D&D General Does D&D (and RPGs in general) Need Edition Resets?

[Minigiant]

Feats, I think, would have eventually reared their ugly heads. Sorcerers, or some other version of a spontaneous caster, would also have appeared at some point. I'm pretty sure there'd have been a music or sound-based Bard show up, fairly early on. Skills were already on their way in during late 2e (and have yet to be done well, three versions later); maneuvers would have appeared as an idea in a Dragon article.

I don't know what you mean by "ability mods for every ability".

We could very well have done without dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, and all the other monsters becoming PC-playable species.

My point is you would need a reset to insert the more mechanical versions of these.

Skills weren't in 1e and they were integrated into the gameplay loop in 2e. Feats didn't exist. Maneuvers didn't exist. Different types of rest didn't exist.

• Does a ranger get a bonus to their Woodcraft or Animal Handing NWP compared to a wizard?
• Which level do you get a feat?
• What schedule is Pact Magic, Psionics, or True Naming work?
• How does wildshape work?
• What is an aberration or fey or giant?
• Are you doing a ton of bonuses, a feat sets of bonus categories, or reducing things down to advantage disadvantage?
• Is the fighter just +1 to hit per level but the paladin gets a class feature every level?
• How does balance work if you add feats or skills or full caster bards or wildshape druids?
• Is Challenge rating a thing? Do you have encounter building tools.
• How do you add magic or martial to a monster?
• How do you swap a monsters race if they only are ability adjusts and Charisma doesn't do anything for monsters?
• Are races just static ability score adjusts?

You need a reset to answer these questions.

 

[soviet]

The Complete Guide to Feats
A supplement for AD&D
In this book we introduce the optional Feats subsystem. Every character gets one every 4 levels. We describe 50 feats for your game including 22 class and race specific ones.
Plug this into your game if you wish, no other changes necessary

 

[soviet]

Incidentally skills were in 1e. They were introduced in the wilderness survival guide. Which shows that you can add in new frameworks through supplements without needing a reset.

Another example of such additions would be kits, from the 2e Complete Guide books. One of these contained all the rules for psionics, an entire new type of abilities.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah I think some forceps in AD&D were better but B/X was the better rules system imho.

I like AD&D class design better eg clerics and Thieves. Class and race I'd better.

So advanced B/X.

Well, to be fair, its to be remembered I'm not a D&D fan really. But when AD&D came along, it didn't actually feel like an improvement on OD&D in any of the areas I cared about, but it sure added in all kinds of extra special-casing all over the place. So one should take my statements with a grain of salt.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Feats, I think, would have eventually reared their ugly heads. Sorcerers, or some other version of a spontaneous caster, would also have appeared at some point. I'm pretty sure there'd have been a music or sound-based Bard show up, fairly early on. Skills were already on their way in during late 2e (and have yet to be done well, three versions later); maneuvers would have appeared as an idea in a Dragon article.

The bard predates AD&D; it was originally a class in the Strategic Review (though it didn't have that strange quasi-prestige class thing I gather they did in AD&D)

I don't know what you mean by "ability mods for every ability".

We could very well have done without dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, and all the other monsters becoming PC-playable species.

More accurately you could have done without them. Its not at all clear that sticking to that would have done anything for the game's popularity.

 

[Remathilis]

We could very well have done without dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, and all the other.

This is hardly a WotC edition thing. There were books to play as dragons (Council of the Wyrms), undead (Requiem the Grim Harvest), humanoids (Complete Book of Humanoids), fey (Wee Folk), lycanthropes (Night Howlers), and planetouched (Planeswalker Handbook). Animal kin (lupin, rakasta and tortle) were in Savage Coast and other Mystara products. By the mid 90s D&D was rife with monstrous PCs.

The golden rule of D&D is that if you introduce a monster, the players will eventually want to play it, tame it, or **** it.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think the new edition ideas are coming, just very slowly, and not in edition reset fashion that folks are used to. Which means, of course, if you want wholesale changes to 5E, you'll get them in decades instead of years. There is also the opinion that if/when the train comes off the tracks, you'll get that wholesale reset sooner, but I'm not as certain of that as they seem to be.

The problem is, some things can't be changed iteratively. You can't, for example, overhaul the CR system iteratively. It has to be replaced en mass; leaving old, broken things in it just means it continues to be unreliable and problematic. E.g. consider how 4e "updated" the monster math with the MM3 and Monster Vault books, but the problems caused by the old math didn't go away--and that was a very minor tweak to an otherwise very successful encounter design system. Likewise, you couldn't remove the deeply flawed spell lists and Iterative Attacks from 3e in a slow, baby-steps way. Their removal must be simultaneous with their replacement, otherwise you're left with an outright hole in your design, and nothing short of actually removing the bad spells can fix the problem. The Spheres of Might and Spheres of Power (for martial/magic respectively, PF1e 3PP content) tried to gently replace iterative attacks with something else. While it's...functional, it pretty clearly sits there awkwardly and there's a lot of pressure to try to find ways to make those special attack actions play nice with a system they were explicitly designed to eclipse. Likewise, including PF spells alongside the Spheres is a great way to never see anything except the most exploitable spheres and all pure PF1e spells otherwise.

Sometimes, change can only come in a chunky block, not in a slow drip. Analogically, you can't do an organ transplant iteratively. Some tasks just have to be done all at once, or not at all.

 

[Vaalingrade]

We could very well have done without dragonborn, tabaxi, goliaths, and all the other monsters becoming PC-playable species.

Not if you wanted to grow the player base in the 2010s.

Especially when Pathfinder is letting you play creepy dolls and plants and the like. People looking for fun, creative options beyond Tolkien's stolen leftovers would have a very easy choice.

 

[payn]

The problem is, some things can't be changed iteratively. You can't, for example, overhaul the CR system iteratively. It has to be replaced en mass; leaving old, broken things in it just means it continues to be unreliable and problematic. E.g. consider how 4e "updated" the monster math with the MM3 and Monster Vault books, but the problems caused by the old math didn't go away--and that was a very minor tweak to an otherwise very successful encounter design system. Likewise, you couldn't remove the deeply flawed spell lists and Iterative Attacks from 3e in a slow, baby-steps way. Their removal must be simultaneous with their replacement, otherwise you're left with an outright hole in your design, and nothing short of actually removing the bad spells can fix the problem. The Spheres of Might and Spheres of Power (for martial/magic respectively, PF1e 3PP content) tried to gently replace iterative attacks with something else. While it's...functional, it pretty clearly sits there awkwardly and there's a lot of pressure to try to find ways to make those special attack actions play nice with a system they were explicitly designed to eclipse. Likewise, alloeonf PF spells alongside the Spheres is a great way to never see anything except the most exploitable spheres and all pure PF1e spells otherwise.

Sometimes, change can only come in a chunky block, not in a slow drip. Analogically, you can't do an organ transplant iteratively. Some tasks just have to be done all at once, or not at all.

Well, the current regime and popularity of the game doesn't see the severity of this issue you do. As I said, if this grows to the point the train comes off the track, you'll get your reset.

 

[Corinnguard]

This is hardly a WotC edition thing. There were books to play as dragons (Council of the Wyrms), undead (Requiem the Grim Harvest), humanoids (Complete Book of Humanoids), fey (Wee Folk), lycanthropes (Night Howlers), and planetouched (Planeswalker Handbook). Animal kin (lupin, rakasta and tortle) were in Savage Coast and other Mystara products. By the mid 90s D&D was rife with monstrous PCs.

The golden rule of D&D is that if you introduce a monster, the players will eventually want to play it, tame it, or **** it.

Wasn't the introduction of Effective Character Levels and Level Adjustments in 3e's Savage Species, an attempt to discourage us players from playing something exotic? If so, it didn't really work because the players were still interested in wanting to playing a member of a monster race. It even hobbled WoTC when they made races such as first version of the Dragonborn, the Raptoran and the Warforged. They actually had to design workarounds to make them possible, but without a significant level adjustment.

Nowadays, there aren't any major restrictions on playing a monster race. They're here to stay.