[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[JRRNeiklot]

What's a fundamental mechanic, though? Is save-or-die really a fundamental mechanic to D&D? You compare avoiding save-or-die to lowering the basketball rim to 8 ft, but I see it more akin to adding a shot clock -- something intended to speed the game up and make it more enjoyable.

Ultimately, though, I think the very basic premise behind all your analogies -- that the D&D designers are making the game easier and easier for the whiny players -- is nothing but pure and total bunkum. People might fixate on the reduction of save or die effects, but the simple truth is, 3e out of the box is easily as deadly as any other edition out of the game, and probably much deadlier. Between having Str and Con scores, feats, and critical hits, there are more ways for a monster to kill a PC than ever before. I've killed more PCs in 3e than in all of 1st and 2nd edition combined.

Wasn't it you who once proclaimed WotC's 3e revision of Tomb of Horrors as having been Disneyized into some kind of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride? Well, I ran that sucker a month ago and had yet another TPK -- I think that was my 5th, and I've had at least one for each major edition of the game. The old dungeon felt just as deadly as it ever did. The biggest difference was that the WotC version didn't need to make up a bunch of saveless, no-precedent mechanics in order to make their revision a killer -- all they needed was that same, toothless 3e ruleset that is supposed to cosset the tender, frail players.

I'd be the first to claim my analogies are less than perfect. Too much alcohol in my youth, perhaps.

3e has few ways of killing anyone. There's really only 4. Damage. Negative con. Coup-de-grace, drowning. Forgive me if I missed one. It makes players less cautious. Go ahead and drink that potion, if it's actually poison, you'll lose a few hits of con which will take the cleric all of one round to fix.

And, yes I did say something to that effect about the revised ToH, though I don't think I mentioned Mr. Toad specifically, lol. I stand by that statement as well. Any idiot can make a killer dungeon with enough critters and traps to erode hit points. It will never generate the fear and atmosphere of instant death or save or die effects, though. I'm not suggesting these effects be prevalent, just that they should exist, though rarely.

 

[Numion]

3e has few ways of killing anyone. There's really only 4. Damage. Negative con. Coup-de-grace, drowning. Forgive me if I missed one. It makes players less cautious. Go ahead and drink that potion, if it's actually poison, you'll lose a few hits of con which will take the cleric all of one round to fix.

You missed the save-or-die effects. Sometimes it seems most of the PCs die to those effects. And the claims about D&D not being lethal are quite false. RttToEE alone cost my players 30 characters. Heck, there's even a TPK (or two) on the general discussion page of ENWorld right now.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think the main difference here is that because CR/EL/WBL/XP etc. are so tightly meshed in 3e a DM who wants to change one aspect (but not the others) needs to consider his modifications more carefully than he would with AD&D where that interaction isn't a consideration. 1e controlled wealth and level pretty consistently by making the gaining of treasure the main factor in gaining XP. You really couldn't have an instance where you had a 10th level character who had never had two gold pieces to rub together because the mechanics of the game made GP and XP almost synonymous. With 3e, the gaining of XP and treasure have become seperated, but keeping them at consistent levels is still important to the way the game functions, so 3e DMs have more to consider when making modifications.

In other words you're gaining the benefits of more detailed guidance and a more integrated system, but you trade that for the inconvenience of doing more work when you want to change some of the parameters without affecting the rest.

If true, this would be the first coherent argument I have ever seen on these boards that a game system is too integrated. Unlike the mythological evidence that would supposedly point a finger at 3e (that is so popular to allude but is never ever explained), here we can see 1e is suffering from the very grievous fault that seems to cause some people such terrible consternation.

But I do not think this argument is true, at least you are wrong in every way that matters.

I actually do not care if I have the right amount of wealth for my level. Not a bit. I care whether I feel like my character is getting rewards that seem roughly commensurate when weighed against the risks. (RPing rewards do count, but we are talking about filthy lucre here so I am not going to get into such details.)

The 3e guidelines directly address this issue. They have a CR system that gives a pretty decent rough measure of risk. The risk as measured by CR translates directly into XP. Monsters and NPCs have suggested loot. A randomish grabbag of defeated enemies yield a certain amount of loot. That is summarized into a wealth guideline, so the DM can check the designers work or their own if he feels like it. The DM can directly tweak things where it matters.

In 1e wealth an enemy yields is mostly decoupled from the actual risk. Some monsters have little wealth but are still quite dangerous. Dragons are very dangerous but yield very large quantities of wealth relative to their actual combat effectiveness. NPC humanoid "Adventurer" types that are equipped sufficiently well to be genuinely dangerous to the PCs upstage even the dragon-shaped piggy banks in rewards relative to their combat effectiveness.

The net effect is that 1e has no meaningful relationship between risk and reward. It is left to the DM to keep his hand on this dial at all times with no useful guidance from the rules.

So in the end, 1e is at least as fiddly as 3e, maybe even more so, but in a different dimension. The difference is that 1e gives weak guidance in exactly the area that tends to directly impact player enjoyment.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Any idiot can make a killer dungeon with enough critters and traps to erode hit points. It will never generate the fear and atmosphere of instant death or save or die effects, though. I'm not suggesting these effects be prevalent, just that they should exist, though rarely.

You are still way off base. With iterative attacks, Str bonuses for monsters, very strong monsters, and critical hits, we are not talking about the glacial speed of combat you may be used to from previous editions at all.

3e can "reward" tactical errors very quickly, very directly.

Furthermore, when it comes to spells or special effect attacks, PCs fail saves much more often. If these effects were not toned down, the level of carnage would make most 1e modules look like kindergarten.

 

[Hussar]

The guidelines were used by the designers as part of the CR system (as were the standard 25 pt. buy stat array and the four PC party). You can call them "optional" if you want, but what you are really saying is that WBL guidelines are "optional if you don't mind the CR system becoming essentially worthless to you". IMO an "optional" part of the game isn't really optional if failing to use it means other parts of the game system stop working properly.

That said, I'm not opposed to WBL guidelines - I don't think they are a bad thing - I just think it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that AD&D's assumptions about equipment affect the way the game plays in the same way that 3e's assumptions do. 3e's assumptions are integral to the system whereas if AD&D considered the effect of equipment at all, it was as an abstract consideration where the main point is "too much is bad".

This is mistaken. The CR guidelines were added AFTER the game was designed, not before. This is a common misperception. The game was designed and then playtested. The CR and Wealth guidelines were the results of that playtesting.

These guidelines were not integral to the development of the system, they are the effects of the system as seen in thousands of hours of playtesting.

The same goes for the 4 encounters/day paradigm. This is explicitely NOT part of the 3e ruleset. What the DMG says is that IF you have about 4 encounters per day with the APL=EL, then a fifth or six encounter is likely going to be lethal. In other words, the 4/day thing is simply advice, not a rule in any shape or form. If you read the actual text you'll see that it's intentionally vague because it will vary so significantly from campaign to campaign.

Chess is the OG wargame. RPG's were born from wargames.

And I have to diagree, I don't find it boring at all. I've been playing it since I was 9 years old, and to this day I still surprise myself. It's very interesting to see what other people's philosophy's on defensive/offensive strategy and play become when enacted. What a great game. I can kill a whole day playing chess.

Interesting. A game that you enjoy and can play all day is a good game. Kind of like CCG's for some people.

 

[Thurbane]

In 1e wealth an enemy yields is mostly decoupled from the actual risk. Some monsters have little wealth but are still quite dangerous.

Darn those non-intelligent giant spiders for not carrying the correct change back in 1E, how thoughtless of them.

Dragons are very dangerous but yield very large quantities of wealth relative to their actual combat effectiveness.

A well played dragon could kick the tar out of most any party I was ever involved in with 1E, including some very high level ones. It's also obvious that dragons had what was arguably "excessive" amounts of loot due to their very nature and mythical precedent. Hardly surprising. I mean, Smaug was brought down by a lucky critical from an arrow, and look at the mountains of luvre he had stashed away.

NPC humanoid "Adventurer" types that are equipped sufficiently well to be genuinely dangerous to the PCs upstage even the dragon-shaped piggy banks in rewards relative to their combat effectiveness.

Not sure what you're getting at here, but if you are implying that humanoids had to be loaded up with massive amounts of gear and magic to be a challenge, it was nothing I ever enountered firsthand. 1E generally relied on hordes of mooks with a few leader types rather than 1 heavily equipped foe. This, of course, varied by DM and adventure/setting.

The net effect is that 1e has no meaningful relationship between risk and reward. It is left to the DM to keep his hand on this dial at all times with no useful guidance from the rules.

Sorry, but that's utter horse-puckey, not to mention entirely subjective. Every monster had a treasure type, and despite what you are saying, the vast majority were quite relative to the threat the creature presented, except in the case of non-intelligent creatures which obviously only had "incidental" treasure, or none at all.

So in the end, 1e is at least as fiddly as 3e, maybe even more so, but in a different dimension. The difference is that 1e gives weak guidance in exactly the area that tends to directly impact player enjoyment.

Again, entirely subjective.

I firmly believe that most of the people who are most vocally bashing 1E and/or 2E here are people who apparently played under some obviously lousy DMs. Have any of the early edition haters played under the same DM with 3.X rules and found a marked improvement, that could be attributed to the ruleset alone, and not to greater experience? I am genuinely interested.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

In 1e wealth an enemy yields is mostly decoupled from the actual risk. Some monsters have little wealth but are still quite dangerous. Dragons are very dangerous but yield very large quantities of wealth relative to their actual combat effectiveness. NPC humanoid "Adventurer" types that are equipped sufficiently well to be genuinely dangerous to the PCs upstage even the dragon-shaped piggy banks in rewards relative to their combat effectiveness.

The net effect is that 1e has no meaningful relationship between risk and reward.

Absolutely. This is one of 1e's many strengths over 3e.

In 1e, you cannot judge the likely reward from an encounter simply by its difficulty. Therefore in 1e, effective players pick and choose their combats, and will hide from, negotiate with or even bribe certain foes rather than fighting them. Another consequence is that in 1e, good reconnaissance is rewarded by relatively easy and profitable encounters, while poor reconnaissance is punished by challenging encounters for little reward.

There's certainly a tendency among some 3e groups to take the Rambo approach to gaming: charge every enemy, often with minimal scouting first. 1e punishes this playstyle and I'm glad that it does.

 

[Hussar]

There's certainly a tendency among some 3e groups to take the Rambo approach to gaming: charge every enemy, often with minimal scouting first. 1e punishes this playstyle and I'm glad that it does.

How? When the PC's are so much more powerful than any opponent, how are 1e PC's punished for Rambo approaches?

 

[FireLance]

Absolutely. This is one of 1e's many strengths over 3e.

In 1e, you cannot judge the likely reward from an encounter simply by its difficulty. Therefore in 1e, effective players pick and choose their combats, and will hide from, negotiate with or even bribe certain foes rather than fighting them. Another consequence is that in 1e, good reconnaissance is rewarded by relatively easy and profitable encounters, while poor reconnaissance is punished by challenging encounters for little reward.

There's certainly a tendency among some 3e groups to take the Rambo approach to gaming: charge every enemy, often with minimal scouting first. 1e punishes this playstyle and I'm glad that it does.

Actually, the only definite link between risk and reward in 3e is experience for overcoming a challenge, and even then the DM could deliberately pick a challenge that would be tougher for a specific party than its CR would indicate. A DM could likewise select opponents that don't provide much treasure.

It seems to me that regardless of edition, whether or not an encounter yields rewards commensurate with the risks is a matter of DM style. Similarly, whether a party gains any benefit from scouting, or is allowed to pick and choose which opponents to fight is also a matter of DM style. I fail to see how any of these factors had anything to do with the ruleset used.

I can only speak from personal experience, but my DMing style of selecting challenges that the PCs should be able to overcome, and providing what I thought were appropriate rewards for overcoming those challenges, has not changed very much since the time I started DMing BD&D for my younger brother to DMing 1e for my friends in high school to DMing 2e for my friends in college and for my current gaming group (who I met after starting work) to DMing after our conversion to 3e. All 3e has given me is a shortcut for determining what are appropriate challenges and how to reward the PCs.

In fact, I would argue that the 3.5e ruleset encourages scouting and preparation more than the 1e ruleset. There are rules for providing the PCs with information about the characteristics, strengths and weakness of the creatures they face (using Knowledge checks). How did the 1e ruleset encourage this?

 

[Numion]

Darn those non-intelligent giant spiders for not carrying the correct change back in 1E, how thoughtless of them.

They probably won't carry any change in 3E either - the EL/CR/wealth system is supposed to even out in course of one adventure. It doesn't mean that every monster was carrying around treasure. This is evident from all the published adventures, for example.

I firmly believe that most of the people who are most vocally bashing 1E and/or 2E here are people who apparently played under some obviously lousy DMs. Have any of the early edition haters played under the same DM with 3.X rules and found a marked improvement, that could be attributed to the ruleset alone, and not to greater experience? I am genuinely interested.

That's the ticket: almost all complaints about 1E are actually complaints about the DM That's pretty ingenious and convincing. You do understand the corollary?

So let's just stick to the merits of the different systems, shall we?