D&D 5E Fifth Edition.....Why?

[Parmandur]

The most recent comment I saw stated that only the early 80's "matched" current levels...matched, not exceeded current levels.

 

[Aaron L]

I love 5th Edition because to me it seems like a damn near perfect fusion of all the best elements of all the previous Editions, including the good parts o 4th Edition, which I otherwise despise (good parts such as Ritual Magic and non-magic-using characters being able to learn to use Ritual Magic and magical Implements giving bonuses to Saving Throw DCs and To Hit bonuses... even though Ritual Magic actually began life in 3E Unearthed Arcana, I'll still give credit to 4E for fleshing it out more.)

I love 5th Edition for wedding the simplicity of OD&D and Basic to the feel of 1st Edition AD&D to the flexibility and the character creation customization options of 3rd Edition. All while bringing the number inflation under control and reducing the power levels down from Infinity Gauntlet superhero levels to the feel of a good pulpy Conan novel power level. When you play 5th Edition, it really does feel like you're actually playing through the kind of story you find in Appendix E! This isn't to criticize 3rd Edition superhero power levels, as I still love 3E and v3.5 and will still happily play them if a good DM wants to run a 3E campaign, but I just love 5th Edition even more.

The same goes for 1st Edition... or even 2nd Edition! If one of my DM friends wanted to run a 2nd Edition Dark Sun campaign I'd jump at the chance (last summer I bought a seriously mint condition unopened Dark Sun Boxed Set on eBay for 60 dollars... I just couldn't pass it up, it's beautiful! Ever since then it's been sitting on a shelf, where I intend to keep it in the best condition I possibly can... and I have also been absolutely dying to play a good old 2E Dark Sun campaign, warts and all... the warts are part of the fun! I want to run or play a full-on, hardcore Dark Sun campaign, with Athasian Fighters using Battlesystem to command Stands of Thri-Kreen Gladiators! I've been dreaming about it! And I used to truly hate 2nd Edition, as some other ENWorld old-timers like me may remember. But over time, I've learned to appreciate 2nd Edition for what it was and the things it did well, instead of comparing it to things I liked about 1st Edition that 2E did differently, and I've come to appreciate that it was its own thing and what it did right it did wonderfully, and for a setting like Dark Sun which was specifically designed for 2E I wouldn't want to use any other Edition. Just itching to play a Mul Fighter/Psionicist/Fire Cleric!)

Or a 3rd Edition campaign, or especially a 1st Edition campaign, I would very happily play in it (and, in fact, one of my friends started running a 1st Edition campaign that lasted for a good two years right after 5th Edition came out, and the reason it ended was because of outside factors, not because any of us lost interest or wanted to stop playing. Each Edition has its own distinct strengths, weaknesses, and flavor, and I love each one for what it does and how it feels. And I will still always happily play a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd Edition campaign if one of my friends wanted to run one (the only one I would refuse is 4th, but that's personal preference for the only Edition I actually despise. If other people like it, that's great and I am happy it exists for them, but I hate it; I gave it 6 months of my life to try to learn to love it and become convinced of its worthiness, but each month I only learned to hate it more and more as a videogame-flavored miniatures-based tactical wargame with the D&D name grafted onto it, and that did not sit all all well with this miniature-disliking role-playing heavy gamer. But I don't want to start an Edition War, I want to counter one.)

But 5th Edition is now my favorite.

The only good thing to come out of the tragedy that ended our last 1st Edition campaign was that it inspired my brother to finally begin the campaign that he'd been wanting to start since 5E was released, and on which he'd been slowly working at the maps and writing down details for years before that... and when he finally did begin, he turned out to be an amazing, spectacular, superior Dungeon Master! (as well as any other Spider-Man superlatives you can think of!!) Far, far better than I ever was as a DM (although he still insists that he could never match me for real spookiness as Keeper for a Call of Cthulhu campaign, I wouldn't be so sure of that... ! )

My brother hadn't DM'd since he ran an Al-Qadim game for us back during my first year of college when he was about 14-15, which, honestly, hung together like a game DM'd by a 12 year old who had only been playing for 2 years, but now, after having played for 24 years, across 4 Editions (2nd, then 1st, then 3rd, then 5th) he is just incredible. He has always been full of confidence and charisma, and he simply shines as a DM. However, he has Dyslexia, which I think was a big burden to overcome in his previous attempts at DMing over the years... but this time it hasn't slowed him down even one little bit... which I attribute at least in part to the mechanics of 5th Edition, with the reduced number load and simplifications to the mechanics... simplifications without making the game simplistic, still allowing just the right amount of complexity in character customization and options to give hardcore character customizers like my brother and I all the options we could want, between (fully customizable!) Backgrounds (if none of the existing Backgrounds fit your idea for your character, it says right in the PHB that you can work with your DM to alter one of them or just whip up a totally new one!) the power of 5th Edition Feats, and the ability to learn Skills with nothing but money, time, and effort!

But anyway, this time he takes notes, keeps track of time, notes the passing of seasons, and takes great care with all the book-keeping aspects of DMing, things I have never seemed to be able to get a good handle on with my ADHD; every attempt at note-keeping I make just dissolves into a mass of disparate papers and scribbles I can neither keep straight nor keep track of. I think he is able to keep all of that together because he doesn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about the numbers and complexity of running the actual mechanics of the game or combat... that stuff just takes care of itself and is mostly a breeze to take care of. And he tells me he's been having a ton of fun doing it! My little brother ("little" 37 year-old, HA!) has been spectacular, and I attribute that to the ease of running 5th Edition. In fact, he makes it seem so easy and fun that I want to give it a go again, but I know that once I do it will start off great like it always does, only to fall apart in a mass of contradictions and confusion after all my grand cool ideas and inspirations frizzle away into yet another mess of ADHD muck... but with 5E I think I could make it last just a while longer. If I was able to make a Pathfinder campaign last a whole year before 2 out of 3 players lost interest (my brother was still raring to go, bless him) with all the associated number-crunching that goes into that version of the game, then I really think I could keep a 5th Edition campaign together for at least a year or two. And after the amazing inspiration of my brother's truly wonderful, fun as Hell game, I am more and more tempted to try every day, and I largely attribute that to how well 5th Edition holds together.

 

[Guest 6801328]

I love 5th Edition because to me it seems like a damn near perfect fusion of all the best elements of all the previous Editions....

I would agree with "best" but not perfect.

• 
  1. SAD classes combined with deterministic score generation (and ASIs) has led to cookie-cutter, min-maxed clones.
  2. Further exacerbated by Dex being too good.
  3. Archery is too powerful; needs to have some more disadvantages.
  4. The attempt to make Feats optional by making them interchangeable with ASIs has resulted in a clear calculus: a few feats are strictly better than ASIs, the rest are strictly worse. Again, result is too little variety.
  5. Interpretation of Stealth rules left a little too much to DMs.
  6. Ranger poorly defined.
  7. Bonus actions problematic (e.g. for two-weapon fighting)
  8. Balance between long-rest and short-rest characters too dependent upon encounters-per-day.
  9. Some classes could stand to have more of their power shifted to sub-classes to allow for greater variety.

Probably more. That's off the top of my head.

 

[schnee]

The most recent comment I saw stated that only the early 80's "matched" current levels...matched, not exceeded current levels.

How 'controlled' is that for inflation, population, stuff like that?

 

[Ovinomancer]

How 'controlled' is that for inflation, population, stuff like that?

It's copies sold, so... no correction needed?

 

[Parmandur]

I do wonder if folks running the free Basic rules count, and how many that might entail.

 

[MoonSong]

You seem to have already solidified strong opinions about various editions, but I'm going to assume your question is serious, rather than an edition wars post.

On Prior Editions
You seem to value systems that are both complex and flexible. You would probably enjoy Pathfinder immensely if you don't already play it. I would agree that 4th edition would be a terrible match for your play style preferences, as it does mimic elements of MMOs and rewards what some would see as cheap tricks under RAW (rules as written) gameplay.

What 3e does and doesn't do well
3e is complex and flexible. 3e does lend itself to recreating iconic characters better, what with its vast library of options and support for epic level play. It also lends itself to matching incredibly specific character concepts to existing rules. The downsize of 3e is the math creep that appears in the edition, an ever-increasing stack of modifiers. Also, the feat trees (feats with layers of prerequisites) while offering options, weren't always well balanced, leading to arguably obvious choices as to which feat to take. Obvious choices (or "non-choices") is a problem in any gaming rules system, but 3e feats tend to struggle with this problem noticeably at times.

How 5e compares to 3e
Conversely, 5e is streamlined and flexible. You lament the loss of options from 3e (presumably feat trees and prestige classes), but with class paths, backgrounds, and optional feats, there is plenty of choice to make a unique character in 5e. But the focus is different...5e lends itself to better creating iconic parties of adventurers rather than iconic heroes in a vacuum. This is because of value caps and bounded accuracy. The difference between a 1st and 20th level character is a lot less in 5e than 3e. While this suggests that a 20th level 5e character is simply less imposing than in 3e, there are some key upsides to caps/bounds:

• You avoid that stack of modifiers that start to slow down gameplay.
• Also, a higher level character fighting an army of orcs is a dull exercise in 3e, but monsters stay relevant longer in 5e.
• Additionally, characters don't get left in the dust in 5e. You won't end up with the best climber being 20 points in modifier above the rest of the party on a climbing check. Both the monster viability and a narrower range of modifiers make it easily for DMs to create combat encounters and set DCs.

I don't think stat blocking the novel iconics was a design priority for 5e. NPCs such as Mordenkaiden and Harshnag have been stat blocked in 5e, and IIRC they simply get unique templates that push them above a PCs power level.

At the end of the day, 3e does best suit your play style, but there are strong upsides to both the 3e and 5e set of rules.

5e isn't really more flexible than 3e, at least not entirely. For example the sorcerer class. I can make tons of different sorcerer PCs using core 3e alone that are next to impossible to recreate in 5e using all sourcebooks available. -And even some third party stuff-. And it is only as complex as you make it. All those multistackable bonuses and modifiers slowing down combat only happen if you purposely want to stack every mod available to you all the time.

If you’re a fan of 3e, I highly recommend Pathfinder. Not without its own problems, but definitely more streamlined than 3.5.

Not the OP. But, actually I find Pathfinder too fiddly for my taste. Having to keep track of resources in rounds per day can make stuff unplayable. And let's not get started on traits. I dread having to choose them.

~1/3rd? On 5e moving 750k units in about 3 years, when TSR was moving that each year in c1985, it came up in another thread - the current volume on a WotC comment, the mid-80s from a contemporaneous news story linked by Morrus. Inflation? It's pretty well-documented, but, on a personal level I vaguely remember buying the 1e AD&D PH for 12 bucks or so back in the day, today it's $50.

I don't know. i got mine for $21 (actually more like 20.70ish)

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I think you might be misremembering some numbers. The best selling single D&D product is the Keep on the Borderlands and it cracked about 1 million copies. If AD&D was doing 750k copies per year for multiple years, that would have buried KotB.

Are you sure that it wasn't 750k copies BY 1985?

 

[Tony Vargas]

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION] - I think you might be misremembering some numbers. The best selling single D&D product is the Keep on the Borderlands and it cracked about 1 million copies.

And there was a basic set that sold over a mil, too.

If AD&D was doing 750k copies per year for multiple years, that would have buried KotB.

Are you sure that it wasn't 750k copies BY 1985?

TSR was moving 750k books/year, according to a contemporaneous article Morrus linked in a recent thread.
It was publishing a lot if AD&D books, but had the 'two prong approach' going...
...the context of that thread was 5e approaching 800k books moved, some 3.5 years in.
FWIW.

 

[Hussar]

And there was a basic set that sold over a mil, too.

TSR was moving 750k books/year, according to a contemporaneous article Morrus linked in a recent thread.
It was publishing a lot if AD&D books, but had the 'two prong approach' going...
...the context of that thread was 5e approaching 800k books moved, some 3.5 years in.
FWIW.

Ahh, right, I remember that thread. It was 750k books for ALL books for the year. So, you are kinda comparing apples to oranges. Sure, we've had 750 k (apparently, ish) PHB's sold in 3e years, but, we have no idea what the total book sales for all 5e books is. Considering that the Monster Manual and DMG aren'T all that far behind on Amazon, I would think they're still selling very, very strongly.