D&D General How has D&D changed over the decades?

[Yardiff]

The 1e DMG didnt come out until '79, so how were all those NPCs stats created before then?

 

[overgeeked]

In 1ed, Monty Haul was easy to remove. Simply use Mordenkainen Disjunction. Anti-magic shell and so on. A beholder with enough minions could become the downfall of MH characters too. But in 5ed? The power is built-in the character, not its items. Items are just a bonus.

Rust monsters and level-draining undead. Oh, I miss those.

 

[overgeeked]

The 1e DMG didnt come out until '79, so how were all those NPCs stats created before then?

However the DM wanted to. You're also forgetting all the other D&D material that was available by ’79. The entire OD&D line along with Holmes Basic. Judges Guild was already around. And others I'm sure. The thing a lot of people seem to forget is that in the early days it was more about the DM just making stuff up than waiting for rule books to tell them how. So the idea that a DM couldn't make an NPC without the AD&D DMG in 1978...is ahistorical.

 

[Lanefan]

Much as I think there's a number of problems with D&D's design, especially its early design, I think I'll be charitable and assume Gygax thought the Illusionist was better than experience in the field taught most people it was.

Sure, that's fair.

Well, they weren't the only ones to get bit on the behind by some of that. But I think the more critical impact was the GM had to have a both fair and reasonable assumption about what the reactions to illusions would be, and I think that was hit or miss enough in the wild that most people learned not to take the chance.

That, and in 1e Illusionist was perhaps the most demanding class to play in that the player had to use imagination to come up with the illusions the character was casting. Some players thrived on this, others...well, not so much.

 

[Yardiff]

However the DM wanted to. You're also forgetting all the other D&D material that was available by ’79. The entire OD&D line along with Holmes Basic. Judges Guild was already around. And others I'm sure. The thing a lot of people seem to forget is that in the early days it was more about the DM just making stuff up than waiting for rule books to tell them how. So the idea that a DM couldn't make an NPC without the AD&D DMG in 1978...is ahistorical.

I should have "reply"ed to Husser's post wo you'd understand that my post was supposed to be a reply to his post about no one ever having rolled stats for NPCs. My mistake.

 

[Lanefan]

Fully agreed. It is way stronger. But this is what players expect to have and dare I say, rightly so. This is what is written, this is what they want.

I'm not sure the standard array really is any stronger on average than 4d6k3 - in fact, on digging into the numbers, it isn't.

Standard array 15-14-13-12-10-8 gives a total of 72 and an average of 12.00. The average result from rolling 4d6k3 is 12.24; which means over the course of rolling 6 times you're on average going to end up with a 6-stat total of about 73.4. That represents one or maybe two extra points to put somewhere in the array, meaning a truer reflection of 4d6k3 would be the standard array plus one "extra" point the player could assign where she liked.

 

[Azzy]

Fully agreed. It is way stronger. But this is what players expect to have and dare I say, rightly so. This is what is written, this is what they want.

You mean weaker than the expected 4d6-l array (or did you not read the link)?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'm not sure the standard array really is any stronger on average than 4d6k3 - in fact, on digging into the numbers, it isn't.

Standard array 15-14-13-12-10-8 gives a total of 72 and an average of 12.00. The average result from rolling 4d6k3 is 12.24; which means over the course of rolling 6 times you're on average going to end up with a 6-stat total of about 73.4. That represents one or maybe two extra points to put somewhere in the array, meaning a truer reflection of 4d6k3 would be the standard array plus one "extra" point the player could assign where she liked.

my issue is that well it comes to the average in theory, when you throw out all the low ones and sometimes people fudge/cheat/reroll you not only always end up at a minimum of average, but over a few campaigns (say 30 characters) you will see way more to the high end.

 

[Helldritch]

You mean weaker than the expected 4d6-l array (or did you not read the link)?

This answer is also for : @Lanefan and @GMforPowergamers
If every single character are kept, you might get it better but you might also ended up way lower. The standard array is stronger in the sense that you take no chances with luck. You are assured to have it. Never higher, but never lower. And it is the never lower that makes it so powerful.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Don't all those things bundled up fall under simplistic and traditional game design. A game design meant to model traditional D&D characters with mechanics too simplistic and linear to create any sense of nuance.

They usually were, but talking about them in the context of not being able to reach certain sorts of classes really understates it; often it was about extremely specific classes or attribute setups.

I mean, people were fudging, cheating, and using favorable rolling methods because there were few supported paths to power so you had to roll one of them.

It wasn't just about power, however; sometimes it very much wasn't. But if you could only get a character you wanted by getting Specific Combination X, then die rolls could be a massive barrier between what you wanted whether it was a case of power or not. And something sort-of like it as in your examples wasn't going to get the job done.