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

[Hussar]

NPC paladins (including paladin organizations; I'm imagining something like Jedi) and lucky players. NPCs were built like PCs in those days you will recall. Worldbuilding used to be a huge part of D&D.

No they weren’t.

No dm ever generated npcs by randomly rolling stats.

 

[Hussar]

What's the threshold for "statistically relevant"?

I ask because our crew have over the years, using char-gen methods similar enough for rock'n'roll, generated well north of 1000 characters.

And I would bet dollars to donuts that if you graphed the point buy value of those characters, the average value would be MUCH higher than they should be.

There is zero chance the average would be lower.

 

[Helldritch]

Didn't someone earlier in this thread argue having two of X in the party makes X not rare even if X is super rare in the campaign world?

By that same logic, two pandas in a zoo makes them common? So that they are no longer an endangered specie?
So OK EVERYONE! ZOO "XYZ" HAS TWO PANDAS! WE NO LONGER NEED TO PROTECT THEM FROM EXTINCTION!

That logic is completely irrational. It was not thought through.

I'm also welcome to lay out why an argument that a particular design decision is inherenlty unfair has legs. There's a strong argument that gating poerwful character types with random rolls is inherently unfair due to the randomness involved. Randomness in play has the chance to even out because a character can make thousands of rolls in its lifespan. But rollng a paldin depends on only a single roll, making randomnes hugely more relevant to it.

You may, lay out your argument. But it does not make it true one iota.
Yep, you had to be very lucky to roll a paladin.

People can argue that paladins were supposed to be rare as a philosophy. I don't think that's accurate, or at least incomplete. Paladins were supposed to be rare because they were simply more powerful. They had abilities that made them simply better than fighters, because they were fighters with a bunch of extra abilities. There's a good argument that this is inherently unfair, because not only does the character get the benefit that high abilities scores normaly provide - already an advantage provided by randomnes - they also get access to a class with flat-out better stuff.

And I think exactly the contrary. It was exactly this reason that made paladin so desired. But since they were rare, most people were happy when they had one in their group.
Now. Not all paladin were parangon of strength, constitution and wisdom. In fact, many barely made it with the minimum stats. And before the UA, they would not get to increase their stats (that was completely BS when we saw that...).

Now, when you gate a class in such a way, you know that a group that has a paladin in it will have it a bit easier than a group without. Again, this is two philosophy at odds that we see here.

Make do with what you have or do whatever you want?
1st philosophy will have someway to reward good rolls with prerequisites and powerful classes.
2nd philosophy will try to push class and game balance instead.

1st philosophy will have a lot of variations in the actual play and will force players to work a bit more creatively to overcome dangers. Here the swinginess is what people are after. A high risk game where the odds are against the players almost all the time. It is exactly those odds that bring players to these games. The uncertainty of the results is what is exciting and enticing to play these systems.

2nd philosophy will see no or few variations, encouraging both cooperation and indiviualism in play. The more balance the game, the more the play becomes individual (even in groups) because you do not necessarily need the other to succeed. The "balance" of the game makes it that even encounters are assumed to be balanced and requires players to make major mistakes to die. Here, since the odds are equal or slightly in favour of the players, the story usually prime over the randomness. In the previous system, the story organically emerge from the die rolls and interactions between players with their environment. In the 2nd the story comes from the interaction between players with their environment since the randomness of the game has been eliminated.

Both systems have merit. Fortunately, 5ed can be made a bit more like 1ed by tweaking it a bit. (This is what we did).

The fact that you could choose not to play this game doesn't make the unfairness disappear. It just means some players accept it, if only because they didn't have any other options.

You always have an other option. That is not to play. If the rules are so abhorrent to you that you play reluctantly, my advice is do not play at all. Find another group. Or become a DM and make your own group that will like your style.

 

[Hussar]

On the point about stats being more important.

This is so untrue.

In earlier DnD you simply never saw a character that didn’t have at least one 18. Every fighter had 18 percentile strength because there was no point in playing a fighter otherwise.

Let’s not forget that we could be rolling 9d6 for our main stat after Unearthed Arcana came out.

You can argue you didn’t use that method. Fair enough but it wasn’t there to not be used. It absolutely was expected to be used.

If anything, the change is the other direction. We are expected to use standard array which is considerably less than what due rolling generates. Never minding the standard of “creative” die rolling.

Like I said. Gaming as a punishment has certainly fallen by the wayside.

 

[Helldritch]

No they weren’t.

No dm ever generated npcs by randomly rolling stats.

Wrong. I did it in 1ed.
Players: We would like to hire a cleric.
Me: Roll stats for 3 characters. Yep, got only one cleric (with a nice 13 wisdom). Want to hire him?
Players: Great! We hire him.
And that cleric is still remembered as one the best NPC they ever had. He could not cast high level spells. But he became their friend.

And I would bet dollars to donuts that if you graphed the point buy value of those characters, the average value would be MUCH higher than they should be.

There is zero chance the average would be lower.

A wild assumption of which you only have gut feeling. With what our friend usually say, I would tend to bet the other way. These average must be really close to the normal average. But it is just my opinion here.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And again, if a player get in a game and accept, then it is not unfair.

We're just not going to agree on this. There can be things people accept that are unfair, because the alternative is equally or more unattractive.

I'm going to present a hyperbolic example here:

You've got a starving man who comes up to a gate. He begs for food. The person at the gate offers him a coin to flip. If he flips it and gets head, he'll be fed; if he gets tails he'll be killed where he stands.

He "accepted it", but the nature of the choice wasn't fair at the getgo. He's been present an option between two unattractive choices.

As I said, hyperbolic, but the choice "Don't play or deal with a character generation system that may saddle you with a character you don't like for the foreseeable future" is not a set of good choices for many people, and to class that as "fair" is not something I can get on board.

 

[Helldritch]

On the point about stats being more important.

This is so untrue.

Agreed on that. Player skills (and not character) were way more important.

In earlier DnD you simply never saw a character that didn’t have at least one 18. Every fighter had 18 percentile strength because there was no point in playing a fighter otherwise.

My first character was a fighter with 16 st and 18 intel. 3d6 in order. All other stat average (9 to 11) save wisdom an 8.

Let’s not forget that we could be rolling 9d6 for our main stat after Unearthed Arcana came out.

Nope. Not unless you used UA. Which we did not.

You can argue you didn’t use that method. Fair enough but it wasn’t there to not be used. It absolutely was expected to be used.

If anything, the change is the other direction. We are expected to use standard array which is considerably less than what due rolling generates. Never minding the standard of “creative” die rolling.

Like I said. Gaming as a punishment has certainly fallen by the wayside.

I fully agree with you. It was expected to be used. But not all tables used it. Not everyone were happy with UA. It was not play tested and it showed. The only thing used in that book were carefully selected.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Then explain Illusionists who, while generally seen as less powerful than standard MUs, were also gated behind tough rolls (Int 15 and Dex 16 I think) in order to make them uncommon.

I doubt seriously they were seen as less powerful per capita by the designers; they had lower experience requirements (which made up for the fact they didn't benefit from their high attributes in that regard), and while they had more limited spell lists, the phrase the AD&D1 PHB had for that spell list was "different and highly effective"; that's not a term you use if you think the class is overall inferior. The fact the playing public didn't agree with them (presumably Gygax) doesn't change that designer perspective, and thus the minimum setting.

 

[Helldritch]

We're just not going to agree on this. There can be things people accept that are unfair, because the alternative is equally or more unattractive.

I'm going to present a hyperbolic example here:

You've got a starving man who comes up to a gate. He begs for food. The person at the gate offers him a coin to flip. If he flips it and gets head, he'll be fed; if he gets tails he'll be killed where he stands.

He "accepted it", but the nature of the choice wasn't fair at the getgo. He's been present an option between two unattractive choices.

As I said, hyperbolic, but the choice "Don't play or deal with a character generation system that may saddle you with a character you don't like for the foreseeable future" is not a set of good choices for many people, and to class that as "fair" is not something I can get on board.

Ok other hyperbolic.
10000 starving man comes at the gate. They can only feed a few or the town will starve too. Flip a coin until only 100 are allowed to get in. All agree. Losers must understand that sometimes, you are simply not lucky.

Unfair... same situation. 10000 starving man. Only those that have black hair can enter. Red hair guys are slain on the spot. No one agreed to that. But that is how it works.
Even more unfair: 5000 are still in line. We change the rule, only those that weigths less than 150 pounds are allowed.

Hyperbolic examples are not necessarily the best. It may help to get a point across to show that some situations can deteriorate, but in this case, another hyperbolic can show even worse. Arbitrary ruling depending on the taste of the authority.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Or they’re persuaded that rolling fairly for stats and lucking into a paladin actually is fair. Some people have a different view of the game and what is fair within it than you or Thomas Shey do. For some people, the character generation mini game, complete with random elements, is part of the game and not the prelude. That’s particularly evident among Traveller players with its table driven character generation or R.Talsorian’s life paths.

I'm afraid I'm cynical that at least some of those like it because they think it'll do well by them, and they can dispose of any cases where it doesn't. Or they don't really care about the numerical quality of the character in the first place, in which case, of course it won't seem unfair.