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

[Minigiant]

I don't really think so. Some times basic conceptual issues were involve; if your concept was a smart character or specifically about a ranger, the fact there are other vaguely related types you can play is no concilation.

You are fundamentally missing my point. My point is that warrriors were linked to STR, DEX, and CON and usually a combination for ir. Whereas INT, WIS, (and later CHA} were linked to casters.

A STR 18/52 INT 12 fighter was noticeably stronger than a STR 12 INT 18 fighter. There was no good option for a high INT warrior or high STR caster.

A big change in 4e and 5e is the delink of Ability Score and Playstyle. You could run a strong caster or smarter and feel no regret of putting your rolls in those scores.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

And I’ve never seen a 1e fighter that didn’t have an 18 Strength. Funny how the plural of anecdote isn’t data.

It was truly amazing how many had 18/00 strength. That 1% chance came up 50% of the time.

 

[Helldritch]

The fact things can be more unfair does not seem to make the argument I think you believe it does.

Of course it does. You compare a dying man to a game??????? Do you know how that sounds?
A simple game with no consequences is compared to a life and death situation.

Heh. One npc in forty years of gaming doesn’t really change my point.

The statement was npcs were generated same as pcs. Unless you did that for every single npc you ever made for DnD, then that statement is not true.

No one examples among many. I did not always played with my full library of books with me back then. We were playing at different houses so carrying zounds of books would have been out of the question. DMG, PHB and MM (later MM2 and FF) add to that the adventure itself (usually homebrewed) and I had to come up on the spot. If an NPC had the stats for the class, ok. If not, tough luck.

And I’ve never seen a 1e fighter that didn’t have an 18 Strength. Funny how the plural of anecdote isn’t data.

And I have seen zounds of them, including my own 1st character ever. Strange how your experience seems to be systematically better than us. Maybe your DM was much more generous than what we had. Point is, there were tables in which a DM would bypass stat gen to allow any classes and others that did not.

And the simple fact of ignoring stat gen in favour of class gen brought the lawful stupid into existence as the strongest of all classes was the paladin that was supposedly rare but that became a common sight. Then many DM found that the class was too powerful and gated it with the Lawful Stupid alignment. Strange how I never had to use the Lawful Stupid in my games. Ho yeah... I used the Stat Gen as it was supposed to be. Make do with what you had rolled.

And here do not get me wrong. I absolutely love 5ed. I find the standard array a bit strong but this is what the game is advocating so I go along with it because I know it has been play tested with these. I know that to make a variation on that, you have to be very careful and warn your players and your players must agree. In modern gaming, standard array is pretty much the basic assumption. Deviation on that is not well seen by the majority of the community.

 

[Azzy]

And here do not get me wrong. I absolutely love 5ed. I find the standard array a bit strong but this is what the game is advocating so I go along with it because I know it has been play tested with these. I know that to make a variation on that, you have to be very careful and warn your players and your players must agree. In modern gaming, standard array is pretty much the basic assumption. Deviation on that is not well seen by the majority of the community.

Actually, the standard array, despite getting a bad rep on this thread, is a (poor) model of expected roll array of 4d6-l.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That’s not even true. Npcs in modules frequently lacked six stats.

For sure example the bozak priest in DL1 is apparently a level 4 MU judging from his spell list but is given no stats in the star block nor an actual level.

Bozak draconians were not a PC race (still aren't).

 

[Micah Sweet]

And I’ve never seen a 1e fighter that didn’t have an 18 Strength. Funny how the plural of anecdote isn’t data.

I saw many 1st ed fighters with 18/percentile Strength, but it was by no means universal.

Are we at data yet?

 

[Micah Sweet]

You are fundamentally missing my point. My point is that warrriors were linked to STR, DEX, and CON and usually a combination for ir. Whereas INT, WIS, (and later CHA} were linked to casters.

A STR 18/52 INT 12 fighter was noticeably stronger than a STR 12 INT 18 fighter. There was no good option for a high INT warrior or high STR caster.

A big change in 4e and 5e is the delink of Ability Score and Playstyle. You could run a strong caster or smarter and feel no regret of putting your rolls in those scores.

I think quite a lot of people would regret putting high rolls in stats other than their primary, even today. People might even argue about it on the internet...

 

[Thomas Shey]

Unless you realize it is ineffective and are trying to sell it.

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.

Truth be told, Illusionists can really rock if the DM is willing to allow illusions to be useful and if the opposition are mostly low-Int easy-to-fool humanoids e.g. Orcs, Ogres, etc. Flip side: Illusionists (particularly pre-UA) are nigh-useless if the opposition are mostly undead, oozes, constructs, or other things on whom illusions have little or no effect.

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.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You are fundamentally missing my point. My point is that warrriors were linked to STR, DEX, and CON and usually a combination for ir. Whereas INT, WIS, (and later CHA} were linked to casters.

No, I'm just not agreeing it was the whole issue.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Of course it does. You compare a dying man to a game??????? Do you know how that sounds?

Of course I did. That's why I mentioned it was hyperbolic out of the gate. It was to point out that two things can both be unfair while still encouraging someone to agree with one of them. At this point, I don't think continuing to explain that to you is useful, because I just don't think you accept it, and without that this conversation has nowhere to go.