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

[Stefano Rinaldelli]

You don't have to. You already made that point, so we get it. You don't have to keep making it.

I want to be sure to say this in a way that doesn't offend you. Really. Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood, especially from Fifth Element.

 

[Helldritch]

As a rule of thumb. Each deadly encounter counts as two and each hard encounter counts as 1.5. This will reduce the number of encounters accordingly. An easy encounter count as a half encounter. At least, this is what I do and it works out quite fine.

I also adjust a bit if I am too lucky or if the players get unlucky. Rolling two 20s when in disadvantage can turn the tide of a battle.

 

[Remathilis]

every single one of those is very obviously about combat encounters rather than locked doors puzzles & the like

Fotuantely, that the revised rules in Xanathar's (traps) and Tasha's (puzzles) have set difficulty for non-combat encounters as easy/medium/hard; which you could roughly equate to combat encounter difficulty. So, your 6-8 encounter could include some dangerous traps (scything blade) or a medium difficulty puzzle (Four By Four) as part of the design. It's an area I hope gets more love in the revision, but there have been some steps towards formalizing and utilizing things like this.

 

[tetrasodium]

Fotuantely, that the revised rules in Xanathar's (traps) and Tasha's (puzzles) have set difficulty for non-combat encounters as easy/medium/hard; which you could roughly equate to combat encounter difficulty. So, your 6-8 encounter could include some dangerous traps (scything blade) or a medium difficulty puzzle (Four By Four) as part of the design. It's an area I hope gets more love in the revision, but there have been some steps towards formalizing and utilizing things like this.

Those are less steps towards fixing the problem than they are steps towards papering over it by pretty much finding ways to justify the square hole. The root problem of an unreasonable adventuring day expectation has deep ripples through the rest of the game. Sure a GM can bump CR & add more monsters to encounters but that only goes so far before it takes on the appearance of adversarial GM'ing & runs into problems with bounded accuracy multiple attacks magic/energy resist/etc impacting different classes to different extents. Resources the adventuring day burns up are more than just HP & those are pegged to 6-8 medium to hard combat encounters

 

[Hussar]

The idea that color and cute are bad in relation to D&D art is an opinion, one which should be allowed to be expressed. Feeling that way isn't in itself a problem. I also feel the art in some gaming materials goes too far in that direction for my taste.

There is a very strong tendency to conflate personal taste with objective value.

There is a considerable difference between “this is bad” and “I don’t like this”

 

[Lanefan]

So you have every dungeon, goblin warren, hamlet and bandit camp for miles around ready to go before you ever start your game?

Not to that extent, but I'll certainly have a better-than-vague idea of what's where - farmlands and villages that way, potentially-dangerous forests that way, the sea is about 5 days travel that way, and so forth.

Assuming the PCs are the least bit familiar with the local area the players will get an overview map of this at campaign start, with some of the villages labelled and named. Meanwhile I'll have a somewhat more detailed DM map which while still not showing everything ("leave blank space" is good advice!) will have more specifics particularly in the dangerous areas.

Talk about design overkill!

Nah.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Burning a bunch of spell slots like that by doing an overnight rest to cast a bunch of cure spells was not without risks, the healer was down all of those slots the next day and would want another rest making "let's go back to town" something players of those characters were likely to consider pushing for instead of just the gm trying to convince the party it's unsafe since there was the first risk of wait while beat up & down on slots till they can pray in the morning to cure everyone else up then the risk of being massively down on spell slots while waiting till they could pray for it again the second morning or the healers were down whatever they just used. By that time two days have passed and the risk of going back can be much higher.

edit: for the record since someone mentioned a wand of lesser restoration, that is a 2nd level spell & would be 3000gp not 750gp. I can't recall ever seeing one, but at 1d4 points of recovery per cast it could pretty quickly suck up a lot of charges if a few players had ability score damage.

edit2: it was extremely difficult for a wizard to get cure wounds on their spell list, without the ability to cast it a wizard can't craft wands of CLW unless the DM took pity & allowed the wizard to craft wands of CLW using the healer's spell contribution during the crafting. Those were almost always found or purchased & only in quantities the GM allowed

RE Edit2: Why is the wizard in this conversation? Any spellcaster that spends a feat to do so can make wands.

 

[Vaalingrade]

RE Edit2: Why is the wizard in this conversation? Any spellcaster that spends a feat to do so can make wands.

Wizards get free crafting feats.

Also, they're the only important class.

 

[tetrasodium]

RE Edit2: Why is the wizard in this conversation? Any spellcaster that spends a feat to do so can make wands.

someone mentioned wizards being able to choose the craft wand feat as one of their bonus feat choices. Other classes being able to choose it in place of a regular feat choice too seemed like a pointless distinction to clarify.

 

[Hussar]

RE Edit2: Why is the wizard in this conversation? Any spellcaster that spends a feat to do so can make wands.

Well there is that. I think we stick with wizard because wizards get it for free.