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

[JiffyPopTart]

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.

Fair, I didnt see how wizards got rolled into making CLW wands. We always had human clerics on wand making duty.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Wizards get free crafting feats.

Also, they're the only important class.

Thems fightin' words!

My favorite 3e character was always a skull cracking cleric.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Thems fightin' words!

My favorite 3e character was always a skull cracking cleric.

Hey, I'm a bard fan. I'm just observing what class gets nice things or whose niche (literally everything) prevents others from having nice things.

 

[tetrasodium]

Fair, I didnt see how wizards got rolled into making CLW wands. We always had human clerics on wand making duty.

our clerics were always aiming for codzilla type battle clerics & couldn't be bothered taking such feats so the clw wands tended to be found/purchased.

Thems fightin' words!

That's justified too. Tonds of classes ^& PrCs got bonus feat choices of various sorts including fighter & such.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

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

While wizard wands were always handy, CLW wands were always the first item purchased and restocked from the party gold pile. Restoration scrolls right after.

Basically the cleric got dibs on the gold because their items were everyone's friend.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

Mod Note:

You’re still making things personal after a direct mod warning not to do so just a few pages back in this thread. This earns you a vacation from this thread.

Everyone else: some others were doing likewise in response. Don’t do that. That further stirs the pot and may lead to more bans.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Rather than address this tangent, let's just go to the DMG.

Your claim that "According to the rules, the point of the 6-8 encounters day is to diminish resources" is false. In a sense you have it exactly backward. The point of the 6-8 encounters is to give the DM a guideline on how many encounters a typical party will likely be able to get through in day. It's right on page 84:

"Assuming typical adventuring conditions and average luck, most adventuring parties can handle about six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day. If the adventure has more easy encounters, the adventurers can get through more. If it has more deadly encounters, they can handle fewer. In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress."

Which all means that 6-8 encounters is in no way a "rule" of the game, it's a guideline that the designers used when designing the rules. The text specifies that there can be more encounters, or fewer. Encounters were not designed to drain a certain amount of character resources, character resources were designed with the goal of 6-8 typical encounters being the baseline. According to the rules.

But more importantly, we now go to page 85, where "the rules" state that "Some players and DMs view random encounters in an adventure as time-wasters, yet well-designed random encounters can serve a variety of useful purposes." It then does indeed list drain character resources...as the third of six useful purposes. The others are create urgency, establish atmosphere, provide assistance, add interest, and reinforce campaign themes.

As such, "according to the rules", draining character resources is only one of six possible purposes for an encounter. So the claim that according to the rules, encounters are there to drain character resources is blatantly false. According to the rules, an encounter that serves only to reinforce campaign themes (and not drain resources), is still a useful encounter.

Fair enough. I stand corrected.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

Of course, if those non-combat encounters don't eat up resources, then they don't serve that purpose (though they may serve others).

 

[Micah Sweet]

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”

Ok. Generally speaking, I don't like this.

 

[Fifth Element]

Right. Which is the problem. Character resources are based on the designers' assumption that the PCs should be getting through 6-8 medium-to-hard encounters per adventuring day (aka between long rests). The assumption the designers made

Unless you're just making naughty word up as you go along when designing a game, there will always be an assumption. It doesn't have to be that specific assumption, but there will be an assumption. And by explicitly stating what the assumption is, it helps people who would prefer a different assumption to make modifications to get closer to their preferred assumption. They had to settle on some assumption, but were also open about it so that you can make changes if desired.

Just because assumptions were not stated in previous editions doesn't mean they're not there. And in early days especially, the designers probably didn't explicitly analyze what assumption they were making, they were probably more internalized. But they were always there. If they weren't, the game system would essentially be random.