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

[Helldritch]

Yea, an intelligent monster is going to attempt to eliminate the biggest threat, but unless the monster does an insta-kill with massive damage to the PC in one turn, one of the targets allies can simply heal or stabilize them on their turn. Then the target can either run away to drink a healing potion, or rejoins the fight.

Ninja'd by

Not unless the villain follows up with several more attacks on the fallen PC before the PC has the opportunity of being healed. Each attack on a fallen PC causes one automatic failed death save.

And yes, multiple attack villains will follow up. They saw a fallen treath get back up. At this point, they know they have to react.

Tactictly Death isnt always the desired result. if the PC is down they are no longer a threat. I don't like when DMs think that the monsters just want to kill (Unless the fluff warrants it)

I immediately shift the monsters to making sure the support is taken down once a damage dealer is down. That action to kill the Damage dealer outright can be much better used trying to curtail a support character from bringing the unconcious character up.

Which can be almost impossible if said character is using healing word at a mid level power. Then the fallen character will gulp a potion or heal on its own with its own spells. Intelligent monsters will know immediately to double tap as soon as a healing word is done. With high level enemies, double tap will be automatic. It is no more "unfair" as players using fire on a poor troll.

I mean, maybe. My PC death rate didn't really change much. Still pretty heavy, 3-6 deaths a campaign (approx a year). It was lower in 3.x, went up in 4e, and stayed about the same in 5e. I use book CR calculations, usually pumping average party level by 1 for magic items. Works fine for me. Wonder what it is I do differently? I play with pretty decent optimizers -- no dud PCs.

And so did I. But using the non gritty realism by default rules, PCs can take a lot more chances than in any other edition. We were even using rules for flanking but we decided against it. With BA it favors mostly foes and players are now at a real "disadvantage" when using flanking.

 

[Vaalingrade]

He literally went through every edition and touched on one or two points. Why would you require he is really clear that 4e isnt just a skirmish game?

He wasnt smearing 4e any more than he did any other edition.

Because there's one of those I care about and it was killed by literally the same lies still being spread.

 

[overgeeked]

But what is the point of a decade long smear campaign? You won. 4e is dead and its legacy burned to cinders. We'll never have encounter-based design, player agency focused design, tactical combat, or anything else it brought to the table again.

Just stop doing donuts on the grave.

That's weird. 4E is one of my favorite editions of the game. I played it once a month the entire time it was current. I've run 4E a few times since 5E came out and I'm playing in a 4E game now.

To quote myself...

I fell in love with literally everything they did with this edition [4E]...except how it actually played at the table. I loved the lore changes, the points-of-light setting, big magic rituals for everyone, residuum, solving linear fighter vs quadratic wizard, roles, power sources, powers, layout, design, monster variety, monster stat blocks, monster roles, MM3 on a business card, the DMGs were amazing...I loved literally everything they did with this edition...except for how it actually played. We played from the start to the finish with this one but could never get a simple combat to be anything less than a multiple hour slog. We tried everything and nothing ever worked. If only they revised the combat rules for speed of play.

So try again. Or, you know, don't.

 

[Jer]

So 5E isn't a dungeoncrawl game. It's not an overland travel game. It's not a resource management game. You only get XP for killing monsters per RAW. The game rewards killing monsters...but fights are trivially easy per RAW...unless the DM puts a heavy thumb on the scale...so it's not a combat game. It's smooth and easy to pick up and use, mostly. But it doesn't push a single playstyle...while actively discouraging or making certain playstyles impossible or pointless.

5e is a modern ruleset trying to emulate the genre of D&D while being dressed up to appear to be a throwback to an earlier edition of D&D. This is why even though you are very technically correct that RAW XP is given out only for monsters, the game is actually better played with the "optional" rules on giving out XP for non-combat encounters and/or via milestone leveling. Those rules should be considered core for the kind of game they've built but are written as if they're optional for ... reasons.

Once you include those in the game it's pretty obvious what kind of game 5e is - it's a game that is designed to tell D&D-like stories. It's definitely not a resource management game, but it has the feel of a resource management game because D&D-like stories have resource management as a part of them. It's not a wilderness travel simulator but it has wilderness travel parts to it because wilderness travel are parts of D&D-like stories. Combat is a part of a D&D-like story so it has combat in it, but the combat game itself isn't the main focus of the game as it was in previous editions because the game is trying to capture all of what goes into a D&D-like story and that includes non-combat stuff that would be freestyled outside of the rules in an older edition but have more built-in support in the current edition. It's a modern game emulating the genre of D&D.

 

[Helldritch]

Which all kind of leads to an interesting question. What playstyle is 5E designed for?

"snip"

So 5E isn't a dungeoncrawl game. It's not an overland travel game. It's not a resource management game. You only get XP for killing monsters per RAW. The game rewards killing monsters...but fights are trivially easy per RAW...unless the DM puts a heavy thumb on the scale...so it's not a combat game. It's smooth and easy to pick up and use, mostly. But it doesn't push a single playstyle...while actively discouraging or making certain playstyles impossible or pointless.

You are sooooo right on that. A DM has quite a workload ahead of him if he/she wants to make any of the above in bold.
For me 5ed tries to encourage a Narrative Play style while appearing to promote all of the above. It is a strange edition indeed. I like it, but sometimes I think it went in too many directions at the same time.

Edit: Ninja'd by @Jer

 

[Minigiant]

Which all kind of leads to an interesting question. What playstyle is 5E designed for?

Episodic Heroic Adventure.

5e is written that if you wrote down all the notes of what happened, it would look like a recap of a TV show or novel series.

 

[Helldritch]

That's weird. 4E is one of my favorite editions of the game. I played it once a month the entire time it was current. I've run 4E a few times since 5E came out and I'm playing in a 4E game now.

To quote myself...

So try again. Or, you know, don't.

And so do I. Some people confound constructive criticism and bashing. 4ed had its shortcomings and I am truly sad it was not as accepted as it should have. People at that time, still had a lot of love for 3.xed and PF took the ball, played the game and won for a while.

 

[tetrasodium]

Tactictly Death isnt always the desired result. if the PC is down they are no longer a threat. I don't like when DMs think that the monsters just want to kill (Unless the fluff warrants it)

except they are actually still very much a threat. A player being knocked down isn't like being taken out in fate where the opponent can simply say something like "and you die so" or "and you've been taken captive by mooks for your fate to be revealed later" /7 such. With healing word allies don't even need to pause their cantrip attacks to bring that PC back up.

I immediately shift the monsters to making sure the support is taken down once a damage dealer is down. That action to kill the Damage dealer outright can be much better used trying to curtail a support character from bringing the unconcious character up.

That kind of geek the mage/shoot the medic first runs into a few problems strategy runs into a few problems with coming off like an extreme killer GM & the followup one two of "you executed bob's PC and the monsters ignored everyone else they ran past to do it". d&d isn't a game where monsters are good at attacking while giving chase (in many cases not even capable of it) & if the healer runs you have turned the combat into little more than what they call kiting mobs in mmorpgs

Ninja'd by

And yes, multiple attack villains will follow up. They saw a fallen treath get back up. At this point, they know they have to react.

Which can be almost impossible if said character is using healing word at a mid level power. Then the fallen character will gulp a potion or heal on its own with its own spells. Intelligent monsters will know immediately to double tap as soon as a healing word is done. With high level enemies, double tap will be automatic. It is no more "unfair" as players using fire on a poor troll.

And so did I. But using the non gritty realism by default rules, PCs can take a lot more chances than in any other edition. We were even using rules for flanking but we decided against it. With BA it favors mostly foes and players are now at a real "disadvantage" when using flanking.

Take this initiative order

• 18Alice (cleric)
• 17 monster1
• 15Bob(wackable mole with 1d4+1hp)
• 10Cindy (bard cleric druid alchemist or that one warlock)
• 8monster2

Even if the monsters gang up on bob it won't matter because Cindy can cast healing word between them, You could even add a third monster almost anywhere in the initiative & nothing changes if it doesn't have multiattack because one monster will drop bob, the next will cause two failed death saves leaving Alice or Cindy to healing word him & reset the 2 failed. If that third monster is just before bob it still only means that bob has a chance of failing a death save on his own before someone can cast healing word.

 

[CleverNickName]

Which all kind of leads to an interesting question. What playstyle is 5E designed for?

The early TSR versions and editions were all about the dungeoncrawl and wilderness exploration. XP for gold, not killing monsters. Low hit points. Combat was deadly. Death was laughably common. Resource management. So they pushed smart play, avoiding combat, interacting with the environment, etc.

2E shifted a bit to more story-focused play. The Player's Option series brought in builds and power gaming. Resource management was still a thing.

3E embraced builds and power gaming and system mastery. It ended up in rocket-tag land. Numbers went up and healing was easier. Resource management was still a thing, after a fashion.

4E was all about combat, almost to the complete exclusion of non-combat. Numbers went up and healing was easier. Resource management was practically gone as it only had two categories: encounter or daily. You got encounter resources back after a 5-minute rest and daily resources back after a 6-8 hour rest. And practically everything else was shoved into skill challenges. As much as I love skill challenges, they were not the panacea the designers thought they were.

5E is often described as a throw-back to 2E. Numbers went up (though a few went down) and healing is easier. Death is rare. Resource management is all-but gone as most resources are trivial to replenish.

So 5E isn't a dungeoncrawl game. It's not an overland travel game. It's not a resource management game. You only get XP for killing monsters per RAW. The game rewards killing monsters...but fights are trivially easy per RAW...unless the DM puts a heavy thumb on the scale...so it's not a combat game. It's smooth and easy to pick up and use, mostly. But it doesn't push a single playstyle...while actively discouraging or making certain playstyles impossible or pointless.

Well, the design intent of all editions of the game has always been twofold: make it fun, and make it sell. The trouble is that both of those things change over time. To keep hitting those marks, the game had to change...which meant new editions were written. But yep, you make excellent points.

When 2E was being written, the game was much more story-focused as you said. But there was enough demand from the customer base for more structured rules and such, so 2E ended up with a much more "mechanical" feel than the earlier versions. If only to distance it from the "Basic D&D" product line that was becoming less popular.

3E was written by the authors of Magic: the Gathering, so it wasn't any surprise that the game was written to appeal to the M:tG player base: lots of math, lots of standardized rules mechanics, lots of build strategy (or "system mastery," as you put it.) Magic: the Gathering was invented by a math teacher, after all. But I digress: at the time 3E was written, it was the kind of game that was considered fun, and the kind of game that people were buying: lots of crunch, not much fluff.

When 4E was written, the kinds of games that were considered fun and marketable were Everquest, World of Warcraft, and other big-budget MMORPGs. So to capture that demand (and sales), the next edition of the game focused on team-building, synergy between classes, per-encounter actions, and similar mechanics from popular games at the time. Apparently this is a bad thing, because every time I bring this up I get yelled at. But I insist that it was not only a good thing, it was the right call at the time. WotC had no way of knowing that the MMORPGs were about to fall out of fashion.

But they did. Times change, and when 5E was being written the shift had started moving back to story-based, "classic" D&D. Retro-clones were all the rage at the tabletop, and on screens people weren't playing MMORPGs as much...instead, they were playing more lore-rich games like Skyrim and Final Fantasy XII. So it's no big surprise that 5E shifted to a more lore-rich, rules-flexible format.

 

[Mournblade94]

except they are actually still very much a threat. A player being knocked down isn't like being taken out in fate where the opponent can simply say something like "and you die so" or "and you've been taken captive by mooks for your fate to be revealed later" /7 such. With healing word allies don't even need to pause their cantrip attacks to bring that PC back up.

That kind of geek the mage/shoot the medic first runs into a few problems strategy runs into a few problems with coming off like an extreme killer GM & the followup one two of "you executed bob's PC and the monsters ignored everyone else they ran past to do it". d&d isn't a game where monsters are good at attacking while giving chase (in many cases not even capable of it) & if the healer runs you have turned the combat into little more than what they call kiting mobs in mmorpgs

Take this initiative order

• 18Alice (cleric)
• 17 monster1
• 15Bob(wackable mole with 1d4+1hp)
• 12monster2
• 10Cindy (bard cleric druid alchemist or that one warlock)

Even if the monsters gang up on bob it won't matter because Cindy can cast healing word between them, You could even add a third monster almost anywhere in the initiative & nothing changes if it doesn't have multiattack because one monster will drop bob, the next will cause two failed death saves leaving Alice or Cindy to healing word him & reset the 2 failed. If that third monster is just before bob it still only means that bob has a chance of failing a death save on his own before someone can cast healing word.

Fair Enough. I run 5e very sporadically. It is my live game from before the pandemic beginning and we meet maybe every three months now. My normal Games are Warhammer 4, D&D 3.5/PF1, and HERO System which has a different dynamic when PCs are down.