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

[Vaalingrade]

While I'm not Lanefan, I think that it's not the point. Out of all editions, 4E is the most reliant on the players knowing, well, the game. Exploiting the game mechanics and not their other knowledge in order to achieve success.

[citation needed]

 

[loverdrive]

[citation needed]

If you want to make a point, make a point. If you want a clarification, ask a clarifying question.

 

[Jer]

How, exactly? The rules still operate strictly with in-universe variables, the players still have exactly zero control over things outside of their characters, drama and genre tropes still don't bear any influence over the outcomes prescribed by the rules.

Yeah, the PCs are slightly more durable than they were in 1E (and in 1E, they're still superhumanly durable, to be frank), there are no more save-or-die effects, but that doesn't suddenly turn D&D 5E into a narrativist game.

Here's the post where I laid out what I think of 5e in this context: D&D General - How has D&D changed over the decades?

Basically no it's not a "narrativist" game (to use the reductionist Forge parlance that I'm not a huge fan of) but it is a game that is using its ruleset to get people to play a particular narrative, and that narrative is to "tell D&D-like stories". The rules that are there aren't there to challenge players in a board-game sense like the combat rules of earlier editions of D&D were, they're there to support a particular narrative of D&D-like stories. And that can be unsatisfying to folks who are looking for that visceral kind of combat challenge that previous editions revolved the game around.

I doubt it's on purpose - as I mention later I think it's purely because of a desire to pull back from 4e's emphasis on combat mixed with a desire to create a compromise edition of D&D that puts what everyone thinks D&D is into a single edition.

 

[overgeeked]

I don't think this is true at all - it's just that the risk of death isn't the main thing to worry about.

Right. And I’m asking about mechanical consequences. Not narrative ones. All RPGs have narrative consequences. That’s not unique to 5E.

As I said earlier, 5e is a much more narrative game than previous editions of the game were. And that means that if you are going into it with that old school idea that all that matters is whether your character lives or dies then it really is going to be a disappointing game for you. That's part of why I assert that milestone leveling and non-combat encounter XP are both necessary for the game to work as the developers intended it to work - your character has to care about things in the game world that are at risk much more in this version of the game than in previous versions.

This makes it much more like most other modern RPGs on the market - in most RPGs the threat of death is there but it's not really likely to happen. The risks you face for failure are far more likely to be consequences that aren't death - loss of a loved one, loss of status, loss of power, loss of opportunity. (They also made gold less valuable overall too, so even "loss of money" isn't the hit that it would have been in previous editions.)

It's kind of interesting - whether by accident or by design they really have managed to kind of wring the last vestiges of the wargame out of D&D. (And tbf I think it's by accident - in an attempt to pull back from 4e's heavy wargaming model they overcorrected and ended up with something that is far more narrative in approach than I think they originally intended...)

Okay. So what’s the point of playing 5E instead of something else? It does basically the same stuff as every other RPG out there, so what’s the draw?

 

[Jer]

Okay. So what’s the point of playing 5E instead of something else? It does basically the same stuff as every other RPG out there, so what’s the draw?

I mean, they're not all the same. If I want to play D&D-like stories, 5e is a pretty good ruleset to use. It's much easier for me to use than say, Dungeon World which tries to do the same thing but puts up weird barriers to play in its attempt to boil down a D&D-like narrative into a set of game rules. Or knocking out my own version of the game in Storypath or Savage Worlds or something. The only game I prefer over it is 13th age, but that leads to point 2.

The player base. You can always find people to play D&D with. It's much harder to find people who are willing to play games they've never heard of. And training people to play new games is not the easiest thing to do - I do it with my long term group, but familiar rule sets make life easier.

ETA: And also 5e actually fits the way that I've played D&D for years. Previous editions were often a bad match for my playstyle, but I'd course correct as a DM and improvise over the bumps because my players wanted to play D&D and not Torg or Mage or whatever. 5e has a lot less bumps for my personal playstyle, which makes it a good fit for my own needs.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Not at all. Healing was slow, that’s the only point being made.

Neither of us have the omniscience required to make a statement that sweeping.

There you go. Where’s safe? Not the dungeon. Wandering monster checks every turn or few turns. Not the wilds. Wandering monster checks every few turns, hours, etc. So safety is…back in town. Or you risked resting out in the wilds.

Sure. But that depended on how much rest you got. Again, wandering monsters.

Not everyone. I suggested using that at our table after playing that game. It didn't go well.

You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.

(Sorry. Couldn’t resist the joke.)

You realize those are mostly edge cases, right? Drowning. In 5E. How long does that take?

“A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds).”

After that, you’re choking for Con mod rounds.

After that, you hit 0 hp and are dying.

CON 12, 2 minutes, 2 rounds, +2-3 rounds.

CON 14, 3 minutes, 3 rounds, +2-3 rounds.

Etc.

This might be where our game styles differ, and why you don't see things that I feel are threatening as threatening.

You posted the rules for holding your breath, which are fine if you want to model how long someone can do so for the purpose of knowingly running through a gas cloud or swimming through an underwater passage.

But in the three cases where characters have died from drowning in the games I've been in, only one gave a character the opportunity to properly hold their breath (sand filling an enclosed space they were trapped in. In the other two cases the PC was in the middle of combat and then suddenly left without air. Once because they were grappled and engulfed by a water elemental and once because they were held magically and then pushed in a sewer.

A character in the middle of battle that gets attacked like that isn't casually holding their breath like they are going to freedive, they are most likely to be breathing heavily already (in combat) and have no time to "take a few deep breaths, then a really deep one, then close off your airway and conserve oxygen". One second they are swinging a sword and the next they are paralysed and immersed in water. New breath is needed almost immediately.

And this is where 5e tells me to be a GM and come up with something fair for the table. Iny case as a GM that thing is a series of increased DC Constitution saves each round until the PC fails and the "run out of oxygen" and move to the countdown as described in the normal holding your breath rules.

You say it's a side case, but I've seen three characters die that way. You can't argue it's too hard to kill individual PCs (as opposed to TPKs) if the only mechanic you are using to kill them is just whacking away at their HP.

 

[tetrasodium]

At the end of the 4-6 pretty easy encounters resource drain wasn't even a stumbling block. You had to push harder in 3.x. it wasn't 4-6 moderate encounters that strained resources.

You keep adding that "pretty easy" caveat to level appropriate encounters, but it seems to have no purpose other than ensuring that the bar for what constitutes an encounter never lifted. I don't think that was ever a term really used mechanically back then like it is in 5e. It took 4-6 to put pressure on & strain resources. That 4-6 was a low enough number that the choices made in each along the way made a great deal of difference in what would be available later & recovery was difficult enough with enough risks that players couldn't just hole up in a closet or something to reset the clock like in 5e so players needed to put much more weight on how they used their resources.

Even though any fight could go really bad for players it was the players needing to tactically coordinate & judiciously use their resources for maximum effect that kept those fights in hand. That is no longer true in 5e because players are almost guaranteed to automatically win just by showing up & autopiloting through a "pretty easy" fight unless the GM effectively executes a player.

 

[Lanefan]

Heh, in other words, what 3e did. More hp and increase damage. Now, why did you do that? If AD&D combat was so lethal, as is being claimed, then there should have been zero need for this.

I know that when I ran 1e, I almost always just gave monsters either full or close to full HP, particularly in 2e when the PC's just had ridiculous levels of damage output relative to the monsters.

Yeah, post-UA 1e and 2e characters could bring the hurt, meaning an ever-tougher array of new monsters had to be invented/designed/released in order to keep up. The classics became chumps, which was kinda sad.

But, again, going back to the 3d6 in order. That was never the rule. It was 3d6 in Basic D&D, sure, but, then you could adjust 2:1 up with Str, Int and Wis and increase Dex. Con and Cha you couldn't change. Which meant that you just dropped Int and Wis to 9 or 10 and used up those points to get that 18 Str.

I'm not the one to argue with on this, as I've never used 3d6 in order. That said...

AIR, this was a system we actually kept in AD&D, which, frankly, does explain why everyone had an 18 in their main stat. But, even in other groups, or in pre-gen characters, it wasn't exactly rare. Like I said, all you have to do is start tracking the stats - sure, you might have the odd character that doesn't have an 18 in their main stat, but, that's likely the odd one out. Heck, the standard array in 5e wouldn't even make a playable character in 1e. 15, 14, 13, 12, 10 8? That's a reroll waiting to happen.

...keep in mind that in 1e bonuses didn't kick in until 15 in any stat. In the standard array in 5e there's bonuses attached to 4 of those stats and a penalty to one; using that same array in 1e might give a bonus on one stat depending where the 15 was put; all the others would be flat. 1e did, however, have the roll-under mechanic which meant every stat point counted for something.

Also keep in mind that in either edition racial adjustments or ASIs - unless playing a Human in 1e - are going to play hell with those numbers. They won't be what the character starts play with, that's for sure; and getting that 15 to something higher is almost guaranteed.

IME the stats for pre-gen characters in most of the modules weren't exactly overwhelming.

 

[AnotherGuy]

A character in the middle of battle that gets attacked like that isn't casually holding their breath like they are going to freedive, they are most likely to be breathing heavily already (in combat) and have no time to "take a few deep breaths, then a really deep one, then close off your airway and conserve oxygen". One second they are swinging a sword and the next they are paralysed and immersed in water. New breath is needed almost immediately.

And this is where 5e tells me to be a GM and come up with something fair for the table. Iny case as a GM that thing is a series of increased DC Constitution saves each round until the PC fails and the "run out of oxygen" and move to the countdown as described in the normal holding your breath rules.

This is exactly the way I would have ruled it too.

 

[Lanefan]

For the record, 1e (and thus to an extent 2e) was not shy about it either:

I know. I ignored that then, too.