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

[Thomas Shey]

I've seen pages and pages of people reacting to other people expressing disinterest in such mechanics as if said people were screeching about the end of days, but hostility from the people who don't see the value in such mechanics? Pretty rare.

Given I've seen people outright say it does not belong in an RPG, I think you've been selective in what you've noticed.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Good thing that's not what's happening because HP aren't wounds and never have been!

Sure they are or the healing spell would not be called Cure Light Wounds.

 

[overgeeked]

Sure they are or the healing spell would not be called Cure Light Wounds.

Right. It’s super easy to prove that poster’s statement wrong. Give it a moment’s thought or just read the books. So if losing hit points isn’t wounds…why do you die from taking damage? Embarrassment?

AD&D. “A certain amount of these hit points represent the actual physical punishment which can be sustained. The remainder, a significant portion of hit points at higher levels, stands for skill, luck, and/or magical factors.”

To the best of my knowledge, that divide, the % that’s meat vs the % that’s everything else wasn’t defined.

AD&D 2E. “Hit points—a number representing: 1.) how much damage a character can suffer before being killed, determined by Hit Dice. The hit points lost to injury can usually be regained by rest or healing; 2.) how much damage a specific attack does, determined by weapon or monster statistics, and subtracted from a player's total.”

 

[Minigiant]

Being able to generate an infinite amount of fire sounds like a superpower. Regeneration of all wounds in 8 hours sounds like a superpower. Stopping people from dying with a touch sounds like a superpower.

Given I've seen people outright say it does not belong in an RPG, I think you've been selective in what you've noticed.

Sure they are or the healing spell would not be called Cure Light Wounds.

Then call me a super.

I hate that we constantly have to go over this.

Only some HP damage is wounds.
And the wounds are minor because the wounds don't affect the the character's effectiveness until they accumulate enough to cause a fatal slip up
Thus the minor wounds can be healed in a day of sleep

I cut my finger yesterday with a blade. Today the wound is "healed". It no longer hurts and it's bleeding. Am I super?

D&D HP damage was never supposed to represent heavy damage on a humaniod PC. Only the last hit is. PCs healedslow becauseGygas intended you toplay your other PCs as you hurt PCs healed. Remember in Gygax' campaigns, if your 31 HP fighter took 30 damage, it took 30 real time days to play. Real Earth Third Planet from Sun Time. You couldn't play with your fighter for a month in no one healed casted magic on it. You had to switch characters, roll a new PC, or bribe the DM. HP damage wasn't to represent guts comng out. It was a gimimick to force to you run multiple PCs and not attach too hard. That's why 0e and 1e didn't care if your PC was overpowered. If you 50 HP paladin took 28 damage, you cannot play him for 4 weeks anyway.

 

[Hussar]

Well, at least some things haven't changed. We're STILL having Meat=HP wanks even after nearly fifty years.

 

[Minigiant]

Well, at least some things haven't changed. We're STILL having Meat=HP wanks even after nearly fifty years.

We will have it for another fifty years because the Hit Points section and the Healing section will never be written one after the other in a seemless fashion.

So we will always have the idea that an orc greataxe can deal 8 damage and should take days to heal but it shouldn't cripple you nor affect your current skill as no one wants to deal with an injury table or the bloodied condition after every hit.

 

[tetrasodium]

Even the lower end of superheroes at best brushes with modern D&D, and by that point, you've basically just said "Its more like pulp characters" since that's what you're talking about...and as I've noted, some of those characters were avowedly among the inspirations for the game.

Pulp characters tend to get beat to hell and suffer consequences they power through while getting pushed & pulled around by their ties to the world & their own weaknesses. The "pulp" comparison only works because it's not really a style of writing that is still seen much outside older rather niche novels. You can see that sort of thing reflected in some of the fste & Savage words interactions with bennies *fate points. D&d is missing too many pieces to call that one little speck of a link to pulp mere coincidence

those missing pieces smash hard into the design choices of modern d&d that strip the gm of tools that once exerted soft power over the Pcs. Based on my experience running fate for years, adding them to d&d would probably be half baked in feeling or just a disaster.

 

[Hussar]

We will have it for another fifty years because the Hit Points section and the Healing section will never be written one after the other in a seemless fashion.

So we will always have the idea that an orc greataxe can deal 8 damage and should take days to heal but it shouldn't cripple you nor affect your current skill as no one wants to deal with an injury table or the bloodied condition after every hit.

Heh, this seems to be a theme this week. Everyone seems to be talking about all the lamp shading we do when we player D&D.

Look at that. We're finding things that have changed, and things that have stayed the same.

 

[Minigiant]

Heh, this seems to be a theme this week. Everyone seems to be talking about all the lamp shading we do when we player D&D.

Look at that. We're finding things that have changed, and things that have stayed the same.

Well as this change, you have to look at the junk we don't want to take from under the lampshade because we don't want to deal with the aftermath to the S of D.

I mean.... half the major changes in D&D over the years all come going from the Assumption of Running Multiple Expendable PCs to Assumption of Running One Not so Expendable PC.

Few realize or are willing to vocalize the reason why 4e and 5e PCs are harder to kill. Tougher PCs who don't randomly die, aren't icky gray morally, and don't take off months of a time make better stories.

0e, 1e, and early 2e PCs had stories. But in the purely narrative literal sense, their stories were often terrible. They almost never follow a writting curve nd they usually exist in plotless or weak plot stories unless the DM forced the plot AND fudged dice. You write down a Old D&D PC's life and hand it to a English teacher and you were getting a F back. D+ if you rolled well.

 

[tetrasodium]

We will have it for another fifty years because the Hit Points section and the Healing section will never be written one after the other in a seemless fashion.

So we will always have the idea that an orc greataxe can deal 8 damage and should take days to heal but it shouldn't cripple you nor affect your current skill as no one wants to deal with an injury table or the bloodied condition after every hit.

Fate is the only system I can think of where an injury table that works] or a mechanic to embody it better like fate's consequences+compels & fate's combat is the most lethal death spiraly I've ever seen. Even DCC funnels can seem downright Hardy by comparison. It's only fate's ability to convert a combat to a negotiated concession that makes it survivable & trying to teach that can be pretty difficult.