D&D 5E I feel like there is a problem with ability score bonuses.

[Charlaquin]

Yeah, I'm not sure how credible that is nor in what context. Maybe compared to the nadir of 2e when WotC acquired TSR, each edition has progressively sold better. But, compared to the height of the fad in the early 80s? I don't think so. There was a thread here quoting a WotC statistic that 5e was on the verge of having moved 750k books, about 3 years into it's run. Morrus dug up an old article from the 80s which mentioned D&D moving that many books /per year/.

Considering it was WotC who made the claim, I would assume they were referring only to the editions they produced. 5e > 4e > 3.5e > 3e in terms of sales is probably what they meant. At any rate, Mike Mearls has said that 4e performed better than 3.5, but failed because it didn’t continue to grow at a fast enough rate, which was the thrust of my argument.

It was a veritable perfect storm, starting with the worst recession since the great depression and not exactly getting better from there. ;P

Precisely. It would be interesting to see what would have become of 4e if it had come out a few years later than it did.

Roughly based on those crumbs of data, above, there are probably still many more lapsed/one-time D&Ders out there than there are returned, continuing & new D&Ders /combined/.

I don’t doubt it. There’s also a major bottleneck for people who want to get into the hobby, because there are far fewer people willing to GM, let alone people who can do it well, than there are people looking to play the game. You can’t get into the game if you can’t find a group to play with, and if your first experience is a bad one, it can ruin the hobby for you for ever.

Nor does the critical importance of continuing & returning fans rest only on their numbers. When long-time & returning DMs who have the experience to run a game like 1e or 5e /well/ run for new players, they both give them a better first-play experience, and a sense of connection with the hobby & it's history. That can also make the game - simultaneously/paradoxically - more accessible, and yet feeling more like an exclusive club. It's not unprecedented when it comes to mainstreaming a nerd-culture thing - if you make it more accessible and the hardcore fans hate it vocally/publicallly it doesn't matter that it's accessible because would-be fans are driven away from even trying it, if you make it appeal to the hardcore fans it's less accessible but at least potential new fans try it.

Indeed. There is always a balance that needs to be struck between acquiring to new fans and retaining old ones. In most hobbies, the latter is much easier to do, but in tabletop RPGs, the old fans will always have their old games if they don’t like the new ones, and they’re the primary avenue through which new fans get brought into the hobby.

 

[Saeviomagy]

What you're saying, here, is that 3e called a DC 5 easy and 5e calls it a DC 10. That's not really saying much about how bonuses worked in either edition. In both editions, stats give you the same mod, to the same d20 check.

And in neither of them did adding a +1 modifier to an individual check really matter much if you still had to roll ~10 to succeed.

If I make a character from levels 1-4 in 5e, his stat modifier cannot make a difference as to whether he automatically succeeds at an easy task. I can't just say "I don't even need to roll". I can't make a plan and know that an aspect of it that relies on an easy thing to do is actually going to succeed. If I break the character generation rules and allocate a 20 to a stat, I can still only automatically succeed on that easy task if I play one of 3 classes.

If I make a character from levels 1-4 in 3e, ranks alone will make me succeed at easy tasks. Where I allocate my statistics will determine whether I can automatically succeed at moderate tasks.

Making success at something meaningful automatic is far, far more powerful than simply shifting probabilities from 25% chance of failure to 15% chance of failure.

The difference is in how those checks scale outside the modifiers. In 3e, a fighter could get a 20 BAB, and a wiz no more than 10 - in 5e, they both top out at +6 proficiency. In 3e a rogue could come up with 24 ranks in each of 8+ skills, while a fighter trying to cross class some the same skills would manage 12 ranks in 2 of them - in 5e, the rogue gets more skills than the fighter, and can manage a +12 proficiency in some to the fighter's +6. That's bounded accuracy and it base leaves stats a more important consideration.

You're creating a strawman here. Why is the fighter in your original example choosing cross-class skills? The 3e fighter had 2 (+int - oh look, another important non-class stat!) skills at 24. In 3e, that means if he's got a total of +5 other things (like a stat), he's automatically succeeding at heroic tasks, which seems appropriate for a 20th level character.

In 5e, he gets his +6 proficiency, +5 from a secondary stat... and guess what, he can succeed automatically at easy tasks. Yay! Heroic! As soon as he tries something moderate, he fails 20% of the time. Those aren't the sort of odds that you take if the result of failure is death.

Meanwhile the rogue with the same stat automatically succeeds at moderate tasks. Oh, wait, actually the rogue has an always-on take 10, so he actually automatically succeeds at very hard tasks.

5e panics about the possibility that a DM might let someone at high level with a good skill roll do awesome or impossible things so hard that it wrecks the curve at the low end, making skilled characters that are supposed to be the pinnacle of heroics be unable to confidently perform tasks like "noticing 6 drow tailing you in a dwarf city" or "recognise a shrine to a god" or "recognize weak stonework" according to the only real references we have.

And because of that, it doesn't really matter what your stats are, because it only bumps some numbers about a few percent.