FWIW considering points damage: Poison is save or die for commoners, etc. in a sense. Considering a commoner has 4 or 5 HP IIRC, that 5 average poison damage is pretty much lethal.
Yes. However, 5e is specifically designed to make the PCs significantly better than commoners, and they then get even better as they gain levels. Where in AD&D, higher level characters had a better chance of succeeding on their saving throw, but the consequences were still much higher than just taking some damage. Thus, players would often alter their tactics against such things, even at high levels.
This is theoretically addressed in that higher level monsters with a poisonous attack deal more poison damage, but it's still ultimately just causing a bigger chunk of hit points in damage.
Or read Gygaxes long winded description about how the fighter was supposed to defend his less resilient enemies and thought wow I want to really do that.
No, and I still think MtG has been a much bigger influence on the design of 3e and later editions than video games. That influence has gone a long way to making the rules/mechanics easier to understand, but I think it has contributed to the effect of the striker, tank, etc. mentality.
But I also didn't see 1e fighters as "tanks" designed to soak up damage. They were significantly better at fighting, so it wasn't so much standing their ground and soaking up damage as they were much closer to what eventually became the striker concept.
Although we have never been really into the battle-map and minis approach to combat. That system probably had a big influence on those types of roles too.
PS - which long-winded description were you referring to? I'd love to go read it again. It's been a while.
I disagree, to answer @dnd4vr 's question, It falls into a different sort of tuneable, but has some significant avantages that were cut out when they made 5e. That's not to say that 5e does not improve on things that were problems in 3.5 (although many of those improvements go too far with a good thing & create new problems).
3.5 was a lot more self correcting than 5e through item churn & the fact that many things were tuned with the expectation that you had +X to your prime stat or +y gear at certain breakpoint levels (I think they were the same tiers we have in 5e). If the players did not get those things then the difficulty would go up dramatically unless they were getting extremely powerful bonuses to offset it elsewhere Coupled with the slot limitations of magic items a gm had more room to give out interesting magic items due to churn & conflict. A fighter might really want gauntlets of whatever, but everyone honestly agrees bob the squishy should get them because that fighter needs his gauntlets of ogre power+4 The +2 gauntlets the fighter used to have are probably equipped by someone else in the party who needs strength as a secondary stat but not as much as the fighter so with one item you frequently have two or more players getting something awesome to them even if some of those people are getting a handmedown. A lot of that wasn't quite explicitly explained despite things like suggested wealth by level tables though so the GM needed to have a certain level of skill & system understanding to be aware 4e tried to improve on that by pretty much just letting players pick whatever they wanted when they reached certain criteria removing some of the gm's ability to juggle things or even deliberately deny others
On top of that there were a lot more tools in the GM's toolbox that could narrowly knock specific types of characters down a peg or two while simultaneously thrusting a different type of character into the spotlight to save the day. A wraith or rustmonster would put the fear of god in a heavy armor clad character & simultaiously thrust a dex build like rogue or maybe ranger into the spotlight to save the day & "tank" it. Meanwhile any undead or construct is going to make the rogue cry with equal intensity due to not qualifying for sneak attack. Tanking was & still is basically a gentlemen's agreement across the table that the gm will make the monsters cooperate to some degree with pc plans rather than just slaughtering the squishies first every time so tanking in 5e is the same but worse due to the lack of meaningful AoO's & tactical combat options built in.
The subjective elements attached to armor like arcane spell failure, armor check penalty, speed penalty, max dex, & so on or weapons like critical threat (the numbers on a d20 that trigger a crit) & crit multiplier (how you multiply the damage or dice) along with things like he damage types associated with the weapon. For example take the following weapons that are all usable by a rogue, lets say the rogue has weapon finesse to use dex instead of strength
dagger is 1d4 19-20x2 slash/pierce
light mace is 1d6x2
a punching dagger is 1d4 x3 & all are usable by a rogue for)
various monsters like a skeleton will need bludgeoning so the rogue will be tickled pink to get the fighter's old +1 light mace if the party came across a better weapon everyone agrees should go to the fighter. Often that calculation will be part of why people agree that it should go to the fighter.
Lets say that the fighter is moving into becoming a crit fishing build & just hasn't found anything they feel was better than the that +1 light mace & they didn't want to drop down to a +nothing scimitar (1d6slash 19-20x2). The new weapon that was found could be as simple as 1d4 or 1d6 with a (non)magical bonus that makes it 17-20 or even x3 or x4 & the fighter will probably be thrilled even though all of those are values that could individually e found on a mundane stock off the rack weapon it's important that all of them are on the same weapon. In 5e that calculation is "I've already got 1d6+1, I don't need a different 1d6+1" & the gm lacks subjective options to make it a difficult decision. Maybe later the GM wants the ranger to have some nice armor, specifically the nice chain shirt of fanciness the party gave to that rogue a few sessions back.
The GM can let them come across a set of +nothing or +1 lstudded leather armor with a -0 acp. Even though it's an objectively worse or at best equal AC for the rogue now the fact that it will allow him to apply another point of dex to ac later and improve a bunch of skills important to him by two points makes it an immediate wow for him. Later the rogue might hold off on improving that armor for quite some time & jump straight to a +2 set of studded leather or +3 set of leather even though the first one might hinder some of his skills while the second one is just an ac bump. so on & so forth. 4e had fewer subjective dials on weapons & armor but it did have them... 5e might as well just list weapons by die size & if heavy light two handed or ranged because there is literally no mechanical difference between for example a +1 sickle (1d4+1 magic slash light) & +1 club (1d4+1 magic bludgeon light) & or any number of other combos that may or may not be class specific comparisons due to proficiency.
3.5 had a lot of problems with being able to build a character that paints itself into a corner by not planning ahead for feat chains or prerequisites for Prestige classes until it might be too late. 5e corrected that problem, but kept going & made feats too condensed (and very powerful) while giving less of them resulting in many feats that pretty much nobody can afford to seriously consider & could seriously harm their character by taking.
Also a problem with 3.5 was that you could spend an inordinate amount of time deciding where to allocate skillpoints to meet feat/prc requirements or just use & that got more complicated if you took levels in a PrC oe multiclassed because what counts as a class & cross class skill might change among other things. 5e improved on that, but in many cases went too far to overly condense the skills. Because the skills were so severely condensed you no longer get a +int mod bonus to skill points (or some equivalent like +proficient skills) so the value of int took a hit while charisma got a huge bump by having the charisma skills condensed too much. That might not sound like much but wizards went from getting 2+int mod skill points to 2 skills proficient & that's before even getting to the massive overconsolidation of knowledge skills.
That's not an exhaustive list, just a few things that paint a picture of where 3.5 is in all that & both how it does better as well as how it does worse than 5e are important to framing that picture.
Oh gadzooks dude I appreciate the question but that is way too long ago in the 1970s or early 80s and there seemed to be a lot of them including magazines and other sources as well as the DMG. There were also ones where he talked about how critical hits were evil because Conan wouldn't fall to some random arrow and similar.
It was also possible in AD&D to regain full hit points and still be utterly incapacitated from being knocked to below zero hit points. I cannot say after noticing that and reading various other things he said about hit points I would ever take them to mean "wounds".
My group optimizes hard core. I run challenging encounters. But I'm not going to beat them over the head. I build encounters based on an assumed reality... meaning I'm not tailoring encounters to the specific group, instead I'm creating a realistic world. But when a level 5 party blows out a CR 12 creature with no consequence, there is a problem. The game is broken.
I don't agree. 5e, like 4e before it and to some extent 3e, has an issue with solo creatures being challenging to a group, due to the action economy. Legendary creatures and Legendary Lairs help this quite a bit. The game is not "broken" because a group of players can beat a single powerful foe, it's more like the game is not tailed towards solo monsters as much as it is towards a group of monsters.
Whether the DM is weaving their own unique story, trying to tie together the various pastiches her players have created into an organic whole, or playing episodic games with no over-arching connectivity just a stream of individual afters that is creating an interactive fictional narrative or in other words story-telling.
No. What I am doing is addressing the point that in 5E and every version of D&D since 2E the game assumes the players are the lead characters of the setting and the game is their for everyone's enjoyment. It is not an adversarial relationship of player vs DM as often (but not always) it seem to feel like in OSR style games. I agree that driving story as you mentioned is bad if done wrong (the bolded emphasis above is my doing). Yet, any aspect of DMing if done wrong is a problematic. When I speak of creating an engaging story I am not talking about railroading or forcing players towards a preset end. I actually prefer a sandbox style of play in fact. What I mean is again making players feel like the leads in the story even from the beginning. This is the story we as a collective are building but the choices and outcomes is dependent upon the choices the cinematic characters make. Railroading is a bad game design and again I didn't feel the need to state the obvious.
Well, I can respect your opinion and disagree at the same time. I think the design choice of modern games is definitely 1) truer to the Sword & Sorcery roots of the genre the game is based on and 2) better for the growth of the hobby as a whole. I agree on one premise that it is easier to be harsher and let up than it is to grant leniency then take it away but I feel that this more for specific issues vs. general game play. For example, I fully support the baseline assumption of 3E, 4E and 5E that the players are not common in abilites but stand out from the norm and are cut from the stuff of myth. That being said if there is an individual class feature or specific rule that is unclear on how it works I usually rule it in a way that is less favorable to the PCs until I can do more research on the subject or Sage Advice makes a ruling, etc. but even this I do not out of a spirit of being punitive but out of a spirit of being fair, because in my view it would not be fair to my players to grant them something (feature usage, item usage, etc.) and then snatch it away (the way many old school modules and monsters encouraged DMS to do).
Also, the flaw with OSR being the baseline instead of the way the game is currently set up is that basically you run a decent risks of losing players to the game like what happened in The Secrets of Blackmoor and that I have personally witnessed happen at game tables. For example, one of our players (we will call him Rob) is easily one of the more tenured people in our diverse group. Rob has been playing D&D since early 1E. I am honestly not sure of Rob's age but I am sure he is in his early 60's. Rob for the most part likes the current edition but can't stand OSR games and in particularly talks about the ridiculous and nonsensical traps that existed in what he calls Gygaxian dungeons. I can tell you now, if Rob who is a very amenable guy showed up at a table and lost his PC to some random F ery like cockatrices as the first encounter of a level 1 dungeon, some trap that was roll a save or die because you didn't take a wooden pole with you and check every 10'f feet for traps (and yes in 1E I recall a game like this) or worst yet you brought the pole and checked every 10' feet but through a random 1d2 die roll you hit the wrong floor plate so BOOM you're dead, Rob would not make a fuss he would say, "I am sorry. I think I am wasting your time and mine. Please forgive me this game is not what I thought but I hope you have a good day" and then leave. Many newer players would do the same thing. So no, I don't think the current game is a design error. I think having heroic be the standard but allowing dials of customization to scale the game tougher or more heroic (which is what I want to happen) is the right way to go. I will say for both ends of the spectrum the dials in 5E could be a little better.
In the two quotes above you are fully taking what I said out of contexting or flat out ignoring the poster I made those quotes in response too. The poster being @Monayuris The person made a statement that he did not care what happens as a DM. I am not saying 0-1-2E DMs did not care. Many did that is why many had house rules that disregarded random F-ery and the harshness of those systems. I am was addressing that poster directly and saying in the DMG the DM is to care and it continues to emphasis the point of the DM should care in various places not the least of which is pg. 6 of the DMG where it talks about getting to know your players so that can understand their motives and playstyles and thus help ensure they are having fun. What a novel concept. I must sayy I feel like you are too intelligent to not get what I was saying here especially since it was in direct response to @Monayuris whose quotes are in my post.
Yes. The DM is free to ignore the rules as they see fit but in my opinion if have to ignore a large amount of rules for the game to be fun then you have a very flawed game. In a solid system the rules enhance the game and for the most part in modern iterations of D&D I think this is true. My players and I (and me when I am a player) loved to optimize and explore the full mechanical potential of our characters. We also favor the tactical combat aspects of the game. For this reason we adhere to the rules as strictly as possible which is one reason why we all crave new official material vs. third party stuff because we like to stay legal. Some of us are lawyers in spirit if not profession and some in the group are both
I've been playing since the '70s myself, and there is a difference between the rules/feel and the content. I agree with with your buddy Rob. I can't stand most of the OSR games, usually for one of two reasons. One is that a given set of rules misses what I see as the point of the earlier editions, and the other is that they try to turn a play-style or approach to game mechanics.
Of course, my own version of the rules is what I would consider an OSR approach, but that doesn't mean anybody else who has been playing as long as me would like them. To me the core of the game is exploration. Not clever puzzles or tricks. Definitely not DM vs player, not resource management, and while I like a lot Gygax's adventures, and I like the concept of save or die, with the proper safeguards to make it viable within the context of the game.
I still think the 5e rules are near perfect, or really about as good as could be expected, for a mass market game. I think it's brilliantly designed, and while there are plenty of flaws, for the average gamer those flaws are just plain irrelevant. Anybody coming to the game for the first time has no idea that LTH functioned differently in earlier editions, and is probably fully onboard that they can just rest for the night and move one. (The reality is, they probably don't think about it at all - it's just part of the rules).
There is no right or wrong here, just different preferences. And the preferences of my players are always somewhat different depending on which edition of the game they started with, influenced by their other hobbies like movies or video games.
I think 5e has a lot more in common with the MCU approach than the sword and sorcery that D&D was originally based on. Again, not good or bad, just what it is (at least to me).
The other aspect that has lost me over the years is the mechanical/tactical aspects of the game. These are only natural as the complexity of the rules increases. But we aren't playing the game to "play a game" and master the rules/mechanics and optimize for those mechanics. We're interested in roleplaying a group of characters as if they are real people in a real world, and exploring the world, the characters, and their adventures. To us the rules are best if they intrude as little as possible, and serve primarily as a framework for the DM to adjudicate the action when there is a question of success/failure. That's why I'm still a big fan of the players not needing to know the rules (and why there are still a lot of "non-gamers" in my groups, many of which have no interest in rules, nor will never really learn them). Don't worry about them, that's one of the reasons I'm here. You focus on being your character and figuring out what you'd do under these circumstances. My job is to be a fair, impartial, and consistent referee when it comes to resolving activities within the world, combined with being one of the architects of the shared narrative between us.
WotC wisely chose to design for the more mechanically inclined. And fortunately I love tweaking and writing rules so I can modify it to fit what we want to do. The reality is, my own rules are always evolving, so no matter what somebody else writes and publishes, I will tweak it. While they could have done some things differently that might have satisfied older players a little more, the design has shown to be very robust and works great as is.
I think that the fact that the ranger is still one of the most popular classes on Roll 20 (I think), despite the fact that it also seems to be one that has received the most criticism shows that for the general gaming public, they care about such things far less than a group like us.
Oh gadzooks dude I appreciate the question but that is way too long ago in the 1970s or early 80s and there seemed to be a lot of them including magazines and other sources as well as the DMG. There were also ones where he talked about how critical hits were evil because Conan wouldn't fall to some random arrow and similar.
It was also possible in AD&D to regain full hit points and still be utterly incapacitated from being knocked to below zero hit points. I cannot say after noticing that and reading various other things he said about hit points I would ever take them to mean "wounds".
People talk about them in terms of wounds because those are descriptive ways for the gm to paint a picture of combat in a relatable form that players can visualize. There are only so many ways that you can describe an attacker not hitting someone before it starts sounding like reading an error log or describing some strange slapstick.
Oh gadzooks dude I appreciate the question but that is way too long ago in the 1970s or early 80s and there seemed to be a lot of them including magazines and other sources as well as the DMG. There were also ones where he talked about how critical hits were evil because Conan wouldn't fall to some random arrow and similar.
It was also possible in AD&D to regain full hit points and still be utterly incapacitated from being knocked to below zero hit points. I cannot say after noticing that and reading various other things he said about hit points I would ever take them to mean "wounds".
I was just curious if you had one in particular in mind.
I've always liked his description of hit points in the AD&D DMG:
"It is quite unreasonable to assume that as a character gains levels of ability ... that a corresponding gain in actual ability to sustain physical damage takes place. ... Because these reflect both the actual physical abilities of the character to withstand damage ... and a commensurate increase in such areas as skill in combat ... the "sixth sense" ... sheer luck., etc.
In particular it's pointing out that hit points increase with level that's always resonated with me. I've always equated them with an increase in skill to better avoid a big hit, and stamina, a sort of built in fatigue system.
That's also why I'm a fan of save or die (suck) type effects, because those types of things (such as poison) don't have anything to do with skill and stamina. Although they still have a better saving throw.
I actually kind of miss the Gygaxian style of rulebooks in that they still seem more "scholarly" in their approach, whether they actually were or not. Although there were certainly other books out there that were much better simply because they actually were more "scholarly," such as most of the MERP supplements, along with a lot of the Rolemaster things, Pendragon, the Palladium books, etc. A lot of sci-fi and sci-fantasy is like that too, Star Trek and Star Wars games for example.
But perhaps this is also related to the shift from what I consider a heroic, sword and sorcery/Tolkien-based approach to a more super-heroic MCU-style approach.
People talk about them in terms of wounds because those are descriptive ways for the gm to paint a picture of combat in a relatable form that players can visualize. There are only so many ways that you can describe an attacker not hitting someone before it starts sounding like reading an error log or describing some strange slapstick.
Fortunately so many adversaries are monsters that describing them as wounds that somehow magically do not impair at all kind of works ... Plus. A parried attack that slams your arm around till you ach is still hit point loss and a successful hit etc so it doesn't have to be slapstick it can be positively described defenses... One trick is allowing players to describe how their characters desperate last ditch defenses (hp) minimize the attack. The lucky guy describes it one way, the tough guy maybe like John Mcclane and the wizards might even describe cracks in his mage armor (some players will want you to describe their own so get imaginative too). A player character who has ummm regenerator flavor might have hit point loss that looks like wounds at first but which fades faster than normal (they just fatigue in the process of that fading).
Healing being restore that abstracted energies and fatigue works if you dont look too close like all game vagueness in my opinion.
