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<blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7954638" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I'm kind of wondering what you're getting at with this? Not saying you're wrong, just don't understand.It's a classic 1e puzzle, where each PC needs to figure out which tree relates to them, and it provides a bonus for success (and a big one in that era where increasing Ability Scores was not baked into the rules). It's also a lesson in greed. Rather than an arbitrary, &quot;it only works once,&quot; it actually has an in-world answer to why everybody can't just eat more fruit.Are you saying that 5e doesn't do this sort of thing at all?I'd agree with that, other than republishing older adventures. 5e is built on bonuses alone, rather than bonuses and penalties. D&amp;D as a whole has shied away from player-solved puzzles. I think a big part of this is that it's much harder to design a puzzle for players so it's not too hard or too easy. Spoilers are also an issue. But I think the real reason is the increased desire for &quot;balance&quot; and that you can design for PC skill much easier than for player skill.Having said that, I'll also admit that I haven't run any of the 5e APs, so perhaps there are things similar to this that I'm not readily aware of.I miss those sort of things myself, but I do think it requires a certain sort of gamer mentality that is probably absent in a lot of gamers today. They just aren't used to them at this point. Player skill is now more focused on the character build and finding creative use of manipulating the mechanics/rules (I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just different). Sure, there were always players trying to find loopholes in the rules, but then the DM was assumed to have the authority to say, &quot;no.&quot;</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ilbranteloth, post: 7954638, member: 6778044"] I'm kind of wondering what you're getting at with this? Not saying you're wrong, just don't understand. It's a classic 1e puzzle, where each PC needs to figure out which tree relates to them, and it provides a bonus for success (and a big one in that era where increasing Ability Scores was not baked into the rules). It's also a lesson in greed. Rather than an arbitrary, "it only works once," it actually has an in-world answer to why everybody can't just eat more fruit. Are you saying that 5e doesn't do this sort of thing at all? I'd agree with that, other than republishing older adventures. 5e is built on bonuses alone, rather than bonuses and penalties. D&D as a whole has shied away from player-solved puzzles. I think a big part of this is that it's much harder to design a puzzle for players so it's not too hard or too easy. Spoilers are also an issue. But I think the real reason is the increased desire for "balance" and that you can design for PC skill much easier than for player skill. Having said that, I'll also admit that I haven't run any of the 5e APs, so perhaps there are things similar to this that I'm not readily aware of. I miss those sort of things myself, but I do think it requires a certain sort of gamer mentality that is probably absent in a lot of gamers today. They just aren't used to them at this point. Player skill is now more focused on the character build and finding creative use of manipulating the mechanics/rules (I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just different). Sure, there were always players trying to find loopholes in the rules, but then the DM was assumed to have the authority to say, "no." [/QUOTE]

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