Is D&D becoming more fantastical?

[Mad Mac]

No, I didn't miss it - I consciously and deliberately ignored it.

I'm not interested in comparing editions. I responded to something posted about 1e - I said nothing about 3e, and have no intention of discussing 3e whatsoever.

Makes it hard to discuss how "editions that shall not be named" are becoming more fantastical if you aren't willing to talk about them, no?

 

[Sholari]

D&D is certainly becoming more "high fantasy" than "low fantasy" with each incarnation.

Amen.

 

[Hussar]

3rd edition does seem to assume at least a Very High Magic setting for D&D. Not sure about 4e.

In terms of Fantastical-ness? I guess it's what you mean. IMO, the game has become significantly less realistic. Not that magic needs realism, but the actual reasons why things work like they do in the world are rarely addressed. This makes it VERY hard to understand what is going on in character. Which, in turn, makes it hard to discern it while exploring.

The focus is often just on rules and on thinking in rule terms. Which makes it hard to think in character when anything attached to a rule comes along.

Ummm, what?

Did you ever play in 1e modules? Walking out with a cart full of magic items?

Ok, I trot this example out whenever this argument is made and it seems to get the point across.

The 1e (and 2e) paladin was limited to 10 magic items. 4 weapons, armor, shield, and 4 other items. No more. TEN magic items was considered a LIMITATION. That means that the expectation was that every other PC would have more than 10 magic items, since if no one ever hits that 10 item limit, it's hardly a limitation is it?

The expected party size in 1e was 6-8 PC's. That's something on the order of 70 magic items within the party. SEVENTY. It was expected that your group would be carting around 70 magic items at some point.

Even cutting it down to the 3e party size of 4 PC's, that's still 41 magic items. FORTY-ONE! How the heck do people figure that 1e was about low magic when you were EXPECTED to have more than 10 magic items per character?

Never mind if you start actually looking at the 3e wealth by level guidelines. A 7th level PC should have 19k gp worth of goodies. Works out to a +1 weapon, +1 armor, +2 stat boost goodie, and maybe a couple of odds and sods. Big deal.

It isn't until you start hitting mid double digits that you see buckets of magic items. You want to play 3e low magic, simply cut off at 8th level. Done. Low magic setting.

 

[The Shaman]

Makes it hard to discuss how "editions that shall not be named" are becoming more fantastical if you aren't willing to talk about them, no?

No.

To wit:

Perhaps I'm just a fan of having normal people do extraordinary things, although still being normal for their race.

Same here.

See? An edition-neutral comment supporting one of the OP's premises.

 

[Pinotage]

It's interesting that "average person" is pretty much translated out as "average fighter", moreso since the "average person" in D&D has never translated into "average starting character", no matter how much the "grim and gritty" fans have insisted otherwise.

The fighter is just a classic example of a martial class with no magical ability being able to do more magical things, e.g. the swordsage. But there are plenty of others - take a look at any of the feats in 3e, and you'll find loads that grant supernatural abilities or the abilities to cast spells. The average person can now pick up a feat and become more magical. Become a sorcerer and you can breath fire like a dragon, is just one example or the 'race' becoming more magical. Suddenly you're not only casting spells, but also have a human breathing fire.

Pinotage

 

[FireLance]

I repeat: The designers of D&D have lost their way.

It only looks that way to you because where they want to end up is very different from where you think they should be heading.

Some of us do think they are headed in the right direction.

 

[FireLance]

What's that quote from The Incredibles? "When everyone's special, no one is."

You know, given that the quote was delivered by the antagonist in the film, it's not surprising that everyone gets a gut-level, "No, not everyone should be special!" reaction to it.

However, think about it a bit more. It's actually saying that the world ought to be divided into "special" people and "non-special" people, and implying that the special people are better or more valuable than the rest. Whether or not this is true in reality, it's a potentially dangerous line of thought.

In a way, the quote isn't even true. It would be more accurate to say, "When everyone is special in the same way, no-one is", but it wouldn't be as nice a sound bite.

If everyone is special, but in different and unique ways, everyone can take pride that they can do something that no-one else can, and still appreciate other people for the things that only they can do. Sure, if everyone can shoot fireballs, or if everyone has a +5 weapon, then shooting fireballs or having a +5 weapon is not special. However, if one person can turn invisible while another is very fast and another is very strong, they are all special in their own ways.

 

[D.Shaffer]

The fighter is just a classic example of a martial class with no magical ability being able to do more magical things, e.g. the swordsage.

The swordsage is the equivalent to the monk in Bo9S. The crusader is equivalent to the paladin/cleric. It's teh Warblade, with its non-supernatural based schools, that's the equivalent to the fighter.

 

[howandwhy99]

In our OD&D game I play a cleric.
At 1st level I had 0 spells. I could only turn undead, but that I could do so without limit.
At 2nd level I had 1 1st level spell. When not taking CLW, I found Detect Magic was the best option.
Of those options available I had 6 spells to choose from. That's pretty significant as our Magic-Users' had discovered fewer arcane spells to learn during adventuring (though they could cast 2 1st level spells at 2nd level.)
Of course I could also ask for spells that were not on that list. I just made them up with the Referee.
It takes us on average about 10 sessions to gain a level.

But to be fair our spells are far more powerful than those in newer editions of the game. For example, invisibility lasts forever... until you hit someone of course.

In 3rd edition, it's pretty obvious things are very different.

In 4th edition, I believe any class may be able to choose special "power source" abilities they can use /day, /encounter & permanent/at will.

I hope they don't go SAGA's route with 4HD at 1st level. That may be a major pain to reconfigure.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

And then changed the rules so they could rarely, if ever, be destroyed in combat... "because that's not fun".

No, it's because the absolute worst spell in all existence to adjudicate is Mordenkainen's Disjunction. It has ridiculous effects on every aspect of a character sheet, and doing all the recalculation is a pain in the ass.

Similarly, changing every instance on your character sheet when you lose the +4 Strength belt is a pain, only better than the MD because it involves only a single character editing fewer lines of text.