Name ONE favourite thing about your favourite edition


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airwalkrr

Adventurer
I like the internal consistency of D&D 3.5. (Almost) everything has a unified mechanic, which makes understanding the game and the math much easier once you have grasped the basics. Once you understand the unified mechanic, you automatically understand a dozen other things.
 

But all that said, IME, it is the rare player who actually went out of their way to do those math exploits or screw around with the most problematic powers. Most were too busy modeling their PCs the way they envisioned them. Time Travel may be capable of screwing things royally, but most people playing supers games are not interested in playing time travellers. They want the iconic powers like flight, super strength, super speed, superhuman toughness, super martial arts or shooting energy beams.
This seems to be a Supers thing. In D&D you're generally playing either a murderhobo, a ruthless treasure hunter, or someone "fighting for survival in a world with the darkest power". In all of these situations you take every edge you can get - and people metagame the same way. In a four colour supers world you aren't. You're being a little more ridiculous and more interested in OTT hijinks and playing someone who wants to help other people. Which means the psychological lure to take every little trick in the book because that's what the game rewards just isn't there - and instead people just want to play larger than life superheroes. (City of Heroes (now cancelled) had the friendliest MMO forums and in game play I'm aware of, I think because of this.)
 



Dog Moon

Adventurer
I'd also like to laud 2Ed for its design decision to make priests different- VERY different- depending on their faith. There was almost as much variation in 2Ed's priests of specific mithoi as there is in any 3.5Ed class.

I think all of my favorite books are from 2e [excluding Monster Template Books :)] and among those favorite are the Faiths and Avatars books from Forgotten Realms. PACKED with information and abilities to make every Cleric very different from Clerics of different Religions.

But as for my favorite aspect, it's Monster Creation from 3.x. I've always liked Monsters and Templates made the Monsters even cooler. Especially Monsters that can have Class Levels added to them. Some people think this adds too much prep time and yes, maybe it does add some, but it's still my favorite part.
 

Gorgoroth

Banned
Banned
Of all the editions I've played, AD&D 2nd edition. Speed of combat that didn't get in the way of the story, but opened it up. Out of combat uses of spells in creative ways for my evoker. Awesome kits and races in splat books.

Not because the rules are that good, or balanced, or even consistent, but despite that, D&D built upon my reading of the Hobbit when I was 13, then LOTR, and opened up a sense of wonder within me, sparked my youthful imagination, and gave me one of the most precious gifts you can have : as an adult, something that makes you feel giddy and excited, as if you were instantly transformed into that lad of yesteryear. That's valuable and precious (indeed).

That's how I felt last night watching The Hobbit with all my old and best highschool friends, together again for the holidays, after being scattered to the four winds. It was a Gathering of Nerds, if you will. And instantly after the movie everyone was also giddy, even some of our girlfriends (not giddy, exactly, but interested, and certainly loved our passion for the topic), eager to play D&D Next playtest sometime this holiday.

In AD&D I had my first ranger, my first paladin, then fifteen years later after trying 3.0 and fizzing out with it, my first wizard evoker who has done some of the most creative things I've ever thought up, as well as the most memorable one-shot character in an evil campaign : Scrubs, the Manbearpig mongrelman (humanoids race book) necromancer whom I RPed as so slovenly disgusting and demented, that even the DM and the other players were aghast at some of the vile, despicable things I achieved and marveled at the pseudo-method acting glee with which I entered his skin. They mention him to this day. The hysterical laughter and drooling speech impediment from the experiments that went into his malformation, his construction at the hands of an evil genius wizard. Even the goblin torturers working for us shied away from the abomination that was this mongrelman. I burn, I shudder, as I pen the damnable atrocity!

PF is overall superior to me, but that's like comparing a modern sportscar to a vintage 80s lambo. The performance isn't the same, by far, but there is nothing that I'd rather own in this life or the next than a yellow Countach if I had to choose. AD&D might corner terribly in comparison, but it's the classic. I don't think PF or 3.5 (definitely not 4) can even come close to competing with the amount of combats one can have while still maintaining a healthy fear of character death that gives the game believability, a jarring and uneven sense of realism that comes from knowing the dice can kill you. It's powerful, almost magical. Dice-based roleplaying. You cared about your character. Now he's dead. That's life. It's absolutely fun every step of the way. The solution isn't to make the game world safe for PCs, it's to make it fun to re-roll new toons and try it again! Give it another go, lad. Better luck next time. Gamblers understand this. Many don't. It's just one of those things I guess, you either get it or don't.

I hope Next can rekindle a good blend of modern and retro vibes while incorporating lots of innovations in an elegant way from other editions, and keep combat fast enough to let the story and exploration pillars have their turn in the sun. For now it's partially succeeding on that front alone (balance of time between the pillars), but still lots of work left and very rough.
 

the Jester

Legend
In this thread, you get to name ONE thing about one edition that you love. Nothing to do with things you don't like, or editions you don't enjoy - just a positive thing about something you love. It can be any edition of D&D or Pathfinder.

Good priest customization. Specifically, the specialty priests I homebrewed for my game in 2e were excellent, mostly well-balanced, flavorful and each had tons of unique spells.
 

Raith5

Adventurer
4th ed - I really like static defenses of 4th - it is just so easy to have a unified system where everyone rolls their attacks - rather than have saves for somethings and attack rolls for others.
 

Wepwawet

Explorer
I don't have a favourite edition anymore :( All of them have different problems and now I can't decide which one's qualities are better.

But I'd have to answer 4E's play-style: the combats are complex and fun, but the world building and the stories are not set in stone, everything is very flexible and free-form
 

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