D&D General Refresher Course D&D Edition Numbers. AKA Modern D&D Is a Self Inflicted Problem.

[Zardnaar]

The staff of curing in AD&D 1e and 2e avoided 3.x's wand of cure light wounds problems by limiting the device to functioning once per day on any person. Also, staves only held 25 charges, as opposed to wands with 100 (50 charges in 3.x). And while the staff of curing was one of the few items that could be recharged, 2e added an item saving throw for the staff each time it was recharged and on a failure the item was destroyed. So, less resilient than 3.x's wands.

Wands of clw were fine. Being available for 750gp wasn't.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Difference is I can comprehend why people do like 4E. It wasn't a badly designed game (over designed maybe). Its a classic example of know thy target audience.

Think I asked you this the other day. Apologies if I missed your answer.

What do you think my favorite edition of D&D is. Least favorite as well if you like.

I believe I had replied. In brief, I believe 2e is your favorite (and I'm pretty sure you've specifically said so), and 4e is (by far) your least favorite. The rough order would be

2e
(Big gap)
3e/5e
Basic/OD&D/1e
(Enormous gap)
4e

Like if 2e is set at 100, then 3e/5e are in the 70s, Basic, OD&D, and 1e are in the 50s-60s, and 4e is somewhere in the single digits.

That is the impression I have gotten from numerous interactions in the past. That time you started two threads on another forum analyzing "what went wrong" with 4e and 3e respectively was a pretty big impact on that. The...very clear difference in how one was treated vs the other was a big indicator.

 

[Zardnaar]

I believe I had replied. In brief, I believe 2e is your favorite (and I'm pretty sure you've specifically said so), and 4e is (by far) your least favorite. The rough order would be

2e
(Big gap)
3e/5e
Basic/OD&D/1e
(Enormous gap)
4e

Like if 2e is set at 100, then 3e/5e are in the 70s, Basic, OD&D, and 1e are in the 50s-60s, and 4e is somewhere in the single digits.

That is the impression I have gotten from numerous interactions in the past. That time you started two threads on another forum analyzing "what went wrong" with 4e and 3e respectively was a pretty big impact on that. The...very clear difference in how one was treated vs the other was a big indicator.

Not a bad guess but you're wrong on 4E lol.

2E isnt my favorite but its up there. Unfortunately it has the AD&D engine.

 

[GrimCo]

We quite enjoyed playing Adventures on Middle Earth which was basically a house ruled 2014 D&D campaign that stripped out spells, magic items and abilities that trivialized healing and exploration. Whenever I read a thread like this, my knee jerk reaction is “use D&D as a toolkit and make the custom campaign feel that you want?”. Want exploration-themed campaigns? Cross out spells like “Leomund’s Invisible Impenetrable Bacta Tank Spa fortress in the sky”? Hate HP bloat? Run a campaign that has a max level of 6, like Brancalonia.

5e Middle Earth is great. My brother bought books and since then, it's my go to for more grounded, low fantasy games. It does GoT or Vikings style game pretty well i may add. Brancolonia is on this years Christmas wish list ( already hinted in not so subtle way to wife ).

But yes, D&D is toolkit. Has been for ever, moment you introduce house rules, you are using D&D as a framework to build on. That's one of it's strengths. It's not perfect toolkit, but it gets job done. Only problem is, it needs better guidelines and support for new players on how to best use that toolkit to curate game experience they want.

But that’s probably not gonna solve anything. I see great things done by other companies that proved to me that 5e can work to support other things than kitchen sink fantasy.

Back to toolkit analogy. Yes, it can do lot of stuff with tweaking while still retaining that familiarity players are accustomed to.

Sometimes I have to remind my players that my DM style isn’t a tournament, nor is there a prize for “most perfect min max combos”. I always prefer style over “substance” (mechanical optimization).

Same. I encourage my players to go wild. Use crazy combos that sound fun without worry about "efficiency" or "synergy". Rule of cool all the way. And even if they find fun in creating uberfleischmaschinen, who cares, i just let them have it and make minced meat of monsters. Or if they go full on quirky but "combat inefficient", also cool, i can shift game away from combat (and for the most part i do that anyway).