D&D 5E So 5E is the Successor to AD&D 2nd Edition? How and How Not?

[Retreater]

AD&D 2nd edition is at my nostalgic core for TTRPGs. It was my first edition. It was the one game that I felt got "yanked out" from me when my players demanded we upgrade to a very different 3rd edition. It was the home of my longest and most "meaningful" campaign (in case you're wondering, it served as the catharsis as my players and I navigated entering adulthood and the death of a friend) - in short, it was our "Stand By Me" experience. I am still best friends with the players from that group 25+ years later ... even though we have moved hours apart.

So when I say I loved 2nd Edition AD&D and the nostalgia of it, I really mean that.

In Chris Perkin's recent interview with Stan!, he claimed that 5e was the descendent of 2nd edition. As I bemoan on online forums that there isn't a good modernized update of 2nd edition (as Old School Essentials does for B/X), people say "you've got 5e - that's the 2nd edition retroclone." However, 5e has been a struggle for me and it feels very different from 2e.

Here's a list of differences between 5e and 2e that I think keep 5e from delivering on 2e feel...
Overnight full heal.
Easy access to healing magic (ESPECIALLY Healing Word).
No stat requirements to qualify for "rare" classes (Bard, Druid, Paladin, etc.).
Bonus actions.
HP bloat.
Bounded accuracy.
Monster damage resistances and spell resistances being inconsequential.
Monster special attacks not being threatening (Mummy Rot, Lycanthropy, etc.)
No specialty priests or specialist wizards.

Some differences, such as positive AC I think are good changes and don't really detract from the feel anyway.

What do you think? Do you think 5e feels like 2nd edition? Do you see any other differences? What are the similarities?

 

[Bedrockgames]

AD&D 2nd edition is at my nostalgic core for TTRPGs. It was my first edition. It was the one game that I felt got "yanked out" from me when my players demanded we upgrade to a very different 3rd edition. It was the home of my longest and most "meaningful" campaign (in case you're wondering, it served as the catharsis as my players and I navigated entering adulthood and the death of a friend) - in short, it was our "Stand By Me" experience. I am still best friends with the players from that group 25+ years later ... even though we have moved hours apart.

So when I say I loved 2nd Edition AD&D and the nostalgia of it, I really mean that.

In Chris Perkin's recent interview with Stan!, he claimed that 5e was the descendent of 2nd edition. As I bemoan on online forums that there isn't a good modernized update of 2nd edition (as Old School Essentials does for B/X), people say "you've got 5e - that's the 2nd edition retroclone." However, 5e has been a struggle for me and it feels very different from 2e.

Here's a list of differences between 5e and 2e that I think keep 5e from delivering on 2e feel...
Overnight full heal.
Easy access to healing magic (ESPECIALLY Healing Word).
No stat requirements to qualify for "rare" classes (Bard, Druid, Paladin, etc.).
Bonus actions.
HP bloat.
Bounded accuracy.
Monster damage resistances and spell resistances being inconsequential.
Monster special attacks not being threatening (Mummy Rot, Lycanthropy, etc.)
No specialty priests or specialist wizards.

Some differences, such as positive AC I think are good changes and don't really detract from the feel anyway.

What do you think? Do you think 5e feels like 2nd edition? Do you see any other differences? What are the similarities?

It doesn't feel especially Second Edition to me. I think it has elements of 1E and 2E, and some general old school sensibilities, but I wouldn't say it is 2E style edition. That also very much came with the composition of the line as a whole. It was a heavily supported edition, with tons of material written with the GM in mind.

 

[payn]

I think its more accurate to see 5E as the successor of all editions. Folks that like 5E, usually relate fondly to their favorite editions in relation. Folks that do not like 5E, usually point to how different it is to their favorite edition in relation. While I have seen what folks say about 5E being X, I also see 5E not being X.

I feel like Donovan can explain it best.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I think its more accurate to see 5E as the successor of all editions.

Well, other than The Edition That Must Not Be Named.

As for your thread topic @Retreater, my position is...nuanced, I guess I'd say. As I've said elsewhere, I never played 2e "properly", only via CRPGs like Planescape: Torment. (That was enough to teach me that THAC0 is verifiably the worst though!)

Here are things that I think make 5e similar to 2e:

Subclasses are similar to kits and achieve a similar goal, covering multiple ideas with one class
Concentration places limits on what casters can easily achieve, at least somewhat like certain rule limits on spellcasters in 2e
"Bounded Accuracy" is at least conceptually similar to the idea in 1e/2e that 0 AC was sort of meant as a soft cap, even if in practice both 1e and 2e broke that cap frequently
Feats, especially as chunky things you get rarely, and the trinary untrained/proficient/expertise skills and proficiencies, are more than superficially similar to NWPs
Some of the adventure emphasis and style is at least in the same direction as 2e and differs from both 3e and 4e

Beyond that, though? I don't really feel 5e is particularly similar to 2e. It has always looked much more similar to 3e in my eyes. As in, nearly identical, apart from a few notable and specific changes (such as not using skill points, or having a much more restrictive Concentration mechanic.)

 

[Reynard]

5E and 2E also have a similar focus on "high fantasy adventure" that is baked into the rules and rulebooks themselves. It isn't that you can't go dungeon/hex crawling with either, but neither wants you too. They want you to tell a grand story.

TSR and WotC are very different companies, of course, and so a lot of things we tend to associate with 2E are missing (rapid release schedules, metaplot via novels, many settings, etc). But those aren't actually functions of the game.

 

[billd91]

I consider bounded accuracy to be less of a difference point between 5e and AD&D versions than 3e/4e. While some characters effectively had 20 levels of increasing ability to hit (fighter-types), one of the key features of AD&D was a bound on Armor Class. 2e's bound on AC was a bit soft for really high end dragons, but for the VAST majority of opponents, it covered a similar span to 5e - about 12-15 points between AC 10 and AC -2 to -5, which conforms to 5e's general spread from 10 to 22-25. From a practical perspective, it means that high level attackers aren't very likely to miss their targets and lower level attackers aren't completely mathematically eliminated from doing damage to a more powerful opponent.

 

[TwoSix]

Far more than a specific mechanic, 5e is meant to be the successor to 2e (or TSR D&D more generally) in that the DMs are supposed to have more explicit authority to override player-facing character rules.

Removing cost (and expected acquisition rate) from magic items, so that they're handed out solely on the DM's schedule, is one example.

 

[ezo]

What do you think? Do you think 5e feels like 2nd edition?

No. However, in the WotC-era, it is the one that feels most like 2E, certainly.

As long as 5E is character-focused instead of story-focused, it will never really feel like 2E to me. While 2E had all the splat books, as many people didn't use them as did IME. So, you had much more "basic" characters in the sense of features, etc. but who due more to how you played them, felt very different.

5E characters grow to become insanely complex by comparison. There is not the same level of DM-driven support and focus on the adventure. Now, I've been playing 5E for about six years or so, while I played 2E for nearly 20 (or hybrids with 1E). When I think back on 2E I recall the adventures, the "moments" if you will where cool or great things happened. Sure, the characters were important of course, but now in 5E it seems more about "remember when my PC did this or that" and not "remember when this happened to us and we had to do this or that".

It's difficult to explain, and going beyond the simple differences in mechanics, etc. that is the best way I can put it.

 

[Charlaquin]

Far more than a specific mechanic, 5e is meant to be the successor to 2e (or TSR D&D more generally) in that the DMs are supposed to have more explicit authority to override player-facing character rules.

Removing cost (and expected acquisition rate) from magic items, so that they're handed out solely on the DM's schedule, is one example.

I think this is also something that has shifted during 5e’s lifecycle, and that shift is one of the biggest reasons behind the large number of folks who really liked early 5e and are finding themselves less and less happy with later 5e and especially post-2024 5e. The D&D Next playtest was very strongly geared towards DMs, touting “rulings over rules,” “DM empowerment,” and making bold claims about how modular design was going to make it possible to pick and choose your favorite aspects of each edition to create the feel you wanted for your table. It was a gradual shift, but over time 5e got more and more player-centric over DM-centric. Unearthed Arcana playtests started being less focused on optional and variant rules, and more focused on new and exciting subclasses. Adventure books started focusing less on doubling as a toolbox for running adventures along similar thematic lines, and more on doubling as a delivery method for new player options that tied in with the themes of the adventure. And the 2024 rules are kind of the culmination of this process - a new version of 5e that uses the same fundamental rules structures to deliver a player-focused experience instead of the DM-focused one D&D Next was built to deliver.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

5E and 2E also have a similar focus on "high fantasy adventure" that is baked into the rules and rulebooks themselves. It isn't that you can't go dungeon/hex crawling with either, but neither wants you too. They want you to tell a grand story.

Far more than a specific mechanic, 5e is meant to be the successor to 2e (or TSR D&D more generally) in that the DMs are supposed to have more explicit authority to override player-facing character rules.

Removing cost (and expected acquisition rate) from magic items, so that they're handed out solely on the DM's schedule, is one example.

Yeah, I think these are the most salient commonalities.

As to how it isn't. When I think of Specialty Priest, and then look at 5e Clerics, I let out a sad little sigh.