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

[Reynard]

And doing so never...y'know...makes them important???

You literally said "ew" to the entire idea of PCs being important.

If you are going to respond, you should take the time and effort to actually understand my position. I said "eww" to the idea of neo-trad where the starting assumption that the PCs are important. I did not say anything at all about never being important. You brought that, as you often do, by coming in hot and assuming everyone holds the same extreme end positions you display. I prefer the PCs to become important through play.

Yes...and it's also the thing that got a CRAPTON of people interested in 5e. People liked what they saw. People wanted to have experiences like that themselves. Telling them to go play literal absolute nobodies with no special skills, training, origin, or anything else? Not going to enthuse them very much.

And here's a perfect example.

 

[Velderan]

I think you'll see a wide range of opinions on this topic because there was a wide range of ways you could play 2e with the wide range of optional rules published. Using just the PHB and DMG, you could play a game that was pretty close to how 1e was played (from what I hear people say, never played 1e myself). But there was also a lot of rules both in the PHB/DMG and books that came along later such as "The Complete _____ Handbook" line and the Player's Option/DM's Option rulebooks that greatly expanded on how you could play the game. As has been said, kits could be looked at as achieving what subclasses do now by expanding the base class into a more focused concept with unique abilities. Non-weapon Proficiencies in 2e could be looked at as the same thing as 5e's Skill Proficiencies where the player had a thing on their character sheet that said they could do a thing by rolling. I tend to see more complaints about this change in the game from 1e purists than I do about the name changes and such to appease angry parents.

I guess it mostly depended on how you played 2e whether 5e resembles it to you or not.

 

[Desdichado]

• Sanitized - check
• Quixotically chasing mainstreamization - check
• Sending lawyers after fans - check. Well, that's not exactly a completely accurate description of the OGL situation, and the Pinkerton situation strictly speaking wasn't D&D.
• Reorganized and cleaned up an earlier version without really significant changes - debatable check, 5e is basically a cleaned up and streamlined and reorganized 3e
• Challenged by another system for dominance - to be seen. Not true during regular 5e, but for 5.5 that might prove to be true. We'll see.
• Glut of products that few people want and which cannibalize each other's sales - I have no idea, although I don't get the impression that many of the last few years' products have been super successful in terms of adoption and sales. That might be perception bias and be completely untrue, however.

On balance, yeah--I think it's fair to call 5e the successor to 2e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I love specialty priests! They were a fantastic way to mechanically and lore-wise differentiate the religious and spiritual traditions of your setting. When I do my own design work in that area I always look to 2e's philosophy for inspiration.

 

[Micah Sweet]

2e took the complicated rules of 1e and made them simpler, easier to understand, and better organized.

It increased the crunch level of PC creation by including things like proficiency, weapon specialization, specialist clerics and magic users, and eventually kits. But not to the level of 3e or 4e.

So yeah I can see what he means 2e and 5e or similar in they are medium crunch and beginner friendly.

Now if the 2e team could have done what they wanted and not had to use legacy things like THAC0 and been able to call proficiency skills, we would have got a even simpler system, but TSR insisted on backwards compatibility.

As a long-time 1e player both before and after 2e's release, the fact that it was mechanically compatible with 1e was a huge point in 2e's favor for us.

 

[GothmogIV]

@Reynard one of the things I've noticed on this forum, and in other places, is how...dedicated 5e players are to this particular iteration of the game. People get crazy defensive, even hostile, if you critique 5e or suggest that it's not all that. If you like 2e, play 2e, or try an OSR game (I am currently loving Castles&Crusades, for example). I, too, felt the jarring reality of 5e when I tried to play it with a 2e point of view. They are completely different games.

And I would like to add, the vast majority of people I've interacted with on ENWorld are wonderful, curious, funny, and helpful. This is a good place to discuss things, but the edition wars are real.

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard one of the things I've noticed on this forum, and in other places, is how...dedicated 5e players are to this particular iteration of the game. People get crazy defensive, even hostile, if you critique 5e or suggest that it's not all that. If you like 2e, play 2e, or try an OSR game (I am currently loving Castles&Crusades, for example). I, too, felt the jarring reality of 5e when I tried to play it with a 2e point of view. They are completely different games.

And I would like to add, the vast majority of people I've interacted with on ENWorld are wonderful, curious, funny, and helpful. This is a good place to discuss things, but the edition wars are real.

I'm not sure it is a 5E thing -- I think eeryone has their favorites, and some folks take that more seriously than others. Try talking to people online about what the best Batman run is...

 

[Iosue]

I'm glad you added this asterisk, because without that the comment would be utterly ludicrous. As it is, it's merely chuckle-worthy.

1e had tighter math than 5e does.

And 5e absolutely, positively DID NOT take any meaningful part of 4e's exception-based design. I find it almost overtly goes the opposite. Like it SAYS "specific trumps general"...and then gets into all sorts of weird and silly exceptions. Particularly because of the hardcore gung-ho "DM Empowerment!" extravaganza.

You’re absolutely right, Ezekiel. About everything. I no longer have the time, inclination, or spoons to deal with your essay-length broadsides that fill any thread where someone mentions 4e, let alone criticizes any one of its possible shortcomings. You’ve made another forum unbearable for me with your refusal to let go of a fight that was tiring a decade ago.

Time to leave ENWorld again. Maybe I’ll see some of you guys in 10 years when the next edition drops.

 

[Reynard]

You’re absolutely right, Ezekiel. About everything. I no longer have the time, inclination, or spoons to deal with your essay-length broadsides that fill any thread where someone mentions 4e, let alone criticizes any one of its possible shortcomings. You’ve made another forum unbearable for me with your refusal to let go of a fight that was tiring a decade ago.

Time to leave ENWorld again. Maybe I’ll see some of you guys in 10 years when the next edition drops.

Alternatively, you could just use the "ignore" function and continue to enjoy the overall awesome community that is ENWorld.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I guess I can see that. For me there's a pretty stark contrast between TSR D&D up through 2nd edition and WotC D&D beginning with 3rd. I can see why players who were very into 3e and/or 4e would say 5e is "rulings over rules", but when I think of my 2nd edition days... hoooo boy those games makes the assertion "5e is rulings over rules" look laughable in comparison. We also had sooo many magic items floating around in AD&D, thanks to the way the treasure tables worked.

It's certainly notable as a return to form, rather than in absolute terms.

Regarding the magic items -- this is true, but it was decidedly different from 3e/4e, right? They were random, and without concrete purchasing rules. You couldn't plan around them -- pick weapon proficiencies/specializations with the assumption you would get the right weapons, or memorize spells based on always having a scroll of knock available, etc. I think that made a huge difference.

5e is 3e but slower and weaker.

• Reorganized and cleaned up an earlier version without really significant changes - debatable check, 5e is basically a cleaned up and streamlined and reorganized 3e

People keep saying this. FWIW, there are some really indisputable parallels. Compared to TSR-era, everyone is on the same xp schedule and there are dwarven wizards and paladins and rangers aren't mostly-better fighters you get rewarded for high stat rolls and so on. Likewise there are mechanical bits like fitting everything possible to d20 and feats and multiclassing working the same, and so on.
However, there are plenty of impactful differences. 3e trying to make the sim side of the game much more concrete and codify rules for most activities and codifying RAW (compared to earlier versions stated contempt for rules lawyers) stands in pretty stark contrast to 5e's rulings-over-rules and natural-language mission statements. Core-rule-from-the-start magic item purchasing and crafting (with individual costs and concrete formula) rules also highly effected gameplay (both in being able to design builds around having certain items and play strategies like 3e Vancian casters memorizing spells of a certain likelihood of use, and then crafting scrolls for rare-events and wands for constant ones).
Just reading the game books (particularly the character creation part of the PHBs) certainly makes the games seem like different attempts at the same thing, but when they play out, or certainly when you DM them, there certainly seem to be a lot of dissimilarities that show up -- enough for me to say that they don't stand out as more alike than other edition to edition comparisons.
It's kind of like how 1e and 2e look neigh identical if you don't factor in how much the optional-rule stuff (especially xp options) or play-pattern focus can change how the game plays (or perhaps similar to GURPS and Hero System look so similar when reading character creation, but decidedly reward different playstyles).
Again, not saying this is wrong or that there are not obvious similarities, just that there are contraindicators as well.

@Reynard one of the things I've noticed on this forum, and in other places, is how...dedicated 5e players are to this particular iteration of the game. People get crazy defensive, even hostile, if you critique 5e or suggest that it's not all that. If you like 2e, play 2e, or try an OSR game (I am currently loving Castles&Crusades, for example). I, too, felt the jarring reality of 5e when I tried to play it with a 2e point of view. They are completely different games.

That super does not feel like a 5e-specific thing. I've been in online D&D discussion since -- I guess technically since the 1e-->2e shift (although most significantly ~93 and onward)-- and this is not new. Not only does every edition have dedicated fans, detractors, and defenders, but people have tended to have a nuanced relationship with whatever edition is current along with whichever editions are their most/least favorite (i.e. if you love 1e and hate BECMI, you'll have a lot to say about 1e, BECMI, and 5e.2024 right now, and had a lot to say about 1e, BECMI, and 3.0 back in 2002).