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

[Chaltab]

I meant the actual adventures. Is there a philosophical difference between the way that WotC and Paizo present these big campaign length adventures?

In my experience, WOTC adventures hide the railroading by having certain things occur no matter what the PCs do, whereas Paizo adventures just railroad you by giving you no other options.

 

[Retreater]

It’s interesting that you went to mechanics first as where you get that 2nd edition feel from.

For me, 2nd ed was all about the lore and just going crazy with lore. By my completely anecdotal/personal metric, 5e’s lore is anemic in comparison. Thus, on that front, I would disagree with Chris Perkins’ broad comparison.

I wonder if he had something more specific in mind as the basis for drawing that parallel in his interview with Stan!…

I guess my experience with 2E was different. I didn't interact with the lore at all. I didn't collect the campaign settings and didn't read the novels. Or play the CRPGs.

Some of the feeling was from the art. They didn't have "one unified brand." The artwork showed a variety of campaigns, as if showing the fantasies of hundreds of players and DMs. It was tied to fantasy, folklore, and literature instead of a unified brand. I could read examples from Greek mythology, historical figures. It challenged me to find inspiration in what I watched, what I read, and the world around me - but today, WotC is the sole source of inspiration for the games.

 

[Shardstone]

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?

Have you read the new Mm? Monster damage is a lot higher now.

 

[Retreater]

My inspiration here is the fantastic tight relationship between chosen character theme and adventure hook in the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting.

I tried using that as the basis of my recent 9-month 4E campaign.
No one really interacted with it, however. We ended up spending most of our time in a standard dungeon crawl before having a terrible experience with Madness at Gardmore Abbey (despite the fact I loved it when I ran it a decade ago).

 

[Stormonu]

I mean you say 2E was low magic but I remember how ungodly full of magic items my BG/BG2 party inventories were. Or how every Vodoni Enforcer in Under the Dark Fist has a +1 longsword.

Oh I certainly remember the golf bags full of +1 swords in my own 2E campaigns; but the DM's advice from the designers at the time would have been a very finger-wagging "you need to make those disappear via theft, the PCs certainly can't sell them.". And the video games were a different beast from the TTRPG.

Spelljammer (and Planescape) may have been the only exceptions, and Spelljammer was very much Monte Haul with tongue firmly planted in cheek.

 

[Retreater]

Have you read the new Mm? Monster damage is a lot higher now.

No. It is not available to peruse locally.
However, it seems like it would be simpler just to reduce character Hit Points than change the damage of everything.

 

[Willie the Duck]

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

I don't think the throughline is mechanics, so much as it is approach.

The rest of the TSR era was had more expectations about what characters would do. GP=XP focusing much of the game on treasure-hunting, wandering wilderness monsters soft-gating when you would shift from strict dungeon crawling to hexcrawling, and name level dictating when the lordship began (BECMI even splitting the level-spread out by expected activity). 2e tried to break the mold and make it much more group-decision-based*, empowering the DM/group to make and alter things to fit their preferences. XP rules became customizable and kits and such allowed you to make campaign-themed characters (and the green faux-leather splatbooks discussing altering basic rules of the game to fit setting theme). *somewhat. No discussion about 2e is complete without acknowledging that they only ever took baby steps on things because of a back-compatibility mandate

On the other side is 3e and 4e which (in different ways *and again, 'somewhat') focused on making concrete, solid, formulaic rulebases, with everything within its formula/procedure and a formula/procedure for everything.

5e is similar to 2e mostly in that it's choosing to eschew the concrete play-patterns of basic+1e and the concrete rules framing of 3e&4e for that more loosey-goosey, DM/group-determined framing. Other than 'rulings over rules,' 'natural language,' and just the lack of what 1e or 3/4e had, though, it might not look very much like 2e. Certainly you are right that specific rules like class stat reqs or prevalence of spellcasting isn't the same, but I don't think that's generally what people are talking about when they connect the two.

 

[Shardstone]

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.

I have a question: doesn't creating more varient and optional rules eliminate rulings over rules? I feel subclasses actually allows me more dm fiat, as I can make my own way of doing things vs having to use structures provided by the game.

 

[DragonLancer]

In my experience, WOTC adventures hide the railroading by having certain things occur no matter what the PCs do, whereas Paizo adventures just railroad you by giving you no other options.

Paizo's adventure paths are not railroads but they are linear. Linear adventures/campaigns aren't bad as they still allow players to decide how they handle a situation and progress the story their table is telling.

 

[Reynard]

No. It is not available to peruse locally.
However, it seems like it would be simpler just to reduce character Hit Points than change the damage of everything.

I mean, they are both essentially "search replace" for the core books, but keeping HD the same maintains a higher degree of compatibility with other sources.