Vaalingrade
Legend
Just like WOTC, not wanting a .5 edition to be a .5 edition doesn't stop it from being a .5 edition.
D&D General Some Thoughts on Historical Edition Changes, and What that Portends for OneD&D
- Thread starter Snarf Zagyg
- Start date
EzekielRaiden
Legend
Conversely, wanting a non-.5 edition to be a .5 edition doesn't make it one, which is kind of my point here.
TwoSix
Unserious gamer
D&D Beyond is simply a non-starter. The majority of my characters are heavily homebrewed.
Clint_L
Hero
It's easy to do home-brew characters in D&D Beyond; they let you integrate home-brew stuff right into it. I have tons of home-brew creatures and magic items, and I know that lots of people have home-brew character classes on there.
Levistus's_Leviathan
5e Freelancer
However, the homebrewing system (which is what the staff of D&D Beyond use to add new official content to the site's character builder) is a complicated mess that takes forever to get any sort of mastery over. And is heavily restrictive in the kinds of things it allows.
Vaalingrade
Legend
We can go round and round on this, locked in eternal combat like Popeye and Bluto, but
EzekielRaiden
Legend
But...?
Vaalingrade
Legend
Still trying to come up with a better alternative. I love a good spinach quiche and a woman made of pipe cleaners.
EzekielRaiden
Legend
Perhaps, then, we should dig into the recipe. For a ".5 edition," I mean.
3.5e did not change the design ethos or goals of 3e. Indeed, it was specifically intended to preserve them by correcting mistakes in the implementation thereof. It's why Savage Species will always be dubiously applicable to 3.5e, because the ethos remains, but the (even weaker...) 3.0 rules make it hard to preserve. Similarly, Pathfinder has often been called a "3.75e" (that is, if we think of "3.5" as being halfway between 3.0 and 4.0, then PF is a half of the remaining half, a "3.5.5" if you will.) By most posters' own admission, Essentials was intended to change or adapt the design ethos of 4e, accomodating something that had not been present before. By those lights, it more resembles things like Skills & Powers (which some think of as "2.5e," but most do not), or even the Book of Nine Swords, which almost no one considers a "half edition within the half edition." So, on this axis, it seems strange to classify Essentials as a "4.5e," when the goal of the exemplars of the ".5" update has consistently been to preserve and repair an edition that already exists rather than to expand and diversify an edition that exists.
3.5e was, pretty much intentionally if we believe folks like Monte Cook, set up for "you have to buy the core books anew." Many folks slammed Wizards at the time for this fairly obvious "buy core books again just a few years later" approach, especially because the changes were relatively minor. PF also required buying new books, but was welcomed due to the "we're saving the game" presentation. Essentials and Skills & Powers, meanwhile...had nothing to do with the original core books. S&P as I understand it would not have functioned as a standalone game. Essentials did, and that was intentional, but it was an alternate, equally-valid starting point, rather than an actual replacement of the original. So, on this front as well, Essentials is unlike 3.5e and much closer to just being another supplemental book (or pair of books in this case.)
Even the claimed reason for its origin doesn't match up. 3.5e came into being because the designers had concerns and wanted them addressed. Essentials, as we have been told more than once, was in part an effort to make more "old school" fans feel more included in 4e. It was a response to player concerns, not a designer-driven do-over like 3.5e. Again, the comparison fails.
Now, perhaps I am cherry-picking without realizing it. I am, after all, trying to advance the position that Essentials is little to nothing like 3.5e other than "it has new books" (which I consider a pretty much worthless standard, given that that would mean we'd already be on like 5.875e by now.) I'm willing to consider what criteria by which you would judge Essentials to be structurally a ".5 edition."
Putting my cards on the table, I won't think very much of any argument which hinges on denying any of the above points. Nor one based on time elapsed or other factors that are not relevant to the function the rules perform relative to their claimed edition. As noted, and as you agree IIRC, Essentials at most put a chunk of errata into an official print publication (RC) and offered an alternate starting point that was not a replacement starting point. (That is, PHB1 remained a perfectly valid starting point long after Essentials launched. I would know. An OSR-leaning DM who decided to check out 4e after the hubbub ended permitted me to join his game and it was one of the best games I've ever played. He enforced a strict "PHB1-2 only" rule, at least to start off, so he could get his bearings in the game.)
So. What were the relevant factors that made 3.5e a ".5 edition" to you? Which among them applied to Essentials, and how/why?
Vaalingrade
Legend
That joke was not an invitation to continue the argument.
Especially not one that straight up insists I accept all of the points you want to establish concerning 3.5 and 4.eS.
Especially not one that straight up insists I accept all of the points you want to establish concerning 3.5 and 4.eS.
Remathilis
Legend
With WotC, you have to look to the other RPGs WotC was working on like Star Wars Saga to find that half-step Basic used to have.
Voadam
Legend
And d20 Modern. And to a lesser extent d20 Cthulhu. And d20 Wheel of Time. And those one shot d20 systems in the magazines. Although these and d20 Star Wars were more full on alternate d20 systems and not purposefully intros to D&D the way Basic D&D was.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Were you playing/DMing in the mid 1980s when Unearthed Arcana came out?
If yes, I'd be interested in seeing your comparison between [pre- and post-UA 1e] and [pre- and post-Essentials 4e] in terms of how much each editoon changed on their release.
It's not a comparison I can make myself as I've never looked at Essentials.
EzekielRaiden
Legend
If I was, I was doing it in Heaven. In the "mid 1980s," I was at best a twinkle in my parents' no-longer-newlywed eyes. (I suppose it depends on your exact definition of "mid 1980s." If you take a very open view, you might possibly be able to squeeze the day of my birth in there...but only just.)
Voadam
Legend
I was there for both.
UA bumped up a lot of power options. More spells for casters, weapon specialization, higher level limits, expanded more powerful race options, some powerful new classes (particularly cavalier and barbarian), and human rolls. Thieves were still thieves, although they could be mechanically terrible thief acrobats alongside standard mechanically terrible thieves.
Overall it shifted the game to allow lots of higher powered options. All the underdark races's special abilities and class options really outclass the options for a PH halfling.Looking back at 0e, which was before my time for playing, it would be similar to original box D&D versus Greyhawk supplement one adding percentile strength, the thief class and more spells.
4e was similar but had some differences too. pre-essentials was tight balance not just between classes and races at equal levels, but in resource management on a daily schedule. The at will, encounter, daily, utility power scheme meant there could be really tight PC to PC balance but also a DM could really anticipate how far a party or an individual could go based on their hp/healing surges/ and AEDU powers. Whether there was one big fight for the day and everyone nova'd, or grinding hall fights against hordes of minions that came in waves, everyone had at will attacks and everyone had roughly equal nova stuff over a day. This was through three PHs full of classes and worked well primal expansion classes and psionic expansion ones and one offs like the sword mage as well as the core fighters and wizards and rogues.
4e Essentials took away the AEDU tight equal power resource management paradigm and gave some new classes more at will and encounter powers while dropping some dailies. This fit a number of people's playing styles better, but threw some DM encounter balance calculations out of whack and you had some people with nova powers while others had consistency in power output, which fit different playstyle preferences, but could be not as balanced depending on the situation.
I personally really like the essentials mechanics innovations, particularly in fighter and paladin defender mechanics being easy to track and remember auras at the table instead of tracking fiddly individual marks on specific targets, and I really liked the increased at will options, I recognize there are tradeoffs for going with design to match different playstyles.
So 4e changed the dynamics of the game, but it was not a raging influx of power the way 1e UA human roll stat generation charts pumped up the power of 1e characters.
RhaezDaevan
Explorer
Maybe the real edition changes were the friends we made along the way.
Vaalingrade
Legend
But we've only made enemies of each other.
Clint_L
Hero
See, I don't think this can be true. Because I figured it out pretty quickly, and I'm sort of an idiot with technology. Like, you should have seen me trying to master Roll20. Embarrassing.
Clint_L
Hero
UA was exciting when it came out because it consolidated and made official a lot of stuff that had been happening over the years in Dragon magazine and had GG's name on it. There was a ton of fluidity in D&D, and in RPGs in general at the time, and it felt to me like the game was really in flux. It was moving towards allowing for a lot more character customization, so there was a portent of 2e, which had been rumoured for awhile (Gygax had been dropping hints in Dragon). So UA felt kind of like a stepping stone to the next thing.
Except then TSR almost went belly up and the next thing you knew GG wasn't writing 2e at all. I remember being stunned to learn that TSR was in chaos and almost bankrupt. At that time, it felt like the 900 pound gorilla of the RPG world.
4e I can't comment on as I didn't buy it and only played that version a few times with friends.
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