D&D General The Crab Bucket Fallacy

[James Gasik]

There are a lot of reasons D&D almost died in the late 90s. 2es mechanics was not one of them. Of the numerous blogs, articles, and books about the demise of TSR, I haven't heard one say the reason D&D almost died was because of THAC0 or Vancian casting.

Yes. Because it was faster. Especially when compared to the edition that replaced it. Any modifiers you had were already factored.

THAC0: "I rolled a 15, so I hit AC 2."
3e: "I rolled a 15, then add +2 for strength. then +1 for the weapon, then +3 for my mastery, then +2 for flanked, etc. etc. etc."

Unless you were using weapon vs. armor type that is.

 

[Minigiant]

People like to complain. I'm about as old school as you get, I like 5E. But I'm not constantly creating threads about how good the game is - people tend to not heap praise on something that's already popular. I think your confirmation bias is showing.

Again it ain't just me

RPG.net, YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, Discord...all full of 5e fans complaining.

Like I said earlier. I can't listen to D&D podcasts because they are all 5e whining. EVERY EPISODE.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Unless you were using weapon vs. armor type that is.

Didn't exist in 2e as a core rule (it was optional in the DMG). And even in 1e, no one played with them.

 

[overgeeked]

Again it ain't just me

RPG.net, YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, Discord...all full of 5e fans complaining.

Like I said earlier. I can't listen to D&D podcasts because they are all 5e whining. EVERY EPISODE.

The longer an edition lasts the more people get tired of it. They learn the ins and outs and see the defects they overlooked early on. There's also the atomic bomb that dropped back in January, the OGL catastrophe. That soured a lot of fans on WotC and 5E.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The Warlord is only tied to the 4e setting. And it's not necessary for it.

The Warlord only appeared in 4e. PoL wasn't a setting, tho, just a style of setting. The 4e Warlord was in FR, Eberron and Dark Sun, too, for that matter.

And, really, if you look at the last time D&D pointed to genre/myth/history for examples of classes....

Hercules, Perseus, Hiawatha, Beowulf, Siegfried (Sigurd), Cúchulainn, Little John, Tristan, and Sindbad… El Cid, Hannibal, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Spartacus, Richard the Lionhearted, and Belisarius.

The myth/legend examples are, well, some of them not done well by the fighter at all (being, well, Demigods, which, also, you could do in 4e, FWIW), one or two really more like Barbarians (which weren't in 2e).
But, the historical examples? All Warlords in concept, except, maybe Spartacus.

Warlord is not a setting-specific concept.

 

[tetrasodium]

You liked THAC0? Seriously!?

Well every time we need to watch a player say words like "I rolled a☆peers at die☆ twelve plus... ☆scans sheet☆ 5 from [attrib] and ☆scans sheet☆ 4 from proficiency that's um... twenty,,,, ooone... oh oo ☆scans sheet☆umm.... oooo my weapon is +1 so twenty two" it's hard not to like the ease & simplicity this brought to every one else.

Spoiler

2e PHB119: Figure Strength and weapon modifiers, subtract the total from the base THAC0, and record this modified THAC0 with each weapon on the character sheet.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Because it's mostly covered. You can't just take the 4E warlord and plunk it down in 5E so I'm not super exactly what it would be.

You can actually, insofar as you can ever do that with a class from one Ed to another, but I don’t think mechanical compatibility is even a small part of why it isn’t a class in 5e.

 

[Oofta]

Again it ain't just me

RPG.net, YouTube, Twitch, Spotify, Discord...all full of 5e fans complaining.

Like I said earlier. I can't listen to D&D podcasts because they are all 5e whining. EVERY EPISODE.

I guarantee that if you look for complaints about anything popular, especially a product that dominates the market as much as D&D does, you can find plenty of detractors. Complaints and being contrarian gets eyeballs.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well every time we need to watch a player say words like "I rolled a☆peers at die☆ twelve plus... ☆scans sheet☆ 5 from [attrib] and ☆scans sheet☆ 4 from proficiency that's um... twenty,,,, ooone... oh oo ☆scans sheet☆umm.... oooo my weapon is +1 so twenty two" it's hard not to like the ease & simplicity this brought to every one else.

Why don't the player's sheet just have +10 to hit next to their weapon? There is no need to recalculate it for every roll.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Unless you were using weapon vs. armor type that is.

Hey, that was a a compelling feature of 1e! It differentiated weapons. It was realistic... kinda...sorta...

TBH, I am the only DM I knew back in the day who used weapon v armor type, and my players hated it. So much so I introduced some purchasable minor magic items that partially negated it (which they snapped up), and essentially sun-set the whole thing at higher levels.

I may be alone in liking that sub-system, and I can certainly see why, but I'm not too embarrassed to admit liking it.
(I generally characterize my self as loving D&D, 1e AD&D, especially, in spite of it's flaws, but that's one little flaw I'm quite fond of.)