D&D General TSR to WoTC shift--OR--the de-prioritization on Exploration spells/classes

[WarDriveWorley]

Problem with utility spells is they made magic the goto for just about anything. To the point where (IMO and IME) a 3e/3.5 wizard could make a rogue near superfluous - unless the DM was big on non PLAYER interactive traps and the like, and most DMs were not.

That's accurate, but tbh magic made almost all other classes near superfluous to some extent, but the thief/rogue really took the brunt of it.

My DM was really good with designing encounters that allowed the party as a whole to participate and our group was also good with making sure players weren't overlooked, but I've played with many (on both sides) that weren't.

I still feel that the greater reliance on utility spells adds more to creative role-playing than it detracts.

 

[Quickleaf]

XP for Treasure
Many of you who have never played TSR era D&D have still heard how you were awarded XP for treasure. This was true. You might get 100xp for the monster, but 500-1000 xp for the value of its treasure. This changed with WotC (well, started to in 2e, but was still an optional rule). People tend to act in ways that foster the reward. Basic human psychology. We do things at work that we are rated/rewarded on. Same for games.

I would encourage questioning that truism.

My memory is foggy cause I was a kid during 1e/Basic, but I don't recall many conversations between us players about "oh, we'll get more XP if we take this course of action, so let's do it instead of that." Maybe we were outliers.

There are many forms that rewards take, speaking about gaming, but this is true in life too. Otherwise if the reward of "academic excellence and recognition" were paramount, psychology would tell us that no students would engage in truancy or go party in lieu of studying. Similarly, if the reward of "high job rating" were paramount, a professional would never engage in pro bono or volunteer work if their company didn't have a program to improve their "job rating" for doing so. And ...well... I have seen plenty of examples of partying in lieu of studying & professionals giving up their time to help others without recognition.

Instead, what's more true IME is that players respond to certain rewards more strongly than others. AND this fluctuates from player to player, and even within the same player from day to day, or even hour to hour.

"I killed it for the XP" might be true one moment, but "I killed it to instigate something and start a riot" might be equally true another moment.

Similarly "I took it for the XP" might be true for one player or in one moment, but "I took it cause I want to draw from the deck and see what happens" or "I took it to keep it out of the evil high priest's hands and/or for leverage" might be equally true.

Player actions, IME, don't always map to what the game says (or the GM assumes) is the obvious reward.

This is why designing good hooks for published adventures is so tricky, and making the wrong assumption can ruin an otherwise good adventure (such as players are motivated by killing monsters, or players are motivated to acquire treasure, or players are motivated by acquiring XP)

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, the fact that the default of poison was frequently save or die, and that even a 5th level thief was rocking no more than a 50% chance to even find a trap, let alone disarm it, stacked things against thieves. A 1st level fighter probably could survive that attack by a goblin, but a 1st level thief being told to go check a corridor for traps? Better hope that there's not a poison dart trap ahead or that the dice really, really like you that day. When I ran a 1e campaign a few years back, the first character to die was the thief.

One thing working against them was that their saves vs poison weren't very good*...which makes little sense, in that one would think Thieves and Assassins would have at least a bit of training on how to deal with poison before it took hold. And as it's the Thief or Assassin who is most likely to be exposed to poison, yeah, the deck's stacked against 'em a little bit.

* - because for some reason poison was lumped in with paralyzation and death; it should have been its own category. I split it out and made the Thief group better (pretty much swapped Cleric and Thief); so far, so good.

But one thing that we've seen since then are story awards, starting with 2e and continuing to 5e. You can get XP for challenges other than combat, even if there's no treasure to be had at all. And if you look at how milestones are set up in official adventures, those can also incentivize exploration. Adventures will have stuff like "the party gains a level if they discover XX location."

Which is fine if the party stay on the rails; but if they decide to go do something else, or somehow manage to bypass the "ding" location, they'll never bump.

 

[Greg Benage]

My memory is foggy cause I was a kid during 1e/Basic, but I don't recall many conversations between us players about "oh, we'll get more XP if we take this course of action, so let's do it instead of that." Maybe we were outliers.

Don't feel bad: There's a lot of revisionism (in a good way -- it's often insightful and interesting) that's come out of the OSR. We ran around doing crazy stuff for no discernible reason because we were 13-14 years old. For that matter, if you read any tales of the OGs old games (including Gary's), they were mostly shenanigans as opposed to strategically extracting XP from the dungeon with the least possible conflict.

 

[Fanaelialae]

There's really nothing stopping a 5e DM from bringing back training rules (and the gold required) if so desired.

IME, it's still fairly easy to incentivize exploration. You just have to include worthwhile things for the players to find. If they can get good stuff by exploring, then they'll explore. If 99% of exploration just yields an empty room and wasted table time, they won't explore.

I have a DM who regularly includes exploration incentives. Sometimes it's a unique magic item. Sometimes it's a helpful NPC. Sometimes it's useful information. And occasionally, it's something really special, like permanent (cool) changes to your character. It's no surprise then, that we focus pretty heavily on exploration in his campaigns.

All that's really changed IMO is that you can no longer dump a pile of gold in a room and call it a day. Which is admittedly more work for the DM, but in a way that results in significantly better campaigns if they put in that work. YMMV

 

[Alzrius]

I would encourage questioning that truism.

My memory is foggy cause I was a kid during 1e/Basic, but I don't recall many conversations between us players about "oh, we'll get more XP if we take this course of action, so let's do it instead of that." Maybe we were outliers.

I don't disagree with what you're saying, here, but I think that what you mention broadly maps to what @Sacrosanct said. If the reward is "getting the treasure (and making it out alive)," then there are likely multiple avenues to achieve that, ranging from "go in the front door and kill everything between us and the treasure" to "create a diversion and slip in past them, bag it all, and then exfiltrate" to "flood the place and excavate the wealth." And that's just a small sampling of possible ideas.

If there are multiple routes to the reward, then people can still act in ways that foster said reward without choosing the same path.

 

[Lanefan]

There's really nothing stopping a 5e DM from bringing back training rules (and the gold required) if so desired.

Doing so would certainly ease the (perceived or real) problem of there being nothing to spend gold on in 5e.

IME, it's still fairly easy to incentivize exploration. You just have to include worthwhile things for the players to find. If they can get good stuff by exploring, then they'll explore. If 99% of exploration just yields an empty room and wasted table time, they won't explore.

Depends what that other 1% gives 'em. If they know that if they keep looking there's at least a chance of a big payoff, IME they'll look till their characters die of old age.

I have a DM who regularly includes exploration incentives. Sometimes it's a unique magic item. Sometimes it's a helpful NPC. Sometimes it's useful information. And occasionally, it's something really special, like permanent (cool) changes to your character. It's no surprise then, that we focus pretty heavily on exploration in his campaigns.

This, as per my point just above.

All that's really changed IMO is that you can no longer dump a pile of gold in a room and call it a day. Which is admittedly more work for the DM, but in a way that results in significantly better campaigns if they put in that work. YMMV

Well, you still can, but you have to hide the room better.

 

[billd91]

Thieves also leveled faster than any other class (being 1-2 levels above at any given time), and didn't have the harsh level limits for demi-humans. Cash in those old modules was not a problem. 1e modules were rife with treasure.

Only in a sort of kind of way. If you're following the training guidelines, even if the thief player's playing to character and alignment are excellent, they can't possibly have enough gold to level at the first moment their XPs allow them too (1500 x current level vs 1251 XPs for 2nd level). And woe to the thief if the DM decides they need to pay for more than one week of training.
Those training costs could be an effing bear.

 

[James Gasik]

Only in a sort of kind of way. If you're following the training guidelines, even if the thief player's playing to character and alignment are excellent, they can't possibly have enough gold to level at the first moment their XPs allow them too (1500 x current level vs 1251 XPs for 2nd level). And woe to the thief if the DM decides they need to pay for more than one week of training.
Those training costs could be an effing bear.

It's the main reason the groups I played with in AD&D chucked the training system out the window. Well that, and the fact that some of those DM's were so super stingy you'd never be able to level up at all, lol.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I would encourage questioning that truism.

My memory is foggy cause I was a kid during 1e/Basic, but I don't recall many conversations between us players about "oh, we'll get more XP if we take this course of action, so let's do it instead of that." Maybe we were outliers.

I'm talking about human behavior in general. I've been a manager/supervisor for decades, and one common phrase that's been around for a while is, "You get what you measure/reward." I.e., we're all sort like a rat who learned that if we do X, we get a reward for it. Often times without consciously thinking about it. If the reward is XP (leveling up and more power) and treasure (a motivator for nearly every would-be hero! Especially in TSR era where the dependency on magic items was much greater than modern editions), we as people are naturally going to gravitate to those rewards. We were also actively discouraged to go in guns blazing because the system was so unforgiving. This is an edition where a housecat could kill a level 1 PC, a lot of monsters had save or die abilities, and you recovered resources (HP and spells) much slower.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Poor thieves and assassins, back in the day. If the poison traps didn't get you, the party paladin was frequently there to take up the slack.

One thing working against them was that their saves vs poison weren't very good*...which makes little sense, in that one would think Thieves and Assassins would have at least a bit of training on how to deal with poison before it took hold. And as it's the Thief or Assassin who is most likely to be exposed to poison, yeah, the deck's stacked against 'em a little bit.

* - because for some reason poison was lumped in with paralyzation and death; it should have been its own category. I split it out and made the Thief group better (pretty much swapped Cleric and Thief); so far, so good.

Same as if the PCs didn't check out what was down that hallway in the dungeon back in the day and didn't get whatever treasure and XP was to be had down there.

Which is fine if the party stay on the rails; but if they decide to go do something else, or somehow manage to bypass the "ding" location, they'll never bump.

 

[Malmuria]

3. There was a reward, part 3. Character power and differentiation was defined by magic items you found (through exploration), not so much by class abilities.

I would add to this that the risks and rewards are not balanced. A trap might lead to death, not just a hit point tax. The treasure chest might (randomly) contain a very powerful sentient sword or (also randomly) nothing. If you want to have a powerful character (via magic items (or even through finding spell books)) you have to take some risks. At least in my current OSE game, this dynamic has a blackjack quality, where the players are both wary of interacting with the environment but ultimately tempted by the possible rewards. Gambling is fun!

 

[Lanefan]

Same as if the PCs didn't check out what was down that hallway in the dungeon back in the day and didn't get whatever treasure and XP was to be had down there.

Not necessarily, as back in the day you'd get xp and treasure through what you did instead, and still be able to advance.

With location-based levelling, if you miss the location or never get there because you went elsewhere, you don't advance at all.

 

[Clint_L]

Exploration is much, much easier in 5e than it was in 1e until 10th level or so. Like, insanely easier. The main "explorer" class in 1e, the thief, was terrible at their job at low levels and was likely to die at the first serious trap they encountered. It's true that gameplay back then prioritized treasure as the main way to get experience, but it is FAR from true that that caused players to avoid combat encounters. To the contrary, D&D was much more combat heavy back then, and killing monsters was how you got your hands on all the fat, fat loot/exp 90% of the time. Just look at the old modules.

I think this theory has an interesting thesis but it is not supported by the facts. Old school D&D was much closer to its war-gaming roots and combat was constant. Wandering monsters, anyone?

 

[Alzrius]

To the contrary, D&D was much more combat heavy back then, and killing monsters was how you got your hands on all the fat, fat loot/exp 90% of the time. Just look at the old modules.

There was a thread a while back which looked at the old modules, and found that a great deal of the XP came from treasure rather than combat:

Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, B/ED&D, and D&D3 - updated 11-17-08 (Q1)

It started with a curious notion, and it built up from going through one adventure module noting certain things mentally. Then it became actually taking notes on a piece of paper, and comparing between them. Following this opening post, will be lists of the treasure (gp value, xp value, and...

www.enworld.org

 

[Fanaelialae]

Doing so would certainly ease the (perceived or real) problem of there being nothing to spend gold on in 5e.

Depends what that other 1% gives 'em. If they know that if they keep looking there's at least a chance of a big payoff, IME they'll look till their characters die of old age.

This, as per my point just above.

Well, you still can, but you have to hide the room better.

IME, 1% is way too low to incentivize serious exploration. Sure, they'll still do a cursory inspection, but they're not going to spend significant table time if most of the time exploration results in nothing, traps, or a wandering monster.

To use the analogy of a lab rat, if a rat has to push a lever 100 times to get treats, and sometimes when the lever is pushed the other 99 times nothing happens, while other times the rat receives a shock, I doubt the rat will continue to push the lever. There's too much lack of positive reinforcement coupled with negative reinforcement. It would be challenging to have sufficient positive reinforcement to overcome that, IMO.

YMMV

 

[Malmuria]

Exploration is much, much easier in 5e than it was in 1e until 10th level or so. Like, insanely easier. The main "explorer" class in 1e, the thief, was terrible at their job at low levels and was likely to die at the first serious trap they encountered. It's true that gameplay back then prioritized treasure as the main way to get experience, but it is FAR from true that that caused players to avoid combat encounters. To the contrary, D&D was much more combat heavy back then, and killing monsters was how you got your hands on all the fat, fat loot/exp 90% of the time. Just look at the old modules.

I think this theory has an interesting thesis but it is not supported by the facts. Old school D&D was much closer to its war-gaming roots and combat was constant. Wandering monsters, anyone?

This gets to the Combat as War/Sport debate. Clearly people played all sorts of ways back in the day, including munchkin brute force combat. But in terms of scenario design, just because a dungeon has an ogre guarding the chest doesn't mean the PCs have to fight the ogre to get to the chest. In fact, it's inefficient to constantly do that, because you'll run out of hit points! And it's not so easy to get those hit points back, and the dungeon has more encounters than would be "balanced" for your party's level.

Wandering monsters are a good example of this: they are meant to be avoided! You don't get (much) xp for wandering monsters, and they have little to no treasure on them. Rather, you have to balance the rewards of exploration (searching for a secret door that may or may not be there) with the risks of exploration (wandering monsters, traps, torch going out).

 

[Clint_L]

There was a thread a while back which looked at the old modules, and found that a great deal of the XP came from treasure rather than combat:

Treasure and leveling comparisons: AD&D1, B/ED&D, and D&D3 - updated 11-17-08 (Q1)

It started with a curious notion, and it built up from going through one adventure module noting certain things mentally. Then it became actually taking notes on a piece of paper, and comparing between them. Following this opening post, will be lists of the treasure (gp value, xp value, and...

www.enworld.org

Yes, I understand that most of the exp came from treasure. That is not in dispute. What I am saying is that that did NOT cause folks to routinely skip combat encounters. Typically, you sought them out because the fastest way to loot was through the monster's dead body. Again, just look at old AD&D modules - they are extremely combat encounter heavy, and then the rules for wandering monsters were way, way more integrated to the game than now.

 

[Clint_L]

This gets to the Combat as War/Sport debate. Clearly people played all sorts of ways back in the day, including munchkin brute force combat. But in terms of scenario design, just because a dungeon has an ogre guarding the chest doesn't mean the PCs have to fight the ogre to get to the chest. In fact, it's inefficient to constantly do that, because you'll run out of hit points! And it's not so easy to get those hit points back, and the dungeon has more encounters than would be "balanced" for your party's level.

To me this seems like a lot of theorizing that doesn't reflect how D&D was actually played back in the day. Modern D&D games are extremely encounter light by comparison. That's been the main progression of the game over time: from a war-game-derived fighting game to a heavy role-play game where often entire sessions won't include a battle. Does anyone really want to argue that modern games are more combat-oriented than old school ones?

 

[Alzrius]

Yes, I understand that most of the exp came from treasure. That is not in dispute. What I am saying is that that did NOT cause folks to routinely skip combat encounters. Typically, you sought them out because the fastest way to loot was through the monster's dead body. Again, just look at old AD&D modules - they are extremely combat encounter heavy, and then the rules for wandering monsters were way, way more integrated to the game than now.

Assuming that you're right, there's something to be said about combat not always being to the death. The morale rules were also baked into the system back then, outlining multiple instances where monsters would potentially retreat/surrender when the fight turned against them.