D&D General What D&D Thing Has Changed The Most

[Lanefan]

Like I said the highs between the editions are generally the same - although I'm going to suggest that e.g. Tales from the Loop would struggle because it's basically Stranger Things: the RPG and you all play one of the kids.

However. D&D characters are clearly lacking in mechanical support in several obvious ways in almost all editions:

1. Character growth is very linear. In my last Space Opera game I started with a rogue and drifter who knew a bit about fixing engines to pay his way round the galaxy - but was also skilled with stealth, guns, lockpicks, and the rest of a rogue's kit. If I had been playing D&D these would all have grown in lockstep with each other - but because we were playing a skill based game he learned what he used and what he needed - and as a consequence ended up as the best damn engineer in the galaxy (mostly because no one else was playing with as much First One tech) and wasn't otherwise a much better rogue by the time he finished than when he started. The character growth was organic but simply would not have worked in a class/level system.

I think this depends on how one defines character growth, and whether said growth needs to be reflected in/by the game's mechanics. Here, your example with the improving lock skills is something that by default has to rely on system abstraction and thus mechanics. But if my character's growth lies in her maturation from a naive young thing to a more worldly woman, mechanics are neither required nor necessary.

1. Magic seldom has a risk and almost never has a cost. The experience of playing a D&D wizard where magic is pretty reliable is entirely different from that of playing a Call of Cthulhu one where casting any spell costs you permanent sanity.

True. Magic is something else that has to rely on abstraction.

1. Long term consequences and injuries aren't much of a thing in D&D; even in the most punishing editions you are just as capable at 1hp as at full hp and it takes you a month of rest to recover all your HP (which is about the time it takes a marathon runner). This impacts how you see combat and risk.

Perhaps, but IMO this one's fuzzier in that one can always choose to roleplay a character who has lost most of its hit points as being badly hurt. (this is one place where D&D really falls down, in not even suggesting this as an option)

1. Your character bonds have no mechanical weight. There's no character who will do intrinsically better in a high stakes situation (e.g. in front of an audience or protecting a loved one) and none that will do worse thanks to nerves. It's down to the dice.

It's all down to the roleplay. Character bonds have no mechanical weight and thus dice need never touch them; but they do (or should!) have role-play weight and ideally are played to with integrity. If my character has stage fright it's down to me to roleplay it properly if it somehow finds itself on a stage.

So yes, system matters. There are some archetypes you can play at a moment in time in any system in most systems. But others you want the support of the system for.

To a point, I get this; as some things have to be abstracted. But even there, roleplay can do what mechanics might not; e.g. in the example of the getting-better-with-locks chap, you might roleplay his growing confidence and swagger as he gets more and more practiced at picking locks, even though the underlying mechanics never change and in fact he still blows it just as often as he did when he started. If the game mechanics happen to back this up it's a bonus, but not IMO entirely necessary.

Edit to add: interesting how when I break up your list to quote the separate parts it renumbers each element to '1'.

 

[DND_Reborn]

This is true. For anyone that hasn't had a chance, look at the Eye of the Beholder book and documentary. Complete nostalgasm.

Loved it (documentary)!

Never read the book.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I think this depends on how one defines character growth, and whether said growth needs to be reflected in/by the game's mechanics. Here, your example with the improving lock skills is something that by default has to rely on system abstraction and thus mechanics. But if my character's growth lies in her maturation from a naive young thing to a more worldly woman, mechanics are neither required nor necessary.

In short you can have only some forms of character growth in D&D. Changing your focus as a character unless it lines up directly with the class system is one of them.

It's all down to the roleplay. Character bonds have no mechanical weight and thus dice need never touch them; but they do (or should!) have role-play weight and ideally are played to with integrity. If my character has stage fright it's down to me to roleplay it properly if it somehow finds itself on a stage.

It's "all down to the roleplay" because the mechanics do not actually do their major job in this respect - telling you what your chances of success are. Your chance of success is entirely in the lap of the dice and not a consequence of the situation you are in and how your character responds to the specific pressure.

And stage fright is one thing. Rising to the occasion and doing well under pressure is another - and D&D does not support that.

To a point, I get this; as some things have to be abstracted. But even there, roleplay can do what mechanics might not; e.g. in the example of the getting-better-with-locks chap, you might roleplay his growing confidence and swagger as he gets more and more practiced at picking locks, even though the underlying mechanics never change and in fact he still blows it just as often as he did when he started. If the game mechanics happen to back this up it's a bonus, but not IMO entirely necessary.

Swagger without mechanical competence to back it is better described as arrogance.

If the game mechanics determine your chance of success (as they do) then they determine your chance of success - and if your character thinks it's different from what the mechanics indicate then they are delusional. Now there's nothing wrong with playing a delusional character - but playing a character who's delusional is not the same as playing a character that actually is what they are delusional about.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Methods of customizing a character.
To begin with your character's identity revolved around race, class, high stat, magic items and playstyle. There was a table for background, but it was exceptionally vague. Now, we have in addition many more races, sub-classes, more defined backgrounds, skill choices, &c. There's perhaps a diminished focus on stuff and more on abilities.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Do you mind explaining? I'm not being argumentative or denying your experience. I just haven't found this to be true on anything but the most superficial level and I honestly want to understand why you think so.

For me, 3e skills were very interdependent. Having skill in two or three related skills gave you a small boost that could be cumbersome to track. There was also quite a lot of them, particularly for a class based game. I don't remember 4e skill approach well. What little 5e I've run, it seems that there are broader skills that are strongly tied to an attribute, and that guides which classes have proficiency in what skills. Which, I think is an elegant method for dividing up the skills.

 

[Lanefan]

In short you can have only some forms of character growth in D&D. Changing your focus as a character unless it lines up directly with the class system is one of them.

3e-4e-5e multiclassing rules would like a word about this, I think.

What D&D does lack is a viable means for a character to willingly drop an existing class completely. I've fixed this in my game via addition of Renouncement, a homebrewed high-level Clerical spell that in effect erases a class from a willing and free-thinking character. Most often cast on characters with alignment-restricted classes who have undergone an alignment change and now not only can no longer be what they were but see it as repulsive and want nothing further to do with it.

It's "all down to the roleplay" because the mechanics do not actually do their major job in this respect - telling you what your chances of success are. Your chance of success is entirely in the lap of the dice and not a consequence of the situation you are in and how your character responds to the specific pressure.

IMO the mechanics have no business being involved here at all. There's no "chance of success" unless someone at the table is acting as a roleplay monitor; the only person who really knows whether the bond has been played "properly" is the person playing it, and thus no reason for dice to hit the table.

And stage fright is one thing. Rising to the occasion and doing well under pressure is another - and D&D does not support that.

Again, it doesn't need to. One can roleplay one gritting one's teeth and trying to rise to the occasion; and D&D (in some editions, anyway) in fact does have mechanics around how the audience might react.

Swagger without mechanical competence to back it is better described as arrogance.

Sure, works for me.

The flip side is that the character could be roleplayed as becoming less and less confident and-or sure of himself as time goes on and he keeps blowing his pick-lock rolls, even though his underlying mechanics stay the same.

If the game mechanics determine your chance of success (as they do) then they determine your chance of success - and if your character thinks it's different from what the mechanics indicate then they are delusional. Now there's nothing wrong with playing a delusional character - but playing a character who's delusional is not the same as playing a character that actually is what they are delusional about.

What I'm trying to do is separate the mechanical abstraction from the roleplay; and IMO there isn't (or shouldn't be) any noticeable difference between the two characters in the bolded sentence, in the eyes of anyone else at the table. They see what you roleplay.

 

[James Gasik]

Huh?

How do I get from a surly warrior to an airhead caster to a no-nonsense [warrior? rogue? could be many things], while changing gender in the meantime, all in the same character and without twisting the underlying mechanics or system into a pretzel?

Not that I personally mind it, but I suspect that subjecting a character to forced gender change would draw howls of protest from some (many?) here.

Be a Changeling.

 

[overgeeked]

(a) system matters

To a point, yes. But it's not the end-all-be-all of RPGs. System matters as much as it's designed to matter. Meaning the more robust the system, and the more the players/referee follow it, the more it matters. If it's a rules light system and/or the players/referee ignore large swathes of it, the system matters significantly less.

System and rules are a list of text suggestions put forward by the designer. It's up to the players/referee to implement them or not, how strictly to adhere to them, and when to ignore them. System and rules are not uneditable code the players/referee must follow.

(b) what is successful within the game will influence what you do.

What the system has rules for, the players/referee will tend to gravitate towards. What the system rewards, the players/referee will tend to gravitate towards. What the system punishes or ignores, the players/referee will tend to gravitate away from.

So yes, system matters. There are some archetypes you can play at a moment in time in any system in most systems. But others you want the support of the system for.

This ignores house rules. The players/referee can, if they wish, hack the system to include or exclude whatever they want. Agian, system and rules are not inviolate code downloaded to the players'/referee's head.

In short you can have only some forms of character growth in D&D. Changing your focus as a character unless it lines up directly with the class system is one of them.

Again, this ignores house rules but it also entirely ignores diegetic (aka in-world / in-fiction) character growth, i.e. things not tied to the mechanics.

It's "all down to the roleplay" because the mechanics do not actually do their major job in this respect - telling you what your chances of success are.

In D&D especially that's generally up to the DM, not the system. For example, in 5E, the DM sets the DC. The system offers guidelines. That's it.

Your chance of success is entirely in the lap of the dice

Uh...no. Your chance of success is entirely determined by the DM and a good DM will make that chance of success entirely based on or "a consequence of the situation you are in and how your character responds to the specific pressure" which is almost exactly what the DM advice on setting DCs is about.

Rising to the occasion and doing well under pressure is another - and D&D does not support that.

Yes, it does. Die rolls. Sometimes you rise to the occasion and do well under pressure (by rolling well), other times you fold like a cheap suit (by rolling poorly).

Swagger without mechanical competence to back it is better described as arrogance.

Not everything is determined by the mechanics. Being confident in the loyalty of your friends, for example. A character can have "swagger" in that regard, but there is zero mechanical support for that...in any edition of D&D. But I wouldn't describe every character who was confident their friends would have their back as arrogant.

If the game mechanics determine your chance of success...

They don't.

 

[Neonchameleon]

To a point, yes. But it's not the end-all-be-all of RPGs. System matters as much as it's designed to matter. Meaning the more robust the system, and the more the players/referee follow it, the more it matters. If it's a rules light system and/or the players/referee ignore large swathes of it, the system matters significantly less.

All that is covered under "system matters".

This ignores house rules. The players/referee can, if they wish, hack the system to include or exclude whatever they want. Agian, system and rules are not inviolate code downloaded to the players'/referee's head.

And this is basically the Oberoni Fallacy. The system in question is the one being played - and if you use house rules to fix a problem with the core rules that doesn't mean that that wasn't a problem in the core rules that needed fixing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

3e-4e-5e multiclassing rules would like a word about this, I think.

Only a slight one. Especially the 3e/5e ones (3e more than 5e) where you basically advance on an entirely different path.

What D&D does lack is a viable means for a character to willingly drop an existing class completely.

You mean you can't turn back time?

I've fixed this in my game via addition of Renouncement, a homebrewed high-level Clerical spell that in effect erases a class from a willing and free-thinking character. Most often cast on characters with alignment-restricted classes who have undergone an alignment change and now not only can no longer be what they were but see it as repulsive and want nothing further to do with it.

The problem here is that no class should ever have been alignment restricted. And in 4e and 5e none are.

IMO the mechanics have no business being involved here at all.

IMO if the mechanics have no business being involved in something where there are success/fail mechanics then they have no business being involved anywhere and we might as well simply freeform. And it is greatly to the discredit of D&D that e.g. a knight will fight exactly as effectively in the fight in defence of two gold pieces as they will to rescue their lover. The outcome is clearly measurable, the opposition is likely identical. So there are mechanics involved - but none for what is the most important part from a roleplaying perspective. The stakes.

There's no "chance of success" unless someone at the table is acting as a roleplay monitor; the only person who really knows whether the bond has been played "properly" is the person playing it, and thus no reason for dice to hit the table.

But we're talking skill and adrenaline.

The flip side is that the character could be roleplayed as becoming less and less confident and-or sure of himself as time goes on and he keeps blowing his pick-lock rolls, even though his underlying mechanics stay the same.

But that's a different character.

What I'm trying to do is separate the mechanical abstraction from the roleplay; and IMO there isn't (or shouldn't be) any noticeable difference between the two characters in the bolded sentence, in the eyes of anyone else at the table. They see what you roleplay.

They will see over time that one is delusional and making boasts that they can not fulfil and the other isn't and doesn't fail. This is the whole point. They see what you roleplay - but D&D's roleplaying support (especially pre-4e) is trivial for characters who actually care about the stakes of the situation.