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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DammitVictor" data-source="post: 8219582" data-attributes="member: 6750908">Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: My first exposure to D&D. I loved Assassins and Monks in the PHB, multiclassing (mostly), Oriental Adventures and the Manual of the Planes and the pure joyful weirdness of AD&D, like it didn't feel the need to be anything but itself.AD&D Second Edition: Now this... was my first love. I didn't mourn the loss of Assassins and Half-Orcs because by the time I switched, the PHBRs had brought them back. THAC0 was such a breath of fresh air. The sheer modularity of the rules: Spheres and Schools and the idea of more than one kind of Mage or Priest. Kits allowed so much customization, even within classes, and then Player's Option didn't rewrite the whole game-- they allowed each individual DM to rewrite the whole game. Campaign settings that still define my relationship with D&D. And for all the crap Second Edition rightfully gets for being the vanilla edition... they eventually added most  of that glorious weirdness back and then some.Rules Cyclopedia: Good old BECMI, minus the I. D&D rules without a lot of the unnecessary, but advanced cruft. "These ones go up to 36" plus the Quest for Immortality. I'm a huge proponent of race-as-class, especially with the innovations of multiple racial classes per race and the monstrous spellcaster rules from Orcs of Thar. A much more interesting weapon mastery system than AD&D's, open to more than just single-classed Fighters. Just the most D&D you could get, with the least baffling rules interference, before the advent of the OSR.Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition and 3.5 Revised: Before we can even begin to address this edition in its own right, we have to talk about the Open Gaming License. Wizards of the Coast may have saved D&D once when they bought TSR and published 3.0, but they saved it for all time with the OGL, and they opened to the door for endless third-party content: the adventure modules they hoped for, plus a veritable renaissance of campaign settings that dwarfed even the diversity and variety of Second Edition, plus the replacement bestiaries and supplements that unfortunately led WotC to dump the license.Beyond that, though... "always roll as high as you can on a d20" is about as good as I've got. The concept behind Feats and Prestige Classes is neat. It's the first viable psionics system in D&D history. edit: Oh, right, Eberron is pretty cool.Pathfinder: To start with, just a whole lot of little Quality of Life improvements over 3.X. The first arcane full spellcaster healer. Archetypes, alternate racial abilities, and alternate Favored Class Bonuses come very close to the customization options of 2e's Player's Option. In the grand tradition of Unearthed Arcana and Player's Option, the Pathfinder Unchained sourcebook is chock-full of ways to refine your D&D to your D&D. And the third-party content for Pathfinder is just head & shoulders above what was available for D&D 3.X in both quality and quantity. edit: The outer space supplements leading up to Starfinder: Distant Stars and People of the Stars.Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition: Monster design, full stop. The Bloodied condition. Healing Surges as a source of mundane healing and a limit on magical healing. Martial classes keeping up at high levels. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies as a better implementation of Prestige Classes. Player Characters can be Immortals again. "Race" is the most interesting it's been since AD&D decoupled it from class, on the virtue of racial powers that scale with level and solid feat support. They killed alignment.Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition: The Background/Ideal/Flaw/Trinket is a nice bit of character color that differentiates characters of the same race/class and makes characters feel "lived in" without needlessly convoluted and problematic "backstories". The built-in augmented spellcasting is great. Advantage/Disadvantage!</blockquote>

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