D&D 5E what is it about 2nd ed that we miss?

[ZzarkLinux]

Thanks for the respones Saelorn. It's nice to see what you mean by the "world of the mechanics". Even though I disagree with it in your 2e application, I'm sure a lot of people see the 2e settings in the same way you do. I actually see the D&D world in more of a Diablo2 mechanics set, but that's just me. (5e allows barbarians to whirlwind while moving; WotC finally caught up with Blizzard)

(D&D characters) need to be able to see enough of a difference (in their hitpoints) to know whether it calls for Cure II or Cure V, because the decision about which spell to cast is an in-character one.

So according to the model, when I call out sick it should go like this:
Me: Boss, I can't make it to work. I got sick this morning, and stubbed my toe on the way to the bathroom. I lost some HP, and if I go to work then I'm worried the computer could make a psychic attack against me that would knock me unconscious.
Boss: Alright, go to the store and pick up some meds. Then head straight home and get some bedrest. But make sure to check for goblins underneath first! Call the sheriff if you need help.

I guess how many hps the Miner has depends how experienced he is.

I don't know if anyone plays dwarf fortress, but in earlier versions when a dwarf mines a lot, then his strength and muscles go up. So prolonged skill practice makes him stronger and better in combat. 5e doesn't really have any mechanics for this because it avoids changing stats too much.

"The miner mines for 100 days, and after the mining his strength has increased by +1"
"The blacksmith works for 100 days, and after the work his intelligence increases +1"
"The jester entertains in a travelling show. Afterward, his craft (performance) is +1"

This makes me wonder if people are just "born with the stats" and have no way to increase them without adventuring. I guess parents can give birth to a child where the child has a strength score higher than the parents. Don't try to wrestle that bottle away!

I guess Dwarf Fortress is a better reality model than D&D.

 

[Neonchameleon]

You have healing potions and spells in the real world? Are they FDA approved?

Seriously, though, Hit Points are what players use to quantify the injuries that their characters suffer. They reflect the reality that some people can be shot or stabbed multiple times without dying (saying nothing, for now, of the severity of those wounds), and the real injuries can be repaired by whatever in-game effect produces the mechanical effect of restoring lost Hit Points.

The characters don't see Hit Points, but they see a reality which corresponds to Hit Points, because the effect which Hit Points represent within the world is an objectively verifiable reality. There is an understandable in-game difference between Cure Wounds II and Cure Wounds V, and the characters must be aware of that difference in order for the players to make such decisions on their behalf.

Hit points are what players use to quantify the "injuries" their characters suffer. Pre-4e these injuries don't even have the cosmetic effect of injuries in an action movie other than a momentary loss of concentration. There is no distraction caused by the injury long term. It doesn't make you any slower, less able to focus, or less able to do ... anything ... except take more hits. A PC on one hit point out of a hundred is almost exactly as capable as the same PC on full hit points. I don't know if you've ever been wounded in your life, but I can assure you that that isn't the way it works even under action movie physics.

If I try assuming that hit points are a physics model rather than a gamist construct in editions before 4e I end up in the position where every inhabitant of the D&D world has their own personal magical force field. And cure wounds, far from doing what it says on the tin, simply recharges this force field that might let a few trivial scratches through. Also this force field after a few levels will e.g. temporarily from thousand degree Celsius or 2000 Farenheight temperatures (the approximate melting points of copper, silver, and gold, which are all explicitly melted by the fireball spell in AD&D and 3.X)

4e is better this way due to healing surges - that there's a difference between a fresh wound (you're down hit points) and an old wound where you've had time to bandage yourself (you're down surges). And 5e keeps some of that.

But ultimately in order to even try to use D&D as any sort of physics model I need to not just check all the assumptions I'd make because I know things about both the real world and common fictional universes - I need to check them at the door. I need to sit down with all the books I mean to use, in detail, and work from the ground up exactly what sort of universe this ends up with. Because it behaves very little like either this universe or cinematic/mythological ones. I consider this overhead ridiculous for an RPG that doesn't state this upfront.

Edit: And yes, Dwarf Fortress is a better model of an understandable or observable reality than trying to assume that the rules of D&D of any edition correspond to a physics model.

 

[Manbearcat]

I just suffered a major (very high grade 2, borderline 3) ankle sprain last night after coming down on someone's foot while rebounding the basketball. The kind of injury that would send most people who aren't veterans of such trauma straight to the ER.

I don't know how many HPs I lost. I don't know what level of Cure spell I should ask for. I certainly didn't fall unconscious or anywhere near it.

I do know that the only D&D mechanisms that model the impact of the effects of this sort of injury on my life are (a) the Disease Track of 4e and (b) Exhaustion (inspired by a) in 5e.

 

[Maxperson]

They need to be able to see enough of a difference to know whether it calls for Cure II or Cure V, because the decision about which spell to cast is an in-character one, the same as if they're deciding which potion to drink. They can't make a decision based on information they don't have access to.

There are many ways to explain how this can work, and very few of those ways involve being able to plunge your sword all the way through the character multiple times. It can't work if the characters can't see some difference between losing 4 HP and losing 40 HP, though; there has to be something that corresponds to that, even if it means your heroes all have aura-vision or whatever.

Hit Points are only as abstract as they need to be - it doesn't matter whether you were stabbed in the arm or bashed in the head, since it doesn't apply penalties and it all heals the same - but they can't be so abstract as to make the game un-RP-able. You need to be able to tell that you were hit, and how badly.

Since you cut this out of the post you responded to, I'll put it back in.

However, the player choice, since it's only the player that can see hit points, can be explained by whim, expedience, a desire to make sure the wound heals, or whatever. That choice does not mean that the PC can see 100% of the hit point damage.

No, the PC doesn't need to be able to make an informed choice.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

Alright, I'm comparing D&D skills to DwarfFortress skills. This is gonna make me rant about the D&D worldbuilding rules again, so get ready.

In earlier versions (of Dwarf Fortress) a dwarf mines a lot, then his strength and muscles go up. So prolonged skill practice makes him stronger and better in combat.

"The miner mines for 100 days, and after the mining his strength has increased by +1"
"The blacksmith works for 100 days, and after the work his smithing skills increase +1"
"The mayor entertains guests. Afterward, his negotiating skills increase"

Dwarf Fortress is a better model of an understandable or observable reality than trying to assume that the rules of D&D of any edition correspond to a physics model.

And it's an Azmodeous dammd shame too! D&D has had decades to build an evolving fantasy world with rules for building construction, profession management, general irrigation, and skill practice. Early D&D's presentation, flavorful settings, and random weather charts helped move D&D away from it's roots As-A-War-Game. But the PHBs of later editions have since gone player-option-heavy and combat heavy, and campaign roleplaying has suffered.

Dwarf Fortress gives the players "Axefighting" and "Spearfighting" and other fighting skills. Where are those stats found? Right next to the "Farming", " Stoneworking", and "Jokeing/Comedian" Skills. Fighting is a skill! And sometimes it's hard to find the fighting skill because the dwarf has so many other stats besides combat! The Dwarf has earned a lot more than Fighting, he has earned "Novice Brewer" and "Competent Leatherworker" and "Expert Weaver". This dwarf has a future!

D&D 3e and later trended to hiding worldbuilding rules from the PHB, and in it's place added more combat and char-gen rules to the PHB. Are there PHB rules for the fighter to increase his strength at the gym? Nope, but here are several pages of feats for chargen. Suppose a wizard goes on a year-long journey, and never even sniffs a library. Does the wizard lose intelligence for avoiding libraries? Nope, but here are a dozen pages of spells. Shouldn't Martial Combat be a skill? Nope, combat gets it's own separate system, and lots of weapon artwork too! What happened to the Spellcraft skill? No dawg, I heard you like vancian. Can we split Charisma into subsets like negotiating, entertaining, and nonverbal? Nope, sacred cows, and the combat system needs charisma. Can we split Dexterity into hand-grasp dexterity and leg-movement dexterity? Can stats go up or down during the game? Nope, can't change stats in-game because the characters are too complicated to build. What about a generic wounds system? Nope, but you get HP and stuff.

Yes, there are generic downtime rules. One page, wohoo! But load on more pages of ways to increase your combat stats. Is there any wonder why 3e PHB and later encourage murder-hoboism?

Sure, the PHB has rules for holding your breath, but what about rules for endurance prep-work to travel a desert? Teleporting goes poof, but what about rules for jet lag or summon sickness? The PCs see a lot of porticullises, but where are the rules to craft a porticullis? How does my strength modifier help me barricade a door? How does my Intellegence modifier help me build a bridge over a chasm? Nah, they just handwave it by saying "PlateMail takes 100 days to make". It saves pagecount.

And that's what I miss about 2E, really, is that 2E didn't make so many assumptions. (...) the DM didn't have to decide whether any given situation was out-of-combat narrative stuff where the rules didn't apply

Those days have been lost. WotC removed worldbuilding rules from the PHB because they didn't want to say "rainfall lasts d3 days" and someone on the internet gets offended. They included exhaustion, but only in snippets. Clerics are not required to visit temples. Druids don't lose wisdom for starting a forest fire. Paladins can't fall. If your fighter is a member of the town guard, then there are no rules for reporting for duty.

Showing "worldbuilding rules" in the PHB would engage the player's imagination about the world. What does the PHB actually say? Talk to your DM. The biggest handwave ever. Then it goes on to list 100+ pages of character-building rules, because those don't need an in-game world. The only consequence of not sleeping at an inn? The DM might DM Fiat some exhaustion rules onto you. There are no hard consequences for ignoring the game-world.

TLDR WotC needs to put "worldbuilding rules" and "worldbuilding consequences" back into the PHB. One line of exhaustion for the barbarian isn't enough. Expand the skills system, even if it means simplifying combat or char-gen.

 

[RotGrub]

It is a good point that 2e had a very large number of resources for world building. The DMG, Fighter's Handbook and the The Castle Guide were packed with good information. Even the Birthright Campaign setting included some.

As for Skills, I'm not a fan of how much 5e generalized skills. Being an expert climber doesn't help you swim.

I really would like to create a rules expansion for 5e that reintroduces all the non-weapon profs.

 

[Neonchameleon]

And it's an Azmodeous dammd shame too! D&D has had decades to build an evolving fantasy world with rules for building construction, profession management, general irrigation, and skill practice.

And thank goodness it only made the occasional nods to going down that rabbit hole. D&D has had time to do this if it wanted to - but it didn't want to. That way lies Harn and the ability to only play in a single setting - and more to the point a game that bogs down and clogs up every time you try to do anything.

Alternatively that way lies GURPS which does that sort of worldbuilding far better than D&D can short of a rewrite from the ground up that makes it look as if 4e didn't touch any of the sacred cows. Once you've got the abstractness of hit points in a system you've thrown away world building unless you're running a setting where everyone has force fields - or a setting that's meant to work the way Order of the Stick does and is incestuous on the rules. And this sort of nonsense is what Gygax was warning against in his repeated rants against "realism" in the 1980s.

Early D&D's presentation, flavorful settings, and random weather charts helped move D&D away from it's roots As-A-War-Game.

Quite the reverse. Early D&D's presentation with the random weather charts was all about setting challenges and having strange new places for the PCs to rob and loot. It works so well because there is no attempt to simulate an actual world - instead it's an attempt to create interesting places and not look too hard at how they work.

But the PHBs of later editions have since gone player-option-heavy and combat heavy, and campaign roleplaying has suffered.

Dwarf Fortress gives the players "Axefighting" and "Spearfighting" and other fighting skills. Where are those stats found? Right next to the "Farming", " Stoneworking", and "Jokeing/Comedian" Skills Fighting is a skill! And sometimes it's hard to find the fighting skill because the dwarf has so many other stats besides combat!

D&D 3.5 has 33 skills before you count the craft, profession, and knowledge skill families. In practice this meant that you were incompetent at 25 to 30 of them - but each of them has a number.

D&D 3e and later trended to hiding worldbuilding rules from the PHB, and in it's place added more combat and char-gen rules to the PHB. Are there PHB rules for the fighter to increase his strength at the gym? Nope, but here are several pages of feats for chargen. Suppose a wizard goes on a year-long journey, and never even sniffs a library. Does the wizard lose intelligence for avoiding libraries? Nope, but here are a dozen pages of spells.

Yay! D&D 3.0 continued precisely in the traditions of its forebears. Where with the exception of 4e every single PHB has been approximately 40% full of spells. Where you don't lose skills by not excercising them and going to the gym doesn't do a hell of a lot (unlike e.g. GURPS). Instead if you want to get better at any skill you chose to name depending on your edition your best option is either to kill monsters or take their stuff.

Your entire argument here is that D&D has never been something it never tried to be and something that when people suggested Gygax resisted vehemently and with very good reason. And when people tried to change this D&D found itself overtaken by a game that wasn't D&D.

What happened to the Spellcraft skill? No dawg, I heard you like vancian.

Given the riots over 4e...

Can we split Charisma into subsets like negotiating, entertaining, and nonverbal? Nope, sacred cows, and the combat system needs charisma. Can we split Dexterity into hand-grasp dexterity and leg-movement dexterity?

You can do that in games like Dwarf Fortress because a computer handles the mechanical overhead for you. You can do that in games like GURPS because they default to the same thing - and GURPS has an intricate collection of advantages.

Is there any wonder why 3e PHB and later encourage murder-hoboism?

3e encourages murder-hoboism because 2e broke the XP rules by removing the XP for GP rules in place of something sillier (XP for behaving like a class stereotype).

Showing "worldbuilding rules" in the PHB would engage the player's imagination about the world.

On the contrary. Showing worldbuilding rules in the PHB would mean that it is implied that you play in a certain very narrow subset of worlds. It narrows the world, it narrows the game, and it puts off a lot of the more creative players even as it engages a few.

TLDR WotC needs to put "worldbuilding rules" and "worldbuilding consequences" back into the PHB. One line of exhaustion for the barbarian isn't enough. Expand the skills system, even if it means simplifying combat or char-gen.

If I trusted WotC a worldbuilder's guide might be a good idea. But making D&D into GURPS is not the way to go.

 

[billd91]

As for Skills, I'm not a fan of how much 5e generalized skills. Being an expert climber doesn't help you swim.

Maybe, but there most definitely a diminishing return with the proliferation of skills (or non-weapon proficiencies). Does it serve the game play to increase the number of skills or consolidate them? In the case of 3e's Listen/Spot vs Hide/Move Silently grouping, consolidating into Perception vs Stealth makes for a more streamlined game and a MUCH better chance for stealth to actually succeed.

 

[Wuzzard]

Neither does a dollar. I don't mean the piece of paper, I mean the "small segment of value". We made it up, it's an imaginary agreed upon concept to help us trade items without having to resort to barter.

I will grant that the imaginary concept of the dollar is *slightly* more important than ogres but ...


(oh, and if you don't agree that dollars are made up, look up fiat currency )


Anyway, I'm pretty sure minions are not what we miss about 2e!!!

Ogres that don't exist (or do exist)... How did I miss out on another quantum ogre discussion. They are my favorite!

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No, the PC doesn't need to be able to make an informed choice.

That's rationalization. It explains how, after the fact, the character could end up having made the same decision that the player made. It doesn't explain what actually happened, and how that decision was actually made.

The real reason why the character cast Cure II instead of Cure V is that the player could see how badly injured the character was - in terms of lost HP - and knew that Cure II would be sufficient while Cure V would be overkill. If the player isn't making the same decisions as the character, for the same reasons, then you're not role-playing... you're just story-telling... you're making stuff up to try and steer the story in a certain direction, without any consideration for the thoughts and decisions of the character as a real person who actually exists within the shared game world.

The central conceit of a role-playing game is that these characters actually exist within the setting. Any rule or mechanic which treats them like mere characters in a story, or like game-pieces on a board, is entirely missing the point.