What is the essence of D&D

[Maxperson]

And yeh your typical encounter is the wizard on the front row standing at the hip of the fighter grinning and taking it LOL -- again you present it as VS

You chose darts. You're stuck with dart range. Don't back out now.

And again, vs. is the best way to determine which is the best fighter.

 

[Garthanos]

The vast majority of 1st level fights are not to kobolds and goblins. Most fights will involve creatures with 1 or more full hit dice..

Those men above have d6...that is a raging 3.5 hit points mage is still taking out 2 in three rounds from over the fighters shoulder

 

[Maxperson]

I'm just trying to make sure I understand this debate.

You are asserting the position that in 1e, 1st level MUs are really combat useful?


.....that isn't a hill I'd die on, primarily because low-level MUs die on that hill.

Yeah. It's a strange argument.

 

[Garthanos]

You chose darts. You're stuck with dart range.

Second row or even third is fine dart range .... in fact people whine when a fighter tricks someone into moving 10 feet

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Nagol]

Post 87:

What is the essence of D&D

Killing monsters and taking their stuff. Oh, and traps, and weird uses of magic. And leveling, and getting your stronghold. And henchmen. And worrying about dying, because you very possibly could die. Permanently.

www.enworld.org

Here's my immediate reply to everyone:

What is the essence of D&D

Killing monsters and taking their stuff. Oh, and traps, and weird uses of magic. And leveling, and getting your stronghold. And henchmen. And worrying about dying, because you very possibly could die. Permanently.

www.enworld.org

View it as you wish. That's the point it went off the rails.

Which, more or less is how those other threads I pointed out way up in post 708 went off the rails too.

You get some superficial commonalities: trade dress, sacred cows (stat names, hit points, etc.) that ended up being shared with items that are demonstrably aren't D&D (I'm referring to independent things from other publishers like Heroquest, Runequest, Chivalry & Sorcery -- not any specific edition of D&D).

What we have never achieved is finding enough commonality inside even a few editions of D&D to set it apart from say Earthdawn. That's mainly because there aren't enough commonalities to our methods of playing D&D to come to agreement for what that means.

 

[Oofta]

Tony I think was inspired by Oofta who mentioned 4e as not D&D? sorry forgot the spelling...

Ooof even realized he had created a divergence

I was pointing out that one of the aspects of 4E was how they consolidated all classes and monsters into the same rules structure with at will, encounter and daily powers. That in my opinion all classes had purely supernatural abilities.

How about this. One of the things that I think of as the essence of D&D is that while all PCs, NPCs and monsters follow the same basic rules for interfacing with the world there's an additional layer added to how they are implemented. All PCs have to track HP, and may have a few conditions (i.e. exhaustion) that apply on an irregular basis. As another example everyone uses the same rules to climb a wall unless they have an exceptional ability.

So a wizard is structured so that people playing that class have to track resources to a greater degree than others. They may have more flexibility, but it comes at the cost of more complexity. The only additional resource a champion fighter normally needs to track is their second wind. A wizard tracks spells and available slots while debating which spell to cast when, a fighter slaps on armor and swings a sword.

In my opinion one important essence of D&D is that in play, from the perspective of the player running a wizard versus a champion fighter almost feels like a different game.

 

[Arnwolf666]

1e rather than 2e here, but I've never in my life used speed factors (or weapon type vs armour type) in any game I've run or played.

Random initiative each round, however, always has been and always will be hard-coded into the system.

Amazing how the dart discussion is like something that almost never came up pre 3.x. Darts were risky because u really wanted a melee weapon just in case. So it was normally staff or dagger. You had a chance of taking a critter out at 1st level with a lucky hit. The dagger you could throw twice in a round, but could also be used at range. Sure you might end up fighting and ogre. But there were lots of very low hp critters like giant rats. Zombies, skeletons, goblins, kobolds that night have been taken out easier with a staff or dagger than a ranged dart. Sure the wizard tried to stay back. But we all knew the wizard was going to eventually end up in melee. And it was normally the fighter keeping the more power badass away from the weaker pc’s.

This theory crafting is how the vast majority of games did not come close to happening. It just doesn’t simulate the typical encounters or the needs for it.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Nagol]

Amazing how the dart discussion is like something that almost never came up pre 3.x.

I was having that talk pre-Internet!