What is the essence of D&D

[Lanefan]

I largely agree.

Pathfinder 2 attacks this from a slightly different angle. Spells have a listed rarity. By default Common spells can be freely taken at level up. Uncommon and Rare spells by default must be discovered through play. Nearly every Wizard can cast Fireball, but much fewer have access to spells like Scry and Teleport.

This allows the GM to control access, but also to give out meaningful treasure to spell casters if the wish.

Something like this could definitely be implemented in 5e. It would just require curating the spell list.

A long time ago I tried something like this with Cleric spells, the idea being to shake things up such that not all Clerics of the same type (or even to the same deity) would necessarily have the exact same spell list.

Some spells were common to all, some were uncommon (a Cleric would get about half of these), and some were rare (a Cleric would only get one or two of these). Each level-up you'd get another uncommon or two and a rare from spells of your castable level or lower; eventually a high-enough-level Cleric (as in stratospheric!) would have them all.

Net result: an overall failure. Added way too much player-side complication to be worth it. Abandoned for subsequent campaigns.

 

[MichaelSomething]

4e very much blurred this distinction by adding and codifying so-called "supernatural" powers for martials, monsters, etc. These powers, to some including me, appear to be simply magical (as in non-mundane) abilities put under a different label; meaning that magic becomes if anything more pervasive - if also more subtle - through 4e than any other version of D&D.

Is it magical to take single handily take out a platoon? Or to go toe to toe with a T-Rex? Cause high level Fighters can do that.

 

[Lanefan]

Ah, but you see that spell was not heretofore unknown. It's known and unknowable to the PC. Finding a copy of Nagol's Pleasing Persona which in almost all ways acts like Charm Person, means you now have a heretofore unknown spell to check!

As with so many things in 1e, I guess it comes down to how the DM interprets the phrase "previously unknown".

Does it mean "previously unlearned"?
Does it mean "previously never heard of at all"?

I've always read it as the former; you seem to be reading it as the latter, and in typical 1e fashion either interpretation is arguably correct.

 

[Eric V]

I have had an epiphany. The logic of the Primacy of Magic camp holds water after all; they have just made one simple error: the true essence of D&D lies in the Primacy of Burgling.

For every edition, the one absolutely necessary member of an adventuring party has been the thief/rogue. Dungeon crawling has simply not been possible without one. You could scrape by without a warrior, or a mage, or a healer, but without a rogue, locks and traps and secret doors simply become impassable. In 1E and 2E, only thieves/rogues have access to the skill system which allows them to tackle these challenges. Even in 3E, which opened up the skill system to every class, the skills for disarming traps and picking locks were capped for non-rogues -- uniquely so, that's how important this primacy is. And it clearly isn't just an arbitrary mechanical limitation. The rogue requirement naturally goes back to the very roots of the genre in Tolkien's Hobbit, in which Thorin and Company go through considerable trouble to recruit a burglar for their cause.

But then along came 4E. And Thievery became merely another skill. Now anyone could open locks, disarm traps, and even pick pockets just as well as a rogue. Were that not enough, the skill challenge system encouraged players to overcome obstacles as a party, gaining successes without using the Thievery skill at all! And, lo and behold, 4E was a highly divisive edition frequently accused of being "not D&D". Now, this connection between 4E changing burgling and 4E getting hated on is just a correlation I'm observing. I'm not saying that the Primacy of Burgling is the essence of D&D, except for the times when that's exactly what I said. And I'll acknowledge that nobody in this thread actually on the "4E is not D&D" side has made a case for the Primacy of Burgling. But, as has been frequently been asserted already, the cases they do make are factually incorrect and/or don't make any sense, so that makes Primacy of Burgling the winner by default.

Now, some of you may observe that in 5E, just as in 4E, thieves' tools proficiency is available to any character. But if you think about it the way I do, 5E handled this proficiency in a different way that preserves the Primacy of Burglary rather than blowing up my theory. You see, the only backgrounds that offer thieves' tools proficiency are Criminal and Urchin. 5E backgrounds are effectively a low-key multiclassing system, so these can be thought of as rogue "level 0s". Thus, even though you don't actually need to be in the rogue class anymore, 5E is still saying that, in essence, in order to burgle you have to be a burglar. 5E also left the skill challenge system by the wayside; clearly the developers thought that contributed to the problem as well. So the Primacy of Burgling is alive and well in 5E, and 5E is received as being "D&D" again. More correlation!

There you have it. All the evidence for the Primacy of Burglary being the essence of D&D, nothing but cold, hard facts. If you have any questions about the case I made, feel free to ask them and I will be happy to explain to you what you're really thinking and why it supports this theory too.

Not bad...but dungeon crawling wasn't necessary for it to be D&D. As well, Find Traps and Knock did wonders to replace the thief.

Those are spells, right...?

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Not bad...but dungeon crawling wasn't necessary for it to be D&D. As well, Find Traps and Knock did wonders to replace the thief.

Those are spells, right...?

Obviously dungeon crawling was necessary for it to be D&D. I mean, it's right in the name. And if your DM only included one trap or lock in the dungeon, that was their own damn fault.

Also, 5E nerfed find traps and knock. Reinforcing the Primacy of Burgling yet again!

 

[Lanefan]

I can think of a couple grey areas, mostly around what's affected by anti-magic: psionics - magic or not? and which spell-effects go up against magic resistance. But, yeah, generally, it's not hard to infer. Spells are obviously explicitly magical, as are, well, 'magic items.' Some Monk might be a grey area, too, a bard's singing, etc...

Psionics and Bard singing mostly fall under magical for me, for these purposes.

Monks are indeed a gray area.

4e included keywords that very explicitly called out powers as having a specific source. Most of them - Arcane, Divine, Primal, Psionic, Shadow, Elemental - were explicitly supernatural. One, Martial, was not.

When it came to monsters, though, source keywords were often omitted. So you may have a point there, if that's what you're going to focus on...

Whether you take a power labeled 'Martial' as such, and are upset that it rival a magical power of the same type/level/recharge-rate, or discount the martial label because the power 'appears magical to you,' you're objecting on the lack of a clear gap between the mundane and the magical.

Exactly, and my point is that the mundane has been made magical.

In the former case, the mundane rivals the magical, erasing that gap, in the latter, the mundane, itself, is erased, removing even the possibility of a gap. Magic being pervasive works /against/ the Primacy of Magic, because it becomes fungible and ordinary - mundane in the sense of everyday experience.

In the game world, yes. But compared to the real world - which is the comparison most people are likely to use when asking "is this magic?" - it's not mundane at all. And that pervasiveness of magic in itself makes magic prime.

Is it magical to take single handily take out a platoon? Or to go toe to toe with a T-Rex? Cause high level Fighters can do that.

In real life a highly skilled warrior could take out a platoon (if all involved were unarmed). The presence of the T-Rex is, if not magical, certainly fantastic; which shifts the boundaries somewhat and makes real-world comparisons difficult - to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever taken on a T-rex in combat.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Not bad....

Though meant humorously, it's a fair stab at "Niche Protection is the Essence of D&D."
And, Niche Protection sure seems like a prominent feature of D&D, if one that eroded over time.

Oh I absolutely meant it that way. 5e, AFAICT, is more than half a successful foray into applying all of the crucial parts of 4e with a presentation that makes happy those who didn’t like 4e, both those who can tell you quite clearly why and those who have trouble articulating exactly why.

In that regard (and that regard only) I’d say it’s the best edition of dnd. It can feel like playing dnd no matter what dnd you want it to feel like, as long as you go into it recognizing that your own biases play a role in how a game feels. Even without considering that factor, it’s my (very close) second favorite edition.

Hell, I’ll be a heretic here and say that 4e and 5e are the only editions that I’d consider “good games” without the aid of nostalgia to tip the scales.

I'd say that's being charitable to both editions. 4e didn't remove /all/ the perennial problems with D&D, and it had a few gaping holes, at times. 5e, obviously, intentionally restored many perennial issues, with great success - and /with/ 'nostalgia' (or some more acceptable term for appreciating the game as it was back in the day) to tip the scales, is a very enjoyable game for doing so.

I enjoyed playing 2e, but I’d not call it a good game the standard of TTRPGaming right now. 5e? Good by nearly any standard.
Even by balance standards, though I know you disagree with me there.

D&D stacks the deck against itself when it comes to balance. If you wanted to rate balance in TTRPGs on a scale of 1 to 10, you'd have use decimal points to differentiate most editions of D&D.

In order to not support RP, it would have to make RP difficult even for people who enjoyed the game and dove fully into it for several years. It didn’t.

What, really, would be a barrier to RP? I mean, what in the actual mechanics or content of an RPG, could do that? (For that matter, what really /supports/ RP? I'd say being able to build a character as close to your vision of it as possible, and be able to play it in a way that conveys that vision, while remaining viable in the 'game' aspect and also not rendering anyone esle's vision non-viable in that same sense. That might be part of it.)

I suspect that these have to do with having a presentation people consciously and/or subconsciously associate with video games and wargames and other games that don’t involve RP

Like MMORPGs? (Never played one, but do they really not involve RPGs? Have they been sued for false advertising yet?)

but the game has a ton of elements that support and encourage RP. What you’re describing is those elements not doing the job for you, which is different from the game not having those elements.

...I guess... a little different. Still curious what those elements, are, exactly.

Often, when people talk about an RP element in an RPG (ignoring the whole thing /is/ an RPG), they're talking about some kind of carrot or stick to reward good RP or punish bad, typically with the DM judging which is which. Inspiration, in 5e, is an example of an RP carrot.
Personally, I don't actually find those helpful.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But compared to the real world - which is the comparison most people are likely to use when asking "is this magic?" - it's not mundane at all. And that pervasiveness of magic in itself makes magic prime.

I mean, I suppose that's one possible criterion - that anything unrealistic must, perforce, be magical.

But, no, the way I described the concept of the Primacy of Magic, pervasiveness undermines it - especially if taken to the extreme of erasing the mundane against which it should be contrasted.

Pervasiveness of magic undermining it's feel is also one of the few arguments I hear against 5e: at-will cantrips making magic too available.

In real life a highly skilled warrior could take out a platoon (if all involved were unarmed). The presence of the T-Rex is, if not magical, certainly fantastic; which shifts the boundaries somewhat and makes real-world comparisons difficult - to the best of my knowledge nobody has ever taken on a T-rex in combat.

Fantastic, but not magical/supernatural is a good point.

 

[Hussar]

See, I'm concentrating on the last bolded bit, because that's where I disagree with you. And a big part of that is the DIY nature of a lot of D&D ... but ....

You can have a lot of different approaches to, for example, a standard 5e campaign; people running it "old school" (OD&D, Dungeon Crawl), people bringing in 1e/2e sensibilities, people adapting it to a more 3e crunch game, people running it as more of a scene-based 4e-style game, and so on.

And it works back, too. I started running a new 1e game recently, and I reverse-incorporated a few 5e aspects into it.

I think a lot of people get hung up on the differences; I prefer to notice the similarities.

But, of course, only those similarities that give you warm and fuzzy feelings. A similarity that somehow you find offensive (for reasons that I cannot fathom) is edition warring and to be entirely discounted.

 

[Garthanos]

I was having that talk pre-Internet!

On Alarums and Excursions?