What is the essence of D&D

[Oofta]

It's getting weird out there ...

Getting? You're the one into getting spanked by a paladin. Or something.

Oh wait, wrong thread!

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Jump allows you to jump TRIPLE your normal distance. Granted, you'd need a STR of 20 to make 60 feet, but, 45 feet is easily doable.

And you'd need to be a wood elf. Jumping that distance costs 60 feet of movement and also requires a 10-foot running start, so 70 feet total.

I'm helping!

Howzabout you actually answer the question - what would the DC be for a rogue to jump triple his normal jumping distance?

It's a leading and nonsensical question. We're looking at what a rogue can do "all day" versus what a wizard can do by expending daily resources. Whatever a rogue can do all day is his normal jumping distance. And this has nothing to do with "fantastic" versus "realistic" expectations. If this were a wuxia game and the rogue's normal jumping distance were 60 feet, the jump spell would still triple that. Would you then be asking snidely what the rogue has to do to jump 180 feet?

 

[Lanefan]

You can jump 60' with the Jump spell if you have Str 20.

Which in 0-1-2e would make you a mighty uncommon wizard indeed.

Mighty uncommon anyone, for that matter.

 

[Lanefan]

It's a leading and nonsensical question. We're looking at what a rogue can do "all day" versus what a wizard can do by expending daily resources. Whatever a rogue can do all day is his normal jumping distance. And this has nothing to do with "fantastic" versus "realistic" expectations. If this were a wuxia game and the rogue's normal jumping distance were 60 feet, the jump spell would still triple that. Would you then be asking snidely what the rogue has to do to jump 180 feet?

Or change Rogue/Thief to Monk.

Now we have a class that can (in all editions) do some pretty crazy jumping, running, and so forth; and (in most editions) keep doing it for as long as desired.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Campbell]

In the context of playing the game what a character can do all day hardly matters. What matters is what you can do when it matters in the critical moments.

In a game with significant attrition that can be when a Wizard is out of spells. I think when you reach a certain level it is probably fair for a rogue to be able to do more than what a Wizard can accomplish with a first level spell because those resources are not so relevant to play.

 

[Nagol]

Which in 0-1-2e would make you a mighty uncommon wizard indeed.

Mighty uncommon anyone, for that matter.

Nah, you're multiclassed elven F/MU and have a Grldle of Giant Strength.

 

[Greg K]

What is the essence of D&D? For myself, I know if when looking upon the core rules (making the essence subjective like art or porn). In my opinion, what I find as the essence can be expanded upon and stretched in supplementary settings and remain acceptable as D&D, but lose the essence of D&D if done in the core rules. Al Qadim, Dark Sun, Ravenloft are, for instance, some of my favorite D&D settings. Planescape, Spelljammer, and Eberron, are legitmate D&D settings despite my dislike of them. Yet, a version of D&D building the core rules of an edition around any of these settings would lose the essence of D&D for me.
Despite my preference for many of the underlying mechanics of 3e, 4e, and 5e in comparison to TSR D&D, the fantasy that WOTC put on top of those mechanics lost the essence of D&D for me- even when considering that 3e used "Greyhawk" as its core setting and 5e uses the Realms (Then again, the essence of both settings to me was lost back in the 2e era).

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think I may have gotten a little too complicated and over-analytical with the Primacy of Magic...

Made less "magical" perhaps, but not made any less important or pervasive. Thus, in this way 4e is still very much magic-prime D&D.

Important & pervasive, in this context, are opposed. Magic was less important in 4e, because there were fewer absolutely vital things (like restoring hps in combat) that /only/ magic could do, and because one of the two traditional source of magic, items, was not just reduced in power, but made so ubiquitous and fungible that they became unimportant (and that can probably go for rituals, too, which became much more adventure-enabling, to the point that the DM would provide a ritual the party 'needed' to continue the adventure.)

All more or less true; albeit with 4e's reduction of capabilities of pre-existing caster classes somewhat cancelled out by its making caster or caster-like classes a much higher perecntage of the total.

Relative to the prior ed PH1, with 11 character classes, 7 of them with spellcasting ability (64%), 8 (73%) if you include any (SU)supernatural powers, at all, the 4e PH1 had 8 classes, 4 of them with spellcasting and/or supernatural abilities, 4 without. 50/50. Now, if you include supplements, 3.5 added the Scout & Knight as non-supernatural, and myriad supernatural classes (not to mention PrCs), while 4e added /only/ supernatural classes, and mostly just subclasses in Essentials, so it would've gotten there eventually.
Frankly, though, ubiquity is the enemy or importance, so it'd've gone even worse for 4e if it had gone all-supernatural.

This runs face-first into your caveat above: it applies to just about the entirety of the medieval-ish fantasy genre, not just D&D.

Not true, until relatively recently, with the advent of Urban Fantasy & Harry Potter and the like, fantasy generally included both some magic (mostly in the hands of villains), usually without specific n/day requirements and not too varied a portfolio for any single practitioner, and extraordinary (superhuman, unrealistic) feats for the (typically martial) hero. The cliché Conan pastiche with the barbarian fighting atop a pile of slain foes, for instance, completely implausible both in terms of getting the bodies piled up & fighting atop such an unstable surface, and in terms of somehow persuading enemies to climb said pile only to be added to it.

Also, (other than 4e which has restrictions on uses of some non or quasi magical powers) a Thief can do fantastic-grade jumps or falls all day while a wizard can only do it up to the number of spells she has memorized that provide the ability.

That's a partial articulation of the Primacy of Magic, yes. Magic faces at least some notional limitations (fewer with each passing edition, it seems), in return for being more potent when it really counts, making it more important than always-available mundane alternatives.

With at-wills in 4e and cantrips in 5e, casters are now also unlimited; and that balance mechanism - such as it was - is no more.

In 4e, of course, that balance-of-imbalances mechanism was unnecessary, AEDU meant every PC had a comparable number/power of limited & at-will resources. Which was a huge part of the problem.
In 5e, the balance-of-imbalances formula remains, just with casters thanks to at-will cantrips, having a higher at-will baseline, and, purportedly solves for 6-8 encounters & 2-3 short rests between long rests. That said, at-will cantrips are mildly contrary to the Primacy of Magic, because they may be viewed as insufficiently superior to mundane alternatives (they don't run out of ammo and have a greater range of effects & damage types, but their actual DPR is less).

Sad but true; though I don't recall 4e significantly altering this trend any.

It quite reversed the trend of adding 'more magical goodies' to each class. It stripped the Ranger of his magical goodies, entirely, spread the Druids goodies over three sub-classes, introduced a new class with none, gave none to the Fighter & Rogue, and bumped full-casters down from dozens of spells/day with either the ability to change those spell up every day, or great control over how often they could re-cast a give spell, to 4/day & 4/encounter, each exactly once. In opposition to that, Barbarians became Primal. That's about it.

I'm not disagreeing at all that magic is A major essence of D&D. It's only when you appear to suggest that magic is THE major essence of D&D that I look askance.

"A Major Essence of D&D" works. I'd imagine D&D with no magic, and all, would be NOT-D&D, for instance. So it'd be fair to say the Primacy of Magic could be necessary but not sufficient, to make something D&D. You could paste D&D on the cover of Ars Magica, for instance, and, great game, all-in when it comes to the Primacy of Magic that it may be, I suspect it wouldn't pass for D&D.

 

[Hussar]

Wow, 7 straight posts directly addressing me and NOT ONE actually answering my question.

And I get accused of bad faith?