What is the essence of D&D

[Lanefan]

Making them everyday schmucks and just like everyone else sounds boring

Unless one sees the excitement and interest lying in what they do, rather than (mechanically) what they are.

And additionally putting that much detail in the npcs is too much work.

Not every NPC gets statted up to the nines; I us the bare minimum for what I need at the moment, but the underlying assumption is that they're the same as PCs if-when I do need to fully stat one out.

 

[Garthanos]

Doing another room with 2 orcs and barely distinguishable furnishings and no rational reason for any of it being there... WELL is not on my goal list.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ever see a Wizard with armor better than the fighter and immune to arrow fire whenever it counted oh I did in 1e it was out of the box magic items too. I am not sure it really really does. Unless items are "designed" that way instead of slap dashed together like they always seemed.

It could happen but wasn't that common. Wizard would still have around half the hit points as well.

 

[Lanefan]

I thought 1e was clear that such hypothetical bonuses were just bundled into their more favorable combat matrix and handfuls of damage dice?

Yeah, not so much.

The quickest of glances at Giant hit points tells you there's no way they got any Con bonuses, even though a typical Giant has the constitution of a dump truck.

I guess sorta back on topic, yes, 3e is the only edition that really went all-in with the PCs & NPCs & Monsters are All The Same Things. Almost to the extent RQ did it.

But, while 3e was say over on that side of the spectrum and 1e & 4e (& now 5e) way over on the other, there was not much "3e isn't really D&D because all NPCs have levels" being bandied about.

I'll posit that's because many 0-1-2e tables (like ours) took steps in-house in this direction - though nowhere near as far as 3e took it - and thus 3e at least looked somewhat familiar, if dialled to 11.

 

[Zardnaar]

Late 2E wasn't to different from 3.0.

3E retained things like spell patterns and a lot if spells were functionally the same as 2E (different range maybe).

 

[Lanefan]

Those'd be the class designs that balanced martial & magic-using classes, in significant part by giving them rough resource parity, thus undermining the Primacy of Magic.

Depends how you look at it: did it undermine the Primacy of Magic, or enhance it by in effect giving magic to all classes?

 

[Garthanos]

Unless one sees the excitement and interest lying in what they do, rather than (mechanically) what they are.

Rolling a plece of plastic at the right moment is on your exciting list . I dont think I would find your fantasy vietnam survivor stories so interesting oh remember that d20 I rolled.

 

[Lanefan]

Again, I disagree with this. AD&D character, because of the random treasure generation, or, if you played 1e modules, were absolutely dripping with magic items. A given lair (and a lair could easily be 2 trolls or a single wyvern) had about a 15% chance of 3-4 magic items. How many lairs were the PC's looting per level? 10? 20? More? Even if they were looting only 10 lairs per level, by 5th level, that's 20 magic items across the party. Sure, some of them were potions and scrolls, but, more than half were permanent items, if you were following the random treasure generation.

I'm not arguing with you. 1e generates lots of magic items, absolutely.

But it, unlike 3e-and-newer editions, isn't shy about blowing them up; and isn't shy about salting cursed and-or deadly items into the pot.

And that's a very, VERY lowball estimate. Sure, you wound up with extra +1 swords lying around, fair enough, but, that's still the point - you had so many magic items that you had spare items floating around. 3e certainly didn't start the notion that PC's would be dripping in magic items. Heck, the wealth by level presumptions of 3e were probably considerably lower than AD&D.

My experience of 3e when it came to treasure was surprisingly similar to 1e (in most games I play in I tend to end up as treasurer, so I speak from experience): in either system we'd come back from an adventure with about the same amount of gype - same length of list, same rough total value. We were loaded with magic in 3e, with the main difference being that we could also make or easily commission exactly what we wanted. (self-made Rod of Wonder for the win!!!)

 

[Garthanos]

We played the actual adventures.

I played a couple as a player (and actually been so long I do not know what their names were) but doors locking behind you as you went through was a feature of one. The lack of story with nonsensical dungeons (one DM indeed tried the random dungeon generator it didnt fee much different than the module). I had players telling me that they never would tell a DM what their characters family was like because it would be used against them.... adversarial DMs were the meat of the game.

 

[Zardnaar]

I played a couple as a player (and actually been so long I do not know what their names were) but doors locking behind you as you went through was a feature of one. The lack of story with nonsensical dungeons (one DM indeed tried the random dungeon generator it didnt fee much different than the module). I had players telling me that they never would tell a DM what their characters family was like because it would be used against them.... adversarial DMs were the meat of the game.

That's on the DM not the system.

It's like getting really drunk using a cheese grater as a sex you and blaming the booze for the results.

I have been running published adventures, there's a more if a risk sure because it's not kid gloves treatment like 5E but it's not fantasy Vietnam.