What is the essence of D&D

[Zardnaar]

You can call it what you want but if you are parting the red sea in your miracle list... and using a mace only it is what it is.

D&D drew on multiple sources. Yes some are biblical and yeah I would call them the essence of D&D. Some spells come from Greek and Roman sources.

Jesus can walk on water so can my cleric big whoop. Gygax was a kid in the 40s hell is in the 80s I had a book of Bible stories.


Big whoop.

Essence of D&D is heavily rooted in Western mythology and let legends including the Judeo Christian tradition.

Barely been to church in my life doesn't bother me at all.

 

[Zardnaar]

Keep banging that drum there was far more to it... boring assed bags of hit points has less appeal to my wife than having her rogue throw out some cool assed maneuvers.

Phone auto correct, I meant wide.

 

[Coroc]

Heh, while I am sure that folks out there have played the no-caster parties, I'd point out that if you look at the pre-gen characters of EVERY SINGLE MODULE that includes pre-gen characters, you'll find parties with casters.

I'd say that's pretty solid evidence that the game presupposes you will have casters in the group.

Ok no pregenerated characters in that material as far as I can recall, but I do own some of the historical realistic background campaign 2e books (a mighty fortress campaign, Vikings campaign, Crusaders campaign) and they absolutely have no casters, e.g. a cleric would not get spells etc.
So you can say your evidence is confirmed by this exception, but even in 2e there was the concept of the no magic world, it just wasn't their standard. They even recommended different levels of magic being present in ones campaign world and gave guidelines up to which level priestly or arcane magic should be present in them.
No stupid discussion back then about game balance, if you wanted to play a priest character in a low magic world you would grab a mace and engage in melee for the combat pillar and save your few spells for healing up a bit after the battle.

 

[Zardnaar]

Ok no pregenerated characters in that material as far as I can recall, but I do own some of the historical realistic background campaign 2e books (a mighty fortress campaign, Vikings campaign, Crusaders campaign) and they absolutely have no casters, e.g. a cleric would not get spells etc.
So you can say your evidence is confirmed by this exception, but even in 2e there was the concept of the no magic world, it just wasn't their standard. They even recommended different levels of magic being present in ones campaign world and gave guidelines up to which level priestly or arcane magic should be present in them.
No stupid discussion back then about game balance, if you wanted to play a priest character in a low magic world you would grab a mace and engage in melee for the combat pillar and save your few spells for healing up a bit after the battle.

Spells that were rituals lol.

No cleric changed the campaign dynamic generally. Dungeon hacks went out the window hexcrawls were fun.

My group had domain in not Africa and built shipyards in hidden locations and had merchant prince type domains.

You don't need martial healing. 1d3 healing fight once or twice a week, lots of downtime hand waved away. Might take you 10 years to hit level 14 instead of 1 year. Real time it was about the same.

 

[Garthanos]

Phone auto correct, I meant wide.

Wife worked she likes the flavor of those tricks as much as anything may not care hugely how they exactly work at a tactical level... but hamstringing enemies to slow them down or tripping them up and not being punished by dying because you weren't just beating down the hit points is golden.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wife worked she likes the flavor of those tricks as much as anything may not care hugely how they exactly work at a tactical level... but hamstringing enemies to slow them down or tripping them up and not being punished by dying because you weren't just beating down the hit points is golden.

Slows game down. Best debuff is death.
2E was tactical for us, strategic in BECMI, 1E wasn't really our main one barely played it relative to the others.

 

[Garthanos]

How much of the Players Handbook is just gone if you remove spells that says to me how significant magic is to the game.

 

[Garthanos]

Slows game down. Best debuff is death.

Not for me AND as I said I will take many times the duration to resolve if it leads to interesting choices. That slowed group of enemies now is easier for your caster to kill with his area of effect....synergy and team work.

 

[Garthanos]

As opposed to a pure single character nova conflict (not just combat) is done...

 

[Zardnaar]

How much of the Players Handbook is just gone if you remove spells that says to me how significant magic is to the game.

So?

Since you seem to hate every edition except for 4E just don't play those editions. We didn't play 4E it's no big deal.

Whatever you like has trade offs. BECMI had a very small spells section in the Rules Cyclopedia. Take powers out if the 4E phb you lose around a third. 12-15 page class descriptions not fun.

4E didn't give you opt out, every other edition didn't. Don't like magic play something else. Don't like powers in 4E you're screwed.

Doesn't really matter what you prefer it's like 5E gave you opt in choices as well there's only 4 races and archtypes as core.