What would you like to see brought back from older editions?

[WyzardWhately]

I've always liked 'XP for gold' as a system, but would it work in a system where you could purchase/make magic items with gold?

I suppose it depends. If you have to blow the money on mechanically useless things to get the XP out of it, then...well, people have the choice of getting magic items or getting XP. That would seem...odd, at best.

If you just have to haul the coins and gems back to the surface to get XP for them, then it makes money a huge motivator - sneaking past a monster and just ganking its treasure becomes a great plan. Hell, PCs might come up with involved schemes attempting to steal a dragon horde without fighting the dragon. I always like it when my players start to get clever.

However, I prefer to make purchasing magic items difficult or impossible, creating them time-consuming (but possible). With that in place, gold as XP doesn't present too much of a problem.

 

[Rechan]

If you just have to haul the coins and gems back to the surface to get XP for them, then it makes money a huge motivator - sneaking past a monster and just ganking its treasure becomes a great plan. Hell, PCs might come up with involved schemes attempting to steal a dragon horde without fighting the dragon. I always like it when my players start to get clever.

Don't forget money making schemes, or small goals that could lead to generating a lot of GP.

But then you run into the problem of something like, the PCs mining gold or other material for the XP. Or just hiring miners to bring up the gold.

 

[Reynard]

I suppose it depends. If you have to blow the money on mechanically useless things to get the XP out of it, then...well, people have the choice of getting magic items or getting XP. That would seem...odd, at best.

If you just have to haul the coins and gems back to the surface to get XP for them, then it makes money a huge motivator - sneaking past a monster and just ganking its treasure becomes a great plan. Hell, PCs might come up with involved schemes attempting to steal a dragon horde without fighting the dragon. I always like it when my players start to get clever.

However, I prefer to make purchasing magic items difficult or impossible, creating them time-consuming (but possible). With that in place, gold as XP doesn't present too much of a problem.

Training costs were in AD&D for just this reason -- it meant the cash that provided the Xp wasn't there just to inflate character power; it actually served a purpose.

Theres another elelemnt to this: in 3.x, the XP reward and the GP reward for any given encounter are designed to be equavalent, without the added benefit of making the PCs work for the majority of those XPs. Watching PCs try and figure out how to get the 500 lb, 10000 gp statue out of the dungeon is always entertaining.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Don't forget money making schemes, or small goals that could lead to generating a lot of GP.

But then you run into the problem of something like, the PCs mining gold or other material for the XP. Or just hiring miners to bring up the gold.

I think there should probably be some point at which increasing your personal net worth no longer equates to a gain of XP. Even if we do have a GP to XP mechanic. But running a gold mine *would* be kind of cool.

 

[Belorin]

One of the guys I game with still draws a shield around his AC and a heart around his Hit Points he has done it for every character he has ever played in D&D, he wins cool points from me whenever I see his sheet. It brings back a bunch of good memories.

I would love for the feeling of discovery again thats what I liked most about the good ole' days. I had the PHB and was told in no uncertain terms that the DMG and MM were off limits, that was so much fun......when I started DM'ing though a couple years later (still back in 1E and Basic) nothing was mysterius to me anymore....but alas I am the primary person who runs games for my group and I want to run games for my son. Maybe I can recapture some of that feeling though him as he will only have access to the players handbook for a long time hopefullyl.

Mechanic wise, I liked moral rules, wild talent psionic random rolls, the old charts for making an artifact, the original Bard, and fireballs and lighting bolts that would fill up entire sections of dungeons or bounce off walls.

Not the...

The truly hardest class to qualify for might have been Appendix II's bard -- not for any ability score prerequisite but for its class prerequisites:

"Bards begin play as fighters… until they have achieved at least 5th level of experience. Anytime thereafter, and in any event prior to attaining the 8th level, they must change their class to that of thieves. Again, sometime between 5th and 9th level of ability, bards must leave off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards under druidical tutelage."

Bard?
And yes to Strongholds, followers and henchmen!

Bel

 

[Reynard]

Not the...
Bard?

The original Prestige Class!

 

[The Little Raven]

Yeah, Vampires aren't even evil. Football players are.

...born to sow the seeds of anarchy!

 

[sjmiller]

I want gnomes in the PH.
I want Illusionists as their own class with their own spell list. (OK, that's all optional)
I want major artifacts to have potential bad side effects, or require unusual actions to activate them.
I want a wide variety of real world polearms.

I just want them to stop messing around with the game and making it "cooler," because I do not think any of their changes so far are all that cool.

 

[Aldarc]

Druids.

 

[elrobey]

A rule that no more than three rangers can ever be in the same place. ;-)