Which edition change changed the game the most?

[Beginning of the End]

Supplement I: Greyhawk.

There is a chasm of difference between the original booklets and what appeared in Supplement I.

I think the scope of this change is often underestimated, but in terms of actually playing the game I'm struck by how similar my experience with OD&D is to my experience with BECMI, AD&D2, and 3E.

When I was young, I:

- Used AD&D1 supplements with BECMI and AD&D2.
- Freely intermixed BECMI and AD&D2 material without even thinking about it.

The editions of the game from '79 to '99, while certainly possessing some key distinctions, were inter-compatible to the point of "I don't need to even convert this stuff". So other than Basic's conflation of race and class and the change in XP methodology, it doesn't surprise me that no one is citing a significant rules-shift in this time period.

Now, for the DM's perspective, let me copy-paste from an e-mail exchange I had with my Dm who has:

- Used OD&D, AD&D, and BECMI modules with 3E.
- Used the same 3E modules in both 3E and OD&D.
- Used the same 4E modules in both 4E and OD&D.

(quote)

Unlike the BECMI/AD&D material, all of these obviously required mechanical conversion. But in each case I lazily followed the conversion process of least resistance: If the encounter says it gets 8 goblins, then I open up the local equivalent of the Monster Manual and use the stats for 8 goblins.

Here's what I experienced:

- The OD&D, AD&D, and BECMI modules all played fine in 3E.
- The 3E modules played pretty much identically in both 3E and OD&D.*
- The 4E module played radically differently in 4E and OD&D.

(end quote)

Speaking as a player, you can see a similar continuity in playing the core classes. From OD&D to 3E there was a gradual accumulation of new options for characters, but surprisingly little difference in how they played at a basic level: Fighters in OD&D play like fighters in AD&D, BECMI, and 3E; magic-users in OD&D play like wizards in AD&D, BECMI, and 3E; and so forth. But fighters and wizards in 4E don't play anything like their predecessors.

4E is the breakpoint at which the gameplay shifts on a fundamental level on both sides of the DM's screen. (Which is unsurprising, since the designers said they were doing that deliberately.)

On a non-mechanical level, you also have a basic continuity of implied cosmology from OD&D to 3E (with the same gradual accrual of additional bling). Here one finds a significant shift from AD&D1 to AD&D2, but 3E largely shifted back towards AD&D1 in this regard. But those shifts once again pale in comparison to the significant break we find in 4E from what came before.

I can understand people saying that 3E's process of cleaning up and unifying the system was a methodology that is shared by 4E's unified design scheme. But 3E created a unified system by polishing the gameplay of D&D. 4E created a unified system by jettisoning the gameplay of D&D.

 

[Gryph]

If I compare each edition back to the original than I would have voted 4e.
I think of the editions as a contimuum and from that viewpoint I think 3e was a bigger departure from 2e than 4e is from 3.5.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The 3e multiclassing that only existed in 3e? How do you not see the problem in this?

3Ed multiclassing was an amalgam and expansion of what had gone before in 1Ed/2Ed's multiclassing and dual-classing systems. In all three, you can make a fighter/cleric/magic-user or fighter/magic-user/thief (albeit with slightly differing terminology) right from the first book.

And multiclassing PCs got all the benefits of the classes at their appropriate level- a single classed MU and a multiclassed MU will have the same number of spells at 3rd level; single and multiclassed fighters get the same benefits at 1st.

With 4Ed's PHB, you were limited to multiclassing into one and only one other class. Ever. (Unless you were a 1/2E or bard.) And whether you multiclass or Hybrid (or both), you only get a preselected few class abilities. With 4Ed multiclassing, you usually don't even get to choose what features you get. Hybridizing alleviates this to a certain extent, but not completely.

3Ed was a growth, 4Ed was a pruning.

 

[wingsandsword]

4e. It's not even close.

Agreed. 2e to 3e did completely change the game system, but the new d20 rules seemed to just be a clarification of what came before. It took 20 years of AD&D and turned it into a more intuitive, less contradictory, far easier to learn system that still "felt" like AD&D, but had learned from decades of game design progress. You could take the same campaign over the years and seamlessly convert it from 1e to to 2e to 3e to 3.5e, but at 4e it would seem like nothing is the same anymore.

3e to 4e was almost as vast a change, but instead it was more like it took a game that loosely resembled D&D and bolted the D&D name onto it for marketing purposes. It may be a fine game, but it is vastly changed in both mechanics and presumed fluff from the D&D editions that came before.

I'd say that 3e trying hard to retain as many elements of flavor from prior editions as it did in the core rules and keeping the changes in setting presumptions fairly small is one thing that made the 3e to 4e split bigger.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Edit: No, my mistake. I've just checked my copy of OD&D (not the 1974 version), and the situation's not as clear as that. Dwarves and Halflings progress as Fighting Men; Elves as some sort of Fighting Man/Wizard multiclass.

OD&D clearly instructs you to select race and class as separate things, but then racial limits on class selection were stringent. If you're using just the LBBs, the distinction is slight:

Humans - Fighters, Clerics, Magic-Users
Dwarves - Fighters
Elves - Fighters or Magic-Users (and could swap before each adventure)
Halflings - Fighters

But once you add Supplement 1, the separate selection is clear:

Humans - Fighters, Clerics, Magic-Users, Thieves
Dwarves - Fighters, Thieves
Elves* - Fighter/Magic-Users + Clerics, Thieves
Halflings - Fighters, Thieves
Half-Elves** - Fighter/Magic-Users + Clerics(?)

* Elves couldn't be clerics in 1974, but in Supplement 1 they could be Fighter/Magic-Users, Fighter/Magic-User/Clerics, Fighter/Magic-User/Thieves, or just Thieves. The mechanics are no longer "swap between each adventure", but rather something more akin to AD&D multi-classing ("experience is always distributed proportionately in the three categories even when the elf can no longer gain additional levels in a given category").

** Half-elves, confusingly, cannot be clerics because "in this regard their human side prevails" (despite humans originally being the only race with clerics). But it turns out they can be Fighter/Magic-User/Clerics just like an elf if their Wisdom score is "13 or more".

In '77-'79, Gygax refined this morass into a race + class system for AD&D that was more unified and clearer.

Also working in '77, Holmes apparently felt the easiest way to make the original D&D rules clear to new players in BD&D was to specify that dwarves and halflings defaulted to fighters and then list them on, for example, the level advancement tables as such. Race and class were still separate choices, but it's easy to see why Moldvay in '81 would further refine this into the race-as-class concept that carried through into BECMI.

(Holmes is slightly more complicated than that because you're told that dwarves and halflings can be thieves in one part of the rules, but also told that they require special rules found in AD&D in another (possibly with the implication that you can only play them as such if you own AD&D). I know at least one person who interprets Holmes to mean that the "Fighting-Men, Elves, Halflings, and Dwarves" XP table should be used to determine the level of a dwarven thief, which means they advance at a slower rate than human thieves. BID.)

 

[Reynard]

3E.

Now, 4E certainly changed the fluff and the balance between classes, and 2E changed the tone and led to "story" games. But it was 3E that fundamentally changed what gave PCs XP.

The shift from XP for treasure to XP for killing things -- I know, I know, but this is the reality of the situation -- fundamentally changed the way the game was meant to be played.

 

[Gryph]

The 3e multiclassing that only existed in 3e? How do you not see the problem in this?

It also got rid of the multi-classing that existed in 1e and 2e. Baby and the bathwater.

 

[Stoat]

3E.

Now, 4E certainly changed the fluff and the balance between classes, and 2E changed the tone and led to "story" games. But it was 3E that fundamentally changed what gave PCs XP.

The shift from XP for treasure to XP for killing things -- I know, I know, but this is the reality of the situation -- fundamentally changed the way the game was meant to be played.

As Prof. C. has pointed out, the 1gp = 1xp rule disappeared when 2E debuted. (IIRC, it was an optional rule in the 2E DMG).

 

[Plane Sailing]

I voted 4e. I've lived through every version of D&D and both in mechanics and 'feel' it made the biggest difference for me.

The second biggest would have been 3e, which changed many, many things mechanically, but still maintained a lot of old school feel (e.g. the differences between fighters and wizards).

Cheers

 

[Plane Sailing]

Take a tenth level elf.

Wait.

Ok, take a tenth level human fighter/thief/druid/bard.

Wait.

Ok, take a multiclassed elven fighter/mage.

Wait.

Ok, take a half-dragon fighter/thief/woodlands sniper/eye of gromash/exotic weapon master.

Wait.

The 3e multiclassing that only existed in 3e? How do you not see the problem in this?

As you appear to be primarily posting to provoke other people, I'm booting you from this thread.