D&D General Your favorite things about editions that aren't your favorite.

[CleverNickName]

My least-favorite edition of D&D that I have played is 4th Edition; the rules and mechanics didn't sit well with me or my gaming group. I liked some of the lore, though, especially the lore about the Raven Queen and the Shadowfell. I wish they would have carried that over into 5th Edition.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

For me:

3e: I love how it did away with the race/class restrictions. Depending on my mood, I might feel a little nostalgic for them, but most of the time I think it allowed for so many new character ideas. The OGL also opened many, many doors. Granted, a few of those were probably better off staying shut.

4e: It simplified skills while still covering the bases, and I dug the skill challenges. The default pantheon was great, and the bits of lore behind the default setting of the core books were fun to explore.

 

[Gradine]

2nd Edition: Settings. So many settings. It was a fun way to mix things up, and it led to such great things as Planescape: Torment, so there's always that. 2nd edition also had by far the best D&D computer games.

3.5: The design space. There was just so much room to add whatever you wanted. New classes? Sure. Or make a prestige class, even easier. Something simpler than that? We've got Feats! It got to be way too much way too quickly, but sometimes that can be enjoyable too (until the bulk of my play time came with newer, more casual players long after 3.5's time). Other than that, I do sometimes miss the more granular skill point system.

4e: Monster and encounter design. They finally nailed it. It's the one thing I really miss from 4e that didn't really carry over (though incorporating recharge mechanics was at least a start)

 

[Li Shenron]

Let's see, excluding BECMI, 3.0 and 5e which are all my favourites, that leaves...

OD&D: it started it all
B/X: it was a draft for BECMI
AD&D1: lots of good adventures
AD&D2: lots of good settings
3.5: lead all powegamers away from 3.0
4e: lots of saved money

 

[Ogre Mage]

4E was my least favorite edition. But my favorite 4E innovation was at-will powers for PCs. Because I remember the days of being a low level wizard or sorcerer who had exhausted your two spells for the day. Then you were reduced to shooting a crossbow. 4E at-will powers made being a low-level caster much better.

 

[ccs]

Hmm, what do I like about my non-favorite editions?

OD&D: The idea. Convoluted poorly edited mess it was, but without OD&D there wouldn't any of this.

BX/BECMI/Cyclopedia: The modules.
Also that it was a simple enough game & a refinement of OD&D - the perfect tool to hook the next wave of gamers heading into the 80's. So like OD&D, the IDEA.

2E: The shear quantity of setting options & lore.

3X/PF: In general, the skill system I guess. D&D has yet to make a skill system I like, but this is the closest.
I also like the MC/Feat system for all the potential characters that can be made. Story-wise that's great. Except too many focus on the mechanics instead of the story & it turns to crap..
For PF it'd absolutely be the Adventure Paths. Sooo many hours of entertainment from most of those.

4e: Ok, to be honest I don't even count this as D&D, but for the sake of the question asked....
I like some of the lore & settings in this edition. Dawn War, Shadowfell, Feywild, even some of the FR changes. As with every other edition I'll pick & choose the bits I like & keep using them.
Oh, and I like Eladrin & Dragonborn.
And I love mocking the edition & poking fun at its ardent supporters (all 12 or so of them).

5e: I like that it's easy to play. I love that it's drawing in so many more to my hobby. I love the Warlock class.
The modules are also pretty good, though many require quite a bit of (re)work vs the old BX & AD&D stuff.

6e: "But it doesn't even exist yet! How do you know it's not your favorite?" Because it's not 1e.
But I'm sure there'll be stuff I like in it when it gets here.

 

[Fenris-77]

I liked the modules from the original rules sets a lot too. I miss those. I also don't think I've ever been more excited about something in a TTRPG than the first time I read the Barbarian in Unearthed Arcana. In my defense I was still young. I love 2e for the lore and the expansion of the rules. It felt like a breath of fresh air when it came out. 3e was a power gaming paradise - all those neat crunchy bits. 4e ... yeah, moving on. I didn't play it so I got nothing. 5e was all about a return to comparative simplicity and I really like a lot of what they did with the mechanics.

 

[commandercrud]

BECMI: War Machine. Weapon Mastery. Immortality.

 

[wingsandsword]

. . .another thing that I've thought to point out:

Basic D&D: The Rules Cyclopedia. . .I can very much appreciate the idea of making core D&D into a single book.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I didn't really like any edition after 2E, but I did like how they finally fixed that 'AC runs backwards' thing...

Yeah we manually fixed that in late 2E manually. It looks from old character sheets like we did that in 1998, but I thought we did it in reaction to 3E being announced, which was 1999 (I believe). Maybe we just heard rumours, and one of the rumours was flipped AC/THAC0?

We did it for everything - ACs, To Hit (can't call it THAC0 any more!), saves, proficiencies. It was a tremendous improvement.

But anyway favourite things from non-favourite editions. 2E I listed as my favourite, so we'll skip that - it makes sense too, because I'd have too many things.

1E - Cavaliers. Unearthed Arcana in general. How they did Bards, even though it's really stupid it's also really cool. So of the adventures are wonderful too (probably not the ones you're thinking of!).

RC D&D - Weapon mastery. Oh my god why did no other D&D after that do that? It solved so many problems and potentially could massively narrowed the caster-muggle gap. Also single-part alignments are imho objectively better than two-part alignments.

3E - The changes to how saves worked. I think this was the best way of having it - Will, Fortitude and Reflex, and 3E came up with that. The sheer willingness to just continually add more and more and more and more material into the pot. Yeah, a lot of it was terrible, terrible misses, or just stupid OP (still mad about PrCs that are "objectively superior" to certain base classes, i.e. they got everything the base class did and more!), but there loads of hits too, and loads of just really cool and weird stuff.

4E - The lore - loads of people have mentioned it, but the Dawn War/Primordials, the Feywild/Shadowfell, and so on. It was really good stuff and way overdue I feel. Making Tieflings core, because you all knew it was coming. A lot of cool races in general. Amazing classes that we still haven't got back and probably won't until the last year or two of 5E, or in 6E. How it made players who used to be bad at understanding how their characters worked into sudden experts, who really got it. How amazingly easy it was to DM.

5E - The cool simplicity of a lot of it. The elegance, I guess. The remarkable combination of good traits from various editions. Subclasses and how well-executed they are. Full-caster Bards (as a habitual Bard player this was like some Charles Atlas-type deal!). Warlocks, even though I don't play them. Not backsliding on the 4E races (much).