Likes and Dislikes: Part 2
It’s time for another slowly and casually written break down of my likes and dislikes of the various editions of D&D.
We’ll start with edition by edition (albeit with a large portion of fractured thoughts and meandering), beginning with the earliest versions of D&D; the white books, the BECMI books, and AD&D 1E (all inclusive).
These books were fresh and new and had nothing more than their source books (the actual fiction literature and historical stories and myth) to start with, and a healthy dose of imagination.
The biggest pro and con of this era was the rules…the lack of rules and the excessive rules.
Luckily, for the rules that were too much (like weapon versus armor type and the many, many charts) you could ignore them.
Not so luckily, there would be arguments over rules interpretations. Sometimes they’d be group-killing arguments.
But the lack of rules would also allow for an open-ended, open-minded view of what you can and can’t do in the game.
This all allowed for the DM to fill in the blanks as needed.
Some DM’s invoked a kind of totalitarian power trip, but those games didn’t last long.
Later editions, as more rules were added or clarified, slowly lost the allowance for this imaginative expansion.
Then there was “Vancian” magic; in other words memorizing a spell in the morning and it was erased from your memory once you cast it.
Vancian magic is something I definitely liked about 1E, but can totally see as a problem.
I’ve seen a variety of systems over the years, and while I’m sure point systems like mana or arcane power might make sense, this system seems best to me.
“You only like it because that’s what you started with.”
Possibly, but I don’t think so.
Point systems allow for the same spell to be cast over and over until you’re done. Or perhaps just a couple of your biggest spells…and then you’re done for the day.
You also will always have your utility spells available. No thinking or planning is required.
Yuck.
Now the bad side of Vancian magic is that spellcasters are vulnerable once they’re out of spells. While this is a critical issue more at lower levels, the earlier versions of D&D just had the wizard throw daggers or shoot a light crossbow.
That’s not exactly magical now is it?
4E did fix that with some minor spells being usable constantly. So I’ll give it credit for that.
Another bad aspect of casters in the early versions of D&D was that they surpassed the power of the non-casters at higher levels. Casters got stronger and more numerous spells while the rest were able to attack a little bit more often, add in a little more damage, and hopefully had some magic items to help them out.
While casters were still relatively fragile (especially magic-users) compared to non-casters, unless they were poorly run or unlucky they rarely had to worry about a fighter hounding them and ruining every spell cast. It was often a one-sided fight at name levels.
The BECMI Masters Set added weapon skills, giving 5 ranks of skills with each rank adding bonuses or abilities and increased damage. This would help bridge the gap left, and make fighters feel a bit more useful.
Now they certainly couldn’t create a Meteor Swarm, but an equivalent leveled and geared fighter could dish out enough hurt to make that dragon pause for a minute before it resumed chasing that magic-user.
Speaking of magic items, they are definitely no longer rare things as the editions progressed.
In 3E and later you absolutely had to have them to do well as the levels increased. What you couldn’t get from adventuring you made (at the cost of gold and XP).
In 4E, you picked them off trees like apples.
Ok, maybe not that easily, but the items were formulaic and even less interesting than the 3E versions.
The 3E & 4E games required magic items because the game was “tuned” to be that level in the math of the game.
In the earlier games the math was not as ingrained into the game. The only times you needed magic items was when you were facing certain monsters, and even then it was a weapon.
This allowed the magic items to be varied and interesting, and very possibly overpowered. But they were supposed to be rare (but not unheard of), so any magic item probably should have been a powerful one.
On a side note; I liked 4E’s approach to relics vs. the stuff in earlier editions. Though I never was able to see how they worked in the game before quitting 4E.
Now I’m going to beat a dead horse again: Random encounters
You’d think that something so insignificant as a small random combat would have no real impact on the game, but in the case of 3E & 4E the results were very problematic and ignored.
Both editions had a problem that became dubbed “the 5-minute adventuring day”.
In simple terms the party uses every power they’re able to when the combat starts, or is about to start. Then when the combat is over, they go rest and repeat in 8 hours.
This is unrealistic and the solution is to have random encounters.
But there’s one slight problem with that:
In 3E combats take longer and longer the higher level the group.
In 4E combats take over an hour to complete.
When most gaming groups seem to set aside around 4 hours to run a session of D&D, the idea of random encounters becomes less appealing.
1E & 2E had much quicker combats.
I truly don’t recall any combats taking over an hour; including grand finale combats at the end of a campaign.
Losing 15 minutes (at the most) for a throw away random encounter was perfect.
It kept the players going as the dungeon had roaming packs of dangerous creatures that interrupted their required 6-8 hours of sleep for them to get all their abilities back.
I really tried to add random encounters back to the game in 3.5.
Prior to level 7 combat lengths weren’t too bad, but once they hit level 7 the combats slowed down. With each level after they slowed even more.
I remember simple fights when I ran the World’s Largest Dungeon turning into a buff paperwork night. Everyone had special spells cast on them. Everyone’s math changed. And heaven forbid I removed some or all of those spells. We’d have to spend 15 minutes redoing the math.
The later editions of the game gave us improvements in some areas, but the direction they’ve taken for combats has made the game unpalatable to me.
We’ll start with edition by edition (albeit with a large portion of fractured thoughts and meandering), beginning with the earliest versions of D&D; the white books, the BECMI books, and AD&D 1E (all inclusive).
These books were fresh and new and had nothing more than their source books (the actual fiction literature and historical stories and myth) to start with, and a healthy dose of imagination.
The biggest pro and con of this era was the rules…the lack of rules and the excessive rules.
Luckily, for the rules that were too much (like weapon versus armor type and the many, many charts) you could ignore them.
Not so luckily, there would be arguments over rules interpretations. Sometimes they’d be group-killing arguments.
But the lack of rules would also allow for an open-ended, open-minded view of what you can and can’t do in the game.
This all allowed for the DM to fill in the blanks as needed.
Some DM’s invoked a kind of totalitarian power trip, but those games didn’t last long.
Later editions, as more rules were added or clarified, slowly lost the allowance for this imaginative expansion.
Then there was “Vancian” magic; in other words memorizing a spell in the morning and it was erased from your memory once you cast it.
Vancian magic is something I definitely liked about 1E, but can totally see as a problem.
I’ve seen a variety of systems over the years, and while I’m sure point systems like mana or arcane power might make sense, this system seems best to me.
“You only like it because that’s what you started with.”
Possibly, but I don’t think so.
Point systems allow for the same spell to be cast over and over until you’re done. Or perhaps just a couple of your biggest spells…and then you’re done for the day.
You also will always have your utility spells available. No thinking or planning is required.
Yuck.
Now the bad side of Vancian magic is that spellcasters are vulnerable once they’re out of spells. While this is a critical issue more at lower levels, the earlier versions of D&D just had the wizard throw daggers or shoot a light crossbow.
That’s not exactly magical now is it?
4E did fix that with some minor spells being usable constantly. So I’ll give it credit for that.
Another bad aspect of casters in the early versions of D&D was that they surpassed the power of the non-casters at higher levels. Casters got stronger and more numerous spells while the rest were able to attack a little bit more often, add in a little more damage, and hopefully had some magic items to help them out.
While casters were still relatively fragile (especially magic-users) compared to non-casters, unless they were poorly run or unlucky they rarely had to worry about a fighter hounding them and ruining every spell cast. It was often a one-sided fight at name levels.
The BECMI Masters Set added weapon skills, giving 5 ranks of skills with each rank adding bonuses or abilities and increased damage. This would help bridge the gap left, and make fighters feel a bit more useful.
Now they certainly couldn’t create a Meteor Swarm, but an equivalent leveled and geared fighter could dish out enough hurt to make that dragon pause for a minute before it resumed chasing that magic-user.
Speaking of magic items, they are definitely no longer rare things as the editions progressed.
In 3E and later you absolutely had to have them to do well as the levels increased. What you couldn’t get from adventuring you made (at the cost of gold and XP).
In 4E, you picked them off trees like apples.
Ok, maybe not that easily, but the items were formulaic and even less interesting than the 3E versions.
The 3E & 4E games required magic items because the game was “tuned” to be that level in the math of the game.
In the earlier games the math was not as ingrained into the game. The only times you needed magic items was when you were facing certain monsters, and even then it was a weapon.
This allowed the magic items to be varied and interesting, and very possibly overpowered. But they were supposed to be rare (but not unheard of), so any magic item probably should have been a powerful one.
On a side note; I liked 4E’s approach to relics vs. the stuff in earlier editions. Though I never was able to see how they worked in the game before quitting 4E.
Now I’m going to beat a dead horse again: Random encounters
You’d think that something so insignificant as a small random combat would have no real impact on the game, but in the case of 3E & 4E the results were very problematic and ignored.
Both editions had a problem that became dubbed “the 5-minute adventuring day”.
In simple terms the party uses every power they’re able to when the combat starts, or is about to start. Then when the combat is over, they go rest and repeat in 8 hours.
This is unrealistic and the solution is to have random encounters.
But there’s one slight problem with that:
In 3E combats take longer and longer the higher level the group.
In 4E combats take over an hour to complete.
When most gaming groups seem to set aside around 4 hours to run a session of D&D, the idea of random encounters becomes less appealing.
1E & 2E had much quicker combats.
I truly don’t recall any combats taking over an hour; including grand finale combats at the end of a campaign.
Losing 15 minutes (at the most) for a throw away random encounter was perfect.
It kept the players going as the dungeon had roaming packs of dangerous creatures that interrupted their required 6-8 hours of sleep for them to get all their abilities back.
I really tried to add random encounters back to the game in 3.5.
Prior to level 7 combat lengths weren’t too bad, but once they hit level 7 the combats slowed down. With each level after they slowed even more.
I remember simple fights when I ran the World’s Largest Dungeon turning into a buff paperwork night. Everyone had special spells cast on them. Everyone’s math changed. And heaven forbid I removed some or all of those spells. We’d have to spend 15 minutes redoing the math.
The later editions of the game gave us improvements in some areas, but the direction they’ve taken for combats has made the game unpalatable to me.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 12:20 PM
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