I played 4th edition for the first time - here are my thoughts.

[Kurald Galain]

@Kurald Galain: The issue with MUs may not have been how 35-year-old Gygax meant it to be played, but it was certainly the way most pre-adolescent or adolescent male newcomers to the game played it.

"Players like combat" is not the same as "every plot is resolved with 3 or 4 level-appropriate combats per day". That's a rather huge difference. Also, whatever makes you think that players who want lots of combat play at level 1? Why on earth would they?

[Beoric]

"Players like combat" is not the same as "every plot is resolved with 3 or 4 level-appropriate combats per day". That's a rather huge difference. Also, whatever makes you think that players who want lots of combat play at level 1? Why on earth would they?

In 1e? When they are 10 years old and trying to figure out the game? Because the players handbook expressly told them to.

[Kurald Galain]

In 1e? When they are 10 years old and trying to figure out the game? Because the players handbook expressly told them to.

The 1E players handbook told them that "every plot is resolved with 3 or 4 level-appropriate combats per day". Really now. Please provide a page number for where it says so, then.

[Beoric]

The 1E players handbook told them that "every plot is resolved with 3 or 4 level-appropriate combats per day". Really now. Please provide a page number for where it says so, then.

Sorry, to be clear, the 1e PH told them that every character began at first level. Page 8, under the heading "Creating the Player Character", second last sentence of the first paragraph.

Also, to be clear, I never said or implied in my previous posts that "every plot is resolved with 3 or 4 level-appropriate combats per day", so I don't know what you were responding to in your post #121.

Although, since you bring it up, I might point out that if you are in a dungeon and have 3 or 4 talky-talky or exploration encounters, its not like you have to call it a day and go back to town. No, you are entirely capable of pressing on until you DO have 3-4 combats.

Unless your characters suffer from social anxiety, then all that talking can be exhausting.

[Kurald Galain]

Sorry, to be clear, the 1e PH told them that every character began at first level.

Starts, yes, but doesn't stay there for long.

Getting back to the point, the argument being brought up is that 1E sucks because (A) characters are expected to advance through fighting, (B) even at first level, multiple combats per day is the default, (C) when not casting spells, wizards are only capable of using darts and/or a crossbow; and (D) doing the same thing every round is boring.

Even casual analysis shows that these four assumptions may be true in 3E and 4E (except for C since 4E wizards cannot run out of spells), but they very obviously do not hold in 1E or for that matter 2E.

[Beoric]

Starts, yes, but doesn't stay there for long.

Getting back to the point, the argument being brought up is that 1E sucks because (A) characters are expected to advance through fighting, (B) even at first level, multiple combats per day is the default, (C) when not casting spells, wizards are only capable of using darts and/or a crossbow; and (D) doing the same thing every round is boring.

Even casual analysis shows that these four assumptions may be true in 3E and 4E (except for C since 4E wizards cannot run out of spells), but they very obviously do not hold in 1E or for that matter 2E.

I have always found (D) to be absolutely true.

10 year old me found (C) to be true. From the existence of thief skills we inferred that if the rules didn't provide for a chance, you weren't able to do that. I now know that was not the intention, but the rules did not expressly call out that you could attempt things not on your character sheet, and I don't think we were alone in playing that way. The problem was alleviated when non-weapon proficiencies were introduced, but by then I made the switch to multiclass characters and never had the issue again (and we dumped demihuman level limits, which I don't think was uncommon).

In my experience (B) was also true, even at first level. More non-combat encounters did not make for less combat encounters in a day, it just made for more total encounters for a day. Given how early published adventures were written (dungeon focussed, with nowhere really safe to hole up in the dungeon, often based on tournament dungeons with time pressure), I am inclined to think this was the norm.

(A) was not true RAW. However, IME a lot of groups never understood the reasoning behind granting XPs for treasure, so it often got houseruled in (I know at least one DM I played with regularly did this). And to 10 year old murder-hobos, combat was the default way of getting the treasure, so (A) might as well have been true.

[neonchameleon]

Except that the first editions of D&D didn't have non-combat rules; it was all based on the *player* to make up for the low level MU's worthless combat capabilities in non-combat situations, as you suggest, but *any* could do that because there was nothing about the MU that made them any better at it. That's not game balance.

OK. Half of this has already been debunked. Eight pages of hireling management rules is a lot. The other half is that of the goal of the game. Gygaxian D&D had as a core rule 1GP = 1XP. And as monsters had about 3GP for every XP they were worth, smart groups wouldn't be in the business of killing monsters so much as running heavily armed heists, looting the treasure and avoiding fighting the monsters. And if you can tell me how out of combat the wizard is less useful than the fighter other than normally being able to carry less stuff (offset by not wearing armour) I'd be interested to hear it.

Wandering monsters on the other hand were rolled for every ten minutes and didn't carry treasure - so they were a punishment. 100% of the risk, 25% of the reward, or nothing gets you nothing if you talked your way out of a confrontation (which was probably still the better option).

I find it almost farcical for people to keep defending the early editions of D&D as having a semblance of balance because "you must not have been playing it right" when, if you go by the *actual written rules* rather than attempting to defend Gygax, it's laughably imbalanced and patently absurd.

As I and several others have demonstrated in this thread, you appear to not know what the actual written rules were. If you play a cargo-cult version of Gygaxian D&D based on ignoring hireling rules, ignoring XP for GP (or just playing badly), and frequently dumping the wandering monster pacing rules and a lot of other rules that look weird but were actually put in there for balance then yes it's laughably imbalanced.

I'm not trying to demonize Gygax or disparage him for everything he did to make this hobby that I love so dearly, but he (and the editions he wrote/created) was *far* from perfect and he made a *lot* of largely arbitrary and patently *bad* decisions with post facto justification (by both himself and others) in order to maintain his reputation as a legend among tabletop game designers.

Gygax as a game designer sucked. To anyone disagreeing with me on this I invite them to read first Mythus then Cyborg Commando. Fortunately Arneson was the designer and Gygax the developer - and Gygax was a good dev.

If you read the stories about the early games of D&D that created a lot of the mythos/history of the Greyhawk setting, there's no mention *at all* of entourages and war dogs. Most of the stories involve a tiny handful of players *as the only actors and combatants* and often it was just a single one.

This has a kernel of truth in it. Most of the famous stories of the early games of D&D that created a lot of the mythos/history of the Greyhawk setting refer to high level characters for what should be very obvious reasons. And to put it simply just going into the Demonweb Pits is more than the life is worth of the average hireling, while hirelings are extremely important if you want to clear out the Caves beneath the Keep on the Borderlands as a first level fighter.

Gygaxian D&D was designed quite intentionally in tiers. From levels 1-5 or so you were low rent sellswords with platoons of hirelings trying to keep the local critter population down. From levels 5-10 or so you were people with a rep for being able to fix problems that normal people (including hirelings) wouldn't dare - and the hirelings would just be one shotted if they tried going with you. And from level 9+ you were the movers and shakers of the land and got a keep, cathedral, or wizard's tower as a class feature (and frequently operated as a single character). And frankly something that can be done by Sigby's brother Rigby the second level fighter even with a platoon of like-minded folks is unlikely to create the lore of Greyhawk.

[MwaO]

And as monsters had about 3GP for every XP they were worth, smart groups wouldn't be in the business of killing monsters so much as running heavily armed heists, looting the treasure and avoiding fighting the monsters.

The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters

http://www.rogermwilcox.com/adnd/IUDC1.html

A fun read. There's a random chance that in AD&D a Centaur might have a million gp gem. So some of the PCs go around hunting them down. One player finds that outrageous and doesn't.

[neonchameleon]

The Intercontinental Union of Disgusting Characters

http://www.rogermwilcox.com/adnd/IUDC1.html

A fun read. There's a random chance that in AD&D a Centaur might have a million gp gem. So some of the PCs go around hunting them down. One player finds that outrageous and doesn't.

Objection! Story based on house rules.

I can believe the million GP gem - but there's a rule in there to prevent rising more than a single level at a time precisely to prevent events like that happening. (Because Gygax's group were the sort of munchkins/playtesters/tabletop wargamers that absolutely would have done so)

[Beoric]

I love that the paladin and anti-paladin hit it off.

[Kurald Galain]

Gygaxian D&D was designed quite intentionally in tiers. From levels 1-5 or so you were low rent sellswords with platoons of hirelings trying to keep the local critter population down. From levels 5-10 or so you were people with a rep for being able to fix problems that normal people (including hirelings) wouldn't dare - and the hirelings would just be one shotted if they tried going with you. And from level 9+ you were the movers and shakers of the land and got a keep, cathedral, or wizard's tower as a class feature

Yes; this is an important thing that people tend to forget. If they see that their preferred playstyle X doesn't fit with level Y, then the normal outcome isn't "this game sucks", but the obvious conclusion is "hey, let's play at a higher (or lower) level". It is entirely intentional that level-1 characters are barely better than commoners, and level 10 characters are the equivalent of a duke or bishop.

[Pugwampy]

Pathfinder is the company I consider to be the effective holder of the D&D franchise now.

D&D5 seems to be an overly complicated bodge to try and merge the the D&D and 4e markets.

I read the 4th edition core rulebook . The closest game i could compare this alien concept with is Magic the Gathering or perhaps thats an insult to Magic the Gathering ?

I cannot believe Gygax would have ever approved of rules 4 .
WOTC got greedy. They wanted a whole new system to sell a whole bunch of new rules books . They have no respect for old rules or old nerds .This is not Dungeons and Dragons . They used the word DND to sell it . They had no faith in their product to even give it a unique name .


Sometimes I speculate if they just wanted to bury the creator of DND so they could enjoy sole glory . I know a forum user who says he helped create the Spell Jammer . He said the woman in charge of TSR sold them out and betrayed them and took all their ideas and lawyered up.

I have not bothered to read 5E but it seems like a sad attempt to merge both 3 and 4 rules in an effort to satisfy everyone . Too little and too late .

I am extremly grateful to Paizo for giving us Pathfinder . Its not perfect but it takes DND further . We can use our old rule books but we can also build on DND
As much as I love 3.5 . I cannot say I was 100 percent satisfied .

[Sneak Dog]

I read the 4th edition core rulebook . The closest game i could compare this alien concept with is Magic the Gathering or perhaps thats an insult to Magic the Gathering ?

I cannot believe Gygax would have ever approved of rules 4 .
WOTC got greedy. They wanted a whole new system to sell a whole bunch of new rules books . They have no respect for old rules or old nerds .This is not Dungeons and Dragons . They used the word DND to sell it . They had no faith in their product to even give it a unique name .


Sometimes I speculate if they just wanted to bury the creator of DND so they could enjoy sole glory . I know a forum user who says he helped create the Spell Jammer . He said the woman in charge of TSR sold them out and betrayed them and took all their ideas and lawyered up.

I have not bothered to read 5E but it seems like a sad attempt to merge both 3 and 4 rules in an effort to satisfy everyone . Too little and too late .

I am extremly grateful to Paizo for giving us Pathfinder . Its not perfect but it takes DND further . We can use our old rule books but we can also build on DND
As much as I love 3.5 . I cannot say I was 100 percent satisfied .

Interesting.

I played 4e. It felt like the system for what Pathfinder is trying to do: an adventuring party that keeps adventuring across all levels.
4e has a less than perfect implementation, but the philosophy it is based upon is solid. 4e says everyone gets to do stuff at all levels. Fighters get as excited about a level-up as a wizard.

I DM'd Pathfinder, it felt like trying to use rules that intend you to go from adventuring party to lords of keeps and whatnot, without actually telling you that the players should be lording keeps and whatnot. It still struggles greatly with the balance between casters and non-casters and the way magic is set up in D&D to do anything and everything at higher levels.

Then I played 5e. I feel like it is just an iteration upon 3.5 with the only solved problem being complexity. There's insane variation in the complexity of classes and how much stuff they get for a level-up. The in-combat balance is pretty sound due to the lack of complexity, but outside of it casters gain the advantage as per usual with their versatility.

[neonchameleon]

I read the 4th edition core rulebook . The closest game i could compare this alien concept with is Magic the Gathering or perhaps thats an insult to Magic the Gathering ? This is not dungeons and dragons .

I cannot believe Gygax would have ever approved of rules 4 .
WOTC got greedy. They wanted a whole new system to sell a whole bunch of new rules books . They have no respect for old rules .

There is a vast amount of irony here coming from a 3.5 fan. D&D 3.5 was literally planned from before the launch of 3.0 in order to sell a bunch of new rule books while changing just enough to make things not backwards compatible.

And when we're talking for no respect for old rules, 3.0 is the iteration with the least respect for old rules. It actively removed the hireling section, the explicit endgame, the level soft-cap, and most of the balancing factors on the wizard from not knowing any free spells after first level in Gygaxian D&D to being given a spellbook with a lot in 3.X to the spell saves being something that kept the save-or-suck wizard in check in Gygaxian D&D being turned into a huge power boost for the save-or-suck wizard in 3.X. 3.5 meanwhile has just enough respect for its predecessor that they made it deliberately impossible to ruin system mastery.

Monte Cook, ibid.
During the design of 3.0, one of the things that we realized was a huge strength of D&D is a concept we called "mastery." Mastery, in this context, is the idea that an avid fan of the game is going to really delve into the rules to understand how they work. We actually designed 3.0 with mastery in mind. For example, we created subsystems that worked like other systems, so that if you knew how one worked, you'd find the other one easier to understand. But I digress.

Anyway, the changes in 3.5 are so pervasive, and some of them so subtle, that any mastery people had achieved is gone. "Oh come on, Monte," one might reply, "the changes aren't that bad." I'm not even talking about "good" or "bad" here. The problem is that there are just enough changes that a player has to question everything. Even if fireball didn't really change, after you've had to re-learn how wall of force, flame arrow, and polymorph work, how can you be sure? Welcome to the game sessions where you've got to look everything up again. With 3.0, it was our plan to get people past that stage as quickly as possible. Obviously, 3.5 demonstrates that plan is no longer in motion and that mastery has been abandoned as a goal. With 3.5 coming out this quickly with this level of change, you can be sure that in three years, 4th Edition will have as many or more. And the cycle of learning and relearning will simply continue.

I've heard current D&D designers and editors say that once they got used to 3.5 and tried to go back and play a 3.0 game, they couldn't remember what had and hadn't changed or how anything worked. If that's true of the designers, why is Wizards inflicting this confusion upon the audience?

And Gygax's responses to 3.X were always diplomatically not talking about it.

4e on the other hand is in many ways a lot more like the game Gygax designed than either 3.0 or 3.5 is. Gygax designed a hacked tabletop wargame - 4e is a hacked boardgame/MMO. 3.0 and 3.5 on the other hand are attempted world simulation engines. Like AD&D there are deliberate tiers of play in 4e while 3.0 and 3.5 removed the level cap entirely with no thought for what this would do for the game. And 4e quite deliberately avoids the Weird Wizard Show that Gygax warned about - while 3.0 and 3.5 both systematically stripped out all the balancing factors Gygax had taken pains to put in.

E. Gary Gygax in The Strategic Review, February 1976
Magic-use was thereby to be powerful enough to enable its followers to compete with any other type of player-character, and yet the use of magic would not be so great as to make those using it overshadow all others. This was the conception, but in practice it did not work out as planned. Primarily at fault is the game itself which does not carefully explain the reasoning behind the magic system. Also, the various magic items for employment by magic-users tend to make them too powerful in relation to other classes (although the GREYHAWK supplement took steps to correct this somewhat).
...
If magic is unrestrained in the campaign, D & D quickly degenerates into a weird wizard show where players get bored quickly, or the referee is forced to change the game into a new framework which will accommodate what he has created by way of player-characters. It is the opinion of this writer that the most desirable game is one in which the various character types are able to compete with each other as relative equals

3.0 was the edition produced with no respect at all for Gygax, stripping out most of his hard work as a developer. 3.5 was planned for financial reasons even before 3.0 was launched and released a mere two and a half years later, and with that base for a 3.5 fan to call any other edition "getting greedy" is incredibly ironic. 4e meanwhile went right back to the drawing board and threw out the tabletop wargame D&D was based on in favour of an MMO inspired boardgame - and then, unlike 3.0 and 3.5 actively learned from Gygax and why he did things and brought a lot of that back.

I am extremly grateful to Paizo for giving us Pathfinder . Its not perfect but it takes DND further . We can use our old rule books but we can also build on DND

Just none of the D&D created by Gygax. And for using your old rulebooks as something you praise, it's once again ironic coming from a D&D 3.5 fan.

[MwaO]

I read the 4th edition core rulebook . The closest game i could compare this alien concept with is Magic the Gathering or perhaps thats an insult to Magic the Gathering ?

I cannot believe Gygax would have ever approved of rules 4 .
WOTC got greedy. They wanted a whole new system to sell a whole bunch of new rules books . They have no respect for old rules or old nerds .This is not Dungeons and Dragons . They used the word DND to sell it . They had no faith in their product to even give it a unique name .

I am extremly grateful to Paizo for giving us Pathfinder . Its not perfect but it takes DND further . We can use our old rule books but we can also build on DND
As much as I love 3.5 . I cannot say I was 100 percent satisfied .

Honestly, speaking as someone who started playing AD&D in 1979…

I think he'd be a lot less happy with 3e/5e/Pathfinder than 4e. He wasn't particularly attached to most of the sacred cows of D&D - if you ever read Lejendary Adventures, he throws most of them out.

And there's a couple of reasons more:
The 3e/5e multiclassing systems are an abomination of bad game design. They're filled with trap choices, strictly inferior options, system mastery, etc...

Ed Greenwood's influence is most minimized in 4e compared to 3e/5e. Particularly his NPCs who could summon up Gygax's favorite PC to behave similar to Ed's while talking to Ed. Seriously, you think the edition war between 3e/4e was bad and irrational and a money grab? You should have heard the people upset that Gygax got kicked out right before 2e came out.

[Kurald Galain]

D&D 3.5 was literally planned from before the launch of 3.0 in order to sell a bunch of new rule books while changing just enough to make things not backwards compatible.

That's not "planned", that's some people (the business team) liking the idea and other people (the designers) opposed. You know, just like every other edition of D&D ever. And since neither team was actually around for much time after launch, the decision was taken years later. Again, just like every other edition of D&D ever. Overall, that makes it a pretty silly argument. That's unfortunate because you had some good points otherwise, but this substantially weakens the entire idea.

[Dr.Samurai]

Ed Greenwood's influence is most minimized in 4e compared to 3e/5e. Particularly his NPCs who could summon up Gygax's favorite PC to behave similar to Ed's while talking to Ed.

Hey MwaO, would you mind expanding on this? I just don't know much of the history about D&D and this is confusing to read, but seems interesting.

Also, are you Mommy Was An Orc from the WotC Forums?

[obryn]

As a reminder, everyone - the best (IMO) history of RPGs, with quite a bit of time dedicated to TSR and later WotC, is up on Bundle of Holding this month for a really reasonable price.
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Designers2017

Get the Bonus Level to make sure you get WotC, Paizo, etc. in the 90's and 00's books.

So don't speculate on the history of the game; learn the history of the game.

[Sol]

Also, are you Mommy Was An Orc from the WotC Forums?

Yes, he is. He's also over on enworld with all of the saved 4e charop guides.

[MwaO]

Hey MwaO, would you mind expanding on this? I just don't know much of the history about D&D and this is confusing to read, but seems interesting.

Also, are you Mommy Was An Orc from the WotC Forums?

Yes, I am.

Ed was writing columns where his Elminster would appear in the real world and talk to Ed about various D&D things. This is in context that everyone knew that Elminster was clearly Ed's favorite PC. And then Elminster would compliment him. Ala "hundreds of thousands of gamers who read yon periodical." and stuff like that.

Gygax lost the rights to the World of Greyhawk and specifically his character Mordenkainen. Then Mordenkainen ended up being a serious version of Elminster in the columns. Where Elminster was always just a touch smarter than Mordenkainen...

[obryn]

And don't forget how - at the end of the Gord the Rogue series - Gary blissfully destroyed Oerth and said - more or less - "But YARTH awaits us with even cooler adventures!"

I don't know if Yarth was ever published, but I have Epic of AErth from the Mythus line.

[Zardnaar]

Its not often I directly tell people you are doing it wrong BUT.

OP you are doing it wrong. Regardless of your opinion on 4E you screwed up in 1 very bad way. New players to a system and you used all those books to create a PC. This is the equivalent of.

1. Using every hardback and then some in 1E.
2. Using the 8 PHB class books in 2E + the Players Option stuff.
3. Using the Complete Arcane/Divine/Warrior/Adventurer/Mage/Scoundrel/Psion/Champion, Expanded Psionics Handbook+ 3 other books in 3.5.

Especially if you have been playing 5E with just the PHB. There is such a thing with drowning players in options. That amount of splat tends to be for the hard core players for editions they actually like. New system PHB (or equivalent) only IMHO. If you like the basics expand it later.

[Kitsonga]

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I'm new to this site and unfamiliar with forums. We just started a 4th edition campaign and I have a rules question. Playing a battlmind, when I use a feat that requires a melee weapon, it's clear that I add my Con modifier to damage because of psioncs, but do I still get my strength bonus from the weapon attack?

[MwaO]

I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask this, but I'm new to this site and unfamiliar with forums. We just started a 4th edition campaign and I have a rules question. Playing a battlmind, when I use a feat that requires a melee weapon, it's clear that I add my Con modifier to damage because of psioncs, but do I still get my strength bonus from the weapon attack?

The attack does whatever it describes. If you do Twisted Eye, a Battlemind 1 power that does 1w+Constitution modifier, it does 1w+Constitution modifier+any other modifiers to damage rolls.

Strength is not one of them unless you have some sort of option that counts your strength modifier and adds it to the attack. Which shouldn't happen unless you go out and find an option that explicitly does that.