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Thread: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
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2012-11-19, 03:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
How they handle Two Weapon Fighting is another thing... right, I think you attack at a disadvantage with each weapon if you do that.
Another thing I'm curious about is the paladin. Traditionally, the class has been about fighting for Good, but aren't alignment-dependent mechanical effects going away in D&D Next?My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
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2012-11-19, 03:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-19, 03:59 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Not in Core, no.
Btw, new Legends & Lore about the developing role of Expertise Dice. It doesn't give me any idea whether they're actually turning the Fighter, Monk, and Rogue into decent classes, but at least it's a change from the limited form those classes have right now. The admission that "expertise dice aren't going to be enough to make the Fighter class special anymore" gives me a glimmer of hope.You can call me Draz.
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2012-11-19, 04:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
The comment about Parry becoming a Fighter thing is also interesting to me, even if that specific change doesn't excite me. I would prefer they play up the defensive high-armour aspect of the Fighter, as it leaves more room for other classes to be skirmishers, snipers, etc. It might just be my 4e bias showing, but to me a Fighter is the one that's hard to kill, not just anyone using a weapon.
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2012-11-19, 04:29 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
"Oh, Expertise Dice were *really* intended as a way to replace BAB increases."
HAHAHAHA, WHAT!? No ****ing way. Maybe that's how they're justifying it to themselves now since they've apparently decided it's a feature every non-caster class gets (and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the Cleric got them in a later packet), but this pretty much directly contradicts their previous statements about what expertise dice were for back when they were Fighter-only.
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2012-11-19, 04:31 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-19, 04:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
While I'm perfectly fine with making fun of WotC for some dumb things (like how crap a lot of the maneuvers are), I don't think that's what they said.
The sentence I think you're talking about is:As the game comes together, it has become clear that expertise serves as a replacement in weapon-using classes for earlier editions' increased attack bonuses
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2012-11-19, 04:48 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Hmm, you're right, my bad, I misread. I redact my mocking: We should make fun of the stupid things he actually says, like this:
To start with, this change makes it easier for us to maintain our flat math approach. We're content to let accuracy remain something that stays flatter than in the past.
Third, since many classes can use expertise, we should make it as simple as possible to use.
"When you make an attack with disadvantage, you can spend expertise dice to offset the disadvantage. Roll all the expertise dice you spend, but add only the highest die result to the lower of your two d20 rolls. Treat that total as your lower roll, which cannot exceed the higher d20 roll, then apply any relevant attack modifiers."
Fourth, we can use feats as a way for characters to gain more maneuvers, focusing on options like Two-Weapon Fighting, Rapid Shot, and so forth—things that many different classes could opt into by using feats in prior editions. If the paladin uses expertise dice, someone playing a paladin can opt into the generic maneuvers and use the dice to fuel them.
You can imagine a simple stunt system that lets anyone try different options in return for spending dice.
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2012-11-19, 04:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Agreed
...Except the entire reason for the flatter math was to slow down character progression. Now you're just moving the number inflation from attack bonuses to damage rolls.
Oh, you've done a great job.
"When you make an attack with disadvantage, you can spend expertise dice to offset the disadvantage. Roll all the expertise dice you spend, but add only the highest die result to the lower of your two d20 rolls. Treat that total as your lower roll, which cannot exceed the higher d20 roll, then apply any relevant attack modifiers."
...What? So those feats are being pushed into the maneuver system? How? Why?
I can see it pretty well:
Two-Weapon Fighting
Prerequisite: Dex 15, base attack bonus +3
Benefit: You gain the following maneuver
Double Attack: You can spend an Expertise Die to gain an additional attack with your off-hand weapon.
Two-Handed Fighting
Prerequisite: Str 15, base attack bonus +3
Benefit: You gain the following maneuver
Cleave: You can spend an Expertise Die to attack two adjacent opponents with the same attack roll.
Or hopefully something better planned out than I can come up with in 10 seconds.
...Isn't that what skill rolls are supposed to do?
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2012-11-19, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Well, the maneuver-based approach to those feats changes... what, exactly? It ties them into a universal mechanic which is good for consistency I guess but it doesn't really do much else. It doesn't solve the feat tax problem, for one.
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2012-11-19, 05:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Arguably, maneuvers occupy the same design space as feats, and having both is redundant.
In practice, I'd expect something as simple as a feat that gives you an extra maneuver.Guide to the Magus, the Pathfinder Gish class.
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2012-11-19, 06:19 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yep. They (thankfully) aren't trying to claim that this is how they planned for Expertise to work all along; just that, in practice, it's turned out that this mechanic mostly represents damage scaling, and they're trying to embrace that.
This process -- playtesting a new idea, figuring out that it doesn't quite work for what it was originally intended for, but figuring out what it does work well for and building the system around that -- is solid game design. (Or at least I hope it is, because I do it a lot in my own work.)
That said, I don't particularly like the idea of damage scaling always being based on Expertise dice. If damage scaling is that much of a given, why not just build it into a class's base statistics? Ah well.
As Dienekes said, *this* was the plan all along. They never claimed they were getting rid of number inflation; just changing the number inflation so that a big gap in levels didn't make the weaker monster completely irrelevant in combat.
...What? So those feats are being pushed into the maneuver system? How? Why?You can call me Draz.
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2012-11-19, 06:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-19, 07:25 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Yeah, this is pretty much the only thing that ever happens to the monk. I mean, I guess fourth edition was different because in fourth edition every class was pretty much exactly the same as every other class. Other than that, though, monk has always suffered from should-be-a-PrC/kit-itis.
So, really, you're not making fun of them for scaling through damage so much as you are making fun of them for changing their minds about what works during a playtest? You're right, how dare those hypocrites listen to feedback and alter their admittedly-in-progress system accordingly?
I really don't understand what about a change that you feel is for the better upsets you.
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2012-11-20, 01:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Huh. I thought that they were planning on damage scaling all along, but maybe that was just me jumping to conclusions based on the assumption that the WotC designers aren't complete nincompoops, to the point of taking the high-level 4e "endless grinding" problem and making it even worse.
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2012-11-20, 02:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
They were planning on damage scaling from the start, if not the exact form of expertise dice. You can go back and read the early articles about bounded accuracy, where they explain that attack/defense scaling would be replaced by HP/damage scaling (nevermind that the HP/damage scaling is in fact still lower than 3e), and how high level characters would minionize low level monsters by being able to kill them in one hit with their higher damage.If my text is blue, I'm being sarcastic.But you already knew that, right?
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2012-11-20, 03:57 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-20, 04:46 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
...I'm not sure what part of "work in progress" and "test" you're not getting here.
Pointing out flaws in the system and providing constructive criticism is good. It helps them identify problems faster and more accurately, and then solve them. It's essentially the whole purpose of a playtest.
However, if all you do is point out problems they've already fixed and insult them for not getting it perfect right away, that's just petty and mean, and not helpful to anyone.
The only thing less helpful would be to make up issues that don't even exist yet and decry WotC for not being able to solve those already non-existent issues because they've proven to be so incompetent in the past, what with them making the #1 most popular tabletop RPG of all time and all. Those bastards.5e Homebrew: Death Knight (Class), Kensai (Monk Subclass)Excellent avatar by Elder Tsofu.
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2012-11-20, 09:33 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I've never taken a test where there was no rubric, no instruction, just "Answer how you think it should be," or "Write an A paper," that I thought was at all legitimate. Nor do I think its a good idea for DMs to have the player roll first and then decide what the DC was afterwards.
Pointing out flaws in the system and providing constructive criticism is good. It helps them identify problems faster and more accurately, and then solve them. It's essentially the whole purpose of a playtest.
The only thing less helpful would be to make up issues that don't even exist yet and decry WotC for not being able to solve those already non-existent issues because they've proven to be so incompetent in the past, what with them making the #1 most popular tabletop RPG of all time and all. Those bastards.
In the past 5-8 years, WotC has mostly lost market share to its competitors. This crew's resume includes a bunch of 3.5 splatbooks and 4e, which has a heavily contested claim to most popular RPG on its best day, and its still impossible to analyze if that was due to brand recognition or the game on its own.
What's truly unhelpful is to not voice fundamental concerns - or even to try to stifle the concerns of others - about the way the game is shaping up, hoping and believing that the foundation of the game will be fixed later in the development cycle, or worse, in a module in the open-ended future, while the team seems to be moving on to specifics like Maneuvers, Spells, and non-primary Classes.Last edited by Stubbazubba; 2012-11-20 at 09:41 AM.
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2012-11-20, 09:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
So now they have stolen everything interesting about the fighter, & put it into anything that would have had a solid BAB. So... what makes the fighter special now? Where is their shiny new toy?
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2012-11-20, 09:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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2012-11-20, 09:56 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Dedicated maneuvers like Parry, apparently. Or something else, if Mearls gets enough negative surveys
Based on the Monk introduction I'm beginning to suspect that their "design process" at the moment is as follows:
(1) Tweak the 3.X version of the class to fit the 5e Character Sheet
(2) Post to Internet; wait for yes/no feedback
(3) If enough "no" then throw a dart at the "5e mechanics" dartboard to revise Class
(4) If insufficient "no" then stamp DONE on it until Phase 2 (AKA the step before "Profit!")
I mean, they had a perfectly workable Monk in 4e. Say what you will about 4e, but the 4e Monk was universally declared to be the most "monk-like" class named Monk in WotC's history. It had a nice combination of attacks and movement powers and class features that (1) did not work against each other and (2) contributed to the "Monk" concept. Yet, when it came time to roll out the 5e Monk, Mearls trots out the 3.x Monk with a new coat of paint (i.e. Maneuvers) which nobody liked.Last edited by Oracle_Hunter; 2012-11-20 at 10:03 AM.
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2012-11-20, 10:39 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I suspect part of the reason is they've taken out minor/move actions and it's kinda hard to make the 4E monk work without them as a concept. Rather than take this as a sign that, you know, taking out move actions was a bad idea, they just continue to dance around the issue.
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2012-11-20, 10:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
It's my opinion that the Rogue & the Fighter can have maneuvers, NO other classes should. The monk needs his own mechanic. Why the heck are they even thinking about the monk, when more "iconic" & more popular classes (Paladin & Ranger) have yet to be shown?
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2012-11-20, 11:24 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
I do, however, feel that taking out move actions was a good idea. One of the major contributions to slow combat in 4E is that every character basically does three things during his turn (more if you count action points, free actions, and immediates). The monk doesn't need special move actions to be feasible, he just needs abilities that otherwise follow the normal rules for movement (such as walking on water or running up walls).
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2012-11-20, 01:04 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
What? So those feats are being pushed into the maneuver system? How? Why?
That said, I don't particularly like the idea of damage scaling always being based on Expertise dice. If damage scaling is that much of a given, why not just build it into a class's base statistics? Ah well.
(75% chance to do at least +13, 99% for +6 ).
Yeah, this is pretty much the only thing that ever happens to the monk. I mean, I guess fourth edition was different because in fourth edition every class was pretty much exactly the same as every other class. Other than that, though, monk has always suffered from should-be-a-PrC/kit-itis.
I've never taken a test where there was no rubric, no instruction, just "Answer how you think it should be," or "Write an A paper," that I thought was at all legitimate.
They haven't told us what they're trying to achieve with their designs.
Yes they have said what they're trying to achieve.
The monk doesn't need special move actions to be feasible, he just needs abilities that otherwise follow the normal rules for movement (such as walking on water or running up walls).
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2012-11-20, 01:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
That I might like. Only as a personal aesthetic, while I understood the concept of 4E minions I didn't like the implementation. Having one hit point thus you can kill an ogre or a beholder minion in one hit feels anti-climactic. It doesn't feel I earned the easy kill.
Anecdote: In one 3E campaign at 6th level the party fought distrachans. We were victorious, but it was very bloody, took "forever", and used up a lot of our resources. That same campaign at 18th level we again had to fight distrachans. It was a cakewalk. No PC got hurt. The combat was over in three rounds. We were not threatened at all. Wasn't meant to be. It felt real good to dispatch an enemy so easily that was so difficult earlier in the campaign. That's the earning of power I want to feel. The PCs improved to defeat the monsters as opposed to the monsters got weaker so the PCs can defeat them.
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2012-11-20, 01:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
It isn't really built into the progression because when using expertise dice the fighter has to choose between damage or something more fancy. It's kind of like if the 3e monk could expend a stunning fist use to have full BAB for a round--yes, the monk theoretically has full BAB "built in" because you can get full BAB when you want it, but it's not reliably there and you have to spend resources that could let you do cool stuff to give you on-level numbers instead.
That's not really a good decision, since that means that every round the fighter has to choose between more damage and cool options; that means he gets to do cool stuff against mooks (when he doesn't need the damage) and less cool stuff against "boss" monsters (when the damage would really help), which is precisely the opposite of what should be happening.
They have though. They've said repeatedly they want to make a new version of D&D, one which feels to the players like D&D and not just another fantasy RPG.
[...]
They want a system that isn't just a "scale all the numbers by x% each level", but rather one that throughout the game a door or goblin represents the same challenge it always has, it's just your chances of getting through unscathed that have gone up, not that you can't be scathed at all.
See here, for example. Even the OD&D fighter with no Str bonus, high-damage weapons, class features, or other benefits could take out about 3 goblins solo and take 7 rounds to die to them. And that assessment doesn't include the old "the fighter can attack one 0th-level opponent per level each round" rule, any multiattack abilities like Cleave to take out goblins faster, and so forth.
Really, bounded accuracy is completely the wrong way to go if they want 5e to "feel" like D&D. When you get to mid levels, you've outpaced low level threats, same with high level and mid level threats. You're supposed to be able to ignore kobolds and orcs and such at high levels unless there are enough of them to kill you with natural 20s, because that lets you take on armies without dying purely through numbers. In fact, the auto-hit/auto-miss rules are there because the original hit tables didn't go past 20 or 2: you were expected to come up against things that would otherwise need less than a 1 to miss you or more than a 20 to hit you, so the tables were set up so you could still hit and be hit by them.
Moving to bounded accuracy means the army/hirelings/henchmen minigames doesn't really work anymore, since pure numbers will win out of individual monsters are actually a threat at all levels. Moving away from daily resources for casters or making them less important to a class (like the sorcerer, who can survive just fine after running out of gas, he's just a fighter instead of a wizard then) without limiting healing like 4e did means attrition tactics don't work as well. A lot of the changes they want to make "because it feels like D&D" are actually achieving the opposite effect, and since the playtest is low level and most people are probably starting over at 1st every time a new packet comes out, I don't know if WotC will get that feedback until it's too late to do anything about it.
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2012-11-20, 02:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
That's not really a good decision, since that means that every round the fighter has to choose between more damage and cool options; that means he gets to do cool stuff against mooks (when he doesn't need the damage) and less cool stuff against "boss" monsters (when the damage would really help), which is precisely the opposite of what should be happening.
Besides, the game has almost always had trade offs between flashy awesome stuff and raw damage output or defense, which is as it should be.
The problem with that approach is that a system where a goblin is always a threat doesn't feel like D&D. Low level monsters were threats to PCs only in groups--small groups, at first level, but they were never individually a threat against a party. As you leveled, the gap only grew; AD&D wizards would routinely wipe out dozens of goblins with a single fireball, and that was okay and expected because the point of using goblins past low levels was to harass the party and run them out of resources, not to present an actual threat.
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2012-11-20, 05:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7
Actually, as far as the fighter is concerned, most of the raw damage stuff hasn't required you to choose between it and the cool stuff. The flat-boost feats like Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization (and the 2e subsystem from which they originate) just constantly add to attack and damage as long as you're using the right weapon. The scaling-boost feats like Power Attack or Combat Expertise and the cool-stuff feats like Stunning Fist and Knockback are just added to attacks and so can be used in conjunction with each other, and in fact can both be added to non-basic attacks like ToB maneuvers and disarm attempts and such.
To be like the 5e system, those feats would have to be mutually exclusive, like if Power Attack let you make a single attack as a standard action where you take -X to attack for +X damage. Late 3e and most of 4e were all about stacking options, giving you free combat maneuvers with your attacks, etc. to make basic attacks more interesting, and now 5e is back to making you choose between more damage and cool stuff, which is a step backwards.
In fact, the 5e fighter has even less choice in options if he wants to be competitive. A 10th-level 18 Str 3e fighter with a greatsword hits a 3e troll on a 2, while a 5e fighter with the same stats needs a 5 to hit his troll. Before Weapon Specialization, Deadly Strike, etc. they both deal roughly the same damage and the trolls have roughly the same HP, so for the 5e fighter to break even with a featless 3e fighter requires him to use Deadly Strike for at least 1 die every round, and for him to break even with a 3e fighter Power Attacking for 3 requires him to roll average while Deadly Striking with 2 dice. Add in the second attack for both, and the 3e fighter needs a 10 instead of a 5, but he's still dealing good damage while the 5e fighter needs to roll average on his last expertise die to keep up.
The 3e fighter has his other 4 feats to work with (and might even widen the damage gap with them), while if the 5e fighter wants to keep up in the damage game his other maneuvers might as well not be there. So when the 5e fighter spends all of his dice on pure damage, he can keep up with the most bland 3e melee class with the fewest sources of extra damage, who has selected (as one out of his five feats) the most obvious and straigtforward choice. Woohoo. I'd much rather see the fighter get straight-up automatic damage boosts and let him use expertise dice for interesting maneuvers only.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but the fact that low level monsters caused a drain on your resources is an actual threat to the party in early D&D. Further, Tucker's Kobolds (http://www.tuckerskobolds.com/) certainly demonstrates that in OD&D low level monsters could certainly be a raw damage threat as well.
Low level monsters' threat was in quantity, not quality. A 10th-level party in 3e could take on a group of 100 standard orcs easily, since by that level most PCs should have at least a 24 AC (pushing the orcs into only-hit-on-a-20 territory) and even non-melee PCs have a good chance to drop them in one hit. The threat of 100 orcs was really the threat of 5 orcs, since 1 in 20 would auto-hit every round, and even then some DR or miss chances (which practically everyone should have) would negate most of that damage, so the party might even be able to take on 500 or 1,000 orcs and stand a good chance of surviving. The same generally held in AD&D: though miss chance items were rarer and fewer spells granted those or the equivalent of DR, enemies were also more easily hit and damaged, so the party would be more wounded than its 3e equivalent at the end but it could still take on an army.
Considering that 10th level is around "name level" in AD&D where you get a bunch of followers, and is about the level in 3e where a party with Leadership and good Cha has double the PCs and at least a hundred followers of their own, you want it to be the case that you can hold army engagements without the enemy just focus-firing the PCs and taking them out in the first round. Being able to lead conquering armies from your very own castle was a big sign that you'd "made it" in AD&D, less so in 3e, and it would have been fairly anticlimactic if you did that only to die to the first band of a dozen orcs you ran across.
This changed (for the worse, I think) in 4e with minions. The concept of a one-hit-one-kill monster has been around since AD&D, but (A) as navar pointed out, before 4e it arose organically, when your minimum damage was higher than monster HP and it was practically impossible to miss, and (B) those monsters needed higher and higher numbers to be a threat, letting you take on armies and feel heroic without dying instantly. 4e minions have roughly the same damage output as normal monsters, meaning that if 4 minions = 1 PC an "army" of 20 minions might be a challenging encounter and an army of 100 just isn't an option without using mob rules or something.
And now in 5e, not only are they attempting to make individual monsters a threat, minion-style, they're lowering the PCs' numbers across the board so you no longer auto-hit and -kill a goblin at mid levels. We've gone from a 10th-level fighter who could kill 10 0-level enemies per round to a 10th-level fighter with Str 18 who has a 15% chance to miss a monster 9 levels lower than he is. So much for giving fighters Nice Things.