-I mention precursors to 3rd edition in optional 2e books ("2.5 edition") in the video. One would make a mistake, though, to suggest that 3rd Edition wasn't a revolution in the game. -Yes, I understand that not ALL tables played D&D by the rules or the same way, and that more-narrative styles predated 2000 at many tables. While it might be satisfying to "disprove" something, the point was obviously never to say ALL tables played X way before 2000. It would be folly to deny that there HAS been a shift in expectations in D&D compared to before, and that the 3e rules changes reflected and furthered a significant trend in D&D. Don't want to lose the forest for the trees.
It was definitely a revolution, but it was one I never got on board with. And it was the feats that killed 3rd edition for me. This is where they went from being characters that you could see and believe, to becoming something that was closer to what you would play on a console or see in an anime series. It's the difference between 13th warrior and Avatar. Sure ascending AC--shrugs. That just changed counting down to counting up. Okay. Spells and magic became much less potent and much--Much more prevalent. And this took D&D in a direction that it already had the potential for--where magic as just another form of tech, where getting a new magic item has all the wonder of upgrading your iphone.
While it's true that many of the rules of 3rd edition, especially those about combat, came from the "2.5" edition, including epic levels, some things were far older. Prestige classes date back to 1st Edition, to the bard class, which could not be taken at 1st level and had pretty harsh multiclass and ability requirements. The monk class in 3.0 is the direct porting of the mystic class from BECMI. But the true revolution was another: the Open Gaming License. That was what really changed the game, adding to the already high level of customization of the d20 System. If you were unhappy with standard material, you could add third party d20 things. Or you could write down and publish your own. This, unlike all the rest, was completely unheard of before and the true unique feature of 3rd edition.
@@ObatongoSensei Epic level is fine---once. Once you've pushed the game to it's absolute limit, you realize the only thing that can challenge an epic level party is another epic level party. After a while that scenario gets pretty stale. There's only one thing left to do--retire them and start at 1st level and stop at 12th at the very top---the sweet spot is really 1st - 7th.
@@andrewlustfield6079 That is true only if you see a "challenge" as a combat encounter. Also, many tend to forget that in every edition anything that is not a challenge doesn't grant experience points, so it should be pointless for the players to kill everything in their path. Raising levels with combat as epic characters is really hard and that's the real reason why playing epic levels might be boring for a combat-oriented group of gamers.
@@ObatongoSensei Well, I use a combination of combat and gold for experience in the 1st edition tradition. It incentivizes going into dungeons in the first place. This way experience is awarded in a pretty even way--roughly a 50% - 50% gold to combat when all is said and done. Level advancement is slow because I also use 1st ed experience point tables--more modern ones make level advancement too fast and you really don't get to see your characters struggle and grow up. But to a larger point, when you lose both the danger of combat and exploration, you've lost all the parts of the game that make it a game--dice are irrelevant and then it's just an improv acting exercise. If there's no danger, there's no point.
It is interesting how table rules propagate into base rules. Max hp at level 1, and negative hps were how i started in Red Box. My Dad was an experienced DM when i was learning. He also had no level caps for PCs. (NPC elves and such were capped based on rules.) You could also earn feats and powers and such through adventures as rewards. (Did you save that old man and get him baxk to town... he can teach you a fighting technique!) The main difference with 3e is a lot of DM systems and levers were given to players so the players would have more character options. Pulling off the stops on wizards did NOT go over well at some tables. Lol. (Im pretty sure it was a stated design goal when releasing 3rd ed fyi.) Back in BECMI they had weapon specialists with cool powers and the ability to become immortal... my brother failed his quest near the end. I agree with most of your points though, it was mostly the moving of agency from DMs to Players. I think the WORST part of 3rd ed. Was the generic ability to craft magic items. Cheap CLW wands to ensure everyone was always at full hp lead to game deaign shifts. (Leading to 4e healing surges in an effort to "re-cap" healing.) Pre 3rd edition the table mindset was on avoiding combat and acquiring treasure more... and 3rd ed shifted the focus to combat by setting out balanced encounter rules. Man... this is a crazy huge topic. It would be fun to just tear loose and talk about this stuff for a few hours.
I hated 3e when it first came out. But the system grew on me once I saw how it simplufied stuff that was complex for no reason (THACO and saving throws, for example) but added complexity where it made sense (character options, race/class combos). I agree with magic items though. It made item creation an assembly line. Magic item creation was an adventure in itself in 2e. In my game, I kept the stuff from 2e that I liked, but mostly used 3e. My game is now an amalgamation of 3.5e and Pathfinder, with a smattering of 2e.
@@TroySavary my problems with item creation was less Magic Item Creation and moreso Mundane Crafting. The sheer time required to make masterwork stuff regardless your level was stupid.
@@priestesslucy3299 The entire D&D economy is broken. Crafting takes too long. Items are way too expensive cimpared to what various professions earn. Adventurers find far too much gold, even on mundane threats like goblins. I completely redid the coin system and prices, so that everyday people could actually afford everyday items. Most items are priced in either copper, or bronze, my new coin worth 10 copper. Silver is worth 100 copper, making it like the dollar to the copper penny. So now that labourer who gets 1 silver per day isn't spending 1/10 of his wages on that 1 copper ale. A gold piece is worth 100 silver, meaning that, like the real world, only the wealthy dealt in gold. Treasures carried by common monsters were correspondingly reduced.
As someone who always giggled at being offered AD&D insurance at work, I was gutted to learn that "advanced dungeons and dragons" stopped being a thing more than 20 years ago. This by itself is a reason to reject anything from 3e on.
If your glasses are crooked, you should take them to an optician you trust so that they can adjust them to align properly on your face. To do otherwise is to not use them as intended, with your vision looking directly through the optical center of your lenses.
Here's some pedantic corrections: There's nothing in 3rd Edition that Interlock/FuZion/Hero/GURPs didn't do first. It was less of a revolution and more of a catching up to what was considered modern game design in the 80's and 90's. If you look at Kits there were Kits that allowed demihumans to take on non-standard classes and BECMI allowed demihumans to effectively achieve 36th level. Race/Level limits weren't simulating anything or simulationist. They were an arbitrary way to give players a reason to play humans. Multi-classing is mostly a legacy concept to continue the fighter/magic-user identity of elves and the fighter/thief identity of halflings in OD&D/Basic. Skills (BECMI) and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (AD&D) are effectively the same as Skills in 3e. They date back to 1985. I think long campaigns were more common in the past, not less, but playing multiple characters was more normal. As far as high-level achievements and play, BECMI had players who could literally become god gods (though they were called Immortals) and they could literally manipulate reality. Also, AD&D had no level cap, see the guy who wanted everyone who ran a character in Forgotten Realms their character sheets because his 400th level character nuked the whole planet and he wanted to calculate experience from the letter columns of Dragon Magazine. Common wisdom in the 2e days was that fighter types were best at 1-5, thieves and clerics 6-9, mages 10+.Very few people I knew played past 8th level and I think the published modules support that was the upper limit for a lot of people. BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia Basic had Effective HD which assigned "bonus HD" for significant special abilities and rules for balancing encounters around those numbers, with math around how party level, number of party levels, and number of opponents were factored in. This is effectively CR. Whatever the Old School Primer says, the fact that adventure modules had recommended levels means people were conscious of game balance. Books like the Dungeoneers Survival Guide or the Segment system from AD&D will show that older editions are crazy rules heavy when they want to be.
"Race/Level limits weren't simulating anything or simulationist. They were an arbitrary way to give players a reason to play humans." Yeah, I was listening to this part of the video and was thinking this was flat out wrong. It's because Gary Gygax hated demi-humans in his game. "Skills (BECMI) and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (AD&D) are effectively the same as Skills in 3e. They date back to 1985." Yeah, skills are just the much more refined (and much better named) equivalents of "Non-Weapon Proficiencies, which were horribly designed. A beginning black smith with an 18 strength was much more skilled than a blacksmith of average human strength who had devoted 50 years of their life to the craft. "Very few people I knew played past 8th level and I think the published modules support that was the upper limit for a lot of people." The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Re part of point 11: as a person who is very under developed socially, I sometimes found myself completely flummoxed by having to role play every conversation - I just had to give up any kind of bartering or persuasion when it wasn't something I could roll for. I thought the point of fantasy was I could play a character that could do things I couldn't do myself. Having to do any bartering myself would be like having to cast spells or swing a sword myself instead of having a game system for them. Rules with social skill checks were a real relief for me because I could play a smooth talking character without having any idea how to flirt, fast talk, persuade, intimidate, barter, give a rousing speech, etc. I could finally play someone other than "myself but can cast spells"
It’s so arbitrary. “We allow any fantasy except being extremely charismatic.” Ridiculous. It’s exactly like making the fighter’s player bench press weights to open a stuck door.
I think the middle ground is to describe what your conversational strategy is; like, what is your angle? Are you going to suggest that the armorer drop the price because you're fighting to save his town, or because you're a regular customer? Are you trying to convince the guard that you genuinely don't know why he's asking you all these questions, or do you want to come off more as threatening, like it's not good for his health to ask these questions? The delivery is all character, but you still have to make some decisions as to what you're looking to do.
@@tsovloj6510 To me, that's 100% the solution. Tell me your strategy or your angle. That's where Insight is a good skill, it can give hints about possible directions to go. As a DM, I sometimes even do this when I'm summarizing a conversation, want to make the message 100% clear to players, or just don't want to make up a voice at that time. "They consider your plea sympathetically, but make it clear they are not violating their orders for anything."
The big difference between 2e and earlier TSR editions of the game is that 2e (within the core rule books) was FILLED with different options to use. Many of those options were contradictory to one another, forcing one to choose one particular option over the other. I'd be willing to bet that most never played 2e using none of the options available. This is precisely why the purely optional books like the brown cover "complete" guides and the controversial "Player's Option" books need to be considered when talking about 2nd Edition AD&D. Because at its core, 2e IS a game of optional rules BTB.
@@TraumatreeYeah, I'm with you. D&D lost its soul with 2e, because that's when they started chasing monetization over publishing a good game. Imo, they've been chasing the dragon ever since, with far too much internal rules lawyering to favor marketing agendas and revenue generation over simply publishing good game mechanics. The popularization of trading card games was a shameless exploitation of this kind of thinking, turning noob enthusiasm, inspiration, and creativity into gameplay mechanics that could be leveraged for profit. 5e was the first money I gave to D&D since AD&D, and I never expect to play that bloated monstrosity, but there are mechanics I wanted to mine for homebrew use. The monetization really started with off-the-shelf modules. Back then, people would buy them, and everybody read them, so they were rarely played. The whole game was all about homebrew rules and homebrew campaigns, from the very beginning. It was the noobs and enthusiasts that they started hooking with commercialization, and they took over the demographic, as far as TSR, WotC, and Hasbro have ever been concerned. The actual gamers stopped mattering way, way back.
If you like older D&D. There's a whole revolution in "OSR" where people rewrite 1st and 2nd edition into something way more usable and not just a straight rip of LotR. As a rules lite basis for laying your campaigns on top of, the old rules can be a lot of fun. If I want to actually integrate character generation into a campaign... Lots of rulesets do it better. Not everyone just wants to be "a fighter" or "a thief". Which is what OSR excels at.
@@KevinJDildonik There a lot of great stuff to mine from *d20* for OSR variations like you mean. And the really lightweight stuff, like Cairn and Whitebox, plays really well with Steve Jackson's old *The Fantasy Trip* which uses some very similar simplified metrics (though that was designed around and expanded from arena combat).
The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and Power of Faerûn were optional books that brought forward the concept of becoming a ruler. The latter not only had military leader, but merchant prince, and priest. I use both of them in all my games since the content is basically system agnostic. If you like old school flavor you can easily mix it with 5e.
I'd love to see you go into how radically initiative changed between AD&D 1 and D&D 3.x, 1D6 per side initiative, with casters declaring first and acting last!
I would say 3.5e is still plenty deadly, despite the increase in survivability. The Wight is CR 3, so you're expected to fight it at about level 3. If your negative levels equal your HD total, you die instantly with no saves. This means a Wight would have to hit you three times to instantly kill any character, and it gains temporary HP each time it inflicts a negative level too. Even a Bugbear, at CR 2, can be a really scary encounter at low levels. When you get to the mid-late levels you're pretty strong, but there's plenty in the Monster Manual and other monster books to keep you fairly challenged.
My early 3rd edition games often ended with at least one party member dead. Wizard got pulverized by a goblin with one hit, then the rogue died to a poison dart trap. Then we had another rogue die when an orc critted him in the first round of combat. And then we had the cleric slip on some wet rocks, fall into a stream and drown. All in 3 sessions.
A 1/2 CR Orc with a greataxe can crit up to AC 26 on a charge, for 21-54 damage. For reference, a CR7 Ogre barbarian chieftain had AC 19 and 79 HP before rage.
A slight error about going to 0 hp in AD&D. On page 82 of the AD&D DMG (and this is not an optional rule), players can go down to -10 hp before dying. We knew this rule all too well as characters were often knocked into the negatives back in the day.
@@MrGrumblier That's how I did it. Dead if negative hp = CON. Any attempt to rescue from death required a CON check and CON was permanently reduced by 1 with each attempt.
Many of the rules of 3rd edition came out of the 2nd edition "Player's Option" books that came out in 1995. Such as allowing for Wizard characters using Swords for once such example.
A number of people involved in the 2nd edition "Player's Option" books were part of the design team for 3rd edition. Skip Williams (one of the 3 main authors of 3rd edition) worked on 3 of the 4 Option books.
Same thing for 3.5 with piles of stuff from other D20 projects shifting back either directly in or into Unearthed Arcana (One major example being a massive pile of the OCR Star Wars D20 rules ending up there with things like the Vitality/Wound system and the Armor as a mix of AC and DR), you also had stuff from both their Dune and Call of C'thulu put into it. Star Wars Saga edition also set up a TON of things for 5e...
Love me some THACO. Had forgotten that huge 3rd edition rules shift. The player skill was huge/necessary. You had to mentor a new player in game, he couldn’t just go by his character’s rules.
It's best to mentor any new player in a game and a good way to do this is to provide a quick writeup of action options and how they work. That gives them an idea of what their character can do and how they do it.
I have played D&D since it was in the Red Box Set. I now principally use AD&D 2nd Ed. and D&D 3.5, and play mostly 3.5 utilizing the best of both editions. The regimented structure of 3.5 appeals to me greatly, but the game flows best when I have the freedom to adjudicate on the fly - this makes for the most memorable game sessions. The rules are there more as firm suggestions, not as cudgels to pound the PC's behavior and actions into submission for the sake of a story plot. Just have fun, and if the rules begin to intrude upon the game, its time for the DM/GM to improvise (and sometimes compromise) with the situation facing the PC's. Besides, as a DM/GM, I have found that any perceived gross violation of the game's setting or over-arching plot can be easily overcome by the addition of elements that allow for recovery from disaster. I make it a habit to craft multiple scenarios for various encounters and branching of the party's progression, and have on hand auxiliary NPC's, events, phenomenon, side-quests, etc. to bring continuity to the campaign. Also, the DM/GM should be prepared to segment the campaign at unexpected points so as to bring a reprieve from the chaos that invariably ensues as a result of the party's decisions and actions. As we often said when I was in the Marine Corps, "Semper Gumby"; always flexible. Good gaming all. :)
I started playing in the early 80's (actually 1980 if I remember right), and from the beginning we were utilizing house rules to smooth out the spots that didn't agree with the game we wanted to play. We moved to 2nd edition when it came out, but there were some changes that were...questionable...at the time. By the time 3rd edition was released we had a well defined set of house rules that made the game more fair for everyone (as well, we had already started incorporating a version of spell points to give mages more durability and flexibility in day to day adventuring). I have tried Pathfinder and 5th edition and am not a fan. The level limitations, skills and feats are just too far from the fantasy game I started with. Originally the onus was on the player to make their character distinctive and original, I prefer that play style.
LOL... same experience as me. Started in 1980...box set to edition 1 then edition 2. Also did the house rules and spell points for mages... worked much better. I haven't tried the newer versions yet.
One of the things that I think most analysis miss is that a significant event happened in '88. The Orcs of thar gazetteer was released. At the time, I don't think anybody saw this as significant, ever, intentional or not, this marked a change the worldview and the de-monsterfication of many creatures within the game. A lot of the content produce back then was exactly that content to generate revenue I think without a great degree of thought about the long-term implications of it. In my opinion, it's pretty easy to trace the progression of the influence of that supplement hand, and its impact on today's version of the game.
Never underestimate the power of an extra feat and 1 skill point per level. Especially at low level. That being said, I never played humans because they are too vanilla.
This has not been my experienfe. An extra feat is huge at level 1. In 5e it's immense since you don't get a feat till l4 normally. Contrary wise, most games don't get to the cap so almost every PC I saw in 2e was demihuman.
@@fugitiveunknown7806 There's a reason humans are always the dominant (or at least most prominent) species, starting with a feat is a massive boost to your survival rate lol
I'm sure there might be some variance from place to place. You and the others do make some good points, so what I say won't be true everywhere. However, for me personally there has been an ever-growing shift to move away from humans. Nothing wrong with playing something else. Just seems like everyone going from one human town to the next and the only adventurers are demi-human or not humanoid at all.
You're definitely correct!! -- page 82 of the 1st Ed AD&D DM guide. Unconscious at zero and you could go to -10 before dying, some simple dying rules by Gygax. 1979 folks!!
30:32 I call Shenanigans! As someone who DMed the game for over 20 years, starting with the original 3 cruddy books in 1975 and ending with 2nd edition, I can tell you that 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D absolutely gave you rules and tables on how to hand out XP. Check out for example, pages 46-49 of the 2Ed DMG. I'm enjoying this video because now I've seen what 3Ed did, and I can absolutely tell you I don't like much of it, specifically the making of characters to be ridiculous demigods with apparently very little effort. Now, my campaigns might have been a bit stingier than most, but over the course of a 7 year (real life) campaign, the highest a character ever got was a 9th level thief. Alse if a DM lets PCs die because of misadventure, rather than the character's own stupid decisions, they are not doing their job.
Depends. The reports of Gary's table sounds a lot like Heroquest/Warhammerquest/Gloomhaven that eventually got codified in the computer RPG Rogue - creating the entire genre called Roguelikes. The idea there is dying to misadventure is all part of the fun. Roll up a new character, try again. See how far you can push it. The 'fun' is emergent. That's why AD&D's listing for the Fighter lists the most important Class Feature was that Fighters can use nearly any magical item, except class-specific items like the Staff of the Mage. Being able to use any random weapon/armor/misc. magic item is only a significant advantage if loot is random. It's value radically decreases if loot is bespoke, or worse yet, other character classes get to pick their magic items. Something codified in character classes in modern Roguelike games.
3rd edition did do some good things -- cleaning up and standardizing the rules so that everything became "roll high on a d20" was a big improvement. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of it falls under the category of "more isn't necessarily better". Having a set rule for every little thing sounds good in theory -- until you're trying to remember all those rules in the middle of combat. My strongest memory of 3rd edition is struggling to figure out what my chance to hit was, with all the skills and feats and conditions that could potentially apply, while my DM nagged me because I was taking too long. Finally, I got fed up and yelled, "Get off my back! If you wanted a game that runs fast, you picked the wrong system!" (the actual sentence had much more profanity in it, but you get the idea) Turns out, I wasn't the only one in the group who felt that way, so we ended up going back to 1st ed.
LOL. Yeah, a lot of noise between imagination and execution. Describe a clever action, DM rules the PC lacks a feat, do something boring instead. My oh my, how I loathed those 15 years. 5e is better but it's still a far cry from the vibe that attracted and rewarded imaginative undergrads in the first place.
See I overall agree with your point--I don't mind if things like character creation is dense under the hood as long as I can turn a key or push a button and drive the car without a hicup. I want to have all bonuses factored into my to-hit rolls already on the character sheet---and for all the crap it gets, THACO does just that. Factor in all of your standard attack bonuses--bam--roll a die and know what AC you hit. THACO of 12--roll a 15--you hit ac -3. The DM tells you if that's a hit or miss. Next player.
All the skills and feats and gear and such should have been precalculated on your sheet though... Only adjustment required being temporary conditions and things like flanking and high ground and charging
@@priestesslucy3299 My table switched to a VTT in the pandemic and it does all the math. It’s more that my old school PC was awesome when I thought of doing something awesome. There was less noise, no constraints, and the only PC with skills was the thief - and those checks felt limiting compared to, essentially, the uncatalogued everything else.
I'm not gonna lie - if my player asks to try an unusual or unexpected approach or tactic that i was completely unprepared for but couldn't think of a good reason to say no (it's not broken or unreasonable given in-game circumstances, I just didn't consider it and/or the rules don't explicitly explain or support it), I do the old edition style of a vibe check. "Yeah, a 16 sounds right to knock the stalagmite off the ceiling."
Which is important, as much of character advancement was tied to acquisition of phat loots. The more I engage with the topic of old school D&D, the more I get the idea that many of the common notions of the older edition are flat out mistaken.
Ah, I had forgotten that. But my point was that 3e introduced being able to buy and craft items. 1e presented them as sale values, yes? The text on DMG 121 only refers to selling them. (It's very "from the players' POV focused") A DM could extrapolate from that these are prices to buy the same items, but am I not right that players DMs didn't run it that way? If so, then a Level 2 party could pool 7,000 gold for a +3 sword. (DMG 124) So I think 3e still changed the game.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Some ran it that way; others didn't. It was one of the many ways in which inter-table consistency suffered due to (a) the vagueness of Gygax's writing and presentation, and to (b) the way he presented the game rules as something of a toolkit for DMs to build their own game. The latter assumption is the reason for so many optional rules and for why so many things are couched in terms of what the DM may choose to do in his or her game. This carried through to 2e, as well. Just look at how Wizards acquire spells in 2e through three different methods to be chosen by the DM. Regardless, whether the GP Values were intended to be used for players to purchase items, it's nonetheless true that magic items _did_ in fact have prices in gold pieces. Strictly speaking, that is. This also meant that there _was_ a magic item economy in the fictional world Gygax envisioned, which puts the lie to the typical OSR/5e meme that such an economy is inconsistent with the old school D&D ethos. As usual. EDIT: Also, the 1e DMG has a few pages dedicated to the creation of magical items by player characters. They're highly restrictive and really costly, but they're there. Pages 116-118. 3e definitely made the rules for crafting more accessible, less obtuse, and more systematic.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG OD&D & AD&D have item prices because the core (expected) gameplay loop per people at Gary's table (OldGeezer et. al.) was "Go into dungeon, bring out loot" where each GP of your share was 1 XP, and magic items sold for roughly 3-5x the price, giving the classic Roguelike choice of "Do I want the sweet magic item, or the xp?" In universe, the primary purpose of "Adventurers" was going into these relics of bygone ages and bringing out toys for the rich & powerful.
First edition had a detail formula for granting XP. The DMG had a list of XP per monster + XP per hit point of monster. XP was also awarded for GP value of monetary treasure and every magic item had an XP value. Most DMs I encountered tweaked these rules to get the progression rate they and their players wanted, but there were official rules.
Amazing video! Concerning the question of other TTRPGs that used gold to buy upgrades: Cyberpunk 2020, published in 1990, also let you earn money to buy any type of wild game breaking cybernetic augmentation or weapon as long as you had money. It also had the ability to do multiple actions per turn with an increasing penalty for each attack!
in 30 years of playing A D and D i have never met a person who played the "you are dead at zero hit points" rule. I have played most versions since A D and D (except 4th) and character death rates are not noticeably different in any of them. I have no idea where people get this idea that life was particularly brutal and short in A D and D it does not match my lived experience in any way.
On Initiative people say it's not as realistic and while that is semi true, neither was the all players declare at the same time because it implies you can't change/react to anything mid action. I've seen some videos on break downs of Movie fights turning them into a turn based game and it actually fits really well. Because when you watch a fight in most shows or movies they do take turns. In sword fights, and even scifi lightsaber fights only one person is attacking at a time. The issue is people confuse the blocking/parrying as part of the real time battle when in TB those actions are implied in a characters defense stat. If you watch a lot of sword fights you'll notice a back and forth as each takes turns striking at each other while the other person dodge/blocks and then makes a strike of their own with the other person doing the same. Everyone is NOT acting at the same moment, they are either defending or attacking. This can even be true in fights with ranged weapons. Going scifi the lightsaber blocking blaster shots would simply be the enemy failing an attack roll against the Jedi defense stat with reflected shots being a reaction ability. The Jedi don't block shots and strike at the same time they switch between actions as in TB this would be them attacking on their turn and defense during other's turns. Or in more modern settings characters in gun fights pop out from cover and take a few shoots then back down. This is pretty much the same as taking turns, and waiting for an enemy to pop out of cover to shoot them is readying an action. Human reaction time is incredibly fast and it's why I've always felt that TB approach to TTRPG was better than the attempted Real Time. In Real Time it's like 6 whole seconds in which you can't change your mind on what your doing. Sit down and watch a clock for 6 seconds to get a feel of just how LONG that is and you'll realize how ridiculous it is that you can't change your mind on what to do. As such I don't think the old school approach is "realistic" in the slightest. It only makes sense when you realize the genre's origins was in war gaming and issuing commands to squads that you then couldn't control until you relayed new orders to the squad does this sort of style make sense. But being in direct control since you are that character so it makes no sense since your reaction time is measured in milliseconds. Thus running to a spot or shooting a spell/arrow where someone was 3 seconds ago is just dumb.
In fencing, taking turns is even codified and referred to as right of way. There are restrictions on scoring based on who has right of way, introduced as a means of incentivizing proper defense and not dying. This clearly didn't work for sport fencing.
I think this is a confusion some have about 1E. A round is not a single swing of a weapon. It is many, it is feints, parries, and strikes. Not all strikes will damage an armored foe. What you are essentially rolling for is again, not a single swing but to see if any of your swings did actual damage.
Buffing casters relative to martials happened in other ways, too. For instance, unified XP progression meant that Fighters and Wizards hit level 20 at the same time, where the Fighter previously leveled much more quickly. On the other hand, the efficacy of damage-dealing spells was seriously hampered by increased hit point totals at higher levels. _Meteor swarm_ became something of a joke compared to things like _gate_ and _shapechange._
This is a misconception. Fighters levelled quickly at first, but wizards sped up at 5th level (right when they got fireball) and actually hit 7th level before fighters. Spell damage did drop relative to both hit points and martial damage, but save or suck/die spells became more effective. In AD&D, saves actually improved with level, with no way to increase the DC. Damage spells would usually do at least half damage, but others were often wasted.,
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Not a misconception; a matter of edition. For 2e, yes, wizards hit 7 before fighters, but fighters hit 6 before wizards. Other editions, notably BECMI, use different XP schedules. And save-or-dies definitely got the systemic buff in 3e relative to 2e.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Ah, BECMI classes hit name and max levels as such: Cleric: 200k / 2.9m Fighter (with Paladin, Knight, and Avenger as proto prestige/sub classes at name): 240k / 3.48m Magic-User: 300k / 4.35m Thief: 160k / 3.4m Other classes were consistently a level or more ahead of MUs. At 2.1m, the Fighter was but 60k from level 25, and the MU was level 21 and finally getting that first ninth level spell. The Thief was also level 25, and the Cleric (along with the Druid) was level 28.
The Epic Level Handbook actually went to arbitrarily high levels, they just didn't list anything specifically after 30th level because all classes followed a set progression of (mostly) bonus feats
As I said in a comment below, and something I think many of the detractors are forgetting, is that no table with any edition that I played, didn't like creativity. 3E allowed cross table game play where a player would know that their character could do certain things due to feats or skills they had. In 1e/2e, what was acceptable at one table another DM could completely nerf due to DM fiat. It's why I don't like that DM fiat is back in 5E. (Or A5E/Level Up, which I prefer, even though it also has DM Fiat.) I had a character I had played from first level to 5/5 F/MU in 1E. Everything was "earned" by old school rules. The first thing a different DM did when I suggested that character fit into the group he was running was approve. The second thing he did was kill my character, no save allowed, change my ability scores, destroy some of my gear, and then have him healed back. That's the DM Fiat I don't like that I'm talking about. Multi class characters in 1E/2E were not handled well. The most I ever saw was a two level difference between a Fighter/Magic User compared to a single class Fighter or Magic User. That means the multi class character was only slightly worse than both of the single class characters, being able to do everything they could do. That doesn't mean players didn't want to play single classed characters with multi classed characters but it did mean they knew that they wouldn't have near the options the multi classed characters had. I much prefer 3E's multi class system (or PF2's) to the earlier versions. The choice in 3E to multi class means a lot more because they are picking between class abilities they will get, even if only at higher levels. Balance? Ha! Put 2E psionics in your campaign and then talk about balance. Heck put 1E psionics in them and see how balance works! Kits? Ha! Most kits allowed for extra mechanic abilities at only role playing costs, which few DMs ever worried about. The Blade singer was the single most abused kit I saw, but there were many of them. Please understand. I'm not trying to negate anyone's feelings on earlier editions of the game or the fun they had. Great! I once had an hours long argument with a player who said that a Sword and Board Fighter Kit should allow a +1 to hit and AC. By the time we were done, the other players had left the table to go to a movie. I'm personally grateful for what 3E did codifying how magic items interacted (How did a cloak of protection, ring of protection and bracers of AC 4 play together in 1E?), how a fighter could get bonuses for the armor or weapons they used, and allowed for player agency with their characters. The only way I would play a 1E/2E game is if I already knew and trusted the DM. Sure, that's based on my experiences, but the game rules allowed for such abuse that it's not my preferred system.
Cross-table play was one of Gygax's reasons for writing AD&D 1st Edition. Here is quote from him from an article in Dragon Magazine #26 (June, 1979): "AD&D rectifies the shortcomings of D&D. There are few grey areas in AD&D, and there will be no question in the mind of participants as to what the game is and is all about. There is form and structure to AD&D, and any variation of these integral portions of the game will obviously make it something else." For those that may not know, when he said "...the shortcomings of D&D", he was referring to original D&D (1974 - 1976).
@@thefiendishdm9976 Well, I guess I disagree with "There are **few** grey areas in AD&D" (emphasis mine) in the quote. As I mentioned above, how magic items interact is one area that is not clear. How psionics interact with magic isn't clear. Grappling rules. Those are off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. Thanks for the comment! Take care!
@@evilDMguy Oh yeah, 1e is full of grey areas. I just mentioned this article because, at least according to Gygax, AD&D was a complete and coherent game. Ready for cross-table play 🤪. I don't agree with everything Gygax said in this article. For example, he stated in the same article (word within brackets mine): "While [original] D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells, 43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed. Either a DM runs an AD&D campaign, or else it is something else." This is a complete 180 from what he said within the 1e DMG about the game being yours to do with as you wanted.
In BX D&D group initiative is very structured so if you want to try old school try this system through OSE. The players declare spells and retreats who is shooting, going into melee to fight. Then each side rolls a d6 . The actions go as follows: move, ranged attacks, spells, then melee . Id there is a tie its simultaneous. Which is chaotic, however thats how combat truely is. I still used moral in my 3e and 5e games too. Not everything wants to fight to the death. And you roll it when the first opposing monster goes down, half or more of the force is killed. I will say ascending AC was a godsend, codifying everything to a d20 roll was so streamlined as well .
Mostly spot on but my personal experience in 2e, which of course is not universal to all people playing 2e, had initiative working differently. It was always individual initiative. Everybody declared their action at the start of the round and every action got its own modifier to the initiative roll. Moving but not attacking had no modifier. Every weapon had its own penalty to initative roll based on its size and any spell that had just a number for casting time applied that number as a penalty to initiative. I don't miss it at all.
That was my experience as well. Then again, I dislike group initiative because yes, it's faster but it makes combat even swingier and vastly increases the chance of a death because all members of one side can pile on a single member of the enemy side before any of the enemy side can respond. It isn't 'realistic' either because people are individuals; there's no reason why they'd all act simultaneously unless it's part of a plan, which actions like Delay and Ready are for.
I've been playing this for 40+ years now, all editions. And I loved 3e when it came out. But I have to say the longer that things go on, 1e or even 2e or BECMI are the way to go, the flavoring, the types of adventures, the stakes, everything... It was all just better.
RE: Magic items for sale, sold! Every edition of Dungeons and Dragons from the red box Basic to 2nd Edition, when magic items were listed, they were listed with a gold piece value. This provided several things, one was the value of finding any given item for exp. totaling. It also gave a good base price for selling off unwanted magic items when you got back to town. Thirdly, it allowed for the creation of magic shops which delt in magic items. This is not new in 3rd Edition. Earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons also had gold sinks other than physical items. Leveling up had rules that involved the character spending time training, which sunk both time into training and gold into paying the trainer. Priests were almost always poor, as at the end of their adventure they would have to tithe nearly all their findings to their church. I do not believe that there were any direct tables listing this amount at this level, etc. but the rules were there for your use.
A well done video about the revolutionary turn that D&D took in the transition from TSR to WotC. I have other things to say, but they deal with the overall results of said revolution I'll save them for the conclusion video where they belong. 😛
I’m gonna be that guy who throws out an opinion at the beginning of the video. 3.5E was the pinnacle of D&D “old school”. It was the culmination of multiple versions of the game from a playing, and lore perspective. There were rules for almost any/every scenario you could get yourself into. By the time 3.5 ended, there was more lore on the in game worlds of the dungeons and dragons brand than ever before or since. It was one of the most accessible versions of the game (due to the OGL) and the coastal spellcasters weren’t afraid to touch on any subject in their production. The game will never see that level of support again except by third party developers, and I would argue that as good as 5th edition is, the next iteration will come nowhere close to these heights.
There's no denying there is a paradigm shift between 2E and 3.5, that shift being incremental and part of it happening in 3.0 That being said, people frequently lose track of the fact 3.0 is genuinely AD&D 3rd edition. It's refined and built by people who genuinely loved 2E and had sincere dreams of saving and revitalizing AD&D
@@priestesslucy3299 And the same thing happened with 3.5 when pathfinder came out. I mean the reality is everyone has a favorite edition, it’s not always the same, but every iteration of the game sparks joy for someone, and that’s what the hobby is about. Except you 4E. Nobody likes you.
The black cover 2nd Edition was really more of a 2.5. There were some core changes, mainly in the way of codifying optional rules, that caused pretty significant changes to gameplay including breaking some compatibility with the class and race splat books. Badly enough that I actually never met a single person in-person who enjoyed those books. We all continued playing regular 2nd Edition.
Yeah, I didn't use them whole cloth. I cherry-picked from them. I've gone back to running 2e (made the change back in 2012), and I still don't use the PO Books on the whole.
Man, back in my Basic D&D and 1st edition AD&D days we rolled new characters all the time. Heck we did adventures with 2 or 3 characters per player because of the expected losses.
Rolemaster did many of these things first, but that was not surprising since one of the primary designers of 3rd worked on rolemaster before going to wizards
Rolemaster was incredible. It was incredibly detailed and incredibly complex. You didn't have character sheets with Rolemaster, you had character booklets.
Right, edition wars are kinda hilarious to me when you realize that the escape valve is... hundreds of other games you could be playing, many of which could easily be am edition of D&D if they slapped the label on it. And a lot of them are just outright better versions of the edition they most closely emulate. (Not saying Rolemaster is good, it's... not, outside of the spectacle of how absurd it is)
This was a fascinating history to me. I had only played 1st edition (1983 revision) and 2nd Edition AD&D. And a couple of years ago started played 5E and was totally lost. Everything I knew was wrong! Now I understand why!
One thing that's important and easy to overlook is that all the "old school" talk aside, play in AD&D wasn't always just focused on the old school style. Sure, the rules mattered and they do change play style, but it wasn't that rare to have characters that were distinct, even if the character mechanics weren't. Or for the players to be interested in plot and heroics, not just war game dungeon crawls for loot. And despite the rules giving you strongholds after a certain level, there wasn't any real support for playing as the ruler of a stronghold. You got followers, but what could you actually do with the stronghold? All that was pure GM fiat.
I've played 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th edition (mostly 2nd and 5th) and I have enjoyed all of them. For me it really comes down to who is running it and who else is in eh player group more than the system or rules.
I'm calling bullshit on that definition of old school. The ethos driving it is _not_ the original view, but instead it's the view that developed among the most vocal group of players. Specifically, those with an interest predominantly in the narrative aspects of gameplay. (Often to the detriment of the narrative aspects of the setting.) These were loudest and most influential, because they generally were more socially adept than the mathy nerdy sort. From the earliest, for example, we can see Gary writing about the importance of balance. Or about the absolute necessity of strict timekeeping. Or of how character abilities aren't a substitute for player skill. (This last was the point of _Tomb of Horrors,_ after all.)
100%. Granted if you look at early zines Gary was... not very popular, but still, while theater kid D&D happened pretty early, there was always some level of "this is a game about overcoming dungeon challenges and getting stronger so it damn well better be balanced"
One example I like to give people that are curious how AD&D was different from newer editions, is the rules a wizard follows with their familiar. In AD&D, it's debilitating to lose a familiar. It takes a year to get it back, it takes a lot of resources, but when the familiar dies it causes a huge system shock to the character. I want to say the caster loses 1 CON permanently. I'm not sure which newer edition changed this but I'm pretty sure that by 3rd edition, losing a familiar is annoying but not life altering for the character. I like this example because having a familiar seems like a simple thing but the choice to get one cannot be taken lightly as the investment itself is quite large but also the consequences of losing the familiar are severe. AD&D is full of extremely impactful decisions like this. It's this level of impact that still has me thinking about it decades later when I don't play it anymore.
Very interesting to have such an historical point of view about "what has been". Some Rules might seem way off now, but at that time (different time) it might have been really fun!
I was the DM for years running white box D&D, but have almost never played any game after AD&D 1. To me, it's AD&D 3 which is "way off". This excellent video does capture the game we played long ago.
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb thanks for the valuable insight! I have no doubt it was amazing! My dad introduced me into the TTRPG world with AD&D (even though I played a mere wolf companion at that time, so I wasn't deeply involved into the intricacies of the rule system). Anyway by "off" I never meant "wrong" (native french speaker here, my english vocabulary is weak sometimes). I meant that it's really far from what I am used to since D&D3 - as you pointed out 🙂
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb could you elaborate what feels off to you about 3rd edition? I'd love to hear your perspective in depth if you feel like sharing 🥰
i played 3rd edition exactly once. I walked past a game setting up and did not recognize the books. This must have been a few months after 3rd edition came out. I asked to sit in. The referee gave me a fighter character to play (I did not create a character and was mostly dealing with the different game mechanics. The characters being played by the other players were strange and idiosyncratic. The players seemed to want the other players to admire the characters they had created. This was simply not part of any D&D games I had played or run in the past. The other players clearly did not appreciate my style, either. In white box D&D, there was a great deal of discussion of tactics before going on a adventure and having encounters. Encounters were very much "us versus the opponents." While I was mostly immersed in the changed game mechanics, the other players did not seem very interested in what I could add to the party in a battle. The DM used individual initiative, with each character seeming to do his/her own thing without regard for what other characters were doing. While the characters were mostly (or all) of double digit levels, they were able to overpower the opponents. I did not think they would do well against equal opponents and would be unlikely to survive well in my game. In general, there was just too much "I" and too little "we" in the game and I think the character generation process is to blame. In white box D&D, a first level fighter is normally an ordinary person with +1 HP and to hit. There is no expectation of the character being special at the start of the game. It is a character's story that can make him special. In the video, there was a piece in which a dwarf and archer and a MU encounter two trolls and a few orcs. . I assume this is a group of new players. Had I been the DM, I would have stopped the game flow after this encounter and explained it this way: You should all have discussed your tactics in character at the start of play and should have known what spells the MU had prepared. The spotlight of this encounter is on the MU using her fireball on the trolls. I would have told the dwarf that he should have declared "I charge as soon as the fireball goes off." In a situation where you (the dwarf) are the one in the spotlight, you should try to say something memorable or distinctive as you charge. Seize your moment, not someone else's moment. It's a group game. i played three sessions of Pathfinder (original edition). During our first encounter I complained that the individual initiative system gave the players an unfair disadvantage in preventing us from coordinating. I also had a dispute with the DM during character creation. The DM wanted me to take all the options the game system allowed and I didn't want to do that. I saw (and still see) that it was a Christmas tree with too many ornaments. I want to give you one last thought. I want you to imagine a dozen couples crowding a dance floor for a waltz. Each of the 24 characters acts independently and sequentially. Think of the chaos if they are not allowed to act as a group. Charles Morehouse@@priestesslucy3299
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb players who want to showboat and make others admire their characters isn't an edition thing. You could put those players in just about any game and they wouldn't change much. A game with as much player input on the character probably enables such players more, but fundamentally you were interacting with players with a play style many don't like. Us vs The World is the intended mindset and perspective of 3rd edition just as much as any other edition. The reduced lethality may contribute towards players being a bit more casual about combat and less focused on party collaboration, but again that's primarily a player thing not a system thing. I've played in dozens of different 3rd edition groups and the only one where we were especially individualistic was my very first group in Highschool. In 3rd edition, level 1 PCs are a single step above an ordinary person of their chosen field. They're measurably and meaningfully stronger, but it's not a lot. The difference is 3rd edition gives fields to normal people. Besides commoners there are Warriors, Experts and Adepts. You raise good points about Group Initiative. With a good GM like you, it sounds like a lot of fun. I might be down to try that style some time. I'm used to Individual Init, but it's certainly got flaws and I'm totally down to experiment. As for the Christmas Tree, it's absolutely an issue. The game's math demands you play along to an extent, but there are ways to boil the math into the system under the hood and reduce the bling dangling off a PC. tl;dr Some of your problems were people problems rather than issues with the system. Sorry you didn't have a good time, and I really appreciate your story 🥰
As an "old school" gamer from the mid-80s, this was a great video. My only issue (nit-pick) is that (like many other people/ sources/ video games) I think you mixed up 2nd edition with 1st edition. I may have to "dust off" my old rulebooks to double check, but I think a lot of the examples (and charts) you cited originated in 1st edition AD&D. (not 2nd) As I said, not a big deal (just a nit-pick), and I could be wrong. Otherwise, nice video with an interesting perspective! Also? I think the "buffing of casters in 3rd edition" WAS intentional. At least for Divine Casters. (Clerics/Priests specifically) This was to address the age old, "Who wants to be STUCK playing the healer?" question. By adding things like "spontaneous casting" and extra spells, Healer characters could help party survivability without needing to focus ENTIRELY on curative spells. (and doing nothing else)
For 2e saving throws, it was obvious which to use: if two or more categories were applicable, you chose the leftmost column. So paralysis/poison/death > rod/staff/wand > petrification/polymorph > Breath weapon > spell. So if you used a wand that cast a spell that simulated a breath weapon that paralyzed people, you saved vs paralyzation/polymorph. This means "save vs spell" was there as catch-all for weird things that managed to bypass every other category.
One minor correction for you - level-draining undead didn't always drain a level in 1E and 2E. Specters and vampires would drain TWO levels per hit. No one liked facing those things. Ghosts, though, were the worst. Your character could be aged up to 40 years just by SEEING a ghost...which could not only kill you on the spot by taking you past your pre-determined old age limit, but it also forced a system shock roll, which could ALSO kill you.
We played a 3 year campaign of AD&D 2e nearly every week (so ~120 sessions) and I barely made it to 7th level with my Mage. 😂 Those were the days. Easily my most memorable RPG.
I continue to enjoy your dive into the history of D&D (and with it Pathfinder), though at this point you might want to examine what was going on outside of D&D in the 90s since some of the changes from 2e to 3e feel like a response to other systems (Certainly, 2e is usually lumped in with 'old school' games while 3e is usually lumped in with 'trad' games)
You're right. A lot, if not most of D&D3 design options were straight out of other RPGs. And it's not a coincidence. Most major RPGs at the time were designed a lot more carefully than D&D and/or had had a couple editions of evolution. A lot of the most important system philosophy and ideas were taken from Rolemaster in particular (skill-based but also class-based system, with different costs to raise skills based on class, or the economics of magic items...).
The whole old vs new school division has always seemed odd to me. IT only considers D&D and the closest derivatives. Plenty of even 80s games that weren't "old school", to say nothing of later experimentation.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Yeah, I tend to see the cluster of games that 3e fits into referred to as 'trad', distinct from 'old school' as in the OSR movement, and leaning into the 90s via WoD and - as you say - even the 80s via games such as CoC - and also distinct from 'narrative/story games' such as the PbtA movement. Old school vs New school, as I'm used to seeing it used, seems to be a division within the OSR, though I'm not familiar enough with the OSR/NSR space to have a freaking clue what the difference is. I'm playing Mausritter as a PbP at the moment and wouldn't have the foggiest if it counts as OSR or NSR. I know I'm a mouse. I know I've climbed a difficult half-decayed staircase using my 6" pole to both test it for being rotten through and as leverage. I know that there was no rolling involved in that like there would probably be if someone was running it in a trad game, and might be if someone was running it in a PbtA depending on what moves were in that game and if 'traversing difficult terrain' fell under one or not.
It seems like the rules lawyer never played any edition before 3rd. Sure, your character had less options in the form of feats, but multiclassing was more common; heck some classes could not be gotten if you did not multiclass (ie, Druid or bard), and you could play any monster in the monster manual as a playable character. I think the rules lawyer missed the splat books and only read the dmg and phb. You still had skills in the form of non-weapon proficencies and weapon mastery where my fighter can be a master of a long sword versus yours was a novice at axes, long bows, and daggers to make them work very differently; doubly so if you took a dip into theif and have more skills and the ability to back stab. The amount of customization I would say is comparable to 3e, they just defined it differently with different values as 3e let you play a halfling illusionist but BECMI let you play a Tree Ent or a Sphynx... depends which you value more to say which is better. Pre-3e also had rules for you to play as litteral gods, which was the goal for play once you got past Domain or Name level play. Seriously, there was a system for a player character to make Worlds, planes of reality, make a race or create monster/creatures, or modify base reality in a plane of thr multiverse in "Wrath of the Immortals" the 2e Mystara rules. Actual rules for how gods work, mind you, and you could still play in this game phase to try to get to the head of a pantheon or destroy your rivals. There was also a lot of things you could spend gold on outside of building a stronghold. Earlier editions assumed you would be spending gold to achieve your goals; ie hire a sage to tell you where a +3 holy avenger is, hire a group of riders to escort you to the dungeon the Holy Avenger is at in case you ran into an orc band of 200 orcs, and hire some experts to set up a base camp so you can have an alchemist, a lock Smith, an engineer, and a black Smith to support the party when they came up after fighting a black pudding and could not get past the locked door when the ceiling was about to collapse. They just did not have a factory that spit out +3 holy avengers like 3e.
Another subtle effect of gold values for magic items in 3e is to move the implied setting of any D&D campaign a long stride further from Jack Vance and Dying Earth, where "magic" was legacy technology from a long, lost civilization. 3e isn't a post apocalyptic game the way AD&D is by default.
One thing to realize about old skool at least as I remember it was the fact that the DM often ruthlessly cheated to keep the game going. Many characters had quite the Christmas tree of magic items, Wishes were not super rare, etc.
Hence the Dungeon Master's Screen, hidden dice rolls, Rulings, and a whole hell of a lot of playing fast and loose with those rules and improv and imagination. Most DMs were grateful to have players at all. The prep workload was enormous. The investment of time and sometimes money was extreme. To put all that effort into making something rewarding just so a single solitary d20 roll could change the entire universe and make everybody cry...was a little too much power for that d20 to have. It wasn't that the DM was abusing power at all, he was preventing that malicious d20 result from gutting the player's hopes and dreams.
@@OceanusHelios Yes indeed... too much power for a single D20 roll to have is a good way of putting it. The OSR folks who say I just do whatever and let the dice fall where they may were at pretty different tables than mine back in Ye Olde Days.
I felt the DM's primary job was convincing players that their ridiculous good fortune (i.e. not being party wiped from gross mistakes) was due to random chance rather than DM intervention. The theatrical embellishment required considerable skill, or at least I got much better at it as time went on. For example when players were up against the wall in an encounter I would hold the mapping of monster's HPs in in reserve, so, for example, if there were three goblins with 3, 4, and 5 HPs and a player hit for 4 damage, it would be the 4 HP goblin that they hit, killing him dead without wasting the one extra damage or leaving a wounded goblin standing that could then attack at least once more. That greatly reduced the number of rolls I had to outright fudge. It was part of the informal agreement that we had that we were there to have fun, which meant the DM would cheat in the party's favor from time to time in exchange for their good behavior (e.g. not purposely trying to wreck the DM's work) and energetic exercising of their suspension of disbelief. It worked great!
strange how many ppl say each new edition killed their game or table when some of us still play 2e and own every book and boxed set. i have never played another version of d&d. i have spent years collecting every book and boxset and dragon magazine. we play a massive house rule filled game including many optional rules found the in option books and dragon mags. all my kids and their friends learned 2e. now many of them play 5e but keep asking to look up stuff from 2e to convert to 5e for their games that were never reissued.
Thanks for the video. Been DMing D&D for 38 years (even playing occasionally). I enjoy listening to people discuss all the changes in the game over the decades. I contend that the game exists in 2 forms. The game as it was during TSR. Then transitioning into the game as it was redesigned by WoTC. Anyone who has ever ‘built’ a Magic the Gathering deck and also played D&D in both its forms should be able to immediately see how much WoTC inserted the mechanics of their card game into their version of D&D. Personally, I prefer the characters to be run by their players instead of their character sheets. Are you driving that bus or just along for the ride?
Yes... whatever system it's about, I think that we should ask: Is there room to optimize your character? Is it expected to optimize your character? In BECMI D&D and AD&D 1st edition the answer is no, in Rules Cyclopedia D&D the answer is very little and no, in AD&D 2nd edition there's little (more with splat books, and considerably with player's option) but still not really expected, and in 3rd edition and on its "yes" and "of course".
My first significant exposure to D&D was the old TSR "gold box" games, which had a fairly faithful implementation of AD&D, including class limitations and male/female characters having certain stat adjustments and limitations. (Female characters strength was capped at 18/50 as I recall.) When I migrated my characters from Pool of Radiance to Curse of the Azure Bonds I was really ticked off by the level caps that were not mentioned in the PoR manual. Dual classing was in CotAB but not in PoR, so levelling characters in general changed drastically.
AD$D2 was a step back in gaming. Most other games around that era had figured out quite a lot of things: more skill-based, more systematization, less ambiguity... We had enough "TTRPG technology" back then so that AD$D2 could have looked more than 3rd ed that 1st ed. Quite a shame.
So, D&D came out of gaming and preserved a lot of its features--and armour class (AC) was one of those. Each of the numbers stood as a shorthand for a type of armour, in the same way as assigning a column number & referring to that number. It turned out to be easier that way, like saying 'THAC0' instead of 'the number you would need to hit armour class 0' -- and it also accounts for the weapon modifiers in the Player's Handbook of 1st edition AD&D. This usage has been preserved in supplements to the game, that subsequently became its own system--Rolemaster. And one of the core staff of 2nd ed Rolemaster ended up working as one member of the core design team of 3rd ed D&D, Monte Cook. One of the design principles of Rolemaster involves that degree of player customisation--fighters can learn magic, but it can easily take all the effort of a given level to develop one spell; the system was skills based, and skill resolution was basically Dice+modifiers then compare against a chart or table, with a rule of thumb being a roll of 101+ (Rolemaster uses a percentile dice as its base) equalling success. Unlike 3rd ed D&D, difficulties modified the dice roll directly, not the target number needed.
I agree with this 100%. Also the editions after AD&D just seemed to lose the atmosphere if you actually being there with all the rules modifications and taking demons and devils out of the game.
I hate the idea of "Player skill not Character abilities". That means that I cannot play certain types of characters ever, because I do not have the "player skill" to pull it off. It would be like me saying, "I want my Bard to play a beautiful song on the lute", and the GM telling me I have to play it on a real instrument and how well I play in real life determines how well my character players.
It's one of those things that sounds good in theory but a LOT of players are neurodivergent and often have a hard time roleplaying social encounters well because they're not good with them in real life. Plus you would never do something like stopping your tabletop game to play out combat in real life, but too many GMs even now have a habit of going, "Well you didn't roleplay your character's rousing speech so it didn't happen, no matter what you rolled on the dice."
That's not at all what was meant by player skill. Player skill is the player knowing how to best use his character's abilities instead of a player just looking at a character sheet and only accepting options they can see on the sheet. For example, my character abilities say nothing about setting up an alarm system, and if character abilities is all I focus on then I wouldn't be able to do that. My player skill tells me that if I take several of the loose boards from the pile of rubbish the DM mentioned and then lean those up against this locked door, if someone opens it from the other side the clatter of falling boards will potentially let me know that the door has been opened. Character abilities would tell me that the burning hands spell I have won't be useful against the orcs who are coming across the rope bridge after me because by the time they get in range of the spell they'll be stabbing me with spears, but player skill is going to remind me that I can use the same spell to quickly burn through at least some of the ropes that support the bridge and slow down the pursuit even if I don't send them all plummeting to their deaths in the gorge below. Those are just two examples off of the top of my head, but I hope they illustrate the point well enough. And, frankly, any DM who insists that his player MUST have a skill to allow their character to use it is a jerk who has no business being a DM. And I say that with the certainly of four and a half decades of being a DM.
@@thatpatrickguy3446 I sideways disagree, with respect. What you are describing could be in any edition of the game. I don't think creativity at the table was ever turned away. It's possible some tables did and I have limited experience outside the groups I had. We did celebrate creativity, especially anything that made someone at the table say, "wow!" I think what the OP is saying is in 1E/2E the DMs were challenging the *players* and in 3E the adventure challenges the *characters*. Let's say there is an adventure that has a riddle or a puzzle in it. In 3E, there will be skills listed with relevant DCs on how to give clues to the players on things their characters already know to help the players solve it. In 1E/2E, the DM presents it and the players either figure it out or don't. I think that is the difference.
@@evilDMguy I understand what you're saying, but based on the statements and the example given by the OP my response was accurate and fair. They spoke specifically of their character being disallowed to do an action because they as a player could not perform the same action. Their intent may have been different, but I can only reply to their words. To your point, the later editions did give examples of how different skills could be used to achieve different goals, but that was sometimes the problem as it reduced a lot of the fun of games in my experience. The one thing I never really liked about 3rd and later editions is that a lot of times the rules brought it down to a dice roll instead of a moment of creative experimentation. While I countered that by telling the players in my games that the more information they could give me on how they would achieve something the more likely they were to succeed, sometimes to the point of not even rolling the dice, there was still too much of a reflex to roll first and think about it later, if at all, because of how the rules were codified. Now I accept that that is a stylistic choice made by me based on the way I learned to play and the era I most enjoyed playing in. I also accept that it isn't everyone's cuppa and that's fine too. There have been days when I've gotten to the table as a player after a dozen or more hours on the clock and I just want to throw dice and swear at them when they let me down rather than think. I like challenges that I can think about and find ways of improving my chances, like the aforementioned boards against the locked door which I used as a player and which, thankfully, prevented us from being surprised by an attack from the rear. I know that, to my mind, the increasing codification of the rules puts more weight on doing what the rules specifically say one can do rather than the original rulings based system which gave the players more freedom to be creative. The rulings based system suits my play style more (possibly because I am an archaic relic of a bygone age 😛) so it is what I prefer. And, apparently, my young players often seem to as well as much as they have asked me for more frequent game sessions. Again, I have no problem with players who just want to sit at the table with friends and let the dice fall where they may. That kind of lower effort gaming can still be great time spent with friends. I just find challenging player skills to be more fun in the groups I've run and played in, and I wanted to properly illustrate the difference where I saw what seemed to be a misunderstanding of the same.
@@thatpatrickguy3446 All fair points and thanks for the reply! I understand that too many rules can feel restraining because then a player may not try something at all. I tell my players their concept is more important. Tell me the concept and then play it and we will make it work. I do agree I state it wrong and the OP was talking that if they couldn't play the piano, their character couldn't. I did know some DMs who did that. If the player only spoke english, that's all the character spoke. It was nearly chess rules if we used minis and put them in the wrong place! Certainly I had a great time as I'm playing all of these decades later. I merely like the modern design and ideas but I will steal from anything to make it a fun game! Again, thanks for the reply! Take care!
The limitations on demi-humans was due to several factors. ONE, supposed to be a human centric world. and TWO, demi-humans got special abilities humans did not. It was supposed to be hard to get to those higher levels anyway. Most commoners were L0-1, if frontiers or war torn then maybe L0-5. So reaching L10 or higher was Lordly. You were basically hitting the ruling class. You would also have to travel farther and wider to find what you needed to level because at these higher levels, i.e. above 10, you could pretty much wipe out village by village. I DMed parties of 8 who each had 3-4 hirelings/retainers. They were basically small armies going through a village. Most of these were fighters in plate as well. Plus when you start the game, you are commoners. You are not heroes yet. You come from humble backgrounds, seeking adventure to make a name for yourself. You profession is now adventurer. You are making your story as you go along. Plus dual characters was not hard at all. In 1E AD&D, at 0 HP you went unconscious. For each round unattended, you lost 1 HP, down to -10 to where you died. Someone had to get to you beforehand to administer aid, and stop the downward spiral. dmg pg 87 "Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will remain in a corna far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there. The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies." This was not optional. This was the Way. Natural healing was ONE week min at 7 HP max, reduced depending on your CON. Second week and on, you got your CON bonus. Max was FOUR weeks healing to which then you gained anything remaining. What some miss is that you were supposed to end your session in a safe area, to where you can rest as described in the above quote. Then in game time became real time. So when you went back to play one week later, a week in game time also passed. DM's had to keep track of this, and change in game world accordingly, such as if they did not finish what their goal was, then, what they cleared, could be uncleared. HP management was important. Pots and healing spells hugely important, or parties could be knocked out of action for awhile. Plus 1E AD&D was an OPEN world. A ttmmorpg if you will. Players rolled up multiple characters and a DM could be hosting 10 or more parties all over the map. So that party above, gets to a resting place, and ends their session, and those same players could pull out other character sheets for another party and start a session with them, who could be 1000 miles from the other party. A DM had to keep track of where parties were in case they overlapped. Greyhawk is a huge map. I think this is a confusion some have about 1E. A round is not a single swing of a weapon. It is many, it is feints, parries, and strikes. Not all strikes will damage an armored foe. What you are essentially rolling for is again, not a single swing but to see if any of your swings did actual damage. What is often missed in these types of discourse is to act like this game lived in a vacuum. Old School came out of wargaming, literally. hat is who it competed against. Computer games started to rise in the 90s and with the advent of the MMORPGs, i.e, UO in 1997, things had to change. Again, 2E did not sell well because also many 1E players just kept using the 1E books. It is not like when a new edition comes out, you literally have to pay the newer one, all you books do not just turn to ash. I still have my first edition 1E books. In 2000, WotC's competition was now computer gaming and game consoles. They had to appeal to the video gamer and that is how I see much of this game changing too. Look at the orcs in 1E, they have pig faces. Look at the orcs in 5E, they look more like WoW orcs. Some have mentioned the Orcs of Thar which was part of Mystara but this was reverse dungeoning. You got to play humanoids IN the Land of Thar defending it against adventurers. The 2E humanoid PHBR states these characters are optional, for the DM to decide, and should be used sparingly. WotC released at the tail end of 2E and adventure book, literally called, Reverse Dungeon. You play a goblin in a goblin clan defending your lair against adventures. It talks about Goblin ecology, how to move up in ranks, etc. And speaking of the forest from the trees. If you never played then, then how can you say, how people played then? Most new players have no idea that what they think is unique to their version has an origin somewhere else. I see this a lot in 5E players trying to justify that version by bashing 1E. They even post incorrect screenshots that is not even 1E but OD&D. I have never played or DMed a game that was not story driven. Combat was gravy. You did not have to do it and because it could be a TPK sometimes, people actually roleplayed their characters instead of just hack n slash, like MOST video games were then and some still are. I played the shit out of Diablo II which dropped in 2000. I had 4 or 5 barbarian variants. I loved my axe barbarian the best because he could murder hobo like no other murder hobo. Each one specialized in a certain weapon style and I do not think they called them feats but each of these classes had them and I would use certain ones for certain variants of all the characters you could play. Each one was basically customized. So, if then WoW comes out, which becomes massively popular, and you can play an orc then hmmmm, would not the youts coming up, who play WoW, also want to play an Orc, full blooded, in a regular party? This is your potential customer base and if you want to expand behind the old school wargaming nerds, then these are the types you are appealing to. Cosplay is also HUGE and mostly from what I see, from women, SOOOOO, you modify your game to suit their interests and BAM, you now got people playing otters, raccoons and anything one can find under a rock. I know this video is just focusing on 3E but obviously we are far beyond that now as end of this year 6E is being dropped. I was going to touch on other things like initiative, but this is rather long, and I just feel like some beers and a movie now.
I think the divide between player skill and character ability still exist, often by people who want a more rules light system. Back in 3rd ED I was often in games where someone used CHA as dump stat yet because they were very personable in real life and would give some great speech the DM would let them pass due to "great roleplaying". It's like your playing a Strong Tough brute with 8 CHA which means he's likely ugly and trips over his words, and you can't use being smart as an excuse because you only got 10 INT as well. Such a character giving complicated rousing speeches to change people's mind and win debates is NOT great roleplaying. It's HORRIBLE role-playing and meta gaming. Role playing means inhabiting the role. It's why I prefer systematizing more aspects because physical abilities don't translate to a character so if you a weight lifter in real life it doesn't mean your 10 STR character can benchpress a wagon. Yet people apply that same respect to intellect and social skills so it's pulling from player skill and not the character's ability as I've seen players with 18 CHA by people who aren't as well spoken wanna do a charismatic character but because they struggle to find the words the DM often ruled against them. So more often than not I'd be in games with low CHA doing all the talking and persuasion, while low INT characters coming up with complicated plans or building machines because they were a mechanic in RL and could describe how it worked. Some may question how the DM called these things when many are suppose to be dice rolls. Well the DM often either wouldn't bother with roll or rig the DC in such a way like, your speech was super effective roll a 3 or higher and you pass, or your speech was not effective roll an 18 or higher to pass. I think doing the roll first to see if success or fail is what helps makes great roleplaying because it encourages improv. Like seen in many of the streamers where after a crit success or fail they take the time to tell the story of the epic success or fail scene which adds to the drama. Because it's up to your character to pull it off with the dice roll and then you to create the story around how that outcome came to be. Where as if you allow players to put a bunch of effort before knowing the outcome the description might not match the outcome and it feels hollow. Also having to improv after the roll is a loss of control which I think is the real issue that some players have who don't like regarding systematization, because they don't wanna roleplay they wanna self insert because they know how to do it so should their character despite the rules.
Pathfinder/DND 3.5 brought a lot of good quality of life changes. Getting rid of the 1e Hit tables and 2e THAC0 as well as changing how saving throws and skill checks work were very welcome to me. I also love that all races can attain any levels they want with the newer editions.
An interesting point of note is if you look at 3.0/3.5 D&D (Jonathan Tweet), and only look at ability modifiers instead of Attribute scores, combined with DC targets for Attribute saves, you'll find the core system from Talislanta 3rd ed (Published by WoTC prior to 3e, original design Stephen Michael Sechi ) which was led by Jonathan Tweet. It seems pretty obvious the main influence on the 'revolutionary' new version of D&D, especially given the failure of D&D 2.5 "Skills & Powers" to gain traction.
I really enjoy your videos, you always bring facts and have a great friendly vibe that comes across. As someone who occasionally receives some less than friendly comments on my own videos (from my mic placement, my pronunciation of the word attribute, and general disagreement about my opinions), I try to always consider the criticism: is it trying to bring me down or build me up and improve my content? If it is the former I have taken the stance I just won’t engage them at all, just forget and move on. If it is criticism to get me to improve, I will make changes and try to get better. That is a long way of saying… if anyone watches your videos and their take away is the crookedness of your glasses, they aren’t worth engaging because they were not paying attention! Keep up the good work!
Old School gamer here. In the days of 1e a party had to cooperate and know when to run away. I stopped playing in 1984. I listen to my son play and it sounds like a bunch of god-like characters who tolerate each other and argue over who is the greatest. The impression I have is little preparation before entering a dungeon/battle and appreciation for other players.
Honestly, as someone who stopped playing around when 3rd edition dropped, I never knew ANYONE who used the stronghold idea. You wanted your character to be that badass. Even if it took a team of badasses to bring down a dragon. Given the size these monsters are supposed to be, that makes sense to me. As for rolling hit points, let’s be honest, NO ONE was honest when rolling their character. If a fighter didn’t hit an 8 or above for hit points, they were rolling again.
I always had max HD for first level in my homebrew that I was the forever DM on. It was absurd that a character could have an 18/00 STR and a low CON, with only 1 HP. I was honest with the players. If they didn't want me to homebrew my own rules then they could skip the process and just go with dice as rolled. That means no bonuses. STR 4 INT 6 WIS 3 CON 7 CHA 8 and 2 HP. It looks like they are either a shitty Palidin or a Mage that can't even spell let alone read a scroll. That character's chance of surviving against one hit from a sickly coyete are pretty slim. Let's just take our valuable real time and spend a couple of hours going through the description of what the character sees, let him act out and choose for his character and have high hopes...only to see him die a sad and gruesome death for the sake of dice as rolled and rules as written. Meanwhile, the person on the other side of the table rolled a character that will be able to laugh and smirk and smug at everybody who is average or unluckily below average. They will be the forever hero because of six separate rolls of 3D6. Forever better than you and your measily doomed pathetic worm of a mage who thought spells were cool. The rules as written from the original DnD didn't allow you to distrubute your scores and rearrange them. Oh no. If you wanted to be a fighter but rolled a High INT but low STR good luck. Your only option was to be a Magic User. With your ONE spell as you embarked to face hordes of things that wanted to kill you. Cantrips? What are those? Can't be used in combat. Not unless you could count on a cantrip that would tie an orc's shelaces together and somehow hope the DM would play along with the jest and have the orcs fall on their swords.
@@OceanusHelios I think our standard for rolling stats was you’d roll like a handful of dice and pick and choose which went to which stat from those. Granted, if you came to the table with a character with all 18s or some shit, you’d get tossed out. It’s a game; fudging of anything and everything is expected.
In D&D and 1E, Elephant grass was a huge threat, since most players didn't know how to go through Elephant grass, while those of us that read a lot of books and/or watched nature shows knew hot to get through it with minimal trouble! D&D and 1E was for people with knowledge and creativity, not the normal boring people!
@@katherineberger6329 Can't use a skill, if there are no skills in the game other than the ones that all thieves have! Use a piece of wood with a rope on both ends to tamp down the grass and make a path through it!
@@katherineberger6329 That is how D&D and AD&D 1E was played, there were no real skills, you might have been something like a Lumberjack or farmer but that was all up to a random roll if the DM used the table!
Thanks for the video! Arguably, D&D is more of a wargame now than ever. As a thought experiment, imagine I am playing Chess and yell charge when I move my Knight. That doesn't make the Knight a PC nor does it make Chess an RPG. So, too, if I play a Napoleonic miniatures wargame and call out the orders of my Generals in French or English, I am not controlling PCs nor is it an RPG. Those games are tied closely to their mechanics and have no sense of non-mechanical roleplaying. Although (O)D&D was first marketed as a form of miniatures wargaming, what it did provide is a thin layer of mechanics and the suggestion that you roleplay anything you can think to do and the DM, through imagination and the randomness of dice, provides the consequences of those actions. This interaction is repeated through gameplay over and over but the focus is not on the mechanics but rather the vocalization of actions imagined by the players. Over the years, more and more mechanics have been added to the game. Like wargames, mechanics now decide much, much more how D&D (or many RPGs) manifest during gameplay.
25:00 I feel this about he enemies being harder to run the higher you went... I ran a game that could basically be described as a 'bad guy of the week' campaign, where the players were basically taking out an evil org by working their way up the ranks of the henchmen. It was easy to design say, the Cancer Mage, or the Lord of Vermin, or the Hunter of the Shadows; it was a lot harder to learn to use that villain's abilities effectively.
Technically 2nd edition had multiple rules around initiative. There could be individual initiatives as well as factoring each group of monsters into different initiatives. Both of which are actually given examples of if you go further in the same combat example being given in this video. After a round or two, they do break up into individual initiatives. There's also a good reason you had to say what you were going to do in a given round before doing initiative: certain actions took longer than others. Weapon speeds were a thing and applied to your initiative.
And Ars Magica was a huge influence because of Tweet. It has the some core mechanic (using a d20 instead of a d10), the abilities (attributes) range from -5 to +5, the Barbarian is built on the Berserker Virtue, and many of the skills were also word for word from the 2nd/3rd Edition Ars Magica book.
BTW, the brilliant innovation of the d20 System--roll a single die of the same kind no matter what you are trying to do, add your bonuses, and succeed if you roll above a certain number--existed in first edition Ars Magica, published in 1987. ArM uses a d10, but the basic principle is the same. The stats in ArM ARE the modifier (-3 to +3, typically), something D&D still hasn't caught up with, even though a lot of character sheets now show the modifier bigger than the vestigial 3-18 number. Using stats in this way is one of the "Shiny New Innovations" people are excited about in DC20 ... (The fact that Jonathan Tweet, one of the two creators of Ars Magica, worked on D&D 3, may have had an impact on the d20 System.)
Your point about character customization is astounding it is incredible how much modern D&D has destroyed creativity that you need the book to tell you how do make your character special. It is amazing how nobody can think for themselves so they just let the book tell them what to do.
@@johnmickey5017 Feats and class options restriction actions and choices they do not add them. The problem with modern players is they need a book to tell them what to do so for example 5E Battle master fighter has an ability that allows them to disarm opponents so that would imply that no other class can do that since it is an ability whereas in Old School D&D any class can attempt to disarm an opponent and depending on how they try it will require I different roll perhaps rolling under DEX or STR. So Old School gives infinite options whereas modern D&D is restrictive.
@@BX-advocate Because modern players do not have imaginations. They need to buy imaginations in books to be able to make 1 fighter different from another with silly mechanics, not imaginations.
I definitely liked original D&D much better. It allowed for much better roleplaying and less rules lawyering. We played an offshoot of OD&D called Arduin Grimoire that did not have many of the limitations that you mentioned with AD &D. There were no limits on experience points or hit points based class or race. We had several older characters that reached level 30 or above. Then we switched to Runequest which had the more logical combination of attack ability versus defense ability and armor instead of just hit points. It also had all skills (including combat) as a percentile roll. It was fluid and adaptable to many different worlds. When I tried to come back to D&D after 3.0 I found it bewildering. I have tried to read the rulebooks of several editions and find the character generation needlessly complicated and tiresome. The feats and skills make the characters too powerful. The rulebooks are too complicated and read like engineering textbooks. Every little detail is prescribed by some rule instead of the DM and players doing what make sense and improvising. I have decided to just go back to the old systems I am familiar with because I can’t find anyone to teach me the new rules.
3rd, 3.5, and then Pathfinder 1.0 really really rekindled my love of RPGs. I'd been introduced to it in 2e, but everyone basically migrated to the much more customizable WOD games. 3.0 came out and really excited me *because* of the customization. It's no surprise that my first attempt at a character was a sorcerer who was proficient in the greatsword, because that was absolutely impossible in 2e.
33:13 - 33:30 Unfortunately, the tendency I've seen for D&D 5e DMs is to apply that codification mindset of "looking for a rule for everything," not being able to find a rule for an unorthodox tactic in the 5e rules, and telling the players, "No, you can't do that" or "You need a class feature/feat to do that." For me, someone who play style largely aligns with Old-School principles, this is infuriating to deal with.
5th imo is a far cry from what D&D was and is aimed at younglings with short attention span. Gone are the deep stuff we pulled in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. And 4th wasn't even D&D... so that left only PF1 as D&D 3.75 which was the best version of the game we will ever get.
@@Traumatree I don't know about 4e not being D&D; it was a more honest representation of the direction the designers at WotC were going with it (i.e. a skirmish board game), and it was certainly better at it then the undercooked D&D 5e. If anything, I'd say that PF2e is the latest in the evolution of D&D 3e, being even less ambiguous than its predecessors when it comes to its rules and procedures. From 3e onwards, each edition of D&D was a significantly different game, being completely incompatible with previous editions before it.
I did like individual initiative in 2e, because D10, lowest goes first, and your number was affected by your reaction adjustment (Dex) and your weapon's speed factor: so a dagger was actually faster to swing than a battle axe. Every single spell also had a speed that was the equivalent of a weapon's speed factor, so choosing a weaker spell might let you pre-empt the enemy. It was a genuinely good system, if a little crunchy.
Weapon speed is cool but it should be the opposite. Longer weapons should go before shorter weapons. No one would take a knife over a baseball bat because 9 times out of 10 the person with the knife won't get close enough to use it.
@@TA-by9wv that conflates reach with speed, which is admittedly more important in real combat, but in terms of game balance, having the 1d4 damage weapon faster that the 1d10 damage one makes a lot more sense, and at least gives a reason to pick the low damage. Plus you could throw a dagger, giving.it more reach than the sword a single time.
In second edition there where lots of ways to customise your character was only limited by your imagination, also multi-classing, then there where the handbooks eg Fighters Hanbook which gave many ways to play your fighter from the classical knight to a swashbuckler. The way that 3rd Edition changed things was an attempt to make all classes equal in power and changed how muti-classing worked. This balancing became more pronouced in 3.5 Edtition and in 4th all the class where the same but had different discription for abilities. The changes made from 2nd to 3rd introduced a more focus on skills and the initiative system was changed along side movment, for a more grid based battle map game. Most of the magic was unchanged except for casting time had gone and a new mechanic of combat spell casting. Saving throws were changed and base attack vs THAC0, bit simpler on the maths side. So i would say it was more evolution of the game and a revolution, bring in some of the optional 2nd edition rules and making them core.
While we like out AD&D and still play it, it seems we use so additional rules, like "full hit points" on the first three levels or the "not dead until -10" rule. But we still loose PC, but the last time we had a whole adventure to get the stuff for resurrection, while the "lost player", runs along as a "ghost". Was funny.
Wonderful analysis of the transformation that came with 3.0! As much as I loved 1E, it had some serious issues: THAC0, individual XP charts per class, demi-human level limits (which we flat out IGNORED), and a bewildering variety of inconsistent mechanics. (As groundbreaking as Gygax was, he was in DESPERATE need of an editor). 2E was an improvement, yes, but an incremental one. But what made 3.0/3.5 my weapon of choice--and remain so to this day--was the codification of combat rules (especially movement!), and the redefinition of a round from one minute to six seconds. To fully understand my point, I need to illustrate. Back in the day, I had a group of players that would constantly test me as to what you can get away with in a round, especially if you weren't engaged in combat. "A round's a minute, right? So I wanna do this, and this, and that, and back to this"...in short, some of my players weaponized the ambiguity (especially in 1E), and I've never forgotten the stress of all those arguments. Then 3.0 came out and the arguments STOPPED. And for all its faults (so clearly illustrated in this video) it remains my mainstay. However, nothing says I can't run a 3.5 game with an old school MINDSET. And I do. Let's start with multiclassing. I've house ruled a system that forbids combos that shatter verisimilitude outright (wizard/monk, anyone?) No more than one multiclass EVER, have to have so many levels in your initial class before you can take it, have to qualify for it, and in some cases, you can no longer advance in the initial class. But I wouldn't have gone through the trouble if 3.5 multiclassing wasn't so easy and elegant in design. Then there's falling below 0 hp. I use a homebrew that smashes 3.5 and 1E in a novel way: if you fall below 0 and are revived, you enter a state I call DISABLED. You are barely conscious, can't attack, can't cast, and movement is cut in half at best. Any exertion will send you right back to 0 hp and the dying rules take over. A DISABLED state lasts 24 hours (modifiers apply), during which your PC is consigned to an ICU ward. Heal checks and curing magic CANNOT bypass this phase, but can whittle away its duration--but only to a point. As for gold and magic items, I'm on the stingy side on both. In the old school, magic items were rare and wondrous; in 3.0, magic went from wonder to commodity overnight, and the effect was jarring. Not to mention the fact that PC wizards and clerics could get in on the action at relatively low levels: scrolls (PC level 1), potions (level 3), etc. Lastly, NO prestige classes or splatbooks used in PC builds. If the base classes were good enough to 1E and 2E, they're good enough for me. You wanna customize? Knock yourself out with careful selection of feats and skills. (An aside: I love monster creation for my homebrew setting. But the rule changes in 3.0 needlessly complicated monster stats, and turned creating a monster from scratch into a miserable slog. I've converted only a handful of monsters I'd created in 1E/2E with so much fun and enthusiasm.) If I had my way, I'd customize a whole system and call it (in honor of Godzilla Minus One), 3.5 - 1. Blend 3.5 with the best of what 1E and 2E had to offer. Clarity and consistency of rules with a gritty editorial slant. A system that can make you feel like a hero and still kick your teeth in if things go badly.
I don't know if old retroclones are retroclones anymore, because after the OGL drama, many retroclones like Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy and World Without Numbers have revised and updated their books with the intention of separating themselves from D&D and OGL to avoid possible lawsuits in future and be more independent.
In 3.5 I had a house rule a few folks stole (those fiends!) Once you have a magic item feat you get an XP pool equal to 10-25% of the XP to get to that level. This can only be used to make items. Intended for smaller items, scrolls, potions, taking the edge off bigger items.
-I mention precursors to 3rd edition in optional 2e books ("2.5 edition") in the video. One would make a mistake, though, to suggest that 3rd Edition wasn't a revolution in the game.
-Yes, I understand that not ALL tables played D&D by the rules or the same way, and that more-narrative styles predated 2000 at many tables. While it might be satisfying to "disprove" something, the point was obviously never to say ALL tables played X way before 2000. It would be folly to deny that there HAS been a shift in expectations in D&D compared to before, and that the 3e rules changes reflected and furthered a significant trend in D&D. Don't want to lose the forest for the trees.
It was definitely a revolution, but it was one I never got on board with. And it was the feats that killed 3rd edition for me. This is where they went from being characters that you could see and believe, to becoming something that was closer to what you would play on a console or see in an anime series. It's the difference between 13th warrior and Avatar.
Sure ascending AC--shrugs. That just changed counting down to counting up. Okay. Spells and magic became much less potent and much--Much more prevalent. And this took D&D in a direction that it already had the potential for--where magic as just another form of tech, where getting a new magic item has all the wonder of upgrading your iphone.
While it's true that many of the rules of 3rd edition, especially those about combat, came from the "2.5" edition, including epic levels, some things were far older. Prestige classes date back to 1st Edition, to the bard class, which could not be taken at 1st level and had pretty harsh multiclass and ability requirements. The monk class in 3.0 is the direct porting of the mystic class from BECMI.
But the true revolution was another: the Open Gaming License. That was what really changed the game, adding to the already high level of customization of the d20 System. If you were unhappy with standard material, you could add third party d20 things. Or you could write down and publish your own.
This, unlike all the rest, was completely unheard of before and the true unique feature of 3rd edition.
@@ObatongoSensei Epic level is fine---once. Once you've pushed the game to it's absolute limit, you realize the only thing that can challenge an epic level party is another epic level party. After a while that scenario gets pretty stale. There's only one thing left to do--retire them and start at 1st level and stop at 12th at the very top---the sweet spot is really 1st - 7th.
@@andrewlustfield6079 That is true only if you see a "challenge" as a combat encounter. Also, many tend to forget that in every edition anything that is not a challenge doesn't grant experience points, so it should be pointless for the players to kill everything in their path. Raising levels with combat as epic characters is really hard and that's the real reason why playing epic levels might be boring for a combat-oriented group of gamers.
@@ObatongoSensei Well, I use a combination of combat and gold for experience in the 1st edition tradition. It incentivizes going into dungeons in the first place. This way experience is awarded in a pretty even way--roughly a 50% - 50% gold to combat when all is said and done. Level advancement is slow because I also use 1st ed experience point tables--more modern ones make level advancement too fast and you really don't get to see your characters struggle and grow up.
But to a larger point, when you lose both the danger of combat and exploration, you've lost all the parts of the game that make it a game--dice are irrelevant and then it's just an improv acting exercise. If there's no danger, there's no point.
RAW in AD&D (1e), you had to use gold to pay for training when you reached enough xp to get to the next level.
It is interesting how table rules propagate into base rules. Max hp at level 1, and negative hps were how i started in Red Box. My Dad was an experienced DM when i was learning.
He also had no level caps for PCs. (NPC elves and such were capped based on rules.)
You could also earn feats and powers and such through adventures as rewards. (Did you save that old man and get him baxk to town... he can teach you a fighting technique!)
The main difference with 3e is a lot of DM systems and levers were given to players so the players would have more character options. Pulling off the stops on wizards did NOT go over well at some tables. Lol. (Im pretty sure it was a stated design goal when releasing 3rd ed fyi.)
Back in BECMI they had weapon specialists with cool powers and the ability to become immortal... my brother failed his quest near the end.
I agree with most of your points though, it was mostly the moving of agency from DMs to Players.
I think the WORST part of 3rd ed. Was the generic ability to craft magic items. Cheap CLW wands to ensure everyone was always at full hp lead to game deaign shifts. (Leading to 4e healing surges in an effort to "re-cap" healing.)
Pre 3rd edition the table mindset was on avoiding combat and acquiring treasure more... and 3rd ed shifted the focus to combat by setting out balanced encounter rules.
Man... this is a crazy huge topic. It would be fun to just tear loose and talk about this stuff for a few hours.
I hated 3e when it first came out. But the system grew on me once I saw how it simplufied stuff that was complex for no reason (THACO and saving throws, for example) but added complexity where it made sense (character options, race/class combos).
I agree with magic items though. It made item creation an assembly line. Magic item creation was an adventure in itself in 2e. In my game, I kept the stuff from 2e that I liked, but mostly used 3e. My game is now an amalgamation of 3.5e and Pathfinder, with a smattering of 2e.
@@TroySavary my problems with item creation was less Magic Item Creation and moreso Mundane Crafting.
The sheer time required to make masterwork stuff regardless your level was stupid.
@@priestesslucy3299 The entire D&D economy is broken. Crafting takes too long. Items are way too expensive cimpared to what various professions earn. Adventurers find far too much gold, even on mundane threats like goblins.
I completely redid the coin system and prices, so that everyday people could actually afford everyday items. Most items are priced in either copper, or bronze, my new coin worth 10 copper. Silver is worth 100 copper, making it like the dollar to the copper penny. So now that labourer who gets 1 silver per day isn't spending 1/10 of his wages on that 1 copper ale. A gold piece is worth 100 silver, meaning that, like the real world, only the wealthy dealt in gold. Treasures carried by common monsters were correspondingly reduced.
@@TroySavary I really like that. Might yoink it.
You using Electrum for a mid-coin between Silver and gold?
@@priestesslucy3299 I had forgotten about electrum. I had silver trade bars as an in between.
As someone who always giggled at being offered AD&D insurance at work, I was gutted to learn that "advanced dungeons and dragons" stopped being a thing more than 20 years ago. This by itself is a reason to reject anything from 3e on.
As someone who also has perpetually crooked glasses, I feel your pain.
Me too, but it's my right ear that's lower.
If your glasses are crooked, you should take them to an optician you trust so that they can adjust them to align properly on your face. To do otherwise is to not use them as intended, with your vision looking directly through the optical center of your lenses.
Read this and immediately adjusted mine. 😅
@@Revan_7even Same here!
😂Me too, seems my glasses are always slightly crooked.
amazing use of The Gamers: Dorkness Rising footage. super underrated film
Here's some pedantic corrections:
There's nothing in 3rd Edition that Interlock/FuZion/Hero/GURPs didn't do first. It was less of a revolution and more of a catching up to what was considered modern game design in the 80's and 90's.
If you look at Kits there were Kits that allowed demihumans to take on non-standard classes and BECMI allowed demihumans to effectively achieve 36th level.
Race/Level limits weren't simulating anything or simulationist. They were an arbitrary way to give players a reason to play humans.
Multi-classing is mostly a legacy concept to continue the fighter/magic-user identity of elves and the fighter/thief identity of halflings in OD&D/Basic.
Skills (BECMI) and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (AD&D) are effectively the same as Skills in 3e. They date back to 1985.
I think long campaigns were more common in the past, not less, but playing multiple characters was more normal.
As far as high-level achievements and play, BECMI had players who could literally become god gods (though they were called Immortals) and they could literally manipulate reality. Also, AD&D had no level cap, see the guy who wanted everyone who ran a character in Forgotten Realms their character sheets because his 400th level character nuked the whole planet and he wanted to calculate experience from the letter columns of Dragon Magazine.
Common wisdom in the 2e days was that fighter types were best at 1-5, thieves and clerics 6-9, mages 10+.Very few people I knew played past 8th level and I think the published modules support that was the upper limit for a lot of people.
BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia Basic had Effective HD which assigned "bonus HD" for significant special abilities and rules for balancing encounters around those numbers, with math around how party level, number of party levels, and number of opponents were factored in. This is effectively CR.
Whatever the Old School Primer says, the fact that adventure modules had recommended levels means people were conscious of game balance.
Books like the Dungeoneers Survival Guide or the Segment system from AD&D will show that older editions are crazy rules heavy when they want to be.
"Race/Level limits weren't simulating anything or simulationist. They were an arbitrary way to give players a reason to play humans." Yeah, I was listening to this part of the video and was thinking this was flat out wrong. It's because Gary Gygax hated demi-humans in his game.
"Skills (BECMI) and Non-Weapon Proficiencies (AD&D) are effectively the same as Skills in 3e. They date back to 1985." Yeah, skills are just the much more refined (and much better named) equivalents of "Non-Weapon Proficiencies, which were horribly designed. A beginning black smith with an 18 strength was much more skilled than a blacksmith of average human strength who had devoted 50 years of their life to the craft.
"Very few people I knew played past 8th level and I think the published modules support that was the upper limit for a lot of people." The more things change, the more they stay the same.
@18:01 "Megan, sit on my lap already... it is your destiny!" Love it!
Familiar Cameos are always fun.
Re part of point 11: as a person who is very under developed socially, I sometimes found myself completely flummoxed by having to role play every conversation - I just had to give up any kind of bartering or persuasion when it wasn't something I could roll for.
I thought the point of fantasy was I could play a character that could do things I couldn't do myself. Having to do any bartering myself would be like having to cast spells or swing a sword myself instead of having a game system for them.
Rules with social skill checks were a real relief for me because I could play a smooth talking character without having any idea how to flirt, fast talk, persuade, intimidate, barter, give a rousing speech, etc. I could finally play someone other than "myself but can cast spells"
It’s so arbitrary. “We allow any fantasy except being extremely charismatic.” Ridiculous. It’s exactly like making the fighter’s player bench press weights to open a stuck door.
I think the middle ground is to describe what your conversational strategy is; like, what is your angle? Are you going to suggest that the armorer drop the price because you're fighting to save his town, or because you're a regular customer? Are you trying to convince the guard that you genuinely don't know why he's asking you all these questions, or do you want to come off more as threatening, like it's not good for his health to ask these questions? The delivery is all character, but you still have to make some decisions as to what you're looking to do.
@@tsovloj6510 To me, that's 100% the solution. Tell me your strategy or your angle. That's where Insight is a good skill, it can give hints about possible directions to go.
As a DM, I sometimes even do this when I'm summarizing a conversation, want to make the message 100% clear to players, or just don't want to make up a voice at that time. "They consider your plea sympathetically, but make it clear they are not violating their orders for anything."
The big difference between 2e and earlier TSR editions of the game is that 2e (within the core rule books) was FILLED with different options to use. Many of those options were contradictory to one another, forcing one to choose one particular option over the other. I'd be willing to bet that most never played 2e using none of the options available. This is precisely why the purely optional books like the brown cover "complete" guides and the controversial "Player's Option" books need to be considered when talking about 2nd Edition AD&D. Because at its core, 2e IS a game of optional rules BTB.
2nd for me was the worse version of the game (just below 4th which was the worst).
@@TraumatreeYeah, I'm with you. D&D lost its soul with 2e, because that's when they started chasing monetization over publishing a good game. Imo, they've been chasing the dragon ever since, with far too much internal rules lawyering to favor marketing agendas and revenue generation over simply publishing good game mechanics. The popularization of trading card games was a shameless exploitation of this kind of thinking, turning noob enthusiasm, inspiration, and creativity into gameplay mechanics that could be leveraged for profit. 5e was the first money I gave to D&D since AD&D, and I never expect to play that bloated monstrosity, but there are mechanics I wanted to mine for homebrew use.
The monetization really started with off-the-shelf modules. Back then, people would buy them, and everybody read them, so they were rarely played. The whole game was all about homebrew rules and homebrew campaigns, from the very beginning. It was the noobs and enthusiasts that they started hooking with commercialization, and they took over the demographic, as far as TSR, WotC, and Hasbro have ever been concerned. The actual gamers stopped mattering way, way back.
I didn't like the 2nd Edition, so i didn't buy the books and never moved past the 1st edition.
If you like older D&D. There's a whole revolution in "OSR" where people rewrite 1st and 2nd edition into something way more usable and not just a straight rip of LotR. As a rules lite basis for laying your campaigns on top of, the old rules can be a lot of fun. If I want to actually integrate character generation into a campaign... Lots of rulesets do it better. Not everyone just wants to be "a fighter" or "a thief". Which is what OSR excels at.
@@KevinJDildonik There a lot of great stuff to mine from *d20* for OSR variations like you mean. And the really lightweight stuff, like Cairn and Whitebox, plays really well with Steve Jackson's old *The Fantasy Trip* which uses some very similar simplified metrics (though that was designed around and expanded from arena combat).
The Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and Power of Faerûn were optional books that brought forward the concept of becoming a ruler. The latter not only had military leader, but merchant prince, and priest. I use both of them in all my games since the content is basically system agnostic. If you like old school flavor you can easily mix it with 5e.
You could arguably add Heroes of Battle for the handling of large forces, even if most of the time the book assumes the PCs are specialized commandos.
I'd love to see you go into how radically initiative changed between AD&D 1 and D&D 3.x, 1D6 per side initiative, with casters declaring first and acting last!
This would make a great review. I vastly prefer the ADnD 2nd edition rules of declaring your intent first prior to initiative.
First in, last out is a very WoTC rule. While I enjoyed MtG, it isn't dnd 🤔
I would say 3.5e is still plenty deadly, despite the increase in survivability. The Wight is CR 3, so you're expected to fight it at about level 3. If your negative levels equal your HD total, you die instantly with no saves. This means a Wight would have to hit you three times to instantly kill any character, and it gains temporary HP each time it inflicts a negative level too. Even a Bugbear, at CR 2, can be a really scary encounter at low levels. When you get to the mid-late levels you're pretty strong, but there's plenty in the Monster Manual and other monster books to keep you fairly challenged.
3e undead are still very scary. Immune to a ton of effects, with a lot of powers.
Oh yes. It appears that there was continued progression after 3.0 up to the present day
My early 3rd edition games often ended with at least one party member dead. Wizard got pulverized by a goblin with one hit, then the rogue died to a poison dart trap. Then we had another rogue die when an orc critted him in the first round of combat. And then we had the cleric slip on some wet rocks, fall into a stream and drown. All in 3 sessions.
A 1/2 CR Orc with a greataxe can crit up to AC 26 on a charge, for 21-54 damage. For reference, a CR7 Ogre barbarian chieftain had AC 19 and 79 HP before rage.
I still run 3.5 to this day, and oh yeah it's deadly, even if all else fails, you can spring Kyuss on a party: we have the stats for that😎
A slight error about going to 0 hp in AD&D. On page 82 of the AD&D DMG (and this is not an optional rule), players can go down to -10 hp before dying. We knew this rule all too well as characters were often knocked into the negatives back in the day.
Also core to the SSI Gold/Silver/Redbox series of games.
My group would do negative constitution. It made more sense as a higher con would make you tougher.
@@MrGrumblier
That's how I did it. Dead if negative hp = CON. Any attempt to rescue from death required a CON check and CON was permanently reduced by 1 with each attempt.
Only if you go to exactly zero. If you go to -1, you're dead, with the DM's option to allow characters to go down to -3 in one blow.
Many of the rules of 3rd edition came out of the 2nd edition "Player's Option" books that came out in 1995. Such as allowing for Wizard characters using Swords for once such example.
It definitely sounds as if that book was the prototype for these ...
A number of people involved in the 2nd edition "Player's Option" books were part of the design team for 3rd edition. Skip Williams (one of the 3 main authors of 3rd edition) worked on 3 of the 4 Option books.
Yes, those books are mentioned in the video too.
Same thing for 3.5 with piles of stuff from other D20 projects shifting back either directly in or into Unearthed Arcana (One major example being a massive pile of the OCR Star Wars D20 rules ending up there with things like the Vitality/Wound system and the Armor as a mix of AC and DR), you also had stuff from both their Dune and Call of C'thulu put into it. Star Wars Saga edition also set up a TON of things for 5e...
Wow you said the same shit that he literally explains in the video
Love me some THACO. Had forgotten that huge 3rd edition rules shift. The player skill was huge/necessary. You had to mentor a new player in game, he couldn’t just go by his character’s rules.
It's best to mentor any new player in a game and a good way to do this is to provide a quick writeup of action options and how they work. That gives them an idea of what their character can do and how they do it.
I have played D&D since it was in the Red Box Set. I now principally use AD&D 2nd Ed. and D&D 3.5, and play mostly 3.5 utilizing the best of both editions. The regimented structure of 3.5 appeals to me greatly, but the game flows best when I have the freedom to adjudicate on the fly - this makes for the most memorable game sessions. The rules are there more as firm suggestions, not as cudgels to pound the PC's behavior and actions into submission for the sake of a story plot. Just have fun, and if the rules begin to intrude upon the game, its time for the DM/GM to improvise (and sometimes compromise) with the situation facing the PC's. Besides, as a DM/GM, I have found that any perceived gross violation of the game's setting or over-arching plot can be easily overcome by the addition of elements that allow for recovery from disaster. I make it a habit to craft multiple scenarios for various encounters and branching of the party's progression, and have on hand auxiliary NPC's, events, phenomenon, side-quests, etc. to bring continuity to the campaign. Also, the DM/GM should be prepared to segment the campaign at unexpected points so as to bring a reprieve from the chaos that invariably ensues as a result of the party's decisions and actions. As we often said when I was in the Marine Corps, "Semper Gumby"; always flexible. Good gaming all. :)
I started playing in the early 80's (actually 1980 if I remember right), and from the beginning we were utilizing house rules to smooth out the spots that didn't agree with the game we wanted to play. We moved to 2nd edition when it came out, but there were some changes that were...questionable...at the time. By the time 3rd edition was released we had a well defined set of house rules that made the game more fair for everyone (as well, we had already started incorporating a version of spell points to give mages more durability and flexibility in day to day adventuring). I have tried Pathfinder and 5th edition and am not a fan. The level limitations, skills and feats are just too far from the fantasy game I started with. Originally the onus was on the player to make their character distinctive and original, I prefer that play style.
LOL... same experience as me. Started in 1980...box set to edition 1 then edition 2. Also did the house rules and spell points for mages... worked much better. I haven't tried the newer versions yet.
Rules were not rigid in those days--at least we didn't perceive them to be. I find some of the information in this video to be wrong or misleading.
One of the things that I think most analysis miss is that a significant event happened in '88.
The Orcs of thar gazetteer was released.
At the time, I don't think anybody saw this as significant, ever, intentional or not, this marked a change the worldview and the de-monsterfication of many creatures within the game.
A lot of the content produce back then was exactly that content to generate revenue I think without a great degree of thought about the long-term implications of it.
In my opinion, it's pretty easy to trace the progression of the influence of that supplement hand, and its impact on today's version of the game.
I've been saying thos for years and usually ger blank stares back also Complete Book of Humanoids, Monster Mythology.
As a result of the removing of restrictions, player's now almost never play humans.
Gotta get me them bonus feats, babyyy! At least in 3.5, anyhow
Never underestimate the power of an extra feat and 1 skill point per level. Especially at low level. That being said, I never played humans because they are too vanilla.
This has not been my experienfe.
An extra feat is huge at level 1. In 5e it's immense since you don't get a feat till l4 normally.
Contrary wise, most games don't get to the cap so almost every PC I saw in 2e was demihuman.
@@fugitiveunknown7806 There's a reason humans are always the dominant (or at least most prominent) species, starting with a feat is a massive boost to your survival rate lol
I'm sure there might be some variance from place to place. You and the others do make some good points, so what I say won't be true everywhere. However, for me personally there has been an ever-growing shift to move away from humans. Nothing wrong with playing something else. Just seems like everyone going from one human town to the next and the only adventurers are demi-human or not humanoid at all.
The concept of negative hit points started with 1e, and I remember using that rule a lot; it is not an inventoln in 2e.
You're definitely correct!! -- page 82 of the 1st Ed AD&D DM guide. Unconscious at zero and you could go to -10 before dying, some simple dying rules by Gygax. 1979 folks!!
30:32 I call Shenanigans! As someone who DMed the game for over 20 years, starting with the original 3 cruddy books in 1975 and ending with 2nd edition, I can tell you that 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D absolutely gave you rules and tables on how to hand out XP. Check out for example, pages 46-49 of the 2Ed DMG.
I'm enjoying this video because now I've seen what 3Ed did, and I can absolutely tell you I don't like much of it, specifically the making of characters to be ridiculous demigods with apparently very little effort. Now, my campaigns might have been a bit stingier than most, but over the course of a 7 year (real life) campaign, the highest a character ever got was a 9th level thief.
Alse if a DM lets PCs die because of misadventure, rather than the character's own stupid decisions, they are not doing their job.
Depends. The reports of Gary's table sounds a lot like Heroquest/Warhammerquest/Gloomhaven that eventually got codified in the computer RPG Rogue - creating the entire genre called Roguelikes.
The idea there is dying to misadventure is all part of the fun. Roll up a new character, try again. See how far you can push it.
The 'fun' is emergent.
That's why AD&D's listing for the Fighter lists the most important Class Feature was that Fighters can use nearly any magical item, except class-specific items like the Staff of the Mage.
Being able to use any random weapon/armor/misc. magic item is only a significant advantage if loot is random. It's value radically decreases if loot is bespoke, or worse yet, other character classes get to pick their magic items.
Something codified in character classes in modern Roguelike games.
3rd edition did do some good things -- cleaning up and standardizing the rules so that everything became "roll high on a d20" was a big improvement. Unfortunately, a lot of the rest of it falls under the category of "more isn't necessarily better". Having a set rule for every little thing sounds good in theory -- until you're trying to remember all those rules in the middle of combat. My strongest memory of 3rd edition is struggling to figure out what my chance to hit was, with all the skills and feats and conditions that could potentially apply, while my DM nagged me because I was taking too long. Finally, I got fed up and yelled, "Get off my back! If you wanted a game that runs fast, you picked the wrong system!" (the actual sentence had much more profanity in it, but you get the idea) Turns out, I wasn't the only one in the group who felt that way, so we ended up going back to 1st ed.
LOL. Yeah, a lot of noise between imagination and execution. Describe a clever action, DM rules the PC lacks a feat, do something boring instead. My oh my, how I loathed those 15 years. 5e is better but it's still a far cry from the vibe that attracted and rewarded imaginative undergrads in the first place.
See I overall agree with your point--I don't mind if things like character creation is dense under the hood as long as I can turn a key or push a button and drive the car without a hicup. I want to have all bonuses factored into my to-hit rolls already on the character sheet---and for all the crap it gets, THACO does just that. Factor in all of your standard attack bonuses--bam--roll a die and know what AC you hit. THACO of 12--roll a 15--you hit ac -3. The DM tells you if that's a hit or miss. Next player.
All the skills and feats and gear and such should have been precalculated on your sheet though... Only adjustment required being temporary conditions and things like flanking and high ground and charging
@@HappiestGnomeI'm with you there. The way feats are implemented as gateways into things anyone should be able to do was bad.
@@priestesslucy3299 My table switched to a VTT in the pandemic and it does all the math. It’s more that my old school PC was awesome when I thought of doing something awesome. There was less noise, no constraints, and the only PC with skills was the thief - and those checks felt limiting compared to, essentially, the uncatalogued everything else.
I'm not gonna lie - if my player asks to try an unusual or unexpected approach or tactic that i was completely unprepared for but couldn't think of a good reason to say no (it's not broken or unreasonable given in-game circumstances, I just didn't consider it and/or the rules don't explicitly explain or support it), I do the old edition style of a vibe check. "Yeah, a 16 sounds right to knock the stalagmite off the ceiling."
Point of order - AD&D 1 had magic item prices except for artifacts.
Which is important, as much of character advancement was tied to acquisition of phat loots.
The more I engage with the topic of old school D&D, the more I get the idea that many of the common notions of the older edition are flat out mistaken.
What was the page number in the 1E DMG please.
Ah, I had forgotten that. But my point was that 3e introduced being able to buy and craft items.
1e presented them as sale values, yes? The text on DMG 121 only refers to selling them. (It's very "from the players' POV focused") A DM could extrapolate from that these are prices to buy the same items, but am I not right that players DMs didn't run it that way? If so, then a Level 2 party could pool 7,000 gold for a +3 sword. (DMG 124)
So I think 3e still changed the game.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG Some ran it that way; others didn't. It was one of the many ways in which inter-table consistency suffered due to (a) the vagueness of Gygax's writing and presentation, and to (b) the way he presented the game rules as something of a toolkit for DMs to build their own game. The latter assumption is the reason for so many optional rules and for why so many things are couched in terms of what the DM may choose to do in his or her game. This carried through to 2e, as well. Just look at how Wizards acquire spells in 2e through three different methods to be chosen by the DM.
Regardless, whether the GP Values were intended to be used for players to purchase items, it's nonetheless true that magic items _did_ in fact have prices in gold pieces. Strictly speaking, that is. This also meant that there _was_ a magic item economy in the fictional world Gygax envisioned, which puts the lie to the typical OSR/5e meme that such an economy is inconsistent with the old school D&D ethos. As usual.
EDIT: Also, the 1e DMG has a few pages dedicated to the creation of magical items by player characters. They're highly restrictive and really costly, but they're there. Pages 116-118. 3e definitely made the rules for crafting more accessible, less obtuse, and more systematic.
@@TheRulesLawyerRPG OD&D & AD&D have item prices because the core (expected) gameplay loop per people at Gary's table (OldGeezer et. al.) was "Go into dungeon, bring out loot" where each GP of your share was 1 XP, and magic items sold for roughly 3-5x the price, giving the classic Roguelike choice of "Do I want the sweet magic item, or the xp?"
In universe, the primary purpose of "Adventurers" was going into these relics of bygone ages and bringing out toys for the rich & powerful.
First edition had a detail formula for granting XP. The DMG had a list of XP per monster + XP per hit point of monster. XP was also awarded for GP value of monetary treasure and every magic item had an XP value. Most DMs I encountered tweaked these rules to get the progression rate they and their players wanted, but there were official rules.
Yep remember that. Not really keen on giving set levels of xp per session like now. If it takes ages to level up, tough!
Amazing video! Concerning the question of other TTRPGs that used gold to buy upgrades: Cyberpunk 2020, published in 1990, also let you earn money to buy any type of wild game breaking cybernetic augmentation or weapon as long as you had money. It also had the ability to do multiple actions per turn with an increasing penalty for each attack!
As I recall, Shadowrun and Rifts also let you buy power.
That any wild power can be bought for money admittedly fits better in a cyberpunk world than in a classic fantasy one.
in 30 years of playing A D and D i have never met a person who played the "you are dead at zero hit points" rule. I have played most versions since A D and D (except 4th) and character death rates are not noticeably different in any of them. I have no idea where people get this idea that life was particularly brutal and short in A D and D it does not match my lived experience in any way.
On Initiative people say it's not as realistic and while that is semi true, neither was the all players declare at the same time because it implies you can't change/react to anything mid action. I've seen some videos on break downs of Movie fights turning them into a turn based game and it actually fits really well. Because when you watch a fight in most shows or movies they do take turns. In sword fights, and even scifi lightsaber fights only one person is attacking at a time.
The issue is people confuse the blocking/parrying as part of the real time battle when in TB those actions are implied in a characters defense stat. If you watch a lot of sword fights you'll notice a back and forth as each takes turns striking at each other while the other person dodge/blocks and then makes a strike of their own with the other person doing the same. Everyone is NOT acting at the same moment, they are either defending or attacking.
This can even be true in fights with ranged weapons. Going scifi the lightsaber blocking blaster shots would simply be the enemy failing an attack roll against the Jedi defense stat with reflected shots being a reaction ability. The Jedi don't block shots and strike at the same time they switch between actions as in TB this would be them attacking on their turn and defense during other's turns. Or in more modern settings characters in gun fights pop out from cover and take a few shoots then back down. This is pretty much the same as taking turns, and waiting for an enemy to pop out of cover to shoot them is readying an action.
Human reaction time is incredibly fast and it's why I've always felt that TB approach to TTRPG was better than the attempted Real Time. In Real Time it's like 6 whole seconds in which you can't change your mind on what your doing. Sit down and watch a clock for 6 seconds to get a feel of just how LONG that is and you'll realize how ridiculous it is that you can't change your mind on what to do. As such I don't think the old school approach is "realistic" in the slightest. It only makes sense when you realize the genre's origins was in war gaming and issuing commands to squads that you then couldn't control until you relayed new orders to the squad does this sort of style make sense. But being in direct control since you are that character so it makes no sense since your reaction time is measured in milliseconds. Thus running to a spot or shooting a spell/arrow where someone was 3 seconds ago is just dumb.
In fencing, taking turns is even codified and referred to as right of way. There are restrictions on scoring based on who has right of way, introduced as a means of incentivizing proper defense and not dying. This clearly didn't work for sport fencing.
This is a lot of over-thinking D&D's combat when Mythras exists
I think this is a confusion some have about 1E. A round is not a single swing of a weapon. It is many, it is feints, parries, and strikes. Not all strikes will damage an armored foe. What you are essentially rolling for is again, not a single swing but to see if any of your swings did actual damage.
@@DevinMacGregor The same was true in BECMI.
Buffing casters relative to martials happened in other ways, too. For instance, unified XP progression meant that Fighters and Wizards hit level 20 at the same time, where the Fighter previously leveled much more quickly.
On the other hand, the efficacy of damage-dealing spells was seriously hampered by increased hit point totals at higher levels. _Meteor swarm_ became something of a joke compared to things like _gate_ and _shapechange._
This is a misconception. Fighters levelled quickly at first, but wizards sped up at 5th level (right when they got fireball) and actually hit 7th level before fighters.
Spell damage did drop relative to both hit points and martial damage, but save or suck/die spells became more effective. In AD&D, saves actually improved with level, with no way to increase the DC. Damage spells would usually do at least half damage, but others were often wasted.,
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Not a misconception; a matter of edition. For 2e, yes, wizards hit 7 before fighters, but fighters hit 6 before wizards.
Other editions, notably BECMI, use different XP schedules.
And save-or-dies definitely got the systemic buff in 3e relative to 2e.
@@PedanticTwit For all of AD&D, not sure of BECMI offhand. I've only got Basic in front of me.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Ah, BECMI classes hit name and max levels as such:
Cleric: 200k / 2.9m
Fighter (with Paladin, Knight, and Avenger as proto prestige/sub classes at name): 240k / 3.48m
Magic-User: 300k / 4.35m
Thief: 160k / 3.4m
Other classes were consistently a level or more ahead of MUs. At 2.1m, the Fighter was but 60k from level 25, and the MU was level 21 and finally getting that first ninth level spell. The Thief was also level 25, and the Cleric (along with the Druid) was level 28.
@@PedanticTwit so weird Becmi pushed back higher spell levels
The Epic Level Handbook actually went to arbitrarily high levels, they just didn't list anything specifically after 30th level because all classes followed a set progression of (mostly) bonus feats
As I said in a comment below, and something I think many of the detractors are forgetting, is that no table with any edition that I played, didn't like creativity. 3E allowed cross table game play where a player would know that their character could do certain things due to feats or skills they had. In 1e/2e, what was acceptable at one table another DM could completely nerf due to DM fiat. It's why I don't like that DM fiat is back in 5E. (Or A5E/Level Up, which I prefer, even though it also has DM Fiat.) I had a character I had played from first level to 5/5 F/MU in 1E. Everything was "earned" by old school rules. The first thing a different DM did when I suggested that character fit into the group he was running was approve. The second thing he did was kill my character, no save allowed, change my ability scores, destroy some of my gear, and then have him healed back. That's the DM Fiat I don't like that I'm talking about.
Multi class characters in 1E/2E were not handled well. The most I ever saw was a two level difference between a Fighter/Magic User compared to a single class Fighter or Magic User. That means the multi class character was only slightly worse than both of the single class characters, being able to do everything they could do. That doesn't mean players didn't want to play single classed characters with multi classed characters but it did mean they knew that they wouldn't have near the options the multi classed characters had. I much prefer 3E's multi class system (or PF2's) to the earlier versions. The choice in 3E to multi class means a lot more because they are picking between class abilities they will get, even if only at higher levels.
Balance? Ha! Put 2E psionics in your campaign and then talk about balance. Heck put 1E psionics in them and see how balance works!
Kits? Ha! Most kits allowed for extra mechanic abilities at only role playing costs, which few DMs ever worried about. The Blade singer was the single most abused kit I saw, but there were many of them.
Please understand. I'm not trying to negate anyone's feelings on earlier editions of the game or the fun they had. Great! I once had an hours long argument with a player who said that a Sword and Board Fighter Kit should allow a +1 to hit and AC. By the time we were done, the other players had left the table to go to a movie. I'm personally grateful for what 3E did codifying how magic items interacted (How did a cloak of protection, ring of protection and bracers of AC 4 play together in 1E?), how a fighter could get bonuses for the armor or weapons they used, and allowed for player agency with their characters. The only way I would play a 1E/2E game is if I already knew and trusted the DM. Sure, that's based on my experiences, but the game rules allowed for such abuse that it's not my preferred system.
Cross-table play was one of Gygax's reasons for writing AD&D 1st Edition. Here is quote from him from an article in Dragon Magazine #26 (June, 1979): "AD&D rectifies the shortcomings of D&D. There are few grey areas in AD&D, and there will be no question in the mind of participants as to what the game is and is all about. There is form and structure to AD&D, and any variation of these integral portions of the game will obviously make it something else."
For those that may not know, when he said "...the shortcomings of D&D", he was referring to original D&D (1974 - 1976).
@@thefiendishdm9976 Well, I guess I disagree with "There are **few** grey areas in AD&D" (emphasis mine) in the quote. As I mentioned above, how magic items interact is one area that is not clear. How psionics interact with magic isn't clear. Grappling rules. Those are off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more.
Thanks for the comment! Take care!
@@evilDMguy Oh yeah, 1e is full of grey areas. I just mentioned this article because, at least according to Gygax, AD&D was a complete and coherent game. Ready for cross-table play 🤪.
I don't agree with everything Gygax said in this article. For example, he stated in the same article (word within brackets mine): "While [original] D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells, 43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed. Either a DM runs an AD&D campaign, or else it is something else."
This is a complete 180 from what he said within the 1e DMG about the game being yours to do with as you wanted.
In BX D&D group initiative is very structured so if you want to try old school try this system through OSE. The players declare spells and retreats who is shooting, going into melee to fight. Then each side rolls a d6 . The actions go as follows: move, ranged attacks, spells, then melee . Id there is a tie its simultaneous. Which is chaotic, however thats how combat truely is. I still used moral in my 3e and 5e games too. Not everything wants to fight to the death. And you roll it when the first opposing monster goes down, half or more of the force is killed. I will say ascending AC was a godsend, codifying everything to a d20 roll was so streamlined as well .
Love that Diplomacy is in the background :)
Mostly spot on but my personal experience in 2e, which of course is not universal to all people playing 2e, had initiative working differently. It was always individual initiative. Everybody declared their action at the start of the round and every action got its own modifier to the initiative roll. Moving but not attacking had no modifier. Every weapon had its own penalty to initative roll based on its size and any spell that had just a number for casting time applied that number as a penalty to initiative. I don't miss it at all.
That was my experience as well. Then again, I dislike group initiative because yes, it's faster but it makes combat even swingier and vastly increases the chance of a death because all members of one side can pile on a single member of the enemy side before any of the enemy side can respond. It isn't 'realistic' either because people are individuals; there's no reason why they'd all act simultaneously unless it's part of a plan, which actions like Delay and Ready are for.
I've been playing this for 40+ years now, all editions. And I loved 3e when it came out. But I have to say the longer that things go on, 1e or even 2e or BECMI are the way to go, the flavoring, the types of adventures, the stakes, everything... It was all just better.
RE: Magic items for sale, sold! Every edition of Dungeons and Dragons from the red box Basic to 2nd Edition, when magic items were listed, they were listed with a gold piece value. This provided several things, one was the value of finding any given item for exp. totaling. It also gave a good base price for selling off unwanted magic items when you got back to town. Thirdly, it allowed for the creation of magic shops which delt in magic items. This is not new in 3rd Edition.
Earlier editions of Dungeons and Dragons also had gold sinks other than physical items. Leveling up had rules that involved the character spending time training, which sunk both time into training and gold into paying the trainer. Priests were almost always poor, as at the end of their adventure they would have to tithe nearly all their findings to their church. I do not believe that there were any direct tables listing this amount at this level, etc. but the rules were there for your use.
A well done video about the revolutionary turn that D&D took in the transition from TSR to WotC. I have other things to say, but they deal with the overall results of said revolution I'll save them for the conclusion video where they belong. 😛
I’m gonna be that guy who throws out an opinion at the beginning of the video. 3.5E was the pinnacle of D&D “old school”. It was the culmination of multiple versions of the game from a playing, and lore perspective. There were rules for almost any/every scenario you could get yourself into. By the time 3.5 ended, there was more lore on the in game worlds of the dungeons and dragons brand than ever before or since. It was one of the most accessible versions of the game (due to the OGL) and the coastal spellcasters weren’t afraid to touch on any subject in their production. The game will never see that level of support again except by third party developers, and I would argue that as good as 5th edition is, the next iteration will come nowhere close to these heights.
There's no denying there is a paradigm shift between 2E and 3.5, that shift being incremental and part of it happening in 3.0
That being said, people frequently lose track of the fact 3.0 is genuinely AD&D 3rd edition. It's refined and built by people who genuinely loved 2E and had sincere dreams of saving and revitalizing AD&D
@@priestesslucy3299 And the same thing happened with 3.5 when pathfinder came out. I mean the reality is everyone has a favorite edition, it’s not always the same, but every iteration of the game sparks joy for someone, and that’s what the hobby is about.
Except you 4E. Nobody likes you.
The black cover 2nd Edition was really more of a 2.5. There were some core changes, mainly in the way of codifying optional rules, that caused pretty significant changes to gameplay including breaking some compatibility with the class and race splat books. Badly enough that I actually never met a single person in-person who enjoyed those books. We all continued playing regular 2nd Edition.
Yeah, I didn't use them whole cloth. I cherry-picked from them. I've gone back to running 2e (made the change back in 2012), and I still don't use the PO Books on the whole.
Man, back in my Basic D&D and 1st edition AD&D days we rolled new characters all the time. Heck we did adventures with 2 or 3 characters per player because of the expected losses.
Rolemaster did many of these things first, but that was not surprising since one of the primary designers of 3rd worked on rolemaster before going to wizards
Rolemaster was incredible. It was incredibly detailed and incredibly complex. You didn't have character sheets with Rolemaster, you had character booklets.
Right, edition wars are kinda hilarious to me when you realize that the escape valve is... hundreds of other games you could be playing, many of which could easily be am edition of D&D if they slapped the label on it. And a lot of them are just outright better versions of the edition they most closely emulate.
(Not saying Rolemaster is good, it's... not, outside of the spectacle of how absurd it is)
This was a fascinating history to me. I had only played 1st edition (1983 revision) and 2nd Edition AD&D. And a couple of years ago started played 5E and was totally lost. Everything I knew was wrong! Now I understand why!
One thing that's important and easy to overlook is that all the "old school" talk aside, play in AD&D wasn't always just focused on the old school style. Sure, the rules mattered and they do change play style, but it wasn't that rare to have characters that were distinct, even if the character mechanics weren't. Or for the players to be interested in plot and heroics, not just war game dungeon crawls for loot.
And despite the rules giving you strongholds after a certain level, there wasn't any real support for playing as the ruler of a stronghold. You got followers, but what could you actually do with the stronghold? All that was pure GM fiat.
I've played 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 5th edition (mostly 2nd and 5th) and I have enjoyed all of them. For me it really comes down to who is running it and who else is in eh player group more than the system or rules.
I'm calling bullshit on that definition of old school. The ethos driving it is _not_ the original view, but instead it's the view that developed among the most vocal group of players. Specifically, those with an interest predominantly in the narrative aspects of gameplay. (Often to the detriment of the narrative aspects of the setting.) These were loudest and most influential, because they generally were more socially adept than the mathy nerdy sort.
From the earliest, for example, we can see Gary writing about the importance of balance. Or about the absolute necessity of strict timekeeping. Or of how character abilities aren't a substitute for player skill. (This last was the point of _Tomb of Horrors,_ after all.)
Acererek FTW! 👍💪👊
100%. Granted if you look at early zines Gary was... not very popular, but still, while theater kid D&D happened pretty early, there was always some level of "this is a game about overcoming dungeon challenges and getting stronger so it damn well better be balanced"
One example I like to give people that are curious how AD&D was different from newer editions, is the rules a wizard follows with their familiar. In AD&D, it's debilitating to lose a familiar. It takes a year to get it back, it takes a lot of resources, but when the familiar dies it causes a huge system shock to the character. I want to say the caster loses 1 CON permanently. I'm not sure which newer edition changed this but I'm pretty sure that by 3rd edition, losing a familiar is annoying but not life altering for the character. I like this example because having a familiar seems like a simple thing but the choice to get one cannot be taken lightly as the investment itself is quite large but also the consequences of losing the familiar are severe. AD&D is full of extremely impactful decisions like this. It's this level of impact that still has me thinking about it decades later when I don't play it anymore.
Very interesting to have such an historical point of view about "what has been".
Some Rules might seem way off now, but at that time (different time) it might have been really fun!
I was the DM for years running white box D&D, but have almost never played any game after AD&D 1. To me, it's AD&D 3 which is "way off". This excellent video does capture the game we played long ago.
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb thanks for the valuable insight!
I have no doubt it was amazing!
My dad introduced me into the TTRPG world with AD&D (even though I played a mere wolf companion at that time, so I wasn't deeply involved into the intricacies of the rule system).
Anyway by "off" I never meant "wrong" (native french speaker here, my english vocabulary is weak sometimes). I meant that it's really far from what I am used to since D&D3 - as you pointed out 🙂
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb could you elaborate what feels off to you about 3rd edition?
I'd love to hear your perspective in depth if you feel like sharing 🥰
i played 3rd edition exactly once. I walked past a game setting up and did not recognize the books. This must have been a few months after 3rd edition came out. I asked to sit in.
The referee gave me a fighter character to play (I did not create a character and was mostly dealing with the different game mechanics. The characters being played by the other players were strange and idiosyncratic. The players seemed to want the other players to admire the characters they had created. This was simply not part of any D&D games I had played or run in the past. The other players clearly did not appreciate my style, either.
In white box D&D, there was a great deal of discussion of tactics before going on a adventure and having encounters. Encounters were very much "us versus the opponents." While I was mostly immersed in the changed game mechanics, the other players did not seem very interested in what I could add to the party in a battle. The DM used individual initiative, with each character seeming to do his/her own thing without regard for what other characters were doing. While the characters were mostly (or all) of double digit levels, they were able to overpower the opponents. I did not think they would do well against equal opponents and would be unlikely to survive well in my game. In general, there was just too much "I" and too little "we" in the game and I think the character generation process is to blame. In white box D&D, a first level fighter is normally an ordinary person with +1 HP and to hit. There is no expectation of the character being special at the start of the game. It is a character's story that can make him special.
In the video, there was a piece in which a dwarf and archer and a MU encounter two trolls and a few orcs. . I assume this is a group of new players. Had I been the DM, I would have stopped the game flow after this encounter and explained it this way: You should all have discussed your tactics in character at the start of play and should have known what spells the MU had prepared. The spotlight of this encounter is on the MU using her fireball on the trolls. I would have told the dwarf that he should have declared "I charge as soon as the fireball goes off." In a situation where you (the dwarf) are the one in the spotlight, you should try to say something memorable or distinctive as you charge. Seize your moment, not someone else's moment. It's a group game.
i played three sessions of Pathfinder (original edition). During our first encounter I complained that the individual initiative system gave the players an unfair disadvantage in preventing us from coordinating. I also had a dispute with the DM during character creation. The DM wanted me to take all the options the game system allowed and I didn't want to do that. I saw (and still see) that it was a Christmas tree with too many ornaments.
I want to give you one last thought. I want you to imagine a dozen couples crowding a dance floor for a waltz. Each of the 24 characters acts independently and sequentially. Think of the chaos if they are not allowed to act as a group.
Charles Morehouse@@priestesslucy3299
@@CharlesMorehouse-zt3rb players who want to showboat and make others admire their characters isn't an edition thing. You could put those players in just about any game and they wouldn't change much. A game with as much player input on the character probably enables such players more, but fundamentally you were interacting with players with a play style many don't like.
Us vs The World is the intended mindset and perspective of 3rd edition just as much as any other edition. The reduced lethality may contribute towards players being a bit more casual about combat and less focused on party collaboration, but again that's primarily a player thing not a system thing. I've played in dozens of different 3rd edition groups and the only one where we were especially individualistic was my very first group in Highschool.
In 3rd edition, level 1 PCs are a single step above an ordinary person of their chosen field. They're measurably and meaningfully stronger, but it's not a lot. The difference is 3rd edition gives fields to normal people. Besides commoners there are Warriors, Experts and Adepts.
You raise good points about Group Initiative. With a good GM like you, it sounds like a lot of fun. I might be down to try that style some time. I'm used to Individual Init, but it's certainly got flaws and I'm totally down to experiment.
As for the Christmas Tree, it's absolutely an issue. The game's math demands you play along to an extent, but there are ways to boil the math into the system under the hood and reduce the bling dangling off a PC.
tl;dr
Some of your problems were people problems rather than issues with the system. Sorry you didn't have a good time, and I really appreciate your story 🥰
As an "old school" gamer from the mid-80s, this was a great video.
My only issue (nit-pick) is that (like many other people/ sources/ video games) I think you mixed up 2nd edition with 1st edition.
I may have to "dust off" my old rulebooks to double check, but I think a lot of the examples (and charts) you cited originated in 1st edition AD&D. (not 2nd)
As I said, not a big deal (just a nit-pick), and I could be wrong. Otherwise, nice video with an interesting perspective!
Also? I think the "buffing of casters in 3rd edition" WAS intentional. At least for Divine Casters. (Clerics/Priests specifically)
This was to address the age old, "Who wants to be STUCK playing the healer?" question. By adding things like "spontaneous casting" and extra spells, Healer characters could help party survivability without needing to focus ENTIRELY on curative spells. (and doing nothing else)
For 2e saving throws, it was obvious which to use: if two or more categories were applicable, you chose the leftmost column.
So paralysis/poison/death > rod/staff/wand > petrification/polymorph > Breath weapon > spell.
So if you used a wand that cast a spell that simulated a breath weapon that paralyzed people, you saved vs paralyzation/polymorph.
This means "save vs spell" was there as catch-all for weird things that managed to bypass every other category.
Loved the video! I started with 5e but I always heard people speak of 3.5 and pathfinder!
One minor correction for you - level-draining undead didn't always drain a level in 1E and 2E. Specters and vampires would drain TWO levels per hit. No one liked facing those things. Ghosts, though, were the worst. Your character could be aged up to 40 years just by SEEING a ghost...which could not only kill you on the spot by taking you past your pre-determined old age limit, but it also forced a system shock roll, which could ALSO kill you.
We played a 3 year campaign of AD&D 2e nearly every week (so ~120 sessions) and I barely made it to 7th level with my Mage. 😂
Those were the days. Easily my most memorable RPG.
I continue to enjoy your dive into the history of D&D (and with it Pathfinder), though at this point you might want to examine what was going on outside of D&D in the 90s since some of the changes from 2e to 3e feel like a response to other systems (Certainly, 2e is usually lumped in with 'old school' games while 3e is usually lumped in with 'trad' games)
You're right. A lot, if not most of D&D3 design options were straight out of other RPGs. And it's not a coincidence. Most major RPGs at the time were designed a lot more carefully than D&D and/or had had a couple editions of evolution. A lot of the most important system philosophy and ideas were taken from Rolemaster in particular (skill-based but also class-based system, with different costs to raise skills based on class, or the economics of magic items...).
The whole old vs new school division has always seemed odd to me. IT only considers D&D and the closest derivatives. Plenty of even 80s games that weren't "old school", to say nothing of later experimentation.
@@jeffmacdonald9863 Yeah, I tend to see the cluster of games that 3e fits into referred to as 'trad', distinct from 'old school' as in the OSR movement, and leaning into the 90s via WoD and - as you say - even the 80s via games such as CoC - and also distinct from 'narrative/story games' such as the PbtA movement.
Old school vs New school, as I'm used to seeing it used, seems to be a division within the OSR, though I'm not familiar enough with the OSR/NSR space to have a freaking clue what the difference is. I'm playing Mausritter as a PbP at the moment and wouldn't have the foggiest if it counts as OSR or NSR. I know I'm a mouse. I know I've climbed a difficult half-decayed staircase using my 6" pole to both test it for being rotten through and as leverage. I know that there was no rolling involved in that like there would probably be if someone was running it in a trad game, and might be if someone was running it in a PbtA depending on what moves were in that game and if 'traversing difficult terrain' fell under one or not.
It seems like the rules lawyer never played any edition before 3rd.
Sure, your character had less options in the form of feats, but multiclassing was more common; heck some classes could not be gotten if you did not multiclass (ie, Druid or bard), and you could play any monster in the monster manual as a playable character. I think the rules lawyer missed the splat books and only read the dmg and phb. You still had skills in the form of non-weapon proficencies and weapon mastery where my fighter can be a master of a long sword versus yours was a novice at axes, long bows, and daggers to make them work very differently; doubly so if you took a dip into theif and have more skills and the ability to back stab. The amount of customization I would say is comparable to 3e, they just defined it differently with different values as 3e let you play a halfling illusionist but BECMI let you play a Tree Ent or a Sphynx... depends which you value more to say which is better.
Pre-3e also had rules for you to play as litteral gods, which was the goal for play once you got past Domain or Name level play. Seriously, there was a system for a player character to make Worlds, planes of reality, make a race or create monster/creatures, or modify base reality in a plane of thr multiverse in "Wrath of the Immortals" the 2e Mystara rules. Actual rules for how gods work, mind you, and you could still play in this game phase to try to get to the head of a pantheon or destroy your rivals.
There was also a lot of things you could spend gold on outside of building a stronghold. Earlier editions assumed you would be spending gold to achieve your goals; ie hire a sage to tell you where a +3 holy avenger is, hire a group of riders to escort you to the dungeon the Holy Avenger is at in case you ran into an orc band of 200 orcs, and hire some experts to set up a base camp so you can have an alchemist, a lock Smith, an engineer, and a black Smith to support the party when they came up after fighting a black pudding and could not get past the locked door when the ceiling was about to collapse. They just did not have a factory that spit out +3 holy avengers like 3e.
Another subtle effect of gold values for magic items in 3e is to move the implied setting of any D&D campaign a long stride further from Jack Vance and Dying Earth, where "magic" was legacy technology from a long, lost civilization. 3e isn't a post apocalyptic game the way AD&D is by default.
One thing to realize about old skool at least as I remember it was the fact that the DM often ruthlessly cheated to keep the game going. Many characters had quite the Christmas tree of magic items, Wishes were not super rare, etc.
Hence the Dungeon Master's Screen, hidden dice rolls, Rulings, and a whole hell of a lot of playing fast and loose with those rules and improv and imagination. Most DMs were grateful to have players at all. The prep workload was enormous. The investment of time and sometimes money was extreme. To put all that effort into making something rewarding just so a single solitary d20 roll could change the entire universe and make everybody cry...was a little too much power for that d20 to have. It wasn't that the DM was abusing power at all, he was preventing that malicious d20 result from gutting the player's hopes and dreams.
@@OceanusHelios Yes indeed... too much power for a single D20 roll to have is a good way of putting it. The OSR folks who say I just do whatever and let the dice fall where they may were at pretty different tables than mine back in Ye Olde Days.
I felt the DM's primary job was convincing players that their ridiculous good fortune (i.e. not being party wiped from gross mistakes) was due to random chance rather than DM intervention. The theatrical embellishment required considerable skill, or at least I got much better at it as time went on.
For example when players were up against the wall in an encounter I would hold the mapping of monster's HPs in in reserve, so, for example, if there were three goblins with 3, 4, and 5 HPs and a player hit for 4 damage, it would be the 4 HP goblin that they hit, killing him dead without wasting the one extra damage or leaving a wounded goblin standing that could then attack at least once more. That greatly reduced the number of rolls I had to outright fudge.
It was part of the informal agreement that we had that we were there to have fun, which meant the DM would cheat in the party's favor from time to time in exchange for their good behavior (e.g. not purposely trying to wreck the DM's work) and energetic exercising of their suspension of disbelief. It worked great!
IIRC Skip Williams was a huge fan of Runequest, he told me that absolutely inspired his implementation of skills into D&D.
strange how many ppl say each new edition killed their game or table when some of us still play 2e and own every book and boxed set. i have never played another version of d&d. i have spent years collecting every book and boxset and dragon magazine. we play a massive house rule filled game including many optional rules found the in option books and dragon mags.
all my kids and their friends learned 2e. now many of them play 5e but keep asking to look up stuff from 2e to convert to 5e for their games that were never reissued.
If you haven’t, check out dungeon dad.
He converts a lot of stuff to the new editions, and he is entertaining to watch.
@@bkane573 i watch DD lol
Thanks for the video. Been DMing D&D for 38 years (even playing occasionally). I enjoy listening to people discuss all the changes in the game over the decades.
I contend that the game exists in 2 forms.
The game as it was during TSR.
Then transitioning into the game as it was redesigned by WoTC.
Anyone who has ever ‘built’ a Magic the Gathering deck and also played D&D in both its forms should be able to immediately see how much WoTC inserted the mechanics of their card game into their version of D&D.
Personally, I prefer the characters to be run by their players instead of their character sheets.
Are you driving that bus or just along for the ride?
Yes... whatever system it's about, I think that we should ask: Is there room to optimize your character? Is it expected to optimize your character? In BECMI D&D and AD&D 1st edition the answer is no, in Rules Cyclopedia D&D the answer is very little and no, in AD&D 2nd edition there's little (more with splat books, and considerably with player's option) but still not really expected, and in 3rd edition and on its "yes" and "of course".
My first significant exposure to D&D was the old TSR "gold box" games, which had a fairly faithful implementation of AD&D, including class limitations and male/female characters having certain stat adjustments and limitations. (Female characters strength was capped at 18/50 as I recall.) When I migrated my characters from Pool of Radiance to Curse of the Azure Bonds I was really ticked off by the level caps that were not mentioned in the PoR manual. Dual classing was in CotAB but not in PoR, so levelling characters in general changed drastically.
AD$D2 was a step back in gaming. Most other games around that era had figured out quite a lot of things: more skill-based, more systematization, less ambiguity... We had enough "TTRPG technology" back then so that AD$D2 could have looked more than 3rd ed that 1st ed. Quite a shame.
3rd edition rendered everything I had bought and done for 20 years moot. I was done immediately and so we're everyone I gamed with.
I love that you used a scene from The Gamers: Dorkness Rising in the part about initiative. It's a great movie, and a perfect example of your point
So, D&D came out of gaming and preserved a lot of its features--and armour class (AC) was one of those. Each of the numbers stood as a shorthand for a type of armour, in the same way as assigning a column number & referring to that number.
It turned out to be easier that way, like saying 'THAC0' instead of 'the number you would need to hit armour class 0' -- and it also accounts for the weapon modifiers in the Player's Handbook of 1st edition AD&D.
This usage has been preserved in supplements to the game, that subsequently became its own system--Rolemaster.
And one of the core staff of 2nd ed Rolemaster ended up working as one member of the core design team of 3rd ed D&D, Monte Cook.
One of the design principles of Rolemaster involves that degree of player customisation--fighters can learn magic, but it can easily take all the effort of a given level to develop one spell; the system was skills based, and skill resolution was basically Dice+modifiers then compare against a chart or table, with a rule of thumb being a roll of 101+ (Rolemaster uses a percentile dice as its base) equalling success.
Unlike 3rd ed D&D, difficulties modified the dice roll directly, not the target number needed.
Sorry advanced dnd was the pinnacle. The 2nd and 3rd was trying to apply rules to every action .
I agree with this 100%. Also the editions after AD&D just seemed to lose the atmosphere if you actually being there with all the rules modifications and taking demons and devils out of the game.
@@blockmasterscott Demons and devils were in every edition of D&D (not sure about 4th. who played that garbage?). 2nd edition just changed the names.
I hate the idea of "Player skill not Character abilities".
That means that I cannot play certain types of characters ever, because I do not have the "player skill" to pull it off.
It would be like me saying, "I want my Bard to play a beautiful song on the lute", and the GM telling me I have to play it on a real instrument and how well I play in real life determines how well my character players.
It's one of those things that sounds good in theory but a LOT of players are neurodivergent and often have a hard time roleplaying social encounters well because they're not good with them in real life. Plus you would never do something like stopping your tabletop game to play out combat in real life, but too many GMs even now have a habit of going, "Well you didn't roleplay your character's rousing speech so it didn't happen, no matter what you rolled on the dice."
That's not at all what was meant by player skill. Player skill is the player knowing how to best use his character's abilities instead of a player just looking at a character sheet and only accepting options they can see on the sheet.
For example, my character abilities say nothing about setting up an alarm system, and if character abilities is all I focus on then I wouldn't be able to do that. My player skill tells me that if I take several of the loose boards from the pile of rubbish the DM mentioned and then lean those up against this locked door, if someone opens it from the other side the clatter of falling boards will potentially let me know that the door has been opened. Character abilities would tell me that the burning hands spell I have won't be useful against the orcs who are coming across the rope bridge after me because by the time they get in range of the spell they'll be stabbing me with spears, but player skill is going to remind me that I can use the same spell to quickly burn through at least some of the ropes that support the bridge and slow down the pursuit even if I don't send them all plummeting to their deaths in the gorge below.
Those are just two examples off of the top of my head, but I hope they illustrate the point well enough. And, frankly, any DM who insists that his player MUST have a skill to allow their character to use it is a jerk who has no business being a DM. And I say that with the certainly of four and a half decades of being a DM.
@@thatpatrickguy3446 I sideways disagree, with respect. What you are describing could be in any edition of the game. I don't think creativity at the table was ever turned away. It's possible some tables did and I have limited experience outside the groups I had. We did celebrate creativity, especially anything that made someone at the table say, "wow!"
I think what the OP is saying is in 1E/2E the DMs were challenging the *players* and in 3E the adventure challenges the *characters*. Let's say there is an adventure that has a riddle or a puzzle in it. In 3E, there will be skills listed with relevant DCs on how to give clues to the players on things their characters already know to help the players solve it. In 1E/2E, the DM presents it and the players either figure it out or don't. I think that is the difference.
@@evilDMguy I understand what you're saying, but based on the statements and the example given by the OP my response was accurate and fair. They spoke specifically of their character being disallowed to do an action because they as a player could not perform the same action. Their intent may have been different, but I can only reply to their words.
To your point, the later editions did give examples of how different skills could be used to achieve different goals, but that was sometimes the problem as it reduced a lot of the fun of games in my experience. The one thing I never really liked about 3rd and later editions is that a lot of times the rules brought it down to a dice roll instead of a moment of creative experimentation. While I countered that by telling the players in my games that the more information they could give me on how they would achieve something the more likely they were to succeed, sometimes to the point of not even rolling the dice, there was still too much of a reflex to roll first and think about it later, if at all, because of how the rules were codified.
Now I accept that that is a stylistic choice made by me based on the way I learned to play and the era I most enjoyed playing in. I also accept that it isn't everyone's cuppa and that's fine too. There have been days when I've gotten to the table as a player after a dozen or more hours on the clock and I just want to throw dice and swear at them when they let me down rather than think. I like challenges that I can think about and find ways of improving my chances, like the aforementioned boards against the locked door which I used as a player and which, thankfully, prevented us from being surprised by an attack from the rear. I know that, to my mind, the increasing codification of the rules puts more weight on doing what the rules specifically say one can do rather than the original rulings based system which gave the players more freedom to be creative. The rulings based system suits my play style more (possibly because I am an archaic relic of a bygone age 😛) so it is what I prefer. And, apparently, my young players often seem to as well as much as they have asked me for more frequent game sessions.
Again, I have no problem with players who just want to sit at the table with friends and let the dice fall where they may. That kind of lower effort gaming can still be great time spent with friends. I just find challenging player skills to be more fun in the groups I've run and played in, and I wanted to properly illustrate the difference where I saw what seemed to be a misunderstanding of the same.
@@thatpatrickguy3446 All fair points and thanks for the reply!
I understand that too many rules can feel restraining because then a player may not try something at all. I tell my players their concept is more important. Tell me the concept and then play it and we will make it work.
I do agree I state it wrong and the OP was talking that if they couldn't play the piano, their character couldn't. I did know some DMs who did that. If the player only spoke english, that's all the character spoke. It was nearly chess rules if we used minis and put them in the wrong place!
Certainly I had a great time as I'm playing all of these decades later. I merely like the modern design and ideas but I will steal from anything to make it a fun game!
Again, thanks for the reply! Take care!
The limitations on demi-humans was due to several factors. ONE, supposed to be a human centric world. and TWO, demi-humans got special abilities humans did not.
It was supposed to be hard to get to those higher levels anyway. Most commoners were L0-1, if frontiers or war torn then maybe L0-5. So reaching L10 or higher was Lordly. You were basically hitting the ruling class. You would also have to travel farther and wider to find what you needed to level because at these higher levels, i.e. above 10, you could pretty much wipe out village by village. I DMed parties of 8 who each had 3-4 hirelings/retainers. They were basically small armies going through a village. Most of these were fighters in plate as well.
Plus when you start the game, you are commoners. You are not heroes yet. You come from humble backgrounds, seeking adventure to make a name for yourself. You profession is now adventurer. You are making your story as you go along.
Plus dual characters was not hard at all.
In 1E AD&D, at 0 HP you went unconscious. For each round unattended, you lost 1 HP, down to -10 to where you died. Someone had to get to you beforehand to administer aid, and stop the downward spiral.
dmg pg 87
"Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will
remain in a corna far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full
week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that
necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there.
The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry
burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure
spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal
spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies."
This was not optional. This was the Way. Natural healing was ONE week min at 7 HP max, reduced depending on your CON. Second week and on, you got your CON bonus. Max was FOUR weeks healing to which then you gained anything remaining.
What some miss is that you were supposed to end your session in a safe area, to where you can rest as described in the above quote. Then in game time became real time. So when you went back to play one week later, a week in game time also passed. DM's had to keep track of this, and change in game world accordingly, such as if they did not finish what their goal was, then, what they cleared, could be uncleared. HP management was important. Pots and healing spells hugely important, or parties could be knocked out of action for awhile.
Plus 1E AD&D was an OPEN world. A ttmmorpg if you will. Players rolled up multiple characters and a DM could be hosting 10 or more parties all over the map. So that party above, gets to a resting place, and ends their session, and those same players could pull out other character sheets for another party and start a session with them, who could be 1000 miles from the other party. A DM had to keep track of where parties were in case they overlapped. Greyhawk is a huge map.
I think this is a confusion some have about 1E. A round is not a single swing of a weapon. It is many, it is feints, parries, and strikes. Not all strikes will damage an armored foe. What you are essentially rolling for is again, not a single swing but to see if any of your swings did actual damage.
What is often missed in these types of discourse is to act like this game lived in a vacuum. Old School came out of wargaming, literally. hat is who it competed against. Computer games started to rise in the 90s and with the advent of the MMORPGs, i.e, UO in 1997, things had to change. Again, 2E did not sell well because also many 1E players just kept using the 1E books. It is not like when a new edition comes out, you literally have to pay the newer one, all you books do not just turn to ash. I still have my first edition 1E books.
In 2000, WotC's competition was now computer gaming and game consoles. They had to appeal to the video gamer and that is how I see much of this game changing too. Look at the orcs in 1E, they have pig faces. Look at the orcs in 5E, they look more like WoW orcs.
Some have mentioned the Orcs of Thar which was part of Mystara but this was reverse dungeoning. You got to play humanoids IN the Land of Thar defending it against adventurers. The 2E humanoid PHBR states these characters are optional, for the DM to decide, and should be used sparingly. WotC released at the tail end of 2E and adventure book, literally called, Reverse Dungeon. You play a goblin in a goblin clan defending your lair against adventures. It talks about Goblin ecology, how to move up in ranks, etc.
And speaking of the forest from the trees. If you never played then, then how can you say, how people played then? Most new players have no idea that what they think is unique to their version has an origin somewhere else. I see this a lot in 5E players trying to justify that version by bashing 1E. They even post incorrect screenshots that is not even 1E but OD&D. I have never played or DMed a game that was not story driven. Combat was gravy. You did not have to do it and because it could be a TPK sometimes, people actually roleplayed their characters instead of just hack n slash, like MOST video games were then and some still are.
I played the shit out of Diablo II which dropped in 2000. I had 4 or 5 barbarian variants. I loved my axe barbarian the best because he could murder hobo like no other murder hobo. Each one specialized in a certain weapon style and I do not think they called them feats but each of these classes had them and I would use certain ones for certain variants of all the characters you could play. Each one was basically customized.
So, if then WoW comes out, which becomes massively popular, and you can play an orc then hmmmm, would not the youts coming up, who play WoW, also want to play an Orc, full blooded, in a regular party? This is your potential customer base and if you want to expand behind the old school wargaming nerds, then these are the types you are appealing to. Cosplay is also HUGE and mostly from what I see, from women, SOOOOO, you modify your game to suit their interests and BAM, you now got people playing otters, raccoons and anything one can find under a rock.
I know this video is just focusing on 3E but obviously we are far beyond that now as end of this year 6E is being dropped. I was going to touch on other things like initiative, but this is rather long, and I just feel like some beers and a movie now.
Good stroll down memory lane. Great sense of humor, had me laughing several times!
I think the divide between player skill and character ability still exist, often by people who want a more rules light system. Back in 3rd ED I was often in games where someone used CHA as dump stat yet because they were very personable in real life and would give some great speech the DM would let them pass due to "great roleplaying". It's like your playing a Strong Tough brute with 8 CHA which means he's likely ugly and trips over his words, and you can't use being smart as an excuse because you only got 10 INT as well.
Such a character giving complicated rousing speeches to change people's mind and win debates is NOT great roleplaying. It's HORRIBLE role-playing and meta gaming. Role playing means inhabiting the role. It's why I prefer systematizing more aspects because physical abilities don't translate to a character so if you a weight lifter in real life it doesn't mean your 10 STR character can benchpress a wagon. Yet people apply that same respect to intellect and social skills so it's pulling from player skill and not the character's ability as I've seen players with 18 CHA by people who aren't as well spoken wanna do a charismatic character but because they struggle to find the words the DM often ruled against them. So more often than not I'd be in games with low CHA doing all the talking and persuasion, while low INT characters coming up with complicated plans or building machines because they were a mechanic in RL and could describe how it worked.
Some may question how the DM called these things when many are suppose to be dice rolls. Well the DM often either wouldn't bother with roll or rig the DC in such a way like, your speech was super effective roll a 3 or higher and you pass, or your speech was not effective roll an 18 or higher to pass.
I think doing the roll first to see if success or fail is what helps makes great roleplaying because it encourages improv. Like seen in many of the streamers where after a crit success or fail they take the time to tell the story of the epic success or fail scene which adds to the drama. Because it's up to your character to pull it off with the dice roll and then you to create the story around how that outcome came to be. Where as if you allow players to put a bunch of effort before knowing the outcome the description might not match the outcome and it feels hollow. Also having to improv after the roll is a loss of control which I think is the real issue that some players have who don't like regarding systematization, because they don't wanna roleplay they wanna self insert because they know how to do it so should their character despite the rules.
“To open the stuck door, can you bench 220 lbs?” - if other skills were handled like social skills.
Old school will survive as long as we keep teaching it
Pathfinder/DND 3.5 brought a lot of good quality of life changes. Getting rid of the 1e Hit tables and 2e THAC0 as well as changing how saving throws and skill checks work were very welcome to me. I also love that all races can attain any levels they want with the newer editions.
An interesting point of note is if you look at 3.0/3.5 D&D (Jonathan Tweet), and only look at ability modifiers instead of Attribute scores, combined with DC targets for Attribute saves, you'll find the core system from Talislanta 3rd ed (Published by WoTC prior to 3e, original design Stephen Michael Sechi ) which was led by Jonathan Tweet. It seems pretty obvious the main influence on the 'revolutionary' new version of D&D, especially given the failure of D&D 2.5 "Skills & Powers" to gain traction.
I really enjoy your videos, you always bring facts and have a great friendly vibe that comes across. As someone who occasionally receives some less than friendly comments on my own videos (from my mic placement, my pronunciation of the word attribute, and general disagreement about my opinions), I try to always consider the criticism: is it trying to bring me down or build me up and improve my content? If it is the former I have taken the stance I just won’t engage them at all, just forget and move on. If it is criticism to get me to improve, I will make changes and try to get better. That is a long way of saying… if anyone watches your videos and their take away is the crookedness of your glasses, they aren’t worth engaging because they were not paying attention! Keep up the good work!
Beautiful analysis
Old School Is Not Dead
Old School gamer here. In the days of 1e a party had to cooperate and know when to run away. I stopped playing in 1984. I listen to my son play and it sounds like a bunch of god-like characters who tolerate each other and argue over who is the greatest. The impression I have is little preparation before entering a dungeon/battle and appreciation for other players.
Honestly, as someone who stopped playing around when 3rd edition dropped, I never knew ANYONE who used the stronghold idea. You wanted your character to be that badass. Even if it took a team of badasses to bring down a dragon. Given the size these monsters are supposed to be, that makes sense to me. As for rolling hit points, let’s be honest, NO ONE was honest when rolling their character. If a fighter didn’t hit an 8 or above for hit points, they were rolling again.
I always had max HD for first level in my homebrew that I was the forever DM on. It was absurd that a character could have an 18/00 STR and a low CON, with only 1 HP. I was honest with the players. If they didn't want me to homebrew my own rules then they could skip the process and just go with dice as rolled. That means no bonuses. STR 4 INT 6 WIS 3 CON 7 CHA 8 and 2 HP. It looks like they are either a shitty Palidin or a Mage that can't even spell let alone read a scroll. That character's chance of surviving against one hit from a sickly coyete are pretty slim. Let's just take our valuable real time and spend a couple of hours going through the description of what the character sees, let him act out and choose for his character and have high hopes...only to see him die a sad and gruesome death for the sake of dice as rolled and rules as written. Meanwhile, the person on the other side of the table rolled a character that will be able to laugh and smirk and smug at everybody who is average or unluckily below average. They will be the forever hero because of six separate rolls of 3D6. Forever better than you and your measily doomed pathetic worm of a mage who thought spells were cool. The rules as written from the original DnD didn't allow you to distrubute your scores and rearrange them. Oh no. If you wanted to be a fighter but rolled a High INT but low STR good luck. Your only option was to be a Magic User. With your ONE spell as you embarked to face hordes of things that wanted to kill you. Cantrips? What are those? Can't be used in combat. Not unless you could count on a cantrip that would tie an orc's shelaces together and somehow hope the DM would play along with the jest and have the orcs fall on their swords.
@@OceanusHelios I think our standard for rolling stats was you’d roll like a handful of dice and pick and choose which went to which stat from those. Granted, if you came to the table with a character with all 18s or some shit, you’d get tossed out. It’s a game; fudging of anything and everything is expected.
In D&D and 1E, Elephant grass was a huge threat, since most players didn't know how to go through Elephant grass, while those of us that read a lot of books and/or watched nature shows knew hot to get through it with minimal trouble!
D&D and 1E was for people with knowledge and creativity, not the normal boring people!
"Explain why your character would know this, and what skill you're rolling to recall this information. Make both good."
@@katherineberger6329 Can't use a skill, if there are no skills in the game other than the ones that all thieves have! Use a piece of wood with a rope on both ends to tamp down the grass and make a path through it!
@@shallendor "My character knows this because I know this" is metagaming. Period.
@@katherineberger6329 That is how D&D and AD&D 1E was played, there were no real skills, you might have been something like a Lumberjack or farmer but that was all up to a random roll if the DM used the table!
Thanks for the video! Arguably, D&D is more of a wargame now than ever. As a thought experiment, imagine I am playing Chess and yell charge when I move my Knight. That doesn't make the Knight a PC nor does it make Chess an RPG. So, too, if I play a Napoleonic miniatures wargame and call out the orders of my Generals in French or English, I am not controlling PCs nor is it an RPG. Those games are tied closely to their mechanics and have no sense of non-mechanical roleplaying.
Although (O)D&D was first marketed as a form of miniatures wargaming, what it did provide is a thin layer of mechanics and the suggestion that you roleplay anything you can think to do and the DM, through imagination and the randomness of dice, provides the consequences of those actions. This interaction is repeated through gameplay over and over but the focus is not on the mechanics but rather the vocalization of actions imagined by the players. Over the years, more and more mechanics have been added to the game. Like wargames, mechanics now decide much, much more how D&D (or many RPGs) manifest during gameplay.
25:00 I feel this about he enemies being harder to run the higher you went... I ran a game that could basically be described as a 'bad guy of the week' campaign, where the players were basically taking out an evil org by working their way up the ranks of the henchmen.
It was easy to design say, the Cancer Mage, or the Lord of Vermin, or the Hunter of the Shadows; it was a lot harder to learn to use that villain's abilities effectively.
Technically 2nd edition had multiple rules around initiative. There could be individual initiatives as well as factoring each group of monsters into different initiatives. Both of which are actually given examples of if you go further in the same combat example being given in this video. After a round or two, they do break up into individual initiatives.
There's also a good reason you had to say what you were going to do in a given round before doing initiative: certain actions took longer than others. Weapon speeds were a thing and applied to your initiative.
And Ars Magica was a huge influence because of Tweet. It has the some core mechanic (using a d20 instead of a d10), the abilities (attributes) range from -5 to +5, the Barbarian is built on the Berserker Virtue, and many of the skills were also word for word from the 2nd/3rd Edition Ars Magica book.
If I’m not mistaken, Rolemaster was also an influence on 3E.
@@Sanguivore Influence, sure. But some of the text was a direct port from Are Magic.
@@AchanhiArusa Oh, I can certainly believe it.
@@Sanguivore Usually this is the point with most people where I have to prove it. Thank you.
The 3.0 stronghold builder guide was one of the best 3/3.5 books ever published.
BTW, the brilliant innovation of the d20 System--roll a single die of the same kind no matter what you are trying to do, add your bonuses, and succeed if you roll above a certain number--existed in first edition Ars Magica, published in 1987.
ArM uses a d10, but the basic principle is the same. The stats in ArM ARE the modifier (-3 to +3, typically), something D&D still hasn't caught up with, even though a lot of character sheets now show the modifier bigger than the vestigial 3-18 number.
Using stats in this way is one of the "Shiny New Innovations" people are excited about in DC20 ...
(The fact that Jonathan Tweet, one of the two creators of Ars Magica, worked on D&D 3, may have had an impact on the d20 System.)
Your point about character customization is astounding it is incredible how much modern D&D has destroyed creativity that you need the book to tell you how do make your character special. It is amazing how nobody can think for themselves so they just let the book tell them what to do.
Right, because you can select feats you can’t design a unique character for the world. Airtight logic!
@@johnmickey5017 Feats and class options restriction actions and choices they do not add them. The problem with modern players is they need a book to tell them what to do so for example 5E Battle master fighter has an ability that allows them to disarm opponents so that would imply that no other class can do that since it is an ability whereas in Old School D&D any class can attempt to disarm an opponent and depending on how they try it will require I different roll perhaps rolling under DEX or STR. So Old School gives infinite options whereas modern D&D is restrictive.
You were talking about making a character special, not combat options.
How is trying a disarm roll making a character special?
@@BX-advocate Because modern players do not have imaginations. They need to buy imaginations in books to be able to make 1 fighter different from another with silly mechanics, not imaginations.
@@Lepidoptera666 so true.
I played a lot of 2nd edition as president of the D&D club in HS.
each class had sublimental books with many specialized sub classes in 2nd edition.
They began to turn it into magic the gathering obscured and disguised under a thin role playing skin, no big surprise, that was their thing after all.
I hope you don't mind me posting this under this video, but the coming out video was really moving, the world needs people like you, thank you.
0:17 Man, I always loved that picture of the dragon on the left.
I definitely liked original D&D much better. It allowed for much better roleplaying and less rules lawyering. We played an offshoot of OD&D called Arduin Grimoire that did not have many of the limitations that you mentioned with AD &D. There were no limits on experience points or hit points based class or race. We had several older characters that reached level 30 or above. Then we switched to Runequest which had the more logical combination of attack ability versus defense ability and armor instead of just hit points. It also had all skills (including combat) as a percentile roll. It was fluid and adaptable to many different worlds. When I tried to come back to D&D after 3.0 I found it bewildering. I have tried to read the rulebooks of several editions and find the character generation needlessly complicated and tiresome. The feats and skills make the characters too powerful. The rulebooks are too complicated and read like engineering textbooks. Every little detail is prescribed by some rule instead of the DM and players doing what make sense and improvising. I have decided to just go back to the old systems I am familiar with because I can’t find anyone to teach me the new rules.
3rd, 3.5, and then Pathfinder 1.0 really really rekindled my love of RPGs. I'd been introduced to it in 2e, but everyone basically migrated to the much more customizable WOD games. 3.0 came out and really excited me *because* of the customization. It's no surprise that my first attempt at a character was a sorcerer who was proficient in the greatsword, because that was absolutely impossible in 2e.
33:13 - 33:30 Unfortunately, the tendency I've seen for D&D 5e DMs is to apply that codification mindset of "looking for a rule for everything," not being able to find a rule for an unorthodox tactic in the 5e rules, and telling the players, "No, you can't do that" or "You need a class feature/feat to do that." For me, someone who play style largely aligns with Old-School principles, this is infuriating to deal with.
5th imo is a far cry from what D&D was and is aimed at younglings with short attention span. Gone are the deep stuff we pulled in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. And 4th wasn't even D&D... so that left only PF1 as D&D 3.75 which was the best version of the game we will ever get.
@@Traumatree I don't know about 4e not being D&D; it was a more honest representation of the direction the designers at WotC were going with it (i.e. a skirmish board game), and it was certainly better at it then the undercooked D&D 5e.
If anything, I'd say that PF2e is the latest in the evolution of D&D 3e, being even less ambiguous than its predecessors when it comes to its rules and procedures.
From 3e onwards, each edition of D&D was a significantly different game, being completely incompatible with previous editions before it.
I did like individual initiative in 2e, because D10, lowest goes first, and your number was affected by your reaction adjustment (Dex) and your weapon's speed factor: so a dagger was actually faster to swing than a battle axe. Every single spell also had a speed that was the equivalent of a weapon's speed factor, so choosing a weaker spell might let you pre-empt the enemy. It was a genuinely good system, if a little crunchy.
Weapon speed is cool but it should be the opposite. Longer weapons should go before shorter weapons. No one would take a knife over a baseball bat because 9 times out of 10 the person with the knife won't get close enough to use it.
@@TA-by9wv that conflates reach with speed, which is admittedly more important in real combat, but in terms of game balance, having the 1d4 damage weapon faster that the 1d10 damage one makes a lot more sense, and at least gives a reason to pick the low damage. Plus you could throw a dagger, giving.it more reach than the sword a single time.
In second edition there where lots of ways to customise your character was only limited by your imagination, also multi-classing, then there where the handbooks eg Fighters Hanbook which gave many ways to play your fighter from the classical knight to a swashbuckler.
The way that 3rd Edition changed things was an attempt to make all classes equal in power and changed how muti-classing worked. This balancing became more pronouced in 3.5 Edtition and in 4th all the class where the same but had different discription for abilities.
The changes made from 2nd to 3rd introduced a more focus on skills and the initiative system was changed along side movment, for a more grid based battle map game. Most of the magic was unchanged except for casting time had gone and a new mechanic of combat spell casting. Saving throws were changed and base attack vs THAC0, bit simpler on the maths side.
So i would say it was more evolution of the game and a revolution, bring in some of the optional 2nd edition rules and making them core.
While we like out AD&D and still play it, it seems we use so additional rules, like "full hit points" on the first three levels or the "not dead until -10" rule.
But we still loose PC, but the last time we had a whole adventure to get the stuff for resurrection, while the "lost player", runs along as a "ghost".
Was funny.
check out palladium fantasy, they had straight up magic item costs in the early 80s.
Also had the roll high on D20 vs target number and skills for all characters albeit rolled on D100. All this well before the 3e changes.
Wonderful analysis of the transformation that came with 3.0!
As much as I loved 1E, it had some serious issues: THAC0, individual XP charts per class, demi-human level limits (which we flat out IGNORED), and a bewildering variety of inconsistent mechanics. (As groundbreaking as Gygax was, he was in DESPERATE need of an editor). 2E was an improvement, yes, but an incremental one.
But what made 3.0/3.5 my weapon of choice--and remain so to this day--was the codification of combat rules (especially movement!), and the redefinition of a round from one minute to six seconds. To fully understand my point, I need to illustrate.
Back in the day, I had a group of players that would constantly test me as to what you can get away with in a round, especially if you weren't engaged in combat. "A round's a minute, right? So I wanna do this, and this, and that, and back to this"...in short, some of my players weaponized the ambiguity (especially in 1E), and I've never forgotten the stress of all those arguments.
Then 3.0 came out and the arguments STOPPED. And for all its faults (so clearly illustrated in this video) it remains my mainstay.
However, nothing says I can't run a 3.5 game with an old school MINDSET. And I do.
Let's start with multiclassing. I've house ruled a system that forbids combos that shatter verisimilitude outright (wizard/monk, anyone?) No more than one multiclass EVER, have to have so many levels in your initial class before you can take it, have to qualify for it, and in some cases, you can no longer advance in the initial class. But I wouldn't have gone through the trouble if 3.5 multiclassing wasn't so easy and elegant in design.
Then there's falling below 0 hp. I use a homebrew that smashes 3.5 and 1E in a novel way: if you fall below 0 and are revived, you enter a state I call DISABLED. You are barely conscious, can't attack, can't cast, and movement is cut in half at best. Any exertion will send you right back to 0 hp and the dying rules take over. A DISABLED state lasts 24 hours (modifiers apply), during which your PC is consigned to an ICU ward. Heal checks and curing magic CANNOT bypass this phase, but can whittle away its duration--but only to a point.
As for gold and magic items, I'm on the stingy side on both. In the old school, magic items were rare and wondrous; in 3.0, magic went from wonder to commodity overnight, and the effect was jarring. Not to mention the fact that PC wizards and clerics could get in on the action at relatively low levels: scrolls (PC level 1), potions (level 3), etc.
Lastly, NO prestige classes or splatbooks used in PC builds. If the base classes were good enough to 1E and 2E, they're good enough for me. You wanna customize? Knock yourself out with careful selection of feats and skills.
(An aside: I love monster creation for my homebrew setting. But the rule changes in 3.0 needlessly complicated monster stats, and turned creating a monster from scratch into a miserable slog. I've converted only a handful of monsters I'd created in 1E/2E with so much fun and enthusiasm.)
If I had my way, I'd customize a whole system and call it (in honor of Godzilla Minus One), 3.5 - 1. Blend 3.5 with the best of what 1E and 2E had to offer. Clarity and consistency of rules with a gritty editorial slant. A system that can make you feel like a hero and still kick your teeth in if things go badly.
I don't know if old retroclones are retroclones anymore, because after the OGL drama, many retroclones like Old School Essentials, Basic Fantasy and World Without Numbers have revised and updated their books with the intention of separating themselves from D&D and OGL to avoid possible lawsuits in future and be more independent.
Good thing the SRD is in creative commons so there is no reason to worry about that.
In 3.5 I had a house rule a few folks stole (those fiends!)
Once you have a magic item feat you get an XP pool equal to 10-25% of the XP to get to that level. This can only be used to make items.
Intended for smaller items, scrolls, potions, taking the edge off bigger items.