I'm afraid there are quite a few things wrong in this video: 1. A lvl 9 fighter in B/X has +5 to hit bonus (Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy, page 29), not +8. You were using the monster's THAC0/To hit table, which as you can see favors the monsters over a player character of the same amount of hit dice/lvl. 2. lvl 9 in B/X is not the same as lvl 9 in 5E. A B/X fighter goes up to lvl 14, so it would be more accurate to say that B/X lvl 6 = 5E lvl 9, in which case we have a to hit bonus of 2+2(due to strength)= +4 (B/X) vs +9 (5E). 3. "Hobgoblins are not Hobgoblins", or at least I don't think it's a good idea to assume that just because they share the same name they are supposed to share their "power tier". I think a better comparison would be a B/X vs a 5E starting character of the same class and attribute scores, in which case usually the B/X character is weaker due to them rolling for their HP (no guaranteed max HP on lvl 1), which on average means they tend to have about half their 5E counterparts' HP. Note that most weapons do the same base damage in both games, for example, a short sword deals 1d6 damage both in B/X and 5E. 4. The video is not taking into account the fact that most player characters in B/X don't get access to multiple attacks, which hugely increases the damage output of 5E characters. Love your content! Hope this helps in some way, shape or form
Good points. And I think the scope of the video is comparison of one type of apple to another type of apple. In the end, they are both apples, but you may have a preference. If Prof. got into the weeds on this one, he would also have to consider XP rates, level caps, etc. These are highly subjective, and once you're into that territory, you have to consider house rules, which is an unknown quantity.
I suspect he's doing that on purpose, he's an experienced gm so he can read a table. There was a recent video about how characters should die occasionally (off the top of my head), not a point anyone would feel the need to make if the game was actually deadly. Perhaps he's paraphrasing and/or poking fun at some of the replies he got..? Just a casual thought on my end though, I could easily be wrong..
Honestly, they just traded skills for supplies. We guzzled healing potions in place of casting cure light wounds. We relied on NPC hirelings, +1 weapons, and ioun stones instead of special abilities. I much prefer the equipment style of play, because it's an easy way to drain coins and motivate new adventures.
In one campaign I have replaced healing spells with variants that always drain supplies. They require to either sacrafice the casters life or some expensive material component. The party also recovers HitDice at a much slower rate. And dead is dead, no resurrection magic available. It's more fun than my other campaigns.
Garry Gygax once said that the players should have a 70% chance of winning and a 30% chance of losing but the players should feel like they have a 70% chance of losing and a 30% chance of winning. That's why i think people think older games were overly brutal but in fact was no the case
AD&D is actually far more deadly and it shows. One can die casting a haste, restoration, or even a wish spell as anything that causes one to age forces a system shock with failure resulting in death. Not to mention a teleport spell can be an instant kill, for if one ended up teleporting into the ground it meant instant death, and how many spells or abilities, if failed, resulted in death. Or the fact that healing was extremely limited and a full night's rest only restored a single hit point leading to loss by attrition, something that is really difficult in the current edition. These are things that many, including professor DM did not take into account. 5th edition plays like the dumbed-down cartoonish version of D&D that has nerfed death, for not only is it harder to flat out die, but most of the abilities and spells no longer result in death or other nasty effects. Even the cocktrice is a joke in 5th edition where it used to be feared in the TSR era. D&D was Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. AD&D was just Gary Gygax, which he made the game even more lethal with his rules. AD&D 2nd edition pulled a little back from Gary's lethality (removing random contraction of diseases, for example), but included more options than 5th edition, allowing for more customization, like hovering on death's door rule. It was also compatible with the AD&D and D&D, something that can not be said of WotC versions of the game.
5e is a strange case where you switch genres as you progress in levels. Levels 1-3: Survival Horror The enemies are fierce and magic things are a nightmare. Levels 4-7: Epic Fantasy Loot and fireballs galore. The Barbarian can't die anymore. Levels 8-15: Super Heroes Play as your favorite fictional character in a TTRPG. Levels 16-20: Post game content Pure wish fulfilment fantasy. At this point, you hunt the Tarrasque for sport.
This seems fairly representative of your average fantasy saga. Start out as lowly peasant who has trouble with goblins and oversized rats, eventually turns out to be some Chosen One , and by the final book ends up in fight with the source of all evil.
even at levels 1-3, I wouldn't call 5E a "survival horror". More like a regular fantasy setting, but it's still very hard to die and even reckless play can't be easily punished
That did strike me as a bit stretchy. I can accomplish similar feats while DMing 5e by setting the right expectations via traps, hidden monsters with False Appearance and other stuff. Its not an incorrect assessment, but I don't think it would be unique to B/X
@@lightwulf9 you would have to do some serious tweaking to 5e to make your players cautious, since you almost have to try to die in 5e. In B/X you drop to 0hp that’s it, you’re dead.
@@KHfanz I was able to put my players on edge with some darkmantles and a gelatinous cube in separate encounters. I disagree wholeheartedly. It does require a lot of consideration from the GM, far as environment and such though.
Professor. Thanks to you I started a Five Torches Deep game. Me and my players come from AD&D2e, and we're all getting that special feeling back. It may be emotional, but the fear is real!
I am preparing an OSR-style game for my birthday, inspired largely by this series. It is based on Old-School Essentials, with elements added from Backswords & Bucklers, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess, as well as the art of Frank Frazetta and from the Basic, Expert, and Advanced D&D books. I told my players to expect a high fatality rate, an they immediately started wagering on who might go through the most PCs in the course of the evening, without anyone TRYING to kill their characters. One of these is my childhood best friend that I haven't seen in about 30 years and just recently got back in touch with, and this will be out first game together. We are really excited about this. Thank you, Professor, for the inspiration.
This is a late report, but I wanted to share it. I am well aware that the Professor will be taking points off for tardiness and, coming from a family of teachers, I accept that 😁 The game went very well, was three sesions long before schedules fell apart, but that's fine because we had alot of fun. The players were my two brothers, whose gaming experience began when I brought home an AD&D PHB home one day and started trying to run games, a friend of ours through a mutual love of professional wrestling, my son, who at the age of 4 made his first character (a very young silver dragon named Macheodiche,) and my long-lost best friend who is into more tactical games (this was his first D&D game ever.) The party was all human: 3 Fighters and 2 Thieves, who were quietly hired to "recover" an artifact for one monastery from another who had "acquired" it from them. They made liberal use of cautious sneaking, distractions, charm and planning and counter-planning. There were traps from Grimtooth's workshop, so plenty of near-death moments (Aldolpho the Charming nearly died three times alone.) I started them off at 1st level. One of the main rule modifications that came into play is that Thief and Thief-like skills are d20, modified by attribute bonus/penalty and class abilities. (Anyone can try and sneak, Thieves are the best at it by a mile.) The other one has to do with combat. I use the Attack Bonus/Ascending AC option, but I add the Attack Bonus (I call it the Combat Value) to the AC instead of the Armor's protective value. Armor, instead, soaks damage, while Combat Value, I find, better reflects one's ability to fence or proficiently avoid the narrow misses reflected by hit points. So no dragons, but they faced angry monks and friars (one of whom was a Cleric, and from him they sensibly fled,) traps, a mountain lion (who gave us the closest call to character death outside of Grimtooth's suggestions,) and the artifact: a fist-sized lump of clay. Having stolen said artifact, they put it in a wooden bowl, covered it, and fled for the first monastery. Over the next three days, the weather got progressively more stormy and violent, forcing them to shelter under a wagon on high ground in a forest. Then they heard the screams. Unwrapping the bowl, they discovered that the bowl had come to unnatural and tormented life, not being designed to live, after three days of contact with the clay ...
I have a group of "old" gamers, we all started back in the '80's. At the moment we are playing the free 5e Basic rules, no feats, limited classes. we are having an absolute blast, it reminds us of the old B/X rules and the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is so much easier than all those modifiers!
Greeting Professor Dungeon Master, I would like to thank you again as your videos help me feel connected to the hobby while I am deployed. While I am only 20, I too started with basic dungeons and dragons as that is what my dad had. I played that with my friends throughout highschool and loved it. That is the cover art I think of when I play dnd, and it is that aesthetic and sense of mystery and adventure I try to bring to the table as a DM.
I must say that you are very lucky that your circle of friends do not consider 5e a synonym of D&D, and the fact that you are that young makes it even more amusing. It's sad that the majority of "new age" D&D players see old editions as obsolete and boring.
this is what i came to say. at number slogs its similar, but with save or die poison and spells and level drains with no saves, against certain monsters your fortunes always hinge on a single die roll.
This makes the older version of the game more deadly for this mechanic has been nerfed out of the game, something Professor DM does not take into account. And let us not forget how many spells could flat out kill you if you cast them in certain early editions. Spells like haste, restoration, and limited wish if you failed a system shock roll.
@@philurbaniak1811 How about the cockatrice and how it is more like an angry chicken than the threat it used to be back in the day? Such is the fate of most monsters from a community that has continually whined about the lethality of the game to the point is nerf-like. Even dragons aren't feared these days...
Well I was suprised that 2E was slightly easyer, but the part about 5E being front loaded, sounds about right. ... Pros: It lets you play the character you want from the begining, and you don't have to roll for stats. (Althoguh, in 5E, rolling for stats is a power-gamer move, that is vulerable to cheeting.) ... Cons: deminishing returns for leveling up.
@@agsilverradio2225 It isn't. This is an argument about only specific mechanics and glosses over many of the actual additional factors that makes 2nd edition and earlier versions much more difficult. Here are some of the things that makes these earlier editions much harder: First, there are spells that the various spellcasters can cast in these earlier editions that can kill yourself our your allies outright, like teleporting into stone which is fatal. Second, only priests had access to healing spells (there were some exceptions). Third, there is no such thing as balanced encounters, meaning it is entirely possible to run into a very old red dragon at 1st level. Fourth, there are no death saves, you hit 0, you die. If you are raised, you lose a point of constitution and there are no ability increases for level advancement. Fifth, many poisons, special abilities, and monster attacks resulted in a save or die situation, there was not advantage. Sixth, if you take 50 points of damage, you have to save vs. death with failure meaning you die. Seventh, any aging or hostile polymorph spell forces a system shock roll, failure results in death. Eight, petrification was always permanent, but if it could be undone, one would have to make a system shock roll (see above). Ninth, energy draining was a thing which removed on level of experience permanently; if you drop to 0th level with 0 hit points, you die. Tenth, critical hits (as an optional rule) could kill you in one hit, provided you failed a save versus death. Eleventh, you could start off with 1 hit point plus your Constitution modifier and that's it. Twelfth, You were generally limited to only one action and maybe some movement. Thirteenth, all spells had to memorized before battle and were set until you next had a decent night's sleep, this affects what a cleric has available for spells. Fourteenth, an successful attack, even if it didn't cause damage, was enough to disrupt spellcasting. Fifthteenth, almost every race besides humans is level capped, though there are options to progress a bit further. Sixthteenth, a good night's sleep only restores a single hit point. Seventeenth, every race (that is not human), kit, and some classes have penalties that can limit (sometimes severely) what you can and cannot do. I think you get the point I am trying to make in that the earlier editions are far more difficult as there were many ways one could die even by one's own spells...
@@craigtucker1290 I think system shock was only present after 2e. Neither OD&D, AD&D 1e, holmes, b/x or BECMI had such a mechanic. But yes, the games were incredibly dangerous, hence why players were cautious about it.
@@18ps3anos System shock was introduced in 1st edition AD&D when they changed stat modifiers to something more nuanced and complex rather than the overly simplistic system it had been. Original D&D did not use system shock, but it had no death saves or hovering on death's door option, you were just dead. My list was kind of a hodgepodge of different things that no longer are present in the current edition or have been nerfed as to be almost irrelevant like accidentally teleporting low which only causes a bit of damage rather than just death. I could have stated which edition had which of these deadly factors, but the point was how WotC has been nerfing death and negative consequences out of the game since they acquired it at the request of the community whiners, til they got to the bubble wrapped, player mollycoddling version that is 5th edition. Basically, all these earlier editions/version were much more lethal than 5th edition currently is. It is the widespread lack of caution and general stupidity that leads to character deaths in 5th edition these days, not that it is actually more deadly. If one played cautiously, like one generally did during the TSR era, one would not die in 5th edition, but that is not what 5th edition is modeled on. It is modeled after a video game rather than the original RPG experience of what D&D use to be, hence people play their characters like it is a video game full of quick saves.
All of this isn't to say anything about the fact that a snake bite in b/x is literally save or DIE, and in 5e it's just some damage, and maybe the poisoned condition until the end of combat. I've never seen a 5e character die because of a bad decision, meanwhile a bad decision saw half our b/x party die in a round.
Prof DM says BX player will play more cautious. Yes, it's that feeling of dread awaiting you around the corner. 5e loses that. Give me 2e and earlier any day.
Yeah that's essentially 5E in a nutshell. Thing is that the low level monsters in many cases are very overpowered. Hobgoblins and kobolds for instance are crazy strong compared to their traditional counterparts. Kobolds basically always have advantage, and hobgoblins are rolling 3 dice of damage. Even regular goblins with the bonus action hide can be dangerous if used properly, and bug bears do crazy surprise attack. Monsters are actually better than 1st level PCs. But yeah after about 3rd level, the math turns around. It's pretty much a similar problem that 4E had, where the PCs get more and more healing powers and the monster damage just can't keep up. Combat becomes more and more grindy in general, and grindy favors the PCs. They really need to hire a designer that's actually good at math and can keep hit points from totally blowing away average damage per round.
Spells are rare at levels 1-3 and PCs drop easily, but then a safety blanket steadily develops with extra spells and abilities and PC Healing Word whack-a-mole opens up. Healing spell slot numbers scale but KOs are constant. Maybe one could increase the cost of "cure KO" spells so that it always takes the equivalent of 1/3 or 1/4 of a character's spell slots to get a PC up. Handwave explanation: your wounds are harder to treat when you fight more dangerous creatures, so you must use level X/3 spell or spell slot equivalents to get level X adventurer back on their feet.
I did a study once of every system I had played (D&D, GURPS, Champions, Fate, Forbidden Lands, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, etc.) to get a sense of what the average fight experience was like. To my surprise, I discovered that most games seem to have players average around three hits before getting taken out. (For example, most weapons in GURPS do 1d6 damage, and average characters have 10-11 health. Champions heroes tend to have around 35 stun points and do 12-15 stun damage on a hit.) [SIDE NOTE: Tanks average about four hits, and spellcasting lightweights usually get in trouble after their second hit.] This explains why, for many people (and as 5e is currently structured), third level is the beginning of competency in D&D: it's literally where you have as many hit points as three average blows. (Since hit dice and weapon damage have always been pretty close in value.) So I guess it doesn't surprise me that 5e and B/X are actually pretty close to each other in lethality. As you suggest, the real difference is how long it takes to get through a battle and on to the next encounter. And man, does B/X have it ALL OVER 5e in terms of speed. When players have a dozen special abilities at first level, you can spend a lot of time reading rules descriptions, even on things that rarely come up (rerolling a 1, resistance to magical sleep...). I don't think I'd mind 5e's spamming of abilities so much if they at least mattered much of the time. But they mostly seem to thicken the rulebook for relatively minor gains.
As much as I enjoy this comparisons, I cannot ignore that sometimes a hobgoblin is not a hobgoblin. Looking from the gamist point of view, we need to learn what role does a hobgoblin have as a combat foe in B/X for first level characters and find the enemy that fills this role for 5e characters. I say that because I grew on AD&D and, when converting old adventurers to 5e, I found out many monsters were upgraded or downgraded and battles that before were challenging became a breeze, and vice-versa. But, maybe the designers (intentionally or not) kept the 5e hobgoblin in the same "power curve" of the B/X one, and all my saying is for naught.
I was thinking the same thing during the video. Hobgoblins have seen a significant increase in the lethality and effectiveness in modern editions. Their martial bonus to damage really reflects that.
I agree. It is one thing I appreciated about 4th Ed's design. It taught DMs to think of characters and more importantly, monsters, in terms of their Roles. From a design perspective, this is more useful. Good observation, Erick.
@@Interfect727 I enjoyed it. I remember in running 3rd Ed, I would use Hobs as the disciplined defensive phalanx, and Gobs as skirmishers as a Hammer-Anvil tactic. It was usually highly effective, especially at low levels. E.G., A Hob fighting defensively would have AC of around 20 (very difficult for low level PCs to hit), and then while their tanks were working on the Hob line, Gobs would attack from stealth to the rear (vs casters). Gobs were low AC, low attack bonus, and low damage, but very good at stealth, so they would be a real threat against the squishies in the back. (TPK Warning: using tactics like this will swing your CR math way off, especially if the PCs are outnumbered on either end (or both!). Adjust XP accordingly.) So yeah, I really appreciated the distinction, represented in the stat block, of the different roles of the various "breeds" of Goblinoids as presented in 3rd Ed. Extending this to different monsters presented endless tactical options, which I enjoyed deeply when running 3rd Ed. That gave us almost ten full years of continuous enjoyment.
The thing you missed, and one of the big contributing factors to old school's lethality, is that in the example the book uses to teach you how the game is to be played, Morgan's party of 1st and 2nd level adventurers _encountered 12 hobgoblins._ What 5e adventure would throw a dozen hobgoblins at a first or second level party? The CR system was designed to avoid these completely lopsided fights, but early D&D rulebooks actively encouraged it. The AD&D players handbook gives a similar example of combat: A party of 5 runs into 20 orcs backed up by an illusionist at a distance of 30 feet. Published modules have similar levels of violence, one published encounter (listed for 1st and 2nd level characters) is a half dozen giant frogs that have a 4 in 6 chance of surprising the party and can swallow characters whole, giving them 3 chances to roll an 18 (if they had an edged weapon in hand...) to escape or die, and that's just the first encounter in the dungeon. I can see that 1v1, old school monsters aren't more dangerous than 5e enemies. But the numbers encountered were not balanced and there was no guidance to the GM on how to build balanced encounters. That is what made old school D&D combat so deadly.
Great video! But I think you forgot to take consideration on the Action Economy in 5e. There are Actions, Bonus Actions, Reactions (all that make the combat slower). And a Fighter in 5e can use a Bonus Action to heal himself, can do more attacks per turn in higher levels, etc... (A Fighter of 9º lvl can do 4 attacks and heal 1d10+9 HP, all in one turn... once per short rest).
My first ever character died to an arrow trap in the very first adventure. She was Lidda from the boxed set for 3rd edition. One of the other players died at level 2 when an orc rolled a critical and cleaved him in twine. At low levels characters are just as likely to die in one shot in later editions as they were in the original.
@@braynechylde4982 Wasn't really overly sad. The trap was sprung because the fighter grew bored of my fiddling with a lock and decided to open it with his axe. It was the very end of the scenario too. We thought it was hilarious. I think the lightheartedness came from several things, but mainly because we played pre-generated characters with basically no backstory.
When I first got 5e, I hadn’t played D&D in 20+ years. In a fit of nostalgia, I dug out my old copy of Keep on the Borderlands and did a quick rough conversion to the new rules. I quickly learned I needed to go back and adjust, because the new monster stats compared to the numbers found in the caves were super deadly for a 5e party of 1-3 level.
I have run the older modules in my campaign and have converted many to 5e, and I concur with that you said here. However, I also tend to like the potential lethality of 'old school', so I only marginally balance the monsters and encounters. I tend to keep the same # of monsters as originally planned, but the more there are, I typically start lowering hit points depending on the number encountered. The simple fact that between all the healers, potions, etc. that 5e players have access to, they may get knocked down a lot, but recover enough to finish taking out the monsters. The party struggles against the monsters (which they should), and feel better when getting through a tough battle. That said, this type of play is discussed and agreed upon during session 0, as I don't run 'high fantasy superhero' type games which seems to be how default 5e is portrayed.
I did a conversion for 3E of Keep on the Borderlands - the main thing I learned was they really handed out a fricken ton of loot back in the day. My players were so far above the wealth by level guidelines it was not even funny. I had to give them half the recommended wealth by level treasure for the next 3 adventures to get them back in line.
I’m mean so I just run Keep on the Borderlands as written in 5e. The only thing that killed players last time I ran it was being betrayed by the evil cleric spy who you can find in the keep. The key is to let players run away, parley set up ambushes etc, and to play humanoids as people who don’t want to die needlessly.
Interesting idea. I'm not sure I understand the point about approaching things cautiously in OSR placing the systems on parity, though. If you're approaching an issue more cautiously due to mechanical differences like limited healing and fewer hit points, then logically that means the system is more dangerous and the behavior of the players has been modified to suit. Am I misunderstanding your point here? It seems to me that you need to compare player outcomes with the same approach to have a good sense of the relative danger between two systems. I have to admit that I think 5e Hobgoblins are a bit of an outlier from a damage perspective, too. The situational +2d6 damage bonus makes them hit considerably harder on paper than would be usual for their attack mode (longsword). In fact, with that bonus triggered they'll hit harder than a lot of PCs in their level range! Compounding this, the CR system would pit a party of 4 level 1 PCs against 2 hobgoblins as a Hard encounter; 3 hobgoblins would be deadly. That same party in OSR would likely be fighting more than 2 hobgoblins, however, and sometimes a lot more. The 3.x and later CR system versus OSR's less structured encounters introduce significant problems in comparing single monsters and players across those editions. I suspect that you'd need to compare a full average OSR encounter to a full average 5e encounter to really get a sense of this from a mathematical perspective. Part of OSR's challenge isn't necessarily in the 1-on-1 capability of monster v player, but the superior action economy of the monsters due to them having a lot more than two or three individual units. It's common (and even normal) for players to be outnumbered in older systems.
Bit of a moot point given any DM is free to ignore any rule they choose. You're not forced to use *anything* you don't want to. The main thrust here is that the core assumptions of the systems are very different in terms of the numbers of foes a group will be facing.
Thanks for the comparison, I recall Morgan Ironwolf very well! I got my introduction to D&D with that basic rule book around the same time you did (sometime when I was in 3rd grade).
There is a decent amount wrong in your presentation. First, Hobgoblins do not get the bonus 2d6 damage always. They must be within 5 feet of an ally to get the bonus, so 1 hobgoblin fighting 1 fighter, the hobgoblin will never get that bonus. Then it would take 3 hits with a 5e Hobgoblin to take Morgan down with an average damage of 6. Next, a 9th level fighter in OSE does not have a +9 to hit. You were looking at the Monster THAC0 table, not the fighter THAC0 table. A 9th level fighter has a +5 to hit, with +2 from STR that is a +7 bonus. That is a +4 difference in favor of 5e of +11. I run both 5e and OSE all the time and the claim that 5e is more deadly or equally deadly is just silly.
And it's not like he is off by a point or two, but quite a bit more which does significantly balance the two out from a damage point of view. That is until you talk about all the other original D&D monsters and effects that can flat out just kill a character, the limited ability to heal or even have hit points comparatively speaking, and the fact that when you hit 0 hit points you are dead, no saving throw. If we played 5th edition like we do the older editions, almost no PC would ever die.
Good points, and I think think death saves eclipse any other comparison. It's statistically difficult for a PC to die in 5e unless the DM uses coup-de-gras on sub-zero hit point PCs.
Totally agree about the player caution equalizing the actual death rates. I've been playing a lot of Mork Borg lately and I warned my players in advance that it was extremely deadly and they were all likely to die. They were into this and some of them even decided to keep their characters when they rolled up 1 HP characters. Because they were paranoid, cautious, tactical, and helped each other out, there wasn't a single character death. And I don't think I was pulling my punches.
That broom almost solo’d me. basically I was in the closet by myself shouting that I was getting attacked by a broom. Someone walked in and saw my strangling the broom which I had broken over my knee.
@@bossman4799 So... you took time out from exploration to be alone in a closet, "strangling your broom". Well OK, that's one way to relieve stress... ;)
@@JeremyMacDonald1973 it wasn't even the DM's skill (rather, it was actually his first time DMing); there's an animated broomstick in the Death House (first dungeon) in Curse of Strahd. it's labeled as CR 1/4 but can one-shot most wizards and clerics at level 1 and an optimized level 1 fighter will have about a 50% chance to hit it just a few bad rolls and this thing will end the campaign
Don't forget, no Challenge Rating. In the 80s and 90s I only had 3 or 4 Characters survive past 4th level in AD&D. Most characters died from failed death saves, poison, stabbed in the back from another Players Character, or being Zerg rushed.
The D20 system did a ton to make a DMs job easier. Making a ruling in 5e is a very straightforward thing - you set a DC, and the players roll to beat it (with Adv/Disadv factoring in if the situation is favorable/unfavorable). Everything is this way - saving throws are a DC, skills are a DC, hell even attacks are a DC check (against AC). The only time you aren't rolling a D20 for anything is when there's damage/health involved, otherwise the game essentially boils down to "target set by DM, now roll a D20 and add your relevant modifiers to see if you beat it".
These points are easy to make when you isolate something out of a game...that supports your point. In other words: Morgan Ironwolf does not exist in a vacuum. Regarding lethality, Prof. DM already mentions ALL OF THE THINGS that make D&D 5e less lethal: Short Rests, Healing among a lot of classes, super effective long rests, no Save-Or-Die effects. 5e is less lethal for monsters and characters by a long shot when you actually consider everything. As for the power level, yes, you can recreate a B/X D&D character in 5e....but that is not a actual representation of a 5e character. A 3rd level 5e fighter can banish enemies into another realm with their arrow shots (Arcane Archer), a 3rd level Ranger can draw on the power of the multiverses to empower their attacks. A 3rd level B/X Fighter has 2d8 more HP than a level1 fighter. That's it. Rangers don't exist in BX, but if we use the Elf class as a stand-in, the Elf has just gained a d6 HP, and it's first 2nd level spell (so uh...Web?) With XP Parity w/ a 3rd level B/X Fighter, the Elf would be level 2, so give me that spell back :) I think the reputations the different editions have is well earned. I think players' preferences are justified by actual differences in the the ways the games play, not just their "perception of them." I will agree with Prof. DM though, whatever your preference, enjoy the games you play!
Other thing to think is that, at least, since 3rd edition Hobgoblings are not meant to fight lvl 1 parties. Well not a bunch of them, in low level adverntures they work more as bosses than entire groups of Hobgoblings.
Excellent comment! It hits on just about everything that I thought when I first watched this. Having run & played every edition, I haven't encountered a single player that thought 5E was remotely as lethal as OD&D, B/X, 1E, 2E. Additionally, in my experience, players that started playing with the earlier editions tend to exhibit more ingenuity & inventiveness than players that started playing in 3E and later. It's not about the players though, but rather the skill system, or lack thereof. Players that played without the skill system tend to think outside the box and experiment more, while players of the newer systems seemed to feel restrained by what's on their character sheet.
Thank you for doing this video Prof. DM! I think the two major components to a lot of the misconceptions that you illustrate here are valid and there is something to be said about how the art influences peoples thinking about a game system. Back in the 80s and prior rpgs were trying to attract the war gamers initially and so the art reflected the gritty reality of tactical combat. Today the industry is trying to attract the comic book/ movie fan so the art has more of that high octane action movie style, from the poses to the color palette. Look past the art and underneath the hood and the system is just trying to be more efficient while offering what people are most asking for and this era of gamer wants options and choices and is willing to sacrifice a little extra time to get it. Even if the choices are illusions, they want to make them.
This psychological effect is something interesting that I never stopped to think about. 5e class description, art, and even style of official adventures really make the player fells like he is playing a amazing hero. This is interesting because since most players don't go to deep in the rules, your presentation of the game can greatly affect how they play the game. When I was first introduced to table top RPGs my friend told me that it was a difficult game and most people don't survive long. That's why I started playing ultra safe and with time realized that I could be more aggressive. And that, independently of the system, but because I learned "as a GM" that you balance your encounters to your players. Now, if I want a easy game, I present the game as easy and balance the game. If I want a harder game, which I usually did, I present the as hard and totally umbalance it. As it may be true that I honestly think 5e is generally easier, it all depends on how the GM will prepare the encounters
I started with 1st edition AD&D, and we definitely had some character deaths. Palace of the Silver Princess (my first module) had a save vs. poison or die that killed my brother’s dwarf fighter even with the dwarven poison save bonus. That trap was before you even entered the castle. I was five, and I was the party cleric (still one of my favorite classes).
Ah, Morgan Itonwolf. My players know her as the first Baroness Ironwolf, founder of the Iron Wolf Barony located on the frontiers of the civilized lands. Many an adventure into the wilderness has launched from Ironwolf Keep, all passing under the watchful eye of the statue erected in the baroness’s honor.
Reaction rolls and morale checks probably have more impact on B/X lethality than damage modifiers. Likewise, whether a 5e party includes a class that can magically heal impacts lethality far more than hit bonuses or AC.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 - Basic Fantasy is basically B/X with 3rd edition style 'To Hit' adjustment. No THAC0. All the PDFs are free and the print copies are dirt cheap - at cost. Little downside for an OSR system. I often recommend it to new GMs wanting to start with a simple RPG which has plentiful and inexpensive resources to start with.
I'd suggest Dark Fantasy Basic. It's a whole different beast than most OSRs, but that's a good thing. If this had been around when Holmes was, I would have forgotten Holmes in a heartbeat. Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells is also very affordable. Especially for a PDF. Both of these provide room for creativity, instead of just options. They're hardcore, but if you want games that are about discovering and inventing what characters can be, instead of knowing what could happen, then these will please you.
I think the experience of the two games is different enough. So I think ultimately it does all come down to a matter of taste. Personally I like both games tonally speaking, personally I would like to see a mix of art some showing the Heroes as hapless fools in over there heads, some showing them as greedy treasure seekers, and others still as noble heroes taking a stand against evil. OSR comes closer, as you do still get heroic scenes from time to time, like the famous Paladin in Hell scene. While 5e is all about the heroic scenes, treasure, and whimsy, and very rarely about the danger. For me a good campaign should have a bit of it all, some danger, some romance, some comedy, some tragedy, some horror, some heroism, greed driven anti-heroes, fighting alongside truly aspirational heroes. You also need to have at least one complex villain, and at lest one mustache twirling cartoon for the players to do battle with. For me the world needs to be dangerous and lethal, but the heroes need to be just that, heroes. Men of metal and valor who may die in bloody agony, or come out on top to die gloriously another day. Sure players should die (in spectacularly humorous and/or horrifying fashion) if they are being stupid, and I don't think the players should START as heroes I think you should have to earn that. That's what I'd like to convey in the art. Though save or die mechanics should stay in the past, where they belong... Ok, they are welcome in a horror game, preferably one where character creation is quick and easy.
AD&D is actually far more deadly and it shows. One can die casting a haste, restoration, or even a wish spell as anything that causes one to age forces a system shock with failure resulting in death. Not to mention a teleport spell can be an instant kill, for if one ended up teleporting into the ground it meant instant death, and how many spells or abilities, if failed, resulted in death. Or the fact that healing was extremely limited and a full night's rest only restored a single hit point leading to loss by attrition, something that is really difficult in the current edition. These are things that many, including Professor DM did not take into account. Even the cocktrice is a joke in 5th edition where it used to be feared in the TSR era.
Teleport can kill you in 5e as well - you just need to get unlucky a few times in a row. Limited healing just slows the fiction down. Instead of staying overnight in an inn and heading back out, the party spends a few days healing (you don't just gain one hp per day since the cleric uses all their spells for healing on those rest days) - which style of fiction you prefer doesn't really change the game mechanics much - you just need *much* faster clocks in the fiction to add risk in 5e. It does change the dungeon crawl a bit - you can't let the characters get a long rest in a dungeon in 5e, but again that just changes the style of fiction. Instant death effects have mostly been removed, multiple saves have been added for things like petrification, and so on. That stuff is certainly less deadly in 5e, and that's mostly for gameplay reasons - being out of the game because you got petrified on round one sucks in the much slower combat system of 5e far more than it did in basic. I'm not sure that makes 5e less deadly in the actual game though - it just changes the style a bit. if the DM doesn't have the monsters attack downed characters than sure, things get much less deadly - but that's the DM going easy on the players not the rule set. The highest character death rate game I've ever played was a 5e game. Put all the BECMI and AD&D games to shame in terms of the how many characters died.
@@samholden5758 Teleport has certainly been nerfed, now it just causes damage, much like the falling result rather than straight out death. That makes teleport inconvenient, not really lethal unless you only have a few hit points and happen to fail all your death saves. While in the earlier editions, you had less hit points as well, and as soon as you hit 0 you were screwed, even if you were playing with the hovering on death's door optional rule. And what about haste? Just casting that spell can kill every recipient of the spell, albeit, most will survive. Limited healing does not slow anything down, never did. It just changes how one plays the game to a more strategically and realistic style of play rather than just stampeding around. Getting a good AC was key in early editions and as the editions evolved, fighting tactics did so as well with options to block incoming attacks, form shield walls, or pike hedges. I seriously doubt you could put the BECMI and AD&D games to shame with character deaths for meatgrinders were part of the original editions, especially tournament play, and are not found in 5th edition at all. Even Curse of Stradh is ridiculously nerfed for how deadly Ravenloft is supposed to be.
@@craigtucker1290 you should talk with the hexadin tank of my table. "I need to get better, last 3 sessions I was K.Oed" His character has the best stats rolled from the party and very good magic items. If the DM go full nova on the PCs the risk is real in 5e.
@@craigtucker1290 I specifically said most instant death things have been removed. Teleport can still kill the entire party with some unlucky rolls which is why I mentioned it - it's unusual for 5e. For haste, again I said they removed most of the instant death things. Why the fixation on one mechanic? Limited healing clearly slows the fiction down. If it takes 8 hours to go back to full resources compared with a week, then clearly the fiction will move faster. None of that changes the actual gameplay though - it just changes the fiction and the DM just adjusts the world to match the ruleset. The slower AD&D style is better to me - it makes no sense to me that a party can go from level 1 to level 20 in a few months of fiction time in 5e. But that doesn't change the gameplay - it still takes months and years of actual real world time to play. Meatgrinders and tournament death fests are irrelevant . If you want a meat grinder in 5e you can certainly do it - it's not the style of game the system was designed for so you would be doing a square peg into a round hole thing and would be better off using a set of rules designed for the type of game you want to play (cyberpunk 2020 or classic traveller are my meatgrinders of choice). I don't really care if you don't believe me and are calling me a liar. The RPG game with the highest character death rate I have ever played was a 5e game. Higher than all the BECMI games, all the AD&D, all the cyberpunk games, all the DDC games (well ignoring the 0 level funnel), etc. Maybe your DM just went easy on you (or you went easy as the DM)? The game is designed to have less "fail one roll and die" mechanics, obviously if you adore that mechanic it won't be the game system for you. But that's a small percentage of character deaths if the players aren't morons anyway.
@@toribiogubert7729 In the earlier editions of D&D, you wouldn't be KOed, you would be dead. Even if someone had raised you, you would also been down 2 constitution points for each time you were raised and you never get ability points for gaining a level. Also there is no such thing as balanced encounter in these editions either and the monsters have more lethal special attacks that just result in death rather than damage or being inconvenienced.
this comparison falls apart imo because b/x hobs arent even CLOSE to comparable to 5e hobs. choosing two versions of a monster instead of a legitimate control group is the opposite of a consistent thought experiment. i dont see a way that this comparison is even somewhat useful unless a more consistent conversion method is applied to make sure that the monster from b/x is 1:1 just as challenging as the 5e monster. and i dont even know how one would begin to formulate that.
Great job, PDM. That's the academic approach to gaming that I come here for. Actual measurable facts to base an argument on... who would'a thought? Great to see a video justifying how the system doesn't really matter. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with "Sayre's Law" but the debate over OSR and 5e seems to be a perfect demonstration of it.
Great comparison. In practice, I find 5e to be the least lethal of all editions due to the generous death save mechanic, and proliferation of healing abilities. 2e was even more swingy than BX and 1e because of the power creep and static -10 hp rule. At higher levels, there were bigger hits, and characters would go from 5 hit points to -50 in one hit. And critical hits made that worse. I've played all editions, and late 1e and 2e produced the most dead characters, by far. BX is balanced by the merit of less options, and therefor less opportunity for optimization. In practice, it's more lethal than 4e and 5e, and maybe 3/3.5e only because 3x gave characters more options to handle low hit point situations (like Revivify, for example). But 1e and 2e, at least at my table, were the most lethal editions.
One other thing to keep in mind is the number of monsters in B/X that can instantly harm a higher level character in a permanent way. Poison can be save or die after one hit, and various undead will literally drain levels with their attacks, basilisks will petrify, etc. Whereas in 5e at higher levels, even death is often just an inconvenience.
I can't stress enough how much people complaining about combat being too long in 5e don't seem to realize how much every npc (friendly or monsters) makes things worse, with extra attacks, reactions and other abilities a player can make 3 to 4 rolls in a single round of combat, with the average party size of 4 players you can have almost 16 rolls each round, it's a lot of time just rolling without even considering a single enemy
Hope you've got on your +1 Vest of Protection... ah, you do. :) Instead of crunching numbers, I'm going to go with actual experiences. I also started with B/X in 1980, playing KOTB by the rules as written. IIRC we lost 3 clerics, 2 MU's, 2-3 fighters or elves and 2-3 thieves (in a party of 8! replacement characters... Father Miles was replaced by Father Mills, lol) before anyone made 3rd level (at which time lethality slows but never goes away). Granted we were learning, and made tactical and strategic mistakes. When I tried 5e for a couple years, ONE character (rogue) died out of a party of six before making 8th level... due to a failed stealth roll while scouting, multiple enemies made good attacks and the death saves all failed, atypically. Also in 5e we hit 3rd level pretty quickly, and everyone leveled up at the same time. There's also all the powers you get in 5e. As you noted the two games have a very different feel: in 5e you charge in boldly to kick ass.... in B/X you skulk around cautiously, run early and often, and try to only fight when the odds are in your favor (and cheat as much as possible... flaming oil FTW!!). I still much prefer B/X, or really Basic Fantasy (B/X with ascending AC and a bit of streamlining), for the edge-of-your-seat feeling, quick combats and simple rules.
There were some things about old-school I didn't like. Ascending AC with bonuses to-hit is better than THACO and all the old charts. Another thing I didn't really like about old-school is the use/over-use/abuse of henchmen and hirelings... essentially meat-shields and mine detectors. Too many NPCs involved complicates things for the DM.
Great analysis! I run a campaign currently that is founded on 2e AD&D with 3e and 5e touches throughout. I call it "D&D Classic" (considering 2e is still the reigning champ in terms of longest continued publishing period; plus it's when Forgotten Realms debuted, and Ed Greenwood is MY Gary Gygax)! It's all about how much complexity you prefer, and how much work you expect your players to invest. I invest a lot of time as a DM, and I expect my players to invest at least a fraction of that learning their characters and the world before we roll our first dice, digital or otherwise. Discord or other channel/post based servers and services make for a great way to seed adventure info and keep RP alive between sessions. I come from the school of spending at least 2-3 hours on character creation. It's a lot of fun, and can fill an entire 0-session. Thanks again, PDM.
The weird, funny story of D&D is that they got it right in the 70s, and nearly every subsequent iteration after 1980 has been an attempt to 'fix' and re-sell something that was exactly right as-is.
My problem with 5e is that it's just bloated with numbers and options from the start. Every 1st lv character is basically guaranteed to start with a +3 mod. Why not keep the numbers low, maybe +2 would be max to get from attributes at 1st lv and if you get lucky (like 17-18 roll), one feat to choose from, and no proficiency bonus. I mean, a giant rat starts with +2 prof bonus, so whats the point of characters having +2 also? Everybody could just start with +0 and take it from there. You run your first adventure and basic goblins roll +4 to hit.
Cause you will need to bring the AC down and make changes that are in place for years. Fiddle to much with the system and end up with a mob with forks and torches crying about how changes killes their hobby from childhood or something. Kinda what happenes with 4th edition.
Thank You for giving your opinion and showing the facts. Both editions have their strengths and weaknesses. I still miss 2nd edition because I Loved DMing those games. I guess the bottom line is like You stated to each His/Her Own.
It's nice to see the math broken down to illustrate how litter difference there is between where D&D was and where D&D is. I've always disliked the stigma of more lethal play when in reality both are pretty much on par with one another. And yeah, my only complaint about higher level play of D&D from 3rd till now has been the length of time taken for a turn. That said, I'm still a major fan of 5e, and I enjoy running it for my friends to see what kind of crazy shenanigans they can get into.
That's the old cover by Rick Hershey. He also used interior art with the high level Morgan facing down various monsters. That was commissioned from Rubus. Redheaded Morgan was done by Matt Forsythe, he won the Facebook fantasy art page Banner contest with his version. Morgan actually appears in the mystara player's handbook one additional time during a celebration. I tried to get an artist that could do her hair properly, but nobody would look me in the eye. Artist would prefer to work on hands for a week straight rather than try to draw 80s hair.
@@markfaulkner8191 most of the time people just want to ask me about the list or any of my other projects that went viral. Small time channels have a very difficult time getting noticed, I'm mid-tier at best.
@@Mr_Welch Just keep plugging away. I post and repost your vids whenever they fit into a conversation. On Facebook groups and in Discord servers. It is a tedious labor of love, but you are getting there!
I'm not convinced. I feel like this is an over simplification. A hobgoblin is a CR 1/2 in 5e, which is meant to be a challenge for 3 first level characters according to Xanathar's encounter building guidelines. In B/X one would encounter something like 1d6 hobgoblins. They're designed to be encountered as a group and a single hobgoblin isn't a threat to a 1st level party. Fighting two hobgoblins (so they get the martial ability) at first level would be brutal in 5e. The quick matchups chart in Xanathar's lists two 1/2 CR monsters as appropriate for a 4th level party. You're comparing the PC's, but the monsters don't really compare. They're both called Hobgoblins and have similar lore, but they're not designed for the same purpose when considering game mechanics and CR systems. I think that a more accurate study would be 3 or 4 morgans vs 1 hobgoblins. The Morgans will win this easily. Of course there are the death saves and plentiful healing in 5e, so even if your fighter goes down, they're back up the next round. If not the next round, then they're fully healed after the next short rest. That B/X character is going to be sore for a couple of days because there is no healing at 1st level (clerics don't get spells until 2nd). Could Horowitz play a Mozart sonata for 2 pianos 4 hands by himself?
Nice video. I just want to point out a few things. 1. As said by another poster you were using the monster to hit chart from B/X. Morgan is only +5 at 9th level from the chart. 2. I think you sort of changed horses in midstream a bit to make a point. You started off arguing the statistics and then switched to “play style” which is obviously subjective. Not all OSR players are more cautious and even if that were true, that is essentially communicating the opposite point that you were wanting to make ... they are more cautious exactly because B/X is so deadly. If it wasn’t more deadly, they would not run from or parlay with monsters more. It is after all a treasure seeking game because of the way XP are earned. You HAVE to find some way to defeat the monster to get the treasure to get the XP. Not always killing them, but you know what I mean. They are more cautious because they cannot beat all the monsters in a straight up fight. Having played a lot of B/X and 5E, I still think that B/X is more deadly for five really important reasons, three of which you mentioned in some form in your video. 1. Only clerics can heal in B/X and they don’t get spells at 1st level. Good luck making it to 2nd level, Morgan meat shield, with no healing. 5E Morgan can be healed multiple times at 1st level by nearly every other member of her party as you pointed out. 2. 5E Morgan even at 1st level gets to recover 1 HD of HPs from a short rest, and all lost HPs with a long rest. Also, don’t forget that 5E Morgan can also recover 1d10+1 HPs from using Second Wind. That is hypothetically a total of 31 HPs a day. 1st level B/X Morgan with no 2nd or higher level Cleric? That lucky lady gets to recover 1 hp after one nights rest IF it is uninterrupted. What’s that? We have to go through a mega dungeon without leaving? Good luck B/X Morgan. 3. Death saves. 5E Morgan gets chances to survive when reduced to 0 HPs, which you stated, but she gets this benefit especially if she has party members who can aid her allowing her an auto pass on the survival roll (without having to make a roll to do this). At 0 hp B/X Morgan is dead ... there is nothing the player can do to stop that. 4. Save or die. These are rare even from poison in 5E and even if they occur failing them more often than not just reduces the character to 0 HPs. Refer to numbers 1 and 3 above as to why this is not a big deal for 5E Morgan. B/X Morgan gets bitten by that giant spider? Roll an unmodified 12 or higher on a d20 (doesn’t matter what her CONis) or she dies ... no backup options like 5E Morgan has. 5. Finally, and this is a big one IMHO, hypothetically B/X Morgan could have rolled a 1 on her HD roll at 1st level. 5E Morgan? Always starts with a base of 10 big HPs. And this issue just gets compounded as levels increase. 5E Morgan can always get a base of 6 HP per each level gained, never having to roll a die. B/X Morgan has to roll at each level and will at best average 4.5 per level, but sometimes she is going to get a 1 or a 2. The hp advantage for 5E Morgan compounds like interest in a savings account, level after level, and B/X Morgan will never catch up. I understand that the monsters do a different amount of damage which will balance this out a bit but regardless, 5E Morgan never has to deal with that situation of working hard to make the next level, only to have the hp total increase by 1 hp (2 in her case because of her CON). That is brutal and it will likely happen to paper tiger B/X Morgan at least once on her trek to 9th level. I love your videos, brother, they are my favorite D&D vids on RUclips. I could even at least entertain your points about the ending of GoT. But on this one ... it seems pretty clear to me that B/X Morgan is way more likely to be killed than 5E Morgan. But I appreciate you putting on your +1 vest of protection on and making this video. 😃🥳👍
Nice breakdown. This is a good example of how you need to be “careful” running old school modules in 5e straight from the book. Some monsters are much stronger in the conversion (some much weaker as well). For instance, hobgoblins. At CR 1/2 they are balanced for 2 against a party of 4 level 1 PCs, in an old school module (for 1st level) you’ll likely run into double or triple that number.
The main difference between 5e and Classic is that while in Classic you are more resilient (of you pick a frontliner) when you drop you are dead, there is no death save or the likes that soften the death's door
Great stuff. I think you are spot on, the difference is in the actual play and the time committed to combat. Thanks for the content. Catch you next time Deathbringer. Cookie for the metric
From my experience and knowledge, there's 4 main reasons 5e has such a low mortality rate. 1) Death Saving Throws. Far and above, this is the reason they survive. If my players' characters died everytime they hit 0 hp, I'd have between 3 and 5 deaths every adventure. Instead most characters go unconscious once per adventure. 2) No negative hit points. Sounds simple, but being able to bring a character back into full action with a single healing spell or potion greatly helps the party in the action economy. 3) Most things that used to be insta death now deal damage. A pit trap that deals 4d10 damage is a lot more survivable than something that immediately kills if you fail a save. 22 piercing damage average, half as much on a failed save is fairly survivable by a lvl 3 martial class character. 4) Culture. Not sure how the culture was back then, but I know that with the way death saves work as well with how easy it is to bring them back, killing a character almost takes a conscious effort from the DM. I think many DM's (especially with how discouraged the DM vs. player mentality has become) will make the baddies ignore characters that are down, allowing them to be healed and back into the fight. BONUS) Focus on party. I'm not entirely sure on this either, but I seem to recall people saying that in earlier editions the party were expected to bring a bunch of hirelings. If those are added in the bodycount then obviously the bodycount can rise without killing a PC. But with more modern editions the focus is just on the party consisting of the PC's and maybe an NPC's or two they brought along. This might make the story focus more on the characters and their interactions among each other, which makes their deaths sting a lot more.
Seems it all comes down to the likelihood of players having an "oh shit!" moment that is (hopefully) followed by "hell yeah!" moment and high-fives around the table. Regardless of the math, we have opportunity to experience this, along with tragic defeat in both systems. It rests on the shoulders of the DM - AND The Players - to engage the rules at hand to seize those opportunities. Carpe Diem.
Another thing to consider with lethality is the instant death damage that 5e has...take a really big hit and you're dead, no saves to survive it. DM's are also far more likely to have attacks target downed players in 5e because the monsters would realize that they might be getting up again.
For me, it is not so much the difference in survivability, but in the lasting consequences of combat. In B/X, I have left combat victorious, but minus two levels with no way of reversing it (He ended up retiring after that fight, even though he was still 3rd lvl. That was some fun RPing). In 5e, there doesn't seem to be any permanence to negative effects.
I never really understood level drain. As a game mechanic maybe, but just wiping out progress doesn't appeal to me. I'd prefer constitution drain. It makes more sense to me.
@@coda821 That's a valid point, but I never looked at it that way. When I learned how to play D&D, losing games of all sorts was just how it was. It didn't matter how far you got in Pac-Man, you always had to start back at the beginning and I would happily drop another quarter in. So, when a character died or got some permanent injury, I would just proverbially 'drop another quarter in' and roll up another one.
A lot of this "Illusion of Choice" stuff you are talking about is about more about the illusion of character options making the game better. Its the same thing you said about leveling up, really. Once the game actually starts, and the player characters have to make strategic decisions on how best to survive, player choice and agency becomes the meat of the game. I would like to make a set of rules where the classes are OSR-level simplistic, maybe with the option to Dual-class (but not dip into several different classes whenever the player feels like it! That would be...."Abserd."), but with the option to pick up some bonus abilities (languages, feats, battlemaster combat manuevers, etc) like how a wizard copies new spells into their spellbook. You could even bring back prestige classes from 3e, but you simply CHANGE your class to the prestige class (often it has prerequisites so you have to be a fighter to become a purple dragon knight, for instance) once you join the organization. You have to interact with the world to find a trainer and possibly pay gold to learn a unique skill. So, this means that the player will spend more time paying attention to the game instead of their character sheet, EVEN if what they want to do is gain new powers!
I fundamentally disagree on the closing statement. There is an intrinsic difference from TSR era d&d and the wizards era roleplaying game of the same name: procedures. The dungeoneering and exploration procedures are the single most important aspect of OS play. TSR D&D wasn't about narrative. A narrative might emerge, but the game was a sandbox about exploration and treasure hunting at its core. Wizards, in designing their RPG, gutted these mechanics, as well as XP for gold, which shifted the focus of the game from exploration, caution, treasure hunting and dungeoneering to a narrative combat simulator.
Enlightening. I've always wondered if the original d&d was deadlier. I started playing during the 3.5 Era so I've never had a chance to play OG d&d or advanced.
Magic was more powerful in early editions. 2nd level spell Blind was permanent if you didn't save. If you had a low Int score a charm spell lasts for up to 3 months. In general i like the feeling of magic being extremely powerful but more rare and prone to backfiring.
I started with Moldvay B/X in the 80s. Ive also played 5E. Combat in B/X is pretty quick and game play is deadly. 5E Combat is slower and with all the healing and rests- not as much.
You made two countering points in this video: You explain the DIFFERENCE in play between "OSR" and 5e, which you boiled down to being cautious because exposing yourself to risk has a high lethality rate with even the example of a straight save vs poison straight out killing a character. Then at the end of the video you say whichever version of D&D one plays doesn't really make a difference. but the above statement JUST pointed out the clear and distinct difference each version encourages. I agree with the sentiment of play whichever way you like. Personally, I like both.
A few things worth noting: (1) Despite being an example character, B/X Morgan is not an average B/X character. She's clearly above average, with bonuses in every fighting stat and a somewhat above average roll for hit points to boot. However, in 5E, she can be created, more or less, with the standard array. (2) You observed the comparative lack of healing in B/X, but it goes even deeper than that. Clerics simply could not heal that much. At level 1, they had no spells at all. (It might be an interesting exercise to compare them against average damage levels.) (3) The fact B/X characters are, by necessity, more careful isn't an argument that B/X is less lethal than people think. If your assumption that both games produce equal body counts is true*, then it just shows the players are forced to mitigate the higher lethality of the system. * I lost 2 of my three B/X characters in the time I played. I'm not sure how secure your assumption is. This said, I agree people should play what version suits them. People like different things. However, lethality seems to be precisely one of these things that make the games different. I get the feeling people nowadays don't spend extensive time on backstory to have it all erased by a top 25% of a d8 damage roll.
Great video, thank you Professor :) I 100% agree that everyone should play however they want, however I think comparing 5e and B/X in terms of lethality using just the numbers is a (little) bit of an apples/oranges situation as one of the reasons 5e seems less deadly than B/X is because of things like Challenge Rating and the expectation that a 5e DM will usually trying to "balance" combat encounters. It's unlikely that 5e Morgan would face 12 x 5e hobgoblins, more like 3 or 4. A B/X DM is more likely to have snorted tea out of his nose laughing when he rolled that encounter and say "Ok, now let's see what you do now..."
This is a much better comparison than most people who just look at 5e PC hit points out of context and completely forget to look at the monster HP. Most discussions also neglect that a B/X party should be 6-8 characters incl retainers but a 5e party is 4 characters. Still not seen anyone discuss magic items which massively power up B/X characters. The true differences imho: - 5e characters take much longer to create - players get more input into their character’s design - 5e combat takes longer - B/X characters get one attack per round which they will often miss. The combination makes the rounds go by fast - 5e characters often have multiple attacks per round which are more likely to hit but do a smaller proportion of damage (but higher absolute damage) - a B/x magic user has a 1d4 dagger at all levels, a 5e wizard has scaling cantrips which are still outclassed by their spells - a B/X magic user has fight ending spells at level one, 5e wizard at level 5 but more spells total. - B/X is full of mini games of encumbrance, rations and exploration. 5e has spells for each of those. But even in B/X those mini games had an expiry in terms of character levels.
I'll done my +1 Hat of Justification, point to my comparable two score years of history, and respectfully disagree. The difference doesn't lie in the averages, it is in the outliers and the different death rules. Per your example, every time Hobgoblin gets to make an attack roll at Morgan in Bx, she has a 1 in 16 chance of ending up dead. This means that if, in the course of he first level of play she suffers the indignity of being on the receiving end of ten of these attack roles there is about a 50% chance she does not reach level 2. In contrast, unless the DM has monsters go after level 1 characters who are down, or the entire party dies, it is highly unlikely that 5E Morgan will die, although highly likely that she will be making death saves almost every combat she enters. [Others have already mentioned save or die and level drain as big edition differences.] I'd agree that the difference in hirelings, henchmen and party safety habits and flaming oil tricks makes comparing editions a challenge, but we absolutely had more death in our games back in the 80's, whether it was low level PCs, or the low level henchmen and hirelings of the high level PCs.
@@wylantern I don't think so. According to the 5E encounter design guidelines, a typical four character first level party would face 2 hobgoblins. So, if one of them knocks a character to 0 hp in the first round of contact, and they both survive to round 2 the DM has a choice. Have the hobgoblin bash a character that is down, or attack one of the remaining characters who still outnumber them 3-2. In many ways 5E encourages near-death while discouraging actual character death. I say this as someone who loves 5E and has no intention of going back, but I do find that unlike prior editions of the game, I really do need to make DM level decisions that directly impact whether characters die. It is far less likely to happen just due to chance and how the dice may fall.
Prof DM, I can accept that mechanically a level one character in 5E has no less and probably a greater chance of being brought to the point of death. The key difference is that for a BX or AD&D player at low level there was very little chance of coming back quickly, or perhaps at all, unless the DM was being very kind and put a cleric of the appropriate level somewhere within easy reach. So perhaps that is the key difference, the potential finality of death in B/X and AD&D?
I'm afraid there are quite a few things wrong in this video:
1. A lvl 9 fighter in B/X has +5 to hit bonus (Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy, page 29), not +8. You were using the monster's THAC0/To hit table, which as you can see favors the monsters over a player character of the same amount of hit dice/lvl.
2. lvl 9 in B/X is not the same as lvl 9 in 5E. A B/X fighter goes up to lvl 14, so it would be more accurate to say that B/X lvl 6 = 5E lvl 9, in which case we have a to hit bonus of 2+2(due to strength)= +4 (B/X) vs +9 (5E).
3. "Hobgoblins are not Hobgoblins", or at least I don't think it's a good idea to assume that just because they share the same name they are supposed to share their "power tier". I think a better comparison would be a B/X vs a 5E starting character of the same class and attribute scores, in which case usually the B/X character is weaker due to them rolling for their HP (no guaranteed max HP on lvl 1), which on average means they tend to have about half their 5E counterparts' HP. Note that most weapons do the same base damage in both games, for example, a short sword deals 1d6 damage both in B/X and 5E.
4. The video is not taking into account the fact that most player characters in B/X don't get access to multiple attacks, which hugely increases the damage output of 5E characters.
Love your content! Hope this helps in some way, shape or form
You have certainly done your research. I welcome criticism that is well reasoned.
Thanks
Good points. And I think the scope of the video is comparison of one type of apple to another type of apple. In the end, they are both apples, but you may have a preference. If Prof. got into the weeds on this one, he would also have to consider XP rates, level caps, etc. These are highly subjective, and once you're into that territory, you have to consider house rules, which is an unknown quantity.
I suspect he's doing that on purpose, he's an experienced gm so he can read a table.
There was a recent video about how characters should die occasionally (off the top of my head), not a point anyone would feel the need to make if the game was actually deadly. Perhaps he's paraphrasing and/or poking fun at some of the replies he got..?
Just a casual thought on my end though, I could easily be wrong..
Good job!
Honestly, they just traded skills for supplies. We guzzled healing potions in place of casting cure light wounds. We relied on NPC hirelings, +1 weapons, and ioun stones instead of special abilities. I much prefer the equipment style of play, because it's an easy way to drain coins and motivate new adventures.
Exactly...equipment creates a finite amount of aid that can be manipulated/tuned by the DM. Skills create a "gaming" of the rules.
In one campaign I have replaced healing spells with variants that always drain supplies. They require to either sacrafice the casters life or some expensive material component. The party also recovers HitDice at a much slower rate. And dead is dead, no resurrection magic available. It's more fun than my other campaigns.
That's a good point.
... "We relied on NPC hirelings" ... ah, you mean 'meat shields'. ;p
@@theGhoulman somebody has to wear the red shirt
Garry Gygax once said that the players should have a 70% chance of winning and a 30% chance of losing but the players should feel like they have a 70% chance of losing and a 30% chance of winning. That's why i think people think older games were overly brutal but in fact was no the case
AD&D is actually far more deadly and it shows. One can die casting a haste, restoration, or even a wish spell as anything that causes one to age forces a system shock with failure resulting in death. Not to mention a teleport spell can be an instant kill, for if one ended up teleporting into the ground it meant instant death, and how many spells or abilities, if failed, resulted in death. Or the fact that healing was extremely limited and a full night's rest only restored a single hit point leading to loss by attrition, something that is really difficult in the current edition. These are things that many, including professor DM did not take into account. 5th edition plays like the dumbed-down cartoonish version of D&D that has nerfed death, for not only is it harder to flat out die, but most of the abilities and spells no longer result in death or other nasty effects. Even the cocktrice is a joke in 5th edition where it used to be feared in the TSR era.
D&D was Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. AD&D was just Gary Gygax, which he made the game even more lethal with his rules. AD&D 2nd edition pulled a little back from Gary's lethality (removing random contraction of diseases, for example), but included more options than 5th edition, allowing for more customization, like hovering on death's door rule. It was also compatible with the AD&D and D&D, something that can not be said of WotC versions of the game.
If you think they weren't brutal then you haven't played B/X.
@@shockerck4465 they are but not as much as most players think
That is a brilliant quote.
For what it's worth, I would burn out *_fast_* feeling like I only had a 30% chance of success all the time.
That's so stressful
5e is a strange case where you switch genres as you progress in levels.
Levels 1-3: Survival Horror
The enemies are fierce and magic things are a nightmare.
Levels 4-7: Epic Fantasy
Loot and fireballs galore. The Barbarian can't die anymore.
Levels 8-15: Super Heroes
Play as your favorite fictional character in a TTRPG.
Levels 16-20: Post game content
Pure wish fulfilment fantasy. At this point, you hunt the Tarrasque for sport.
This seems fairly representative of your average fantasy saga. Start out as lowly peasant who has trouble with goblins and oversized rats, eventually turns out to be some Chosen One , and by the final book ends up in fight with the source of all evil.
even at levels 1-3, I wouldn't call 5E a "survival horror". More like a regular fantasy setting, but it's still very hard to die and even reckless play can't be easily punished
It's a pretty wild argument that it is not more deadly because players are more cautious due to how deadly it is.
That did strike me as a bit stretchy. I can accomplish similar feats while DMing 5e by setting the right expectations via traps, hidden monsters with False Appearance and other stuff. Its not an incorrect assessment, but I don't think it would be unique to B/X
@@lightwulf9 you would have to do some serious tweaking to 5e to make your players cautious, since you almost have to try to die in 5e. In B/X you drop to 0hp that’s it, you’re dead.
@@KHfanz I was able to put my players on edge with some darkmantles and a gelatinous cube in separate encounters. I disagree wholeheartedly. It does require a lot of consideration from the GM, far as environment and such though.
Professor. Thanks to you I started a Five Torches Deep game. Me and my players come from AD&D2e, and we're all getting that special feeling back. It may be emotional, but the fear is real!
Cool!
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 the one playing the fighter asked when would they level up "having 7hp has me very nervous"; and I replied "that's the whole point" 😈
I am preparing an OSR-style game for my birthday, inspired largely by this series. It is based on Old-School Essentials, with elements added from Backswords & Bucklers, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess, as well as the art of Frank Frazetta and from the Basic, Expert, and Advanced D&D books. I told my players to expect a high fatality rate, an they immediately started wagering on who might go through the most PCs in the course of the evening, without anyone TRYING to kill their characters.
One of these is my childhood best friend that I haven't seen in about 30 years and just recently got back in touch with, and this will be out first game together.
We are really excited about this. Thank you, Professor, for the inspiration.
hope you have a great time
Sounds amazing mate let us know how you get on 👍
Coooool! Happy birthday!
It is scheduled for March 20th, best date close to my birthday. I'll join the Facebook group and post it there.
This is a late report, but I wanted to share it. I am well aware that the Professor will be taking points off for tardiness and, coming from a family of teachers, I accept that 😁
The game went very well, was three sesions long before schedules fell apart, but that's fine because we had alot of fun. The players were my two brothers, whose gaming experience began when I brought home an AD&D PHB home one day and started trying to run games, a friend of ours through a mutual love of professional wrestling, my son, who at the age of 4 made his first character (a very young silver dragon named Macheodiche,) and my long-lost best friend who is into more tactical games (this was his first D&D game ever.) The party was all human: 3 Fighters and 2 Thieves, who were quietly hired to "recover" an artifact for one monastery from another who had "acquired" it from them. They made liberal use of cautious sneaking, distractions, charm and planning and counter-planning. There were traps from Grimtooth's workshop, so plenty of near-death moments (Aldolpho the Charming nearly died three times alone.)
I started them off at 1st level. One of the main rule modifications that came into play is that Thief and Thief-like skills are d20, modified by attribute bonus/penalty and class abilities. (Anyone can try and sneak, Thieves are the best at it by a mile.)
The other one has to do with combat. I use the Attack Bonus/Ascending AC option, but I add the Attack Bonus (I call it the Combat Value) to the AC instead of the Armor's protective value. Armor, instead, soaks damage, while Combat Value, I find, better reflects one's ability to fence or proficiently avoid the narrow misses reflected by hit points.
So no dragons, but they faced angry monks and friars (one of whom was a Cleric, and from him they sensibly fled,) traps, a mountain lion (who gave us the closest call to character death outside of Grimtooth's suggestions,) and the artifact: a fist-sized lump of clay.
Having stolen said artifact, they put it in a wooden bowl, covered it, and fled for the first monastery. Over the next three days, the weather got progressively more stormy and violent, forcing them to shelter under a wagon on high ground in a forest. Then they heard the screams. Unwrapping the bowl, they discovered that the bowl had come to unnatural and tormented life, not being designed to live, after three days of contact with the clay ...
I have a group of "old" gamers, we all started back in the '80's. At the moment we are playing the free 5e Basic rules, no feats, limited classes. we are having an absolute blast, it reminds us of the old B/X rules and the advantage/disadvantage mechanic is so much easier than all those modifiers!
Greeting Professor Dungeon Master, I would like to thank you again as your videos help me feel connected to the hobby while I am deployed. While I am only 20, I too started with basic dungeons and dragons as that is what my dad had. I played that with my friends throughout highschool and loved it. That is the cover art I think of when I play dnd, and it is that aesthetic and sense of mystery and adventure I try to bring to the table as a DM.
Thanks for your service Nigel
I must say that you are very lucky that your circle of friends do not consider 5e a synonym of D&D, and the fact that you are that young makes it even more amusing. It's sad that the majority of "new age" D&D players see old editions as obsolete and boring.
Beautiful analysis. I've been playing for 44 years and I've long understood the importance of *doing the math*!
Thank you.
Man, I remember starting out with the Basic Blue book D&D - good times, good times
I think it is mostly the old "save or die" mechanics that were brutal. Oh, and energy draining undead. OH THE NIGHTMARES!
this is what i came to say. at number slogs its similar, but with save or die poison and spells and level drains with no saves, against certain monsters your fortunes always hinge on a single die roll.
This makes the older version of the game more deadly for this mechanic has been nerfed out of the game, something Professor DM does not take into account.
And let us not forget how many spells could flat out kill you if you cast them in certain early editions. Spells like haste, restoration, and limited wish if you failed a system shock roll.
Oh god Level Drain! 😭
Wouldn't fly on most tables nowadays!
@@philurbaniak1811 How about the cockatrice and how it is more like an angry chicken than the threat it used to be back in the day? Such is the fate of most monsters from a community that has continually whined about the lethality of the game to the point is nerf-like. Even dragons aren't feared these days...
@@craigtucker1290 definitely! My main concern these days is Balance which means turning difficulty up OR down as appropriate👍
"The answer may surprise you!" It is the #1 trick that players don't want you know!
Yep
Well I was suprised that 2E was slightly easyer, but the part about 5E being front loaded, sounds about right.
...
Pros: It lets you play the character you want from the begining, and you don't have to roll for stats. (Althoguh, in 5E, rolling for stats is a power-gamer move, that is vulerable to cheeting.)
...
Cons: deminishing returns for leveling up.
@@agsilverradio2225 It isn't. This is an argument about only specific mechanics and glosses over many of the actual additional factors that makes 2nd edition and earlier versions much more difficult. Here are some of the things that makes these earlier editions much harder:
First, there are spells that the various spellcasters can cast in these earlier editions that can kill yourself our your allies outright, like teleporting into stone which is fatal.
Second, only priests had access to healing spells (there were some exceptions).
Third, there is no such thing as balanced encounters, meaning it is entirely possible to run into a very old red dragon at 1st level.
Fourth, there are no death saves, you hit 0, you die. If you are raised, you lose a point of constitution and there are no ability increases for level advancement.
Fifth, many poisons, special abilities, and monster attacks resulted in a save or die situation, there was not advantage.
Sixth, if you take 50 points of damage, you have to save vs. death with failure meaning you die.
Seventh, any aging or hostile polymorph spell forces a system shock roll, failure results in death.
Eight, petrification was always permanent, but if it could be undone, one would have to make a system shock roll (see above).
Ninth, energy draining was a thing which removed on level of experience permanently; if you drop to 0th level with 0 hit points, you die.
Tenth, critical hits (as an optional rule) could kill you in one hit, provided you failed a save versus death.
Eleventh, you could start off with 1 hit point plus your Constitution modifier and that's it.
Twelfth, You were generally limited to only one action and maybe some movement.
Thirteenth, all spells had to memorized before battle and were set until you next had a decent night's sleep, this affects what a cleric has available for spells.
Fourteenth, an successful attack, even if it didn't cause damage, was enough to disrupt spellcasting.
Fifthteenth, almost every race besides humans is level capped, though there are options to progress a bit further.
Sixthteenth, a good night's sleep only restores a single hit point.
Seventeenth, every race (that is not human), kit, and some classes have penalties that can limit (sometimes severely) what you can and cannot do.
I think you get the point I am trying to make in that the earlier editions are far more difficult as there were many ways one could die even by one's own spells...
@@craigtucker1290 I think system shock was only present after 2e. Neither OD&D, AD&D 1e, holmes, b/x or BECMI had such a mechanic. But yes, the games were incredibly dangerous, hence why players were cautious about it.
@@18ps3anos System shock was introduced in 1st edition AD&D when they changed stat modifiers to something more nuanced and complex rather than the overly simplistic system it had been. Original D&D did not use system shock, but it had no death saves or hovering on death's door option, you were just dead.
My list was kind of a hodgepodge of different things that no longer are present in the current edition or have been nerfed as to be almost irrelevant like accidentally teleporting low which only causes a bit of damage rather than just death. I could have stated which edition had which of these deadly factors, but the point was how WotC has been nerfing death and negative consequences out of the game since they acquired it at the request of the community whiners, til they got to the bubble wrapped, player mollycoddling version that is 5th edition.
Basically, all these earlier editions/version were much more lethal than 5th edition currently is. It is the widespread lack of caution and general stupidity that leads to character deaths in 5th edition these days, not that it is actually more deadly. If one played cautiously, like one generally did during the TSR era, one would not die in 5th edition, but that is not what 5th edition is modeled on. It is modeled after a video game rather than the original RPG experience of what D&D use to be, hence people play their characters like it is a video game full of quick saves.
All of this isn't to say anything about the fact that a snake bite in b/x is literally save or DIE, and in 5e it's just some damage, and maybe the poisoned condition until the end of combat. I've never seen a 5e character die because of a bad decision, meanwhile a bad decision saw half our b/x party die in a round.
Bad decisions can kill pretty readily in the 1st 3 levels
Prof DM says BX player will play more cautious. Yes, it's that feeling of dread awaiting you around the corner. 5e loses that. Give me 2e and earlier any day.
I started with the Holmes version, but wow, does seeing those old rulebooks bring back good memories.
I miss having my Holmes copy. I wouldn't use it, but nostalgia is a powerful spell.
They're a lot of fun.
Same here. That's why I got me a Blueholme Journeyman's Rules book.
What I struggle with is despite relative lethality in lvl 1 5e, it quickly becomes much harder to die by level 3 and beyond.
Yeah that's essentially 5E in a nutshell. Thing is that the low level monsters in many cases are very overpowered. Hobgoblins and kobolds for instance are crazy strong compared to their traditional counterparts. Kobolds basically always have advantage, and hobgoblins are rolling 3 dice of damage. Even regular goblins with the bonus action hide can be dangerous if used properly, and bug bears do crazy surprise attack. Monsters are actually better than 1st level PCs.
But yeah after about 3rd level, the math turns around. It's pretty much a similar problem that 4E had, where the PCs get more and more healing powers and the monster damage just can't keep up. Combat becomes more and more grindy in general, and grindy favors the PCs. They really need to hire a designer that's actually good at math and can keep hit points from totally blowing away average damage per round.
No doubt.
Spells are rare at levels 1-3 and PCs drop easily, but then a safety blanket steadily develops with extra spells and abilities and PC Healing Word whack-a-mole opens up. Healing spell slot numbers scale but KOs are constant.
Maybe one could increase the cost of "cure KO" spells so that it always takes the equivalent of 1/3 or 1/4 of a character's spell slots to get a PC up. Handwave explanation: your wounds are harder to treat when you fight more dangerous creatures, so you must use level X/3 spell or spell slot equivalents to get level X adventurer back on their feet.
I did a study once of every system I had played (D&D, GURPS, Champions, Fate, Forbidden Lands, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, etc.) to get a sense of what the average fight experience was like. To my surprise, I discovered that most games seem to have players average around three hits before getting taken out. (For example, most weapons in GURPS do 1d6 damage, and average characters have 10-11 health. Champions heroes tend to have around 35 stun points and do 12-15 stun damage on a hit.) [SIDE NOTE: Tanks average about four hits, and spellcasting lightweights usually get in trouble after their second hit.] This explains why, for many people (and as 5e is currently structured), third level is the beginning of competency in D&D: it's literally where you have as many hit points as three average blows. (Since hit dice and weapon damage have always been pretty close in value.)
So I guess it doesn't surprise me that 5e and B/X are actually pretty close to each other in lethality. As you suggest, the real difference is how long it takes to get through a battle and on to the next encounter. And man, does B/X have it ALL OVER 5e in terms of speed. When players have a dozen special abilities at first level, you can spend a lot of time reading rules descriptions, even on things that rarely come up (rerolling a 1, resistance to magical sleep...). I don't think I'd mind 5e's spamming of abilities so much if they at least mattered much of the time. But they mostly seem to thicken the rulebook for relatively minor gains.
Ever considered running the WOD system as a Fantasy Setting?
As much as I enjoy this comparisons, I cannot ignore that sometimes a hobgoblin is not a hobgoblin. Looking from the gamist point of view, we need to learn what role does a hobgoblin have as a combat foe in B/X for first level characters and find the enemy that fills this role for 5e characters.
I say that because I grew on AD&D and, when converting old adventurers to 5e, I found out many monsters were upgraded or downgraded and battles that before were challenging became a breeze, and vice-versa.
But, maybe the designers (intentionally or not) kept the 5e hobgoblin in the same "power curve" of the B/X one, and all my saying is for naught.
I was thinking the same thing during the video. Hobgoblins have seen a significant increase in the lethality and effectiveness in modern editions. Their martial bonus to damage really reflects that.
Interesting observation.
Yeah, Hobgoblins since 3e have evolved into the 'samurai' version of goblins. Check the artwork out on 3e, 3.5, 4th, Pathfinder, and 5th.
I agree. It is one thing I appreciated about 4th Ed's design. It taught DMs to think of characters and more importantly, monsters, in terms of their Roles. From a design perspective, this is more useful. Good observation, Erick.
@@Interfect727 I enjoyed it. I remember in running 3rd Ed, I would use Hobs as the disciplined defensive phalanx, and Gobs as skirmishers as a Hammer-Anvil tactic. It was usually highly effective, especially at low levels.
E.G., A Hob fighting defensively would have AC of around 20 (very difficult for low level PCs to hit), and then while their tanks were working on the Hob line, Gobs would attack from stealth to the rear (vs casters). Gobs were low AC, low attack bonus, and low damage, but very good at stealth, so they would be a real threat against the squishies in the back. (TPK Warning: using tactics like this will swing your CR math way off, especially if the PCs are outnumbered on either end (or both!). Adjust XP accordingly.)
So yeah, I really appreciated the distinction, represented in the stat block, of the different roles of the various "breeds" of Goblinoids as presented in 3rd Ed. Extending this to different monsters presented endless tactical options, which I enjoyed deeply when running 3rd Ed. That gave us almost ten full years of continuous enjoyment.
The thing you missed, and one of the big contributing factors to old school's lethality, is that in the example the book uses to teach you how the game is to be played, Morgan's party of 1st and 2nd level adventurers _encountered 12 hobgoblins._ What 5e adventure would throw a dozen hobgoblins at a first or second level party? The CR system was designed to avoid these completely lopsided fights, but early D&D rulebooks actively encouraged it. The AD&D players handbook gives a similar example of combat: A party of 5 runs into 20 orcs backed up by an illusionist at a distance of 30 feet. Published modules have similar levels of violence, one published encounter (listed for 1st and 2nd level characters) is a half dozen giant frogs that have a 4 in 6 chance of surprising the party and can swallow characters whole, giving them 3 chances to roll an 18 (if they had an edged weapon in hand...) to escape or die, and that's just the first encounter in the dungeon.
I can see that 1v1, old school monsters aren't more dangerous than 5e enemies. But the numbers encountered were not balanced and there was no guidance to the GM on how to build balanced encounters. That is what made old school D&D combat so deadly.
Good point, well said.
Great video!
But I think you forgot to take consideration on the Action Economy in 5e.
There are Actions, Bonus Actions, Reactions (all that make the combat slower).
And a Fighter in 5e can use a Bonus Action to heal himself, can do more attacks per turn in higher levels, etc...
(A Fighter of 9º lvl can do 4 attacks and heal 1d10+9 HP, all in one turn... once per short rest).
I like them all
My favorite is still 3.5.
Good breakdown and video
3.5 with Unearthed Arcana can be any style or challenge you want it to be.
My first ever character died to an arrow trap in the very first adventure. She was Lidda from the boxed set for 3rd edition. One of the other players died at level 2 when an orc rolled a critical and cleaved him in twine. At low levels characters are just as likely to die in one shot in later editions as they were in the original.
My first character was one shot by a goblin worg rider with a spear in Ad&d so I feel your pain
Mines of Phandelver module. First bugbear ever oneshot the fighter. Dealt overdamage which ended up insta killing him.
@@braynechylde4982 Wasn't really overly sad. The trap was sprung because the fighter grew bored of my fiddling with a lock and decided to open it with his axe. It was the very end of the scenario too. We thought it was hilarious. I think the lightheartedness came from several things, but mainly because we played pre-generated characters with basically no backstory.
When I first got 5e, I hadn’t played D&D in 20+ years. In a fit of nostalgia, I dug out my old copy of Keep on the Borderlands and did a quick rough conversion to the new rules. I quickly learned I needed to go back and adjust, because the new monster stats compared to the numbers found in the caves were super deadly for a 5e party of 1-3 level.
I have run the older modules in my campaign and have converted many to 5e, and I concur with that you said here. However, I also tend to like the potential lethality of 'old school', so I only marginally balance the monsters and encounters. I tend to keep the same # of monsters as originally planned, but the more there are, I typically start lowering hit points depending on the number encountered. The simple fact that between all the healers, potions, etc. that 5e players have access to, they may get knocked down a lot, but recover enough to finish taking out the monsters. The party struggles against the monsters (which they should), and feel better when getting through a tough battle.
That said, this type of play is discussed and agreed upon during session 0, as I don't run 'high fantasy superhero' type games which seems to be how default 5e is portrayed.
I did a conversion for 3E of Keep on the Borderlands - the main thing I learned was they really handed out a fricken ton of loot back in the day. My players were so far above the wealth by level guidelines it was not even funny. I had to give them half the recommended wealth by level treasure for the next 3 adventures to get them back in line.
True, true.
I’m mean so I just run Keep on the Borderlands as written in 5e. The only thing that killed players last time I ran it was being betrayed by the evil cleric spy who you can find in the keep. The key is to let players run away, parley set up ambushes etc, and to play humanoids as people who don’t want to die needlessly.
"So play the version of D&D you like, because it doesn't make a difference ."
Blasphemy!!! 😁
Great content as always Professor thank you!
You're welcome!
Sometimes it takes decades of experience, training, practice, and study to realize the simplest truths. Thank you for putting in the work, Professor.
Interesting idea. I'm not sure I understand the point about approaching things cautiously in OSR placing the systems on parity, though. If you're approaching an issue more cautiously due to mechanical differences like limited healing and fewer hit points, then logically that means the system is more dangerous and the behavior of the players has been modified to suit. Am I misunderstanding your point here? It seems to me that you need to compare player outcomes with the same approach to have a good sense of the relative danger between two systems.
I have to admit that I think 5e Hobgoblins are a bit of an outlier from a damage perspective, too. The situational +2d6 damage bonus makes them hit considerably harder on paper than would be usual for their attack mode (longsword). In fact, with that bonus triggered they'll hit harder than a lot of PCs in their level range!
Compounding this, the CR system would pit a party of 4 level 1 PCs against 2 hobgoblins as a Hard encounter; 3 hobgoblins would be deadly. That same party in OSR would likely be fighting more than 2 hobgoblins, however, and sometimes a lot more. The 3.x and later CR system versus OSR's less structured encounters introduce significant problems in comparing single monsters and players across those editions. I suspect that you'd need to compare a full average OSR encounter to a full average 5e encounter to really get a sense of this from a mathematical perspective. Part of OSR's challenge isn't necessarily in the 1-on-1 capability of monster v player, but the superior action economy of the monsters due to them having a lot more than two or three individual units. It's common (and even normal) for players to be outnumbered in older systems.
No where in the game does it force a DM to use the CR system.
Bit of a moot point given any DM is free to ignore any rule they choose. You're not forced to use *anything* you don't want to. The main thrust here is that the core assumptions of the systems are very different in terms of the numbers of foes a group will be facing.
Thanks for the comparison, I recall Morgan Ironwolf very well! I got my introduction to D&D with that basic rule book around the same time you did (sometime when I was in 3rd grade).
There is a decent amount wrong in your presentation. First, Hobgoblins do not get the bonus 2d6 damage always. They must be within 5 feet of an ally to get the bonus, so 1 hobgoblin fighting 1 fighter, the hobgoblin will never get that bonus. Then it would take 3 hits with a 5e Hobgoblin to take Morgan down with an average damage of 6. Next, a 9th level fighter in OSE does not have a +9 to hit. You were looking at the Monster THAC0 table, not the fighter THAC0 table. A 9th level fighter has a +5 to hit, with +2 from STR that is a +7 bonus. That is a +4 difference in favor of 5e of +11. I run both 5e and OSE all the time and the claim that 5e is more deadly or equally deadly is just silly.
And it's not like he is off by a point or two, but quite a bit more which does significantly balance the two out from a damage point of view.
That is until you talk about all the other original D&D monsters and effects that can flat out just kill a character, the limited ability to heal or even have hit points comparatively speaking, and the fact that when you hit 0 hit points you are dead, no saving throw. If we played 5th edition like we do the older editions, almost no PC would ever die.
Good points, and I think think death saves eclipse any other comparison. It's statistically difficult for a PC to die in 5e unless the DM uses coup-de-gras on sub-zero hit point PCs.
Totally agree about the player caution equalizing the actual death rates.
I've been playing a lot of Mork Borg lately and I warned my players in advance that it was extremely deadly and they were all likely to die. They were into this and some of them even decided to keep their characters when they rolled up 1 HP characters. Because they were paranoid, cautious, tactical, and helped each other out, there wasn't a single character death. And I don't think I was pulling my punches.
Right! Very interesting & weird.
5e? Lethal? Hah! Not outside of Curse of Strahd (where we had a TPK against an animated broomstick)
That broom almost solo’d me. basically I was in the closet by myself shouting that I was getting attacked by a broom. Someone walked in and saw my strangling the broom which I had broken over my knee.
@@bossman4799 So... you took time out from exploration to be alone in a closet, "strangling your broom". Well OK, that's one way to relieve stress... ;)
@@DocEonChannel but does it interrupt a short rest? 😁👍
That is awesome... I once killed a player with an animated chair (in 4E) but a full on TPK with a broomstick! Much respect to your DM!
@@JeremyMacDonald1973
it wasn't even the DM's skill (rather, it was actually his first time DMing); there's an animated broomstick in the Death House (first dungeon) in Curse of Strahd.
it's labeled as CR 1/4 but can one-shot most wizards and clerics at level 1 and an optimized level 1 fighter will have about a 50% chance to hit it
just a few bad rolls and this thing will end the campaign
Don't forget, no Challenge Rating. In the 80s and 90s I only had 3 or 4 Characters survive past 4th level in AD&D. Most characters died from failed death saves, poison, stabbed in the back from another Players Character, or being Zerg rushed.
The beauty of random encounters and that it is possible to run into a very old red dragon at 1st level.
As a player, its all good, as a DM....the closer to OSR the easier your task! Dont know how anyone can DM some of these later editions!
The D20 system did a ton to make a DMs job easier. Making a ruling in 5e is a very straightforward thing - you set a DC, and the players roll to beat it (with Adv/Disadv factoring in if the situation is favorable/unfavorable). Everything is this way - saving throws are a DC, skills are a DC, hell even attacks are a DC check (against AC). The only time you aren't rolling a D20 for anything is when there's damage/health involved, otherwise the game essentially boils down to "target set by DM, now roll a D20 and add your relevant modifiers to see if you beat it".
These points are easy to make when you isolate something out of a game...that supports your point. In other words: Morgan Ironwolf does not exist in a vacuum.
Regarding lethality, Prof. DM already mentions ALL OF THE THINGS that make D&D 5e less lethal: Short Rests, Healing among a lot of classes, super effective long rests, no Save-Or-Die effects. 5e is less lethal for monsters and characters by a long shot when you actually consider everything.
As for the power level, yes, you can recreate a B/X D&D character in 5e....but that is not a actual representation of a 5e character. A 3rd level 5e fighter can banish enemies into another realm with their arrow shots (Arcane Archer), a 3rd level Ranger can draw on the power of the multiverses to empower their attacks. A 3rd level B/X Fighter has 2d8 more HP than a level1 fighter. That's it. Rangers don't exist in BX, but if we use the Elf class as a stand-in, the Elf has just gained a d6 HP, and it's first 2nd level spell (so uh...Web?) With XP Parity w/ a 3rd level B/X Fighter, the Elf would be level 2, so give me that spell back :)
I think the reputations the different editions have is well earned. I think players' preferences are justified by actual differences in the the ways the games play, not just their "perception of them." I will agree with Prof. DM though, whatever your preference, enjoy the games you play!
Other thing to think is that, at least, since 3rd edition Hobgoblings are not meant to fight lvl 1 parties. Well not a bunch of them, in low level adverntures they work more as bosses than entire groups of Hobgoblings.
Excellent comment! It hits on just about everything that I thought when I first watched this.
Having run & played every edition, I haven't encountered a single player that thought 5E was remotely as lethal as OD&D, B/X, 1E, 2E.
Additionally, in my experience, players that started playing with the earlier editions tend to exhibit more ingenuity & inventiveness than players that started playing in 3E and later. It's not about the players though, but rather the skill system, or lack thereof. Players that played without the skill system tend to think outside the box and experiment more, while players of the newer systems seemed to feel restrained by what's on their character sheet.
Thank you for doing this video Prof. DM! I think the two major components to a lot of the misconceptions that you illustrate here are valid and there is something to be said about how the art influences peoples thinking about a game system. Back in the 80s and prior rpgs were trying to attract the war gamers initially and so the art reflected the gritty reality of tactical combat. Today the industry is trying to attract the comic book/ movie fan so the art has more of that high octane action movie style, from the poses to the color palette. Look past the art and underneath the hood and the system is just trying to be more efficient while offering what people are most asking for and this era of gamer wants options and choices and is willing to sacrifice a little extra time to get it. Even if the choices are illusions, they want to make them.
"And if you include the Tasha's Cauldron of Everything rules..."
I'm gonna stop you right there. 😂
I know right?
This psychological effect is something interesting that I never stopped to think about. 5e class description, art, and even style of official adventures really make the player fells like he is playing a amazing hero. This is interesting because since most players don't go to deep in the rules, your presentation of the game can greatly affect how they play the game. When I was first introduced to table top RPGs my friend told me that it was a difficult game and most people don't survive long. That's why I started playing ultra safe and with time realized that I could be more aggressive. And that, independently of the system, but because I learned "as a GM" that you balance your encounters to your players. Now, if I want a easy game, I present the game as easy and balance the game. If I want a harder game, which I usually did, I present the as hard and totally umbalance it. As it may be true that I honestly think 5e is generally easier, it all depends on how the GM will prepare the encounters
I started with 1st edition AD&D, and we definitely had some character deaths. Palace of the Silver Princess (my first module) had a save vs. poison or die that killed my brother’s dwarf fighter even with the dwarven poison save bonus. That trap was before you even entered the castle. I was five, and I was the party cleric (still one of my favorite classes).
Ah, Morgan Itonwolf. My players know her as the first Baroness Ironwolf, founder of the Iron Wolf Barony located on the frontiers of the civilized lands. Many an adventure into the wilderness has launched from Ironwolf Keep, all passing under the watchful eye of the statue erected in the baroness’s honor.
Woot! Finally got to see the whole thing after about a week! And, not surprising, it is about equal.
Reaction rolls and morale checks probably have more impact on B/X lethality than damage modifiers.
Likewise, whether a 5e party includes a class that can magically heal impacts lethality far more than hit bonuses or AC.
Professor Dungeon Master have you ever played Basic Fantasy Role-Playing? It's totally free and I am interested in hearing what you think about it?
It's pretty much B/X, right?
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 It is a mix between Basic and 5e. And Advanced
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 - Basic Fantasy is basically B/X with 3rd edition style 'To Hit' adjustment. No THAC0. All the PDFs are free and the print copies are dirt cheap - at cost. Little downside for an OSR system. I often recommend it to new GMs wanting to start with a simple RPG which has plentiful and inexpensive resources to start with.
@@DUNGEONCRAFT1 it pretty much is, just a bit more compatible with modern editions of d&d
I'd suggest Dark Fantasy Basic. It's a whole different beast than most OSRs, but that's a good thing. If this had been around when Holmes was, I would have forgotten Holmes in a heartbeat. Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells is also very affordable. Especially for a PDF. Both of these provide room for creativity, instead of just options. They're hardcore, but if you want games that are about discovering and inventing what characters can be, instead of knowing what could happen, then these will please you.
Started reading Macdeath. It's excellently written and an absolute banger. The ideas in this module alone are worth every penny.
I think the experience of the two games is different enough. So I think ultimately it does all come down to a matter of taste. Personally I like both games tonally speaking, personally I would like to see a mix of art some showing the Heroes as hapless fools in over there heads, some showing them as greedy treasure seekers, and others still as noble heroes taking a stand against evil. OSR comes closer, as you do still get heroic scenes from time to time, like the famous Paladin in Hell scene. While 5e is all about the heroic scenes, treasure, and whimsy, and very rarely about the danger. For me a good campaign should have a bit of it all, some danger, some romance, some comedy, some tragedy, some horror, some heroism, greed driven anti-heroes, fighting alongside truly aspirational heroes. You also need to have at least one complex villain, and at lest one mustache twirling cartoon for the players to do battle with.
For me the world needs to be dangerous and lethal, but the heroes need to be just that, heroes. Men of metal and valor who may die in bloody agony, or come out on top to die gloriously another day. Sure players should die (in spectacularly humorous and/or horrifying fashion) if they are being stupid, and I don't think the players should START as heroes I think you should have to earn that. That's what I'd like to convey in the art.
Though save or die mechanics should stay in the past, where they belong... Ok, they are welcome in a horror game, preferably one where character creation is quick and easy.
Shared on my french FB Old School Group.
This saturday, we'll play "à l'ancienne" with younger players.
^_^
AD&D is actually far more deadly and it shows. One can die casting a haste, restoration, or even a wish spell as anything that causes one to age forces a system shock with failure resulting in death. Not to mention a teleport spell can be an instant kill, for if one ended up teleporting into the ground it meant instant death, and how many spells or abilities, if failed, resulted in death. Or the fact that healing was extremely limited and a full night's rest only restored a single hit point leading to loss by attrition, something that is really difficult in the current edition. These are things that many, including Professor DM did not take into account. Even the cocktrice is a joke in 5th edition where it used to be feared in the TSR era.
Teleport can kill you in 5e as well - you just need to get unlucky a few times in a row. Limited healing just slows the fiction down. Instead of staying overnight in an inn and heading back out, the party spends a few days healing (you don't just gain one hp per day since the cleric uses all their spells for healing on those rest days) - which style of fiction you prefer doesn't really change the game mechanics much - you just need *much* faster clocks in the fiction to add risk in 5e. It does change the dungeon crawl a bit - you can't let the characters get a long rest in a dungeon in 5e, but again that just changes the style of fiction.
Instant death effects have mostly been removed, multiple saves have been added for things like petrification, and so on. That stuff is certainly less deadly in 5e, and that's mostly for gameplay reasons - being out of the game because you got petrified on round one sucks in the much slower combat system of 5e far more than it did in basic. I'm not sure that makes 5e less deadly in the actual game though - it just changes the style a bit.
if the DM doesn't have the monsters attack downed characters than sure, things get much less deadly - but that's the DM going easy on the players not the rule set.
The highest character death rate game I've ever played was a 5e game. Put all the BECMI and AD&D games to shame in terms of the how many characters died.
@@samholden5758 Teleport has certainly been nerfed, now it just causes damage, much like the falling result rather than straight out death. That makes teleport inconvenient, not really lethal unless you only have a few hit points and happen to fail all your death saves. While in the earlier editions, you had less hit points as well, and as soon as you hit 0 you were screwed, even if you were playing with the hovering on death's door optional rule.
And what about haste? Just casting that spell can kill every recipient of the spell, albeit, most will survive.
Limited healing does not slow anything down, never did. It just changes how one plays the game to a more strategically and realistic style of play rather than just stampeding around. Getting a good AC was key in early editions and as the editions evolved, fighting tactics did so as well with options to block incoming attacks, form shield walls, or pike hedges.
I seriously doubt you could put the BECMI and AD&D games to shame with character deaths for meatgrinders were part of the original editions, especially tournament play, and are not found in 5th edition at all. Even Curse of Stradh is ridiculously nerfed for how deadly Ravenloft is supposed to be.
@@craigtucker1290 you should talk with the hexadin tank of my table. "I need to get better, last 3 sessions I was K.Oed" His character has the best stats rolled from the party and very good magic items. If the DM go full nova on the PCs the risk is real in 5e.
@@craigtucker1290 I specifically said most instant death things have been removed. Teleport can still kill the entire party with some unlucky rolls which is why I mentioned it - it's unusual for 5e.
For haste, again I said they removed most of the instant death things. Why the fixation on one mechanic?
Limited healing clearly slows the fiction down. If it takes 8 hours to go back to full resources compared with a week, then clearly the fiction will move faster. None of that changes the actual gameplay though - it just changes the fiction and the DM just adjusts the world to match the ruleset. The slower AD&D style is better to me - it makes no sense to me that a party can go from level 1 to level 20 in a few months of fiction time in 5e. But that doesn't change the gameplay - it still takes months and years of actual real world time to play.
Meatgrinders and tournament death fests are irrelevant . If you want a meat grinder in 5e you can certainly do it - it's not the style of game the system was designed for so you would be doing a square peg into a round hole thing and would be better off using a set of rules designed for the type of game you want to play (cyberpunk 2020 or classic traveller are my meatgrinders of choice).
I don't really care if you don't believe me and are calling me a liar. The RPG game with the highest character death rate I have ever played was a 5e game. Higher than all the BECMI games, all the AD&D, all the cyberpunk games, all the DDC games (well ignoring the 0 level funnel), etc. Maybe your DM just went easy on you (or you went easy as the DM)?
The game is designed to have less "fail one roll and die" mechanics, obviously if you adore that mechanic it won't be the game system for you. But that's a small percentage of character deaths if the players aren't morons anyway.
@@toribiogubert7729 In the earlier editions of D&D, you wouldn't be KOed, you would be dead. Even if someone had raised you, you would also been down 2 constitution points for each time you were raised and you never get ability points for gaining a level. Also there is no such thing as balanced encounter in these editions either and the monsters have more lethal special attacks that just result in death rather than damage or being inconvenienced.
"My spellcaster sidekick casts Healing Word" my player
"I have done this to myself..." me
Lol.
Speed does matter.
A rollercoaster travels over the same tracks at high speed as well as half speed, but which provides a more thrilling ride?
this comparison falls apart imo because b/x hobs arent even CLOSE to comparable to 5e hobs. choosing two versions of a monster instead of a legitimate control group is the opposite of a consistent thought experiment. i dont see a way that this comparison is even somewhat useful unless a more consistent conversion method is applied to make sure that the monster from b/x is 1:1 just as challenging as the 5e monster. and i dont even know how one would begin to formulate that.
Great job, PDM. That's the academic approach to gaming that I come here for. Actual measurable facts to base an argument on... who would'a thought? Great to see a video justifying how the system doesn't really matter. I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with "Sayre's Law" but the debate over OSR and 5e seems to be a perfect demonstration of it.
need a Morgan Ironwolf miniature for this video
This is the first video of yours I 100% agree with. Good points all around.
Give me Basic Dungeons and Dragons all day long!!! Still hasn't been beaten in terms of fun, danger, and ease of play.
Amazing Look Back to my Middle School and High School years! :-) Thank You Professor!
This should be the video that introduces your channel!
Great comparison. In practice, I find 5e to be the least lethal of all editions due to the generous death save mechanic, and proliferation of healing abilities. 2e was even more swingy than BX and 1e because of the power creep and static -10 hp rule. At higher levels, there were bigger hits, and characters would go from 5 hit points to -50 in one hit. And critical hits made that worse. I've played all editions, and late 1e and 2e produced the most dead characters, by far. BX is balanced by the merit of less options, and therefor less opportunity for optimization. In practice, it's more lethal than 4e and 5e, and maybe 3/3.5e only because 3x gave characters more options to handle low hit point situations (like Revivify, for example). But 1e and 2e, at least at my table, were the most lethal editions.
Fun analysis! Players seem to be protective of their favorite versions of the game- throughout the history of the game
One other thing to keep in mind is the number of monsters in B/X that can instantly harm a higher level character in a permanent way. Poison can be save or die after one hit, and various undead will literally drain levels with their attacks, basilisks will petrify, etc. Whereas in 5e at higher levels, even death is often just an inconvenience.
I'd love to hear the professor break down what he knows about illusions and illusionists.
I can't stress enough how much people complaining about combat being too long in 5e don't seem to realize how much every npc (friendly or monsters) makes things worse, with extra attacks, reactions and other abilities a player can make 3 to 4 rolls in a single round of combat, with the average party size of 4 players you can have almost 16 rolls each round, it's a lot of time just rolling without even considering a single enemy
True.
how do you get 4 rolls in a round as a PC i cant even imagine...
Oh I better write that down! This may be asked in the exam in D&Dlogy
Hope you've got on your +1 Vest of Protection... ah, you do. :) Instead of crunching numbers, I'm going to go with actual experiences. I also started with B/X in 1980, playing KOTB by the rules as written. IIRC we lost 3 clerics, 2 MU's, 2-3 fighters or elves and 2-3 thieves (in a party of 8! replacement characters... Father Miles was replaced by Father Mills, lol) before anyone made 3rd level (at which time lethality slows but never goes away). Granted we were learning, and made tactical and strategic mistakes. When I tried 5e for a couple years, ONE character (rogue) died out of a party of six before making 8th level... due to a failed stealth roll while scouting, multiple enemies made good attacks and the death saves all failed, atypically. Also in 5e we hit 3rd level pretty quickly, and everyone leveled up at the same time. There's also all the powers you get in 5e. As you noted the two games have a very different feel: in 5e you charge in boldly to kick ass.... in B/X you skulk around cautiously, run early and often, and try to only fight when the odds are in your favor (and cheat as much as possible... flaming oil FTW!!). I still much prefer B/X, or really Basic Fantasy (B/X with ascending AC and a bit of streamlining), for the edge-of-your-seat feeling, quick combats and simple rules.
There were some things about old-school I didn't like. Ascending AC with bonuses to-hit is better than THACO and all the old charts. Another thing I didn't really like about old-school is the use/over-use/abuse of henchmen and hirelings... essentially meat-shields and mine detectors. Too many NPCs involved complicates things for the DM.
Great analysis! I run a campaign currently that is founded on 2e AD&D with 3e and 5e touches throughout. I call it "D&D Classic" (considering 2e is still the reigning champ in terms of longest continued publishing period; plus it's when Forgotten Realms debuted, and Ed Greenwood is MY Gary Gygax)! It's all about how much complexity you prefer, and how much work you expect your players to invest. I invest a lot of time as a DM, and I expect my players to invest at least a fraction of that learning their characters and the world before we roll our first dice, digital or otherwise. Discord or other channel/post based servers and services make for a great way to seed adventure info and keep RP alive between sessions. I come from the school of spending at least 2-3 hours on character creation. It's a lot of fun, and can fill an entire 0-session. Thanks again, PDM.
The weird, funny story of D&D is that they got it right in the 70s, and nearly every subsequent iteration after 1980 has been an attempt to 'fix' and re-sell something that was exactly right as-is.
My problem with 5e is that it's just bloated with numbers and options from the start. Every 1st lv character is basically guaranteed to start with a +3 mod. Why not keep the numbers low, maybe +2 would be max to get from attributes at 1st lv and if you get lucky (like 17-18 roll), one feat to choose from, and no proficiency bonus.
I mean, a giant rat starts with +2 prof bonus, so whats the point of characters having +2 also? Everybody could just start with +0 and take it from there.
You run your first adventure and basic goblins roll +4 to hit.
Cause you will need to bring the AC down and make changes that are in place for years. Fiddle to much with the system and end up with a mob with forks and torches crying about how changes killes their hobby from childhood or something. Kinda what happenes with 4th edition.
Maybe I've done something wrong; my best ability is a +2. Our game doesn't use feats, though, so that might make a difference.
@@malcolmrowe9003 if you go with standard set of scores and choose human you get 16 in one of your abilities, and thats +3 mod.
Thank You for giving your opinion and showing the facts. Both editions have their strengths and weaknesses. I still miss 2nd edition because I Loved DMing those games. I guess the bottom line is like You stated to each His/Her Own.
It's nice to see the math broken down to illustrate how litter difference there is between where D&D was and where D&D is. I've always disliked the stigma of more lethal play when in reality both are pretty much on par with one another. And yeah, my only complaint about higher level play of D&D from 3rd till now has been the length of time taken for a turn.
That said, I'm still a major fan of 5e, and I enjoy running it for my friends to see what kind of crazy shenanigans they can get into.
YES, been waiting for this since last week and 1980, haha
I saw the cover of Mr Welch's Mystara PHB! Nice :)
That's the old cover by Rick Hershey. He also used interior art with the high level Morgan facing down various monsters. That was commissioned from Rubus. Redheaded Morgan was done by Matt Forsythe, he won the Facebook fantasy art page Banner contest with his version.
Morgan actually appears in the mystara player's handbook one additional time during a celebration. I tried to get an artist that could do her hair properly, but nobody would look me in the eye. Artist would prefer to work on hands for a week straight rather than try to draw 80s hair.
@@Mr_Welch I would love to see you get more cross-content exposure with the other top D&D gurus :D
@@markfaulkner8191 most of the time people just want to ask me about the list or any of my other projects that went viral. Small time channels have a very difficult time getting noticed, I'm mid-tier at best.
@@Mr_Welch Just keep plugging away. I post and repost your vids whenever they fit into a conversation. On Facebook groups and in Discord servers. It is a tedious labor of love, but you are getting there!
I'm not convinced. I feel like this is an over simplification.
A hobgoblin is a CR 1/2 in 5e, which is meant to be a challenge for 3 first level characters according to Xanathar's encounter building guidelines. In B/X one would encounter something like 1d6 hobgoblins. They're designed to be encountered as a group and a single hobgoblin isn't a threat to a 1st level party. Fighting two hobgoblins (so they get the martial ability) at first level would be brutal in 5e. The quick matchups chart in Xanathar's lists two 1/2 CR monsters as appropriate for a 4th level party.
You're comparing the PC's, but the monsters don't really compare. They're both called Hobgoblins and have similar lore, but they're not designed for the same purpose when considering game mechanics and CR systems. I think that a more accurate study would be 3 or 4 morgans vs 1 hobgoblins. The Morgans will win this easily.
Of course there are the death saves and plentiful healing in 5e, so even if your fighter goes down, they're back up the next round. If not the next round, then they're fully healed after the next short rest. That B/X character is going to be sore for a couple of days because there is no healing at 1st level (clerics don't get spells until 2nd).
Could Horowitz play a Mozart sonata for 2 pianos 4 hands by himself?
That comment 👏👏👏
Nice video. I just want to point out a few things.
1. As said by another poster you were using the monster to hit chart from B/X. Morgan is only +5 at 9th level from the chart.
2. I think you sort of changed horses in midstream a bit to make a point. You started off arguing the statistics and then switched to “play style” which is obviously subjective. Not all OSR players are more cautious and even if that were true, that is essentially communicating the opposite point that you were wanting to make ... they are more cautious exactly because B/X is so deadly. If it wasn’t more deadly, they would not run from or parlay with monsters more. It is after all a treasure seeking game because of the way XP are earned. You HAVE to find some way to defeat the monster to get the treasure to get the XP. Not always killing them, but you know what I mean. They are more cautious because they cannot beat all the monsters in a straight up fight.
Having played a lot of B/X and 5E, I still think that B/X is more deadly for five really important reasons, three of which you mentioned in some form in your video.
1. Only clerics can heal in B/X and they don’t get spells at 1st level. Good luck making it to 2nd level, Morgan meat shield, with no healing. 5E Morgan can be healed multiple times at 1st level by nearly every other member of her party as you pointed out.
2. 5E Morgan even at 1st level gets to recover 1 HD of HPs from a short rest, and all lost HPs with a long rest. Also, don’t forget that 5E Morgan can also recover 1d10+1 HPs from using Second Wind. That is hypothetically a total of 31 HPs a day. 1st level B/X Morgan with no 2nd or higher level Cleric? That lucky lady gets to recover 1 hp after one nights rest IF it is uninterrupted. What’s that? We have to go through a mega dungeon without leaving? Good luck B/X Morgan.
3. Death saves. 5E Morgan gets chances to survive when reduced to 0 HPs, which you stated, but she gets this benefit especially if she has party members who can aid her allowing her an auto pass on the survival roll (without having to make a roll to do this). At 0 hp B/X Morgan is dead ... there is nothing the player can do to stop that.
4. Save or die. These are rare even from poison in 5E and even if they occur failing them more often than not just reduces the character to 0 HPs. Refer to numbers 1 and 3 above as to why this is not a big deal for 5E Morgan. B/X Morgan gets bitten by that giant spider? Roll an unmodified 12 or higher on a d20 (doesn’t matter what her CONis) or she dies ... no backup options like 5E Morgan has.
5. Finally, and this is a big one IMHO, hypothetically B/X Morgan could have rolled a 1 on her HD roll at 1st level. 5E Morgan? Always starts with a base of 10 big HPs. And this issue just gets compounded as levels increase. 5E Morgan can always get a base of 6 HP per each level gained, never having to roll a die. B/X Morgan has to roll at each level and will at best average 4.5 per level, but sometimes she is going to get a 1 or a 2. The hp advantage for 5E Morgan compounds like interest in a savings account, level after level, and B/X Morgan will never catch up. I understand that the monsters do a different amount of damage which will balance this out a bit but regardless, 5E Morgan never has to deal with that situation of working hard to make the next level, only to have the hp total increase by 1 hp (2 in her case because of her CON). That is brutal and it will likely happen to paper tiger B/X Morgan at least once on her trek to 9th level.
I love your videos, brother, they are my favorite D&D vids on RUclips. I could even at least entertain your points about the ending of GoT. But on this one ... it seems pretty clear to me that B/X Morgan is way more likely to be killed than 5E Morgan. But I appreciate you putting on your +1 vest of protection on and making this video. 😃🥳👍
It was quicker and easier to make a character in OSR than 5E too
Great videos!Helped me loads in campaigns
You had me at Morgan Ironwolf...
Nice breakdown. This is a good example of how you need to be “careful” running old school modules in 5e straight from the book. Some monsters are much stronger in the conversion (some much weaker as well). For instance, hobgoblins. At CR 1/2 they are balanced for 2 against a party of 4 level 1 PCs, in an old school module (for 1st level) you’ll likely run into double or triple that number.
B/X Morgan is a she, but in 5e Morgan’s gender is NEVER assumed
The main difference between 5e and Classic is that while in Classic you are more resilient (of you pick a frontliner) when you drop you are dead, there is no death save or the likes that soften the death's door
Great stuff. I think you are spot on, the difference is in the actual play and the time committed to combat. Thanks for the content. Catch you next time Deathbringer. Cookie for the metric
From my experience and knowledge, there's 4 main reasons 5e has such a low mortality rate.
1) Death Saving Throws. Far and above, this is the reason they survive. If my players' characters died everytime they hit 0 hp, I'd have between 3 and 5 deaths every adventure. Instead most characters go unconscious once per adventure.
2) No negative hit points. Sounds simple, but being able to bring a character back into full action with a single healing spell or potion greatly helps the party in the action economy.
3) Most things that used to be insta death now deal damage. A pit trap that deals 4d10 damage is a lot more survivable than something that immediately kills if you fail a save. 22 piercing damage average, half as much on a failed save is fairly survivable by a lvl 3 martial class character.
4) Culture. Not sure how the culture was back then, but I know that with the way death saves work as well with how easy it is to bring them back, killing a character almost takes a conscious effort from the DM. I think many DM's (especially with how discouraged the DM vs. player mentality has become) will make the baddies ignore characters that are down, allowing them to be healed and back into the fight.
BONUS) Focus on party. I'm not entirely sure on this either, but I seem to recall people saying that in earlier editions the party were expected to bring a bunch of hirelings. If those are added in the bodycount then obviously the bodycount can rise without killing a PC. But with more modern editions the focus is just on the party consisting of the PC's and maybe an NPC's or two they brought along. This might make the story focus more on the characters and their interactions among each other, which makes their deaths sting a lot more.
Seems it all comes down to the likelihood of players having an "oh shit!" moment that is (hopefully) followed by "hell yeah!" moment and high-fives around the table. Regardless of the math, we have opportunity to experience this, along with tragic defeat in both systems. It rests on the shoulders of the DM - AND The Players - to engage the rules at hand to seize those opportunities. Carpe Diem.
Another thing to consider with lethality is the instant death damage that 5e has...take a really big hit and you're dead, no saves to survive it.
DM's are also far more likely to have attacks target downed players in 5e because the monsters would realize that they might be getting up again.
For me, it is not so much the difference in survivability, but in the lasting consequences of combat. In B/X, I have left combat victorious, but minus two levels with no way of reversing it (He ended up retiring after that fight, even though he was still 3rd lvl. That was some fun RPing). In 5e, there doesn't seem to be any permanence to negative effects.
I never really understood level drain. As a game mechanic maybe, but just wiping out progress doesn't appeal to me. I'd prefer constitution drain. It makes more sense to me.
@@coda821 That's a valid point, but I never looked at it that way. When I learned how to play D&D, losing games of all sorts was just how it was. It didn't matter how far you got in Pac-Man, you always had to start back at the beginning and I would happily drop another quarter in. So, when a character died or got some permanent injury, I would just proverbially 'drop another quarter in' and roll up another one.
A lot of this "Illusion of Choice" stuff you are talking about is about more about the illusion of character options making the game better. Its the same thing you said about leveling up, really. Once the game actually starts, and the player characters have to make strategic decisions on how best to survive, player choice and agency becomes the meat of the game.
I would like to make a set of rules where the classes are OSR-level simplistic, maybe with the option to Dual-class (but not dip into several different classes whenever the player feels like it! That would be...."Abserd."), but with the option to pick up some bonus abilities (languages, feats, battlemaster combat manuevers, etc) like how a wizard copies new spells into their spellbook. You could even bring back prestige classes from 3e, but you simply CHANGE your class to the prestige class (often it has prerequisites so you have to be a fighter to become a purple dragon knight, for instance) once you join the organization. You have to interact with the world to find a trainer and possibly pay gold to learn a unique skill.
So, this means that the player will spend more time paying attention to the game instead of their character sheet, EVEN if what they want to do is gain new powers!
The professor is smoking crack...
I fundamentally disagree on the closing statement.
There is an intrinsic difference from TSR era d&d and the wizards era roleplaying game of the same name: procedures.
The dungeoneering and exploration procedures are the single most important aspect of OS play. TSR D&D wasn't about narrative. A narrative might emerge, but the game was a sandbox about exploration and treasure hunting at its core.
Wizards, in designing their RPG, gutted these mechanics, as well as XP for gold, which shifted the focus of the game from exploration, caution, treasure hunting and dungeoneering to a narrative combat simulator.
Enlightening. I've always wondered if the original d&d was deadlier. I started playing during the 3.5 Era so I've never had a chance to play OG d&d or advanced.
For some reason, I have seen this video last week.
Anyway, interesting comparison.
Magic was more powerful in early editions. 2nd level spell Blind was permanent if you didn't save. If you had a low Int score a charm spell lasts for up to 3 months. In general i like the feeling of magic being extremely powerful but more rare and prone to backfiring.
Awesome content, as usual. Great, thoughtful info!
I started with Moldvay B/X in the 80s. Ive also played 5E. Combat in B/X is pretty quick and game play is deadly. 5E Combat is slower and with all the healing and rests- not as much.
You made two countering points in this video:
You explain the DIFFERENCE in play between "OSR" and 5e, which you boiled down to being cautious because exposing yourself to risk has a high lethality rate with even the example of a straight save vs poison straight out killing a character.
Then at the end of the video you say whichever version of D&D one plays doesn't really make a difference. but the above statement JUST pointed out the clear and distinct difference each version encourages.
I agree with the sentiment of play whichever way you like. Personally, I like both.
A few things worth noting:
(1) Despite being an example character, B/X Morgan is not an average B/X character. She's clearly above average, with bonuses in every fighting stat and a somewhat above average roll for hit points to boot. However, in 5E, she can be created, more or less, with the standard array.
(2) You observed the comparative lack of healing in B/X, but it goes even deeper than that. Clerics simply could not heal that much. At level 1, they had no spells at all. (It might be an interesting exercise to compare them against average damage levels.)
(3) The fact B/X characters are, by necessity, more careful isn't an argument that B/X is less lethal than people think. If your assumption that both games produce equal body counts is true*, then it just shows the players are forced to mitigate the higher lethality of the system.
* I lost 2 of my three B/X characters in the time I played. I'm not sure how secure your assumption is.
This said, I agree people should play what version suits them. People like different things. However, lethality seems to be precisely one of these things that make the games different. I get the feeling people nowadays don't spend extensive time on backstory to have it all erased by a top 25% of a d8 damage roll.
A fascinating comparison. Thanks, Professor.
Big problem with monsters for me is adding a lot of traits, etc. I prefer keeping monsters simple to facilitate improvisation and speed of play.
Great video, thank you Professor :) I 100% agree that everyone should play however they want, however I think comparing 5e and B/X in terms of lethality using just the numbers is a (little) bit of an apples/oranges situation as one of the reasons 5e seems less deadly than B/X is because of things like Challenge Rating and the expectation that a 5e DM will usually trying to "balance" combat encounters. It's unlikely that 5e Morgan would face 12 x 5e hobgoblins, more like 3 or 4.
A B/X DM is more likely to have snorted tea out of his nose laughing when he rolled that encounter and say "Ok, now let's see what you do now..."
I do enjoy lethality, but that's not why I go for the old school. I go for the old school for speed of play.
Spending 4 hours planning on how to examine a door that might be a instant death trap isn't what I'd call speedy play.
B/X is less deadly because B/X players are more cautious... Because B/X is more deadly. Hmm...
Yeah. That's like a double negative or something.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
This is a much better comparison than most people who just look at 5e PC hit points out of context and completely forget to look at the monster HP.
Most discussions also neglect that a B/X party should be 6-8 characters incl retainers but a 5e party is 4 characters.
Still not seen anyone discuss magic items which massively power up B/X characters.
The true differences imho:
- 5e characters take much longer to create
- players get more input into their character’s design
- 5e combat takes longer
- B/X characters get one attack per round which they will often miss. The combination makes the rounds go by fast
- 5e characters often have multiple attacks per round which are more likely to hit but do a smaller proportion of damage (but higher absolute damage)
- a B/x magic user has a 1d4 dagger at all levels, a 5e wizard has scaling cantrips which are still outclassed by their spells
- a B/X magic user has fight ending spells at level one, 5e wizard at level 5 but more spells total.
- B/X is full of mini games of encumbrance, rations and exploration. 5e has spells for each of those. But even in B/X those mini games had an expiry in terms of character levels.
I'll done my +1 Hat of Justification, point to my comparable two score years of history, and respectfully disagree. The difference doesn't lie in the averages, it is in the outliers and the different death rules. Per your example, every time Hobgoblin gets to make an attack roll at Morgan in Bx, she has a 1 in 16 chance of ending up dead. This means that if, in the course of he first level of play she suffers the indignity of being on the receiving end of ten of these attack roles there is about a 50% chance she does not reach level 2.
In contrast, unless the DM has monsters go after level 1 characters who are down, or the entire party dies, it is highly unlikely that 5E Morgan will die, although highly likely that she will be making death saves almost every combat she enters.
[Others have already mentioned save or die and level drain as big edition differences.]
I'd agree that the difference in hirelings, henchmen and party safety habits and flaming oil tricks makes comparing editions a challenge, but we absolutely had more death in our games back in the 80's, whether it was low level PCs, or the low level henchmen and hirelings of the high level PCs.
But that's because modern DMs pull their punches more than it's about the system.
@@wylantern I don't think so. According to the 5E encounter design guidelines, a typical four character first level party would face 2 hobgoblins. So, if one of them knocks a character to 0 hp in the first round of contact, and they both survive to round 2 the DM has a choice. Have the hobgoblin bash a character that is down, or attack one of the remaining characters who still outnumber them 3-2.
In many ways 5E encourages near-death while discouraging actual character death.
I say this as someone who loves 5E and has no intention of going back, but I do find that unlike prior editions of the game, I really do need to make DM level decisions that directly impact whether characters die. It is far less likely to happen just due to chance and how the dice may fall.
Prof DM, I can accept that mechanically a level one character in 5E has no less and probably a greater chance of being brought to the point of death. The key difference is that for a BX or AD&D player at low level there was very little chance of coming back quickly, or perhaps at all, unless the DM was being very kind and put a cleric of the appropriate level somewhere within easy reach. So perhaps that is the key difference, the potential finality of death in B/X and AD&D?
Definitely. Death at 0 hp completely changes the game, & IMO, for the better.