@@AllThingsLich Basically it will be a library for future generations. Between the mags, all the editions of D&D, all the modules, Gamma World, Traveller, Hollow World, Call of Cthulu, Pathfinder collection, etc, etc. Someone scanned it all. I tried to find the site but it is long gone. Luckily I spent days downloading and got it all. Save it for the grandkids. :)
4th Edition is my favorite. As a DM, I enjoyed making both combat and non-combat situations. I always pushed my players to think outside the Box, use their abilities in ways that were unique or off the wall instead of thinking it's rigid. As a Player, it allowed me to explore a lot of character concepts that just weren't good or prevalent in previous editions, while maintaining a relatively decent balance point. I'd say 90% of the complaints could also be directed at other editions (especially 3.5) and the other 10% are easily fixed by a DM who's read the DMG.
Advanced 1e is also my go to. 2e just felt like it didn't really change much, like ac, and some other stuff, but 1e just had some of the best material in my opinion. I still read the dmg a lot today! Sure, they're compatible, but man, adnd is beautiful to me. As for the nuances, they can be changed and whatnot. But, man, 1e is my go to, plus it had some of the BEST modules that ever released. Personally, temple of elemental evil, scourge of the slavelords, queen of spiders, castle greyhawk, dungeonland and the land through the magic, and then finally desert of desolation (the three separate modules, i3-i5) are all my favorite adventures.
@@asdlife2496 love the 1ed modules..Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Vault of the Drow, Against the Giants, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks just to name a few
I've played D&D for 30 years and played all editions and have always felt the new editions are meant to sell more books. D&D is and should always be about the adventure and the Characters. The rules are there to help drive the story. That is it.
That is one way to look at it, but that's just one angle. I have always seen 3 major camps that people tend twards: Naritivists, simulationists, gamists. I'm not the first to bring these classifications up. Some people invest just as much into DnD because of the simulation aspects or the gameplay you can't get anywhere else. I wouldn't discount the other two as being less important then story, only that story can be a preference in type of game.
I like all editions I've played. Never played 4th edition though. I like the fast pace and deadly situations of the early editions, but I relish the roleplaying and story emphasis of 5e. I find myself playing more 5e now as I introduce new players, but I mix in some older mechanics. In my older years, I just want to have a fun time telling epic stories with friends. I don't find myself too beholden to editions. Would kill for an updated Dragonlance setting though..
It always has been. Roleplay is a lot more present than ever and now players can build their characters instead of being so much restrictive than before.
I always hated the argument that D&D 4e was focused on combat to the detriment of roleplay elements. 4e's roleplay was *exactly* the same as every other edition's roleplay, it's just now you had an in-depth tactical combat system, too. It also introduced the Skill Challenge system, which is something I still use in my 5e games. My biggest issue with 4e was that it was slow, and the first two Monster Manuals didn't help with that. But no, the game didn't give you a "card that told you how to negotiate with the NPC", you roleplayed that like every other edition and then rolled Diplomacy...like every other edition. If someone's 4e game lacked in RP, it was their fault, not the game.
Totally agree , 4e was my favorite for most types of role and roll players. I would also add that a well oiled, veteran group of 4e players that knew their characters could move about twice as fast through combat as when they started playing, the combat is that crunchy and layered.
D&D hasn’t discouraged roleplay, but it certainly has never encouraged it either. Thus why there are wargaming grognards who think D&D is only for combat and complain about groups using “teh funnee voysez”. I really like skill challenges.
3.0/3.5 had its flaws, and could get convoluted, but I honestly love the books from that era, and I love the bullshit you could do with your characters. Looking back on the 3e catalogue, it's hard not to think "D&D firing on all cylinders." I don't view editions that aren't 3.0/3.5 as being strictly inferior or anything, I think the problem is just that 3.0/3.5 contains so much that it's hard to rationalize giving all of it up for what 4e or 5e have to offer (imo, anyway.) Unless, as you mentioned, the most important thing for you is "staying with the times."
I like 3.5 a lot. If you are into detail though I suggest reading through some of the older rules, there are some areas where the old rules had a lot more detail that 3.0 cut out. Checkout the rules for hirelings and henchmen. A lot of that stuff could easily fit into 3.5. The way dungeon crawling involves resource management is pretty sweet too. Basic Fantasy RPG would be a good introduction to the older material: it's free, based in a more d20 system, streamlined and easy to read and learn, but with all that old school flare. For Gold and Glory is a free retroclone of AD&D2e that has the same advantages (and my personal favorite).
All those options, with all the prestige classes alone. we still play it. And 4th was just a bad joke. We took some of the adventure ideas, but stayed with 3rd/3.5/Pathfinder
I also vastly prefer 3.5/Pathfinder to any other edition. Yes, it is more complex, but I loved that complexity and depth. Every rules question was handled by the RULES (take note 5e). Monster creation and challenge rating worked and made sense. Combat could take a while or be over within a couple rounds depending on the tactics used. Dungeons were deadly and fun, and PC death was always a risk. 2e had fond memories for me, mostly in Dark Sun and Birthright, but it was very unbalanced and extremely lethal. I didn't mind those aspects much, but the classes were also pretty boring. Your character was only defined by race, class, ability scores and proficiencies. Kits helped a bit and skills and powers were a fun addition. All in all I'd say 2e was my 2nd favorite edition. We tried 4e and were disappointed at how boring it got with the constant hit points grind of combat. That and how all the classes seemed to play the same, and you'd end up spamming the same powers over and over again every single combat. I did like the monster design aspects, but the combat itself was just way too video gamey. 5e is very similar to 4e IMO in how boring the combats can get. The 5e challenge rating system breaks down way too easily and becomes essentially useless after level 10. 5e rest system is pretty silly. Broken leg? Long rest! Bleeding out with 1 hit point? Long rest! 5e needs too much homebrew and too much DM fiat to make it playable.
Heads up, Armor Class actually stems from a wargame about ships at sea. The reason early armor class rules went from 10 to 1 was that it was like a "count down to the best and thickest armor", so a 10 would be like a little rowboat and 1 was a dreadnought (or something like that).
"Mazes and Monsters" was absolutely made, and written (it was originally a book) to feed into the Satanic Panic over D&D. I'm old enough to remember many letters appearing in Dragon from "concerned" christian RPGers and there were several games released featuring strongly christian messages to aleviate the problem. I am 2Ed all the way down btw, I was deeply into FR and spent a small fortune on FR stuff and the supplementary books. I still have all the editons core rule books. My biggest issue with 5Ed is the cost, £45 (I guess over $50) is a hell of a lot of money for each book, it naturally excludes young people who simply do not have that sort of disposable income or parents who are sufficiently well off to be able to afford nearly £150 for the core books. This means we are in danger of losing an entire generation of potential players and does not bode well for the games future. Surely, (and I am happy to admit my ignorance on this) WotC/Hasboro could see their way to make these available as a downloadable file or a softback edition both of which would be cheaper options or, do they wish to be exclude entire social classes from the game?
I really think that the best thing we can do for young gamers is guide them to Basic Fantasy or other low cost retroclones. I wish I had started there as during my teenage years I looked at the 3.5 books and saw them as wildly unattainable (even at £20-25 each) but now I have the 5e core rules and I play BFRPG far more often, even with the dent in my wallet from buying those books still being felt.
If I remember correctly, the book that inspired Mazes and Monsters was inspired partially by a newspaper article. A real college student supposedly got lost in steam tunnels while playing D&D. Later, he committed suicide. It turned out that he never got lost in the steam tunnels. That was incorrect. He did actually commit suicide a year later.
The books do have a cost, but it's not extravagant. AD&D 1e's core books, released 1977-1979, retailed for $12-15 each, depending on how much your local Waldenbooks or wherever you'd buy from sold for. Accounting for inflation, $15 per book in 1979 comes out to over $60 per book in 2022, and we know inflation goes up way more year-to-year than wages go up. The difference between 1e and 5e(or 4e, or 3.x, or even 2e) is that 1e wasn't initially created with the idea of producing a truckload of additional books in mind, and those three books, or even just a couple more, actually WERE intended to be a game you could play for the rest of your life, rather than eventually be phased out or have a lot of the core books made obsolete by future books of the same generation.
It turns out it wasn't panic. The panic label was created by the FBI. It turns out the FBI confirmed it all real and they lied to the public about it. Look into the Finder's Cult for a starting place.
AD&D came out prior to the Mentzer Red Box version and is contemporaneous with Holmes and Molvey. The reason for the separate values for level advancement was based on game balance. Thieves were expected to advance faster than Magic users, or indeed all other classes. The drive in later editions to make all classes advance equally helped make multiclassing easier, but unbalanced the game, necessitating giving all classes powers ala 4th Ed. Very few people have played 1st edition at its crunchiest (roll every month for disease, haste spells age the use necessitating a system shock roll, polymorph causes a system shock roll, Weapon speed and casting time added to initiative dr, weapon vs armor class type modifiers, and so on). Which is understandable, the DMG is thick and oddly laid out, UA is a separate book, not to mention the Manual of Planes, Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneers Survival Guide. Oh, and Ravenloft came out in 1983, so is a 1st edition book. The Ravenloft campaign setting came out in 1990 for the 2nd Edition.
Not to mention, thieves had a 1d6 hit die and not much in the way of armor. Fighters and the like were more durable, thus more likely to survive. If your thief bit it (which was very likely), your new thief needed to catch back up pretty damned quick... thus why they leveled faster.
Ahhh, system shock! Back when magic had negative side effects ... that everyone conveniently "forgot" come later editions ... which totally unbalanced casters :\
I used to DM 3.5 for my college friends, and build frenzy was a huge thing for them. They loved combining classes, prestige classes, feats, and magic items to deal heavy amounts of damage. Sadly, that mentality is way too common in 5th edition. I often see posts on Reddit or Facebook asking how to build the best of X (where X is healing, tanking, or damage), and I hate it. I would never allow coffee 'locks or any gimmicky builds if I were to return to being a dungeon master. I like 5th edition for making every subclass unique (except for Hunter and Monster Hunter for the Ranger), but a subclass should not exist purely to multiclass splash into another class.
Good take. I'm with you on the best build sort of thing. It irks me but I get it. Whether from video game mentality or a desire to play and be the best version possible, I get it, but..it does ruffle my feather's a bit. Thanks for the comment.
perhaps its because they don't want to let the team down in combat, they don't want to be the one who in combat repeatedly fails to carry there weight Or they dnt know what rp is.
The class/race/EXP restrictions from OD&D helped to differentiate characters and bring nuance to the game world. It's easier to be a thief than it is to be a paladin or a magic user, but the rewards for that easy path are fewer. Those restrictions help to describe the game world. It's intuitive that you're not going to find paladins and magic users in every tavern. The powerful ones will be influential in society. The ones with higher ability will progress faster, as it is in real life. This brings a built-in challenge mechanic. If you want a harder time of things, you can play a character with suboptimal stats. Now go to 5e, where it doesn't matter what your race or class is or what your stats are, your character is one of several slightly different flavors of monster murdering machine. In that implied setting, half-firbolg half-air-genasi artificer monk clerics are every bit as remarkable or unremarkable as everyone else. In that implied setting, rather than being interesting avenues for roleplay, race and class have generally no impact at all. What happens is that everyone basically plays a human in a creature costume, because it doesn't matter. Level caps are fantastic. That's when a character retires and is melded with the game world, and can live on as an influential NPC, and remind the players of the history of their game world. The lethality of OD&D meant that it was very difficult to get to that point in the first place, and it was an achievement. You had to be very lucky and a good player to get even to level 8. Now in 5e, when you roll up ... er, I mean, assign stats to your level 1 ... er, I mean, level 3 character, you can expect to reach level 20 as long as the group remains interested in the campaign. Finally, as the years have gone by with each successive edition, DMs are being taught less and less to make the game their own. Now they're being instructed on how to fill each session with X number of fairly balanced encounters. In OD&D, because the rules were much less codified, you could more easily say, "Dwarven cleric? Sure!" And you could have the party encounter a troll at level 2, but with the object of the encounter not being monster murder as it always is these days, but negotiation or stealth or something like that. If the DM was good at his job and foreshadowed how deadly trolls are, and the PCs decided to fight it anyway, they soon learned their lesson, and the game had a dimension of danger and challenge to it.
extremely well said and the more minutes go by where I consider this video and the release (and discussion of) Tasha's, the more I'm inclined to agree with you 100%. Thanks for the comment Evan
@@kateslate3228 Sometimes when we're confronted by things we've never thought of before it can be scary or even painful. I look forward to your well thought out counter argument.
Let's all be nice and see where this goes! And yes, a follow up vid is on the mind. I'm currently deep in the mud of my world setting so things outside of that book are moving at sloth speed.
I'm not going to lie, I really enjoy 4e. I started with 5e, and when my DM recommended 3.5 I... wasn't a fan. I can't remember who said it, but I think if 4e wasnt dnd, it would have been taken a lot better. It came off of the heels of 3.5, one of the most invested editions ever, I don't know if any edition would have been taken well
Very well said. As I play through D&D's many editions and settle into campaign after campaign of 5e, many of the things from 4e are starting to grow on me. Enough so, that I'll speak heresy right now. I think I like it more than 5e........
@joshua H -- Part of the issue with 4th Edition for me, is not that it was a bad edition, but around that time, Gygax had died, and he did not have any voice in D&D's mechanics in the 4th Edition, and it felt like it embraced a "position-based, dumbed-down video game" version of Dungeons and Dragons. Which functioned as a drastic departure from its 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd Edition predecessors.
It was also the ONLY edition that I bought not 1 book for, and that says a lot, because I actually worked for Wizards retail during the 3rd Edition roll-out, and I was really let down by what took the time to glance over.
Ravenloft first appeared as a module for what is nowadays called 1st edition. I know, I bought the module when it came out. I own it. I never bought D&D 2nd ed.
The one thing I hope everyone can agree on is that D&D is always evolving. Now, weather we like the end product or not is up to personal taste. I for one can see good parts in each of the editions that I have played in, but bay far the most important part of gaming is hanging out with a pack of nerds and rolling some dice.
My 8 year old daughter has a very hard time concentrating, so I decided I would get back into the game, she has improved 10fold, which is really the side benefit, best part is we do this together, even the wife and older daughter will play now n then.
Level limits on races in 1e meant that non-human characters would be more rare. In 5e, you can easily have a whole party with no humans. They’re one of the few races that doesn’t have darkvision.
Played them all, still enjoy the 1st edition. You really had to use all those nuances to make progress, that was hard, was so much more then your basic hack and slash. You had to plan things out and adapt. As the editions that followed, the classes became less unique and you got stuck in a role that cookie cuttered you to playing the same way every time.
I was all about the 1st edition, I liked the way it was. As always though if you dont like a rule dont use it, if you group comes up with a cool idea feel free to use it. I always found it to be a freeform system and I thing that was its biggest charm. I also liked the basic boxed sets because it felt like it was a whole lifetime , you went from a young person all the way to almost becoming a demi god.
I'll be doing an updated video and further discussion related to this video. It's' gained some good traction. Anyone that has fixed and accurate timeline info, send it my way please. I'd like to improve the information on the next video! Thanks
I was 14 years old when I played first edition with my brother and his friend from junior HS and even though most people dump on 4E because it was too tactical or not enough role playing or whatever nonsense people say, if you have a good DM, even 4e will be fun. The most fun I had was a 4E campaign with a DM who used the old 2nd edition modules and settings like Dragonlance using 4E rules. We had a blast
1st edition: Personally I still like the race/class limitations. I think it adds flavor to the cultures of the races by making certain classes exclusive to certain races. This was also a way to make humans more desirable to play given the stat disadvantages they had. The uneven advancement was terrible and there were too many disconnected game mechanics. 2nd edition: did not get rid of sexually suggestive art, evil characters were still possible and they just stopped using the "Demon" and "Devil" words. All of the Demons and Devils were still in the monster manuals. Those criticisms are typical of people who had a 1sd edition bias and never played 2nd edition. The bad was all the extraneous books and customization. The cost and availability of miniatures was also prohibitive. 3rd edition: the best things about it was the cohesion of D20 system. The game was initially badly unbalanced but it was a good thing that character advancement was unified. 4th edition: the good was making spell like powers available to every class was awesome but role-playing was pushed into the background. 5th Edition: possibly the easiest version of the game to learn and teach with others but it lacks some of the realistic rules and detail of prior editions. Some of the best 1st a day third party product support. While miniature play is entirely optional, there are multiple avenues to acquire and customize miniatures at multiple price points. The game, as written, is a little too easy on players.
A lot of this stuff is way off. The satanic panic was over before 2e came out. Forgotten Realms came out during 1e, not 3e. It was essentially the default setting for 2e while 3e went back to Greyhawk for the default setting. The use of miniatures goes back to the 70s and there were rules in 2nd edition that really assumed miniatures were available, it was just not something you had to have and could be hand-waved if the DM chose. 4e simply required you have miniatures to play.
Almost Everything you said negatively about 1st edition is wrong. Thieves died quickly, so low XP levels let new characters catch up. If paladins and fighters had same Xperia requirements, why would anyone chose a basic fighter without all the bonuses? Why cap levels/classes for races - because they live forever. Say a fighter took 20 game years to make it to 20th level, what is an elf going to look like after adventuring for 800?
OG DM here. 40 years, yeah, I'm old. Interesting discussion, although you might want to research your D&D history a bit more. There was some misinformation here. Regardless, there is no doubt the hobby is in an amazing place right now. I am saddened by the fact that Gygax and Arneson died before seeing D&D and RPGs becoming "Geek Chic." Hopefully, the good times will keep rolling. Thanks for the video :)
I agree. AD &D was not 1st edition. That was the "White Box" plus the 3 books starting with Grayhawk, which introduced the Theif class. My first DM was the creator of the original D&D vampire. (True story) Yup, I am a Keeper of Ancient Geekdom.😄
@@PlanetZoidstar I don't know what makes me more sad - the fact that I could almost be your father or that most people will never know the joy of reading those original 1st edition AD&D books. The monster manual is so awesome! I know most people like the original covers better; However, I love the reprint covers myself. Especially the Red Dragon cover of the MM.
@@gygeson5888 It's nice to hear from someone who was there when D&D was new like my dad, as he played back in the 70s and early 80s and still has alot of those AD&D books, Monster Manual and also the Fiend Folio. It is a real shame like you say that most people will never get to read those long out-of-print books. I recall being confused what "See-Below" meant when it popped up in the monster stat blocks. Being 8 or so I didn't get it until it meant to "See Below" for an in-depth description. The updated covers are really cool and detailed, but I prefer the originals, mostly for nostalgia, but also because they feel more personal. Less like something done by a an artist employed by a faceless corporation and more like something drawn by someone on that original creative team with Gary Gygax and Co. That Red Dragon is almost as iconic as the demonic statue with the ruby eyes.
Great video, man! I've never played but I bought a handful of older rulebooks as a kid and I used to love reading them. They really sparked the imagination.
Thank you! Once you play, you're hooked for life (assuming you find the right group and get off with the right experience). Here's to hoping you "find your game" someday and thanks for the comment.
I was 12 when my best friend to this day introduced me to AD&D. (First Edition). We don’t play it as much as we did back then, but we are both 54 now and still play this edition to this day. Whatever edition you like and are familiar with is your edition. ;).
I've been obsessed with D&D since I was about 10, (I'm 30 now!) and the various versions have always interested me. My collection is mainly 3E/3.5E. I have both sets of Core Rulebooks, (and an extra set of 3.5 Rulebooks that my buddy left years ago), Player's Handbook II, Monster Manual II, a couple spellbooks, and my favorite, The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I aslo have two sets of the Advanced D&D Second Edition Forgotten Realms box, but that's it for AD&D. I ignored 4E (but grabbed the Starter box for fun.) I just started getting back into it when I joined a group in 2019. Our DM said we could use his books but I went out and bought the 5E Player's Handbook. A month later I picked up the 5E DM Guide and Monster Manual. I also have Descent Into Avernus Special Edition cover.
Disappointed that the best version of the game, the Basic/B/X/BECMI/Mentzer strain of the game, was simply not mentioned, especially since my hope is that Basic / Classic D&D will influence the idea of “what’s not in it” the most.
I honestly miss asymmetrical leveling, when the really good classes would level up slowly. I miss class limits on races, and I miss prime requisites. That being said, I don't think they are coming back.
I've previously commented on this video before but I think I want to touch up on it again, specifically about 4e. 4th Edition was specifically designed from the ground up to address the issues that were plaguing 3e/3.5 and you could see a number of ideas that would coalesce into 4e with other WotC games of the time such as Star Wars d20/Saga and even in D&D with the Book of Nine Swords. And it wasn't like the game was hiding out what it was when they talked about it a fair bit on their forums and even released two books ("Wizards Presents Races and Classes" and "Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters") where they touched on their design process and why they were making the changes for the new edition. 1) Clerics and other divine spellcasters (healers) felt too needed for a group and reduced the game to "15 minute adventuring days" at lower levels 2) Wizards (and literally any spellcaster) just outshone non-spellcasters in just what they could do after around level 6 3) At the same token Wizards and most other spellcaster were incredibly weak at low level 4) Skills were incredibly wonky and tied into other skills in ways that make some logical sense but made people just keep scratching their head as to why they couldn't just be one skill (spot, search, listen being the big ones) 5) Some races were just not played very much because they were just bad, whether that was due to stat penalties or their lore that didn't make them interesting or way to cringey (Half-Orcs were a double-whammy of bad lore and bad stats for instance) 6) Tons of players were reporting they were playing other races at incredibly common rates, chiefly Tieflings and pretty much any draconic race (ESPECIALLY half-dragons) 7) The settings themselves were becoming way too bogged down in their own lore which made many D&D players either not want to play in those settings or you would run into a lore-lawyer who stopped games when the DM misstated which copper dragon lived in the Cliffs of Drejar 8) Not only were the settings lore-dense they were also "really heavily mapped out" and people were hitting disconnects as to why they were fighting random orcs on a road that the map made out to be a MAJOR highway and one that should be really well maintained and defended 9) The problem of "why not just get X or Y NPC to just fix this?" 10) Way too many "trap options" that look good at the surface level but do NOT pan out at all long term (Toughness, for instance, was a feat that Monte Cook himself called out as bad and that should have had a disclaimer of "use only on an elf wizard at level 1 for one shot games" or how anything that lowered your chance to crit like rapier) 11) And, lastly, too many classes stepping on other classes toes in what they would do in combat unless someone built a very niche build These were all complaints being leveled in forums both official and non-official and which WotC was eager to tackle. Couple this with Hasbro threatening to shut down everything D&D related and make WotC only focus on Magic the Gathering you can see why they were desperate to do something. So they discussed with the public and developed 4e to address a lot of the problems people were constantly complaining about online and what happened? It sold really well! Not as well as they might have hoped but whenever pressed on it the people at Hasbro and WotC will only say that 4e did sell better than 3e but my guess it did so mostly thanks to the DDI account membership fees since it was supposed to have a LOT of online stuff with it too which got pushed back because of a tragic double murder and suicide perpetrated by the guy in charge of the online content for 4e. Truth be told, I've played every edition now (even a one shot of Original D&D) and to this day I still contend 4e is the best version, especially with the additional rules that came out later in it's life (Monster Vault and MM3, backgrounds, themes, alternate racial ability scores and powers, and all of the new classes, paragon paths, and epic destinies) since it's the first edition where I 100% believe I'm a hero right out of the box and never had to just be "okay" or go for very peculiar playstyles/builds (chain trip fighter from 3e for instance) and which finally made my group play as, well, a group and not as a bunch of ragamuffins who just so happened to be on the same quest until suddenly the wizard is summoning Celestial Black Bears and flying around the battlefield dropping fireballs and chain lightning spells and the rest of the party just stood back and watched. /rant
I like my characters to have a good back story and a personality as opposed to being a one dimensional set of min-maxed stats. They're not the most powerful build possible but they have distinctive personalities that make them memorable. Too many players sacrifice role playing for roll playing.
My playing time (vs. doing time) is sparse there days but I'm with ya. I love flawed and less than optimal characters. So much so that I don't even bother looking around for (what makes my character better)
I've been playing for 11 years and have been a DM for 9 years. I DM 3.5 and have played many games in 3e and 5e. I enjoy 3.5 most of all over the other two, but I have to sat 5th is just as fun because it is still dnd and dnd is just fun. I definitely see the benefits of 5th edition. Most notable is how easy it can be for new players to join in overall. Personally I don't have much of a problem with that with 3.5, as complex as it may be, because I think it's all about how you present the game to new players. I also don't pull out any other books with new players. Instead relying solely on the core books for their first games. The biggest reasons I like 3.5 more than 5e is because it feels like you can make your characters much more flushed out. As you gain levels in 3.5 you get skill points, feats, ability points and, of course, class special abilities and spells. On the other hand with my experience in 5e it seems very basic. You tend to get one or three abilities per level and it never seems as climatic. As for skills, I like how 5e is more simplistic but I like how you can have to characters of the same class in 3.5 that feel very different because of their feats and the ranks they have distributed in their skills. While I'm thinking of it, I do notice most people like stealth being one skill rather than a hide and move silently. However, I believe someone can hide very well, yet be a noisy dolt and vice versa. Most importantly though, the thing that I strongly dislike the most about 5e, is proficiency bonus. To me, if makes me feel that if I'm playing a fighter with a +2 strength and the wizard of the same level has the same strength and wielding the same weapon, we basically have the same chance to hit and deal the same damage. I much preferred the base attack system and base saving throws in 3.5. It made each class feel different on their ability to strike an enemy in melee or ranged. It made a wizard more reliant on spells since he couldn't hit as constantly as the fighter could of the same level and strength score. Anyways, just rambling like you, but felt like I wanted to throw my d20 cents into here.
Jesse! Thanks for the comment. Some really good takes and input in there and though you call it rambling, it's appreciated. I like your points on not grabbing too many books and trying to keep things as basic as possible, while also being able to squeeze simplicity out of any system by simply approaching it the appropriate way. I also do like the nuances between characters and distinction offered with skills ranks and such. And that's a really interesting point on the bit about wizards feeling very fightery with the default proficiency bonus and maybe looking into squeezing a bit more uniqueness and variety from one class to the next. All told, points understood and well said.
@@AllThingsLich I have learned to appreciate each edition and take things from them. For instance, I use inspiration in my 3.5 games. Adds some interesting events!
So, it sounds to me like what you really miss about 3/3.5 is the ability to roleplay., and I totally agree. I haven't played a lot of 4 or 5, but dnd for me was always at its best roleplaying, not always combat.
Yes it's what I miss most. You can obviously roleplay in any rpg but with 5e, the rules and mechanics are so geared towards "builds". Most of a character sheet deals with combat, therefore, you kinda head in that direction. 4e was like that but it knew what it was and wasn't trying to give you anything else. 5e is overall my favorite dnd edition (and I think best) but it is slowly starting to grind on me just a bit. I'll have to video my dislikes in a new video soon. Thanks for watching and comments
What makes you say that 3/3.5e is better for roleplaying than 5e? I've played both (although I have't played 3.5 as much as 5), and I'd say that 5e is slightly better than 3.5e for roleplaying, mainly because of how it makes backgrounds important.
@@benl2140 agree and this is always a take that I never really understood to the point where it's become annoying to hear it parroted. Having started with 3.5 and played 4e and 5e, there is nothing different in my experience between the editions in terms of my ability to roleplay or have more/less utility out of combat - yes, even with 4th edition. In my experience, outside of combat, there are always skills you can utilize, non-combat abilities/feats that are available, and, y'know, your own brain and mouth to actually play your character and roleplay. I legitimately had full sessions in 4e where we had no combat at all aside from like two skill challenges, same for 5e, and no one batted an eye or was itching to role initiative to "feel useful with their power cards" or whatever. The power system of 4e or the more hybrid of 3rd and 4e system of 5e were just ways they handled character abilities, the same way much of 3rd edition is strictly hack and slash or spellcasting until you get into the crunch of special abilities of prestige classes or non-core classes out of supplements like Tome of Battle. I genuinely think that people just see 4e/5e having a more defined rules system of how abilities/attacks work and jump to the conclusion that the editions are therefore combat-based and the combat is center stage, when imo it was just the edition giving hard rules for the sake of clarity not present in 3rd edition and prevent certain abuse cases as well. And similarly they see the simplification of things like skill progression and come to the same conclusion, when really it's just making thing simpler and less munchkin-y; the roleplay and out of combat aspects are just as much present.
@@Mrryn I'm not sure what you're talking about: 3.5e has _way_ more defined rules for combat than 5e. i.e. the section in the 5e PHB on grappling is less than a quarter of a page. In the 3.5e PHB, it's almost a page and a half.
@@benl2140 I was referring moreso to action economy in terms of combat system. And length does not necessarily equal being more defined - you can pose the same question "can I do X if Y?" to both editions, with one saying "well it depends, if X is Z and Y is Z +/- 1 but not if Z is W," etc., and the other saying "No unless you have a feat or feature that says otherwise." One is more description and flexible but the other is clearly defined.
I've played most editions but I liked BCEMI and 4th edition the most. I still play those two editions, and are pretty much my go to fantasy RPGs, along with The One Ring when I want to delve into Middle Earth.
BECMI is my preference. The restrictions listed in the video are bonuses to me, helping certify D&D as a specific fantasy. The further AD&D got in editions, the more micromanagey and codified it became on its way of failing to become a universal fantasy engine, which I’d rather play instead. Skills just felt like ability checks with extra steps. 4E is possibly the greatest edition…. of Chainmail ever made. But honestly, who still plays 3.0 exclusively? It wasn’t long before 3.5 replaced it, so only that should count as 3E.
>Inevitable "4e was done to make Warcraft: The D&D Edition" claim. Godsdammit I am so fething SICK of this damn claim. No, it wasn't. Roles were not added to "make the game more videogame like". They were done to create a framework to eradicate the Tiers problem of 3rd edition, where you had classes that ranged from "all powerful" to "useless unless you metagame like a boss" - they were also built specifically because D&D had built up the tradition of "the party needs a Fighter, a Thief, a Mage and a Cleric", and so WotC decided to look at WHY that happened and what could be learned from it. The AEDU system was built to end the discrepancy between the martial and spellcaster classes, and even it wasn't unprecedented; classes having abilities that can be used X times per Y time period goes all the way back to the original Paladin and the Thief's Backstab and even 3e's Barbarian's Rage. And classes were not cookie cutter identical. The power layout was simplified so it could be read easily, yes, but each class's powers had their own distinctive traits. Even in the same Role, a Fighter and their focus on powerful physical strikes, manhandling foes and reliability, with many powers that only expend if they're pulled off successfully, was not the same as the teleporting, elemental damage-focused, close-to-midranged Swordmage, which wasn't the same as the aura-emanating Paladin or the shapeshifting Warden. 4th edition HAD its problems, I don't deny that. But so many "problems" are actually lies that have been floating around the internet with no basis literally since 2008. I'm sick of them. And by the way, Warcraft HAD a D&D conversion. It had two of them, in fact, both done by White Wolf - one for 3.0, done to build off of lore back when the most recent Warcraft games were Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne, and World of Warcraft D20, which was done before the first Warcraft expansion, so sadly whilst it converted or invented many playable races, it never did get uncorrupted Draenei, one of Warcraft's best inventions.
I would really like to see another attempt at 4th edition. I genuinely enjoyed it and now find the reversion backwards with 5th as just boring as hell.
I didn't really get to get into tabletops till 5th, but from what I hear and have seen. I think 4th was simply disliked because it was not 3.5. Hell Pathfinder 1e exist because people loved 3.5 style that much. I think if 5 came out immediately after 3.5 it would have crashed too.
@@AllThingsLich I like to make sure combat has something going like... big bad boss will take an hour to kill, or you break the dam to kill him but also flood the town you've spent 4 sit downs in, or something where peoples feats and skill checks can come into place. I havent DMed in 6 years or dnded in 4. First game tomorrow, so watching some dnd videos to get the rust off. Good vid, man. Too many people are too into one edition and crap over the others.
@@braydenb1581 I feel you. Good luck on your journeys. Dismissing other editions is akin to admitting that you know it all and want to stop learning. There's something to be taken away from EVERY edition of D&D.
3.5 is where I started. I quickly found that I loved how many third party publishers were putting out compatible books. I loved Iron Kingdoms, Etherscope, and Dragonmech, among others. I really loved how easy to pick up and play 4e was. I haven't gotten into 5th. Great video. Brought back some great memories. The funniest thing to me is your mention of WoW. When I was running my 3.5 stuff with my regular group, a couple of them were getting into WoW and wanted me to incorporate elements of WoW into my campaign setting. I decided to give them what they seemed to want and went out and bought the 3.5 compatible WoW tabletop books. My players weren't interested and those books still sit collecting dust on my shelf.
I remember a little bit about Iron Kingdoms. Etherscope and dragonmech, not so much. Sounds interesting though. Maybe I'll have to do some detective work and check them out. Thank you for your comment
I understand why for roleplayong reasons, the first edition d&d class and race limitations were a thing. Like imagine a halfling fighter being as strong as an orc fighter.. it just doesn't make sense lol. So I understand why they stopped them at lvl 8
@@AllThingsLich yeah Tasha's book is looking like its going to be wild lol. You should make a vid on it. If you haven't already. Just finished ur vid and gonna sub. Also hopefully u make the second part to this vid like u promised in a previous comment I just read 😅
@@sonic-bb thank you for the sub. Of course I'll be doing a video on Tasha's. I do a spotlight on every single officially released book (at least these days). As to making a new video...the wheels are turning my friend. Thanks again for your interest!
Except an Orc is going to very easily have more Strength and deal more damage per round even if they were the same level, I think the class and level restrictions were a bit extreme. What about a Human Fighter being stronger than an Orc Fighter or a Human Mage being more magically adept than an Elven Mage, or a Human Rogue being more skillful than a Halfling Rogue or a Human you know what I'm saying here. Maybe if it wasn't so Human-central I would have received it better.
Loved the number of books, classes, and rebuild of the core D&D game offered, but the DM’s job is to make it concise. Characters can and should be created under 10 min and maybe only 5. Forget the ability scores themselves, they don’t mean as much as you think, you really only need to know the bonuses they offer. Feats and proficiency’s? - how do you envision your character? - Boom, pick several feats and profs to match and let’s go. As a DM give reasonable challenge ratings, forget the modifiers as those should all be in the CR calculation, let the player add theirs, go for it and move on. If they forget a bonus or item, well their character was distracted at the time and move on. Basically don’t let the rules/tables/dice interfere with gameplay and a fun time.
I found nothing redeeming in 3 or 3.5. I bought the books, but never played it. It's was just stupid detailed. 5e feels like a superhero RPG. The characters are so damn OP.
3rd will always be my favorite, it was my first experience. I have been stuck as a forever dm but finally getting to play a pc in 5e. 5e is surprisingly fun, I'm loving my character and the mechanics
In order: Chainmail, D&D Box(Basic), D&D(Advanced) (considered 1st edition, just known as AD&D), 2nd Ed....etc. I pretty much stopped with AD&D but did dabble a couple times with 2nd Ed....I'll still take AD&D any day.
The latest months I have; 1. Gamelead Tomb of Horrors as a 70s convention RPG, urging my playgroup to try to come into the very mindset of that era, while I lead the whole thing using AD&D 1st edition rules. Inspired by that I have also prepared myself to play the classic computergame Pools of Radiance. 2. Traced monsters from the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy computer games (1991) back to the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums (1989) while looking deep into how they match up with 2e rules. This also meant digging into the Ruins of Undermountain and The Ruins of Myth Drannor sourcebooks for 2nd Edition. 3. Continued to trace the monsters from Eye of the Beholder way back through Original D&D and 1st Edition just out of curiosity to see how far back they went, but ended up sidetracked by reading Chainmail, while being amused by early 80s Dungeon Magazine articles. 4. Inspired by Chainmail I went forth to read 4th Edition to appreciate it as a tactical combat system for a board game, while doing some appreciation of ~2008-2012 history with the help of some retrospective videos on youtube. 5. Inspired by 4th Edition I read Dark Sun 4th Edition and enjoyed it. 6. I also spent a bunch of time reading up on the v3.5 rules while I was playing through Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate and Storm of Zehir. 7. And I spent a bunch of time reading up on 5e while I was playing Solasta: Crown of the Magister.
I like AD&D 1e, reason one being that I've always adored 0 to hero type games and 1e is perfect for that, since characters are way weaker than modern editions but can end up snowballing at high levels. Monsters feel actually dangerous because of this, meaning players have to be creative in the ways they deal with them. It also helps that 1e isn't as min-maxy as the other editions, there's not really any "builds" per se, you just roll up a character and go with what you get. 1e is also way more sandbox-y than other editions due to the emphasis placed on map traversal, the dungeon, and the dozens upon dozens of random factors like monster encounters and treasure. There's also tons of optional rules too, throw out the ones you don't like and mess around with the ones you like. This makes 1e feel like a toolkit and gives both the DM and players tremendous creative freedom. Some more miscellaneous points are that skill checks don't exist meaning the players can just roleplay their actions. After all does it make sense for an acrobat to randomly critical fumble something he's been trained for years to do? Also combat is short and sweet since there's not really any class abilities, 5e combat in particular drags on forever due to how many abilities the classes get. The dungeon part of the name is actually the primary focus, as the editions went on it felt like dungeons kind of got backseated in favor of sweeping narratives. Last point I have to make is in the initiative system, you can actually perform combos with your team mates since initiative is for the whole group rather than the individual, meaning if you want to do something that hinges on another player's spell or action you won't get screwed over by turn order.
4th edition was a money grab just as the market crashed and was just a bad time. Classic players questioned changes in 3rd seeing this - Change in AC calculation, class switching, and massive HP gains. Some of these are good, just depends on the game style you play. 4th went over the top and wanted you to buy the mini’s, terrain, etc. buy, buy, buy at a time when people were losing their homes.
My guess is 6th addition will be Virtual Table Top (VTT) focused. If you think about the low hanging fruit in that space it's vast. Just look at the content on steam workshop for games. They could build a VTT that could allow the player base to the create epic 3d adventures you could virtually walk through. In theory combining the best aspects of a table top role playing with visual and auditory aspects of a 3d world. With DLC licenses they could bank. I started with AD&D aka 1e, to me 5e is easy mode. All the the things you outline as negative are what made it great to me you had to make choices and the stakes were high. Plus I have yet to meet anyone that didn't use house rules for AD&D. For the most part we ditched all the cumbersome rules or relaxed them as needed. Typically it was somewhat similar to the a hybrid of Basic and AD&D. I think you nailed it when spoke to measuring it vs what you started with. I'm still digesting 5th edition and I'm more of spectator that participant. Oddly because of the evil that's is Amazon have way to much money in a dice collection. While my local group didn't play with miniatures they predated AD&D. We didn't use them because when I played starting around 8-14 years old they were just too costly. I had a few as did most of buddies but at most we used them as a static avatar. As I recall many of the popular monsters were represented. The books were $10-25 each back in the day. Modules were $8-15. Just for some perspective that was when normal movie ticket was around $2-$5. It was a fairly expensive game, so in that regard not much has changed.
Well said. Thanks for the comment. I can see how there's a big push for VTT. I hope it doesn't go there because in my opinion, the greatest element of D&D is sitting around (hopefully) like-minded people and sharing that experience in person.
Good video. I played hundreds of hours of AD&D 1E when it was current. The Satanic Panic was under 1E and not 2, as was the suicide panic giving birth to the Tom Hanks made for TV movie Mazes & Monsters. Ravenloft also came out of 1E but was not a setting until 2E. 2E in 1989 was a great cleanup of the rules, which had been a mess but it made it both mom friendly by stripping out the spicier things and also ripped out the Gygax feel and Greyhawk setting. The result was a bland and tepid edition without the feel it had. Now, it needed to do some of these things because 1E came out to a crowd of players that were adults in college or middle aged wargamers. 2E came out and the game was long since a game for 12+ or even younger at times.
Does Pathfinder 1e have pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as 3.5? Because I've played a good bit of Pathfinder and 5e and I feel that Pathfinder did streamline skills a bit, just not as much as 5e did.
Path 1e cleaned up a lot of the bloat from 3.0/3.5 I my memory serves. I think both are great value for your table. It depends on what you are looking for in your game and where you want the crunch and details.
I prefer 3e, 3.5, PF 1e because of the D20 system it's highly detailed & there's an abundance of material available .There's numerous variable rules for every rule in 3e & ya can still ignore them all if ya want. I like that classes feel unique & individualistic from one another. It's also really easy to correct the "see-saw balance" between classes , ex 1st lvl Fighter vs 1st lvl Wizard compared to 20th level Fighter vs 20th level Wizard. The biggest issue with 3e, 3.5, PF1e & the D20 system is knowing what not to allow in your campaign. It's inevitable a GM is gonna have to exclude a lot of material or broken combinations.. Ravenloft was 1st introduced as a module for AD&D 1e. I see lot of others got on ya about history so I'm not gonna go on about it. I'm sure you've looked into it since this was filmed. Thanks for sharing your perspectives, cheers!
As I'm always in the headspace of 6th edition and what I could/what I want it to be, I need to check out pathfinder 2.0. I'm familiar with paizo and pathfinder just never delved into the crunch and system of it all.
I like your presentation style but it doesn't look like you've done much research into OD&D at all. The evolution from Chainmail through the Rules Cyclopedia for "original" or "classic" D&D is fascinating and of fundamental importance to future editions. You really should read Playing At The World for a scholarly study on D&D's origins. There are just too many historical inaccuracies for me watch this entire video.
Definitely an “abridged history of AD&D”. I was a friend of a D&D player (Gary Switzer (now deceased)) who (along with his D&D gaming group which included the first editor of the D&D rule set) literally created the thief class and managed to have his character class added to D&D by E. Gary Gygax. We recently returned to playing AD&D and we only play its first edition as we retain our original books.
@@inhocsignovinces1419 sir, if you don't mind, would you be opposed to me talking and/or interviewing you at some point? I'm fascinated with that exact story and have found very little information on it, clearly one of the best sources is someone who was there
I played endless hours of 1E. Different classes needed different XP per level in 1E and 2E because they were of vastly different levels of effectiveness. Thieves were massively nerfed. Paladins rocked. Magic users eventually owned everything. I HATED the class level limits where humans had unlimited progression in every class. IIRC dwarves could only go to 8th in fighter. You would think everyone would have clerics, but nope. Halflings had no level cap in thief but could not enter many classes and had level limits like 3 in others. So every time you saw a halfling you knew he was a thief, but thieves were useless at doing anything but climbing, at which halflings had a big penalty. Needing different XP per level made parties a lot less unbalanced by class. It did not get too bad because XP required to level was huge and jumped in big leaps at each level and so party members were only 0 to 2 levels apart. Honestly, I am not sure why everyone plays D&D when there are so many games out there and some groups would like a few of them more than D&D. Some groups would still like D&D best if exposed to everything but a lot of people put a lot of working into making D&D's square peg fit the round hole they want it in.
Basic for me, it is anything but basic of course but it leaves a lot of room for house rules and advancement of your characters towards being Kings and even gods. I do like that.
I started with basic, 2nd ed etc. I loved and played every edition since. For a year now I've been into old school again. I've had to homebrew a decent amount. Actually i first build the thing almost from the ground up. I also really recommend Worlds Without Number to everyone! Free pdf is a must download. The simplicity of old school gives a lot of freedom I feel to DM as well as players. You're not bound by rules that cover everything and emergent play surprises even the DM through random encounters for example as well as the fact that players think of other ways to solve things besides just fighting.
Yeah in 3rd, 3.5, and pathfinder 6th level is frequently a stopping point. Epic 6 campaigns are pretty decent because you can, with preparation, punch well above your weight class as it were (arguably more than at any other point there after - haste at 6th level adds a full 50% more attacks to martial characters, only 33% at 11th for example). In short all the classes can do their class's things at 6th and they can do them pretty well. Most characters have come into there own. It's a very good time as a PC. As a DM it's easier to manage, there's only 3 spell levels being thrown around, the truly absurd spells aren't there yet - the linear fighter vs exponential caster issue does not yet exist. Encounters/puzzles/obstacles are easy to build around as a result creating fun world interactions.
I wasnt there, but was this type of focus on optimization there in 2e and earlier? I feel it also is a video gamey type thing like making powerful pvp diablo characters or skill trees present in most western RPGs. I usual start with the character I want by his class and personality (like, this my Oppenheimer summer so I wanted a nuclear physist dunamancy time/gravity wizard) then look up a sample build that closest fits that model (this one I discovered the artichron which thematically fits for both classes and my back story)
I think 4th edition is the most *pure* form D&D ever took. It didn’t *pretend* that the game was about anything other than combat. Look back at 3/.5. Sure there were options for non-combat, but there weren’t very strong rules for them, and the classes that were built around non-combat were generally considered to be garbage because they couldn’t fight well. Most of the supplements and expansions added things that would be useful in combat, etc. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty confident 4e looked at what 3/.5 players liked (build crafting and tactical combat) and pushed that forward. Also it was very popular, as far as I can tell. It brought a lot of people into D&D because it was simpler to understand and had less fiddly bits.
@@AllThingsLich lol I had to rewatch. You said that Eberron, Forgotten realms, some of the best worlds came about during this time for me. I'll agree that I might have misinterpreted what you meant.
Hey, great video, I first played during 3.0 And have so many fond memories, I was an adult, but the nostalgia almost make me feel like a child when I look back, I sure enjoyed those 8 hour games, now I am 60 and play MMO'S, but told my 16yo daughter that dad is gonna teach her D&D, initially it will consist of just the 2 of us any advice??
1) Find something pre-published. Focus on the fun of the game and the experience at the table rather than having to build maps, worldbuild, etc. 2) Have a session 0 - a session to discuss what sort of game she wants to play (heavy combat, vampires, video game/arcade style, etc.). Then, find the adventure/module that fits that type of game. 3) Keep it simple. Focus on a fight, a social conflict, and a mystery or secret to unravel. Don't get caught up in the minutiae of stuff. 4) Ignore most of the rules. Build her a character or build one together. Let the rule of cool and fun slide, then harp on the rule details (if you ever want to), MUCH, much later. Hope it all helps. Thank you for the comment and let me know how it goes!
Love the breakdown. I personally started with 3.5e, but must admit my teenage self did find it hard to comprehend / fully grasp. I've come back (many years later) to 5e and really love the fact that it is now more accessible than ever. That said, the ultimate strength of 5e is also its undoing. I do find 5e to be a little lacking in complexity (especially when comparing it to Pathfinder 2.0 (don't have much exp. with 1.0)). Sometimes I wish certain classes had a bit more depth - Warlocks spamming Eldritch Blast, Fighters/Barbs going Great Weapon Mastery / Polearm Master, Clerics being heal bots... I know, not all these choices are forced but certain classes can feel darn repetitive.
appreciate the comment! I'm really pushing to finish up my 5e world book but already, my mind spins around a few things you address- notably, adding some complexity and getting away from the tedium (eldritch blast as you say). I can't say a "fake 6E" is in the works but it really should be on the top of my creative list, as I've been spinning around it a lot lately.
3.5E was the min-maxer's dream because there were too many options. That's the one thing I like about 5E (having played all D&D editions since Basic/AD&D) is that the simplified the rules -- gone were the skill and feat trees (if you wanted X skill/feat, you had to make sure you got A, B, C, and D skill/feat first as you levelled up) and gone were the stacks of modifiers, now we just have Advantage and Disadvantage.
A big plus for 4E was that it balanced the abilities of the classes evenly. Like you said about AD&D, there was a big discrepancy between level XP of the paladin and thief (the paladin got most of its powers at level 1!). So 4E the classes levelled up at the same rate and got powers at the same class level, this is very noticeable with fighters, who in 3.5E relied mostly on feats, who can do marvellous things that were as impressive as spellcasters (short of Time Stop and Wish). Another thing was at-will powers, which meant low level arcane casters weren't screwed over casting their only spell slot and be useless for the rest of the right. What we have now are damage dealing cantrips that can cast at-will.
For me - Dungeons and Dragons died when TSR did. WotC was never able to recapture the feeling of old school D&D from 1977-1997. I've kept up with D&D though the new edition books throughout the years and nothing comes close to 2nd Edition.
Just paused your video after D&D 3/3.5. I've played D&D since AD&D back in 1982 in high school. AD&D did evolve a bit with the two mentioned books Dungeoneers Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide. However, you're beloved world of The Forgotten Realms had it's birth in AD&D, referred to as the "old grey box". MANY supplements were also printed detailing different areas of The Realms. I know that's were WOTC nicked many ideas for their 3rd Edition. I have often wanted to run a hybrid AD&D/2nd Ed as the Second Edition of AD&D cleaned up some things...but it also had a lot of "fiddly bits" as you call them in the soft covered "Complete" series of books with optional rules. The reason I love both those editions is because I was also younger when I played them (and when you buy a lot of game stuff...it's tough going to another edition). Lastly, I will talk about 3rd Edition. I was taken by it. The D20 system was well thought out and managed to work for other games based on the licensing agreement. Now...that being said, you're correct, it had some fiddly bits in the rules. However, as any DM/GM worth his salt knows...you're always free to modify or omit rules. I noticed later on that, unfortunately, the 3rd Edition was also easy to Min/Max and the characters felt too planned out with the feats and skills. However, I did buy into 3rd Edition and when 4th was announced. This older gamer decided to get off the "lets buy the next edition!" wagon. Now I will continue to watch your video.
Good rest of the video. I had heard 4th Edition was geared towards computer gamers in the style of the rules. I've heard a few people say good things about 5th edition as well. All that being said, never forget. Wizards of the Coast may have got the D&D ball rolling again...but Hasbro purchased WOTC. I feel...it's just about the Profit game...make more books...in the hopes the mooks keep buying them. ;-)
@@Malryth appreciate your comments. I've done an updated video about editions. Perhaps check that out as well and we can discuss more over time. Thanks for watching!
Coming from 3.5e and Pathfinder, my biggest gripe with 5e is that everything is kinda oversimplified : add your proficiency bonus to attack roll, saving throws, skill checks, stuff like that. I do like that it's way more noob friendly and easy to pick, and it's definitely a deep and complex game, I just prefer Pathfinder, but for the sake of having a group to play with, 5e is a great game and I enjoy it as much as the older version.
Started in 2nd . I did really like 2nd. But 3rd really allowed for players to be creative and make amazing ideas come true. Still wish 2nd was more mainstream.
I really think they should bring back a basic and advanced (or just expanded) version; so we have a choice of a more streamlined 5e type experience or a feature rich 3.5/pathfinder option with more choices. "Old-School Essentials" does it well; with a basic core game with an advanced ruleset that is just an addon to the original basic rules. Maybe the d&d essentials kit fits this category somewhat. It's not exactly what I mean though.
I get what you mean and agree 100%. I think 5e really brought a lot of people into the game and while I feel it's "best" edition of dnd, it's not my favorite. Being able to bridge between the success and popularity of 5e and the good things that came from previous editions would be beneficial to all
Just so this is in the comments: If you're playing 3.X, and you get knocked down by a winter wolf, as mentioned here - consider just staying down. You can still fight and especially cast spells (defensively) while prone.
In 2008 when 4th Edition was released, they were trying to harness the profitability of the MMORPG space, (kind of like they are now) and World of Warcraft commercials featured Musicians and Movie stars the likes of Ozzie Osbourne, Mr. T, William Shatner, and Vern Troyer. (Mini Me from Austin Powers fame) World of Warcraft was Immensely popular.
yes perhaps. That'd be way before my time though. Even Chainmail is something I had to research after hearing about within the last 5 years or so. Thanks for the comment.
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Playing AD&D and watching Dragon Magazine trickle out the new rules for 2e was the Golden Age for me.
I definitely miss my dragon, dungeon, (and duelist) magazines
@@AllThingsLich I managed to find PDF's of every issue including all the best of. Got White Dwarf too. Got lucky.
@@ameliaward7429 nice! You've got some good reading material ahead of you.
@@AllThingsLich Basically it will be a library for future generations. Between the mags, all the editions of D&D, all the modules, Gamma World, Traveller, Hollow World, Call of Cthulu, Pathfinder collection, etc, etc. Someone scanned it all. I tried to find the site but it is long gone. Luckily I spent days downloading and got it all. Save it for the grandkids. :)
Same here. I remember the Cavalier and the Barbarian appearing with their gorgeous art in Dragon. Loved it.
4th Edition is my favorite. As a DM, I enjoyed making both combat and non-combat situations. I always pushed my players to think outside the Box, use their abilities in ways that were unique or off the wall instead of thinking it's rigid.
As a Player, it allowed me to explore a lot of character concepts that just weren't good or prevalent in previous editions, while maintaining a relatively decent balance point. I'd say 90% of the complaints could also be directed at other editions (especially 3.5) and the other 10% are easily fixed by a DM who's read the DMG.
I don't know why but I like 1st ed...just seems to have embodied the spirit of the game. Love the artwork.
Advanced 1e is also my go to. 2e just felt like it didn't really change much, like ac, and some other stuff, but 1e just had some of the best material in my opinion. I still read the dmg a lot today! Sure, they're compatible, but man, adnd is beautiful to me. As for the nuances, they can be changed and whatnot. But, man, 1e is my go to, plus it had some of the BEST modules that ever released. Personally, temple of elemental evil, scourge of the slavelords, queen of spiders, castle greyhawk, dungeonland and the land through the magic, and then finally desert of desolation (the three separate modules, i3-i5) are all my favorite adventures.
@@asdlife2496 love the 1ed modules..Queen of the Demonweb Pits, Vault of the Drow, Against the Giants, White Plume Mountain, Expedition to the Barrier Peaks just to name a few
Same here. I think it was the pinnacle of DnD art.
I've played D&D for 30 years and played all editions and have always felt the new editions are meant to sell more books. D&D is and should always be about the adventure and the Characters. The rules are there to help drive the story. That is it.
That is one way to look at it, but that's just one angle. I have always seen 3 major camps that people tend twards: Naritivists, simulationists, gamists. I'm not the first to bring these classifications up. Some people invest just as much into DnD because of the simulation aspects or the gameplay you can't get anywhere else. I wouldn't discount the other two as being less important then story, only that story can be a preference in type of game.
I like all editions I've played. Never played 4th edition though. I like the fast pace and deadly situations of the early editions, but I relish the roleplaying and story emphasis of 5e. I find myself playing more 5e now as I introduce new players, but I mix in some older mechanics. In my older years, I just want to have a fun time telling epic stories with friends. I don't find myself too beholden to editions. Would kill for an updated Dragonlance setting though..
AD&D 1e and 2e for real adventurers not super heroes ( D&D 5..^^)
It always has been. Roleplay is a lot more present than ever and now players can build their characters instead of being so much restrictive than before.
@@Lescouzec once everyone is super no one will be. Plus it takes cahones to take on dragons and mindflayers.
I always hated the argument that D&D 4e was focused on combat to the detriment of roleplay elements. 4e's roleplay was *exactly* the same as every other edition's roleplay, it's just now you had an in-depth tactical combat system, too.
It also introduced the Skill Challenge system, which is something I still use in my 5e games. My biggest issue with 4e was that it was slow, and the first two Monster Manuals didn't help with that. But no, the game didn't give you a "card that told you how to negotiate with the NPC", you roleplayed that like every other edition and then rolled Diplomacy...like every other edition.
If someone's 4e game lacked in RP, it was their fault, not the game.
Totally agree , 4e was my favorite for most types of role and roll players. I would also add that a well oiled, veteran group of 4e players that knew their characters could move about twice as fast through combat as when they started playing, the combat is that crunchy and layered.
D&D hasn’t discouraged roleplay, but it certainly has never encouraged it either. Thus why there are wargaming grognards who think D&D is only for combat and complain about groups using “teh funnee voysez”.
I really like skill challenges.
I will always have a soft spot for AD&D 2E. I played that with my family growing up. I have so many fond memories of it.
3.0/3.5 had its flaws, and could get convoluted, but I honestly love the books from that era, and I love the bullshit you could do with your characters. Looking back on the 3e catalogue, it's hard not to think "D&D firing on all cylinders."
I don't view editions that aren't 3.0/3.5 as being strictly inferior or anything, I think the problem is just that 3.0/3.5 contains so much that it's hard to rationalize giving all of it up for what 4e or 5e have to offer (imo, anyway.) Unless, as you mentioned, the most important thing for you is "staying with the times."
3.0/3.5 provided some of my greatest D&D memories.
I like 3.5 a lot. If you are into detail though I suggest reading through some of the older rules, there are some areas where the old rules had a lot more detail that 3.0 cut out. Checkout the rules for hirelings and henchmen. A lot of that stuff could easily fit into 3.5. The way dungeon crawling involves resource management is pretty sweet too. Basic Fantasy RPG would be a good introduction to the older material: it's free, based in a more d20 system, streamlined and easy to read and learn, but with all that old school flare. For Gold and Glory is a free retroclone of AD&D2e that has the same advantages (and my personal favorite).
All those options, with all the prestige classes alone. we still play it. And 4th was just a bad joke. We took some of the adventure ideas, but stayed with 3rd/3.5/Pathfinder
I also vastly prefer 3.5/Pathfinder to any other edition. Yes, it is more complex, but I loved that complexity and depth. Every rules question was handled by the RULES (take note 5e). Monster creation and challenge rating worked and made sense. Combat could take a while or be over within a couple rounds depending on the tactics used. Dungeons were deadly and fun, and PC death was always a risk.
2e had fond memories for me, mostly in Dark Sun and Birthright, but it was very unbalanced and extremely lethal. I didn't mind those aspects much, but the classes were also pretty boring. Your character was only defined by race, class, ability scores and proficiencies. Kits helped a bit and skills and powers were a fun addition. All in all I'd say 2e was my 2nd favorite edition.
We tried 4e and were disappointed at how boring it got with the constant hit points grind of combat. That and how all the classes seemed to play the same, and you'd end up spamming the same powers over and over again every single combat. I did like the monster design aspects, but the combat itself was just way too video gamey.
5e is very similar to 4e IMO in how boring the combats can get. The 5e challenge rating system breaks down way too easily and becomes essentially useless after level 10. 5e rest system is pretty silly. Broken leg? Long rest! Bleeding out with 1 hit point? Long rest! 5e needs too much homebrew and too much DM fiat to make it playable.
Heads up, Armor Class actually stems from a wargame about ships at sea. The reason early armor class rules went from 10 to 1 was that it was like a "count down to the best and thickest armor", so a 10 would be like a little rowboat and 1 was a dreadnought (or something like that).
appreciate the clarity. Thank you kindly
"Mazes and Monsters" was absolutely made, and written (it was originally a book) to feed into the Satanic Panic over D&D. I'm old enough to remember many letters appearing in Dragon from "concerned" christian RPGers and there were several games released featuring strongly christian messages to aleviate the problem.
I am 2Ed all the way down btw, I was deeply into FR and spent a small fortune on FR stuff and the supplementary books. I still have all the editons core rule books.
My biggest issue with 5Ed is the cost, £45 (I guess over $50) is a hell of a lot of money for each book, it naturally excludes young people who simply do not have that sort of disposable income or parents who are sufficiently well off to be able to afford nearly £150 for the core books. This means we are in danger of losing an entire generation of potential players and does not bode well for the games future. Surely, (and I am happy to admit my ignorance on this) WotC/Hasboro could see their way to make these available as a downloadable file or a softback edition both of which would be cheaper options or, do they wish to be exclude entire social classes from the game?
I really think that the best thing we can do for young gamers is guide them to Basic Fantasy or other low cost retroclones.
I wish I had started there as during my teenage years I looked at the 3.5 books and saw them as wildly unattainable (even at £20-25 each) but now I have the 5e core rules and I play BFRPG far more often, even with the dent in my wallet from buying those books still being felt.
If I remember correctly, the book that inspired Mazes and Monsters was inspired partially by a newspaper article.
A real college student supposedly got lost in steam tunnels while playing D&D. Later, he committed suicide. It turned out that he never got lost in the steam tunnels. That was incorrect. He did actually commit suicide a year later.
The books do have a cost, but it's not extravagant. AD&D 1e's core books, released 1977-1979, retailed for $12-15 each, depending on how much your local Waldenbooks or wherever you'd buy from sold for. Accounting for inflation, $15 per book in 1979 comes out to over $60 per book in 2022, and we know inflation goes up way more year-to-year than wages go up. The difference between 1e and 5e(or 4e, or 3.x, or even 2e) is that 1e wasn't initially created with the idea of producing a truckload of additional books in mind, and those three books, or even just a couple more, actually WERE intended to be a game you could play for the rest of your life, rather than eventually be phased out or have a lot of the core books made obsolete by future books of the same generation.
It turns out it wasn't panic. The panic label was created by the FBI. It turns out the FBI confirmed it all real and they lied to the public about it. Look into the Finder's Cult for a starting place.
WOTC did make a free document which includes everything you need to play 5E, but yeah prices for the books are fucking stupid
I used to be a crossfiter just like you, then I took an arrow to the knee.
Haha awesome comment. Funny...I just hit a 350 paused Back Squat yesterday and low and behold..my first ever squat injury - wrecked my knee
The arrow to the knee didn’t stop me. Then again, it was an arrow to your knee, not mine, so I guess that’s understandable.
AD&D came out prior to the Mentzer Red Box version and is contemporaneous with Holmes and Molvey. The reason for the separate values for level advancement was based on game balance. Thieves were expected to advance faster than Magic users, or indeed all other classes. The drive in later editions to make all classes advance equally helped make multiclassing easier, but unbalanced the game, necessitating giving all classes powers ala 4th Ed. Very few people have played 1st edition at its crunchiest (roll every month for disease, haste spells age the use necessitating a system shock roll, polymorph causes a system shock roll, Weapon speed and casting time added to initiative dr, weapon vs armor class type modifiers, and so on). Which is understandable, the DMG is thick and oddly laid out, UA is a separate book, not to mention the Manual of Planes, Wilderness Survival Guide and Dungeoneers Survival Guide.
Oh, and Ravenloft came out in 1983, so is a 1st edition book. The Ravenloft campaign setting came out in 1990 for the 2nd Edition.
Not to mention, thieves had a 1d6 hit die and not much in the way of armor. Fighters and the like were more durable, thus more likely to survive. If your thief bit it (which was very likely), your new thief needed to catch back up pretty damned quick... thus why they leveled faster.
Ahhh, system shock! Back when magic had negative side effects ... that everyone conveniently "forgot" come later editions ... which totally unbalanced casters :\
I used to DM 3.5 for my college friends, and build frenzy was a huge thing for them. They loved combining classes, prestige classes, feats, and magic items to deal heavy amounts of damage. Sadly, that mentality is way too common in 5th edition. I often see posts on Reddit or Facebook asking how to build the best of X (where X is healing, tanking, or damage), and I hate it. I would never allow coffee 'locks or any gimmicky builds if I were to return to being a dungeon master. I like 5th edition for making every subclass unique (except for Hunter and Monster Hunter for the Ranger), but a subclass should not exist purely to multiclass splash into another class.
Good take. I'm with you on the best build sort of thing. It irks me but I get it. Whether from video game mentality or a desire to play and be the best version possible, I get it, but..it does ruffle my feather's a bit. Thanks for the comment.
perhaps its because they don't want to let the team down in combat, they don't want to be the one who in combat repeatedly fails to carry there weight Or they dnt know what rp is.
The class/race/EXP restrictions from OD&D helped to differentiate characters and bring nuance to the game world. It's easier to be a thief than it is to be a paladin or a magic user, but the rewards for that easy path are fewer. Those restrictions help to describe the game world. It's intuitive that you're not going to find paladins and magic users in every tavern. The powerful ones will be influential in society. The ones with higher ability will progress faster, as it is in real life. This brings a built-in challenge mechanic. If you want a harder time of things, you can play a character with suboptimal stats. Now go to 5e, where it doesn't matter what your race or class is or what your stats are, your character is one of several slightly different flavors of monster murdering machine. In that implied setting, half-firbolg half-air-genasi artificer monk clerics are every bit as remarkable or unremarkable as everyone else. In that implied setting, rather than being interesting avenues for roleplay, race and class have generally no impact at all. What happens is that everyone basically plays a human in a creature costume, because it doesn't matter.
Level caps are fantastic. That's when a character retires and is melded with the game world, and can live on as an influential NPC, and remind the players of the history of their game world. The lethality of OD&D meant that it was very difficult to get to that point in the first place, and it was an achievement. You had to be very lucky and a good player to get even to level 8. Now in 5e, when you roll up ... er, I mean, assign stats to your level 1 ... er, I mean, level 3 character, you can expect to reach level 20 as long as the group remains interested in the campaign.
Finally, as the years have gone by with each successive edition, DMs are being taught less and less to make the game their own. Now they're being instructed on how to fill each session with X number of fairly balanced encounters. In OD&D, because the rules were much less codified, you could more easily say, "Dwarven cleric? Sure!" And you could have the party encounter a troll at level 2, but with the object of the encounter not being monster murder as it always is these days, but negotiation or stealth or something like that. If the DM was good at his job and foreshadowed how deadly trolls are, and the PCs decided to fight it anyway, they soon learned their lesson, and the game had a dimension of danger and challenge to it.
extremely well said and the more minutes go by where I consider this video and the release (and discussion of) Tasha's, the more I'm inclined to agree with you 100%. Thanks for the comment Evan
What a long wall of text to say nothing but a crock of shit.
@@kateslate3228 Sometimes when we're confronted by things we've never thought of before it can be scary or even painful. I look forward to your well thought out counter argument.
Let's all be nice and see where this goes! And yes, a follow up vid is on the mind. I'm currently deep in the mud of my world setting so things outside of that book are moving at sloth speed.
I think so! This mechanic gives more realistic, makes you think and feel value.
11:45 Ravenloft was first released as an adventure module for 1st edition (I6 Ravenloft), created by Laura & Tracy Hickman
I'm not going to lie, I really enjoy 4e. I started with 5e, and when my DM recommended 3.5 I... wasn't a fan. I can't remember who said it, but I think if 4e wasnt dnd, it would have been taken a lot better. It came off of the heels of 3.5, one of the most invested editions ever, I don't know if any edition would have been taken well
Very well said. As I play through D&D's many editions and settle into campaign after campaign of 5e, many of the things from 4e are starting to grow on me. Enough so, that I'll speak heresy right now. I think I like it more than 5e........
@joshua H -- Part of the issue with 4th Edition for me, is not that it was a bad edition, but around that time, Gygax had died, and he did not have any voice in D&D's mechanics in the 4th Edition, and it felt like it embraced a "position-based, dumbed-down video game" version of Dungeons and Dragons. Which functioned as a drastic departure from its 1st, 2nd, and even 3rd Edition predecessors.
It was also the ONLY edition that I bought not 1 book for, and that says a lot, because I actually worked for Wizards retail during the 3rd Edition roll-out, and I was really let down by what took the time to glance over.
Ravenloft first appeared as a module for what is nowadays called 1st edition. I know, I bought the module when it came out. I own it. I never bought D&D 2nd ed.
I got the 2nd Edition Ravenloft boxed set. It was pretty good with helpful ideas about running a horror/suspense type of game.
Wasn't that module set in Greyhawk?
The one thing I hope everyone can agree on is that D&D is always evolving.
Now, weather we like the end product or not is up to personal taste.
I for one can see good parts in each of the editions that I have played in, but bay far the most important part of gaming is hanging out with a pack of nerds and rolling some dice.
My 8 year old daughter has a very hard time concentrating, so I decided I would get back into the game, she has improved 10fold, which is really the side benefit, best part is we do this together, even the wife and older daughter will play now n then.
Level limits on races in 1e meant that non-human characters would be more rare. In 5e, you can easily have a whole party with no humans. They’re one of the few races that doesn’t have darkvision.
Played them all, still enjoy the 1st edition. You really had to use all those nuances to make progress, that was hard, was so much more then your basic hack and slash. You had to plan things out and adapt. As the editions that followed, the classes became less unique and you got stuck in a role that cookie cuttered you to playing the same way every time.
I was all about the 1st edition, I liked the way it was. As always though if you dont like a rule dont use it, if you group comes up with a cool idea feel free to use it. I always found it to be a freeform system and I thing that was its biggest charm. I also liked the basic boxed sets because it felt like it was a whole lifetime , you went from a young person all the way to almost becoming a demi god.
I'll be doing an updated video and further discussion related to this video. It's' gained some good traction.
Anyone that has fixed and accurate timeline info, send it my way please. I'd like to improve the information on the next video!
Thanks
This is a good video, you know.
Accurate Timeline: Chainmail, 0e, Holmes Basic, 1e, BX, BECMI, 2e, Rules Cyclopedia, 3e, 3.5, 4e, 5e
I was 14 years old when I played first edition with my brother and his friend from junior HS and even though most people dump on 4E because it was too tactical or not enough role playing or whatever nonsense people say, if you have a good DM, even 4e will be fun. The most fun I had was a 4E campaign with a DM who used the old 2nd edition modules and settings like Dragonlance using 4E rules. We had a blast
@@arielcarmona6660 Agreed that DMs can override any issues with system or world.
1st edition: Personally I still like the race/class limitations. I think it adds flavor to the cultures of the races by making certain classes exclusive to certain races. This was also a way to make humans more desirable to play given the stat disadvantages they had. The uneven advancement was terrible and there were too many disconnected game mechanics.
2nd edition: did not get rid of sexually suggestive art, evil characters were still possible and they just stopped using the "Demon" and "Devil" words. All of the Demons and Devils were still in the monster manuals. Those criticisms are typical of people who had a 1sd edition bias and never played 2nd edition. The bad was all the extraneous books and customization. The cost and availability of miniatures was also prohibitive.
3rd edition: the best things about it was the cohesion of D20 system. The game was initially badly unbalanced but it was a good thing that character advancement was unified.
4th edition: the good was making spell like powers available to every class was awesome but role-playing was pushed into the background.
5th Edition: possibly the easiest version of the game to learn and teach with others but it lacks some of the realistic rules and detail of prior editions. Some of the best 1st a day third party product support. While miniature play is entirely optional, there are multiple avenues to acquire and customize miniatures at multiple price points. The game, as written, is a little too easy on players.
A lot of this stuff is way off. The satanic panic was over before 2e came out. Forgotten Realms came out during 1e, not 3e. It was essentially the default setting for 2e while 3e went back to Greyhawk for the default setting. The use of miniatures goes back to the 70s and there were rules in 2nd edition that really assumed miniatures were available, it was just not something you had to have and could be hand-waved if the DM chose. 4e simply required you have miniatures to play.
Appreciate the corrections
Almost Everything you said negatively about 1st edition is wrong. Thieves died quickly, so low XP levels let new characters catch up. If paladins and fighters had same Xperia requirements, why would anyone chose a basic fighter without all the bonuses? Why cap levels/classes for races - because they live forever. Say a fighter took 20 game years to make it to 20th level, what is an elf going to look like after adventuring for 800?
OG DM here. 40 years, yeah, I'm old. Interesting discussion, although you might want to research your D&D history a bit more. There was some misinformation here.
Regardless, there is no doubt the hobby is in an amazing place right now. I am saddened by the fact that Gygax and Arneson died before seeing D&D and RPGs becoming "Geek Chic." Hopefully, the good times will keep rolling.
Thanks for the video :)
Thanks for the comment and good lookin' out for appropriate info!
I'm 35 and some of my first memories were going through my dad's AD&D Monster Manual. The one with the Red Dragon on the front. Good times.
I agree. AD &D was not 1st edition. That was the "White Box" plus the 3 books starting with Grayhawk, which introduced the Theif class. My first DM was the creator of the original D&D vampire. (True story) Yup, I am a Keeper of Ancient Geekdom.😄
@@PlanetZoidstar I don't know what makes me more sad - the fact that I could almost be your father or that most people will never know the joy of reading those original 1st edition AD&D books. The monster manual is so awesome! I know most people like the original covers better; However, I love the reprint covers myself. Especially the Red Dragon cover of the MM.
@@gygeson5888 It's nice to hear from someone who was there when D&D was new like my dad, as he played back in the 70s and early 80s and still has alot of those AD&D books, Monster Manual and also the Fiend Folio. It is a real shame like you say that most people will never get to read those long out-of-print books. I recall being confused what "See-Below" meant when it popped up in the monster stat blocks. Being 8 or so I didn't get it until it meant to "See Below" for an in-depth description.
The updated covers are really cool and detailed, but I prefer the originals, mostly for nostalgia, but also because they feel more personal. Less like something done by a an artist employed by a faceless corporation and more like something drawn by someone on that original creative team with Gary Gygax and Co.
That Red Dragon is almost as iconic as the demonic statue with the ruby eyes.
Great video, man! I've never played but I bought a handful of older rulebooks as a kid and I used to love reading them. They really sparked the imagination.
Thank you! Once you play, you're hooked for life (assuming you find the right group and get off with the right experience). Here's to hoping you "find your game" someday and thanks for the comment.
I was 12 when my best friend to this day introduced me to AD&D. (First Edition). We don’t play it as much as we did back then, but we are both 54 now and still play this edition to this day. Whatever edition you like and are familiar with is your edition. ;).
very well said.
I've been obsessed with D&D since I was about 10, (I'm 30 now!) and the various versions have always interested me. My collection is mainly 3E/3.5E. I have both sets of Core Rulebooks, (and an extra set of 3.5 Rulebooks that my buddy left years ago), Player's Handbook II, Monster Manual II, a couple spellbooks, and my favorite, The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. I aslo have two sets of the Advanced D&D Second Edition Forgotten Realms box, but that's it for AD&D.
I ignored 4E (but grabbed the Starter box for fun.) I just started getting back into it when I joined a group in 2019. Our DM said we could use his books but I went out and bought the 5E Player's Handbook. A month later I picked up the 5E DM Guide and Monster Manual. I also have Descent Into Avernus Special Edition cover.
Disappointed that the best version of the game, the Basic/B/X/BECMI/Mentzer strain of the game, was simply not mentioned, especially since my hope is that Basic / Classic D&D will influence the idea of “what’s not in it” the most.
The crunch of 3.5 was its strength and appeal.
Congrats on 250 subs. Nice video, dude thanks for the content.
Thank you. Thank you. I'm high society now!
@@AllThingsLich in the words of Hulk Hogan, "HELL YEAH BROTHER"
I grew up with marveling at the wall of used 3.5 books at my local used bookstore, until 5e matches that it will play second chair.
3.5 was insane in that department. Though I do see 5e gaining ground. Tons of books and I see no end in sight
New to your channel, great video!
I honestly miss asymmetrical leveling, when the really good classes would level up slowly. I miss class limits on races, and I miss prime requisites. That being said, I don't think they are coming back.
Homebrew it?
@@kimwidol lol yeah let’s try that. “Wait so you’re saying he gets to be an elf but I can’t.“ “Yeah sorry but only one elf per party”
Everyone could be an elf in the party, you just were level capped.
I've previously commented on this video before but I think I want to touch up on it again, specifically about 4e. 4th Edition was specifically designed from the ground up to address the issues that were plaguing 3e/3.5 and you could see a number of ideas that would coalesce into 4e with other WotC games of the time such as Star Wars d20/Saga and even in D&D with the Book of Nine Swords. And it wasn't like the game was hiding out what it was when they talked about it a fair bit on their forums and even released two books ("Wizards Presents Races and Classes" and "Wizards Presents Worlds and Monsters") where they touched on their design process and why they were making the changes for the new edition.
1) Clerics and other divine spellcasters (healers) felt too needed for a group and reduced the game to "15 minute adventuring days" at lower levels
2) Wizards (and literally any spellcaster) just outshone non-spellcasters in just what they could do after around level 6
3) At the same token Wizards and most other spellcaster were incredibly weak at low level
4) Skills were incredibly wonky and tied into other skills in ways that make some logical sense but made people just keep scratching their head as to why they couldn't just be one skill (spot, search, listen being the big ones)
5) Some races were just not played very much because they were just bad, whether that was due to stat penalties or their lore that didn't make them interesting or way to cringey (Half-Orcs were a double-whammy of bad lore and bad stats for instance)
6) Tons of players were reporting they were playing other races at incredibly common rates, chiefly Tieflings and pretty much any draconic race (ESPECIALLY half-dragons)
7) The settings themselves were becoming way too bogged down in their own lore which made many D&D players either not want to play in those settings or you would run into a lore-lawyer who stopped games when the DM misstated which copper dragon lived in the Cliffs of Drejar
8) Not only were the settings lore-dense they were also "really heavily mapped out" and people were hitting disconnects as to why they were fighting random orcs on a road that the map made out to be a MAJOR highway and one that should be really well maintained and defended
9) The problem of "why not just get X or Y NPC to just fix this?"
10) Way too many "trap options" that look good at the surface level but do NOT pan out at all long term (Toughness, for instance, was a feat that Monte Cook himself called out as bad and that should have had a disclaimer of "use only on an elf wizard at level 1 for one shot games" or how anything that lowered your chance to crit like rapier)
11) And, lastly, too many classes stepping on other classes toes in what they would do in combat unless someone built a very niche build
These were all complaints being leveled in forums both official and non-official and which WotC was eager to tackle. Couple this with Hasbro threatening to shut down everything D&D related and make WotC only focus on Magic the Gathering you can see why they were desperate to do something. So they discussed with the public and developed 4e to address a lot of the problems people were constantly complaining about online and what happened? It sold really well! Not as well as they might have hoped but whenever pressed on it the people at Hasbro and WotC will only say that 4e did sell better than 3e but my guess it did so mostly thanks to the DDI account membership fees since it was supposed to have a LOT of online stuff with it too which got pushed back because of a tragic double murder and suicide perpetrated by the guy in charge of the online content for 4e.
Truth be told, I've played every edition now (even a one shot of Original D&D) and to this day I still contend 4e is the best version, especially with the additional rules that came out later in it's life (Monster Vault and MM3, backgrounds, themes, alternate racial ability scores and powers, and all of the new classes, paragon paths, and epic destinies) since it's the first edition where I 100% believe I'm a hero right out of the box and never had to just be "okay" or go for very peculiar playstyles/builds (chain trip fighter from 3e for instance) and which finally made my group play as, well, a group and not as a bunch of ragamuffins who just so happened to be on the same quest until suddenly the wizard is summoning Celestial Black Bears and flying around the battlefield dropping fireballs and chain lightning spells and the rest of the party just stood back and watched. /rant
Thanks for the comment. Well said on many points and I'm starting to lean towards 4e myself.
I loved and still love 4E.
In 3.X there was a prerequisite that you required Ambidexterity before you could take Two-Weapon Fighting.
I like my characters to have a good back story and a personality as opposed to being a one dimensional set of min-maxed stats. They're not the most powerful build possible but they have distinctive personalities that make them memorable. Too many players sacrifice role playing for roll playing.
My playing time (vs. doing time) is sparse there days but I'm with ya. I love flawed and less than optimal characters. So much so that I don't even bother looking around for (what makes my character better)
I've been playing for 11 years and have been a DM for 9 years. I DM 3.5 and have played many games in 3e and 5e. I enjoy 3.5 most of all over the other two, but I have to sat 5th is just as fun because it is still dnd and dnd is just fun.
I definitely see the benefits of 5th edition. Most notable is how easy it can be for new players to join in overall. Personally I don't have much of a problem with that with 3.5, as complex as it may be, because I think it's all about how you present the game to new players. I also don't pull out any other books with new players. Instead relying solely on the core books for their first games.
The biggest reasons I like 3.5 more than 5e is because it feels like you can make your characters much more flushed out. As you gain levels in 3.5 you get skill points, feats, ability points and, of course, class special abilities and spells. On the other hand with my experience in 5e it seems very basic. You tend to get one or three abilities per level and it never seems as climatic. As for skills, I like how 5e is more simplistic but I like how you can have to characters of the same class in 3.5 that feel very different because of their feats and the ranks they have distributed in their skills. While I'm thinking of it, I do notice most people like stealth being one skill rather than a hide and move silently. However, I believe someone can hide very well, yet be a noisy dolt and vice versa.
Most importantly though, the thing that I strongly dislike the most about 5e, is proficiency bonus. To me, if makes me feel that if I'm playing a fighter with a +2 strength and the wizard of the same level has the same strength and wielding the same weapon, we basically have the same chance to hit and deal the same damage. I much preferred the base attack system and base saving throws in 3.5. It made each class feel different on their ability to strike an enemy in melee or ranged. It made a wizard more reliant on spells since he couldn't hit as constantly as the fighter could of the same level and strength score.
Anyways, just rambling like you, but felt like I wanted to throw my d20 cents into here.
Jesse! Thanks for the comment. Some really good takes and input in there and though you call it rambling, it's appreciated.
I like your points on not grabbing too many books and trying to keep things as basic as possible, while also being able to squeeze simplicity out of any system by simply approaching it the appropriate way.
I also do like the nuances between characters and distinction offered with skills ranks and such. And that's a really interesting point on the bit about wizards feeling very fightery with the default proficiency bonus and maybe looking into squeezing a bit more uniqueness and variety from one class to the next.
All told, points understood and well said.
@@AllThingsLich I have learned to appreciate each edition and take things from them. For instance, I use inspiration in my 3.5 games. Adds some interesting events!
So, it sounds to me like what you really miss about 3/3.5 is the ability to roleplay., and I totally agree. I haven't played a lot of 4 or 5, but dnd for me was always at its best roleplaying, not always combat.
Yes it's what I miss most. You can obviously roleplay in any rpg but with 5e, the rules and mechanics are so geared towards "builds". Most of a character sheet deals with combat, therefore, you kinda head in that direction.
4e was like that but it knew what it was and wasn't trying to give you anything else. 5e is overall my favorite dnd edition (and I think best) but it is slowly starting to grind on me just a bit.
I'll have to video my dislikes in a new video soon.
Thanks for watching and comments
What makes you say that 3/3.5e is better for roleplaying than 5e? I've played both (although I have't played 3.5 as much as 5), and I'd say that 5e is slightly better than 3.5e for roleplaying, mainly because of how it makes backgrounds important.
@@benl2140 agree and this is always a take that I never really understood to the point where it's become annoying to hear it parroted. Having started with 3.5 and played 4e and 5e, there is nothing different in my experience between the editions in terms of my ability to roleplay or have more/less utility out of combat - yes, even with 4th edition. In my experience, outside of combat, there are always skills you can utilize, non-combat abilities/feats that are available, and, y'know, your own brain and mouth to actually play your character and roleplay. I legitimately had full sessions in 4e where we had no combat at all aside from like two skill challenges, same for 5e, and no one batted an eye or was itching to role initiative to "feel useful with their power cards" or whatever.
The power system of 4e or the more hybrid of 3rd and 4e system of 5e were just ways they handled character abilities, the same way much of 3rd edition is strictly hack and slash or spellcasting until you get into the crunch of special abilities of prestige classes or non-core classes out of supplements like Tome of Battle. I genuinely think that people just see 4e/5e having a more defined rules system of how abilities/attacks work and jump to the conclusion that the editions are therefore combat-based and the combat is center stage, when imo it was just the edition giving hard rules for the sake of clarity not present in 3rd edition and prevent certain abuse cases as well. And similarly they see the simplification of things like skill progression and come to the same conclusion, when really it's just making thing simpler and less munchkin-y; the roleplay and out of combat aspects are just as much present.
@@Mrryn I'm not sure what you're talking about: 3.5e has _way_ more defined rules for combat than 5e. i.e. the section in the 5e PHB on grappling is less than a quarter of a page. In the 3.5e PHB, it's almost a page and a half.
@@benl2140 I was referring moreso to action economy in terms of combat system. And length does not necessarily equal being more defined - you can pose the same question "can I do X if Y?" to both editions, with one saying "well it depends, if X is Z and Y is Z +/- 1 but not if Z is W," etc., and the other saying "No unless you have a feat or feature that says otherwise." One is more description and flexible but the other is clearly defined.
I've played most editions but I liked BCEMI and 4th edition the most. I still play those two editions, and are pretty much my go to fantasy RPGs, along with The One Ring when I want to delve into Middle Earth.
BECMI is my preference. The restrictions listed in the video are bonuses to me, helping certify D&D as a specific fantasy. The further AD&D got in editions, the more micromanagey and codified it became on its way of failing to become a universal fantasy engine, which I’d rather play instead. Skills just felt like ability checks with extra steps. 4E is possibly the greatest edition…. of Chainmail ever made.
But honestly, who still plays 3.0 exclusively? It wasn’t long before 3.5 replaced it, so only that should count as 3E.
>Inevitable "4e was done to make Warcraft: The D&D Edition" claim.
Godsdammit I am so fething SICK of this damn claim. No, it wasn't. Roles were not added to "make the game more videogame like". They were done to create a framework to eradicate the Tiers problem of 3rd edition, where you had classes that ranged from "all powerful" to "useless unless you metagame like a boss" - they were also built specifically because D&D had built up the tradition of "the party needs a Fighter, a Thief, a Mage and a Cleric", and so WotC decided to look at WHY that happened and what could be learned from it. The AEDU system was built to end the discrepancy between the martial and spellcaster classes, and even it wasn't unprecedented; classes having abilities that can be used X times per Y time period goes all the way back to the original Paladin and the Thief's Backstab and even 3e's Barbarian's Rage. And classes were not cookie cutter identical. The power layout was simplified so it could be read easily, yes, but each class's powers had their own distinctive traits. Even in the same Role, a Fighter and their focus on powerful physical strikes, manhandling foes and reliability, with many powers that only expend if they're pulled off successfully, was not the same as the teleporting, elemental damage-focused, close-to-midranged Swordmage, which wasn't the same as the aura-emanating Paladin or the shapeshifting Warden. 4th edition HAD its problems, I don't deny that. But so many "problems" are actually lies that have been floating around the internet with no basis literally since 2008. I'm sick of them.
And by the way, Warcraft HAD a D&D conversion. It had two of them, in fact, both done by White Wolf - one for 3.0, done to build off of lore back when the most recent Warcraft games were Warcraft 3 and The Frozen Throne, and World of Warcraft D20, which was done before the first Warcraft expansion, so sadly whilst it converted or invented many playable races, it never did get uncorrupted Draenei, one of Warcraft's best inventions.
I would really like to see another attempt at 4th edition. I genuinely enjoyed it and now find the reversion backwards with 5th as just boring as hell.
I didn't really get to get into tabletops till 5th, but from what I hear and have seen. I think 4th was simply disliked because it was not 3.5. Hell Pathfinder 1e exist because people loved 3.5 style that much. I think if 5 came out immediately after 3.5 it would have crashed too.
I love 4th. the key is to add role-playing to every encounters. Do skill checks or RP combat if you randomly bump into 2 dudes
Yea I'm a fan lately as well, as mentioned in my update video. Good advice in adding RP specific bits at intervals.
@@AllThingsLich I like to make sure combat has something going like... big bad boss will take an hour to kill, or you break the dam to kill him but also flood the town you've spent 4 sit downs in, or something where peoples feats and skill checks can come into place. I havent DMed in 6 years or dnded in 4. First game tomorrow, so watching some dnd videos to get the rust off. Good vid, man. Too many people are too into one edition and crap over the others.
@@braydenb1581 I feel you. Good luck on your journeys. Dismissing other editions is akin to admitting that you know it all and want to stop learning. There's something to be taken away from EVERY edition of D&D.
Amazing video, thank you for sharing.
You're welcome. Thank you
Intend your puns, dammit
3.5 is where I started. I quickly found that I loved how many third party publishers were putting out compatible books. I loved Iron Kingdoms, Etherscope, and Dragonmech, among others. I really loved how easy to pick up and play 4e was. I haven't gotten into 5th. Great video. Brought back some great memories. The funniest thing to me is your mention of WoW. When I was running my 3.5 stuff with my regular group, a couple of them were getting into WoW and wanted me to incorporate elements of WoW into my campaign setting. I decided to give them what they seemed to want and went out and bought the 3.5 compatible WoW tabletop books. My players weren't interested and those books still sit collecting dust on my shelf.
I remember a little bit about Iron Kingdoms. Etherscope and dragonmech, not so much.
Sounds interesting though. Maybe I'll have to do some detective work and check them out.
Thank you for your comment
It's funny that you say "that iconic dwarven cleric" because to me, it's always been "that iconic human cleric"
Dwarves are so resilient though!
1st Edition had great balance, and the limitations placed roll playing in the forefront.
I understand why for roleplayong reasons, the first edition d&d class and race limitations were a thing.
Like imagine a halfling fighter being as strong as an orc fighter.. it just doesn't make sense lol. So I understand why they stopped them at lvl 8
Thanks for the comment. Never thought of it that way. The upcoming Tasha's book is going to throw a wrench in all of this anyway!
@@AllThingsLich yeah Tasha's book is looking like its going to be wild lol. You should make a vid on it. If you haven't already. Just finished ur vid and gonna sub. Also hopefully u make the second part to this vid like u promised in a previous comment I just read 😅
@@sonic-bb thank you for the sub. Of course I'll be doing a video on Tasha's. I do a spotlight on every single officially released book (at least these days). As to making a new video...the wheels are turning my friend.
Thanks again for your interest!
@@AllThingsLich sweeet! x) and forsure bro I'll make sure to check it all out :)
Except an Orc is going to very easily have more Strength and deal more damage per round even if they were the same level, I think the class and level restrictions were a bit extreme.
What about a Human Fighter being stronger than an Orc Fighter or a Human Mage being more magically adept than an Elven Mage, or a Human Rogue being more skillful than a Halfling Rogue or a Human you know what I'm saying here.
Maybe if it wasn't so Human-central I would have received it better.
i played since 1978 and the worst thing was a rule policing DM. even the books call the rules more of a guideline.
Loved the number of books, classes, and rebuild of the core D&D game offered, but the DM’s job is to make it concise. Characters can and should be created under 10 min and maybe only 5. Forget the ability scores themselves, they don’t mean as much as you think, you really only need to know the bonuses they offer. Feats and proficiency’s? - how do you envision your character? - Boom, pick several feats and profs to match and let’s go. As a DM give reasonable challenge ratings, forget the modifiers as those should all be in the CR calculation, let the player add theirs, go for it and move on. If they forget a bonus or item, well their character was distracted at the time and move on. Basically don’t let the rules/tables/dice interfere with gameplay and a fun time.
I found nothing redeeming in 3 or 3.5. I bought the books, but never played it. It's was just stupid detailed. 5e feels like a superhero RPG. The characters are so damn OP.
Squat, bench, dead, row, ohp, chins** small correction ;)
3rd will always be my favorite, it was my first experience. I have been stuck as a forever dm but finally getting to play a pc in 5e. 5e is surprisingly fun, I'm loving my character and the mechanics
You've inspired a possible video. Kind of talking about which versions might be more enjoyable to DM versus being a player in
In order: Chainmail, D&D Box(Basic), D&D(Advanced) (considered 1st edition, just known as AD&D), 2nd Ed....etc. I pretty much stopped with AD&D but did dabble a couple times with 2nd Ed....I'll still take AD&D any day.
The latest months I have;
1. Gamelead Tomb of Horrors as a 70s convention RPG, urging my playgroup to try to come into the very mindset of that era, while I lead the whole thing using AD&D 1st edition rules. Inspired by that I have also prepared myself to play the classic computergame Pools of Radiance.
2. Traced monsters from the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy computer games (1991) back to the 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums (1989) while looking deep into how they match up with 2e rules. This also meant digging into the Ruins of Undermountain and The Ruins of Myth Drannor sourcebooks for 2nd Edition.
3. Continued to trace the monsters from Eye of the Beholder way back through Original D&D and 1st Edition just out of curiosity to see how far back they went, but ended up sidetracked by reading Chainmail, while being amused by early 80s Dungeon Magazine articles.
4. Inspired by Chainmail I went forth to read 4th Edition to appreciate it as a tactical combat system for a board game, while doing some appreciation of ~2008-2012 history with the help of some retrospective videos on youtube.
5. Inspired by 4th Edition I read Dark Sun 4th Edition and enjoyed it.
6. I also spent a bunch of time reading up on the v3.5 rules while I was playing through Neverwinter Nights 2: Mysteries of Westgate and Storm of Zehir.
7. And I spent a bunch of time reading up on 5e while I was playing Solasta: Crown of the Magister.
1st-2nd Edition crossover was also when we got all the joys of the Dragonlance stories!!!!
Oh Dragonlance. Kender! And the art was always brilliant
I liked AD&D best. But played 2nd edition the most by far. Played nothing between 2nd and 5th.
Ad&d 1ed is the best. The rest of the editions made it for the stupid.
i like AD@D first edition
Ravenloft was available in 1st Edition.
I6 Castle Ravenloft was 1st edition.
I like AD&D 1e, reason one being that I've always adored 0 to hero type games and 1e is perfect for that, since characters are way weaker than modern editions but can end up snowballing at high levels. Monsters feel actually dangerous because of this, meaning players have to be creative in the ways they deal with them. It also helps that 1e isn't as min-maxy as the other editions, there's not really any "builds" per se, you just roll up a character and go with what you get.
1e is also way more sandbox-y than other editions due to the emphasis placed on map traversal, the dungeon, and the dozens upon dozens of random factors like monster encounters and treasure. There's also tons of optional rules too, throw out the ones you don't like and mess around with the ones you like. This makes 1e feel like a toolkit and gives both the DM and players tremendous creative freedom.
Some more miscellaneous points are that skill checks don't exist meaning the players can just roleplay their actions. After all does it make sense for an acrobat to randomly critical fumble something he's been trained for years to do? Also combat is short and sweet since there's not really any class abilities, 5e combat in particular drags on forever due to how many abilities the classes get. The dungeon part of the name is actually the primary focus, as the editions went on it felt like dungeons kind of got backseated in favor of sweeping narratives.
Last point I have to make is in the initiative system, you can actually perform combos with your team mates since initiative is for the whole group rather than the individual, meaning if you want to do something that hinges on another player's spell or action you won't get screwed over by turn order.
4th edition was a money grab just as the market crashed and was just a bad time. Classic players questioned changes in 3rd seeing this - Change in AC calculation, class switching, and massive HP gains. Some of these are good, just depends on the game style you play. 4th went over the top and wanted you to buy the mini’s, terrain, etc. buy, buy, buy at a time when people were losing their homes.
My guess is 6th addition will be Virtual Table Top (VTT) focused. If you think about the low hanging fruit in that space it's vast. Just look at the content on steam workshop for games. They could build a VTT that could allow the player base to the create epic 3d adventures you could virtually walk through. In theory combining the best aspects of a table top role playing with visual and auditory aspects of a 3d world. With DLC licenses they could bank.
I started with AD&D aka 1e, to me 5e is easy mode. All the the things you outline as negative are what made it great to me you had to make choices and the stakes were high. Plus I have yet to meet anyone that didn't use house rules for AD&D. For the most part we ditched all the cumbersome rules or relaxed them as needed. Typically it was somewhat similar to the a hybrid of Basic and AD&D.
I think you nailed it when spoke to measuring it vs what you started with. I'm still digesting 5th edition and I'm more of spectator that participant. Oddly because of the evil that's is Amazon have way to much money in a dice collection.
While my local group didn't play with miniatures they predated AD&D. We didn't use them because when I played starting around 8-14 years old they were just too costly. I had a few as did most of buddies but at most we used them as a static avatar. As I recall many of the popular monsters were represented. The books were $10-25 each back in the day. Modules were $8-15. Just for some perspective that was when normal movie ticket was around $2-$5. It was a fairly expensive game, so in that regard not much has changed.
Well said. Thanks for the comment. I can see how there's a big push for VTT. I hope it doesn't go there because in my opinion, the greatest element of D&D is sitting around (hopefully) like-minded people and sharing that experience in person.
Good video. I played hundreds of hours of AD&D 1E when it was current. The Satanic Panic was under 1E and not 2, as was the suicide panic giving birth to the Tom Hanks made for TV movie Mazes & Monsters. Ravenloft also came out of 1E but was not a setting until 2E. 2E in 1989 was a great cleanup of the rules, which had been a mess but it made it both mom friendly by stripping out the spicier things and also ripped out the Gygax feel and Greyhawk setting. The result was a bland and tepid edition without the feel it had. Now, it needed to do some of these things because 1E came out to a crowd of players that were adults in college or middle aged wargamers. 2E came out and the game was long since a game for 12+ or even younger at times.
Does Pathfinder 1e have pretty much the same strengths and weaknesses as 3.5? Because I've played a good bit of Pathfinder and 5e and I feel that Pathfinder did streamline skills a bit, just not as much as 5e did.
Path 1e cleaned up a lot of the bloat from 3.0/3.5 I my memory serves. I think both are great value for your table. It depends on what you are looking for in your game and where you want the crunch and details.
I prefer 3e, 3.5, PF 1e because of the D20 system it's highly detailed & there's an abundance of material available .There's numerous variable rules for every rule in 3e & ya can still ignore them all if ya want. I like that classes feel unique & individualistic from one another. It's also really easy to correct the "see-saw balance" between classes , ex 1st lvl Fighter vs 1st lvl Wizard compared to 20th level Fighter vs 20th level Wizard. The biggest issue with 3e, 3.5, PF1e & the D20 system is knowing what not to allow in your campaign. It's inevitable a GM is gonna have to exclude a lot of material or broken combinations.. Ravenloft was 1st introduced as a module for AD&D 1e. I see lot of others got on ya about history so I'm not gonna go on about it. I'm sure you've looked into it since this was filmed. Thanks for sharing your perspectives, cheers!
thanks for watching and your comment. And thanks for not beating that dead horse. =) Yes, I've looked into it! Cheers!
I watched your video with pleasure, thanks :)
What you think about Pathfinder 2e as a reference for D&D 5.5/6?
As I'm always in the headspace of 6th edition and what I could/what I want it to be, I need to check out pathfinder 2.0. I'm familiar with paizo and pathfinder just never delved into the crunch and system of it all.
I like your presentation style but it doesn't look like you've done much research into OD&D at all. The evolution from Chainmail through the Rules Cyclopedia for "original" or "classic" D&D is fascinating and of fundamental importance to future editions. You really should read Playing At The World for a scholarly study on D&D's origins. There are just too many historical inaccuracies for me watch this entire video.
Thanks for watching!
Definitely an “abridged history of AD&D”. I was a friend of a D&D player (Gary Switzer (now deceased)) who (along with his D&D gaming group which included the first editor of the D&D rule set) literally created the thief class and managed to have his character class added to D&D by E. Gary Gygax. We recently returned to playing AD&D and we only play its first edition as we retain our original books.
@@inhocsignovinces1419 sir, if you don't mind, would you be opposed to me talking and/or interviewing you at some point? I'm fascinated with that exact story and have found very little information on it, clearly one of the best sources is someone who was there
I played endless hours of 1E. Different classes needed different XP per level in 1E and 2E because they were of vastly different levels of effectiveness. Thieves were massively nerfed. Paladins rocked. Magic users eventually owned everything. I HATED the class level limits where humans had unlimited progression in every class. IIRC dwarves could only go to 8th in fighter. You would think everyone would have clerics, but nope. Halflings had no level cap in thief but could not enter many classes and had level limits like 3 in others. So every time you saw a halfling you knew he was a thief, but thieves were useless at doing anything but climbing, at which halflings had a big penalty. Needing different XP per level made parties a lot less unbalanced by class. It did not get too bad because XP required to level was huge and jumped in big leaps at each level and so party members were only 0 to 2 levels apart. Honestly, I am not sure why everyone plays D&D when there are so many games out there and some groups would like a few of them more than D&D. Some groups would still like D&D best if exposed to everything but a lot of people put a lot of working into making D&D's square peg fit the round hole they want it in.
Basic for me, it is anything but basic of course but it leaves a lot of room for house rules and advancement of your characters towards being Kings and even gods. I do like that.
This is the BEST analysis I've seen yet. Honest and knowledgeable. Thank you.
Thank you! I've been told by many of my errors in "d&d history" and accuracy but regardless, always just trying to help. Thanks for the words!
I started with basic, 2nd ed etc. I loved and played every edition since. For a year now I've been into old school again. I've had to homebrew a decent amount. Actually i first build the thing almost from the ground up. I also really recommend Worlds Without Number to everyone! Free pdf is a must download. The simplicity of old school gives a lot of freedom I feel to DM as well as players. You're not bound by rules that cover everything and emergent play surprises even the DM through random encounters for example as well as the fact that players think of other ways to solve things besides just fighting.
will be checking out worlds without number
Hi new player, I chose third as my 1st adition. I wanted the crunch.
Probly the best place to start. ~Level 5 was the most "fun" from what I remember.
Yeah in 3rd, 3.5, and pathfinder 6th level is frequently a stopping point. Epic 6 campaigns are pretty decent because you can, with preparation, punch well above your weight class as it were (arguably more than at any other point there after - haste at 6th level adds a full 50% more attacks to martial characters, only 33% at 11th for example). In short all the classes can do their class's things at 6th and they can do them pretty well. Most characters have come into there own. It's a very good time as a PC. As a DM it's easier to manage, there's only 3 spell levels being thrown around, the truly absurd spells aren't there yet - the linear fighter vs exponential caster issue does not yet exist. Encounters/puzzles/obstacles are easy to build around as a result creating fun world interactions.
I wasnt there, but was this type of focus on optimization there in 2e and earlier? I feel it also is a video gamey type thing like making powerful pvp diablo characters or skill trees present in most western RPGs. I usual start with the character I want by his class and personality (like, this my Oppenheimer summer so I wanted a nuclear physist dunamancy time/gravity wizard) then look up a sample build that closest fits that model (this one I discovered the artichron which thematically fits for both classes and my back story)
Great conversation. D&D 3.5 Forgotten Realms was my golden age. I’m still running 3.5, but I’ve added and transformed the system to suit my needs.
I think 4th edition is the most *pure* form D&D ever took. It didn’t *pretend* that the game was about anything other than combat.
Look back at 3/.5. Sure there were options for non-combat, but there weren’t very strong rules for them, and the classes that were built around non-combat were generally considered to be garbage because they couldn’t fight well. Most of the supplements and expansions added things that would be useful in combat, etc.
I’m not sure, but I’m pretty confident 4e looked at what 3/.5 players liked (build crafting and tactical combat) and pushed that forward. Also it was very popular, as far as I can tell. It brought a lot of people into D&D because it was simpler to understand and had less fiddly bits.
Did he say that Forgotten Realms came about in 3e?
Not sure if I said that? Did I say that?
@@AllThingsLich lol I had to rewatch. You said that Eberron, Forgotten realms, some of the best worlds came about during this time for me. I'll agree that I might have misinterpreted what you meant.
@@99zxk I'm trying! Always trying. I'll mess it up from time to time
Hey, great video, I first played during 3.0
And have so many fond memories, I was an adult, but the nostalgia almost make me feel like a child when I look back, I sure enjoyed those 8 hour games, now I am 60 and play MMO'S, but told my 16yo daughter that dad is gonna teach her D&D, initially it will consist of just the 2 of us any advice??
1) Find something pre-published. Focus on the fun of the game and the experience at the table rather than having to build maps, worldbuild, etc.
2) Have a session 0 - a session to discuss what sort of game she wants to play (heavy combat, vampires, video game/arcade style, etc.). Then, find the adventure/module that fits that type of game.
3) Keep it simple. Focus on a fight, a social conflict, and a mystery or secret to unravel. Don't get caught up in the minutiae of stuff.
4) Ignore most of the rules. Build her a character or build one together. Let the rule of cool and fun slide, then harp on the rule details (if you ever want to), MUCH, much later.
Hope it all helps. Thank you for the comment and let me know how it goes!
1st was the only one I really knew. I saw the 2nd, but there weren't enough changes to have me wanting to update everything.
Love the breakdown.
I personally started with 3.5e, but must admit my teenage self did find it hard to comprehend / fully grasp. I've come back (many years later) to 5e and really love the fact that it is now more accessible than ever.
That said, the ultimate strength of 5e is also its undoing. I do find 5e to be a little lacking in complexity (especially when comparing it to Pathfinder 2.0 (don't have much exp. with 1.0)). Sometimes I wish certain classes had a bit more depth - Warlocks spamming Eldritch Blast, Fighters/Barbs going Great Weapon Mastery / Polearm Master, Clerics being heal bots... I know, not all these choices are forced but certain classes can feel darn repetitive.
appreciate the comment! I'm really pushing to finish up my 5e world book but already, my mind spins around a few things you address- notably, adding some complexity and getting away from the tedium (eldritch blast as you say). I can't say a "fake 6E" is in the works but it really should be on the top of my creative list, as I've been spinning around it a lot lately.
3.5E was the min-maxer's dream because there were too many options. That's the one thing I like about 5E (having played all D&D editions since Basic/AD&D) is that the simplified the rules -- gone were the skill and feat trees (if you wanted X skill/feat, you had to make sure you got A, B, C, and D skill/feat first as you levelled up) and gone were the stacks of modifiers, now we just have Advantage and Disadvantage.
3.5! Meta magic, grapple, tactical maps, defined stacking bonuses, complex but much better once you know the nuances.
Each time you die, we played it in second edition as you would lose a point in your CON score and you gain a "scar" determined by the way you died.
A big plus for 4E was that it balanced the abilities of the classes evenly. Like you said about AD&D, there was a big discrepancy between level XP of the paladin and thief (the paladin got most of its powers at level 1!). So 4E the classes levelled up at the same rate and got powers at the same class level, this is very noticeable with fighters, who in 3.5E relied mostly on feats, who can do marvellous things that were as impressive as spellcasters (short of Time Stop and Wish).
Another thing was at-will powers, which meant low level arcane casters weren't screwed over casting their only spell slot and be useless for the rest of the right. What we have now are damage dealing cantrips that can cast at-will.
For me - Dungeons and Dragons died when TSR did. WotC was never able to recapture the feeling of old school D&D from 1977-1997. I've kept up with D&D though the new edition books throughout the years and nothing comes close to 2nd Edition.
I also noticed a massive change when it went from 2nd edition to 3rd.
Honestly the only thing I’ve noticed that’s extremely different and all the additions how much dark vision is handed out like candy in fifth edition
my first was 2nd ed advanced and my favorite is a toss up between 5th Age and 5th ed.
Just paused your video after D&D 3/3.5. I've played D&D since AD&D back in 1982 in high school. AD&D did evolve a bit with the two mentioned books Dungeoneers Survival Guide and Wilderness Survival Guide. However, you're beloved world of The Forgotten Realms had it's birth in AD&D, referred to as the "old grey box". MANY supplements were also printed detailing different areas of The Realms. I know that's were WOTC nicked many ideas for their 3rd Edition. I have often wanted to run a hybrid AD&D/2nd Ed as the Second Edition of AD&D cleaned up some things...but it also had a lot of "fiddly bits" as you call them in the soft covered "Complete" series of books with optional rules. The reason I love both those editions is because I was also younger when I played them (and when you buy a lot of game stuff...it's tough going to another edition). Lastly, I will talk about 3rd Edition. I was taken by it. The D20 system was well thought out and managed to work for other games based on the licensing agreement. Now...that being said, you're correct, it had some fiddly bits in the rules. However, as any DM/GM worth his salt knows...you're always free to modify or omit rules. I noticed later on that, unfortunately, the 3rd Edition was also easy to Min/Max and the characters felt too planned out with the feats and skills. However, I did buy into 3rd Edition and when 4th was announced. This older gamer decided to get off the "lets buy the next edition!" wagon. Now I will continue to watch your video.
Good rest of the video. I had heard 4th Edition was geared towards computer gamers in the style of the rules. I've heard a few people say good things about 5th edition as well. All that being said, never forget. Wizards of the Coast may have got the D&D ball rolling again...but Hasbro purchased WOTC. I feel...it's just about the Profit game...make more books...in the hopes the mooks keep buying them. ;-)
@@Malryth appreciate your comments. I've done an updated video about editions. Perhaps check that out as well and we can discuss more over time. Thanks for watching!
@@AllThingsLich Alrighty, I'll look for that video.
Little correction, I6 was introduced during AD&D 1e but just before the avalanche of 2e books.
Coming from 3.5e and Pathfinder, my biggest gripe with 5e is that everything is kinda oversimplified : add your proficiency bonus to attack roll, saving throws, skill checks, stuff like that. I do like that it's way more noob friendly and easy to pick, and it's definitely a deep and complex game, I just prefer Pathfinder, but for the sake of having a group to play with, 5e is a great game and I enjoy it as much as the older version.
Started in 2nd . I did really like 2nd. But 3rd really allowed for players to be creative and make amazing ideas come true. Still wish 2nd was more mainstream.
Thanks for this video
I really think they should bring back a basic and advanced (or just expanded) version; so we have a choice of a more streamlined 5e type experience or a feature rich 3.5/pathfinder option with more choices. "Old-School Essentials" does it well; with a basic core game with an advanced ruleset that is just an addon to the original basic rules.
Maybe the d&d essentials kit fits this category somewhat. It's not exactly what I mean though.
I get what you mean and agree 100%. I think 5e really brought a lot of people into the game and while I feel it's "best" edition of dnd, it's not my favorite.
Being able to bridge between the success and popularity of 5e and the good things that came from previous editions would be beneficial to all
Just so this is in the comments: If you're playing 3.X, and you get knocked down by a winter wolf, as mentioned here - consider just staying down. You can still fight and especially cast spells (defensively) while prone.
The shortest time between editions was between 3rd and 3.5, 3 years I think.
In 2008 when 4th Edition was released, they were trying to harness the profitability of the MMORPG space, (kind of like they are now) and World of Warcraft commercials featured Musicians and Movie stars the likes of Ozzie Osbourne, Mr. T, William Shatner, and Vern Troyer. (Mini Me from Austin Powers fame)
World of Warcraft was Immensely popular.
I think the term Armor Class was used in a lot old naval combat games before chainmail.
yes perhaps. That'd be way before my time though. Even Chainmail is something I had to research after hearing about within the last 5 years or so. Thanks for the comment.