D&D versions. Taking (up) the 5th?
Dec. 28th, 2020 11:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI've written before that I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) for a long time. I started with the first Dungeons & Dragons Basic rules, aka the "blue box", in the early 1980s; then bought the Second Basic D&D, aka "magenta box" rules, which expanded with Expert, Companion, and Master sets; then graduated to Advanced D&D. From there I followed along to AD&D Second Edition, then (name change) D&D 3rd Edition, then D&D 3.5.
Why so many versions? Well, understand that the companies behind D&D are book publishers. They make money by selling books. What better way to drive book sales than by putting out whole new versions of the rules every 5-7 years? And that's exactly what they've done. Devoted D&D players buy new books all over again every cycle. Except I hopped off the corporate America treadmill after 3.5. I decided I'd had enough.
Partly my choice to stick with 3.5 was frustration with purchasing and absorbing ever more new systems. Partly it's because 3.5 didn't have anything majorly broken with it that I wanted to fix (at the time). And partly it was because the next version, 4th Edition, frankly sucked. It broke with too much of what had made D&D, well, D&D for 3 decades and introduced rules seemingly more tuned to short-attention-span adolescents weaned on computer games.
Fourth Edition wasn't the end of the line. Now there's 5th Edition. Friends tell me it's a lot closer to the style of D&D 3.x than 4. So I'm trying it out.
Hawk and I bought two of the D&D 5e manuals recently. Our impetus was joining a game with younger players. You see, 3.5e was released in 2003. Seventeen years ago. That means there's an entire generation of D&D players for whom 3.5 has always been old. If we want to expand our gaming circle beyond old-school middle-age players we've got to join up with the present day.
D&D 5th Edition is interesting. It's closer to the 3.5 rules than 4th edition was. It fixes one main problem of 3.5: the system of advancement that makes higher level characters basically untouchable by NPCs and monsters more than a handful of levels lower than them.
I see this in my long term game, where we use 3.5 rules. It's particularly a challenge as the characters have risen to high levels (15-20). Their increasing wealth affords them access to magic items which, when combined with their level based bonuses, make it so that even upper-mid level foes can only hit them on a "natural 20" (a 5% chance of success).
This power imbalance casts the game into a particular style. High level PCs are basically superheroes. Attacks from anyone or anything that's not also a "super" just bounce off. That's not wrong in any absolute sense, it's just a particular theme of play— a theme that may not fit with the way the setting and storylines were conceived at lower levels.
How does 5E do it differently? Two things. First, level based bonuses do not ramp up as quickly. Second, magic items have smaller "pluses", and even the lower pluses are more expensive. Together these changes keep higher level characters from being able simply to ignore lower level foes.
I don't foresee migrating to 5E in my long term game. The move from 2E to 3.0 years ago disrupted things in my game that I didn't originally anticipate. I won't repeat that level of disruption with all the years of development invested into that game. But for new games, particularly with younger players, I could see choosing 5th Edition.
At the same time I'm reluctant even to start a new game with D&D 5. It's several years old at this point, having first been published in 2014. One thing we've learned from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro/Whomever Owns It Now is publishers gonna publish. There's a whole never version of the rules every few years to spur sales of a whole new set of rulebooks. I'm reluctant to get too deeply invested— financially or mentally— in 5E. MySpidey Corporate Profiteering Sense warns me there'll be yet-another all-new rules set published soon.
Why so many versions? Well, understand that the companies behind D&D are book publishers. They make money by selling books. What better way to drive book sales than by putting out whole new versions of the rules every 5-7 years? And that's exactly what they've done. Devoted D&D players buy new books all over again every cycle. Except I hopped off the corporate America treadmill after 3.5. I decided I'd had enough.
Partly my choice to stick with 3.5 was frustration with purchasing and absorbing ever more new systems. Partly it's because 3.5 didn't have anything majorly broken with it that I wanted to fix (at the time). And partly it was because the next version, 4th Edition, frankly sucked. It broke with too much of what had made D&D, well, D&D for 3 decades and introduced rules seemingly more tuned to short-attention-span adolescents weaned on computer games.
Fourth Edition wasn't the end of the line. Now there's 5th Edition. Friends tell me it's a lot closer to the style of D&D 3.x than 4. So I'm trying it out.
Hawk and I bought two of the D&D 5e manuals recently. Our impetus was joining a game with younger players. You see, 3.5e was released in 2003. Seventeen years ago. That means there's an entire generation of D&D players for whom 3.5 has always been old. If we want to expand our gaming circle beyond old-school middle-age players we've got to join up with the present day.
D&D 5th Edition is interesting. It's closer to the 3.5 rules than 4th edition was. It fixes one main problem of 3.5: the system of advancement that makes higher level characters basically untouchable by NPCs and monsters more than a handful of levels lower than them.
I see this in my long term game, where we use 3.5 rules. It's particularly a challenge as the characters have risen to high levels (15-20). Their increasing wealth affords them access to magic items which, when combined with their level based bonuses, make it so that even upper-mid level foes can only hit them on a "natural 20" (a 5% chance of success).
This power imbalance casts the game into a particular style. High level PCs are basically superheroes. Attacks from anyone or anything that's not also a "super" just bounce off. That's not wrong in any absolute sense, it's just a particular theme of play— a theme that may not fit with the way the setting and storylines were conceived at lower levels.
How does 5E do it differently? Two things. First, level based bonuses do not ramp up as quickly. Second, magic items have smaller "pluses", and even the lower pluses are more expensive. Together these changes keep higher level characters from being able simply to ignore lower level foes.
I don't foresee migrating to 5E in my long term game. The move from 2E to 3.0 years ago disrupted things in my game that I didn't originally anticipate. I won't repeat that level of disruption with all the years of development invested into that game. But for new games, particularly with younger players, I could see choosing 5th Edition.
At the same time I'm reluctant even to start a new game with D&D 5. It's several years old at this point, having first been published in 2014. One thing we've learned from Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro/Whomever Owns It Now is publishers gonna publish. There's a whole never version of the rules every few years to spur sales of a whole new set of rulebooks. I'm reluctant to get too deeply invested— financially or mentally— in 5E. My
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