Is it worth learning older D&D systems if you know only 5e? If yes which one would be the best to learn?

Perhaps it's because people can sincerely feel differently to you? That makes more sense than branding literally any disagreement as 'pretending'.

Fluff can be fixed a lot easier than mechanics though. Its almost expected that a DM will alter some fluff but having to work around core mechanics being flawed is much more difficult.

I would love to run a game in the Planescape setting, I've heard people talking about both recreating it in 5e, and WotC actually working on it.

>literally cancer

If 3.5 is killing you, you might deserve to die.

Very much. 4e for modern game design principles. 2e for great settings. BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia to see very different but still very good version of D&D. 3.x is garbage and should be avoided at all costs.

>4e
>modern

I didn't know WoW was what kids called "modern game design."
All 4e is is a few good ideas wrapped up in a slew of terrible ones and HORRIBLE math.

Being fair, 3.PF does have some good ideas. It's just that the vast majority of them are badly executed.

Well, despite the whole 4e=MMO thing being bullshit, WoW is literally an example of modern game design. It defined huge parts of the modern online gaming landscape, which these days is the largest, most prolific and most profitable kind.

So even your stupid comment doesn't really make sense.

5e>3e>2e
Honorable mention- 4e.

What do you like about DnD user?

WoW is almost 13 years old. Calling it modern is just highlighting how dated 4e. If he wanted modern design, he's already got 5e, which at least is modern TTRPG design, not MMORPG design, which as you can tell by 4e general failure doesn't really mesh for anything except short stints. Sort of why the 4e board games are so much better than 4e.

The True Tiers

God Tier
B/X
BECMI
Rules Cyclopedia

Great Tier
1e
2e
4e

Ok Tier
5e

Bad Tier
3.x

Shit Naga What Are You Doing Tier
3.PF

Wannabe Tier
Palladium Fantasy (The Classic AD&D Heartbreaker)
Fantasycraft
13th Age

Shillfag Tier
Strike!

I'd say that's a good reason to learn, but depending on how true you want to be to the original release you may have a lot of work to do with it.

>grognard tiers

Roll over, grandpa.

TSR-era D&D is fantastic for what it's meant to do, though, and its rules are much easier to tweak and alter than those of modern D&D. I'd much rather run a game of Swords & Wizardry (OD&D with some supplements, organized better and worded more clearly) than 5e, even if 5e is the best modern D&D edition.

But 5e is pure FEEEEEL and kinda shitty in its design. See shit like the Bladelock and Beastmaster Ranger.

At this point I'm not certain whether you're intentionally missing my point, or just stupid.

I mean, it only opens you up to potentially more games/groups, so you might as well.

UA beastmaster is pretty good

>WoW

Remember when 3e was Diablo? Of course you don't.

>5e
>modern
hahahahah

I'd flip 3.x and 3.PF personally, PF did fix some stuff, it just made a bunch of other mistakes, but I'd say in total it's slightly better.

>TSR-era D&D is fantastic for what it's meant to do, though, and its rules are much easier to tweak and alter than those of modern D&D

Heartily disagree. Game has not aged well, and everything from the ridiculous class imbalances to the nonsensical saves to the cheap deaths to the excessive charts to the tedious high level combat makes me always just recommend 5e instead.

if your friends know only this system it's not bad to learn something new (yay ponnies and rainbows)...play to have fun and the fun of a game not the rules that surround it..each edition and game has it's issues but don't get stuck in details...

Mehh, PF fixed some stuff, but unless you're including the Dreamscarred Press material it dropped more good stuff than it added

The point is that it's not meant to be played like 5e. If you're really comparing the two looking for the same type of gameplay, you're doing something fundamentally wrong. However, I will agree that there are some issues with TSR-era D&D editions (i.e. CHARTS CHARTS CHARTS), but that's why we have retroclones.

Only grognards afraid of change said that.
Everyone called 4e WoW edition, because if you're going to have tanks, healbots, nukes and DPS as the core philosophy of your game, you can't call it anything else.

What are any big offenders?

Except those were a core part of the design of 3.PF.

They just, y'know, fucked up.

>but the fluff is terrible
Gotta disagree with you there, honestly.

It means nothing in a stagnating industry

Well, it dropped the ToB stuff, which was not only excellent, but uniquely "3.5". But as I mentioned, Dreamscarred Press material brings that stuff back

It also broke maneuvers like tripping and grappling thanks to the CMB/CMD system and made feat chains that were already too long even longer

When people say 'The fluff was terrible', they usually refer to how it changed established settings, which I never really paid attention to or cared about, but some people did.

I still think the World Axis is a more functional basis for adventuring than the great wheel, though.

It's nothing immediately amazing, although PoLand is somewhere between serviceable and good (which I guess is the point), and the cosmology is at least less autistic than Planescape.

This is a tough one.
I enjoy the setting much more than the system (I personally think it is unnecessarily hard to learn), it has a certain atmosphere, I don't know how to describe it, it can be both cheery and gloomy at the same time, the range of possibilities is large. Plus I have played many cRPGs based on it before I started playing real RPGs, so there's a nostalgia factor, too.
So, it looks like I actually don't like it that much, it's more like a go-to game, first one I learned and the only one my friends know.

Except they weren't, because those roles only work in nonsense universes designed after MMORPGs. 3.PF has the sacred cows of war games dragging it down.

>God Tier
>B/X
>BECMI
>Rules Cyclopedia

Speaking from experience of playing OSR, B/X and the like requires a lot trust in the GM/Ref. The emphasis on rulings means that the game lives or dies on you being fair and impartial, while also being able to interpret the dice's results in a way that's conducive to the tone of the game.
Shit's hard, and I haven't mastered it yet.

What about OD&D?

Moldvay/Cook Basic (B/X) is pretty cool little package. It's a total of 128 pages with monsters, treasure and everything. It's rather tightly focused on dungeon exploration (branching into wilderness exploration later on) and gives you some insight into where D&D came from, and maybe provides some perspective into some legacy mechanics in newer editions as well.

It's worth noting that all pre-3e systems are built on the same core rules, and so are largely compatible when it comes to importing rules from one to another. AD&D has significantly more rules and options than Basic (particularly B/X, since later Basic starts getting a bit more involved), making it good source material. However, compared to B/X, it's a bit of a muddled mess, with a bunch of obnoxious complexities and restrictions that do little to make the game more enjoyable. Simply put, for what's actually there, B/X is a significantly better game.

>tanks, healbots, nukes and DPS

All originally derived from the Warrior/Wizard/Priest/Rogue basic class types.

It's really dependent on what you want to get out of it. I'd recommend reading all of them, solely so you know the roots of the system and can see how it's evolved over time, which is very interesting. Certain editions have also informed tons of other games, and being familiar with traditional core mechanics can be useful when looking at other systems.

If you're concerned with setting stuff, I'd suggest reading 4e and some older campaign setting books (Greyhawk, Eberron, Al-Qadim, probably not Dragonlace) if only as a source of ideas.

From my experience, those roles exist in all combat-focused tabletop RPGs

It makes sense, the roles are what you get when everyone in the group focuses on doing one thing well to make the group stronger as a whole. A guy who deals damage, a guy who can take damage without dying, a guy who buffs the party and heals, and a guy who debuffs the enemy.

The roles that exist in MMORPGs came from tabletop games, not the other way around

You really don't know, do you? Alright, history lesson time.

3.x playtesting was based around the idea of blaster wizards, defensive fighters, healbot clerics and backstabbing rogues. It's the source of a huge amount of the problems with core in that system, since they only tested the mechanics in those contexts, rather than wondering what happened if they were used outside of them.

With Wizards, they only really tested their combat magic, not really thinking about utility. With Clerics, they found that nobody wanted to play the healer, so they kept piling a huge amount of extra abilities onto them until they ended up in their current, OP as fuck state. Fighters and rogues 'worked' because they had a GM who played along based on how they thought they should work, instead of realising that the fighter had no way of fulfilling their job of defending the team apart from the somewhat laughable attacks of opportunity they could dish out.

Don't believe me? Look it up, you should be able to find the details somewhere. It might enlighten you.

But exaggerated into a largely nonsensical role.

It's sort of like how 4e thought minions were a good idea.

Minions weren't a good idea. They were a fucking fantastic idea.

>Don't believe me? Look it up, you should be able to find the details somewhere. It might enlighten you.

Weird, because everything I'm finding is saying that you are full of shit.

Where are your sources?

>implying minions aren't one of the best new ideas in 4e

I use minions in 5e

It's really simple, you take a lower level monster, and just make it's HP=1, good for evening the odds in boss fights

Please remember not to reply to obvious bait.

Actually OP, this is something. Rip off the idea of Minions for your 5e games. They're a great way to fill out encounters without creating extra bookkeeping and bullshit.

Fantasy Craft if you ever desire to play 3.5

ok

I actually haven't played it so I reserve judgement on it.

>Implying minions weren't ripped from 7th Sea's Brute Squads

...

Considering splash damage and other forms of little bonus damage aren't uncommon in 5e, all the worst parts of minions are dramatically enhanced.

I don't really know 5e, but I think you might have the wrong idea about at least some old school editions. Yes, the old school save categories were kind of ridiculous from the standpoint of actually meaning something to the players, but the way the numbers scaled worked very well. As far as class balance goes, casters in B/X are actually very limited. Magic-users do suck at low levels, but they aren't anywhere near as powerful at high levels as 3.x wizards, or even their AD&D counterparts. In a way, every class in B/X is very limited, which puts them on a level playing field.

As far as cheap deaths go, that's what the game was about. It's okay to prefer another style of play, but there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Oh, and the tables? Aside from the to-hit table (which could just be boiled down to the single progressing stat of THAC0), I don't know that there's really anything you wouldn't see in more modern incarnations of D&D.

If you haven't run a miniboss that consists of a group of different interacting minions with a shared health pool, you haven't lived.

This is really bad bait.

4e to know the nuts and bolts of system tinkering and 5e to have a look at the traditional way of presenting fantasy should give the full spread of what DnD has managed to be.

What worst parts?

My acquaintance of african descent.

...Yes, that is the point

See, 5e suffers from the problem of boss fights being easy, because whichever side has more turns has a really big advantage

Adding minions gives more turns to the bosses side, and takes turns from the players side spent clearing them, thus evening out the score

Just make minions not take damage from anything but a full hit, as it is if you actually read the 4e minion rules.

He didn't read the rules and thus has misconceived how minions work in 4e, see above.

It does put B/X in the best position, so it can't be all bad.

I don't think you've played 5e.

>5e suffers from the problem of boss fights being easy, because whichever side has more turns has a really big advantage
And that's why they made legendary and lair actions a thing. Have you read the DMG?

>Just make minions not take damage from anything but a full hit

But there's tons of little "full hits", which is an issue that exaggerates how bad the 4e minion methodology would be for anything except 4e.

What about it is bad?

Again, just make minions immune to splash or bonus damage, or at least give them a high flat chance to avoid it (this isn't in 4e, but it follows from the original rules).

>Is it worth learning older D&D systems

Define "worth". 5e is better than any of them by most objective measures so you're not going to get better play or anything from them. But any RPG fan worth his salt obviously learns at least OD&D and 2nd edition AD&D because of their historical value.

AD&D also has the most supplements of probably any RPG ever so you might find plenty of ideas you can reuse.

Yes
Yes

It's not enough, lair actions help more than legendary actions do, but either way you still end up with monsters that feel rather frail in the face of the PCs onslaught

That's funny because I felt the other way around. PCs were too fragile vs monsters without stacking basically everything, as in, literally got oneshot from full HP by a bugbear miniboss fragile, you could and couldn't do shit all to them without an entire party's worth of successful actions.

Minions aren't the sort of thing you should just put into a game unless you have a VERY good reason why you want to put such things in the game. Most RPGs are made objectively worse by the addition of dozens of random incompetent mooks into every battle.

Every edition of dnd is worth knowing. Just don't spend too much money, and especially don't give wotc money

only if you make it yourself.

Maybe if they're a bunch of min-maxers but I don't see how any team of four can reliably down a properly made boss before he gets em wounded.

...I feel like you're completely misunderstanding the point and function of minions.

The whole idea is that they aren't incompetent. Instead of being lower level monsters who are a negligible threat, Minion attacks have a solid chance of hitting and hurting PC's, giving you a reason to attack them, but their greater vulnerability to damage (although not being hit) also keeps GM bookkeeping down and lets you clear out the threat.

You're also not meant to shove a dozen of them into every battle. They're an option to make use of when you want to have a swarm of enemies of significantly larger size than normal, but not make it a boring slog, which can often result from just using lower level monsters, since they have enough HP to not go down in one hit but no real ability to hit or do significant damage.

meh chainmail is better

But fighting to the death with real armies was much more fun back in 1300 ad

Galahad is op! Morgan la fey is mai wiper!

Not him, but my biggest issue with it was that the players treat "minions" less like creatures and more like props, and it doesn't take long for most players to react to them more like a nuisance or chore. It also, rather than boosting their egos, killed their spirits because there was no real glory in killing minions.

SHut up and do what htis guy says and don't let them die to anything except a direct, single target attack.

If you can't figure that out, tell us your trouble and we'll advice you soe moe

If I was given the choice between playing 5E and playing 3.5, the only thing that would make me not pick 3.5 are the words "core only". Nothing in 5E even comes close to being as fun to play or interesting as a single ToB class, let alone classes that are even better than that like Factotums or Bards.

>5e is better by most object measure

no

5e is fine.

But I fucking hate it, objectively. It just feels so bland to me. I will never run it, will never encourage running it, and am tolerant of it only because I don't want to start an edition war with the people who DO like it.

5e is not the best, it is in fact the worst. If you want to CLAIM it is the best, what you actually mean is "5e is my favorite system."

That's a totally differant thing.

I'll play in your games if you play in mine, but not if you pretend yours are better than mine. That's just rude.

>But I fucking hate it, objectively.

Why are people so stupid.

>Galahad is op!
You realize how rare it was to have the stats to be Galahad, right? There's a reason there was only one of him.

BEst version of dnd is "3.5, psions and warblades only."

Its super duper playable.

I dunno, why DO you feel the need to insult me and feel superior to me?

I don't feel superior to you, which takes some effort, let me tell you.

str 18
dex 18
con 18
iq 10
cha 18
wis 3
save/magic -6
save/boobs -11

Tier 3/4 3.PF with proper content restrictions and a GM who knows their shit can be fun.

But they still have to fight, adjust and generally beat the system into submission to really make it work.

YOu gotta to the that with the 5e too or 5e are broingz

Because you said something retarded. If you don't like being called stupid, don't say stupid things.