Best D&D Edition

5e is my fave at the moment.

I like 4e a lot and I think it's a ton of fun, but I find it rather too much work to DM on a weekly basis when I've got other commitments, and has too many small fires to put out during and between sessions (though not quite as many as 3.5e/PF).

5e is much easier on me, plays fast and well, and keeps the ball rolling smoothly in lots of different ways (players more rarely losing focus when it isn't their turn, helps players remember to role play via the traits, is intentionally very open to DM rulings and is easy to rule for or even homebrew for if needed, works well in theatre of the mind for smaller battles, etc.)

There are lots of things I like about the old Advanced and Basic D&Ds, (especially if you approach them with a playstyle and DMing style that fits them,) but every edition/variant of them have a few bizarre rules or restrictions, and some source of busywork or another (like calculating percentage bonus XP for one). Some of the rules are also very waffly and haven't aged well, of course.
I think the best parts of the old games as things are now, can be found by analysing how they were played moreso than what was in their rulebooks. It's just very hard to transpose that playstyle onto a different game system, for a number of reasons.

I don't have one at this point. They all have some pretty deep flaws that leave me not feeling particularly included to one over any other, save that I'll take any over 3.x and its derivatives.

D&D 4e.

I have none of the nostalgia or difference in playstyle that a lot of people carried over from the earlier editions, and none of the complaints about immersion ever bothered me or my group.

4e offers the most mechanically sound, tactically satisfying combat experience and, admittedly with a bit of work (the out of combat side of the game is a real weakness), the rituals/martial practices and non-combat utilities offer a lot of utility in a way that's more fairly distributed throughout the party instead of concentrated in a few characters.

It's not a perfect game, and I wouldn't tell anyone they're wrong for preferring another edition, but for me and my group it creates the best experience and supports our playstyle.

4e>BECMI/RC>5e>2e>BX>Basic>1e>LBB>3/3.5

5th

You chose the right one for you pic. B/X wins the day.

from what I've played, 5E

Pretty much this. It comes with so many variant rules that you can get it to do whatever you want within the confines of what it's capable of and still pull from old editions and what makes them great. looting for the sake of looting and a large helping of the weird

5E although OD&D is cool too.

AD&D because it's what I'm most familiar with, from videogames mostly. I dislike both 3e and 4e because they seem too videogame-like (ironically). 5e seems good but I haven't had a chance to look deep into it so I haven't formed a hard opinion.

I really like how every aspect of the Rules Cyclopedia exists to paint a particular world.

For instance, that Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits are seperate classes shows that they are fairly rare, that humans are widespread and varied and the setting is human-dominant, that the three races fall into defined racial identities, and even that elves mature more slowly. The implications of it's mechanics are very well thought out, lore-wise if not necessarily consistency-wise.

In contrast, later editions tell you lore, but that's not necessarily how things function in-game. 5e can certainly SAY that humans are the common, widespread race... But if you aren't using feats, players have very little incentive to actually play them and you end up with parties of strange niche races. 3.5 can SAY that elves are talented magicians, but if they gain a bonus to Dexterity and have flat Intelligence you won't actually see all that many Elven Wizards. Etc.

Basically I appreciate the ludonarrative. You can absolutely 'get' the setting and world being portrayed even if you read absolutely none of the lore.

BECMI>3.5>5e>4e>ODnD>ADnD

3.5 and 5e are neck and neck for 2nd place for me though

Gather round anons. In the late 70s, Gygax spent YEARS trying to clean up the mess that TSR had made of D&D with the supplements. The result what we today know as AD&D FIRST EDITION. The following year B/X came out, and Gygax FLIPPED OUT, because he knew that what he had put out under his own name was BLOAT and that B/X was the TRUE FORM of D&D reified in WRITTEN FORM AT LAST. Gygax completely lost confidence in himself and fled to Hollywood. That's why everything Gygax "wrote" in the 80s was actually ghost written by somebody else from his old campaign notes. Gygax prevailed upon the Blumes to have B/X re-written as soon as possible, and the successor was edited into the bloated mediocrity that is BECMI, and that made Gygax feel better about himself.

Gygax and Arneson made D&D and shared the rights to it. Gygax made AD&D to cut Arneson, who had left TSR, out of a paycheck and forgot a little caveat that if D&D goes out of print it reverts back to the both of them to do as they see fit and in court Gygax had made the argument that AD&D was a wholly seperate game. If this went through Gygax would have AD&D all to himself/TSR while Arneson would have had D&D to do with as he saw fit. They settled out of court by agreeing that the Basic line would be a 'continuation' of OD&D and Arneson could get royalties.

After Gygax left, they tried to ruin him by making AD&D and a module based on a parody version Castle Greyhawk and it pissed off D&D players so they actually had Gygax defend them by promising him a cut of money from AD&D 2e as well.

Both surrendered their rights to D&D in general some time after WotC bought the rights to the game from TSR for undisclosed sums of money.

>2nd edition AD&D, for it finds the middleground between the lethal and gritty old editions, and the story-driven new ones, allowing me to easily run either one, even within the same campaign.
This desu.
They only other one I have played is 5e.
It seemed just a bit too bloated for my tastes.
I don't like when games have a bunch of extraneous skill categories that could be covered with just a Dex roll or something.

Anything that isn't AD&D 2e might as well not be D&D as far as I'm concerned. 3e with its terrible artwork and stupid character creation sub-game made me lose interest in the whole thing.

3e was the pinnacle of D&D, user. That's why everyone loves Pathfinder! It's 3.5 but with a lot of fixes! 2e brought nothing to the name and need I remind you that TSR went under with it? Need I say more?

>That's why everyone loves Pathfinder!
You are trying too hard.

>Anything that isn't AD&D 2e might as well not be D&D as far as I'm concerned.
>Implying 2e is D&D.
>Confusing middle school for old school.

Not confusing it for anything. I don't like it because its oldschool, I like it because that's what I started playing shortly before it was canned. Loved all the video games, loved the huge boxed sets full of maps, artwork, and lore. Think the rules are pretty simple and work very well.

I liked the AD&D Super Endless Quest books. Cheap quick adventure, no morons to get us all killed during the first encounter, and easier to hide from Jack-Chick-believing parents. Best ones were Shadow Over Nordmarr, Test Of The Ninja, and The Sceptre Of Power. Most of the books brought something unique to the adventure gameplay in a way that most DM-run adventures do not. I don't recommend Prisoners Of Pax Tharkas or Lords Of Doom (boring), The Sorceror's Crown and Clash Of the Sorcerors (slapdash), and The Ghost Tower has an infuriating ending, but the rest are all worth a playthru.

5e. It gets rid of much of the unfortunate bloat of 3.PF and 4e without the weird obfuscated mechanics that 1e and 2e stacked on themselves over time.

PF. It satisfies my mechanical itch, its variety of options are consistently interesting, and it's fluff is nice. Hoping Starfinder is even better since I want to run a GotG/Starfox/Outlaw Star campaign.

If it must absolutely be D&D, then 4e with 3.5 following behind it. 5e is absolute shit for a variety of reasons. Im ambivalent on AD&D since I never really got to play an actual game, but the rules are a fucking mess. Older editions are shit game design and deserve nothing more than the dustbin of history.

My favorite edition is 3.5/ pathfinder because I was first introduced to table top games with 3.5. I just love the wide range of character options you get with the edition and can pretty much build a character to do whatever you want. I know other people hate it but I still like it the best.

5e is pretty good but it needs more character options. After playing 5e for a few years, I’ve noticed several class archetypes feel very samey. So in a lot of situations if you played one class, playing another character of the same class but different archetype doesn’t feel that much different. 5e has potential to be great but it needs a little more work.

I like reading the books for AD&D but I doubt I’ll ever get my group to play it with me. I wish there was a good retro-clone for AD&D 2e with updated rules sort of like how swords & wizardry did for OD&D.

This guy is my nigga

Why thank you, user.

B/X, OD&D, and its retroclones are first for me. Second is 5e then third is 13th Age. I love the tight game loop and easy rules of older editions, though my players rather dislike the lethality and lack of character customization.

They all have their charms.
>1e old school charm, wizards with 1hp
>AD&D, birthed the game, great modules , still had
>3.5 cleaned the game up for the modern era, brought it out of the dark ages and made it accessible
>4E is the exception,video game mmo cancer that wasn't even D&D
>Pathfinder, the most realistic version of the game, as in you can plug real world values into it and they are true to the game making it unparalleled in immersion. Also the most balanced (casters are fine whiners l2p, fighters with all their feats are overpowered if anything ) and modern version of the game with the most variety and choice. Also respectful of alternate communities such as lgbt which allows for a breadth and depth of gameplay that other editions don't offer.
>5E is a great casual version of the game that goes back to its osr roots. Simple to pick up but lacks depth unlike Pathfinder. Main issue is that unlike pathfinder there's very little crunch which means the GM has to write half the rulebook which is annoying.

Surprisingly this

>3.5 cleaned the game up for the modern era, brought it out of the dark ages and made it accessible
>Counting Pathfinder as an edition of D&D
>Shilling Pathfinder that hard under the guise of "All editions are good"

I don't think this thread is for you, friendo.

You should have been able to tell he was spouting shit after the meme repetition in regards to 4e.

3.PF > BECMI > ADnD2 > 5e
But for some kind of game BECMI > all

No hate I would play even 4th with the right group.

Rules Cyclopedia and LBB OD&D.

>Bad Tier
Fite me

My players have mostly cleared the randomly generated dungeon of depth 1, seem inclined to skip the crypts of depth 2, and the caves of depth 3 are pretty low in roomcount and mostly big fat solo monsters, so I'm sure they won't last long.

Depth 4 is a procedurally generated hexcrawl of underdark pirates(Sahuagin, Undead, Deep Humans, and LowHD Mind Flayers) on an underground sea and stalagmite islands that I think will scare players off from delving deeper/serve as a 'side area' once they find an entrance to depth 5 so there's no rush, but I'm looking for inspiration sooner rather than later

Anyone want to throw some ideas for rooms and themes for Depth 5 at me? Most entrances to depth 5 will be guarded entrances on the stalagmite islands of depth 4 if that jogs yer noggin, and I've used too many undead already so I was gonna go easy on those.

This

BECMI butchered Thief progression and was ass for looking up information.
I'll admit C & M had goid points, but I really can't understand why you would rate Bx so low.

youtube.com/watch?v=kP53l4JJLEg

AD&D was made to screw over Arneson.
Bx was made as part of a settlement.
Gygax still wrote after going Hollywood, you can tell because of his distinctive garbage style.
BECMI may be a worse game than Bx, but it /was/ a better introduction for new players. (the stated purpose of the Basic line)
Arneson got royalties on AD&D too.
The sum was disclosed.

I'm similar to you, except that I was raised on AD&D 1e which is why I prefer it the most. Everything else though, is spot on.

That one.

F.A.T.A.L

3.5, or AD&D. Each had their fun points, and I've seen often enough that the rules aren't broken so much as there's an ample amount of tha/tg/uys who need to be kept in line and reminded about rule zero.

That said, fuck 4th. If I wanted to play and MMO with my friends, we'd do just that. Fucking lack of non-combat development, even AD&D had a series of nonweapon proficiencies.

5th ed is nice, just haven't played enough. Also, fuck redditized house rules. Don't dick the most playtested edition's balance because it' fucking fashionable - it ain't 3.5, where splatbook shenanigans can catch a DM off guard.

/thread
/someone should just sticky this to stop all the D&D edition fighting

>Repeating 4e meme lies
>Worth /threading

All the shit taste in here.

I have good memories of participating in the 3.5 character optimization community. I wish the games that were actually supposed to be about crunchy build optimization were as cool as that shit ended up being.

I like 4E's tactical combat.

I like the OSR community's ideas about how to run games, even if I don't give a damn the actual systems. I like random encounter tables, hex crawls, dungeon crawls, characters getting followers, and the world not being balanced against the party.

5e is the best one I've played for sure, but I never played AD&D, just read the books.

4e is usable with a specific set of modifications.

3e is fucking shit.

>BECMI may be a worse game than Bx, but it /was/ a better introduction for new players.
I actually find it rather difficult to digest, because it teases a concept and it's difficult to find more info on it, because it's buried somewhere several dozen pages later. The Basic Set of BECMI assumes you'll read everything in order, incurious about the things that have been introduced but not detailed. I don't know about you, but when I encounter part of a subsystem, I usually approach it like "Hmm. That's interesting. But if X is like that, I wonder what Y is like." And then I flip a page or two and look at Y. Or I'm like: "But what happens under circumstance Z?" And I find it extremely frustrating if I can't find an answer because I have to leave the who matter hanging as "unresolved."

Besides, it's not just the tutorial-style of the Basic Set that's an issue. Later editions don't do that and they're still organized in the most infuriating way, as if they were actively trying to make things difficult to reference. And all told, there are 9 separate rule books, which is just ridiculous.

I think B/X is not only easier to reference, but also easier to learn.

Poe's Law?

Regardless, I'll point out that 1e *is* AD&D.

3.5 was the best D&D ever had to offer. Sure, it can get messy, but no other game allowed that deep character customization. It had rules to pretty much anything, and you could easily build on that because, with a system as complex as that, you can easily create new stuff when you know it well.

5th is okay. A good mix between the customization from 3.5 and the casualness from 4th.

Anyone here saying 4th is great and even better than 3.5 does not know shit about games.
It's been a while since I've been here, is Veeky Forums full of fucking casuals now or what?

2/10. Best I can do.

It's so weird that people always equate 1st edition with Basic and 2nd edition with Advanced.
It's not like Advanced didn't have a 1st edition.

>no other game allowed that deep character customization.
No class-based game is going to have anywhere near the deepest customization. I don't have a problem with class-based games, mind you, but the entire point of classes is putting people into categories, which inherently restricts the options available. There are strengths to this, but deep character customization isn't one of them.

To be fair, it is kind of confusing.

Total clusterfuck of different D&Ds with different naming conventions, then 1st edition AD&D, then 2nd edition AD&D, and then 3rd edition D&D. Third edition AD&D doesn't exist. So what are first and second edition D&D?

(Then 3.5 happened, 4th is called 4E instead of 4th, 5th was D&D Next for a while then became 5th but people refer to it as 5E too.)

Depends on what you mean by deep customization. If you want the most comprehensive and detailed customization possible, GURPS wins. If you want to treat character customization like a game in of itself and judge it by how intricate the tradeoffs and emergent mechanics are, I'd still go with 3.5.

Is that a useful trait for an RPG to have? No. But it was a pretty cool thing while it lasted.

But I digress. You're responding to a troll post.

I started with basic (the red dragon cover box set), then moved straight to 1st AD&D and loved it. 2nd was fine. my friends play pathfinder, so i've play that a bunch and consider it a complete clusterfuck of a game system that's way too focused on appealing to every special snowflake's desire (So you want a cross blooded half dragon half celestial elven barbarian with spontaneous spell casting? don't worry, bloodrager's exist - WE'VE GOT YOU COVERED!).

bleh.

They've all got merits and distinctions which can make or break a system for people, and I'll probably have a new favorite every two years or so.

At this moment, 5e: my experience with it has been absolutely free of dysfunction or growing pains, which is more than I can say for any other iteration of D&D that I've ever played and surprising for an RPG in general.

>leveling is slower
>implying 2e can't do oldschool quite happily

>So what are first and second edition D&D?
Holmes Basic and B/X.

>leveling is slower
That wasn't what I wanted to quote. I wanted to quote
>Confusing middle school for old school.

That said, 2e's leveling is pretty slow if you don't play it in old-school mode.

>Holmes Basic and B/X.
We're skipping OD&D and BECMI / RC?

>Third edition AD&D doesn't exist
3e is AD&D, there just stopped being a Basic line to require the explicit differentiation. It's still called 3rd Edition to communicate that it's the successor to 2e.
1st and 2nd editions are 1e and 2e AD&D.

OD&D is 0e, given that it's the predecessor to both Holmes and AD&D 1e. BECMI is D&D 3, RC is D&D 4 (or 3.5, if you like).

What the fuck are you talking about?

3rd ed is nothing like 2nd in any way except that you roll a D20.

Feats, positive AC, difficulty numbers... what is similar?

It doesn't have to be similar to push the naming convention.

He's talking about the fact that 3E was literally called third edition AD&D until they decided to drop the A for marketing reasons, Einstein.

Hmm. "Best Edition".

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From a purely Dungeon Master standpoint, 5e. Everything moves so fast, rules are straight forward, there is enough character options for my taste, and combat doesn't bog down the game forever, like 3 and 4e.

AD&D 2e is alright for content, but the rules are garbage for the modern gaming scene.

AD&D 1e is garbage, the way its written is just too all over the place. It works, but getting to the point of being comfortable takes a lot of studying.

OD&D and D&D Cyclopedia is alright, but much like 2e it's bogged down by old mechanics.

This is the best one.

I started right after 2nd ed was released and it remains my favorite. 3rd was okay; I liked having the d20 as a base like CoC had percentile, but it felt very wargamery. 5e might be good, but I cant find a group anymore.

Mythras/Runequest 6

GURPS dungeon fantasy

5e, though 4e has the best combat and the best "default setting".

Seriously. Out of all the things that should have remained from 4e, the default setting is top of my list.

5e by far.

I disagree. I'm going with "Inappropriate Workplace Behavior" followed closely by "How Much You Wanna Bet We Have to Fight That Fucking Rock Right There?"

> 4th Edition anywhere but Oh Shit Naga What are You Doing Tier

Whut

Quiet you.

>good tier
4e, 5th, Basic, AD&D

>had neat ideas but man it totally reads like something a couple sweaty nerds banged out on typewriters in their basement, which it totally was tier
Original

>being fun with a good group doesn't make it a good game and also let's not forget how it ruined an entire generation of tabletop fans tier
3rd, 3.5, Pathfinder

5th is ok, I wish they hadn't thrown the baby out with the bathwater with 4E but 5th is a good enough compromise between the D&D that I want to play and the D&D that the rest of the world seems to want