Favorite Edition of DnD

People spend plenty of time fighting over which edition is the worst, but how about we talk about which edition is your favorite? Not everyone plays DnD, but it remains a very popular choice for a reason. It's generally accessible and not too hard to teach to newbies. Which edition do you think offers the most to players both new and old? Do any of them have features you wish were used universally? Are there any glaring flaws with your favorite that you think could be fixed to make it better? Give me your thoughts on your favorite edition of DnD, and please no shitflinging between editions.

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>Which edition of D&D is your favorite?
Old School Hack

>That's not an edition of D&D, user...
Fuck you, sure it is.

>Good things about your edition...
It's lite and fun. Easy for players to get into, easy for them to get a solid grasp on. It captures the things that D&D tries to well, and does more with less.

>Flaws with your edition...
Old School Hack is very lite, and underdeveloped. It needs more content to extend play beyond a few levels. But it's also a pretty dead game.

>D&D remains a very popular choice for a reason...
That reason is BECAUSE its popular. Like 40K, it's just the most prevalent option in a hobby where you have to have other players in order to play at all.

It's popular because it's popular.

Even more so than with 40K, since D&D even has a significant mainstream pop-culture presence.

I've never actually tried Old School Hack. Is it more supportive of lower levels or is it good for campaigns of all levels as long as they're short? I like the idea of something that I can grab and go because I run one-shots more often than long campaigns.

only ever played 5e

For me, it's D&D 4e. I play a lot of different games and sometimes go a while without playing D&D, but when I'm in the mood to kick down some doors and kill some monsters, I prefer to go for the edition with the best combat system.

I can understand the arguments about it being a very limited system and that it only runs a certain kind of game, but that's all I want out of D&D. If I'm not doing badass adventurers killing monsters, completing quests and righting wrongs, I'll be playing another system. 4e gives me the archetypal D&D experience with a finely tuned set of mechanics (once you make use of the math fixes, which is a legitimate flaw of the system) and has enough content that the combat minigame always feels fresh and fun, each new class providing a distinct playstyle and set of mechanics to experiment with, along with the most fun aspect of it, the necessity of teamwork in combat and the ability to pull off some amazing combos of various powers and abilities.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it as anyone's first system, but I'm not sure I'd recommend any D&D as that. I'm just the type for player who likes having a different system for every kind of game, and for fantasy superhero badassery, in my experience, 4e is unsurpassed.

Favorite class in 4e? I've got some players looking for something a little different, but at the same time are unfamiliar with anything that isn't DnD. The only things they've played were 5e and a couple games of 3.5. I'm not sure how I feel about the spellcasting system, but I haven't had a good look at it.

Does Gamma World 7e count?

4rry here.

I love it for both new and experienced players because the system allows for players to pick their race/class/power/feat combos to do whatever they want giving great flexibility to new players who don't understand minmaxing yet and just want to have fun with the game and also grants complexity to experiences players who want to game the system or try to make very powerful characters. The roles and powers make the game relatively balanced between classes for combat encounters. Again, this is nice for new players so that they cant just pick the wrong class and fuck up the whole game. The system allows for retraining so players who want to change what theyve done dont have to play mother may i with the dm. The whole system is nice since it caters to the flexibility needed to properly introduce new players and also the complexity necessary to allow experienced players to mess around with the system mechanically.

That said, I find the feat taxes boring and unfun and the system's math requiring magic items is also some bs but both are easily fixed or avoided. The system's focus on combat often gives people the impression that it cant be used for roleplaying but I find that the lack of rules here makes for an unencumbered rp experience; you dont have players constantly saying "oh wait, I've got a spell/ability for that" when youre just trying to talk the dwarf blacksmith's price down.

The Warlord. It is honestly one of the best designed 'Support' options in any RPG I've ever played. Rather than being passive and reactive it's an aggressive, proactive leader who acts as a potent force multiplier, all your powers and abilities just making your allies better. I've never had so much fun playing a heroic leader of men, throwing themselves into the fray and leading by example, spurring their allies on to greatness.

Also, if you are considering 4e, there's a few caveats/things to consider-

If your players don't like metamechanics or are uncomfortable with blatant narrative abstractions, your players won't like 4e. The 'Powers' system is built around the idea of a cinematic fight scene, giving you a selection of more basic options along with a few big, badass moves, but some players struggle to rationalise the IC/OOC disconnect of the powers not existing as discrete, in universe things. I've never had a problem with it, but some people find it to be a dealbreaker for them, which is fair enough.

The other thing is the math fixes. The first two Monster Manuals are unfortunately kinda fucked mathematically, the damage is too low and the HP is too high so the fights feel like a boring slog. The Monster Manual 3 and Monster Vault fixed this, and the numbers in pic related give you all the necessary stats for encounter building alongside the guidelines in the DMG. On the player side, you need to give out an Expertise feat and Improved Defences to each player for free. This gives them +1 to attack and +1 to defences per tier, smoothing out the math.

I'd also recommend tracking down a copy of cbloader. It's an offline implementation of the 4e character builder that gives you all the content and makes building and levelling a character easy, as well as simplifying shopping for items. I honestly barely use the 4e books these days, everything I need is in cbloader or on funin.space, a rip of the compendium, a searchable index of all 4e content.

>Gamma World 7e
It's fine by me. I'd love to hear your opinions on it.

Thanks for the advice. 4e actually sounds a lot like what I'm looking for. My players aren't terribly worried about things making sense 100% in-universe and don't mind a little abstraction, so it shouldn't be a problem. The only time they really have a problem is when they have to come up with ideas in a more free-form system. I've actually heard good things about the Warlord class in 4e before and it was one of the reasons I started looking into it. I'm going to see if I can track down those resources.

mediafire.com/file/38pt0j437xwz8gl/4e LCB Complete Setup.zip

Here's a link to the character builder. It worked for me, although unfortunately some people have installation issues with it. It's a hack of an old, non-updated program made quite a while ago, so it's only got more and more problems as it goes forward. If you can get it working though, it's still extremely handy.

OSH really only -is- "lower levels". It supports like... 4 levels of progression? You could pretty easily do more and just let it run, but it really needs a few more "tiers" of play.

How "epic" it is probably mostly comes down to how you describe things, though.

A lot of campaigns I run end up being low-level short adventures (not all by choice), but I'll check it out anyway. It'll probably still be useful as a quick adventure game without a lot of need for setup if I understand correctly.

The other classes we put together for it.

Sweet, thanks. I'll fiddle around with it and see how it works. I don't think it had any issues with the installation, so it should be good to go. I'm actually excited to try this one after our current campaign finishes.

If you're going to run it, a few little bits of advice- The DMG is honestly one of the best there is, it gives a lot of great advice on how to structure and organise things as well as providing a lot of mechanical support, it's well worth a read even if it's stuff you already know.

For your first few fights, you'll probably want to run with pregen monsters, but once you feel comfortable with the system designing your own monsters and encounters is something I've really come to enjoy, especially given how you can tune them to your party.

Talking about your party, while most classes in 4e are alright, there are some to avoid or to only choose with great care. The Vampire and Assassin were released late in the day, badly designed and never supported well, while the Seeker is just very mediocre and the Runepriest is kinda complicated and didn't get much support. Both of the latter are very much playable, but require some extra work and consideration.

Other people like them, but I'd suggest against the Essentials classes. Again released late in the day, they're basically just reworkings of existing 4e classes with less options and more simplified mechanics, which some people like but I tend to find boring as sin, I'd go for the default version in basically all circumstances.

4e makes the assumption that you'll have a player class covering every role. While this isn't too hard, it does require a little coordination ahead of time to make sure you get a balanced party, so it's something to discuss with your group. It's also a fact that while 4e characters are powerful, they're all specialised. Of any RPG I've ever played, it's the one that most necessitates teamwork and cooperation in its combat system, which is fun but can blindside people if they aren't expecting it.

For your first game, don't worry too much about optimisation. 4e works fine without it.

Man, that takes me back. I wish the dude actually continued with the Expert/Advanced thing he was planning. (The same goes for Torchbearer, although that's probably actually happening.)

OD&D, I shit you not. There's just something about the bounded math, simple rules and general weirdness that does it for me. I first got into it for archaeological purposes, but these days I thing it actually has some things worth merit.

>Do any of them have features you wish were used universally?
Putting an actual fucking limit on AC, I guess? The variable number of hit dice also handily solves the issue of Constitution being more valuable to less durable class (the bonus hit points are closer to being a flat percentage than varying from +18% to +40%).
The only thing I think should actually just be adopted by all the other editions is the rules for Pursuit and Evasion, because the rules for running away in modern editions (and even AD&D and, god forbid, the Rules Cyclopedia) are dogshit.

>Are there any glaring flaws with your favorite that you think could be fixed to make it better?
It's OD&D. I dunno, man, throw a dart and let's see what you hit.

Most of the really big issues come in with Supplement I: Greyhawk, so personally I recommend just playing with the LBBs (Little Brown Books), but they definitely have their own share of issues. The editing isn't as bad as in certain other products (hello, Eldritch Wizardry, didn't see you there - you were hiding behind two halves of the Druid), but it's pretty damn bad and the only reason I feel proficient in it is because of the whole archaeological thing I mentioned.

The biggest flaw, though, is that you kind of need to wing things in regards to actually implementing the combat system since you're supposed to use Chainmail but it's not entirely clear how you're supposed to do that.

>>For your first game, don't worry too much about optimisation. 4e works fine without it.
That's good to ehar. I'll probably stumble a little bit on the first campaign, so I'll take it easy and test the waters in the first one. I've been wanting to see more teamwork from my players. Our current CoC campaign has them all very paranoid and distrustful of each other's characters. Hopefully 4e will get them in the spirit of team play again. Thanks for all of your advice. It's going to be a big help.

>Man, that takes me back. I wish the dude actually continued with the Expert/Advanced thing he was planning. (The same goes for Torchbearer, although that's probably actually happening.)
I really liked "adopting" the system after dude just abandoned it. We had planned on taking on the expert/advanced progression after putting the classes together, and I actually have a framework laid out somewhere in my notes, but we just never got around to it. Mostly because that was in the middle of a huge RPG dry run for everyone we knew, where everyone switched pretty heavily from RPGs-and-sometimes-board-games to just all boardgames all the time.

If youre looking for teamwork from your players. 4e should work great but I would have a thorough session 0 with the whole present so you can have them all discuss which classes and roles they are going to take. Something to keep in mind is that you can skip some roles if you pick complimentary classes. Barbarians might not have the marking mechanics of a good defender but they can really stack up on hp and can be a suitable stand-in as a person who can just be beat to hell and back. I find the controller role to be almost unnecessary since it just kinda does aoe/buffs and many other classes can accomplish this; monk, cleric, and bard being some prime examples. Speaking of classes and session 0, you might want to look into some synergistic classes so that you can suggest class combos. A Warlord who has a really beefy MBA/RBA user can make for a powerful combo or making the Radiant Mafia is also pretty fun. Knowing the class mechanics beforehand or looking them up as players choose what they think would be fun can make for some very fun and very optimized teamwork.

Also, just to throw this out there: Swordmage best mage.

I usually do a session 0 anyway just to help everyone setup and get things squared away, so I doubt we'll have too much trouble. I think it'll be fun building a synergistic party from the ground up.

4e always scratched the same itch for our group. The combat is really the only thing we needed a system for anyway and that mechanic doesn't effect my narrative, so why not?

>that business card is one of the most concise condemnations of 4e ever written

why is that, do you think?

4e fan here. Another great site for people is funin.space

It's a rip of the compendium for 4e so even if you have issues with the char builder you have this.

...What?

I think he's implying the fact that 4e needs such a thing is a testament to its poor quality. Can't imagine why though, seems like a neat little tip card that helps improve the game.

I assumed it was the whole "balanced to a fault" angle, where everything is literally the same. (It isn't, really, but I suppose the skeleton it's built on is similar?)

You know that you can make a fairly accurate version of that for multiple other editions, right? There's multiple spreadsheets out there showing the general progression of monster stats for every WotC edition and Pathfinder, for instance. They just weren't all that open about how it worked in 3E, although both Pathfinder and 5E have monster creation guidelines that give hints as to their mindset.

3E's charop scene had Tleilaxu_Ghola's Optimization by the Numbers, for instance, which shows clear linear progressions in HP and saving throws (they weren't very interested in the typical offensive capabilities, what with being optimizers trying to spot typical weak points).

You can probably put together very similar things for most editions, actually. Off the top of my head, OD&D would be extremely simple to handle that way - AC already tends to increase with hit dice!

All that the 4E math shows, really, is a change in the order of operations: whereas in 1E you would make the monster first and then calculate its XP second from its capabilities, in 4E you could begin from the level and then work things out from that basis.
Which is kind of necessary when WotC decided to balance everything around character levels, but that decision was done back in 3E. Maybe late 2E, I dunno, I honestly haven't kept track of what went on in that edition. (I'm the OD&D dude.)

>that business card is one of the most concise condemnations of 4e ever written
Nah. Things like that were some of the reasons I actually enjoyed running 4e as much as I enjoyed playing it.

If 3e taught me one thing really well, it was to completely ignore the massive amounts of crunch in the rules and instead work off of fairly basic numbers to bring interesting concepts to life.

I ran 4e almost entirely off of the "guidelines". Skill DCs, challenges, monsters, rivals. I don't think I ever wrote a real stat block for any enemy, ever, and it ran amazingly in spite of that. Or maybe because of that.

>I ran 4e almost entirely off of the "guidelines". Skill DCs, challenges, monsters, rivals. I don't think I ever wrote a real stat block for any enemy, ever, and it ran amazingly in spite of that. Or maybe because of that.
As a fan of OSR stuff, I think being able to improvise stuff on the fly is probably pretty important for smooth play. Nothing kills the flow of a game quite like having to reference a book - or even just skim through a statblock.

Regardless of how well they actually succeeded with it, 4E's attempt at consistent math was admirable.

>Regardless of how well they actually succeeded with it, 4E's attempt at consistent math was admirable.
Yeah, it was a mess of varying degrees throughout the lifetime of the edition, but just having the data to work with was a better toolset for me than dozens of books full of crunch.

I honestly wish they'd published full guidelines for powers and feats, too. How much damage x power type of y role can do at z level, how much reduction in damage the various debuffs or effects were worth, etc. You can never make something like that 100% accurate, and you can reverse engineer it, but just having their own internal logic would make things a lot easier.

Like all these guys said, I really like that 4e was very open about how the game worked mechanically. It made it so that I, as a DM, could build any monster I wanted for any level and not have to worry about some CR or if the party could handle it. The ability to directly see how monsters were made and apply that to creature building was refreshing since in previous editions I would have had to work that out from some vague or obfuscated rules and without explicit guidelines. Honestly, being open about how the game worked really facilitated my ability to create and tell a story with my players rather than hinder it like many people who deride the plain nature of the system proclaim.

How much people praise or crave obfuscation is something that really confuses me. While a game like Nobilis 2e is a beautiful thing to read, it's an absolute nightmare to actually use. I'd far prefer a clinical rules reference than an artful mess when it comes to actually running a game, even if I can appreciate an artful mess for its own sake.

5th edition. Now I want to clarify that I’ve played all editions since the red box. You know which red box starter set I mean.
I loved that starter set a kid and have loved d&d ever since. But time passed and 3e came out and I got invited to play it with a large group of friends. Over time we changed what we were playing from 3e to 3.5e and then to pathfinder and then to pathfinder using path of war and then to pathfinder using spheres of power and pow and then finally to pathfinder with spheres of power and spheres of might (very heavily house-ruled of course). I personally don’t play in the game anymore because I dislike 3.pf and I feel like pow and spheres don’t feel like d&d. I played a little bit of 4e and ran it for some 12(ish) year olds a few times. Felt 4e made the game purely about combat. Then 5e comes out and at first I’m skeptical of it because in many ways it seems completely different to all the previous editions and yet is also an amalgamation of them all. Now I’ve gone back and actually tried to run 2e and while it holds a place in my heart it’s a complete mess and is extremely unfriendly to newcomers. 5e is approachable, it feels like d&d, it hasn’t decent combat mechanics, it can be played with as much or as little combat, politics and exploration as you like.

If I were to improve it would need more content just generally. A criticism I often see on 5e is the fact that it seems to be basically missing rules. I.e. where are rules for artificers kits/crafting/alchemy/creating magic items, ect? While some of this has been addressed fairly recently I found that I made different rules for those aspects of the game to fit the game I was running and hence I think having a singular set may have actually held me back. Basically you should approach 5e expecting to fill in a few gaps and then it runs really nice. Also there’s a few issues with certain class options just being a bit too shit such as Way of the Four Elements Monk.

I very much agree. Obfuscation of the rules is simply baffling to me but then again I almost always completely separate the rules from the fluff since I tend to inject my own fluff into nearly all of my games anyway. Maybe i should try gurps

>It made it so that I, as a DM, could build any monster I wanted for any level and not have to worry about some CR or if the party could handle it.
The way I see it, there's two right ways to approach this: either you have the system be extremely transparent and balanced like in 4E, so the typical DM can easily create monsters that are somewhat on-par with published ones; or you abandon the concept of CR and the like entirely, like in OD&D and the like, and thus having the monster be unbalanced won't wreck the game in a way other monsters won't already.
(In fact, chances are that it'll just become That One Deadly Monster On the First Floors. Shout-outs to OD&D having Wraiths sometimes show up on Level 1. Gotta love extremely swingy wandering monster tables.)

The issue comes when you're somewhere in-between, like in 3.5. CR matters to some degree, for whatever reasons, but accurately gauging CR is difficult (because it is highly obscured - c.f. 5E vampires not getting increased Challenge from their Charm ability) and doing it wrong can wreck a game (because modern games are often more about singular heroes making stories rather than murderhobos dying repeatedly).

If you want clarity in who can fight who reliably and what is and isn't a challenge, GURPS probably isn't the system for you. 150 points in cooking skills and 150 points in guns and gun accessories will have vastly different competence in separate fields.

There's been articles written on the subject, of course, but you need to be careful not to assume that equal points values mean equal challenge.
And honestly, with NPCs you're often better off not statting them beyond just giving general skill levels and relevant advantages and rough attributes.

I fell in love with Fantasy Flight's stupid dice system for Star Wars, and have adopted Genesys now that it's out as my "generic system" of choice. It's lacking some of the specific guidelines I would like, though it seems predictable enough.

its more about lack of rules obfuscation and rules separate from fluff, but I definitely understand your point of concern

>I wish Genesys had more specific guidelines
>or you abandon the concept of CR and the like entirely

I'm pretty sure Genesys (and star wars before it) has taken this approach to things. Given the way the system is set up, and the relatively minor chance of "death" in defeat, I think it's kind of intentional. Challenges that are "too weak" are fine in that they're often done quickly and can be narratively engaging, while challenges that are "too hard" are also generally fine, because they're still unlikely to end the story (unless you make them).

And thus the system can get away with "guidelines" for creating challenges that are really, -really- lite and loose.

>Which edition of D&D is your favorite?
4th edition is my favorite.
>>Roles system means no class (pre-Essentials) is underpowered (boring, I'll give you, but that's mostly Essentials' fault).
>>Martials do more interesting stuff than just "I roll to attack".
>>The arcane casters all have solid, defined thematics that mean they actually play differently.
>>The Nentir Vale setting is what I've been looking for in a setting, with prominent non-human communities and a wide, easily shaped & refined world.
>>Good, solid, PC-supporting fluff for races that were generic throw-away bad guys, like gnolls, bladelings and more.
>>Support for monstrous PCs.
>>Interesting new fluff for halflings & gnomes.
>>Devas and Shardminds.
>>Swordmage is the best Gish I've ever seen.
>>Primal Power Source makes Druids/Shamans/Barbarians feel like they have a clearly defined place in the cosmology.
>>Psionics are simple, non-complicated and easy to integrate.
>>World Axis cosmology really excites my imagination and catches my interest in a way that the Great Wheel never did.
>>Races are all uniquely flavored and mechanically strong.

Oh, GURPS is great for that - rules can't really be obfuscated when the system is built around everything being an optional toolbox where you only use some of them, after all. There's a lot of knobs to turn, but they're usually fairly clearly labelled.

It just might be hard to tell what things look like when you've turned those specific knobs in those specific combinations, and comparing it to other knobs might leave you confused until you figure out the ramifications.

>>>The Nentir Vale setting is what I've been looking for in a setting, with prominent non-human communities and a wide, easily shaped & refined world.
God, yes. The Nentir Vale is like The Known World before the Gazetteers came along and defined everything, and it's pretty great. It does lose out a bit on being planned rather than truly ad-hoc like The Known World, but the decision to just not define stuff? Yeah, that's a good one.

Not to mention how it's, like, the one setting that actually supports all the stuff that Points of Light was inspired by. Shit like B2 The Keep on the Borderlands has a similar Law vs. Chaos, Bastions of Civilization vs. The Untamed Wilds thing going on, but it very much does not make any sense whatsoever when you start defining Karameikos and make it look like The Untamed Wilds aren't really all that untamed nor wild.

>>Psionics are simple, non-complicated and easy to integrate.
IMHO 3.5 did it better, but that's mostly just bias.

Yea, I find that the abundance and necessity of splats turns me off of the game but the more I learn about the game the more i realize it might be what I want. I'm eventually just gonna have to buckle down and push through it but it'd be easier if i had someone in the area to teach me.

this has officially turned into a 4e thread i think.

Check by the GURPS thread sometime - they'll have plenty of advice for where to start. If you just want something D&D-esque, maybe check out the Dungeon Fantasy Roleplaying Game (Powered by GURPS)? It's a "worked setting", basically all the rules and variants and whatnot pre-applied for a specific thing.

I appreciate that it's normally more art than science in other editions and that this can turn people off, but as someone who always had a knack for that way about things I actually really hated the inescapably procedural feeling that came with GMing 4e. Always felt like I was saddled with more work than I would have in most RPGs. Never brought the same joy.

It's certainly fun enough as a player, though.

Another good example of this is Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. They both happen to also measure groups of nameless enemies with the same sort of 'skill upgrade' mechanic, and are easy to BS a simple enemy's stats in.

5e
i love Advantage & Disadvantage, and more importantly what it replaces the 50 modifiers your trying to rememeber from various effects, buffs debuffs flanking etc.

I get that. I was never really able to master the art of monster building so instead the whole thing always just felt like a craps shoot. I found the more procedural way 4e was presented to be refreshing and useful.

I'm actually surprised by the amount of 4e got in this thread. I rarely hear anyone talk about it. That being said, I'd still love to get opinions about other variants of DnD and maybe favorite splatbooks and third party content.

>I rarely hear anyone talk about it.
Why would we talk about it here? Since before its launch, its gotten nothing but hate and shitposting.

I remember when I stopped even caring to discuss it online.

Someone was ranting about how it "Isn't even Real D&D", and listed a bunch of things that "real D&D" had that 4e didn't. And I realized that he wasn't wrong about those things. And that I just kind of hate "Real D&D" as most of the fans understand it.

This degree of coherent discussion of it is honestly pretty rare. There is a bizarre diehard section of the classic D&D fanbase absolutely committed to shittalking it whenever it's brought up and absolutely rejecting any notion that anything about it isn't entirely awful. I've always thought it's pretty odd behaviour since their side actually won the edition war.

It's somewhat tricky to get 4E discussion on Veeky Forums, but there's a few forums elsewhere that'll have spirited discussions on it from time to time. Usually they've banned edition warring, which helps.

>That being said, I'd still love to get opinions about other variants of DnD and maybe favorite splatbooks and third party content.
If you ever get interested in looking into OD&D, try to see if you can find Judges Guild's Ready Ref Sheets. It's a wonderful little third-party product from the dawn of the hobby.
(Also, of course, Judges Guild had some magnificent stuff they put out in general - the main highlights being City State of the Invincible Overlord, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Dark Tower and Caverns of Thracia.)

>4E
best combat, easy DMing, a lot of freedom with roleplaying, actual balance, supports both Dark sun and eberron without beeing 3.5.

2e is best edition

>OD&D, I shit you not
^ This guy gets it, there is just something about it. Almost like it's pure. Sure the rules are the definition of arcane and i never liked the idea of the other races being capped to certain levels, but it just so innocent, untainted by greed and bloat features and deadly as fuck.

>deadly as fuck
I keep bringing up how you can encounter Wraiths (immune to nonmagical weapons!) on Dungeon Level One, but maybe that's just cherrypicking a bit.
I should probably mention the Gargoyles (immune to magic as well), Lycanthropes of indeterminate type (let's be honest, they're probably werewolves), Ogres, 7th-level Magic-Users...

Want to tangle with the toughest monsters in the game, the Balrogs and Red Dragons and Purple Worms? Take a trip down to Dungeon Level 3 and see if you get lucky on your monster safari. (Finding Monster Level 6 monsters isn't guaranteed until DL13+, though.)

Decide that you've had enough of the deadly dungeon, so you wander out into wilderness adventures instead? Hot tip: this is a bad idea in all of TSR D&D.
Decide that you just want to hang out in town rather than do all that? Damn, son, why is the city encounter table 50% undead?

Shit's weird as hell and honestly I kind of love it?


>untainted by greed
Also, yeah, this is kind of a thing. Imagine any other D&D edition having, in its core book, the words
>In this light, we urge you to refrain from writing for rules interpretations or the like unless you are absolutely at a loss, for **everything** herein is fantastic, and the best way is to decide how you would like it to be, and then make it just that way! On the other hand, we are not loath to answer your questions, but why have us do any more of your imagining for you?
The closest you get these days is, what, how they deliberately kept the Nentir Vale vague and unexplained for a while?

4e for sure.

BECMI gets a mention for having a similarly good complexity-to-depth ratio. And I don't mind 5e. And sometimes I like to dust off my 3.x knowledge and think about characters I'll never play. But 4e really is on top for me, no question.

>Nentir Vale
I honestly dont even know what that is. I always make up my own adventure and worlds unless it get talked into being DM for a group of all new people 3 hours before they want to try D&D because it "looks like so much fun on Stranger Things". Then i break out the 5e starter set. I dont even read the fluff in the monster manual half the time nowadays unless it's for a super strange monster.

>4e for sure.
Been thinking of collection the PHB and MMs for 4e since i loved it's version of Dark Sun. Any othe rsplats you'd recommend?

Points of Light, PoLand, the Nentir Vale, Nerath, whatever. The 4E setting.

>I'm actually surprised by the amount of 4e got in this thread. I rarely hear anyone talk about it.
This is pretty much the only place on the internet where it's still relevant, other than 4e-specific forums. And even here you can't really talk about it, people just shitpost about how much better it is than Pathfinder.

I mean, that's not a high bar. It's kind of like saying that this pb sandwich is better than this shit one. Of course it's better, it's not shit.

>And even here you can't really talk about it, people just shitpost about how much better it is than Pathfinder.
>just shitpost about how much better it is than Pathfinder
>shitpost

I mean, someone's gotta do it to keep that stereotype alive.

I enjoyed it the most because of the electronic tool set it came with. My players could create characters on their own from the same sources without needing to borrow books from one another or wait for the session. I could create an unlimited number of brand new monsters every week that were only limited by my ability to create names for things.

That sounds really cool. Was that part of the CBLoader?

CBLoader was the Character Builder. The Monster Builder was sperate and required a different hack to work.

FWIW CBLoader still exists and will occasionally upload new content to you computer when you boot up the CB.

I got the CBLoader, but it's giving me an error when I go to use it. I probably just missed something in the instructions. I'll look for that monster builder.

I can't really help you. It is still on this computer, but then again, I haven't got a new computer in four years. I can't stress how much the Monster Builder helps when making characters. I would copy the text to make PDFs each week.

I'm sure I'll find it digging around. I appreciate the advice though. This thread has really sold me on 4e.

>Favorite Edition?
3.5e hands down, it was the first edition of D&D I was introduced to back when it was brand new.
>What edition I actually run?
5e, it's just so much easier on me as a DM to work with a much more simplified system. I no longer have to spend hours and hours on every nuance of the game, and players no longer spend hours upon hours picking feats and abilities.

In the back of the 4e DMG there was a starter adventure as well as a "starting region" called the Nentir Vale which was a few pages of info about the town of Fallcrest (a starting location with a number of quest hooks and such) and a few about regional locations and history. Just enough that it's easily understood but loose enough that it can be filled with more shit the DM wants.

It was expanded over the years (including another town in the Vale, Winterhaven, being the start for the only official AP for 4e). There is a guy who has compiled a lot of the info for people and the first thing you need to know is that, despite adding more the guys at WotC surprised me and others in still keeping the world feel mysterious and dangerous, perfect for their "Points of Light" idea for 4e.

thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=72&t=15210

5e a best

>Halflings and Gnomes
Oh my fucking god this so fucking much. They still kept elements of what makes a Gnome and a Halfling, but now they don't feel like "guys were more than just dorfs".

4e>BECMI/RC>5e>2e>BX>Basic>1e>O>3.P

I should stress this is only my take.

Basically everything was good and pretty high quality. Really, the only questionable things are the Dragon Magazine stuff, especially from the end of its life cycle when Mearls got its grubby hands on it (yes, even the Essentails stuff imo).

One reason I wouldn't just collect stuff is because the electronic tools are just so good. That said, setting books and DM-ing advice are not included in rules compendiums and CBLoader, so those could be still pretty cool to get.

1e AD&D

My fav is 3.5 (only played 3.5 and 5)

I want to try 2e but my group just wants to stick to 5e/starfinder (I know, gross)

I do declare that this person is me brethren of african american descent

Good taste.

Not a bad order, I might switch 2e and 5e but thats just because 2e has a lot of settings which are great, such as Dark Sun, Spelljammer and Planescape, and 5e is notably lacking in that department

I feel I can only really comment on the flavors of D&D I've played, so...
BECMI: will always have a place in my heart, because it was the first RPG I played.
2nd ed: probably my least favorite edition system wise, but one of the best campaigns I was ever in was run in this system.
3rd ed, was a game changer, and I like that, but feat bloat and some of the more diehard fans (now paizo fanboys) really poisoned the game for me.
4th ed, not gonna lie, I love this one. it felt like everyone had something to do, and could have moments of awesome. I had more fun playing this than a lot of other games.

A question to the folks in this thread who like 4e-

What are the aspects of it you disliked? What are the problems it suffered that you wish were fixed or improved on? I'm one of the poor bastards attempting a 4e inspired successor game, and hearing people's thoughts on the flaws of the original is always really handy.

Don't make things generic. This is actually a critique I have of most 4e-like games. One of the main things about 4e was that classes that before were just there now were giving mechanically interesting and innovative things and felt different from one another. Try to keep those things.

That's something we certainly want to support, giving each class its own distinct mechanical identity and playstyle at least equal to and hopefully improving on the foundations set by 4e.

bloat for feats, circumstantial modifiers, (ongoing) statuses, even number of powers (both in the sense that many higher level powers are just a lower level power with an extra couple of [W] and the number of powers a character has access to), as well as magic items

If you do "simple" classes, actually try to make them competitive

I said it earlier in the thread but I am not a huge fan of the feat taxes. I think investment in something like one of the Expertise feats should gain a noticeable benefit instead of it seemingly being required to keep the system's math in check.

Additionally, i am not a huge fan of the HP and general numbers bloat. OSR and 5e's bounded accuracy and the like make the whole system much less gamey-feeling and I also am not a huge fan of rewriting my character sheet every 2 levels. The HP bloat also goes over to monsters and really prolongs fights. I know MM3 and MV attempted to fix it but i still kinda wish it was just a little more deadly on either side.

Not to shit on user's post, but for the love of god, don't lower the expected skill bonus values for proficiency/"expertise" to 5e levels, if you keep the d20.

Cutting down HP and reducing damage just to play with lower numbers sounds good tho.

On feat bloat, we're trying to cut down the number of feats a character gets but making each one more significant, equivalent to maybe 2-3 4e feats. Over our current level progression setup, we've currently got characters gaining 8 combat feats and 5 non-combat feats, splitting the two into separate categories to avoid false choices, with a similar approach to powers and items, less but more significant and avoiding false choices between in combat and out of combat effects. Does that like a decent solution?

Could you clarify what you mean by circumstantial modifiers and ongoing statuses? That there are too many different ones and they're bothersome to keep track of?

And we're not yet considering simplified classes, but if we did we would try to make them worthwhile.

Negating feat taxes is 100% something we're trying to do. We're reworking the system math from the bottom up, including to hit and damage numbers- We're currently basing it around the idea that a standard fight should be over in 3-5 rounds, averaging out at 4.

Number progression is something we're still fiddling with, as we're trying to find a middle ground. Some people really enjoy seeing numbers rise, finding it gives a tangible sense of progression, while others feel like it's pointless inflation. We're still figuring out if we can find a sweet spot, or at least a decent compromise between the two.

I like the +5 I am just not so much of a fan about the 1/2 level. i think it is pointless and just adds numbers to add numbers. Maybe a 1/4 level would feel less pointless? but then youre nearly at the weird proficiency thing that 5e does.

The Black Hack has an interesting take on progression; basically what matters is not your level, but the difference in level between you and what you are rolling against.

So if a level 10 guy is rolling to attack a level 20 enemy, he gets -10 to the roll (or rather, the enemy has +5 to his defenses to frontload the math).

This is easily adjustable, as you can see. It could be level/2, or level/4, or even level/10. This way you could scale how insignificant lower level enemies and challenges become to characters, while bonuses from feats and abilities would still be flat +X% (thank you d20 for having a normal distribution!).

I have heard that before. The problem I can see with it in a 4e like game is constantly having to roll different numbers if the encounter has different level enemies. It's just another little thing to keep track of, whereas a scaling bonus with level effectively does the same thing mathematically while keeping the modifiers more consistent.

>I have heard that before. The problem I can see with it in a 4e like game is constantly having to roll different numbers if the encounter has different level enemies

That's why you frontload it by adjusting enemy defenses to the party level (if the party has different level characters this falls apart a bit, but that shouldn't happen). So, essentially the characters always roll the same, it's just the DCs changing. You'd probably have to announce the DCs to make the players know/feel like the characters are progressing tho.

But, again, that's basically exactly the same as how progression works in D&D mathematically, it just obfuscates it rather than being obvious about it.

that sounds interesting. how does it feel in play? is it too much to take into account during play? i find that lots of players arent huge fans of extra things they have to keep track of and this seems like it might bog down play if not implemented well.

The point is that you can easily adjust how it plays.

You want swarms of low level enemies to be a problem at high levels? Set scaling to 1/4 or lower. Maybe even set it to 0, with the only scaling coming in the form of damage and HP.

You want to feel a big bump of power every time you level up? set it to 1. Hell, set it to 2, and in 3 levels the first level goblins won't be able to touch you (in exchange the dragon that's 3 levels higher than you is a fucking terror.

But level appropriate enemies will be always "balanced" to the party.

On one side of the spectrum you get GMing 4e which is compared to being a human MMO server, i.e. 'science'. That's the back-end. The front-end that players see however can be made very satisfying by that laser-precise difficulty control. When an encounter seems impossible at first glance, but is actually adjusted so that it's indeed damn near impossible to win, but still possible, players get massive satisfaction when they finally beat it by gitting gud. But you really need a well-designed (granted, only for that specific purpose) rules system with laser-tight balance, and complete transparency.
On the other side you get extremely math-less play, when your goal might even not be beating the monster. Immersion, if you will. Remember Scrap Princess' monster books. They're evocative as hell, creatures are loaded with compelling concepts, each worthy of an adventure to be built around. But why even add statblocks? It kind of kills the evocativeness of it for me.

So, I'm wondering, is it just me, or is there really no middle ground? Is it a case of hyperspecialisation trumping all? Is there a way to blend the 'gamey' and the story-oriented without watering down anything?