Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on August 10, 2022, 10:44:06 AM5e is garbage that people project whatever they want on because it hits in the nostalgic fee-fees.

Disagree with this part. People play 5e due to its sheer market dominance, plus the fact that the core is so easy to use it's hard to go back to the pain that were the earlier editions for handling almost anything. But the system itself feels so different from earlier editions, outside of ability score, race and class names, I can't see how anyone can get feels of nostalgia from it. It's basically a different game with a few overlapping concepts.

Never got around playing 4e, so can't say much about it.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 10, 2022, 11:45:41 AMIt's basically a different game with a few overlapping concepts.

Its a mishmash of old and new mechanics with no thought given to how or why any of them worked in separation. Its design iteration was based on 'feeling' like D&D rather then working well. Lots of mechanics are 4e style things, just laid out like 3e/2e but that gets a pass from the grognards and celebrated as a retro success.

As for ease of use. I would compare it to a old clunky car that is now on cement blocks instead of tires, and a IOU not in place of an engine. Its sure much easier to manage cement blocks instead of tires, but I don't give it credit for that.

And I don't even think 4e is great. I only bring it up in a design sense.

Stock 3.0 is the best edition.

I mean, "best" is subjective, right?  Stock 3.0's upsides:
1- Clearly worded spells and effects
2- Everything stacks correctly, once you get the rules behind everything it all makes total sense. DMG formula extrapolate smoothly from PHB stuff.
3- Action economy is easy to understand with the "partial action"
4- Extremely powerful effects available starting at mid levels
5- If you build encounters correctly every encounter is fast and medium or high risk
6- The best DMG.  The 3.5 DMG stripped away tons of a younger Monte Cook's actual great points.

The downsides, which got all this fun nerfed, are things like "the martial classes don't compete at all past the mid levels" and "this and that and the other thing are optimal and too good".  Also "the splatbooks were OP".  Well, stock 3.0 doesn't have splatbooks, and you'll just have to get over the fact that haste is super good and the team that maintains it more throughout the fight will probably win.  Play high magic item options to make martial classes good for a couple more levels, but ultimately you have to buff your martial guys and strip buffs and actively debuff enemies to win, and you either like that or you dislike it.

3.5 took away all the uniqueness of the edition in exchange for some class balance and better templates for splatbooks.  It removed a lot of the great wording of the rules which were pretty important, changed how things scaled or stacked to be unfun and crappy, and basically knocked a bunch of holes in the side that they then spent years slowly patching up with splatbooks, badly.  Was it worth it?  3.5 was the most successful edition by far to that date, grabbing basically the entire TTRPG community, but it also had a lot more time and was open source.  But I don't think it was worth it.  Stock 3.0 had everything you needed to make literally anything, and it was immediately obvious how it was supposed to work.  When people look back at 3.5 they don't think "oh man, it was so BALANCED and there was no martial/caster disparity!".  Every problem 3.0 had, 3.5 still has, maybe mitigated a little bit, but a lot of things 3.0 had just got deleted.

Now obviously as popular as 3.0 was, 3.5 exceeded it, and 5ed is almost not even the same thing, because the mass market and multimedia blitz got so many new players that it isn't even remotely comparable to older versions, which were mostly fighting over the same core TTRPG crew that goes back to the dawn of the hobby.  But if you come at 3.0 with the assumptions from prior versions plus really read that 3.0 DMG, I think you'll see the incredibly blank slate that it gives you, with just so damned many tools.

3.0 or 3.5 by a mile (there isn't much difference between the two, but I think the tuning up they did of some of the weaker classes was worth it). I would restrict it to player's handbook classes, and strictly enforce the multiclassing limitations. Unfortunately you can't really take out feats without a total redesign of the fighter and wizard classes.

5e is more streamlined on paper, but I find in practice the action economy is more complicated, and I actually kinda hate both bounded accuracy and the proficiency system. 3.x's skill system needed some tuning, but afaic, they threw the baby out with the bathwater. And I still think the fort/ref/will save system is the best in any edition of D&d.

Honestly though, Pathfinder 1e almost makes 3.5 obsolete, since it's basically the same game with the rules a little further cleaned up.

As an addendum to what I just said, and echoing a lot of other people, a lot of the best stuff in third edition is in the third party material. You can look for the d20 Conan for a great low fantasy game, or Radiance for a high fantasy one.

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 10, 2022, 10:37:33 AM
Unlike many here I can't fathom a world without Feats (or their equivalent in other games), or what issue anyone could possibly have with them, other than crappy implementation. So if anything I would drop Ability Increases as a default and hand out Feats instead, then turn Ability Increases into a feat, and adjust all feats to match a +2 bonus to a score in terms of power.

For me, it's because the crappy implementation is only part of the problem (because that's the way WotC rolls).  The other parts get into questions of design that I don't particularly care to argue, but at the crux is my belief that feats are trying to occupy a space that simply doesn't properly exist in the WotC systems.  Note, I'm not saying that feats couldn't work.  Only that to really make them work well would require a ground up rebuild of the whole system so that they fit into the design seamlessly.  WotC designs and uses them like a junk drawer where everything goes that didn't fit anywhere else.

5e, definitely.

- Good caster/fighter balance.
- Less fiddly than 3e, similar amount of options.
- Numbers are less bloated than 3e and 4e (e.g., +12 attack bonus at level 18 or something).
- Grids and minis are a lot less important.
- Fewer skills than 3e.

5e has also the weakest weapon list and a few issues of its own. But I'd take it over 3e and 4e without a second thought.

I'm talking about the core books only, not sure about all the splats; also, not counting good hacks such as Fantasy craft and so on. Just the core books as written.

(If I were to nitpick, I'm counting the PHB only. The 3e monster manual looks horrible but it's quite funcional, and I can't really compare the DMGs since I don't remember the details).

BTW, here are a couple of 3e x 4e x 5e posts:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/does-d-require-miniatures-3e-versus-4e.html
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/02/tripping-oozes-in-d-3e-versus-4e-versus.html

And an old one from 2015 saying 5e brought balance to the forge. I mean, force.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2015/11/d-5th-edition-bringing-balance-to-forge.html

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 10, 2022, 12:59:37 PM
Honestly though, Pathfinder 1e almost makes 3.5 obsolete, since it's basically the same game with the rules a little further cleaned up.

For a real campaign I ran a hybrid version where I brought in the Pathfinder classes and (1st party) feats but used 3.5 for everything else.  Because the Pathfinder classes and feats are legally available on the web, and the feats are a bit better balanced than the later 3.5 stuff, it worked well.  It also avoided a lot of the terrible Pathfinder spells, which were in many cases given totally garbage tier wording as an attempt at a nerf, leaving the spells either literally nonfunctional or simply incoherent.

Here's a good example:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forcecage.htm
The 3.5 forcecage is a very powerful spell.  You can use it to instantly imprison someone who fits in it, because you target the area around them and create a force cage.  There's no physical way out of the cage.  Makes sense, right?  Generally, players and NPCs at high levels work out some way around a forcecage should one be cast around them.  Martial whiners influenced the Pathfinder developers, however, and we get this:
(pop up warning, this site is a bit too grabby of your attention):  https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/forcecage/

This is the same spell.  You'll notice that they tried to make it so that you can use a Reflex save to "negate".  This text does literally no thing at all by the rules, because the forcecage doesn't actually effect you in any way.  That's how the rules work.
But the obvious intention is that if it's cast around you, you get a reflex save.  Do you move outside of it?  Does it cancel the spell?  Does every thing inside it get a save?  Does a virus?  Unlike the extremely exacting language of 3.X, we get a total garbage spell and we begin the idea of asking developers for ruling on SJW forums or shitpile social media.  It's a total embarrassment and regression.

That being said, the same whiners influenced the Pathfinder developers to do a really amazing job with the martial classes, and Pathfinder in general has way better things to plug into the base classes.  It also breaks one of the terrible issues that 3.5 had the moment you get away from stock, and that is prestige class stacking.  Generally in Pathfinder you single class or you have a sensible multiclass, you don't end up with Fighter 3/Rogue 1/Assless Moon Ninja 3/Cleric Of The True Faith 1/Cleric That Gets Their Power From Atheism 5 or whatever shit, complete with some Munchkin on the order of the stick forum telling you to KEEP CRUNCH AND FLUFF SEPARATE and making a case that his munchkin optimized cancer cell is somehow good for the game.  Pathfinder just shut all those people up forever, and I'll always be grateful for that.

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 10, 2022, 01:10:17 PM
As an addendum to what I just said, and echoing a lot of other people, a lot of the best stuff in third edition is in the third party material. You can look for the d20 Conan for a great low fantasy game, or Radiance for a high fantasy one.

I'll pick the fight here- while I agree with the idea, you seem to conflate d20 with third edition.  Many times these things simply printed tons of things differently, left out the XP chart (the original WotC idea was that if you copyright the XP chart, no one can copy that or something?), and then copied over weapon tables or something.  These games often had none of the third edition classes or spells, or had entirely unique takes on serious other things.  I dispute calling these third edition at all, because they aren't Dungeons and Dragons.

I agree that there was a lot of cool creative products of that type.  I'll also throw Iron Heroes into that mix as something that tried to allow for a low magic setting to actually function while still scaling like games that had magic.

Quote from: Venka on August 10, 2022, 03:39:43 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on August 10, 2022, 12:59:37 PM
Honestly though, Pathfinder 1e almost makes 3.5 obsolete, since it's basically the same game with the rules a little further cleaned up.

For a real campaign I ran a hybrid version where I brought in the Pathfinder classes and (1st party) feats but used 3.5 for everything else.  Because the Pathfinder classes and feats are legally available on the web, and the feats are a bit better balanced than the later 3.5 stuff, it worked well.  It also avoided a lot of the terrible Pathfinder spells, which were in many cases given totally garbage tier wording as an attempt at a nerf, leaving the spells either literally nonfunctional or simply incoherent.

Here's a good example:
https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/forcecage.htm
The 3.5 forcecage is a very powerful spell.  You can use it to instantly imprison someone who fits in it, because you target the area around them and create a force cage.  There's no physical way out of the cage.  Makes sense, right?  Generally, players and NPCs at high levels work out some way around a forcecage should one be cast around them.  Martial whiners influenced the Pathfinder developers, however, and we get this:
(pop up warning, this site is a bit too grabby of your attention):  https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/forcecage/

This is the same spell.  You'll notice that they tried to make it so that you can use a Reflex save to "negate".  This text does literally no thing at all by the rules, because the forcecage doesn't actually effect you in any way.  That's how the rules work.
But the obvious intention is that if it's cast around you, you get a reflex save.  Do you move outside of it?  Does it cancel the spell?  Does every thing inside it get a save?  Does a virus?  Unlike the extremely exacting language of 3.X, we get a total garbage spell and we begin the idea of asking developers for ruling on SJW forums or shitpile social media.  It's a total embarrassment and regression.

That being said, the same whiners influenced the Pathfinder developers to do a really amazing job with the martial classes, and Pathfinder in general has way better things to plug into the base classes.  It also breaks one of the terrible issues that 3.5 had the moment you get away from stock, and that is prestige class stacking.  Generally in Pathfinder you single class or you have a sensible multiclass, you don't end up with Fighter 3/Rogue 1/Assless Moon Ninja 3/Cleric Of The True Faith 1/Cleric That Gets Their Power From Atheism 5 or whatever shit, complete with some Munchkin on the order of the stick forum telling you to KEEP CRUNCH AND FLUFF SEPARATE and making a case that his munchkin optimized cancer cell is somehow good for the game.  Pathfinder just shut all those people up forever, and I'll always be grateful for that.

Uhhh, I don't know who you played PF with, but I played PS games for years, and the highly optimized, multiclass builds were the norm for most folks that play in the Society.  PF did almost nothing to stop the min-maxing... it certainly didn't "shut them up forever"...

Greetings!

Well, as for the best WOTC D&D, I would say D&D 5E is the best. I greatly enjoyed 3E for many years, though I think that 5E embraces most--though not all--of what made 3E good, while managing to be a more streamlined system that doesn't drown the player--or more importantly, the DM, with tidal waves of rules, crunch, and endless addendums scattered over 15 different hardcover books.

Thus, I think 5E is the best WOTC D&D.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

5e. Its dirt simple to get into and the general rules are surprisingly few. Its the situational rules where things can get iffy. But the game is surprisingly flexible and theres lots of options.

I also appreciate they they dod not go class stupid like prior editions have and instead present new class paths.

Oh its got problems. But some were just printing gaffes and others were addressed in later print runs.

3e I just do not like. Its not a bad system but its stupidly power creep happy to the nth degree. Its a powergamers dream like few other RPGs before or since. Gets the job done. I am just not a fan of how it gets the job done. I am also not to thrilled with the types of gamers 3e bred and encouraged. I can at least appreciate just how much they smoothed transition. If you are familliar with 2e D&D then easing into 3e is not a huge leap initially. Its the late game that the system has its myriad pitfalls.

4e is a board game pretending to be an RPG. Its not D&D in any way shape or form. 4e D&D Gamma World though presents 4e in a more RPG sense. Still a mess. But its a mess of a different sort.

Honestly its a matter of taste.

Quote from: Jam The MF on August 09, 2022, 11:53:42 PM
If you were going to play a WOTC Edition, which one would it be?

For me, it would either be 3.0 or 5.0 Without Feats or Prestige Classes.  3.5 was just a rewrite of 3.0 with more pages to read.  Neither was perfect.

I'd say 3.0, not because it was the best of rulesets, but because it launched an incredible number of independent (and quite honestly, better) game settings and extras for a fantasy RPG.

3.0, because it introduced the OGL (which opened the door for TSR D&D compatible materials by third parties, even if this wasn't what was originally intended).

Well, the OC asked "If you were going to play a WOTC Edition, which one would it be?", so I am thinking OGL and derivative games do not count, which si why I chose 5e.