Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Your favorite version of D&D ?

Whats your favorite version of D&D ?

AD&D ?

D&D3 ?

D&D5 ?

One of the subversions ?

And why do you like it best ?

Probably no surprise on my end: AD&D 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded, with all Player's and DM's Option books, tweaked with a number of house rules.

A friend introduced me to AD&D with the Mystara campaign setting and I started being a DM with the second Forgotten Realms campaign setting box. We've been playing since the mid-90s. What I like most about late 2e, is the vastness of compatible rulebooks and lore. I can use books from 1e through 2e P.O. That's more than twenty years of releases, 1977 to 1999. 1e converts with minor tweaks, so you can do it on the fly. However, I'm afraid that when I die and want to turn away from the light, Gary Gygax's Amnizu lawyer will show up and say "Not so fast, buddy. Didn't the rules clearly say 'no magic shops?' Guards, arrest him!" Yes, all the bad rep for tedious maths, cryptic tables and endless browsing in multiple books is justified. But, we probably modified every rule that didn't fit our style of play, and the ongoing campaign of course also changed the worlds we play in. These days, the group is still based in Waterdeep, but we're also using Planescape, Greyhawk, Spelljammer, Mystara and Ravenloft resources in almost every campaign.

When 3e came out, we had all hoped for a modernisation of the existing rules, not a complete cut. We actually adapted 3e Saving Throws in happy anticipation when they were introduced in a magazine ahead of the release. We simply didn't expect WotC to break the rules, the continuity and the style of playing like that. When I was done reading through the new books, at first I thought I was missing something. TSR was often antagonised, and rightly so, for spreading rules across three books you had to buy. But this was different. After trying to convert, or rather "re-imagine" three important NPCs, I realised that we would not be able to continue our campaign with the new rules. No working combat system, most spells were transmutations all of a sudden, and FR had lots of pretty silly retcons that couldn't be explained - not to mention what they did to the cosmology. The wizard and fighter could maybe have switched to playing rhythm guitar and triangle in the henchmen band away from danger, but the Ranger was just completely broken. We would have lost compatibility with my existing collection of rulebooks and all the campaigns based on them. WotC also broke the continuity with the race of one PC not even available in early 3e. We therefore voted against a new start and I've been developing the world myself since then. With almost every TSR release available as PDF and several Fandom pages, all the browsing and planning has actually become fun instead of the drag it used to be. No regrets!

I'm a programmer and an old fight in computer science was VMS vs Unix.

Unix is a wordplay with Eunuchs, because it started as a "crippled", simplified version of a much larger operating system project (called Multics or something like that) that never actually saw the light of day.

VMS on the other hand was an operating system that was horrifically complex and absolutely cryptic to use (I once did use it a bit, many decades ago).

So the question was which OS would be better.

Unix won this, big time. This was because it was build on simple concepts that could be freely combined. Unix became so successful that its now the dominant operating system - both Windows and MacOS are now under the cover more or less Unix, too.

The core idea here was already expressed by Albert Einstein: As simple as possible, but not any more simple.

So unsurprisingly I prefer a system build on simple concepts that allow amazing complexity and flexibility in other areas, too.

So thats why my favorite D&D to date is D&D5, which gets the closest on this idea. Its still far from perfect though. But it also has amazing flexibility compared to previous versions of D&D.

My main complaint about D&D5 is that they went too far in some places, and simplified the system too much. The whole concept of Advantage and DIsadvantage for example is overused and just poor. I also dont know why they removed the Delay action from D&D3 from D&D5. This was an absolutely essential function in The Temple of Elemental Evil to make the group cooperate with each other.

AD&D is full of strange absurd nonsense tables. The progression of saving throws in AD&D for example are strangely well hidden and was really hard to find out when I tried to fully understand Baldurs Gate 1+2. Its also a bunch of absolute nonsense. I cannot see any reasoning behind these values at all. The short version is that Thief and Bard for some reason get the worst saving throws in the end, while Warriors get the best ones.

The core problem with all D&D versions on the computer is of course that they are designed for tabletop and the dominant design principle

Still, D&D5 supports many more different setups than previous versions of D&D. One of my favorite part is that Bards, which was my initial choice in Baldurs Gate 1, are now actually a playable class. In AD&D they just sucked big time in every way, and in D&D3 they have still been a useless class.

The only remaining complaint I have about D&D5 Bards is that they can only inspire others. So you have a class that is one of the three skill classes, the other two being Rogue and Ranger, and they have a really good ability to push skill useage, but you're not allowed to use it for their own skills.

I usually end up not using this feature at all because guess what, my Bard is the protagonist and since she cannot inspire herself, nobody else needs these inspirations either. You can also sort of use them in combat but thats a PITA to do. Which is why I keep making Wyll into a Bard in all of my runs, just so I can have Inspirations on my protagonist as well, for the really hard checks.