Reply To: Dungeons and Dragons – where to begin

[davehawes 7768xp 0]

Even though personally, it is probably my least favourite edition, I am going to probably agree with everyone here and say 5th is the best option right now.

I’ve played 2nd, 3rd/3.5, 4e and touched 5th.

I spent the longest periods with 3/3.5 and 4e.

My favourite is probably 4e because so much of the rules were more elegant and well constructed compared to 3/3.5 and it really worked as a tactical miniatures game. You could still have plenty of fun with the narrative element outside of that, but there was a solid little combat game in there as well (at least for levels 1-15, pre-essentials).

3/3.5 definitely had more flavour, and I have a huge collection of books for it, so much potential and so many different ideas. The problem, in the end, was it was pretty clunky and required a lot of homework for balancing for the DM, if you were going to support all that variety. I never found that a problem, but I can see why it might be an issue. The way they changed magic/powers in 4e I think was much smarter. Moving away from having spells and special abilities really be different things mechanically, was a much cleaner solution. However, I do see how it lost some flavour in exchange for streamlined mechanical elegance. 4e did solve the age-old 3.5 problem of a Wizard who had used all his spell-slots was basically an old-guy in a dressing gown, and at the same time, where a Wizard was choosing from an array of cool spells each turn, a warrior, if they were lucky, got to use a feat, but most of the time they were just rolling lots of D20’s every turn thanks to a high BAB. It meant a lot of big fights could get grindy, without creative thinking on the part of players and DM, serious house-ruling, or the switch to targeting mostly attributes and aiming to reduce those to 0. Then again, if lots of HP is a mechanic you don’t like, D&D might not be the game for you (I actually think the WP/VP system used in D20 modern, and one edition of the SWRPG is an infinitely better health system).

 

So why agree with 5th? Because as far as I can tell, 5th is basically a cleaned up and streamlined version of 3rd, with just one or two trace elements from 4e. 4e did so many things to take D&D in a brave new direction, something I applauded, and could see the design cleanliness to it. However, it also robbed the game of some of its charm and clearly lost a lot of the fanbase. 5e has returned to those more popular roots. For me, I have tons of 3.5 books, and I already have a pretty good “3.5 style D&D” game that I am happy with, so no need to invest in another very similar thing. If you are however starting out, it makes sense to go with the latest for ease of access, and because it probably has polished a few things up from that earlier edition.