D&D General What Have You Liked Most About Each Edition (+)

[Lanefan]

1e - variety of adventures; rules modularity; relatively flat power curve
2e - variety of settings; expanded level ranges; some art
3e - internal consistency; NPCs and PCs use the same mechanics
4e - set-piece combats; bloodied; points-of-light; some art
5e - back to a flatter power curve; adv/disadv mechanic

 

[billd91]

1e - inspirational and challenging vocabulary
2e - settings, regularizing certain 1e rules like fixing surprise, weapon group proficiencies
3e - all stats are on same bonus schedule, all classes on same XP schedule, removal of limits (racial limits, stat requirements for classes), ACs go up, NPC classes
4e - bloodied status
5e - bounded accuracy, taking the design stuff learned through 2 previous editions and producing a game that can play with the relative simplicity of the 1e/2e days, dispensing with the wealth/level and magic item economy that drove the 2 previous editions

 

[Imaculata]

2E - Deadly combat, suspense, great variety of monsters (shadow dragon!).

3E - OGL, feats, prestige classes, combat system, the 3 saves, armor class.

3.5E - Improvements to the ranger, rules fixes, spell tweaks, balancing in general.

5E - Legendary actions and lair actions for monsters, approach of taking actions as a player and not making rolls unless stated by the DM, the art.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

2e was the edition I started with as a player and how I made my school weekends very long.

3e was where I became DM and it was my way to make friends at the university. I forever hold it im my heart.

4e was how I made new friends in a new part of my life, after I had to shut the door to the old one.

5e got me my own little family.

 

[Xeviat]

I started playing officially in 3E, but I played a few CRPGs based on 2E, so I can say something about 2E.

2nd Edition
* The creativity of the settings (like Planescape). These were truly fantastical, and uniquely D&D.

3rd Edition

• Respect for unifying mechanics
• Respect for trying to codify everything and make a simple physics engine.
• The customization.
• The World Building DM books (DMG portions, Manual of the Planes, Deities and Demigods)
• The genre books (Heroes of Horror/Battle)
• The terrain books (Sandstorm, Frostburn, Stormwrack, Cityscape)
• Being my first Edition

4th Edition

• The attempted balance
• The monsters!!!!!
• Monster levels, roles, minions/elites/solos ...

5E

• Subclasses
• Most of the player side
• Being easy to pick up and teach
• Being easy to hack

 

[oreofox]

1e - Played a single session in like 1995 or so. It was after school while waiting for my parents to come pick me up. I was a wizard of some sort, and the DM had me searching in a cavern for a spellbook to use for my spells. It lasted 20 minutes. So I guess my favorite thing about that is it was my first time ever?

2e - Dragonlance. I loved the War of the Lance books, going on the early publically-accessible internet at the local library printing off various things about it at 10 cents a page. Got the books in 1998 or so (silver anniversary edition black covers), and played a bit. Then 3e came out.

3e - Everything. First time really getting deep into D&D, being DM, and actually creating a setting (which I still use today)

4e - Never played it. Couldn't get into the visuals of the book layouts. However, I converted the adventure "Elder Elemental Eye" to 5e and my players and I did have some fun with it.

PF 1e - The options available to make your characters. I am not talking about feats, but more the races and classes available. The amount of monsters. The APs were pretty good as well. The majority of players I came across, however, was not my favorite. Those people ruined the system for me.

5e - Again, everything. I love the idea of subraces and subclasses/archetypes. Some of the decisions they went with don't really vibe with me, but overall it is my favorite version. I've nearly converted my entire setting over to it.

 

[Gorgon Zee]

Responding as I feel about them right now, rather than at the time:

1E: A sense of the zany and random that later editions smoothed over. It's unpolished and random, but that can be a ton of fun. The "The frog demon shoots at you with the laser before teleporting to its orbit base" edition
2E: The spells -- I just love the layout, descriptions and spells from that era. They are evocative (or abjurative ... rim shot), fun and yet descriptive enough to be playable. For me they hit a great balance in making magic seem unusual, but also playablele
3E: I loved the community it generated -- Living Greyhawk in particular -- that contained the most involved and excited group of people. I remember being so excited by a business trip because I could take the Saturday after it to play a game that I literally had to leave my state to play.
4E: Hands down the best set of rules for combat of any D&D version; I'd highlight the way it promotes team effort and allows all sorts of viable unusual characters that no other edition does as well.
5E: It appears very playable by new gamers.

 

[delericho]

OD&D, B/X: Never played.

BECMI: My introduction to the game. I liked the relative simplicity of it all, and I also liked the way that the boxes gradually built on one another, allowing the game to become more involved as we gained experience with it. (I should note that I never got to the "MI" part of this version - moved to 2nd Ed.)

1st Ed: This edition seems to have the bulk of the best adventures, and also seems to be the place where many of the iconic concepts that we now take for granted originated. Even the relative rawness of it is something of a plus - it's unlikely that something like "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" would be tried now if it hadn't been done before. So, lots of creativity here.

2nd Ed: Possibly controversial, but IMO 2nd Ed is better than 1st - largely because the writing is much cleaner and the organisation much better. (If I'd graduated from BECMI to 1st Ed it's likely I would not now be a gamer.) The expanded format of monsters used in the Monstrous Compendium (though not the folders!) was a highlight. But the best thing about the edition was the settings: for me, it was Ravenloft, Spelljammer, and Dark Sun that were the highlights.

3e/3.5e: On reading the 3e PHB it was immediately obvious to me that this was the edition I never knew I always wanted. Obviously, over time the weaknesses in the mechanics of this edition became sorely apparent, but just having a set of consistent mechanics was a massive step forward. Also, while 2nd Ed really shone in its settings, it was 3e that gave us my absolute favourite in Eberron, as well as the single best setting book I've seen in the FRCS.

4e: In most ways my least-favourite edition (hey, something has to be), 4e had a lot of good ideas, many of which have been sadly dropped. The Bloodied condition is something I still use. But my favourite was the explicitly-stated monster roles and the Solo/Elite/regular/Minion split - that really helped with encounter design.

5e: In many ways I find this to be a truer successor to 2nd Ed than the previous two editions, in a good way - it has the cleaned up mechanics, but also lacks the complexity of a 3e or 4e. But right now the single biggest highlights are the "Starter Set" (for "Lost Mine of Phandelver") and the "Essentials Kit" (for everything except the included adventure).

 

[Bacon Bits]

Basic, particularly B/X and BE: The simplicity of everything, but especially the classes. Race-as-class worked pretty great with the built in cultures of Mystara. This was the first edition I played and in a lot of ways this is still D&D boiled down to the absolute essentials.

1e: At the time I played it, AD&D did two things that I wanted: mirrored the CRPGs I was playing, and added more complex characters. That might sound at odds with what I just said about Basic, but at the time I played it that's what I was looking for.

2e: I think 2e rangers are the quintessential version. The start of the rules cleanup. 2e was much easier to read, IMO. Vastly improved art quality, though 1e art is still charming. 2e was really about expanding settings. Dark Sun is a very unique style of setting. Planescape, even though I consider it difficult to run, added a lot of lore and ideas. Ravenloft and FR saw expanding during the 2e era. And Spelljammer... certainly has it's fans.

3e: The wholesale rules cleanup, especially ascending armor class. Going from a patchwork of higgledy-piggledy rules to an actual holistically designed game. Taking the step of unifying everything into a single system is an extremely difficult goal given the existing materials.

3.5e: Patching the biggest holes from 3e. It may have been a money grab, but it is not at all surprising how necessary it was to fix balance problems after such a thorough revision in 3e.

4e: Addressing the big problems: playability, balance, and making the DM's life a lot easier. A significant number of ideas in 4e are extremely good, and future editions will almost certainly incorporate them. Monster and character designs are extremely innovative and generally well put together.

5e: Simplifying the game and rolling back some of the changes from 4e that tended to affect game tone, play style, and feel. This edition fixes problems from both 3e and 4e and does a reasonable job of making the game feel like Basic, 1e, and 2e.

 

[ccooke]

Hmm. I'll bite.

2e: It's getting too long ago, now, but... the shape of 2e in my memory is a familiar, slightly crazy lump of contradictions that were fun.

3e: The first attempt at making d&d make any sense. The OGL, for all the good it did (and really, try to imagine what the wider RPG landscape would be like, today, without the OGL)

4e: The ambition to create an edition that was designed as a cohesive system. Everything in 4e is shaped by a core design - and a damn good one, too.

5e: Streamlining without losing too much detail. Bounded accuracy, and the flexibility of chargen. Providing more active (rather than passive) encouragement to roleplay than previous¹.

¹ I feel I should caveat this. There is no edition of d&d that is bad for roleplaying, but 5e provides a lot more support for players - particularly newer ones - to think about their character's personality in concrete terms, with example ideas and some mechanical support to reinforce it.