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

[Marc_C]

B/X Moldvay: It was new and it was awesome. Random encounters as what I liked the most (as a DM).

AD&D 1e: Race and class are separated. The DMG advice on world building. Greyhawk. All the iconic spells, monsters, magic items and artefacts.

AD&D2: All the optional rules you could turn on and off. Spelljammer!

D&D 3: The unity of the system. Opened the door to playing genres other than Fantasy with almost the same system. Star Wars, Gamma World, Modern, Future.

D&D4: The monster roles and recharging abilities. Minions.

D&D5: Rapidity of creating characters. Advantage/disadvantage. Monsters and PCs are not built the same way. Turning off Feats and Multi-classing. Optional rules in the DMG to customize your game.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Yes, I liked how the books were written as simply largely assuming the reader was familiar with whatever Gygax was talking about & understood the words/terms being used.
Very much a "There it is kid, figure it out, catch up to us...." vibe.
As 12 year Olds we looked up plenty of things in dictionaries, encyclopedias, at the library, etc. Or we'd just ask Dad at dinner.

I credit my high SAT scores to White Wolf's love of obscure, Latin-based words for basic concepts.

 

[DammitVictor]

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: My first exposure to D&D. I loved Assassins and Monks in the PHB, multiclassing (mostly), Oriental Adventures and the Manual of the Planes and the pure joyful weirdness of AD&D, like it didn't feel the need to be anything but itself.

AD&D Second Edition: Now this... was my first love. I didn't mourn the loss of Assassins and Half-Orcs because by the time I switched, the PHBRs had brought them back. THAC0 was such a breath of fresh air. The sheer modularity of the rules: Spheres and Schools and the idea of more than one kind of Mage or Priest. Kits allowed so much customization, even within classes, and then Player's Option didn't rewrite the whole game-- they allowed each individual DM to rewrite the whole game. Campaign settings that still define my relationship with D&D. And for all the crap Second Edition rightfully gets for being the vanilla edition... they eventually added most of that glorious weirdness back and then some.

Rules Cyclopedia: Good old BECMI, minus the I. D&D rules without a lot of the unnecessary, but advanced cruft. "These ones go up to 36" plus the Quest for Immortality. I'm a huge proponent of race-as-class, especially with the innovations of multiple racial classes per race and the monstrous spellcaster rules from Orcs of Thar. A much more interesting weapon mastery system than AD&D's, open to more than just single-classed Fighters. Just the most D&D you could get, with the least baffling rules interference, before the advent of the OSR.

Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition and 3.5 Revised: Before we can even begin to address this edition in its own right, we have to talk about the Open Gaming License. Wizards of the Coast may have saved D&D once when they bought TSR and published 3.0, but they saved it for all time with the OGL, and they opened to the door for endless third-party content: the adventure modules they hoped for, plus a veritable renaissance of campaign settings that dwarfed even the diversity and variety of Second Edition, plus the replacement bestiaries and supplements that unfortunately led WotC to dump the license.

Beyond that, though... "always roll as high as you can on a d20" is about as good as I've got. The concept behind Feats and Prestige Classes is neat. It's the first viable psionics system in D&D history. edit: Oh, right, Eberron is pretty cool.

Pathfinder: To start with, just a whole lot of little Quality of Life improvements over 3.X. The first arcane full spellcaster healer. Archetypes, alternate racial abilities, and alternate Favored Class Bonuses come very close to the customization options of 2e's Player's Option. In the grand tradition of Unearthed Arcana and Player's Option, the Pathfinder Unchained sourcebook is chock-full of ways to refine your D&D to your D&D. And the third-party content for Pathfinder is just head & shoulders above what was available for D&D 3.X in both quality and quantity. edit: The outer space supplements leading up to Starfinder: Distant Stars and People of the Stars.

Dungeons & Dragons Fourth Edition: Monster design, full stop. The Bloodied condition. Healing Surges as a source of mundane healing and a limit on magical healing. Martial classes keeping up at high levels. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies as a better implementation of Prestige Classes. Player Characters can be Immortals again. "Race" is the most interesting it's been since AD&D decoupled it from class, on the virtue of racial powers that scale with level and solid feat support. They killed alignment.

Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition: The Background/Ideal/Flaw/Trinket is a nice bit of character color that differentiates characters of the same race/class and makes characters feel "lived in" without needlessly convoluted and problematic "backstories". The built-in augmented spellcasting is great. Advantage/Disadvantage!

 

[Hex08]

D&D Basic & Expert sets - These were my introduction and will always have a special place in my heart. Easy to learn and play and tons of fun.

AD&D 1st Edition - It wasn't very long before I moved on 1st edition. I loved pouring over those books, especially the Monster Manual, Deities & Demigods. I also bought the World of Greyhawk setting, which is still my favorite D&D setting. I think it was here that I also got introduced to Dragon Magazine (R.I.P) but that may have been during 2nd edition and that magazine was probably always my favorite thing about the game.

AD&D 2nd Edition - Cleaned up the rules, and TONS of options and Forgotten Realms stuff to own and pour over. I ran Night Below twice. More Dragon magazine. Probably my all time favorite version.

D&D 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder 1e - Uniform leveling between the classes, being able to customize your characters with skills and feats like never before, Prestige Classes, and the Open Gaming License, some great third party content (Malhavoc Press, Sword & Sorcery...). Generally each iteration improved on the prior.

D&D 4th edition - didn't play

Castles & Crusades - This one might be a cheat but it is a very rules lite version of the game with a 1st & 2nd edition feel. It's super easy to convert 1e and 2e stuff to and fairly easy to convert 3.0 stuff to. My current favorite version

D&D 5th edition - I only played one session and own the PHB. It simplified what became overly complicated and crunchy game with 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder, it has some interesting mechanics like advantage/disadvantage and a good entry point into the hobby for new players.

 

[Alzrius]

I can't limit myself to a single thing about any edition, so this isn't so much a "most" for me as it is a "here's one thing that tickles my fancy about each!" listing:

Original D&D: Looking back at the psionics introduced in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry, I'm struck my just how alien they were. You actually lost abilities (e.g. spell slots, Charisma points, etc.) in order to gain psionic powers. While it's obviously an early attempt at maintaining game balance, it creates an in-character effect where utilizing those powers seemingly burns out part of your brain, isolating you from normal humanity as you tap into a weird, supernatural power...

AD&D 1st Edition: It might be a bit idiosyncratic, but I'm still struck by how the reworked paladin in Unearthed Arcana can improve almost all of their ability scores (I think all but Wisdom) as they level up. Literally, they get to increase their ability scores by a fractional value, and when that value exceeds 100, the score goes up by 1, to a maximum of 18/00 (the fractional values don't add anything, except for Strength, which uses the "exceptional Strength" rules as normal). The cavalier has this too, but for only four of the six ability scores (I can't recall which one the paladin gets that they don't). It's an exceptional boost to what's already one of the strongest classes you can take.

BECMI: I can't remember if it was laid out in the Immortals Set or Wrath of the Immortals, but the idea that after you became a Hierarch Immortal, you could give up your Immortality to start again as a level 1 character, and if you worked your way up to Hierarch Immortal a second time you'd be taken beyond the multiverse to become one of the "Old Ones," always struck me as extremely cool. It was basically the New Game+ of Dungeons & Dragons, with the best ending being unlocked if you could pull it off.

AD&D 2nd Edition: Assuming I recall correctly, there's a little tidbit of a rule tucked away in DMGR4 Monster Mythology (I think in the introduction) where it gives prayers asking for divine intervention a 1% chance of succeeding (and once one of those rolls does succeed, it won't anymore; the idea being that your god won't keep helping you if you continue to find yourself in situations where you need their direct assistance). I love this idea, that there's always some minor chance (so long as you have a patron deity) that no matter how bad things look, you can always use this "roll of last resort" to ask your god to step in and help you out.

D&D 3rd Edition: I'll nominate the 3.0 Dungeon Master's Guide here. While I know a lot of people disregard the 3.0 Core Rules in favor of their 3.5 counterparts, there were a lot of optional rules in the 3.0 DMG that - as I recall - didn't make it into the later revision. For instance, there's a (quite complicated) rule about hitting targets other than who you were aiming at when you miss with a ranged attack. That's the sort of verisimilitude that I like to contemplate, even if the implementation was a bit too rules-heavy.

D&D 4th Edition: It might not have been called the Plane of Shadow anymore, but it was nice to see that plane get its own boxed set in The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond. Heck, it was nice to see a boxed set again that wasn't a starter set for learning how to play the game.

D&D 5th Edition: It's more "D&D Next" than 5E proper, but I got a kick out of seeing Abdel Adrian again in Murder in Baldur's Gate. He didn't get the send-off I felt he deserved, but it was nice that he got one at all.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Vael]

Only referencing editions I've played.

3.5

• It's the first edition I ever played.
• Late 3.5 expansions, trying out alternative magic systems were quite innovative and interesting. Tome of Magic, Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum ... I liked the more experimental stage of 3.5
• Eberron. Full Stop. Eberron is easily my favourite campaign setting for DnD.

4e

• This is definitely what I'd describe as the most balanced system ever made. Balanced for DMs, balanced for PCs
• My first foray into DMing was 3.5 ... did not go well. 4e was the system where I got my sea legs for DMing and I do find it good for that.
• 4e organized play was so good. DMing gave me a wealth of free material. Battlemaps, adventures. I met a lot of friends going to games stores to play 4e.
• Monsters. Minions. I really enjoyed that monster statblocks were self contained and pretty easy to run.

5e

• Still my favourite of the three, I like the lighter system.
• I have found this to be the most approachable DnD edition, I have introduced a wide variety of newcomers to DnD through 5e.
• Compared to the previous two editions, this one is probably the easiest to Theatre of the Mind

 

[Lanefan]

AD&D 1st Edition: It might be a bit idiosyncratic, but I'm still struck by how the reworked paladin in Unearthed Arcana can improve almost all of their ability scores (I think all but Wisdom) as they level up. Literally, they get to increase their ability scores by a fractional value, and when that value exceeds 100, the score goes up by 1, to a maximum of 18/00(the fractional values don't add anything, except for Strength, which uses the "exceptional Strength" rules as normal). The cavalier has this too, but for only four of the six ability scores (I can't recall which one the paladin gets that they don't). It's an exceptional boost to what's already one of the strongest classes you can take.

We use this percentile-increment system in our games still, for all classes (and with a different strength system above 18.01) and it's not as big a boost as you might think. On average* a character might improve one stat per 5 levels or so, and as out games only go to 10th-12th it's really not that big a deal.

I find it to be a way better system than hard-coded ASIs like 5e has, in that it's both random and on average much slower.

* on average. Some characters might get lucky and improve three stats, others might get unlucky and never improve any.

 

[Retreater]

B/X: Streamlined, fast character creation, rewarding creative solutions, great adventures.
2e: Classic fantasy art, great settings (Dark Sun, Ravenloft), psionics, comprehensive Monster Manual, green leatherette historical campaign guides, blue leatherette DM guides. This is where I entered the hobby - great nostalgia.
3.x/PF: This era all feels in the same category to me, so I'm listing it together. This is the first edition where I used minis and tactical play. I also became the primary DM for my players in this era. Lots of great adventures. Some wonderful 3PP content with the OGL. The SRD gave a pathway for us to dream of publishing for D&D. Ascending AC, unified die mechanics, implementation of skills.
4e: Bloodied condition, healing surges, simplified monster statblocks, creative positioning and other effects. The D&D Encounters program was awesome, and I made many friends through it, and was very active in my FLGS community.
5e: Generated a lot of interest in the hobby. D&D became mainstream. Haven't had a problem coming up with a group since it was released. DMs Guild and other venues have given us some great 3PP content.

 

[Argyle King]

2E - I don't have much experience with 2E because various groups of that time period protested the game and hampered my ability to buy it. However, it remains on of my favorite editions to read. I know that sounds weird, but something about the writing style of 2E draws me in.

3E/3.5E - This was the first version of D&D which I was able to openly enjoy. I enjoyed the amount of choices I had for character creation. Adventures such as Red Hand of Doom also remain among my favorites.

4E - I thought the concept of the "points of light" setting and the style presented in the preview books was awesome. Many of the lore changes concerning cosmology and creatures were things I highly enjoyed. I liked the general mindset behind how encounter design changed. Honestly, despite what some of my posts might imply, there were a lot of things I enjoyed about 4E. (Unfortunately, the things I didn't like about 4E were things I really really disliked, and those things involved some of the core components of the game's math and how the game was built, and I felt they were things I couldn't change without just playing a different game.)

5E - I enjoy that there is a more diverse art style. Subclasses and backgrounds are ideas which I enjoy as a way to add variety to character creation and created a set of bullet points around which to define a character.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'll start with 4th....

Minions. Bloodied. Self-contained stat blocks. Monster roles. Different kinds of orcs or goblins or whatever. The monster maker site! Points of light setting. Lots of cool abilities for characters. How combat was about controlling the battlefield.

2nd.....planescape. all the other settings.

3rd....feats. the ogl. So much amazing 3rd party content. Eberron.

Everything before that..... I was young, and everything was new.

5e.....the two starter sets. Inclusion and diversity.