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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26148 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 10, 2025

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There is a reason why the birth of D&D 4 -- where WotC started to streamline things to make the game more newcomer-friendly -- drove fans to the fork of 3.5 called Pathfinder.

I'm not sure I would describe 4e's sin as being "streamlining" or "being too beginner friendly." They made the decision to use grids instead of feet, but the earliest editions used table inches. They replaced 3e's point-based skill system with a simple yes/no, but most TSR editions didn't have a general skill system by default. They threw the lore in a blender, but by the end of 4e's life the World Axis lore had basically everything from the Great Wheel, and it almost ends up being a change of emphasis and presentation more than an actual, substantial change to things.

Heck, it's a bit silly to say that 4e was the start of D&D trying to make itself newcomer friendly, when there is an entire line of Basic D&D under TSR (BX, BECMI and the Rules Cyclopedia) that all manage to be pretty easy to play and run, and are still playable to this day.

It seems pretty obvious to me that racial and sex-based bonuses exist in the real world. If a kid wants to become the worlds best long distance runner, but is a girl of European origin, then I am sorry to say that it seems very unlikely that she will ever beat the best male long distance runner from Kenya.

Of course, sex-based bonuses, while clearly present at least for physical (and social!) attributes in the real world, are totally absent in D&D. Women melee fighters are just as viable as men, and most non-evil societies are shockingly egalitarian compared to a medieval baseline. And as far as racial bonuses are concerned, the almost exponential scaling of power with the character level means that a STR-based halfling fighter will still be slaughtering creatures twice her size by the dozen eventually. So in a sense, the game mechanics of D&D were more woke and blank-slatist than reality for a long time.

I agree with you to an extent, but 1e did allow for superhuman stats for humans: 18/100 for males and 18/50 for females. A cap reminiscent of Hercules vs. Xena levels of strength.

However, my feeling is if you're going to allow for larger than life heroes with more strength than is actually humanly possible, who cares about maintaining strength differences between sexes? I'm genuinely fine with either option - either different superhuman caps for men and women, or superheroic men and women being potential equals - but I have a slight preference for the latter, since we're not even talking about real biology anymore anyways.

Heck, even Greco-Roman mythology had Camilla and the Amazons as examples of warrior women with immense strength, so it is hardly "woke" to allow for them in fantasy.

The lack of alignment also strikes me as silly, it was always a defining characteristic of D&D. Sure, I can see how the Always Chaotic Evil trope might be Problematic, but this can be fixed without getting rid of the E-word altogether. Just say that most goblins follow evil goblin gods, problem solved. And of course, the cosmology of D&D has not suddenly changed merely because alignment is not a stat any more, it is pretty clear that the followers of Baal or Shar are evil even if you do not spell it out.

I also do not think that the alignment system lead to an overall reductionist morality, you could still have plenty of shades of grey. Or even two lawful good characters going to war with each other if loyalties and circumstances conspire to pit them against each other.

The weird thing is, they haven't even gotten rid of alignment. Flip through the 5.5e Monster Manual, and you'll see that every monster statted there has an alignment. 5e and 5.5e just de-emphasized alignment (most spells and effects like "Detect Good and Evil" interact with creature types like Celestial or Fiend instead of Alignment itself), and presented things slightly differently. (Like, the 5.5e Monster Manual says up front that all of its alignments are suggestions, and you as DM can change them if you want, but has that ever not been the case? Even if, say, 1e doesn't give you explicit permission, what DM is so devoid of creativity that they couldn't conceive of the idea of a fallen Astral Deva/Angel?)

The big change is in how they emphasize and present humanoid creatures. The 5.5e Monster Manual basically defaults to making the DM do homework and apply racial traits to the NPC stat blocks for all of the humanoid races (including orcs and drow), and shunts a lot of creatures that were historically humanoids into other categories (like goblins becoming fey, and lizardfolk becoming elementals.) I don't like most of 5.5e's changes, and have continued to run 5e with my local group (with a healthy dose of OSR philosophy and sensibilities because I love that playstyle) but it is simply false to say D&D got rid of alignment.

The weird thing is, they haven't even gotten rid of alignment.

I misspoke. What I meant was to say they got rid of alignment for player characters, at least if BG3 is any indication. In 3e, every character, including mortals, had an alignment which was tracked and could be detected. A decent fraction of classes (paladins, clerics, druids, probably more) had alignment restrictions, so there was a mechanical effect even in computer rpgs. (Naturally, with tabletop gaming, a DM is much likelier to intervene if a divine spellcaster strays to far from the purpose of their god, and they can do that in any edition.)

If doesn't surprise me they got rid of alignment in BG3.

5e still has alignment for player characters, but it doesn't really do anything mechanically. The one effect I can think of off the top of my head that cares about PC alignment is rakshasas still being vulnerable to piercing damage wielded by good creatures.

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