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View Full Version : Curiosity - D&D edition with the most content



Cicciograna
2020-09-23, 01:12 PM
Just out of curiosity, which is the D&D edition that provides...


the most crunch? The most classes, tactical options, spells, mechanics, the works.
The most fluff? The most settings, the most stories and plot hooks, the longest descriptions.

Am I wrong in assuming that 3.0/3.5 Edition takes the prize for #1, and 2nd Edition wins for #2?

Composer99
2020-09-23, 01:45 PM
I'd have to say that sounds about right.

There is a website, tsrarchive.com, that indexes TSR (and WotC) publications; it'd be pretty easy to stack up editions based on the different categories of content. Time-consuming, but easy.

Khedrac
2020-09-23, 01:47 PM
I don't know 4th and 5th edition, but I have to agree on 2nd Ed for #2 - then you add together all the different campaign settings published the footprint was huge.

As for #1, I'm not so sure that it isn't also 2nd Ed - most of the campaign settings brought new options and crunch, and when you add in the Players Options series of books I think it probably out-stripped 3.5 in terms of possibilities. Not sure about this one though.
I do think you need to split 3.0 and 3.5 as different systems, in may ways they are futher apart than 1st Ed and 2nd Ed!

MrStabby
2020-09-23, 02:07 PM
Official... I would guess so.

Unofficial homebrew? I would guess 5th due to ease of creation and the newfound popularity of the game providing both demand for content but also a huge supply of homebrewers.

sktarq
2020-09-23, 03:55 PM
I would say 3/3.5 still takes the cake for homebrew stuff as well both because of time (people have had longer to add stuff) the OGL of the time, and that 3.5 was also majorly popular at the time.
but I would also say that it is much harder to FIND that 3.5 stuff, it is not as well organized or accessible, hell even old Dragon Magazine stuff just for an example can require a passable amount of work if it wasn't a favored article and that stuff was official/official-ish.

NigelWalmsley
2020-09-23, 06:08 PM
It's 2e and 3e in the top spots for sure. Which one wins probably depends on how you count it. If you count all the various "Our IP d20" things published under the OGL, 3e might be the most prolific gaming system ever. But you could make a reasonable argument that you shouldn't count those things, on account of people who played 3e not treating them as real 3e content. And there are a lot of things like that. For example, does Pathfinder count as 3e content? It was sold as "backwards compatible", and the community seems to regard them as largely interchangeable (see: the existence of a "3e and PF" forum here), but PF is obviously published by a different company. Are we counting by pages? By possible builds? Do we count Dungeon, Dragon, and various web content? There are reasonable arguments for or against all of those things, and any of them might change the outcome.

Quertus
2020-09-23, 06:20 PM
I was going to vote for 3e for most crunch, despite using skills & powers etc, kits, etc in 2e, 3e felt like had more *real* variety, until I remembered that the 2e DMG had rules for creating custom classes. The sheer variety I saw out of that - all of it technically RAW - beats even 3e, IMO.

False God
2020-09-23, 07:21 PM
I mean, if we include homebrew and 3pp content, 3.5 has Pathfinder.

Cicciograna
2020-09-23, 07:59 PM
I would be inclined to lump PF in the big 3.0/3.5 Edition group. At the end of the day, they are mostly interchangeable: sure, there are different details, but the core of the game, the mechanics underneath it, are the same.

In a first approximation, I think that 3rd party should be counted in, it is still valid material, even though not produced by the main house. I recognize that this gives strictly the edge to the 3.X group, owing to the OGL.

Talyn
2020-09-23, 08:15 PM
There was SO MUCH mechanically ill-advised awesome fluff for 2nd edition. Just from the stuff that I personally had on my shelf in middle school:
- Guide to Hell
- a campaign where you play as freaking DRAGONS with a whole attached rule system and setting
- players option: skills and powers
- players option: high level campaigns (woo magic item creation rules)
- the complete book of: dwarves, elves, mages, paladins
- not one, not two, but THREE entire books of more wizard spells
- the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
- the Dragonlance Campaign Setting
- the Birthright Campaign Setting

2nd edition had so many fluffy splatbooks, it was kind of ridiculous, and I wanted them ALL. I like playing the later editions better, but I could stay up late every day for a month reading the 2nd edition splatbooks.

Mr.Sandman
2020-09-23, 10:30 PM
Definitely have to say 3.0/.5 especially if we are counting all D20 products as 3.5 based, as you have multiple licensed properties throwing in their hat like Star Wars d20, and the first 2 editions of Mutants and Masterminds were 'D20 based'.

Tanarii
2020-09-23, 11:49 PM
2e. Between the soft covers (green historical, red class & race, grey DMs), campaign setting boxes and associated expansions, and players options, they have both the mechanical and setting stuff hands down.

gijoemike
2020-09-24, 12:25 AM
2e. Between the soft covers (green historical, red class & race, grey DMs), campaign setting boxes and associated expansions, and players options, they have both the mechanical and setting stuff hands down.

I must agree 100% with Tanaril. 2e had so many tables and charts that 3.X chose to avoid like the plague. There were so many one off rules in almost every book.

For example of pure crunch.

Potion admixture side affect table. If you drank 2 potions at once or 1 right after the other awful/amazing/weird stuff could happen.

Wielded Weapons actually had a initiative modifier. Daggers were fast. Big Swords/Hammers were slow.

There was a chart that modified your to hit roll based on piercing/bludgeoning/crushing damage vs their armor type. Piercing was good against chainmail. But slashing was terrible against chainmail.


Getting a new weapon of a different type required you to look at 3 or 4 different tables.

18/00 strength. But only strength.
Different classes had different XP rules and # to reach to level.
Rogues got xp for each gold piece they had.

Multiclassing

YOU think the multiclass rules for 3.5 were bad were you lose 20% xp if a class is 2 levels off from another. That is simple and straight forward. To multiclass in 2nd ed you had to have certain stats at a high enough level before you could take the class. Classes had different level caps per race. Half elf bards could go to 20. Every other class the poor demi humans just stopped as some point. Dwarven fighters were good, dwarven mages were capped at level 8, maybe.

2ed had way more crunch.

Books

2ed also had settings that didn't get much traction in the 3.0 edition. Also many of the kit books in 2nd ed were for a class, not a grouping of classes.

Khedrac
2020-09-24, 02:55 AM
Definitely have to say 3.0/.5 especially if we are counting all D20 products as 3.5 based, as you have multiple licensed properties throwing in their hat like Star Wars d20, and the first 2 editions of Mutants and Masterminds were 'D20 based'.

If you count all the D20 products as the same system, then the question probably becomes meaningless because they are simply not the same system.

They probably would still win, but if all D20 count as one system then OD&D, AD&D 2nd Ed, BEMC(I)/RC D&D also all count as one system - and all of the retro close that have sprung from them...

As I said before, for a survey like this even 3.0 and 3.5 are not the same system - they are further apart than some of the earlier versions of (A)D&D such as AD&D 1st Ed and 2nd Ed.
(In general adventures for 1st Ed can be run unmodified for 2nd Ed - which is the same as 3.0 and 3.5.)

RedMage125
2020-09-28, 01:58 PM
I think 2nd edition wins for #2, certainly.

I disagree that 3.0 and 3.5 should be counted separately. I think that, even if counted together, and ONLY counting WotC-published books, that 2e probably still wins #1, but not by much.

But 3.x also brought us OGL. Kingdoms of Kalamar, the initial Pathfinder (when it was just an OGL settign published by Paizo before they made their own Core Rulebook), Ravenloft 3e (licensed by Sword & Sorcery studios, a branch of White Wolf), XCrawl...the list goes on. So many settings the diverged very little from Core D&D. If all those can count, than 3.x wins #1 by a LANDSLIDE.

Ken Murikumo
2020-09-29, 01:10 PM
For Reference, 3.0/3.5 has, according to one specific site (of questionable legality):

990 classes

3608 feats

& 4911 Spells (including psudo-spells like mysteries & maneuvers)

These numbers include reprints from different versions and different books (the bass classes, for example, are reprinted in each setting but with minor wording or fluff changes).


This is official 1st party publication, dragonlance's setting book (dunno if that was 1st party), and dragon compendium.

This does not include dragon magazine, archetypes/alt class feature classes, or web updates & official web content.

Psyren
2020-10-02, 04:46 PM
I'd say 3e wins on fluff too simply because you can (and someone somewhere has) converted any and everything from the other editions to it.

Jason
2020-10-02, 05:00 PM
If you count d20 open license products then there's no question its 3rd edition. And yes, both editions of Pathfinder would be included in the count.

If you don't count open license products...it's probably still 3rd edition.