What edition to DM?

[Reshy]

I was considering starting a game of D&D, but I don't know what edition would be the best to go with out of the bunch. I've seen a lot of people arguing over the differences between them and I'm kind of stumped as to what to start going on. The editions I'm aware of are 3.5e, Pathfinder, 4.0e, and NEXT. But I can't seem to get much information about the practical differences between them other than 3.5e is older than 4.0e and NEXT while pathfinder is a complete offshoot of 3.5e. Right now I possess mostly 3.5 material but I know that it's aging and there's nothing really being made for it, which is sad so I'm wondering if I should look into another edition instead.

[BrokenChord]

An important thing to remember when making the system comparison is that although 3.5 doesn't have new material being produced for it any more, it has so much material already that you can most likely DM for years with a single-minded pursuit to use as many of the things you like in the shortest possible amount of time. If you play at a more realistic pace, you'll pretty much never have a need for new material, because nearly everything you can think of exists in some form already.

Now, with that aside, let's compare the systems and their potential pros and cons to a DM. Note that I am horribly, terrifyingly even, biased towards 3.5, so assume I'm double-layer sugarcoating my evaluation of it and assume I left a thin sheen of slime on 4e, Pathfinder, and NEXT.

Let's start with 3.5. First thing I've gotta say in 3.5's favor: variety. I touched on this earlier. There are so many things in 3.5, it is insane. Honestly, if a theoretical list of every fantasy character and concept someone somewhere could find interesting were to be compiled, the number of characters and concepts the system COULD emulate would exponentially dwarf the number of characters and concepts that couldn't be played out and utilized mechanically. It's really freaking huge like that.

It also has fairly solid RPG mechanics, but they all do; D&D is rules-heavy across all editions.

However, 3.5 faces a steep price for giving players and DMs so many options. Well, actually, I'm lying. Their issue was never having so much stuff. The D&D 3.5 play-testers were just terrible. Long story short, you have tons of options, and assuming nobody abuses the mechanics you can build characters and, as a DM, encounters, of any variety and it can all be a lot of fun. But the mechanics are so, so, horribly, painfully abusable and unbalanced. Druids need to have good knowledge of the mechanics just to restrict themselves enough not make five of the other core base classes useless. Spellcasters in general can be highly unbalancing, occasionally on accident, but it can be almost guaranteed if the player is just trying to play a "full" caster to its strongest abilities.

Basically, 3.5 has huge balance issues, which are fairly easy to circumvent on paper but suck pretty hard in practice because a lot of players out there aren't willing to restrict themselves to the level of capability the game assumes them to have.

Also, those same balance issues extend to certain playstyles. Two-handed weapons are just straight up better than any other style of weapon wielding, for example, and some styles, while supported with feats and such in the rules, are just not very effective. You can play anything you can dream of, but it might not be good.

Pathfinder... I don't have much to say. Some people love it, some hate it. It fixed some of 3.5's issues, created a few more. You appear to like that it still has new stuff coming out though, so there's that, and it's sort of compatible-ish with 3.5 material, so you can pretend that it has 3.5's material going for it too, though it doesn't really work out.

4e is a huge step. Forward or backward? Well, that's your call. On the plus side, 4e is WAY more balanced than 3.5 and PF. All the classes are somewhere around equal in worth by default, the game is much more structured, and the mechanical holes, while existent, are few and far between. This comes with some things that I consider costs, however. For one thing, classes are much more defined in their roles, rather than general and open-ended like in previous editions, and the game punishes you heavily for not having a given role filled in the party. For example, mechanically, one 4e Fighter can't and won't be much different from another 4e Fighter; same applies to Wizards, Clerics, and so on. It also shifts away from a lot of the previous editions' sense of internal consistency in favor of making battles more cinematic.

Of course, 4e is also much easier to DM for, as the books are usually right when they guess at the strength levels of the players. Sadly, while it's not a small amount by any metric, 4e has quite a bit less material than 3.5, and the two systems aren't very -port friendly with each other.

NEXT... I don't know it well enough, but given how they treat monster encounters, race/class combos, and XP from what I've seen, it seems to be heading in a more MMORPG-like direction. Take that as you will.

Hope I've been of some help. I recommend 4e if you can get your hands on the books if you're totally new to tabletop gaming because it's much easier to follow along with. Otherwise, 3.5 gets my vote.

[Kaun]

It doesn't matter.

Most of the issues people talk about with editions only really exist on the internet.

If you have run games before and have some experience with pnp rpg's just pick which ever one is easiest to get your hands on.

If you have never run a game before and have little rpg experience then 4e is easier for new DM's.

[Reshy]

I want an edition that's pretty much fun for both the players and the DM, and not too much on either spectrum. Generally speaking I'm probably the only one who plays D&D and actually optimizes, so I'm not terribly worried about that in 3.5e if I was to host it. I probably wouldn't care if they had an overpowered character so long as they weren't making the game less fun for others, myself included.


Questions for Chord:

What makes PF not gel well with the older 3.5 material that it sprung from?

How is 4e less internally consistent?

How is NEXT like a mmorpg?

[Nightgaun7]

4e is the easiest to DM by far, and imo is the best edition of D&D. The things BrokenChord loves about 3.5 I think are bigger issues and the things he doesn't like about 4th I think he overstates. Personal taste. I find I do a LOT less houseruling in 4E, which really helps too.

Either way, Pathfinder is useless.

[Reshy]

4e is the easiest to DM by far, and imo is the best edition of D&D. The things BrokenChord loves about 3.5 I think are bigger issues and the things he doesn't like about 4th I think he overstates. Personal taste. I find I do a LOT less houseruling in 4E, which really helps too.

Either way, Pathfinder is useless.

Strange thing is that I cannot for the life of me find a good list of the books for 4e. For 3.5e I can easily look up all the source books and know what's out there.

What's wrong with pathfinder exactly?

[Rhynn]

You can't lose anything by checking out the free retroclones linked in my signature. They're all simpler and easier to play and run than 3E or 4E.

[BWR]

Strange thing is that I cannot for the life of me find a good list of the books for 4e. For 3.5e I can easily look up all the source books and know what's out there.

What's wrong with pathfinder exactly?

Nothing really. Unlike Nightgaun7, I detest 4e and consider it D&D in name only. PF is the spiritual continuation of the brand.
There are some changes from 3.5, mostly for the better imo, but at heart it's the same game. Whatever is 'wrong' with PF is basically the same that 'wrong' with 3.5.
There are always things people dislike about it, most of which can be fixed with a few simple house rules, and you always have the option to make extensive house rules and homebrew to customize. The game works perfectly well without them.

The Wikipedia article on D&D has a list of products. I assume it's mostly complete.

[BrokenChord]

She.
She.
She.
I am a GIRL, Nightgaun7.

Anyway, on to the actual point at hand. My issue with compatibility between 3.5 and PF is mainly that a lot of the subtler differences are lost in translation; PF's changes, for good or for ill, tend to become trivialized when the elements that warranted the change are re-introduced. Along with that, the little things also get to me; D&D was based around a slightly lower stat threshold than PF, and things like PrCs that are pointedly about making mages less squishy lose some of their impact. Plus, a lot of 3.5 material just doesn't mesh well with the rule changes, and I feel houseruling to compensate for discrepancies defeats the point of changing rule systems in the first place.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Pathfinder. But I feel like the fact that it's an offshoot and not a supplement is too quickly ignored by many people, and trying to get the best of both worlds just ends up minimizing the point of the separation.

As for other editions. Starting with 4e and the fact that I feel it's less internally consistent. This is based on two main things: the "mook rules" and the alteration of certain class functions in favor of filling a defined role.

The "mook rules" to which I refer are the boss fight recommendations for DMs in 4e. I shouldn't have to describe how internally inconsistent it is that the act of being near the boss enemy causes mooks to turn from individual creatures into mob units acting on the same initiative with 1 HP each.

The predefined roles thing is basically the relative inability of characters to play to archetypes despite those archetypes being described and utilized. The system makes healer clerics non-functional, makes most wizard spells destruction-and-evocation-y, and restricts fighters to a single combat function with little variance for combat style. Which is fine if it works that way in-world, but D&D 4e continues to utilize now-defunct fantasy tropes in what is quite honestly an outdated and exclusivist attempt to evoke wonder in players by showing them cool things that they can't work with themselves.

NEXT... Again, I haven't given it more than a gloss-over. But the treatment of xp in the form of constant "xp packets" which allow grinding and the inflated emphasis on race in relation to class makes it feel very MMO-y to me. I could be wrong, but it feels off to me.

[Nightgaun7]

She.
She.
She.
I am a GIRL, Nightgaun7.

Phone doesn't show the little gender icon.

The "mook rules" to which I refer are the boss fight recommendations for DMs in 4e. I shouldn't have to describe how internally inconsistent it is that the act of being near the boss enemy causes mooks to turn from individual creatures into mob units acting on the same initiative with 1 HP each.

The predefined roles thing is basically the relative inability of characters to play to archetypes despite those archetypes being described and utilized. The system makes healer clerics non-functional, makes most wizard spells destruction-and-evocation-y, and restricts fighters to a single combat function with little variance for combat style. Which is fine if it works that way in-world, but D&D 4e continues to utilize now-defunct fantasy tropes in what is quite honestly an outdated and exclusivist attempt to evoke wonder in players by showing them cool things that they can't work with themselves.

The Minion rules are there so you can be cool and heroic and fight a huge mob of enemies and still have a chance of surviving. Minions are meant for things like a horde of zombies, white dragon hatchlings, angry gnomes, whatever. They aren't things that were going to be a big deal on their own regardless of the presence of the boss monster. As a GM they're great. Simple, dangerous, but the 1 HP means you can kill them in droves and . One common homebrew is the Super-minion, which is killed in two hits or oneshotted if hit by a striker feature.

And some of the most fun fights I've had have featured nothing but minions.

Healer/Pacifist Clerics are actually extremely viable - I've played one myself and you heal, buff, and debuff pretty darn well.
Wizards don't have the huge array of spells they did in 3.5, of course, but they do have far more than evocation and destruction (admittedly, necromancy sucks since it never got as much support. But hey, it's 4E, so it's easy to work around)
Fighters can use two handed weapons, two one handed weapons, sword and board, polearm, or just put the enemy in a headlock and hit another guy with that guy. Every fighter style is decent and can get to great if you play it well. They all play differently, and fighters are probably the best defender in the game and can do Striker-level damage if you want. If you're complaining about classes having roles, well...at least fighters have a role (that they are damn good at) instead of being tier 5.

One thing I love about 4E is how all the stupid feat taxes and class feature requirements and spell restrictions and such for PrCs (paragon paths, in 4E) are done away with. At most you might need to be a member of a certain race.

As a GM, you also don't have to put up with Druids and Wizards and such breaking the world. In 3.5 even people who aren't really trying can do it with ease.

Nothing really. Unlike Nightgaun7, I detest 4e and consider it D&D in name only. PF is the spiritual continuation of the brand.
There are some changes from 3.5, mostly for the better imo, but at heart it's the same game. Whatever is 'wrong' with PF is basically the same that 'wrong' with 3.5.
There are always things people dislike about it, most of which can be fixed with a few simple house rules, and you always have the option to make extensive house rules and homebrew to customize. The game works perfectly well without them.

The Wikipedia article on D&D has a list of products. I assume it's mostly complete.

Pathfinder is like getting limeade when you asked for lemonade. It's not bad, but why not get the lemonade?

EDIT: To clarify, I just feel like it's not different enough or fixed enough to bother with.

[Eisenheim]

I think I might be able to help a little more with a balanced view of these systems. I have played and DMed both editions quite a bit, and come to be frustrated with both of them. Here are my first thoughts.

As a DM: I found 3.5 much easier to run in an improvisational fashion once I had a passing familiarity with the system, the combat math of 4th makes getting the numbers exactly right more important for an encounter to run well. Eventually, I found the amount of preparation I had to do for 4e's tightly balanced tactical combat made me burn out on running the system at all. The plethora of options in 3.5 was never an issue for me as a DM, but no one in my group was a particularly heavy optimizer or owned a huge number of books, both of which help with that problem.

As a player: as others have mentioned, 3.5 suffers from major balance issues. How much of a problem this is definitely depends on your group, but I know that as a player, I unintentionally wound up overshadowing some parties, simply because I liked the idea of a wizard, and that is one of the most powerful 3.5 classes. 4th edition characters are certainly less mechanically distinct than 3.5 characters, because they all use the same mechanics, unlike 3.5, but I never found that this had an impact on the role playing diversity of the characters.

Both systems heavily reward system mastery and place almost all their mechanical focus on combat, with much less material to support out of combat, especially social, conflicts.

As I said at the beginning, I became dissatisfied with both systems eventually, and depending on what kind of game you want to run, I might recommend a different system. If you want to run a heroic fantasy story with most of the focus on tactical combat, either one will probably do you fine, with the choice being a matter of personal taste. If you are thinking of a game with more social elements and the option for non-combat problem solving, something like FATE core might be more useful. I'm running a game that began as a D&D campaign in FATE now and it works well and really expands what the players can do.

[Nightgaun7]

I think I might be able to help a little more with a balanced view of these systems. I have played and DMed both editions quite a bit, and come to be frustrated with both of them. Here are my first thoughts.

As a DM: I found 3.5 much easier to run in an improvisational fashion once I had a passing familiarity with the system, the combat math of 4th makes getting the numbers exactly right more important for an encounter to run well. Eventually, I found the amount of preparation I had to do for 4e's tightly balanced tactical combat made me burn out on running the system at all. The plethora of options in 3.5 was never an issue for me as a DM, but no one in my group was a particularly heavy optimizer or owned a huge number of books, both of which help with that problem.

This is really interesting, because so far I've never heard someone say they thought 3.5 was easier to run. I can whip up a 4E session with a 2 minute look through the Adventure Tool and another 3 minutes on plot and environment. The monster stat blocks are so much simpler, and the tighter math means it's super easy to adjust monsters to where you want them. 4E did have some issues early in its life span, where monsters took a lot of damage to kill and did less damage themselves, but they got that ironed out (side note: MM3 on a business card, check it out for help with all monster math). And there are very, very few times when somebody will use one spell and completely end the encounter. I found that tremendously irritating in 3.5, since I had to know the spell list for all my players to ensure they wouldn't throw something wacky in there and really screw things up. Good luck doing that with druids and clerics (you can ban spells, of course, but I don't like to do so).

I also find combat can be run with much larger numbers of enemies and players, even if you aren't using minions, which is a definite plus for me as we have a large group. For example, one session was basically an arena match in a small valley with swarms of summoned monsters attacking the party of 9. You would think 9 players and 10-15 monsters in any one round (they respawned, essentially) would be slow as a snail, but we got through about 10 turns in an hour and a half and had an absolute blast. You do need players who know what they're doing, but so does every system, and if you want I can make several suggestions to help speed things along.

All that said, my group likes combat and optimizing. If your group is more about roleplay than rollplay, it might not matter as much. Personally I think 4E handles roleplay and out of combat skills just fine, but I know a lot of people prefer a more complex and fiddly system for their skills and such.

[BrokenChord]

Yes, I recognize why the minion rules are there, and it's not like I grow sudden hate for everyone who likes them. But it's pretty hard to argue that it's trading away internal racial consistency. Whether it's trading it away for cinematic appeal, or for ease of use, or something else entirely is mostly up to the people using it, but it is a trade that I personally would want to avoid making at all costs.

[Yora]

I've been running 3rd Edition/pathfinder, and looking back it wasn't either fun, nor effective.

3rd Edition can be either very good or very bad, depending on what you want.

If you want to play a game where you use clever methods of building characters and NPC that make the most effective use of their mechanical elements and making tactical descisions about positioning and timing, then 3rd Edition is a really good way. I like to think of it as hyper-complex chess.
But if you want to play a game where you only touch the dice in situations where it isn't clear if something the players want to do will automatically succeed or automatically fail, then it's a poor system. It's way too complex and keeps track of so many things you really don't know to answer these questions.

When asking about the version of D&D that is the easiest to run for GMs, then my recommendation would be any of the many retro-clones there are. These games try to use rules and dice only when you really have to use them. If the GM could just say "sure, that shouldn't be a problem for your character", then there are no dice to be rolled.
It's still D&D. It has all the classes, all the races, all the spells, and all the monsters that the other games have too.

What's wrong with pathfinder exactly?

Nothing's really wrong with it. It does some things different then 3rd edition, but those aren't really better or worse than in 3rd. Other things that I consider bad about Pathfinder are exactly the same issues I see in 3rd edition as well.

[Kurald Galain]

Most of the issues people talk about with editions only really exist on the internet.

If you have run games before and have some experience with pnp rpg's just pick which ever one is easiest to get your hands on.

This bears repeating.

Personally speaking, I don't see a material difference between 3E and PF, and consider them interchangeable (which is in no way an insult to either). Also personally speaking, I find 4E much harder and more time-consuming to DM for; we had a discussion about that and opinions were pretty evenly spread, so it's a matter of taste (not fact) which edition is easier.

I like the suggestion of starting with a retroclone; they have less baggage to worry about, both in terms of rules and in terms of internet criticism.

[Eisenheim]

Nightgaun7: I DMed a long-running 4e campaign starting soon after launch, so I had to adjust MM1 monsters to avoid combats that dragged forever, and even after adjusting health up and damage down, I found it difficult to do more than run two combat encounters, with basically no time for role-play, in a 3-5 hour session. I also didn't ever subscribe to any of the online tools for 4e, so I was building my encounters by hand. my group also only had 3 PCs, which may have contributed to slowing down the fights because damage just didn't go down as fast.

[Rhynn]

What's wrong with pathfinder exactly?

For me, it intensified the main problems of D&D 3E: there were more classes, options, modification, feats, races, subraces, etc. Just more of everything, and 3E had way too much stuff already to keep track of. 3E's main problem was being cumbersome and heavy to use, unless you restrict the book selection strictly.

4E was a better tactical combat RPG (I would seriously play the heck out of a turn-based grid-based combat-heavy RPG in the style of Nahlakh/Natuk/the Gold Box games based on the rules), the differences entirely a matter of taste, but it was at least as heavy, broad, and cumbersome, with even longer & slower combats.

That's one reason I love ACKS (see sig): I've created many classes, races, monsters, and spells for it so far, but they're all for a specific use or purpose, easy to keep track of (in large part because I created them), and they were trivial to create (especially in comparison to 3E). Also, very quick combat.

[Magic Myrmidon]

Usually, when a question of what game to play comes up, I always recommend Legend from Rule of Cool. Because it's the most well-thought out, fun game I've ever played. But sadly, it's probably the most difficult "version of dnd" to DM for.

[Aedilred]

As this thread has already demonstrated, this subject is one about which people tend to harbour strong opinions, and it's difficult to get a balanced viewpoint, since people will always be trying to recommend their personal favourite. With that said, I largely agree with BrokenChord's assessment of the systems. It comes down in large part to how you and your group like to play.

Essentially, 3.5 offers flexibility and scope at the expense of internal balance and bloat. The amount of material out there for it is staggering, and that's both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it's great, because it means you (and your players) can do pretty much anything you want to. On the other, all of that means different abilities and classes aren't always balanced against each other, and keeping track of all the different options available can become a bit of a chore. It doesn't help that the core classes are actually some of the least well-balanced, so to get a balanced party you would probably need access to more sourcebooks, particularly the Complete series.

Having said that, I've never felt that the balance issues have to be a problem, especially if your players aren't hell-bent on optimising. As with pretty much all gaming, the internet plays a large role here: the community's had the best part of fifteen years to work out how to break 3.5, has done so exhaustively, and that has perhaps led to the perception that the game is unplayable, where in fact a starting player might well not pick up on the loopholes and combinations that make certain classes so disproportionately effective (and even if they do, might not use or abuse them). I've had thoroughly enjoyable core-class-only games of 3.5 where none of the players felt they were sidelined. In fact in one of those campaigns, if anyone was sidelined, it was the wizard, which the CharOp forums would probably claim is literally impossible.

4th edition is kind of the opposite to 3.5 in that it makes balance and simplicity priorities. This makes the game more immediately accessible and less hard work to learn and keep up with; it also means that the party is designed to work better as a team rather than a collection of individuals some of whom might overshadow the others. On the other hand, in aspiring to balance and simplicity, it arguably sacrifices variety and flexibility. There can be a feeling of samey-ness among 4th ed characters, both between members of the same class, and between different classes. You don't get so many options to develop and personalise your character mechanically and the game largely expects you to stick to pre-defined paths.

Again, this doesn't have to be a problem. If your group members are all keen roleplayers, it doesn't necessarily matter what's on the character sheet and they can still develop their characters how they like. For me, it was a problem, which is why I went back to 4th ed: essentially I felt that if the character development was all down to roleplay and I couldn't do so much about the mechanics, we might as well be doing a free-form roleplay game, but that's a personal thing. 4th edition felt - to me - more like structured entertainment, where the book tells you how to play and you play that way, but there isn't so much scope for your own input. From a purely mechanical standpoint, it's undoubtedly a better game, but I felt that came at the cost of some of the actual roleplaying.

Pathfinder I've only read and never played. It seems to attempt something similar to 4th ed (i.e. balance and streamlining) but while remaining much closer to the 3.5 rules. Apparently it's fixed some issues and created new ones, which doesn't surprise me. I know nothing much about Next at all.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I think you're better off considering "which edition fits our preferences?" I have thoughts on some editions of D&D, but it's far more fruitful for you to consider them on your own.

Basic/Expert D&D: there's a lot of confusion around how the early editions of D&D roll together, but I'll single this one out because it's my favorite of the old D&Ds. It rewards a sword-and-sorcery type of story, where players are expected to rely on their wits and focus on their objectives. There's a lot to discover and explore in the game, and I think they're rather tightly-written. The Moldvay B/X D&D is the game I've trawled through the most.

2E: I don't actually know much about this one, save that it brings a lot of tables and discrete rules to the game. Ask around, but I suspect this one will be a bit more arcane to a newcomer.

3.5 Edition: I honestly know nothing about 3rd Edition, but it seems as though 3.5 essentially supersedes it. You'll find a lot here. It's really a giant stewpot of ideas and classes and character options. It requires some care when it comes to making a character that will be competent, and introduces the notion of encounter balance, although from everything I've heard...the Challenge Rating system is problematic in practice. Its greatest strength is the enormous craziness of all its color, and I would say that it's the first edition of D&D that moves into the genre of high-magic fantasy. (It is, however, fairly versatile. It can get a bit scatterminded, though.)

Pathfinder is basically the same thing, but they ironed out some wrinkles in the system (such as making skills require less bookkeeping). I think the balance is a tad bit better. But it's compatible with 3.5...and it also benefits from ongoing support.

4th Edition: Removed a vast number of 3.5's idiosyncrancies from the game--and whether that's a strength or a weakness is up to you. It has a much better system for creating balanced encounters against the characters, to the point that the system seems to encourage play that focuses on beating through setpiece encounters. There's lots of cool buttons and gizmos for the classes--now, each class gets something special and it's very difficult to make an incompetent character. It moves full-on into the high-magic genre from Level 1; characters start as superheroic. Combat can be a bit overwhelming with all of the options, though, and runs long for many people because of it.

13th Age (Honorable Mention): Is it technically D&D? No. Is it basically D&D? Yes. It's what happened when key designers from 3E and 4E got together to make their own take on d20 fantasy, sans the input of Wizards of the Coast. It's much more focused on the "cool stuff for characters" aspect, is far more improvisational in its style, and doesn't feel as rigid as 4E. It focuses more strongly on tying narrative hooks into characters, too, and it gets rid of practically all of the busywork found in previous editions of D&D. (It doesn't give you any semblance of a pre-existing setting, though. It gives you a skeleton, and then wants you to flesh the world out during play. Also, it doesn't have much in the way of adventures or support outside the core book.)

3.5 is probably the edition with the most third-party support, as well as the edition with the most official support (in terms of splatbooks). Early D&D is probably next in line, although 4E has a lot of neat sourcebooks that cover different areas of the setting, with flashy new character options.

[Airk]

Unless you are super into charop, trillions of moving parts, or system mastery (which, to me, at this point, are all actually UNDESIRABLE), you should skip any D&D numbered 3 or higher entirely.

Actually, I suggest you skip anything that says "Dungeons & Dragons" on it entirely.

IMHO, the correct choices are:
A) Go for some sort of minimalist cleaned up Retro Clone (go check Rhynn's Sig, or just try Heroes Against Darkness or something.) for not too many rules but retaining some of that oldschool 'dangerous' feeling.
B) Skip the whole 'games even remotely mechanically tied to D&D' thing entirely and get your Dungeon on with Dungeon World, which implements a very different way of making interesting stuff happen
C) Go all-in with Burning Wheel and get a game that drives itself on the characters' Beliefs more than on their stats.

I do not recommend any Edition of D&D.

[Eisenheim]

I am largely in agreement with Airk, but it really depends on what you want. Both 3.5 and 4th edition D&D provide solid mechanical bases for detailed fantasy combat, with minimal rules support for other avenues of conflict and little to nothing in the way of mechanics that encourage immersion in the character or the scene. If we're recommending systems beyond D&D, I will always suggest FATE core and I have had many good experiences with 7th Sea, though you really have to start a bit higher than its default power level for a fun heroic game.

[Rhynn]

Basic/Expert D&D: there's a lot of confusion around how the early editions of D&D roll together

Fortunately, I have a post that explains all of that.

There's some small inaccuracies or missing bits (the 4.5E, whatever it's called, which I'm 99% unfamiliar with, having but once held and opened one of the books and immediately put it away; plus some of the author attributions are a bit fuzzy), but that's pretty comprehensive I think.

[Aedilred]

2E: I don't actually know much about this one, save that it brings a lot of tables and discrete rules to the game. Ask around, but I suspect this one will be a bit more arcane to a newcomer.

3.5 Edition:...and I would say that it's the first edition of D&D that moves into the genre of high-magic fantasy. (It is, however, fairly versatile. It can get a bit scatterminded, though.)

To be honest, 2nd ed AD&D was already pretty high-fantasy. In fact in many respects 3rd ed (and by extension 3.5, which is basically a "debugged" 3) is the natural successor to AD&D2. The crunch is shuffled around quite a bit, but a lot of the time that comes down to adding customisable and flexible options (making skills universal, adding feats) and removing some of the more arcane and inexplicable mechanics (THAC0, the 18/xx strength system, multi/dual-classing, etc.) When I moved on from AD&D2 to 3rd ed, I felt that 3rd ed was the sort of thing you'd get if somebody sane sat down and tried to rewrite the AD&D2 rules to make sense. That's a simplification, but I think those systems are rather more similar, certainly in spirit, than 3/3.5 and 4.

There's a lingering, suspicious part of my brain, very possibly addled by nostalgia, that secretly suspects AD&D2 was quietly a better game than 3/3.5. But "arcane" is definitely the word to describe it. It's definitely a child of 80s gaming; I can't imagine trying to explain it to a newcomer now.

[Nightgaun7]

Unless you are super into charop, trillions of moving parts, or system mastery (which, to me, at this point, are all actually UNDESIRABLE), you should skip any D&D numbered 3 or higher entirely.

Actually, I suggest you skip anything that says "Dungeons & Dragons" on it entirely.

IMHO, the correct choices are:
A) Go for some sort of minimalist cleaned up Retro Clone (go check Rhynn's Sig, or just try Heroes Against Darkness or something.) for not too many rules but retaining some of that oldschool 'dangerous' feeling.
B) Skip the whole 'games even remotely mechanically tied to D&D' thing entirely and get your Dungeon on with Dungeon World, which implements a very different way of making interesting stuff happen
C) Go all-in with Burning Wheel and get a game that drives itself on the characters' Beliefs more than on their stats.

I do not recommend any Edition of D&D.

I am largely in agreement with Airk, but it really depends on what you want. Both 3.5 and 4th edition D&D provide solid mechanical bases for detailed fantasy combat, with minimal rules support for other avenues of conflict and little to nothing in the way of mechanics that encourage immersion in the character or the scene. If we're recommending systems beyond D&D, I will always suggest FATE core and I have had many good experiences with 7th Sea, though you really have to start a bit higher than its default power level for a fun heroic game.

If you don't want to play 4E, which is definitely not the game for everyone, then I would have to third this opinion instead of telling you to play 3.5. Any love I have for 3.5 is overwhelmed by what a horrible mess the rules are.

My biggest reason for loving 4E, really, is how easily and quickly I can run it as a GM. If that appeals to you but you don't like other attributes of 4E, focus on other games (be they retroclones or rules-lite) rather than defaulting to 3.5/Pathfinder

[Jay R]

I strongly suggest that you run the edition or game whose rules you know best.

The worst edition of D&D, run by a DM who knows it cold, is better than the best edition of D&D, run by somebody who doesn't know it well.

[Jarawara]

"There's a lingering, suspicious part of my brain, very possibly addled by nostalgia, that secretly suspects AD&D2 was quietly a better game than 3/3.5."


I know quite a few people who after playing 3E went back to playing 2E and the earlier editions.

I still like some of the mechanics of 3E, but that's mainly because we the players had largely introduced those mechanics long before 3E came out. 3E just put the player's ideas all together into one unified system... and somehow broke it in doing so.

I use a heavily modified 3E system now with a heavy feel of 1E's simplicity to it.

[Zaydos]

B/C/E/M/I: Never DM'd this just played it, but it's a nice simple system, especially if you're only using the Basic box until you get to the levels of the others letting a group grow into the rules.

2e: I enjoy this, it allows for much easier improvisation by the DM, expects more judgment calls and needs more. It is rather arcane, though.

3.X: I've never had a problem with 3.X and an RL group, something I can't say for other editions. It runs into a lot of problems if you have hardcore optimizers and it tends to work best if you're a group of actual friends who will try to make characters to have a fun game together. Lots of options, potential for abuse, and potential for fun; it's the edition I keep coming back to and have found it easiest to get new people to play (the older editions have a reputation for being arcane, 4e had a reputation for being bad, and when picking up first time players they already knew these reputations). What there aren't official rules for there's homebrew of somewhere, and it's fairly easy to make your own stuff.

PF: It's modified 3.X. You need to do some twisting to port stuff between them (honestly as much as between 1e and 2e if not more). It has the same problems, and same strengths, although in my opinion from the campaign I played in it mostly it exacerbated the problems and most of its fixing of the problems was the reduction in options; porting in 3.X material willy-nilly gives it all the 3.X problems and more. I do like some of its changes (rogue/barbarian/fighter; some of its skill list trimming) but I haven't seen enough to tempt me away to it (I was already doing an almost identical skill list reduction and I don't like the change to skill points).

4e: It's a fun tactical game. PF and 3.5 really directly compare; 2e, 1e, and B/C/E/M/I I'd also directly compare. 4e is a horse of a different color. It's worth giving a shot, but I prefer 3.X. To me 4e lacks verisimilitude in the name of Balance. For a beginning DM it is much easier to improvise than 3.X (I've seen very few people improvise 3.X/PF well; and had a DM that loved doing just that while being very bad at it) but I'd say harder than 2e or B/C/E/M/I. It has 3.X's dedication to the rules and having them apply to DM and player, where the older editions encouraged "if you can't find the rule atm make something up" and giving monsters plain weird powers. Of 3.X and later editions it's probably the best I know of for a beginning DM and group, though.

Next: I don't even know.

[Airk]

I strongly suggest that you run the edition or game whose rules you know best.

The worst edition of D&D, run by a DM who knows it cold, is better than the best edition of D&D, run by somebody who doesn't know it well.

I disagree with this assertion. It's really only true of games with a large amount of moving parts and specific rules and system mastery. If 95% of the game boils down to "roll 2d6, add a modifier, and then look at what it says on the power." then you don't need to "know it well" to run it. Indeed, if it's new to the players as well, a lot of fun can be had in the "we're all learning this together" way.

That said, this comment did make me go back and read the OP more thoroughly, and it seems like the OP is thinking about avoiding 3.5 because "it's aging and there's nothing really being made for it". And I want to point out that, in spite of the fact that I still think 3.5 is a bad choice for most people, these are both TERRIBLE reasons to change games. Aging? So what? It's not like the game has graphics that are going to look dated. "Nothing being made for it?" One of the WORST THINGS about 3.5 is all the crap that's been made for it. Any good game is complete with one book (or maybe two in the form of player/GMs books). You shouldn't need to waste money on an endless stream of splatbooks, expansions, and modules of dubious quality in order to enjoy a game. So while there are lots of good reasons to drop 3E, those are not them.

[Vrock_Summoner]

Um... 3.5 IS a complete game with just the Core books. Supplements are just that; they are the salt and pepper for your eggs, the gravy for your mashed potatoes, and they do make it better, but the course was filling and complete without them. Admittedly, some of the subsystem books are more like extra entrees than additives (I'm thinking Magic of Incarnum and the XPH), but that isn't a bad thing because it doesn't detract or replace things from a game that was, in fact, just as complete as many other systems. D&D 3.5 with supplements is a full game +, which I don't see as bad.

(Also, at least a nominal amount of credit is warranted; a large amount of D&D's vast abundance of books is setting material, not mainly rules supplements. And whether or not you like the settings, the fact is they offer a lot more help, example, and guidance for building worlds that make sense in the game mechanics. A lot of publishers don't give you that kind of support, and showing instead of telling really does make a difference for this sort of thing.)