Felon said:
Salutations, Gary. Thanks for the spiffy game that has become one of the chief sources of pleasure in my so-called life. Hoping to see many, many more years of gaming goodness, so don't retire too soon, OK? 
My pleasure, and do make sure that you spend some time having fun away from gaming, eh?
As for retiring, I don't think I'll be able to ever to that totally, but my creative work will be channeled into those areas I really want to play games in and about
How about Anglo-Saxon England or the American Indians resisting the influx of settlers? I'm up for some gaming there
There was a thread over on the WotC board fairly recently about drow and their weapons. It dwelled on the fact that in 3e, the rule for drow weapons & armor degrading in sunlight was thrown out. Sean Reynolds' stated that rule was discarded intentionally because the only reason that rule existed in the first place was to "screw the players". Do you feel that statement, and the accompanying general sentiment expressed by others that AD&D drow were over-the-top and introduced solely to be the "ultimate party-killers", is at all fair and accurate? [/B]
Heh, and my opinion of Mr. Reynolds' statement must be self-censored. Given that the whole concept of the game is fantasy, what, pray tell, makes drow weapons disintegrating in the radiation from the sun any more unreasonable than just about everything else of fantastic natute in the game? More likely he was unable to find a rationale for the effect, and needing a rule for everything had to do as was done.
As for drow being too difficult to defeat, boo-hoo-hoo. Good players managed to do so with their PCs pretty handily, second-rate ones lost. Is the game to be a cake-walk or a challenge? Speaking for OAD&D, I can state the former was meant to be the case. As for 3E, well, you be the judge...
On a broader tangent: hindsight being 20/20, do you think that there were monsters in AD&D that genuinely qualified as an over-the-top attempt at creating the biggest, baddest, PC-kilingest beastie (i.e. creatures that were probably more fun to design than to fight)? [/B]
A very few of the AD&D monsters were meant to be near-unkillable. Those were done to pose a real challenge to PCs that were exceptionally well-equipped with magic items and of level above the usual--say 14th and above. After all, something had to be around that would pose a very real and difficult problem for such characters, no? Again, the game was meant to be such that no character could be invulnerable, unkillable. What fun would there be in such case?
Cheerio,
Gary
