Of all the complaints about 3.x systems... do you people actually allow this stuff ?

The big one is the what... 20 minute adventure day ? Rules as written yes, this "theoretically" could be a problem. The thing is , I have been running campaigns for about 15 years now and I can honestly say I have never had this problem. This brings me to my question, does this ACTUALLY happen in your games? If so, why do you allow it?

The other thing is the so called "Caster / Melee" rift. Where wizards and other casters are basically much better than every one else. Has anyone ever actually encountered this in their games? I personally haven't, perhaps it's because my group isn't into min maxing or something. People who play fighters or monks or whatever, they have a fantastic time. They kill enemies just as much as any other character, and I personally have just never seen all of these horrible terrible game breaking elements that seem to be so rampant.

I'm not saying they don't exist but it just seems to me that given RPG's that have so many rules these type of things are bound to happen, that's where the DM comes in. The DM is there to be a referee, he is there to reign in things that may be game breaking. The DM should not allow free reign in their game letting players get what ever they want.

Games such as GURPS and HERO blatantly say something akin to..."there are game breaking skills (or powers or whatever ) presented here, as a game master and player, you need to work together to make sure you can create a character that is suited for the game you intend to run." This seems only logical and I dont know why so many D&D players don't under stand this.

In my opinion characters need some sort of drawback, in the form of ability scores or powers or whatever. I have come across people who say something similar to... "well some people don't think it's fun to run a character that sucks." or "I hate people who think you should make crappy character because it's better roleplaying" .

First off , in my opinion if you want to play in a game thats nothing but min maxing fighting awesomeness that's fine, but I don't run games like that. I believe there are many better mediums to do that in rather than running it as a table top rpg. Secondly , people who usually say they hate playing characters that have drawbacks because it's good roleplaying, obviously are not aware of what people term a 2 dimensional character.

In my opinion, all characters should have drawbacks, end of discussion. Stories are not fun or entertaining to read if your character has no chance of doing anything wrong. It takes away the element of story telling, and gaming. I cant imagine a person who would just love to kill everything all the time with no threats . It would get boring very quick. If you are playing a table top rpg for ego boosting and showing everyone you are better than them , I would say you are in this hobby for the wrong reasons. There are other hobbies out there that allow you just such a thing, video games, board games, table top war games, writing novels, going into the army , playing sports etc etc.

Any one agree, disagree? Have your own stories or thoughts on the matter?

Yeah, I never heard of these problems until the internet.

But I think it's mostly that a lot of people want every potential problem or situation spelled out exactly in the rules. And then conversely, every thing not explicitly forbidden by the rules is fair game.

I generally agree that there can be a lot in a game system that can be presented as broken with math, but never or rarely appears at the game table. That's the Occam's Razor for games, have I actually seen this at the table?

I have seen the 20 minute adventuring day at my table. I'm the DM and I run 6 players. If just one of them is very tactically minded, he will convince the group to do the thing that makes the most tactical sense. Sometimes that is the 20 minute adventuring day. Now I, as the DM, try to create adventures with no mind at all as to what characters will be playing in them. To specifically counter character abilities is essentially cheating. I might be a bit mindful in thinking something plays right into one character's hands or gives another character a bit of difficulty in order to make the players feel the strengths and weaknesses of their characters matter. But I don't necessarily even realize the mage has Rope Trick. I don't necessarily think far enough ahead that if the lair only has 1 entrance, the PCs can control that from the outside pretty easily while resting. Sure, I could change the details of the adventure to punish that. I could also say Thor hits them with a 30d6 lightning bolt. Either way, I'm telling them they aren't playing it the "right way". So I don't do that.

For the record, it isn't always the mage that makes the 20 minute day. It can even be the fighter, or a general group consensus that they want to go in with full hit points AND full spells. Also, for the record, it has never been an actual PROBLEM in my games, just that I've seen it happen. It didn't ruin anything. But would it be so hard to put in a soft brake on that in the system? If you don't play with a 20 minute adventuring day, you wouldn't notice those soft brakes even being there. It would be there for newbie DMs, DMs who won't or can't houserule the game (like games of alternating DMs) and people with problem players that they don't want to outright ban from the game.

Evenglare said:

The big one is the what... 20 minute adventure day ? Rules as written yes, this "theoretically" could be a problem. The thing is , I have been running campaigns for about 15 years now and I can honestly say I have never had this problem. This brings me to my question, does this ACTUALLY happen in your games? If so, why do you allow it?

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Only at very high levels, when the party can greater teleport at will (only had a couple of campaigns go that high). Even then it's not automatic and only happens if the first encounter of the day doesn't go as planned.

Evenglare said:

The other thing is the so called "Caster / Melee" rift. Where wizards and other casters are basically much better than every one else. Has anyone ever actually encountered this in their games? I personally haven't, perhaps it's because my group isn't into min maxing or something. People who play fighters or monks or whatever, they have a fantastic time. They kill enemies just as much as any other character, and I personally have just never seen all of these horrible terrible game breaking elements that seem to be so rampant.

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Again, only at high levels, and even then not all melee characters are significantly weaker than all casters. Monks usually are. It hasn't killed anyone's fun as far as I know.

Evenglare said:

Any one agree, disagree? Have your own stories or thoughts on the matter?

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Haven't been problems for us, but that doesn't mean they haven't for someone else.

Hmm, I just thought of an interesting house rule for spell regaining. What if you didnt have to regain all of them at a single time. Sort of replenish them during the day, say a spell set a number of hours equal to the spell level or perhaps twice the hours. Except make your highest level spells only refill after a day's rest.

Example would be regaining the first levels spell every hour (or 2) throughout the day. 2nd level spells every 2 (or 4 hours a day).

Or something similar?

It's been years since I played 3.5, so my details are a bit fuzzy (5 a.m. scotch is not helping, btw):

20 minute adventuring days? Yep. The group had perfectly legal methods allowing them to pop into an extradimensional space for a day or so to recharge their spells. I simply got tired of coming up with reasons why this shouldn't work.

Spell-caster supremacy? By the time the levels were in the teens, magic just became ridiculous to deal with. Players monopolizing play time with their summoned allies, buffed cleric/wildshaped dominating melee combat (CoDzilla), scry/teleport, etc.

Glad to hear that your group is working fine. Personally, I found the arms race exhausting and eventually gave up.

I've experienced the 20 minute adventuring day at times when things have been extraordinary tough, such as right before venturing even deeper. I don't mind. Some of these adventures are really pushing the envelope in terms of difficulty.

At high levels a wizard can do amazing stuff. Once per day. High level spells are really restricted. I think the wizard has earned it. I think the complaint comes from alpha males not being used to the second fiddle, even for brief moments, and find that role hard to accept. Losing something you take for granted can stir strong emotions.

Wormwood said:

20 minute adventuring days? Yep. The group had perfectly legal methods allowing them to pop into an extradimensional space for a day or so to recharge their spells. I simply got tired of coming up with reasons why this shouldn't work.

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If you refer to rope trick, the first time they lose their bags of holding (and their contents) and wind up half dead on an unknown plane should teach them.

You bring up a good point. Sometimes the problem with casters wasn't the raw damage dealt, sometimes it boiled down to parity of game time. "It Jen's turn? Well, I guess I'll go take a walk for a while."

I like the idea of a mechanic where could take a short rest a la 4E and regain a spell or 2 of LOWER levels, thus encouraging you to make sure you have used up those spell levels. If you only burnt your best spells, there's nothing to recharge.

20 minute adventuring days? Sure. That's a problem I definitely had in 3rd Edition. Why wouldn't you do it, with the way spellcasting works. And constantly coming up with some kind of rationale for why players can't do it is impractical.

In 4th Edition there are times when my players will go through one fight, and it doesn't even need to be a particularly hard one, and want to go back to town to rest up. A big part of weaning players off this behavior is building up a level of trust with them that I'm not going to throw stuff at them that is unfair and that it's okay to venture forward at less than 100% effectiveness.