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

Number48 said:

Except, of course, when the enemies DON'T have magic, or much magic. That group of ogres and gnolls can only bolster their defenses physically, and what they can accomplish in 12 hours is pretty crappy compared to freshly rested adventurers.

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Maybe. But they can certainly be somewhere else, doing something else in the meantime. And if the PCs are silly enough to assume that the gnolls and ogres will be in the same place as they were yesterday, then they deserve whatever's coming to them.

And, of course, explaining to a village full innocent civilians why the ogres were able to raid the village repeatedly and eat a significant number of the population with no resistance while the PCs whiled away 19 hours a day in a rope trick is left as an exercise for the most Lawful Good PC...

It's not the ogres and gnolls defenses that's the area to focus on (though they could very easily seek allies, resort to desperate and dangerous magic like callings/summonings, undead raising, etc - especially if the tribe looks like being in danger of being obliterated) - it's their OFFENSIVE capacity that they should be using against the PCs. Time is a weapon. By sticking with the 20 minute adventuring day, the PCs abandon it. They might fight a lot of battles and rarely look like losing, but it's still very easy to fail to meet their strategic goals if their everyday tactics limit them to a small number of fight per day.

Number48 said:

Except, of course, when the enemies DON'T have magic, or much magic. That group of ogres and gnolls can only bolster their defenses physically, and what they can accomplish in 12 hours is pretty crappy compared to freshly rested adventurers.

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Yes, but for example they can make sure that next time the PCs are attacking their location, ALL ogres and gnolls will be ready to group up together, so that instead of several small encounters the PCs will have to deal with one huge army.

humble minion said:

Maybe. But they can certainly be somewhere else, doing something else in the meantime. And if the PCs are silly enough to assume that the gnolls and ogres will be in the same place as they were yesterday, then they deserve whatever's coming to them.

And, of course, explaining to a village full innocent civilians why the ogres were able to raid the village repeatedly and eat a significant number of the population with no resistance while the PCs whiled away 19 hours a day in a rope trick is left as an exercise for the most Lawful Good PC...

It's not the ogres and gnolls defenses that's the area to focus on (though they could very easily seek allies, resort to desperate and dangerous magic like callings/summonings, undead raising, etc - especially if the tribe looks like being in danger of being obliterated) - it's their OFFENSIVE capacity that they should be using against the PCs. Time is a weapon. By sticking with the 20 minute adventuring day, the PCs abandon it. They might fight a lot of battles and rarely look like losing, but it's still very easy to fail to meet their strategic goals if their everyday tactics limit them to a small number of fight per day.

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This seems to assume that the monsters know 1) if the adventurers are coming back and 2) how long it will be. If your town is attacked by goblins, would the town send its best fighters to go attack a random group of monsters? No, they would hunker down and see if another attack is coming.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see my campaign as a way to punish people.

Li Shenron said:

Yes, but for example they can make sure that next time the PCs are attacking their location, ALL ogres and gnolls will be ready to group up together, so that instead of several small encounters the PCs will have to deal with one huge army.

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Oh, absolutely. If you attack and leave, you leave the enemy ready and on high alert. But even so, the characters have resources the monsters simply don't. They can choose the time and location of the attack. They can bring in long-range artillery strikes, while the gnolls arrows can wound but not kill over the course of few rounds. The monsters CAN make it harder for the PCs, but in 12 hours there is little they can do that matches the increase in power the PCs get from resting.

Sammael said:

The 20-minute adventuring day only exists if the player characters operate in a vacuum. If the world around them changes and responds to their tactics, then they'll soon learn that it's often much better not to give the enemies another day to prepare.

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I find that the only things that stop short days are: time limits, a lack of safe rest spots, or constant immediate danger. In about 50% of the parties I've DM or been in, they rest if given the chance. If a reason not to rest, then there is a chance that the party doesn't rest.

And this goes hand and hand with the caster/fighter rift. If the casters are always at 100%, they will often have a Win spell for the situation and always tempted to use it. If the casters limit they use of replacement and Win spells or the overall level is low enough, this usually doesn't happen.

Minigiant said:

I find that the only things that stop short days are: time limits, a lack of safe rest spots, or constant immediate danger. In about 50% of the parties I've DM or been in, they rest if given the chance. If a reason not to rest, then there is a chance that the party doesn't rest.

And this goes hand and hand with the caster/fighter rift. If the casters are always at 100%, they will often have a Win spell for the situation and always tempted to use it. If the casters limit they use of replacement and Win spells or the overall level is low enough, this usually doesn't happen.

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Speaking of Win spells, there is also the flip side. If the wizard had a Win spell and didn't use it, then somebody dies, then somebody is going to feel let down. That makes it hard to save spells for later use.

Yup, it happened.

Summoned monsters bogged down fights, as did henchmen. Buff, scry teleport, then rest. Rope trick for endless rests. Spell caster dominance. Dispel magics flying every decent fight with a patchwork of buffs stripped away and 20 mins recalculating. Spell buff spreadsheets. Complaints of people chewing up more than their fair share of time. Counter complaints when allocated time didn't allow them to do all they could do.

And more...

If I played 3E again, I'd spend the time negotiating table rules to mitigate the above. The system is good enough to deserve saving.

The 20 minute workday has never been a problem with my groups. The monsters don't just sit there and wait for the PCs to come back. They make preparations for it to happen again.

For example if someone breaks into your house kills one of your dogs and is run off by the other dog, you would not just leave the front door all busted up and a dead dog on the floor. You would call the police,get better lights, get an alarm system, get better locks, bigger dogs, get a gun, or whatever, to protect your family and/or your livelihood. I play my monsters much the same way.

They may get an ally to help, if they have access to divination they can cause a lot of problems for the PCs, they may retaliate against the nearest village, if they have trackers they may find the PCs at camp. In the very best case scenario, the whole place is on high alert, and when the PCs come back they will face a group of enemies prepared for an attack (having a few family or friends killed by an invading force can bring out some devious tactics to defend the rest of them).

Sometimes in a larger environ like a megadungeon some other threat will move into the area since those rooms are now vacant. The rest of the force may just run away. They may move the valuable idol they need to complete their fell ritual to another location.

Its not so much punishing the players for resting, but rather playing the threats as realistically as possible and not just assuming that the adventure site is in a save state in stasis waiting for the players to return and finish the job.

As far as magical disparity. All the big nasty spells and neat tricks the players have the enemies also have. They exist in world where big scary magic is present and the bad guys know it is present and worse have access to it. If they are going up against a large organization and they don't fell it in one shot then eventually the enemy earns about who is coming after them. They may mount attacks against the group while they are camping, they may take hostages, they may target the mage first, they may seek to build some hideouts in areas that are in anti magic fields or other areas where magic is not the best choice, some of them may have SR or other defenses against spells. As long as you give the non magic types a chance to shine, where they feel like a mission was only a success because of their contributions then I have found my melee players are quite satisfied.

Its not really about being the best all the time for my players, but being a valued member of a team. If I have a player who seems to be not contributing to a game in a way that pleases them I pull them aside and find out what they are looking for. You know "hey, when you made this character what did you have in mind? What did you think you would be really good at?". Sometimes I find that they did not make the right toon because of a rules mastery issue and in those cases I help them to rebuild their toon or make a new one. Sometimes I find that they were thinking of making a toon that interacted with a type of challenge that I just was not offering in the current campaign environment, in that case I make sure to put some elements in the story that would appeal to the player. Sometimes I find that they player even though they are not really in the spotlight, is playing and getting exactly what they wanted.

So for character disparity I really look towards the group. If everyone is having a good time then I don't really consider it to be broken.

love,

malkav

OH yes I've seen the 20 minute adventuring day. I remember I joined a group playing a published adventure. They walked into the first room of a dungeon, killed two guards, and said, "WELP, I cast two spells. Let's rest."

And the DM just shrugged and said, "OK."

I wanted to tear my hair out.

Part of the problem was the published adventure design. It was the "badguys have stolen important magic wands crucial to saving our city" adventure in the Shackled City campaign. So, Pcs had to recover wands that multiple NPCs carried. Each NPC was stationed in different parts of a Large dungeon. The NPC's respective camps did not interact with one another (The wizard holed up in his study, the undead cleric and his mindless undead in some caves, the fighter/cleric and mercs in her section) so the dungeon factions did not communicate regularly. There was no way for the party to accomplish the mission without scouring the whole thing, fighting at least 15 encounters (at level 3-4 ish). It was a grinder.

Furthermore, the entrance to the dungeon was accessible by a cable car. The PCs took out the guards, left, hired mercenaries to control the cable car mechanism, and prevented any enemies from ever escaping. But the PCs could leave at their leisure; they went back to town again at one point!

Even so, the party would go in, have some fights, then rest with no repercussions.

Suffice to say, I didn't stay with that group.

But look at something like a Megadungeon. Undermountain, etc. I don't see how you could ever run a Megadungeon without constantly resting. And if the entire dungeon creacted to that, then the whole premise falls apart.

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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The 15 minute adventure day was a real problem. In my experience, it happens when a DM has a poor understanding of the (3e) system. He throws CRs that are significantly over the party's level at them, usually doesn't hand out sufficient magic items, and rolls random encounters any time the party rests. As a result, the party rests after almost every encounter. They don't have much choice. The party realizes that any time they rest there's a chance for up to two CR +4 encounters, not to mention that they probably just fought a CR +3 or +4 encounter (with crappy gear), and are therefore already low on resources. If they go on for even one more fight and the DM rolls well for random encounters, the party will TPK for certain.

When I still played 3e, I played with two different DMs who did this. One I eventually convinced of the error of his ways, but the other carried the mentality into 4e (the result is fortunately not nearly as bad in 4e). It's not even that this style of DM is trying to be a jerk; he's just trying to challenge the players using a mentality that was popular (at least in my circles) during 2e.

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?

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If you haven't seen the caster/melee divide, then you haven't seen a caster played to it's full capabilities. Nothing wrong with that; casters who actively avoid overshadowing the party is a perfectly legitimate play style and works very well with 3e. The problem is that not everyone enjoys playing that way.

The problem lies in the fact that a lot of spells are auto-success. When there's 2 seconds left on the clock, do you chance the fighter kicking the ball through the goal posts or do you have the wizard teleport without error between the posts with the ball? I'm fairly certain that most groups will pick the latter, because it's just plain sensible. The caster classes are geared toward being the MVP for that reason. The non-casters have one speed they can travel at constantly (until brought to 0 hp, at least), while casters can go from zero to over nine thousand in less than a second.

Add to that spells that allow them to do a non-caster's job better than the non-caster class can via Shapechange, Knock, Invisibility, etc. and the capability to completely ignore their daily limitations via easy crafting of scrolls and wands, and 3e casters can very easily get out of hand very quickly. In some campaigns they didn't. That was, however, either because the DM realized the problem and imposed additional limitations (such as preventing the PCs from having time to craft items), or the players made it a non-issue either through ignorance of how to get maximum potency from a caster or recognizing the problem and avoiding any problematic elements.

Personally, I don't like using those kinds of workarounds in my games (ignorance works, but my players are too smart for that to last long). I'd much rather have a system that assumes that everyone is playing their class at 100% (or at least 90%), than one that assumes that casters will play at 25% and everyone else will play at 75%. IMO, of course.