D&D has a lot of rules!

[DaveMage]

Sounds like the confusion attack went too far!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Sounds like the confusion attack went too far!

You mean it shouldn't work on the DM?

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Yes, I've noticed the same thing. In order to work around it, I suggest to ignore or fudge some powers, making up rules on the spot.

In this case for example, I'd have said that difficult confusion DC would be somewhere between 18 and 22, pick 20. And confusion means many things, most of them suck. So roll 1d10: On a 1 you will attack your friends for the rest of the encounter; otherwise you're just incoherent and will wander off (similar to a panic, except not so fast). Make confused stuff up on the spot, too.

If there is a template and you don't remember what it does, make stuff up. Fiendish suggests some sort of damage resistance. Pick 5/magic. And something to make it tougher. I suggest +4 to Con.

Done.

What do you think?

I also liked S'mon's comment elsewhere:

That might work for some people but I generally try to use the rules if I know they exist and where to locate them. I think that comes from my experience in 2E with so many ad-hoc rulings left up to the DM. There were that many decisions left up to the DM's discretion that, depending on your DM, you could get screwed over.

I'd hate to kill a PC because I made up one of the stats on the fly and made the combat grossly (but unintentionally) harder. I can understand some people being comfortable with it, and I imagine most of my players would be comfortable with me doing it. However, my personal preference is to use the rules if I know they're available. I have made stats, DC's, etc., up on the spot before but I try to avoid it if possible.

Despite there being so many rules, I still don't mind DM'ing 3.5E. The longer I have been DM'ing it, the more my knowledge base has increased. This means having to look less things up, or at least knowing exactly where the rule is if I need to look it up.

From a personal perspective I like that there are rules to cover most situations in 3.5E. My main annoyance is probably with some of the organisation of the books. I hate when monster abilities refer you to a spell in the PHB, requiring you to reference another book. The organisation of the DMG sometimes feels like it was done at random. The poor indexes in the back of all 3 core books just top it off. The Rules Compendium has been a godsend to me in this regard. That book sees a lot of use in my game now since the rules are a lot easier to find in there.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Sounds like the confusion attack went too far!

I know your comment was tongue-in-cheek, but to be honest, I wasn't really confused by all the books I had open and was referencing. I was just surprised by how many I had to reference.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Recently, my players have been using the 3.5e D&D PHB, while I use Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure. I strongly recommend this approach Treebore.

Generally speaking, the threat level is a bit lower - CR 8 3e monsters become around CR 4-5 when using C&C stats. This means I can run the C&C module Palace of Shadows with bulettes, gorgons, hags et al for 3rd-4th level 3e PCs, which I like a lot.

That sounds like a pretty awesome idea. I may have to give that a try sometime (when I finish my SWSE campaign, maybe).

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

When I was playing 3e, I cut down on in-game referencing by doing out-of-game preparation.

When I was playing 3E I cut down on in-game referencing by not being concerned enough with following rules to reference too many things in-game.

 

[Woas]

Yeah, it does have a lot of rules huh? One of my new year resolutions is to only play RPGs that fit it's core rules in one book. Sorry D&D.

 

[Mark]

pre-statted 'advanced' creatures

These are a huge boon but I use the term to refer to the ones I create myself for my games in addition to any found in a published source. While I am a laptop DM who uses the 3.5 SRD Revised for quick rules and stat checking, I love nothing better than to throw the group for a loop by advancing, templating or otherwise varying the regular stats of a creature to add some new twist. Recently the party had to deal with their favorite inn and HQ being demolished by a land kraken. Anyway, for more complex encounters I tend to collect as much of the info as possible onto a single DOC cheat sheet (whcih could just as easily be printed out as referenced on a laptop). As to the design philosophy of trimming away anything that cannot be used in a single combat or reducing to just "signature" abilties, that would be the exact opposite of what I feel an experienced group needs to maintain their interest and excitement since it takes almost no time at all for experienced players to become all too familiar with a simple bag of tricks.

 

[Festivus]

My last 4E game, I had brought one book to the table to GM with, and I never opened it. Granted this is a low level (4th) game, but that everything is there in the stat block with no prep time is awesome. I hope things stay this way. I saw for the first time a reference to look up something in a book that wasn't in the statblock, in the level 30 Delve sample at WoTC... take a look at the balor's resists.

My last 3.5 game, I had brought DMG, PHB, MM1, Rules Compendium, Spell Compendium, Magic Item Compendium, Psionics Handbook, plus photo copies of a few pages from other books I needed. At one point I had open PHB for spell effects, Spell compendium for spell effects, DMG open for a magic item, and MM open and tabbed for a couple monsters (and this was with the stat blocks from the magazine).

My solution by the end of the night was to just toss out the lesser creatures in the encounter as minions... sped things up considerably.... but yes, it's more complex and takes more prep time and looking up of rules (if you choose to do so... I now choose not to)

 

[Rechan]

When I was playing 3E I cut down on in-game referencing by not being concerned enough with following rules to reference too many things in-game.

I think that many, many people who were/are playing 3e don't think that's "Okay". That it's a rigid framework where there's a rule for everything, and because of that, you need to or at least should do it.

It wasn't until 4e came out and it literally said "Hey, you don't have to use a formula, and you can just fudge the stats in the first place" that I realized that was okay to do.

I honestly thought that if I didn't account (and have a legitimate rule reason) for every +1 in there, that it would be broken and either too weak or too tough.