Are you glad that Increased Threat Ranges no longer stack?

[Paragon]

Does anyone ever tell their players no? I mean really, most of this sounds like stuff that should be worked out between player and dm if they have such a problem with it. but thats just me.


Paragon

 

[ShadowX]

This is an *excellent* change, IMO, and I'll certainly be using it. Of course, I'm a big proponent of anything that nerfs the characters (NPCs or otherwise) and boosts the monsters, which gets a big thumbs-up from me.

Does it really matter how powerful the monsters or characters are? There always bigger monsters out there. If you increase the power of all the monsters you are still going to be throwing monsters that are suitable challenges at your PCs.

 

[Wolfen Priest]

Just house-rule it. I have heavily house-rules 3E since the day it came out because frankly too much of the rules were powergamerish or munchkiny to me. I still buy the books though, and make the necessary changes for my campaign. Expecting WotC to anticipate your every need and cater to it is ridiculous. 3.5 is trying to rectify some of the power inflation that occurred in 3E, and people are going to complain when their characters take a hit in power.

The problem I have is that Andy Collins and others are claiming that these changes (and all others for 3.5e) are about increasing viable options for players; frankly I just don't see that happening given the rules changes they are implementing (there is no changing them at this point, the books are almost certainly printed by now).

As far as my overall opinion of D&D right now, I'd say that it's a little too complicated for most average *new* players to grab hold of easily, and limiting creative options isn't going to bring new people into the game. So the (re)designers are simply doing this as a business stunt so that all the hard-core gamer-geeks (read: EN Worlders) will buy another set of books costing $90.

It will not increase the number of people who actually play the game. I think what they should do for 4.0 is simplify the HELL out of D&D, keeping the interesting parts like allowing players to make different types of characters of the same class, but streamlining the actual rules-in-play (like AoO).

It's getting (for me) too hard to bring new people into the game without having to make sure they can handle all these stupid little rules, house-rules, and rules-updates. D&D should be about telling a story using basic but competent rules that allow players to feel that they have done something interesting with their character. All (or most) of the rules I've seen for 3.5 fail miserably to do this.

 

[Arnwyn]

Does it really matter how powerful the monsters or characters are? There always bigger monsters out there. If you increase the power of all the monsters you are still going to be throwing monsters that are suitable challenges at your PCs.

Yep, it does to me. The more powerful characters get, the more difficult it is for the DM to challenge them while maintaining a level of reasonableness (ie. "versimilitude" for those who read the DMG too much) in the campaign and campaign world.

Anything that makes the DM's life more difficult is bad. Very bad.

 

[bwgwl]

i haven't seen this rule in context with the rest of 3.5, so i have no way of judging if it's a good thing or not.

however, as a knee-jerk reaction, i'd say, "sure, sounds all right to me."

 

[molonel]

Odd

When I first entered my results in the poll, I said, "No."

Yet, reading through this thread and thinking about it, I think this will be a good change overall. I dislike options which benefit ONLY monsters or ONLY players, because it makes the game a bit into a power struggle between DMs and players. Keen + Improved Crit stacking really only benefitted players, for the most part, because most things with natural weapons and frankly, most NPCs, will not have both because you can't keen natural weapons and most NPCs, until higher levels, don't have near the monetary resources of NPCs.

I started out disliking the change, but reading through the responses, I changed my mind. Unless they make Impact a Core enchantment (bludgeoning equivalent of Keen), it will close some of the HUGE gap for threat ranges between piercing and slashing weapons.

Overall, I like the change.

 

[Cloudgatherer]

Overall, I like the change. Seems to fall in line with the changes they've been making to the spellcasters lately. This is perhaps the first change I've read about that actually toned down fighter types.

Just as we don't need the uber DC archmages flinging save or die spells and ended encounters in one shot, the same can be true for critical hits. In both instances, (save or die, critical hit) the odds that it is successful should be relatively low, as to not make battles anti-climatic.

 

[coyote6]

Re: Re: Re: Re: No, don't change it

Because I thought it was rather silly that they wouldn't work on creatures immune to crits, I've house ruled it to where they get to roll to confirm, and if that's successful they get the burst damage.

Oh, that's what I probably would/will do when it comes up in my campaigns. Hasn't yet, though.

 

[rounser]

I think what they should do for 4.0 is simplify the HELL out of D&D, keeping the interesting parts like allowing players to make different types of characters of the same class, but streamlining the actual rules-in-play (like AoO).

It would be nice, but without some miraculous game design indeed, those two demands are somewhat mutually exclusive.

 

[ShadowX]

Yep, it does to me. The more powerful characters get, the more difficult it is for the DM to challenge them while maintaining a level of reasonableness (ie. "versimilitude" for those who read the DMG too much) in the campaign and campaign world.

Anything that makes the DM's life more difficult is bad. Very bad.

If you are at the point where monster break the versimilitude, the PCs are just as likely to do the same. Extreme powergamers are the only reason to go to absurd lengths to challenge PCs, and by then you usually have other problems. Lastly one can always use class levels to the same effect. I don't find monster and PC balance to be a problem, a DM always has control of the power levels in their game.