Rules light 3.x non retro-clone d20? (Forked Thread: D&D has a lot of rules!)

Zelligars Apprentice · Feb 7, 2009

Forked from: D&D has a lot of rules!

My group has been struggling with the D&D 3.x rules for some time now. We have a campaign where the main characters are at least 16th level, so things are REALLY bogging down.

Is there a rules-light version of d20/3.x D&D out there that would play well with such a high level group? For various reasons, 4e is out of the question. Also, we are a very role-playing intensive group, so "old-school" dungeon crawling isn't our thing (thus, retro-clones are out, too). But, we still want to stick with some version of d20.

Can you help?

Thanks in advance.

Olaf the Stout said:
I know I'm stating the obvious here and it wasn't exactly something I didn't already know, but D&D sure does have a lot of rules!

I had a situation last session where this really became apparent to me. I was running a combat in my 3.5E Shackled City campaign with the the PC's fighting a Fiendish Umber Hulk. I had the following books open.

The SCAP Hardcover open to 2 sections, one page to get the Umber Hulk's stats, and another to see it's tactics.
The MM open in 2 sections, one page to the Umber Hulk page to get the full description of it's Confusion ability, the other page to the fiendish description to make sure that the template didn't affect the Confusion save DC.
The PHB open to the Confusion spell description.
The DMG open to the page with rules about dealing with crowds.
The Rules Compendium open to the rules about dealing with gaze attacks.

So that was 5 books open to a total of 7 pages, just for a single encounter versus a single monster! And none of the books were splatbooks either. Sure, I had the Rules Compendium open, but if I didn't I would have just had the DMG open to another section to look up the gaze attacks rules.

I think I also had to have a quick double check of a another page in the Rules Compendium to see what sort of action using the Confusion ability what the rules around that were. That was me double checking something I already knew, just to make sure though.

Anyone else have a similar or worse experience?

I know it's not something exactly unique. I just found it amusing as I don't think I've ever had so many books open to so many different pages before. Most of the times it is just the SCAP hardcover I have open with the MM to look up a monster or the PHB to look up a spell. This was just a bit of an extreme case.

Olaf the Stout

Treebore · Feb 7, 2009

Zelligars Apprentice said:
Also, we are a very role-playing intensive group, so "old-school" dungeon crawling isn't our thing (thus, retro-clones are out, too). But, we still want to stick with some version of d20.

Can you help?

Thanks in advance.

As is pointed out in the other thread started by hellochristian "Old School" D&D, and therefore retro clones of the same are not just dungeon crawls. Like 3E you can do as much roleplaying as you wish, do roleplaying scenarios just as often, etc....

So by your criteria old school retro clones are not disqualified, only your impression of them is wrong because you are apparently only aware of the stereo types of old school gaming.

I ran plenty of games based outside of dungeons in 1E and 2E, in fact going to dungeons was the exception in my games, not the rule, and I did plenty of role playing low combat sessions with my groups.

So saying old school games only allow for dungeon crawl type games is as erroneous as saying role playing is impossible in 4E, its just not true.

Aus_Snow · Feb 7, 2009

Tricky, to meet all the criteria. . .

* Microlite20 - very frickin' 'lite' indeed, basically d20. . .
* True20 - maybe 'rules medium', sorta d20. . .

There are plenty of options that meet all criteria bar one. Oh well.