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 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?
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.