2E vs 3E: 8 Years Later. A new perspective?

[Ridley's Cohort]

In 3e, how easily could you take a class and redesign it from the ground up sch that it both worked differently mechanically from any other class yet remained vaguely balanced and in-type?

It would be no more difficult than to do the same in 1e or 2e. I see no obstacles here.

Are you claiming that the Core classes in 1e and 2e were mechanically balanced? By 3e standards, they were not.

 

[Gothmog]

I seen this claim that by virtue of being "too integrated" certain kinds of changes are more difficult in 3e of couple of dozen times. But when it comes to actual examples of an apples to apples comparison, the silence is always deafening.

Ok, I'll take a stab at this, since I wrestled with 3E for years in my low-magic campaign before giving up.

The low-magic game I wanted to run had reduced item availability, armor as DR, class-based defense bonuses, lower magic caps (no weapons over +3 total value), no spells over 6th level, and spellcasters had to make casting rolls to have their magic work, but got more spells per day.

First, with reduced item availability and lower magic caps, something needed to be done about boosting PC power some. However, I also wanted to keep the PCs in a somewhat "gritty" campaign, so over-the-top powers were out. What I ended up doing was changing the feat progression from one feat every three levels, to one feat every two levels. Sounds simple, right? Its not. Suddenly, characters are gaining access to more feats than before, and progressing up feat chains faster. In addition, I saw some REALLY munchkin twink builds with the extra feats, which ended up making the characters somewhat to significantly more powerful than core D&D characters.

Now, because the characters were more powerful, it took me a while to figure out how to challenge them. Normal opponents were mowed over with little or no consequence- humanoids, animals, giants- they were all easy pickings. The character's were tackling critters routinely with CRs 3 or 4 higher than their level would indicate- so already the balance went wonky. However, put them up against a creature that had DR or SR, and they got smashed by critters with a CR of 1 or 2 lower than their level. The exception to this was the power-attacking, weapon focused, combat twinked barbarian- it didn't matter if the critter had DR- he did so much damage with his feat combos, he didn't need any enchanted weapons.

Ok, so now if I want to challenge the party, I have to mess with the creatures and CR system, either throwing more critters at them, advancing the creatures, or adding on new powers and abilities to the creature. In addtion, any NPC rival I stat up has to use the same expanded feat availability as the PCs have, which made statting them up an even bigger nightmare.

With the armor as DR and class-based defense bonuses, this needed to be done, because in a low magic game BAB will quickly outstrip AC, and people will be auto-hitting on every attack. Plus, the reduction in healing capabilities means PCs need a way to soak some of the damage. I don't remember exactly the values we used for DR, but we added class based defense bonus equal to 2 + 1/2 base Reflex save. No big deal for the PCs- the calculation is done once, and we move on. But then the DM also has to recalculate the same defense bonuses for each monster and NPC, as well as assign armor DR values, based on the type of armor or natural defenses of each critter. Another bookkeeping nightmare.

Now restricting magic to 6th level or less wasn't that big of a deal. It did reduce the kinds of abilities and powers characters had, what was possible to do, and the kinds of items available. In addition, I made 5th and 6th level spells into rituals, which took anywhere from 10 to 100 times as long to complete as normal spells (barring some of the combat spells at those levels which took double the time). However, when I come to a creature with an innate spell ability that is 5th level or higher, do I treat it as innate and have the normal casting time? Or do I treat it as a ritual like a spellcaster would and have it take substantially longer? After some tinkering, I finally opted on normal casting time for innate abilities, but any spell-like powers gained from "casts spells as an X level sorcerer" entries found in the MM were treated as spellcasters.

Which brings me to the third complication- spellcasting rolls. I didn't want magic to be a sure fire thing every time, so I instituted casting rolls to make spells work. While spells could achieve "critical hits" (a 20, followed by making the DC of the spell- basically going off at 2 levels above the caster's and/or causing max damage at the caster's level), spell disasters were also possible (a 1 on the casting die, followed by failing to meet the spell's DC- odd results from annoying to deadly on a d100 table). After some playing, spell DCs were set at 10 + 2 per spell level. The caster made a caster level check (level + controlling stat bonus + 2 for each time the Practiced Caster feat was taken), and if he beat the DC of the spell it went off. Since spellcasting wasn't a sure thing, I gave spellcasters two extra slots of spell levels 1-2, 1 extra of levels 3-4, and no extra 5th or 6th level spells. We also added a feat, Arcane Channeler, that allowed the caster to add one extra spell per day to his 1st level spells the first time he took it, 1 extra 2nd level spell the 2nd time, and so on, up to 1 extra 4th level spell the 4th time he took the feat. This worked ok for PC spellcasters- predictably they ended up taking a bunch of feats that made spellcasting an almost virtual certainty, although spell disasters still occurred on average about once per game session.

What became a big pain was trying to balance monster and NPC spellcasters against the PCs. Now I had to assign DCs to each spell they had, figure out the casting level check, and modify the number of spells per day from what the PHB gave on the standard table.

Because magic is required in a lot of D&D situations and the skill system is geared towards use with high levels of magic flying around, I also had to go and take that into account. The core rules assume stat buff items are pretty common, making skill totals on average for the important skills of a given class about +1 to +2 higher- another thing to take into consideration when assigning DCs as given in the PHB.

Because magic is rare, the wealth per level guidelines had to be tossed too, and I had to come up with other suitable rewards for the PCs. Not a difficult thing to do really, but deviating from the wealth per level guidelines made it much harder to guage how the PCs would do in a fight with supernatural opponents, or ones that needed certain types of weapons or spells to harm them.

The point I'm making is that everyhing in 3E was interconnected to an extreme degree. 3E was built with a very metagamist view- ensuring class, monster, and item balance in under narrowly defined criteria (mostly combat), and deviating from those assumptions meant having to rebuild parts of the system from the ground up. I have run low-magic games in 1E and 2E, and NEVER ran into these problems- in fact, the systmes of 1E and 2E accomodate low magic AND high magic much better than the assumptions of 3E. While the degree of interconnectedness means I can anticipate where problems might come up in 3E, it comes down to this: trying the play the game in 3E my group and I want to play is WAY more work than it is worth, because it causes a domino effect due to the built in assumptions of the system. My players liked the campaign ok, but agreed it didn't have the same charm or fun of the 2E campaign- and several of them told me directly it was 3E was such a "b*tchy" system to work with. Doing all that extra work also caused extreme DM burnout for me- simply put, 3E is not robust or flexible enough to handle the needs of my group.

3e is a game that allows the DM to drive with one hand on the steering and the other holding a brewski, windows down, music cranked up. Or at least you can get away with that lackadaisical attitude some of the time. 2e is game you need to keep both hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road.

Some DMs drive 3e wildly and end up wrapping their campaign around a tree.

At this point you can try putting both hands firmly on the 3e steering wheel and stop pounding down those high proof supplements. Or you can go back to 2e, and put both hands on the steering wheel, and complain that 3e is hard to drive because doing so one-handed while drunk did not work out for you.

IMNSHO, there is a double-standard here. If you judge 3e by a higher standard, you are implicitly endorsing the idea that 3e has absolutely superior mechanics.

I have to disagree here- 3E was the system I had to keep both hands on the wheel with and always be thinking in terms of mechanics and system- leaving me less time for storytelling and roleplaying. Once you factor in changes to the system, 3E is much more termpermental and difficult to handle than 2E was. As a consequence, my enjoyment of the game was lessened, as was my players. We have tried 3E by the books, and the built in assumptions the game is built around don't appeal to us. I'm not judging 3E by a higher standard at all- I'm comparing 2E and 3E, the workload, and the enjoyment my group got out of both systems, and pointing to 2E as the clear winner for us. While I won't argue that 3E has more unified mechanics, for us they are clearly not superior. Superior mechanics to me mean I can play the game, not have to worry about referencing the rules or spending hours in statting NPCs, and have more time for the game.

Are there better games out there to fit the playstyle my group and I like? You betcha. Simpler to prep and run? ABSOLUTELY. Why did we try so long with 3E? We were all 1E and 2E AD&D fans, and I guess felt some sort of misguided loyalty to D&D. We eventually realized you can't pound a square peg into a round hole, no matter how much you want to. I know a lot of people love 3E and the implicit assumptions it presents- and for them its relatively simple to run and play as long as they like a rules-heavy and interconnected system- more power to you. For us, 3E is clearly a step away from the D&D we knew and loved, so we went back to 2E for our D&D needs.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

This is the key point that I would like to highlight. This is true in 3e as well, no matter what changes you make to the game. While 3e makes it easier to run a game using the built-in assumptions, I don't see how running a game without these assumptions would be any more difficult in 3e than in any previous edition. I'd be eyeballing challenges against what I know of the party's capabilities instead of relying on guidelines*, which is what I did in 2e, 1e and Basic D&D anyway.

Of course.

A related point is that having built-in assumptions has significant informative value to the DM even you choose to not use those built-in assumptions. An integrated system reacts to change predictably. The predicted results can inform.

The PCs are weaker than by the book PCs? Then looking up typical encounters and rewards in the DMG has some small value to the DM -- you know that those answers are too high, powerful, rich for your campaign.

The PCs have "too much" magic? Look up what is normal and boost the opposition.

Obviously the value of the guidelines declines as you stray further away, and you have to rely more on your own judgment. But if you were a highly competent 2e DM, relying on your own judgment should not be scary, nor should the need to rely on one's own judgment precipitate declarations that all the mechanics need to be rebuilt from the ground up.

 

[green slime]

The thing called "balance" as some kind of automagic property of the system is 3e-speak.

You are gulping down the Kool-Aid...while complaining about it at the same time.

If you are going to use a significant degree inherent mechanical balance as a yardstick, then 2e is completely broken out of the box.

It is completely trivial to build things in 3e that are every bit as balanced as typical 2e.

All these things that are allegedly hard to do in 3e are not. Yes, I can remove heavy armor, rewrite skills, remove Feats, change magic item rarity, change wealth level without breaking a sweat. That is because an integrated system makes it very simple to anticipate side effects, so a DM can easily compensate with a light touch.

3e is a game that allows the DM to drive with one hand on the steering and the other holding a brewski, windows down, music cranked up. Or at least you can get away with that lackadaisical attitude some of the time. 2e is game you need to keep both hands on the steering wheel and eyes on the road.

Some DMs drive 3e wildly and end up wrapping their campaign around a tree.

At this point you can try putting both hands firmly on the 3e steering wheel and stop pounding down those high proof supplements. Or you can go back to 2e, and put both hands on the steering wheel, and complain that 3e is hard to drive because doing so one-handed while drunk did not work out for you.

IMNSHO, there is a double-standard here. If you judge 3e by a higher standard, you are implicitly endorsing the idea that 3e has absolutely superior mechanics.

You really should tone down your hype, because its not working as an argument. I completely disagree with your one-handed vs two-handed lopsided analogy.

1e & 2e were far easier (IMO) to wing, prep, & throw together a party for an evening. But then we never used the latter 2e stuff "P&O".

I find it far harder to have that "laidback" attitude with 3e, primarily because there is always something going to leap up and attack you when you least expect it, especially if you try and tweak the rules, primarily through there being so many effects (feats, spells, skills, classes, PrC) that add various named and unnamed bonuses all over the place.

Plain vanilla 3e vs plain vanilla 1e/2e (no splat books, no tweaks), I'd say it is far easier to learn 3e (coherent, integrated rules vs sprawled, adhoc rules). But I'd also say 3e is far harder to master (run all levels of game competently, with ease). Just see all the threads concerning prep time, and DM work load. While you may not experience those problems for whatever reasons, it is perfectly obvious that many other people do.

 

[SSquirrel]

I miss things like specialty priests, fun and interesting kits like the Battlerager (making a comeback in 4E yay!), and as someone else mentioned, the freetime to enjoy it all. I will never miss the 2WE skill system, dual class rules, level limits, etc etc. I always hated that my Rogue had a 16 dex and was trying to do X skill, but a cleric who happened to also have a 16 dex was just as good. Yet it was a skill that is far more typical of my line of work than his. There wasn't much in the way of improvement for skills, now there is. I don't mind divying out a few points. Heck RPGA is point based chargen for stats

Earlier editions of magic item creation dint' make sense b/c you were never really told how to do it. If a DM really didn't want you having magic items, you just didn't. Typically this should mean the DM won't throw things immune to the gear you have at you, but this doesn't stop a lot of folks heh. Someone mentioned that 3E would mean there were loads of low level items lying around. Of course there are, haven't you read thru old adventures? +1 swords and ring of prot +1 around every corner w/an occasional Wind Fan! Low level magic items should be just that, thus you can make them at LOW LEVEL A mighty wizard would take the time to quest for parts to make a titanic artifact of doom, not blow his wad making a shiny +2 sword, which gets left w/a bunch of orcs in a dungeon.

 

[FireLance]

The low-magic game I wanted to run had reduced item availability, armor as DR, class-based defense bonuses, lower magic caps (no weapons over +3 total value), no spells over 6th level, and spellcasters had to make casting rolls to have their magic work, but got more spells per day.

Let me turn the question round slightly. How would you have done this in 2e?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Gothmog,

I am grateful that you took the time for such a detailed response. Thank you.

Of course you had to keep both hands on the wheel. You slayed a number of sacred cows there! Furthermore, many of them would inevitably tend to add complexity, regardless of which edition you are running.

I am a little confused why it was necessary to both boost the PCs and boost the monsters. Don't both those changes tend to cancel out in the long run, while heaping up work for the DM? Since you world was gritty, I would have toned the power of monsters down. That is always easier to do, and would probably be a temporary things for lower levels.

I suspect it would have served you well to simplify or remove mechanics, e.g. reduce the number of feats instead of the opposite. That dings fighter-types somewhat (as does low magic), but your changes to spellcasting could have compensated adequately, if they had been tuned to do so.

DR and SR could plausibly be ignored, and is overused in all game editions IMO (but that is a bit of a pet peeve).

The main issue that would have remained would have been the power of the monsters. But as Firelance pointed out, if you are blazing a trail you always have to keep you eye on concrete abilities. Isn't that true about all editions?

If I might be so bold as to offer general advice, it would better to focus on general goals rather than specific mechanics when making changes. Choose mechanics with the amount of fiddliness that suits your personal style.

"I want a gritty world" is a goal. Lowering the amount of magic is the obvious first thing to try, but it is only one of many possible solutions. "Make magic less predictable" is a goal. Adding a die roll is a mechanic. Lowering PC stats and trimming the spell list in the PHB might have accomplished a similar net result with a simpler than core ruleset.

While I have personally always loved armor as DR in game systems, I also have come to recognize the wisdom of Gygax original decision to not do so. DR is an added complexity, and therefore always a hazardous choice.

In a nutshell, I think 3e may have already been slightly rules heavy for you in some respects, and you added houserules that increased this burden. You might have been able to simplify in some places and gotten a similar feel, at lower cost.

[edited to make easier to read]

 

[Imp]

remove magic weapons without worrying about monsters immune to non-magical weapons

Why does this always come up in these discussions? It's the easiest thing to work around:

"Oh dear. My PCs have no magic weapons, and they've come up against something that requires a +1 or better weapon to hit. Whatever shall I do? I know! Perhaps I will simply ignore that requirement. Yay! Encounter saved."

And if it's something like a ghost where letting normal weapons affect it just seems silly, you can just change the requirement to "blessed" weapons or whatever seems appropriate.

In 3E, though, you also have monster BAB, damage, reach, etc. that can sneak up on you. It's that you have to worry about, not the nice big red flags waving at you from the statblocks.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

You really should tone down your hype, because its not working as an argument.

Fair enough. I, too, am finding the extreme hype not convincing.

Plain vanilla 3e vs plain vanilla 1e/2e (no splat books, no tweaks), I'd say it is far easier to learn 3e (coherent, integrated rules vs sprawled, adhoc rules). But I'd also say 3e is far harder to master (run all levels of game competently, with ease). Just see all the threads concerning prep time, and DM work load. While you may not experience those problems for whatever reasons, it is perfectly obvious that many other people do.

A reasonable point that I do not feel the need to agree or disagree with. Many feel this way, and a number appear to have some good reasons.

If for the sake of argument I concede your point, there is no logical connection to the hyperbole of needing to rebuild entire game systems because of modest changes, due to the curse of integrated mechanics.

My main bone to pick is that I believe the Curse of Integration is not merely over hyped, but mythical.

Perhaps 3e is a bit rules heavier than 2e, and people are confounding those issues? By some measures the 3e mechanics are heavier. By some other measures, not. Does not your post hint as much?

 

[FireLance]

To be fair, I'll answer the question I just posed myself.

First, with reduced item availability and lower magic caps, something needed to be done about boosting PC power some. However, I also wanted to keep the PCs in a somewhat "gritty" campaign, so over-the-top powers were out. What I ended up doing was changing the feat progression from one feat every three levels, to one feat every two levels. Sounds simple, right? Its not. Suddenly, characters are gaining access to more feats than before, and progressing up feat chains faster. In addition, I saw some REALLY munchkin twink builds with the extra feats, which ended up making the characters somewhat to significantly more powerful than core D&D characters.

First question: why would you want to boost PC power? If I was DMing such a game in 2e, I'd just scale back on treasure and make no other changes. Why not do the same in 3e?

Now, because the characters were more powerful, it took me a while to figure out how to challenge them. Normal opponents were mowed over with little or no consequence- humanoids, animals, giants- they were all easy pickings. The character's were tackling critters routinely with CRs 3 or 4 higher than their level would indicate- so already the balance went wonky. However, put them up against a creature that had DR or SR, and they got smashed by critters with a CR of 1 or 2 lower than their level. The exception to this was the power-attacking, weapon focused, combat twinked barbarian- it didn't matter if the critter had DR- he did so much damage with his feat combos, he didn't need any enchanted weapons.

Ok, so now if I want to challenge the party, I have to mess with the creatures and CR system, either throwing more critters at them, advancing the creatures, or adding on new powers and abilities to the creature. In addtion, any NPC rival I stat up has to use the same expanded feat availability as the PCs have, which made statting them up an even bigger nightmare.

If I was running a 2e game, I'd expect the characters to be less powerful, so I'd be looking at challenges on the lower end of the danger scale. Since I don't have CR to guide me in 2e, I'd just be flipping through the monster manual looking for appropriate challenges. If I'd made changes to the core rules to compensate, say by giving everyone a free psionic power, and ended up with a party more powerful than normal, I'd be doing the same, except that I'd be looking at challenges on the higher end of the danger scale. Again, not very different from what I'd be doing in 3e.

With the armor as DR and class-based defense bonuses, this needed to be done, because in a low magic game BAB will quickly outstrip AC, and people will be auto-hitting on every attack. Plus, the reduction in healing capabilities means PCs need a way to soak some of the damage. I don't remember exactly the values we used for DR, but we added class based defense bonus equal to 2 + 1/2 base Reflex save. No big deal for the PCs- the calculation is done once, and we move on. But then the DM also has to recalculate the same defense bonuses for each monster and NPC, as well as assign armor DR values, based on the type of armor or natural defenses of each critter. Another bookkeeping nightmare.

If I wanted to introduce armor as DR in 2e, I'd pretty much have to do the same. In fact, there might be even more guesswork on my part since monster AC isn't nicely split into armor, Dex, natural armor, deflection, etc. in 2e.

Which brings me to the third complication- spellcasting rolls. I didn't want magic to be a sure fire thing every time, so I instituted casting rolls to make spells work. While spells could achieve "critical hits" (a 20, followed by making the DC of the spell- basically going off at 2 levels above the caster's and/or causing max damage at the caster's level), spell disasters were also possible (a 1 on the casting die, followed by failing to meet the spell's DC- odd results from annoying to deadly on a d100 table). After some playing, spell DCs were set at 10 + 2 per spell level. The caster made a caster level check (level + controlling stat bonus + 2 for each time the Practiced Caster feat was taken), and if he beat the DC of the spell it went off. Since spellcasting wasn't a sure thing, I gave spellcasters two extra slots of spell levels 1-2, 1 extra of levels 3-4, and no extra 5th or 6th level spells. We also added a feat, Arcane Channeler, that allowed the caster to add one extra spell per day to his 1st level spells the first time he took it, 1 extra 2nd level spell the 2nd time, and so on, up to 1 extra 4th level spell the 4th time he took the feat. This worked ok for PC spellcasters- predictably they ended up taking a bunch of feats that made spellcasting an almost virtual certainty, although spell disasters still occurred on average about once per game session.

What became a big pain was trying to balance monster and NPC spellcasters against the PCs. Now I had to assign DCs to each spell they had, figure out the casting level check, and modify the number of spells per day from what the PHB gave on the standard table.

I guess setting DCs might be easier in 2e because saving throws were a function of the defender's class and level, and were seldom influenced by the spellcaster. However, everything else - casters rolling to determine the effectiveness of their spells, changing spells per day, and rebalancing them to the right level of challenge, would still need to be done in 2e.

Because magic is required in a lot of D&D situations and the skill system is geared towards use with high levels of magic flying around, I also had to go and take that into account. The core rules assume stat buff items are pretty common, making skill totals on average for the important skills of a given class about +1 to +2 higher- another thing to take into consideration when assigning DCs as given in the PHB.

This is probably another area that would be easier to modify in 2e, because NWPs and thief skills were less influenced by magic than 3e skills.

Because magic is rare, the wealth per level guidelines had to be tossed too, and I had to come up with other suitable rewards for the PCs. Not a difficult thing to do really, but deviating from the wealth per level guidelines made it much harder to guage how the PCs would do in a fight with supernatural opponents, or ones that needed certain types of weapons or spells to harm them.

Since wealth per level guidelines were not present in 2e either, you'd be doing the same amount of eyeballing to determine what opponents are a suitable challenge for the PCs. And regardless of wealth by level guidelines, you still need to come up with suitable rewards.

The point I'm making is that everyhing in 3E was interconnected to an extreme degree. 3E was built with a very metagamist view- ensuring class, monster, and item balance in under narrowly defined criteria (mostly combat), and deviating from those assumptions meant having to rebuild parts of the system from the ground up.

Not much more so than in 2e, though, if you intend to make similar changes to your 2e game.

I have run low-magic games in 1E and 2E, and NEVER ran into these problems- in fact, the systmes of 1E and 2E accomodate low magic AND high magic much better than the assumptions of 3E.

Having DMed 1e, 2e and 3e, I half suspect it is because we were used to doing all the eyeballing all the time in 1e and 2e, so the amount of work we needed to do was about the same no matter what changes we made to the rules. DMing 3e using the standard assumptions requires less eyeballing, so when we make changes to the standard assumptions and need to eyeball as much as we needed to do in 1e and 2e, it feels like extra work.