Spell said:
i hate the combat. even before the 3.5 it was waaaaay too rule heavy for my tastes. preparation time would take forever, if you want to follow the rules, or, god spare us, customize your monsters.
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and, most of all, i completely despise the fact that the unification of the system meant that if you wanted to change one bit, you basically had to balance one subsystem or another.
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try to get rid of feats, or simplify (and speed up) combat, or run a low magic campaign without having to refer to a dozen of other published books beyond the core ones.
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ps: that is not to say that you can't house rule 3.x. but, with my very limited amount of time, i simply had to quit role playing. i could have found a group and played with them, but i like to DM, sorry.
You know, for years I have seen people on these boards extoll the virtues of Rules Light systems. But I never did see much of the appeal myself. You make several points here that I readilly acknowledge too. Prep time for NPC's at higher levels does take a long time, and there is too much 'Variable Sprawl'. The math is not difficult, but keeping track of every current modifier can drive you nuts. Still, I do not how the absence of these things really weighed that heavily in favor of rules light systems.
But your comments do suggest something I had not previously considered.
In systems like D&D where you are presented with both a large number of choices to consider when creating a character, and when you have many variables that interact with a lot of stats (Modifing 1 stat and having to adjust 2 or 3 others), it becomes essentially impossible to improvise an effective combatant NPC on the fly and still be consistent with the rules.
Third edition further complicates that by being a well thought out and interconnected system. The only reason I can see to want to house rule out feats is to make high level character creation quicker. Slamming out a 12th level fighter is easy when all you have to remember is "12d10 hp, +12 Bab, +x, +y, +y" for saves as a base line. Maybe you also drop in a few feats as obligitory power (all fighters get feat X at level Y), though use less of them.
But when you also have to select 10 feats, and level appropriate equipment, things grind to a halt.
This is further aggravated if you have PC's who are prone to pick a fight with unexpected opponents. You may not have statted out the captain of the guard, but if the players end up insisting on a course of action where he would show up and fight, then you have a problem.
For 2nd Edition, this problem would have only shown up for Wizards. Clerics could cast anything their spheres allowed, so you only had to determine those. Rogues did have a percentile table for their core skills, but you could get away with applying a flat average if you are in a hurry. Fighters had very few stats to worry about. Wizards you would have had to select spells, but I have yet to see a game where there would be any high level wizards that that may be pulled into an unexpected fight.
I still do not think much of rules light systems myself though. 2nd Edition had plenty of elements in it that are just not nearly as good as 3rd editions elements, in my opinion.
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