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

[Son_of_Thunder]

The problem with making the rules too loose is that it often gives bad DMs the excuse to power trip.

That's really not the problem of the system though is it? It's one of the things I prefer about earlier editions over d20. It's not a bug for me.

 

[Reynard]

If what you claim were true, products such as Spycraft (no AoOs), Iron Heroes (no/low magic items), and hundreds of other products with varied skill lists and feat lists couldn't exist. Yet they do. Would you care to explain the existence of hundreds of products that completely disprove your assertions that you can't modify d20 without breaking it?

It isn't that you can't change stuff, but rather that there is a lot more to consider when doing so because everything is so interconnected. Spycraft didn't just drop AoO's and be done with it, for example. Dropping AoOs means re-examining a lot of feats and combat maneuvers and other elements that AoOs interact with. You start to blur the line between "house ruling" and "game design".

 

[Reynard]

That's really not the problem of the system though is it? It's one of the things I prefer about earlier editions over d20. It's not a bug for me.

I don't know how pervasive it truly is, but on this and other gaming messageboards there's a prominent culture of anti-GM-ism, where its adherents automatically assume a GM is going to abuse any authority the rules grant him to screw over the players and laugh maniacly into his viking hat. I've only ever met a few GMs like that, and not a one of them had a regular group (and for good reason). it is far more common for a GM to get kicked to the curb than a troublesome, whining ruleslawyer of a player, IME.

 

[billd91]

It is possible to discuss problems neutrally and clinically without getting into trouble, you know. Was it one of the following?

1. It reduced the ability of the DM to control the number and type of magic items available to the PCs, and hence, the tone and power level of his game.

2. It increased the ability of the players to further customize the PCs, thus leading to greater min-maxing.

One I have heard voiced by one of my DMs:

3. Magic items feel less special. Even the weirdest items used to treasured, and very few items other than plain magic weapons were considered "standard".

(There is more than a kernel of truth in #3. This is the problem of the Big Six stated another way. I also think that this could easily be solved by DM fiat -- make weird/multifunction items cheaper and PCs will start finding better uses for them than selling them for pocket change.)

The easy magic item creation rules for PCs has been accused of doing these things but I think Ridley's Cohort has it most right with his kernel of truth.

Before magic item creation, it was up to the DM to sprinkle magic items in the campaign (possibly even randomly rolled), which led to a lot of diversity that we don't see now. Now, if the party is into item creation, there are the big 6 you can count on most of them having.

In general, I don't agree that there are more magic items or that there's a heck of a lot more min-maxing. Published adventures had gobs and gobs of magic and treasure that offered PCs plenty of opportunities to min-max along some line. Nor do I agree that 3E is more based on needing magic items and equipment than 1e or 2e, since they were extremely important in those editions as well.

My beef is with the conformity. Those big 6 items are so well tuned toward PC survival and success that their deployment becomes a dominant strategy. With DMs being responsible for magic item distribution in earlier editions, there tended to be more diversity of tactics. The min-maxing ended up being based more on the specific items the PCs were finding rather than building it by intentional design. It led, I think, to more idiosyncratic design and more interesting magic flash in the game.
I think 3E does a lot to provide options in character building in general with feats, multiclassing, prestige classes and so on. But that's a different kind of flash. It's an action-movie flash, good in its own way, but different from 1e and 2e fantasy adventuring flash.

 

[Shadeydm]

now, surely you are right. there's nothing that stops me from stop giving magical items to the players if i want to run a nitty gritty low magic game. nothing apart from the fact that the *whole* system is built around the assumption that, say, you will have a +x magical weapon at level 3, and a +y magical defense bonus.

yeah, i could simply substitute those plusses with class bonuses. only, in my nitty gritty world, it doesn't make sense at all that a PC should have access to what effectly are superpowers.

in 2e, there's way those monsters that do need magical weapons to be fought often require a +1 weapon and nothing more. hardly stuff of legend in a "normal" campaign.


say i wanted to ignore completely the skill system. would the classes still be balanced? nope. say i wanted to run a late reinassance game where nobody wore heavy armours and magic was rare. would the classes would be balanced? nope.

Very interesting and difficult to dispute. Well said Spell.

 

[Psion]

now, surely you are right. there's nothing that stops me from stop giving magical items to the players if i want to run a nitty gritty low magic game. nothing apart from the fact that the *whole* system is built around the assumption that, say, you will have a +x magical weapon at level 3, and a +y magical defense bonus.

yeah, i could simply substitute those plusses with class bonuses. only, in my nitty gritty world, it doesn't make sense at all that a PC should have access to what effectly are superpowers.

You realize, of course, that this poisons the analysis with your perspective? The only thing that makes these "superpowers" is that you know that in the version of the game you are not playing, the modifiers are assigned to magic item.

Which begs the question: what do you hope to get out of this "low magic" game? Do you want to take away magic because you don't like the concept of players having much magical bling? Or do you think that magic items make it too easy?

If the former, adjusting the bonus is perfectly valid (though I think adjusting the challenge rating you face the PCs with, and paying special attention to creatures that are best faced with magic, would be easier.) If the latter, why are you tweaking the PCs to be more powerful.

say i wanted to ignore completely the skill system.

Then you'd do something that hasn't been done since before 1e, because the thief/rogue has required some version of the skill system since 1e.

would the classes still be balanced? nope. say i wanted to run a late reinassance game where nobody wore heavy armours and magic was rare. would the classes would be balanced? nope.

Sure. You'd have to compensate somehow to make the concepts you want to show up in the game desirable again. Somehow, I don't find the argument "changes have consequences" a compelling argument. The simple, unified baseline of d20 makes it fairly straightforward to predict the scope of these consequences. If you want to make changes and not compensate, that's your fault.

surely i could redesign the system to play d20 nitty n gritty, or d20 without armour, or d20 without magic, or whatever. but that would be, indeed, REDESIGNING the system, not just plug in your nice little set of house rules.

I would suggest to you that wanting it to be otherwise is silly.

that's why many people had heavily house ruled AD&D games, back in the dayswhereas many people today have bought arcana unearthed, iron heroes, or whatever "it's still D&D, only with a different flavour" RPG supplement it seem to offer an alternative rule set.

So, are you honestly suggesting old AD&D house rules had the same level of playability and quality as AE and IH? I rather think that unlikely.

(For that matter, am I the only one who recalls how every Dragon back in the 1e days came with warnings about how all this stuff was use at your own risk... and risk there was...)

now, keep in mind that i see absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it's all good... it's good to have unified system to introduce people into the game and everything.
but i don't have lots of money to spend on "alternative d20" books. and, most importantly, i have zero time to read them... or to redesign the system by myself.

Then your choice is to tolerate the imperfections regardless of the system you use or handwave them away in play, because "tweak once and have everything line up perfect" is not on the table regardless of whether you were playing 1e or 3e.

exactly as i think i've shown you above: you touch the feats? your game is unbalanced.

Notwithstanding that innumerable supplements have added feats with little consequence?

 

[TerraDave]

Reading this, with which there is so much that I disagree...

I do agree that the best feature of 2nd ed was its compatibility with 1st edition. And its blandness did help make it (seem) pretty open to doing what I wanted to do.

My campaign at time could be described as "Earth, with a 1st edition feel".

 

[Voadam]

WOW! i couldn't disagree more with you on this one!

now, surely you are right. there's nothing that stops me from stop giving magical items to the players if i want to run a nitty gritty low magic game. nothing apart from the fact that the *whole* system is built around the assumption that, say, you will have a +x magical weapon at level 3, and a +y magical defense bonus.

yeah, i could simply substitute those plusses with class bonuses. only, in my nitty gritty world, it doesn't make sense at all that a PC should have access to what effectly are superpowers.

in 2e, there's way those monsters that do need magical weapons to be fought often require a +1 weapon and nothing more. hardly stuff of legend in a "normal" campaign.

Huh?

In 3.5 DR magic only requires a +1 weapon as well. The DR system is designed so that you can be a fighter and reasonably fight monsters without the optimal type weapon until you get to things like Balors and Pit Fiends that require epic in 3.5, but those require more than +1 weapons in 2e as well.

say i wanted to ignore completely the skill system. would the classes still be balanced? nope. say i wanted to run a late reinassance game where nobody wore heavy armours and magic was rare. would the classes would be balanced? nope.

Matter of opinion I guess. 3e classes are balanced around combat ability, skills do very little in combat.

A 3e rogue has evasion, uncanny dodge and sneak attack while a 2e rogue would only have backstab.

For low armor I go with a house rule that class reflex save adds to dex bonus to get a level based AC increase for low armor types that favors the agile and encourages feinting. Its worked for me in my 3.5 wildwood game. In 2e I'm not sure what I would have gone with, probably just adjusted to the higher number of hits that PCs and NPCs would be taking.

In a low magic game for 3e I might look to the Conan RPG or Iron Heroes for inspiration, in 2e the historical campaign books mostly suggested limiting wizard evocations and spell levels IIRC.

surely i could redesign the system to play d20 nitty n gritty, or d20 without armour, or d20 without magic, or whatever. but that would be, indeed, REDESIGNING the system, not just plug in your nice little set of house rules.

that's why many people had heavily house ruled AD&D games, back in the dayswhereas many people today have bought arcana unearthed, iron heroes, or whatever "it's still D&D, only with a different flavour" RPG supplement it seem to offer an alternative rule set.

House rules that were not REDESIGNING the system to provide AD&D nitty n gritty, without armor, or without magic, or whatever?

Weren't the other D&D like options from Pre 3e/OGL things like Paladium, Rolemaster, MERP, Ars Magica, and GURPS?

now, keep in mind that i see absolutely nothing wrong with that, and it's all good... it's good to have unified system to introduce people into the game and everything.
but i don't have lots of money to spend on "alternative d20" books. and, most importantly, i have zero time to read them... or to redesign the system by myself.

www.d20srd.org check out the variant rules section for OGC things from Unearthed Arcana such as vitality points instead of hp, level based defense bonus to AC for low armor campains, different skill systems, magical taint, sanity, etc. Free and Legal.

Of course if you don't have time to read such rule variants to fit different campaign styles then most of the options from 2e wouldn't be available either (historical setting books, ravenloft CS for fear and horror mechanics, combat and tactics for some 3e similar tactical combat, etc.)

which leaves making up house rules in 3e vs making up house rules in 2e.

A matter of opinion, but I don't think it is tougher to tweak 3e than 2e to most variant baseline desires.

 

[Psion]

Huh?

In 3.5 DR magic only requires a +1 weapon as well.

I think he's trying to say that since 3e actually tries to factor in magic items into character power, it somehow thereby requires you to have the assumed level of magic items according to the wealth by level table.

Which is an old 3e-bashing argument, but just as illogical as it was when first uttered. The 3e wealth by level actually attempts to quantify the power level including magic items. In 2e, this evaluation was absent and it was a crap shoot. So we are to believe that we are worse off knowing that we are less powerful than expected for our level without X number of magic items as in 3e than having no standard established at all as in 2e?

 

[Shadeydm]

Notwithstanding that innumerable supplements have added feats with little consequence?

With little consequence your kidding right? Even the folks at WotC have admitted that the proliferation of an endless list of feats has been problematic in terms of game balance because feat C from book D does take into account the consequences of feat H from book Z etc, etc.