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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 3995736" data-attributes="member: 545">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]</blockquote>

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