3.5 Missing Link

[JoeGKushner]

A barabarian lord from the outer reaches hunting for the elven assassin who killed his family was a fighter who wore only hide armor..

Well, in 1st ed at least, we have the Unearthed Arcana with Cavalier, Thief-Acrobat, and yup, barbarian. We also had assassins as a core class, some weird psionic powers, a very werid bard class, and some strangeness with the druid.

Is the issue that class/prestige class defines the character, rather than roleplay?..

I had a simliar thread over at RPG.net about defining a character through the game system or trying to squeeze character concept into the game. I generally go from game to character concept. No point trying to play Elric when whatever I decide on I'm first level.

I don't know. Maybe I should play a jaded knight; a 38 year old fighter whose bronze coated armor has seen a little too much wear and tear.

Similiar to the Knight of Brass and Gold in Hawkmoon perhaps? One who has a duty and winds up dying for it? Times like this, the old character concepts with no RPG abilities from say, the Complete Fighter, are handy.

 

[Eridanis]

Please keep in mind that while everyone is entitled to defend and promote their favorite game system, no one is allowed to call one another names. That's one of the prime rules here, whether one is a new poster or an old hand.

Please keep the discussion calm and on-topic.

 

[sniffles]

Most of the time, in my experience, you get out of the game what you put into it. If you're not getting what you want out of it, don't blame the game.

 

[Abstraction]

My only comment is that you do not actually roll any dice when casting a maximized fireball.

 

[Hussar]

In our C&C game the other night (different group though), we got through 4 separate combats and all of them flowed much more smoothly than they did in 3.0. I know because I ran the same module in 3.0 with a different group. We accomplished all of that in the span of about 3 hours of gaming.

To be fair, it would be extremely difficult to run four combats in three hours in my group. Possible, but not likely. I have seven players, and I play online, so, combat gets slowed down a touch. My average combats last about forty minutes or so. Rarely more than an hour unless we're playing very high level characters.

Like I said, I make crib notes as a player. It's only good manners. A player who came to the table and tried to hit the books in the middle of combat would get shown the door in most of the groups I've gamed with. Granted, in OpenRPG it's pretty easy to have the crib notes, you just set chat macros and click the right one. The spellcasters in the group now have their entire spell lists on chat macros complete with links to the SRD and short descriptions of the spells. Click once to launch the spell, type the dice damage, hit enter. Ten seconds. Poof.

Maybe it's because I haven't done tabletop in a few years and I've forgotten what it's like. That's possible. But, then again, every group I've been in has insisted on players making notes for their common actions so we didn't tie up the game. That goes all the way back to 1st edition.

 

[amethal]

My only comment is that you do not actually roll any dice when casting a maximized fireball.

Yeah, he must have meant an empowered, maximised fireball.

Also, I picked up C+C, Blue rose and True20. I really like the latter..

I love the idea of True 20. I wish I had the chance to play it.

However, as its a d20 game, its mere existence reminds me that you don't have to play "bloated" D&D if you don't want to. (Not intending to be rude about D&D; most of the time I love bringing in the latest twist from WOTC book #195, but sometimes I long for the simple life.)

If attacks of opportunity and 5 foot steps are getting you down, take them out. D&D plays perfectly fine without any metamagic feats. Hand wave experience points. Keep the characters short of magic items if you want. Remove the grid. So long as you spend a little time considering the implications, D&D /d20 is a very robust system that can be modified to your heart's content.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Sad.

Quoted for truth.

 

[Zappo]

In my group, you get ten seconds to decide what to do. It doesn't seem to be a big problem.

Quoted for extreme truth. Too often when I find someone near my age (39) or older who complains that something about the current game just doesn't float their boat, it seems that invariably they cite things like "half dragon tiefling kobold paladin wizard rogue" characters or some such as among the reasons they don't like it.

The entire point of the game in its current iteration is that there are many options to choose from - and perhaps one of the most important options is that one could easily play the game with as few options as there were in 1e and other older editions. Play the agme the way you remember playing it.

My thoughts exactly. I dislike PCs that are weird for the sake of weirdness, but I love 3.X nonetheless. The last character I made for playing was a pure human rogue.

Surprisingly, no WotC agent jumped up screaming "NO! You must play a half-celestial drow totemist!" at me.

 

[Steverooo]

Most of the time, in my experience, you get out of the game what you put into it. If you're not getting what you want out of it, don't blame the game.

Most of the time, in my experience, I don't get out of a game what I put into it, and the harder I try, the worse things get. I don't blame the game, per se, but generally quit the Group that I'm playing with, and look for one that's more Old-School, and remembers the spirit of the game, from way back then...

It bothers me that (it seems) I'm supposed to leave my class and enter some "Prestige Class", instead. Why can't my class be my Prestige Class? Why isn't my Class Prestigious? Why can't I have, say, one special ability of my choice per level, or two, if they're about as powerful as a Feat? Seems to me that that would solve the problem, and "Prestige" Classes wouldn't be needed...

But, hey, what do I know? (D&D would look so much different, if I did it!)