3e, DMs, and Inferred Player Power

[Primitive Screwhead]

ThirdWizard... By quite a lot

But now that you and Raven Crowking have answered the original posters question.. to which I completly agree with your analysis... we now return you to your regularly scheduled thread hijack

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

My 2¢

There are a LOT of books out there...

While I own many of them, I'm not the only DM in the group, and the current consensus among the other DM's is that they do not use ANY of them except the core and the class books. Some core classes get disallowed on occasion, like Paladins and Monks. Psionics? Don't even ask.

And even when I'm the DM, the players tend towards the familiar.

I have, in other threads, griped about plain vanilla D&D for the past 10 years- I can't even get them to try other RPGs- but I have NEVER felt entitled to play a particular class or PrCl...nor have I ever felt pressure to screw my campaign by allowing a player to design a PC that doesn't fit the campaign.

If I'm running a stone-age fantasy campaign, you can be sure that there will be NO Warforged PCs. When I ran my last campaign in which all of the races were sentient animals, there were NO Dwarves, Elves, Humans, Orcs, Half-Demon Genasi, etc.

I see the proliferation of books as just a natural growth of the hobby towards increasing options in all RPGs. The original RPGs were fairly rigid, but the rise of point-based systems and RPGs based on sources other than JRRT touched off peoples' imaginations. These days, any system or setting that controls PC creation too much is going to be shunned. Thus, while not as flexible as a system like HERO, GURPS or Mutants & Masterminds, 3Ed's flexibility is greater than all previous editions of D&D because of all those wonderful books, WOTC and otherwise.

But the "Set of Choices" available in all of those books is perforce going to be limited by the DM's campaign design to the "Set of Campaign Choices."

 

[Testament]

So what's my point? The game is a social contract: the GM offers a game that entices players to join, and the players accept the GM's vision for the setting. It's a reciprocal relationship. If I understand you correctly, you would call this a compromise, but I disagree - no one compromises anything in this instance. It is rather a reflection of their mutual interest.

Dude, I am framing this quote on one panel of my frickin' screen.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

#507 is a great post, ThirdWizard. But I'm curious. Do you believe that there's no arms race whatsoever in 3.x? I could see the case being made for prestige classes and templates, etc. But spells, IMO, clearly get more powerful with each successive splatbook...

 

[I'm A Banana]

/follow ThirdWizard

 

[Belen]

So, the DM can't alter the rules as much as he could, becuase the Players now know the rules. Before he could say that having the hand 5, 6, 7, 8, A was almost as good as a straight. Now he can't. He could outright say that a PC can't jump a 10' pit, and now he can't say that, because the rules cover jumping and the Player knows them.

Good post. However, I was never advocating a relationship where I created rules and hid them from the players. I was saying that the players do not have the right to demand that certain rules be added to the game. Certain rules are "add-on" to the system, such as PrCs or feats. There should be no assumption of "yes" where these are concerned.

So, we bring this around to the DM allowing or disallowing something. Now, the game is more balanced with the idea that everything that is written will work in a traditional, generic, D&D game. Before this wasn't really the case. Especially in 2E there was an arms race going on. Things would be unbalanced and it was the DM's job to adjudicate things so that his game stayed balanced if that's what he wanted. The idea wasn't to allow things, it was to disallow things. A DM had to disallow things or his game would soon spiral out of control.

That isn't the case anymore. You can play a vampire fiendsh half-dragon PC in a game and it won't be unbalanced, it will probably be weak. So, now the DM disallows this only if it won't fit his campaign. Before the DM would disallow it if it wouldn't fit the campaign or because of a rules consideration (unbalancedness for one). So, now the DM has half the reason to disallow it.

I disagree here. This dynamic has not changed. The idea that all new options are balanced is part of the problem. All new options in 3e are not balanced against one another. Some options are clearly superior than others. If anything, the veneer of balance means that a DM has to be more wary about supplments these days, especially considering how additions can alter the complexity of the rules. The tight rules set works against itself in that it's base is almost like a house of cards.

So, the DM is less likely to say no nowadays. Wanna play a bladesinger? In 2E I balked at the idea of letting that kit into my games. I didn't care that it fit a character. It was overpowered and there was no way it was going in. Now? It's a PrC and its balanced for play. I can now allow the bladesinger PrC into my game as an attainable goal for a PC whereas before I would have said no.

2e had the bladesinger. 3e has the Hulking Hurler.

So, for these reasons I have to say that 3E is definately giving to the Players, and that the DM's job is not only easier, but it is a lot more flexible in terms of saying "Yes."

And here we disagree. I think it is more difficult in 3e. In 2e, if a kit was horribly overbalanced, it was fairly easy to compensate. You could change core rules to fit the existance of the unbalanced kit. In 3e, an option that is unbalanced is far more difficult to deal with. The core rules of the game are so tighly woven that you cannot easily modify things to fit the circumstances. This place the DM in the position of saying no while the "rules" give the impression that things are "balanced."

In 3e, there is no tool that allows a DM to readily evaluate new options. It requires a lot of work to test out new classes, feats, etc. You cannot just assume that the new options will even fit a generic game. And there are so many rules that even WOTC designers cannot see where a new rules will interact with all the others.

This may be different if 3e fostered strong DMs with the power to say no, but this is not the case.

 

[Quasqueton]

In 2e, if a kit was horribly overbalanced, it was fairly easy to compensate. You could change core rules to fit the existance of the unbalanced kit. In 3e, an option that is unbalanced is far more difficult to deal with. The core rules of the game are so tighly woven that you cannot easily modify things to fit the circumstances.

Isn't this backwards? If an option/kit is unbalanced, shouldn't you change the option/kit rather than the core rules?

Quasqueton

 

[Hussar]

I'm still confused as to how people can say that the DM's ability to say no has been eroded in 3e. Admittedly, I don't buy an awful lot of supplements, but, simply looking at Dragon, I see the mantra, "You must ask your DM to okay this idea" repeated in just about every issue.

How does that jive with the idea that players are being entitled? How much more support can a DM want from the rules than to have the rules specifically state that it is entirely up to the DM to allow a new rule? Don't like Hulking Hurlers? No problem, nerfed.

3e rules repeatedly state that X is optional. If you don't like X don't use it. Any optional rule is the perview of the DM. Again, how much support do you want?

 

[Belen]

Isn't this backwards? If an option/kit is unbalanced, shouldn't you change the option/kit rather than the core rules?

Quasqueton

No, I am saying that fixing it requires changing the rules, which is hard to do in 3e. So the easiest option is to say "no."

 

[Quasqueton]

No, I am saying that fixing it requires changing the rules, which is hard to do in 3e. So the easiest option is to say "no."

Sorry, but I'm still not following this. If X option is "broken", why is changing the core rules the "fix"?

Quasqueton