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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tf360" data-source="post: 725545" data-attributes="member: 2105">I find 3e far easier to deal with as a DM than 1E and 2E for a lot of reasons.  The biggest one I felt was the ambiguity of the two previous editions as well as the overpowering kits and races in both of the previous editions.  1)  More rulesSimply put, 3E is a lot easier to deal with.  All of the rules are in the PHB and the DMG.  1E and 2E had tons of rules in all of the class books as well as some of the other books that came out later such as the Tome of Magic, Unearthed Arcana etc.  (Remember the good old days of weapon styles and weapon speed.)  Once you get combat down pat and then understand how some of the commonly used spells work, its way easier than 1 or 2 E with a lot fewer "rules on the fly" to adjudicate difficult situations.  Like Piratecat said, assign a DC for an unusual situation and let the character roll his own fate rather than guess.  2)  Prestige classesEver deal with the Humanoid handbook from 2E?  Trust me, it was pretty miserable when one of my players decided to be a wood giant with practically no drawbacks.  What about the kits?  Most of them were either ridiculously underpowered or totally outrageous.  Clever players learned to sort the good from the bad and before long everyone wanted to play the same kits as well as the same races.  And don't even start me on the Psionics books from 2E or the double weapon specialized grugach elf fighter with a long sword from Unearthed Arcana.3)  NPC'sCreating NPC's does require some work, but like most have reiterated, you don't need to go overboard for lackeys and guards.  No one needs to know if the four 3rd level fighters guarding the entrance to the hidden temple spent two ranks in Swim.  It's simply not necessary.  I only figure out the stats for the skills that may come into play, especially Listen and Spot for guards.4)  Game worldsThe number and quality of game worlds in the present environment is complete unprecedented.  1E had only Greyhawk and maybe Forgotten Realms near the tail end.  There are a lot of quality game worlds out there totally including the ones previously mentioned.5)  FragmentationI can't really comment on this, since I've played with the same gaming group for almost fifteen years, and we haven't needed a new player in about eight years.  Guess we're just lucky with that.6)  ModulesI can't remember very many modules from WOTC or TSR during 2E.  Sure there's a lot of poor modules on the market today, but there's also a lot of quality ones as well.  While some look back nostalgically at some of the 1E modules, I kind of view them as overly simplistic or just hack and slash fests.  2E didn't bring to mind an abundance of quality modules since the number of available modules was really slim pickings to say the least.7)  Rapid advancementI personally slow it down as well.  Another method that I use is that each player has multiple characters in the campaign, three to be precise.  They pick and choose which characters to play for each adventure, also slowly down the advancement of the group as whole as well as allowing everyone the opportunity to play a different character class rather than being the same thing all the time.</blockquote>

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