You asked for point by pioint discussion so here i go!!!
Harold Mayo said:
1) I really dislike that it is really promotes min-maxing. Even the "official" stuff feeds off of it (note the little "Power Play" asides in DRAGON magazine). Optimizing a character is fine, but it goes too far to actively promote this, IMO.
the power play stuff in dragon was pretty bad, but it hasn't been in there for a year or so. i'm not sure of other examples, esp. in the rule books that actively encourage min/maxing... could you give more examples of what you're talking about?
2) It gives the tendency to create "super-characters" because of the abuse of the min-maxing potential. Instead of a nice fantasy combat like might be seen in (for example) the Fellowship of the Ring movie (where characters struggle), you end up with something more akin to a fight out of a cheesy martial arts movie. This is really, sort of, a continuation of (1) above but it's a separate gripe in my mind.
this IMHO, is more to do with players than the system itself. i've seen players make min/maxed PCs... i've seen players make PCs with skills they'll never use, or with huge social skills but terrible in combat or whatever. I think it's a strength of the system that it covers a lot of bases, allowing a wide range of styles of play.
3) It encourages mapping out the progress of a character from 1st level onward. This may not be a bad thing for some people, but I, as a player AND as a DM, would prefer to let my character's experiences in the game shape his development rather than KNOWING that I am going to take this or that prestige class at a certain level or that I am going to multiclass at level x so that I can gain special ability y.
i think that in real life people plan like this as well... for exapmle in their school careers they take subjects that will allow them to go to the university them want and to do the courses they're interested in. i've also seen players start towards X PrC, and then because of the flavour of the game change midstream. it is a sort of problem that you have to plan early to geta certain kind of PrC but i'm not sure that the problem wouldn't be worse than the solution.
4) Feats are a neat idea but they aren't really done "right". I REALLY like the feats that a lot of OGL companies are coming out with that are regional, cultural, or racial in nature. I REALLy like that because I never did like the sheer equality of older editions of AD&D. I was overjoyed when the Player's Option books came out and there were traits and disadvantages given as official rules. Feats are great but are, under the current rules, more for combatative purposes than for anything else. Since fighters gain more feats than anyone else, they can, potentially have more neat things from their "background" than any other character. The problem is that the feats were really designed more around enhancing the abilities of the character classes, especially fighters, than for adding "color" to the game and the system falls flat on its face when trying to use feats for this purpose.
i'm firmly of the opinion that strengths/weaknesses as game attributes are a really good way to encourage minmaxing. and also of the opinion that character background should be roleplayed, not taken as an stat attribute or whatever. i like the feat system myself, especially as presented in the core books.
5) 3E has the "feel" of a computer game. Simplistic and enabling you to gain a lot of power quickly. 3E has been out for three years? Is that right? Have to check on that, but it seems about right. I have heard more people talk about 20th level characters since the 3E rules came out than EVER in all of my 24 years of playing D&D put together. It "feels" like Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale more than pen & paper role-playing. I heard a rumor that this was actually what the designers were shooting for since computer games have bitten into the pen & paper rpg market share so much that they felt that they needed something to lure them in. Don't know if it's true but, if it is, they sure succeeded.
i think that a different way to look at this, at elast the 'more 20th level characters tan ever before' part, is to see it as the game actually allowing players to continue past 12th level or so when the old rule sets break down, and to allow people to play a full level set (1-20) over the course of an average length campaign (1.5 years or so). i think thats a worthy aim myself, as it keeps the game vaired and fun, and stops it from being 2 years of orc bashing to get to 5th level. the 'power up' syndrome is a wierd one, but again i think that it's down to the DM to make sure it doesn't feel like 'i'm in a dungeon and i've just gained these amazing new powers!!!'. There's no rules reasons why it should happen like than.
thanks for reading.
