3e too complicated ?

[John Crichton]

Amen Brother.

Could somebody please come up with a single opposed roll system for turning undead? That is the single most confusing and hard to explain part of the whole game IMHO.

In both games I play or DM in everyone you plays a cleric ask that we don't have undead so we can just avoid going there

While I don't love it and it's not the easiest part of 3e, the turning system isn't that hard to understand. Maybe the first few times but after that it's no big deal.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

The 3e turning system is almost useless, too. If you run into undead with HD more than 4 points higher than yours, you can't turn them... period.

Suppose I throw an advanced ghoul at my players - I hope they don't waste time trying to turn it.

 

[Dark Jezter]

I would love to see a new turning system for 3.5e. In its current form, turning is a confusing process and very difficult to explain to newer players. An opposed-roll system would be much nicer.

 

[tieranwyl]

Consistency should not be confused with simplicity. 3E is consistent, but it is not simple. Computers are consistent, but they are not simple. The playability you gain in consistency is cancelled out by the large volume of rules in 3E. I would have rather seen 3E core rules balanced without feats and skills. Those things could have been added as optional rules in Dragon Magazine for the people that wanted a miniatures focus on the game, or just needed comprehensive skill set.

3E had so much going for it with the universal experience point table, lifting of racial level limits, lifting of racial class restrictions, BAB and 3 save catagories. In fact, there are more good things about 3E than bad. Its just that the few bad things are a major drag on the game. (I would have accepted level limits for the opportunity to take any class. I would have even accepted class restrictions for the opportunity to gain unlimited levels in classes that made sense for some of the races.) If skills just had to be included in the core rules they should have been percentile based. Sadly, there is no going back now. Skills and feats are too much a part of the overall balance of the game.

I am hoping the 3.5 D&D introductory game will leave feats and skills out of it, and be a rules-lite verson of D&D. I'm not going to get my hopes up though.

 

[hong]

The 3e turning system is almost useless, too. If you run into undead with HD more than 4 points higher than yours, you can't turn them... period.

Notice how undead CR tends to match HD, unlike for many other monster types.

Suppose I throw an advanced ghoul at my players - I hope they don't waste time trying to turn it.

I would have thought that half the fun of throwing an advanced undead at the players is to see if they DO waste time trying to turn it.

 

[Starman]

Actualy, I thought that is what all those NPCs in the DMG were for.

I do use those when I am prepping an adventure, but for on the fly stuff, I wing it and I haven't had a problem yet.

Starman

 

[Impeesa]

3E is too complicated? Hah! You are spoiled and weak! Play Rolemaster without spreadsheet assistance - you will soon come to appreciate the inherent simplicity of even THAC0, let alone the d20 system. As a bonus, you get to sample some of Monte Cooke's earlier works - I blame him for the fact that I have a dwarf fighter who regularly goes tooling around in a magical flying space beetle.

--Impeesa--

 

[Lord Pendragon]

The 3e turning system is almost useless, too.

Seeing as my 12th-level PC once turned a lich, I can't quite get behind this statement. Sure, the higher above the party level an undead's CR is, the harder it is to turn. But then, it's harder to survive an undead with a CR much higher than the party level, so it all works for me.

 

[Shadowlord]

If you change these aspects, you are not playing D&D anymore. I personally like them.

But I have to admit that every game session, me and/or the other players we get tired of opening the books and looking-up stuff for every situation that arises.

I dearly hope 3.5 will fix that aspect, rather than making it WORSE.

Actually, we aren't playing D&D anymore, we're playing D20 ! Thus, levels could & should be forgotten. That won't happen in 3.5 though, but let's hope 4th ed will go in that direction.

 

[Shadowlord]

If you make it all skilled-based and someone just picks basic skills, they really don't become harder to defeat. I can be the greatest rider in all the world and still be taken out by a guy with real combat experience. It seems challenge ratings are only applicable with things that actually affect your combat prowess. So would you only measure CR based on things that increase combat prowess, like more strength, or more combative feats?

Let's make this clear: YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT EVERYONE !
You don't only get XP for defeating someone (although the current CR system doesn't reflect this very well), you could & should get XP for interaction (where skills do matter more than BAB & HP), roleplaying, and story advancement!

In the end you'd asign a CR based on XP/level, not combat prowess. If someone put much into skills, fine. He'll be your superior in non-combat situations (which are plenty in any decent RPG ).