D&D 3.x 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Thomas Shey]

Or like this meme attests:

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You may not be a very good character, but you can definitely be what you chose to be.

Though this assumes "what you choose to be" isn't expecting a certain degree of competence to go with it. I'm not sure a lot of people would really be onboard "You can be a Divranian Ominous Spellcrafter, but you will most likely be less competent than any standard spellcaster and the side benefits will rarely come up."

 

[James Gasik]

Though this assumes "what you choose to be" isn't expecting a certain degree of competence to go with it. I'm not sure a lot of people would really be onboard "You can be a Divranian Ominous Spellcrafter, but you will most likely be less competent than any standard spellcaster and the side benefits will rarely come up."

Oh absolutely. Not every build is going to work, and sadly, a great many of them are traps or at the least, not fantastic. I'm reminded of a friend who really liked the idea of being a Rage Mage, and fueling his magic with the power of his anger....but a close look at the Prestige Class revealed it didn't offer a lot more than being a Barbarian/Sorcerer- sure he could cast spells while raging, and he got a buff to those spells, but he didn't really get more spells out of the deal.

Or one of my favorites, the Dragon Shaman, which gave you most of what you'd want out of it fairly early on, and offering very little for staying with it.

But this has always been an issue with D&D- I remember the 2e books saying "you can make any kind of character you want!" but only later did I realize the game made no provisions for making sure my Whip Specialist Fighter (I was on a Castlevania kick at the time) would actually be useful!

Still, even if most of the options are mediocre or outright bad, I still enjoy having them available. There's always the challenge of taking something that looks horrible and seeing if you can work with it, and usually, a lot of those bad things are still fertile ground for cool ideas- the Green Star Adept didn't work right no matter how hard I tried, but I based a whole campaign around the Green Star, Alhazarde, and various people fighting over it's starmetal.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Oh absolutely. Not every build is going to work, and sadly, a great many of them are traps or at the least, not fantastic. I'm reminded of a friend who really liked the idea of being a Rage Mage, and fueling his magic with the power of his anger....but a close look at the Prestige Class revealed it didn't offer a lot more than being a Barbarian/Sorcerer- sure he could cast spells while raging, and he got a buff to those spells, but he didn't really get more spells out of the deal.

There were a lot of PrCs in the 3e era that were absolutely traps once you got into them (and some that were virtually intelligence tests in that they could do almost everything meaningful that the closest extent class did and then some). Some were pretty obvious if you understood the game and looked at them more than casually, but some required really understanding what the benefits theoretically were.

Or one of my favorites, the Dragon Shaman, which gave you most of what you'd want out of it fairly early on, and offering very little for staying with it.

But this has always been an issue with D&D- I remember the 2e books saying "you can make any kind of character you want!" but only later did I realize the game made no provisions for making sure my Whip Specialist Fighter (I was on a Castlevania kick at the time) would actually be useful!

Yeah, that was the kind of thing feats and PrCs were theoretically supposed to help with. Sometimes they did, but often--not so much.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Yeah, 3.X, especially early 3.0 had some odd design choice for PrCs. Look at the Oozemaster for example, it is a 5/10 PrC meant for spellcasters, but no spellcaster is going to give up five caster levels. I would either just make it a full casting PrC or remove the casting requirement altogether and make it more of a PrC aimed at martials, most of the abilities are something that a martial character would make better use of anyways and the tenth level capstone ability changes your type to Ooze which makes you immune to crits which a martial character can make better use of than a spellcaster.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yeah, 3.X, especially early 3.0 had some odd design choice for PrCs. Look at the Oozemaster for example, it is a 5/10 PrC meant for spellcasters, but no spellcaster is going to give up five caster levels. I would either just make it a full casting PrC or remove the casting requirement altogether and make it more of a PrC aimed at martials, most of the abilities are something that a martial character would make better use of anyways and the tenth level capstone ability changes your type to Ooze which makes you immune to crits which a martial character can make better use of than a spellcaster.

Yeah. Spellcaster aimed PrCs in general had to give out something pretty compelling if they wanted you to sell down one or more casting levels to take it, and few of them did.

 

[Deset Gled]

Yeah. Spellcaster aimed PrCs in general had to give out something pretty compelling if they wanted you to sell down one or more casting levels to take it, and few of them did.

The flipside, of course, is that you're supposed to give up something pretty important to get PrC levels, and casters generally have very little to sacrifice except casting levels.

The root cause of this was that the 3e designers didn't forsee PrCs being such a big sales tool. And best way to fix it would be to break down casting into more isolated components so that you could change some without killing the whole base class. But those changes would have been pretty major, so they never happened.

 

[Thomas Shey]

The flipside, of course, is that you're supposed to give up something pretty important to get PrC levels, and casters generally have very little to sacrifice except casting levels.

While true, all it means is its hard to make PrCs viable for spellcasters. There's no point in putting them out just to be traps.

The root cause of this was that the 3e designers didn't forsee PrCs being such a big sales tool. And best way to fix it would be to break down casting into more isolated components so that you could change some without killing the whole base class. But those changes would have been pretty major, so they never happened.

I suspect it'd have required disassembling the magic system more than it was, or giving mages more magic-adjacent special abilities in addition to their spells (and frankly, last thing most spellcasters needed in 3e was more juice).

 

[Emerikol]

I think 3e did a lot of things right but not everything. If I had to play exactly by the rules, I'd play 3e if I had to play a D&D game.

For me I want a 3e infrastructure with a 1e flavor and sensibility. I hated PRCs and banned those immediately when the game came out. I am going to create my own game one day. I also will go back to slow advancement.

 

[Voadam]

For me I want a 3e infrastructure with a 1e flavor and sensibility.

So Necromancer Games' (now a legacy part of Frog God Games) modules, "Third Edition Rules, First Edition Feel"

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think 3e did a lot of things right but not everything. If I had to play exactly by the rules, I'd play 3e if I had to play a D&D game.

For me I want a 3e infrastructure with a 1e flavor and sensibility. I hated PRCs and banned those immediately when the game came out. I am going to create my own game one day. I also will go back to slow advancement.

Ironically, I thought PrCs were one of the best ideas in 3e; it was just the execution was often, shall we say, lacking.