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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AMP" data-source="post: 9228423" data-attributes="member: 7037413">I have a fondness for the 3.0/3.5 era. One thing I liked about it was that any concept I dreamed up I could use mechanics to define to get the feel right. However, one of the things that also crushes me under its weight is that there is, indeed, a rule for pretty much everything. The math, although strictly addition & subtraction, could become cumbersome at higher levels, if only because an adjustment over here affected half the other subsystems attached to it. I don't think it's a bad system, but this edition really brought the concepts of "builds" and "balance" to the forefront. I am one of those GMs who doesn't care about things like "avaerage damage output" and things like that. I grew up with BECMI and 2nd Edition, and I consider game balance an illusion, utterly and completely.If I'm doing MY job right, you won't need to worry about challenge or fun, and if if you're playing with skill, then you won't worry about being "effective." There is always something to do as a player, be creative and don't assume you cannot have fun because you don't have a superhero character.  You do NOT need to have similar results of to-hit success or damage results to participate in an effective way. Use your brains and think outside the box. That's where the fun is at.When next I run 3rd, I plan to let players pick whatever classes they want to mess with that I've chosen to fit the campaign, and I'll be drawing from materials that have a wide range of so-called power levels. Go. Nuts. Make the CONCEPT you actually want, not just a mechanical nuke. I'm even going to include the NPC classes as player options (Commoner, etc.), in case there is a player's concept they fit, and if they fit the world. I can futz with creatures to adjust them, challenge-wise, including stripping entire abilities, and tailor each adventure to the exact characters involved, so even if someone has a character who is merely skilled at languages, I can accommodate that and you will still have fun, even if you have to use the fighter to hide behind during combat and use your creativity to effect results rather than mechanics. Remembering old style game play can really help with 3rd, in this way.This is why I think you're more correct than not in your post's thesis. It's the intent of the play, really, that drives this system's personality, and its interconnectedness was a virtue and a bane. A lot of players got so good with these rules they could really force a GM to do what they wanted, in some cases, if that was their goal, and show them a rule which allowed it. My advice for GMs using 3rd is that YOU run your table, not the players, and for darn sure the system itself doesn't. Make rulings on rules and clearly define early on that simply because a rule exists in an official book does not mean you will accept that rule at the table. You are a Judge in every sense of the term, lean into it. The system is a toolkit to bend to your milieu, not to define it, and this has been lost with the obsession over mechanics in a lot of modern, crunchier games. A lot of GMs I was around during the 3rd era forgot that and soon had a load of very min/maxed powerhouse PCs around the table, simply because they sniffed out rule synergies and leaned on them.Wow, it appears that I've strayed a bit from the original topic, but I feel it is all related.</blockquote>

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