Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
A Thread For Those Somewhere In The Middle
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 3927647" data-attributes="member: 1465"><p>Hussar's comment are interesting as usual.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I usually think that 3e allows for very good flexibility in the flavor, as long as you don't try to step out of some of the core assumptions, such as the power of spellcasters or the magic item quantity. On a smaller scale, it is instead quite easy to write up or modify classes, feats, spells etc because it's quite modular.</p><p></p><p>But indeed there is some sort of "lock" between flavor and rules. Just to make a very small example, weapons are designed in a certain way so that the game assumes that every sword has a 19-20/x2 critical, and every axe has 20/x3. The type of critical could be a tactical choice for your character, while the weapon "image" could be a flavor choice. The two choices are locked, you cannot make one without locking yourself with the other. You can of course house rule something, but it's like the ruleset assumes the lock is good. In OD&D all weapons did the same damage, so the flavor choice was free: the downside is that there is no tactical option at all of course, but still the feeling it gives you is that there is no lock.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This can be either good or bad depending on how you ask. Some gamers want flavor in the core, and despise a RPG which is just a "tool", they want a world ready to be played. Others do not want the flavor defined, but exactly want only a tool to which they can apply their favourite flavor (homebrew or from an existing setting).</p><p></p><p>Personally, I think that 3e fell in the middle. Some common ground of flavor was there, in the choice of races, classes, spells and magic items. But these are so modular that it's easy to remove those which don't fit with your favourite flavor, and add new ones. OA you mentioned is just a good example, and IMHO Rokugan is even better: they removed classes which don't fit (cleric, druid, paladin, bard, wizard), adjusted those which were almost ok (barbarian, ranger), kept some untouched (monk, sorcerer, fighter, rogue), and added new ones (shugenja, inkyo, ninja, samurai, courtier). That is IMHO a nice feature of the system.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Indeed, you cannot easily remove those few basic assumptions of 3e. I would have wanted a low-magic-items game sometimes, but if I just lower them I suddenly have difficult problems in choosing monsters for the adventures. If someone want a world where spellcasters don't have truly amazing spells (the higher levels), you easily end up with spellcasters being near-useless when the game goes high in level.</p><p></p><p>Fact it, I don't know yet any ruleset that allows flexibility to such extreme degree that you can really create anything between no-magic and anime. I believe that at a certain point every system is limited to its basic assumptions, and if you want to go beyond you really just have to switch to another system.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Li Shenron, post: 3927647, member: 1465"] Hussar's comment are interesting as usual. I usually think that 3e allows for very good flexibility in the flavor, as long as you don't try to step out of some of the core assumptions, such as the power of spellcasters or the magic item quantity. On a smaller scale, it is instead quite easy to write up or modify classes, feats, spells etc because it's quite modular. But indeed there is some sort of "lock" between flavor and rules. Just to make a very small example, weapons are designed in a certain way so that the game assumes that every sword has a 19-20/x2 critical, and every axe has 20/x3. The type of critical could be a tactical choice for your character, while the weapon "image" could be a flavor choice. The two choices are locked, you cannot make one without locking yourself with the other. You can of course house rule something, but it's like the ruleset assumes the lock is good. In OD&D all weapons did the same damage, so the flavor choice was free: the downside is that there is no tactical option at all of course, but still the feeling it gives you is that there is no lock. This can be either good or bad depending on how you ask. Some gamers want flavor in the core, and despise a RPG which is just a "tool", they want a world ready to be played. Others do not want the flavor defined, but exactly want only a tool to which they can apply their favourite flavor (homebrew or from an existing setting). Personally, I think that 3e fell in the middle. Some common ground of flavor was there, in the choice of races, classes, spells and magic items. But these are so modular that it's easy to remove those which don't fit with your favourite flavor, and add new ones. OA you mentioned is just a good example, and IMHO Rokugan is even better: they removed classes which don't fit (cleric, druid, paladin, bard, wizard), adjusted those which were almost ok (barbarian, ranger), kept some untouched (monk, sorcerer, fighter, rogue), and added new ones (shugenja, inkyo, ninja, samurai, courtier). That is IMHO a nice feature of the system. Indeed, you cannot easily remove those few basic assumptions of 3e. I would have wanted a low-magic-items game sometimes, but if I just lower them I suddenly have difficult problems in choosing monsters for the adventures. If someone want a world where spellcasters don't have truly amazing spells (the higher levels), you easily end up with spellcasters being near-useless when the game goes high in level. Fact it, I don't know yet any ruleset that allows flexibility to such extreme degree that you can really create anything between no-magic and anime. I believe that at a certain point every system is limited to its basic assumptions, and if you want to go beyond you really just have to switch to another system. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
A Thread For Those Somewhere In The Middle
Top