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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wik" data-source="post: 5663607" data-attributes="member: 40177">Responses!I actually swore off 3.5 a few years ago, right before we switched to fourth.  After running Savage Tide, I got incredibly frustrated with the game at around 10th level.  But it looks like I'm crawling back.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Okay, before I get into this, can we just agree that this is from my own personal view, and not some blanket assumption?  I don't want to start an edition war, and it bugs me when I say "this is what I did", and then I get people telling me that I was obviously looking at it wrong, or arguing about why my perceptions are not accurate.  Anyways.What I didn't like from a DM's point of view was that the game was very much divorced from "what's going on".  Or rather, it felt like we were playing two games - the mechanical game, and the story game... and often, the story was secondary to the mechanics.  Having to figure out why the great evil villain who never likes to enter close range combat would fly down to the ground to enter close-range combat with a world-renowned fighter simply because his power said so really bugged me.Or rather, the GM's role is simply to react to PCs, and his ability to control the pacing and layout of the encounter can be severely limited by player choices and actions, to a degree that is not seen in almost any other roleplaying game.  There was also a point where I had PCs that, even with monsters well above the group's level, simply couldn't be hit (for example, the Dragon of Tyr monster cannot, apparently, hit our artful dodger rogue on an OA, even if he rolls a 20;  likewise, our fighter is able to hit the dragon on anything but a 1)In other editions of D&D, I felt I could ignore the game rules in favour of the game world reality.  But because of the way the game is presented and character ability choices are so important to the play, doing so would have felt like cheating this time around.Not to mention that, to really challenge your group, you need to throw many encounters at them over the course of the day, whereas I've usually been more of a "few large encounters" type of person.  The game works less well at high levels with that sort of playstyle, because PCs get more chances to go nova.you are absolutely correct.  In fact, I'd hazard a guess that Pathfinder would be even worse at those levels, though I'm not 100% sure.  I tended to wing stat blocks (hell, I still do, it was my 4e signature move!), so they might not be as big a problem for me as they are for others.It was a lot of fun.  It was also fun to have you guys tease me every time I got fed up with the system.  Your running bet on how long into the session it'd take for me to bitch about the system cracked me up.And of course, the story isn't "concluded".  Because it's possible we'll come back to the Isles sometime in the future... and see what's happened in the interim.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  I'm thinking I need to run a campaign from the tiefling side of things.  Tiefling versus Genasi could be a lot of fun.  Up until about level 8 or 9, we followed the game rules as written, XP-wise.  At that point, I started awarding double XP, simply because we knew we wanted to finish the campaign and move onto something else, while also seeing how all 30 levels played out.  I rarely gave out quest XP... mostly because I forgot it was there.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />At around 12th level, we made a few minor houserules, and one BIG house rule that changed the game drastically.  Essentially, I let my players pick all their treasure.  I was tired of the wish lists/treasure packets (the biggest drain on the GM EVER, in my book), and so just cut out the middle man and let players pick their own gear.  This did lead to some hyper specialized PCs, but meh, it saved me the headache of rewarding treasure... I just focused on giving out cool stuff every now and then.We also played around with a wealth bonus, though it was rarely used.  We handwaved a lot of purchases.  When the players hit around 22nd or 23rd level, I got really drained during one fight, where I looked at the group and said "I can't keep playing this game".  I was no longer having fun, because my entire play experience was setting up encounters that, unless I really manipulated the mechanics, could not go the way I wanted them to.  There were no stories in combat for me, anymore... just mechanics.  I told the group that, and we decided to fast forward through the epic tier, and end the game with one last dungeon crawl at 30th level.While it sucks that we missed out on levels 23-29, I know myself and at least 2 players were sick of 4e, and it was nice to finish the campaign while we were still having fun rather than watch the game fizzle out due to burnout.</blockquote>

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