Anyone else long for old days simplicity?

[mmadsen]

In the 1st edition (and 2nd before all the Complete Handbooks) you knew what you where getting with say a 9th level fighter, or for that matter a whatever level anything. With the 3rd edition a 9th level fighter will have at least 9 feats (10 if human). All this takes time . . .

Agreed. I love the flexible design of the modern Fighter class, but I'd love to see specific "subclasses" laid out, exactly what skills and feats a knight, archer, pikeman, etc. would have at what level.

That way you could have the simplicity of old-school D&D with the flexibility of modern D&D. Also, you could move away from prestige classes and toward feat and skill lists for various archetypes.

 

[Lazybones]

The new Realms book, Lords of Darkness, has DMG-style NPC lists for numerous Faerunian baddies at different levels, as well as encounter ideas for putting together a quick group of them.

Not helpful if you're not running a Realms campaign, of course, unless you wanted to tweak them a little.

I'm not sure I buy the whole assertion that running things "on the fly" was easier in earlier editions. As others have mentioned, the old abbreviated stat-blocks left a lot out, and a lot of things that are now handled by the skill system were just sort of left to the DM. There's nothing in 3e that says you can't still do that--if you're running an impromptu encounter with an NPC that's not integral to the part, just take the basic info from the DMG, and wing it! You might be off a point or two on a skill check, or have to guesstimate an attack bonus, but who cares?

 

[ColonelHardisson]

I guess what I'm really after is someone who has done all this work already. I don't suppose anyone knows of a site anywhere where loads of this stuff is mapped out?

As I mentioned, Monte Carlo was working on such a project; with luck he'll turn up.

The only other solution I can see is to start a similar project here on the boards, in the Rogue's Gallery Forum. If enough people pitch in (and unfortunately, the history of the boards has shown that such things rarely happen), a good-sized netbook could be produced.

 

[WSmith]

Re: Re: Anyone else long for old days simplicity?

Agreed. I love the flexible design of the modern Fighter class, but I'd love to see specific "subclasses" laid out, exactly what skills and feats a knight, archer, pikeman, etc. would have at what level.

That way you could have the simplicity of old-school D&D with the flexibility of modern D&D. Also, you could move away from prestige classes and toward feat and skill lists for various archetypes.

OMG! I have felt this way from day one.
When I was working on a AQ 3e conversion, I felt many of the kits, except for the Sha'ir, could be reproduced by using a predetermined skill/feat progression.

I was hoping the Hero Builder's Guidebook would have taken care of this. Also I say saw a few articles published sparaticlly on Dragon on how to make an archtype character by multiclassing and selecting feats, (not sure which issues, I would have to look through my stack, )

Maybe Monte Carlo will show up again.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Originally posted or so the Germans would have us believe by Lord Vangarel

As an example, a random encounter with say a knight (11th level fighter) is not easy to do, especially if the party decides to fight the knight. Now if I was as prepared as I should be I'd have a stat block mapped out, but as I'm not I don't. I have to stop the game while I think of all the feats and skills just in case they affect the fight. It would also be nice to make the knight a bit more unique and give him a prestige class, now I have to make sure that all the feats and skills fit the rules. Let's say the encounter wasn't random but I never planned for the party to fight the knight, I've made a few notes about class and level just in case, but one of the party takes exception and fights him. Stop the game while I map him out or wing it. My point is in previous editions (without feats, and prestige classes) I keep most of the info in my head and guess at an average. Now it's not as easy.

You need a nice box of index cards. I make up NPCs by the bushel and write them out on 3X5 index cards and keep them in a box next to me. I always try to make up stuff that the PCs can reasonably be expected to encounter. These basically become ready-made random encounters - I can even add notes to particular ones if I want to use it as a reoccuring villian.

These take maybe 10-15 minutes to make including items (I use a 28-38 point buy for stats). Maybe longer if I add a setting as well.

I try to make about 3 a week and now have about 50 of them. I figure I have used maybe half. but the rest are still there waiting if I need them.

This is also a great way to become very fluent with the class progressions as far as feats, PrCs, skills etc goes. After about 10 I found I could do most of it with little reference to the PHB.

Now if you don't even want that amount of work how about that Enemies and Allies book? I haven't seen it in detail but it is just supposed to be a list of ready-made NPCs. Anyone have opinions on this one?

 

[kenjib]

Re: Re: Anyone else long for old days simplicity?

Agreed. I love the flexible design of the modern Fighter class, but I'd love to see specific "subclasses" laid out, exactly what skills and feats a knight, archer, pikeman, etc. would have at what level.

That way you could have the simplicity of old-school D&D with the flexibility of modern D&D. Also, you could move away from prestige classes and toward feat and skill lists for various archetypes.

Yes yes!

*lights a torch*

DOWN WITH PRESTIGE CLASSES!

*sets the place on fire*

The revolution has begun!

 

[Orcus]

I agree with the original post. I have my old boxed set sitting out on my shelf and I am half way tempted to just use that for a short campaign. Talk about simplicity. And so much more freedom to do things how you want.

Clark

 

[Wolfspider]

The old D&D is simple only because you've had twenty years to get used to its cryptic quirks and crazy mechanics. D&D3E is actually light years simpler.

Remember the words of the bard:

"The good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

 

[Zerovoid]

I'd really like something like Jamis Buck's generators that worked well, but the guys that it generates are just to nonsensical. One of those fighters had weapon focus( short spear) and improved critical( great axe). Thats just stupid. I usually use the pregenerated NPC's from the DMG, since I have that with me at the table, and their feats and skills are picked logically. I'd like something that was just a bigger version of that, with entries for archers, horse fighters, fighter/theifs, clerics devoted to various gods, etc...

 

[jfiz]

two ideas...CR based stuff and d20 light?

Ok first of all, I had given some thought to this previously, but I'd like your thoughts on the matter before I go to far with it on my own...

Has anyone considered developing a system where NPC details could be benchmarked against their CR, or an overall made up "threat rating" type of thing?

What I thought was that you might develop a flow chart type of thing, based on the NPC's primary class from the core classes. Based on this primary class and what challenge/threat rating you wanted, you could assign a general attack bonus, AC, #spells with levels, average HP's, etc. Then each entry in the flow chart would have a section for "role" or threat description, where brief feat lists and # of feats would be defined. Finally, you would have 2 skill #'s based on primary class and "challenge/threat rating" where the lower number represented the average skill level, and the higher represented the rating for the characters specialties which could also be then listed with the role.

I supposed that you might end up with entries that looked like this:

prim. class: Ranger
Roles: (1) forrest protector, (2) survivalist.
Purpose: short term ally while party travels through vesve forrest
Stats: total plusses = CR
feats: (= 1/2 CR + 2)
Role 1: ambi/twf/wp. focus/expertise/impr. crit/etc./etc.
Role 2: ambi/twf/tracking/pbs/imp. init/far shot/alertness/etc/etc
Skills: Avg=1/2 CR. Specialties = CR +2, #spec. skills = 1/3 CR.
Role 1: Hide, MS, riding, rope use, sense motive, etc, etc.
Role 2: wilderness lore, rope use, spot, listen, search, etc.

...you get the idea....then you would just need to work on fleshing out some broad-level roles for each primary class. You could even extend the idea of primary class to include specific multiclass combos etc. (A Brigand? even levels of figher and rogue say). Then during play you just refer to this, assign the CR (or your own threat rating really), pick the role and follow the prompts to see what the character has.

I realized early on that this is missing something...some way to make it easier to come up with all of the roles and classes you would need...and it's not perfect....but I also think this idea might find a nice where you don't want just average BAB + hp's no details NPC's, but you don't want to do a full character sheet either...sort of an inbetween option.

What do you think - anyone have any ideas to take off with and improve/complete my starting groundwork?

Thanks,