Be honest, how long would it really take you to notice all of this stuff...?

[n00bdragon]

The broken parts of 3e are not the myriad of +1s. Sure, you can optimize that way and make some nice characters, but in the end the truly broken stuff is the abilities that are "just so". They declare that things happen without the addition of dice or impose the rolling of basic skill checks on people and creatures that don't have points in them, basically stuff that avoids at all costs actually dealing with the mechanics of combat.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Yep, if you have that uniform a bunch of people, that's great. But that's a rather specific case that I, at least, have never worked with in practice.

I am running a 4e game with uniformly optimized characters. We agreed to make strong* characters that weighted offense before defense and pure damage before control.

This has made combat fast, and easy to run for me as a DM. The only thing slowing it down is the darned 4e monsters that have too many fiddely bits. Even so, we managed 6 encounters in one session without problems. If it had been a dungeon crawl, we could easily have done 10. (About 6-7 hours effective play time).

In 3e I preferred DM-ing level 3-7 and the only time we got over level 11, the game ended in a TPK. I really dislike save-or-die spells, or the over-the-top control spells like Confusion. If you only play level 3-7, you usually avoid the super-optimized characters as well, since they often only starts to shine at level 10+.

*but no builds that rely heavily on magic items or weird-ass options from dungeon magazine.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I noticed that 3.5 was broken when the seven strong party with two clerics and two wizards needed 30+ minutes to sort out the daily buff spells at level 12+.

In combat you would usually have 2-3 additional "temporary" buff spells running as well. This meant you basically had to re-calculate your whole character all the time. My character self-buffed as well, so I probably had something like 7-8 buff spells running at a time. Not a problem for me, but of the other players, only one could have run the character without slowing down the game. The rest would just have spent ages trying to find what they had in to-hit.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I noticed that 3.5 was broken when the seven strong party with two clerics and two wizards needed 30+ minutes to sort out the daily buff spells at level 12+.

In combat you would usually have 2-3 additional "temporary" buff spells running as well. This meant you basically had to re-calculate your whole character all the time. My character self-buffed as well, so I probably had something like 7-8 buff spells running at a time. Not a problem for me, but of the other players, only one could have run the character without slowing down the game. The rest would just have spent ages trying to find what they had in to-hit.

Well, that's simply unprofessional!

It doesn't matter what game- for some people, every option must be reconsidered at each decision point. We have one or two guys like that in our group...and oddly, they rarely play primary casters. Perhaps it is because they know they're slow with the "simpler" classes that they don't go that route. IDK.

The guys who gravitate to the casters generally know what they want to do before it is time to act.

 

[Lanefan]

Well, that's simply unprofessional!

It doesn't matter what game- for some people, every option must be reconsidered at each decision point. We have one or two guys like that in our group...and oddly, they rarely play primary casters. Perhaps it is because they know they're slow with the "simpler" classes that they don't go that route. IDK.

The guys who gravitate to the casters generally know what they want to do before it is time to act.

Not in my experience.

What I usually see is one of two things:

1. Every option gets reviewed every time - and this is in a game that doesn't have nearly as many as 3e - and analysed halfway to death, or
2. No options get looked at whatsoever; it's damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead, fireballs on full.

Which is to say, I'd prefer a game in which you outthink the enemy in play, not in character build. Far more satisfying, to me.

Me too. Character building and optimizing just aren't fun for me, when compared to actually playing the game.

Lanefan

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I noticed that 3.5 was broken when the seven strong party with two clerics and two wizards needed 30+ minutes to sort out the daily buff spells at level 12+.

In combat you would usually have 2-3 additional "temporary" buff spells running as well. This meant you basically had to re-calculate your whole character all the time. My character self-buffed as well, so I probably had something like 7-8 buff spells running at a time. Not a problem for me, but of the other players, only one could have run the character without slowing down the game. The rest would just have spent ages trying to find what they had in to-hit.

One of my favourite groups of players had a similar problem but, being really numerate and computer-literate air traffic controllers, they simply built spreadsheets that allowed them to toggle the changes on and off. And, yes, that meant we ended up with a couple of extra laptops at the table but it wasn't a distraction: we were all there to play.

 

[Blackbrrd]

One of my favourite groups of players had a similar problem but, being really numerate and computer-literate air traffic controllers, they simply built spreadsheets that allowed them to toggle the changes on and off. And, yes, that meant we ended up with a couple of extra laptops at the table but it wasn't a distraction: we were all there to play.

Sounds familiar. I have played in a group with all engineers too. Not really a problem. Technical difficulties is there to be overcome. At the same time, this more or less illustrates the problems with 3e, and how 5e hopefully has managed to fix the problem so the game works well at a table with the rest of my friends, not just the engineers.

 

[Ratskinner]

In combat you would usually have 2-3 additional "temporary" buff spells running as well. This meant you basically had to re-calculate your whole character all the time. My character self-buffed as well, so I probably had something like 7-8 buff spells running at a time. Not a problem for me, but of the other players, only one could have run the character without slowing down the game. The rest would just have spent ages trying to find what they had in to-hit.

IMO, that's the fault of the design for 3e's buff spells (and 3e's general penchant for adjusting all you stats on the fly). If they had worked more like DW "hold" mechanic, I think it might have been easier. So you might have seen:

Bull's Strength: You or the target of this spell may hold 2d6. The recipient may spend a point of this hold to: give +3 to a strength or strength-based skill check, increase the strength modifier of melee attack by 2, or add 2d4 Str damage to a melee attack. An unspent hold vanishes after 10 minutes.

I dunno if that kind of design was kicking around back then, but I think it could have fixed a great deal of 3e's buff issues. (Consider applying it to Wildshape, for instance).

Edit: buff issues, not balance issues...although some of those might be helped as well.

 

[Blackbrrd]

IMO, that's the fault of the design for 3e's buff spells (and 3e's general penchant for adjusting all you stats on the fly). If they had worked more like DW "hold" mechanic, I think it might have been easier. So you might have seen:

Bull's Strength: You or the target of this spell may hold 2d6. The recipient may spend a point of this hold to: give +3 to a strength or strength-based skill check, increase the strength modifier of melee attack by 2, or add 2d4 Str damage to a melee attack. An unspent hold vanishes after 10 minutes.

I dunno if that kind of design was kicking around back then, but I think it could have fixed a great deal of 3e's balance issues. (Consider applying it to Wildshape, for instance).

That's quite similar to how they did it with 4e. It worked pretty well. I do like 5e's concentration for spells with duration though. I really hope you end up with encounters where it's really important to gank the buffing spellcaster to get rid of the concentration-buff-spells. It gives me the right vibes at least.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Me too. Character building and optimizing just aren't fun for me, when compared to actually playing the game.

Lanefan

They're almost never set against each other, though. You don't say "I'm not playing D&D this week, I'm building and optimizing my PC!". You build & optimize the PC before the game starts and/or between sessions.

People who enjoy both building and optimizing AND playing thus potentially have more fun. Of course I'm also semi-blonde so obviously I have more fun.

Personally I enjoy optimizing PCs up to a point, and I actively dis-enjoy playing PCs who are obviously (to me) bad at their proposed job. The point I enjoy optimizing to is "Is this PC actively good at their job and potentially fun to actually play in ?", though, not the "Would the CharOp boards approve of this guy?".

Of course, in some games, optimization isn't really a thing, and in those cases I just build the PC purely to concept (but my concept will never be some sort of all-round incompetent!).