Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Campbell" data-source="post: 6320912" data-attributes="member: 16586">I think a lot of it has to do with emergent properties of play. When most of the play testing was done for 3e most players were still immersed in optimal behaviors for playing previous editions. If clerics mostly heal and buff other characters, wizards focus on artillery, and etc. most of the issues with 3e are not readily apparent. Scenario design also plays a big part. There's quite a lot that DMs can do under the surface to make play function more smoothly. Also in many cases systematic redesign is necessary to fix issues which have knock on effects that need to be accounted for. In general we're pretty good at coming up with good enough solutions if no one is pushing too hard at the game.I don't consider 3e and Pathfinder bad games. I do think they are particularly fragile games, especially without some of the later 3e patches to Wildshape, Polymorph, etc.It might also be interesting to look at a game like World of Warcraft. In raiding environments melee damage dealers have been sub-par for a long time as ranged character classes have improved in mobility. Guilds just changed their comps if they wanted to be more competitive, muscled through it regardless, etc. Now that there is a focused effort to decrease caster mobility there is much gnashing of teeth because it means updating rosters, having people switch to alts, etc. People have a wonderful capacity to adjust to the environment they find themselves in. I know when I actively played 3e one of my solutions was just to stop playing fighters and move towards more martially oriented clerics, psychic warriors, warblades, etc.</blockquote>

Verification