Converting to 3.5 woes...

[rushlight]

Where do you get damage dealer? He said he didn't have damage spells, but scouting /information spells. These have pretty much been nerfed to 1min/level spells. Ooh fly, get to edge of town crash. Cast invisiblity get to next room peekaboo I can see you. Yeah, that real damaging, TO THE PLAYER!

Who said I was talking about his particular character? I was making general statements based on comments by the majority of people who are vocal against 3.5.

 

[rangerjohn]

Well my point is unless you play the kind of character you don't people to now, your #$#@$$$#. If you don't play an optimized damage dealer whether that is a fighter or spell caster your useless. You won't get through DR as a fighter and any non-combat use of spells is right out the window with those durations.

 

[Argus Decimus Mokira]

Hey

This is very telling. We used S&P at one point, just before 3e. It was a mangled mess, and I was glad to get rid of it. It wasn't my idea, but the majority of the players wanted it. So, the poor DM had to make do. S&P = powergamer paradise. Full reign to tweak and poke and fiddle for the most available damage (or spellpower) possible. Man, I'm glad that day is done. If something like this ever reared it's ugly head again, I'd just have to find a new game to play.

Ah yes, S&P ... whatever were they thinking? My friends and I would spend hours (well, maybe more like minutes) coming up with elven archers of no particular subrace that could thread needles with their arrows from miles away, clerics with no spell casting capabilities that could destroy any fighter build in seconds, and crusaders that define the word "broken".

We stopped playing until 3ed came out.

Thanks
-Matt

 

[rushlight]

Well my point is unless you play the kind of character you don't people to now, your #$#@$$$#. If you don't play an optimized damage dealer whether that is a fighter or spell caster your useless. You won't get through DR as a fighter and any non-combat use of spells is right out the window with those durations.

Untrue. If you've got a DM who doesn't take his player's abilities into account then you've got a bad DM. That's another very important part of the balance. If your players don't have any +3 weapons yet, then 5 Iron Golems will probably be a bad idea for a "challenge". The players should be roughly the same, and the DM should provide encounters equivilent to the player's power. That's what balance IS. Everyone has a part to play.

Don't blame the system for the shortcomings of a player, or the DM.

 

[rangerjohn]

My point is the only thing the rules support now is power. With all these 1 min/level spells spell casters are being channelled into damage spells, preffably from a distance. In other words evokers, because everything else will wear off before it can be used, whether its hold person, or bulls strength of fly, or invisibilty. I guess Andy didn't like any spell but fireball.

 

[ShadowX]

3.5e is not going to stop powergamers. At most they will have to tweak their characters. In fact somethings in 3.5e aid powergamers, dwarf bonuses, new power attack and new PrCs to name a few. And I agree that the nerfing of utility spells just forces mages into the blaster role. As for DR, whats the point of the mechanic if you never face monsters with a DR you can not overcome?

 

[Philip]

My point is the only thing the rules support now is power.

IMO the opposite is the case. With some durations shortened some really easy options fall away. No longer is there a ready spell to solve every problem of movement or concealment.

Now you must choose between using the fly spell to cross the chasm, or using it against your opponent next encounter.

Now you must choose between bypassing the guards at the gate with your invisibility, or easily sneaking inside of the castle toward's the king's bedroom to overhear that essential conversation.

The old spells, especially when coupled with extend, provided automatic solution to such problems. Less power, yes, more challenge yes!

 

[Petrosian]

Hello.

My name is stve and i am a GM.

I wont be using 3.5e in my game.

Why?

My game has run for 11 levels now, from 2nd to 13th, and you know by now all those niggling 3.0 issues like haste too good and hour long buffs and such have either been addressed or handled. Its not wrong for a sor with extend to be able to buff for 24 hours, its just one of the things being 12th level means.

I considered moving to 3.5 but the downside of that is too much of what has gone before" and the decisions in character design suddenly overnight become wrong choices and tactics learned become errors that need to be rethought.

All in all, the impact on 3.0 characters at mid levels is severe even if i could get them all to forget all the events that went before and start trying to figure out tactics for a radically different game, their spell choices and magic items choices are now in many cases bad choices.

The transition would not be a smooth one. I think WOTC may have started with the notion of it being a smooth transition but lost that along the way.

Also, after hearing from people who apparently have books in hand, i now realize that in addition to some few big changes, there are a lot, a whooe lot, of little changes. bobbi shouldn't need to relearn her barbarian and sandy should not need to redo his sorcerer when our game has been running without breaking and with everyone enjoying it for 11 levels.

When i run my next fantasy game, i will reconsider 3.5, but frankly, both midnight and arcana unearthed sound more interesting for fantasy worlds.

So, my advice to a player who has a Gm insisting on change would be to take him aside and discuss it from the point of view of treating it like a software upgrade. has the current game been unfun or broken in play or have people been having fun? if the answer is it has been playing fine then the need for a radical transition to the new version seems to be lacking. Upgrading for the sake of upgrading in midrun is usually bad.

if he has his heart set on it, then your options are adapt or quit and run your own game.

 

[Carnifex]

Oh dear. If people think that the only spells outside of blast spells worth having were the 1d4+1 buffs and haste, they really aren't being very imaginative. Knocking the buffs down to 1 min/level is perhaps a bit much (I reckon 10/level is a better amount, along the same lines of reasoning as Monte Cook put up about 1 min/level being a generally unuseful duration) but there is so much more to casters anyway. Haste was broken and has been fixed. The buff spells were being over-relied on, and have been fixed. I understand the reasoning behind the Hold spells, which under the old rules were as fatal as a save-or-die spell because you'd just get coup-de-graced by someone while held. And somehow, fixing all these things makes an arcane caster useless? Give me a break.

 

[rushlight]

My point is the only thing the rules support now is power. With all these 1 min/level spells spell casters are being channelled into damage spells, preffably from a distance. In other words evokers, because everything else will wear off before it can be used, whether its hold person, or bulls strength of fly, or invisibilty. I guess Andy didn't like any spell but fireball.

Actually, I originally wrote something to point out the error in your judgement, and the reasons for which you totally miss the point. I have since realized that you look at a rainbow and only see black and white. If you cannot see the game beyond damage dealt vs damage taken, then nothing I can say here will change you.

I'm truly sorry that you will miss the great possibilities and adventures you could have without ever engaging in combat. Perhaps in a few years you'll understand that RPGs are substantially deeper than a simple "shoot-um-up".

While it is true that combat is an integral part of what makes D&D, it isn't - by far - the soul of the game. While it is perfectly valid to base a game, or an entire campaign, on simple fights, there are things beyond that for others to appreciate. I would never tell you that your method of enjoying the game is "wrong" (since it's not), I would suggest that you broaden your horizions.