Core concept or rule that just bugs you beyond your ability to put up with it?

[reanjr]

No weak items of course 'breaks the game' because in 3e it imbalances the classes above about 4th level - Clerics can still buff up, Wizards and Sorcs can still slaughter mooks with fireballs, Fighters become hopeless. When we played Midnight, the Channeler totally dominated play until the GM nerfed the spell system.

That's my biggest pet peeve about the game. Why do you have to play by the RAW? Why don't they make a system whose rules don't all depend upon the entire framework of the system to avoid having everything crash on your head? The classes should be balanced with one another. Period. They shouldn't be balanced if the party comes up to five encounters a day. Or if magic items are being distributed properly. Or if most of your adventure is dungeon crawl. Or if don't primarily fight humanoids. That's the part that irks me. The rules are written left and right to dicate what campaign I am playing in. They force my hand to either play Forgotten Realms or to house rule everything. Well, Forgotten Realms was one of the very few campaigns I never bought in 2e, so that pisses me off.

2e accepted rule changes well because the rules didn't make assumptions about your campaign. 3e is like a paper-thin rock wall. It looks strong until you lean against it. Then the entire mess comes down in a cloud of smoke.

 

[reanjr]

Elements of Magic [Revised] solved my magic problems, the BoHM makes alignment more pleasant for me, and DanMcS' weapons proficiency system fixes all my proficiency difficulties. Heavy house rules and the mass of quality products out now can fix most anything.

When you add in the core rules, how much does that come to in USD?

 

[reanjr]

D) Total Battlefield Awareness. Currently, the game assumes you can see everything within your range of vision in 360 degrees all the time. This is in part due to having no facing in 3.5, but in terms of what you can look at during combat, I think there should still a front/side/back limitation.

At that point, why wouldn't you just add facing back in? You already have to keep track of it...

E) Proliferation of extra attacks at higher levels. This isn't unique to 3.5. The extra die rolls begin to slow the game down more and more at higher levels. Instead, bump the damage and just have 1 attack roll. With the right rules, the net effect can be similar.

This is actually really easy to fix (without increasing damage dealt, which can cause a slew of other problems) if you accept one minor observation: against a high-AC opponent, your iterative attacks are pointless and against a low-AC opponent, your initial high attack bonus is unnecessary. Just don't give iterative attacks. Anytime a player can choose to make multiple attacks by taking a -5 penalty to all attacks for each additional attack made.

 

[mmadsen]

The classes should be balanced with one another. Period. They shouldn't be balanced if the party comes up to five encounters a day. Or if magic items are being distributed properly. Or if most of your adventure is dungeon crawl. Or if don't primarily fight humanoids. That's the part that irks me. The rules are written left and right to dicate what campaign I am playing in.

The classes cannot be "balanced period" if they differ at all. Think about it.

 

[Saeviomagy]

No magical properties other than the ability to transfer mystical energy into your mind and body sufficient to allow you to hurl elemental power and wield magical energies.

Does a spellbook radiate magic? Does it get suppressed in an anti-magic field? Can it be dispelled or disjoined?

So what sort of strange magic IS it exactly??

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't really understand what you mean by this. If the GM is in charge of handing out the treasure and doesn't give out much if any low power magic items then how does this break the game? True, the PC's will have lower attack bonuses and AC's but so what? That just means that low level creatures will continue to be a threat for longer, level progression will go a bit slower (which seems to be a complaint for many with 3E so that's two birds with one stone) and creatures of the party's EL will be bigger challenges rather than something they walk all over.

I find it interesting that you mentioned attack bonuses and AC simultaneously. Without magic items character BAB and attack rolls go up, but their AC does not.

Magic items disproportionately boost some stats, and have little effect on some other stats. You're not going to get uniformly weaker PCs by cutting out the magic items.

A) Prestige Classes. Replace with properly written/restricted feat choices instead.

I can't believe I didn't mention this one earlier. I concur wholeheartedly!

So if you are using heroic stats, it is like having permanat low level magic items.

I wasn't using anything above 30 point buy, and rolled stats introduce their own imbalances.

 

[reanjr]

Because there is no good way to assign numbers to this system. You think it is faster to attack with a dagger than with a greatsword, and thus a dagger wielder should get more attacks. My experience is the exact opposite. A properly used greatsword can strike many times before a dagger weilder can even get close enough to strike. (Try it, get out a longsword or greatsword sized piece of wood and a dagger sized peice of wood, you and a buddy carefully simulate combat and see who gets in more hits). But a dagger is handier in some other ways, so who goes first and faster? It is a question that cannot be resolved in any sensible way, so the initiative system (correctly, in my view) ignores it as part of the abstraction of the system.

In my system, they are different, but neither lets you attack before the other (they attack at the same time), they simply have greater or lesser recovery time (which is absolutely correct, no matter how you slice it). The difference isn't great though (at least not compared to 2e). The quickest of weapons, for instance, are a 5, while the slowest are about a 12 (and that's only for swung polearms).

I'd also like to say that while you can't get an "in" with a knife measurably more often than with a greatsword, you can often make several quick slashes when you do. I've seen knife fighting books describing in detail how a trained individual can make a half dozen non-superficial cuts with a knife in under 2 seconds. You just can't do that with a sword.

So the number of attacks with a knife should definitely be higher on average than a longsword. Making the attacks not happen all at once is the correct abstraction. Making the knife just as unwieldly as a greatsword is not.

 

[reanjr]

So are you suggesting that magic should be kept out of the hands of the PC's?

I believe the creation of magic items should never be codified in any way that implies that a PC can create a magic item that the DM did not explicitly approve of.

 

[reanjr]

Well I suppose that I agree that it's the only real way of keeping magic unknown and unknowable. It just doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I've never quite understood this stance. What is it about shopping list magic items makes it fun? Is it just the number-crunching aspect? (trying to get the most synergy out of disparate magical buffs)

 

[reanjr]

Closing/fending and retreating/pressing rules. Great system that incorporated this for AD&D1, and which i adapted to AD&D2--it accomplished everything AoOs do, and then some, and with less complexity and less intrusiveness.

I never played 1e. Do you mean (in effect, if not in implementation) allowing something like an immediate action to follow an opponent when they move?

If so, I agree. It would add a huge amount of realism with no real slow-down to the game. I think it would also engender team-work. Archers and casters would need their melee allies to protect them as they wouldn't be able to just move-cast or move-attack as easily.