D&D has a lot of rules!

[Olaf the Stout]

I know I'm stating the obvious here and it wasn't exactly something I didn't already know, but D&D sure does have a lot of rules!

I had a situation last session where this really became apparent to me. I was running a combat in my 3.5E Shackled City campaign with the the PC's fighting a Fiendish Umber Hulk. I had the following books open.

The SCAP Hardcover open to 2 sections, one page to get the Umber Hulk's stats, and another to see it's tactics.
The MM open in 2 sections, one page to the Umber Hulk page to get the full description of it's Confusion ability, the other page to the fiendish description to make sure that the template didn't affect the Confusion save DC.
The PHB open to the Confusion spell description.
The DMG open to the page with rules about dealing with crowds.
The Rules Compendium open to the rules about dealing with gaze attacks.

So that was 5 books open to a total of 7 pages, just for a single encounter versus a single monster! And none of the books were splatbooks either. Sure, I had the Rules Compendium open, but if I didn't I would have just had the DMG open to another section to look up the gaze attacks rules.

I think I also had to have a quick double check of a another page in the Rules Compendium to see what sort of action using the Confusion ability what the rules around that were. That was me double checking something I already knew, just to make sure though.

Anyone else have a similar or worse experience?

I know it's not something exactly unique. I just found it amusing as I don't think I've ever had so many books open to so many different pages before. Most of the times it is just the SCAP hardcover I have open with the MM to look up a monster or the PHB to look up a spell. This was just a bit of an extreme case.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Treebore]

I don't know if it ever got that bad, but it was reasons similar to that why I moved to a different RPG. Too much time needed to "make sure" the rules were be followed. I can remember having 4 books open for one encounter, but I don't remember if it was one type of monster. It was likely though.

 

[FireLance]

Anyone else have a similar or worse experience?

When I was playing 3e, I cut down on in-game referencing by doing out-of-game preparation. If I had a fiendish umber hulk in the adventure, I'd have done up the stat block for that fiendish umber hulk with all the necessary combat information on one sheet of paper (which also doubled as an initiative card), and the supplementary rules and information for running each encounter (if any), cut and pasted from the SRD or retyped from a non-SRD sourcebook, on another sheet of paper. That way, I wouldn't have to refer to more than two sources for any one encounter.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I do exactly the same thing firelance does.

Ken

 

[armorclass10]

I find Adobe Acrobat Professional and pdfs help me immensely. Pricey but since I use AA8 for work I can justify it. But pregame organization is more than half the battle.

I am hoping 4E is better, seems more streamlined...I guess I find out tomorrow night, DMing my first session with 7 PCs.

In my opinion, 3.5 was a bit crazy at times, especially as a DM so I agree with you about there being too much.

 

[S'mon]

When I was playing 3e, I cut down on in-game referencing by doing out-of-game preparation.

Since returning to 3e last summer after a couple years away (running C&C, then online Mutant Future and Labyrinth Lord), my solution has been to ignore most of the rules. 3e works much better that way.

 

[S'mon]

I don't know if it ever got that bad, but it was reasons similar to that why I moved to a different RPG. Too much time needed to "make sure" the rules were be followed. I can remember having 4 books open for one encounter, but I don't remember if it was one type of monster. It was likely though.

Recently, my players have been using the 3.5e D&D PHB, while I use Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure. I strongly recommend this approach Treebore.

Generally speaking, the threat level is a bit lower - CR 8 3e monsters become around CR 4-5 when using C&C stats. This means I can run the C&C module Palace of Shadows with bulettes, gorgons, hags et al for 3rd-4th level 3e PCs, which I like a lot.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

When I was playing 3e, I cut down on in-game referencing by doing out-of-game preparation. If I had a fiendish umber hulk in the adventure, I'd have done up the stat block for that fiendish umber hulk with all the necessary combat information on one sheet of paper (which also doubled as an initiative card), and the supplementary rules and information for running each encounter (if any), cut and pasted from the SRD or retyped from a non-SRD sourcebook, on another sheet of paper. That way, I wouldn't have to refer to more than two sources for any one encounter.

If I had the prep time to do that I would. However there isn't a lot of free time available for me. The limited prep time I have is spent re-reading the upcoming adventure, writing up a campaign newspaper to fill the players in on what events have been happening around town, figuring out where plot lines are going to go and how NPC's might react to the actions of the PC's and going through my D&D minis collection to find the minis I need for upcoming encounters.

I used to use The Game Mechanic's initiative cards (a prewritten card if I was using a straight out of the MM creature, otherwise filling out a blank one by hand) during my sessions. However I now use the Gamemastery Combat Pad to track initiative so I don't have as much need for the initiative cards any more (or the time to fill them out). They would still be handy to use if I had the time to organise them though.

That's one of the downsides I've found with 3.5E, a lot of prep time is needed for each session. You can go without it, but the game runs a lot smoother if you have prepared beforehand. The game often slows to a crawl if I am NPC'ing a spellcaster and I haven't read through his spells beforehand. Just deciding what spell he will cast can take a while sometimes!

Olaf the Stout

 

[Spatula]

That's one of the downsides I've found with 3.5E, a lot of prep time is needed for each session. You can go without it, but the game runs a lot smoother if you have prepared beforehand.

That is why I will never DM 3e again. And why I'm very much looking forward to DMing 4e, even if I don't like some parts of it.

 

[Rechan]

The SCAP Hardcover open to 2 sections, one page to get the Umber Hulk's stats ...
The MM open in 2 sections, one page to the Umber Hulk page to get the full description of it's Confusion ability ...
the other page to the fiendish description to make sure that the template didn't affect the Confusion save DC.

Why the hell were the second two not in the first?

The fiendish template and the full text of the confusion power should have all been factored into the stats. If the Fiendish template effected the DCs, then it should just be there in the SCAP book what the DCs were!

If not, that's just shoddy work right there.