D&D needs improvement

[Numion]

Numion, the comparison is only relevant on this thread because of the claim that the typical Roman soldier wore armour equivilent to D&D banded mail. Compared to everything else that the OP said, this is pretty silly minutia to have even been brought up. Even if the Roman Legions wore full plate, it wouldn't affect the claim that shields are not nearly as useful in D&D worlds as they are in the real world (which is, IMHO, an accurate claim).

I'm not sure how useful shields are in real world (riot police's use of shields is pretty different from medieval melee), but I guess they are more useful than in D&D.

How useful they should be in D&D is a different matter. For some reason they made swords more useful than in real world, because it fits the settings with knights and such. Maybe shields are less useful than they ought to, because they wanted to have more two-weapon and two-handed fighters than some wussy shieldmen

Focusing on the armour that the Romans wore, rather than the actual point being made, seems like a simple and rather silly attempt to deflect the point that actually impacts the rules (i.e., relative value of shields).

If you think that, you were surprisingly willing to waste bandwidth on minutiae of relative armouring of roman legionnairies

C'mon, you brought up Homer Simpsons relative level of armour ..

 

[Raven Crowking]

If you think that, you were surprisingly willing to waste bandwidth on minutiae of relative armouring of roman legionnairies

C'mon, you brought up Homer Simpsons relative level of armour ..

Please. That I am, unfortunately, sometimes willing to follow someone into the Realm of Silly Minutia is all too apparent. While it might be a waste of time, it at least shows the Realm of Silly Minutia for what it is, and, hopefully, has some ameliorating effect on those whose arguments stem therefrom.

RC

 

[shilsen]

Please. That I am, unfortunately, sometimes willing to follow someone into the Realm of Silly Minutia is all too apparent. While it might be a waste of time, it at least shows the Realm of Silly Minutia for what it is, and, hopefully, has some ameliorating effect on those whose arguments stem therefrom.

Oh, please! Next you'll be telling us that you don't really care whether Shadowfax was a pokemount and then what will we do with our poor fractured worldviews ?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Oh, please! Next you'll be telling us that you don't really care whether Shadowfax was a pokemount and then what will we do with our poor fractured worldviews ?

Well, clearly a slim majority believes that Shadowfax can be represented in D&D as a pokemount (though presumably by removing the flavour aspects that make the term pokemout apply, though not necessarily all of the rules aspects that do the same), and may even believe that Shadowfax = Pokemount (though I shudder at the thought).

I am far more ammenable to the idea that, within a D&D campaign, a pokemount might be described as Shadowfax than that, as Storm Raven had suggested, Shadowfax within the LotR might be described as a pokemount.

But, truly, do we really want to start that up again? Losing the related threads was probably the only good outcome of the Great Purge of '06.

 

[Raven Crowking]

OTOH, do I care if you think the Romans wore banded mail? No. Do I care that this is used as an argument for why shields in D&D are equivilent to shields in the real world? Yes.

BTW, Numion, if the designers really wanted lots of two-weapon fighters, they could have lowered the penalties for fighting with two hands and granted a +1 AC bonus for the weapon in your off hand if you don't attack with it in a given round. Granting these bonuses without requiring feats to get them would dramatically increase the number of two-weapon fighters, even if shields were treated better.

 

[Agent Oracle]

As far as 2E armour being more realistic than 3E; why would it not be? The designers of 2E tried very hard to portray weapons and armour realistically. They may not have succeeded, but they did make an effort. They went to great lengths to describe what each type of armour was like, in the Arrms & Equipment Guide, provided pictures of various types of weapons, and avoided including fantastic weapons that would be injurious or lethal to their user. In contrast, 3.X uses a more "anything goes" approach, even if that "anything" demonstrably makes no sense. Admittedly, the renditions of armour don't suffer the same problems that the gnomish pick do, but neither are they overly concerned with painstaking historical detail. Which is why they dropped several armour types, piecemeal armour, and involved descriptions of how that armour was put together. In fact, I have heard that described as a strength of the 3E system.

RC

Painstaking... historic... detail?

(Walks over to shelf, gets down AD&D PHB)

"Ringmail: This armor is an early, (and less effective) form of chain mail... (Historians still debate wether this armor ever even existed)"

Avoiding fantastic weapons that will injure the user?

"Arquebus: 500 GP." "If the attack roll is 1 or 2, then the arquebus backfires and the holder takes 1d6 points damage."

(flips back and forth through the pages) you know, you'd think the PHB could at least have pictures of what different kinds of armors look like. The only thing I see is a chart of different polearms. Huh, I never even realized that was all they had... but, that said, there is some great splash art here of a wizard casting wall of force, and an elf in chainmail using a torch when being swarmed by kobolds... very "not in the face"-tastic.

I do miss being able to buy individual pieces of clothing instead of whole outfits... but the prices for some of the objects are outrageous... 4,000-10,000 gp for a suit of fullplate. oh, let's not forget helmets!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Ah, Agent Oracle, but please note that they brought up the question as to the historical nature of ring mail. They assumed that it was important, or of interest, to those playing the game. The quote you used demonstrates only that the designers of 2nd Ed were worried about historical accuracy, not that they were not.

Note also that the arquebus is not a fantastic weapon (although one might argue it is a poorly statted-out weapon) and the dangers are made apparent. "Fantastic" things in this sense does not mean "really great" but "did not really exist".

If you tried, in real life, to use a gnomish pick, you'd need to worry about piercing your forearm (at the very least). Likewise, an axe with double blades on both ends is as likely to be a danger to you as to your foes. Yet, it is assumed that the D&D player will simply not notice these things, and no mention is made of them in the rules.

Open your 2nd Ed Arms & Equipment Guide (which is, please note, where I said those details were found), if you have one, and you'll get as much or more detail on that armour and those weapons as you could possibly need. This is not all in the PHB for the simple reason that this level of detail is not required in the Core Rules. I do agree with you, though, that better depiction of armour would be useful in the Core Rules of every edition!

However, again, the comparison is only relevant on this thread because of the claim that the typical Roman soldier wore armour equivilent to D&D banded mail. I don't believe that anyone here has yet tried to claim that 3.X, in any official rules sense, has described either banded armour or Roman armour with anything approaching the detail of 2nd Ed's A&EG and Glories of Rome historical suppliment.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Losing the related threads was probably the only good outcome of the Great Purge of '06.

Weeeell, I was going to agree with you there for a second (honest! ), but no. There's the - oh so regrettable - loss of the SoW threads as well. *sigh* Whatever shall we do.

Oh that's right, we'll resurrect the ******* things. :\

 

[Raven Crowking]

If people insist, yes.

 

[shilsen]

Well, clearly a slim majority believes that Shadowfax can be represented in D&D as a pokemount (though presumably by removing the flavour aspects that make the term pokemout apply, though not necessarily all of the rules aspects that do the same), and may even believe that Shadowfax = Pokemount (though I shudder at the thought).

I am far more ammenable to the idea that, within a D&D campaign, a pokemount might be described as Shadowfax than that, as Storm Raven had suggested, Shadowfax within the LotR might be described as a pokemount.

But, truly, do we really want to start that up again? Losing the related threads was probably the only good outcome of the Great Purge of '06.

Nah! Just jerking your chain

If people insist

Oh gods, no!