Does 3E/3.5 dictate a certain style of play?

[Aaron L]

We don't use minis and have never suffered for it. The wealth guidelines are something that was added as a helpful tool that 1E and 2E lacked and ignoring them is easy. Having a tool available that you can freely ignore is always preferable to not having a tool when you may need it.

 

[IceFractal]

3E no more forces its playstyle than putting a straw in a drink forces you to drink through the straw.

CRs, expected wealth, and so forth - those aren't unbreakable rules, they're guidelines that go together: if you use the guidelines for PCs, the CRs for monsters will be relatively accurate. Otherwise they won't be, but nothing stops you from eyeballing them and picking whatever challenges you feel will work.

 

[MerricB]

3E feels different. A great DM will probably still run a great game. However, they might feel constrained by the rules.

And some DMs will make the rules dance to their tune. Seriously, in 3e I've found that applying the rules is not constraining - it's liberating. Instead of having to run things entirely on the fly, my knowledge of the rules is good enough to have them enhancing the game rather than them slowing things down.

Cheers!

 

[Psion]

Where is all this stuff that is devoted to min maxing, minis, and tactics? I've got a lot of books and these areas just are not in them.

On the same page as far as min/maxing, but I found things like determining concealment by tracing lines across objects on the battlemat instead of DM determination of what things were like, introduced when they gutted the cover/concealment rules, to be something that is devoted to minis and I felt appropriate to house rule back to the old version in order to better facilitate miniless play.

 

[Mouseferatu]

3E no more forces its playstyle than putting a straw in a drink forces you to drink through the straw.

Ice, I don't do quotes in my sig, but if I did, this would have just made the top of the list. Excellent metaphor.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

On the same page as far as min/maxing, but I found things like determining concealment by tracing lines across objects on the battlemat instead of DM determination of what things were like, introduced when they gutted the cover/concealment rules, to be something that is devoted to minis and I felt appropriate to house rule back to the old version in order to better facilitate miniless play.

I draw lines on the battlemap the same way I always have: in my mind. None of this stuff is nearly as mandatory as people make it out to be.

 

[the Jester]

Although I need a week or two to do some prep work on it first, I'm about to run the 2nd arc of a low-magic campaign for our group. I've tweaked the 3e rules for it but it is definitely still dnd. It works great.

 

[Kurotowa]

Games have rules, rules set limits on what and how you do things, limits create a style of play. What seperates a roleplaying game from improv storytelling is that it does have rules and a style of play. This is was true for D&D 1st edition as it is now for D&D 3rd edition. The style has just shifted over time, with levels and magical items coming more quickly than they once did. What you call powergamers are just using a different style of play than the one you would prefer.

However there are degrees to this. Some games have very modular rules, where different elements can be subtracted or changed easily. Other games have very interconnected rules, where small changes ripple out and have a major impact. The early editions of D&D were more the former, while D20 is much more the latter. That's why people will often object when a GM makes a change in one place (amount of magical gear) without making a balancing change in another place (warrior dependance on gear vs caster dependance on gear).

My point, to state it clearly, is that every RPG has a style of play best suited to its rules. This is an inescapable fact. You can be willing to enjoy a game for what it offers, decide to find a different game better aimed at your tastes, or go under the hood and try to homebrew something exactly to your desires. The biggest trouble with the homebrew option is that it's so easy to do badly. So first you ought consider if you can enjoy D&D 3.5 for what it is instead of hating it for what it isn't. Then if you really want to go ahead you need to make an effort to understand why the rules are the way they are now, and what effect the changes you want will have, and how to effectively encourage the play style you want.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The last 3.5 campaign I ran, the party didn't get a magic item until almost 3rd level. It was a +2 Shortsword.

There were no balance problems.

I've been using minis since I started playing D&D back in 1977, so the emphasis on minis in 3.5 doesn't bug me. I've also played many other systems (more than 50), all with varying degrees of "mini-orientation" in their rules. My experience has been that things run more smoothly if the players can see the entire battlespace (or at least most of it), regardless of the details of the combat system. Sometimes, I satisfied that with just a sketch on a piece of graph paper and some dots, dashes, asterisks, etc.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Lots of interesting food for thought. I must admit that I'd feel more comfortable dramatically raising the levels needed to acquire the feats to craft magic items-given that you need to be 18th level to craft a permanent magic item, and 12th level or thereabouts to craft a magic wand, that dramatically reduces the number of magic items available in the campaign-and this applies just as much to villains as it does to heroes, which means that as DM I'd have to think up ways around these limits, which is only fair, after all!

And, as I mentioned, I'd in all likelihood dramatically trim the number of hit dice for certain monsters-giants being the most obvious, but but prominent NPCs would also see their arsenals and power levels reduced appropriately. I've often found that I'd feel comfortable cutting levels by as much as one-half to two thirds, especially when I cannot think of any real rationale or background for these powerful characters.

Funny thing, actually; my ideal game would be a hybrid of all three editions, with the 1E system of combat (one-minute round and segments that allow for more DM adjudication), character abilities and monster stats, fused with the 2E rules for specialist wizards, and the 3E skills and some of the feats, without prestige classes. Granted, it might be a hopeless mishmash, but at least I tried, right? (BTW, I even came up with ideas on how to fuse the THACO system with multiclassing and giving monsters classes, although one could as easily say that a monster simply has a higher THACO, the way the original G3 module had Snurre fighting like a cloud or storm giant, depending on whether he had his sword or not.)

I'm glad to see the positive responses to my concerns. I must admit that I'm speaking more from the POV of a storyteller or novel writer as opposed to a DM, since I have no one to game with. Indeed, one of my own personal pipe dreams/hopeless delusions is to write role-playing novels that have deep characterizations on the level of Tolstoy's War and Peace or Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, or what have you. It's still swords and sorcery with D&D motifs, only the characterization and history are on the level of Shakespeare or Homer. Rangers struggling with alcoholism, gnomes who have war flashbacks, halflings who sow political mayhem and exploit the weaknesses of men with their hats of disguise, that sort of thing.

And yes, I know I'm nuts.