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

[Mark CMG]

You can play a fighter with a 9 strength and 18 intelligence if you want... but it won't be a good fighter. So, people don't do that unless the DM is running a game that is nearly only roleplaying - and is pretty far from what D&D is about.

Naw. Like many, you fall into the trap of thinking the game is mainly about the portion they focus on in the rules because it can be more easily quantified.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Only because we really are better than everyone else. Honest!

A testimonial on the superior qualities of Mac.

 

[Jim Hague]

After reading comments like this in the 1,000 post-plus [Edition WARZ] thread, I think I've hit the crux of my annoyance-the trends that lead to min-maxing of multiclassing, feats and prestige classes, characters with bizarre combinations of templates and abilities with no rhyme or reason, and magic items being increasingly common among players. That's what drives me crazy-characters seem to be developed for their maximum effectiveness as killing machines, and magic items are less strange and wonderful objects than high-powered additions to the PC arsenal that can be used to blow the heads off the next monster that comes along.

And I say that's a player and GM issue, not a system issue. I've had Core-only games where players deliberately take sub-optimal choices - like Profession: Moneylender for a contemplative half-orc Monk, or Knowledge: Royalty for a noble but non-Palaidn knight, or Feats that don't give them maximum oomph, or items they found and kept because they were 'neat' but useless in combat - and been perfectly happy, even happier, with characters that weren't min-maxing, twinked-out killing machines.

It ain't the system, man. They system provides maybe some encouragement in that direction as the default mode, but you can, utterly without changing a blessed thing, run it otherwise successfully. You keep making these huge, sweeping statements, and once again I direct you to the Story Hours posted here in ENworld for proof and pudding that it just ain't so.

 

[kaomera]

I've seen it stated that AD&D & 3.5 levels map pretty closely to one-another, and 3.5 just "goes higher". I'm not sure I completely agree with that. Name level in AD&D was 9th level (or a bit higher), in 3.5 I'd put that closer to 15th. Likewise, a lot of the bigger monsters have been beefed up quite a bit. And on top of that there is no longer the gradual slow-down in level gain as one reaches the top levels. Two consequences of this are that your "plusses" get really big (a negative, for me), the other is that before the PCs "top out" they get access to a lot of high-level abilities (teleport, etc.; this is a positive to my mind).

There is a definite feeling among a lot of players that 3.5 encourages or even demands a specific play-style (or, at least, that a specific play-stlye is the best way to have fun with D&D), and in the end this ends up being close to the same thing as if it specifically did so. If the players want to play min-maxed (or just plain poorly thought-out monstrosities with little RP possibilities, not that I'm bitter...) characters, then it's up to the DM who wants something else to either convince them otherwise or else find new players. And convincing them otherwise is, IMHO, hard.

One thing I'm kind of interested in (because I've had it suggested to me, and I can't really be sure, myself): Does anyone here think that 3.5 assumes less willingness to kill PCs than AD&D did?

 

[MerricB]

One thing I'm kind of interested in (because I've had it suggested to me, and I can't really be sure, myself): Does anyone here think that 3.5 assumes less willingness to kill PCs than AD&D did?

No.

AD&D 2E had that in it, as it tended much more to narrative play.

3e is brutally deadly, although it's more likely that raise dead will be available. Still, when you hear of Gygax's games, there's a lot of wishes available.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Naw. Like many, you fall into the trap of thinking the game is mainly about the portion they focus on in the rules because it can be more easily quantified.

Rubbish.

D&D has a range of play-styles, from heavy role-playing/narrative to strict gaming/dungeon-delving and many axes as well. However, if you play a heavy role-playing game with no rule use, then you're not playing D&D.

 

[kaomera]

No.

AD&D 2E had that in it, as it tended much more to narrative play.

3e is brutally deadly, although it's more likely that raise dead will be available. Still, when you hear of Gygax's games, there's a lot of wishes available.

Cheers!

OK, that makes sense, certainly do stupid thing still equals make pretty red spot on walls and/or ceiling for the next group through to find*. But for some reason I'm not seeing nearly as many purely random low-level deaths in 3.5 as was the case in AD&D (like, um, 1 vs. far too many to count... ). I wonder if that's down to better-equipped (and significantly less, y'know, pre-teen-ish) players, me maturing as a DM over the last 20 years, or the CR system smoothing out the "random batch of trolls vs. 1st level party" thing... (I'm betting it's a bit of each).

*If the dungeon you're in is at all known (ie: you found it to get inside in the first place, and there's no adventurer-stains, that's a good sign there's a gelatinous cube about... )

EDITED TO ADD: I would have thought that the introduction of critical hits would have made up for the lack of the AD&D wandering monster tables, but so far it has not in my games...

 

[Mark CMG]

D&D has a range of play-styles, from heavy role-playing/narrative to strict gaming/dungeon-delving and many axes as well. However, if you play a heavy role-playing game with no rule use, then you're not playing D&D.

Heavy roleplaying games require plenty of rule use. It's just that those rules aren't the primary focus of what you get in the books since 1974. The RPGing part of the game has always been more nebulous and left more in the hands of the DM and players. IMO, it's the main reason games (and playing styles) vary so widely from group to group. It's still all D&D, though.

 

[reutbing0]

Heavy roleplaying games require plenty of rule use. It's just that those rules aren't the primary focus of what you get in the books since 1974. The RPGing part of the game has always been more nebulous and left more in the hands of the DM and players. IMO, it's the main reason games (and playing styles) vary so widely from group to group. It's still all D&D, though.

But that doesn't really address MerricB's comment. If there's literally no use of any D&D rules, are you playing D&D?

 

[CruelSummerLord]

And I say that's a player and GM issue, not a system issue. I've had Core-only games where players deliberately take sub-optimal choices - like Profession: Moneylender for a contemplative half-orc Monk, or Knowledge: Royalty for a noble but non-Palaidn knight, or Feats that don't give them maximum oomph, or items they found and kept because they were 'neat' but useless in combat - and been perfectly happy, even happier, with characters that weren't min-maxing, twinked-out killing machines.

It ain't the system, man. They system provides maybe some encouragement in that direction as the default mode, but you can, utterly without changing a blessed thing, run it otherwise successfully. You keep making these huge, sweeping statements, and once again I direct you to the Story Hours posted here in ENworld for proof and pudding that it just ain't so.

That's what I just said. It's not the system's fault by itself-the rules might lean in that direction, but WotC is responding to market shifts, sad as those shifts may be. I wasn't faulting 3E or WotC for doing so.