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

[el-remmen]

D&D does D&D style fantasy very well, other types not so well without modification.

Yeah, but modification has been part of the D&D experience since Day 1.

 

[Shadeydm]

I honestly feel that the 3.xE of DnD encourages and rewards players for rules lawyering, power gaming, min/maxing, and munchkinism in general. It gives players a sense of entitlement to knowledge outside the scope of thier PC and encourages metagaming.

All that being said I still play and DM it, as I have every other edition when it was released but I have never felt more in tune, or in the zone if you will as I did when DMing 1E ADnD.

With 3.xE I spend more time as a DM pouring though books during play time double checking rules etc. then I ever did in all the previous editions combined. In ADnD I had mastered the rules in 3.xE I am enslaved by them.

 

[Psion]

I don't know. There are so many assumptions built into 3.x that I feel it only really does a good job of modeling D&D.

Just what does this mean, though? Despite this, I have experienced a lot of different styles under D&D with relatively minimal changes. Political intrigue, shady criminals, Arthur-esque knights, classic dungeon crawl, classic quest fantasy, martial arts mayhem, struggles for suvival in desolate wastelands, etc. The most that most of these require is the selection of options.

You add the variants in UA into the mix (an official D&D book, I'll remind you), the doors get blown wide open.

 

[WayneLigon]

Pardon me for saying this, but that means you and your players really don't like D&D. You like d20 (Fantasy).

They are the same thing. The exact and same thing. Even if I'm playing Arcana Unearthed/Evolved or Iron Heroes or Midnight, I'm really playing D&D.

Previously, we liked D&D but we could take it only for so long before we had to play something else, something that didn't have the silly inconsistant restrictions meant to 'balance' the game. The vast majority of our problems with D&D disappeared with 3E and it's very rare that we play anything other than a d20 game these days. If we do, it's truly to take a break and just try something else out for a time. But for the last six years we've come back to D&D.

Classes are something we could probably live without, but we like the convenience they provide. It's simply easier, and since we normally use unlimited multiclassing it's easier to cerate a character I like than it ever has been before.

We could lose the quasi-Vancian magic system, but I look for that to go away in an edition or two. We can wait, since it's still not a deal-breaker, that tipping point beyond which we go 'we'll just play something else'. If it were up to me, D&D would have something like the Arcana system in Blue Rose/True20, or a variant of what's in True Sorcery. It makes magic much, much more like what you see in everything else under the sun but D&D.

See, when everything else does things differently than D&D, that means it's time for D&D to change. And it has, (too) gradually over the years. And it will continue to change and grow more apart from the OD&D/1E roots, as it has to, as all things must.

But next phase, new wave, 4E, anyways, it's still D&D to me.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know. There are so many assumptions built into 3.x that I feel it only really does a good job of modeling D&D. If you want to model Conan style S&S you have to make a lot of changes, or buy OGL Conan. If you want to model ME style fantasy you have to make a lot of changes. Now if you want to model FR style fantasy with a vast abundance of magic, or Eberron, or Greyhawk, then you are fine as is. D&D does D&D style fantasy very well, other types not so well without modification. This isn't unique to 3e by any means though.

I'm in the not convinced camp as well.

Which assumptions do you mean? The wealth/level ones? That's a simple baseline, and, really, pretty easy to get around in the single digit levels. You can strip out all the wealth from a party, simply bump the point buy to about 45 (which models Conan heroes pretty well) and you have a Conan setting so long as you set the level limits to about 11th. Use mostly human and humanoid enemies, with the odd aberation and dire animal tossed in, and that's pretty darn close.

Might have to nix a few of the classes, but, that's more a setting thing than rules anyway. Paladin's wouldn't fit in Conan too well, not because of power or balance issues, but because paly's don't fit.

Middle Earth? Meh, not too hard at all. Good grief, the Fellowship is literally dripping with magic halfway through the first book. Granted, Gandalf would have to be NPC'd, cos, well, if I had a high double digits level wizard in Moria, there'd be a stack of dead goblins before I retreated.

As I said, trying to emulate specific novels is pretty difficult. Not because of the mechanics so much as the fact that players are FAR more pragmatic than any novel writer. Heck, players would have handed the Ring to Tom Bombadil and then went off to check out something else. Novel emulation isn't a game problem, it's a player one.

 

[Storm Raven]

AD&D seemed designed to recreate the worlds of classic fantasy fiction.

This is entirely inaccurate.

Use the 1e AD&D rules to create for me an accurate portrayal of characters from classic fantasy fiction. Try making the Gray Mouser. Or Fafhrd. Or Gandalf. Or any of about a hundred other characters. Look at the 1e Deities and Demigods. Look at the number of heroic fictional characters statted up in that book. Look at how many actually follow the 1e AD&D rules.

Look at the AD&D monster list. How many match up to the creatures of classic fantasy fiction. Look at the mountains of treasure and magic goodies handed out like lollipops at your local bank branch in 1e AD&D modules. Look at Gygax's descriptions of the D&D campaigns that gave genesis to the design of 1e AD&D - look at how they included laser guns, trips to the moon and mars, dragons being hauled around in wagons for use as siege engines, and other over the top silliness.

3.X Edition seems designed to recreate the worlds of computer gaming. The first was intended for a literate audience (although it didn't always work out that way in practice, of course). The designers of 3.X edition seem to have realized that few people read classic fantasy anymore, so they changed the basic assumptions of the game accordingly.

The 3e rule set allows me as a player and as a DM to emulate the works of classic fantasy much better than any previous edition ever did. The rule set is flexible enough, and customizable enough that I can do just about anything with it, and have it work. This was decidedly not the case for earlier editions of the game.

 

[Hussar]

3.X Edition seems designed to recreate the worlds of computer gaming. The first was intended for a literate audience (although it didn't always work out that way in practice, of course). The designers of 3.X edition seem to have realized that few people read classic fantasy anymore, so they changed the basic assumptions of the game accordingly.

I missed that little gem. Let me point out a couple of things. First off, "Classic Fantasy" doesn't exist. Fantasy as a genre distinct from Science Fiction only came in the 80's. When AD&D was released, most of the books on the biblio list in the DMG had been out of print for more than a few years. By the beginning of the 80's, it was virtually impossible to find authors like Vance and Leiber on bookshelves. Never mind that there has been more genre novels written in the past fifteen years than in the past century. That 3e is perhaps not drawing on Tolkein or Leiber is simply a reflection of the fact that the genre has expanded exponentially in the past couple of decades.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Middle Earth? Meh, not too hard at all. Good grief, the Fellowship is literally dripping with magic halfway through the first book.

What? Sam and Frodo had...luggage. And Sam's cooking gear.

Unless you meant halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring...which would be the dividing point between BOOK I and BOOK II, and at that point you could make the case for Sam, Merry and Pippin having short sword +1 versus undead (each), Frodo was wearing mithril chain, and carrying Sting (a short sword +1 or maybe +2). Gandalf had Glamdring, a +3 or +4 weapon. Other than Frodo, only half the party had one "magic item" each. Considering that the hobbits' blades were only proof versus the undead king, I'm not even sure I'd count those. Hardly "dripping with magic".

After they leave Lorien...well, that's another story.

 

[Hussar]

Someone actually made a list of the magic items that the Fellowship is carting around by the end of the books. It's lengthy to say the least. But, yes, I did mispeak on the timing. My bad. Then again, at the point you mention, in D&D terms, we're looking at 1st, maybe second level characters, all with magic weapons. And Frodo's carting around a 4th or 5th level character's wealth by 3e standards, not even counting the Ring.

 

[thedungeondelver]

Someone actually made a list of the magic items that the Fellowship is carting around by the end of the books. It's lengthy to say the least. But, yes, I did mispeak on the timing. My bad. Then again, at the point you mention, in D&D terms, we're looking at 1st, maybe second level characters, all with magic weapons. And Frodo's carting around a 4th or 5th level character's wealth by 3e standards, not even counting the Ring.

But - and while I don't disagree - that's balanced on the other end by the fighter types having no magic items at all, ever, for the duration of the books. Unless you count Anduril/Narsil, which while being a keen blade wasn't really given any "magic" properties. I guess we could be generous and call it a longsword +1 or +2.

Hmm...just for S&G let me see if I can do a scratch list here for Frodo (note I am not listing the One Ring):

Sting (a shortsword of enemy detection +1 or +2 as you like )
The Phial of Galadriel, a glass of Continual Light (when held, unlim. charges)
An Elven Cloak
Elfin Chain (in pure AD&D terms, not magical, just very light to the point of not being an armor burden)

Hmm...the waybread wasn't magic, the broach on his cloak wasn't magic...what else was there? It's been about a year since I last read the books but I honestly don't recall what else he had.