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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 3255113" data-attributes="member: 3146">Hmm. How many threads can be combined into a single post?Criticism of "power gamers." Check. "Is 3.x like old D&D?" check. Miniatures mentioned. Check. Magic items. Check.But I'll fall for it once more.To answer the first part of the post, D&D 3.x works just fine in a setting where 6th level characters are "high level." You just fight large dragons rather than huge dragons and the devils big devils of the campaign are ice devils rather than pit fiends. Nobody casts raise dead except from scrolls. And it will work just fine and you can have fun. You will also, incidentally, get a relatively low-magic campaign. If 6th level characters are high level characters then a character is, according to the by the book default, unlikely to have more than two or three permanent magic items and those items won't be too impressive. Gauntlets of ogre power, a +2 shield, and a +1 sword is about as high magic as a character is likely to achieve.Of course, all that assumes that you really want to run a "toned down" campaign. In that case, there are quite a few parts of 3.x you won't use if you want to run a toned down campaign. For starters, you can probably ignore most of the spells of 5th level and above. Your PCs won't get to use them and if your NPCs use them, they'll kill the PCs. The same for all those high CR monsters. Ocean Striders? They're probably not on the menu if you're running a lower-powered game. But I've been playing for years and never run into an ocean strider so you can definitely have fun without running into them.On the other hand, if you don't really want to run a toned down campaign, but what you want to do is throw world-shattering monsters at low-level PCs, then 3.x is not a particularly good venue for that. Things like balors and the tarrasque have earned their fearsome reputation and 6th level PCs are not likely to be able to oppose them. (But that was true of previous editions too. Trying to run 1st level PCs through the hall of the fire giant king would have been an exercise in sadism. Truth to be told, the older editions of the game weren't exactly problem free if you didn't give out magic items either. A high level fighter without a magic weapon and magic armor and girdle of giant strength or something similar was an even sorrier spectacle than his 3.x counterpart)Now, all of this has nothing to do with power gaming (which is or should be an entirely separate whine). High level characters can be power-gamed, but low level characters can be power-gamed too. For every initiate of the sevenfold veil I've seen played, I must have seen a dozen 20str, 14-16 con, 6 charisma half-orc barbarian/fighters with their standard issue greatsword/greataxe. Power gaming is about creating a powerful character within the given ruleset and whether you are playing high level or low-level, high magic or no magic merely determines the way that powergaming will play out. (Though, I must say that my experience suggests that a lot of low magic campaigns encourage powergaming because if the PCs aren't getting power from their equipment, they need to get if from their stats and class/feat/skill decisions).But, to answer the last question, "is there a place for a non-powergamer at the table," the answer depends upon what you mean. You could be championing the role-wimp ("Look, my aspiring master swordsman has taken Skill Focus and Greater Skill Focus: Underwater basket weaving, didn't bother with weapon focus, and chose druid for his starting class even though I wear metal armor and can't use the druid powers--ok, he's utterly useless at everything, but it all makes sense because it's in the seventeen pages of semi-literate backstory (which really amounts to a thinly devised ripoff of a b-movie or comic book character) that I wrote for the character." If that's the case, my attitude is "good for you, you've proved that you're not one of those evil power gamers, now get lost." If, on the other hand, you just want your single classed human barbarian with a 16 starting strength and the obvious PHB feats (Weapon Focus, Power Attack, Cleave, etc) to be viable, then there's plenty of room for you in the games I write and run.</blockquote>

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