Dungeons & Dragons Lite: Am I the Only One?

[Henry]

Time for me to take another vacation from the General RPG board. See y'all in the funny papers.

Shaman, if you're going to let one person's opinion drive you from the forum, we'll miss you, but I'm a bit amazed you'd let it get to you.

MHO, those of you with just the 3 core books and a couple of others have boring campaigns in my eyes. The feats, spells, monsters, prestige classes all become horrible repetitive and eventually boring.

Razz, I can't tell if you're being somewhat facetious, but if you aren't I hope you get a chance in the future to experience something similar to the fantastic games that I have experienced, using only three core books, or at most a limited subset. Your example of the Beholder with sorcerer levels is a bit simplistic, because not only should a DM not let the players know every trick up a monster's sleeve, there's also a lot more that a monster, or NPC can do to make life interesting.

Do you honestly know what the blue-skinned demon with tentacles for arms and just won't die actually is? Or were you aware at all times when a DM uses a different description tacked on to the troll stats to liven things up? Must a PC fighter have the option for Leap Attack and Deft Opportunist in order to be interesting? Do you call foul if the NPC raises a mountain of leaping fire to escape pursuit, despite the fact that he used Limited Wish or Wish to enact it? If you find it boring, then more power to you, and I hope that WotC is producing what you need (or some 3rd party company is if WotC isn't), but there's a lot more to core-only games than just, "Yawn, another beholder with sorcerer levels."

 

[Whisper72]

Hmmm.... I am definately of the Third Way. I am a book collector, and like to read up on as much as possible. On the other hand, I am very restrictive towards what I do and do not allow to my players. Even most rules in the core books often do not see any use, and I often have a specific homebrew world where many spells, powers etc. are off-limits. I never let PC's just choose / buy / make magical items without express permission on my part.

The problem arises when a DM does not have his game under control but lets the players decide how the game is played, and then, the amount of rules allowed is not so much the problem itself, but allows more ways for the players to exert their control, thus aggravating the problem. I feel that problems with rulebloat are therefore more of a symptom of an underlying problem rather then the problem itself.

The amount of books and rules allowed is therfore more of a style issue then a problem in and of itself IMHO. Some people like rules for everything, others like to make more stuff up as they go along. To each his or her own...

 

[Breakdaddy]

Shaman, if you're going to let one person's opinion drive you from the forum, we'll miss you, but I'm a bit amazed you'd let it get to you.[/I]

Absolutely. There are plenty of assinine comments tossed around in the forum (some intentional, others not so much). I hope Shaman (or anyone for that matter) doesn't let it affect them to the point where they would take a long term hiatus from the forum. I usually don't let such remarks affect me beyond mild irritation (although in all honesty, there are some posters that are perpetually pissed off/gloomy/negative, and those guys can be very difficult to not want to smack down. Thats when I will take a brief time out normally so I don't waste my time on such individuals.... sometimes I don't succeed!)

 

[Coredump]

But I don't have to. You see, after taking some time off, here's what I've decided to do. I'm going to start a 3.0 campaign (I never got into 3.5) using *only* the following books:

But why a 3.0 campaign? Why not stick with 3.5, and just use the same 'core' books.


I tend to buy books, but I tend to buy Kalamar books. I really like the setting and how they have fleshed it out. The more I read, the better I can run the setting. Even if we never run into many orcs, "Fury in the Wastelands" helps me run the world better. (And it was actually a great read just on its own.) I don't like adding a lot of 'crunch' to my world, but the fluff and background is great for making it better.

 

[jdrakeh]

I bought the Castles and Crusades players' handbook today - I think your game sounds way too complicated for me...

I'm a C&C convert, myself - I like it because I can use it with 3x supplements, as well as earlier D&D (Basic D&D stuff) with no real 'conversion' necessary. That makes it much more practical for me from a utility standpoint than D&D 3x was.

 

[Altalazar]

I like to have options. I don't see any particular problem with the number of books used. In the end, assuming there is balance, it really doesn't matter. As a DM, I actually would like not knowing necessarily everything my players could do - that could lead to monsters being unrealistically prepared to counter it.

What matters most is a compelling story and internal consistency (and having fun!)
If a character concept is interesting, compelling, logical and consistent, I don't care what 'halfs' there are.

It does seem somewhat limiting that everything that could possibly happen is limited to what is in a few books. So what if the players have a spell you never heard of? Assuming it isn't broken (which if it is Wizards, it is likely not), why not let that additional color in.

I'd feel like an artist who was given the 'traditional' palate of three colors (and no, we're not talking 'dot' painting to make additional colors - I'm talking three solid colors and that's it, with broad brushes - no mixing allowed) who is told that all paintings must use only those colors, even as supplements continue to be published with a whole range of new colors added.

 

[Altalazar]

You know, some restaurants have a wine list and a dessert menu.

And then one day, a patron realizes he doesn't have to look at the wine list and dessert menu. He jumps up on a table and loudly proclaims his epiphany:

"Hey, all you diners! I've decided to not order wine or dessert. I don't have to. I'm just ordering off the main menu. Am I alone? Or do you all want to leave here drunk and fat?"

The other diners look at the odd man on the tabletop. Does he not realize that many diners already dismiss the wine list and dessert menu from the hostess when they first sit at the table? Or does he not realize that many diners enjoy the wine and dessert, and they don't get drunk or fat?

* * *

Why do some players think playing core-only is an epiphany? Plenty of players play in core-only campaigns. And why do those players think that playing with some/all optional/supplemental material leads to "25th level Half-Gelatinous Cube/Half-Stone Golem Paladins?" Plenty of players play with the optional/supplemental material without insane characters.

And then to add to the funny, they call playing with 2-3 optional/suppmental books "Lite". I guess my core-only game is "Liter".

Quasqueton

Excellent example with the diners. I really like it.

And despite playing in several 'everything Wizard is allowed' games, I should point out I've had yet to see even a single 25th level half-gelatinous Cube / half-stone golem. In fact, pretty much all the characters involved have been straight core rulebook classes, with I think one core-rulebook prestige class. Sure, there were a few feats and such from other books thrown in and a few psionic classes, but for the most part, it was still mostly core, as probably all games are, despite how many books are allowed to be used, because no matter how many supplements they publish, the core rules are called 'core' for a reason - they will be at the center of every campaign that is D&D, even if there does happen to be a 25th level half-gelatinous cube / half-stone golem, which I somehow suspect is really just hyperbole against using a stray spell or feat that isn't in the core rulebooks.

 

[Henry]

...So what if the players have a spell you never heard of? Assuming it isn't broken (which if it is Wizards, it is likely not), why not let that additional color in.

It's the part about "it's likely not broken if it's from Wizards" that many people find debateable, and the part where you, Razz, and players such as me may differ. WotC has gotten much better this year about limiting the reactions between different feats/spells/abilities to keep unbalancing effects down, but this has not always been the case. (I've seen too many "Giant Hulking Hurler" threads to give WotC a clean pass.)

"More Color" in supplement books necessitates being different; being different from what has gone before in supplements necessitates being slightly more powerful to satisfy consumers. It also means that when Spell Y is mixed with Spell X from two different sources, you have the potential for combos that remove all challenge from the game, reducing it to "he who beats the initiative roll, wins."

Example: Some people find spells that lower spell resistance just fine. I don't, and find these kinds of spells totally unbalancing challenging encounters. Where players had to come up with something more complicated than, "whack it with more magic," It becomes, "whack it with THIS spell, and THEN more magic." It's not my type of game.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Un-mother-ing believable.

Time for me to take another vacation from the General RPG board. See y'all in the funny papers.

How funny - it's perfectly fine to call into question the imagination of those who like lots of books to draw from, but the counter opinion isn't allowed?

 

[Jackelope King]

I've seen too many "Giant Hulking Hurler" threads to give WotC a clean pass.)

You may have seen them, but have you really read them? Most of them use absolutely blatant rules abuses and combos which simply cannot exist (dipping resources from Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Greyhawk with equal fervor) or do not form an actually playable character (the hulking hurler is a glass cannon... he's got pathetic saves, poor hit points, and an armor class usually reserved for paralyzed sheep). 99% of the OMFGWTFBBQ builds of this type are entirely theory builds which serve absolutely no purpose in an actual game (like the hulking hurler and his uranium boulder, the ubercharge builds that take hours to prepare, or the appocalyptic artificer who needs to hunt down an artifact to cast his doomsday spell). The only time you need to worry about theory builds is if the players have act under absolutely controlled scenarios: in any situation other than their ideal situation, theory builds are significantly underpowered.

"More Color" in supplement books necessitates being different; being different from what has gone before in supplements necessitates being slightly more powerful to satisfy consumers.

Not necessarily. A = B, but B != C here. If you're looking at just 3.5, the power scale has decreased dramatically from the early days (Book of Exalted Deeds). Even just within the Complete book series, Complete Adventurer presents weaker options from a power point of view than all of its predecessors. Complete Divine may have been a bump up from Complete Warrior (I'm lookin' at you, divine metamagic), but there has been no general trend upwards in power. The "combo factor" you alude to later certainly may cause problems.

reducing it to "he who beats the initiative roll, wins."

Nah. This already exists in the core rules in the form of a single spell. It's called "gate"

Nothing wrong with playing a core only game. I can have plenty of fun with just those core books. However, vanilla ice cream, as tasty as it is all by itself, can only hold my attention for so long before I start craving something along the lines of "Fossil Fuel" or "Marsha-Marsha-Marshmallow" from Ben & Jerry's.