[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Crothian]

Perhaps, but they've had to return to the 1e seat-of-pants method of figuring out what's a good challenge for the party...which is perfectly fine given a vaguely competent DM, but it does somewhat throw the CR system out the window.

I never had to return to the old method. The CR numbers are still there. If I have 6 players of fifth level I know that usually a CR 6 monster will work well. DMing is hard work and even for a 4 person party the game will not always work perfectly. No RPG does becasue none of them cover everything the players and DM want to do and how they act.

 

[carmachu]

Soul of the game:

Its simple: the fact that it still feels like a game, not that WOTC/Hasbro is trying to stick a vacumn hose in your wallet with new editions.

3.0 was great. HUGE improvement over 2nd. 3.5 was......not quite the same feeling. Felt more like planned obsoleteness, if you will.

Now rumors of 4th are out. No hard details......but I dont know. If the 4th rumors were now and there was no 3.5 it be a different story.

THanks but I have had enough of that with the CCG market and Games workshop miniatures.

 

[Henry]

I'll agree with Crothian in that none of the examples posted actually break mechanics significantly, the same way that "disallowing bards and druids" broke AD&D significantly. (Closest one might be the fighters one, but thanks to Paladins and Rangers and Barbarians, a D&D party would do pretty well without fighters.)

However, when talking "soul of the game/players":

ENWorld is a great site, but it's populated mostly by DMs. And, DMs who played in previous editions where they had more control over the game will probably be more put out by the more player-empowering / egalitarian 3e than Players. I have to wonder if oppinions would be the reverse in a mostly Player based community.

This is an excellent example: Player empowerment and egalitarianism (through the promise of balanced rules supplements) are two ways in which the game changed at its core default level. Egalitarianism has its strengths, but its main cost tends to be sacrifice of individual group customization of their games, for books of supplements from which people pick and choose. It's admittedly easier, but for me it's less fulfilling in some ways.

Currently, we're running a wide-open D&D game with almost all supplements allowed, because we normally run core only + 1 or 2 books extra, and I wanted to try it out. The players are having a ball with it, but I'm kind of thankful it's nearing an end, because I'm almost completely burned out on it. I could have just as easily made a Core only game where the players got what they wanted by talking to me about character concept, but it NEVER happened - no matter how many questionnaires or "what don't you like", nobody ever wanted anything but what was already spelled out in a book. Instead, I'm constantly reading books, finding out if players applied various spells properly, if the feat they chose really means what they thought it said, finding out if they added a certain bonus mistakenly twice, etc. Instead of knowing how they stuff their characters have works because I helped them come up with it in the first place. As it is, I look forward to playing for a while and only worry about my OWN character.

 

[Stormtower]

I take everything on this topic said at ENWorld with a grain of salt. ENWorld is a great site, but it's populated mostly by DMs. And, DMs who played in previous editions where they had more control over the game will probably be more put out by the more player-empowering / egalitarian 3e than Players. I have to wonder if oppinions would be the reverse in a mostly Player based community.

Well put. Regarding player empowerment and egalitarian power relations between DM and players, I'd say this: it's still the DM's job to make them earn their PCs' levels and powers. DMs still control the placement of magic items, cash treasure and above all, opportunity to use items and treasure. Any of the tricks and nifty obscure PrC abilities that players use to get ahead in the system can be used just as effectively by creatures and NPCs under the DM's control to cut them back down to size if necessary.

Hmm... in rereading that last paragraph, my tone comes across more adversarially than reflects my actual table culture when I DM. But I understand that has a great deal to do with my players, since we have an understanding that rules are there to frame the game fairly, not to be exploited by players or the DM.

If at some point in the future I encounter a table of players who seem TOO "empowered" or have a creeping entitlement mentality, I might change my tune... but I don't think it's the rules system that causes this mentality as much as the lack of substantive discussion (not here on ENWorld, more in face-to-face situations) about building a table culture that maintains and reinforces the DM's authority. That vital element of RPG culture can be lost (or not built up in the first place) regardless of edition/iteration of the game system in question.

 

[Doug McCrae]

If by 'soul of D&D' you mean, necessary qualities to still be D&D, I would say it resides in:


The fantasy genre
Classes, and by extension the adventuring party in its diversity
Levels
The level track, ie the great range of power progression from 1st upwards
The plethora of monsters and magic items

Maybe dungeons
Maybe the alignment system
Maybe Vancian magic

 

[Henry]

I never had to return to the old method. The CR numbers are still there. If I have 6 players of fifth level I know that usually a CR 6 monster will work well. DMing is hard work and even for a 4 person party the game will not always work perfectly. No RPG does becasue none of them cover everything the players and DM want to do and how they act.

Plus, the 3.5 CP rules are crafted to work whether your party has 4 or 20 in it, whether they are 1st or 20th level, and each person gets a proportional amount of XP. Admittedly, I find it HARDER than the XP for previous AD&D versions, but it's logical and does the trick well. The 3.0 XP rules are what many AD&D players are thinking of when referencing 3E confusions on the XP rules. (With those, the higher level PCs get MORE XP than normal by bringing along a lower level PC!)

However, the CR's are definitely something my players keep me on my toes about. Last night, 5 15th level characters defeated a CR 17 Marilith, a CR 15 Deathshrieker, and 3 CR 8 Zakya Rakshasas, with only two characters wounded. Guess I'll have to get tougher...

 

[Zaruthustran]

The soul of the game: sitting around with friends, exercising wish fulfilment. Strategists have board games and computer games, adrenalin junkies/competition freaks have video games, but dreamers have only RPGs. And by RPGs, I mean D&D.

That was true until games like World of Warcraft came along. Now... I think WotC is having to look long and hard at what the D&D is, and what it could/should be. When 4E comes out it's got to be the kind of game that can thrive in a world with amazingly compelling online games. In a 4 hour block playing D&D my party and I can engage in 2-3 fights and a small amount of roleplaying. In the same block of time, online, my party and I can clear out several dungeons and--unlike D&D--can converse and role-play even during combat.

I'm very curious to see how WotC responds to WoW.

Really, the power shift comes down to marketing. WoTC knows they can sell a lot more books if they are player focused, rather than DM focused. So, they have shifted the expectations in the playerbase to a point where players seek out new goodies for their characters on the shelves of the local gamestores instead of the DM's local dungeons while actually playing the game.

I just thought this was a really good point. Generally, there are 4-5 players for every DM / the market for player-focused books is 4-5 times as large as the market for DM books. It makes sense to target the larger market.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Fine.

Add level limits to elves like in AD&D. Suddenly, a whole bevy of prestige classes are out of the question.

And that breaks the whole system causing it to crumble down? Not in the least. Assuming you actually had a sensible reason for level limits in the first place, there a number of obvious ways to fudge this issue and use level limits within the context of 3e rules in a workable manner.

Besides I could equally well argue that AD&D is completely and totally broken out of the box because Elven Wizards can never acquire 9th level spells and cast Wish.

Strike 1.

Remove that stupid linear XP chart and put back varied XPs by class. Whoops, now the CR system is broken.

First of all, if you start with a narrow-minded premise that something needs to be fixed in a very certain manner but have no coherent goal, it is trivial to declare it impossible to succeed.

Is 1e/2e hopelessly broken if we get rid of those stupid non-liner XP charts and varied progressions by level? Hmmm... You should think about it.

Second of all, the CR system is just a guideline and it is sufficiently coarse that most campaigns could use it as is, even with a PC here or there up or down a level. No problem. Most would never notice a difference.

Third of all, we have the concept of LA that could be trivially adapted to this purpose, assuming there is some good reason for this change in the first place.

Fourth of all, you could just resort to not using the CR system at all and handing out xp in chunks that feel right. Amazingly enough, this breaks nothing!

Strike 2.

Take Feats away from the Fighter class and suddenly they are, by the numbers, less powerful fighters than thieves.

It is true that if you make a radical change that cripples a class and are apparently unwilling to make any other changes to compensate, then the system breaks. That is true about 3e. That is also true about 1e and 2e and OD&D. Duh.

Now, let us suppose you have a good reason for getting rid of Fighter bonus feats. You could make a playable hyper-simplified custom Fighter class by some combination of the following:
--Increase HPs.
--Increase BAB, e.g. 1.5 BAB per Fighter level.
--Give special Fighter Bonus Damage, e.g. +1 point per Fighter level.
--Increase skill points.
This is not rocket science. This is child's play.

Strike 3.

All this shows is if someone likes one system less than another (Fine. Vive le difference!), it is trivial to come up with completely stupid examples that allegedly break disfavored system, when the exact same kind of examples would break the favored system. Yes, one can "prove" anything...if one has infinite tolerance for illogical arguments and a bizarrely egregious double-standard.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Re: CR system breaking with large partieserhaps, but they've had to return to the 1e seat-of-pants method of figuring out what's a good challenge for the party...which is perfectly fine given a vaguely competent DM, but it does somewhat throw the CR system out the window.

If you insist on making radical changes for vague or unstated reasons, you may have to pay a price. That is hardly unique to 3e.

OTOH, the CR system is already a plus/minus 10%-20% kind of thing, so if your Rogue is one level "too high", that is something that can probably be ignored completely. Or corrected for on the fly by tiny fudges, if the DM is generally competent.

 

[Thurbane]

I take everything on this topic said at ENWorld with a grain of salt. ENWorld is a great site, but it's populated mostly by DMs. And, DMs who played in previous editions where they had more control over the game will probably be more put out by the more player-empowering / egalitarian 3e than Players. I have to wonder if oppinions would be the reverse in a mostly Player based community.

Speaking as both a player and a DM (player only at the moment), I can't begin to tell you how incorrect that statement is, at least from my own experience.

Looking at it from both views (player & DM) 3E has its advantages and drawbacks.

Any DM who suddenly has "less power" because of the rule set is merely letting pushy rules lawyers badger him into giving them everything their way.

In our group we have all now embraced 3E, but we all still accept that the DMs word is final. At my game last night, for example, the DM made a ruling that contradicted the standard grappling rules. We brought this to his attention; he weighed it up, and then said his ruling stood. And guess what? We accepted it. Funny thing is, his ruling was actually more advantageous for the players than a book ruling would have been. But even if it had gone the other way and been worse for the players (which it often has) we would still have stood by the DMs ruling.

I just can't get my head around this "us versus them" mentality some gaming groups seem to have between the players and the DM. In our group, we all play (DM included) for a common goal: to enjoy ourselves and have fun. How you can do that with DMs and players constantly sniping each other and rules lawyering, I don't know...

From a mechanical POV, 3E is firmly in the "bigger better faster more" mindset compared to earlier editions. An equivalent level or XP 3E character or monster is going to mop the floor with a 1E or 2E, when you take feats, faster progression etc etc. into account. And despite many arguments to the contrary, I personally feel that 3E has definitely shifted the focus from role-playing to roll-playing, although the amount varies by playing group. Now, having said that, I really do like 3E - but I would never agree that it is inherently "better" than earlier editions; in the same way I wouldn't say that a Programming Guide to C++ is "better" than The Lord of the Rings.