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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 2065202" data-attributes="member: 6957">Perhaps it is fair to say that 1st ed. was more D. M. reliant for its rulings than 3e? There was a lot of guess work in 1st ed. that is missing in 3e, with a good DM with sound instincts this guess work was fine. With a poor to average DM it was not so good. With some of the DMs that I can remember bragging about TPKs (including one I met at a con who boasted that he had a huge, old, black dragon in the second room of the dungeon... against 1st level characters) this was an incredibly bad thing. 3e does not assume that the DM knows how to balance things, it instead shows the balance. Once you know what is balanced you can depart from it, knowing the likely consequences. (In today's game you are playing heroes recruited by the Good Wizard Gargamel to kill the evil Smurfs that are infesting an entire village of poisonous mushrooms...) I really do not understand why E.G.G. made some of the design decisions that he made, some of them likely come under the heading of 'seemed like a good idea at the time'. SOmetimes his defenses of the sillier rulings annoyed me more than the rule itself.I will take 'dry and uninteresting' balanced rules over 'evocative and atmospheric' unbalanced rules almost any day.A final point in favor of 3e - flexibility.  Because the reasoning behind the rules is transparent modifying them is a lot easier. Because there are guidelines as to what third level spells can do you see a lot fewer overpowered and underpowered spells. Because there are guidelines on what traps a fifth level party should face you don't end up with Tomb of Horrors.The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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