Has D&D jumped the shark?

[Desdichado]

My suspicion is that the game works best when played with the core rules plus a (small) number of carefully selected expansion options. This may be the entirety of some supplements, parts of others, and house rules, in some combination. Of course, the ideal set of supplements is likely to be different for each group.

I'm not sure there's really a meaningful distinction between what you say, and allowing anything published by WotC on the other end of that, barring obscenely poorly designed prestige classes, feats, etc.

It's not like any group is really managing a heavy load of non-core options -- at most you'll have a feat or two per group, maybe a handful of spells, maybe a prestige class, possibly an alternate base class -- like I said, what's really the meaningful distinction?

 

[Truth Seeker]

Side Note: On the Racial Levels

Just had to read, hold, scan all three thread pages, to see, if anyone made the connection to where the Racial level theme came from. And as the for the jumping shark bit...I am sorta leaning near that, after this explanation.

The RL verison and mention came about from Monte Cook's first book Arcana Unearthed *before the update one*...with that release, a D&D 3.0 (2003) variant PDF file was created by Jesse Decker, Andly Collins and Charles Ryan with Monte's blessing, to be given the public domain.

Later, a revised verison of the "racial levels" came into Wotc's Unearthed Arcana (2004), promptly known as Racial Paragon Classes, till this day, I am still miffed, as to why a enchance racial feature for a race, is considered a 'class'. And please, don't try to explain it...that alone could hurt my head.:\

I fell in love with the addtional and new features, it helped out greatly, in expanding a PC's race background (flavor use). As it is known or not. Sometimes it is tough, to illustrate a race's background home skills, unless they are a rogue with a high intelligence. The current class *for the majority* skill pool, expect for the rogue, does not provide enough flex to round out a character's life background fully*like what they did, before coming into a fighter profession or something. But as always, even with the new addition, it was still limited, but hey...it did helped a lot.

That is my side note.

p.s. GO MONTY!!!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Well, you should just do like the rest of us and play with a bunch of sweaty, hairy (acceptible alternative is balding) overweight middle-aged men. It's not hard to tell guys like that no.

Sorry, but I'm not giving up my current all-physicists group...

 

[delericho]

I'm not sure there's really a meaningful distinction between what you say, and allowing anything published by WotC on the other end of that, barring obscenely poorly designed prestige classes, feats, etc.

It's not like any group is really managing a heavy load of non-core options -- at most you'll have a feat or two per group, maybe a handful of spells, maybe a prestige class, possibly an alternate base class -- like I said, what's really the meaningful distinction?

There's truth in that. However, my concern would not be with the general case, which would work exactly as you say, but rather with the specific (worst) case.

Feat A from supplement 1 might well be fine.
Race B from supplement 2 might also be fine.
Class C from supplement 3 might be fine.

But, if a character of race B takes calss C and feat A?

Plus, of course, there's the combing through all 20+ supplements to find just the right new feat/prestige class/spell for the character that you could face every time the character levels up.

But, as you say, you're much more likely to get a few supplementary things in any given group at any given time, and most likely to have a player only choose something new if they already know that's what they want for their character.

 

[Desdichado]

There's truth in that. However, my concern would not be with the general case, which would work exactly as you say, but rather with the specific (worst) case.

Ah, the hypothetical worst case scenario. That's a fair statement, though -- I'm sure that as soon as I try to make a claim that it's only hypothetical and the reality never matches that, then fourteen people will immediately jump in to the thread and claim that they've witnessed the worst case scenario first hand, and they'd be right.

 

[Zenodotus of Ephesus]

Has D&D jumped the shark?

Do you agree or disagree with this? And if you agree, when exactly do you think that D&D has jumped the shark?

I will need to see a full stat block on that shark before I can detemine if there is a balance issue.

 

[helium3]

Sorry, but I'm not giving up my current all-physicists group...

Oh man. You're so lucky. I would KILL for an all physicists group.

Also, as someone pointed out earlier, increased complexity is a great thing as long as there's some sort of tool that allows the GM to handle the increased complexity. The real problem with the proliferation of alternative mechanics in these splat-books is that it vastly increases the amount of work that a DM has to do in order to accomodate them.

Basically, someone REALLY needs to write up some gold-standard eTool that really helps a DM to plan, organize and execute his game. This eTool also needs to be open in some sense to customization so that changing mechanics doesn't make the tool useless. I've seen a couple of tools out there, but none of them really seem up to snuff.

 

[Desdichado]

Sorry, but I'm not giving up my current all-physicists group...

Even for an all stewardess group?

I even remember someone talking about running a game for a bunch of strippers at one time...

 

[Kanegrundar]

Even for an all stewardess group?

I even remember someone talking about running a game for a bunch of strippers at one time...

Strippers, eh? Hehe Cool.

Kane

 

[JoeGKushner]

The DMG II has shown me that D&D has quite a way to go before jumping the shark.

Magical Locations? Thumbs up.

Weapon and armor templates? Thumbs up.

Touchstone sties from Planar Handbook and Sandstorm? Thumbs up.

Racial Substitution Levels/Substituion Levels in general? Thumbs up.

I'll be curious to see how Weapons of Legacy and their other odd sounding book latter on this year do, and of course I'm very curious to see how Heroes of Horror does and hoping it suits my needs more tahn I felt Heroes of Battle did.

WoTC has a while to go before they run out of ideas.