Has D&D jumped the shark?

[Jürgen Hubert]

No, they aren't... perhaps I was a little to offensive in how I put that, so I apologize. What I'm saying is that you have to look at all the things these mechanics offer to the whole of D&D, not just how they fit into one book. For example: I dislike the Races of Stone feats that require dwarf or require gnome, but feats with racial requirements do make since in the context of things like elemental gensai... if I was to make my judgement about all feats with racial requirements after reading only Races of Stone I'd be pretty ignorant of what it can offer D&D as a whole.

I sort of understand what you are getting at, but I have to disagree here. Feats have been in D&D 3.X from the beginning, and limiting them to one race doesn't change their fundamental nature - they only limit them to a smaller number of characters. And in fact, such feats already exist in the Core Rules after some fashion - the feats for monsters introduced in the Monster Manual (though they don't limit the feats to specific races or creatures, but to broad categories - such as "creatures with wings").

Individual feats might be good and useful or bad (over or underpowered), but that's not a matter of their prerequisites.

My beef with Racial Substitution Levels and especially Mindset spells is that they represent an entirely new category of mechanics - and I think entirely new categories of mechanics is the last thing D&D needs (obviously, some people will feel different about this). RCLs are effectively a "pseudo prestige class", and I think their effects should better have been represented by existing mechanics - such as prestige classes and feats. And Mindset spells present yet another way of "buffing" characters - and there are already plenty of ways of doing that already. In my experience, players of spellcasting characters will spend far too much time during sessions for figuring out the "perfect buffs" (which is boring for the other players) - and as a DM, I'd rather not have to deal with such things as creating spellcasting NPCs is far too much effort already.

Despite claiming not to be interconnected, D&D books have gone back to having information that relates to every other book. This means that I have to have spells and subsititution levels in my Races of Eberron without having the Eberron CS to use them with, but I don't mind because they help D&D as a whole.

Well, this is precisely what I am contesting - I do not think that they help D&D as a whole. Mind you, I'm not against adding new material to D&D - new spells, races, feats, whatever - but I think that these should remain within the existing frameworks of mechanics instead of adding yet another layer of complexity to it all.

 

[Quasqueton]

I think applying the concept of "jumped the shark" to anything other than TV series means "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

Quasqueton

 

[diaglo]

I think applying the concept of "jumped the shark" to anything other than TV series means "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

Quasqueton

i blame Whisperfoot aka DD, Barendor, aka..that guy in customer service from WotC... for its use here.

 

[delericho]

Think where they can go with this simple mechanic: in setting books different cultures can have Cultural Subsitution Levels, and thus explain why the plains nomad fights differently then the city guard even though they are both fighters, and can do it without having to create a completely new 20 level class. It saves space, saves redundency, and makes things clear and simple. For the guy that said "just play them differently" I respond that the only class we need is commoner. If you want wizard, "just play them differently". There are lots and lots of times that mechanical differences are what is critical to make the character work.

But, if you want to create a plains nomad fighter who fights differently to a city guard fighter, give them different feats. If you want to differentiate a gnomish and an elven wizard, choose different spells. The rules already provide the ability to mechanically differentiate these character types, and they do it without giving additional benefits through Substitution Levels.

I don't like Substitution Levels for the same reason I don't like the notion that Regional Feats are better than normal feats, or that Dwarves get Weapon Familiarity - I like variation in the characters that are created, and having one set of options be clearly better than another reduces that variation.

As an aside, one thing I would like to see them implement in a future 4th edition is the notion of character talent trees for the less-flaxible classes (Ranger, Barbarian, Monk, Paladin, and others), similar to the mechanic in d20 Modern. Basically, Rangers would have a Favoured Enemy tree, an Animal Companion tree, a Tracking tree, and a Combat Style tree. As they advanced in levels, they could choose which trees to follow. This allows players to easily choose to play a "Ranger with more emphasis on Favoured Enemies" or a "Barbarian with more rage". This would remove the need to several prestige classes that currently exist solely to do those jobs, allowing the next batch of classbooks to provide more interesting prestige classes, provide another means of differentiating characters, and allow the third-party companies yet another way to expand the game.

Or, of course, you could just do the same thing with feats, and require "4 levels of Barbarian" or whatever to take the feat.

 

[TerraDave]

Jurgen H is deffinately on to something.

The Core Rules already have:
-Abilities
-Race
-Class
---within class options
-Skills
-Feats
-Equipment
-Spells
-Prestige Classes (optional)
-Monster races (optional)
-Templates (optional)

As a means of customising charecters. Now the following have been added in various products:

-Psionics
-Racial Levels
-Incantations (? those epic spells things)
-(assorted) substitution levels
-Teamwork benefits
-Legacy Weapons

There is also know a fair number of "alternate" feats and some spells that work pretty differently then what is in the core rules. (And I may be forgetting things).

Each of these may be great on their own. But when put together, the result looks like a big mess.

And its does make you wonder about the designers at WotC. That they can't build on the fairly extensive core rules and feel the need to throw out so many new "player option" mechanics. In past editions, this generally was a sign of "jumping the shark".

 

[Kanegrundar]

I'm all for trying out some new stuff. Otherwise the game will stagnate. After all, you don't have to use all the new rules and mechanics in your game, let's face it that would make it an unruly beast of a system to run. Pick and choose the parts you like and scrap the rest.

I also like the interconnection we're seeing in the new releases. It's good that psionics is starting to see more mention in book rather than being treated like something that is part of D&D, but not really recognized part. Plus, I like it when I read a new bok and they reference back to other books for ideas on how to implement them in new ways. It gives me a lot of ideas that I may not have thought of before.

Has D&D past it's prime due to any of this? Not hardly. They are still putting out interesting books that will get my gaming dollar. When we get to the point that new product isn't offering up any new ideas, that's when we can talk about D&D, or 3.5 specifically, being past it's prime or "jumped the shark" if you will.

Kane

 

[Plane Sailing]

- Mindset spells: These are spells that give characters special boni to skill checks and other things as long as they have prepared them, but not cast them. Do we really need yet another way of buffing characters? I personally think that running D&D characters involves far too much math already (not difficult math, but there is a lot of it...) - and introducing things like this just makes it worse.

Do you know what bugged me about these? No effect for sorcerers! I would have preferred it if they were spells which DID give a special (mindset) bonus to spontaneous casters who had gone to the effort of learning the spell - a greater investment IMO. Give the sorcerers a bone!

Why yes, I DO play a sorcerer, why do you ask?

 

[Desdichado]

Whats the DC for jumping a shark?

Is it sad that we can actually figure that out

Based on how often it happens, I'm guessing it's fairly low.

 

[radferth]

I don't mind any new option by itself, but the proliferation of different types of options is starting to mimic the situation of the Powers & Options days of 2nd ed, where no two D&D games resembed each other. That is not so bad in and of itself, but it makes things really rough on newbies, especially new DMs who have no idea what to include or exclude. Maybe we could start some feature here to help them out.

 

[hexgrid]

I think applying the concept of "jumped the shark" to anything other than TV series means "jumped the shark" has jumped the shark.

Quasqueton

Clearly, the concept - the pivotal moment at which something good starts to go bad - can be applied to much more than tv shows. Before "jumped the shark" there wasn't a word or phrase (in english, at least) to describe this.