Nope, I run them both like they are supposed to be run. I do know that it's a little easier to handwave certain things in 3rd edition but that doesn't mean I don't know how to run my games.
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Has the DM fallen from grace?
- Thread starter ForeverSlayer
- Start date
Nope, I run them both like they are supposed to be run. I do know that it's a little easier to handwave certain things in 3rd edition but that doesn't mean I don't know how to run my games.
Well first off, as a long time DM, I have to say that the DM doesn't tell the story, the players do. The DM provides the framework sure, but in the end, its the players' story.
That being said I too do not see the role of the DM diminishing. What I see is WotC giving DMs the tools to make running a game easier in an effort to get more DMs into the game, and thus a lot of newer DMs. Newer DMs are, in my opinion, much more likely to simply "control the monsters" because they are so focused on getting the encounters prepared, the rules straight and the sessions run right that they just don't have time to worry about giving the game that something extra special.
Along the same lines, the easier to design encounters has at times lead to even experienced DMs taking shortcuts in the narrative. Its easy to plan a combat now, so we can plan more of them, in fact, it might be easier now to plan a good, challenging combat encounter than it is to plan a good, interesting, roleplay encounter. The reverse though used to be true.
The experienced DMs who take the time to craft good campaigns and not just encounters are still able to do great things with the campaign. However there are likely plenty of instances of DMs who just stop at making the encounters because the can. With time, these less experienced, or time crunched DMs, will improve their skill sets and you'll see more of what I think you are looking for.
DM vs. Player trust will always be an issue because quite frankly, both sides have abused the trust over the years. There were plenty of DM's who thought that they could "win" D&D while there were equally as many players who I think set out to try to disrupt the DM's plans as much as possible. As long as the game is played and adjudicated by humans, trust will be an issue -- perhaps even moreso in the video game age.
That being said I too do not see the role of the DM diminishing. What I see is WotC giving DMs the tools to make running a game easier in an effort to get more DMs into the game, and thus a lot of newer DMs. Newer DMs are, in my opinion, much more likely to simply "control the monsters" because they are so focused on getting the encounters prepared, the rules straight and the sessions run right that they just don't have time to worry about giving the game that something extra special.
Along the same lines, the easier to design encounters has at times lead to even experienced DMs taking shortcuts in the narrative. Its easy to plan a combat now, so we can plan more of them, in fact, it might be easier now to plan a good, challenging combat encounter than it is to plan a good, interesting, roleplay encounter. The reverse though used to be true.
The experienced DMs who take the time to craft good campaigns and not just encounters are still able to do great things with the campaign. However there are likely plenty of instances of DMs who just stop at making the encounters because the can. With time, these less experienced, or time crunched DMs, will improve their skill sets and you'll see more of what I think you are looking for.
DM vs. Player trust will always be an issue because quite frankly, both sides have abused the trust over the years. There were plenty of DM's who thought that they could "win" D&D while there were equally as many players who I think set out to try to disrupt the DM's plans as much as possible. As long as the game is played and adjudicated by humans, trust will be an issue -- perhaps even moreso in the video game age.
malraux
First Post
It was only simple or not time consuming if you brush over all the choices. Choosing skills, feats, ability points, etc all take time. Sure you can be lazy, only ever raise spot, choose toughness, raise con, etc. to make the process easier and faster. But that means an awful lot of the touted advantages are getting ignored.
But doing this is still correct. If you want to become a bit more complex with your creatures then it will take time because you have more books to go through. Compiling a list of feats, items, and anything else into a list is easy using Word or Excel.
Flipping through lots of books can get old.
If your "monster" was an evil cleric (or wizard) you would need to do the following:
1) Create the cleric, pick feats, skills & domains (or specialty school). Decide on any template. (Remember, in 3.5E, there was no official software that allowed you to create characters - Heroforge was good, but not perfect)
2) equip the cleric or wizard with items appropriate for their level, including magic items.
3) pick many dozens of spells for the evil cleric or wizard once the game gets to a high enough level. Decide which spells are meta-magicked and slot them appropriately in the process. Does this wizard or cleric have a contingency item and/or spell on them?
4) Make the evil cleric or wizard different than the previous cleric or wizard so the encounter has a unique flavor to it. This was very important to me as a DM - I didn't want to do the same thing over & over again, just adding levels along the way.
5) Since I had a large group of players (8), I could not throw a solo cleric or wizard at them - they would need to have support, be it warriors, monsters, summoned creatures, lower level clerics/wizards or whatnot. So, if the level 15 cleric had a level 12 and a level 11 with him, I would need to do the same with those supporting clerics. Then, the clerics would need bodyguards - fighters or monsters of whatnot.
6) Forgot this part - but, then you need to decide which "buffing" spells/items the bad guy is going to cast and in which order (i.e, what if the PCs surprise the bad guys, what if the bad guys surprise the PC, what if they stumble upon each other, what if the bad guy has only one round of warning or two...) and, then you need to calculate the plusses and/or minuses for each buff. Individually, the calcs are all easy, but if you have 6-8 buffing spells and some stack with others and some don't, it can get confusing if certain ones are dispelled and others are not)
Then, I need to decide if the PCs will have any allies to help them out at all, too.
And, since my bad guys had dozens of different options each round, I would often be a bottleneck at the table deciding which spell to cast, which metamagic spell, where to move, etc for each of my 15-20 bad guys. And, after each encounter, I would kick myself because I missed one or more important options for my bad guys ("damn, my lich had a ring of positive energy resistance on her left hand..." I totally forgot about it since most of her other items were protective in nature, like the Ring of Protection +4 on her other hand. But, the party rogue doing 40 points of positive energy damage to her was a turning point in the battle. )
With 4E, I just decide on the level of the encounters and pick appropriate bad guys from the monster builder, copy & print. They're already equipped and have their skills all picked out and I don't need to pick out 40 or more spells and 5-10 magic items. Where I was spending 20-40 hours between sessions on creating bad guys and encounters in 3.5E, now I'm spending 20-40 minutes.
While I like Pathfinder, I found it made the base classes more complex than 3.5E, so it would have even more things for me to forget/not remember. Plus, when my group chose 4E over Pathfinder a year and a half ago, there was no official character building software available for PF at the time.
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Actually all you had to do was look in the DMG. There were already classes such as cleric and wizard already created from levels 1-20 with appropriate gear for their level. Changing the race and item line up wasn't hard at all.
malraux
First Post
As I recall, that didn't include spell selections, nor did it have spells applied. Additionally, if you stick to the requirement that each wizard/cleric be somewhat unique, that does limit the usefulness of that prepped generic npc. But yes, if you ignore all the reasons why that doesn't work, it works.
Imaro
Legend
All I'll say concerning the latter part of this thread is that Pathfinder has tools that are just as, if not more, robust than 4e's current tools. Combat manager makes it a breeze to stat out and run encounters, there's a web site that allows you to print out "spell cards" for any relevant spells, and Hero Lab allows character creation and advancement for a flat fee. So I would argue that the disparity between prepfor 4e and Pathfinder is alot closer (when using electronic tools) than most think.
Switching up a spell here and there was not hard at all. Now taking a 20th level cleric or wizard and rearranging every spell he had and then trying to find the best combos of spell use did take a little bit more time but it's not a difficult as some people try and make it out to be.
Nullzone
Explorer
Holy beans this thread reeks of subjectivism.
Just because YOU did or didn't have a problem with a design implementation doesn't mean that OTHER PEOPLE had the same experience.
Adjusting on the fly was a pain in 3.x. I don't know if it's been streamlined any in PFRPG but this forum isn't about PFRPG anyway so it's moot.
Heck, even just reading monster statistics was a pain. I don't really need to know that this 20th level dragon can cast Detect Magic as a level 1 spell. He's a 20th level dragon, I'm pretty sure he knows what a magic sword is and looks like. And oh man I'd better look up his feats, he might have a double attack or a cleave...yep, there they are, cleave on hit and double attack when <insert one of the many multiattack feat triggers here>.
Sure, people do it all the time because they knew what to look for. But the clear, concise approach to the stat block in 4e is so much more conducive to actually getting useful information to the DM quickly, particularly for people with limited grognardian instincts. I sincerely doubt you could cold-read a delve and pull it off nearly as smoothly in 3e as you could in 4e. (Don't misunderstand me; that's not to say 4e is a better system, it just does a better job of delivering information.)
What exactly was the point of this thread again besides drumming up a bunch of "lol this isn't hard learn how to DM" and "oh man 4e is deprecating the DM's authority"?
Just because YOU did or didn't have a problem with a design implementation doesn't mean that OTHER PEOPLE had the same experience.
Adjusting on the fly was a pain in 3.x. I don't know if it's been streamlined any in PFRPG but this forum isn't about PFRPG anyway so it's moot.
Heck, even just reading monster statistics was a pain. I don't really need to know that this 20th level dragon can cast Detect Magic as a level 1 spell. He's a 20th level dragon, I'm pretty sure he knows what a magic sword is and looks like. And oh man I'd better look up his feats, he might have a double attack or a cleave...yep, there they are, cleave on hit and double attack when <insert one of the many multiattack feat triggers here>.
Sure, people do it all the time because they knew what to look for. But the clear, concise approach to the stat block in 4e is so much more conducive to actually getting useful information to the DM quickly, particularly for people with limited grognardian instincts. I sincerely doubt you could cold-read a delve and pull it off nearly as smoothly in 3e as you could in 4e. (Don't misunderstand me; that's not to say 4e is a better system, it just does a better job of delivering information.)
What exactly was the point of this thread again besides drumming up a bunch of "lol this isn't hard learn how to DM" and "oh man 4e is deprecating the DM's authority"?
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