How Do You Get Over All Of The Number Crunching?

[Mathew_Freeman]

I honestly don't find it that much of a problem. I make sure I have a nice clean character sheet with everything written on it, I make sure that if I'm applying spells to characters then I write down what bonus I'm getting (including what type of bonus it is) and the new relevant stats...

Combat goes pretty quick, as everyone just tends to go with the same ideas (I hit him! I fireball him! I cast Wall of Fire!), and although I can't speak for creating NPC's, since I don't DM, I would tend to think that so long as you don't obsess over every detail it surely shouldn't take that long to do.

I have to ask, what do your house rules cover? Are they things that players have tried to manipulate (like some spells, eg the usual harm/polymorph candidates for revision)? Or are they things you're not happy with for flavour reasons (example - many hour/level buffs have been changed to 10mins/level in the campaign I'm in because the DM doesn't want his high level villains to do the 'I wake up, I get buffed, I do my thing' routine in his game for strictly flavour reasons).

I haven't seen that much that requires houseruling in 3e, and I certainly think the game, as a whole, works much more coherently than in 2e, which I also played for several years.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

28 pages?

Hmmm... Not a bad start.

 

[Gothmog]

I can definitely see 28 pages of houserules. I personally have around 75 pages, including a WP/VP system, fixes to spells/abilities/feats in the Core Rules, defense-based AC progression, replacement spellcasting classes, a low-magic magic system, a list of herbs and natural medicines, a revision of the domains and clerical spellcasting, new feats, new spells, new prestiege classes, etc. 3E's internal consistency is tighter than previous versions, but it has it own sets of inconsistencies and problems the previous editions never dreamed of. The funny thing is that I had fewer pages of houserules for 1E and 2E combined than I have now (not that I mind house-ruling, in fact its nice since the DM can tweak the rules to suit his own world).

As far as reducing the load of number crunching on the DM, PCGen is a true help for making NPCs. I also have one player keep track of spell durations, buffs, etc; another do initiative; another keep track of mapping and notes; etc. You just need to delegate some of the tasks to the players.

 

[Wormwood]

28 Pages?

Wow.

My House Rules are three pages, and two of those are bald listings of allowable PrC's, Spells, Items and third-party sourcebooks. Admittedly it would have been easier to just list the sources I was restricting, but I wanted the players to get a feel for all of the options available to them.

Actual *rules modifications* are barely a page, and these are all balance issues (involving minor nerfs or boosts to a few spells, weapons and class abilities).

My last DM, on the other hand, had about a dozen pages of house rules. Mostly restrictions on classes and races, with some fairly major alterations of skills and magic items. Taken as a whole, it was essentially an effort to turn 3e back to 2.5e. I always thought he could have saved 90 bucks and just used his old books. He'd have been happier, and I wouldn't have wasted three months trying to navigate through his nostalgia.

As for 3e being 'numbers-heavy', I will cheerfully concede that point, since I consider it one of the system's main strengths. There are *many* other systems out there that are rules-light. In fact, the overwhelming majority of RPGs released in the past dozen or so years take that approach.

3e, on the other hand, makes an attempt to apply an underlying numeric foundation whereby the game can progress evenly throughout all levels of play. Does it succeed? Not really, but I'm the kind of system wonk that enjoys manipluating the minutae of calculating bonuses with conditions versus effects.

 

[Mortaneus]

Want a fastasy system that is quite good, quite different from D&D, and fairly complex?

www.theriddleofsteel.net

 

[Cedric]

Well, you can do what I do...I play in a 3rd ed game and a 1st ed game.

The 1st ed game is for the grit, the mystery and the thrill of just managing to stay alive.

The 3rd ed game is where you create a character or a world with endless possibilities, using a good (if power heavy) rules system...

Cedric

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I much prefer working grit, mystery and thrill into d20...

Not the easiest task to start, but once you get the hang of it, it works great.

 

[s/LaSH]

Scratch paper, mostly. Hm, and every time a PC levels I walk them through the process. You'd think that'd get kind of old by 10th level... ah well. Anyway, I've probably just got a mind geared towards this sort of thing. I do simple orbital mechanics in my head while I'm strolling down the street, and my homebrew system (which I'm hoping to have online tomorrow) has been hovering around for more than seven years now, drifting easily in and out of scientific calculators and stuff (it's easier now, thank Whoever).

So that's my contribution. Scratch paper and an interest in things that involve numbers. It got my brain good.

 

[Bob5th]

Yeah it took our group a bit to get into 3E. A singl 3e into mission. A 12th level adventure under a bad DM. A level 1 - 19 series ran by me. And a level 1- 12 series ran by the normal DM. After that we started the Adventure path with a good feal for the rules.

Everyones complains about Thaco but I myself never had a problem with it. Don't get me wrong BAB is easier but I could have lived with Thaco.

I like all the underlying math. To me it makes it feal as if they are based on something no just a thing the desingers pulled out of thin air.

In our group when someone is going to craft something they've figured it up and dicussed it with the DM between gaming sessions.

I find the stacking bonuses to be much easier than 2E. In 2E it was like Item A stacks with Item B but B doesn't Stack with C or D but C and D stack with each other. In 3E it more cut and dry. Like bonuses (almost) never stack. When we started 3E we overlooked the stacking rules and had this crazy idea that everything stacked. If that didn't lead to some over powered characters then I don't know what did.

Grapple, Trip, and Overrun. Yeah I'm still having to look all that stuff up. Not as much for the grapple modifer but for the all the things that can be done in a grapple.

Yeah I have some good memories of 2E when I first started to play around 6-7 years ago with the groups extra character Bob Jr. But would I want to switch back to 2E now? No I perfectly content here in 3E.

 

[bret]

Just curious, have you ever considered trying a different system?

Even if you don't stay with the other system, it is good to find out about other game systems to give you a better feel for what the alternatives are. Many systems give away a brief intro with a subset of the rules, so you can get a feel for what they are like.

I have to agree that D20 tends to get really heavy on the tracking required. Trying to keep track of multiple buffing spells, remembering what sort of bonus various things are, etc. By 12th level, it is getting really bad.