Hmmm... Guess I'll throw out some of my "gems".
Gothmog said:
Personally, I don't care for high-powered play much, but to each his own.
Same here.
Having said that, the core system of 3E is much better than 1E or 2E. The way skills and feats are handled are much more realistic. Likewise, BAB and saves in 3E are much easier to work with than the old THAC0 and saves of 1E and 2E. The classes are more balanced against each other, and no race is overwhelmingly more powerful than the others now (elves anyone?). The new multiclassing rules are great, and encourage character development (as long as the DM keeps an eye out for munchkins).
Agreed completely. Especially the munchkin part.
What is a problem to some people at least is the assumption in the core rules that every game is going to be high-powered. Yeah, I know- everyone can make their own house rules (which I do), but some people take the books as gospel and balk when house rules are introduced.
Yep. Of course, I generally make sure any prospective Players are fine with house rules before I ask them to join the group, and I also show them the rules before I accept an answer.
1) Very fast leveling rate- It is assumed that PCs level every 13 or so encounters assuming equal party level CR encounters by the books. I feel that such fast progression doesn't give the characters adequate time to develop and explore their abilities before gaining a new level. In a sense, 3E is very video-gamish- its all about the power-ups.
I halved the rewards, as well as focus on story-line and social interaction (investigation, politics, guild/church relationships, etc.). Did wonders.
2) Reliance on magic items at higher levels. Although all versions of D&D have had this flaw, its especially bad in 3E. It is assumed that PCs need certain levels of magic in order to survive and advance in 3E. While its not hard to restrict magic items, it is annoying that the whole CR/XP/magic item system is so interlinked that if you want to change one part of that equation, you have the throw out the other aspects as well. What I ended up doing was giving story awards for XP, and not worrying about XP per kill or CR.
The other problem is that the assumed levels of magic items (per PC wealth) is purposely done to grant non-spellcasters what they need to even-up with primary spellcasters (Wiz/Sor/Clr/Drd).
Items can be reduced, but then the 4 spellslingers need to be reigned in to a degree.
I do this by eliminating a few things (spontaneously producing spells and the 2 freebies a level Wizards gain) and adding others (expectations upon guild members, difficulty obtaining lore after a certain point, research mishaps, etc.).
3) Uncapped character abilities at high levels. In 1E and 2E, after 10-12th level, character advancement and capabilities slowed down. I think A'koss is right here, after 10th level, the game needs to reign in the classes somewhat and restrict power, otherwise its an ever-increasing power escalation of PC vs NPC power.
Agreed again. One of my favorites is what I call the "Aptitude Cap". I completely dislike the idea that someone with a 4 Charisma and 23 Ranks in Diplomacy is a smooth-tongued snake. Rather, that character has a limitation of 4 Ranks in their Charisma Skills. You can imagine how well this works in capping a bit of the power level.
Hit points, saves, and AC become so disparate at higher levels for PCs in the same party that the DM has to be much more careful what he thows at the PCs, or some of the PCs will be useless. For example, fighters need monsters with high HP and AC to be challenged, but then the other classes can't hit them, or substantially contribute to a combat.
Defense Rolls go a long way to aid in this.
On the other hand, creatures with high DR are pretty much immune to the fighters, and require spellcasters to deal with.
True yet not... It more or less depends on how you handle them. For instance, once I bring in the more potent items of the campaign, DR becomes less of a problem. If anything, I use lower-ranked DR prior to this point in order to representing the growing dangers of the world, making the magic items that much more cherished when found.
And realistically, how many level 12+ characters and/or monsters are there in a world to throw against the PCs? It becomes increasingly hard to justify increasingly powerful opponents in the world.
This is also a problem, although having a larger setting helps to a degree. The infamous "evil empire" is always good for high-level NPC villains to defeat. Monsters, I agree, are over-all problematic in regards to verisimilitude. After all, how many dragons are there in the world, and if there are so many, how did anything larger than a field mouse survive the past few mellenia?
Not to mention the whole Power Play blurb atrocity in Dragon- that's evidence enough that 3E has been geared toward a powergamerish type of play.
Yep. Here is why I enforce logical class gain and training requirements. It's also why I write my own Prestige Classes and let them be discovered in-game rather than just picked freely for the hell of it.
I still like 3E, but hopefully WoTC will reign in the power levels a little bit by the time 4E comes around.
Doubt it. As pointed out earlier, sales and marketability are more essential to a business than not. One thing we
might hope for is that WotC might do a d20 Fantasy in the same vein as d20 Modern, providing a Core system more friendly to lower powered games. But they'd have to find that market research validates the expense through profitability.
Bees like honey!
