I've finally figured out why 3rd edition bugs me

[Quasqueton]

PC wizard wants to write a scroll. He studies up on what is required for the scroll: "feather of cockatrice, ink of giant squid, venom of wyvern." Gets his party together to go kill a cockatrice, giant squid, and wyvern.

Once each creature is slain, the wizard thinks, "Hmm. You know, I only need one feather off this '. Only an ounce of the squid ink and 'vern poison. Wonder if I could sell any of the extra to other wizards wanting to write their own scrolls?"

Wizard makes a deal with a local shop to sell individual ' feathers, and special ink and poison by the ounce. As word gets around the small, tight mage community, the local shop gets some wizard patrons looking for special items for their scroll scribing. Few want to go to the trouble of hunting cockatrices just to scribe a single scroll. Heck, many wizards have died (or been petrified) trying to obtain such a quill.

While the wizards are in the shop, they ask, "Do you have any blood of gorgon? I need a howler's quill. How about a mummified elf hand?" The shopkeeper realizes that he could make a lot of money if he could have more magical ingredients.

The shopkeeper puts out word among the adventurous crowd, that he will pay money for odd bits and pieces of monsters. He pays 1gp per gallon of gorgon's blood; sure that's a hefty amount, and he needs to get some investors (maybe the local wizard guild) to help him out. Then he sells the blood for 1gp per ounce. He buys whole cockatrice carcases for 10gp, then sells the quills for 1gp each; the heart for 5gp; the beak for 2gp; etc.

The shopkeeper, having proven the magical market to be lucrative even on the small scale, forms a guild with some other interested merchants. They open a few magical shops in other large cities and towns throughout the land.

One day, a wizard wants to write a scroll. He studies up on what is required for the scroll: "feather of cockatrice, ink of giant squid, venom of wyvern." He knows of this little "curiosity shop" in Big Town. He stops by and buys the supplies he needs. A friend of his, an older, more experienced wizard, mocks him saying, "Back in my day, we actually had to go hunt the cockatrice, squid, and wyvern ourselves. This idea of just buying magical supplies 'over the counter' takes the excitement out of scribing scrolls."

After a couple years, the shopkeeper has contacts all over the country among various adventurers, wizard's guilds, even the king's court wizard. When a warrior stops by his store inquiring about an enchanted weapon, well, the shopkeeper thinks, "Hmm. I wonder if I could work out a deal with some mage to embue an item for me?"

Then in a few years, the guild is buying, selling, trading, and brokering magic *items* as well as components.

After a couple decades, adventurers (or anyone with the need and cash) can buy magic components and items "over the counter". And the old timer adventurers moan. . .

Quasqueton

 

[Faraer]

The essential problem with flavor-text saturated roleplaying games is sometimes- the flavor isn't to everyone's liking.

Yes. Where 1E was a world, play style, and ruleset in one, 3E is clearly sold as a fantasy roleplaying game suitable for running a range of different kinds of fantasy campaign, and commercially it balances that broader appeal with putting enough in the game to give it some appealing imaginative content and identity. For me, D&D divorced of 'flavor text' has little appeal. The very term 'flavor text' discloses a particular attitude to the relationship of story/world content and rules, in which the former is a superficial gloss for the latter. While 3E's approach is more mechanics-focused than most games, those mechanics contain *implicit* world detail that is in some ways quite specific, and hence offputting to some, just as the original AD&D ethos did not appeal to all.

 

[diaglo]

After a couple decades, adventurers (or anyone with the need and cash) can buy magic components and items "over the counter". And the old timer adventurers moan. . .

after a couple days... someone else gets the idea there is money in the business and kills the first guy.

or better yet... the monsters revolt. and kill the first guy.

or even more... the adventurers kill the last ' and no more scrolls can be made.

 

[Turjan]

or even more... the adventurers kill the last ' and no more scrolls can be made.

Ah! Maybe the cockatrice will fall under the endangered species act ! Oh no, that's for Eberron .

 

[Greg K]

My problem with 3.X is not the core rules or lack of fluff. It is WOTC

My disappointment with 3.X is not the mechanics themselves, but until now I really couldn't put my finger on the problem. Thanks to the people over on Andy's boards, I think I figured out my dislike for the majority of WOTC's non-setting 3e supplements in comparison to 2e. 3e, imo, has better core mechanics, but 1e and 2e non-setting supplements as was pointed out were really about helping DMs and players tailor their campaigns and creating campaigns that capture the feeling of novels they read.

3.x class supplements just throw lots of Prc's, feats, and spells. 2e supplements gave you lots of rules options to tailor the game itself (e.g., kits, specialty wizards, optional combat rules, optional spell casting systems.) Granted, the kits in the majority of the 2e handbooks were problems either do to power creep that began to show up in later supplements or just had lame special abilities (e.g., the savage fighter acted as if he had an alarm spell when asleep). but there were some books with well written kits (the Complete thieves and Complete Druid's handbooks come to mind). More importantly, the kits at least gave an example of how to tweak the existing classes, we don't see really see this until Unearthed Arcana. Until Unearthed Arcana, everything is pretty much prestige classes despite customizing characters (i.e., class variants) actually being in the PHB (p.94/3.0 and p.110/3.5) and PrC's being listed in the DMG as completely optional.

However, kits aside I generally found much more useful material in the 2e Handbooks on the same topics of their 3e counterpoints. I look at The Complete Thieves handbook and The Complete Bard's Handbook and each had much more useful material than Song and Silence. Same for The Complete Handbook Druid's and Ranger's Handbook in comparison to Masters of the Wild.

While Tome and Blood was on par with 2e's Complete Wizard's Handbook, it, imo, does not come close to matching PO: Spells and Magic. PO: Spells and Magic not only gave several new wizard specialists (e.g., alchemist, artificer, song mage, elementalist, force mage) based primarily on creating unique spell lists based either on effect or a non-standard casting method and playable at 1st level, it also gave a point based magic systems (not to mention it gave several variations on the spell point system. Both, the new specialist wizards and the spell systems really gave DM's options for thinking about magic their campaigns. Even Complete Arcane, based on the previews, looks as if it will fall short of PO: Spells and Magic in this regard.

The only 3.x class book that I really felt was better than its counterpart was Complete Warrior. Despite cool things like the tight and broad weapon groups, combat styles and new equipment, Complete Fighter kits were often ruined by the special abilities as was the case of many kits in the the complete series. Furthermore, Complete Fighte still had that stupid table to resolve unarmed combat.

Looking at what I like about the 2e supplements, it was no surprise that people on Andy's boards realized that I enjoyed Unearthed Arcana, because it gave the campaign altering options that were found in the 2e book, but lacking in thier 3.x counterparts. As they pointed out, WOTC appears to not be really interested in giving DMs and players things in the splat books to really alter the game in the sense that 2e was-- the exception being a book like UA. To me this is the real problem of 3.X at least as far as Wizards is concerned. WOTC appears to not really be interested in helping DMs tailor the rules to create truly unique campaigns. So, until things change, I will continue supporting third party companies.

 

[Greg K]

oops double post.

 

[Greg K]

My problem with 3.0 is not the mechanics nor the lack of fluff. It is WoTC

sorry, triple post

 

[Henry]

Now THAT's an idea! Cockatrices are being hunted to extinction, and the local wizards want to capture a bunch and create wildlife preserves - now how do you capture something unharmed whose very touch can kill you? Time to break out the otiluke's spheres and the flesh to stone spells! (Or maybe just the 'spheres - don't want those cockatrices failing a fort save...)

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not alone in having coming BACK to D&D as a result of 3E -- 2E seemed like just a simple cash grab, lots of changes for no real reason, no vision, lots of "DM - play THIS way" sort of products, so I bailed and made up my own games, played Fantasy Hero and so on, or just stuck with 1E AD&D.

A feeling I have also for 3.5...

But maybe I better not go there. As to the rest of your post, I totally agree. 1e had the flavor to hook me, but didn't have the rules to keep me. I actually left D&D before 2e to do the same types of wanderings in other games and systems that others here have described, before being brought back by 3e. 2e was just an incremental step from 1e's already kludgy ruleset.

But again, my experience is perhaps odd. I run d20 games that have little in common with D&D in most respects anymore.

 

[Turjan]

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