just getting into 3rd edtion

[Dandu]

1. Yet many people still don't play them. Weird, huh?

People play them all the time.

 

[aboyd]

Corsair has a point though -- get 100 players at the local meetup.com event and you'll find more than a few of the players shy away from the cleric because they don't want to play the "band-aid."

Do plenty of smart players go for clerics & druids? Sure, they've seen the class abilities, the features, the math. They understand what kind of power has been put into those classes to make them more desirable. That doesn't stop a portion of players from assuming that these classes are uninteresting or underpowered.

I find a lot of players just don't read forums, don't know character optimization (and don't care about it once they hear of it), and really have no idea how versatile the classes can be.

 

[Dandu]

Corsair has a point though -- get 100 players at the local meetup.com event and you'll find more than a few of the players shy away from the cleric

A few is not many. Mathematics can prove this.

 

[aboyd]

Oh give me a break. I don't know why I wasted my time.

 

[irdeggman]

A few is not many. Mathematics can prove this.

Make sure that you reference is not putting table top players and and online players into the same mix.

They are actually different styles across the board.

Online players tend to be more thoughtful and lean towards more optimization methods.

In my 30 plus years of playing D&D people have shied away from playing clerics.

In 2nd ed - it was purely because fo the "band aid" role - while specialized priests help give more focus, the "role" of the cleric was still more tightly focused than other classes.

In 3.x, people have played clerics more often, but almost exclusively they have shifted towards prestige classes and in a the vast majority of times they were mutliclassed - more so than other players playing other classes.

And since our group evolved from 2nd ed into 3.x we still carried our old preconceptions with us so a tendency to play less clerics and in fact I have only seen 2 people play druids total.


So it depends on the gaming group reference, but there is a reason why WotC made the cleric (and then its prestige classes) in general more powerful mechanically than other classes - it was not by accident it was a conscious decision based on research over the years.

 

[memnoc]

ok so keeping to the core sounds best thank you for all the advice here's hoping for the best

 

[Noumenon]

I would say the spell Charm Person is the one that will be the most difficult for a new DM to plan for, roleplay, and keep balanced.

I think it counts as "broken" that PCs will die unexpectedly, without their players making any bad choices, in encounters you had no idea would be tough. It really strains a game when instead of running the adventure you want, you have to leave the dungeon to get new companions, everything stops while people make new characters, all the attachment they formed to their character concept is gone...

 

[Aus_Snow]

Remember that, even according to the very rules and text themselves (e.g., DMG 3.5) prestige classes are totally optional, both in general and apiece. Whitelist rather than blacklist, is my advice, and don't fret if your whitelist is empty either.

Remember Rule 0 as well.

And keep splats to an absolute minimum. In fact, just like the PrC thing, you can be as selective as you like, even within any given source, let alone among the (hopefully small) lot of them.

 

[Voadam]

ok so keeping to the core sounds best thank you for all the advice here's hoping for the best

It is a fairly complex system with a ton of options that can increase complexity but also some that can reduce complexity (for example warlocks from Complete Arcane are a spellcasting class that uses only a few not so powerful but at will magic powers so there is no spell slot tracking and resource management).

Sticking to core to start is a pretty good strategy for getting a handle on the system.

 

[Dandu]

Good non-core supplements are the XPH (material from which can be found on the SRD), Tome of Magic, Magic of Incarnum, and the Tome of Battle.