Kits versus 3E...

[Arnwyn]

Like I said, I'm as bad a culprit at this as anyone. It just occured to me as a good guideline for online discussion this very minute so I dumped it on your head. Please don't be offended.

Nope, not offended at all - in fact, I agree with you. Believe me, I was wincing when typing it, and when I do I try to put a little vague qualifier in front (like I did above: "suggest"). Lame, I know. But please don't take that as the crux of my argument/discussion.

How do *I* feel? Well, I liked kits. I thought they worked well (for *my* game) and certainly differentiated the different characters. I never had any balance problems, and some people used kits while others did not. In the same party. A 3e template version would work well, IMO. (I use the 3eAA ones, and they work just fine.)

What, exactly, are the two options here and how do they differ? It sounds like what you're asking is that some undetermined game publisher should create some class templates for us all to use.

I think that's a great idea. Not sure how that goes against anything else that's been said. I guess I've been working on the assumption that SOMEBODY has to design these.

Sure, that's a possible course of action.

I'm going to go all nitpicky on you for a second and say that these are CLASS templates, not CHARACTER templates.
Ain't I awful?

Erg... yes, you are. But oops, my mistake. Yes, CLASS templates, of course.

 

[Ravellion]

That's a lot of IF's. Fact is, clerics couldn't have 18/00 STR, only fighters. And they also coudn't use two-handed swords. So I fail to see why you even brought all that up. My 3E cleric didn't have to break any rules to do that much damage.

Like a specialty priest of Torm wouldn't have to do either?

Please don't compare UA to all the shenanigans that are now possible with 3E. I refer you to the various Smack-Down threads so you can understand the current state of things. UA never allowed a Cavalier, or anyone else, to do 200+ points of damage in 1 round. Ever.

No, 200+ damage in a round is now quite common, while back then the things that were allowed in UA simply were better than what was around before that. If everyone is on even ground, it doesn't matter that it is 50 feet higher than before. This isn't even power inflation, it is numberinflation required for the greater variance of results possible in many things inherent to the d20 system.

Ah the good old days. Those truly were magical times when we trembled at the thought of 3 orcs rushing the party.

I have seen 2 2e DMs crash and burn because they thought that a few Orcs were a nice challenge for a low level party. They were, and are no longer. But hey, I still remember 2e 1st level fighters with longsword specialization and two weapon fighting with 18/78 strength, making two attacks doing 1d8+6, making 2 and a half attacks per round, with no penalty on their primary hand, soI can't blame them. The Orcs have gotten so much more powerful, and the characters so much more puny. Unless of course, we give a balanced excample. Instead of the both of us using one minmaxed example and one low powered one, we could actually make a balanced comparison.

Aw, frig, I have fallen into edition wars...

The thing is, I remember kits. If you want to make sure that people don't need a prestige class to fulfill a concept, I think the most important thing there is, is to disallow that prestige class. If in 2e you needed to take the cavalier kit in order to become a cavalier, the same is true for 3e.

If there are no Cavaliers, kits or prestige classes, you can't get more cavalierish than by taking mounted combat, a high ride skill and spirited charge (or in 2e by taking Ride: Horse and weapon proficiency lance. Done. ). Same for Duelists/Swashbucklers. If the Duelist class is unavailable, the most swashbucklerish you can get is wearing a foppish hat and light armour and finessing a rapier.

Rav

 

[Henry]

That's a lot of IF's. Fact is, clerics couldn't have 18/00 STR, only fighters. And they also coudn't use two-handed swords. So I fail to see why you even brought all that up.

It was possible, just rare. It would involve a human with an 18/00 STR and a 17 WIS dual-classing.

UA never allowed a Cavalier, or anyone else, to do 200+ points of damage in 1 round. Ever.

However, comparisons can be made within the editions themselves, and UA character classes were FAR more desirable than their non-UA precursors, mainly because they were balanced with exhorbitant XP tables, which many DM's completely overlooked. The UA barbarian, for instance, would almost start combats within his own party, because he HAD to destroy magic items in order to stay abreast with the other characters, and the other PC's either resented him for destroying magic, or simply fought him to prevent it. The Cavaliers were role-play restriction balanced, and due to the code had to be palyed in ways that were almost suicidal. Not good ideas for balance, because most DM's I knew bypassed them and allowed the character more leeway anyway, not realizing the game-breaking they were accomplishing.

And while we are talking about EGG, as long as he is available in another thread, why not ask him if he thinks 1E is as overpowered as 3E? And tell him you think a cavalier is on par, power-wise, with what can be created with the current rules.

In my opinion, this wouldn't get you too far, because Gary has already publically said which edition he prefers, and frankly, he doesn't prefer AD&D now to Lejendary Adventures, his current work - which is almost as rules-light as they come.

Ah the good old days. Those truly were magical times when we trembled at the thought of 3 orcs rushing the party.

As a point of comparison, my groups fear plain orcs NOW more than they did back then. Orcs can remain a bit scary clear up until 3rd level. Back in the old days, even novice players took that 1-8 points of damage an orc did in stride, and they were no longer scary after 1st level. It took me introducing a critical hit system to make them scary back then.

 

[Voadam]

Well there are a lot of kits in 3e, they are just almost all in Mongoose's Quintessential series of class books, which coincidentally look an awful lot like the complete books of 2e where kits originated. A couple others go the route of switch out options for core classes such as Beyond Monks, Call of Duty, and Malladins gate ahs a bunch of variant classes in their Forgotten Heroes Paladin book and St John's Abjuration books.

If you like the kit ideas for 3e I suggest you check out the maladin and mongoose books.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Easy. He had an 18 STR and took martial weapon proficientcy, Greatsword. That gave him an 8-18 damage potential at first level.

Ok, maybe I exaggerated a little by saying he did close to 20 points of damage consistently. But most times he rolled in the teens. Lucky rolls aside, it's amazing a 1st level cleric can even do this.

A little... avg. damage is 13.

He averages 13 if he never misses or crits. Against a typical 1st-level AC (14, my standard 'benchmark'), he deals 7.9 damage per round. He would average nearly 20 (19.7) damage a round if he was allowed to roll 7 d20s and take the highest for the attack roll and crit confirmation.

 

[Spatula]

That's a lot of IF's. Fact is, clerics couldn't have 18/00 STR, only fighters. And they also coudn't use two-handed swords. So I fail to see why you even brought all that up.

My point was, the increase in power is "more a consequence of removing the artificial divide between fighter stats and non-fighter stats than anything," but you snipped that. In both cases (18 in 3E, 18/00 in 1/2E) the character has the highest possible strength for a human and is using the best weapon possible. And, it wasn't necessarily impossible for a cleric to have those things in 2E, at least, so perhaps you should point the finger in that direction.

Please don't compare UA to all the shenanigans that are now possible with 3E. I refer you to the various Smack-Down threads so you can understand the current state of things. UA never allowed a Cavalier, or anyone else, to do 200+ points of damage in 1 round. Ever.

You couldn't wish for your opponent to take 200 pts of damage? UA escalated the power level of the game. And power escalation is what you were accusing 3E of. Perhaps you meant compared to earlier editions, rather than within the game itself, in which case I misunderstood you.

 

[El Ravager]

Someone mentioned the occupations from d20 Modern. I do like those and can see how they are like kits. I like them because they add some flavor without really unbalancing things. But, using the swashbuckler example again, if there was a swashbuckler occupation/kit deal I still think it would be silly to not be able to consider your character a 'swashbuckler' without the kit, same as feeling like your character isn't truely concept x because you don't have PrC or whatever named after concept x is silly.

Conclusion: Occupations cool but not if they got out of hand like kits; game mechanic names do not define the character concept.

 

[Larcen]

...Perhaps you meant compared to earlier editions, rather than within the game itself, in which case I misunderstood you.

That's right. I meant 3E as compared to previous editions. 3E, while fun, has a much more munchiny feel to it I think. Again, I refer you to the smack-down threads to see the kinds of things that are possible. Sure, the previous editions had deadly combos too, but 3E being so relaxed in it's restrictions, and allowing PCs to fly up the XP charts, is almost screaming for abuse.

 

[Ranger REG]

Right, but isn't that the point of the thread -- the concept isn't flawed, just the implementation of it? Really, though, I don't think occupations make much sense without the generic classes of d20 Modern, but at least there's a mechanic in place for it already.

Well, the occupation is meant to give the PC some kind of background, regardless of his class(es)' path(s). Kit is meant to customize the PC development into what he wants to be ... beginning at 1st level.

I mean if we use the mechanics from occupation, then there is no way one can have cavalier abilities at 1st level.

So, if you use that in D&D, then it's okay to give them bonus skills and a feat that would reflect his background (commoner, noble, artisan, etc.) without having to give any so-called Special Benefits and Special Hindrance, then I may go for that.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Larcen - comparisons between editions are, at best, worthless. Especially when you're comparing something which has changed as much as hitpoints. A 200hp smackdown in 2e would kill gods. In 3rd ed, it wounds a dragon. There's a little bit of a difference there. Finally, at first level you could put together a multiclass cleric/fighter. Which just illustrates how inflexible 2e really was.

As to kits - on the whole, they were completely worthless, excluding those which threw the whole game out of balance, which were worse. They were a name, and very little else. I always remember thinking "hey, maybe there's a kit which matches my concept", looking up said kit and going "wow, that was a waste of time. I could have guessed that I needed those proficiencies, and I personally can't see why people would just suddenly know that I'm an >insert kit here< and give me lodging/change their reaction to me".

Significantly more value would have been obtained from just listing a number of archetypes and giving a short paragraph describing their role in history or fiction.

I'd like to see more flexibility in 3e skill lists though - the urban ranger idea is a good one. Either widening the available skills for ALL classes, or making them slightly more like the expert (ie - you may have 10 class skills out of this list...) would make possible a much wider number of concepts, which are not penalised in effectiveness.