Monte Cook reviews 3.5

[BryonD]

I do not see how you can call constant mis-quotes and misrepresenting me as cordial. Perhaps I find that kind of behavior to be more rude than you do.

I look back over your posts and see a long string of this.

So I see no reason to continue discussing things with you.

 

[Hardhead]

I do not see how you can call constant mis-quotes and misrepresenting me as cordial. Perhaps I find that kind of behavior to be more rude than you do.

The entire thread is there for anyone to look at. I did not misquote you, or anyone, at all.

EDIT: As for misprepresenting, a much more nebulous claim, I don't believe I did that either. I suppose you could argue that I misprepresented you when I said you called part of Monte's review "childish," but I don't believe I did. I believe that you are picking nits in the whole discussion, but I maintain that tone is an inherrent part of any communication. If you didn't mean it was childish, I don't know what you meant, but I apologize for misunderstanding.

As for the WotC quote, they clearly lay out feedback as the primary reason for the revision, and to the best of my knowledge have never even offically mentioned financial reasons as a reason to go ahead with the revision. Of course, no one is naieve enough to believe that, but it's certainly the face I believe they've put forward. If you believe I'm misrepresenting them, I've yet to see you put forward any quotes to back your assertions up.

 

[Darrin Drader]

The entire thread is there for anyone to look at. I did not misquote you, or anyone, at all.

For two people who agreed half a page ago to stop talking to one another, you sure do still have a lot to say.

IOW, this is not the proper venue for mud flinging. If it continues I'll call the mods in.

 

[Nightfall]

For two people who agreed half a page ago to stop talking to one another, you sure do still have a lot to say.

IOW, this is not the proper venue for mud flinging. If it continues I'll call the mods in.

And if he won't I will. Btw Darrin, I think your opinion is a great one...even if I don't agree with the weapon size change meself. (Or what they did to specialists)

 

[Hardhead]

For two people who agreed half a page ago to stop talking to one another, you sure do still have a lot to say.

IOW, this is not the proper venue for mud flinging. If it continues I'll call the mods in.

Actually, that was someeone else that agreed to stop talking to Bryon.

Still, you're right, I did go a bit overboard and I apologize to the entire forum. I should have just sent Bryon an email or something. Again, sorry.

 

[Jody Butt]

If the predictions of the proliferation of house rules come to pass, I am not looking forward with having to learn new rules every time I play with different people. That could be an even bigger blow to Monte's concept of mastery than the way the changes were made between 3 and 3.5.

Anyways, I don't like using miniatures. For those who wonder why, for me it interferes with my imagination. I like to imagine the battle as fluid and action-packed. When it's run on a battle mat two things happen:

1. Your imagination of what the actors look like are effected by whatever miniatures happen to be on hand - and by necessity they very often aren't anything resembling the creature they are supposed to represent.

2. Miniature combat accentuates the static turn based nature of D&D combat. It's harder to imagine everyone moving and fighting at once - the chaos of war - when you see them in front of you moving one at a time and waiting for each other to move.

Yeah, I can ignore these things, and of course I don't assume that other people should agree, but since someone was wondering earlier, this is why I, personally, prefer running it without minis.

Playing with minis just seems more like a video game or board game to me, rather than an act of imagination.

You are certainly not alone. The day a miniature appears on my table will be . . . well, it will never happen.

 

[Steverooo]

Facing

I disagree completely with him over the square facings. Long creatures and "no facing in combat" rules simply didn't make sense on any level.

Which could be easily fixed by having facing. This would also allow Sneak Attacks from behind without Concealment/Cover, and solve some of the other ridiculous problems with 3.5. Instead, we have a rule that makes horses charge down five-foot corridors at half speed, and other such "stuff".

 

[ThirdWizard]

Re: Mastery

For the mastery thing, I completely agree with Monte. We now have to relearn all the rules, not just the ones that have changed, because its impossible to know what has changed and what remains the same without going over everything with a fine toothed comb, and even then we might miss something. That's the thing, you can't relate anything in 3.5 to 3.0, you have to look at it as a separate entity entirely because it is now the Core books!

And making PCs is the least of the problem with this. It's trivial in fact. Knowing that now the rules have changed slightly on a spell your wizard uses every other session, or knowing that trips are calculated differently, or knowng that a skill does something slightly differently is very different than picking a spell, feat, or skill for a PC.

And that's not even going into how conditions, Supernatural Abilities, encounter distance, and lots of obscure facts that many take for granted are changing.

 

[Olive]

You are certainly not alone. The day a miniature appears on my table will be . . . well, it will never happen.

Aren't you a 1e fan? wasn't that game based on minis? Using 1 inch measures and all?

 

[dcollins]

Wow -- great, fascinating article that I agree with 100%. And boy, is that incredibly rare. My observations about 3.5E that I've developed from the previews are confirmed spot-on by the design process that Monte has described here.

I haven't read the whole thread -- probably all the main topics have been hit upon several times. I will, however, point out this:

Amusingly, the presence of "playtester credits" is one of my third-rail issues that I've identified as the true mark of a quality gaming product, as I wrote a few years before 3E here: www.superdan.net/grtdnd/grtdnd3.html