My take.

[helium3]

Three out of five players.

*nod*

I've noticed that if you offer XP in amounts that players actually care about, they'll respond. The way I set it up, the players can do the extra work to get the bonus XP whenever they want. Oddly enough, as soon as the players got close to (but not quite) leveling the background info came pouring in.

In the past, the DM would give out a whopping 150 XP for character background. What a major incentive!!

 

[Hussar]

Whereas, I have been criticized by my players for not doing mountains of blue-booking between each session covering each and every minute of downtime.

I recently tried an experiment: I told them "You are going to start your next adventure HERE. You are currently THERE. It's a three month trip across hostile terrain; here's some of the known points of interest. If you write a short story -- a page at least -- detailing one adventure you had en route, you get half the XP needed to move you to your next level and a level-appropriate magic item of my choice."

This way, they get to define something of their non-combat time and get material rewards, and I don't have to do .

I can also be sure anytime they enter a town, at least an entire game session will go by with them running hither and yon meeting every NPC in the place, each according to their own personal interests -- the Oath Of Poverty druid will be looking for oppressed people, the warforged tinkerer will be looking to fix things, the bard will be looking to get laid, etc. I basically need nothing but a bunch of NPCs and agendas, no real 'adventure' at all.

Lizard - that's great and all. But, do you think that the rules should assume that every group plays this way?

 

[helium3]

Whereas, I have been criticized by my players for not doing mountains of blue-booking between each session covering each and every minute of downtime.

See, I'd just tell my players to piss-off if they tried to give me a hard time about that. I'm talking about IMPORTANT stuff, not every time Lidda has to run to the Latrine. Basically, that time off gives the player-characters a chance to research any Plot Hooks they might have run across. I tend to throw them in quite liberally.

On an aside, it was really funny at first because the players were coming from the perspective that each and every plot-hook must be followed. They were totally overwhelmed until I finally explained that "no, I do not expect you to follow up on every hook, just the ones you think your character would be interested in."

 

[FireLance]

Personally my problem is not so much with the 6 hours rest but with the spontaneous self healing and especially with the "being cut down by an enemy but then standing up again with 25% health".

As for me, I just assume that no physical healing actually takes place. The character just taps some hidden reserve of willpower and continues fighting despite his wounds. Would replacing the terms "hit points" and "healing surges" with "determination points" and "determination boosts" help?

 

[Lanefan]

Full healing from any condition in 6 hours is a complete non-starter for me.

We unintentionally quasi-solved the housecat problem 25+ years ago when we introduced "body points" - a single die roll representing real physical damage that any living thing does once (though a housecat rolls a d1) and adds to its normal hit points (we call those "fatigue points"). A Human rolls d5 for bodies, a Dwarf d6, an Elf d4, etc., and decent Con can force a minimum. What this does is turn what used to be the 0 h.p.-to-1 h.p. divide into something much larger that housecats can fit into. (this turned out to be surprisingly similar to SWSE's wound-vitality system, only with fewer wound points)

We then introduced rules to the effect that body-point healing via rest worked differently than fatigue point healing, and spells worked differently on the two types as well.

But, if the party can full heal in 6 hours then the bloody monsters better be able to as well!

Lane-"I have a housecat in my lap as I type this"-fan

 

[Celebrim]

The problem is BryonD, 3e actively penalizes you if you try to do that. Climb, for a simple example, is a cross class skill for wizard. So, he has to burn 2 ranks each time. Say he's got an 18 Int...

Ok.

Look at what a wizard is pretty much expected to know:

Spellcraft
Concentration
at least 1 Knowledge skill

Already he's over his skill limits per level.

Say what?

I thought you said he had an 18 Int? Doesn't that mean he could max out 6 skills - 7 if he's human. And since he really only needs 2 skills, plus some knowledge skills perhaps not possessed by others in the party, he's got alot of skill points left to spend.

Considering that DC's almost always scale by level, unless you keep a skill maxed, you might as well not bother.

That is in my opinion, extremely poor design on the part of the DM. You are punishing players for getting skillful at something, rather than letting them enjoy the rewards of thier skillfulness. Some DC's should scale with level, but on average walls shouldn't get smoother, floors more slippery, treasure more exotic, objects harder to craft, runes harder to decipher, entanglements harder to escape from, ropes harder to tie, animals harder to handle or ride, weather harder to survive, wounds harder to treat, and so forth simply because the characters are getting tougher.

How can he possibly afford to keep up other skills to the point where they will actually work?

That he isn't getting some tangible benefit out of 5 ranks in some skill is the fault of the DM, not the system.

 

[Imp]

That is in my opinion, extremely poor design on the part of the DM. You are punishing players for getting skillful at something, rather than letting them enjoy the rewards of thier skillfulness. Some DC's should scale with level, but on average walls shouldn't get smoother, floors more slippery, treasure more exotic, objects harder to craft, runes harder to decipher, entanglements harder to escape from, ropes harder to tie, animals harder to handle or ride, weather harder to survive, wounds harder to treat, and so forth simply because the characters are getting tougher.

I wouldn't be that mean, because a lot of the 3e rules sort of imply that sort of thing, but I don't do generally scaling DCs either – just the occasional lock or trap or Big Deal obstacle that's meant to be a hassle or else intentionally divide the party. I encourage characters to spend nominal points (say, up to 5 or so per skill) on cross-class skills.

 

[Incenjucar]

Full healing from any condition in 6 hours is a complete non-starter for me.

It's mostly recovering, not just actual healing. Heroic characters vs. Monsters is equivalent to a fist fight between two normal people, or a boxing match with gloves on between two serious fighters.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

Heroic characters vs. Monsters is equivalent to a fist fight between two normal people, or a boxing match with gloves on between two serious fighters.

Even if this is true -- and it sure seems suspect to me -- is it really your belief that six hours after, say, Frazier-Ali -- six hours! -- the two fighters would be perfectly able to go at it again? And then again, six hours after that? Really?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Ok.



Say what?

I thought you said he had an 18 Int? Doesn't that mean he could max out 6 skills - 7 if he's human. And since he really only needs 2 skills, plus some knowledge skills perhaps not possessed by others in the party, he's got alot of skill points left to spend.



That is in my opinion, extremely poor design on the part of the DM. You are punishing players for getting skillful at something, rather than letting them enjoy the rewards of thier skillfulness. Some DC's should scale with level, but on average walls shouldn't get smoother, floors more slippery, treasure more exotic, objects harder to craft, runes harder to decipher, entanglements harder to escape from, ropes harder to tie, animals harder to handle or ride, weather harder to survive, wounds harder to treat, and so forth simply because the characters are getting tougher.



That he isn't getting some tangible benefit out of 5 ranks in some skill is the fault of the DM, not the system.

5 ranks mean you invested 10 of your wizard skill points, and you're already a 7th level Wizard. Your friendly neighbourhood Fighter or Rogue already had that 5 levels earlier, at half the cost.

And then there is the problem: What if I want to make a Climb check in interesting challenge to the whole group? I mean, it isn't as if you need a lot of Climb checks per session, so they should probably count for something.

In 3E, there is a very narrow window of opportunity for make Climbing count for everyone - probably the first 1-3 levels. Afterwards, I'll have the untrained, who can succeed at only the most basic task, or the trained, who will still succeed at difficult tasks and fine basic tasks cakewalks.

There is a reason why HD, BAB and Saves automatically scaled in 3E, and it was a flaw that this didn't apply for skills. If you really want a level based system, make sure that every bit of character advancement is guided by these levels.