Now is the season of our discontent?

[Numion]

Yep, I saw this as well in the last game I ran a couple of weeks ago. The group routinely handled encounters 4-5 EL above them without much trouble.

Now does this happen only in D&D / much more in D&D than other games, or is it that it's only possible to notice in D&D? Because, you know, D&D is about the only game that establishes an explicit baseline for what PCs of certain competence level should or should not (usually) be able to do.

I can't keep up with the arm's race- I surrender. :\

Or you could grow a pair. UP with the ELs and DOWN with the XPs*

* on the sly, of courz

 

[Eltharon]

Or what that leads into: the one-armed hunchback albino dwarf who also 'happens' to be a master of the broadsword, like someone put it.

A group of people finds the class system of D&D restrictive. A much smaller sub-group can actually make use of GURPS' 'realistic' character creation system without ending up with a group of quasimodos.

Actually, thats a problem with one of the players in my group (And, incidentally, the best GM). He plays characters that are...strange. Like the 60 year old paraplegic wizard. Luckily, we can normally talk him out of something bizarre, because said paraplegic gets pretty boring after maybe 10 minutes. I'm not going to let him look through all the GURPS disadvantages, I'm going to give him a sheet with the one's I'll let him have (other he seriously might play a bloodthirsty quadriplegic with a bad back, one eye...)
So its a little more important in GURPS to moderate your players when they make characters. If you do, everything should work out fine.

 

[Ashrem Bayle]

Are you guys putting a cap on the number of points you can gain from Disadvantages? In my campaign, the number of points you can gain from Disadvantages equals 1/3 of the starting points given.

So for 200pt heroes, you can only make use of 66pts of Disadvantages. Quadriplegic is worth 80pts by itself.

 

[robberbaron]

[Stream of Consciousness]
I have generally avoided the 'I'm done with xx' threads because I'm happy with the games I play/run. Then I read this thread and finally realised that...

I'm not happy at all. Particularly with 3.5.

I've played 1e, 2e, 3e and 3.5 and the progression has not been altogether favourable; my enjoyment had decreased in step with the version increment.
Back in 1e characters were much simpler: no skills, no feats, fewer special abilities and fewer 3rd party classes (which were pretty much all crap, anyway). Now characters all have skills and feats, many have loads of special fu they can do, 3rd party classes are abundant and I think most of them are still crap.

I also agree with Mallus. I enjoy playing more than I enjoy DMing, which is a shame as I DM one of our 2 D&D games and it is the only one that everyone in our group tries to attend.

In the recent past (last 10-15 years or so [I have been playing for 31]) we have played quite a few different games - Palladium, Cyberpunk/Cyberspace, D20 Modern, D20 Cthulhu, Champions, Runequest, Bushido and prbably a few I can't remember - and I have enjoyed them all, to different extents, but the problem is that each was generally run by a different person and when they stopped running them we stopped playing them.

Rather than try something new I'd like to revisit some of these other games that I have played and loved, particularly Bushido and Cyberpunk-thingy.

Then again, I have always been a bit of a gaming slut - I would play whatever anyone wanted to run.

In conclusion, I am not sure what the answer is.
If I stop playing/running the games with which I am unhappy, would anyone run something else to fill the void or would my gaming come to a bumpy halt? I'm not sure and I think I'm scared to push the big red button to find out.

[/Stream of Consciousness]

 

[Hussar]

Yep, I saw this as well in the last game I ran a couple of weeks ago. The group routinely handled encounters 4-5 EL above them without much trouble. I can't keep up with the arm's race- I surrender. :\

This I absolutely don't understand. I've done more than my share of combat in 3.5 and I've never seen this. Take most creatures of a given CR and they can generally kill a given PC of an equal level in one round of full attacks. Not likely perhaps, but possible. Jack the CR's up to +4 or +5 and how are you not obliterating PCs? I mean, if you are squaring up a CR 15 Horned Devil against a 10th level party, how are they not dying?

A single round of full attacks from Mr Horned Devil nets you 6d6+45+2d8+5+2d6+5 plus 3 DC 27 Fort saves. With those attack bonuses, he's not missing often. And that's without power attack. You're looking at easily 100 points of damage in a single round. A bit of luck and most 10th level characters should be dead in the first round.

In 18 months of play in the World's Largest Dungeon, I killed over 20 PCs, more than half permanently. I averaged a PC fatality every 3 sessions. I don't have a problem with over powered PC's, I have a problem with keeping them alive.

What are your players doing so differently?

 

[RFisher]

RFisher, can you drop me a line at ryanstoughton <zagga> hotmail.com? I'm massively interested in any serious uses of Risus.

Unfortunately, I can't really help you on that front. I haven't really made a lot of progress on that front. I think using less freeform abilities than cliches & changing how you use the dice a bit (one of the variations in the Companion is mentioned as being particularly suited to serious Risus) might get you there. But for the foreseeable future I'm not planning on attempting serious Risus.

Or what that leads into: the one-armed hunchback albino dwarf who also 'happens' to be a master of the broadsword, like someone put it.

My solution to the super-cripple phenomenon (when I felt it was becoming distracting) was simple: Up the base points a bit & no points for disads.

 

[der_kluge]

Those of you who have left D&D -


Why do you hate America?

 

[Ry]

Why do you hate America?

Oh no! He's figured out we're all Canadian!

 

[Arnwyn]

I'd be surprised if any group can go an extended time playing only one RPG without getting burned out. Yeah, I know that any number of people will chime in with stories of how they've played the same game since dinosaurs roamed the Earth,

And here I am!

but really? There was never a session where everyone felt like playing something else, maybe even a card or board game?

Yeah, really (or more appropriately: of course, really). Why would someone come over for a D&D session and not want to play D&D? Weird. There has never been a session where even one person who came over for our bi-weekly D&D game "felt like playing something else", much less "everyone", in more than 15 years. Of course, we don't overplay (and yes, a once per week session is overplaying, AFAIC). Maybe if people didn't overplay, they wouldn't get "burned out"? Just a thought.

Frankly, I'm surprised that someone else is surprised at such a thing.

Some of us have time-intensive day jobs, so having one system for everything makes actually finding time to play much more realistic (as we don't have to spend time learning a new system for different settings, premises, or genres that we'd like to get down with). For me, it's to obtain that kind of efficiency (and the freed up blocks of time that come with it) that I choose to consolidate my gaming under one cover.

'Nuff said. In any case, we're a one system group as well. If we didn't "feel like D&D", we'd go golfing or skiing instead.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Even though I've recently left D&D and made the switch to GURPS, I still check this board because of the great community and wonderful ideas that aren't necessarily tied to the d20 system. So as I pop in occasionally, I've noticed that I don't seem to be alone in my decision to leave d20 behind.

More and more I see people saying they are switching to GURPS, True 20, World of Darkness, Hero, etc, as their system of choice.

As I look back at it, I can't really pinpoint the exact reason I decided to leave D&D behind, but it seems many others had the same thought at about the same time.

What is it about 3.5 that pushed you away?

For myself, it was the d20 system as a whole. Problems with the vague nature of what happens in a six second round, hit points, levels, classes, feats, etc. These things made for a game that wasn't very realistic, or was altogether too confining than I'd prefer. I wanted a good mix of realism and playability, and I didn't want to be restrained by classes. I was also getting tired of paying increasing prices for decreasing quality.

And after writing about 50 pages or so of house rules, I decided D&D just wasn't the game for me anymore.

Me, I'm not playing anything right now.

But that's more a time thing than a desire one.