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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 5314845" data-attributes="member: 3400">The games (1e, 2e) were balanced better than I believe most people realize.Wizards had awesome powers at higher levels without needing a lot of magic items (though they did like them). So the treasure tables in 1e were skewed in favor of disposables and the armor wearers and weapon users rather than wizard-oriented items. This seems to have disappeared in 3e in favor of tables based more around cash value. Magic items were also a lot harder to make, keeping wizards (or other spellcasters) from kitting up powerful stuff on the relative cheap compared to fighters who were buying up their stuff retail in 3e.Saving throws were kept to values covered by a d20, so there was no ability to spike a save DC higher compared to your enemy's target saving throw. Save or Die effects became a lot weaker as PCs progressed. Not only did that favor high-level characters surviving, it prevented wizards from being an instant win button with a save or die effect... barring a fortunately bad save from the opposition. The tactic was a lot less reliable.Wizards and other spellcasters were much easier to disrupt in 1e/2e than in 3e. They had to be a lot more careful on the battlefield what spells or actions they would take. Fire off a weak but quicker low-level spell or invest more time (and gain a worse initiative) with a more effective higher level spell thus increasing the risk of being attacked and disrupted? AC was pretty much confined to 10 to -10 barring exceptional types of enemies. It was very hard for any AC to be completely out of a moderately made character's reach.Touch attacks were based on the full AC of the target - add in the increased likelihood of disruption and you don't see very many harm spells cast in a fight.Some changes made in 3e, generally for gamist reasons, actually hurt the balance of the game compared to 1e/2e. Cyclical initiative. After the ease of playing with it, who would want to go back? Yet it makes the turn order of the wizard predictable after being initially set. Combine that with spells being cast in 1 standard action rather than variable segments affecting turn order and the spellcaster is much harder to disrupt.3e also brought in open-ended bonuses for things, particularly AC and save DCs. This meant that a power-gamer (or anyone with a modicum of sense about improvement) could focus on building up a character with a very high bonus, dwarfing the normal less optimized players or monsters. Easy to work into the rules from a gamist perspective, maybe not so good for game balance.</blockquote>

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