On taking power away from the DM

[delericho]

DM: You enter a 20' by 30' room from the south, a table and three chairs are in the center, a fireplace stands against the north wall, a picture hangs above the fireplace. A door leads to the west. What are your actions? DMs Notes: If the players look behind the painting they will find a wall safe, if they search the backwall of the fireplace specifically they will find a loose brick with a +1 dagger behind it.)

Why on Earth would anyone create a +1 dagger? And then, why would they hide it behind a loose brick in their study, when they have a perfectly good safe right there?

Seriously, though...

A Search or Spot check roll (which is player rules knowledge) can pretty much mean that they can find any hidden object without a real clue where to look by just rolling a few dice. Obviously this is example is poor, because there are many more variables and I didn't want to write a novel for a post, but it isn't so much a "cheating" thing as the DM is roped into 'giving' things to the PCs just because they roll a few dice instead of using problem-solving skills.

Surely the answer to that is to "smart up" (is that right?) the game - make the clues really easy to find, but the solution fiendishly complex. Instead of having a safe behind the painting, have the safe take the form of an extra-dimensional space to which the painting is the key, but only if you can work out the clues. Search and Spot won't help you there, and while Appraise will give you the value of the painting, Spellcraft the school of magic, and Knowledge(arcana) some further clues, the players are still going to have to put it together themselves.

I think the biggest DM rules fiasco came with PrCs. Great idea, poorly executed. In the DMG, it states that a PrC should be "Campaign Specific", and describes them as optional, but then WotC and every third party company wrote PrCs and published them in PLAYER LITERATURE.

I'm with you on that one.

 

[Psion]

Does it mean I had more fun or that I am somehow cheated out of something, in a way, yes, but only if you can remember playing another way. I think the biggest DM rules fiasco came with PrCs. Great idea, poorly executed. In the DMG, it states that a PrC should be "Campaign Specific", and describes them as optional, but then WotC and every third party company wrote PrCs and published them in PLAYER LITERATURE. Nearly every player I have ever met balks when you say that all published PrCs are unavailable, "because its in the rules", when originally the concept was to make those campaign specific organizations into PrCs for flavor. When a DM says that a rule in a published book is not going to be used (whether or not its optional) often the new breed of rules lawyer shouts foul, and can now back up the argument with "written proof".

Yeah, I fight that fight too. But I blame the players more than the rules in this particular case. Because it's the player who is going to be playing the class, after all. It's the player you have to interest in it.

I find well written PrCs to be a boon, because it gets players to invest in the setting. But all to many players miss that, brush off the backstory, and pronounce their entitlement to play the mechanics.

Heck, in these very forums I fought the fight with many who complained about the new longer prestige classes with more flavor material. That, to me, was a good move by wizards that emphasized what was good about PrCs. But all to many poo-pooed the move, to my bafflement.

 

[Celebrim]

I've been in so many of these discussions that I'm too bored with them to even bother again.

The basic problem I've seen in the past is that the various sides will attempt to demonstrate a gross, obvious, change in kind when no such large change has taken place. Basically, both sides think the other is making straw man arguments, a conclusion that is only strengthened by the fact that in order to demonstrate that something gross (in both senses) has occurred or that absolutely no change has occured alot of people are making straw men out of there own points.

I think that there has a been a change in degree over the editions. It's subtle. I've made efforts in the past to show that the abstract skill system in general makes many things easier to arbitrate, but in certain narrow situations it actually makes things more difficult and it tends to discourage certain sorts of puzzles which were previously staples of the game. I think this ought to be obvious, but apparantly it isn't. I've made efforts in the past to show that while the DM is still in charge, the direction of the game is to minimize the ad hoc decision making he has to make and that this has both positive and negative consequences. I've made efforts to show in the past that things like PrC's and assumed wealth levels have given players defacto assumptions of world control that weren't present in earlier editions, and it ought to be obvious that this can lead to social friction.

I'm sick and tired of hearing about how there is something wierd about friends playing a game and having social friction. Really? You've never once had disagreement or animosity at your game table. No wonder we are communicating. We don't even belong to the same species! I applaud your transcendence of humanity, but some of us are still stuck on the rock were even close friends and long time associates can disagree, act irrationally, feel slighted, etc.

Quasqueton's thread shows he's been thinking about this at some depth as well, and it's a good place to start. There are other threads on this subject out there, but I've no desire to recreate 200 pages on this subject and can't point you to them.

 

[Celebrim]

I find well written PrCs to be a boon, because it gets players to invest in the setting.

That was the theory, and if it had worked, then great. But, it doesn't work, as your own experiences tend to support. Instead of tending to get players to invest in the setting, it encourages them to invest in the mechanics at the expense of the setting. In fact, in practice it discourages interest in the setting in favor of class dipping to get X powers. It didn't help that the DMG sample PrC's were so generic.

How often in 3rd edition did you see players get interested in an organization join it, and then say, "Oh, I qualify for a PrC now? Ok, that's cool." Instead, what you tend to see was, "Ok, I qualify for a PrC now. Secret society? Whatever."

You could have been members of a cool organization without the explicit class.

In my opinion, PrC's were the single worst design decision in 3.X. They are very bad for the game, far worse than even some other popular but questionable design decisions like critical hits. I can see what Monte was going for, but in practice it just didn't work. Anyway, I've talked this one to death to. I'm not going to list the dozen or so problems PrC's cause again.

Maybe we need a new edition just so we'll have something new to complain about.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

What power?

There is DM's burden and there is DM's fun. There is no DM's power.

What power? The one I most commonly encountered was the Lightning Bolt of DM Retribution.

The way I see the changes over editions, the DMs have rules to work with that are more clear. This results in fewer arbitrary decisions that the DM has to make, and which may be argued if they go against the players (they never seemed to when they went the players' way...). I think in 3e players seemed to have a greater expectation that the DM was following the exact same rules as the players: If a PC cannot do something, an NPC cannot either and if an NPC can do something, the PCs can as well. An prime example are the monster builds in 3e - monsters were expected to fulfill the same prerequisites as players in order to have certain feats. It sounds like 4e may actually restore some of this "power" in doing monster builds.

 

[Glyfair]

But, it doesn't work, as your own experiences tend to support.

It's flawed, but this isn't an either/or situation. In my experience it often works, but there are times the current system with prestige classes can be distracting.

Instead of tending to get players to invest in the setting, it encourages them to invest in the mechanics at the expense of the setting. In fact, in practice it discourages interest in the setting in favor of class dipping to get X powers.

Again, this isn't either/or situation. Yes, some prestige classes encourage dipping. That doesn't inherently discourage interest in the setting. It might distract from it, depending on the player, but it doesn't discourage it.

In my opinion, PrC's were the single worst design decision in 3.X.

I think they are flawed. I see two major flaws. The primary flaw was the way that prerequisites were handled. They were often (usually?) so rigorous that it required planning far in advance.

The second flaw I saw was that they tended to be used for non-prestige uses. Prestige classes were supposed to be something you worked towards. However, many prestige classes were things that players wanted to do at first level. If I want to play a lightly armored fighter, why should I have to fight unarmored for 5 levels before I could gain the Duelist class (or be crippled with a horribly sub-optimum choice? Fortunately, they began to fix this in the middle of 3.5 by introducing full classes that could do this.

Still, there are times they work. When the class has a lot of flavor (be it campaign specific or character specific) and the prerequisites are logical for the character type, they work almost seamlessly.

Prestige classes are probably one of the top 3 misunderstood things about 3E. To this day I still see people who believe that prestige classes were only supposed to be used for campaign specific organizations, even though the article released on the first day of 3E by the DMG author specified several other types of prestige classes.

 

[Clavis]

Having played D&D for over 20 years, I will concede that Old School DMs regularly abused their power, and that that the older rules were filled with too many obvious patches and inconsistencies. The main problem I have with the newer rule set is not that the rules explicitly take away power from the DM. After all, any player that does not cooperate with the DM can simply not be invited back to the table. The main problem is that the nature of the 3.X edition rules de-motivate DMs, and turn the role into a drudge job.

I do believe that the balance between creativity and rules adherence is essentially zero-sum. The more overly long stat-blocks I have to create and balance, and the more over-the-top PC abilities I have to keep in mind, the less I am able to just be creative, both in pre-game preparation and spontaneous in-game action. The brain space that SHOULD be coming up with exciting locations and thrilling descriptions of action is instead being used to calculate whether a PC triggers an Attack of Opportunity for wearing purple near a Dragon on a Tuesday in the rain. Some people enjoy a very tactical game, and their fun comes from discovering ways to get the most out of the mechanics. I, however, do not.

Ask yourself, are there fewer good DMs around now than there were? Even WOTC concedes that fewer people want to run 3rd edition than previous editions. The company is now making fun of 3rd editions combat system in official advertising! I have refused to run the 3.X edition game for years now because I was having far less fun than I did under previous editions. "Loss of DM power" is perhaps just another way of saying loss of an enjoyable experience for the DM.

 

[Psion]

The company is now making fun of 3rd editions combat system in official advertising!

They couldn't possibly have any ulterior motives for that, now...

 

[Celebrim]

It's flawed, but this isn't an either/or situation.

Very few things are, which was sorta my point of the 10:11 post. When arguing, the tendency is to conform your argument to an either/or form so as to make it clear what you are saying. But, the truth of the matter is that most of the time, you are talking about something that is fuzzy and that there are exceptions to the general thrust of your argument.

In this case, my general thrust is 'it's flawed', and the fact that with the right DM, players, PrC, and roleplay it can work well doesn't change that fact.

In my experience it often works, but there are times the current system with prestige classes can be distracting.

It's hard to quantify how often it works. I confess I dropped PrC's from my own campaign so early on, that I've got very little experience with them. From my experience outside of my campaign, its not so much that they are distracting, it's that crunch has no direct bearing on how interested a player is in the fluff. Alot of the time, they aren't really interested in the fluff at all, and no amount of crunch can make them interested in and of itself. Or else, they are interested in the fluff, but only in a generic way because the PrC is a generic concept rather than an enhancement to the fluff and its being used to kludge a hole in the rules better fixed by more flexible base classes and/or more feats.

Besides that, for the little good they do do, they aren't worth the problems of sterotyping, inflexibility, balance, player entitlement, and so forth they introduce.

As you yourself said, why should you wait to be a duelist until X level. Why can't a fighter be a duelist right from the start?

It's not so much that I think PrC's should only be used for campaign specific institutions, it's that as a design decision, I only think they make sense in that context. The other uses of PrC's strike me as kludges intended to patch holes in the rules that more rightly should have been patched using different tools. Very few PrC class abilities couldn't have been turned into feats. Some solution to multi-casting spellcasters should exist other than a PrC for each combination. Base classes shouldn't be so narrow that every specialist needs a PrC to support it given the rich possibilities of the feat and skill systems to produce specialization. Base classes shouldn't have so much flavor built in (paladin, barbarian, druid, ranger) that you need PrC's for variant base classes that really should have been options of a better designed base class. For example, if I want to have a raging fanatic who is an oathsworn temple guardian of a lawful organization, I shouldn't have to cludge a PrC together. I should be able to just give them levels in the super-concept of 'fanatical emotion driven warrior' that 'initiate of a barbaric secret warrior society' is just one concept within.

 

[Morrus]

I'm sick and tired of hearing about how there is something wierd about friends playing a game and having social friction. Really? You've never once had disagreement or animosity at your game table. No wonder we are communicating. We don't even belong to the same species! I applaud your transcendence of humanity, but some of us are still stuck on the rock were even close friends and long time associates can disagree, act irrationally, feel slighted, etc.

Let's tone down the sarcasm, please, Celebrim. This is EN World, not Circvs Maximvs.

Nobody has said anything of the sort; they have stated that the solution to social friction is not a game rule, but requires social handling.

You're free to disagree; you're not free to insult people who disagree with you.