Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Clavis" data-source="post: 3859551" data-attributes="member: 31898">I would like to see skills and feats as optional add-ons for the system, but not as vital parts of it. D&amp;D at its heart has always been a class &amp; level based system. The whole &quot;updating&quot; of the rules always struck me as ironic, because the &quot;more modern&quot; games that the designers of 3rd edition were looking to for inspiration were&nbsp; played by far fewer people than D&amp;D.The advantage of a pure class-based system (like Basic D&amp;D), with strong uncomplicated archetypes, is that it is very easy to bring new players in. All they have to say is what character from fantasy fiction their PC is most like, and the DM can just tell them what character class they should play. You start adventuring within 15 minutes, as opposed to the 1 and a half hours to 2 hours it always seems to take to create someone's first 3rd edition character. It can be quite off-putting for people who just want to role-play around a table to first have to fill out a character sheet that looks like a tax form.The problem with a pure class-based system, however, is that experienced players get bored with it. Its more a problem with male players than female ones, though, mainly because male players tend to want to &quot;win' the game by having the strongest possible character. In my experience female players don't tend to care about mechanical character optimization, and are more satisfied with simpler rules. Since D&amp;D player base is overwhelmingly male, however, something like skills and feats should be available for them. Skills and feats should be a modular add-on however, something that a DM can include or exclude without damaging the core system. If skills and feats are core, they shouldn't &quot;kick-in&quot; until mid-levels, allowing new players time to master the basic rules before encountering another level of rules complexity. Also, having skills and feats not be available until mid levels keeps initial character creation fast and simple, making retention of new players (especially new female players) more likely.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Clavis, post: 3859551, member: 31898"] I would like to see skills and feats as optional add-ons for the system, but not as vital parts of it. D&D at its heart has always been a class & level based system. The whole "updating" of the rules always struck me as ironic, because the "more modern" games that the designers of 3rd edition were looking to for inspiration were played by far fewer people than D&D. The advantage of a pure class-based system (like Basic D&D), with strong uncomplicated archetypes, is that it is very easy to bring new players in. All they have to say is what character from fantasy fiction their PC is most like, and the DM can just tell them what character class they should play. You start adventuring within 15 minutes, as opposed to the 1 and a half hours to 2 hours it always seems to take to create someone's first 3rd edition character. It can be quite off-putting for people who just want to role-play around a table to first have to fill out a character sheet that looks like a tax form. The problem with a pure class-based system, however, is that experienced players get bored with it. Its more a problem with male players than female ones, though, mainly because male players tend to want to "win' the game by having the strongest possible character. In my experience female players don't tend to care about mechanical character optimization, and are more satisfied with simpler rules. Since D&D player base is overwhelmingly male, however, something like skills and feats should be available for them. Skills and feats should be a modular add-on however, something that a DM can include or exclude without damaging the core system. If skills and feats are core, they shouldn't "kick-in" until mid-levels, allowing new players time to master the basic rules before encountering another level of rules complexity. Also, having skills and feats not be available until mid levels keeps initial character creation fast and simple, making retention of new players (especially new female players) more likely. [/QUOTE]

Verification