D&D 3E/3.5 Problems with 3.5 I don't wanna see in 4th

[The Little Raven]

You know, I don't think our gaming group ever picked up on that.

I remember when I first noticed it. I was reading through a couple spells, glanced up at the current DM, arched a brow and spoke.

"What does the room look like?"
"Uhh... dude, you're human, it's pitch black."
"I cast darkness, centered on myself."
"Uhh... what? Lemme see that."
<DM reads book>
"Frak... okay, the human can now see dimly."
"You could have just said no."
"I'd rather say yes than get the stink eye all night."
"Wise choice."

 

[arscott]

I'm not a fan of miss chances at all. I would be in favor of allowing magical weapons to hit incorporeal creatures. A better mechanic would be to give the creature a bonus to AC and Reflex defense because they are incorporeal.

Can't speak for Incorporeality (doesn't exist in SW, except in the form of force spirits which can't be damaged at all), but miss chances for concealment have turned into static penalties.

I'm not sure why Rope Trick is broken. It's never derailed a game I've run.

Well, it's never derailed a game per se, but I've had the psionic version ruin an encounter.

In the Dark•Sun game I ran, the PCs were escorting a group of starving pilgrims. I had planned for them to be attacked by monsters at night, but one of the psions to a rope-trick equivalent power. Since a psion can use the power as often as he likes as long as he's got the power points, this guy cast it 3-4 times, allowing the entire group of pilgrims and the PCs to evade the attack entirely. Since the whole point of the encounter was to kill a bunch of pilgrims (thematically important, I assure you), it definitely had a negative impact.

 

[Ecaiki]

First of all, Hi to everyone. I've lurked here since around the time 4E was announced.

Now with that out of the way... I say leave fly exactly as it is, since they have said (I think, memory is fuzzy) that fly is a paragon power, so your wet behind the ears adventurer is quite ground bound.

I'm hoping that they have fixed the caster multi-classing issues that 3.x introduced, since I found it frustrating that a melee type could do it with very little penalty aside from their BAB. If a caster dared to look into getting something that didn't mesh with their casting they were screwed over by more then a single level dip unless that led to some kind of prestige class.

The only other thing is I hope to any deity that cares to listen that clerics and the like have their monopoly on healing abilities broken. I'm not one to play a divine class, I love the arcane flavour too much, so I should have the option to heal as well as any divine class as long as I focus on it.

 

[howandwhy99]

Darkness is hopefully fixed. Dimness is what it became after the revision, which is an old 1e/2e spell.

EDIT: Which is odd as most 0-level spells were originally 1st level and Dimness was a 0-level spell in UA that became a 2nd level spell.

 

[Ninja-to]

Here's another to add to the list:

Golf Bag Syndrome (ala Monte Cook's description).


DR was and is a mess. Just a headache not needed. Carrying around a Mace, Sword and silver arrows, cold-iron spear... on and on. As a player, a major pain in the arse. Monte's response was to make +1 through +5 able to overcome DR, like +2 overcomes DR Silver etc. Has there been any word on DR yet? I haven't seen or heard anything. Closest I've seen was something about 'Damage Threshold' but it's murky as to what that means. Maybe a damage cap per hit.

 

[DandD]

That's a two-fold problem. Carrying around tons of items to overcome the specific DR is cumbersome, yes. But making it again like in the old system, where a better plus can overcome the lesser plus-DR makes having special items with interesting properties worthless, as only the enhancement bonus would matter.
I guess that in this case, I'd rather have the system introduced in 3.5, than the one we had before in 3.0, simply because it makes having an item made of a special material matter more. Perhaps reducing the DR-values might be better than returning to the old +5-enhancement bonus-supremacy (it's already too good for its own sake).

 

[kennew142]

Well, it's never derailed a game per se, but I've had the psionic version ruin an encounter.

In the Dark•Sun game I ran, the PCs were escorting a group of starving pilgrims. I had planned for them to be attacked by monsters at night, but one of the psions to a rope-trick equivalent power. Since a psion can use the power as often as he likes as long as he's got the power points, this guy cast it 3-4 times, allowing the entire group of pilgrims and the PCs to evade the attack entirely. Since the whole point of the encounter was to kill a bunch of pilgrims (thematically important, I assure you), it definitely had a negative impact.

I'm just curious. Did the characters know an encounter was coming? If not, how did they know to get everyone into the extradimensional space? If yes, didn;t the attackers spot the characters? They spend a while getting everyone into the space, I assume. Couldn't the attackers have seen them doing it. If so, they could have dispelled the power, or set a watch on the spot to attack them when they came out.

I guess I'm not clear on how the encounter was ruined. I don't know the details of your story, but couldn't the opponents have attacked at another time? It seems to me that lots of thematically important story issues could be bypassed by spells. Create Food and Water could have proven problematic, if you'd wanted them to lose pilgrims from starvation along the way, for example. It is the nature of magic/fx that it bypasses story elements, unless you are flexible enough to work around them.

 

[ZombieRoboNinja]

That's a two-fold problem. Carrying around tons of items to overcome the specific DR is cumbersome, yes. But making it again like in the old system, where a better plus can overcome the lesser plus-DR makes having special items with interesting properties worthless, as only the enhancement bonus would matter.
I guess that in this case, I'd rather have the system introduced in 3.5, than the one we had before in 3.0, simply because it makes having an item made of a special material matter more. Perhaps reducing the DR-values might be better than returning to the old +5-enhancement bonus-supremacy (it's already too good for its own sake).

Judging from the DDM cards that came out, some characters have special vulnerabilities - the one I remember is "Vulnerable: 5 Fire" or something, which I'm guessing means you take an extra 5 damage whenever you take fire damage.

This would be an easy fix for the problem you're addressing. Fae could have "Vulnerable: 5 Cold Iron" so that cold-iron weapons would do extra damage to them, and so on.

 

[DandD]

Judging from the DDM cards that came out, some characters have special vulnerabilities - the one I remember is "Vulnerable: 5 Fire" or something, which I'm guessing means you take an extra 5 damage whenever you take fire damage.

This would be an easy fix for the problem you're addressing. Fae could have "Vulnerable: 5 Cold Iron" so that cold-iron weapons would do extra damage to them, and so on.

Hmm, that might actually work in a good way. In D&D 3.X, you can after all kill a demon with a normal weapon, you just have to make enough damage that it's more than his DR can deflect. But hitpoints and AC are also meant to signify how hard and how tough a monster is, and may incorporate the 'quasi'-immunity that such beings have towards common people. Only heroes are able to do enough damage to kill such monsters, and so do overcome the 'immunity' of the monster in a 'gamist' way (as far as I understand that whole narrativist-gamist-simulationist-crap that's being thrown here around lately).
Yes, that would actually be a good idea. The Pit Fiend does already have resistances, so having some vulnerabilities wouldn't be bad either towards specially sacred silver items.
However, I can't see any such things stated on the example Pit Fiend entry, so perhaps they have thrown DR completely away...

 

[arscott]

Or just kept it for particularly evocative or unique situations.

Fey being vulnerable to Cold Iron makes sense and fits with their folkloric roots. Demons? not so much. If special-materials vulnerability goes to only a few iconic creatures, I'd be happy (cold iron for fey, silver for lycanthropes, etc.)

Alternately, special materials may now become weapon qualities. So instead of a Dolgaunt having DR/Byeshk, we see a weapon property, Byeshk, that grants bonuses when attacking abberations.