Col_Pladoh said:
The basis for the D&D game, including 3E and 3.5E is not the superheroic, but the heroic. IMO, the new system hands players on a proverbial silver platter what once had to be earned, and so there is an escalation in character powers and tose of "monsters" as those who play the new game seek to find the satisfaction they will never gain from ti because there is no earning of rank through long play that gives actual expereince and understanding, grands the ability of clever play, not mere use of gifter powers.
Gary,
I'm going to have to disagree with this to some extent. The designer notes for 3rd edition have stated that character advancement in 3rd edition was designed this way for a reason. Despite the need to draw younger players into the hobby, the reality is that right now there are more older players than younger ones. One of the realities of being an adult is that there are more real-life constraints on time than there were as a child. In today's society, people just don't have the time to play as much as they would like. The designers of 3rd edition took this into account by establishing that the ideal group at one DM and 4 players, and by accelerating level progression. Gone are the days of creating an adventure for a party of 6 to 8 PCs of X level (that isn't to say that you can't modify an adventure to suit a party of more PCs). On the other hand, the DMs Guide aknowleges this more rapid progression, and suggests that if you wish, you can prolong the amount of time it takes to advance by rewarding a fraction of the XP indicated in the DMG. To me this seems like a perfectly reasonable way to maintain the enjoyment for modern players while still allowing for a more lengthy progression in power for those who have more time to devote to this hobby.
In addition to this, the monsters are more than capable of continuing to provide a challenge to the PCs by advancing them by hit dice, size, or adding templates. In 1E and 2E, monsters were mostly set in their power level while in 3E they are scalable, which is a wonderful thing for me as a designer and DM. It used to really irritate me that after a certain level, there was no point in throwing orcs or goblins at higher level PCs because they weren't designed tough enough to be a challenge for them. Wonderful monsters had to be scrapped at higher levels because they just weren't a challenge anymore.
My personal beef with 3E is the proliferation of feats and the leap in power that occurs at epic levels. I feel that the feats presented in the core rules make a nice complete set of abilities that, for the most part, are well deisgned and not overpowered. I feel that some of the ones that have appeared through various supplements have not been as well balanced as the originals, which leads to power creep by virtue of owning those books. Epic play can be easily remedied by throwing out epic feats and epic magic, and instead going with the stripped down system presented in the 3.5 DMG.
This doesn't seem to me like rapid advancement and gifted usperpowers. Instead, its just a game that incorporates more dynamic elements than hack, slash, wipe blade, repeat. Anyway, as you are someone that I have an enormous amount of respect for, I look forward to your rebuttal.