Review of Monte's 3.5 Review...

[Grog]

I agree, Monte's review was pretty pathetic. His argument is essentially that the changes didn't weren't of benefit enough to justify the changes. But his review took almost no note on gameplay or balance, and just harped on the changes. In a cost-benefit analysis, you have to have the cost and BENEFIT, but this was really more of a rant than review.

I fail to see how it was a rant. He said he thought most of the changes were good, and he recommended people buy the books. He listed things he liked and things he disliked. Sure, he spent more time on his dislikes, but that's typical for reviews.

Apparently, compatibility is the major criteria by which to judge this product. I quite frankly haven't heard anything that suggests that old material is completly obsolete; its no less balanced under this new system then it was under of the old, because the four iconic classes haven't really changed.

They haven't changed in their basic roles, true, but beyond that, a lot of stuff has changed. The balance of power between fighting styles has changed. Several feats have been changed. Many spells have been changed. Many magic items have been changed.

3.5 is looking a lot more like "Completely rebuild your character from the ground up" and a lot less like "It took me 10 minutes to convert my 17th level druid."

 

[Wolv0rine]

First of all, thanks to the people who took the time to review 3.5, review those reviews, and review those reviews, and finally, the people who reviewed the reviews of the reviews of the reviews...

*chuckles*

I'd like to address some points...

Hasbro/WotC is doing this for the money...
Well, duh! That's the reason a company exists. Business 101.

This is so basic it continues to astound me that noone seems to take it into consideration. We're ALL (everyone doing business at least) here to make money. The question is if we do it honorably or not. Many of us do, but I don't feel that WotC has made me feel that they are doing so honorably for quite a while. I'd say probably since being bought by Hasbro, sadly.

The loss of Modrons...
So? Make them. Get the "Creating a Monster" doc, and make the damn thing, it's not THAT hard.

The innate problems with anything to which the answer is "Make it!" or "House-rule it!" is pretty simple. It's a matter of everyone playing (basically) the same game. And I think that's extremely important. If we're all playing D&D, the gamerules should be done well enough that we're all playing mostly the same game. House rules are good, and I'd never want to see them go away. But they shouldn't be needed to 'fix' the game, only alter it to taste. If the gamerules are such that most people feel the need to make house rules to "fix" thew game itself (not just tailor it), then we cease being able to talk amongst ourselves with the same frames of reference. And that's so sad.
Not that I disagree with your point.

The Weapon Rules...
So? What, if I don't use it, will Wizards SpecOps teams come bursting through my door to beat me down with She-Hulk Annuals? Will I be electronically lynched on ENWorld?
If you don't like it, don't use it!

See above. I agree with Monte on the weapon size issue though. A little common sense goes a long way. It's not beyond me to figure that halflings are smaller than humans, and thus a human longsword is pretty friggin big for a halfling.

They're making me switch!!!!
Nobody is making you do anything. Come on. People are still playing 1E. Buddha on a go-cart, people are still playing Gamma World 1E!!!
Don't buy the books. Excersize the only way to get a company to pay attention. With money.

[/B/
This is an option, yes. And it's likely the only real option one has. But again, it goes back to my point above. Will I eventually buy the books? I hope so, if only so I'm familiar with the current state of the official rules, and can understand what people are talking about. It's like d20 Modern. Don't have it, don't know the rules. And I feel like an idiot every time d20 Modern comes up, and I'm completely lost in the conversation. If I were in that position with D&D itself... not a fun thought. So in effect, yes they ARE making us switch. We are not forced to buy the books (and we CAN go by the SRD alone, true), but it's a matter of everyone being on the same page, even if some of us change a few words in our copy.

 

[bmcdaniel]

[/B]
This is so basic it continues to astound me that noone seems to take it into consideration. We're ALL (everyone doing business at least) here to make money. The question is if we do it honorably or not. Many of us do, but I don't feel that WotC has made me feel that they are doing so honorably for quite a while. I'd say probably since being bought by Hasbro, sadly.
[/B]

Lump me in with Warlord, but I just have to say who cares? I just don't understand why people on these boards seem so intent on questioning the motives of both WOTC, Monte and all the other game designers out there. I could care less whether Monte uses the proceeds of Arcana Unearthed to donate to the Republican party or smoke ganja (I'll leave it to you to decide which is a *bad* motive).

All I care about is whether the quality of the product is worth the price asked for it. For me, right now, $90 is pocket change (the story was different when I was a poor college student). And the rules changes, on balance, seem pretty good to me; they mostly address areas where we had houserules anyway.

Motive can sometimes be a proxy for quality. When someone says "WOTC just released 3.5e for the money"; what is really implied is that WOTC didn't care about the quality of the product at all. But it makes no sense at all to speculate endlessly about WOTC's motives when we can look directly at the product itself and figure out whether we like it or not on its own merits!

 

[Banshee16]

in support of Monte

In reading Monte's review, I think he's raised a lot of very important points.

As a long-time DM....I've been buying and running TSR/WotC products for, 16 years now, since 1st Ed., I'm not just trying to bash the company, or claim that the game should never change.

But Monte's right. This is too much, too soon.

And I resent the manner in which it's been done. If it's a money grab, at least have the balls to say so. And that's what this increasingly looks like. I have *0* interest in buying new copies of the same books I just bought 3 years ago. I would have been perfectly happy spending money on some cool new book that they've actually put some imagination into, instead of just reselling old ideas.

And I *really* resent having these changes forced down our throats. I know, I know, some wiseguy is going to say that we don't have to buy the books.

Nobody's forcing us to buy these books. But given that every D20 company out there (including WotC) is going to be having all their books running off 3.5 instead of 3.0, I'm going to need to have copies of at least the 3 core books so facilitate understanding the changes. Either that, or use the conversion guide which they *admit* doesn't have all the rules....just points out how some things have been renamed, and makes references to where adjustments need to be made. One doesn't learn *how* to do these adjustments unless one buys the books.

These aren't small fixes. Some are cool, but in many cases I believe Monte is right in saying that change was made, for the sake of change, and to give us more reasons to buy the books.

Looking at what I'm reading, many of the changes are bad. They break the system further. I'm not sure about anyone else out there, but I find that designers at WotC are very limited in their ability to understand what's going in my own game.

And when I see the lists of new rules, and find that 70% of them I'm going to have to rule 0 and take out of my game, but I still need to have a set of the new rules to understand new products coming out, I'm not impressed. I've bought tonnes of product from 3E and 2nd and 1st Ed. but this time around, this leaves me feeling very frustrated.

New rangers? Cool.

Paladin summoning a mount? Rule 0. What happens to that nice summoned mount when the paladin comes up against a Blackguard or something with Magic Circle against Evil? Can the paladin's mount now be dispelled? Or what happens when the PCs are on a journey through a desert or something, and the duration of the summoning wears out? The paladin gets dumped on his saintly posterior in the sand and now has to double up with a companion or walk.

Nerfed spell durations? Rule 0. This is D&D, a roleplaying game, not a tactical war simulation. I have a hard enough time keeping spellcasters alive in the game without making them weaker.

Stronger fiends? Good.

New polymorph other? Bad, bad, bad. Rule 0. As a DM I didn't let that spell get abused....in fact, few enough of my players used it as is....the changes make it weaker. *Why* cannot the spell be used to turn a fighter into a tiger or cow or, heck, a satyr?

Multiclassing XP restrictions on prestige classes? Rule 0.

Getting rid of save or die spells? Or changing hold person so that victims now get a save every round? Yet another spell that's useless now. 3rd level, and it *may* get ONE opponent for one or two rounds. The save DCs are low enough that I find my players rarely fail their saves as it is. And that's with the standard 4d6 drop lowest for ability scores, and low amounts of magic items...much lower than the standard.

My group's actually walking through the door, so this post will have to end, but all 6 of us are pretty miffed by the situation.

What is most aggravating is that it's very smart marketing by WotC. Many people will buy the books if only to understand the changes and have compatibility with new products coming out And they'll get to look at the figures, realize they sold well and figure "these sops will buy anything we throw at them, let's get them a new edition in two years".

At this point I don't honestly know what we'll do. I can easily buy them, but I don't want to, for fear that the bean counters will see it as a sign of one more fanboy supporting a move like this.

There was so much they could have done if they wanted to generate revenue....but this is not appreciated.

This post is not based on one reading of Monte's review, but from his review, reading the previews on the WotC website, the lists of changes on EN World and the WotC message boards, and experiencing the slowly growing anger and disappointment in many of the changes.

Sincerely,

A very disappointed DM (and customer)

 

[jasamcarl]

I fail to see how it was a rant. He said he thought most of the changes were good, and he recommended people buy the books. He listed things he liked and things he disliked. Sure, he spent more time on his dislikes, but that's typical for reviews.



They haven't changed in their basic roles, true, but beyond that, a lot of stuff has changed. The balance of power between fighting styles has changed. Several feats have been changed. Many spells have been changed. Many magic items have been changed.

3.5 is looking a lot more like "Completely rebuild your character from the ground up" and a lot less like "It took me 10 minutes to convert my 17th level druid."

Yeah, but how does this effect the backlog of published stuff? Outside of a few prc reqs, most modules based their balance off the CR/EL. Under the old system, many of the results were innacurate, often overestimating a challenge. The new core rules won't make that stuff less balanced, though they might now stand out more.

And please, as to converting a character...big deal. Its a fixed one time cost that is probably paid for by a (hopefully) more balanced game at upper levels. The idea that mastery of every particular rule was a neccessity is ridiculous, because most of these 'subtle' rules i assume he is alluding to probably only rarely showed up in game. Most groups are a bit more forward thinking than that, otherwise, new editions wouldn't be published.

As to the 'problem' of a new edition every 2 to 4 years, consider this; if a new edition comes out in that period of time, the amount of support material for it will probably be about the same give or take for 3.5 as 3.0. In that case, assuming that of course that you need the core rulebooks of either to understand their supps, then neither will have an advantage in support over the other. So why would you need to upgrade simply for this new support? You wouldn't, unless you thought that 3.5 and its attendant supplements benefited qualitativly from the changes.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I can see a lot of points, actually...the 'no guidelines for designing a PrC' thing grates on me mucho, and I think what he means by 'retroactive changes' are things that change the world you're in.

Through all of your 3rd ed. campaign so far, every deva you met has been called a deva by everyone who knew what a deva was. And now, all of a sudden, for no obvious reason, they're called angels, by everyone.

And the facing and weapon things actually influence publishers as well. If *I'm* confused by the weapon rules, I can't competently write supplemental weapons because I have no idea what the heck they're talking about.

 

[Grog]

And please, as to converting a character...big deal. Its a fixed one time cost that is probably paid for by a (hopefully) more balanced game at upper levels. The idea that mastery of every particular rule was a neccessity is ridiculous, because most of these 'subtle' rules i assume he is alluding to probably only rarely showed up in game. Most groups are a bit more forward thinking than that, otherwise, new editions wouldn't be published.

No one's saying that mastery of every particular rule was a necessity. But given the massive number of changes in the revision, it's entirely possible that a person's entire character concept is going to be significantly altered, and they're probably going to want to change their character because of that.

For example, many spells have been altered in the revision. So if I'm playing a sorceror, I'd definitely need to take a look at my spell list and replace the spells that weren't as useful as they used to be. If I had spell focus, I'd want to switch that out for another feat that was actually useful. I'd also probably want to re-select my magic items. Etc. That's a lot of stuff to change, and I might end up with a completely different character than I had when I started.

 

[Destil]

Unless you had someone die last session and the party can't raise the cash this week because you're now in 3.5e, I don't see how the cost to bring someone back from the dead is "retroactive." Dwarven armor being made of adamantite? You can't just implement that as a "from here on out it's going to be adamantite, but all dwarf armor your characters currently have is mithral?" Changing the name of a creature to an "angel" (which Monte advocated in the first instance anyway, as I recall) is a world-shattering retroactive change? I guess none of these qualifies as a huge change for me.

Sorcerers using Int as their main spell-casting stat instead of Charisma would be a big change. Half-elves getting a +1 or +2 racial bonus to Diplomacy checks? Not a big change. Even changing a gnome's favored class to bard from illusionist is no big deal - just let pre-existing gnomes keep illusionist instead.

So, what you're saying is basicly it's not a big change if you don't change it?

In this I agree with Monte for the most part. Changing the name of a spell or skill or ability something is really not needed. I was never really clear on why 3.0 felt the need to change "Monster Summoning I" to "Summon Monster I" in the first place... a rose, by any other name, would smell as sweet - why bother re-naming a spell? A slight re-categorization (Word of Recall -> Conjuration spell) may be in order, but hardly qualifies as a problem to me.

I agree, but one thing I remember hearing about 3E was that the changes to language were intended to better fit how people accualy used game terms (+1 longsword vs longsword +1). And Monster Summoning I vs Summon Monster I is hardly anything you'll need to worry about figuring out in about two seconds, even if you never played D&D before (note that Monster Summoning I is Summon Monster III in 3E, though ) But are improved and greater invisibility the same spell? Would I know if I never played before? I'm guessing no. And that's a bad thing.

I haven't seen 3.5, so I can't comment on that and will reserve judgement. But I will say that with every supplement you bring to the table, the learning continues. I really don't think anyone's game ever "stops" getting the rules tinkered with, so this is not a big deal for me.

There's a significant diffrence between "Hey, look... Gerater Spell Focus, what's that?" And "Improved Sunder? Huh? Do I need to already have Sunder for that?" Re-naming old feats and abilities is a big change, and while the revison may be more internally consistant it's also more confusing for an existing player.

The counter-argument is, of course, that these spells were massively over-powered and "broken." Why spend 16,000 gp on a stat-boosting item when an 8th-level caster level scroll of bull's strength (cost - 400 gp) will likely do the trick just as nicely?

This is one of the changes where I say, "yes it was a drastic change, but it probably was so broken that you had to do it." If everyone is using it all the time, it's probably broken.

And now it's just as broken. No one should ever cast these spells now. The're useless, because with such short durations and minor benifits the're not worth casting. Very low duration spells are only useful when they grant major benifits, because they take a standard action to cast. And it's often not worth casting them instead of just using a web.

In 3E you get the choice of using a spell and being subject to dispell or paying for an item. I'll concead that empower was broken with these because you could get better than the +6 an item could give you, but a much better fix would have been making the spell non-empowerable. If they had given +2 at 3rd-5th level, +4 at 6th-8th level and +6 at 9th+ with the old to fix empowering they would still be fine. I also don't buy the "if it's always used it's broken" logic, myself.. though that's it's own topic.

And I might say "rays are horribly underrepresented in the core books." It's all a matter of opinion, I guess.

At least rays are represented. As opposed my beloved energy missiles (both of them). I'll agree here, though. I have no problems with rounding out spell schools/levels/types and new spells being added.

 

[Destil]

One thing that just came to mind. This is not your standard review. It dosn't encourage you to buy or not buy the books. Monte assumes that you are buying them, and the advice is slanted towards his opinion of the rules you should and shouldn't be using from it...

Which is nice. Though I do like square facings, I don't think the ogre needs a 10x10 base.

 

[heimdall]

For example, many spells have been altered in the revision. So if I'm playing a sorceror, I'd definitely need to take a look at my spell list and replace the spells that weren't as useful as they used to be.

Agreed. My bard stayed alive in a couple of encounters through the judicious use of Emotion. From what I've seen posted, it's been broken up into 4 different spells. Ouch! This is just one example. But with discussion about haste, polymorph other, the buff spells, etc., it stands to reason some characters are really going to change and change a lot. Gnome illusionist, anyone?