Revised DR

[Pielorinho]

Also, how do you make your quote's include that "originally posted by: x" thingy? hehe I haven't posted too much here

At the bottom right corner of each post is a button marked "quote." Click on it.

If you want to get fancy, you can use tags throughout your post. To put more language in the quote format (e.g., if you want to break up a quote by someone else, or you want to quote the SRD or something), you can put "[ quote ]" in front of the text, and "[ /quote ]" after the text. (Remove the spaces in order to get it to work).

If you break up someone's quote, though, for God's sake don't reply to their post sentence by sentence. That gets super-annoying, and is usually a sign that you're engaging in a fruitless bicker-battle with the person. Or maybe that's just my personal peeve .

Daniel

 

[green slime]

I'm slightly concerned at this. Not overly. I find the DR modification to be exciting and challenging. Something that has bugged me for a while, was the inclusion of DR 5/silver which had no real meaning.

That said, I don't like the idea of revising all the DR stats of the monsters, considering the MMII, MoF, FF (slated for April, before the arrival of the revised MM), not to mention all non-WotC monster books, of which ToH, CC and CCII immediately leaps to mind....

SO it is with mixed feelings and trepidation that I read of this DR change. I hope the revised MM contains some simple rules for converting "old" DR to this new system. I'm sure someone at WotC has already thought of this.

 

[IceBear]

Daniel,

You mentioned Monte's name in your post. I knew that Andy and Skip were involved in the revised rules, but I didn't think Monte was. Is he?

IceBear

 

[RedSwan78]

Sorry, didn't really mean to "jump down your throat" and all, it's just I'm.. well, upset at the proposed changes, because I REALLY don't see anything wrong with the current DR rules. ::shrugs::

Also, it will get annoying for future gaming, for me at least. Right now, it's pretty much everyone is using 3e. There's still a few old-school 2e players running around. I mean, that's what I first learned, was 2e. I made the conversion over to 3e, and after learning it, I like it much better.

Now, with 3.5 coming out.. it will be kinda wierd.. "so are you playing 3e, or 3.5?" or you think it's a 3e game, but they never really *say* it's a 3.5 game and.. bleh, I'm blabbering..

I guess it all comes down to, I thought the "revised" books where just going to include all the various "errata".. but, now I see that it is *changing* things.. and that I don't like.

 

[Pielorinho]

Daniel,

You mentioned Monte's name in your post. I knew that Andy and Skip were involved in the revised rules, but I didn't think Monte was. Is he?

IceBear

Not that I know of -- and given what he's doing with Arcana Unearthed, I'd doubt it. I referred to him in the context of writing 3E, and the similar (to me) complaints people were making about 3E before it came out.

Daniel

 

[Rill]

Does anyone else like the idea that enhancement bonuses to weapons will now "enhance" the weapon instead of turning it into something entirely different? It just seems to make more sense to me.

And for the "fighters are weakened, archers are weakened, why do casters still get to throw spells at these monsters without penalty?" crowd, just remember that virtually every caster will have one less spell per round to work with due to the haste changes. Those same changes make the spell more likely to be placed on the non-casters granting an additional attack. I don't see a net loss for combat types, especially considering the lowered DR numbers.

Again, the game is played as a system, and changes trickle down through all aspects. Which tends to validate concerns about the backward compatibility issues, but will likely lessen many of the other complaints as more details and thought are put into those issues.

-Rill

 

[Shalewind]

I'm in agreement with Pielorinho here. First off, no change that the designers could have made is going to please everyone. 3E didn't please everyone, but it did a damn fine job. The same people are now working on your revised rules.

In response to some of the issues:

It seams to me to that this was added because one or two individuals in the revision proccess wanted it for thier own campaign.

First off, that is a little harsh and more than a little insulting to the developers.

Andy has said: "the R&D mantra for revised 3e, "do no harm." If there was something cool to change but it didn't really need to be done, it wasn't."

These people CARE about what you the buyer THINK. TSR never did that. The new staff has taken the time to do things like, post to your board. Comments like this make me wonder why they care.

And the Sky is not falling. But I am unimpressed with the reponse from these boards. Everyone wants to bash the new rules set without having seen it. Why not reserve judgement until you have all the facts. D20 works with balance by a collection of rules, not just one set. Saying things can be overcome by a cantrip... Who's to say they aren't revising that to? The truth is, no one knows the extent of the changes. I'm reserving judgement until I see the completed product, though I have faith that the staff did a damn good job (why? because they care enough to listen to me when I e-mail in and say I've had a problem with DR).

And speaking of this little speck of information we have recieved (thank you Andy for clearing things up):

Why would your fighter carry a "caddy"? He can't afford a bunch of weapons unless he takes away from his primary one. So he has a +4 bashing sword. Can he kill demons quick. Sure, using things like power attack and the like. Can the paladin and cleric with their holysilvered weapons do it better. Maybe, but perhaps they should be able to.

And in response to the low damage weapons... I think it is a lot more likely that the treasure seeking rogue has a dagger for every monster than a barbarian having a greatsword for every occasion. "Hey guys, I got that <X Material> dagger hear... Let me sneak up on it, then you guys move in."

And I think the over reaction to, ALL my weapons are worthless is a bit much. There aren't that many materials that are going to be applied to ALL monsters with DR. It's not like half the monsters are going to need some rare or unique weapon to hit. Silver and maybe like two others will probably be a "Standard". Remember guys, give the designers some credit. They have playtested this...

And even if that new nifty critter needs a TrueFireCrystal blade to bypass it's awesome DR... Well that leaves two choices:

1) Let's beat it with a cool strategy.
2) Let's go on a quest to get the legendary TrueFireCrystal Sword.

Options... Not restrictions... Anyone can pick apart new rules. Just like anyone can try and embrace them and work with them. Have a little faith guys. And don't panic when you haven't even seen all the rules yet.

pax.

 

[IceBear]

Not that I know of -- and given what he's doing with Arcana Unearthed, I'd doubt it. I referred to him in the context of writing 3E, and the similar (to me) complaints people were making about 3E before it came out.

Daniel

Ah, I read your post too fast it seems I also thought it a bit much for Monte to be working on Arcana Unearthed and 3.5.

Edit: BTW - I was joking in my response to the sky is falling (in case some thought I think the sky is falling)

IceBear

 

[heirodule]

But the second half is what keeps this from being a hose-job to the fighters. That's the fact that DR *values* are going down, almost across the board. As I shared at Winter Fantasy, the vast majority of monsters will have DR 5 or 10 (a few, such as the mighty pit fiend, creep up to 15). That means that the fighter who doesn't have the right weapon can still dish out damage to a DR monster, just not as much. (Can you say Power Attack?)

This second part comes about because, despite R&D's best efforts to create a wholly new DR system for 3.0, the fact that there were monsters with DR 20, 30, or even 50 made the system work just like it did in previous editions, which is to say, "If you don't have a weapon this good, don't bother fighting." I mean, come on, does anyone even *try* to fight an iron golem (DR 50/+3) without a +3 weapon? It might as well just say "immune to damage from weapons less than +3" and in 99% of the cases, it'd be exactly the same.

I'm glad that you are playtesting the DR drop with the fighter types, but the complexity fo the rules still makes me lack confidence that such a sweeping change will be truly considered in all its aspects.

Like the Lantern Archon, which is a fine creature for Summon Monster IV, only has 1 hit die, but that's ballanced by its DR 20/+1. If you thought of that and rebalanced the Lantern Archon, I slaute, you but I'm guessing nobody cared enough to worry about it.

Paul

 

[Shalewind]

Edit: BTW - I was joking in my response to the sky is falling (in case some thought I think the sky is falling)

Nope. I know you better. I'm sure some other people thought it was though.