The problem with D&D

[Chainsaw Mage]

Oh and yes if your thinking that I'm a little old school then that's true. I do hanker after the days of musty black and white rule books with long words in them and a recommended age past ten. I don't see that as bad though as I increasingly am finding role-playing games getting "dumbed down" to attract larger portions of the populace.

I'm not sure there's any truth to the assertion that RPGs are being dumbed down to attract more players. But even if they are, it sure ain't working . . . our hobby is dying. Thank CCGs and MMOs.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What you see as flaws are really non-issues.

I wouldn't say that. The changes in power level at different stages of the game is a frequently discussed issue around here. That doesn't sound like a non-issue to me at all.

Every system has things that make you kinda of roll your eyes. But d20 and D&D inparticular is so close to perfect that all other games pale in comparison.

Heh, I don't think even the designers of the game would ever make that argument. They made the best Dungeons & Dragons game that they knew how, but they didn't have unanimity on every design question, their opinions have changed over time, and the big playtest that is the marketplace has revealed other issues as time has gone on.

3.5 is a very good version of D&D, but it's not perfect and it's certainly not "so close to perfect that all other games pale in comparison."

And the nay sayers are probably not smart enough or creative enough or just too dang lazy to make it what they want.

Yeeeeeeah, I'm sure THAT's the problem.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

But even if they are, it sure ain't working . . . our hobby is dying. Thank CCGs and MMOs.

Or the Internet and videogames, both of which are much bigger than CCGs or MMOs. Even the biggest MMORPG of all time is a tiny fragment of the videogame industry taken as a whole.

That's right: ENWORLD IS KILLING ROLEPLAYING, AAAAAAAAAAH!

Alternately, roleplaying, like newspapers, the music industry, personal relationships and everything else the Internet is supposed to be killing off, is going to evolve and adapt.

My not-yet-born son will play D&D with his cousins, and I expect his kids will as well. They may not be using graph paper with the ragged rubber top where previous pages have been pulled off, and they almost certainly won't need a crayon to color in the numbers on a d4 sharp enough to pierce my foot, but it'll be D&D. People have played make believe since at least the creation of language, and we as humans love to codify things and make rules. Roleplaying ain't going anywhere.

 

[tzor]

I agree with this completely. Gygax went with a d20-based system (rather than the previous 2d6 based system) for combat and saving throws in D&D because he wanted a flat probability distribution and (I suspect, though he's never confirmed this) heavy random element, but retained d6 and d% based rolls in most other areas.

I am going to have to disagree completely. (I suppose we could always ask him.) While Gygax did use a d20 in both D&D and AD&D, he used a table driven system for those d20's as they were used in combat and saving throws. The result was both non linear (the best example is the large zone in the combat tables for a result of 20) and non uniform. Unlike d20, rolling one better on the dice did not have the same uniform effect for all classes.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Depends on who is the PC and who is the NPC IMHO. Two fresh 1st level PC fighters versus a 3rd level NPC fighter is probably a hard but winnable fight. A 3rd level PC versus two 1st level NPCs is a speedbump.

I dunno, even in real life, if two guys are fighting one guy, one guy will get behind the guy they're beating up. In D&D terms, this is flanking and (arguably) aid another.

That makes for more of a challenge than one guy standing behind the other, waiting to get beat up, like in a bad kung fu movie.

 

[Ry]

Arrghhh! These apples suck! Their skin is too thick, they fall apart into 12 distinct pieces once you finally get the peel off, they squirted me in the eye when I tried to make sauce, and, for god's sake, they're ORANGE-coloured!

(holds up marshmallows to the screen)

 

[S'mon]

A 10th lvl character is far more akin to a superhero or a mythic hero than any of the examplees you mentioned. Could the Hulk or Hercules mow down a mob of similarly armed mooks without a second thought? Yes.

Yeah, I think as long as you row back the campaign demographics, as Eberron did, so 10th level really is Achilles (rather than merely Myrmidon #38, with Achilles as 25th level Epic Fighter), 3e can work fine for most high-powered mythic fantasy; the magic level is a bit high but not totally outrageous. The ony problem then is that per the RAW, getting the PCS from 1st to 9th will only take around 27-30 game sessions, because 3e has a standard advancement rate that is extremely fast when you run dungeon crawls by-the-book. Halving XP awards, make Achilles and the rest of your world's top dog NPCs 10th not 25th, and you have a reasonably robust campaign setting that's as plausible as most other fantasy RPGs.

Now, remember not to sic 3.5e CR 20 Pit Fiends on your 10th level Epic Hero PCs...

 

[RedFox]

I think the problem with D&D is that it's not the kind of game you want or like.

 

[Sir Elton]

Xini,

1. Don't post "D&D sucks" threads on the Enworld boards. As you can see, it brings out a lot of feelings, most of them defensive, by the people here.

2. There are systems that do what you like them to do.

3. I don't like D&D either, but I get flamed on the Wizards.com Community on a regular basis for trying new things.

Elton.

 

[Urban Knight]

As the friend who has spent many hours lamenting on what we perceive as the 'flaws' of DnD, I feel I should put my two pence worth into this discusion.

In my oppinion D&D 3.5's greatest strength is that it is so closely based upon AD&D.

As a child I loved basic D&D and AD&D, and I have to admit I like D&D 3.5 a lot.

The game system was and still is relatively simple. This can be a good thing as a new player can pick it up and get playing with relatively little investment of time and effort on their part.

Game play is relatively speedy as there is no need to endlessly cross reference tables to discover what happens, players and GM's alike can be reasonably confident that action A will result in action B so on and so forth.

The game can be a lot of fun to play.

Almost everyone I know (or know of) who play roleplaying games has at some point or another played D&D (or one of it's varients).

However I personally feel that the first and biggest place the D&D system falls down is the flat level system coupled with it's linea probability distribution curve.

Most of the flaws in the D&D game can be lived with, gotten around, looked fondly upon as a quirk of the system ... etc.

However the current level system and the power differential between 1st - 10th - 20th level characters is so great that it makes the necessary suspension of disbelief trying.

As written D&D 3.5 is designed that after 13-14 encounters at the appropriate challenge rating, a Party of Adventurers are supposed to aquire their extra +1's and Dice of Hit Points.

3.5 is also designed so that characters can freely chop and choose what class to advance in by simply adding to gether all of the +1's, so a Wizard is not limited to just being a man in a dress who likes to wiggle his fingers and cause the dress' of Tavern wenches to unbutton.

Unfortunately it is this very design principle that makes the power disparity inherent in the original AD&D system even worse in 3.5. At least in AD&D PC's stopped getting HD + Con Bonus after 9th level, could never get and AC better than -10 and would never hit AC0 with less than a 3 (before modifiers) hell Monsters would never hit AC0 with less than a 6.

I guess what I am saying is good framework needs limiting factors, PC's should always be able to advance but as a PC becomes beter at something it becomes harder to get better.

To my mind D&D 3.5 is a game with out limits.