Theories regaurding the change in rules of D&D.

[Moon-Lancer]

(b) That each level-appropriate encounter will expend exactly 20% of th party's strength

http://www.thealexandrian.net

I know this to be false, as In, I agree with you.

take a Earth Elemental, Huge. cr 7. ow, thats definitively not 20%, and could be a tpk in the right environment.

a cr 5 earth elemental can be just as bad at level 5, as it gets two attacks, while the main fighter only gets 1.

 

[Numion]

4. In a day and age where Feats and Prestige Classes are playtested and forum-tested to within an inch of their lives, it seems like all choices are "equally valid." That sounds awfully politically correct, doesn't it? Has D&D evolved to reflect the (perhaps unconscious) political values of the recent generation of writers?

OTOH D&D is accused of catering too much to min/maxers, who seek the best possible choice of feats and prestige classes. I don't know how true that is, but obviously both the min/max claim and what you said can't be true.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

1. The evolution of silver pieces from "hoped for reward" to "assumed mechanic." Wealth has changed in D&D from being a question of "the potential of unlimited riches" to "the guarantee of what the average gamer should expect; no more, no less."

It is not necessarily the radical change that you are suggesting here. If you ran 1e very literally, it is likely most of your xp came directly form acquiring lucre, on a 1 gp = 1 xp exchange rate.

I would say that 3e has taken some pains to make all levels from 1-20 playable out of the box. Regardless of one's opinion on the effort, the attempt necessitated a fairly explicit ceiling and floor to wealth as a starting point/guidepost.

2. The slow expansion of Skills from "none" to "necessary for your class, but your character's additional knowledge is roleplayed" to "all possible skills." We've touched on this already, but I would really like to focus on how certain Skills are not "skills" at all (like Jump), and subject to physical limitations, while others (like Knowledge) are very much Skills. Also, if most Skills are untrained, does it make sense to say that someone who has "maxed out" on a skill is only 20% better at it then someone who's never even "cracked open a book"?

There has always been a tension & controversy around competence, level, and how they should relate.

If you consider the Take 10 rule, those 4 ranks guarantee a character of modest talent can hit DC 15 checks 100% of the time. If I am an extraordinary talent (very high stat, some miscellaneous other bonus), I can automatically hit DC 20 as well -- more than sufficient to win the respect of the man on the street.

So "20%" measured in ranks can mean the difference between 0% chance of failure and ~60% chance of failure. Obvious this argument applies to only some kinds of checks.

3. In OD&D a Fighting-Man had 1d8 HP and swords did 1-6 damage. There were no bonuses. Now a two-handed sword can do 2d6+7 (~5% chance of double that), while HP have only advanced to 1d10+Con. The "arms race" has favored damage output over survivability, it seems.

Not sure about OD&D, but relative to 1e/2e the combat pace of 3e is very fast. It is not just the melee damage output, but the effectiveness of spells.

In 1e/2e at middling levels, monsters and PCs alike make their saves most of the time against everything under the sun.

While there may be more combat modifiers that can come into play, IME there tends to be fewer rounds ina combat. Fewer rounds with only one attack per PC. Fewer spells that do nothing. The net effect is combat takes less time overall.

This is a significant change in feel.

4. In a day and age where Feats and Prestige Classes are playtested and forum-tested to within an inch of their lives, it seems like all choices are "equally valid." That sounds awfully politically correct, doesn't it? Has D&D evolved to reflect the (perhaps unconscious) political values of the recent generation of writers?

Is someone going to start ranting against the eurogame aesthetic? Just kidding! Just kidding!

The other side of the coin is that there is no compelling design reason to include "sucker plays" or "overpowered/broken feats" into a game at all. At least not on purpose.

One might suggest this coddles players. But I see it as primarily saving a DM a lot of hard crunching that I would prefer a highly competent game designer would take a crack at first.

It is easy to add overpowered options that a highly appropriate to the specific themes and needs of a specific campaign. Just add "more". It is a lot of work for a DM to digest even a single splatbook when the powerful level of the material is all over the map.

5. It's fairly easy to judge how dangerous goblins are. A "newb" GM (in any addition) doesn't need CR to tell him that. CR is really useful for "newb" DM's when judging the more dangerous critters. However, was CR necessary because of the advanced level progression? In an older edition where you leveled slowly, the GM would have time to grow into his role and be able to better judge what his party can and cannot handle. Now, with parties leveling every third session, there's no time to adjust. Has D&D evolved to create a generation of GM's that cannot (as) accurately judge threat and ability? Is this the wrong board to be asking this on, since EN World attracts the older crowd?

A fair point. The other side of the coin is that the campaign can organically grow through a range of levels that would probably have never happened otherwise.

If campaigns have a modest half-life, some of that expertise probably comes from going over the same ground for the upteenth time.

 

[Hussar]

The same could be said for DMs who need to use CR = APL monsters.

The monster usually has the home field advantage, and ought to be able to use that well enough to push the ECL of an encounter far beyond the CR of the creatures. Heck, one could say that if the DM needs monsters even half the APL, he isn't using his monsters effectively enough.

Of course, the problem here is that "ineffectually" isn't defined in any sense except "If you find yourself having trouble with the CR system as needed, you must be using your monsters ineffectually".



It is essentially a meaningless statement, because it is recursive, illuminating nothing beyond the statement itself. OTOH, if one were to establish criteria for effectual and ineffectual use first, one could then determine whether or not Hussar, or the people he wonders about, are correct.

RC

I never, ever said innefectually. Reread what I said please.

I asked, given the math that is available to all of us, why DM's continually send EL+x encounters at their parties and don't kill PC's. I've shown the math, such as it is. Given that a par EL creature is capable of killing an average PC in a single round, EL+ creatures should be more capable of killing average PC's.

So, if EL+ encounters are not killing PC's, I would like to know why. Why are players consistently capable of beating the odds? The odds say that you should be killing PC's in these encounters, if not often, then at least sometimes. Yet, people claim to be consistently using EL+ encounters and not killing PC's.

This isn't saying anything, other than what your reader filter thinks it says. It's simply asking a question based on the odds.

If the odds say that X should occur Y number of times and it doesn't over large enough sample, then there is something strange occuring.

I want to know what that is.

 

[rounser]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested earlier in the thread, but could a 4E based on autogenerating the game work? Like that 1E randomly generated dungeon, but x1000 because the edition is built around the concept. Towns, wildernesses, planes etc. all readily produced on the fly at the level of detail of the encounter.

That could provide a baseline, such that even if the DM has nothing prepared, the game still runs itself....but given that baseline, the DM is welcome to depart from it, and build up detail and story and such where he/she sees fit.

I think that nails the "too much prep time" problem, but the design feat that would be required to create such a D&D and still keep it interesting is quite staggering....especially if table spaghetti is to be avoided.

 

[Irda Ranger]

The older versions just said, don't be monte hall, but don't be stingy... No real tips or advice there...

It also barely mattered, since there were no "10,000 GP = Magic Item of your Choice" rules. You could hand out 100,000 gp (and I did!), and the most it could buy you was a castle and a bunch of men-at-arms to guard it. There was no Magic-Mart. That was cool, but it didn't make you more powerful in the dungeon. The only "unbalancing" treasure was giving out magical items that were too good (guilty of that too, before anyone asks). In that sense the lack of advice made sense.

So what does it matter? It's dungeons and dragons not dungeons and fish mongers... so what if realisticaly a fish monger should have a better skill at mongering fish... Does it really matter? How will it effect my game? The only time I see it becoming an issue is when someone tries to sneak a bonus because of his lengthy backstory about a long family line of fish mongers.

Usually not, I agree. In fact, your attitude closely jives with mine. However, some people seem to object to someone else having a "free" rank in Profession (Fishmonger). I wonder if that's healthy. Should there be more freedom in character design, or more equality? I think we have more equality now, at the cost of freedom. Clearly WotC is run by Communists. (just kidding! those guys are so focused on the money they couldn't possibly be Communists.)

Don't ask if I'm joking. I have no freakin' idea myself.

Didn't everything do 1d6 damage if I remember correctly? Also stats were routinely much lower right? because of the roll 3d6 in order? Shrug.

Daggers didn't. As for stats, they were lower, but they also didn't really matter "in combat" because the benefit of high stats was an XP bonus, not +X to attack. My point was that a 1-6 sword blow could not drop you to -10. There's a lot more risk now.

I think it's more that they don't want people to start playing something then decide "this game sucks" because their character never gets to really do anything except watch another character shine... Then they'd loose a player, aka money.

Fair point. This is both a business and a game, after all. I just thought it was interesting to observe the evolution from "fair in my opinion" to "fair on paper." After all, some people IRL choose to quit their jobs and work part-time or for lesser pay in exchange for reasons which can't be put down on a character sheet. I had players who occasionally made choices of that nature.

Not often though. We were in high school.

For one, it allows monster "categories" more easily... Just scroll through and find one that fits the CR you need...

Now here's an attitude that probably deserves its own thread - mainly because I really, really object to it. I hate (note the italics) the idea that a monster should be chosen for it's CR. No, no, no! A monster should be chosen because it fits the story! Full stop.

Generally I am opposed to anything that hints of "story elements chosen for tactical reasons", because if players want a "all tactics combat fest" there are much better options out there than D&D. A DM needs to play to D&D's strengths.

To back down a little bit, I know it might seem like I'm over-reacting to a single sentence. Fully aware of that. I just didn't want it to slip by un-noticed. I'm not nearly as incensed "in person" as the text may appear, but since body language doesn't reduce to writing easily ...

It helps see the relative power level over all of an adventure...

A true GM, with the Force as his ally, .. .. sorry. Wrong genre.

A good GM can usually judge that on his own. I think it's a skill that has atrophied from reliance. (Not that that's always a bad thing - Plato was against learning how to read, since it weakened the memory (and he was right about that), but I think we agree that learning to read is a good idea). Whether its been a fair trade off or not, I'm not sure.

Personally I think most of the changes were done to fit around how people play the game, or wanted to play the game.

"Most"? I'm not sure that's true, since they only polled a favored section of the audience. And even if it was "most", it's take the rest of us along with them. OD&D's plethora of house rules meant less consensus - which meant more people were already playing the game they wanted to. Have more current versions of the game incorporated the "best" house rules, pronouncing them "right" and the rest "wrong"?

Well, maybe that's too strong. But they're certainly made my job harder. For example, I hate the magical item creation rules (and the close interrelated rules building class balance on presumed items) with the white hot passion of a thousand dying suns. Ergo, introducing that rule into the Core Rules has rendered D&D unplayable for me. Magic swords should MEAN SOMETHING!! WAS EXCALIBUR HANDED OUT BECAUSE ARTHUR WAS 5TH LEVEL???

Sorry. Off rant. This is not a WrongBadFun thread.

I think that some of the 3e changes (not all) have taken the play experience in directions may object to (hence, Diaglo & Friends), and that even if some (or most!) players asked for them, that didn't mean WotC should have complied. WotC's best efforts would have been put to providing the game people actually needed, not the game they thought they wanted. (The preceding statement approved by Henry Ford and Steve Jobs).

Games should fit the players... Players shouldn't be forced to modify their tastes to suit... That's like saying I should only watch TV on a 12" screen because Motorola doesn't want to make soemthing bigger...

Yes.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm not sure if this has been suggested earlier in the thread, but could a 4E based on autogenerating the game work? Like that 1E randomly generated dungeon, but x1000 because the edition is built around the concept. Towns, wildernesses, planes etc. all readily produced on the fly at the level of detail of the encounter.

That could provide a baseline, such that even if the DM has nothing prepared, the game still runs itself....but given that baseline, the DM is welcome to depart from it, and build up detail and story and such where he/she sees fit.

I think that nails the "too much prep time" problem, but the design feat that would be required to create such a D&D and still keep it interesting is quite staggering....especially if table spaghetti is to be avoided.

I love and hate this.

I love it because it's awesome. Pure awesome.

But unless the generators are very customizable, I bet it would take a lot of work to adapt them to house rules. Would you be able to use the DMG's generators in Dark Sun or the World of the Burning Sky? or your home brew?

 

[Hussar]

"Most"? I'm not sure that's true, since they only polled a favored section of the audience. And even if it was "most", it's take the rest of us along with them. OD&D's plethora of house rules meant less consensus - which meant more people were already playing the game they wanted to. Have more current versions of the game incorporated the "best" house rules, pronouncing them "right" and the rest "wrong"?

Well, maybe that's too strong. But they're certainly made my job harder. For example, I hate the magical item creation rules (and the close interrelated rules building class balance on presumed items) with the white hot passion of a thousand dying suns. Ergo, introducing that rule into the Core Rules has rendered D&D unplayable for me. Magic swords should MEAN SOMETHING!! WAS EXCALIBUR HANDED OUT BECAUSE ARTHUR WAS 5TH LEVEL???

Sorry. Off rant. This is not a WrongBadFun thread.

Couple of points.

First off, limiting the response age to 35 didn't exactly exclude a large segment of the gaming population. That assumes that gaming tastes were dramatically different for a 25 year old gamer and a 45 year old gamer. I don't think you can really say that. There are plenty of younger players that don't like 3e and plenty of older ones that do. This is something of a bugaboo that is made much of but signifies a lot less than you might think.

As far as handing out magic items based on level, that's always been true. Look at modules. You didn't find Vorpal swords in 1st level modules for a reason. Heck, we usually played something along the lines of, "Hey Bob, your paladin just hit name level, let's go hunt up a Holy Avenger for him." Obviously YMMV.

 

[rounser]

But unless the generators are very customizable, I bet it would take a lot of work to adapt them to house rules. Would you be able to use the DMG's generators in Dark Sun or the World of the Burning Sky? or your home brew?

WOTC could sell those as expansions, I guess. Go buy a book with a generator for the 7th layer of hell, for instance. Customisation always was a lot of work, so no change there.

 

[RFisher]

Inspired by the "survival of the fittest" tangent: Does a rule's survival prove its value? Are criticals good because they have survived?

Well... you know a goodly portion of my feelings on this I assume... However, skills are simply another way to challenge a player (aside from simply saying, make a dex check, or make a str check... (which i routinely did in previous editions because I didn't make my own house rules for skills...)

But, most often in my experience, skills don't really provide a challenge for the player.

I don't want myself as the player taken out of the equation. It's not satisfying to me to succeed at something because I sunk enough points into a skill. I want to succeed because of decisions. Decisions I--the player--make, not decisions simulated by my character's skill bonus.

That's not to say that I want to eliminate chance from the game. I want many things to be decided by my decisions alone. For those fewer times when chance is involved, I want the ability to make decisions that will shift the odds in my favor. I want the ability to look for a different solution when I can't tilt the odds comfortably enough in my favor. It should be rare when I really step out on a limb. (Which is important to have on occasion as well.)

Now, I don't think the trend I've seen of taking the player out of the equation is the fault of skill systems (& certainly I observed it long before 3e), but I don't think they are entirely unrelated either.

Another thing that I've been thinking about recently is the difference between extended tasks & one-roll tasks. In combat, success typically depends on many rolls with decision points between them. Many other things are typically handled as one-roll, succeed or fail. These are very different, & I think the trend has been for there to be more & more one-roll tasks.

OTOH D&D is accused of catering too much to min/maxers, who seek the best possible choice of feats and prestige classes. I don't know how true that is, but obviously both the min/max claim and what you said can't be true.

Some combinations of options are better than others. This is a real strength of 3e: It replaces limitations with consequences.

To some of us, those better combinations are fairly obvious, & we tend to be a bit blind to the myriad suboptimal choices. We automatically filter them out, & what we are left with is fairly well balanced.

But to others, the PHB offers a dizzying array of options with very little guidance. It would take them effort to separate the better choices from the worse ones. (Perhaps it would be easier than it looks to them, but that is still a barrier.)

Now, if the PHB can itself offer enough options to make people feel this way, imagine how they can feel in a group that adds even a single supplement to the mix. Or a group that cherry-picks from a wide range of supplements. (That can be even worse for this kind of person.) Not to mention that the more options you add, the more you increase the chance of the min/maxer being able to find a less well balanced option.

I honestly don't think 3e caters to min/maxers, but I can see how others can have that perception. (But then, I don't really consider "min/maxing" to be a negative.)

That's not even considering the fact that effective min/maxing varies from group-to-group. So it is possible for the same system to be a min/maxers dream under one DM but not under another.