Third Edition Culture- Is is sustainable?

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

-- All races have the same attributes, i.e., all elves are dextrous, all halflings favor rogues.

All races have the same tendencies. The stats are up to the player, who is perfectly free to make an elf with a 10 dex and 16 con if he so chooses. Tendencies are not requirements and archetypes are not straitjackets.

-- All classes are fundamentally the same. Without multi-classing, you can't build a cleric of a god of lies and deception where Bluff and intimidate are class skills. Furthermore, which skills are class skills are worked into the very balance of the game. Give Sorcerers diplomacy, and you make bards redundant.

So create a 'trickery' domain where the domain ability gives them bluff and intimidate as class skills. Or let the character take one of the feats that adds class skills. Or make the cleric rely on his god-given magic to excel at deception.

And I hardly think the sorcerer with his whopping 2 skill points per level is going to compete with my bard in diplomacy except at very low levels.

-- Class hit dice versus racial hit dice. Halfling barbarians have d12 hit dice. Half-orc wizards have d4 hit dice. What?!

Because only the last few hit points represent lethal damage, the rest.... oh, never mind. If your going to gripe about the hit point mechanic, there's threads going back 20 years on that.

-- the magic item creation system makes no sense. Yea, at least there *is* one in 3rd edition. There still aren't any rules for rechargable magic items or consistent pricing guidelines in the core rules. Also, needing one feat to create boots of water walking, and a separate feat altogether to create a ring of water walking (and a stringent level requirement to boot).

Asking for a simple set of rules that can accomodate every 'I wish I had' from every munchkin player is unrealistic. Rechargeable items (which are really a combination of charged items and uses per day) are notoriously hard to play-balance. In campaigns with few encounters per day, they become essentially infinitely-charged items. For some effects, that's fine, but a wand of fireballs (50 charges, recharges 5 per day) is an invitation to a whole lot o' d6 rolling. Given the near-limitless combinations of item type and spell, the RAW do a pretty darn good job. It's up to the DM and the player to come to a reasonable conclusion using the rules as guidelines.

-- the d20 itself. I like HARP because it uses a 100 scale for things. For example, I'd like to see a gradual increase in armor, or weapons. Adding a +1 is a huge bonus in D&D, and it's the most granular thing you can get. For my next campaign, I wanted to introduce things like "tattered leather" being worse than "high quality leather", but neither being nearly as good as "crappy studded leather". You just can't get to that level of detail with a 20-point scale.

But at a certain point, who cares? I've played a lot of d100 games (including the love/hate affair with Rolemaster). More granular modifiers just means more rules, more complexity, and more things to forget. Want crappy leather armor? Fine -- same AC, one additional point of armor penalty. No one is going to take it unless they have too, but I doubt anyone one would in a d100 game if it was +3% armor / -3% armor penalty vs +5/-5.

-- the concept that 20th level adventurers walking around a gritty, realistic village is a totally absurd concept. 20th level adventurers are simply out of place anywhere other than plane-hopping through the multi-verse battling dragons, and demons.

And in D&D, that's what they are doing. But in Midnight, they're not. Twenty years ago, my 13th level DU&D character wasn't hanging out in the village, he was crawling through the Underdark to get to Lolth. The only game I've ever played where top of the line characters didn't appear as gods to the common folk was DragonQuest. (Maybe Paranoia or Recon, but truth be told I never saw characters survive long enough to tell).

-- inconsistent CR ratings. 20 CR 1 goblins is a cakewalk, but 20 CR 1 shadows can TPK a high level party if used right.

And a CR20 dragon could be a cakewalk if the DM plays it wrong. That's not a failure of the CR guidelines. For all their faults, the CR ratings are a major blessing. In the old days, all you had to go by was hit dice. Lot's more TPKs in the hands of inexperienced DMs back then. CRs are approximations that player skill and DM experience can skew widely in either direction.

Yea, PCGen and E-tools are nice, but one shouldn't need them to play the game effectively. Tools are created to fill a niche where a problem resides. That's why those programs exist. If it was easy to make NPCs in D&D, you think those people would sell any software? Anyone that's familiar with the Oracle Database software will understand. Anyone that uses that regularly pretty much has to use some high-dollar software called TOAD. Without TOAD, Oracle is a bloated, nightmarish, unwieldy piece of crap that appears to have been written by aliens from Ophiuchi. With TOAD, it's intuitive, and easy to use. Far be it from the programmers at Oracle to actually create an intuitive, easy to use interface. That'd be asking too much. Instead, TOAD by Quest software stepped in to fill a niche where a problem existed. Same with PCGen and Etools. The fact that they exist does not alleviate the fact that there is still a fundamental problem with the complexity of the system.

You don't have to use PCGen or ETools. It was a couple of years before either of those programs evolved to the point of utility, and people played 3rd Ed. just fine. (And I remember a lot of Shadowrun, Gurps, etc., chargen programs and spreadsheets well before d20). I'm sure Psion and Hypersmurf and some of the other rules gurus around here can churn out a point-perfect NPC quite handily on their own. I suspect most of us could do approximately well enough long hand. But for those that want to push the limits (fiendish half-dragon/half-weasels with 12 levels of barbarian, anyone?), those that have limited prep time, or those that are struggling with the rules for any reason, those tools are wonderful (but not essential).

Choice breeds complexity. You can't complain about all elves being dextrous on one hand, and decry the difficulty in making NPCs on the other.

Is d20 perfect? No, of course not. (Strawmen are 1/4 CR -- notice how easily I dispatched that one?) But the beauty is in how it can be adapted to a variety of gaming styles without forcing players and DMs to memorize entirely different rule-sets. It's a darn site easier to play D&D one week and post-apocalyptic d20 Modern the next than it ever was to play Rolemaster and then Aftermath. Or even to play Gurps both weekends, in my opinion, and I played a heck of a lot of Gurps.

 

[barsoomcore]

Actually, it's the groups game, so removing stuff without their input could be a bad idea.

I guess I don't get how doing something that annoys people who don't enjoy playing the same game I do is a problem.

If you don't like my DMing style, you shouldn't play in my game because neither of us will have lots of fun. Likewise if I don't like your playing style, I shouldn't be surprised if having you in my game is no fun for anybody.

What's with this, "The group has to agree," business? If you don't enjoy playing together, then why on earth do you play together? Play with people who want to play more or less how you want to play.

It's not a question of being hard-nosed or tough or anything like that. It's a question of wanting to have fun.

If you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong. I don't have fun when I have to review and evaluate a million PrCs and feats, so I'm strict with my players -- I give them a list of what's available and they choose from that. If they're desperate to play something they can first of all put in the effort to demonstrate to me how that particular class/feat/whathaveyou fits into MY campaign, and if they do that, I'll look it over and decide. But if I say no, that's it. That's all.

It's my game, and any player who has a problem with that is 100% welcome to leave. I won't be offended or hurt or troubled in the slightest. Why would I be? Not everybody likes what I like, and they're for the most part fine human beings despite that.

I'll remove stuff from my game at my discretion. If my players have opinions on that, I welcome them, but in the end I say yay or nay. I've changed class availability half a dozen times as my vision of Barsoom has altered, I've added more feats and taken away others, I've changed the magic system, added entirely new magic systems...

I couldn't imagine how I'd react if some player said, "Hey, that's not fair! You can't do that! No!" I guess I'd just say, "Wrong."

Sometimes I make a decision and unexpectedly it turns out to have a negative effect on a player. The player points it out "You changed this feat and now my character's cool ability doesn't work," and we discuss. Sometimes my response is, "I know, that's why I did it," and sometimes it's, "Geez, I didn't even think of that. Let's come up with an alternative."

My players have designed spells and classes and feats and weapons, they've come up with some pretty crazy concepts and some really great ideas that have enriched the campaign beyond measure. I'm a tyrant, but I'm a tyrant who wants happy players and a tyrant who knows that good ideas can come from anywhere.

I don't run my campaign to prove how smart or tough or anything I am. I run it because it's so much fun to do so. I work as hard as I do at it because it is fun for me to do so. The second it stops being fun for me, I stop running it.

So in a sense, no, I don't care what the group wants. I'll run the game I want to run. If nobody wants to play in my game, I guess that's too bad for me -- but not playing at all is better than spending the effort to run a campaign I don't enjoy.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Where is the logical connection of what you call "attitudes" and your claim that these had been "proved wrong"? You are simply telling me that you played the game and it worked/you had fun, which nobody doubts.

...which is EXACTLY my point. They worked for me in my games. They've worked for others in their games. They don't work for others. I'm saying the SAME thing that's been said many times in this thread, just from the 'I like how it is' side of things.

*shrug* Did anyone claim that? There are many things in 3.x which have objective problems. This does not mean in any way that you cannot play the game or cannot have fun. You can also play Rifts and have fun; this doesn't make the ruleset sacrosanct, though.

It seems to be implied in many of the posts, however. Of course the rules aren't sacrosanct! If I thought that, I wouldn't wing it a good amount of the time to keep things moving. Sure, I do have a good knowledge of the rules(and is likely more so than others, just because I do have more free time), but I hate having to slow down play to look through books the whole time. The problems some people see in D&D aren't problems for others. What does this mean?

Simply, they aren't problems for everyone. They aren't objective, but subjective. If they were objective, I'd be agreeing with you that they're problems.

 

[Turjan]

...which is EXACTLY my point. They worked for me in my games. They've worked for others in their games. They don't work for others. I'm saying the SAME thing that's been said many times in this thread, just from the 'I like how it is' side of things.

I specifically referred to this sentence that you wrote: "Many of the attitudes I've seen on ENworld against high level play, certain spells, heck the whole 3.5 revision were quickly proved wrong when I actually ran games with face to face groups." You cannot prove "attitudes" wrong by having fun in your game. There's no logical connection between these two points.

The problems some people see in D&D aren't problems for others. What does this mean?

Simply, they aren't problems for everyone. They aren't objective, but subjective. If they were objective, I'd be agreeing with you that they're problems.

There are objective problems. Look into the "multiclassing" thread and look at some sample calculations. It's simple math that shows that something is not right. These might not be your personal problems, but I think here we get into semantics; the word "problem" has two different main meanings; I use one, you the other. The problem I am talking about is to make the game system consistent. In this regard it is completely irrelevant whether you can enjoy the game or not.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

There's no logical connection between these two points.

Welcome to the internet!

There are objective problems. Look into the "multiclassing" thread and look at some sample calculations. It's simple math that shows that something is not right. These might not be your personal problems, but I think here we get into semantics; the word "problem" has two different main meanings; I use one, you the other. The problem I am talking about is to make the game system consistent. In this regard it is completely irrelevant whether you can enjoy the game or not.

Calculations only mean so much. I'm sorry, but after the huge "Mystic Theurge is the most broken class ever!" 'calculation' threads that came up after we got that preview for 3.5, and then it was quickly proved that those calculations simply didn't have ANY effect in normal gameplay, I don't care what people have to give much credit to 'calculations' anymore.

There are just too many instances that I've seen on these boards where 'calculations' are done to prove how overpowered or underpowered something is...then in actual play, it does just fine. Why? Because you can only take so much into account without actually PLAYING the game. And besides, this is just a game. Don't need to bring in 'calculations' and all the evil complex math into it.

 

[BSF]

Wow. Interesting discusion. Belen Umeria, to answer your question I do think that 3.x can sustain. If only because of the resounding success I have seen across several players, and the apparent ability of WotC to keep selling the rules, the game can sustain.

Is that good or bad? Maybe both. I like the game, I enjoy it both as a player and as a DM. But it could use improvements. I find that my proficiency at 'winging' npcs grows over time. Coupled with the MM, I have access to a variety of opponents reasonably quickly. I try to only stat out the notable NPCs.

At higher levels, NPCs do become more complex and convoluted. It can be difficult to keep up with. One thing I do wonder about is how many DMs are also players? I have the luxury of playing in one game and running another (with a wife, two kids, career and in my 30's ). I am wondering if sitting in both seats gives a broader exposure to the ruleset and makes it easier to adjudicate. I don't know. What I do know is that I have less interest in Castles & Crusades than I do in Blue Rose. Unlike Belen_Umeria, I am not reserving that system for the ladies, I am just wondering if I can tell stories differently through it and whether it will be more fun overall.

DnD of any flavor is not perfect. Really, no system is. But for any given group, there may be systems that are better and worse.

 

[Turjan]

Calculations only mean so much. I'm sorry, but after the huge "Mystic Theurge is the most broken class ever!" 'calculation' threads that came up after we got that preview for 3.5, and then it was quickly proved that those calculations simply didn't have ANY effect in normal gameplay, I don't care what people have to give much credit to 'calculations' anymore.

Actually, this is a good example. The Mystic Theurge is a clumsy workaround for multiclassing deficiences in D&D 3.x. You cannot multiclass a cleric and a wizard, let's say 8:8, and have a viable 16 level PC. This is not possible in D&D.

There are just too many instances that I've seen on these boards where 'calculations' are done to prove how overpowered or underpowered something is...then in actual play, it does just fine. Why? Because you can only take so much into account without actually PLAYING the game. And besides, this is just a game. Don't need to bring in 'calculations' and all the evil complex math into it.

Well, why do you take part in this discussion, then? This thread expresses more or less the will to look for points of improvement in the existing game system, and this is a viable goal, whether this interests you or not. I brought the point of Rifts(tm) in one of my previous posts. Can you have fun with Rifts? Sure! Is it a really shoddy game system with lots of points for improvement? Sure! You see the point?

 

[eyebeams]

There is an alternative to being an expert, but it does require confidence in yourself and the player's confidence in you as a DM. Wing it. It keeps play moving, and if you have a grasp of the basics of the d20 system(which aren't complicated at all) it isn't too much of a problem. And if you want direct book reference, have the player with his book open to the page with the spell/feat/whatever before his turn in initiative comes up so he can reference it without much flipping of pages, etc.

There ARE ways to keep things moving, and its obvious by the amount of people that DO play into high levels that it isn't impossible or even as insanely troublesome as is sometimes said.

Your suggestion to wing it does not, in fact, argue for the merits of the system. I mean, I could wing a Phoenix Command skrimish quickly, but that does not mean Pheonix command is a simple game either.

Your suggestion to get help doesn't either. The question is whether you get into a game to master and play within in, or get into a game to make it accomodate the way you already want to play. Both types of enjoyment are valid, but nothing is gained by pretending that one is the same as the other.

 

[eyebeams]

Calculations only mean so much. I'm sorry, but after the huge "Mystic Theurge is the most broken class ever!" 'calculation' threads that came up after we got that preview for 3.5, and then it was quickly proved that those calculations simply didn't have ANY effect in normal gameplay, I don't care what people have to give much credit to 'calculations' anymore.

That's because the Mystic Theurge was rehabilitated from an earlier stage of 3e development when they were going to drop multiclassing and use hybrid classes entirely, and resurrected (along with some other PrCs) to help fix the problems with multiclassing spellcasters. The Mystic Theurge is fine; Cleric/Wizards just suck, is all.

 

[barsoomcore]

Your suggestion to wing it does not, in fact, argue for the merits of the system.

Well no, but his suggestion (perhaps more implied than stated) that d20 makes "winging it" easier DOES argue for the merits of the system. I like a system that, if I make up a rule on the spot using my knowledge of the basic concepts of the game, I end up with a mechanic that is more or less identical to the one I couldn't remember.

Which is what I find happens time and again with d20. A player does something, I don't recall EXACTLY what the rule is, I make a quick call and the game goes on, and later I look it up to find that my off-the-cuff judgement is very close to what the actual rule is.

Inventing "Bull Rush" on the fly is going to get you something VERY similar to the existing rule, if you're familiar with attacks of opportunity, opposed checks and so on. Likewise just about any special combat action except for turning undead, which drives me crazy.

Sure you can wing any game, if you're not concerned with whether or not it will be rewarding and fun to play. One of the things I like about d20 is that when I wing it, I end up with pretty much the same game as when I know the rules.

Whether or not you think that's rewarding and fun is of course, up to you, but at least it's consistent. Somebody who LOVES Phoenix Command is probably going to have less fun if your winging it has little relationship to the rules. Other people might have MORE fun, of course, but for this guy, all the effort he's put into learning the rules is going to waste every time you make a ruling that is in opposition to the actual rules. Which might make it less fun for him -- and maybe even for you.

So there is an argument to be made that systems that make it easier to wing it and still approximate the correct rules are in fact more likely to be fun to play.