Third Edition Culture- Is is sustainable?

[Retro-Rocket]

or the look of horror when a 50-foot awakened scorprion comes air-walking over your battlements, ranting for your blood.

Dang Henry, I am going to have to swipe that one. Cool visual!

 

[Sebastian Francis]

1. Too much crunch. This was one of the problems with 2ed as well. Everything now is more, more, more: more PrC's, more feats, more spells, etc. I believe 3ed as it stands now is on overload. I know the simple answer is "don't use what you don't like" but the problem is with all the influx of material, it's very difficult to find a group where everyone is on the same page. If someone has a new shiny book, they want to use it. If you want to run a game that's more streamlined, you run the risk of making the players unhappy.

Absolutely. I especially hate feats and prestige classes for this reason. Every month Wizards churns out another book chock full o' new feats and prestige classes. [YAWN].

2. High-level play. High-level play in a "standard" 3ed campaign is brutal. After 12th level so, the system becomes a dinosaur. The system just has too many options: spells, magic items, special abilties, etc. You can spend a whole session just planning and buffing up for a battle. Then once you start the battle, that takes a whole session too! Again, some people will debate this but I've been in a slew of groups since 3ed came out and I've never seen this probelm remedied. As someone else mentioned, it's also a nightmare for a DM to run party vs party battles too. You always end up forgetting something along the way.

Agreed. I don't even want to *try* running a 3rd edition campaign past 10th level or so. The problem is, though, that *players* often want their characters to advance high into teens because of all the new KEWL POWRZ they'll get. I rather miss the old days of 1e and 2e, when players at 9th level were ready to set up a castle and retire.

 

[Scribble]

One combat per hour sounds damn good to me. What where you used to?

dang I WISH I could get it down to that quick... Combats tend to take several hours...

Then again, I have a huge group (9 players) and they're pretty high level.

 

[fredramsey]

Absolutely. I especially hate feats and prestige classes for this reason. Every month Wizards churns out another book chock full o' new feats and prestige classes. [YAWN].

Last time I checked, no one from WOTC comes to your house and forces you to use them.

Agreed. I don't even want to *try* running a 3rd edition campaign past 10th level or so. The problem is, though, that *players* often want their characters to advance high into teens because of all the new KEWL POWRZ they'll get. I rather miss the old days of 1e and 2e, when players at 9th level were ready to set up a castle and retire.

Grow a freakin' backbone, and run your own game. Are you a DM, or whipping boy?

 

[Sebastian Francis]

Is this an 'objective' problem with 3.x D&D? It is insofar as many mature DMs simply do not have enough time to prep adequately for their sessions. Granted, there are 'short cuts' -- e.g. prepacked modules, and so forth. But for some DMs (myself included) campaign design is 50 percent of the fun.

Of course, reading through and mastering the content of most prepackaged 3e modules is a huge time-consumer in itself. :\

IME it is a real challenge to find decent DMs in my age group (30+) for 3E. And this is probably the main reason why I'm switching to a 'rules lite' system (viz. shorter prep times).

You know, I've been thinking the same kind of thing. I'm 33 years old, happily married, and have a 2-year-old daughter. Maybe I'm not at a station of life where I can properly DM 3e. Maybe the DMs who boast about running four high-level 3e campaigns are all 20-year-old university students with no real responsibilities and tons of free time. :\

 

[IronWolf]

I have been having a great time with the 3.x version. I was away from the game for many years after having played 1st and 2nd Edition AD&D. When I became interested in playing again it was a decision of dusting off my old 1st and 2nd edition books or picking up the core books for version 3.5. I opted to jump in with 3.5 figuring it would be easier to find players.

So far I have been quite happy. I think the rules for combat help make things more interesting, the feat system and skill system work well for my games. I've been having a great time.

Now of course I still turn back to some of my older material for the fluff (i.e. older Forgotten Realms source books), but I don't miss the rule books much. Things just feel cleaner to me in the 3.5 version.

 

[Belen]

Absolutely. I especially hate feats and prestige classes for this reason. Every month Wizards churns out another book chock full o' new feats and prestige classes. [YAWN].



Agreed. I don't even want to *try* running a 3rd edition campaign past 10th level or so. The problem is, though, that *players* often want their characters to advance high into teens because of all the new KEWL POWRZ they'll get. I rather miss the old days of 1e and 2e, when players at 9th level were ready to set up a castle and retire.

Funny. My magic limit is 12th. It is interesting that WOTC made a concerted effort to reduce XP in order to level faster, yet a lot of people still stop at around the same point to avoid the high level craziness.

I wonder if they'll look into that.

My previous campaign went to 27th. I stopped having fun running the game around 15th and it showed. Not only did I lose my sense of the players and their abilities, but I could not keep up with the NPCs. It basically became a game where those who won initiative survived.

 

[Storm Raven]

Nope, just change them to fit within a simpler framework. Point Blank shot would just grant a flat +1 att/dmg to ranged weapons.

Which makes it not really that "Point Blank" and also makes it significantly better than most other feats (like Weapon Focus, and most of the other combat feats). Is it really that difficult to figure out if you are closer than or farther away than 30 feet? It's a two second calculation.

Spells are somewhat trickier. (Note: That is said remove or modify things that provide a temporary bonus for a short period of time). 10 min/lvl is good. Rd/lvl would be bad.

Its a good thing that most buffing spells aren't a round per level then. You are still advocating eliminating most of the bardic singing abilities though.

The main issue with 3e IMO is that too many bonus' stack. It then becomes confusing and stops the game while everyone figures out what mods they have, whether they stack, what condition they apply too

Like named bonuses generally don't stack. Everything else does. This isn't rocket science.

It's nightmare-like

Only if your version of a nightmare is a very light-hearted one.

 

[Ranes]

You can spend a whole session just planning and buffing up for a battle.

I just had a flashback to my first game of 1e.

Then once you start the battle, that takes a whole session too! Again, some people will debate this but I've been in a slew of groups since 3ed came out and I've never seen this probelm remedied.

Not everyone sees it as a problem. Or experiences it. I agree with Jeff. It isn't hard - given that you're playing D&D in the first place - to find a system that helps you play or DM.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

Nope, just change them to fit within a simpler framework. Point Blank shot would just grant a flat +1 att/dmg to ranged weapons.

But then its not really 'point blank' anymore, is it?

Absolutely. I especially hate feats and prestige classes for this reason. Every month Wizards churns out another book chock full o' new feats and prestige classes. [YAWN].

What would you RATHER them put out? Honestly, its either feats and PrCs or flavor books that don't apply to even half of the people who buy books. Feats and PrCs can be used by EVERYONE. I enjoy not having to come up with the mechanical aspects of the game and being able to spend my time on the flavor of my homebrew.

Agreed. I don't even want to *try* running a 3rd edition campaign past 10th level or so. The problem is, though, that *players* often want their characters to advance high into teens because of all the new KEWL POWRZ they'll get. I rather miss the old days of 1e and 2e, when players at 9th level were ready to set up a castle and retire.

Treating high level play like its only for people that want 'KEWL POWER' is foolishly elitist. I've run a game from 10th level to 19th(at the moment, soon to go Epic), and while it started more combat based. As the PCs have grown in power, they've gotten more and more involved in the political and roleplaying aspects of the world and planes.

And you know, its not that hard to run a high level game at all. If the players want to play so bad, have them HELP. Make sure THEY keep track of a things for themselves so you, as DM, can focus on the other aspects of the game. You seem to be insulting anyone who enjoy high level play and saying all of them are little kids who just want to kill things. So many people go around chanting about how 3e is just for all the video game kids who don't want to do anything but kill. I've had groups of people that fall into that...and you know what? The second they got into the actual RPing, they loved it more than anything. You have to give things a chance before throwing them out entirely.