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Message: <blockquote data-quote="francisca" data-source="post: 1850755" data-attributes="member: 9734">For those of you DMing 3.X and finding frustrations, I feel your pain.  Here are some bits of advice on certain topics:On NPC creation and the amount of time it requires to "do it right by the book":OK, decide right now: Do your players trust you or not?  This is important.  Do they trust you to provide them with a challenging adventure which is neither a cakewalk nor a meatgrinder?  If they do, you are fine.  Don't spend time detailing out the street urchin who cuts their purse.  Decide what level you think the urchin should be, and max out sleight of hand skill.  Guestimate HP and decide if he should have a Dex bonus.  That's it.  You are done.  Don't sweat the rest of the skill points and feats.  The point is to have the urchin pick the pocket and run, or to get caught and move the game along.  If your players trust you, they won't ask for a skill point audit of the NPCs.  If they do, they don't trust you, and you either need to win their trust or find a new group.  If they don't trust you, you're not going to have much fun anyway.  Having said that all of that, if you have a feature NPC, notably recurring villians, hell yes stat them out.On the "simple mechanic, just roll and add mods" issue:Yep.  The devil is in the details.  There are tons of mods, some which stack, some which don't, synergy bonuses, and circustantial bonuses.  Some are hard to remember.  Suck it up and get used to it, it's part of the game.  However, having your players do some of the bookeeping can go a long way towards making the game run smoother.  Have them put a die out which shows the number of rounds remaining on bless.  Before you roll for initiative, remind everyone to decrement spell effect round counts.  If you really are frustrated with this aspect of the game, maybe an earlier edition would be better suited to you.  And don't take offense just because some joker on a message board waxes on about he'd never go back to an earlier version of the game.  It's irrelevent to you and your group.Combat taking forever:Yes.  It does.  If you are having fun, it shouldn't seem like it, however.  As someone playing 1E AD&D, DMing Basic/Expert and 3.5, I can tell you that they all take a while.  The older editions take less time due to 3.X's "what the hell skill synergy applies here" stuff, but 3E combat does get faster with experience, just as it did with older editions.At this point, I'm just going to point to my sig, and walk away.</blockquote>

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