Thumbs Down to 3.5 Edition

[d4]

a) Can a human now take a Halfling Longspear, and gain 10 feet reach for a -2 penalty to his attack rolls?

i don't see why not. "Most reach weapons described in this chapter double the wielder's natural reach, meaning that a typical Small or Medium wielder of such a weapon can attack a creature 10 feet away..." (PHB, p.113)

since Small and Medium creatures have the same reach, i'd suspect their reach weapons would work similarly. the question of whether to allow a one-handed weapon to have reach (albeit at a -2 attack penalty) is another story.

b) In most campaigns, Halflings, Gnomes, Humans, Dwarfes and Elves live alongside. They have their own lands, sure, but in most greater cities, you will find all of them - why didn`t Halflings and Gnomes never adapt to use weapon sized for other races?

because they're not really physically capable of it. look at the race line-up again. look how much smaller the hands of a halfling are than a human. the handle of, say, a longsword is just too big for the halfling to grip effectively. there's going to be differences between a human-sized longsword and a halfling-sized greatsword, because they are built for different sized hands. thus the -2 penalty. or look at it this way: take a ogre-sized dagger and put it in the hands of a halfling. is it the same as a halfling greatsword? they are probably about the same length (they are both two-handed for a halfling and light for an ogre). but the balance is going to be different between the two, and the handle of the ogre dagger is going to be a lot wider and harder for the halfling to grip. now think about an ogre trying to use a halfling greatsword as a dagger -- the handle is going to be so narrow and tiny he's going to have a hard time getting more than two or three fingers around it... this is where the attack penalty is coming from. makes sense to me.

c) If you want to create treasure, what type are the weapons found in it? All optimized for medium size characters? That would mean a huge penalty for halfling and gnomes.
What is with the weapons many opponents carry - a Giant wielding a Flaming Screaming Keen Longsword (Large) and a Heavy Shield +2 is defeated - the equipment he left is useless for the characters and has to be sold ...

it's not (totally) useless. a human can still use that large-sized longsword as a two-handed weapon at a -2 penalty. on the other hand, i don't really see how this situation is any different than in 3.0. of course giants and other large creatures are going to have equipment too big for the smaller PCs to use.

 

[Henry]

Playing Devil's Advocate a moment...

In most campaigns, Halflings, Gnomes, Humans, Dwarfes and Elves live alongside. They have their own lands, sure, but in most greater cities, you will find all of them - why didn`t Halflings and Gnomes never adapt to use weapon sized for other races?

For the same reason that Dwarves and Halflings don't buy clothes sized for Human children - the proportions are all wrong. They would want their own sized weapons, I would think, including diameter of hand grips.

What is with the weapons many opponents carry - a Giant wielding a Flaming Screaming Keen Longsword (Large) and a Heavy Shield +2 is defeated - the equipment he left is useless for the characters and has to be sold ...

If I find a flaming screaming keen longsword, a -2 penalty to hit is NOT going to bother me. If it does, I'll ask the Wizard to cast Enlarge Person on me just before jumping into battle if it does... All we are dealing with is a -2 penalty to hit, which is not that big a difference for the Fighter, especially if the weapon is worth it. The exact same problems exist under 3E that exist under 3.5 - that Longsword would be Huge under 3E, and would need to be used 2-handed, same as under 3.5.

I like the new Damage Reduction in that it has lower values and you have a chance to beat opponent`s DR even without the appropriate weapons, but I do not like the way the material rules for weapons work. I am not sure if we will encounter the Golfbag Syndrom.

We haven't encountered it yet, and I'm DMing a 3E game using a modified version of the 3.5 Damage Resistance rules. I'm keeping the +1 through +5 designations, but I am also using the bludgeon/pierce/silver/adamantine descriptors too. So far, no one has yet carried more than one or two weapons, and those are the ones who carry multiple weapons for versatility anyway. The Barbarian in the group hacks away at EVERYTHING with his Greatsword, no matter what.

 

[Li Shenron]

I am a bit disappointed by some players who actually say "why do you complain about how 3.5 changed this one rule? It's not so different than before!". This is one of the points where dcollins and Monte Cook are right: too many changes were not strictly necessary, but were MINOR changes that didn't really turn the thing different. So why change it?

We are still playing 3.0 because we haven't bought the new books yet, and already we are making confusion because some of us have read the 3.5 SRD. It's about minor changes, because the major ones we are able to easily remember how they are in 3.0 and 3.5.

After 2 years of playing 3.0 I was very satisfied that I could DM a game without being constantly looking up for rules in the books, although of course I always did to some extent, but I thought I had learned how to play basically. I haven't bought 3.5 and already I am confused and have to look up all the time... Why changing little things like spell's duration or range or saving throws unless it was really needed?

Indeed I think that most of the changes, even the minor ones, are improvements, but had they waited a couple of more years for the revision, they would have had time to correct ALL the minor things. Now they have not even corrected half, and they have changed things that are not better than before, and some are even blatantly worse (Deflect Arrows and standing up from prone come to my mind).

 

[buzzard]

That is the point.

And I don't like the point.

buzzard

 

[buzzard]

Ummm, drifting a bit off topic, but that's a bit on the inaccurate side. There have been video and computer games before D&D came along in '74. IIRC, the Odyssey console beat that by a couple of years, and games like Spacewar were around in the late 60's.

I recommend you read a bit of history. About the only videogame in existance in 74 was Pong. The Odyssey console came out in the late 70s (I owned one) and Space Wars was of the same era. There are NO consequential videogames which predate D&D (though Zork or rogue might be its contemporaries, but those were larks created on campus mainframes).

buzzard

 

[Zerakon]

I recommend you read a bit of history. About the only videogame in existance in 74 was Pong. The Odyssey console came out in the late 70s (I owned one) and Space Wars was of the same era. There are NO consequential videogames which predate D&D (though Zork or rogue might be its contemporaries, but those were larks created on campus mainframes).

Sorry, but the videogame industry would have come regardless of D&D's existence. See http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm for a brief article on some early games. It doesn't even mention Colossal Cave which was written in 1972 I believe. Sure, they weren't mass-marketed because PC technology wasn't around yet. But it's silly to argue that D&D had anything to do with the creation of the videogame industry. Though I could see an argument for D&D helping that industry -- we can wonder would Richard Garriot aka Lord British have even written Ultima had there never been PnP roleplaying? How many people would have played videogames had there not been a fantasy roleplaying element? But, regardless of the answers to those questions, the videogame industry was going to come, and grow, with the advent of the PC.

edit: fixed quote format

 

[Henry]

How about Shaped instead of Created? That's a better term, because without RPG's the videogame scene might be far, far different. Likely, we'd all be playing a 4-megapixel version of Pacman or Donkey Kong by now.

I am a bit disappointed by some players who actually say "why do you complain about how 3.5 changed this one rule? It's not so different than before!". This is one of the points where dcollins and Monte Cook are right: too many changes were not strictly necessary, but were MINOR changes that didn't really turn the thing different. So why change it?

I agree, truthfully. On its own merits, I like most of the changes; when putting it in the context of where the RPG scene is right now, it did NOT come at a good time. Most of the changes they wanted to institute should have really waited for a brand-new edition.

 

[buzzard]

Sorry, but the videogame industry would have come regardless of D&D's existence. See http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm for a brief article on some early games. It doesn't even mention Colossal Cave which was written in 1972 I believe. Sure, they weren't mass-marketed because PC technology wasn't around yet. But it's silly to argue that D&D had anything to do with the creation of the videogame industry. Though I could see an argument for D&D helping that industry -- we can wonder would Richard Garriot aka Lord British have even written Ultima had there never been PnP roleplaying? How many people would have played videogames had there not been a fantasy roleplaying element? But, regardless of the answers to those questions, the videogame industry was going to come, and grow, with the advent of the PC.

Don't put words in my mouth. Instead, try reading what I wrote again. I stated that D&D is not predated by any major videogames. I do not ascribe any 'spawning of videogame' powers to D&D.

Now one could probably make a strong case that fantasy video games (Ultima et al, as you mention) are a direct result of D&D. However I'm not concerned with that argument. I'm just quite certain that Space Wars and the Odyssey system do not predate D&D.

Funny though, I just looked up Colossal Cave, and a page which discusses its history says that the initial creator (Will Crowther) wrote the game as an attempt to simulate the D&D game that he played with pen and paper.

www.rikadams.org/adventures/a_history.html


buzzard

 

[herald]

Sorry, but the videogame industry would have come regardless of D&D's existence. See http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcomputer_videogames.htm for a brief article on some early games. It doesn't even mention Colossal Cave which was written in 1972 I believe. Sure, they weren't mass-marketed because PC technology wasn't around yet. But it's silly to argue that D&D had anything to do with the creation of the videogame industry. Though I could see an argument for D&D helping that industry -- we can wonder would Richard Garriot aka Lord British have even written Ultima had there never been PnP roleplaying? How many people would have played videogames had there not been a fantasy roleplaying element? But, regardless of the answers to those questions, the videogame industry was going to come, and grow, with the advent of the PC.

edit: fixed quote format

I doubt history will bear out that the video game industry was a direct result of D&D.

But we can say that D&D set the standard that Computer RPG's have become and there for revolutionized the industry.

Computer games fall into many catagories. RPGs are very differant than the "twitch candy" of pong and all that proceeded.

You can make the case that Lord British and the like made it into the industry first, certainly he had seen war game mechanics and used them to his advantage. (Not that I'm faulting him, in fact I praise him for it.) Safe to say, anything that can be done on a computer, and anything that has been done on a computer is has been done before on one way or another.

 

[Mystery Man]

EDIT - NOT the best tension reliever. Sorry. -Henry

Here's one less non-PC

Sorry, tension reliever.

Had to be done.