Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

[Samnell]

It's a complaint about the rules if they could have designed the system to give me everything I need with less prep time. And they're claiming that they can do so.

They could have done that, sure. They could have created a single-stat game. You add this stat to a d20 roll. If you beat the other guy's d20 roll (plus his one stat) you win. But all simplicity comes at the cost of options. Options are complexity and complexity is options. If you want customization, then you'll get the complexity that comes with it. If you can do with less, you can have a simpler, lighter, faster game. I'll believe WotC created a system with more options and less complexity when they unveil their giant laser built on the moon.

I don't like the drudge work of character and monster design and customization.

Drudge work is entirely subjective. I really, really hate rules-light systems. I'd rather not play than play rules-light. I can't think of a worse kind of gaming drudgery. Not every system is right for every person. 4e obviously is not going to be right for me. 3.5 isn't right for you. That's fine. I didn't claim that we have identical gaming tastes.

I want to say, "hey, here's a neat idea for a character," jot down a few things, and be ready to go in five minutes instead of fifty.

What takes fifty minutes? I've applied extremely fiddly templates in half the time. The speed at which one creates characters or NPCs of equivalent complexity is a function of system familiarity.

When I tinker with rules, the idea is that I want to do it once, and then it should function for me. I shouldn't have to constantly be getting under the hood of the thing. Once I pimp my game, it should perform.

Maybe if you've made some kind of mistake you have to go back under the hood, but a D&D game isn't your hair. It doesn't need to be washed daily. What makes you go back under the hood? I really doubt that 4e is going to eliminate human error, so you can't be complaining about that. What drives you back under the hood?

 

[Samnell]

Exactly. Rewarding rules mastery is no longer a guiding design principle.

I was with you that far. Rewarding rules mastery is one of the holy grails of my personal design philosophy. 3.5 started a trend towards punishing it with all the renamings of spells. One assumes 4e shall go farther. This is how I know it's not the game for me.

 

[Anthtriel]

I was with you that far. Rewarding rules mastery is one of the holy grails of my personal design philosophy. 3.5 started a trend towards punishing it with all the renamings of spells. One assumes 4e shall go farther. This is how I know it's not the game for me.

Everything that a computer can easily do way faster than a human is not "mastery" for me and doesn't need to be rewarded.
I think real "rules mastery" and real "tinkering" is what the WotC designers themselves do: throwing together entire monsters/spells/abilities on the fly, without having to rely on broken advancement/template rules (which are broken for reasons very similar to the reasons why multiclassing and ECL is broken).
If you have played long enough to know what numbers work, I don't see why you ever would want to rely on the published material for anything else than inspiration.

Ultimatively, all RPG rules are nothing more than a crutch, and the 3E monster rules are a particularily uncomfortable crutch, that just begs to be thrown away once you don't need it anymore.

 

[Wormwood]

ZOMG! They r letting casuals get free EPIXXX!!!!!!

QQ more!

 

[Charwoman Gene]

QQ more!

Unacceptable SLAP IN THE FACE!

This is great therapy for my WOW addiction recovery....

 

[Wormwood]

Unacceptable SLAP IN THE FACE!

This is great therapy for my WOW addiction recovery....

Post on your MAIN!

. . . sorry about that . . . I'm 5 months clean myself. One day at a time.

 

[BryonD]

It doesn't really work well in flavor either: Why can your Level 1 Wizard who spent his life studying scrolls, fight about as well as fighter at the beginning of their career, but not at all at the higher levels? You would imagine that the difference between them would stay pretty much the same.

Huh???

Say two 8 year olds go out and play basketball for the first time. One decides he really likes it and the other doesn't care that much. The first does that every day for the next ten years and the other does other things, with an occasional game here or there.
It make perfect sense that they would be about the same skill level that first day, but the basketball player is going to leave the non-player in the dust over time.

And, IMO, if a high level rogue can't jump clear of fireballs that the plate covered fighter gets nailed by 90% of the time, then something is really screwed up. If the plate coated fighter CAN avoid area effects roughly as well as a rogue, then THAT is screwed up math.

 

[howandwhy99]

Exactly. Rewarding rules mastery is no longer a guiding design principle. And thank god for that.


Hong "not a fan of grinding" Ooi

Remove choice from character creation and players can't minmax anymore. Your choices become things like "race" and "class". Character optimization becomes an in-game activity, isn't that so much better than gaming the system?

Not to mention, if you remove rules from the province of the Players, you remove their ability to Rules Lawyer. If they do not know the rules, but only "how the world works", they can only become curious when things don't work consistently and look for explanations. Not turn the game into repeated arguments. I'm hoping they take this kind of Rules Mastery out of the game too.

 

[Anthtriel]

Huh???

Say two 8 year olds go out and play basketball for the first time. One decides he really likes it and the other doesn't care that much. The first does that every day for the next ten years and the other does other things, with an occasional game here or there.
It make perfect sense that they would be about the same skill level that first day, but the basketball player is going to leave the non-player in the dust over time.

Except that characters (especially in 4E) are not just doing it for the first day, but for years. Rich Baker remarked that a Warlock/Wizard is different depending on what class he started with, that implies that much like in Saga, the class you start with is effectively your background, which shows off what you did the first 17-23 years of your life. That's quite different from your "first day".

In your example, that would mean you have one guy who spent all his life playing basketball, and one guy who spent all his life playing soccer, with both playing each other's sport from time to time. The soccer player would lose most of the time in basketball against the other guy and vice versa.
When they turn 17, both are considered level 1, and are already quite proficient in their speciality. As both become more athethlic, they become better in both areas. And though they spend more time with their speciality, they are already quite good in their speciality, so progress takes longer than in the area they are relatively weak at.
So during all their life, the effective distance between them at both sports probably stays about the same.

Skill, especially in physical activities, doesn't really grow linearily; there are certainly diminished returns. So a level 15 fighter will have to put in a lot of time to get even better in fighting, whereas a rogue doesn't put in as much time, but doesn't need as much time either, so the effective difference between always stays roughly the same.

And that is a strictly simulationist argument. The whole "leveling up" thing doesn't make much sense to begin with, so even if there were a minor conflict, it wouldn't matter much to me.

 

[hong]

Remove choice from character creation and players can't minmax anymore. Your choices become things like "race" and "class".

Pish tosh. Only lazy DMs do that.

Character optimization becomes an in-game activity, isn't that so much better than gaming the system?

No, gaming the DM is not much better than gaming the system.

Not to mention, if you remove rules from the province of the Players, you remove their ability to Rules Lawyer. If they do not know the rules, but only "how the world works", they can only become curious when things don't work consistently and look for explanations.

If I wanted to make philosophical enquiries about the nature of the world, I'd play The Sims.