What did we do before feats, skills, and prestige classes?

[I'm A Banana]

For me and my group, we didn't really think about every fighter being the same mechanically, we had different attributes and different NWPS but even that wasn't the big deal, it was actually the CHARACTER that we thought about. Sure, Sasha Quickblade and Valadriel Darkholme were essentially the same character at 5th level, sans magic items, but they were different people and that was all we thought about. In fact, we were so immersed in our characters that we didn't even notice these similarities mechanically until we played 3e. For us game balance wasn't whether the magic user was over shadowing the fighter in encounters but whether or not we got too much treasure or if an encounter might accidentally wipe out a party of 7.

Well, it's not an either/or scenario. With 3e, thinking about the rules is thinking about the character. When Sasha Quickblade takes the Quick Draw feat because her sparkling blade is lightning-fast, that's making her different from Valadriel Darkholme who takes the Blind-Fight feat beacuse of his dark home. They are different people -- and their choices reflect that fact.

Thinking about balance frees up time to think about fun stuff. The 3e rulebooks are focused on rules because rules are what we most need to get balanced and right to be fun. Because if our games are 90% combat and our fighter can't contribute to combat because the wizard can take care of everything, it's not much fun, no matter how many chapters of history I've written about Sasha.

We used to do things like leaping onto chandeliers and other kewl Errol Flynn style theatrics but now it seems like everyone is like "well, you can't do that cause you don't have this *particular series of feats* and it says on page XX you need such and such feat to do this here as well so you can't do that either". I know that isn't what the rules say, penalties to the skill check etc but either the DCs are set so high that the untrained could NEVER accomplish such a tactic or the above arguement ensues.

If your concept of your hero is jumping onto chandeliers, then wouldn't you think that you'd make choices relevant to chandelier-jumping? Jump, balance, tumble, whatnot? And if you don't make those choices, why do you think your character can do that?

3e is a game where you get to do something cool by selecting to do that cool thing over other cool things. If I make a Dex 8 Half-Orc fighter, I'm not saying I can swing on chandeliers or dodge bullets. If he's got a Strength of 18, I'm saying he can break down doors and bend bars and arm wrestle. And lo, he can.

But that's just out of the box. The game constantly encourages you to make the game your own and use your own rules of what's fun. If you want to hand-wave acrobatics (and many of us do), you can. If you don't, you don't have to, and that's worth all the marbles.

 

[Imp]

Actually, back in the 1e days, I remember shunting off a fair bit of the character differentiation onto the magic items the characters carried... want your fighter trained in kung fu? Give him slippers of kicking! A master duellist? Has a +5 defending longsword! How will I make this player's thief special? Arrange for him to find a cloak of arachnida... That, the attributes, weapon specialization, magic-user's spell lists (which were limited), the nonweapon proficiencies...

 

[Heathen72]

She got rescued, and then it was a game of Doctor, and "patient".

Very patient, in my case.

 

[Silver Moon]

Two level 20 fighters were identical in AD&D. You can "Imagine" stuff all you want, but they are STILL the same level 20 fighter. Sorry. You might wear a cape, and I might wear a cowl, but we're the same guy, underneath. It didn't work for me, and I hated it. Which is why I stopped playing D&D in the 80's and did not start again until 3rd edition.

That wasn't my experience. I started back in 1981 and in both of my gaming groups all of the characters were distinctly different. The tall young human Viking fighter wasn't at all like the sneaky gnome fighter or the middle-aged one-eyed-half-elf fighter. Different specs, different personalities, different equipment.

On the other hand, I know of a 3.5E player now who has four characters, all of different fighter-based prestige classes, yet they are practically interchangeable.

I'm just saying that the easier character generation rules didn't necessarily restrict the result, just as the wide arrange of options today don't automatically mean wide ranges of character variation.

So I'll go back to my earlier statement, "It's all D&D to me". Pick the rule system you like best and make the most of it!

 

[Klaus]

You know, as much fun as it is for old-timers to heap scorn on a more detailed rules set, I've got to disagree. That attitude strikes me as intellectual elitism, and it gives nostalgia too heavy a weight for my own personal taste.

I use my imagination as much or more in 3e than I did in 1e. I very clearly remember making up a dwarven fighter in 1st edition, and being incredibly frustrated that mechanically he was like every other fighter out there. Sure, I had an elaborate backstory for him, just like I do for my characters nowadays, but I always had the nagging feeling of so much lost potential.

That's no longer true for me. Maybe its because I play with DMs who respect the rules without being shackled to them (as my favorite DMs always are), but I now can match my character's abilities to the intricate vision I have in my head. I love that about D&D nowadays.

I agree with P-kitty here (and mostly everywhere)!

I loved 2e kits (specially the earlier ones from The Complete Fighter's Handbook), and the point-buy aspect of Skills & Powers (min-maxing to nth degree!!!). But 3e takes the cake in allowing your character reflect your imagination.

 

[Hussar]

The somewhat ironic thing is, the "We used our imagination" crowd and the "We use the rules" crowd are closer than they first appear. The WUOI bunch, use their imagination to create unique characters and then, create new rules to reflect this part of the game. In TheShaman's example, he mentions giving bonuses to a character for background. Sounds an awful lot like a skill focus feat to me.

In other words, when all is said and done, we use the rules to create our characters. If the ruleset is not expansive enough, we expand it to fit our concepts. If the ruleset is expansive, we mix and match until we find our concept. At the end of the day though, you still wind up with a complex ruleset for creating concepts.

In other words, before we had kits, feats, etc. we simply created our own versions and used them.

 

[teitan]

Well, it's not an either/or scenario. With 3e, thinking about the rules is thinking about the character. When Sasha Quickblade takes the Quick Draw feat because her sparkling blade is lightning-fast, that's making her different from Valadriel Darkholme who takes the Blind-Fight feat beacuse of his dark home. They are different people -- and their choices reflect that fact.

Thinking about balance frees up time to think about fun stuff. The 3e rulebooks are focused on rules because rules are what we most need to get balanced and right to be fun. Because if our games are 90% combat and our fighter can't contribute to combat because the wizard can take care of everything, it's not much fun, no matter how many chapters of history I've written about Sasha.



If your concept of your hero is jumping onto chandeliers, then wouldn't you think that you'd make choices relevant to chandelier-jumping? Jump, balance, tumble, whatnot? And if you don't make those choices, why do you think your character can do that?

3e is a game where you get to do something cool by selecting to do that cool thing over other cool things. If I make a Dex 8 Half-Orc fighter, I'm not saying I can swing on chandeliers or dodge bullets. If he's got a Strength of 18, I'm saying he can break down doors and bend bars and arm wrestle. And lo, he can.

But that's just out of the box. The game constantly encourages you to make the game your own and use your own rules of what's fun. If you want to hand-wave acrobatics (and many of us do), you can. If you don't, you don't have to, and that's worth all the marbles.

My point is that all this focus on nit picky detail has eliminated the fun. I can pick up an Uzi as an example and fire it, maybe even effectively but with the way the rules have been interpretted Jeb isn't going to because he didn't pick those feats to be able to use that Uzi. Jeb dies. For some reason players forget they can still do it but they get a penalty to the action for being untrained.

I'm sorry but a character should be able to be Errol Flynn without having to use all his feat slots to get that high of a jump and tumbling score to pull it off but again, while it isn't the RAW, many players and even DM's look at the Charsheet and say "nope, can't do that, you need these three feats and you have toughness, blind fighting and the anal swelling feats (cuz you just got screwed out of fun)". Uhhh, yeah I can, -4 penalty or even then a Dex check would do just fine. They don't think that way because 3.5 has become so quantified. Focus on game balance has ruined the fun factor in a lot of ways as well. That is the main arguement I see in this thread about how things have become in 3e. Balance. Balance SHOULD be in the hands of the DM, not the RAW. I like that 3e made it a little easier to have balance for the DM but I still think that 3.5 has taken it a little too far. Why are buffs so nerfed? That makes them essentially pointless because they wear off after a single combat and some of the CRs of these monsters are calculated with Buffs in mind. Well, if you wizard has been too busy preparing Buffs then the fighter is getting all the glory while even the high level Wizard is sitting back doing what 1st level wizards do, wait to be useful.

Polymorph. We played with Polymorph as written for AEONS, AEONS I SAY, and nobody complained, the DM kept the spell from becoming too potent etc. Now we have had how many new versions in how many years to supposedly fix a problem that a good DM won't let happen!!

Jason

 

[Psion]

My point is that all this focus on nit picky detail has eliminated the fun.

You understand, of course, that's a rather subjective determination. For me, having a system that says race X or class Y is like this, and no mechanic to support in play, is a fun-killer.

Polymorph. We played with Polymorph as written for AEONS, AEONS I SAY, and nobody complained, the DM kept the spell from becoming too potent etc. Now we have had how many new versions in how many years to supposedly fix a problem that a good DM won't let happen!!

I blame that on tournament play, and the R&D team paying too much attention to tournament play.

 

[Evilhalfling]

non-weapon profs and magic items were the mechanical distinguishing characteristics, and adventuring history was more important than intial concept.

Since magic items were random/ abitrarly given, each PC had a few well use items, or a bagful of little used stuff. (mostly found in moduals)

My sisters thief (1st ed) I remember as the thief who broke her +3 sword prying open a door,
and was killed by a vampire, dropped in a moat and forgotten by the party - until it was too Late!

The halflng monk (reincarnated from human in backstory), with 2 rings of Elemental command.
He was on a quest to obtain all 4 an beome a demi-god. Enslaved to a mindflayer nautalis after a conversion to 2nd (spelljammer)

 

[Remathilis]

A story of Two Fighters: Bilbo and Barg started play in a D&D campaign alike

Our fighters had different names to start...
and alignments...
Then, we found out we could be different races...
and could specialize in different weapons...
and had different % strs...
Then they got different secondary skills...
which switched to different nwps...
then they got different kits...
and could swap around their race/class abilities with skill points...
and gain new fighter abilities like mastery at high level...
Then they converted again and took different skills...
and prestige classes...
and feats...
and Subsitution levels...

So that in the end, Bilbo and Barg looked nothing alike again.

Just the way we liked it.