What don't you like about D&D?

[Gundark]

The complaining and negative threads.

QFT. Can we get a ban on these threads too?

 

[Teflon Billy]

What don't you like about D&D?

Mostly what I don't like is how poorly it models the kind of "Fantasy Adventure Fiction" I enjoy.

I like D&D just fine, but it's really it's own genre now, and comes closer to "Superheroes" than "Sword and Sorcery".

Which is to say that when I have the taste for a game of "Faux Medieval Superheroes" it's my game of choice.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

What I don't like currently are the inflated numbers. We're playing in the low 20th levels right now in an Epic-level game, and the number juggling and die-rolling are almost headache inducing. Fun, when you see what you're doing to the hordes of 100's of minions, but you can get bogged down in calculators and geometry pretty quickly. (How fast can YOU total up 46d6

Pretty much like so:

Some guys in our groups go on and on about how fun epic level gaming is for them--but they always game with laptops and computerized dice rollers.

type 46 into the d6 space, click "roll". www.d20srd.org's dice bag works just fine, and is only really necessary for large-scale damage effects. Most of the time it's still d20-to-hit, modifiers tracked on a combat sheet for easy reference.

 

[Demetrios]

Personally, I houseruled that all shields have double AC, except for bucklers. So, bucklers: +1, small/light shields: +2, large/heavy shields: +4, tower shields: +8. Does it make shields more effective? Heck yeah! But I think that’s the way it should be.

[*]Mechanics -- A lot of the mechanics I don’t like. Like the undead turning mechanic, or the Death at -10. But there are variant mechanics for them out there, and easy enough to adopt for your own game.


[*]Skill & Skill Points -- I just don’t think skills are done well in the d20 system. There is little consistency on how class-skills are assigned to classes. I also think that some of the classes themselves really have too few skill points. Then your left with one or to characters being the possessors of needed skills for an adventure. (Then I see people argue that the INT bonus justifies the fact that a character doesn’t have that many skill points per level.

No one ever bothers with cross-class skills, unless it’s part of the character concept, because the cost is too high to the character. Spending what few points they have just to keep a handful of class skills relevant.

Hi

Love your idea on shields - when designing my own system (almgamation of Vampire and D&D), I doubled up shield bonus when the character has the right feat. Otherwise its standard, because anyone can use a shield, but how well is a different matter.
I just brought the tower shield down though to +3 for non-proficient or +6 if you have the feat (kinda think +8 is pushing the envelope a bit too far.


Skill Points: I understand what everybody is saying about skill points, they all want a fighter who can sneak, or a mage that picks pockets or a barabrian with bluff...etc. My point is, if there are people complaining now about the fighter class, saying anybody can do what he does eventually - what would they do if you had a mage with 10 ranks on sleight of hand - what would happen to the Rogue class. Plus there is a feat called Able-learner which reduces cost of skill points for cross-class skills, but still with the cap. Maybe just making that standard for all PCs would suffice. Perhaps if the DM allows just choose your "class" skills at the begining of play - swap one class skill with another cross class.
If you're sailor fighter - drop ride and take balance. I can't believe all the DMs out there are so hard-arsed.
The only problem that I haven't sorted out for myself is the progression of craft and proffession skill points for 0-level characters.

I'm new to this site, and I haven't gone back tracking but can someone please explain to me why everyone is anti the -10 die rule? In our campaign we play it and no one has raised objections - so what are we missing?

 

[frankthedm]

Ray of Enfeeblement.

Rays in general when it seems a ranged touch attack replaces what should have been a damn save.

 

[eyebeams]

* I don't care for money being used as a game balance mechanic for magic items and certain spells. It's inexact and makes it hard to run games with exceptionally wealthy and poor characters.

* Multiclassed casters suck because spell progression is along two axes: number and power. There are PrCs that exist specifically do deal with this suckiness.

* level-adjusted races.

 

[Renfield]

Another thread where I don't quite have the time or desire to read through but shall post anyway just because. Now considering this isn't quite an Edition Warz threadI hope the hardcore 3.X is GOD! players will take comments here with a grain of salt. So far that's what I've seen (Granted I only went through page one) So here's my little list.

Elves and Gnomes! Gnomes seem to have strayed from their original roles, everywhere I look they seem to be Gnomes! A la Dragonlance tinker gnomes. Which I hate loathe and despise. So in my campaigns they're back to their woodland dwelling prankster with a knack for illusion type ways. As for the Elves, I sort of got sick of them in the fantasy genre in general, it's like they're the Nazi's of fantasy. "We are the superior race, we were the first, we are better than nonarians... er I mean non-elves at art, magic, fighting, etc etc." they just lacked the whole 'racial clensing' aspect in most fantasy worlds. I'd say 'that's just me' but thankfully my players have a tendency to agree. We've matured thought, we've gone from flat out abusing elves in our custom campaign worlds to simply not allowing them that 'superior' status in our campaigns. I mean hell, Elven arrogance shattered Toril just so they could have their silly little island, which now isn't as protected as they thought it was. So what do they do? "Um, hey guys, I know we left and all to go to our safe little island, turns our it's not so safe so we're back and we want our land again, gimme!!"

That rant being done I shall move on.

Lack of Customizability That's what I'd love D&D to become. Some people say D&D3E isn't D&D because it's not similar enough to 1e or OD&D. I find that logic somewhat flawed as I look at editions as something of an evolution. It starts out a simple organism and grows to something else. I would like something akin to the basic classes of UA only with a little more oomph. Where you choose some sort of starting template but as you advance you can spend XP and buy abilities that fit your characters. One class might have easier access to the ability but another could use them as well. Why not have a warrior who can smooth talk people and be quick on his feet. Instead of making a whole new core class or a prestige class "Swashbuckler" or whatnot why not have such abilities buyable instead? I would love to have a good point buy system come out, and no one mention GURPS, it just didn't work for me and in my wonderful world doesn't qualify as 'good'.

AC System I like the spell point system rather than vancian fire-and-forget, I also enjoy the idea of combining a 'Defence Bonus' advancement system with the 1/2 Armor = DR option from UA. The idea of Armor and Dex being the only things that improve armor aside from magic has been tolerated at best. We played with the above UA rules and found it really didn't alter the game much. Say you send a low ranking martial artist up against a high ranking teacher, the teacher is experience and trained and is better able to block and defend blows. Send the lower ranking martial artist against a complete beginner and you'll see roughly the same to an equivalent extent. Now that analogy has it's flaws and is by no-means perfect (maybe the beginner is a scrapper from the streets and lays the not-so-beginner out flat etc) but it gets the point across.... Perhaps I should have used SCA....

I don't like how everything has become combat oriented. Yes combat is an important part of the game but I don't think that's deserving of making spells all in relation to combat. It feels to me like there's some 'if it's useful in combat and gives PC's an edge it must be toned down' mentality. So that would go right away. For those who think it would unbalance the game I think the fact that the enemies have the same access to the same things don't.

Okay, I'm done, for now. Oh, AoO would/should be toned way down.

 

[Nebulous]

[*]Vancian "fire and forget" magic. I'm not sure what to do about it other than avoid playing magic using characters. As a DM, I've been known to completely disallow D&D magic and replace it with psionics, or Midnight campaign setting magic, or Call of Cthulhu magic, etc. but that's pretty extreme. By that point, I'm not sure you can call your game D&D anymore and you may have to use the dreaded "d20 Fantasy" label.

Those are all good substitutes. Arcana Evolved also has a nice system for magic, but what i'm dying for is something like Ars Magica that is balanced for D&D, something freeform and intuitive . Elements of Magic sort of did that, and True Sorcery sort of did that, but neither one completely jangled by bells.

 

[Desdichado]

Those are all good substitutes. Arcana Evolved also has a nice system for magic, but what i'm dying for is something like Ars Magica that is balanced for D&D, something freeform and intuitive . Elements of Magic sort of did that, and True Sorcery sort of did that, but neither one completely jangled by bells.

They're good if standard D&D balance isn't important to you, because they clearly aren't balanced to D&D standard.

They sure are fun, though. Very flavorful. And it was hella fun to see the guy with the lowest Wisdom score (and consequently lowest SAN score) be the one who was most excited to learn and cast spells via the Cthulhu magic system.

 

[Psion]

They're good if standard D&D balance isn't important to you, because they clearly aren't balanced to D&D standard.

I think EoM is fairly balanced with the existing D&D standards. I just think it's difficult to use.