Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 5972667" data-attributes="member: 50304">Well, in AD&D -> 3.5 Edition they padded the page-count of the PHB with 100+ pages of Vancian Spell Lists. 4E cut that out so they had to replace it with something. They cut almost all the Magic Items out of the Essentials player's books (leaving in only a few examples) but then again they cut the words-per-page count down by like 30% or so and dropped 3 classes each - still hitting that 300+ page sweet spot.Actually, I found it more off-putting that the mechanical balance of the monsters and challenges assumed players would get useful magic item enhancement bonuses to their attacks ranging from +1 to +6 over 30 levels or the players couldn't hit anything, and it actually restricted use by level to keep players from jumping ahead and messing up balance. It totally cut into the stingy-bloke DM and the Monty Haul DM's prerogatives. You had to do all sorts of rebalancing to compensate for not going along with the math.Likewise 3rd Edition with its DR and AC escalation and spell output escalation was always assuming weapon-based combatants were advancing their enhancement bonuses on gear as well.In both editions one of the worst things you could do to a fighting character was take their stuff. I once had a table nearly implode because a Living Greyhawk module has Hill Giants with Improved Sunder and giant axes. Seriously, one guy had to talk this girl back to the table when the +3 Elvencraft Longbow (the one that doubled as a quarterstaff so the ends were enchanted individually for melee too) she'd dumped 2 years worth of accumulated loot value into got turned into a pile of broken sticks in a single swing. It was crap-tacular.- Marty Lund</blockquote>

Verification