What was so bad about DMing 3x?

[Rechan]

Yep, exactly -

"How many rings of protection, amulets of natural armour, bracers of defence, and cloaks of protection have we accumulated by now?"

"About 6 or 7 of each, but we'll just sell them when we get back to town…"

Not to mention brooches of shielding.

Think I'm joking? None of the villains in Shacked City had them. We had 3 arcane casters in the party. It was Magic Missile Palooza. THe DM was FURIOUS that the wizard in that module did not have a Shield spell (and the players literally stood up and cheered when they found this out).

After a certain point, it feels like Paper/Rock/Scissors to the eighth power.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

It wasn't so bad...

I enjoyed DMing my low to mid level adventures (never got to high level), but that does not mean I cannot also be interested to see what happens with 4e that might make things simpler/faster/better as they have said.

Bring on 4e. If I don't like it, they can't prevent me from going back to 3.5.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Not to mention brooches of shielding.

Think I'm joking? None of the villains in Shacked City had them. We had 3 arcane casters in the party. It was Magic Missile Palooza. THe DM was FURIOUS that the wizard in that module did not have a Shield spell (and the players literally stood up and cheered when they found this out).

After a certain point, it feels like Paper/Rock/Scissors to the eighth power.

<off topic>
I run a lot of published modules, and I prefer to run them unmodified if possible, since I don't have a lot of time to do modifications. The thing is though, if I knew that my party would walk all over an encounter because they were packing a metric tonne of magic missiles, I'd just go in, edit out a 1st level spell, and edit in Shield for the sake of making it a challenge for them. Unless, of course, they were barely hanging on throughout the rest of the adventure. Sometimes handing over an important enemy to the players is something that you have to do in order to make them feel effective. But either way, the goal is to make sure that things are challenging, but not too challenging...challenging enough to be fun, but not frustrating.
</off topic>

 

[Celebrim]

Most of the criticisms I have heard about DMing (and for that matter playing) 3rd edition have to do with how the default game plays after about 13th level.

Part of the reason I think that is is that in point of fact, I haven't DMed a 3.X game past that point. Thus if I hold a different viewpoint, its probably because I haven't had the same degree of experience with the problem they have.

But somewhere around 13th level, the game looks to me like it could concievably start breaking down, particularly if you start loading the splatbooks on. It also looks like it could start to become a real preparation burden for certain styles of play. This also could be a difference in expectations. I generally expect a preparation to play ratio approaching 1:1 regardless of level of play. I can tolerate that, but not everyone can.

 

[Mark Hope]

I think I take the phrase "tools not rules" more literally than most. A lot of the people I hear complaining about running D&D these days complain about "having" to do things that I don't bother doing. Because they think of the 3e tools as rules that have to be followed rather than tools that can be used as needed.

QFT. Sanity prevails.

 

[The Little Raven]

I think I take the phrase "tools not rules" more literally than most. A lot of the people I hear complaining about running D&D these days complain about "having" to do things that I don't bother doing. Because they think of the 3e tools as rules that have to be followed rather than tools that can be used as needed.

Well, the fact that the tools are interdependent makes it far more difficult to just ignore some of them. It isn't like it's a set of modular options that can be disconnected from eachother without having a greater impact on the entire system.

 

[Wolfspider]

In order to avoid magical item glut, I usually simply make sure that all the magical items that the NPCs they face are vile, unspeakably evil things that none of the PCs would even want to touch, much less use: cloaks made out of human skin, rings made out of human bone, weapons adorned with runes describing unspeakable blasphemies, that kind of thing. The PCs will usually decide to destroy these items, and they are usually rewarded by the powers of good (or at least those of not-evil) for doing so.

It's worked out great so far. Of course, there was the ranger who decided to keep a +2 grinding short sword for a while.

Messy.

 

[Hussar]

I've never really had a big issue with power creep to be honest. After all, what class is more powerful than the core classes? Even something like Bo9S, which specifically ramps up the power, only brings melee classes in line with casters.

((On a totally weird side note, my Firefox doesn't recognize the word melee))

My problem just came from workload. It's a pile of work to develop adventures week after week and I get burned out. My campaigns died around 9th or 10th level because I just couldn't keep up. I fixed this problem by using stuff like Adventure Paths and whatnot, but, really, that's a bandaid, not a solution.

It's great that other people can advance a creature by 12 hit dice and stat it up in a few minutes. I can't. It takes me forever and I usually do it wrong. Maybe if I did it more often, but, again, we run into the time problem again.

So, it looks like 4e will make it easier to take a basic chassis and add enough power under the hood to make it a viable challenge, regardless of the PC's levels. Whether they succeed at that or not remains to be seen.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

((On a totally weird side note, my Firefox doesn't recognize the word melee))

yeah, its dictionary has some odd blind spots I've noticed....

 

[WhimsyTheFae]

QFT. Sanity prevails.

Good point. It's obviously insane to use all the rules. Next time I run 3.5, I'll just send my players to Hobo if they want me to stick closer to the rules, because they obviously don't get it.

Why do we even have different systems?