What was so bad about DMing 3x?

[Elder-Basilisk]

I don't know that it starts breaking down. I had a friend in high school who, back in the 2e days was fond of high level campaigns. I never really enjoyed them and the rules definitely did break down there. In 3.x, I've played one Living Greyhawk character to 18th level (and beyond now) another to 15th, and another to 13th, I've played Age of Worms to 14th level, and in a home campaign that IIRC started at 14th level and went to 18th before we put the campaign on hold and switched DMs.

In none of those games have I felt like the game actually broke down. Now, I didn't particularly enjoy the high level home campaign for a number of reasons related to the DM, but primarily because it felt like he was making his world so bizzarely high powered that even at 18th levels our characters are still schlubs whose actions are not of consequence to the world. The plots and characters reactions to us were more appropriate to a mid-level game.

What does happen at level 13 or so is two things:
First, the accumulation of treasure really starts to skyrocket. At 11th level, my bizarre halfling holy warrior had a magic sword, a magic shield, a magic mithral breastplate, a hat of disguise, a minor vest of resistance, gauntlets of ogre power, and a +2 cloak of charisma. When put that way, it may sound like a decent amount (well, she was 11th level) but it really just amounts to her class gear (weapons/armor/shield), a toy (hat of disguise), and three miscellaneous items--gauntlets, vest, and cloak.

At 13th level, her armor is now +4, she has anklets of translocation, counterstrike bracers, a ring of the four winds, a ring of thunderclaps, a belt of giant strength +4, an amulet of health +2, an ioun stone to boost her AC (and she's thinking about getting a second to boost her wisdom). I think there are a few more things out there too. It took her 11 levels to get basic gear plus four other items. Now, in the space of two levels, she has nearly doubled the amount of gear that she has and has gained enough items that give her options that I now find myself carefully rationing my swift and immediate actions.

It is around 13th level that you start to have enough character wealth and find big enough hordes that magic items is no longer just about getting a good sword, but you end up with all sorts of other options too which can either conflict with each other or synergize.


A second thing happens somewhere around 13th level. Spellcasters find several things:
1. They have access to quite a number of long duration buff spells
2. They no longer run out of spells in a typical adventuring day
3. Their 2nd-4th level spell slots are no longer the bulk of their productive combat actions.
Because of that, spells like hero's feast, greater magic weapon, magic vestment, barkskin, heroism, flame arrow, shield of faith, etc can become standard operating proceedure.

If PCs decide to go that route, several things happen. Bookkeeping becomes more complex because your character now has a different set of attack rolls with heroism or greater magic weapon than without them and a dispel magic spell will often take several minutes to resolve. The more important thing, however, is that the power disparity between a party who works together before combat and one that does not grows dramatically. If one group of characters has +4 magic vestment on their armor and their shield, shield of faith, and barkskin up and the other doesn't, that's easily the difference between being AC 29 and AC 41. (Or at least that's the difference in my halfling's ordinary armor class and the armor class she had in the last module where her party included a druid and a cleric with a bead of karma). Likewise, the difference between a +22 attack and a +29 attack should not be underestimated. (Greater magic weapon often adds +3 to my halfling, hero's feast another 1, haste 1, and recitation 2). Buffed and unbuffed states make a difference before this level range, of course, but first, the difference isn't as large mathematically as to turn a likely hit into something that only hits if it threatens a critical.

The third thing that happens around 13th level is that the around that point in time, characters have made enough choices in their design and development that their innate power levels begin to diverge more sharply. At every level, there is a way to make a useless character and there are characters who are stronger at every level as well. However, at higher levels, the differences become more pronounced as strong characters tend to end up with multiple abilities that synergize together.

With all of these changes in the game happening at once, there is a definite learning curve both for players and for DMs and it is somewhat more challenging to find encounters that will challenge different groups of PCs in the same way. It still happens. Age of Worms works pretty well so far. And Living Greyhawk generally manages a reasonable and interesting level of challenge. But the game definitely changes.

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.

 

[AZRogue]

One thing I forgot to add (and I'm not up to going through the whole thread right now, so not sure if anyone else mentioned it ) is that in 3E, once your BAB got high enough to allow for multiple attacks a round, most movement stopped. It was all "I Full Attack, and 5' step". That didn't bug me at first, but after running encounter after encounter, it became clear that it just wasn't as effective to keep moving as it was to stay in one spot and trade blows until something died.

The movement in 4E seems to encourage a lot of movement which I think will help keep things Dynamic. That alone will breath a bit of life into things.

And, since I'm posting, I just wanted to re-state my opinion that after level 12 or so, designing an encounter or NPC really started to feel like doing your taxes. I can't stress how much that annoyed the Hell out of me. I like to make NPCs, always have, and love to come up with monsters and characters with personalities and quirks and gestures that make them instantly recognizable to the PCs when they pop back up later, but the rest of it, the calculating stats, and recalculating stats as items were added or feats were changed, was so boring that it just drained me. 5 hours of tedious unenjoyment that felt like a punishment (preparation) did not make up for the 5 hours of awesome fun at the gaming table.

Not that all of this matters, really. It's clear that quite a few people DID have problems with DMing the game. I just hope that 4E addresses some of those issues.

 

[SteveC]

I am running a higher level D&D campaign now (just hitting 13th level) and all I can say is ... ugh! The real problem is that D&D at this level doesn't have to be complicated, there are just many character builds that make it so.

In the game I'm running now, we have basically five characters: a tattooed monk, a scout, a dwarven fighter, a paragon elf wizard and a kobold sorcerer.

The first three characters are a piece of cake to run a game for. They're powerful, but not too bad by any means. They can effectively deal with threats at or above the CR pretty well, especially the dwarf, who has the two weapon pounce thing down pat.

It's the other two characters who are nightmares. The elf is a conjuration specialist with the sudden teleport ability, and he uses all of the "mark of" buff spells to make him far more effective in combats than he should be. The spells from the last few splat books ... ugh! Why anyone would use stoneskin with it's pricy material component when they could cast mark of earth and get the benefits for a combat for no cost. It beats me.

The kobold sorcerer? All I can say is races of the dragon + dragon magic can be very broken. I love the "wings of cover" spell, which gives him total cover against one attack aimed at him every turn ... at the cost of a single level 2 spell slot. Level 13 sorcerers have a lot of spell slots they can use for that type of thing. I've told them that EVERY sorcerer they run into will be taking this spell, which made them more than a little perturbed.

The real problem is that these abilities can be balanced fairly well, if you're running the characters exactly by the rules and keeping all of the restrictions for each spell and ability working together in total, but it just gets far too complicated. None of my players are cheaters, but I've found many mistakes in their builds or in how they combine them together when I really start to look at the characters, and that cheezes the players off at me ... even though it really shouldn't.

All I can say is "bring on 4E" and restore some sanity to the game ... even if it's only for a little while.

--Steve

 

[Celebrim]

One of my beefs with running (and playing) the 3.x ruleset is how you are pretty much forced to focus one one or two character tricks like a laserbeam to be useful at the higher levels.

In fairness, I think this is more of a problem with 3.5 than it is with 3.0. The problem here is you can focus on one or two character tricks like a laserbeam. I was already getting annoyed with this in early 3.0, which is one of the reasons I made the decision early on to bane PrC's. By 3.5, the options to create 'one trick wonders' had become so common that they were for all practical purposes the default assumption of the game. Correspondingly, the actual challenge of creatures with higher CR's was greatly increased above the levels of 3.0 to cope with the power creep. But this put the game in a situation where if you wanted to use the CR system at higher levels, your PC's pretty much had to have created 'one trick wonders'.

Frankly, any system that allows you to focus in on one single trick with 'laserbeam' like precision is going to be one that I won't allow at my table. The amount of times that WotC printed supplemental rules that made an already useful and balanced character build more powerful made me want to scream, and was one of the chief reasons I simply stopped buying WotC books.

I stuck to largely 3.0 plus my own approved feats exclusively focused on enabling character builds that wouldn't be viable use core feats only. I banned PrC's and largely stuck to the core classes. I _did not_ have many of the problems that I hear about so frequently on these boards. Of course, again, I also didn't play alot of high level 3.X in part because I had kids, and in part because I wanted to stick to what I thought was the 'sweet spot'.

 

[dougmander]

And, since I'm posting, I just wanted to re-state my opinion that after level 12 or so, designing an encounter or NPC really started to feel like doing your taxes.

QFT.

If I didn't love my game group so much, and if they weren't so attached to their characters, I would have stopped playing 3e a couple of years ago. For me, joy leaves the building sometime around 12th level. I have high hopes that 4e will make DMing fun again.

What burned me out:

Doing skill points, feats, and abilities for high-level NPCs. It takes me hours.
Studying a full-page description of a monster's abilities, then seeing said monster die in a few rounds.
Keeping track of multiple buffs, debuffs, and conditions during combat.
Multiple attacks and AoOs make combat sloooooow without really adding fun.
Having to look up the grapple, disarm, sunder, and turn undead rules every time they come into play, even after years of DMing 3e. Just something about them gives me a mental block.
Reliance on grid-based combat rules that turn every fight into a ponderous chess game, as players focus on counting squares instead of engaging in the action.

 

[Dragonblade]

Reliance on grid-based combat rules that turn every fight into a ponderous chess game, as players focus on counting squares instead of engaging in the action.

Although, I'm a big 4e fanboy, in the interest of fairness I have to say that I don't think 4e will help you in this regard. Although interactive terrain and the new emphasis placed on movement in combat may help.

However, I think 4e will be a vast improvement over 3e regarding the rest of your points.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I'm not sure how true this is unless you construe the one or two tricks very broadly. Of the characters that I play or play with regularly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many of them. Starting from the top:

My highest level character: Fighter 1/Wizard 6/Spellsword 1/Eldritch Knight 10.

Lots of tricks there. Arcane strike and attack normally. Arcane strike, whirling blade, follow up with quickened whirling blade. Empowered, normal, and quickened melf's unicorn arrow. Empowered Lucent Lance. Defensively, improved blink, elemental body, iron body, moment of prescience, greater mirror image, empowered mass fire shield, fires of purity. If it comes up, enlarge person plus improved trip with a guisarme and combat reflexes.

My next highest level character: Rogue 1/Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 4/Shadowbane Stalker 8.

Plenty of tricks there too. The usual buff and bash cleric stuff (divine power--quickened or normal, righteous might, quickened divine favor, precast greater magic weapon, magic vestment, etc) sneak attack, as well as the combat focus chain of feats--combat focus, combat awareness, combat healing, destruction, firestorm, flamestrike, slay living, defensively, energy immunity, fortunate fate, life's grace, mass death ward, holy aura.

Next highest level character: Cleric 8/Radiant Servant of Pelor 7
Again, lots of tricks. He can fight well enough using his spells and powers. He can buff the party very effectively (domain spontanaity: strength means that he can turn all his unused spell slots into magic vestment at the end of the day so everyone in the party gets magic vestment). Plenty of offensive magic tricks too--sunburst, sunbeam, Pelor's Clenched fist, Pelor's grasping hand, fire shield, bolt of glory, and sudden empower.

Next highest level character: Fighter 4/Scout 9/Nightsong Enforcer 1
I'll admit this character doesn't have a lot of tricks. He's good at finding and disabling traps. He can hide and move silently adequately. In combat, he pretty much always spring attacks, discovers that what he's hitting is immune to his sneak attack and skirmish damage, Power Attacks, and then moves away. Every now and then, elusive target figures in. Every now and then camouflage or flawless stride figures in. But mostly, he just moves, hits things (fortunately, he gets the bulk of his damage from strength, melee weapon mastery, power attack, and his greatsword so the fact that only one monster in ten in the age of worms is vulnerable to sneak attack/skirmish doesn't neuter him completely), deals damage, and moves away.

That said, the party could really be considered an experiment in 4th edition combat roles since we have my character (striker), an archer (striker), a fighter/knight/dwarven defender (defender), a wizard/mage of the arcane order (controller?), and a favored soul (leader is the 4e terminology here I guess) and all of our roles are pretty undiluted. (Unlike the other characters I describe here, most of whom could switch between two or three of the 4th edition roles from round to round without any special preparation).

Next highest level character: halfling Monk 2/Fighter 2/Cleric 2/Paladin 3/Pious Templar 4
No particularly effective magic tricks since she doesn't have access to any particularly useful spells. The best she can do is cast bless weapon on her unarmed strike--just in case she needs it. However, she has plenty of class, feat and item based tricks. Smite Evil, divine might, power attack, combat reflexes, close quarters fighting (which actually enables her to resist grapples pretty well these days--last mod, several things tried to grab her and she managed grapple checks of 56 and 61 respectively), dodge, mobility, elusive target, counterstrike bracers, ring of thunderclaps, etc. Not to mention, evasion, mettle and saves which are better than my 18th level character in every category. And, if she needs to, the nobility domain gives her the ability to buff her party members too. (Yes, for the record, this was my attempt to see how I could use the multiclassing rules to create a heinously broken character and then--so as not to hog too much of the spotlight--to see if all that heinous multiclassing could make a halfling melee fighter without sneak attack viable.)

Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 6.
Quite a few tricks here too (as might be expected for a spellcaster). Domain spontainaity glory (in combination with greater spell penetration) lets him cast holy smite while still being lawful neutral and lets him do it often enough that he can fill the role of an offensive spellcaster (between that, flame strikes, plane shift, etc). Augment healing makes him an effective healer, and holy sword can even make the 98lb weakling into a semi-credible melee threat (who could at least conceivably kill something in melee without spending the entire fight buffing).

Fighter 4/Barbarian 2/Hexblade 2/Occult Slayer 1
I'll confess that this character's trick is mainly hitting things and killing them without getting killed himself. He's pretty good at that trick though. Main options: Power Attack, Cleave. Other options: Hexblade's curse (someone may fail the DC 11 some day), rage, ditch the shield and switch to wielding his bastard sword 2 handed.

Then again, he's designed to be a more ordinary character and wouldn't even have the hexblade and occult slayer levels if the party's cleric of Pelor hadn't betrayed him in Red Hand of Doom. I will say though that he's never really felt behind the power curve except when I brought him into Red Hand of Doom as a 4th level character.

Fighter 5
At the moment, he has three tricks. He can bull-rush things. He can charge them and hit them with his shield and knock them prone. And he can power attack. He's not likely to reach 13th level or so either but if he did, he would have quite a few tricks up his sleeve (other than simply hitting things and dealing lots of damage). Three Mountain Style, Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Improved Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, and Combat Brute all have very nice potential--either together or separately.

Marshal 2/Hexblade 2/Fighter 1
At the moment, he has a few tricks. Hexblade's curse is occasionally useful (DC 14 at level 5 is much better than DC 11 at level 9 and the character has tricks to make it harder). Power Attack and Cleave are the obvious tricks for any melee character who's not a rogue. Blindfight is kinda nice. Intimidating Strike has some very nice synergy with a decent armor class as well as with the hexblade's curse (when you're shaken, DC 14 is harder to make) and can serve to set up bad guys for the party casters' spells. (In one mod, the party cleric hit the main bad guy with doom; my hexblade followed up with intimidating strike and the hexblade's curse. At -6 to attack and saves, he wasn't much of a threat anymore). By level 13 (if he ever gets there) the character will have quite a few more tricks--grant move action, auras to boost saving throws and increase speed as well as to boost attacks and damage, and the ability to use wands of hexblade spells. (The wand of false life that he has right now is pretty nice).

All of the successful characters I've seen or played with (except maybe a few archers--most of whom had one very good trick: shoot things with their bow and deal lots of damage) have had a lot more than one trick up their sleeve and have not exactly been focused "like a laser beam" on those one tricks either. Now, most of them can get a lot of their tricks working together at the same time and when and if that happens, they really tear through things, but when they can only leverage a few of their tricks or have to fall back on the "not quite focused but perfectly adequate" areas of their expertise they work well too. (One trick pony characters tend to actually work best at low levels when there are fewer immunities, by level 9 or so, they will start running into things that are immune to their trick (or better at it than they are) and it stops working). WotC supplements introducing hideously overpowered material (divine metamagic, Rhino's Rush, illusionary pit (Complete Arcane version), etc) can lead to balance problems, but there is no reason that a DM has to allow them into his campaign. And there is no reason to believe that 4th edition will be any better in that regard. (When the designers are explicitly denouncing the 3.x design goal of "balance" you might take that as an indication that things will get worse in that regard rather than better).

In fairness, I think this is more of a problem with 3.5 than it is with 3.0. The problem here is you can focus on one or two character tricks like a laserbeam. I was already getting annoyed with this in early 3.0, which is one of the reasons I made the decision early on to bane PrC's. By 3.5, the options to create 'one trick wonders' had become so common that they were for all practical purposes the default assumption of the game. Correspondingly, the actual challenge of creatures with higher CR's was greatly increased above the levels of 3.0 to cope with the power creep. But this put the game in a situation where if you wanted to use the CR system at higher levels, your PC's pretty much had to have created 'one trick wonders'.

Frankly, any system that allows you to focus in on one single trick with 'laserbeam' like precision is going to be one that I won't allow at my table. The amount of times that WotC printed supplemental rules that made an already useful and balanced character build more powerful made me want to scream, and was one of the chief reasons I simply stopped buying WotC books.

I stuck to largely 3.0 plus my own approved feats exclusively focused on enabling character builds that wouldn't be viable use core feats only. I banned PrC's and largely stuck to the core classes. I _did not_ have many of the problems that I hear about so frequently on these boards. Of course, again, I also didn't play alot of high level 3.X in part because I had kids, and in part because I wanted to stick to what I thought was the 'sweet spot'.

 

[Mort]

You'll note that all the characters with a "good number of tricks" are casters of one iteration or another. Having access to decent magic gives you a broad number of options almost by definition. Having a good build where you can get synergies going makes that even more effective.

The problem is the non-casting classes. For them to even attempt to keep up with the casters, they have to find an effective shtick and stick to it like glue. This may make them effective -but also makes them boring (charging and swinging your ax is fun but gets old if that's all you do, especially if the guy next to you has all sorts of fun effective options).

This is one reason I like the Bo9S classes - they give warriors more options in combat while still allowing them to keep up with spellcasters.

It certainly looks like the 4e designers are aware of this fact and have taken steps in the right direction (we'll have to see of course).

I'm not sure how true this is unless you construe the one or two tricks very broadly. Of the characters that I play or play with regularly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many of them. Starting from the top:

My highest level character: Fighter 1/Wizard 6/Spellsword 1/Eldritch Knight 10.

Lots of tricks there. Arcane strike and attack normally. Arcane strike, whirling blade, follow up with quickened whirling blade. Empowered, normal, and quickened melf's unicorn arrow. Empowered Lucent Lance. Defensively, improved blink, elemental body, iron body, moment of prescience, greater mirror image, empowered mass fire shield, fires of purity. If it comes up, enlarge person plus improved trip with a guisarme and combat reflexes.

My next highest level character: Rogue 1/Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 4/Shadowbane Stalker 8.

Plenty of tricks there too. The usual buff and bash cleric stuff (divine power--quickened or normal, righteous might, quickened divine favor, precast greater magic weapon, magic vestment, etc) sneak attack, as well as the combat focus chain of feats--combat focus, combat awareness, combat healing, destruction, firestorm, flamestrike, slay living, defensively, energy immunity, fortunate fate, life's grace, mass death ward, holy aura.

Next highest level character: Cleric 8/Radiant Servant of Pelor 7
Again, lots of tricks. He can fight well enough using his spells and powers. He can buff the party very effectively (domain spontanaity: strength means that he can turn all his unused spell slots into magic vestment at the end of the day so everyone in the party gets magic vestment). Plenty of offensive magic tricks too--sunburst, sunbeam, Pelor's Clenched fist, Pelor's grasping hand, fire shield, bolt of glory, and sudden empower.

Next highest level character: Fighter 4/Scout 9/Nightsong Enforcer 1
I'll admit this character doesn't have a lot of tricks. He's good at finding and disabling traps. He can hide and move silently adequately. In combat, he pretty much always spring attacks, discovers that what he's hitting is immune to his sneak attack and skirmish damage, Power Attacks, and then moves away. Every now and then, elusive target figures in. Every now and then camouflage or flawless stride figures in. But mostly, he just moves, hits things (fortunately, he gets the bulk of his damage from strength, melee weapon mastery, power attack, and his greatsword so the fact that only one monster in ten in the age of worms is vulnerable to sneak attack/skirmish doesn't neuter him completely), deals damage, and moves away.

That said, the party could really be considered an experiment in 4th edition combat roles since we have my character (striker), an archer (striker), a fighter/knight/dwarven defender (defender), a wizard/mage of the arcane order (controller?), and a favored soul (leader is the 4e terminology here I guess) and all of our roles are pretty undiluted. (Unlike the other characters I describe here, most of whom could switch between two or three of the 4th edition roles from round to round without any special preparation).

Next highest level character: halfling Monk 2/Fighter 2/Cleric 2/Paladin 3/Pious Templar 4
No particularly effective magic tricks since she doesn't have access to any particularly useful spells. The best she can do is cast bless weapon on her unarmed strike--just in case she needs it. However, she has plenty of class, feat and item based tricks. Smite Evil, divine might, power attack, combat reflexes, close quarters fighting (which actually enables her to resist grapples pretty well these days--last mod, several things tried to grab her and she managed grapple checks of 56 and 61 respectively), dodge, mobility, elusive target, counterstrike bracers, ring of thunderclaps, etc. Not to mention, evasion, mettle and saves which are better than my 18th level character in every category. And, if she needs to, the nobility domain gives her the ability to buff her party members too. (Yes, for the record, this was my attempt to see how I could use the multiclassing rules to create a heinously broken character and then--so as not to hog too much of the spotlight--to see if all that heinous multiclassing could make a halfling melee fighter without sneak attack viable.)

Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 6.
Quite a few tricks here too (as might be expected for a spellcaster). Domain spontainaity glory (in combination with greater spell penetration) lets him cast holy smite while still being lawful neutral and lets him do it often enough that he can fill the role of an offensive spellcaster (between that, flame strikes, plane shift, etc). Augment healing makes him an effective healer, and holy sword can even make the 98lb weakling into a semi-credible melee threat (who could at least conceivably kill something in melee without spending the entire fight buffing).

Fighter 4/Barbarian 2/Hexblade 2/Occult Slayer 1
I'll confess that this character's trick is mainly hitting things and killing them without getting killed himself. He's pretty good at that trick though. Main options: Power Attack, Cleave. Other options: Hexblade's curse (someone may fail the DC 11 some day), rage, ditch the shield and switch to wielding his bastard sword 2 handed.

Then again, he's designed to be a more ordinary character and wouldn't even have the hexblade and occult slayer levels if the party's cleric of Pelor hadn't betrayed him in Red Hand of Doom. I will say though that he's never really felt behind the power curve except when I brought him into Red Hand of Doom as a 4th level character.

Fighter 5
At the moment, he has three tricks. He can bull-rush things. He can charge them and hit them with his shield and knock them prone. And he can power attack. He's not likely to reach 13th level or so either but if he did, he would have quite a few tricks up his sleeve (other than simply hitting things and dealing lots of damage). Three Mountain Style, Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Improved Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, and Combat Brute all have very nice potential--either together or separately.

Marshal 2/Hexblade 2/Fighter 1
At the moment, he has a few tricks. Hexblade's curse is occasionally useful (DC 14 at level 5 is much better than DC 11 at level 9 and the character has tricks to make it harder). Power Attack and Cleave are the obvious tricks for any melee character who's not a rogue. Blindfight is kinda nice. Intimidating Strike has some very nice synergy with a decent armor class as well as with the hexblade's curse (when you're shaken, DC 14 is harder to make) and can serve to set up bad guys for the party casters' spells. (In one mod, the party cleric hit the main bad guy with doom; my hexblade followed up with intimidating strike and the hexblade's curse. At -6 to attack and saves, he wasn't much of a threat anymore). By level 13 (if he ever gets there) the character will have quite a few more tricks--grant move action, auras to boost saving throws and increase speed as well as to boost attacks and damage, and the ability to use wands of hexblade spells. (The wand of false life that he has right now is pretty nice).

All of the successful characters I've seen or played with (except maybe a few archers--most of whom had one very good trick: shoot things with their bow and deal lots of damage) have had a lot more than one trick up their sleeve and have not exactly been focused "like a laser beam" on those one tricks either. Now, most of them can get a lot of their tricks working together at the same time and when and if that happens, they really tear through things, but when they can only leverage a few of their tricks or have to fall back on the "not quite focused but perfectly adequate" areas of their expertise they work well too. (One trick pony characters tend to actually work best at low levels when there are fewer immunities, by level 9 or so, they will start running into things that are immune to their trick (or better at it than they are) and it stops working). WotC supplements introducing hideously overpowered material (divine metamagic, Rhino's Rush, illusionary pit (Complete Arcane version), etc) can lead to balance problems, but there is no reason that a DM has to allow them into his campaign. And there is no reason to believe that 4th edition will be any better in that regard. (When the designers are explicitly denouncing the 3.x design goal of "balance" you might take that as an indication that things will get worse in that regard rather than better).

 

[Rechan]

***Point 2 (somewhat related to Point 1)***

The adventures come upon an ancient treasure hoarde filled with immense riches and magical items. Picking through the pile they find a magical ring of protection from fire, a waraxe of the ages, and a sparkling suit of scale armor.

[Fantasy novels, movies, and lesser detailed game systems]

Wizard: "I shall wear that Dragon's Ring so that should we come across that found Smaug I will laugh at his pitiful fiery breath."

Rogue: *casts away his short sword* "Now, I can finally wield a true weapon of the ages. I shall stand beside you fair warrior"

Warrior: *strips out of his battered plate armor* "And beside you I shall stand like the dwarven walls of the deep, for no greater armor exists than this"

vs.

[D&D 3.x]

Wizard: "Hey, does anybody want this ring of fire resistance? I already have a better resistance because of my fiendish heritage and I am probably going to cast Mass Energy Resistance on everyone anyway, so its not going to stack. No? I'll just put it in the portable hole in the Jewelry Department"

Rogue: "That waraxe looks pretty sweet, but no way am I going to waste a feat on it. I already have to take the crappy Endurance next level so I can get that sweet Die-Hard at 15th. You want it Fighter?

Fighter: "Man! That thing is a +5 vorpal waraxe of doom! Too bad I specialized in the greatsword otherwise that would rule. Throw it in the Hole and maybe we can trade it in for some potions.

*party walks off*

Wizard: "Hey, did someone grab that +3 scalemail?"

Rogue: "Can't wear it."

Warrior: "Nah, my plate I got at 3rd level is better"

THIS.

 

[Hussar]

The real problem is that these abilities can be balanced fairly well, if you're running the characters exactly by the rules and keeping all of the restrictions for each spell and ability working together in total, but it just gets far too complicated. None of my players are cheaters, but I've found many mistakes in their builds or in how they combine them together when I really start to look at the characters, and that cheezes the players off at me ... even though it really shouldn't.

Yeah, this really is a point. It's not just that the math is hard on the DM, it's hard on the players too. It's not about cheating or anything like that, it's just forgetting a number or not knowing that other rule. It happens. Auditing character sheets is a PITA. Again, at single digit levels, it's never an issue, or at least rarely an issue, but, at higher levels, there are just so many factors to keep straight.

They really did make too many stackable effects.