What was so bad about DMing 3x?

[Derren]

Statblocks for monsters are very large, and involve a lot of details that honestly aren't that important except that they're part of the construction process and other statistics derive from them. Such at hit dice. There are other rules, like getting a feat every three hit dice, that at high levels mostly bloat your monster or NPC with feats you don't intend to use. And finally skill points can be a nightmare, because there's a lot of them to give out, and they don't necessarily do much for the typical role an enemy might play- combat foe.

Except when you want to use the monster for something else than combat. Then those things are important. Or when the monster is supposed to be a combat encounter but the PCs don't fight but do something else (maybe implementing a complicated plan of how to defeat the monster without combat).

Sure, for the average "kick in the door hack & slay" group this won't happen often, but when the players want d&d to be something more than diablo on paper having the same rules for NPCs than for PCs is important.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

High level gaming

My player group is in the mid-high 20s for levels and either I come up with a challenge that totaly crushes them, or they breeze past whatever it is I layed out for them. The difference between challenges is also unclear. As 1 challenge I set them up against a level 32 demigod with 5 devine ranks, various powers and they completely destroyed him. in another encounter I sent them against a group of level 20 "PC classes" and I mopped the floor with them.

Theres no happy medium or real way to measure things with high level campaigns.

 

[Dragonblade]

On the off chance that this isn't subtle trolling-

Nobody is saying that DMing 3e makes your skin burst with open sores, or your eyes bleed. Its simply that, for a number of people, the 3e system for NPC and monster creation involved a lot more work than it justified with its results. Statblocks for monsters are very large, and involve a lot of details that honestly aren't that important except that they're part of the construction process and other statistics derive from them. Such at hit dice. There are other rules, like getting a feat every three hit dice, that at high levels mostly bloat your monster or NPC with feats you don't intend to use. And finally skill points can be a nightmare, because there's a lot of them to give out, and they don't necessarily do much for the typical role an enemy might play- combat foe.

A lot of these rules are unnecessary. The hit die rule, for example, exists to help you figure out things like what a reasonable fortitude save is for a particular type of monster at a particular level. But the system that does it involves a lot of awkward reasoning in which you variously increase or decrease hit dice in order to finagle a particular outcome. It would be a lot easier to just have a chart that TELLS you what the hit dice system is trying to create- a chart that says something like "eh, fort save for a level 12 encounter should be about +X for the average melee creature." And then you can adjust as needed.

Now, I know that monster and NPC design in 3e doesn't HAVE to use all these systems. Rather than spending forever working out that your monster is a Large creature, so you have to adjust it in this direction, but that causes its CR to go up, and you'll have to lower its hit dice to bring it back down, but that causes its saves to drop, blah, blah blah, you can just guestimate answers. That is, as an experienced DM, I know that a fortitude save for a level 12 melee monster should be around a +11, so I can skip the whole hit dice process and assign that value. I might also know that I want feats X and Y, but don't need the next 3 feats 12 hit die creature is owed, so I might just skip those feat slots and assume they're used on something not related to combat. That's what many experienced 3e DMs do, and it works just fine.

But 4e supports that style of monster creation straight out of the box, and instead of expecting you to spend a few years learning the game so that you know things like "+12 fort save at level 11 for a fighty monster, +6 for a spellcaster," it just TELLS you that. This saves you from having to retro engineer things like fortitude saves from seed stats like hit dice.

Thus making things easier.

There are a couple of other ways that things ought to get easier. The reduced tendency of in game buffs and debuffs to affect seed statistics reduces paperwork. The movement of magic items away from combat statistic boosts and towards providing new abilities means that a character without them will be less screwed- meaning NPCs won't need them as much, and reducing the time necessary for assigning them. Stuff like that.

I agree completely. Well said!

 

[Greg K]

What is so bad about DMing 3x, and do you enjoy DMing other systems but not that one? Help me out, because 4e to me is introducing a system I don't like to fix a "problem" I'd never heard of.

For myself, I just don't like the game above tenth to twelve. However, this is one of the complaints I had about previous editions.

I suspect that if I ran higher level games and/or allowed all of the splats in their entirety, I would share complaints about the headaches shared by others.

 

[AZRogue]

Personally, 3E was great. Fantastic, even. And then the PCs started leveling up. After level 13 (around there) and a few splatbooks/d20-books it became increasingly difficult to assemble encounters and NPCs. It took longer and longer and became very draining. I'm one of those people who get an idea and I like to run with it and even with an NPC that I was dying to play, by the time I worked out his Skill bonuses, Synergy bonuses, adjustments from magical items, feats, worrying about which effects stacked and when, blah, blah, blah, I was just done. It really became a pain. So, I ended up making a basic NPC type and then I made up the rest as I went along without my players knowing. It's all I had time for and it saved me. I was able to scribble down my core concept and then just used the base stats and added +1 to +10 to everything as I felt like it on the spot. It was a lot of improv, but more fun and those games went much smoother.

By that time we weren't even really playing 3E anymore. Worrying about stacking magical items, which Feats could be used to do what and when, and all the stuff out there, the games broke down into rules lawyering binge sessions where everyone had an opinion and no one could agree and everything ended up in a stalemate that I had to break. No one had a problem with that, but it became tiresome.

Still, it took some time for it all to add up. We ended up switching to some other games, like d20 Modern with a de-emphasis on Grapple rules and Attacks of Opportunity (dropped them and stopped using minis at all) and the fun level increased quite a bit. As I've said before, it was my group that told me of 4E coming out and they're excited as Hell about it. Most have either mothballed their 3E books or given them away.

This is all just personal experience, though, so YMMV. The game played very well at around level 7 or so. And the rules themselves were light years beyond 2E. I don't think 4E will be anywhere as far ahead of 3E as 3E was of 2E, but it seems to be going back to basics, so to speak, enough for me to really want to play. A lot of what they're doing is inspiring, from a story-standpoint, and having new abilities on old monsters will surprise my PCs and really help with their sense of wonder and mystery.

For me, 3E had its sense of wonder and mystery sanitized with antibacterial soap and laid bare. Everything was classified and detailed to the point that I felt like I was doing my taxes. It gave me tools, yes, but at the same time destroyed any interest in using them. Hell, my group asked for (and we started) one of our old Rolemaster campaigns up again rather than continue playing 3E. I never really got to play 3.5, as were were playing other things at that time. Maybe 3.5 fixed a lot of things that I remember being problems.

 

[Greg K]

I couldn't stand playing in campaigns where the DM just let the players take any PrC they wanted (powergaming invariably ensued followed by whining).

While I dont' like playing in such games either, do you think 4e is going to prevent those DMs from allowing anything there players want?

 

[Mallus]

Sure, for the average "kick in the door hack & slay" group this won't happen often, but when the players want d&d to be something more than diablo on paper having the same rules for NPCs than for PCs is important.

Not for some DM's. We just make stuff up when we encounter lacunae in the rules...

 

[Greg K]

and then deal with the possibility that a player will complain that I am "house ruling" by not letting every WotC book out there into play, so I spend quite a bit of time evaluating material to see if its gonna cause a problem, since WotC apparently didn't do a good job monitoring this stuff themselves.

We have already been told that there will be more player handbooks and splats with 4e. Therefore, I don't see how 4e is going to change players, who feel entitled to using anything by WOTC. The best solution, imo, is not to game with such players if they are a problem.

--DM creativity squelched: When 3e came out, I welcomed the more concrete and specific rule set. I have come to realize, that the rules that clarify can often bind and beat my creative juices with the hearty player cry of "you can't do that!" or "you cheated!" or a number of other things. . . often coming from players who like a predictable pattern/ rule set that they can learn to exploit.

It sounds like you have had some problem players. I guess that I have been lucky not to have such players. Actually, I had one such player while running another RPG and the other players kicked him out before I got the chance.
Anyway, I would suggest not playing with problem players. If you choose to do so, it is not the rules fault.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Except when you want to use the monster for something else than combat. Then those things are important. Or when the monster is supposed to be a combat encounter but the PCs don't fight but do something else (maybe implementing a complicated plan of how to defeat the monster without combat).

Sure, for the average "kick in the door hack & slay" group this won't happen often, but when the players want d&d to be something more than diablo on paper having the same rules for NPCs than for PCs is important.

I disagree.

I am running an Iron Heroes game and using the Villain Classes from the IH supplements. They make pretty useful combat stats. At first, I noticed that they sometimes lacked the detail I wanted in regards to "out-of-the ordinary" abilities. These days, I just don't care. Does an NPC need a Knowledge Skill to serve his purpose in the game? I give him level +3 ranks, unless it's not that much of a focus for him.

For spells or spell-like abilties - I know the 3.x system, and I know Iron Heroes well enough to know what spells might be appropriate for a certain level (sometimes I know it better than the rules itself, if such a thing was possible - there are some templates if applied to the monster would smell cheese if I created the monster on its own) If NPCs (or rather: Monsters) ever need them, they will get them. Luckily, in Iron Heroes it doesn't matter that much, since spellcasters are rare, and the Dreaded Sorceror has been enough for this so far.

 

[Mark Hope]

I've never encountered many of the problems that most posters here cite. Like Cadfan suggests, if rules get in the way, I ignore them. As an experienced DM, I have a good feel for the system and am happy eyeballing an NPC's stats. Players that grumble about it are politely reminded that the rulebooks are not DMing the game - I am. This approach, imho, holds true for any edition of any game. Maybe it's because I started with Basic D&D back in the day, but I have always embraced the idea that the rules are there for when you need them, and nothing more.

I do like the fact that the d20/3e system can be scaled in complexity very easily. I run occasional games for my kids that are more or less like C&C (but using the 3e rules - no skills or feats or fiddly rules.) Works like a charm and the game doesn't fall apart for the lack of crunchiness. At the other end of the spectrum, I have a homebrew with houserules and 3rd-party supplements out the wazoo, which runs just as smoothly. This flexibility of complexity is 3e's biggest attraction to me: I can use the core system to make it pretty much whatever I like. Stuff that gets in the way gets junked. It might well be the case that 3e failed to make it sufficiently clear that this was a viable approach, which is why many folks get hung up on its complexity - I don't know. It never stopped me.

I can see, however, that 4e makes it easier for beginning DMs to hit the ground running, or those who are uncomfortable with discarding rules for whatever reason. I'm just not in either of those camps, which is one reason why I'm not switching. For me, it ain't broke and don't need fixin'...