What was so bad about DMing 3x?

[rkanodia]

My own campaigns are mostly about role-playing. Nearly every encounter or situation can be resolved without resorting to violence. In no way does the fact that I no longer write up detailed character sheets for every monster impede role-playing.

Oh, come now. Just saying that the monster is 'good at basket-weaving' isn't precise enough. I know that I would roleplay a monster with 7 ranks of basket-weaving VERY differently from the way I would roleplay one with 9 ranks of basket-weaving!

 

[Kahuna Burger]

You know, the more I think about this the more I'm convinced that the problem in these situations is not one of "problem players" but that D&D claims to be "Everything to Everyone." If D&D were more closely associated with a fairly specific style of gaming, and there were other more widely played games that were also closely associated with other styles it would probably be a lot easier for so called "problem-players" to find groups that are more into the sorts of things they are.

Yeah, your perfect player is busy being the problem player in someone else's group, ime. Not to say that there is a perfect group for every "problem player" but these days I do tend to think more in terms of bad fits than bad players.

 

[maggot]

Okay, try this. Create an evil NPC party that can stand up to a Codzilla, Batman wizard, a poucing Barbarian, and <insert most broken skill monkey here>. Use at least one prestige per NPC and have at least one of them be a CR 3+ Monster with class levels. If possible, give one of them an animal companion to ride and use the combat riding feats. Have another one fly around a lot. Everyone is level 17th. Tell me how long you take to plan it all out.

Let's since these are NPCs for my own campaign, no one is going to check there stats. I'm not sure why I have the design constraint "at least one prestige per NPC" because that won't be visible to the players. The design constraint of "CR 3+ monster" seems arbitrary: if I'm designing an encounter, I probably know the race already.

So say, I decide on a Ogre fighter 11, human cleric 14, elf wizard 14, and halfling rogue 14. I could simulate their stats in 10 minutes. Unless the players are going to demand proof that I "did the math", the encounter should go well. And I probably wouldn't do an all NPC party, but instead throw in a monster or two to make it even easier. Why use an orge fighter, what about an elder earth elemental.

If the party is decked out in all the latest rules splat, making the encounter a push over, I'm probably familiar with that and I would probably adjust automatically. I'd also probably be familiar with those splats and maybe the cleric has the same broken prestige class and I just drop a feat or two (not that I always assign them all) and tack on the abilities. Again, no one is going to check the math.

 

[WayneLigon]

So you dislike DMing 3x because random people on the internet give you NPC assignments with weird setups? I can see how that would be a problem.

Don't be deliberately obtuse. He's mentioning things that are considered to be fairly extreme cases of people deliberately mining the rules for the most synergestic advantages they can come up with, but things that are known and smoewhat common. While they don't actually break the rules, they break the spirit of the game. It's a perfectly good example of the kinds of challenges you're going to face if you have players even remotely interested in creating 'good characters'. I'm not talking about questionable interpretations of the rules or some shady math or other things that are borderline cheating - I'm talking about perfectly good, solid rules and characters that - when certain combinations are brought into play, become vastly more competant than those around them.

The simple fact of the matter is that the players have the major advantage of having to focus on one set of stats and keep those stats over a period of time until they become very familiar with them. As a GM, that doesn't happen; I'd have to do five or six times the work they'd do, and continue to do that every week, to continue to present a reasonable challenge to them.

I used to be a doubter as well. I'd GMed an Arcana Unearthed game to 16th level and found it not very daunting at all. Then I played in a 3.5 game up to 15th level and I just came off a stint of almost a year Gming a 3.5 game where they got to 15th level. It was enough to put me off GMing D&D for some time to come and by the end I was practically cheating - I'd make NPCs and Monsters that had three lines of stats: HP, AC, their main attack and secondary attacks, and any special abilities and I'd just wing it. It was still a royal pain to create NPCs and use certain monsters.

I'm not a detail-oriented person. I don't have a good memory, either. After about 10th level, the sheet amount of detail to even a simple single-class PC is starting to become daunting to me.

I'll see how 4E plays out, but at this particular point in time I might not return to D&D for awhile. The sheer number of interactions among the rules is just not something I want to deal with right now. Part of me looks forward to 4E while another part of me says 'Any RPG that's longer than about 150 pages is too damn complex for me to bother with'.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Okay, try this. Create an evil NPC party that can stand up to a Codzilla, Batman wizard, a poucing Barbarian, and <insert most broken skill monkey here>. Use at least one prestige per NPC and have at least one of them be a CR 3+ Monster with class levels. If possible, give one of them an animal companion to ride and use the combat riding feats. Have another one fly around a lot. Everyone is level 17th. Tell me how long you take to plan it all out.

if this was for player in my game ...prob 2 hour max...less if i didnt want tio hurt em 2 bad. i controll classes and prestige classes in my game..i dont see why it has to be anything fancy. u know what powers and spells your player have its easy from there . your hurting yourself by trying to do to much why use 4 classes when one works well. why use cr3 mosters if u dont have to or want to i dont get it . most the prob i see is omg i must use every single book i own every time. i must allow players to use every broken feat and magic item they want . alot of prob is solved by saying no sometimes.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

For monsters this isn't much of an issue (except when a player plays a monster). Its more important for NPCs. There it simply hurts immersion when the NPC can do thinks that the PCs never could or the other way around.

Monsters are NPCs, though. The rules are more complex for monsters, but creating one is basically identical to creating the other.

And for every stat you leave out you restrict the options the player have. For example what happens if the PCs manage to lure an NPC into a pit trap? Now it would be good to know what climb skill this NPC has. Without the rules for it it simply becomes an arbitrary DM decision which will mostly based on what the plot needs and not on teh real capabilities of the NPC. For me this is a lesser form of railroading.

I suspect that with regards to 4e, even if a DM does not have Climb stats written down for a specific monster, the DM will be able to determine it without just making something up. But this is a playstyle preference, and completely subjective. If one needs to know that Monster X has a +32 climb check from 18 ranks, +2 synergy, +4 racial, +4 items, +2 sacred bonus, +2 miscellaneous, that's a valid way to play. But objectively, that's very complex. So it's possible there might be simpler ways of reaching a similar result, without necessarily invoking rule 0 or DM fiat (which, by the way, are also valid ways of playing.)

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Don't be deliberately obtuse.

I'm afraid disagreeing with the relevance of an example isn't being deliberately obtuse. But bye now.

 

[Mark Hope]

I suspect that with regards to 4e, even if a DM does not have Climb stats written down for a specific monster, the DM will be able to determine it without just making something up. But this is a playstyle preference, and completely subjective. If one needs to know that Monster X has a +32 climb check from 18 ranks, +2 synergy, +4 racial, +4 items, +2 sacred bonus, +2 miscellaneous, that's a valid way to play. But objectively, that's very complex. So it's possible there might be simpler ways of reaching a similar result, without necessarily invoking rule 0 or DM fiat (which, by the way, are also valid ways of playing.)

I'd agree with this pretty much. Of all of 3e's rules, the one that does hack me off the most is the fiddliness of the skill system. I much prefer the simpler system presented in Unearthed Arcana and was interested to see something like it appear in SWSE and (most likely) in 4e. This is an area where I think 4e will improve on 3e.

 

[Protagonist]

can use telekinesis as the spell ... CL18 ... except that <insert extra rule>...

that really sums up my main gripe with DMing in 3.5 ... freakin' cross references and convoluted ability / spell descriptions galore!

 

[Greg K]

Yeah, your perfect player is busy being the problem player in someone else's group, ime. Not to say that there is a perfect group for every "problem player" but these days I do tend to think more in terms of bad fits than bad players.

If the player accepted that the current DM's playstyle is different from his or her own and either tried to fit in or politely leaved, he or she would not be a problem player. It's the whining, complaining and challenging how the DM chooses to run his or her campaign that the person a problem player.