What's the biggest challenge / frustration in your game?

[Piratecat]

We were talking the other day and wondering what ongoing problems people are having now that 3e and 3.5 has been out for a few years. What are you guys seeing? I'm not talking about problems with specific rules; I'm more wondering about things like balancing encounters, or designing exciting plots, or bored players, or slow combat... that sort of thing, for both players and DMs.

As a player, when I'm levelling up I sometimes find the vast number of possibilities to be somewhat daunting. I waffled for quite a while in KidCthulhu's campaign, wavering back and forth about whether I should take a PrC, and if so which one. No matter how much I try to focus on the PC's personality, sometimes I get carried away by mechanical concerns.

As a DM, I sometimes have trouble keeping track of what the PCs can do. There's a lot of capability at high levels, and yet I'm still asking the guy with the +30 skill check to roll a knowledge: planes even when the DC is 25.

We have fast combat down, at least. Last night in Sagiro's game he ran a 6 round combat involving about 20 participants in roughly 5 hours. It never dragged, which is important.

What about with you folks?

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Hmm.

I'm not sure if it's 3.x's or our fault, but character casualties are high, and it takes a while to create a character, even when only a few non-core books are involved... and those characters, because there's so much time put into the mechanics of character creation, often lack personality.

Characters (IMX) often have 1 thing they're incredibly good at and 1 Achilles' heel, so you throw one thing at them and they don't even notice, and another thing of the same power and you have to be careful to avoid a TPK. Of course, this probably isn't 3.x's fault, but more our poor character design capacities.

Balancing encounters, that's always a toughie...

That's about it for now...

AR

 

[Crothian]

Ours have little to do with rules it all about the people. In one game we just have trouble getting together with people getting sick, going to Texas, having work dinners....

The other game its the players all want different things. You have some who want character driven games, some say they want that but they don't by their actions, and then there are the combat people.....That games been on hold for almost 2 months becasue people are being stubborn and really don't seem to even want to try to talk it out.

But as far as rules and things go the players are really good at finding things that there characters want to persue that the rules don't cover. I have no problem making up things that work, but you'd think with the vast amount of stuff I have for d20 that people could find something that fits.

 

[BOZ]

the fact that my character is much weaker than some of the uber-godlike PCs in my epic level campaign: http://65.127.163.19/showthread.php?t=104155 (read on though, it's about to change)

 

[Nareau]

The past few sessions I've run have been pretty off when it comes to pacing. It's a relatively new campaign, and I was trying to cover a huge amount of exposition (multiverse history, politics, power struggles, etc). I had a devil of a time trying to do that without everyone falling asleep.

Spider

 

[fafhrd]

The game I'm currently running has really emphasized the fact that the game assumes a balanced party. My group (for various reasons) is constituted entirely of spellcasters. The encounters I throw at them tend to be anti-climactic. If I send them up against creatures without potent magical ability or if they get the drop on the enemy, they die quickly in a holocaust of spellfire. If I set something up to counter that, their fragility really shows and they're likely to fold quick. I don't want to push it and end up with a TPK but I'd like a chance to bloody noses and take their smugness down a notch. Really though, given the disparity between warrior types and spellcasters I can't blame them for their choices.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Well, there are player frustrations - I've got two groups and both groups have some folks who are just not that into the game. I suppose different people game for different reasons, but when I have to explain rapid shot to a player every week, it gets irksome. They're just not that into it. Luckily, I keep up on those PCs skills and can "do the math" for them in order to keep things moving.

One group is extremely on-time, and gets down to business right away. The other one is always late starting, and very easily distracted. Sadly, the on-time group is in danger of breaking up since a couple of players had to leave on account of a baby being on the way (the to-be dad was driving from Milwaukee - 90 minutes - and was the other person's ride). The more late/distracted group is still a great group, but tough to keep focused.

Mechanically speaking, I don't have too many frustrations. I used to get annoyed that the only 2nd level spells worth taking were buffs, but that problems gone now. I feel PC's pain on the PrC's - I've got one PC fighter that's 12th level, and I still can't find a suitable PrC for him. You'd think with all the books out there...

One thing is DM's who still haven't quite got the hang of the differences between 2e and 2e - in one game I'm in we're running through the G1-3 series. I almost said updated, but the problem is that it isn't really. We're the level 2e characters would have been, and the number of giants is what it was in 2e. So now that we're in the Frost Giant caverns, every single giant is a TPK waiting to happen - and occasionally the DM sees it, and compensates by suddenly switching to highly unfavorable tactics to swing things back in the PC's favor. I don't think he quite saw that 7th level characters and giants are not equivalent until now... But its not like he hasn't been playing 3e every week since it came out... But he's a good DM otherwise.

 

[BlackMoria]

My frustration is the 3.x concept of balanced wealth - that players of a given level should have 'X' value of equipment / money.

It is frustrating on two levels...

Look at most old modules and try to convert them to 3.x. Not only does one have to convert monsters and the like but the magic items have to be converted as well - something largely ignored by others posting module conversions. A lot of old low level modules have magic items that a 3.x player would slobber over for translated value. So, these modules need to be toned down for the amount of 'wealth' if one wants to stay within the suggested 3.x guidelines.

Secondly, and more importantly, it is the effect on players. Players in older D&D tended to distribute wealth/ magic on need or best utilization. Now wealth/ magic seems be distributed based on its net worth. If player 'A's equipment is worth twice that player 'B's, then player B is put out because player 'A' seems to have a perceived advantage magic-wise. Never mind that allowing player A to have magic items worth twice that of 'B's may make sense for a optimal party configuration or for best survivability.

So, 3.x has produced a climate that I have observed where players keep track of their net worth like a bloody accountant and then start whining when the numbers get skewed and not in their favor. Players complaining about the net worth of other players magic items because it is more than theirs, players complaining to the DM because table X says they should have Y value in equipment at this level but they have Z- which is lower than Y (odd that they never complain when Z is greater than Y).

The whole 'balanced' wealth thing has caused some players to consider the game in terms of 'who has the most toys' or the most expensive toys.

Sorry this has turned into a rant, but this, from my perspective, is the most significant effect that I have observed from the many on-line games that I play over the last few years. It is likely that others don't have this problem or haven't noticed it - if so, great for you and your game.

 

[barsoomcore]

Frankly, things have gotten smoother and smoother -- the last year or so has been especially good. I really feel like I'm on top of my DMing these days -- turning out consistently entertaining games, having fun, not getting too bogged down in stat block creation or other onerous tasks.

Combat goes really well. As ever, I can kind of flail a bit when I don't know where I'm going, but mostly it's been good.

Stat block creation is a pain, and I feel like it doesn't have to be quite so much. There's room in the market for something less comprehensive (but more usable) than PCGen, I think. Lots of times I can't bear to think of starting up PCGen and trying to get it to function properly just to create an NPC, so usually I just fudge it or forget about generating a stat block for them.

That and a better "DM's Helper" application -- nothing fancy, I know exactly what I want and all I need is six months off so I can write the darn thing. Sigh.

 

[Xaov]

issues

Well as a player. Thankfully when I have played I have not had the misfortune of having a boring plot or anything, however we have a trio of players in our group who make up an arguing triangle. and thats the problem.

As for being a DM I find story is sometimes hard to keep interesting, I am also finding it to be a problem to balance story/char development, and combat. If I go for development, people get bored. I think the only other problem I face, is getting the players together to play, players end up going home a bunch on the weekends, or are otherwise generally unavailable so it gets to be a pain.