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

[Klaus]

My main problems and concerns became the BattleBox...

Namely:
- something to minimize book-shuffling looking for rules
- Something to quickly lay out a spell's area of effect
- Spell lists that let the player note down known spells, spell save DC, and have a short description (like in the PHB spell lists)

I'm usually at top form in low-level games, mainly because the highest I've ever played or DMed in 1e and 2e was 12th level. It just took so LONG to get there!

Can't wait to try my hand at action points and stuff like that, though!

 

[trowizilla]

My big problem (other than those dratted unexpected critical hits that tear through my Big Cool Evil Dude) is time. Nobody can clear out an evening to play lately! Frustrating. Because of the time lapse, it can be hard to keep plot momentum, and there's a lot of "oh, how does this ability work again?" I'm not as solid on the rules as I could be, so there's a lot of looking-up work after a long absence.

Otherwise, I've been running a game with 2-3 newbies and one player who has more D&D experience than I do. The newbies have taken to it like ducks to water, but the experienced one...well. He's the boyfriend, and tends to take every point of damage his character takes as a personal attack, complains that his character doesn't have enough magic items, etc. I let all the players know at the start of the game that there weren't going to be a ton of magic items lying around, but that with my method of chargen (base 8 in each stat, roll 6d10 and arrange as desired - ganked from Conan), they'd still be quite powerful. (By the way, they all got ridiculously high stats...not a one has less than 2 18s). Still...fuss fuss fuss, all from the one player. Other than that, he can be a pretty good player, but the whole group gets incredibly sick of his sulking. However, he's my boyfriend and also He Who Owns A Car, so it's not a shape-up-or-leave situation. Argh. While I'm in rant mode, any suggestions as to how to deal with this?

 

[SSquirrel]

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.

Heh. Now this is starting to sound like the old Rolemaster campaign I played in. It's really sad when we consider a 5 hr combat as being "fast". Not dragging is important, as I know we've had people fall asleep waiting for their turns in the past heh. Maybe this is why I want to run using the Revised Grim N Gritty rules. Combat should be a LOT quicker under that. *grin*

My only real problem with D&D right now is that my group's schedules never mesh right so we can play and I'm getting a lil bored of the standard fantasy conventions etc. Not really a fault of the system, I just need to play something different for awhile I think.

Hagen

 

[GlassJaw]

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.

Well I see a 5-hour battle as a problem, regardless of how "fast" it went. I've been harping on this for a while now and it's what I see as the main problem with high-level 3.X. I find it quite boring. I really hate standard D&D high-level play.

I'm working on a low-magic campaign right now and I really want it to be fast-paced. So that's one thing I'm concerned about. I want a session to have some combat but also equal parts role-playing, plot developlment, and problem-solving.

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.

You read my mind. I'm completely burned out by the amount of crunch available. I know I don't have to use it all but I feel like I'm always missing something everytime a new book is released. Again, my next campaign will be Grim Tales only with some campaign stuff. One book and you're all set.

 

[ForceUser]

Balancing encounters is definitely my biggest bugaboo. Every now and then I just screw up and throw something at my players that's ridiculously, stupidly, "I should have known better, what was I thinking?" tough. I've thrown a trio of pennaglion 1st-level commoners (CR 4 each) at a 4th-level party of 6 (pennaglions cast dominate person at will). I flubbed the wipeout. I flubbed another wipeout later when I threw 7 stone giants and a slightly advanced stone giant leader at a 12th-level party of 7. Still later I threw a gnoll warband of 16 plus a 4th-level gnoll cleric and 5th-level gnoll ranger leader at a party of 7 whose average level was 4. Luckily the party pulled it out on their own, but it was a very near thing.

In all of these cases I simply forgot (or didn't realize) exactly how tough these monsters were. Most of these encounters, as well as others I've ran, could go either way provided the PCs maximize their talents and get a few lucky rolls. If the PCs use poor tactics or roll badly, these fights become deathtraps. As a DM, I'm usually kicking myself halfway through the fight as I watch the results of my poor judgment unfold. Players deaths due to stupidity on the part of the PCs I can deal with. Player deaths due to my lack of ability to plan fair encounters just make me, not to mention my players, frustrated.

I struggle with this each time I crack open the Monster Manual to plan for the next session's probable encounters. I am trying to learn to err on the side of caution. Sometimes I get excited about the monsters themselves and forget the realistic capabilities of the players. As they level up it's just going to get worse, I think.

 

[RangerWickett]

Motivating the characters to oppose the villain.

The last successful campaign I ran started with the PCs on the run from the evil empire because they were spellcasters, and the evil empire wanted to kill all spellcasters who didn't belong to a particular imperial organization. Forced together, the party was motivated even if they didn't get along. That campaign was great, as eventually the PCs grew to like each other.

The next campaign I started had a similar 'on the run' beginning, this time when a military quartermaster framed the party for stealing magical loot, and had them run out of the military, with bounty hunters on their tail. However, I made the mistake of having the villains not be at all associated with the military. I figured I'd have them be on the run, and then they'd stumble across a secretive plot, so they'd have to rely on themselves to stop it, since they couldn't go to the authorities. Well, instead the party ignored all hints at the plot, or when they did follow the hooks, they were just doing it because they were frustrated, not proactive.

That game collapsed, since the party eventually decided to become murdering pirates instead of follow the plot hooks the entire campaign setting was based on. I suppose I could've just jumped forward in time a few months to when the villains succeeded with their nefarious plot, but I didn't like the characters.

My new game, the party seems to like short adventures, not villainous plots. So I'll just think of several possible villainous plots, and run the characters through various adventures tangentally related, until they seem to get interested. The group apparently wants to join a rebellion of some sort, so I need to come up with a revolution.

One of the persistent problems I have is that the players just aren't curious. They see someone or something, and if they think it's a bad guy, they attack it. Even if it's not a bad guy, and the person asks them to stop attacking, they keep attacking. If it is a bad guy, so far even a CR 14 demon hasn't been enough to do more than tickle the 10th level party, since he spent the entire encounter on the ground thanks to Mr. Spiked Chain.

Sorry, ranting.

Anyway, the party doesn't seem to care why villains do what they do, or who they're working for, which makes it very hard to have any sort of involvement by the villain, barring the villain just walking up, slapping the PCs, and saying, "You idiotic fools! I. AM. THE. VILLAIN."

And if he did, they'd just trip him, take 18 attacks of opportunity on him when he tries to do anything, and then beat him to a pulp.

The players just want a video game. It seems like a waste.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

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.

I just wanted to add that I definitely take part in this phenomenon as a player. I divide up the loot for our party, and I use the value of various items as a guide. If one PC has a ton of wealth, then that PC stops getting a share of the coinage until the wealth balances out. etc. etc.

I'm not so sure this is a bad thing, though, or that it originated with 3.x. I didn't play regularly during the 1e and 2e days, but I know I'd be pretty miffed if all the magic gear went to one particular PC because "he needs it more" regardless of the fact that he's already got a ton of magic items and my PC has few. Unless I'm playing a Saint, my PC is going to want his fair share, regardless of what the other PCs think they need more.

It seems to me, 3.x has simply codified it so that there's an easy way to judge a PC's fair share, not made it any more important than it has always been.

 

[Piratecat]

Well I see a 5-hour battle as a problem, regardless of how "fast" it went.

Nah, not for us in this case. It was a climactic fight we'd been expecting for three or four years real time, we each had a PC and an NPC to run, there was incredibly cool roleplaying and sacrifice throughout, each person's turn went quickly and it never came to a stall. I'm not usually a fan of huge battles, but this one went quite smoothly.

Not to hijack, though.

 

[Look_a_Unicorn]

Ongoing problems tend not to be with 3.X, the people I play with have all found these rulesets "better" in terms of ease of use and comprehensive-ness than other games they've played (with a few exceptions, mainly AD&D).

The main problems seem to be threefold, two of which may be more a problem with the players than the game:
1) Backstory/characterisation seems to always get skipped over in character gneeration and very few of our DM's insist on it (I'd never roll a dice, given a chance).
2) Organising a suitable time for us all to get together!!
3) The inclusions that some players will persistently bug the DM to include from Dragon or other material. When it's a DM that's not too good at saying no, even when it's not suitable for the campaign AND the player isn't willing to help develop a reason for it to exist in the campaign, storywise....
well I guess it comes back to too many rules not enough immersion.

Or it may just mean we (our group) needs to think of it less like a computer game that you ca min/max to win- and more like an adventurous story!!

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

...each person's turn went quickly and it never came to a stall.

That's important. Oh, jeez, that's important. I HATE waiting for people to make up their mind. "Um, should I use a wand, or should I try and shoot him?" We have 7 regular players, so far with two cohorts, but that's going to go up soon to at least four or five cohorts...and maybe one or two of the other players keep enough track of what's going on they don't have to go "um, what happened?" when it's their turn. Once in a while is okay, but if you have to ask it more than once/combat, I think that's a problem.

Granted, as a fighter-type, I have a fairly simple set of options, which helps. It also doesn't hurt that I'm playing him as a member of the Transcendent Order, which rather encourages just doing something. But, still, if you're a sorcerer and can't decide to magic missile someone or fireball them, well...oy.

Brad