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

[MarauderX]

The rare, but intriguing, split double post.

 

[Kannik]

1 - As a DM, what bothers me is making NPCs. Granted, I have to make high-level ones right now, but choosing feats, skills and esp. spells can take a good while. Going back to monsters in a bit will be nice break from that...

2 - As a player, too many "You have to do X. By the way, we have no information. Good luck." Wherein we the party wanders around for a while trying to land upon something that will allow the GM to give us the next clue to move onto the next thing. The extremes of this can be you try _anything_ and the GM lets it work or gives you a clue from it or, of course, the stumble upon something to go to the next stumble to the next stumble, ie, railroad or slide show.

3 - Also as a player, parties that have no reason to stick together. I'm even at fault of this in the campaign I DM (though I tried to goad a bit, but wasn't quite forceful enough in my instructions). I can understand characters being individuals, having their own concerns, but it seems many groups are staying together simply because of meta. (Not to mention players who make characters who specifically don't really work well in a party or adventuring environment). Interestingly, this is only become a problem in campaigns over the past 4 years.

Those are the three off the top of my head. }

Kannik

 

[Arnwyn]

Making NPCs. I like nice, detailed NPCs with lots of options. In short, with almost as many options as I would devote to a PC. But frankly, using that many options and not cutting corners is a task. Sometimes a task I don't have time for.

Ditto. Ditto ditto ditto. Did I mention ditto?

Making NPCs in this edition is absolutely brutal - even with using some of the time-saving techniques that have been mentioned in the past at ENWorld. The time requirements for "battle-ready" 3.x NPCs are just horrendous, and very troublesome.

I've also discovered that (for myself) the game actually runs very smoothly as a DM. I don't have to put as much foresight and thought into encounters with this edition, nor their tactics - everything is already well detailed and explained beforehand, and almost all the time, the results that I expect actually occur.

On the flipside, the prep work before running a game is much higher in this edition, which can be inconvenient at times. The good part of this is that with 3.x I can model my campaign world much more closely than I ever could in previous editions.

But making NPCs still makes me cry.

 

[Warrior Poet]

As a player, when I'm levelling up I sometimes find the vast number of posibilities to be somewhat daunting.

Yes. Try this with a rogue. Wow.

No matter how much I try to focus on the PC's personality, sometimes I get carried away by mechanical concerns.

Preach it, brother!

As a DM, I sometimes have trouble keeping track of what the PCs can do

Uh huh. This is one of those issues that produces exponential (well, geometric at least) problem growth if it gets out of hand (which it did with me recently). Encounters can get out of whack because you forget what particular challenges the PCs can or cannot handle.

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

Wot 'e said!

Balancing encounters is definitely my biggest bugaboo.

Me, three. Etc., etc. Thanks for this list. Almost every one of these posts rang true for me at some level. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't already been said. I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing these, if for no other reason than there's a lot of good brains working around these problems, which can equal a lot of good suggestions for countering the problems down the road. Makes it seem a little less like an impossible mountaint to climb . . .

Thanks for everyone's input.

Warrior Poet

 

[Psionicist]

My only problem is that I find it very hard to stick with a character for a long period time, I usually create a new character every 6-12 months. There are so many interesting character concepts... It's overwhelming.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

Given the number of people that list statting out NPCs as one of the biggest challenges, I wonder if it would be useful to create an on-line database of NPCs. Not a generator, but a repository of hand-created NPCs categorized enough so that you could ask for an 'elven cleric, 8th level, moon and magic domains' and have it display the stat blocks (assuming someone had uploaded one). It might not be tuned enough for your BBEG, but for NQSBBEGs it could cut down on prep time.

Turanil has a thread like that on these boards. I'm working on a similar thread with Lu Baihu for D20 Modern. (They're still hard to stat up because of how important occupations and skills are, but at least there's no need to super-optimize equipment.)

 

[barsoomcore]

Arnwyn: you said a mouthful. Eons to create these buggers, but using them is a breeze. I just KNOW there's a better way to do this. It isn't THAT complicated. I just haven't seen the solution yet.

I think I'll be starting to scale back the "regimentation" of 3e in my campaigns in games to come. C&C sounds like a good idea, and maybe something like that will be more my cup of tea. We'll see, we'll see...

 

[Shallown]

I think the D20 is my biggest issue. The actual amont of randomness in a 1-20 range. I think D10 or 2d10 would have worked well. Seems sort of odd among all the other issues people have but the unpredictability is what gets me at times. I mean a 1-20 range is sort of big. Its hard to adjust challenges and everything else around that big a range.

Then again maybe its just me.

Later

 

[Dagger75]

For me: Its actually getting the PC's to care about the campaign world. I make up names of city officials, religions, and special locations and none of the players really seem to care. When they are brought up in conversations and clues, they never can put 2+2 together. It could just seem obvious to me but soemtimes I got to wonder.

NPC's: Never really had a problem with this. I'll tell you my little tricks. Most stats I say are 14, except a prime stat, Fighters have Str, wiz Int, you get the point. These are 18's. Basically count up the feats they would get and usally only care about feats. Skill points I never really worry about. Rogues all have maxed ranks in Hide and move silently, Wizzy's have maxed concentration and Spellcraft, same with clerics. Fighter have a bunch of ride, Rangers have max survival. I never really care about the "Fluff" skills, professions, craft, most knowledges.

For monsters new monsters I create, I make up hit points, AC, bonuses to hit and damage. Granted it won't pass any of the fine tooth stat disections that go on but I ain't trying to publish so who cares.

 

[Christopher Lambert]

NPC's: Never really had a problem with this. I'll tell you my little tricks. Most stats I say are 14, except a prime stat, Fighters have Str, wiz Int, you get the point. These are 18's. Basically count up the feats they would get and usally only care about feats. Skill points I never really worry about. Rogues all have maxed ranks in Hide and move silently, Wizzy's have maxed concentration and Spellcraft, same with clerics. Fighter have a bunch of ride, Rangers have max survival. I never really care about the "Fluff" skills, professions, craft, most knowledges.

Now that I run mainly Modern, I can't avoid this.

For monsters new monsters I create, I make up hit points, AC, bonuses to hit and damage. Granted it won't pass any of the fine tooth stat disections that go on but I ain't trying to publish so who cares.

Usually it's pretty easy to set things like AC and saving throws, IMO, but setting things like damage and hit points drive me up the wall.