Piratecat said:
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?
Wow, i guess where you stand really does depend on where you sit, or somesuch truism. IMHO, anything topping 1 min/player/round is definitely not fast combat. In fact, anything getting anywhere near half an hour per round, regardless of the number of players, is definitely "slow" combat--or, really, "very slow" combat. And, yes, i know whereof i speak. My long-running AD&D2 campaign regularly had over a dozen players (i think 19 was the all-time max), and, due to some extenuating circumstances, we had as many as 25+ PCs in play at once. We could get through an entire Big Battle (10-20+ rounds) in 2-4 hours. Since slow combat is one of the things currently plaguing my game, i hope that we can do much better than your group has, once we get familiar with the rules--if that's the best i have to look forward to, i'll probably burn out on the system much sooner. Personally, anything over an hour in a single combat is just too long, period.
Anyway, other than that, the other big thing that's causing me frustration right now is the d20--or, more specifically, whiffing in combat. See, last week's game ended with a big fight (3 PCs, 6 balthroks (mole-bear-people), unknown quantity of valorians who are actually at war with the balthroks so the PCs were able to talk their way out of that part of the fight). The PCs were already a little banged up and had used some spells to get to that point, but not too badly off. Anyway, we've got a (A)mage/archer, a (B) mage, and a (C) front-line fighter. Problem is, (A) can do some cool stuff without needing to roll, and he's got some spells that improve his archery so that, at least a couple of times, he's pretty much guaranteed to hit. (B), again, can do most of his cool stuff without rolling. (C), on the other hand, can't do a damn thing without it involving a die roll. Which wouldn't be so bad, except she has the worst luck with dice. Literally, i don't think she rolled double digits on the d20 all night (oh, wait, there was a 19 on a Listen check--and that *did* matter), and she made it through that entire final combat (and the one preceeding) without once hitting anything--i think her best attack total was a 15. And i just don't know what to do about it. She
wants to play a "mighty warrior" in concept, and certainly doesn't want to deal with the added complexity af being a spellcaster. But when we go through entire combats with non-magical big-bruiser foes, and she isn't able to contribute anything, i feel bad. Unless someone has another suggestion, it's definitely time to give mid20 a try, i think--i can't think of anything less-radical that'll address the problem.
So far, the "too many possibilities" thing hasn't reared its ugly head, and i don't think it will--the group is used to much more possibility-laden games, so, if anything, "too many strictures" has been a bit of a problem.
As a GM, planning is a big pain, and what killed my last D20 System GM. There's just too much crunch, if you want to do it "right". I've got Everyone Else, a couple monster books, En Route, several of Phil Reeds excellent item PDFs, and some other time-savers, but mostly i think i'll just wing it--especially since i've yet to see anything D20 System that's half as good as the Citybooks (i've got the full set), and i don't feel like doing up proper high-level statblocks for characters when they show up.
