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

Doug McCrae said:
I don't think intelligent, or even vaguely sane for that matter, people would base their strategy on grafitti.

In their defense, the players knew that somebody was deliberately leaving them clues around town. It's not like they found "For a good time call Jenny, 867-5309" and thought that would help them defeat the armies of Mordor...

-The Gneech :cool:
 

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Overall, the new edition is wonderful. The issues i have had are the following (other than moving away from my group):

1. High level NPCs become very complicated to run/create - if one were to stat out an NPC from the ground up, using no tools (heroforge is what i use and is awesome) it would take about 6 hrs to create 1 detailed NPC (spellcasters with prestige class, magical items etc.).

2. The original item creation rules being broken - my first campaign started when 3e came out and the item creation rules are not the best, players will optimize to their advantage - which is natural, but it creates a more high powered campaign.


3. Spell dependency - certain spells become necessary for any spell caster - a high level spell caster without dispel magic is dead in water for example. Buff spells are way too "buffy" all NPC needs them (4 13th level fighters going up against a balanced party is not the same CR - characters will easily have ACs close to 40 if not greater and attack bonuses that are in the high twenties with the buffs, not so with the fighters with no buffs who tend to get mowed down rather easily, this creates situtations where buffs are necessary all the time for NPCs).

4. I do not like to use save or die spells. Saving throws are way too low with the save progressions and it is much harder for a spell caster to boost save DCs than for a character to boost their saves (the "buffy" issue again).
 

I need a way to promote and reward heroics as opposed to the "paycheck player" who only does something if there's a bag of gold at the end. Adventuring to for pay has its place in DnD and I'll certainly have no problem using that angle, but I get tired of having to bribe the characters to do anything.

Oh and uh...3.5 is working out very well for everyone in my group. I've even managed to convert my old 1E DM over to the light side after years of 1E and houserules. If you knew him you'd be truly amazed believe me.
 
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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.
 

Couple of things:
diaglo said:
no one wants to take control. they want everyone to vote for an adventure. yet when someone suggests something. they In Character say why they wouldn't do such a thing...
Man, we are in the same world here. Sometimes I just want to smack them and say "WTF!? Don't you WANT to be heroes?"
The_Gneech said:
"For a good time call Jenny, 867-5309"
Jenny, Jenny, who can I turn to?
You give me something I can hold on to.
I got it, I got it, "For a good time", "For a good time call..."

867-5309...
867-5309...

867-5309...
867-5309...

Darn you.
woodelf said:
i've yet to see anything D20 System that's half as good as the Citybooks
Will there ever be anything as useful, as well-done as the Citybooks ever again? Man, the hours of adventuring fun those books provided me with...


And after saying "I feel like I'm super-DM" -- I totally crashed and burned this week. TERRIBLE game. BORING game. My players didn't have any investment (which is my fault), my encounters were STUPID, it was painful...

Did kill one of the longest-running PCs in the opening encounter, though. Now I have to reshuffle all my plots that depended on him...
 

I think you just talked yourself into it.

Tell them to go play Diablo and find some real RPGers. :D

3catcircus said:
My biggest frustration is my whiny players coupled with 3.x's system that puts more power in the player's hands than in the DM's.

I've four players - 2 are ambivalent and 2 whine whenever everything doesn't go in their favor.

They don't want to try a critical hit system that doesn't grossly over-favor them (such as Advanced Players Guide's Crit System or Torn Asunder) - although they have no problem wanting to use one they came up with that penalizes NPCs.

They complain that I sometimes throw encounters at them that could possibly cause them to die.

They consider that any time I take creative license and allow or disallow something to advance the storyline, that it somehow takes away from their characters.

They are offended when I stat out an NPC that is as detailed as a PC - and take even more umbrage at the fact that I would actually consider using all of those feats and stats that I generated and play that NPC intelligently - they act as if the NPCs are simply targets in Hogan's Alley...

They don't seem to care (or lack the capacity) to delve into the richness of the campaign world (we're using FR) and consider any attempt to bring out regional differences as an attempt to stifle them (such as taking offense at the idea that I would penalize them for wearing heavy metal armor when marching through the middle of Raurin's desert...)

They take offense at the idea of possibly doing some in-character stuff while out-of-character (such as handing one of them a piece of paper with strange writing on it along with a primer and letting them decipher it rather than just rolling a Decipher Script check).

Frankly, I'm fed up with the lot of them and am seriously considering just being done with the game altogether and start looking for a new group of players.
 

Shallown said:
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
There is a solution. I, too, am really bugged by the degree to which the d20 dwarfs the character's capabilites, especially at low levels. So, i looked at some probabilities, and came up with mid20.

mid20: roll 3 d20s, toss the highest and lowest, and use the remaining one. Gives you a full 1-20 range, but tapered like a bell curve (only not so severely--you'll actually see 1s and 20s). You can also incorporate your crit checks right into the roll by either checking the high die for threat range, or by including one off-color die and using that for the crit-check (i.e., if the middle die is in the threat range and the red die is a hit, it's a crit). The probabilities are not the same--but they're reasonable. And the die roll is easy.

Or, if you want to take this one step further, you can extrapolate from "middle die is a success" to "two dice exceed DC is a success, fewer than two dice is a failure". From there, it's a simple logical progression to say that if all 3 dice exceed the DC, you have a critical success, and if none of the dice exceed the DC, you have a fumble/error. So, in short: roll 3d20 and compare each of them to the DC of the task. Determine how many of them meet or exceed the DC (it'll probably be easier to subtract all bonuses from the DC, so you can just compare the raw dieroll):

3: critical
2: success
1: failure
0: fumble
 

neg said:
My group has argued about this on and off for a few sessions now:

Fighter paths are kind of limited:

You can take the weapon finesse path, dodge, mobility, etc..

Or

You can take the power attack, cleave, improved cleave path...

Unless you have great stats, you can't take both. Now I know there is some variation, but these two major branches are what defines the type of fighter you play 99% of the time, at least in our group.

If fighters could be given a few more large developmental paths, w/o taking a PRC, that would be great.

-neg
Take a look at Spycraft, at least for inspiration--lots more useful melee/martial-arts feat chains, that stack all the way up to 20th level.
 

Lord Pendragon said:
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.
IME, there was one huge difference in AD&D2: the players didn't know the GP values of the items, because there weren't any. So the way it always went in every group i was aware of (GM, player, or witness) was that the monetary treasure (gold, gems, art) would be divided up more-or-less evenly based on GP value (normally evenly unless someone specifically didn't want their full share). The magic items would then be spread aronud based on utility and fairness. So the players woul try to make sure everyone had about the same number/usefulness of magic items, but nobody cared (or even knew) if the fighter had more magic items than the wizard--they just knew that it made sense to give the armor, gauntlets, and sword all to the fighter, and the wizard got the wand. And so on. And it was assumed up to the GM to put in the right magic items in treasure--if the wizard was getting short-shrifted on magic items, you made sure the next treasure had something that (1) the wizard's player would like and (2) either only the wizard could use, or the wizard would clearly make best use of. Failing that, you at least gave the group something that was superior to equivalent items the wizard had but inferior to equivalent items the othres had. So, frex, a dagger +2 when the fighters all had "real" weapons of +2 or better. Heck, in some groups, so long as all the main-line fighters had magic weapons at all, they'd let the wizard (or thief) have the +2 dagger, because they'd rather have more damage than more pluses, and can always have the wizard toss it to them if they get in a bind.
 

The frequent slowness of play (mainly during combat - often when spells or special abilities are involved, or some rule that specifically deals with a rare situation that we have run into needs to be looked up).

My next problem is NPC spell casters - the Archvillains are a group of wizards and sorcerers 11-14th lvl - combat and preperation times are long and ardorus, esp when I don't have exact numbers of prep rounds worked out.

And remembering how much they know of PC tactics after four fights and some deaths on both sides.

Buckets of magic items - the party has 5, 11th lvl pcs - with 36 permanent items.

long level up times, even having standarized 1/3 xp needed per session
after many levels and deaths, 0-3 PC's have to stop and train each session.
rarely falling conviently at the end of a session.

Balancing encounter levels -
learning curve on high level charaters - esp clerics. PC's take huge amouts of time adjusting their buffs before entering battle, if they are allowed to. 1 hour of game time can easily be spent on the seven rounds leading up to a battle - with refiguring bonuses and rotating magic items.
 

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