Why do we have such different experiences?

[Noumenon]

(3) Allowing player control of encounter pace. Or, as Justin Alexander calls it, the Death of the Wandering Monster. This has a huge impact on how the classes perform.

That essay doesn't work for me because it doesn't recognize the existence of the sorcerer. That class never runs out of spike damage no matter how much you push the pace.

The effectiveness of blaster sorcerers is the biggest difference in my experience from the Enworld consensus. I suspect them of playing with "one big monster" instead of "eight CR 4 monsters that allow the sorcerer to deal 120 damage a round." I keep designing mixed encounters with low-level monsters like centipede swarms, and after one round it's not a mixed encounter any more and only the hill giant is alive. Seriously, how is it balanced when the fighter does 14 damage a hit with his greataxe and the sorcerer does 30 damage a hit, and can hit three or four things at once?

 

[catsclaw227]

Speaking of which, you coming to the NC Game Day weekend after next?

I would LOVE to, but the timing sucks.

Friday, my mother-in-law goes home to Russia after staying for a year - my (non-gaming) wife will be very sad. I have my bi-weekly game (the 2nd in our Scales of War campaign) on Saturday, Sunday is the Super Bowl.

Isn't there one in April too? I'll put the laserbeams on that one. I've missed two now since I've lived in the Triangle - and it totally sucks. It will be nice to meet more gamers in the area, though I have met a couple of my current gamers through AFNG.

 

[Beginning of the End]

That essay doesn't work for me because it doesn't recognize the existence of the sorcerer. That class never runs out of spike damage no matter how much you push the pace.

Sorcerers get an infinite number of daily spells in your campaign?

Well, I can definitely see how that would end up tipping the balance of power.

Joking aside, though, that's actually the point I'm making: If you adopted styles of play which resulted in a "one encounter per day" or "few encounters per day" dynamic, then you were effectively giving the spellcasters infinite spells per day.

And, as a result, you were having significantly different results from a group that featured days in which a half dozen combat encounters and a couple dozen situations in which judicious spell-usage could prove useful were not unusual.

To put it a third way: Spellcasters in D&D were balanced on meaningful resource management that included both combat and non-combat applications of spells. The more of that resource management that you effectively removed from the game -- whether through house rules or through style of play -- the more powerful the spellcasting classes became.

When you express that as "infinite spells per day", I think klaxons sound in everybody's head. When it's the result of allowing nova tactics, the result is obscured but no less significant.

 

[Ktulu]

Coming in late to this thread, but I'll post my feelings on what I experienced with 3e.

I love detail in my games. I get excited reading about campaigns with differing coinage, styles of dress, culture, etc... Playing in a game that has that level of detail can be a blast.

Same goes for encumberance, and such. When playing, I love it. I enjoyed the detail one could have with monsters and their abilities.

However, the fall down for me came with time. I work about 50 hours a week, not counting my on-call status for my clients. I have a wife and a baby. We live 15-30 minutes from the majority of BOTH our families.

As such, I have NO time for gaming. When I could fit in time for planning sessions I often glossed over the minutae. It killed me to try and get a game put together dealing with everything.

For me, the experience is time. If I had more time, 3e would not have been a problem to stick with.

 

[pawsplay]

For instance, a 3rd level Fighter may struggle against an ogre, a 5th level Fighter will certainly struggle against a troll or ettin.

That's because an appropriate encounter for a lone 5th level fighter would be a CR 1 foe. Put a CR 5 up against four 5th level fighters and we can start laying bets on how many rounds the troll will last.

 

[Noumenon]

days in which a half dozen combat encounters and a couple dozen situations in which judicious spell-usage could prove useful were not unusual.

Dude, most of the modules I play don't even have that many encounters. (White Plume Mountain did, but it said it expected you to take three sessions.)

I gave my barbarian a magic gem to encourage doing more combats in a row. But there are a lot of days it just won't work. Any day you travel, you're not likely to have six random encounters. Any day somebody gets turned to stone, you're done for that day.

 

[S'mon]

That's because an appropriate encounter for a lone 5th level fighter would be a CR 1 foe. Put a CR 5 up against four 5th level fighters and we can start laying bets on how many rounds the troll will last.

Uh, yeah*. My point was that this is a big change from 1e-2e. In those editions a Fighter could usually hold the line effectively against numbers of typical opponents, even without support from the casters. In 3e the Fighter needs constant healing and a maxed AC just to stand in line a few rounds.

IME with a CR 5 troll against 4 5th level Fighters, typically the troll will kill one before it goes down.

*Actually the CR/EL system does not state what an appropriate encounter for a lone PC is. Extrapolating from the base system, a CR 1 foe looks appropriate for a 4th level PC (1/4 the base XPV), for a 5th level PC I'd reckon a weak CR2 like a bugbear. Most appropriate would be around 1.5 ELs, say a gnoll + a hobgoblin.

 

[Jeff Wilder]

IME with a CR 5 troll against 4 5th level Fighters, typically the troll will kill one before it goes down.

Well, we're getting into specific tactical talk here, so I won't take it beyond this post, but ...

IMO, if four 5th level fighters (say, straight from the DMG, but equipped as PCs) can't handle a troll without one of them dying, they're being run by idiots.

For the fighters, assume an AC of 24, 42 HP, an attack bonus of +8, and damage of 1d10+4. (This would be a sword-and-board fighter. AC down to 22, damage up to 2d6+7 for a two-handed fighter. Neither of these are anywhere near optimized. Because this monster does so much damage if both claws hit, the fighters are fighting defensively, and flanking.)

The troll hits with a single claw (+9) 41 percent of the time, and with both claws (and thus a rend) 9 percent of the time. It hits with its bite 5 percent of the time. Average damage (ignoring crits) is about 7 per round. Average damage -- assuming a rend -- is 38. Barring a crit, one of our fighters will survive the average damage of the troll even if it hits with everything, and hitting with everything would be very, very lucky for the troll.

Meanwhile, the fighters hit the troll's 16 AC 65 percent of the time, for an average (barring crits) of 10 damage. Due to regeneration, it will probably take 8 to 9 hits to bring the troll down, which is three to four rounds of attacks, assuming one fighter drops out of the battle after taking serious damage.

Looking at the percentages, it should be pretty clear that it would take fairly horrible luck for a fighter to die before the troll goes down. With average luck and good tactics, the fighters will all still be well conscious, with maybe -- maybe -- 40 damage spread out among them.

So, is it possible for the troll to kill a fighter before going down? Sure. But it's very unlikely, and certainly not typical, unless the fighters use no tactics or bad tactics.

In the interests of disclosure, these numbers aren't precise, because I'm doing all of this in my head and probably screwed something up. But they're close enough to get the point across.

 

[S'mon]

So, is it possible for the troll to kill a fighter before going down? Sure. But it's very unlikely, and certainly not typical, unless the fighters use no tactics or bad tactics.

Some Fighters will have less than typical AC & hp. Often they will take AoOs moving in. Very often only 2 will be able to attack the troll in melee, in a 10' corridor say. Often players do use sub-optimal tactics. Sometimes the troll will attack a sleeping party and kill the guard. Certainly IME it's very common for a troll to get a Rend in and tear a 5th or 6th level PC apart before it goes down.

Edit: Certainly I don't ever see many PCs fighting defensively (-4 to hit +2 AC), and it will usually be a round or 2 before any can flank, even if it's not a battle on a confined frontage.

Edit 2: Because of the troll's reach, a badly wounded fighter who retreats will take an AoO. A Fighter with say 25 hp left is very unlikely to retreat, but if he gets rended he's dead. I actually lost my favouritest PC ever in similar circumstances, a 6th level Fighter who was critted by an Enlarged 6th level orc Fighter, and went from ca 22 hp left to -18 or so.

 

[resistor]

I think one of the other important aspects is how people came to the game. Those that started with 3E probably have pretty different experiences than those that started with BECMI (me!) or 1E or 2E, and people that came in from different games entirely (Vampire players migrating to D&D with 3E, frex) also had a different experience. The toolkit idea is a valid one, but where we took our apprenticeship is going to have a big impact on what we are going to try and build.

I never really encountered the big complaints regarding 3E that led to many of 4E's design changes simply because I did my best to run 3E the same way as I had always run D&D -- sandboxy, emergent story, player centric fantasy adventure with equal doses of gritty and epic. I would run into a wall every once in a while, of course, but overall I was most successful when I just did what I do behind the screen and relaxed a little. At the same time, though, players that really embraced builds or square-counting kind of disrupted my mojo.

Personally, this explanation falls apart for me. I started playing with 3e, and have never played with someone who played before it. And yet I always get lumped into the "grognard" side of things, and I know I'm not the only person around in that situation. I remain unconvinced that length of gaming history is as meaningful as we'd like to believe it is.