Why I don't play D&D anymore

[IcyCool]

Yeah, let's get back on topic.

I already said I have tweaked it for years, in my last campaign I didn't even really use XP.

However, what my experience as show me is that, if you get away from this basic assumption (the average of encounter / day) you'll find serious problems on the way. Also, since there isn't many place except "dungeon controled environment" where such a number of "mechanical encounter" can be done, I said that D&D don't support well many of classical adventurers "sports".

Psionics is seriously out of whack if you don't adhere to the 4+ encounters per day guideline. Spellcasters are slightly better, but still majorly out of whack. I figured the recharge magic option in Unearthed Arcana (with some fiddling) would fix this somewhat for spellcasters (by restricting what they can do in one encounter), but I haven't seen or come up with anything for psionics. Of course, I've only had one psionic character played in my games, and it was a bad (balance-wise) experience (story-wise it was a fantastic character).

 

[Crothian]

Ooops, I hope I will not ruin the game for you

Can't happen. I've been playing D&D for close to 30 years now. I know what the game is and I know how to run it and play it so it is fun for me and my friends. Most of the problems that people have with the game just never become an issue at our gaming table. We try not to over think things or make the game be something its not.

 

[Chaldfont]

I don't know that this thread is the best place for this and I apologize if I derail it completely.

I think one of the main factors in the "buildz" mentality of having to have the most optimized character possible for your class/race/level/ combination is that now rather than being 4 or 5 people around a gaming table making suggestions if you ask we have places like the "character optimization board" at wizards.com.

The mentality of some gamers now is if your character isn't built into the optimal powerhouse you are "letting the group down" and they should be able to boot you. I can't stand that mentality but it does appear to be growing if posts on enworld are any indication. All it takes is one in a gaming community and then it grows perhaps slowly, perhaps swiftly depending on the charisma of the player(s) involved.

Sure helping people optimize can be a good thing but there is a difference between "Wow your character can do awesome stuff can you help me level my character or build a new one please? " and "You are the weakest link goodbye!!!!!"

I totally agree with this. I hate the use of the word "build". My group asked a guy not to come anymore because he was like this. We all want to play an interesting character--not necessarily the optimized (what us old schoolers would call "min/maxed") character. Having someone disrespect your character choices is not fun.

But we had this, to a lesser degree, back in the day. I remember guys telling someone to drop a non-magical axe in favor a +1 short sword and getting the reply, "yeah, but my guy likes axes."

Another problem I have with "builds": I think a lot of time they come from people not really playing the character much. In a real, organic campaign, important themes and goals change all the time. Everybody might need to take on a new language, or sneaking might become something everybody needs to be able to do. You never see non-optimal stuff like this in a pregenerated, optimized build.

 

[bento]

I still don't understand what your compulsion with this four-encounters a day issue. Isn't that why we have magical items and CLW spells?

I personally had an issue with 3.5, which was the player's mentalities that in order to advance they must kill things. When I removed that issue by changing to a variant of the rules (True20) the burden to kill everything in sight was lifted.

In the past two games my players have killed very little and now prefer to take prisoners to interrogate.

Maybe you do need to shop around for another system. Something similar while incorporating the changes you feel are important.

 

[Rystil Arden]

But we had this, to a lesser degree, back in the day. I remember guys telling someone to drop a non-magical axe in favor a +1 short sword and getting the reply, "yeah, but my guy likes axes."

In general, I think the reasonable response in this situation is to keep the shortsword as a backup weapon and use it at least on guys with DR X/Magic and pick up a magic axe at the first chance you get. Being petulant and refusing to do so, if you are the party's melee damager, is likely to result in everyone's death through in-character stupidity. It would be like a wizard who styled herself a pyromancer and refused to cast anything but fire spells on the Red Dragon. There's a subtle line, of course--when it's just the +1 to hit and damage over the axe on a normal opponent and the character likes axes, that's a different story.

 

[Emirikol]

I've made it worse in my campaign. We have a virtually non-combatant party (warlock, spellthief, rogue-swshbk, rog-swshbk, and a bbn), so I throw horrendously hard EL encounters at them. Guess what happens? They have to "think" bout what it is they're doing.

If you think that having a majority of encounters be diplomacy and puzzle encounters are going to cut it, you're probably not reading what most players want. They want challenges of all three types.

I agree. It's the issue of "balance" that kills D*D. Every player out there has been spoiled to think that all encounters are "balanced" and defeatable (at least that's what I've seen in LG). When the game is 'balanced,' players stop thinking...then the DM get's bored.

jh

 

[gizmo33]

The psion was a breaking point because she was always augmenting her powers* and doing so, she was over shining many of the other characters, not only the wizard. In fact, for the wizard, is was not the better DCs of anything, but the fact that a Psion can repeat the same power over and over, but that's not related to the topic.

But if she's anything like a spell-caster, how is she augmenting her powers with a swarm of fiendish arrowhawks bearing down on her? If you're talking about orc warriors with no missle weapons lumbering across the open steppe in platemail, I can see why spell caster's aren't challenged. I really think that there's more to this, but since I don't know the details of the encounters, and I don't know how Psions work (although, glancing through the SRD they look a lot like sorcerers to me), and we don't talk specifics, it's hard to say.

If the original topic is about "4-encounters per day" then I think that's a dead end. I think it's debateable whether or not that's really essential to DnD, as other folks have mentioned. From what I can tell, the issue that's causing this is really the design of the Psion class, and not of DnD in general. There may be ways to tweak the encounters to be more tactically sound, to house-rules the Psion class to suit your campaign, or look at the way you run encounters (always giving PCs surprise?), but without knowing the specifics I wouldn't know where to go with this.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

It's not a mindset, it's how the D&D game works !

No, this is what ad-hoc XP awards are for: situations that aren't covered by the CR system. If there is a scene in which the PCs can succeed or fail at some task, it's an encounter. If it's an encounter, it deserves an XP award. Dice do not necessarily need to be involved, although there is an extensive set of rules for using dice to make scenes easier to adjudicate. I also play FUDGE, and I can't imagine a scene from any of my FUDGE fantasy sessions that couldn't be directly inserted into a D&D game. It is true that D&D players might be more likely to just default to rolling skill checks or getting into a fight, but that's just habit. I've played entire sessions that are based on role-playing, and awarded XP based on the ad-hoc rules in the DMG.

D&D isn't the pigeonhole you seem to think it is.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Edit : Before you say that the DM can awards ad-hoc XP, this game I give in example really does have a mechanic to reward acting characters traits, you have to "buy" them, etc. I don't say it's a better game than D&D, I just say that this game support some kind of encounters that D&D don't.

No, it supports them in a different manner than D&D does.

 

[BlackMoria]

Psionics is seriously out of whack if you don't adhere to the 4+ encounters per day guideline. Spellcasters are slightly better, but still majorly out of whack. I figured the recharge magic option in Unearthed Arcana (with some fiddling) would fix this somewhat for spellcasters (by restricting what they can do in one encounter), but I haven't seen or come up with anything for psionics. Of course, I've only had one psionic character played in my games, and it was a bad (balance-wise) experience (story-wise it was a fantastic character).

I don't get the 4 encounters per day thing.

Been playing 30+ years with literally scores of people and never once as a player or DM have I (nor anyone I played with for that matter) been 'counting' encounters (well...that is the 4th encounter today....time to call it a day and its Miller time).

So, because noone is keeping score, we don't run into instances of "its the 4th encounter of the day so don't hold back". No one knows for any absolutely certainty when the next rest period comes (the DM is within his/her right to harry the party if the plot elements make for nice dramatic tension).

Therefore, I don't run into the situation of psions or spellcasters blowing their wad because of some expectation that they can call it a day anytime they feel like it. In my campaigns, such assumptions wll lead to the psion contributing in a minimal fashiion to the rest of the encounters that day because the assumption is just plain wrong.

Punching the clock on encounters like some wage slave (Well, that's four today already.... it's Miller time) flies in the face of what I think D&D is about.