Why I don't play D&D anymore

[Hussar]

Of course, 4/day of appropriate CR must be the average, not a constant thing each day. However, when the DM breaks that assumption all around the table must know that they are playing a different game that was not playtested.

Please, for the love of little kittens READ THE DUNGEON MASTERS GUIDE.

If you peruse this lovely little tome, you will discover that the whole 4 encounters per day thing IS NOT IN THE BLOODY BOOK!. You will also be advised to vary up the difficulties and number of encounters in a day. Heck if you read the WOTC Design and Development column, you'll find a sweet little guide for developing adventures that also specifically nixes this perennial bit of stupidity that people like to trot out.

4 encounters/day IS NOT FOUND ANYWHERE IN THE RULES. What is said in the rules is that a APL=EL encounter will usually use about 20% of your resources. You can do 10 encounters/day, but, unless you want to kill your PC's, you should tone down the EL for each encounter.

Good grief RTFM.

 

[Delta]

3.0 DMG p. 101:

This means, on average, that after about four encounters of the party's level the PCs need to rest, heal, and regain spells.

That's pretty close. No need to be rude.

 

[Hussar]

But, Delta, that's only true if you use 4 APL=EL encounters. Since the DMG further states that there should be a fairly large portion of encounters that are either lower or higher EL's, then it stands to reason that the 4 encounters/day line doesn't really apply except in very specific circumstances.

I know I'm not being terribly polite here, but, good grief, six years of 3e and people are STILL trotting this out? The 4/day line is a guideline at best. If you find psions too powerful for how your game is played, don't use them. I haven't had that problem, but, hey, that's fine. I accept that others do.

BTW, if you think fighters can go 10 encounters in a day better than any other class, well, try it without a cleric.

If a class is causing you difficulties, the very simplest answer is to not use that class. This is particularly easy when the class is non-core. Just say no.

It just irks me to no end that people like to trot this out like it's on a macro or something as "proof" of how broken 3e is and how the 3e rules just don't work. However, it is always useful to actually read the manual before making sweeping statements.

 

[Wes350]

That doesn't support the kind of campaign* I want to do with the D&D game. Don't think I hate dungeon crawls. I do like them, from time to time, not in every adventure! I also want to run some "mystery solving", some "wilderness trek", some "political diplomacy" or some "overland skirmishes" and I think D&D should support all of them because they are the typical things we imagine adventurers doing.

I almost fell off of my chair in laughter at the sentence I put in bold.

Boy, you need a different game. D&D does the D&D genre well, and with a good GM you can get by useing it for other stuff. But there are better systems out there for the type of fantasy adventureing I think you are looking for.

I played D&D exclusively back in the day - And I tried to go back to D&D this last year after being away from the hobby for many years.

Why did I break away?

I found that after I've played a few d20 games, and tried out ol' 3.5, that I had never really played D&D at all!

When we were young, many of the rules didn't really make sense, and so we house ruled and eliminated stuff to the point of not playing the game as the written rules intended.

So now that I was trying things by the book, well, imagine my suprise!

I found the whole concept of "encounters per day" and "encounter levels" to make me shake my head in despair.

The fact that combat is so map/minis based.

The wal-mart pervasiveness of magic items. And the fact that the game assumes you must have a certain amount of them at higher levels.

The power creep that comes with leveling up.

The whole "monster of the week" syndrome. Look at all the various monster manuals! Are that many monsters really nessicary? For the D&D genre, yes. For other types of fantasy, no.

And my personal favorite:

Instead of talking about cool character concepts, we have people asking about the best possible character "Builds".


Now from a popularity standpoint my opinions about D&D are in the distinct minority. Many of my complaints about D&D are seen by many as features of the game. And this is demonstrated in D&Ds' dominance of the RPG market.

Skeptic, if you are looking for something different, might I reccomend you take a look at the following:

Rune Quest
EarthDawn
Artesia
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
Burning Wheel
Arrowflight
EPIC role playing
Iron Gauntlets
Or even Unisystems all flesh must be eaten + dungeons and zombies supplement.

All of these have reviews at either rpg.net or therpgsite.com



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[wedgeski]

Of course, 4/day of appropriate CR must be the average, not a constant thing each day. However, when the DM breaks that assumption all around the table must know that they are playing a different game that was not playtested.

Come on, this is an outlandish comment. Of all the thousands of playtesters that ran 3e through its paces, do you think they were all ordered to run the game at 4/day? Perhaps on occasion, but I would bet that most of the time they were running games that looked exactly like the games everyone else runs today.

To be honest I still don't understand why people think that these design imperatives (wealth per level, encounters per level, encounters per day, etc.) are a *bad* thing. They are absolutely fundamental to designing a decent game. Why do they rub so many people up the wrong way? I just don't get it.

 

[arscott]

Mostly a side note, but I tend to disagree about the psion shining when there's only one encouter per day. Because spells autoscale, and because powers tend to be slightly weaker than arcane spells, a wizard is probably going to outshine a psion in a single combat. It's at 2 encouters a day that the psion shines. That's the point where the wizard is starting to run out of high-level spells while the psion can keep manifesting his highest level powers.

 

[Wes350]

To be honest I still don't understand why people think that these design imperatives (wealth per level, encounters per level, encounters per day, etc.) are a *bad* thing. They are absolutely fundamental to designing a decent game. Why do they rub so many people up the wrong way? I just don't get it.

I want to make sure I understand you clearly before I post a response to this.

By decent game do you mean Fantasy RPGs in general?

Or designing a decent game/session/adventure/campaign for D&D 3.5?



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[Rystil Arden]

Mostly a side note, but I tend to disagree about the psion shining when there's only one encouter per day. Because spells autoscale, and because powers tend to be slightly weaker than arcane spells, a wizard is probably going to outshine a psion in a single combat. It's at 2 encouters a day that the psion shines. That's the point where the wizard is starting to run out of high-level spells while the psion can keep manifesting his highest level powers.

It depends on the battle's length and the level of the character. A Wizard won't have enough of their highest level for even a single four-round fight, at least not at an odd level.

 

[Dracorat]

My response:

You will only have fun if you want to have fun.

 

[wedgeski]

I want to make sure I understand you clearly before I post a response to this.

By decent game do you mean Fantasy RPGs in general?

Or designing a decent game/session/adventure/campaign for D&D 3.5?

Okey-doke. I'm talking specifically about D&D 3rd Edition, the game as a whole. It takes these design imperatives to create something which is logically consistent and straightforward to learn, but with enough subtleties and additional complexity that it takes time and expertise to master. It also takes these things to create something that is balanced (yes, I used the 'b' word!) across as many of the permutations of level, race, class, skills, feats, spells, and equipment as it can possibly be.

Previous editions (which I played and loved, btw) were balanced by the seat of their pants, if they were indeed balanced at all. As a fan of *games*, I can really appreciate the design challenges involved in creating something as complex as 3rd Edition. It wasn't perfect, by any stretch, but it did all the right things in all the right places and has been a deserved success as a result.

So in many ways, much like you Wes, I'm probably citing strengths of the system that you would consider weaknesses. But in all the years I've been playing 3.0 and now 3.5, the systems on which the game is built have almost all had a positive impact on the quality of the game.