Your biggest problem with 3rd Ed at beggining ?

[Rashak Mani]

When you first started 3rd Ed D&D what wasted the most game time or made you think you would never get the rules right ? What baffled you most on the new D&D ?

Multiple choices

Vote for Reach = Grappling

 

[mattcolville]

Wow, as of now, 100% of the people said AoO.

I didn't *think* they were a problem until we all realized we didn't know what the hell the description was talking about. 'Moving within a threatened area" indeed. Who thought this was clear? Man, in the HACK rulebook we actually state that "Dying" is the same as being "Killed" just for the anal rules-lawyers out there who would say; "Ah, 'Adverse Character Loss Syndrome' says 'you do not die! I didn't die! I was *killed*!"

 

[Agnostic Paladin]

I'm finally comfortable with AoO. The only thing that still stresses me out is trying to understand grappling. I really feel the mechanic is clunky and insufficiently flexible. e.g. Last week, I grabbed hold of a stirge that had started feeding from my throat. (It's pretty easy to grapple one) But when I decided to simply hurl it away from myself, there wasn't anything in the rules about how that works.

 

[Rashak Mani]

Darn I forgot about the Grappling !!! Thats got to be number one after AOOS !!

 

[EricNoah]

Grappling is my biggest problem area too. If you have multiple attacks, do you get multiple chances to start a grapple? Do you get multiple chances to get out of a grapple? Ai-yai-yai....

 

[Crothian]

AoO without a doubt. It was confusing because we all read the book seperately and all of had a different idea of what AoO meant. That first session it took us about an hour to reread the section and go through it to understand. Luckily, that was the first seesion so speed was not needed or expected.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

AoO for me. This is a very clear instance of where the textbook-style writing of the rulebooks hurt. Clearer, and reader friendlier, examples would have helped immensely. I realize that the rules were written in such a way so as to discourage rule-lawyering by dispensing with more personalized writing that could be interpreted many ways, but it ended up doing just the opposite in some cases - like this one.

 

[rounser]

Lousy, limited monster selection. Templates and levels sweetened things a bit, but still, far too many lousy lame monsters in the Monster Manual. And too many outsiders and unoriginal "DM special" undead.

Yes, they fulfil niches ("sonic attack for bards to foil monster" = destrachan, "resist fear ability useful monster" = krenshar) but D&D monsters are as much about style, atmosphere and storytelling as about functionality. And it doesn't matter what niche it fills if it's so lame that you don't want to use it in your campaign.

Monster Manual II should hopefully rectify this...

 

[WolverineJon]

Hmm, I misunderstood the subject line to mean "peeve" instead of "difficulty." Ah, well. I'll also say grapple for my biggest difficulty with the 3E rules. As far as biggest peeve/annoyance, at first I didn't like how they changed the rules to make it more difficult to interupt a spell in progress via an attack; now you have to ready an action ahead of time to do so, AND the caster still gets a concentration if you hit. In contrast, in 1E and 2E any damage would do the trick, and you could react after the spell was started if the spell's casting time was long enough. I'm getting more comfortable with the new way of doing things now, though.

 

[Turlogh]

AoO because its as clear as mud.
But gotta say those CRs, ELs and ECLs sound more like a crap shoot than any real "science" or method behind it.