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Aemoh87
2011-02-09, 04:01 PM
I have been reading alot of forums and I came to something. 3.5 isn't very hard. Which isn't a bad thing but it's not a challenging game that needs optimization to compete. There are some exceptions but most monsters in your CR are easily dispatched by middle of the road characters.

My point is that 3.5 is about role playing not combat :) More about how you overcome challenges than overcoming them.

ex cathedra
2011-02-09, 04:07 PM
3.5 is about whatever your playgroup wants it to be about. Some groups want heavy-roleplaying games full of intrigue, while some players just want a fantasy combat sim, and some groups just want an excuse to hang out.

The difficulty depends solely on the group involved. The difficultly as presented is perhaps a tad on the easy side, but that's generally due to the weaknesses of the CR system. Players without a good grasp on practical optimisation, DMs without a good grasp on the CR system, DMs who want to provide a challenge, and players who want to be challenged are all capable of making the game either easier or more difficult.

Typewriter
2011-02-09, 04:11 PM
When dealing with games like D&D, where the focus is more on the ruleset than on the structure of the game it's really hard to make that as a judgement call.

If you're looking it as nothing more than a RAW "Four characters vs. a CR appropriate encounter, X amount of encounters a day" then yes, 3.5 can be very easy. Especially if those 4 characters come from optimizers on this board :P

cfalcon
2011-02-09, 04:16 PM
Saving the world isn't normally easy!

If you are just grinding mobs, sure, whatever.

Keld Denar
2011-02-09, 04:19 PM
D&D is primarily a combat engine though.

Think about a video game. You can have a video game with a GREAT story, completely irregardless of whether or not the gameplay or mechanics or graphics of that game are any good. Or you could have a game with amazing breathtaking graphics that has a 2d linear boring story with no twists or turns. You can have both, you can have neither, and you can have anything on the spectrum between the two at any given moment. They don't have to be linked.

Flip through your PHB, easily 2/3 of the pages in it deal with arbitrating combat. Thats where you NEED rules. You don't need rules to court the duke's daughter, or explore your character's haunted past, or arbitrate a peace negotiation between two waring factions.

That said, D&D can be hard. I all depends on the skill of the DM. I have a DM who creates great stories, but his combats tend to be easy and straightforward because he doesn't take the time to really understand and create challenging encounters. I also have a DM who also creates great stories, and his combats are incredibly challenging, and we've lost a few characters along the way. Just like CharOp takes skill, EncounterOp takes skill as well. Not every DM is good at it. The game engine isn't inherantly easy, its just easy to screw up to give the illusion of being easy.

Aemoh87
2011-02-09, 04:33 PM
Where you could have more rules for out of combat. And dnd is a combat game. But what i am saying is, DnD 3.5 is more about how you approach challenges not the challenge themselves. :)

gbprime
2011-02-09, 04:38 PM
But what i am saying is, DnD 3.5 is more about how you approach challenges not the challenge themselves. :)

The same can be said about any story. (And gaming is just telling a story with rules.)

Roger Zelazny always said that the secret to making good stories was to create interesting characters and make them suffer. Exactly how they suffer is beside the point, the meat of it is in reaction and growth in the face of adversity.

Combat Reflexes
2011-02-09, 04:38 PM
The problem with D&D is that middle-of-the-road characters are unequal. A party consisting of cleric, wizard, fighter and rogue would be fairly equal at lower levels, but as the players level up the cleric and wizard enjoy more and more magic power (they grow exponential) while the rogue and fighter can only stab things harder (they grow linear).

Although it may be a problem at tournament games and such, it really doesn't matter if you have a good gaming group that gives everyone a time to shine.
Within a gaming group people might try to optimize their character to give them more time in the spotlight. The other players notice that the optimized character does things better than theirs and they either a) de-optimize the character [very rational] or b) optimize theirs to keep up the party balance.
This optimizing and counter-optimizing sometimes goes all the way to the point of munchkinry where your character is just ignored if it isn't capable of breaking the game. And that's why my whole group is playing 4th-level Commoners at the moment :smalltongue:

But if you roleplay as well as you rollplay and you have rational co-players, everything is fine.

PinkysBrain
2011-02-09, 04:48 PM
CR (or rather encounter level) is a rule of thumb.

It's rather trivial to go both ways on the difficulty curve at the same EL ... generally an archer ambush can quite efficiently kill PCs for instance.

Kurald Galain
2011-02-09, 04:54 PM
My point is that 3.5 is about role playing not combat :) More about how you overcome challenges than overcoming them.
How you play 3.5 is your own choice. However, the rules of 3.5 are overwhelmingly about combat, not roleplaying. Almost every other RPG on the market has comparatively less rules about combat, significantly less rules period, or both.

ericgrau
2011-02-09, 04:57 PM
What kind of group are you in? I've had about 2/3 of my DMs make the campaign very hard and 1/3 go easy.

CR equal to your character level is not supposed to be hard. It's a routine fight. CR + 2 is supposed to be difficult and CR + 4 might risk a TPK... if you don't run. Even the DMG recommends a mix of fights including ones you're supposed to run from.

Dust
2011-02-09, 05:01 PM
While 'hard' isn't the right word, I find going into a game with the IMMENSE number of supplements available and being expected to produce an optimized character isn't intuitive or reasonable.

Ozreth
2011-02-09, 05:07 PM
While 'hard' isn't the right word, I find going into a game with the IMMENSE number of supplements available and being expected to produce an optimized character isn't intuitive or reasonable.

Agreed. I wouldn't play with a group that expected me to produce an optimized character. I also wouldn't introduce somebody to the game with anything more than the players handbook.

But ya, the system is easy. People I know pick up 3.5 quicker than 4e as 4e's battle system has a lot to consider and keep track of.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-09, 05:07 PM
Honestly? Yes. I find 3.5 hard. Well, not hard, but dense and time-consuming and waaaay more complex than it needs to be.

Explaining how 3.5 works to a new player doesn't go anywhere near as smoothly as explaining 2e or 4e to a new player. There's also the "Ivory Tower" problem; options that are radically powerful generally don't look radically powerful, so it's difficult to immediately gauge what's good and what isn't without having more than a general grasp of comparative power levels within the system

It's tough to play, tough to teach, and tough to run.

Ozreth
2011-02-09, 05:09 PM
Honestly? Yes. I find 3.5 hard. Well, not hard, but dense and time-consuming and waaaay more complex than it needs to be.

Explaining how 3.5 works to a new player doesn't go anywhere near as smoothly as explaining 2e or 4e to a new player. There's also the "Ivory Tower" problem; options that are radically powerful generally don't look radically powerful, so it's difficult to immediately gauge what's good and what isn't without having more than a general grasp of comparative power levels within the system

It's tough to play, tough to teach, and tough to run.

I think a lot of the people like the ones who post here at GitP have a hard time stepping back to their first play experience and teaching it to others that way. Forget every book exists other than the PHB. Don't try to explain builds or optimizing or splat books or campaign settings or multi classing. Show them the PHB, build them a boring level 1 character and show them how to make skill checks.

candycorn
2011-02-09, 05:13 PM
What eric said. A DM running a CR appropriate encounter has less resources than the party.

1) 1/4 combat power. A party of 4 level 10 characters is EL 10. A single level 10 character is CR 10. This means less versatility, less combat actions, less synergy.

2) Less WBL. 25% the numbers and half the WBL for NPC's means that the average encounter will sport enemies with about 10% the money of the party.

This is balanced somewhat by the fact that the DM controls the environment, so can give his encounters terrain or lair advantages, to an extent. Still, these encounters are not supposed to be truly hazardous, unless the party screws up by the numbers.

Now, you can offset this (lower the level of monsters, increase numbers, and spread them out) to give them more actions, which will likely hake them more lethal. However, for a CR appropriate encounter, you're supposed to have the edge. Some games design to encourage retreat (by setting the default combat difficulty to equal to the party, or above it)... D&D is not one of those games. It wants people to face and defeat challenges, with occasional moments of real risk.

That does hint that yes, a good D&D game will generally place more emphasis on the day-to-day with the party, and less on the enemies. They're comparable in any action movie or anime to the mooks.

There are exceptions to that. I could see a game where there are fewer, but more significant challenges, with sleuthwork and such to identify them. I could see one with lots of hard combats, if the players like optimization.

But yes, the default view of D&D is that it's designed for most encounters to be less lethal.

Curmudgeon
2011-02-09, 05:29 PM
Yes, I find 3.5 hard. But then, that's my aim. When other players choose Wizards and Druids, I choose Rogues. If they crank it down a notch and play Favored Souls and Factotums, I'll play a Monk. My goal is for my PC to make valuable contributions to party goals without overshadowing other PCs. I want to be challenged in the game, and to have to stay alert to be effective.

D&D is no fun if there's a way to make it http://bestuff.com/images/images_of_stuff/64x64crop/easy-button-160327.jpg?1221747641.

AslanCross
2011-02-09, 07:22 PM
I have been reading alot of forums and I came to something. 3.5 isn't very hard. Which isn't a bad thing but it's not a challenging game that needs optimization to compete. There are some exceptions but most monsters in your CR are easily dispatched by middle of the road characters.

My point is that 3.5 is about role playing not combat :) More about how you overcome challenges than overcoming them.

The "difficulty level" of monsters, while greatly influenced by the deficient CR system, can depend greatly on how the DM plays them. Obviously, a lich striding to the front lines spamming fireballs is going to be easier than a lich with several contingencies shooting black tentacles and solid fog at PCs who are trying to get to the floating rock the lich is on while dangling over a lava-filled chasm.

I'm not sure how your logic works---because the monsters are easy, D&D is not about combat, but roleplaying? Well, I hope D&D's about roleplaying, otherwise I wouldn't know why it's been the definitive roleplaying game for 30 years. However, the capabilities of the characters are primarily based on combat.

Furthermore, I'm of the school of thought that thinks "roleplaying" and "combat" are not two separate things, and as such I disagree that "roleplaying" is character interaction only. Yes, there are people who just roll dice and shout out numbers. That doesn't mean having a combat-heavy rules system sacrifices "roleplaying."

To put it simply: I'm a bit confused by your statement, but I agree with it in that I don't believe in the stereotype of D&D that you're attacking.

Psyren
2011-02-09, 07:28 PM
Flip through your PHB, easily 2/3 of the pages in it deal with arbitrating combat. Thats where you NEED rules. You don't need rules to court the duke's daughter, or explore your character's haunted past, or arbitrate a peace negotiation between two waring factions.


Seriously, *this.*

I recall a sig I read around here (though I don't see it anymore); it said "In reality, all of us as tabletop gamers are just playing Cops & Robbers. The only point behind the dice is so that we don't degenerate into 'I hit you!' 'Nuh-uh!' 'Yeah-huh!'"

Haarkla
2011-02-09, 07:35 PM
Does anyone find 3.5 Hard?
As a DM, yes.

Aemoh87
2011-02-09, 07:45 PM
What kind of group are you in? I've had about 2/3 of my DMs make the campaign very hard and 1/3 go easy.

CR equal to your character level is not supposed to be hard. It's a routine fight. CR + 2 is supposed to be difficult and CR + 4 might risk a TPK... if you don't run. Even the DMG recommends a mix of fights including ones you're supposed to run from.

CR + 4 is not really a you should run once characters reach a certain point. Example: Cleric. It's pretty easy to make a cleric who is immune to save or dies, HP can go infinitely negative, and is defended from multiple forms of dispel magic.

But I have seen alot of situations where you need role playing as well as combat to over come things (Example: the lich on the floating rock) but if your a good player and the lich is within 4 CR of you it shouldn't be an issue at all. The fun is deciding how to take said lich down, then enacting your plan. But once you get close enough to whack it, it goes down without much of a fight.

ericgrau
2011-02-09, 08:18 PM
It's pretty easy to make a cleric who is immune to save or dies, HP can go infinitely negative, and is defended from multiple forms of dispel magic.
Only against the ones that are actual death effects, which are a minority, and only after spending a combat round so usually it's a waste of time; not being able to move when he does so is a bit of a problem; half of his buffs are still typically gone unless major caster level cheese is used.

But basically the DM replaces CR = level + 4 with CR = level + 6 or level + X or whatever for stronger parties and same situation. The fights are however hard the DM wants to make them and they should be challenging if the game's going to be fun.

The Big Dice
2011-02-09, 08:57 PM
3.5 isn't hard per se.

What it is, is unnecessarily complicated. Though to be fair, that's quite possibly a legacy carried on from AD&D. It's also not particularly intuitive for beginner players. But then, it was designed to be like a CCG in construction. Not always obvious and sometimes quite confusing at first glance.

Eldariel
2011-02-09, 09:09 PM
I have been reading alot of forums and I came to something. 3.5 isn't very hard. Which isn't a bad thing but it's not a challenging game that needs optimization to compete. There are some exceptions but most monsters in your CR are easily dispatched by middle of the road characters.

Optimized characters face optimized foes. Well-played Kobolds are a huge challenge, let alone Outsiders or Dragons played up to their stats. No, the game isn't easy unless your DM basically runs it as a CRPG with a stale world and no movers aside from opponents and with monsters acting in scripted manner with easily abusable weaknesses and with monsters simply not on par with the PCs.

Intelligent foes taking advantage of the environment, preparation, team tactics and so on does a lot. Feating the foes with feats from the whole available source list is a v. good move. Using lots of foes with class levels (humanoids, monstrous humanoids, aberrations, undead, outsiders, dragons & giants all are likely candidates to have class levels and the ones without are really just random "commoners"; giants that actually fight have learned fighting, after all).

NichG
2011-02-09, 09:33 PM
I've had easy encounters, hard encounters, etc throughout my experiences playing 3.5.

I played a few of the Goodman Games DCC modules, and they are generally what I'd consider 'hard'. You end up doing things like using a Wand of Bull's Strength to not be paralyzed for the rest of the dungeon because the dungeon designers expected at least one party member to get completely drained by shadows at some point. We ended up TPKing in the Lich Queen module, but we had fun. It appeals most to a certain player type.

On the other hand, I've played in other games that are not run with the intent of being quite so tough, and those are very fun too. Sometimes its nice to not have to worry about survival so much, so you can do crazy, heroic, etc things with some expectation of surviving them.

The key to making D&D hard is to understand that as written it is really intended for multiple encounters with no chance to refresh between them. A single encounter of any CR using the monster rules as written will either be steamrolled or will usually kill at least one PC. The reason is that monsters die fast, so if they're a credible threat for TPK (requiring they kill 6) they will kill one. On the other hand, five rapidfire encounters (no chance to heal in between) of weaker monsters may wear the PCs down to the point where everyone is at risk of dying if they mess up, but everyone could survive too.

I don't really like having that many encounters in games I run though. It just eats up time. So I just adjust the monster rules for stuff I run, making them longer lived, giving them additional actions per round, other tricks to get around the inherent system assumptions.

Safety Sword
2011-02-09, 11:15 PM
I find it hard to have time to play as much as I want. Does that count?

NMBLNG
2011-02-09, 11:27 PM
Personally I find 3.5 a bit harder than 4e, though that may be due to having more access to 4e material and being more familiar with it.

In 3.5, I find it harder to make the kind of character I want to create. There are a lot of feats and classes to pick from, and sometimes it seems that no combination will quite make what I'm looking for. Between that and CO being a bit counter-intuitive, it can be very easy to make a character that is nowhere near as cool as it should be.

MeeposFire
2011-02-09, 11:58 PM
Combat wise3.5 is as easy or hard as you want. The only problem is that it takes a lot of work and guessing (at least until you really know the system) to get things right.

I also agree that 3e has the most difficult character creation of all the editions overall (note its difficulty is from option overload and analysis paralysis).

faceroll
2011-02-10, 12:14 AM
Where you could have more rules for out of combat. And dnd is a combat game. But what i am saying is, DnD 3.5 is more about how you approach challenges not the challenge themselves. :)

It's hard in that you need to master a huge ruleset and understand some pretty complex game theory to properly game the system. If you go into it using the assumptions presented in the PHB, once you get to the mid levels, it's going to be difficult.

Mikeavelli
2011-02-10, 12:28 AM
There's only one circumstance where I've found D&D to be hard, it was the perfect storm of circumstances:

- None of us were terribly experienced at D&D, so our builds were sub-optimal.

- The DM had a 2nd edition mentality, gave out treasure FAR less than recommended WBL, and his definition of min-maxing\powergaming included having max ranks in a skill for your character level.

- the DM didn't fully understand the CR system, so we'd have encounters too high level for us, with characters that were underpowered even by the standards of the system.

[hr]

That said, these days the group I'm playing with is so optimized that to even have a credible threat, monsters start at CR+2 and go up from there.

big teej
2011-02-10, 11:29 AM
CR (or rather encounter level) is a rule of thumb.

It's rather trivial to go both ways on the difficulty curve at the same EL ... generally an archer ambush can quite efficiently kill PCs for instance.

uhm.... how effeciently?:smalleek:

Tyndmyr
2011-02-10, 11:43 AM
The same can be said about any story. (And gaming is just telling a story with rules.)

I disagree with your definition.

Poker is a great game, but it's not about the story. Ditto for checkers.

Hawk7915
2011-02-10, 11:57 AM
As everyone else has said, it depends.

Most stock adventures and campaign modules were balanced around a "heal-bot, skilmonkey, fighter, fireball wizard" party and will thus be utterly destroyed by "Warblade, Batman Wizard, DMM Cleric, Factotum/Chameleon". There are exceptions of course (Red Hand of Doom is mostly easy-mode for the optimized party, but there's a few encounters like the Hydra or the Fiendish Behir that can easily result in a player death or two even against a reasonably high-optimization group), but for the most part they are balanced around a Tier 5 party, and will be too easy for anything stronger.

But for homemade campaigns, it's all up to the DM's own skill. There's a vast difference between a group of level 4 players fighting a level 8 Fighter and a Level 8 Cleric as their "boss fight"; there's a vast difference between two clerics depending on the DM's own skill. Some monsters are way strong for their CR (Aboleth, Monstrous Crab); some are lower. Some monsters can be played intelligently to be way over their CR (Dragons, spellcasters, kobolds) or played poorly and become a cake walk (Dragons who land and go "Claw, Claw, Bite" instead of using magic or strafing a party with breath attacks).

And as noted, different classes are loaded with feat traps or are very hard to build well. It's hard to screw up a Druid or a Crusader, but it's easy to screw up a Wizard and end up with a weak, unplayable mess. You have to actively work to make a Fighter or Hexblade who isn't dead weight; following the Player Handbook's own advice and taking Toughness and Weapon Focus and Run will likely get you killed even in some Tier 5 adventures.

Tyndmyr
2011-02-10, 12:01 PM
As everyone else has said, it depends.

Most stock adventures and campaign modules were balanced around a "heal-bot, skilmonkey, fighter, fireball wizard" party and will thus be utterly destroyed by "Warblade, Batman Wizard, DMM Cleric, Factotum/Chameleon". There are exceptions of course (Red Hand of Doom is mostly easy-mode for the optimized party, but there's a few encounters like the Hydra or the Fiendish Behir that can easily result in a player death or two even against a reasonably high-optimization group), but for the most part they are balanced around a Tier 5 party, and will be too easy for anything stronger.

RHoD is quite doable with a moderately optimized E6 group. I even had to adjust some of the encounters upward to not be trivial. The hydra is, IMO, one of the easier encounters. Look at how far away the hydra begins, and it's movement speed. If your party can't obliterate it in two rounds, you have a lack of ranged damage that's going to be a severe problem often.

Most modules are far, far too easy. Running ToH for a fairly optimized party resulted in a "We like this. We want more encounters like this, but perhaps a little harder". I find that far too many "challenges" are nothing more than a wall of hp that relies on actual melee attacks to do things.

Czin
2011-02-10, 12:15 PM
I have been reading alot of forums and I came to something. 3.5 isn't very hard. Which isn't a bad thing but it's not a challenging game that needs optimization to compete. There are some exceptions but most monsters in your CR are easily dispatched by middle of the road characters.

My point is that 3.5 is about role playing not combat :) More about how you overcome challenges than overcoming them.

Compared to the editions prior to it, 3.Xe is much more forgiving towards player mistakes. My old DM told me that 1e, especially at low levels; would eat the party and spit it out for even small missteps if the DM goes purely by the rules and in fact flat out said that if you start at level 1 multiple backup characters were an absolute necessity unless your DM was very lenient, and since the prevailing mood back then was that the DM was supposed to play against rather than play with the PCs you would be stupidly lucky to find said lenient DM. He said that it got a bit better by 2e but TPKs at low levels were still quite common.

So I would definitely agree with the statement that each edition of D&D is easier for the players to survive than the last.

TheDMofDMs
2011-02-10, 01:44 PM
Okay. Second post go.

3.5 is a relatively complex system. And it is hard to teach.

But earlier editions, while they had easier character creation, were much, much harder to actually play. Any game that has a parabola graph in its rulebook is pretty crazy.

4th edition (World of Dungeons and Dragonscraft) is smoother in the running, but mostly for the D.M. Character creation is pretty fast, but there's a lot of jargon that goes into an average game. In 3rd, only the casters need to understand the difference between an emanation and a burst, and only if they choose those spells. In 4th, a new player needs to come to grips with quite a few terms, and probably in their first session.

Encounters in 3rd and 3.5 are dependent on the circumstances. 3rd edition simulates real combat about as well as can be expected in the fantasy-genre. Fights-a constant whirl of activity-don't last long. A minute or two, maybe. If a troll gets the drop on a band of lvl5 adventurers, one of them is very likely to be dead. If those same travelers have five minutes to prepare themselves, that troll probably won't get to attack twice.

Aside from that, the "Ivory Tower" problem is a great example of one of 3rd's biggest problems. Of course, most of that comes from the supplement books, which, as the DMG states, are off-limits until given the okay. And for good reason. The designers knew what kind of horror would be unleashed if every book, every prestige class and alternate race, ever variant rule, was open for every single game. They didn't balance all that, and they knew it.
The rest of this problem probably comes from the Magic Items and the Spells chapters. The utility of a spell or item is hard to guess, considering cost (in gp or in spell levels), output (damage or bonuses), and function (when it is useful). Is Color Spray probably too awesome of a spell? Most likely. Does Polar Ray suck a lot. Oh yes. Is a Dusty Rose ioun stone worth all that? Probably not. Is there any reason every adventurer ever doesn't buy: +1 armor, Cloak of Resistance (+1), +1 weapon, Ring of Protection (+1), Amulet of Natural Armour (+1) before anything else? Maybe, but they probably shouldn't.

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-10, 02:11 PM
Aside from that, the "Ivory Tower" problem is a great example of one of 3rd's biggest problems. Of course, most of that comes from the supplement books, which, as the DMG states, are off-limits until given the okay. And for good reason. The designers knew what kind of horror would be unleashed if every book, every prestige class and alternate race, ever variant rule, was open for every single game. They didn't balance all that, and they knew it.
This was, and is, my biggest problem with 3.5: the Ivory Tower problem extends to the Player's Handbook, the one player option book you have to use. Druid 20, Cleric 20 and Wizard 20 are some of the most mind-numbingly powerful builds in all of 3.5, and 95% of their spells, feats and items are going to come from either the PHB1 or the DMG. A first-time player in a core-only game intent on playing a single-class Fighter (or even worse, a Monk) is going to be mighty pissed when he realizes that beyond level 6 or so, there is literally nothing he can do to catch up with the pure power of the caster classes.

MeeposFire
2011-02-10, 02:17 PM
This was, and is, my biggest problem with 3.5: the Ivory Tower problem extends to the Player's Handbook, the one player option book you have to use. Druid 20, Cleric 20 and Wizard 20 are some of the most mind-numbingly powerful builds in all of 3.5, and 95% of their spells, feats and items are going to come from either the PHB1 or the DMG. A first-time player in a core-only game intent on playing a single-class Fighter (or even worse, a Monk) is going to be mighty pissed when he realizes that beyond level 6 or so, there is literally nothing he can do to catch up with the pure power of the caster classes.

What has saved the game a little bit with beginners is that many new players play wizards as blasters and clerics as healers. In this type of party melee does not seem so boned. This is the type of game the designers expect for the most part too though as we all know once your players get more experience with the system this is not how the crafty players play the game.

Amphetryon
2011-02-10, 02:32 PM
What has saved the game a little bit with beginners is that many new players play wizards as blasters and clerics as healers. In this type of party melee does not seem so boned. This is the type of game the designers expect for the most part too though as we all know once your players get more experience with the system this is not how the crafty players play the game.

In my experience, the newbies indicated above don't have the same issues with playing a Druid in a sub-par manner, which has led a couple of groups I've played in to look long and hard at whether Druids are too strong. Cleric players might want to heal, Wizard players might want to blast fireballs and lightning bolts, but, in my experience and in general, Druid players want to have kickin' animal companions and the ability to summon more animals to the fight, which often plays havoc with a DM's encounters if s/he wasn't expecting it.

Random aside: I'm surprised we've gotten this far into the discussion of "3.5 is easy" without anyone pointing to That Damn Crab (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a) as Exhibit A for the counterpoint. :smallbiggrin:

Fox Box Socks
2011-02-10, 02:41 PM
Point taken, Meepo, but as a DM, often I had to put together a game with a bunch of people that have played the game before and one or tow that were completely green. I had this conversation one too many times:

"I want to play a Fighter"
"Okay, why do you want to play a Fighter?"
"Well, I want to be a big guy that hits things with a sword. Fighters get a bunch of bonus feats, and the book says they're good all-around front line combatants. I want to play an all-around front line combatant"
"Okay, you don't want to play a Fighter"
"What? No, I totally want to play a Fighter"
"No, you actually don't. Fighters actually aren't very good at the thing you want them to be good at. Barbarians are good at it, and there's a class called Warblade that I think would be right up your alley, but Fighters actually aren't very good at that sort of thing"
"Well, what are Fighters good for?"
"Combat trickery and niche specialization, mostly. A strong Fighter is a Fighter that has a trick or gimmick who devotes all of his bonus feats towards improving that trick or gimmick. Like, tripping people. Or charging people"
"But the book says that Fighters are good at being general front-line combatants"
"The book is lying"

MeeposFire
2011-02-10, 02:47 PM
Oh I agree with you as you add more knowledgeable players you get what I talk about less and less (which was my second point in my previous post really).

Indeed druids are really hard to screw up but I have found that many newer players do not even play druids that well. Still nobody remains new forever so it is a losing battle regardless.

Squark
2011-02-10, 03:01 PM
I ultimately went with 4e because it was "easier" but now, looking back, I think I need to clarify; It's easier for me. Instead of having to eyeball an encounter and spend an hour creating one npc, I can plug in a few numbers, build a power or two for the monster, and I have an encounter. Now, admittadly, as my players get more experienced, I'll want to incoporate more time into encounter construction to challenge my players, but for a novice DM, encounter building is a lot easier.

If I had limited my players to only, say, the PHB, EPH, and the ECS, I don't think character creation would have been that much harder (given that I did a lot of the selection of feats and powers for them anyway) than it was for me with 4e (As is, my real problem is I should have listed races and classes and asked them what they wanted to be, then built the character for them. Practically did, as is).

MeeposFire
2011-02-10, 03:17 PM
Yes in any edition it is easier to ask new players what they want and build it for them, a pseudo pregen as it were, than to have them do it all by themselves. It also helps them from being overwhelmed at first.

Squark
2011-02-10, 03:34 PM
Well, actually, The d&d basic game really did not require any handwalking- Character Building basically consisted of, "Roll 3d6 six times. These are your ability scores. Choose your class based on these rolls. Buy whatever you think sounds useful. If you're a wizard or an elf, choose a spell. You're Done." (And a fair bit of looking up stuff from a table)


And 2nd Edition AD&D (at least, with only the PHB) isn't much harder- The only additional thing you had to choose was your weapon proficiencies, and maybe nonweapon proficiencies (but only if your DM used those). My only experience with D&D pre 3.5 comes from my Dad's old Pink box and 2e PHB, so I can't vouch for 1e, the blue box, or 2e with splat books.


So the choices I gave them basicly where early character generation.

Velaryon
2011-02-10, 08:34 PM
There's only one circumstance where I've found D&D to be hard, it was the perfect storm of circumstances:

- None of us were terribly experienced at D&D, so our builds were sub-optimal.

- The DM had a 2nd edition mentality, gave out treasure FAR less than recommended WBL, and his definition of min-maxing\powergaming included having max ranks in a skill for your character level.

- the DM didn't fully understand the CR system, so we'd have encounters too high level for us, with characters that were underpowered even by the standards of the system.

<hr>

That said, these days the group I'm playing with is so optimized that to even have a credible threat, monsters start at CR+2 and go up from there.

You've just described the first D&D game I ever played in, and my own D&D campaign that I'm running right now, respectively.

My first DM was exactly like that: a holdover from AD&D 2e who frequently forgot how the rules worked in 3.0 or wanted to change them to what he was familiar with, and who gave us far below WBL in magical items.

My first character was a fighter with only a 14 Strength, Weapon Focus, Spring Attack, and other bad choices thanks to bad advice from the "more experienced" players. I think by level 9 I had two magic items, one of which was a Ring of Regeneration on crack (it worked like the regeneration Trolls get), and a +2 rapier. No stat-boosting items, nothing to help my terrible AC of 17. They actually let me pick scale mail as my armor since I had no idea what was good to take.

Whereas in my current campaign, my party of level 12 PCs recently defeated a Marilith without even a single casualty. Granted, part of that was a lucky break when the Marilith rolled a natural 2 on a Will save, but the fact that they managed to live long enough to pull that is quite impressive.