3.5 D&D Fixes!

[bloodtide]

Well, I've seen tons of posts about how to fix 3.5E nitpicking on every spell, feat, ability and class. But I think that looking at the bigger picture can 'Fix' everything.

1.Do not allow SuperCharacters. The easy way to do this is to eliminate the whole 'point buy' way of character creation. Then have each player roll for each ability, and keep whatever they get. Even if they get a character with no score higher then 12.

2.Don't be a Storyteller DM. While telling a story is good, it's bad for a life and death, action adventure game like D&D. If you feel you 'must' keep the characters alive to tell your story, then you create an imbalance. D&D is made to have monsters and foes kill the characters, not just 'progress a story'.

3.Up the Fantasy. Too many DM's are in love with the low magic/low fantasy type game. To make it 'a lot like old time Earth'. While there is nothing wrong with the idea, D&D is not made for this type of game. And if you run a low magic/low fantasy game, you will upset the balance.

4.Don't allow Free Rides. Too often you see builds where a character dips into a Prestige class or gets a feat or such just for an awesome ability. But many DM's make the mistake of giving it all away for free. Your character had to join an organization or such, yet everyone just forgets about that part. And that disrupts the balance.

5.The Supreme Rules This might be the worst one. This is where the group considers the DM 'just a player', and that the 'Rules are Supreme'. This type of DM looses the 'judgement' part of DMing and becomes a slave to the rules. So if page 45 says a character can do 'X', the DM just throws his hands up and says 'ok, we must follow the rules'.


Each one of the above alone can cause balance problems in a D&D game. Three of them is a big problem, and all five just throw balance out the window.

The first one can fix a lot of 'problems', by eliminating all the SuperCharacters. It has the effect of limiting all the crazy optimization, as a character with low stats can't get all the feats, prestige classes and such they need/want for the awesome build.

[sirpercival]

Obvious troll is obvious.

[Gamer Girl]

Ok, I looked it up, but I still don't get what a 'troll' is?

Is it just when someone posts something you don't like you call them a troll?

Is it like slang?

[sirpercival]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

[lord pringle]

1.Do not allow SuperCharacters. The easy way to do this is to eliminate the whole 'point buy' way of character creation. Then have each player roll for each ability, and keep whatever they get. Even if they get a character with no score higher then 12.

What about the guy who guy who broke the odds and got all high rolls? And decides to play an CoDzilla, while everyone else has 12s? Point buy is the great equalizer not a way to abuse everything. Besides my low-op group uses 17 16 15 14 14 11 for our stats and the only time the abused anything, was a wish that my hubris got in the way of.

[darksolitaire]

OP either uses sarcasm, or this is the case of "My D&D is better then your D&D."
Seriously, what?

[Chronos]

There's something to be said for rolled ability scores, but you should at least let the player assign the rolls to the stats. If someone just plain likes playing barbarians, but rolls a 6 Str and a 17 Int, what do you do? If he likes playing barbs, then the dice shouldn't force him to be a wizard instead: That's no fun for anyone.

[Tenno Seremel]

obvious text here

I got infracted (warned?) for saying stuff like that :}

Whatever, "Don't be a Storyteller DM" is ugh…

[The Boz]

What about the guy who guy who broke the odds and got all high rolls? And decides to play an CoDzilla, while everyone else has 12s? Point buy is the great equalizer not a way to abuse everything. Besides my low-op group uses 17 16 15 14 14 11 for our stats and the only time the abused anything, was a wish that my hubris got in the way of.

False dichotomy. My favorite is 4d6b3 that generates a single array that every player uses.

[sirpercival]

You get warned for that and a troll doesn't get warned for trolling?

Alright, a real response:

1) Rolled stats are WORSE for party balance because you can have wildly-varying sets of ability scores. If you want everyone to have bad stats, just do 2d6+1 or 10-point buy, or put a cap on how many scores you can have above a certain point.

2) Don't tell stories as a DM? If you want to have adventures be entirely based around combat, go play 4E -- that's "fixed" for you. What makes the game interesting is what happens and what the players do about it, which is normally called "plot".

3) You really think that upping the magic level will mesh well with the idea of "not having 'supercharacters'"? I like high-magic games, but giving PCs more magic is giving them more power.

4) DMs can choose to enforce the prereqs of a PrC, or not, or adapt it to something else. Was there a point with this one?

5) I'm confused -- are you saying a DM shouldn't play by the rules, or a DM should? Because, the biggest rule a DM should play by is Rule 0.

[Tenno Seremel]

You get warned for that and a troll doesn't get warned for trolling?
Well, it's complicated, so… I'll not derail this thread at least, however good or bad it is. Well, that one was a good thread anyway, about good, evil and stuff %)

[Flickerdart]

High ability scores are the least of all concerns when creating a game-breaking character. Likewise prestige classes. A Wizard who rolled a 13 as his highest stat and never takes a prestige class has the potential to be far more powerful than a Fighter with ten PrCs and two 18s.

[Midnight_v]

Ok, I looked it up, but I still don't get what a 'troll' is?

Is it just when someone posts something you don't like you call them a troll?

Is it like slang?

Don't know if you checked the link but its really along the lines of "goading" posting something higly flamatory, for the "Ev-lulz" (evil + lol).
The op here, may not be, but its very hard to tell...
He could just be really wrong/arrogant, the thing is these rules espouse a simple fix, for a complex problem. The inherent implication in this is that people who aren't/don't agree w/these rules are having bad/wrong fun, or actually contributing to the game being worse.
He talks a lot about the "The balance" and doesn't specify the "Balance" point.
He also suggests that "You had to join an organization" which: Many people find fluff mutable, and want you to play the character "you'd" like to play, as you know you could be doing anything else.
Also, and he seems to not know this but limiting presting classing punishes melee unduly, as the game itself is inherently imbalanced.

Tl;DR: The Op, doesn't know what he's talking about, but it is offensive to some that he expresses it like he's had an "eureka!" that the rest of everyone who plays has missed over the last decade... so we don't know if he's being funny or not. srsly.

[Keinnicht]

Well, I've seen tons of posts about how to fix 3.5E nitpicking on every spell, feat, ability and class. But I think that looking at the bigger picture can 'Fix' everything.

1.Do not allow SuperCharacters. The easy way to do this is to eliminate the whole 'point buy' way of character creation. Then have each player roll for each ability, and keep whatever they get. Even if they get a character with no score higher then 12.

Well, I don't know, see, I sort of like my players to have fun. I mean, I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, I'm sure your policy of forcing people to play virtually useless characters makes just as great a game.

No, but seriously, screw that. A character who doesn't have a single ability score higher than 12 is basically unplayable. He can't ever be an especially good spellcaster, can't do melee or ranged combat very well, has very few hit points, etc. Personally, I would probably not play a character whose highest score was a 12.


If you're serious, you're a bad DM and I feel bad for your players.

I mean, I personally like to run games where the characters have very high ability scores and are gestalted. This is because I like to run games where the players are super-mega-ultra hardcore heroes. I do not like to run games where a three orcs can be a dire threat to the PCs if the orcs win initiative.



3.Up the Fantasy. Too many DM's are in love with the low magic/low fantasy type game. To make it 'a lot like old time Earth'. While there is nothing wrong with the idea, D&D is not made for this type of game. And if you run a low magic/low fantasy game, you will upset the balance.

No, you won't, provided you're not an idiot. By which I mean:

Idiot Way to Run Low Magic: Continue to give PCs encounters exactly like they were characters in a default campaign setting. Without keeping in mind that against monsters with DR, fast healing, or other such things, they're much, much weaker than a regular party. And take a lot longer to heal.

Correct Way to Run Low Magic: Actually think about it for ten seconds before you make an encounter.


4.Don't allow Free Rides. Too often you see builds where a character dips into a Prestige class or gets a feat or such just for an awesome ability. But many DM's make the mistake of giving it all away for free. Your character had to join an organization or such, yet everyone just forgets about that part. And that disrupts the balance.


No, it doesn't. This is just a laughable idea. Having to join an organization to take levels in the prestige class is not a balancing mechanism. It's fluff. There are no real disadvantages to joining most organizations, and if there are any, they're usually pretty minor (Like having to pay 100 GP a month in membership dues, or something. Which is virtually nothing for the average PC.)

There are also advantages to joining most organizations.

In fact, pretty much any "special" requirement for a prestige class (Making peaceful contact with an evil outsider, joining X organization, having been killed and brought back to life, etc.) is pretty much there for flavor and has virtually no effect on the class' actual play.



5.The Supreme Rules This might be the worst one. This is where the group considers the DM 'just a player', and that the 'Rules are Supreme'. This type of DM looses the 'judgement' part of DMing and becomes a slave to the rules. So if page 45 says a character can do 'X', the DM just throws his hands up and says 'ok, we must follow the rules'.



Depends on what it is. For example, I certainly would not support doing this in an instance where "following the rules" creates something like Pun-Pun. On the other hand, I can think of numerous situations where "not following the rules" would be the same thing as "being a big jerk to your players because one of them can do something inconvenient."

[Hiro Protagonest]

You get warned for that and a troll doesn't get warned for trolling?

No. It's that you get a warning for flaming, while the troll, if the mods deem them a troll (they probably will if the OP never posts anything on topic in this thread again), will get a warning too.

All of those except for 5 are false, and if anything create more unbalance, while number 5 is the subject of Oberoni Fallacy.

[Diefje]

Can you spot which points are contradictory?

If you answered "d) Every point", you won a cookie



You want to up the magic, but lower the power. You want to cut the RP, but force RP for multiclassing. You want to stick to the rules, except the ones you disagree with... Etc etc etc

[Socratov]

if anything it would induce a complete party of warlocks... they don't really need stats anyway...

[Claudius Maximus]

If you're serious, you're a bad DM and I feel bad for your players.

Come one now, everyone being pathetic can be its own kind of fun.

And I don't like the gaming philosophy described here, but I think this is a bit far as a reaction. The troll comment too. I'd rather explain why this is a bad approach than insult the guy. And whether he's a troll is up to the mods.

[Doc Roc]

I has my own solution for these ills.

1) Sit down with your players and talk with them diplomatically about your expectations.
2) Involve them. People who are involved in something are a little less likely to try to poison it.
3) Be polite!
4) Be professional.
5) Have a plan to kill every encounter you make.

[Socratov]

I has my own solution for these ills.

1) Sit down with your players and talk with them diplomatically about your expectations.
snip for relevance

but, easy on the use of the skill: Diplomacy :smallamused:

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Thread locked for review. Both trolling and calling people trolls (or saying they are trolling) are against the Forum Rules here. While the former requires some judgment (and often people who disagree with the viewpoint jump to the wrong conclusion about it being trolling), the latter is easy to spot.