Why Spellcasters are Trouble in the Game

[bloodtide]

The simplest way to put it, is a disconnect between the designers of the game and the players of the game.

1.The designers all agreed on a ton of unwritten rules. Stuff that was 'common sense' to them. Stuff they thought was so common and so automatic that they thought that everyone in the world thought the same way they did about everything. So they saw no need to 'waste the space' in the rules telling people stuff that they already knew and did not feel the need to put in the common sense rules as everyone already knows them all anyway. It's typical group blindness, after all when everyone you know that players D&D follows all the same unwritten rules, you think that the whole world of gamers follows them too.

The game is designed around the concept that your playing the game with your absolute best friends in the world, who are all, of course, saints and angels as otherwise you would not be friends with them. This is more group blindness, were the designers always play with their best and most noble and good friends, and never have a problem. So, again, with the designers thinking that every player of D&D is a saint and angel, they saw no need to put in limiting rules. No saint gamer would ever look through all the monster books and find a powerful animal to wildshape into, after they get done volunteering at the shelter and come over to game, they will only wildshape into a handful of common animals like a bird or a fox. So no rule is needed there, as all gamers are good and noble.

2.The game is very much designed around the concept of Good. They fixated on the concept of 'Classical Good' for most of the game, and toned down anything 'bad' or 'evil'. This was not really there faults, though they likely went along with the idea, as this is more of a corporate thing. The suits what the game 'suitable for all ages'. But this is a slippery slope, as once you start to make everything 'rated E' you can quickly water down everything.



3.The game is designed around the concept of ''a group of good friends getting together to play a game''. So the whole game set up is just barley enough to cover play for a couple hours. The characters and the world come out of nowhere, pop in for the adventure, and then fade to nothingness. And as the world does not exist except for the couple hours, long term rules are not needed. So they did not need to take one whole page of the DMG to describe common teleport defenses, for example.


4.0E, 1E and 2E where harsh. Anyone who played them, especially in the 70's, 80's and 90's has had at least one 'bad experience.' And not just from bad DMs, but from harsh rules. For example 2E has the system shock roll, do something like change your shape and you might with a random dice roll kill your character. Lots of people think such rules are unfair and no fun, their character should be immortal or at least only die in 'epic story lines' and never with a random dice roll. So 3E with a huge brush got rid off all the 'negative' and 'harsh' things in D&D.

This also is the fault for the big 3E shift to make the DM 'just a player' and not in anyway 'the special one in control of the game'.

5.The designers suffered from a huge case of group think. Only if they could have had an ''average 5 year old'' look over some of the rules. I'm sure that kid could have spotted tons of things that the designers would never see. But, of course, even if the kid did point them out, it's doubtful they would have listened anyway. This also covers the idea that the designers are not optimizers at all and they did not have the foresight to look ahead to new additions to the game.


So, just my thoughts....

[Snowbluff]

Disconnection! Disconnect is a verb, disconnection is a noun. :smallfurious:

[Answerer]

You have made a staggering number of assertions with absolutely no evidence or reasoning. I don't think you are correct on quite a few of them.

[nedz]

I downloaded the module writers guide for 3.5 once (it may even still be around). What they were looking for was original new Feats, Monsters, Spells and even Classes. It was a requirement that new writers introduce such stuff if they wanted their articles published. There was no requirements about balance or even playability: just original ideas. Take a look at the old Dragon Magazine sometime.

[Aegis013]

The simplest way to put it, is a disconnection between the designers of the game and the players of the game.

1.The designers all agreed on a ton of unwritten rules. Stuff that was 'common sense' to them. Stuff they thought was so common and so automatic that they thought that everyone in the world thought the same way they did about everything those things. So they saw no need to 'waste the space' in the rules telling people stuff that they already knew and did not feel the need to put in the common sense rules as everyone already knows them all anyway. It's typical group blindness, after all when everyone you know that players in D&D follows all the same unwritten rules, you think that the whole world of gamers follows them too.

The game is designed around the concept that you're playing the game with your absolute best friends in the world, who are all, of course, saints and angels as otherwise you would not be friends with them. This is more group blindness, where the designers always play with their best and most noble and good friends, and never have a problem. So, again, with the designers, thinking that every player of D&D is a saint and an angel, they saw no need to put in limiting rules. No saint gamer would ever look through all the monster books and find a powerful animal to wildshape into. After they get done volunteering at the shelter and come over to game, they will only wildshape into a handful of common animals like a bird or a fox. So no rule is needed there, as all gamers are good and noble.

2.The game is very much designed around the concept of Good. They fixated on the concept of 'Classical Good' for most of the game, and toned down anything 'bad' or 'evil'. This was not really their faults, though they likely went along with the idea, as this is more of a corporate thing. This suits what the a game that is 'suitable for all ages'. But this is a slippery slope, as once you start to make everything 'rated E' you can quickly water down everything.



3.The game is designed around the concept of ''a group of good friends getting together to play a game''. So the whole game set up is just barley enough to cover play for a couple hours. The characters and the world come out of nowhere, pop in for the adventure, and then fade to nothingness. And As the world does not exist except for the couple hours, long term rules are not needed. So they did not need to take one whole page of the DMG to describe common teleport defenses, for example.


4.0E, 1E and 2E where harsh. Anyone who played them, especially in the 70's, 80's and 90's has had at least one 'bad experience.' And not just from bad DMs, but from harsh rules. For example 2E has the system shock roll, do something like change your shape and you might with a random dice roll kill your character. Lots of people think such rules are unfair and no fun, their character should be immortal or at least only die in 'epic story lines' and never with a random dice roll. So 3E with a huge brush got rid off all the 'negative' and 'harsh' things in D&D.

This also is the fault for the big 3E shift to make the DM 'just a player' and not in anyway 'the special one in control of the game'.

5.The designers suffered from a huge case of groupthink. Only if they could have had an ''average 5 year old'' look over some of the rules. I'm sure that kid could have spotted tons of things that the designers would never see. But, of course, even if the kid did point them out, it's doubtful they would have listened anyway. This also covers the idea that the designers are not optimizers at all and they did not have the foresight to look ahead to new additions to the game.


So, just my thoughts....

{{scrubbed}}

1. There is a limiting factor on wildshape, under the wildshape entry itself, in fact. It says you must have encountered the animal in question and had time to become familiar with it you must be familiar with the animal in question. This means the DM can say "What? The sorcerer turned it into a boiling puddle of ooze in six seconds, you didn't have time to familiarize yourself with that fleshraker." or "You've never encountered one of those before, ergo you can not wildshape into it." It's not the fault of the designers if this has been ignored in your groups.

2. That's because most people want to play the good guys. How would you "tone up" "evil" and "bad"? Considering the freedom the game offers, isn't it up to you and your imagination to make things as bad and dark as you want?

3. The game was designed around that, as the internet (in early editions) wasn't a commonly used method of group finding. However, this doesn't mean the world is there for a couple of hours and gone afterward. That's up to the DM, it sounds like you simply don't have a DM who invests very heavily into his setting. Still, not a fault of the designers. (unless you're referring to the "standard" setting, which I think you can blame Tolkien for as much so as the designers)

4. Making the game attractive to, in your words, "lots of people" sounds like good business sense to me. As far as lethality, your DM can increase that as well. However, people don't like to die randomly. Lots of groups skip early levels and start at 3 or 5 because the lowest levels in 3.5e are still too random for them.

5. I doubt an "average 5 year old" would have the reading comprehension skills, or the attention span, to get the know the rules, or have the mesh of creative and logical flair to introduce alternatives. You're simply critiquing "ivory-tower game design." You're accusing the writers of being closed-minded, but when they're developing a product, it's not that surprising they don't want to leak the entire product so that competitors might get a hold of it. Other people brought in can likely fall into your groupthink scenario, so unless you can propose a working alternative for something that has happened in the past and is already done, I'm not sure why you're so upset about it.

tl;dr If you don't like 3.5e, don't play it. I highly doubt you're being forced to play.

[JustPlayItLoud]

I don't really have anything to add, but I feel the need to point out that disconnect is a noun as well as a verb. A word can, in fact, function as more than one part of speech.

[SilverLeaf167]

Ok, you appear to me to be a troll, but I'll bite.

--snip--
He very well might be, I remember this guy arguing with... pretty much the whole board a couple times before.

[Jeraa]

1. There is a limiting factor on wildshape, under the wildshape entry itself, in fact. It says you must have encountered the animal in question and had time to become familiar with it. This means the DM can say "What? The sorcerer turned it into a boiling puddle of ooze in six seconds, you didn't have time to familiarize yourself with that fleshraker." or "You've never encountered one of those before, ergo you can not wildshape into it." It's not the fault of the designers if this has been ignored in your groups.

It says nothing about having to actually encounter one. You just have to be familiar with the creature you are turning into. That is what Knowledge (Nature) is for.

[Gnaeus]

1. There is a limiting factor on wildshape, under the wildshape entry itself, in fact. It says you must have encountered the animal in question and had time to become familiar with it.

Uh, it doesn't actually say that. The SRD says:
"The form chosen must be that of an animal the druid is familiar with."

Exactly what that means is a house rule/dm interpretation. It could be as easy as a knowledge nature check. It never says you must have encountered the animal.

[Snowbluff]

He very well might be, I remember this guy arguing with... pretty much the whole board a couple times before.

Well, he used the word "Disconnect" incorrectly, and didn't acknwoledge that evil has all the best things (Assassins, Ur Priests). Labeled trolled, /ignored.

[Aegis013]

It says nothing about having to actually encounter one. You just have to be familiar with the creature you are turning into. That is what Knowledge (Nature) is for.

Only if your DM allows you to use Knowledge(nature) as a substitute. Knowing vaguely that a bear exists because someone told you, or you heard about a 15 foot tall brown furry creature with teeth and claws might not be enough to wildshape into a bear. Either way, it's DM turf thanks to the clause.

[SilverLeaf167]

Well, he used the word "Disconnect" incorrectly, and didn't acknwoledge that evil has all the best things (Assassins, Ur Priests). Labeled trolled, /ignored.
I think you should have painted that "Disconnect" rant in blue for sarcasm. :smallwink: The rest is true though.
Unless you are trolly enough to actually get angry about that.

[Snowbluff]

Only if your DM allows you to use Knowledge(nature) as a substitute. Knowing vaguely that a bear exists because someone told you, or you heard about a 15 foot tall brown furry creature with teeth and claws might not be enough to wildshape into a bear. Either way, it's DM turf thanks to the clause.

Though it might be funny to see a Druid mess up that check and turn into a really messed up bear-like-thing. :smalltongue:

[Aegis013]

Edited my previous post, since you gentlemen are correct it doesn't say you actually need to have encountered it.

[Xiander]

It says nothing about having to actually encounter one. You just have to be familiar with the creature you are turning into. That is what Knowledge (Nature) is for.

An interesting point to debate is what is takes to be familiar with an animal? Do you need to have read about it? Seen it? Touched it? Dissected it? Or is it enough to have gotten a thorough description from the odd traveling merchant who saw one in a circus once?



Edit: Wow! swordsaged... Hard.

[Gnaeus]

Only if your DM allows you to use Knowledge(nature) as a substitute. Knowing vaguely that a bear exists because someone told you, or you heard about a 15 foot tall brown furry creature with teeth and claws might not be enough to wildshape into a bear. Either way, it's DM turf thanks to the clause.

True, but Knowledge (nature) is the skill the game uses to determine how much you know about natural things. It presumably is less a matter of knowing that bears exist (which would be a DC 10 untrained check) and more like knowing what bears eat, where they live, their role in the food chain, their life cycle, their behaviors etc. Potentially (given the stupid high ranks in Know Nature most druids sport) a lot more knowledge than anyone could get with a casual encounter with an animal.

And of course, you can always SUMMON a bear, and examine it. This is harder for other animals.

[Snowbluff]

I think you should have painted that "Disconnect" rant in blue for sarcasm. :smallwink: The rest is true though.
Unless you are trolly enough to actually get angry about that.

Are you trolling me? I actually don't like it when people screw up grammar. Normally it's fine, but mixing up Nouns with Verbs is just so basic that I- *sigh* I don't want to live on this planet anymore, lol. :smalltongue:

[PersonMan]

Disconnection! Disconnect is a verb, disconnection is a noun. :smallfurious:


Well, he used the word "Disconnect" incorrectly, and didn't acknwoledge that evil has all the best things (Assassins, Ur Priests). Labeled trolled, /ignored.

Ahem. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disconnect?s=t)

Relevant section:


— n
2. a lack of a connection; disconnection: a disconnect between political discourse and the public

---

On topic, I think I agree with Answerer. Point 5 is the only one that, IMO, has any real substance. The rest I either can't comment on (0-3e) or disagree with.

[Snowbluff]

Ahem. (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disconnect?s=t)

Relevant section:



Holy crap, that wasn't their the last time I checked it XD

[SilverLeaf167]

Hey, some people have trouble with grammar...

Well, he used the word "Disconnect" incorrectly, and didn't acknwoledge that evil has all the best things (Assassins, Ur Priests). Labeled trolled, /ignored.

Holy crap, that wasn't their the last time I checked it XD

Are you trolling me? I actually don't like it when people screw up grammar. Normally it's fine, but mixing up Nouns with Verbs is just so basic that I- *sigh* I don't want to live on this planet anymore, lol. :smalltongue:
...and some with spelling. :smallamused:

[Snowbluff]

Hey, some people have trouble with grammar...



...and some with spelling. :smallamused:

Lol, I'm better at grammar IRL, since I type too fast. It doesn't translate from my brain to my hands. I do know it was meant to be "there" but I am just realy lousy at typing in general. :smallbiggrin:

EDIT: See!? I did it again!

[SilverLeaf167]

Back on topic though...

bloodtide, troll or not, you base all of 3.5's balance problems with casters on a couple assumptions about what kind of people the designers were. Even if they had some faulty logic and playtesting, these were definitely not the only reasons (I doubt most of them are reasons at all): there was honestly other stuff, such as personal bias (I think a designer wrote about how he hated Sorcerers, though that isn't related to this specific problem), tradition and tropes.

[killem2]

After getting past grammar nazis, (seriously guys, who gives a ****), I have to say that brokeness is in the eye of the spell caster.

If you play it like a powergamer its going to be a powerful game breaking class.

It's all I got.

[Kerrin]

Group-Think can be a real problem that crops up. I've had it happen in groups at work, myself included.

For a fairly clear game related example, years ago I used to play the board game Blood Bowl. The Games Workshop designers at the time had overlooked how hideously fatal the fouling assist rules could be if used to their full potential. Even after the game was released they didn't realize it until someone from outside the design team joined their in-house league and used that tactic against them. The game turned from possessing the ball and scoring points into ignoring the ball and injuring the other team's players until there weren't enough left to compete in the second half of the game.

The problem was the game's designers never played that "style" of game against each other. Heck, I never spotted the problem myself until someone played that style of game against me.

This was easily addressed out in the real world by players almost unanimously implementing a common house rule to cap the benefit from fouling assists.

Considering how fast optimizers can analyze games and find completely broken things, I'm surprised game companies don't hire some of them to analyze their game rules before they're shipped. It might reduce the size of the game's errata.

Similarly, I'm surprised game companies don't have people who have never seen the game in question before playtest the game to reveal many of the annoyingly confusing and unclear things in the rules. It might reduce the size fo the game's FAQ and how many player aids players end up having to create for themselves.

[Optimator]

It's 2012. We know this.

[bloodtide]

Ok, you appear to me to be a troll, but I'll bite.

Not a Troll(just any time anyone disagrees with something they call Troll. This is very common on one side out there, it happens with the president all the time, for example.)



1. There is a limiting factor on wildshape, under the wildshape entry itself, in fact. It says you must have encountered the animal in question and had time to become familiar with it you must be familiar with the animal in question.

That is still only half the problem as you can wildshape into powerful creatures and get all their stuff.



2. That's because most people want to play the good guys. How would you "tone up" "evil" and "bad"? Considering the freedom the game offers, isn't it up to you and your imagination to make things as bad and dark as you want?


With the more modern views of good and evil, they could have at least added something.





3. The game was designed around that, as the internet (in early editions) wasn't a commonly used method of group finding. However, this doesn't mean the world is there for a couple of hours and gone afterward. That's up to the DM, it sounds like you simply don't have a DM who invests very heavily into his setting. Still, not a fault of the designers. (unless you're referring to the "standard" setting, which I think you can blame Tolkien for as much so as the designers)

The whole Core Game is biased around the idea of 'a group of good friends getting together and have some fun playing a game'. And more so 'just an adventure' too. That is why there are no rules for anything else.




4. Making the game attractive to, in your words, "lots of people" sounds like good business sense to me. As far as lethality, your DM can increase that as well. However, people don't like to die randomly. Lots of groups skip early levels and start at 3 or 5 because the lowest levels in 3.5e are still too random for them.

It's not just the lethality. Any kind of negative drawback is a good thing. In 3.5 you can polymorph all the time, as it has no negative effect. But in 2E you had to be careful, every time you changed your shape you could have something bad happen. So it's not that you never used the power, you were just careful about it and only used it when you really need it. It's not like your randomly rolling a dice to randomly kill a character...that player is choosing to risk using a powerful spell or ability. If you add in the 2E penalty for Gate, aging five years, 'suddenly' players will avoid using that spell.




5. I doubt an "average 5 year old" would have the reading comprehension skills, or the attention span, to get the know the rules, or have the mesh of creative and logical flair to introduce alternatives. You're simply critiquing "ivory-tower game design." You're accusing the writers of being closed-minded, but when they're developing a product, it's not that surprising they don't want to leak the entire product so that competitors might get a hold of it. Other people brought in can likely fall into your groupthink scenario, so unless you can propose a working alternative for something that has happened in the past and is already done, I'm not sure why you're so upset about it.

The ''average 5 year old'' is from the Evil Overlord list(haha)

To say the designers are closed minded is not right, i'm sure they are open to things, but as they filter everything to what they think, the new ideas don't matter much.

If you work at a big company, you will see groupthink all the time. Say the core rules are being made and teleport is written. Everyone looks it over and says 'great spell'. Yet no one could take a second to say ''well wait, then you can teleport any and everywhere''. But you don't see that in the rules, everyone in the groupthink missed that.

[Aegis013]

Not a Troll(just any time anyone disagrees with something they call Troll. This is very common on one side out there, it happens with the president all the time, for example.)

I say you appear to me to be a troll, because this doesn't look like it is intended to produce real, productive discussion, but rather spark meaningless argument. It's not necessarily because I don't agree with you. There are some things that I think you have legitimate concerns about, but don't know why you would bring them up here, in this venue, without additional examples or proposed alternatives.


That is still only half the problem as you can wildshape into powerful creatures and get all their stuff.

So, offering the players something really cool that can be really powerful and expecting the DM to keep things in line is only dealing with half the problem? Can you propose a suitable alternative? I honestly like this method, as long as there is no miscommunication between the wildshaping player and the DM.


With the more modern views of good and evil, they could have at least added something.

Like what? Can you offer an example?


The whole Core Game is biased around the idea of 'a group of good friends getting together and have some fun playing a game'. And more so 'just an adventure' too. That is why there are no rules for anything else.

Yes, but you ought to not judge the game based soley on core. You're excluding a huge part of the game by doing so, an analogy might be "I don't like monopoly because sometimes I have to draw chance cards. Because I sometimes have to draw chance cards, the entire game is crap."

It still falls to the DM to make the setting come alive and be interesting. If you would like to propose something for this, I'd be interesting in hearing it, but unless you have something in mind, I don't understand what the problem is.


It's not just the lethality. Any kind of negative drawback is a good thing. In 3.5 you can polymorph all the time, as it has no negative effect. But in 2E you had to be careful, every time you changed your shape you could have something bad happen. So it's not that you never used the power, you were just careful about it and only used it when you really need it. It's not like your randomly rolling a dice to randomly kill a character...that player is choosing to risk using a powerful spell or ability. If you add in the 2E penalty for Gate, aging five years, 'suddenly' players will avoid using that spell.

That's simply your opinion. As a company attempting to make a profit from producing a game, making it attractive to the largest target audience who will still purchase it (especially as the biggest name pen-and-paper table top) is still simply good business sense. If you want more negative drawbacks, houserule some. Propose alternatives.


The ''average 5 year old'' is from the Evil Overlord list(haha)

To say the designers are closed minded is not right, i'm sure they are open to things, but as they filter everything to what they think, the new ideas don't matter much.

If you work at a big company, you will see groupthink all the time. Say the core rules are being made and teleport is written. Everyone looks it over and says 'great spell'. Yet no one could take a second to say ''well wait, then you can teleport any and everywhere''. But you don't see that in the rules, everyone in the groupthink missed that.

Ok. So you have a problem with teleport and other spells? Propose alternatives. Ban them outright. Lots of people use houserules because this system is something a bunch of guys got together and went "This seems like a fun framework of rules that we have fun playing together, let's try to make a profit by selling it to others." If you don't like everything, but like some things, you can keep some things and change other things. It's part of the reason games like this (meaning pen-and-paper table top games in general) are so wonderful.

If you don't like 3.5, you don't have to play it.

[navar100]

I don't have any problem with spellcasters at all. Tough noogies.

3E works just fine for me, and Pathfinder managed to improve it. Tough noogies.

Players in my group play and enjoy two-weapon using fighters and monks even in the same party as clerics, wizards, and druids. Tough noogies.

[Red_Dog]

I have no stake or quarry in this argument.
My personal opinion is that DMs should discuss with the players all the rule adjustments and effectively make a set of variant rules. Want one without T1&T2s? sure why not, just make sure that all players agree on this.

Heck I would really love to play in a campaign of all T4-T5s. With little to no UMD available. But that's what I like, not what everyone likes.

So with this in mind=>


With the more modern views of good and evil, they could have at least added something.

{{scrubbed}}

In regards to this question, The game designers did what any sane person would do => Try making money.

As much as I love "morally gray worlds", they had no choice but to make it in this way. I used to be mad about that and all the lazing writing. But now I get it = > 3.5 has enough splat books to make a "Gray World" of your own design. Make your own stories and fluff. I am sure everyone is capable of creativity ^^.

[Dsurion]

tl;dr bloodtide holds strong opinions and thinks he's right.

[Thorcrest]

Yes, but you ought to not judge the game based soley on core. You're excluding a huge part of the game by doing so, an analogy might be "I don't like monopoly because sometimes I have to draw chance cards. Because I sometimes have to draw chance cards, the entire game is crap."

Actually... I would say this is a bad analogy. Core IS an entire game, all of the other rules are supplements/different settings/optional additional material/etc. To use Monopoly, your example would be: "Don't judge Monopoly on just regular Monopoly. You can play things like Star Wars Monopoly, Super Monopoly, EdnaKrabapoly, etc."

If you judge the game on the core rules alone, that is sufficient to make a judgement of the CORE game. Making a judgment of 3.5 on Supplements alone is not.

[Aegis013]

Actually... I would say this is a bad analogy. Core IS an entire game, all of the other rules are supplements/different settings/optional additional material/etc. To use Monopoly, your example would be: "Don't judge Monopoly on just regular Monopoly. You can play things like Star Wars Monopoly, Super Monopoly, EdnaKrabapoly, etc."

If you judge the game on the core rules alone, that is sufficient to make a judgement of the CORE game. Making a judgment of 3.5 on Supplements alone is not.

That makes sense, thanks for pointing that out.

[Red_Dog]

Thorcrest=>

Just want to make a comment, that while, I agree that judging the system by core is a decent way to put it, I would at least suggest judging it by Rules Compendium. It just explains quite a few things better than the core does. I think of that book as an errata which is part of the original Core more than anything else.
[I also feel that it was bad for them to charge money for a book of an Errata >_> but that's just me ^^]

[Fatebreaker]

Howdy, Bloodtide!

I'm going to offer you some friendly advice. No, not "internet friendly advice," which is usually some thinly-veiled insult offered up in passive-aggressive language, but real, honest-to-God friendly advice which will help you in all your future endeavors.

It seems to me, given both your previous posts and this one, that the topics you discuss here are of some importance to you. But it also seems like you're not really being taken seriously, and I'm sure you're tired of being called a troll. So how about we look at ways for you to express yourself on topics you care about in a way which people will take seriously?

See, I'm going to talk to you about the concept of a "thesis." You might have heard of it before. People pay a lot of money to go to college and learn how to write a thesis. Since you are not paying me a lot of money, I will only be giving you the highlights. Hey, I said this was friendly advice, not a charity.

A thesis is basically the point you are trying to make. In an academic sense, it's a document of research and findings, usually used to garner some level of academic recognition. It's a thing you have to write before they give you a fancy piece of paper which says that you can write a thing which rewards you with a fancy piece of paper. But for our purposes, the "point you are trying to make" vibe works well enough.

Look at your thread title. "Why Spellcasters are Trouble in the Game." Now look at your original post. Notice that you never actually tell us anything about spellcasters in particular, let alone tell us why they are trouble in the game. Right off the bat, that's trouble. Anyone who doesn't agree with your title has not been given any new information to bring them around to your side. Anyone who wants to learn why spellcasters are trouble in the game has, likewise, come no closer to the truth you are trying to impart. The problem here is that you are no longer a credible source of information -- after all, you seem entirely unable to understand what the subject of your own thread is. Notice the people calling you a troll? It might have something to do with making such a sweeping, unsubstantiated, provocative claim.

So, Thesis 101: If you are trying to make a point, then make that point.

Now, since you never talked about spellcasters in a thread supposedly about spellcasters, let's look at the subjects you do bring up, and what you could have done differently to actually make the point put forth by your title.

Your first subject, that of "unwritten rules," is actually a very valid point. All games have unwritten rules. Even "Rock / Paper / Scissor" presumes that one participant is not going to start knifing the other players. Game designers are becoming more aware of this, or at least, I've begun to see more games which have a "heart-to-heart" section somewhere near the very front or the very back of the book where the developers talk to the players about how the game is meant to be played. It's a positive trend which I'd like to see more of.

However, you immediately go from a very valid point about games having unwritten rules to ranting about how the designers presume that all players are "saints and angels" and people only play with their "absolute best friends in the world." There are several problems with this.

First, you cannot hold the game or the designers accountable for who you choose to play with. That is entirely on you. Arguing that the designers are responsible for something over which they have no control only hurts your overall argument and makes it difficult for readers to take you seriously. You appear to be angry and hurt, and unable to deal with your own poor decisions. Again, this hurts your credibility, not only because you suddenly appear to have an agenda, but also because it questions whether your problems with spellcasters are actually problems with spellcasters, or just problems with the folks at your particular table.

Second, who you play with is in many ways irrelevant to your overall argument. Certainly, if you have a problem player (or if you are the problem player), then that will influence your experiences with the game, but that says nothing about the intrinsic merits and flaws of spellcasters as a mechanical means of expressing a conceptual intention. It only invites in people who disagree with you, but cannot prove it via the system in question. Now, their personal group is a legitimate "proof" that you are wrong, because you brought it up in the first place. Navar100 makes an excellent example of this -- he insists, in a very combative fashion, that his group has either (depending on your point of view) failed to find or succeeded at avoiding the flaws of the system, and he does so in a way which contributes no helpful information (such as ways to fix spellcasters). But, rather than being an irrelevant "nu-uh!" he is suddenly a legitimate counter-argument, because you framed the argument in such a way that you legitimize it.

Sidenote: I don't mean to pick on you, Navar100, but your rebuttal was a short and convenient example. I hope you realize that I'm referring to how framing a discussion inherently alters what information becomes relevant or irrelevant in the context of that particular discussion. I am not claiming that you and your experiences are irrelevant in general. Congrats to you on not falling victim to 3.x's flaws, and happy gaming!

So, as I hope you can now see, your first point not only fails to advance your thesis of spellcasters being problematic, but it actually hinders your ability to make further legitimate points. It also makes it much easier for people who disagree with you to do so in a way you cannot defend against!

Your second overall point is simply totally irrelevant. The morality of the campaign is largely up to you and your party, and as such holds no weight when criticizing the system as a whole (see the flaws with first subject). If you're talking about the alignment system, well, that applies to characters of all classes, and without a more specific argument on your part, in no way demonstrates a flaw of spellcasters. Maybe if you compared "good" spells and "bad" spells and showed how it was mathematically superior to be evil than good, and then argued that an evil wizard in a good party leads to party conflict, and how that hinders the fun of the players, well, maybe then you'd have a point, but you don't do that. Remember: If you're trying to advance a point, you need to connect your supporting arguments back to that point. Otherwise they're not supporting arguments.

Your third point is a rehash of your first point, but in a different fashion, and with all the same weaknesses. For example, to put myself in the position in which I placed Navar100 earlier, my group has long term games and long-term rules all that time. So there.

See how unhelpful that rebuttal is? But it's totally legit, because instead of phrasing your argument in a fashion which focuses on subjects which benefit you, you've framed the discussion in the context of individual groups of players, which you cannot defend against. A more relevant argument might have been to point out how, in older editions, fighters leveled up faster than wizards, and then explaining how that benefits long-term play, as compared to 3.x, where fighters and wizards receive unequal rewards for equal experience.

Your fourth point still doesn't support your thesis (protip: pattern recognition is awesome), and now you're arguing that the game should be arbitrarily harder at random times. This could be a valid argument in support of your topic (ex: in Dark Heresy, being a psyker means AWESOME POWER... and a slight chance of exploding), but you describe the trend of fewer and fewer random consequences in such a way that it applies to all characters of all classes, rendering it irrelevant. It may be a fascinating subject in its own right, but it does nothing to support your main point about spellcasters in particular.

Like number one, number five is a very valid point! Unfortunately, you don't draw it back to your thesis of "Why Spellcasters are Trouble in the Game," so your valid point goes entirely to waste.

If you want to discuss why the mechanics of spellcasters have negative effects on the system of play, you should discuss that. I look forward to reading a revised draft of your argument, complete with a tighter focus and relevant supporting points.

--

TL;DR: I like the parts where he doesn't support his original point.

Edit: Zounds! Spelling and grammatical errors! I shall now do the dance of shame.

[Nich_Critic]

There are two problems in my mind, and they have to do with the two "real" currencies of dnd - actions and options.

With actions, Spellcasters take the cake. Even in core, they have quicken spell (and no swift actions means other classes have no real equivalent). They have timestop. They have slow, stinking cloud, summon monster, grease, and many other spells I'm forgetting, all of whose purpose is to give the wizard more actions, or remove the enemies actions. If the enemy can't act, they lose. If they act less then you, they lose (all else equal)

For options, Spellcasters also take the cake. If Fighters could retrain their feats daily, they might come close (not really), but a wizard being able to change their spells makes them the king of options. If something isn't working today, they can regroup tomorrow with a completely different set of tactics. The fighter, who usually focuses on one thing to be competent, often hits a wall where their one trick stops working. And because of feat chains, trying to be good at many things is doomed to failure (and I'm not talking about "worse then a wizard" failure, I'm talking about "unable to hit except on a 20" failure, or worse, not able to attack at all).

How could you fix it? Well, the concepts are kind of broken from the start. It's hard to conceptualize what a 10th level fighter is supposed to be, narrative wise. He's past the point where mundane persons could hope to hurt him, but he's not really special or magical unless he has magic weapons. One way is to do the tomb of battle thing, and give them legitimate magic of their own. The other option is to tone down casters. I would really like to see a return to the day when spellcasting was dangerous. I think, even at level 20, casting a 9th level spell should always carry some risk, or have some cost. Stopping time as a standard action shouldn't be free.

[Lonely Tylenol]

Spoilering the grammar silliness.

On the issue of grammar:

Ironically, I believe the false accusations regarding the word "disconnect" bothered me far worse than anything else in this thread. Not only is disconnect a commonly accepted use of the word, it is also commonly used in many circles (have you ever heard newscasters talking about "the disconnect" between politicians and the voters, or "the disconnect" between the super-rich and, well, everyone else?). Not only was it a correct form of the word, but it was the correct form of the word--meaning that everyone who suggested otherwise was actively hampering his speech.

More importantly, if you're going to harangue people because of their spelling and grammar, make sure yours don't have any glaring flaws, and if they do, remember that your own spelling and grammar aren't without flaws and think twice about what you'd think if someone else attacked your spelling and grammar. Annoying, isn't it? :smallannoyed:

I don't generally point out spelling or grammar mistakes, but I make it a point to point out spelling and grammar mistakes of people who point out spelling and grammar mistakes. I challenge you to do the same for me: even when I post from a phone (as I am now), I proofread everything, as an English-tutor-turning-teacher should.

As for the topic at hand:

I believe one of the key problems is splatbook interaction, at least as far as combinations of spells are concerned. Sure, sometimes spell interactions are particularly powerful on their own (Planar Binding and Magic Circle Against X are like chocolate and peanut butter, and the Polymorph line is an ice-cream sundae all on its own), but for the most part, what the designers often fail to look at is how this spell from obscure splatbook X/campaign setting Y/compendium Z (for revisions) is going to interact with previously published books (or with books published later). After all, the "dragon-killer" Shivering Touch/Spectral Hand combo involves a core spell working within its stated boundaries to deliver a decidedly non-core spell. Yes, the broken spell in the combo was and is Shivering Touch, but do you honestly think that the designers could have foreseen something like Shivering Touch ever existing when they created Spectral Hand? Do you believe that any of the designers of Frostburn looked combed through the core books (much less the whole series) to find the one spell that may interact with it in a disproportionately good fashion? Likely not. Even some of the clearly inherently broken spells and abilities (let's use Polymorph and Wild Shape/Animal Companion here) are mostly so because of their open-ended ness and splatbook interaction; after all, after they printed those spells and class features in 3.5 core (ignoring previous versions), they printed more than a half dozen books devoted entirely to providing more creatures that they interact with (Monster Manuals II-V, Fiend Folios I & II, Draconomicon... How many others am I missing?). Do you think that, when they created the Fleshraker, they were thinking about what would happen if you Wildshaped into it? Or when they created the Tanar'ri, they were thinking about how many people would cast Planar Binding on it, instead of seeing it as another set of beings to encounter and bludgeon to death?

The same, ostensibly, goes for feats, class abilities, items, and so on. How many designers do you think intuitively thought of Nightsticks (Libris Mortis) and Persistent Spell (some Faerûn splat) when they created Divine Metamagic, or vice-versa? (I honestly can't recall which books each are in, or which came first!) More to the point: how many players, as part of the whole, do you think intuitively come up with this combination of obscure feats and items? ("Intuitively", of course, meaning "disregarding those who were explicitly told about the combo by someone else, or had it explained to them".) Obviously the answer is "at least one", or we wouldn't be having this discussion, and obviously the ability to search out other peoples' efforts online helps greatly (a departure from previous editions during their respective releases), but I highly doubt that the answer of people that just know these things, in terms of percentages, is higher than "very, very low".

If the D&D designers really wanted balance, they'd need to look over every previous release with a fine-toothed comb every time they release a new book (a process that becomes cumulatively more exhaustive as more books are published), to account for every possible broken combo and loop they possibly can. Hell, even if they had narrowed down their search to "spells and effects that have categories of things that they can affect", such as "spells that create monsters", or "spells that call monsters", or "spells that affect the viability of a certain category of spells", such as "Range: Touch" and "Spell Residtance: Yes"), they would have caught a lot of the common problems that just kept compounding on themselves (I mean, sure, they would have missed things like Enlarged Solid Fog/Maximized Vortex of Teeth, or other variants of such, but I think I can forgive that indiscretion). Unfortunately, they didn't.

If you want a fast and dirty rule on how to spot-weld the worst problems away, however, you now know that the first thing to look for is probably going to be "spells and abilities that affect other categories of spells and abilities". For instance, Spectral Hand affects the category of "Range: Touch" spells, Divine Metamagic affects the category of Metamagic feats, and Polymorph affects the category of all monsters under 15 Hit Dice. You can then decide for yourself which end the brokenness is coming out of.

EDIT: Can I just say, by the way, that the English tutor, the reasoning thinker, and pretty much every other part of me fell in love with Fatebreaker over that last post?

[navar100]

Sidenote: I don't mean to pick on you, Navar100, but your rebuttal was a short and convenient example. I hope you realize that I'm referring to how framing a discussion inherently alters what information becomes relevant or irrelevant in the context of that particular discussion. I am not claiming that you and your experiences are irrelevant in general. Congrats to you on not falling victim to 3.x's flaws, and happy gaming!


No problemo.

[Engine]

This also is the fault for the big 3E shift to make the DM 'just a player' and not in anyway 'the special one in control of the game'.

Just wish to say something about this.
Fault? IMHO, hardly so. I will never tire to say, without the DM there's no game. But the same is true without the players. So no, the DM isn't so special compared to the players. She's just a player, just one with different duties than the others at the table.

[Thorcrest]

Thorcrest=>

Just want to make a comment, that while, I agree that judging the system by core is a decent way to put it, I would at least suggest judging it by Rules Compendium. It just explains quite a few things better than the core does. I think of that book as an errata which is part of the original Core more than anything else.
[I also feel that it was bad for them to charge money for a book of an Errata >_> but that's just me ^^]

By all means, feel free to judge whatever parts of 3.5 and whichever books you wish, but if you are to judge the system purely by the system rules, that is acceptable, whether it is the Core books or the Rules Compendium, as long as the base of the game is judged and not merely a supplement or claiming the game is poor because of a supplement. In essence, my post was simply to explain why that was not a suitable analogy.

Note: I forget if I have even read the Rules Compendium anymore, probably a few years ago if I did, since I usually just go by the Core Books and look over any other supplementary books when they are brought into play by either myself or another member of my group.

[Rejusu]

1. Heaven forbid they design a game with the intention you play it with your friends.

Seriously the faults of players and DM's alike cannot and should not be attributed to the system itself. Especially since the system can't do anything to prevent a bad DM from introducing a load of crazy house rules. As for players abusing the system? Well that's what the DM is for, to step in and prevent that sort of thing.

Either way this is not a problem with the game, it's a problem with the people you play with. The solution is to find a better group to game with, or work out the issues in your current group.

2. Purely subjective, especially since evil is pretty powerful in 3.5. See Ur-priest for an example of this. Good gets more of the spotlight, but evil is pretty plentiful.

3. Once again, you say this as if there's a problem with designing a game to be played by friends. Setting up the world for the long-haul is the DM's job. The various resources provide ample material for doing so. However when they don't the DM can always fill in the gaps on their own. At some point you need to draw a line on how much detail to include though. All the major stuff should be there, but frankly there's no point wasting space with all the little details that can easily be worked out by a competent DM. No one needs a table describing how long it takes to cook various types of meat.

Yes I know teleport defences are a bit more important, but again it's something that can easily be filled in by the DM. Don't want the party to just teleport into the BBEGs lair? Teleport scrambler, any attempts to teleport in are thrown a random distance off course.

4. Again subjective. Harsh rules don't automatically make a system better, a lot of people would argue they make them worse. The worst kind are the completely arbitrary things that can kill you outright and have nothing much you can do about them. It's also a bit ridiculous to say 3.5 got rid of all of them and it's frankly false. A lucky crit from a random Orc can outright kill you at level one, not to mention the amount of save or suck/die rolls there are. A random dice roll can still just as easily kill you in 3.5, now there's just less annoying and arbitrary ones.

I don't know what kind of D&D you're playing, but a 3.5 DM is still just as much a god as DM's have ever been. This part is just blatantly untrue.

5. The average five year old would get bored before the end of the first page and would struggle over all the long words and then proceed to doodle a moustache on the barbarian illustration.

Though oddly enough this is the only one of your points that has merit. When creating anything it's impossible to see all the faults yourself. Wizards could do with doing more external playtesting on D&D before launching a new product. As well as getting someone with no D&D experience, as fresh eyes often reveal the most as they don't have any preconceptions.

[Malachei]

The simplest way to put it, is a disconnect between the designers of the game and the players of the game.

1.The designers all agreed on a ton of unwritten rules. Stuff that was 'common sense' to them. Stuff they thought was so common and so automatic that they thought that everyone in the world thought the same way they did about everything. So they saw no need to 'waste the space' in the rules telling people stuff that they already knew and did not feel the need to put in the common sense rules as everyone already knows them all anyway. It's typical group blindness, after all when everyone you know that players D&D follows all the same unwritten rules, you think that the whole world of gamers follows them too.

The game is designed around the concept that your playing the game with your absolute best friends in the world, who are all, of course, saints and angels as otherwise you would not be friends with them. This is more group blindness, were the designers always play with their best and most noble and good friends, and never have a problem. So, again, with the designers thinking that every player of D&D is a saint and angel, they saw no need to put in limiting rules. No saint gamer would ever look through all the monster books and find a powerful animal to wildshape into, after they get done volunteering at the shelter and come over to game, they will only wildshape into a handful of common animals like a bird or a fox. So no rule is needed there, as all gamers are good and noble.

2.The game is very much designed around the concept of Good. They fixated on the concept of 'Classical Good' for most of the game, and toned down anything 'bad' or 'evil'. This was not really there faults, though they likely went along with the idea, as this is more of a corporate thing. The suits what the game 'suitable for all ages'. But this is a slippery slope, as once you start to make everything 'rated E' you can quickly water down everything.



3.The game is designed around the concept of ''a group of good friends getting together to play a game''. So the whole game set up is just barley enough to cover play for a couple hours. The characters and the world come out of nowhere, pop in for the adventure, and then fade to nothingness. And as the world does not exist except for the couple hours, long term rules are not needed. So they did not need to take one whole page of the DMG to describe common teleport defenses, for example.


4.0E, 1E and 2E where harsh. Anyone who played them, especially in the 70's, 80's and 90's has had at least one 'bad experience.' And not just from bad DMs, but from harsh rules. For example 2E has the system shock roll, do something like change your shape and you might with a random dice roll kill your character. Lots of people think such rules are unfair and no fun, their character should be immortal or at least only die in 'epic story lines' and never with a random dice roll. So 3E with a huge brush got rid off all the 'negative' and 'harsh' things in D&D.

This also is the fault for the big 3E shift to make the DM 'just a player' and not in anyway 'the special one in control of the game'.

5.The designers suffered from a huge case of group think. Only if they could have had an ''average 5 year old'' look over some of the rules. I'm sure that kid could have spotted tons of things that the designers would never see. But, of course, even if the kid did point them out, it's doubtful they would have listened anyway. This also covers the idea that the designers are not optimizers at all and they did not have the foresight to look ahead to new additions to the game.


So, just my thoughts....

While I disagree with some of your statements... what is wrong with 1.-4. ?

Actually, every RPG has a lot of unwritten rules. Otherwise, the rulebooks would be really unwieldy, and people (like you?) would complain that they have to pay for / read / deal with all these really redundant explanations of common-sense aspects.

If you want D&D rules to be balanced and explicitly cover all aspects for a chaotic evil party of players who are not friendly to each other then perhaps a more restricted environment (multiplayer computer game) may be what you are looking for. Or maybe not.

[Snowbluff]

tl;dr bloodtide holds strong opinions and thinks he's right.

Also, his primary fallacy is that he assumes too much.