what have you learned as early adopters?

[CyberThread]

What has this edition taught you as a player or dm. With the unique status of being early adopters and not having everything at once?

[Beleriphon]

One thing I learned, you don't need everything at once. Totally unnecessary for everything to available to play the game.

[Fwiffo86]

Too many rules slow the game down. Not everything requires a rule to define it, especially for situational things.

[EugeneVoid]

That giantitp is becoming filled with Oberonis

[Selkirk]

Too many rules slow the game down. Not everything requires a rule to define it, especially for situational things.

yep...this....:smallcool:

[Theodoxus]

I've learned as a player:
1) Multiclassing is a trap in most cases. At least in regards to optimization. For character concepts or niches, it can certainly work. But straight class is nearly always better.
2) Magic items trivialize encounters. My first DM was a 3.5 enthusiast and felt bad for not providing magic items off the bat. My +1 plate mail at 2nd level left me unhittable. The rogues +2 shortbow slaughtered everything he shot at (yay for sneak attack!)
3) Swarms of monsters are bad mmm kay? Like, really bad. Doesn't matter if they have 1 hit point each or 100 - encounters are not trivial, even with magic items, when you're looking at 8-10 attacks a round. It's how my DM balanced his magic item mistake. It was brutal.

I've learned as a DM:
1) It's really easy to modify the game to where you want it to be. Creating new archetypes, weapons, spells, monsters, etc takes only a few minutes and modicum of system mastery.
2) Players are happiest when they understand that actions are limited by their imagination, not rules. Having everything being based on an attribute rather than skill opens up options.
3) Character development is no longer tied to magic item vision quests, but actual, you know, character development. Gaining a level is always exciting for the players as it opens up more options. It's not just a desire to do more damage or take more damage, but nifty things to do - and that don't require magic items to pull off. It's the corollary to the magic item trivializing everything - they're aren't needed, but when obtained, they're always special.

[Yagyujubei]

yep...this....:smallcool:

i agree as well. I'm firmly in the camp that having grey area is better for most situations, because you can decide how things should go on a case by case basis

[MaxWilson]

2) Magic items trivialize encounters. My first DM was a 3.5 enthusiast and felt bad for not providing magic items off the bat. My +1 plate mail at 2nd level left me unhittable. The rogues +2 shortbow slaughtered everything he shot at (yay for sneak attack!)


This. The other DM I play with has handed out a ton of magic items which resulted in the first few characters created in the campaign having ACs of 26+ (in spite of being a wizard!), and even later characters are by now walking around with +4 weapons that grant STR 29 or +4 and Sharpness and Magic Resistance, etc. From a story perspective this even makes sense, since these are Shieldbreaker/Townsaver/Soulcutter/etc. based on Saberhagen's Song of Swords (though not the same powers as Saberhagen's Swords) which we looted last week from a legendary archmage's ruined tower... but the net effect on the game is that our 8th-10th level characters slaughter anything that gets into melee with us, and most of the damage inflicted on the party thus far has actually come from traps and area effects, like invisible Prismatic Spheres in our path. (Again, storywise this is fine, after all it's an archmage's tower.) The combats that we do have tend to be heavily-enhanced creatures like Greater Nalfeshnees with AC 23 instead of 17, or Balors that emit 50 HP blasts of negative energy in a 60' radius. In short, while combats have not been trivialized, they have become very swingy and very short, 1-2 rounds usually. I almost wish we were playing without stats or miniatures entirely.

[Gurka]

The above posts are why I've mostly limited magic items to abilities and effects, with very few static numerical bonuses. The few that I have included are either attack or damage, none with both, and most of them are situational.

It's been both more interesting and has preserved balance.

[Yagyujubei]

yeah you really need to reign it in, my current longest running group is level 5 and the DM has handed out a single +1 longsword, and a few masterwork weapons. If you want the party to feel like they're getting really cool rewards for their hard work, then give them strange magical items that arent outright powerful in battle, but have interesting and fun applications elsewhere.

[MaxWilson]

Endless Decanter of Water FTW!

[Freelance GM]

Rules are a distraction- you're playing the game for fun. Don't worry what encounters are level-appropriate, and how many magic items your players should be getting- just tell the story you want to tell, and let the players play the role they want to play, and see how it goes.

It might go better than you think.