Why play Core only?

[Arael666]

I keep seeing people who only want to play/dm a core game... it puzzles me, what benefit can you have in playing core only? what purpose would this rule fulfil?

I know some of the "wrong" reasons like the "core is more balanced" or "supplements are overpowered", feel free to list those if you guys think it's not an obvious reason, but what I'm looking for are legit reasons as to why a group of people would play a Core Only Game.

[Flickerdart]

"Core is easily available" is usually the argument made, but the SRD contains way more than just Core, and WotC's published a lot of stuff online for free.

"Everyone knows Core" is the only argument I've seen that I find even remotely convincing. While not everyone has overarching mastery of the entire 3.5 canon, most people are familiar with the ins and outs of what every build possible with the core three books can do. So there are no surprises of the "PC X found a powerful feat in splat Y that the DM didn't prepare for and now the party is dicing up the BBEG into kebabs ten levels early" variety. In this situation, everyone knows that fighters have nothing to take past level 12, and that rogues are weak against half the monster manual, and simply pick the appropriately powered options for the campaign that they are in.

[The Insaniac]

If the DM is new or there are a lot of new players, core only works to limit the number of options that people need to work through. Might not be the best way to limit options but is is a clean and simple one.

[Arael666]

"Everyone knows Core" is the only argument I've seen that I find even remotely convincing. While not everyone has overarching mastery of the entire 3.5 canon, most people are familiar with the ins and outs of what every build possible with the core three books can do. So there are no surprises of the "PC X found a powerful feat in splat Y that the DM didn't prepare for and now the party is dicing up the BBEG into kebabs ten levels early" variety. In this situation, everyone knows that fighters have nothing to take past level 12, and that rogues are weak against half the monster manual, and simply pick the appropriately powered options for the campaign that they are in.

Ok, I can see that as a reason, but that would also translate into an incompetent DM in my opinion, I mean, he didn't even bother to check his player sheet. I'm not saying he should read the sheet and know right away what to expect, but not even asking "what does this wird names feat do?" it plain laziness.

[Zyzzyva]

Because you're all broke and busy doing other things than gaining system mastery?

That's how my university gaming society worked, for the most part. We had two PHBs, a MM, a DMG, and (IIRC) a Manual of the Planes. We had neither the time nor money to buy anything else, and Core isn't so broken to render it unplayable, so why not?

[Arael666]

Because you're all broke and busy doing other things than gaining system mastery?

That's how my university gaming society worked, for the most part. We had two PHBs, a MM, a DMG, and (IIRC) a Manual of the Planes. We had neither the time nor money to buy anything else, and Core isn't so broken to render it unplayable, so why not?

As was stated before, SRD has a lot of free information.

[Flickerdart]

Ok, I can see that as a reason, but that would also translate into an incompetent DM in my opinion, I mean, he didn't even bother to check his player sheet. I'm not saying he should read the sheet and know right away what to expect, but not even asking "what does this wird names feat do?" it plain laziness.
"The DM can be lazy" is seen by some as an advantage. It means that you can throw a golem at the party and reasonably expect it to be magic-resistant and tough to kill, without having to build in extra shields because the Rogue has a Greater Demolition Crystal and the Wizard prepared Orbs of Acid. It means that the party can't extend the expected length of the adventuring day by loading up on ultra-cheap Lesser Vigor wands (sure, there are CLW wands, but they're not as good).

[Knaight]

It's easier to pick up a solid understanding of the system allowing easy use with just Core than with Core+Splats. Core alone is about 1000 pages, not wanting to deal with more than that is entirely reasonable.

[bjoern]

I made a thread about a core only wizard. I wanted to try it because the rest of my group barely optimizes at all. I have a hard time making an awesome character and then never using any of their abilities.

I'd rather put the handcuffs on during character creation . make a PH only wizard and then play him to his max potential.

I had a sorcerer/incantatrix that was very powerful. I spent most encounters not doing anything because i could end encounters with a single spell.

Now I made a less powerful character (sorcadin abj champ) who has 4 less caster levels than the incantatrix and I'm able to actually try stuff in battle without the fear of ending the whole thing in the first round, without playing stupid .

[LoyalPaladin]

The table I play at played core only for our first three campaigns. Mostly because most of us had no idea there were more books. Then our DM took us on a magic carpet ride and we've been smashing encounters ever since. Sometimes people just don't know about the world outside core.

[Red Fel]

Not that I necessarily espouse this view, but "I want to keep their first game simple" isn't an unreasonable position. Are there more balanced, or more exciting options outside of core? Yes. But if you can hand your players a single book and say, "This is the one we're using, read and learn," that may be valuable for players who are new or have difficulty mastering a system.

But generally? Core only is a bit "ew" to me.

[TheIronGolem]

As was stated before, SRD has a lot of free information.

Yes, but money isn't the only constraint, there's also time and "headspace". A DM is within his rights to ban content that he doesn't understand, and if he is unable to spare the time that it takes to learn it, then that's that. Furthermore, not all DM's are confident that they can juggle various subsystems (Psionics, martial maneuvers, Incarna, etc) in their mind along with the core stuff during a game (even if they've read up on it), so they may want to keep it out just for the sake of keeping things light and simple (insofar as that is possible with a system like 3.x).

Don't get me wrong, I very much prefer a game with many options. But there are valid reasons for wanting to stick to core, even if they aren't always the ones that get cited.

[PaucaTerrorem]

Ok, I can see that as a reason, but that would also translate into an incompetent DM in my opinion, I mean, he didn't even bother to check his player sheet. I'm not saying he should read the sheet and know right away what to expect, but not even asking "what does this wird names feat do?" it plain laziness.

{Scrubbed}

[GreyBlack]

Added difficulty. While by no means difficult to break something in core (the majority of T1 spellcasters are core), it is significantly harder to pull off something like the Locate City Bomb playing core only. Also, it could be argued that Core Only is closer to how DND was "meant" to be played, without all of the splat and weird tricks available with all of the splats available (I don't hold much in that argument, just that it could be made).

[Zyzzyva]

As was stated before, SRD has a lot of free information.

And if any of us had learned about this before right about now, we'd probably have used that info! :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Added difficulty. While by no means difficult to break something in core (the majority of T1 spellcasters are core), it is significantly harder to pull off something like the Locate City Bomb playing core only. Also, it could be argued that Core Only is closer to how DND was "meant" to be played, without all of the splat and weird tricks available with all of the splats available (I don't hold much in that argument, just that it could be made).
LCB is a TO trick. Nobody playing a game, core or otherwise, should be worrying about that sort of thing. All of the high-magnitude PO tricks (chain-gating, free wishes, magic jar body-switching) can be done in core.

[eggynack]

I tend to think of core in terms of the SRD because it matches up to my perception of core as being a thing of availability. I don't think that avoiding non-core because of a lack of knowledge is laziness though. Sometimes you just want to play a game, and you don't want to have to learn the ins and outs of piles of books and their related subsystems. Core is easy, and core is there, and some things matter more than character variety and balance.

[Knaight]

As for the SRD - while it does have a lot of information outside of core, the organization of it is less than ideal. It's great for quick reference, it's not great as a rulebook substitute when learning the game.

[Flickerdart]

As for the SRD - while it does have a lot of information outside of core, the organization of it is less than ideal. It's great for quick reference, it's not great as a rulebook substitute when learning the game.
This is more or less intended, since WotC excludes key portions of the PHB and DMG from the SRD (such as character creation guidelines, WBL, or XP tables). So while you know there are feats and levels, nothing in the SRD will tell you when feats and levels are gained, so you still have to buy a PHB and give WotC money.

[Necroticplague]

This is more or less intended, since WotC excludes key portions of the PHB and DMG from the SRD (such as character creation guidelines, WBL, or XP tables). So while you know there are feats and levels, nothing in the SRD will tell you when feats and levels are gained, so you still have to buy a PHB and give WotC money.

In theory. In practice, you can google the stuff they excluded and still find it legally when someone brings it up under Fair Use.

[Zyzzyva]

In theory. In practice, you can google the stuff they excluded and still find it legally when someone brings it up under Fair Use.

No, in practice I've found you go "what the heck are you doing? I just wanted to stab dragons!" and go back to the PHB.

[Flickerdart]

In theory. In practice, you can google the stuff they excluded and still find it legally when someone brings it up under Fair Use.
It's very hard to find the absolute basics for two reasons: "unknown unknowns" (the newbies don't know these rules are missing), and something being so basic that nobody mentions it. Answers can also conflict - for instance, googling "how often do you gain feats in 3.5" gives two contradictory answers in the top two results, with one saying 1,3,6,9..., and the other saying 1,3,5,7... We know which one is correct right away, and also why someone might say the second, but newbies don't.

[madtinker]

Forget DM laziness, I have players who don't bother to read spell descriptions (detect magic probably tells me what a spell is, so I'll use it to identify the enchantments on all these magic weapons). No way am I letting them use alternate systems when they won't learn something as basic as detect magic.

[rgrekejin]

For the same reason that some people speed-run through Resident Evil using only the knife - just to prove that you can. :smalltongue:

[dascarletm]

Others have said it, but when I bring in a new player that hasn't played something like this before, I limit it to core only (unless someone REALLY wants to play something outside it). This is because I don't give prebuilt characters, because I think making a character really helps you understand the game better. If you have a lot of sources available it becomes overwhelming for new players. It can turn them off to the game entirely. I made this mistake once, and feats were the big killer, there is just so many of them, and having to go through all or most of them can take a long time.

[Flickerdart]

Others have said it, but when I bring in a new player that hasn't played something like this before, I limit it to core only (unless someone REALLY wants to play something outside it). This is because I don't give prebuilt characters, because I think making a character really helps you understand the game better. If you have a lot of sources available it becomes overwhelming for new players. It can turn them off to the game entirely. I made this mistake once, and feats were the big killer, there is just so many of them, and having to go through all or most of them can take a long time.
There are a billion feats in the game, but there are still something like 120 feats in Core - and at level 1, the character can't take half of them and doesn't have any use for most of the rest.

This is why I like to go through CharGen with a new player. For example, if a player has picked a Knight, I'll present them a condensed list of about 10 feats from which to pick - from defensive ones like Stone Power and Improved Trip to offensive ones like Power Attack. They still get to pick, but they benefit from my system mastery, and by the time they're good enough at the game to start exploring on their own, they'll have appropriate expectations for what a feat should provide and will skip over the Toughnesses and Weapon Focuses of the game.

[Tvtyrant]

Iconicness is a reason that comes up. Every individual who DMs in our group but me is all about iconic d&d stuff. Populations that hate casters, prcs are for munchkins, etc. They mostly leapt at the chance to play 5E because it cleared out the splatbooks :smallmad:

[NomGarret]

I am more inclined to run "anything but core" than "core only" myself, but here are the circumstances where i'd be tempted:

You're playing somewhere where hauling a lot of extra books is impractical and access to online sources is difficult or clunky.

To quicken character creation in a group known for choice paralysis. Now everyone sharing one book isn't always the fastest, but not flipping through 3-4 books to answer "what feat should I take?" Does save some time.

[Seharvepernfan]

but what I'm looking for are legit reasons as to why a group of people would play a Core Only Game.

It works. You can get the classic D&D experience with just core. It also gets everybody on the same page where they know what to expect. You don't need splatbooks to have fun (though they are fun).

[Flickerdart]

Iconicness is a reason that comes up. Every individual who DMs in our group but me is all about iconic d&d stuff. Populations that hate casters, prcs are for munchkins, etc. They mostly leapt at the chance to play 5E because it cleared out the splatbooks :smallmad:
Since when is "populations that hate casters" iconic?

[dascarletm]

There are a billion feats in the game, but there are still something like 120 feats in Core - and at level 1, the character can't take half of them and doesn't have any use for most of the rest.

This is why I like to go through CharGen with a new player. For example, if a player has picked a Knight, I'll present them a condensed list of about 10 feats from which to pick - from defensive ones like Stone Power and Improved Trip to offensive ones like Power Attack. They still get to pick, but they benefit from my system mastery, and by the time they're good enough at the game to start exploring on their own, they'll have appropriate expectations for what a feat should provide and will skip over the Toughnesses and Weapon Focuses of the game.

Don't get me wrong I go through with them as well, but outside core only if they want to play a knight, they get something like 5+ class choices, a multitude of possible prestige classes, and more feats to choose from. This takes into account a condensed list of suggestions. If they want to be a spellcaster it gets even worse.... especially for clerics. Now they have to look through 5 books to see all the spells they have available. Core only lets them have the SRD list up, and badda bing badda boom that's the spells you get to choose from.

[Necroticplague]

Since when is "populations that hate casters" iconic?

When is anything iconic, for that matter?

[Tvtyrant]

Since when is "populations that hate casters" iconic?

I pin it on Warhammer and Dragonlance. And Wheel of Time, and actual treatment of witches.

[Flickerdart]

Don't get me wrong I go through with them as well, but outside core only if they want to play a knight, they get something like 5+ class choices, a multitude of possible prestige classes, and more feats to choose from. This takes into account a condensed list of suggestions. If they want to be a spellcaster it gets even worse.... especially for clerics. Now they have to look through 5 books to see all the spells they have available. Core only lets them have the SRD list up, and badda bing badda boom that's the spells you get to choose from.
Not really. I don't consider Crusader as appropriate for a total beginner, Fighter is crap, so that just leaves Knight. PrCs are not necessary for a beginner. Then they get my condensed list of feats, pick a few, and done.

[Allianis]

I actually just got done playing a Core only campaign, and the reason was simplicity. We had a 6 person group, and 3 were brand new and only 1 had a lot of experience. All of the expansion material can be very intimidating for players who are still asking which dice they're supposed to be using. In the end, it's a game. The point of the game is for people to have fun, and if that means making things simpler (and arguably less interesting), then so be it. The next campaign is going to be open to all non-homebrew material, and everyone's comfortable with it. So that's my take on the matter.

[pwykersotz]

Iconicness is a reason that comes up. Every individual who DMs in our group but me is all about iconic d&d stuff. Populations that hate casters, prcs are for munchkins, etc. They mostly leapt at the chance to play 5E because it cleared out the splatbooks :smallmad:

To be fair, 5e is amazing. :smallsmile:

I've never played a core-only game, but I've wanted to. Core only is two things to me. First, a challenge. What can I do with the tools I'm provided? The second is a simplification. Both these things are valuable in certain circumstances.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

I keep seeing people who only want to play/dm a core game... it puzzles me, what benefit can you have in playing core only? what purpose would this rule fulfil?

I know some of the "wrong" reasons like the "core is more balanced" or "supplements are overpowered", feel free to list those if you guys think it's not an obvious reason, but what I'm looking for are legit reasons as to why a group of people would play a Core Only Game.

Because I hate you. I hate you, and everything you love. I hate everything you like to such a personal level that I name things/people/animals after you just so I can set them on fire. I once piled high the entire d20 library save for Core, and had it fed into a woodchipper. I am in the process of building a time machine so that I can destroy the entire multiverse seconds before the first 3E splatbook hit store shelves. I once said the word "Infusion". I am the only survivor of that episode of unquenchable violence. When the sun grows cold and dim and the last human falls into darkness as Heat Death overtakes the universe, my hatred for all that you care about will still be warming the earth's core.

Of course since I moved over to the superior Trailblazer D20 rules, I don't even use Core any longer, so I may be having a laugh.


Iconicness is a reason that comes up. Every individual who DMs in our group but me is all about iconic d&d stuff. Populations that hate casters, prcs are for munchkins, etc. They mostly leapt at the chance to play 5E because it cleared out the splatbooks :smallmad:


To be fair, 5e is amazing. :smallsmile:

Perfection! :smallbiggrin:

[Afgncaap5]

I've never limited my players to core only, but I *have* suggested it as a possible good place for my players to draw from because of how I run my campaign worlds. D&D provides a lot of amazing options and, ultimately, not all of the options were designed with all of the others in mind. This issue gets complicated with all the homebrew I bring to the world, and a lot of prestige classes and feats have added complexity from being rooted to certain locations or organizations. Most members of the pyrokinetic prestige class have to contend with the homebrewed pyromancer class, for instance; probably not a big stumbling block to a player who wants to play it, but it's a complicating issue.

The core books represent a sort of "stable ground" that I can show my players, though. Everything in them is usable without constraints or restrictions that come from the lore of the world, and available without consultation unless the book itself says it needs it (though I can't see myself denying things like the Leadership feat.) Players might need to work something out specifically in other cases, but the core books give nice middle ground for them.

Having said that, I can definitely understand people who want to go core only/SRD only for the convenience, lack of complexity, or simple cost issues. It'd make things smoother.

(As a side note: one of my GMs has a general "all books allowed" stance on things. One player took his samurai/iajitsu master from a Rokugan campaign and brought it in, and we started getting involved in some cosmic, world ending things. The Samurai player kept making references to Rokugan mythology, and near the end of one session he said "Sounds like you need to brush up on your Rokugan cosmology." The DM gave more or less the best response ever with, "No. Your character needs to brush up on MINE." Core-only can remove fluff-based confusion like that. It's not really necessary, in my opinion, but as I've had a player ask to use Shadow Weave magic in my Eberron campaign, it is something I've considered as helpful sometimes. (I've still not figured out what Shar is in that sequence. Rakshasa Rajah feels easiest, but there's something to say for Daelkyr or Quori. I probably won't need to know, of course, but it's something I've spent more than a little time considering.))

[Flickerdart]

(I've still not figured out what Shar is in that sequence. Rakshasa Rajah feels easiest, but there's something to say for Daelkyr or Quori. I probably won't need to know, of course, but it's something I've spent more than a little time considering.))
When in doubt, make it the first NPC the PCs encountered that's still alive. The sweet old lady that they saved from orcs? That was actually Shar. She makes delicious cookies, and in her spare time runs the Shadow Weave.

[Afgncaap5]

When in doubt, make it the first NPC the PCs encountered that's still alive. The sweet old lady that they saved from orcs? That was actually Shar. She makes delicious cookies, and in her spare time runs the Shadow Weave.

Shar making cookies and just running the Shadow Weave as a side thing may well become canon for me in all games where she exists now, actually.

[PaucaTerrorem]

Because I hate you. I hate you, and everything you love. I hate everything you like to such a personal level that I name things/people/animals after you just so I can set them on fire. I once piled high the entire d20 library save for Core, and had it fed into a woodchipper. I am in the process of building a time machine so that I can destroy the entire multiverse seconds before the first 3E splatbook hit store shelves. I once said the word "Infusion". I am the only survivor of that episode of unquenchable violence. When the sun grows cold and dim and the last human falls into darkness as Heat Death overtakes the universe, my hatred for all that you care about will still be warming the earth's core.

Dude, we need to hang out.

[dascarletm]

Not really. I don't consider Crusader as appropriate for a total beginner, Fighter is crap, so that just leaves Knight. PrCs are not necessary for a beginner. Then they get my condensed list of feats, pick a few, and done.

Eh different strokes for different folks.

But I agree, if they wish to be a martial type I'd open it to splats, etc. Divine spellcasters on the other hand.

[PaucaTerrorem]

But I agree, if they wish to be a martial type I'd open it to splats, etc. Divine spellcasters on the other hand.

This is pretty much how my old DM ran things. I always play cleric or conjuration wizard and he would limit me to core plus one maybe two splat feats/acf/spells. Martials however get whatever they want. Especially monks, paladins, rangers, and bards. He loves those classes and gives all the love he can. While I still wanted to DMM/abrupt jaunt it up, I understand completely why he does it. Full casters don't need any love outside of core.

[Elkad]

New players (or permanently new players, which may actually be worse).
Unwillingness to steal the other books (or inability to pay the high asking prices for the rarer ones).
DM ease. Sure, core has plenty of game-breaking stuff. But it's measurable at least. The number of ways to combo up stuff from 17 books and break the game is uncountable.
Speed. Wait, what book had Poison Duskfolk Lizardpeople? (yes, that's the wrong name, that's part of the problem) Minotaur Greathammer? Shock Trooper? Oops, I've spilled a drink, crushed half the minis on the map, and got pizza sauce on a bunch of MM2 pages when I spread 11 books out looking for something.
Interaction again. Basically every book acts as if it is the only expansion ever published, and so ignores interaction with every other optional book. So every DM has to houserule (and argue with players) all kinds of vague areas.

I love the way ADB designed the Star Fleet Battles rulebooks. Every expansion said what prior books it expected you to have, every new book had errata for prior books explaining interactions between the two (and reference numbers to find the related rules), and everything came 3-hole drilled and printed in a way you could collate every book into one giant 3-ring binder that was properly organized. Even the rare errata was done so you could pull out the out-of-date pages and replace them with corrected ones. And that's a little company. WotC should have plenty of resources to do the same, but they don't bother.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Simpler
Fewer Books
More Iconic
Party power level is much more predictable since the extreme builds are not available.
It's a lot easier to say, "core only" than, "Core+ this +that+the other, but no divine metamagic, absolutely no Tome of Battle, and no you can't mix three Faerun prestige classes with an Ebberon prestige class and two Greyhawk specific feats."
...
and it is more balanced. Blah blah blah, Tier 1, blah blah blah, Tier 4, blah blah blah, fighters still suck, blah blah blah, whatever. I read the first page of that thread. But core only is still more balanced especially in the players vs monster department. A lot of people have written some variant on, "you can take a golem out of the monster manual and expect it to present the challenge it is mean to present." That is one of the things that it means to be more balanced.

And the same goes for Pathfinder too really except that prestige classes aren't as big a deal.

Now, given my own preference, I actually do like a lot of non-core feats and spells that support options which aren't well supported by the core rules and give martial characters longer and more interesting feat chains. However, Core only or "Core + these classes" is a lot easier to explain than trying to put together a list of banned options which don't fit the flavor or power level of the campaign I want to run.

[Rainshine]

Books. I dumped the majority of my 3.5 library years ago, and only kept a couple. If it's SRD, fine, I can find it and look it up as a DM. Back when I had them and we'd use them, a single character might require referencing four or five different publications for rules. Core cuts that number way down. Nowadays, we can just use PF and avoid that whole issue for me as a DM. Oh, you're casting spell X from book Y? Here, let me type it into search and... yeah, see, target personal? You can't cast it on the gunslinger.

[johnbragg]

Iconicness is a reason that comes up. Every individual who DMs in our group but me is all about iconic d&d stuff. Populations that hate casters, prcs are for munchkins, etc. They mostly leapt at the chance to play 5E because it cleared out the splatbooks :smallmad:

+1 for Iconic. Taking OOTS as a typical party, fighter cleric wizard thief, plus ranger and bard. Warblade crusader warlock factotum, plus unarmed swordsage and um, optimized bard, is a very different thing. You can say it's better, but you can't argue that it's not different.

[Ephemeral_Being]

+1 for Iconic. Taking OOTS as a typical party, fighter cleric wizard thief, plus ranger and bard. Warblade crusader warlock factotum, plus unarmed swordsage and um, optimized bard, is a very different thing. You can say it's better, but you can't argue that it's not different.

As a DM, you build 4-10 characters a week. It gets tedious to make another generic Sorcerer. And your party gets bored fighting them, because there are only so many viable spells for a Sorcerer to use. It's not a surprise; he's going to have Glitterdust and Orb. It helps to have Warlocks and Binders around to change up encounters. Is your party equipped to fight a couple DFI Bards within a troop of Kobolds? Are they expecting a Duskblade? How about an Artificier?

I find it makes for a better campaign to add source books. Generally, I limit myself to what the party is using. If they want to open the Complete series, I can now pull from that. If someone is playing a class from Tome of Battle, I figure that's fair game now. It keeps us on a level playing field.

[johnbragg]

As a DM, you build 4-10 characters a week. It gets tedious to make another generic Sorcerer. And your party gets bored fighting them, because there are only so many viable spells for a Sorcerer to use. It's not a surprise; he's going to have Glitterdust and Orb. It helps to have Warlocks and Binders around to change up encounters. Is your party equipped to fight a couple DFI Bards within a troop of Kobolds? Are they expecting a Duskblade? How about an Artificier?

I find it makes for a better campaign to add source books. Generally, I limit myself to what the party is using. If they want to open the Complete series, I can now pull from that. If someone is playing a class from Tome of Battle, I figure that's fair game now. It keeps us on a level playing field.

"We're bored, let's change it up" means "different." I'm saying a reason people play Core-only is because Core has the iconic classes, and if you get too far away from that it feels like a different game.

[Necroticplague]

Um, I keep seeing stuff about "iconic" getting flung about, but what does that even mean in this context? Why is the fighter more represenative of the high fantasy of DnD by being limited to being good at completely mundane tasks, than the warblade, who has actually fantastic fighting styles?

[Maglubiyet]

Core only, as some people have alluded to, also minimizes some of the more insane exploitative characters.

Sourcebooks are usually designed for in-world compatibility with themselves. When added ALONE to core they can provide some nice extra flavor and abilities. However, when they are pulled apart and thrown in with all of the other myriad character options it can produce some unintended results.

Designers cannot foresee all of the possible combinations of Feats, Spells, PrC's, equipment, etc. While they may be "rules legal", when you pull abilities from many different campaign settings you can get some very over-powered builds.

Many of the character optimizations you see are nothing more than exploits of unintended "bugs" in a system grown too large to maintain internal consistency. Sticking to core reduces many of the possible abuses.

[NichG]

The fewer pieces you have to juggle, the more you feel as though its possible to learn to keep control over them. For a DM who is new to the system, or for a player who is new to the system, its useful to be able to look at something you could reasonably read through thoroughly in a few hours and say 'this is all I'm going to have to master'. It lets you hold the entirety of the task in your head, so you can very clearly mark out 'okay, here are the things I don't understand/haven't evaluated, and here are the things that I do understand'.

When people say that 'core is more balanced' or things like that, its probably because they're trying to express that they don't feel in control, but instead they end up fixating on the consequences of being out of control ('my character sucks', 'the game gets broken', etc) rather than the underlying reason (not having mastered the game yet). Essentially, the reason for that loss of control is the inclusion of factors which those involved aren't familiar with and can't anticipate. If you know a core wizard is broken, at least you probably know how its broken, and can take pre-emptive steps to come to terms with that. But if someone hands you a stack with 5000 pages of rules that you don't know, its a black box - is there something in there that is going to cause problems? Who knows!

So generally, until people are comfortable with one bite-sized set of rules, they're going to want to stick with what they know. For most people that's going to be core, just because of the way that the rules are organized and presented. And of course, if things still end up going out of control even within that bite-sized chunk, they're not going to feel comfortable adding even more rules to the mix because they'll feel like there's still work to be done on their understanding/mastery of the small set that they do know. Its sort of like D&D teaches you to juggle by handing you three chainsaws, and then says 'hey, want me to add a few scarfs to the mix?'

For something like D&D, I generally get the feel that you have to play a character who heavily uses a particular book before you really know it. I was completely lost with Tome of Battle until I had to build and play a competent Swordsage, and I've had players who used Incarnum but I feel like I still don't really 'get' it - what are the viable builds, etc - since I've never played an Incarnum character.

[Jay R]

Because lots of things in splat books break the system, and many things don't fit the world I'm building. You can't play a half-orc if there are no orcs in the world.

I allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis, but I won't even allow all of Core rules. (You cannot grow up in a city and then take a level of Barbarian, for instance. And the spiked chain is grossly over-powered.)

[LoyalPaladin]

(You cannot grow up in a city and then take a level of Barbarian, for instance.
That'd definitely fall under a case by case basis for me. I'll usually allow anything if their backstory blows me away.

[Telonius]

Probably so obvious that it hasn't been said yet, but ... a 100% legit reason to play Core only: the DM only owns the PHB, DMG, and MM1, doesn't want to (or can't) spend the money to get the rest, and doesn't want to engage in piracy. It's always kosher for the DM to ban materials they don't have access to.

[Zyzzyva]

Probably so obvious that it hasn't been said yet, but ... a 100% legit reason to play Core only: the DM only owns the PHB, DMG, and MM1, doesn't want to (or can't) spend the money to get the rest, and doesn't want to engage in piracy. It's always kosher for the DM to ban materials they don't have access to.


Because you're all broke and busy doing other things than gaining system mastery?

That's how my university gaming society worked, for the most part. We had two PHBs, a MM, a DMG, and (IIRC) a Manual of the Planes. We had neither the time nor money to buy anything else, and Core isn't so broken to render it unplayable, so why not?

:smallamused: But yes, I think this reason doesn't get stressed enough.

[Telonius]

Piracy concerns being the added thing. It's so common that it's almost assumed, but there are people who don't do it on moral and legal grounds.

[nyjastul69]

Piracy concerns being the added thing. It's so common that it's almost assumed, but there are people who don't do it on moral and legal grounds.

The bolded bit is really kinda sad. I hope that's not as accurate as you assume. I'm prolly wrong though.

[Zyzzyva]

Piracy concerns being the added thing. It's so common that it's almost assumed, but there are people who don't do it on moral and legal grounds.

All right, I'm happy with that. I will say I've personally never pirated a game, but I don't know how common it is in the wider world.

[aspekt]

Honestly as a longtime DM it basically comes down to a management issue. I simply am not capable of tracking all the various pieces of d20 floating around out there. I've even had players try to pass off online homebrew as standardized 3.5.

Mostly though I limit play to certain books which more or less fit the campaign, rather than use Core only.

[mvpmack]

Why is spiked chain overpowered? It's a 2-handed weapon that doesn't deal 2d6. Even if it can be used for trip, I don't see how that even steps into the realm of overpowered. It costs a feat, and it isn't spellcasting or an animal companion. Seems pretty OK to me.

My problem with Core-only is that there were many great attempts at smoothing the curve between wizards and every other class in various supplemental books, and those attempts are good stuff that I'd want in my game. Hell, I'd give paladins Battle Blessing as a class feature. Fighters should just never be picked over warblade, and monks should never be picked over swordsage (Paladins at least get the mount, which gives them a unique advantage over crusaders). Yeah, maybe I can live without DMM and some of the more overpowered caster cheese, but non-wizard, non-druid classes need all the help they can get. I actually think clerics are OK without DMM (though other divine feats are good).

Core-only requires just as much balance consideration as allowing every splatbook. My DM lets us pick from whatever we want, but he goes over everything we ask for and thinks over how giving it to us will impact the game.

In any event, warblade is just more iconic than fighter. It'd be best if we just deleted fighter and renamed warblade to fighter. It'd solve all the problems.

[Telonius]

I've even had players try to pass off online homebrew as standardized 3.5.

That can be a problem with newer players especially. I've had "The Talk" about dandwiki a few times. So easy for a beginner to look at the stuff there and not realize it's homebrew.

[Elderand]

That can be a problem with newer players especially. I've had "The Talk" about dandwiki a few times. So easy for a beginner to look at the stuff there and not realize it's homebrew.

Dad ! Dad ! Where do bad homebrew come from ?
Well Timmy, when someone gets an idea and love it very much, he tries to write about it and end up making a bad homebrew on DnDwiki.
So there's no sex involved ?
There might be timmy, some homebrew is that bad.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Why is spiked chain overpowered? It's a 2-handed weapon that doesn't deal 2d6. Even if it can be used for trip, I don't see how that even steps into the realm of overpowered. It costs a feat, and it isn't spellcasting or an animal companion. Seems pretty OK to me.

IMO, spiked chains aren't OP (though they are up there with dire flails on the list of stupid weapons that lack historical precedent, defy physics, and shouldn't be in D&D) unless you add some non-core items to them. Exotic Weapon Master and the flurry option made spiked chain the only core reach weapon you can flurry with. I think there are/were a few other non-core items that beefed up spiked chains, but I don't think there's any power level issues with them in a core only environment.

[Jormengand]

That can be a problem with newer players especially. I've had "The Talk" about dandwiki a few times. So easy for a beginner to look at the stuff there and not realize it's homebrew.

They do all reside in the homebrew category, and anything else has SRD in the URL.

And as a general rule, anything that you can't tell is homebrew just by looking at it is probably actually game-usable without blowing too much of the game to smithereens.

[TheIronGolem]

IMO, spiked chains aren't OP (though they are up there with dire flails on the list of stupid weapons that lack historical precedent, defy physics, and shouldn't be in D&D)
D&D is not a Medieval Combat Simulator, and any attempt to make it one is misguided and doomed to fail. Unrealistic weapons are not a design problem.


Exotic Weapon Master and the flurry option made spiked chain the only core reach weapon you can flurry with. I think there are/were a few other non-core items that beefed up spiked chains, but I don't think there's any power level issues with them in a core only environment.

So you can flurry with a spiked chain. So what? How is that comparable to what a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid can achieve at the same level, at a lower cost of character resources?

[Der_DWSage]

They do all reside in the homebrew category, and anything else has SRD in the URL.

And as a general rule, anything that you can't tell is homebrew just by looking at it is probably actually game-usable without blowing too much of the game to smithereens.

Yeah, they've actually cleaned up rather significantly. It used to be nigh-impossible to tell the difference (I think it used to be in the tiny footnotes at the very bottom of the page) and you couldn't remove your own pages, either.

That said, DanDwiki has years of bad reputation going for it. I'm glad to see them cleaning up their act, though.

[Troacctid]

Exotic Weapon Master and the flurry option made spiked chain the only core reach weapon you can flurry with.

Pretty sure you're not in Core if you're using Exotic Weapon Master.

[Necroticplague]

Pretty sure you're not in Core if you're using Exotic Weapon Master.

You might want to re-read his post. That's kinda his point. "In core, it's not OP. To make it OP, you need to go outside core".

Heck, arguably, the kusarigama is better in Core.

[eggynack]

Why is spiked chain overpowered? It's a 2-handed weapon that doesn't deal 2d6. Even if it can be used for trip, I don't see how that even steps into the realm of overpowered. It costs a feat, and it isn't spellcasting or an animal companion. Seems pretty OK to me.
It is and it's not. The spiked chain is way better than every other weapon in core, and probably better than every weapon in the game, tempered only by the fact that it eats into a feat compared to something like a guisarme. The weapon damage is irrelevant compared to the ability to attack adjacent targets, especially later in the game, and the overall combination of abilities is outstanding. It is, in point of fact, an overpowered weapon, in that nearly any character will choose it if given the opportunity (though I this tendency has actually been changing, shifting over to the less powerful but feat-cheaper guisarme to reflect the general power level of feats, sometimes backed by armor spikes).

However, the spiked chain is not an overpowered game object. While a character focused on weapons will pick a spiked chain, assuming power seeking behavior, a character without a predetermined focus will absolutely not. As you note, a core character and a non-core character alike can find far greater power through even spellcasting of the type held by a bard or beguiler. So, while the weapon is overpowered relative to, say, a bastard sword or dire flail, it is probably actually underpowered in a broader gamewide context.

[Flickerdart]

Spiked Chain is not even overpowered as a weapon. It's powerful as a weapon, but its benefits are roughly on par with the cost you pay. Don't think of it as an item, think of it as a feat that says "you can use a reach weapon to strike adjacent squares."

[Sacrieur]

We literally had a ten page discussion about this.

[Elder_Basilisk]

D&D is not a Medieval Combat Simulator, and any attempt to make it one is misguided and doomed to fail. Unrealistic weapons are not a design problem.

That doesn't mean that they are not a problem. Many people want D&D to create stories with imagery matching the iconic images of the genre such as a heroic knight with a sword and shield or a barbarian with a greatsword or a sneaky rogue with a dagger. Most of those images are informed by historical medieval and ancient weaponry. Introducing weapons without a medieval or ancient analogue undermines that goal--and more so if those weapons are good enough that they are not merely another option but are obviously the best option.

It's the same problem you get if you introduce laser guns to D&D. They just don't fit in a lot of peoples' fantasy worlds, regardless of whether or not they are game-breaking. And if they are obviously better than the weapons characters already have available to them, then they make it hard for those people to play the game they want to play without banning them.


So you can flurry with a spiked chain. So what? How is that comparable to what a Wizard, Cleric, or Druid can achieve at the same level, at a lower cost of character resources?

Quite easily, in terms of raw damage output, killing monsters, and taking their stuff in the context of a complete adventuring party. Even more so in a context where the silliest and most game-breaking options are removed. It is usually a 20-30% damage increase for the character in the levels it becomes available (perhaps 15-25% at higher levels). And for all their limitations, martial type characters are very often the party's leading damage dealers. Remember all of the "tier 1/tier 5" blather that has been tossed around on various messageboards for the last few years is decidedly not an evaluation of what can kill monsters or how characters function in an adventuring party; it evaluates classes solely in terms of what they can theoretically do with proper build and preparation and without outside assistance, and is usually addressed at 20th or epic level and in a context where anything officially published is permitted, no matter how many settings it mixes or how game-breaking (or game-changing if you prefer) it is.

But really, comparison between different classes and roles is not the only kind of relevant comparison. Comparison within classes and roles is relevant to the game as well. Even if one were to believe the "all martials suck and there's no point to playing one in D&D at all" hype, it is still a problem if the design of the game makes one weapon dramatically better than the others, especially if doing so forecloses the iconic options that the game is supposed to support in favor of options without any historical or out of game resonance.

[Flickerdart]

Even if one were to believe the "all martials suck and there's no point to playing one in D&D at all" hype, it is still a problem if the design of the game makes one weapon dramatically better than the others, especially if doing so forecloses the iconic options that the game is supposed to support in favor of options without any historical or out of game resonance.
Spiked Chain is not dramatically better than all other weapons. Unless you've invested in tripping, Spiked Chain is not worth a feat. I'm surprised you're not as vitriolic about sword & board being vastly inferior to two-handing, despite historic popularity of the shield.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Spiked Chain is not dramatically better than all other weapons. Unless you've invested in tripping, Spiked Chain is not worth a feat. I'm surprised you're not as vitriolic about sword & board being vastly inferior to two-handing, despite historic popularity of the shield.

Not in core. However, non-core did have prestige classes that could make it noticeably better.

As to why the two/handed/sword and board thing doesn't bother me as much: First, it's not the topic at hand. We were talking about core/non-core and got sidetracked into spiked chains by my off-hand comment that they only become a balance problem in non-core but I don't like them in any form of D&D. Secondly, the sword and board thing is less of a live issue for me because I mostly play Pathfinder these days and Pathfinder effectively did away with the animated shield which goes a long way towards making sword and board more competitive with two-handed weapons. There are a few other points on that topic though:
1. The unviability of sword and board vis a vis two handed weapons in 3.5 is somewhat overblown--especially with armbands of might reducing the relative damage difference for lower Power Attack values and other non-core damage enhancing items and abilities. Sword and board is viable (at least at levels where animated shields don't make the distinction moot--and yes, animated shields are pretty silly too) it's just not a simple and easy (and also depends upon close to standard wealth by level or a substitute that is roughly equivalent).
2. Historically the use of shields actually did phase out in favor of two-handed weapons such as bastard swords, poleaxes, pikes, greatswords, and halberds in the era that fullplate (and later halfplate) became common (for those who could afford them).
3. Especially in fantasy art and literature, two-handed weapons are just as iconic as sword and board, so it's less of an issue with a non-iconic item displacing iconic items than it is of one iconic image crowding out another iconic image. That is still problematic but not nearly as problematic.

[Flickerdart]

Not in core. However, non-core did have prestige classes that could make it noticeably better.
Non-core also gives you something better to do with your feat slots AND something better to do with your feats. If you don't want players taking Spiked Chain, go non-core, because they'll have more worthwhile things to do.

[Killer Angel]

Spiked Chain is not dramatically better than all other weapons. Unless you've invested in tripping, Spiked Chain is not worth a feat.

But if we stay in core, fighters have plenty of garbage feats, so one slot for the Spiked Chain, is almost a "must have".
Of course is not mandatory, but there are little reasons to not take it, when you grow up in levels.


EDIT: ah, more or less, it was already said and already answered. Oh, well...

[TheIronGolem]

That doesn't mean that they are not a problem. Many people want D&D to create stories with imagery matching the iconic images of the genre such as a heroic knight with a sword and shield or a barbarian with a greatsword or a sneaky rogue with a dagger. Most of those images are informed by historical medieval and ancient weaponry. Introducing weapons without a medieval or ancient analogue undermines that goal

The mysterious warrior wielding a strange weapon is no less iconic - and no less deserving of representation in-game - than your heroic knight or sneaky rogue. They are perfectly capable of coexisting, and the presence of one in no way undermines or devalues the other. Your complaint is no more valid than it would be if you were claiming that having rogues undermines the paladins.


and more so if those weapons are good enough that they are not merely another option but are obviously the best option.

It isn't the best option, though - obviously or otherwise. Spiked chains do have a higher utility ceiling than most weapons, but they require a good-sized chunk of character resources to get there.


It's the same problem you get if you introduce laser guns to D&D. They just don't fit in a lot of peoples' fantasy worlds, regardless of whether or not they are game-breaking.

That's a disingenuous comparison. Laser guns belong to an entirely different genre, whereas "weird" weapons like the spike chain and dire flail belong in high-fantasy, which is what D&D is.


Quite easily, in terms of raw damage output, killing monsters, and taking their stuff in the context of a complete adventuring party. Even more so in a context where the silliest and most game-breaking options are removed. It is usually a 20-30% damage increase for the character in the levels it becomes available (perhaps 15-25% at higher levels). And for all their limitations, martial type characters are very often the party's leading damage dealers.

"Raw damage output" is the most obvious way to end encounters, but by no means the only one. Casters get spells that effectively end (or at least, trivialize) many encounters from the get-go. Sleep, Grease, Color Spray, etc.

But let's ignore the casters and just compare martial to martial. Whatever damage you can put out with a spiked chain, the next guy can match or beat with most two-handed weapon. That feat slot you had to burn on the exotic proficiency was free for him to use on Power Attack (the real source of Big Melee Damage in 3.x). Yes, you could take Power Attack too, but he still has one more free feat slot than you do to spend on other things that help him kill monsters faster. And yes, you have a bit more flexibility than he does, but you paid a premium for it.

If you're going to argue that Core is better balanced than not-Core, you need much better evidence than this weapon.

[eggynack]

Spiked Chain is not even overpowered as a weapon. It's powerful as a weapon, but its benefits are roughly on par with the cost you pay. Don't think of it as an item, think of it as a feat that says "you can use a reach weapon to strike adjacent squares."
True enough. As I noted, I think the trend in optimization has been away from the spiked chain towards a martial option, like the guisarme, which indicates that the weapon isn't massively more powerful than its surroundings. Really, it might just be overpowered for an exotic weapon, which is a thing that would probably be better restated as all other exotic weapons being significantly underpowered for the cost.

[atemu1234]

I see core as the 'lowest common denominator'. Everyone who can say they play D&D 3.5 knows core. Some splatbooks, on the other hand.

[Elkad]

...better restated as all other exotic weapons being significantly underpowered for the cost.

This. Exotics need more than a single point of damage or critical range. Spiked chain adds utility, but really needs 2 feats. Minotaur Greathammer has a real critical boost and is still marginal in it's 19-20/x4 form. Everything else isn't worth it, unless it's free (race/class bonus).

Weapon Specialization is a better choice than most exotics, and nobody takes that either.

[johnbragg]

This. Exotics need more than a single point of damage or critical range. Spiked chain adds utility, but really needs 2 feats. Minotaur Greathammer has a real critical boost and is still marginal in it's 19-20/x4 form. Everything else isn't worth it, unless it's free (race/class bonus).

Weapon Specialization is a better choice than most exotics, and nobody takes that either.

This. The first 3.0/3.5 character I built (not counting a standard-issue dwarf cleric "because we need a healbot") was Ozal Doubleaxe, because there was a double weapon that did d8/d8! No, not a half-orc ranger, a human fighter, because Two-Weapon Fighting is a "Feat" and so is Ambidexterity and Exotic Weapon Proficiency. (Ambidexterity was a 3.0 feat, I took something else before we started the campaign).

I realized 4-6 levels in that it probably would have been wiser to just use a quarterstaff and spend the feat on something else. (By that point, Ozal was two-handed Power Attacking half the time anyway, against enemies with Damage Reduction or just high AC's. He had also taken a level of Wizard just so he could cast Shield before combat.)

[rrwoods]

I don't buy (heh) the money argument.

At least, with regards to individual feats, spells, or even classes in most cases, the money argument doesn't fly for me. As a player, I am not asking my DM to buy a book (I already own it) or read the whole thing -- just one class at most, or one feat at the least. If that's too much work, I don't want to play in that campaign. That's lazy GMing.

Now if we are talking whole systems, like incarnum or psionics or maneuvers, that's a whole different beast of a discussion. I will say that Tome of Battle goes a long way toward helping the balance issues present in core though.

[Pluto!]

People who devour and analyze all the splatbooks are in the minority. Ain't nobody got time for that.

There's a pretty severe sampling bias here (in a forum specifically about talking about playing a game) in terms of how much time and effort outside playing the game itself that people are willing or interested to spend thinking about it.

Of the people I've played 3e with, about half have owned a PHB (3.0 or 3.5) and probably half of them owned another splatbook or two. Then there were like two guys with over-the-top D&D encyclopedias.

[Necroticplague]

Saying that core has less bugs/balance issues than core+splats strikes me as being similar to saying "a pound of butter contains less fat than 50 pounds of lean beef, therefore butter is healthier for you than beef". Yes, the butter may have less fat overall, but that's only because there's so little of it. If you compared the pound of butter to a pound of beef, you'd see the butter is ridiculously riddled with fat compared to the beef.


And on a related note, I can't recall many exploits outside of core that don't make heavy use of something core at their center. Uberchargers are nothing without Power Attack, pun-pun abuses a core-only wish loop, Hulking Hurler is derived from the moronic carrying capacity rules in core, the larger chunk of god wizard spells are core.

[ericgrau]

I think people play core only because it's easier. Same with limited books in general.

It does cause less balance issues. Full stop. Just because you can do an infinite loop and so on in core doesn't mean it ever ever happens in a campaign. As soon as you say "And then I wish for a candle of invocation" everyone just laughs at you and says no seriously, it's time to play for real. The real power problems are the lighter power creep that are harder to notice. In practice web creates far more power gaps between players than planar ally, and it's not horrible. Likewise for splatbook power creep. Plus limited material in general means there are less opportunities to create problems, combos, and knowledge gaps between the super obsessed and merely experienced. As the DM gets more experience he can likewise reign in more issues from using more books, but it is harder for him making 100 encounters than it is for a player making a single character. As a DM he can handle fewer books than he can as a player.

[rrwoods]

It does cause less balance issues. Full stop.

No, it doesn't. Full stop.

In core, my choices for an arcane caster are a wizard or a sorcerer. Meanwhile, my comrades' choices for a melee striker are rogue, barbarian, and fighter.

Outside core, the same two players could pick beguiler and warblade, and those are just the first two that came to mind. The wizard + rogue party has balance issues starting around level 7. The beguiler + warblade party... basically never does.

EDIT: forgot about bard. Bard is at least as powerful as sorcerer though.

[johnbragg]

Saying that core has less bugs/balance issues than core+splats strikes me as being similar to saying "a pound of butter contains less fat than 50 pounds of lean beef, therefore butter is healthier for you than beef". Yes, the butter may have less fat overall, but that's only because there's so little of it. If you compared the pound of butter to a pound of beef, you'd see the butter is ridiculously riddled with fat compared to the beef.

But you're not comparing a pound of butter to a pound of beef, i.e. "Tome of Battle is more balanced than Core". You're comparing a pound of butter to 50 pounds of beef covered in a pound of butter, Core-only vs Core-plus-splats. IF you eat a pound of butter in one sitting you'll barf. If you manage to eat 50 pounds of beef in one day, you'll rupture something and be in the hospital.

The Non-Core campaign is hypothetical. It's not like people (besides Pathfinder) are putting out splatbooks with campaign settings built around a half-dozen Tier 3 classes. (Although it's a good idea).

[emeraldstreak]

Because of the two newbie myths:

1. Everyone knows the Core.

Nope, not at all. Very few actually know the optimization depth of the MM and the DMG.



2. The Core is more balanced.

Hahahah.

[Necroticplague]

But you're not comparing a pound of butter to a pound of beef, i.e. "Tome of Battle is more balanced than Core". You're comparing a pound of butter to 50 pounds of beef covered in a pound of butter, Core-only vs Core-plus-splats. IF you eat a pound of butter in one sitting you'll barf. If you manage to eat 50 pounds of beef in one day, you'll rupture something and be in the hospital.

To continue with this analogy, however, nobody will ever expect you to eat 50 pounds of beef. At worst, they'll ask that you nibble on a few pieces of from around the giant pile, and ask if that portion of beef is too fatty. If I ask if Dragon Mag is available, I'm not particularly caring about the entire history of the magazine, because I can't cram that much content into a character. What I mean is "Hey, mind if I pick up Gheden, Sculpt Self, And Troll-blooded?" So even if you start with 50 pounds of beef and a pound of butter as potential meal, what you'll end up actually eating is maybe 2 pounds of beef and a thin coating of butter.

[hifidelity2]

I have over many years basically played (and DM'ed) what would be Core + (starting with V2)

This is Core, plus a few house rules
When I started there was nothing else (I think MM2 was "new")
Core works for all of us, we understand it, and as DM's we now how to balance the game
The house rules allow us to bring in Campaign specific spells / weapons and these days even feats

Its what we like and enjoy

[Killer Angel]

Because of the two newbie myths:

1. Everyone knows the Core.

Nope, not at all. Very few actually know the optimization depth of the MM and the DMG.


And even fewer are the ones that know the optimization depth of MM, DMG and splatbooks.
I don't see your point... it may be true that Core is not so well known, but it's more known than all the plethora of other D&D books.

[Flickerdart]

When I started there was nothing else (I think MM2 was "new")
Now this isn't a bad reason (it's not a great reason, but it makes sense) - the group started with the core books, so the "everyone is familiar with it" angle actually works. But introducing newbies to only Core as if were some sort of sacred canon is, in my opinion, a mistake, since you can let them enjoy all the good stuff out there from day one.

[Necroticplague]

Now this isn't a bad reason (it's not a great reason, but it makes sense) - the group started with the core books, so the "everyone is familiar with it" angle actually works. But introducing newbies to only Core as if were some sort of sacred canon is, in my opinion, a mistake, since you can let them enjoy all the good stuff out there from day one.

"Hey, you see all these classes that are impossible to screw up completely permanently*? Don't use them! Instead, lets stick a newbie with the things that can easily be completely useless if you don't know what you're doing^!"

* fixed list caster, martial initiator, invocation user, incarnum-user, binder
^=monk, fighter, wizard, sorceror, barbarian.

[Jay R]

When I said that the spiked chain is over-powered, I didn't mean that the D&D spiked chain rules are more powerful than some other D&D weapon rules. I mean that the D&D spiked chain rules are over-powered compared to the actual combat value of a spiked chain.

It is far more powerful and effective than a spiked chain would be in actual combat.

If a weapon does more damage in reality than another, the D&D rules should reflect that. The greatsword is more powerful than a dagger, and should be. That's not being overpowered; it's being correctly powered.

But the spiked chain is a silly thing that has never been a serious weapon, and should not be on a level with the weapons that appear to be its equivalent in power in D&D. It is overpowered. It has more power than such a device should have.

[Hecuba]

In general my experience is that (at least since the point when the 3.5 corpus expanded significantly past core+complete), "Core only" is generally an indication that the group is interested in playing the game in a mechanically simple way where significant system mastery would be somewhat gauche.

Keep in mind that there are plenty of people playing D&D who never look up anything related to it online and never plan their builds out to any significant before or after they take a level. If your character design process consists of 10 minutes at the beginning of a campaign, Core-only has some significant merits.

I would argue that such a play-style is perhaps better supported by versions of D&D other than 3.5.
But 3.5 can support it fairly well, and there are many people for whom D&D is (by default) 3.5.

[Killer Angel]

Now this isn't a bad reason (it's not a great reason, but it makes sense) - the group started with the core books, so the "everyone is familiar with it" angle actually works. But introducing newbies to only Core as if were some sort of sacred canon is, in my opinion, a mistake, since you can let them enjoy all the good stuff out there from day one.

Actually, we introduce newbies to Core, because it's where you find the basis for the game, and we don't want to give them too much options to choose from, or they can easily lose themselves. One book is enough for beginners.
BUT we give 'am also some useful add-ons from various splatbooks (let's say, a selection of options useful for archers, and similar). So, it's not core-only, but neither "take these 10 manuals and fend for yourselves"

[Tommy_Dude]

To adress one concern about why "Core Only" has popped up in many forums and boards; Paizo Publishing, the people who brought Pathfinder to life (also known as 3.75) has an organized play campaign. This campaign usually uses most of the splats and other books with a few statements along the lines of "this feat is not legal, this spell is not legal" for each book involved. This however has led to some bloat in a gaming format where GMs are supposed to be able to quickly and efficiently audit character sheets properly. This is one reason that the Pathfinder Society (their organized play system) has released a secondary campaign called the CORE Campaign. In this mode of play you are only allowed to use the Pathfinder Core Rulebook for most of your character options. This has led to a few things such as being able to earn "table experience" for GMs more than once etc etc. But the primary goal of this initiative was to introduce completely new players to PFS (Pathfinder Society's more common moniker) with as little pain as possible. As PFS is quite popular this has led to increased forum traffic.

On to why I prefer Core Only.

Fluff. See, when I look at feats and classes and spells from other splat books I might have to stretch the boundaries of my campaign world to allow such things to exist. Let's take the Tome of Battle/Path of War concept. It centers around maneuvers and stances that highly skilled martial characters would know. Well, that sort of breaks down if I'm doing a campaign where history is just starting, the only arcane magic comes from sorcerers and everyone uses bone or stone clubs. It would be a stretch to say this literal cave-man suddenly knows how to perform a highly specialized fighting stance, where as sorcerer magic comes from the blood. But if that initiator wanted to play a psionic warrior instead that would fit more mechanically as psionics are power of will. So with most campaigns it may be easier to start with core only for the first few characters until the world is more fleshed out, then if I can find a place for your options I'll let you retrain from level 1 up. And sometimes I limit the classes in core depending on the campaign. For instance, in the stone-age campaign there would be no rogues, rangers, wizards, or monks. As these classes represent a high amount of training that would stretch the suspension of disbelief to I AND my players.

[endur]

Forget DM laziness, I have players who don't bother to read spell descriptions (detect magic probably tells me what a spell is, so I'll use it to identify the enchantments on all these magic weapons). No way am I letting them use alternate systems when they won't learn something as basic as detect magic.

There are tons of PHB rules that people (both experienced players and GMs) constantly overlook.

[Necroticplague]

On to why I prefer Core Only.

Fluff. See, when I look at feats and classes and spells from other splat books I might have to stretch the boundaries of my campaign world to allow such things to exist. Let's take the Tome of Battle/Path of War concept. It centers around maneuvers and stances that highly skilled martial characters would know. Well, that sort of breaks down if I'm doing a campaign where history is just starting, the only arcane magic comes from sorcerers and everyone uses bone or stone clubs. It would be a stretch to say this literal cave-man suddenly knows how to perform a highly specialized fighting stance, where as sorcerer magic comes from the blood. But if that initiator wanted to play a psionic warrior instead that would fit more mechanically as psionics are power of will. So with most campaigns it may be easier to start with core only for the first few characters until the world is more fleshed out, then if I can find a place for your options I'll let you retrain from level 1 up. And sometimes I limit the classes in core depending on the campaign. For instance, in the stone-age campaign there would be no rogues, rangers, wizards, or monks. As these classes represent a high amount of training that would stretch the suspension of disbelief to I AND my players.

Except that fluff is easily changeable. So it's not much of a reason to not like something. And if we're gonna talk about Core fluff, it's a bit like gruel: plentiful and easily digestible, but bland and doesn't particularly go with anything.

Initiation seems to be too much about precise stances and motions? Change the fluff, keep mechanics. Most the supernatural stuff can be a simple form of sorcery, most the rest can either be a variation of being a berzerker (iron heart, tiger claw, stone dragon, diamond mind, some of devoted spirit),or inspiring warlord (rest of devoted spirit, white raven).

Rogues? Humans have been setting traps and ambushing prey since we started hunting it. The rogue is simply a hunter with a differing coat of paint. Ranger? Likewise, considering the only remotely trained thing they get it is 'fighting style', something you'd expect a hunter to develop if only out of availability (if the main weapon you have on hand is a greatclub, you end up picking up the strong-arm style out of sheer exposure).

[Anlashok]

Did someone really just say Rangers don't make sense in a setting that would be dominated by hunter gatherers?

[Rowan Wolf]

Not siding either way on the core only debate, but it seems to me that the balance concerns and directions seem to shift quite a bit during the lifetime of 3rd edition publications, and classes (especially prestige classes) published earlier in the run are often balanced to a much harsher standard than those near the end of the run.

[rrwoods]

If your character design process consists of 10 minutes at the beginning of a campaignthen you are spending ten minutes rolling up a character you are going to play for countless *days* of real time! Why anyone would do this is beyond me, but sure, whatever floats your boat.

[Necroticplague]

Not siding either way on the core only debate, but it seems to me that the balance concerns and directions seem to shift quite a bit during the lifetime of 3rd edition publications, and classes (especially prestige classes) published earlier in the run are often balanced to a much harsher standard than those near the end of the run.

By the community or the developers? Because from what I've seen, all are held to the same standards, and its simply that the earlier stuff isn't as up to snuff. People are just as quick to jump on the truenamer for being weak and White Raven Tactics for being too powerful as they are to point out the gaping flaws in the monk and the hilarious abuse of Wizard possible.

[Rowan Wolf]

By the community or the developers? Because from what I've seen, all are held to the same standards, and its simply that the earlier stuff isn't as up to snuff. People are just as quick to jump on the truenamer for being weak and White Raven Tactics for being too powerful as they are to point out the gaping flaws in the monk and the hilarious abuse of Wizard possible.

Well initially they seem to view caster levels as most of the class feature for primary caster and many prestige classes were balance around the lost of a few to compensate for the abilities gain however that approach seemed to largely abandoned as either they decided that was not the proper approach or that scope of balance had changed. On the martial side of thing they initially were very reluctant to give access to pounce, but in one of the last books published they allow if with only a single level of barbarian in exchange for fast movement.

[Jay R]

Except that fluff is easily changeable.

Which is to say that you pick and choose which rules to use. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it's the same decision process that leads other people to only use Core rules.

If it's reasonable for you to use only part of the expansions, then it is equally reasonable for somebody else to use none of them.

[Elderand]

Which is to say that you pick and choose which rules to use. There's nothing wrong with that.

But it's the same decision process that leads other people to only use Core rules.

If it's reasonable for you to use only part of the expansions, then it is equally reasonable for somebody else to use none of them.

Except that's not what was meant when they said fluff was changeable.

[Killer Angel]

Except that's not what was meant when they said fluff was changeable.

true. To address the original statement:


Except that fluff is easily changeable.

Indeed it is, but fluff is written, and many people don't like to change what's on printed paper.

[Socratov]

To continue with this analogy, however, nobody will ever expect you to eat 50 pounds of beef. At worst, they'll ask that you nibble on a few pieces of from around the giant pile, and ask if that portion of beef is too fatty. If I ask if Dragon Mag is available, I'm not particularly caring about the entire history of the magazine, because I can't cram that much content into a character. What I mean is "Hey, mind if I pick up Gheden, Sculpt Self, And Troll-blooded?" So even if you start with 50 pounds of beef and a pound of butter as potential meal, what you'll end up actually eating is maybe 2 pounds of beef and a thin coating of butter.

Dude, you're making me hungry for steak here.

Anyway, to toss my 2 cp in:

I have tried to introduce people to DnD and I have been intoduced by DnD. When I was introduced I was told: Read the PHB, if you want you could look into the DMG and MM. Then think of what you want to play and we'll help you make it happen. I introduced people pretty much the same way: read PHB, I'll help you figure out the rest. I can get that the sheer number of options the complete Dnd 3.5 line of books provide can be overwhelming. But core is bland. It has no real tasty options. And playing a bard in core is not very fun (only nice thing you have is glibness). Outside core bard starts to get fun (if you ask me the most fun class out there in sheer versitality and stuff you can do). Another thing splats do well for newbies is introducing magic. If you give a newbie a warlock as arcane caster (and help pick out the better invocations) they will get an instant innate feeling for the magic. Without the bookkeeping and preparation it becomes a whole lot more playable for newbies. Get psion if they want a way of resource management.

That said, if you start out as a completely fresh gaming group then core is a better fit because it's way less expensive then going splatdiving from the get-go.

On the subject of fluff, if you won't at least try to make it fit thematically then you've missed a great opportunity to enrich your game and characters. It's the same reason why some alignment restrictions exist. Easiest example is form the Warlock: in CA it looks like the angry goth kid, but you could jsut as easily make a celestial based warlock by changing some names of abilities, or a fey typed warlock, or a dragon typed warlock, or whatever. There should be a thread somehwere where some posters challenged some other posters in completely refluffing the abilites of the warlock to suit a different background. Same goes for ToB. Don't liek the magicy/animesque sauce they poured ove rit? Change the fluff. It's not hard people, and it makes your games all the richer in content.

[Vhaidara]

On topic, I see access being a reason in 3.5, because the SRD is available (and a lot of people just don't like psionics).

In PF, I don't get it. The PFSRD is RIGHT there. Legally required, too. the only Paizo content I allow in my games right now (without a third party archetype) are Magus, Alchemist, and Hybrid classes (minus the Arcanist). And even then, only the Alchemist got picked up because Vivisectionist was exactly what my player wanted.

Here's how I introduce people to DnD/PF: "So, pick a character. Tell me about them. How do they fight? What kind of magic, if any, do they have? How strong is it? How much of what they do is inherent and what comes from training?"

For 3.5, my first group ended up being
A bird with pets (Raptoran Druid/Beastmaster, the player was a big fan of Harvest Moon and other pet based games)
A master shapeshifter who was able to take any form he desired (Changeling Druid/Master of Many Forms)
Richard (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcbazH6aE2g) (Half Elf Wizard throwing fireballs everywhere. the party kept him because bad things happened when he was out of their sight)
A master of metal and magic (Earth Genasi Fighter/Wizard/Runesmith, switched to Warblade/Wizard/Runesmith/Jade Phoenix Mage after I allowed ToB. Crafting focus)
A draconic being of air and master of unarmed combat (Half Emerald Dragon Air Genasi Monk, switched to Swordsage/Shadow Sun Ninja with ToB and reduced LA)
A little sneaky spellblade (Kobold Spellthief, I messed up helping this guy, as I was just getting back in the game. I let him switch characters after a while to...)
A whale-man unarmed warrior of great belief (Homebrew race, basically aquatic goliaths, with a custom unarmed crusader variant)

In PF, I look over the things I use in my games, dominantly Dreamscarred Press and Spheres of Power, but also glancing at Paizo classes (usually archetyped into one of the other systems). Using this, I helped my current party build
A werewolf warrior who wields fire and sword side by side, whose pent up anger has become a separate personality (Shifter//Mageknight, when he hits 0 HP, his CE Rage emerges as a Mageknight//Primal Disciple Barbarian and tears things up)
A former space pirate with a pair of claw gauntlets that contain hammerspace (Vivisectionist Alchemist//Armorist)
A pyro with a fire snake, both of whom will eventually be able to become dragons (Incanter//Elementalist)
A dhampir with a great affinity for the manipulation of pure darkness and fear (Swarm Master Dread//Fey Adept)
The ultimate expression of edge, a brooding badass wielding his blades with his mind (Harbinger//Symbiat)

Yes, this party is nuts. They're enemies will be likewise. I think most of them have backups that I was also more than willing to help them out with (and that keep me from feeling to bad if someone dies, since everyone has a fun backup ready)

[The Insanity]

For me the only situation where using Core only would be justified is when the game just came out and Core IS ALL THERE IS. Fortunately I started playing long after that time, so I never had to endure the lack of options.


Not that I necessarily espouse this view, but "I want to keep their first game simple" isn't an unreasonable position. Are there more balanced, or more exciting options outside of core? Yes. But if you can hand your players a single book and say, "This is the one we're using, read and learn," that may be valuable for players who are new or have difficulty mastering a system.
Just because the options are there doesn't mean they have to be used. Don't know about you, but I expect that the people I play with have enough common sense to realize they're new to the game and thus start with the basics, adding more stuff when they're ready for it.


Because lots of things in splat books break the system, and many things don't fit the world I'm building. You can't play a half-orc if there are no orcs in the world.

I allow exceptions on a case-by-case basis, but I won't even allow all of Core rules. (You cannot grow up in a city and then take a level of Barbarian, for instance. And the spiked chain is grossly over-powered.)
That looks more like lack of imagination on the part of the DM to me.

That argument that Core is better known, I don't buy it. I might be wrong, but I think that my group knows more non-Core material than Core material, simply becasue it's just better so we look into splatbooks more often.

[rrwoods]

But if you can hand your players a single book and say, "This is the one we're using, read and learn,"
then you should find someone with more time to devote to DMing.

Having a player pick a race and class and bounce ideas off you seems like a good idea on paper -- you're being a good DM and giving the player advice and support! -- but in practice it's just lazy. With a new player, I ask "what kind of character do you want to be?" It's a deliberately open ended question designed to make them ask questions about the game. The types of questions the player asks tells me about how they view gaming and what kind of experience they want from the campaign (which, by the way, is something I'll simply directly ask the more experienced players), which allows me to craft the adventures with the players' desires and goals in mind.

When we get a decent idea as to what kind of character they want to be, *then* I start making class and feat suggestions, and talk about skill points and races. If they seem like the kind of person who wants to plan their character out (eg, I asked them "how much planning beyond level 1 do you want to do", and they didn't say "none"), I might go into what multiclassing is, and talk a bit about prestige classes and what is available that fits their concept.

Never do I hand a player a book and say "read this and come back to me" --
and certainly not the same but with twenty books! (Most of) the rules of the game can come later.

Now there's obviously a dissonance between what I'm saying now and what I said before about experienced players handing you characters, not sourcebooks. It would seem as though I'm simultaneously saying a DM doesn't need to know everything (they only need to read what the players have on their character sheets) and does need to know everything (when dealing with a new player you should be suggesting classes and feats from any source that fit their theme), but that's not true. If you don't know a lot of books, that's ok! Just talk to the new guy about what you *do* know, and draw upon the more experienced players' knowledge as well (D&D is a team sport) and don't worry if you miss an option. There's nineteen more levels to pick up that feat you forgot about.

Long story short: Really work with the new player to make their first experience memorable. "You can't have that, it's not in core" leaves a bad impression. Help them make the character they want to play and stop worrying about what book the content comes from.

... Man, I'm glad the last poster quoted that post; I missed it earlier.

[GGambrel]

...but what I'm looking for are legit reasons as to why a group of people would play a Core Only Game.

Apologies if others have already said this, but the most 'legit' reason I can think of is that a number of group members would prefer to play a Core Only Game. :smallwink: Their reasons may vary (many have been mentioned), but in the interest of bringing a group together to play all preferences should be taken into account. The DM probably deserves some extra poll in this issue since much non-Core material is setting-based and other non-Core material may not make sense in a setting the DM has created.

[rrwoods]

the most 'legit' reason I can think of is that a number of group members would prefer to play a Core Only Game ... but in the interest of bringing a group together to play all preferences should be taken into account
This is the best reason posted thus far.

But! In the interest of playing a (hopefully) long campaign with literal days of future real time invested, I'd still suggest that politely challenging the reasons why folks would want to play a Core only game is the right course of action. Have at least a short conversation about why they feel that way, and would they really mind if other players played characters using classes and feats outside core, and make an offer to assist by providing concise options (not whole books!) if they want the help, etc.

If you still have a bunch of players that won't budge, and you've still got the itch to play and hang out (it's supposed to be about having fun after all!), by all means acquiesce.

[NichG]

then you should find someone with more time to devote to DMing.

This kind of line ends up with no one ever getting to play because they can't find any real person who can live up to everyone's ideal.

I mean, when I DM I spend months collaboratively writing new game systems from scratch with my players, so that the system is tuned to their specific tastes. But that's because I'm crazy. It'd be unreasonable for me to say 'if your DM doesn't do this, you should find someone with more time to devote to DMing' just because I happen to have enough time to devote to that.

[rrwoods]

This kind of line ends up with no one ever getting to play because they can't find any real person who can live up to everyone's ideal.
I understand and respect this. I know all too well the feeling of not being able to find a game because no one is willing to create content or do all the things it takes to run a game. But I'm not talking about a massive amount of time here.

The bare minimum amount of time and effort required to run a game is pretty large. Even if you aren't using your own content, there's a lot of time spent thinking about how to challenge the characters (and the players), and the logistics management at the table is higher than for any player. Depending on the length of the campaign, you're going to be running a lot of sessions (I can't make this point enough), so that effort adds up to a large amount, however you want to measure it. Once you take into account all that stuff, having a not-too-short conversation with the players about the party mix and their character options is a miniscule investment of effort, and the value is disproportionately larger than said investment. Every incremental gain in fun value during character creation affects *every session* after it!

There seem to be a lot of DMs that don't step back and look at things from that perspective, though. They have a story they want to tell, they figure the players already know what they want, so why bother questioning anything? The point is, that's lazy. Possibly willfully. But either way, it makes for a worse campaign overall.

I'm not looking for ideal. No DM will know all the rules. No DM will be a perfect storyteller. No DM will be 100% easy to get along with (especially not good friends). And certainly no DM will be all three of these things! I'm just saying -- if you're willing to put in the effort to run a game... be willing to put in the vastly smaller effort to help out with character creation, rather taking the easy road of restricting sourcebooks.

[NichG]

I understand and respect this. I know all too well the feeling of not being able to find a game because no one is willing to create content or do all the things it takes to run a game. But I'm not talking about a massive amount of time here.

The bare minimum amount of time and effort required to run a game is pretty large. Even if you aren't using your own content, there's a lot of time spent thinking about how to challenge the characters (and the players), and the logistics management at the table is higher than for any player. Depending on the length of the campaign, you're going to be running a lot of sessions (I can't make this point enough), so that effort adds up to a large amount, however you want to measure it. Once you take into account all that stuff, having a not-too-short conversation with the players about the party mix and their character options is a miniscule investment of effort, and the value is disproportionately larger than said investment. Every incremental gain in fun value during character creation affects *every session* after it!

There seem to be a lot of DMs that don't step back and look at things from that perspective, though. They have a story they want to tell, they figure the players already know what they want, so why bother questioning anything? The point is, that's lazy. Possibly willfully. But either way, it makes for a worse campaign overall.

I'm not looking for ideal. No DM will know all the rules. No DM will be a perfect storyteller. No DM will be 100% easy to get along with (especially not good friends). And certainly no DM will be all three of these things! I'm just saying -- if you're willing to put in the effort to run a game... be willing to put in the vastly smaller effort to help out with character creation, rather taking the easy road of restricting sourcebooks.

This is really a personal optimization though. The effort involved in including other sourcebooks and running for them competently isn't really this tiny one-time thing. As you said, the logistics management is higher for the DM than for any player, and you have to spent lots of time thinking about how to challenge the characters and the players. Doing this for unfamiliar material is a lot more effort than doing it for material you're familiar with. And that's where sourcebook restriction really can help - it means fewer unknowns, fewer mis-understood mechanics, etc that you have to worry about.

If my DM has to choose between spending time and energy to make the world more reactive to PC choices and actions, versus spending that time to become competent with the particular individual character mechanics we all decide to grab from our favorite sourcebooks, I'd rather play the sword&board fighter in the former game than the swordsage in the latter. I like swordsages more than fighters, and I think they're an overall better balanced class, but its simply less important to me than a dozen other things the DM could spend their time on.

If the DM has time and skill to do both, even better, but I think its a bit silly to say 'this one thing has to take precedence when the DM allocates their time'. Priorities vary, and engaging the entirety of the ~10 years of published material doesn't have to be your top priority.

[Felyndiira]

I'm not looking for ideal. No DM will know all the rules. No DM will be a perfect storyteller. No DM will be 100% easy to get along with (especially not good friends). And certainly no DM will be all three of these things! I'm just saying -- if you're willing to put in the effort to run a game... be willing to put in the vastly smaller effort to help out with character creation, rather taking the easy road of restricting sourcebooks.

I feel that this is mostly an argument made from the perspective of an experienced tabletop player/DM with mostly experienced groups. However, 3.5e and Pathfinder do still cater to a pretty wide breadth of audiences, which includes DMs that aren't willing to - or, sometimes, able to - spend that much time designing a campaign.

That is why campaign paths sell so well after all; many DMs will use, say, Winter's Wrath as their entire campaign world with all of its pre-written NPCs and not really go far beyond what the campaign tells them too, aside from maybe some bells and whistles. I've had my share of DMs that had their own unique world, but most of the world was actually winged on-the-spot past a very broad idea of a story. Said DMs actually kept the NPC Handbook/Beastiary with them and looked up encounters on-the-fly when he wanted us to fight something, and wrote most of the campaign's story based on another player's backstory. Most of those DMs do not spend hours or days writing about their campaign world or preparing for it; they simply crack open a book and maybe work out a modification or two when they are really put into a bind. Many of those DMs, similarly, would not even know what to do if the players throw them adequately off the rails.

For many of those DMs, learning a new book can be a daunting task. I do think that many of us at GITP take our mastery of the 3.5 and PF systems for granted; I could honestly say that when I first started D&D 3.5e it took me a long time to understand a subsystem, and a lot of the optimizations on this very board with dips in 7 different classes were mystifying to me. Given all that, it's not really unreasonable for a GM to not want to look through the massive amount of materials available to the game just to expand his horizons, as you say. After all, 3.5e and Pathfinder are supposed to be hobbies for us, and that does include the DM just as much as the players. A DM might just want to have fun running a standard fighter/not-rogue/cleric/wizard party through a published campaign setting and talk with his friends about how the fighter did 29 damage to the dire wolf, not spend large amounts of time crafting a world and all the contingencies required for when the players decide to go, buy land, and crown themselves kings of thieves.

For many of those DMs, not wanting to include all of pathfinder is just as reasonable as not wanting to include third party products or homebrew for many of the people on this board. After all, what really is the difference between, say, the ACG/Tome of Magic, a third-party supplement from Kobold Press, or the Celestial Avatar Knight class designed by someone on the GITP boards with the compatible feat from the Brilliant Gameologist forums? Certainly not balance.


There seem to be a lot of DMs that don't step back and look at things from that perspective, though. They have a story they want to tell, they figure the players already know what they want, so why bother questioning anything? The point is, that's lazy. Possibly willfully. But either way, it makes for a worse campaign overall.

I disagree with the idea that "less options" is analogous to "a worse campaign overall".

Compared to pretty much any other system on the market, DnD 3.5e and Pathfinder have probably the most options for players to select from. It's not a matter of just design, either; I can think of ways to implement many D&D feats into merits for World of Darkness, just as an example. You can expand the entire selection of supernaturals into classes, and intermingle them all into a setting. Clearly, World of Darkness can support just as many options, or at least more than its current system allows you. Would you, then, call any campaign using the Base WoD or a Vampires the Masquerade systems a "worse campaign" than Pathfinder, just because they are more restricted in choices?

I mean, yeah, different systems and all, but the point is still that simplicity doesn't naturally "diminish" a campaign in the same way that choosing a simpler system - like, say, FATE over Pathfinder - doesn't diminish the campaign. Instead, it's a matter of what the group wants; if most people in a group just wants to run a simpler, core-only campaign and one player really wants to play a Incantatrix, then sure, you can argue that the campaign is "diminished" for that player. Similarly, if most of the group wants to play sci-fi and one person wants to play fantasy, you can argue the same. In this case, is the campaign really "worse" for being core-only or for being sci-fi only, or is it just incompatible playing styles between that player and the rest of the group?

I mean, if most of the core group is having fun and okay with the core-only policy, why would the campaign be "worse overall" for them?

[johnbragg]

I understand and respect this. I know all too well the feeling of not being able to find a game because no one is willing to create content or do all the things it takes to run a game. But I'm not talking about a massive amount of time here.

The bare minimum amount of time and effort required to run a game is pretty large. Even if you aren't using your own content, there's a lot of time spent thinking about how to challenge the characters (and the players), and the logistics management at the table is higher than for any player. Depending on the length of the campaign, you're going to be running a lot of sessions (I can't make this point enough), so that effort adds up to a large amount, however you want to measure it. Once you take into account all that stuff, having a not-too-short conversation with the players about the party mix and their character options is a miniscule investment of effort, and the value is disproportionately larger than said investment. Every incremental gain in fun value during character creation affects *every session* after it!

But the time investment isn't just the conversation during character generation. It's the time investment required to master the material in Core PLUS Splatbook X, Y and Z well enough to do a good job DM'ing it.

Things that aren't broken can often become broken through lack of careful reading. In one of my first 3.0/3.5 campaigns, my wife's Barbarian was dominated by vampires in almost every combat because (Barbs have lousy will saves) nobody in the veteran gaming group had read the NEW text of Protection from Evil warding off possession temporarily. It takes time and effort to not make mistakes like that with Core material. (Easier now because the internet means much faster information flow).

The same happens with non-Core content. There's a mediocre-as-written Paladin spell, Divine Sacrifice, which lets you sacrifice 2 hp per round attack to add d6 damage to the attack. IF you don't read the spell closely, you'll sacrifice 2 hp/round before combat for 5 rounds to add 5d6 damage to the Paladin's first attack. (You can't do that with the spell as written.) And the DM will have to balance encounters around the Paladin's nova attack, and might boost the numbers on everything you fight so that only the semi-optimized, semi-cheating 2003 model Paladin can hit it and the ranger, cleric-rogue, bard are hopelessly outclassed (and my Durkon-cleric is busy healing the Paladin because it's 2003.) It took a half-dozen sessions before I got ahold of the spell he was using and read the RAW and found out we had been doing it wrong.

(As I said upthread, it's a much bigger concern for spells, and now I suppose maneuvers, than it is for feats or classes, because there are so many more spells to keep track of.)

I understand what you're saying--I'd like to try out Tome of Battle. But it would take significant trial and error to figure out what in ToB works best, what is needs close reading to work properly, etc. If you have a job and kids, that kind of time investment may not be feasible.

Now get off my lawn!

[rrwoods]

{that whole post}
I'll have to agree to disagree here. I just see a huge difference between "running for a sourcebook competently" and "running for a character competently"; sure, it takes more time to challenge a player using material you're unfamiliar with, but just because I pick one ACF from Complete Champion doesn't suddenly mean you need to know the whole book.

To me, when a DM says "core only" it sets off red flags about competence and willingness to invest effort, especially online where the DM is very likely someone I've never met before. But I totally get that there are realities where the DM has just enough time to "stick to the plan" as it were, and as long as it doesn't fall under "no gaming > bad gaming" then I'll happily roll with it.


{that whole post too}
See response above as well. I keep seeing people say things alluding to needing to know a whole book. That's a scarecrow.

I'm also not saying that less options necessarily makes a worse campaign. That's just a personal preference, which I'm doing my best to keep out of this discussion. What I'm saying makes for a worse campaign is a lazy DM -- and I take a blanket "Core only" statement to be a sign of lazy DM'ing. Again, see above: maybe it's not, and among my friends I'll initiate a conversation about it to figure out what the motivation is before making any assumptions; online I'm just going to move on.

If most of the group is having fun, then obviously everything's going great. Now what if the tank in that group asks if he can take Stand Still next level? Is the DM going to say "oops, we're not using XPH, you can't have that", or is he going to read the feat first and decide whether it's good or bad for the game? There's a line of course; I expect a player to ask about one or two prime choices and maybe a handful of backups -- since I'm saying the DM shouldn't need to know a whole book, the player shouldn't ask about one either.


It's the time investment required to master the material in Core PLUS Splatbook X, Y and Z well enough to do a good job DM'ing it.
I maintain this isn't true, see above, etc etc.


Protection from Evil, Divine Sacrifice
... OK, it's on the player to read his spells. If you all were playing 3.5, and the player hasn't read the 3.5 versions of their spells, that's not the DM's fault. The DM can't be expected to know every player's spells any more than e can be expected to know every book (though he should certainly have a very good general idea as to what the characters are capable of).

[johnbragg]

I'll have to agree to disagree here. I just see a huge difference between "running for a sourcebook competently" and "running for a character competently"; sure, it takes more time to challenge a player using material you're unfamiliar with, but just because I pick one ACF from Complete Champion doesn't suddenly mean you need to know the whole book.

To me, when a DM says "core only" it sets off red flags about competence and willingness to invest effort, especially online where the DM is very likely someone I've never met before. But I totally get that there are realities where the DM has just enough time to "stick to the plan" as it were, and as long as it doesn't fall under "no gaming > bad gaming" then I'll happily roll with it.

Maybe a better way to say that is that "core only" flags a DM (and a group) which is playing well below your comfortable optimization level. That DM is likely to be unprepared for, say, Versatile Spellcaster shenanigans, and would either see encounters trivialized by high-op players, or in reaction throw wildly overpowered encounters at the hapless party. EVeryone's fun gets ruined, the high-op player posts on the Worst DMs thread and the DM posts on the Worst Players thread.

(Better in this case meaning "nicer", not "more accurate")

[rrwoods]

Maybe a better way to say that is that "core only" flags a DM (and a group) which is playing well below your comfortable optimization level. That DM is likely to be unprepared for, say, Versatile Spellcaster shenanigans, and would either see encounters trivialized by high-op players, or in reaction throw wildly overpowered encounters at the hapless party. EVeryone's fun gets ruined, the high-op player posts on the Worst DMs thread and the DM posts on the Worst Players thread.

(Better in this case meaning "nicer", not "more accurate")
Then the DM can veto Versatile Spellcaster! I've got no problem with that. My entire standpoint comes from the idea that character creation is a conversation, not "Here's my character sheet now let's play".

Further, if the DM misunderstands the power of a feat/spell/class, my view is that he has the right to ask the player to change a choice previously made, and that player has the responsibility to change that choice and the right to change other choices made on the assumption that choice was valid to start with.

EDIT: Also, I edited my previous post to respond to your previous post.

[johnbragg]

. Again, see above: maybe it's not, and among my friends I'll initiate a conversation about it to figure out what the motivation is before making any assumptions; online I'm just going to move on.

That's a wise, timesaving move on your part. Flip the script, though, and consider the wannabe PbP DM who knows he isn't ready to run a game with Incantrixes and kobold shenanigans and Tome of Battle and warforged and etc etc. He (or she) is doing the same sort of timesaving move. ESpecially with people you don't know.

I don't know you. I don't know your optimization level, I don't know your integrity level--I don't know whether you'll intentionally misread your source, whether you'll take the most advantageous (but widely rejected) reading, or play it straight. I don't know if you're optimizing to make your Paladin Pun-Pun, or just to make your Paladin a high Tier 4/low Tier 3. So the DM is leaving himself open to all sorts of game-wrecking shenanigans.


If most of the group is having fun, then obviously everything's going great. Now what if the tank in that group asks if he can take Stand Still next level? Is the DM going to say "oops, we're not using XPH, you can't have that", or is he going to read the feat first and decide whether it's good or bad for the game?

That second thing. (I don't know the Stand Still feat, but let's pretend I'm the DM and I read it and it's fine. It sounds like a WOTC feat for martials, so it can't be that good. :smallbiggrin:) But starting with "Core only" or "Core Plus Short List" makes that a DM option, "Yes, I will make this reasonable exception for you" vs "No, I'm going to make an exception to deny you something I implied you could have."


... OK, it's on the player to read his spells. If you all were playing 3.5, and the player hasn't read the 3.5 versions of their spells, that's not the DM's fault. The DM can't be expected to know every player's spells any more than e can be expected to know every book (though he should certainly have a very good general idea as to what the characters are capable of).

It wasn't even a 3.0 vs 3.5 issue--Divine Sacrifice was in a book that only the Paladin player owned, and the PAladin hadn't read it closely, neither had the DM before approving it. I only read it after a few months of my Durkon cleric doing almost nothing in combat but heal the Paladin. (This was a different time--there was no such thing as the SRD, no such thing as freely available illegally scanned PDFs of splatbooks online, forums were in their relative infancy. If you didn't have the book, you were kind of in the dark as to the RAW for a spell.)

But I could easily see myself having the same problem with a player using (abusing?) a spell from Stormwrack or The Last Splatbook of Faerun or Dragon #366 or whatever.


Then the DM can veto Versatile Spellcaster! I've got no problem with that. My entire standpoint comes from the idea that character creation is a conversation, not "Here's my character sheet now let's play".

I agree on the conversation part. But I disagree on the starting point of the conversation.

I used Versatile Spellcaster because I was just introduced to it this weekend on the E6 Tippyverse thread. If I were running an E6 game, and you joined my E6 game that didn't list splatbook restrictions, you'd be ticked off that I banned your feat. And you'd have a point.


Further, if the DM misunderstands the power of a feat/spell/class, my view is that he has the right to ask the player to change a choice previously made, and that player has the responsibility to change that choice and the right to change other choices made on the assumption that choice was valid to start with.

It's a lot more comfortable, IMO, to start out restrictive and then make exceptions than it is to try to take away candy that's already been given out.

(And yes, if iI'm retconning away your feat/spell/cool toy, you should be allowed to retcon decisions that assumed you'd have it.)

[squiggit]

So the DM is leaving himself open to all sorts of game-wrecking shenanigans.
That's irrelevant to whether or not it's a core only game though.

[johnbragg]

That's irrelevant to whether or not it's a core only game though.

No, that's the whole point. 15 or so years after 3rd Edition came out, 12 years after 3.5, there is a very limited set of shenanigans a player can get away with by exploiting the DM's lack of knowledge of how things in Core work. (I'm only talking about CharOp shenanigans, not lousy or disruptive roleplaying.)

It's much easier to be blindsided by something a player found in the nearly 50 sourcebooks wikipedia lists for 3.0 and 3.5.

[Jay R]

Why play Core only?
That's no different from any of these questions:
Why play 3.5?
Why play D&D?
Why play any rpg?
Why play any game?
Why play?

Because we enjoy it. In the long run, that's the only answer.

If you don't want to play Core only, don't play in such a game, and have fun the way you want to have fun. If somebody else wants to play Core only, great, they can have fun the way they want to.

And my players and I will continue to play the 2E game I'm running, with each PC having a single Feat, and many monsters re-written. And we'll have fun the way we want to.

[rrwoods]

Nah, I wouldn't be ticked. Especially if you hadn't read the feat before I asked you about it. I dunno, maybe players are in general more apt to complain about such things than I think they are.

There's certainly potential here for players to feel like the DM is playing favorites because hey, he got to have Stand Still but I didn't get Divine Metamagic wah wah cry some more. I would rather have these issues come to the fore on day zero; there's no more potential for that feeling during character creation than there is at the table.

I'll admit, casters that always know their whole list is a little daunting, since that is pretty much a flat exception to my statement that "a DM only needs to know the part the character picks". In those cases though, a responsible player would broach the subject of obscure* spells before the game begins; or, if discovered during an encounter where it could be really useful, be ready for the DM to say "no" or at least "not right now".

* "obscure" here varies depending on the group; it could mean "not in the PHB" in some groups or "in a campaign setting specific book" in others, or anything in between.

[Talakeal]

I haven't read the entire thread, so forgive me if this has already been said:

First there is the issue of length. The most common complaint I get when showing people Heart of Darkness is that the core rules are almost 600 pages long. 3.5s core rules alone are nearly double that. Add on the splat books and you have tens of thousands of pages to read and memorize. This is simply too much of a commitment to ask in both time and effort.

So, people are less familiar with anything outside of core.

Next there is accessibility. It is a burden to buy and then carry around all those books, and takes a lot of time to search through them for the rule you need. The SRD alleviates this somewhat, but it is in a stripped down and disorganized format, you need to look for something in specific and hope it is in the SRD rather than just reading the relevant chapter and soaking it all in.

Then there is the issue of balance. Now, generally 3.X is a mess balance wise, and core is no better. But people perceive core as the "default", and the devil you know is better than the devil you don't. I have fixes for fighters and monks and shapechange. But if you throw something at me that I have never heard of I need to make rulings based solely on a quick read rather than actual play experience or in depth study. This will come back to bite me in the butt later on.

[rrwoods]

I want to make sure I say the following, because the direction this thread and my arguments have taken may have buried this notion.

Fun is what is most important.

I'm not here to crap on the way other people have fun. Do what works for your group!

"What works" can be a spectrum, though. I simply and humbly propose that, if a player asks about an option outside the approved list of source materials, the "what works" bar for that player may have moved slightly, and the group should be aware of that.

[johnbragg]

I want to make sure I say the following, because the direction this thread and my arguments have taken may have buried this notion.

Fun is what is most important.

I'm not here to crap on the way other people have fun. Do what works for your group!

"What works" can be a spectrum, though. I simply and humbly propose that, if a player asks about an option outside the approved list of source materials, the "what works" bar for that player may have moved slightly, and the group should be aware of that.

I think we agree more than we disagree. A player asking about an option means looking up and evaluating that one option, with the real possibility that the answer is "no", or maybe "not as written, but how about with these nerfs" (of course these nerfs may make the option worthless and the player picks something else.)

As opposed to implying familiarity with the 40+ WOTC 3E books, never mind Dragon Magazine, Pathfinder, 3rd party stuff and homebrew.

[Troacctid]

When I want a Core-only game, I go to 5th edition. Its core is waaaay better than 3.5's, and it's not remotely close IMO. It's more balanced, it's easier to learn, and character creation is more streamlined. Basically, if you have a set of criteria where Core 3.5e > Non-Core 3.5e, then by those same criteria, Core 5e > Core 3.5e, almost guaranteed.

[rrwoods]

I think we agree more than we disagree. A player asking about an option means looking up and evaluating that one option, with the real possibility that the answer is "no", or maybe "not as written, but how about with these nerfs" (of course these nerfs may make the option worthless and the player picks something else.)

As opposed to implying familiarity with the 40+ WOTC 3E books, never mind Dragon Magazine, Pathfinder, 3rd party stuff and homebrew.
I guess part of my beef with saying "Core Only" on a game means that feats outside core are a special exception of some sort, which can turn off players from even asking about them in the first place, which can lead to the same situation that results from the DM directly saying "no, it's not core" in response to the question before the question is even asked (because essentially that's what's happening).

It does seem like we agree more than disagree on things though.

[Yahzi]

I might have to stretch the boundaries of my campaign world
This. The last time I created a campaign world (for GURPS) I wrote a computer program to generate every spell-caster and noble in the known world.

I am trying to make a D&D campaign that is a) feudal and medieval but also b) follows all the rules of D&D. I have gotten to the point where I can justify why wheat costs 1 cp per pound and why some people take the Aristocrat class. I know what effect various spells have on the economy (less than you think until you hit Plant Growth) and the legal system (a lot more than most people consider).

It's not that I have anything against the splat books, and I totally agree the mundanes need the help (so much so that I've introduce a few house rules to close the gap a bit). But I simply can't predict the effect of all those classes/spells/feats on the economics/military/social systems of the world. Most D&D worlds don't even try - I have seen published adventures that are low-level murder mysteries... and there is a 3rd lvl Cleric NPC in the module. I keep seeing backstories where some noble woman dies in childbirth or of the plague. That bothers me, especially since my players just go "We tell the Cleric to cast Zone of Truth. Skip to the end."

Once I have established the world, then it's OK if a player introduces a new thing. So they (and they alone) figure out a new spell, or they discover a small sect of cultists with a new prestige class. That can be incorporated. But starting from scratch, building a whole world, it's enough to take in just Core.

[gooddragon1]

To me, core only demonstrates merely a lack of comfort with material other than basic stuff. I feel like the most common reason would be that they've heard horror stories about broken things or they had a bad experience before.

[Tommy_Dude]

I think I'll add one more thought to this.

Right now I'm playing my characters through Kingmaker, which is a Paizo Adventure Path (for those that don't know, it's a full pre-written campaign going from 1st level to roughly 18th or 19th level). Core Only can mean different things. I have allowed the Big Hardbacks Line of Pathfinder to this game. CRB, Ultimate Combat, Ultimate Magic, Ultimate Equipment, Advanced Player's Guide, Advanced Race Guide. The only hardbacks I have not added were the Advanced Class Guide and Mythic Adventures.

In this game, the idea is that the party comes from all walks of life and have been chartered to explore (and eventually settle, then rule) a small puppet nation on the frontier. As time goes by, the small puppet nation gains it's independence as the sponsoring country is thrown into civil war.

To that end, Rather than opening EVERY book and EVERY source, each player gets 1 book outside of the Big Six, that I will read through, understand, and approve. Oddly enough most of these extra books come from Paizo's official line so far with one 3pp title. If a character dies, I will allow that player to add another book since they might need new options for new characters. The understanding being that I need a week to digest this material. To be honest? My players are having a blast, but I am struggling. Even with six books of "official" quality, I am finding that many things in the adventure Path are a tad weak in many areas. I do not have the system mastery to improve them, nor do I have the time. The entire reason I'm using a premade campaign is because I have maybe 4 hours a week to prep next week's session. If I spend two hours re-writing an NPC from scratch to be more challenging, then I have less time to keep track of political maneuverings, timed events, and roll20 image and map prep.

Does this make me a lazy DM? Sure, why not. But, when I don't understand the Path of War/Tome of Battle Initiator? Initiation? Initiate? Rules to begin with, my players could also get confused on them (this has happened many times with two of my players) or legitimately cheat (this has happened with five players in my past). So I need advanced forewarning when I get new sub-systems thrown at me. I am more likely to allow simple mechanic archetypes or classes that already do something I can relate to, than adding something from Path of War. And this is just one example. I have nothing against Path of War, I have heard that it's great for martials. It gets a thumbs up on design goal. I just don't have time to learn it, and saying to me that "I just need to know the important bits on the character's sheet" that's a bit of a fallacy, even in core. For example: Someone takes the brew potion feat. We all know what this does yes? Well, the actual RAW is split in the pathfinder core book under the feat, the magic item creation base rules, the potion creation base rules, and the potion section in magic item description. That's several spread out pages I have to dig through and find if I wasn't familiar with core. Now let's look at Path of War. If you showed me what your stances or maneuvers do, that's only part of the problem. I don't know how the base system works. I'd have to read the first few chapters of the book to understand that, then possibly the class description, then the stances themselves. Let's not even get started on how the terminology meshes badly with Pathfinder's Combat Maneuver System and how I might mistakenly assume Path of War Manuever DCs have to beat a character's Combat Maneuver Defense rating. And this was a legitimate bit of confusion I had when I tried to read the book the first time, then gave up because I don't have the time to read it fully.

Honestly, the Core Only question this thread has originally asked has come down to a Player Entitlement vs DM Fiat argument in many cases. With a few reasonable voices calling out that "this is supposed to be for fun. What works for your group is all that matters." That is the strongest point here. Why someone would play Core Only comes from personal preference, not some overarching goal of "I'm better than you because I play Core Only." That is wrong. Some people don't have system mastery or RAW memorized from core. Heck, I've been playing for almost five years and I still don't even understand what this "Tier" thing people keep talking about is. I've never seen "Tier 4" or whatever mentioned in a single rule book I have read.

[Flickerdart]

Rather than opening EVERY book and EVERY source, each player gets 1 book outside of the Big Six, that I will read through, understand, and approve. ...But, when I don't understand the Path of War/Tome of Battle Initiator? Initiation? Initiate?
It seems that the thing you have a problem with is not books but subsystems. This is a pretty valid concern, but if a player just wants one feat from one book, why do you need to read through the whole thing?

Heck, I've been playing for almost five years and I still don't even understand what this "Tier" thing people keep talking about is. I've never seen "Tier 4" or whatever mentioned in a single rule book I have read.
It's not a WotC term - WotC has never really admitted that its classes are unequal, and I don't think Paizo has either. It's shorthand for referring to how versatile a class is - for example, a Tier 1 class has a meaningful and decisive contribution to make in any scenario, while a Tier 5 class will often struggle to contribute even in its purported area of expertise, and be all but useless outside of it. It's advised that players pick classes that are in adjacent tiers to make things easier for the DM - otherwise he ends up trying to build an encounter where both Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) are equally challenged. In a party with a T1 and a T5 class, encounters that challenge the T1 will smear the T5 across the floor, and encounters appropriate for the T5 are trivial for the T1 to overcome.

It's important to note that Tiers are for classes and not builds - a novice player can use a Tier 1 class to make a character that can't do anything, and a hardcore optimizer can pull out all the stops to make a Tier 5 class seem unstoppable and almighty, especially to the eyes of an inexperienced DM and players.

[Necroticplague]

Honestly, the Core Only question this thread has originally asked has come down to a Player Entitlement vs DM Fiat argument in many cases. With a few reasonable voices calling out that "this is supposed to be for fun. What works for your group is all that matters." That is the strongest point here. Why someone would play Core Only comes from personal preference, not some overarching goal of "I'm better than you because I play Core Only." That is wrong. Some people don't have system mastery or RAW memorized from core. The sad part is that sometimes, the bolded portion is wrong. I have had the unpleasentry of talking to people who thought that core only was the only real dnd, and everything else was for munchkins and powergamers, since they didn't have this kinda stuff back in the day (ignoring the fact that 2e had more books than 3e, they were just harder to find in the pre-internet days).


Heck, I've been playing for almost five years and I still don't even understand what this "Tier" thing people keep talking about is. I've never seen "Tier 4" or whatever mentioned in a single rule book I have read.

The 'tiers' aren't in any book, their a community-made construct to represent how powerful the classes are in a general sense.

[Aedilred]

I don't buy (heh) the money argument.

At least, with regards to individual feats, spells, or even classes in most cases, the money argument doesn't fly for me. As a player, I am not asking my DM to buy a book (I already own it) or read the whole thing -- just one class at most, or one feat at the least. If that's too much work, I don't want to play in that campaign. That's lazy GMing.


Yes and no. It is partly dependent on context. If the DM owns his own copy (or is lent it by the player) and can take it away and study it along with the time he'd normally dedicate to game prep, then it's reasonable to expect him to be able to incorporate it in the game unless he has specific objections (whether thematic or balance-related).

But if the player presents him with a new book in-session and asks him to make an on-the-spot ruling on whether or not it's viable - which is how, in my experience, it's usually done - he has to cross-reference that mentally with everything else in the game: how this interacts with all the core stuff he's already using, how it interacts with other non-core options he's already approved from that player, how it interacts with other non-core options other players are using, and so on. And he has to do that in a matter of minutes, under pressure, because it's eating into session time.

And they potentially have to do that for every player.

A lot of GMs just aren't confident in their ability to adjudge balance on the fly, especially when it comes to things they've never seen before. And rather than run the risk of calling it wrong and later regret the consequences of their decision but be unable to do anything to rectify it prospectively, it's easier just to say no to everything by default. Maybe you'd call that lazy, but depending on the type of campaign and the time commitment expected - both in and out of session - of players and DM, I don't think it's inherently unreasonable. Perhaps you just have different expectations of your DM from me.

I do fall on the side of preferring to allow splatbooks in general, because I think they make the game more interesting. I'm also fortunate in having a reasonable collection and am happy to lend them to DMs or other players for them to have a look over (almost uniquely among books...) But I can completely understand why some DMs would want to restrict their use, even if I disagree.

[rrwoods]

It's the player's responsibility to present the GM with a desired character option well before the gaming session. Even if it's in core!

If I asked my GM last minute whether an option was okay, I would fully expect them to say "you'll have to wait on that until I have time to study it."

[johnbragg]

The Tier system, briefly.

Tier 1 classes have the ability to do basically anything, including many gamebreaking things because of the power of their spells, and then turn around the next day and break the game and/or world in a completely different way because they have unlimited access to their entire spell list. (Wizard, Cleric, Druid)
Tier 2 classes are like Tier 1s, except they have to choose their spells on a fairly permanent basis. (Sorcerer)
Tier 3 classes are either "can always do something useful (Bard)" or "masters of a particular thing" (warblade, fixed list casters)
Tier 4 classes are good at something (Rogue, Barbarian, Warlock), but not as good as a full-caster who woke up that morning and decided to do the same thing
Tier 5 classes aren't especially good at what they're supposed to be good at. (Fighter, Monk, Paladin)


The original JaronK essay The original JaronK essay (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=658.0)

And also Why each class is in its Tier (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=5070.0)

I personally find that the Tier list overrates skills, and underrates combat power, relative to the actual gameplay at most tables. (You'll notice that the Expert and the Adept are Tier 4, while the Fighter is Tier 5.) But it's a powerful demonstration of the way caster supremacy is built into the 3X architecture.

[endur]

Maybe you'd call that lazy, but depending on the type of campaign and the time commitment expected - both in and out of session - of players and DM, I don't think it's inherently unreasonable. Perhaps you just have different expectations of your DM from me.

Time commitment is an important issue. For example, I GM a four player in person group (2 clerics (one tanking, one healing), 1 sorcerer, and a rogue). 2 players sent my their character sheet ahead of time before we started play, two players have never really shown me their character sheet, but I have some idea of what is on their sheet.

I used to think that core + 1 other book per player was reasonable ... however, as soon as I saw the alternative subsystems in books like Tome of Battle ... I realized that wouldn't work. . . I've now gone to core only ...

Why not allow alternative subsystems? Of my four players, at least one has not previously played D&D 3.x. The other three haven't played 3.x on a regular basis in probably 10 years (and Tome of Battle didn't exist back then, so none of us had prior exposure to it). It takes time enough to follow the core rules for high level characters (party is level 11). The time required to GM Tome of Battle (as cool as a book as it is) just isn't worth it.

There are plenty of feats, extra rules, organizations, prestige classes, spells, etc. in the splat books that aren't broken. However, there is a cost in added complexity for every item you add. Eliminate splat books and you eliminate interrupts, swift actions, multiple definitions of polymorph and lots of other stuff that really don't add much to the game.

Gary Gygax managed to have witches and balrogs and vampires and all sorts of other funky characters as PCs at his 1e table, but he didn't need splat books to run the game. The core rules are flexible.

[Flickerdart]

Eliminate splat books and you eliminate interrupts, swift actions, multiple definitions of polymorph and lots of other stuff that really don't add much to the game.
Um, you do know Quicken is Core, right?

[Troacctid]

So are multiple definitions of polymorph. And interrupts.

[Necroticplague]

There are plenty of feats, extra rules, organizations, prestige classes, spells, etc. in the splat books that aren't broken. However, there is a cost in added complexity for every item you add. Eliminate splat books and you eliminate interrupts, swift actions, multiple definitions of polymorph and lots of other stuff that really don't add much to the game.

And the cost is pretty minimal. I've yet to meet a system where you can't easily sum it up in 1-3 short sentences after a skim-read through the relevant class's features (which usually re-iterate all the relevant mechanics).