Things you dislike about 3.x

[Kiara LeSabre]

In keeping with the general theme of reflecting on the merits and (especially and most frequently) flaws of the newest edition of D&D, why don't we take a moment for retrospective and look back on what we remember (somewhat less than) fondly from the days of 3.x D&D?

Piles and piles of feats! ... most of them traps. Unless you spent all of your time browsing the CO boards, picking the right feats, or even knowing which books had the right feats, could be like hunting a needle in the proverbial haystack. Pity that, if you were a fighter, knowing exactly the right feats and optimizing to the nines was your only hope ... for modest adequacy as the caster's plucky sidekick.

Wizardly death combos that no non-caster could possibly escape! Gosh, I know I'll sure miss those.

Rogues completely obviated, in their supposed primary role, by low-level spells! ~sigh~ It makes me all misty-eyed, remembering the good old days.

Druids having class features more powerful than entire classes! Well, we can only hope the druid returns as the 'zilla the cleric didn't quite manage to come back as.

Monks and CW samurai having no role at all! I know I look back fondly on the time I spent playing a mook ... I mean monk.

Well, I wonder what else we'll miss from the glory days of 3.x?

[Swordguy]

*sigh* Bet this'll get locked for trolling. Hope not, though - it's only fair to have this one and the "stuff you hate about 4e" thread.

Anyway, I hate the fact that the focus of the game because less about making characters and more about making builds. While it certainly happened in previous editions, it got out of control in 3.x. For evidence, compare the number of "rate my build" or "how do I be mechanically optimal" threads on, say, this forum, against the number of threads about "how should I roleplay this character"?

The fact that 3.x is a restrictive, rather than permissive game. Generally speaking, in older D&D, if you can justify it to the DM, he'd give you a shot at it. With the increased crunchiness of 3.x, it became "if you don't have X feat, or ability, or whatever, you can't do it", because allowing you to do it without an ability wasn't fair to the person who had mechanically built that ability into their character.

[Cybren]

Well this thread certainly isn't needlessly antagonistic.

I disliked 3.5 never developing a clear direction with any of its elements:

Were feats minor bonuses meant to enhance an area of a character defined by its class or were the feats the primary method of distinction for a character?

Were prestige classes metagame concepts that were simply suggestions for things for the DM to do or "real" classes you enter into later? Were they tied into organizations within the world or were they just collections of mechanics with roleplay suggestions?

I disliked skill checks, traps, overly redundant classes, and the support for settings like Eberron rather than super cool funky ++ settings like Spelljammer or Planescape.

I disliked "the blood wars" and other "generic D&D setting" story material. I disliked Grayhawk, aka, "Generic D&D". Most of all I disliked "asmodeus" and the way he seemed to be handled. "ACTUALLY HE'S AN UBER OVER DEITY. IN FACT HE'S BEEN THE REAL DM I AM JUST HIS SERVANT HAIL ASMODAI"

I dislike dividing magic into "arcane" and "divine", and using multitudes of spell lists to differentiate between the cleric and paladin, and yet the sorcerer and wizard shared one. I disliked the unintuitive placement of some spells into schools. I disliked evocation, creating stuff, and conjuration(creation), which is also creating stuff. I believe the distinction was in the level of gloweyness.

[FoE]

In fairness, I think most 4E critics recognize that 3.5 has a lot of faults as well. They would just rather have seen 4E go in a different direction than it did. And while I don't agree with them, I don't think this thread is helping matters.

That said, the whole "PCs and NPCs must play by the same rules" approach was pretty dumb. And I'm glad to see that players aren't punished for not picking a magic-user.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Well this thread certainly isn't needlessly antagonistic.

It could be called antagonistic, but I don't think it's any more antagonistic than the threads that inspired and provoked it. To me, it's more a matter of balancing the scales and giving a voice to the other half.

Well, I'll step out of the way again now. :smallsmile:

[ghost_warlock]

Things I Hated About 3.X

Different Classes using Different Mechanics: Whether it's ToB maneuvers/stances, Vancian spellcasting, psionic power points, simple full-attack actions, vestige powers, invocations (ie., warlock or the dragon-themed class from Dragon Magic), or incarnum points, I know I certainly won't miss different classes that function in varied and intriguing ways. 2 at-wills + X encounter powers + X daily powers for everyone is certainly a better method.

Min-Maxing: I was always annoyed, personally, when players assumed that, by default, they'll have 18's in the primary attributes for their class.

Too Much Bookwork I never understood why characters retained their old, low-level spells/feats when they got undoubtedly better ones at higher levels. Old spells should be forgotten after a character uses them for 10 levels, and old feats should be replaced with new ones. Why do characters really need to know potentially hundreds of spells when 20-some should do them just fine.

No Magic for Fighters It really sucked, in 3.X, that fighters couldn't cast spells without multiclassing. Ritual magic available to everyone in 4e is really a much better system, even if it takes longer and can cost a lot.

Cheap Magic Magic items that cost less than millions of gp at high levels is unrealistic.

Dragon and Dungeon Magazine It sucked having to wait to get these in the mail or picking them up at the local hobby store. It's better to get them piece-by-piece over the month. Also, carting all those magazines around could be a chore, having them available only electronically is better. And people who still want a physical copy can always just print the mags themselves. All that fancy artwork looks great when printed with an inkjet printer or a black-and-white-only laser printer.

SRD Having a useable, easily accessed SRD available made it too easy for people to print cheap versions of the rules or access the information when they were away from home/their bookshelf.

Modern Setting d20 Modern sucked, anyway. I'm glad WotC decided to drop all that stuff and stick with the medeival fantasy D&D was originally imagined as.

Too Much Splat Noone will ever produce anywhere near as much splat for 4e that they did for 3.X, especially since there's fewer companies producing stuff for 4e than there was for 3.X. Anything you think is missing you can just homebrew yourself, after all.

Hype When 3.0, and then 3.5, were released these message boards were clogged for months with people arguing back and forth over which system (3.0, 2e, OD&D, Rifts, GURPS, WoD, ad nauseum) was a better system and why they thought so. People flamed and trolled, sister and brother turned against brother and sister. The old systems were criticized as being clunky or unusable; people claimed that they never had any fun with the old systems despite the years of gaming they'd done with them, or the numerous posts they'd made on forums like this talking about the old systems. People who liked the old systems better were called backwards while people who liked the new systems were called sellouts. WotC was accused of being an Evil Money-Making Monster of a company that was just out to turn in a profit. People argued whether the new system was more intuitive or whether it was dumbed down. I'm glad nothing like that has happened with 4e.

[FoE]

(Sigh) I had to read through that post like three times before I figured out what the point of it was. Well, I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again, but ...

SARCASM DOES NOT TRANSLATE WELL ON THE INTERNET!

[TheCountAlucard]

I dislike the fact that almost every supplemental book written seems to not take the other supplements into consideration, leading to extremely-abusable combos, including the infamous Pun-pun and the Divine Metamagic + Persistent Spell + Nightstick + Divine Power + Righteous Might Cleric.

Also, I don't like the fact that nearly every supplement has new druid and cleric spells. When your tenth-level cleric has ten thousand choices for what to prepare in the morning, there is a problem.

[Cybren]

(Sigh) I had to read through that post like three times before I figured out what the point of it was. Well, I've said it before and I'll no doubt say it again, but ...

SARCASM DOES NOT TRANSLATE WELL ON THE INTERNET!

Deadpan delivery does not translate well using the written word. Irony does.

[FoE]

Deadpan delivery does not translate well using the written word. Irony does.

{Scrubbed}

[llamamushroom]

SARCASM DOES NOT TRANSLATE WELL ON THE INTERNET!

When will someone get around to making that sarcasm font?

OT: One thing which I like considerably more about 4ed is the design of the books - I really don't like the faux-grimoire/ancient text of doom. I prefer the more intuitive layout of 4ed, though the fact that it took me an hour of searching to find out how many friggin' powers my class learnt was a point in the 'cons' column.

[Spiryt]

Well, I think that most things have been stated already.

It's rather iritating - 3.5 gives you maaany options with any class, and multiclass multipless it all by 439. But unfortunately most of this things won't work very well, regardless if combinations mak prefecft sense, or are rather silly.

Also magic items becoming most important part of characters in high levels, although it is DM call, so it's not so bad.

[Morty]

It's funny how few people griping about 4ed can make an impression that everyone just keep on pointing its flaws outnumbering those who don't. Anyway, enough trolling on my part, let's get down to business.


Anyway, I hate the fact that the focus of the game because less about making characters and more about making builds. While it certainly happened in previous editions, it got out of control in 3.x. For evidence, compare the number of "rate my build" or "how do I be mechanically optimal" threads on, say, this forum, against the number of threads about "how should I roleplay this character"?

I'd argue about it being fault of system rather than players. It's not 3ed's "fault" that players want to have optimized characters. And you don't see many "how do I roleplay this character" for 4ed either, simply because there's limited amount of roleplaying help you can get from people on a message board who don't know you or your gaming group. And before anyone says that, it is possible to play unoptimized character in 3ed. My entire group plays characters as optimized as wet cardboard and we're having fun.
Now let's see what irks me in 3ed(I'll leave out broken casters and weak fighters because that goes without saying right now):
Tons of magical toys: Otherwise known as "Christmas Tree Effect", a situation where every high-level character is hung with magic items necessary for his/her survival.
Magic for everything: While I like Vancian casting and utility potential of 3ed magic, it's annoying how there's a spell for absolutely everything. It leads to parodies like Eberron being logical extentions of the rules.
Alignment system: 3ed alignment system is good as far as such systems go, but the very idea of a system governing moralty and ethics is bogus.
Preety little chunks of XP: Now, that's more of a feature of the setting rather than system but sentient races being XP fodder for low-level adventurers annoys me.
Hm, that's preety much it. There's also class imbalance, but it's been gone over so many times it's not worth mentioning. Also, ghost_warlock, that was a great post.

[Mastikator]

I dislike that heal wounds is a conjuration type spell, but inflict wounds is necromancy. It has always irked me.
Oh, and the way "necromancy" is not used as what necro mancy actually means, not even close. "Necromagi" is a better term >_>

[Irreverent Fool]

It could be called antagonistic, but I don't think it's any more antagonistic than the threads that inspired and provoked it. To me, it's more a matter of balancing the scales and giving a voice to the other half.

Well, I'll step out of the way again now. :smallsmile:

So instead of helping the problem, you thought you'd perpetuate it? ...like I'm doing right now to you? An excellent plan, sir! Surely to fight fire we must use... more fire!

*ahem*

The OP listed a few of the glaring problems with 3.x that we're all aware of. Like everything else on these boards, these problems are usually just theoretical, at least in my experience.

Oh sure, you'll occasionally come across someone who wants to play some broken combination they came up with or saw online but it will either be in a game where that sort of thing is encouraged, just for the fun of it or they quickly become bored of it (along with the other players!)

D&D is a cooperative storytelling game. "Breaking" it tends to violate the little social contract we have. You'll still see people "playing the game the way the developers thought it should be played", and guess what -- it's still fun.

People will always find loopholes if there are rules. 3.x has the problem of having too many rules and thus too many loopholes. In a simpler age, it was a matter of asking the DM "can I do this?" and the proper response was "you can try". If the DM really didn't want you to do it, he could say "no" or give you an ability check at which you were unlikely to succeed. The problem with 3.x is that the question is no longer asked by the player. Instead it becomes a situation of "Hey DM, the rules say I can do this! Ha ha! If you say I can't, you're breaking the rules!"

Yes, magic is powerful. Spellcasters have too many spells and letting druids cast while in an animal form or even shapeshift into things based on HD instead of CR wasn't the best idea.

My problem?

Skills.

Everything else from a character sheet is easily translatable to a pad of note paper, but writing down skills is tedious and time consuming. And seriously, why do we have "open lock" AND "disable device"? Isn't a lock just a device?

Don't get me wrong. I like the skill system in theory. I like that different characters can be good at different things and have varying rates of success. It's simply the bookkeeping that gets to me. Say I make an error and miss a skill point. Say I forget to put ranks in my skills when I level up. It's just kind of a pain to track and double-check. It's exponentially more of a pain when you multi- or prestige class.

That's what I don't like about 3.x

Edit: Excellent post, Ghost_Warlock

[Starsinger]

Most base classes only exist for 5-10 levels until you can PrC and never look at them again.

The PrC issue is further compounded by the have or have not skill system, you either have a ton of skill points, or every last skill point your class gets is used for PrC requirements.

Unless your class needs Charisma for something, it's useless. Everyone benefits a little from an increased Con score or an increased Wisdom, but nobody cares for a Charisma boost unless they were boosting Charisma anyways.

Monsters as PC races is a nice enough idea in theory, but it fails miserably once you pass LA 2.

Conjuration, the school of kings! Teleporting? Check. Summoning? Check. Better direct damage than Evocation? Check. Healing? Check. Protection from random encounters at night? Check. Walls? check. Protection spells? Check. Magic dust that blinds opponents and lets you see them? Check. Blocking vision? Check. And with the exception of the better than evocation part, that's all core.

The skill system in general. Maybe I'm just angry because I liked to play Sorcerers who didn't really get skill points, but I think the system is fairly lousy.

The existence of the Aristocrat class. This one is largely personal, but I hate it when I want to play a character of noble background and DMs tell me that I can't without multiclassing Aristocrat.

Touched range healing spells, or rather the lack of ranged heals. I want to play a soft fragile healer bleepit, not a full plate wearing abomination. Therefore, I do not want to be in the fray just so I can heal people. Which of course brings us too...

The inefficiency of incombat healing. I rather dislike the "It's better to turn into a melee beast and full attack the enemy into submission and then bust out the tube of cure light wounds" mentality.

That uhh, thumb twiddle time most low level casters have, wherein they're resorted to preciously hoarding their three spell slots per level, and thus their choices are hit something with a stick, shoot something with a bow...

Cantrips. Beyond level like 2 wherein damage cantrips stop being useful, why is there a limit on them. (Oh yeah Cure Minor.. whoo)

The idea of combat classes, and not combat classes. Generally you can tell the difference, a "combat class" has no skill points to speak of. Combat classes have a ton of skill points. Compare Fighters with Rogues. I say the idea, because like a lot of things in 3.5 it failed in execution.

The lack of flavorful abilities on some classes. Druid and Monk are full of abilities of varying degrees of usefulness ranging from "not very useful" to "totally useless but interesting". And then some classes, Sorcerer, Cleric, stop getting class features after level 1. (Which of course reinforces the awesomeness of ditching your base class for a PrC ASAP)

Bonus feats for wizards. So, not only are Wizards a spell level ahead of spells when compared to Sorcerers (The only thing that feels worse than 3rd level Fighter is 3rd level Sorcerer as far as time wasting goes), but they also learn extra metamagic and item crafting feats, since they can't cast as many fireballs in one day.

The weakness of blasting/the might of "I win" spells.

Special mount, AKA the class feature that sometimes isn't. From my experience, DMs dread 2 things about Paladins. 1, Paladins have that stick up their butt class feature, and 2, Paladins get a special mount. Every DM I've met hates mounted combat and finds some way to barter that ability away.

The internal inconsistency in regards to how long a level of a class takes. As brilliantly discussed in the OOTS comic, your first level of wizard can take you like decades if you start play as a level 1 elven wizard. Or you can be a level 1 human rogue, start play at say level 23, and then take a level of wizard after a week of adventuring. You could also spend say 6 years learning how to be an elven fighter and then gain a level of wizard after a week of adventuring.

Confirmation rolls for critical hits. Nobody likes seeing that natural 20 "go to waste" because you rolled a 7 on your confirmation roll.

Flavor, flavor everywhere, but not a drop to drink. I dislike a lot of 3.5's inherent flavor, people seem to take anything put in a core book as gospel leading to very long lists of "Our Vampires are Different" between how I want to describe things and how the books say things are.

[SoD]

Personally, the thing I dislike most about 3.x is the fact that my local gaming store no longer sells the stuff for it.

[LibraryOgre]

1) Exclusively roll-high system. I like a little bit of variety in my dice-resolution method, and d20 under score creates a nice, variable set of critical success and "mishap" numbers.

2) Removal of percentage-based thief skills. I liked the granularity provided by thief skills being percentiles, even if I tended to keep mine at 5%; it let me give creative penalties.

3) Nerfing of saving throws. There were a lot of ways to increase DCs, but your saving throws became less likely to succeed as you went up in level, except against simple effects.

4) Full attack action requires no more than 5' of movement, as opposed to up to a half-move. That really nerfed the fighter, even if they provided more attacks for people who stood still.

5) Explosion of attributes for PCs; while the increase in maximum for non-PCs (like dragons and giants) made sense, the removal of racial attribute limits annoyed me.

6) The Hit Point explosion, which degraded both the blaster-caster and the fighter by making save-or-dies or save-or-sucks much more powerful (combines with points 3 and 4).

7) The ridiculous ease with which permanent magic items could be created. I don't mind about potions and scrolls being easy to make... I even like the mechanics is place for that... but permanent and variable magic item creation was just way too easy. It was like in the later Elder Scrolls games: You didn't need anything but a good Enchant skill, because that would let you make anything you needed (My first creations were items which healed stamina and items which healed HP, and would work more or less indefinitely). That, far more than low-level spells obviating the need for thief skills, really cheesed me off.

[Jimp]

1) Exclusively roll-high system. I like a little bit of variety in my dice-resolution method, and d20 under score creates a nice, variable set of critical success and "mishap" numbers.

2) Removal of percentage-based thief skills. I liked the granularity provided by thief skills being percentiles, even if I tended to keep mine at 5%; it let me give creative penalties.

3) Nerfing of saving throws. There were a lot of ways to increase DCs, but your saving throws became less likely to succeed as you went up in level, except against simple effects.

4) Full attack action requires no more than 5' of movement, as opposed to up to a half-move. That really nerfed the fighter, even if they provided more attacks for people who stood still.

5) Explosion of attributes for PCs; while the increase in maximum for non-PCs (like dragons and giants) made sense, the removal of racial attribute limits annoyed me.

6) The Hit Point explosion, which degraded both the blaster-caster and the fighter by making save-or-dies or save-or-sucks much more powerful (combines with points 3 and 4).

7) The ridiculous ease with which permanent magic items could be created. I don't mind about potions and scrolls being easy to make... I even like the mechanics is place for that... but permanent and variable magic item creation was just way too easy. It was like in the later Elder Scrolls games: You didn't need anything but a good Enchant skill, because that would let you make anything you needed (My first creations were items which healed stamina and items which healed HP, and would work more or less indefinitely). That, far more than low-level spells obviating the need for thief skills, really cheesed me off.

I'm going to agree with this post.

[Spiryt]

I'm going to agree with this post.

Me too, but not comletely.


5) Explosion of attributes for PCs; while the increase in maximum for non-PCs (like dragons and giants) made sense, the removal of racial attribute limits annoyed me.
Well? :smallconfused:

Halfling in 2ed could have maximum of 17 strenght... While in 3.5 only 16. Granted, there's bigger diference between 17 and 18, let alone 18/80 in 2ed than between 16 and 18 in 3.5. But still, there is no removal of limits...

[Starsinger]

Me too, but not comletely.


Well? :smallconfused:

Halfling in 2ed could have maximum of 17 strenght... While in 3.5 only 16. Granted, there's bigger diference between 17 and 18, let alone 18/80 in 2ed than between 16 and 18 in 3.5. But still, there is no removal of limits...

I believe, although I admit this is very much me calling the Elephant a spear... but I believe that in 2e that 17 strength was the absolute limit ever for a halfling's strength.

[Matthew]

I believe, although I admit this is very much me calling the Elephant a spear... but I believe that in 2e that 17 strength was the absolute limit ever for a halfling's strength.

More or less correct. A Halfling Fighter could use Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, or the equivalent Potion of Strength, and effectively gain a strength score of 18-25, but would not be able to increase their 'natural' (or permanent) strength score beyond 17. Neither tomes, wishes, level advancement or just plain working out would ever let the Halfling exceed his racial maximum (unless the DM decided otherwise).

[ghost_warlock]

Alignment system: 3ed alignment system is good as far as such systems go, but the very idea of a system governing moralty and ethics is bogus.
Preety little chunks of XP: Now, that's more of a feature of the setting rather than system but sentient races being XP fodder for low-level adventurers annoys me.

The really sad thing is that both of these apply to pretty much every edition, even 4e. They aren't complaints about 3.x so much as complaints about Dungeons & Dragons.

I like this thread. :smallbiggrin:

[Spiryt]

More or less correct. A Halfling Fighter could use Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, or the equivalent Potion of Strength, and effectively gain a strength score of 18-25, but would not be able to increase their 'natural' (or permanent) strength score beyond 17. Neither tomes, wishes, level advancement or just plain working out would ever let the Halfling exceed his racial maximum (unless the DM decided otherwise).

Well, I was suspecting this. Do you mean that abiliites could be increased with levels as in 3.5 ?

My only experience with 2ed were unforgetable Infinity Engine games, where this wasn't implemented.

[Morty]

The really sad thing is that both of these apply to pretty much every edition, even 4e. They aren't complaints about 3.x so much as complaints about Dungeons & Dragons.

True. But then, many of the compliants in "What do you dislike about 4ed" are the same. At least that's what I guess, I stopped keeping track of it long ago. And while 4ed alignment system is much worse than the one in 3ed, it's also much easier to ignore.


More or less correct. A Halfling Fighter could use Gauntlets of Ogre Power, a Girdle of Frost Giant Strength, or the equivalent Potion of Strength, and effectively gain a strength score of 18-25, but would not be able to increase their 'natural' (or permanent) strength score beyond 17. Neither tomes, wishes, level advancement or just plain working out would ever let the Halfling exceed his racial maximum (unless the DM decided otherwise).

I think such restrictions might better illustrate racial disadvantages than stat penalties- a halfling might be strong, but he will never be as strong as a human, and won't come even close to being as strong as a half-orc. I'd have to think about it some more, though.

[Prophaniti]

Actually, there is one thing about 3e that always bothered me...

Vancian casting is an interesting model for spellcasters, but I've never felt like it was an adequate balance for the more powerful spells out there. The one problem the groups I've played in HAVE had with wizards is the narcolepsy thing. Vancian casting alone is not enough to make magic feel like I want it to in my games.

A few other things sometimes get to me (RAW monks), but most of these are quickly fixed with minor tweaks, houserules, or clarifications. The skills system, for example, I like very much. I just fix the few problem skills (diplomacy) and increase the number of skill points everyone gets and voila! it works beautifully. 3.5 will remain my system of choice for quick games with my friends.

Lately, though, I've fallen in love with level-less systems, and am currently making WFRP work for my homebrew setting. I really like how it's shaping up so far, and I think I'll enjoy it more than if I'd tried to make it run on d20.

Oh, and it took me till about halfway through ghost_warlock's post before I caught on... great stuff.

[Tengu_temp]

Random hit points.

Power creep at low levels - the difference between level 1 and level 3 is extremely vast, between level 17 and level 19 not so.

Huge class imbalance.

Too much broken stuff.

If you're not a caster or ToB class, combat boils down to:
---------------
|ATTACK <--
|DEFEND
|RUN
|ITEM
---------------

Vancian casting sucks bum. Spontaneous casting is barely better.

Too much contradictory material. Same with developers, they can't make up their minds on too many matters.

Too many absurdities for what's supposed to be a simulationist game.

Too big dependancy on magic items.

Does a bad job at representing a heroic high-magic setting.

Fandom that thinks DND is the best thing since sliced bread, converts everything to D20 (even stuff that D20 represents badly, which means almost everything) and refuses to even look at non-D20 games.

[Starsinger]

If you're not a caster or ToB class, combat boils down to:
---------------
|ATTACK <--
|DEFEND
|RUN
|ITEM
---------------
And 4e is supposed to be video gamey... :smalltongue:


Fandom that thinks DND is the best thing since sliced bread, converts everything to D20 (even stuff that D20 represents badly, which means almost everything) and refuses to even look at non-D20 games.

You just made about half the homebrew forum cry..

[Matthew]

Well, I was suspecting this. Do you mean that abiliites could be increased with levels as in 3.5 ?

My only experience with 2ed were unforgetable Infinity Engine games, where this wasn't implemented.

Generally speaking, no. The exception to this would be the Cavalier, whose attributes gradually increased by level. Not a class usually open to Halflings, but I bet at least one person has played one.



I think such restrictions might better illustrate racial disadvantages than stat penalties- a halfling might be strong, but he will never be as strong as a human, and won't come even close to being as strong as a half-orc. I'd have to think about it some more, though.

Quite possibly. You could still end up with a Halfling with strength 17 and a Half Orc with strength 9 or whatever, but hard minimums and maximums always seemed fairly reasonable to me.

[Viruzzo]

Anyway, I hate the fact that the focus of the game because less about making characters and more about making builds.
Quote. Quote! QUOOOTE! I'd say " focuses more on making characters and less on playing them", but the concept stays.


Generally speaking, in older D&D, if you can justify it to the DM, he'd give you a shot at it.
Word. This depends on the GM too, and is also an issue in 4e, but less so since they removed much crap (Profession and Craft skills? Meh).


<a ton of good points>
Again. Quote. Quote! QUOOOTE!

Too much multiclassing: when I look at a level 1 Rogue, I expect at level 10 it to be some kind of Rogue. Not a mage/psion/Blackguard/Elder Thing/Catgirl bizzarro chimera.

I was going to ask what "Vancian" meant, but... Dying Earth > Jack Vance > Vancian. I too hate this. I love the guy, read a lost of his stuff, but applying it to a non "wizard-centric" system fails. Oh and I hate that they stole Imprisonment from the book. Bad designers!

[Morty]

Quite possibly. You could still end up with a Halfling with strength 17 and a Half Orc with strength 9 or whatever, but hard minimums and maximums always seemed fairly reasonable to me.

3ed attribute modifiers are quite different from those in 2ed though, so I don't know how this would work out.

[slexlollar89]

I don't know about everyone on these boards, and I do not in any way intend to diminish the purpose of this thread or any pionts the posters are making, but many of these 3.x problems can be avioded or are nonexistant based on the DMs style of play and their interpretations of the rules.

Many of my own players play monks and wizards and are very much on the same teir of power (depending on the situation and circumstances of course) throughout a game. At the same time, the theoretical overshadowing of phyiscal abilities by spellcasting has very rarely occurred in games I have run and participated in...

I don't know, maybe I have had extremely good DnD experiences... but overall the pet peeves of 3.5 have not become largely apparent to me personally (and if they have I either lack a sufficient wisdom score to notice or my players are far too polite to bring these things to my attention).

Having said that, the only problem I have with 3.5 is the fact that the DM has such a large body of mechanics to work with, and I say work with because a DM must birng his ideas into reality in some part based upon this extensive body of rules and regulations. Many times I find myself forgetting or just ignoring many rules in order to facilitate the groups fun or jut because I really don't know them as well as I should...

[Prophaniti]

If you're not a caster or ToB class, combat boils down to:
---------------
|ATTACK <--
|DEFEND
|RUN
|ITEM
---------------


See, most of my non-ToB non-caster characters end up with something more like:
--------------
|FULL ATTACK
|ATTACK WITH A FREE DISARM ATTEMPT
|TRIP
|DISARM
|SUNDER
|SHIELD CHARGE WITH A FREE TRIP ATTEMPT <---
|RIDE-BY ATTACK
|GRAPPLE
|ETC
--------------

Sure, it's not quite as robust a list as a full caster's usually is, but even with a full caster, it usually boils down to only a few spells that would actually be useful in this particular situation. Blow them up, Hold them for the melee's to kill... maybe a few more. It doesn't matter that they had dozens of spells to choose from, most of them did the same thing with different colored lights.

[expirement10K14]

I can't stand imbalance in the core. Monk's, unless played as the Joker, suck. Bards are underpowered in most cases. Sorcerers are much worse than wizards- slower spell advancement, spells known, no bonus feats. Fighters are useless when compared to casters. Cleric-or-Druid-zilla rules combat.

Without supplemental feats/PrC's (most of which either suck or are horribly broken- True Necromancer v. Hulking Hurler) nothing is balanced in any way.

[LibraryOgre]

Halfling in 2ed could have maximum of 17 strenght... While in 3.5 only 16. Granted, there's bigger diference between 17 and 18, let alone 18/80 in 2ed than between 16 and 18 in 3.5. But still, there is no removal of limits...

Without magic or other special modifiers, a 3rd edition halfling can have a strength of 21... 16 at 1st level, and +5 for levels 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20. In 2nd edition, that was, at most, a 17, without magic.

Oh, another thing to add to the list:

8) Strength penalty on gnomes. They already have a restriction on their carrying weight due to small size; a strength penalty just exacerbates this. Furthermore, according to the DMG (i.e. the design principles that guided race creation), a bonus to constitution was balanced by anything EXCEPT a penalty to strength.

[Matthew]

3ed attribute modifiers are quite different from those in 2ed though, so I don't know how this would work out.

Exceptional strength is probably the most significant deviation. That said, I have been using the BD&D/C&C attribute modifiers for years without problem.

I suspect the real difference is in how attributes are expected to scale as characters gain in power. Anything above the racial maximum would have to be ascribed to magic, which means if you want to keep scores competitive you have to increase and regulate the effects of magical items on attribute scores. Probably more trouble than it's worth.

[Tengu_temp]

See, most of my non-ToB non-caster characters end up with something more like:
<snip>
That's true, but most of these choices are suboptimal, so depending on the build most non-casters end up either charging and then full attacking, or spamming trip/grapple/one other thing they are specifically built for. I wouldn't call that a diversity of options.

[Spiryt]

That's true, but most of these choices are suboptimal, so depending on the build most non-casters end up either charging and then full attacking, or spamming trip/grapple/one other thing they are specifically built for. I wouldn't call that a diversity of options.

Well, that's true, but not so bad. Heavy hitting fighter always can grapple something that's hard to hit for example, can use defensive fighting and so on.

The real problem is when other people have more optimised characters. 3.5 works best when everyone are playing rather suboptimal characters, the approach that not everyone like. And DM must be experienced, to make fights with things that players indeed would have some options against.

[Kurald Galain]

What I dislike about 3.X?

It's sequel.

Insert winky-smily here. Hey, somebody had to say it <grin> Plus, I've got your Sarcasm font right here.

[bosssmiley]

What I dislike about 3.X?

It's sequel.

Insert winky-smily here. Hey, somebody had to say it <grin> Plus, I've got your Sarcasm font right here.

Oh come on, Pathfinder ain't all that bad.

What? You mean there's some other game calling itself D&D out there? :smallamused:

Serious head on. Eggy hates:

Twink Variant Races: Grey Elf. Shadow Gnome. Deep Halfling. Goliath. Fix the Core races first.

Nerfed to Death/Unbalanced Classes: Monk, any full-BAB class, Sorc, etc. You know the drill...

Worthless Skills: "You took Craft (leatherworker), Forgery, Knowledge (nobility) and Profession (miner)? Way to set skill points on fire!"

Crappy Feats: "Access to 8th level spells, or another weaksauce situational bonus that even I won't recall? Hmm, tough call...."

System/Splatbook Sprawl: Too many books. Too many crappy classes. Too many synergistic twink options.

The Chandelier o' Gear: Only D&D3 could make flaming swords and cloaks of invisibility seem lame. :smallannoyed:

[EvilElitest]

needless angatanism ahoy


Just to put this out there, most anti 4E people don't view 3E as the perfect system by any means. Anyways


I don't like the organization of 3E, the fact that there is no real coherence between the many splat books, which leads to even larger balence problems.

I don't like dipomancy

And i don't like how they ditched those cool fluff stuff in 2E
from
EE

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

Magic users were given too much power.

Properly armored and itemized; a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard could play every "role" in the party without abandon. One of the main reasons I am gaga for a setting with LOW MAGIC, like Iron Heroes or a slightly modified Dragonlance. A Human Wizard at level 12 should not have more power than a colossal Great Wyrm Dragon.

The Defenstration of Reason
No, a Halfling should NOT have an 18 STR, even with magic items.

An Elf should be out mage-duel a human.

A Bear CANNOT cast spells (reason why the Shapeshift variant druid is the only one in my campaign).

You should be able to explain the source of your characters power in a few sentences, not an entire encyclopedia. If you need to reference some severely obscure source book that was questionably updated to 3.x and 'make it work for the character', then you should not be able to use it.

among others...

[Guyr Adamantine]

Magic users were given too much power.

Properly armored and itemized; a Cleric, Druid, and Wizard could play every "role" in the party without abandon. One of the main reasons I am gaga for a setting with LOW MAGIC, like Iron Heroes or a slightly modified Dragonlance. A Human Wizard at level 12 should not have more power than a colossal Great Wyrm Dragon.

That's pretty much like that in all editions (Except the last). Wizards are godly, I got over it long ago.

Now, while I wont play 4th ed, the things I dislike in 3rd ed:

Badly designed classes: Monk, wizard, fighter, etc.

Grognards: Just because I wont switch, I'll be associated with each and every moron that prefer to be insulting and completely obnoxious bastards toward 4th ed players. Its a matter of taste, guys!

[Morty]

Exceptional strength is probably the most significant deviation. That said, I have been using the BD&D/C&C attribute modifiers for years without problem.

I suspect the real difference is in how attributes are expected to scale as characters gain in power. Anything above the racial maximum would have to be ascribed to magic, which means if you want to keep scores competitive you have to increase and regulate the effects of magical items on attribute scores. Probably more trouble than it's worth.

Well, let's see: if in place of every -2 stat penalty we put "max 16 in this score without magic" it'd be less crippling during character creation, as for example a halfling in order to have 16 Str would have to put roll 16 rather than 18 for it, but more crippling at higher levels, as the character wouldn't be able to raise this attribute during level ups. All in all yeah, it'd shake the balance(such as it is) too much to be worth the effort.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The over reliance on equipment and inability to create unarmoured fighters.

Having to wait for people to decide where to place their Skill Points.

That's about it.

[LibraryOgre]

That's pretty much like that in all editions (Except the last). Wizards are godly, I got over it long ago.

I disagree. In 1st and 2nd edition, Wizards, even prepared wizards, were defeatable. The ability to choose any spell as you leveled up, the ease with which attack spells could be put into charged items, and the relative inefficiency of saving throws really pumped the power of wizards. When you throw in the simultaneous nerf which kept fighters immobile if they wanted to be effective, and you've got a recipe for very dangerous wizards.


Grognards: Just because I wont switch, I'll be associated with each and every moron that prefer to be insulting and completely obnoxious bastards toward 4th ed players. Its a matter of taste, guys!

Grognards are people who started playing before me. That's the subjective terminology.

[Starsinger]

Grognards: Just because I wont switch, I'll be associated with each and every moron that prefer to be insulting and completely obnoxious bastards toward 4th ed players. Its a matter of taste, guys!

We don't think of you that way, Guyr. It's just the underlined people.

[Frosty]

See, most of my non-ToB non-caster characters end up with something more like:
--------------
|FULL ATTACK
|ATTACK WITH A FREE DISARM ATTEMPT
|TRIP
|DISARM
|SUNDER
|SHIELD CHARGE WITH A FREE TRIP ATTEMPT <---
|RIDE-BY ATTACK
|GRAPPLE
|ETC
--------------

Sure, it's not quite as robust a list as a full caster's usually is, but even with a full caster, it usually boils down to only a few spells that would actually be useful in this particular situation. Blow them up, Hold them for the melee's to kill... maybe a few more. It doesn't matter that they had dozens of spells to choose from, most of them did the same thing with different colored lights.

With the except of Full-attack and possibly Ride-by-attack, how the hell are any of the other things useful against enemies that are not humanoid shaped creatures of Large size of smaller? I mean, you can't Disarm or Sunder a Dragon. You *could* try to grapple it or trip it, but good luck. Same thing with an ooze, except oozes can't be tripped, and the ooze would THANK you for a free meal if you try to grapple it.

If you only fight humanoids in a campaign, then Fighters aren't too bad. You've got options when th eother person needs a weapon to fight back and you can disarm them or sunder the weapon. And they don't have like twice your strength so you actually can grapple or trip them reliably. But otherwise, you've got very little options.

[Matthew]

Grognards: Just because I wont switch, I'll be associated with each and every moron that prefer to be insulting and completely obnoxious bastards toward 4th ed players. Its a matter of taste, guys!

One thing the 3e/4e change over seems to be encouraging is a serious misappropriation of terminology, or at least an exposition on the popular meaning of 'grognard' (fr. grumbler). There are a lot of other words suddenly being used in dubious ways, but this one is particularly funny. Still, it's pretty much par for the course.

[Guyr Adamantine]

We don't think of you that way, Guyr. It's just the underlined people.

People tend to generalise. A lot. There is still hope, but sterotypes are hard to break. I'm just afraid that, with the irrational hostility of many morons toward 4th Ed, I'll be victim of that stereotype.


Grognards are people who started playing before me. That's the subjective terminology.

Well, no. Grognards are those grumpy greybeards that, if they had the power over human evolution back in the "Primordial Soup" days, would've kept us as unicelular beings, if only because "we've always been fine that way".

[Matthew]

Well, no. Grognards are those grumpy greybeards that, if they had the power over human evolution back in the "Primordial Soup" days, would've kept us as unicelular beings, if only because "we've always been fine that way".

Actually, no they're not. They couldn't care less what other people do for the most part, though they do take umbridge when told that they don't know what they like (or that their favourite game will no longer be supported). Very extreme grumblers may do the exact same thing in reverse, telling other folks that they don't know what they like, but really you're doing yourself no favours constructing their identity for them, or indeed by invoking and perpetuating the "game evolution" paradigm.

[Jimp]

I don't know about everyone on these boards, and I do not in any way intend to diminish the purpose of this thread or any pionts the posters are making, but many of these 3.x problems can be avioded or are nonexistant based on the DMs style of play and their interpretations of the rules.


Just to point out that this point is true for basically any RPG ever. Since this is true it is generally disregarded when discussing the merits and drawbacks of a system. The DM can change the system, but that doesn't change the fact that it was flawed in such a way that needed the change.

[Aquillion]

Rogues completely obviated, in their supposed primary role, by low-level spells! ~sigh~ It makes me all misty-eyed, remembering the good old days.Not this myth again.

No, rogues aren't rendered obsolete by knock, no more than they're rendered obsolete by a fighter with a very large door-kicking boot. In fact, rogues remain useful far longer and far better than any non-casting Core class. Finding traps with spells requires a substantial investment and a large amount of wasted time; it becomes near-impossible to do reliably if alarm traps or traps that are otherwise bad to set off under any circumstances (a chest that destroys its contents, say) are used frequently. Detecting ambushes is extremely difficult unless you already know to scry for them (in which case they're less of a problem -- Foresight, the most common answer, is 9th level and only gives you just enough warning to avoid being flat-footed, which is nowhere near as useful as the rogue who spots/hears the potential ambush before you walk into it.

Social skills are likewise very difficult to mimic with spells; the charm and dominate lines have severe disadvantages and limitations which Diplomacy, Bluff, and so on do not. Even when it comes to disguise, the spells that you'd expect to replace it just give a bonus -- they make the rogue better at what they do, rather than replacing them.

Likewise, the most common mistake people make when they repeat your myth is to assume that Invisibility is bad for the rogue's role. Just the opposite is true. While Invisibility makes you hard to see, it doesn't make you hard to hear -- you need Move Silently for that (Silence is an option, but since it blocks sound in an entire area, it tends to make you more obvious, rather than less -- an aura of deathly unnatural silence doesn't help you be sneaky.)

And rogues, unlike caster, can do this all the time -- a rogue can search every room and corridor for hidden treasure, traps, and secret doors. They can make social skill checks against every single NPC you run into without any real risk, trying to get you a better deal. They can look behind every locked door and inside every locked container, palm items in plain sight, and tell in an instant when that innocent-looking shopkeeper tries to lie to you. And they can do all this in plain sight, without having to prepare for it, on a whim or whenever it looks like it might be even slightly helpful.

And some skills, like Disable Device, are just hard to replace without resorting to completely smashing things (remember -- without a disable device skill, you won't know how to disable devices safely no matter how good you are at smashing them with a greatsword, or how thoroughly your disintegrate removes the parts you aim it at. Smashing/disintegrating things mindlessly is an excellent way to have your DM smiling wickedly as he describes the broken remains/empty supports of the trap sinking into the floor or the revealed gas intakes that fed the trap you obliterated hissing ominously as the real trap activates.)

Can a caster fill in for a rogue in a pinch? Sure, but so can a Barbarian with thick boots, a lot of HP, and maxed Intimidate. The rogue is still the best class at doing their job in Core, period. They're one of the few Core classes that simply worked, without being too broken, too weak, or rendered obsolete by anyone else.

On top of all this, just like a caster can burn resources to mimic a rogue... as it happens, rogues have the ability to burn resources to mimic a caster. And they can often back these abilities up with their skills, or use the spells they cast from wands/scrolls to back up their stealthy abilities.

Sure, it's easy to describe how your caster will deal with every trap on a message board, where you can devote a big chunk of your spells to every trap or every potentially trapped area. In an actual game, though, you don't want to have to summon something new every hundred feet, or drop a disintegrate / divination spell every time you encounter a strange mechanism.

...yeah, I know that that's a little long. But the myth about rogues being rendered obsolete is simply so wrong that I can't get over how often people repeat it. Are casters more powerful? Yes. But that's a problem with casters, not rogues. No matter how powerful casters are, though, maxxed Bluff, Spot, Listen, and Search (among others) are almost always going to be useful things to have around.

Rogues were one of the classes that 3.X did well. Not perfectly (the problems with sneaking not functioning in combat were an issue), but overall they were balanced and had their own useful things to do at all times if they were clever. Granted, 4e does them well, too, but that's neither here nor there.

(And regarding the Monk, my problem with it wasn't that it was too weak, but that it was in core in the first place; such a setting-specific class never had any place in Core. The fact that it was stripped out completely in 4e is one of the things I like about the new edition; monks always belonged in Oriental Adventures for people who want them, and nowhere else.)

[thegurullamen]

Just to point out that this point is true for basically any RPG ever. Since this is true it is generally disregarded when discussing the merits and drawbacks of a system. The DM can change the system, but that doesn't change the fact that it was flawed in such a way that needed the change.

True and yes, it does apply to 3.5, but that's not what he's saying. He's saying that some of the interpretations above can, and according to the rules, should have been avoided. Specifically, anything focused around min/maxing or optimizing isn't in the heart of the rules and so the system cannot be held accountable for it; it was, after all, abuse.

Once again, just to placate the more rabid of the posters viewing this, 3.x was far from perfect and, again, Jimp had a good point in his/her last sentence.

[LibraryOgre]

Well, no. Grognards are those grumpy greybeards that, if they had the power over human evolution back in the "Primordial Soup" days, would've kept us as unicelular beings, if only because "we've always been fine that way".

You're not to clear on the meaning of "subjective", are you?

[Aquillion]

...since my previous post ended up going on way to long, here's the TL;DR version of it:

No matter how powerful casters are, someone with max ranks in skills like Spot, Listen, Search, and Bluff is almost always going to be useful. Casters are more powerful, yes, but that's a problem with casters, not with Rogues... realistically, casters still don't render things like Bluff or the wis alertness skills obsolete.

[Guyr Adamantine]

You're not to clear on the meaning of "subjective", are you?

I think I'm a little too invested in this.:smallredface:

See ya!

*Runs in the opposite direction*

[Viruzzo]

@Aquillion
Yes the rogues are less overshadowed by casters than, say, fighters, but if your adventure doesn't involve many traps, opportunities for bluffing, sleight of hand and such, you are gonna be a lot less useful. So a good DM would save you, but the system is still not very generous towards you.

[Jayabalard]

One thing the 3e/4e change over seems to be encouraging is a serious misappropriation of terminology, or at least an exposition on the popular meaning of 'grognard' (fr. grumbler). "Grognard" as a term for old players of a game (the old guard) has been used since the 70s; it has nothing to do with the 3e/4e switch.


The DM can change the system, but that doesn't change the fact that it was flawed in such a way that needed the change.The reason that people often point this out is that a great many people believe that the fact that a good GM is required to interpret and adjudicate a game does not indicate that there is, in fact, a flaw in the game.

[Myatar_Panwar]

See, most of my non-ToB non-caster characters end up with something more like:
--------------
|FULL ATTACK
|ATTACK WITH A FREE DISARM ATTEMPT
|TRIP
|DISARM
|SUNDER
|SHIELD CHARGE WITH A FREE TRIP ATTEMPT <---
|RIDE-BY ATTACK
|GRAPPLE
|ETC
--------------


Ok nice, those are some great options for fighting those low level bandits. Too bad that in order to be optimal with all those abilities, you need to be a high level, now that we are fighting Giants, beholders, dragons, and the rest of the monster manual that isnt a medium pansy. Have fun with your new list: Fullattack, Charge, step back as the wizard AoE's everything to death.

Ok now, I have never and will never hate 3e. It was a fun game to play of course, as flawed as it is, and I in-fact still play in one. What I hate more are peoples mis-placed perceptions of both 3e and 4e. Heres one of them:

3e is not as option heavy as everyone wants to think
Seriously, most every anti-4e person seems to believe that 3e's option are nearly limitless. No, they arn't. You have crap loads of feats and limitless ways to multi-class, but are you ever going to use all of the builds possible? Are they all viable? No, in fact when making a certain fighter you will probally always use the same feat build over and over again, because everything else sucks. Just becuause you have a character sheet with a crap load of feats on it with "X class 2/ Y class 3/ V prestige class 7" doesnt mean anything special. In fact its probally just a guy who uses a sword in the end, hitting people over and over again, just like a featless fighter would be doing. And if you need a bunch of feats and prestige classes to hit things with a sword effectivly, or maybe convey some sort of character personality, then both you and the game are doing something wrong.

[potatocubed]

Character Optimisation: You shouldn't need to twink-build a character just to feel competitive with the others. You shouldn't be able to twink-build a character so potent that they make everyone else obsolete.

The Paladin Code: Thank the stars that's finally gone.

[Matthew]

"Grognard" as a term for old players of a game (the old guard) has been used since the 70s; it has nothing to do with the 3e/4e switch.

I know, but it's application to D20/3e players is very new (there were for instance no "3.0 Grognards" as far as I am aware) and highly amusing, since it lumps together two communities that view themselves as having very little in common [i.e. the pre D20 and D20 [I]Dungeons & Dragons communities]. I wouldn't personally use grognard for much of anything, except to describe people who are 'grumbling', and possibly Napoleon's Old Guard. If I were to use it to describe D20/3e players, I might call them neo-grognards or 'the new grumblers', if I felt like being completely transparent.

Really, though, the interesting thing is the negative connotations associated with 'grumbling', as though criticism or having a negative opinion of something is in and of itself 'bad'. Basically, using the term grognard as a label for others is an underhanded way of saying 'get with the programme you backward jerk'.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Not this myth again.

No, rogues aren't rendered obsolete by knock, no more than they're rendered obsolete by a fighter with a very large door-kicking boot.

Large door-kicking boots don't guarantee success. An adamantine door with an adamantine lock personally crafted by the God of Lock Crafting that's DC 500 to pick will resist basically any door-kicking boot and any rogue as well, but a 2nd-level spell goes right through it.


In fact, rogues remain useful far longer and far better than any non-casting Core class.

Mostly thanks to having UMD as a class skill.


Finding traps with spells requires a substantial investment and a large amount of wasted time

Summon Monster I is a 1st-level spell, and Find Traps is a 2nd-level spell.


it becomes near-impossible to do reliably if alarm traps or traps that are otherwise bad to set off under any circumstances (a chest that destroys its contents, say) are used frequently.

But they mostly aren't. Sure, if you happen to play in a campaign called Nothing But Traps: A Game of Traps, Traps and More Traps That You Can't Afford to Simply Set Off, then a rogue will shine. I guess ... most games just don't turn out that way for some reason.


Detecting ambushes is extremely difficult unless you already know to scry for them (in which case they're less of a problem -- Foresight, the most common answer, is 9th level and only gives you just enough warning to avoid being flat-footed, which is nowhere near as useful as the rogue who spots/hears the potential ambush before you walk into it.

Usually, by the time Foresight is up and running more or less constantly, it's paired with Celerity when needed, which does more than avoid being flat-footed -- it also means, "Sure, you ambushed, but I go first anyway. Don't look now, but I'm about to stop time and basically defeat all of you in just one round."

Also, druids have Spot and Listen as class skills, too, and they're better at it than rogues because Wisdom is their priority stat ... and they can turn into creatures with abilities like Scent. And have an animal companion along that has special senses, too.


Social skills are likewise very difficult to mimic with spells; the charm and dominate lines have severe disadvantages and limitations which Diplomacy, Bluff, and so on do not. Even when it comes to disguise, the spells that you'd expect to replace it just give a bonus -- they make the rogue better at what they do, rather than replacing them.

Bards are better at this, from their base skill level to topping it off with spells that make them even better still.

And of course there are also beguilers.


Likewise, the most common mistake people make when they repeat your myth is to assume that Invisibility is bad for the rogue's role. Just the opposite is true. While Invisibility makes you hard to see, it doesn't make you hard to hear -- you need Move Silently for that (Silence is an option, but since it blocks sound in an entire area, it tends to make you more obvious, rather than less -- an aura of deathly unnatural silence doesn't help you be sneaky.)

Yeah, you know ... or you can just fly. If you're a caster.

But sure, a rogue can be sneakier (especially picking up HiPS). Okay? And? So what? If the goal is infiltration, wizards can do it better by using divination followed by a Teleport in (in a moment of stopped time, if they need that edge). If the goal is avoidance, wizards can do it better with Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion and Mind Blank.


And rogues, unlike caster, can do this all the time -- a rogue can search every room and corridor for hidden treasure, traps, and secret doors.

Great. So the rogue is useful if the game is the worst kind of roleplay-dead dungeon crawl with tons of inexplicably placed traps and locks. And then only if the traps are all specifically designed to destroy treasure if they're set off. At which point the wizard just shrugs, leaves, and goes to gank a dragon for its treasure instead.


They can make social skill checks against every single NPC you run into without any real risk, trying to get you a better deal.

Bards and beguilers do it be-e-etter.

[shadow_archmagi]

Huh. Well, I guess I'll just roll up a wizard, a druid, a bard and a beguiler and do four characters at once instead of playing a rogue.

[Jimp]

The reason that people often point this out is that a great many people believe that the fact that a good GM is required to interpret and adjudicate a game does not indicate that there is, in fact, a flaw in the game.

That's a good point.

[Jayabalard]

You have crap loads of feats and limitless ways to multi-class, but are you ever going to use all of the builds possible? Are they all viable? No, in fact when making a certain fighter you will probally always use the same feat build over and over again, because everything else sucks. You should try to avoid ascribing your pre-conceptions and limitations to other people. I could care less if a certain build is "viable" by your interpretation of "viable" , and I'd never stick with the same feat build just because someone else thinks that the other options "suck".

[LibraryOgre]

"Grognard" as a term for old players of a game (the old guard) has been used since the 70s; it has nothing to do with the 3e/4e switch.

As he said, a misappropriation; people who are annoyed at 4e have been labeled "grognards", despite the term not really applying.

[Jayabalard]

As he said, a misappropriation; people who are annoyed at 4e have been labeled "grognards", despite the term not really applying.Since grognards was originally was used to mean veteran [war]gamers, the term grognard can probably be applied to 2e/3.x players at this point.

Besides, many of the most vocal people who are annoyed at 4e really are grognards (there's even a couple of Rabid 1e AD&Ders who are posting about it), so it's not suprising that people are overgeneralizing and limping the younguns who don't like 4e in with the real grognards who don't like 4e.

[Curmudgeon]

Spot and Listen. These are the skills that are essential to pretty much everyone, but they don't work correctly. An object that's 2X as far away should be 4X as hard to see or hear; that's just simple geometry. Instead, the DC goes up by +1 for each 10'. By this system, it's totally impossible to see the moon.
Paucity of Errata. There are so many errors in the D&D books and hardly any of them have ever been addressed. According to the rules, a full attack with missile weapons never provokes attacks of opportunities. If you don't believe me, check for yourself: the AoO on missile attacks is only stipulated in the Standard Actions section of the Combat chapter, and the Full-Round Actions section says (in the table) that full attacks never provoke! A company-paid columnist expressing a personal opinion on a regular basis is an inadequate response when official revisions are needed.
Mordenkainen's Disjunction. Magic items are important in D&D 3.5. (That's not my complaint, though I realize 4.0 has changed things in this regard.) They're increasingly important at higher levels, so characters accumulate lots of them by the time their enemies can cast 9th level spells. Mordenkainen's Disjunction can grind a game to a halt for 2 hours of real time, as everybody checks the original source books to find out if the item has a better saving throw than their character. For classes like Rogues, who both need the items and are good at acquiring them -- but have bad Will saves -- it's essential to check every item. There are many problematic spells in 3.5 D&D, but MD kills every game session dead.

[Deepblue706]

3.x: It's not GURPS.

[Matthew]

Since grognards was originally was used to mean veteran [war]gamers, the term grognard can probably be applied to 2e/3.x players at this point.

It can be applied, but that doesn't mean it should be applied. The term grognard means 'grumbler'. It is a constructed identity that one group creates for another. Certain members of this 'other group' have embraced the word and charged it with a positive meaning in an attempt to appropriate it, a common reaction to a pejorative term.

However, in this context it is being used pejoratively to describe people who are complaining about 4e. The inference of 'grumbling' is that they are complaining without good reason, or 'just don't like change' or whatever.

Certainly, 'grognard' has a multiplicity of meanings and uses, but most often people use it in it's popular sense, which is "people living nostalgically in the past, standing in the way of the 'evolution' and 'advancement' of roleplaying games, wrongly believing that the games they play are better than the current iteration." That's a load of crap, mainly because it assumes a lot of subjective opinions as objective reality, but because it can all be summed up in one word [i.e. a constructed identity] any acceptance of its usage confirms the subjective as the objective.

To put it another way, it's not a helpful term for promoting reasonable discussion.



Besides, many of the most vocal people who are annoyed at 4e really are grognards (there's even a couple of Rabid 1e AD&Ders who are posting about it), so it's not suprising that people are overgeneralizing and limping the younguns who don't like 4e in with the real grognards who don't like 4e.

Who are you referring to, exactly?

[Prophaniti]

Ok nice, those are some great options for fighting those low level bandits. Too bad that in order to be optimal with all those abilities, you need to be a high level, now that we are fighting Giants, beholders, dragons, and the rest of the monster manual that isnt a medium pansy. Have fun with your new list: Fullattack, Charge, step back as the wizard AoE's everything to death.

Had two people with similar replies to that post of mine. Ok, why is it considered normal and fair to face mostly foes that the fighter cannot use some of his options against, but when I suggest something similar about limiting wizards by changing the foes and situations they face I'm accused of some falacy or other, usually the one about good DMs? Seriously, the MM is rife with monsters, and the DMG with items, that vary from weakening this supposed god-like wizard power, to neutering it completely. If the fighter's pallate of options in a fight is tossed out of the discussion because some monsters are immune to it why is the same not true of the wizard? That being said, there's nothing wrong with fighting humanoids at all levels, mixed with enough fantastic monsters to make things interesting. Humanoids make up most of the occupants of most settings, after all.

This also ties in somewhat with the (completely theoretical) point that wizards replace rogues. Sure, they can in theory (though again, it would take a very convoluted multi-class build to completely replace them, or just four seperat characters), with limitless casting and all spells known. In practice, I've yet to see a party go in (and succeed) without a rogue, or at least a rogue-substitute. Why in the hell would a wizard waste his limited spell slots, funds, or xp (for item crafting) trying to replace a character who can do all these things for free, no prep time or resources required? The only people who make this claim have to be ones who never play an actual game, and only discuss the rules. Or perhaps they played a game once, had a superb example of just how much of an ass people can be play a wizard and wreck the game... while the DM sat back and watched. I can think of no other way that personal experience could lead you to such a conclusion.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Wizards are only broken in internet-based rules discussions and thought exercises. In practice, applying these theories requires too much time and more DM leniance than I have ever seen present, even when we have someone new DM. Not to mention that so much of this 'god-like' power relies on high-level spells, which only come into play infrequently. I've yet to have one ruin a game for me, as a player or a DM, and if someone tried, I'd likely think "Why am I letting this ******* ruin my weekend?", not "Man, this game is broken ****." I'd feel the same way no matter what system we were using, because every single one has exploitable flaws. Even the optomizer of our group has never stolen the whole game/story with his crazy caster builds, and the rogue was still in charge of traps and locks.


Spot and Listen. These are the skills that are essential to pretty much everyone, but they don't work correctly. An object that's 2X as far away should be 4X as hard to see or hear; that's just simple geometry. Instead, the DC goes up by +1 for each 10'. By this system, it's totally impossible to see the moon.

Please. That's just an example of people using skill checks where they don't apply. You do not make spot checks for things that everyone would notice (yes, this requires a DM who has, not an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, but rather a modicum of common sense). While it is very amusing to equate low spot checks with comedically poor observation (Hey, look, a beach!), the fact is your spot check would have to be well into the negatives to be that oblivious. Using Spot and Listen in this way would be no different than a DM in 4e making a Skill Challenge for your character to realize they are standing in a room. It may be done, but the circumstances would have to be quite convoluted. Ex: the moon has HiPS, a really high Hide check, and an inexplicable desire to not be noticed. Could make a very interesting story, though...

[Jayabalard]

Who are you referring to, exactly?If you mean the rabid 1e fanatic (and just to be clear, I mean that in a good way), then I'm mostly referring to Nagora, though I seem to recall a couple of others; otherwise I'm just referencing to my general perception that the most vocal and literate anti-4e posters seem to qualify as Grognards; they tend to be the ones who criticize 4e for keeping the less than good elements of 3e and then moving away from the original "good stuff" from early editions of D&D rather than the ones who praise 3e as the end all be all of Roleplaying games.

[pasko77]

Not this myth again.


Wow. That was... interesting.
Thanks for your analysis.
Maybe it was an already discussed matter, but i never thought about it.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Huh. Well, I guess I'll just roll up a wizard, a druid, a bard and a beguiler and do four characters at once instead of playing a rogue.

Tell you what. You roll a rogue 20, and I'll roll a wizard 20. Have an independent arbiter give us 10 plausible (not simply tailor-made for a single class, but the kinds of things that could actually come up in a game) adventures to overcome. If you can perform better in even one of the 10, you win.

[darkzucchini]

Cross class skills. I don't like that their max rank is half that of class skills. I would have preferred a Class Skill Group system like from Iron Heroes. Some skills needed revision, like diplomacy.

Full casters were much more powerful than mundane class, and though this was never a big problem in any of the games that I played in or DMed, I can see how it could interfered with some of the players ability to enjoy the game. I would have liked to see magic just as powerful as it is in 3.5 (maybe more powerful with the edition of rituals like those found in the Rituals and Relics books) but with heavy costs for casting the more powerful spells (my solution has been to require casters to succeed a Will save equal to the DC of the spell or suffer a backlash as specified by the spell).

Vancian spell casting. Too few spells at low level, too many at high levels. Would have liked a spell point system with a limited point pool but a way to regain points both in and out of combat.

Still combat. Up until 6th level, the fighter can run all over the place and still be rather effective at killing the enemy. Suddenly at 6th level, its better for you to just stand still and hit your enemy twice.

I would have liked to have seen an expanded alignment system, like that in Monte Cook's Book of Hallowed Might but, meh, whatever.

Thats about it for right now, maybe I will come up with a few more in a little bit. But I would also like to comment on some people statements.

I think Jayabalard hit the nail on the head. No system is going to run well with a bad DM, and just about any system could be played decently with a good one a bit of house ruling. Anyway, you are going to have a good time so long as you have a good DM and a good group, and a bad time if you have a bad DM and a bad group.

Yes, many builds in 3e weren't optimizable, but removing the ability to create such characters isn't really fixing the problem in my opinion. It seems a boring world where every rogue runs around with a dagger or a rapier and ever wizard chucks fireballs all over the place. I want to be able to play my glaive wielding rogue.

[Prophaniti]

Tell you what. You roll a rogue 20, and I'll roll a wizard 20. Have an independent arbiter give us 10 plausible (not simply tailor-made for a single class, but the kinds of things that could actually come up in a game) adventures to overcome. If you can perform better in even one of the 10, you win.
Sounds like a fine challenge. You have to prepare your spells ahead of time, of course, not knowing what you'll face, as well as limit all magic items to those you craft yourself (which will be minimal, since to be fair you'd both be given the same amount of xp, so if you spend too much on crafting you won't be lvl 20) or purchase with RAW WBL. All ten challenges will be back-to-back, no rest period (I'm picturing a series of ten rooms, you must touch the objective in each). Sound fair? Not that I have time to arbitrate it myself... plus, I don't really trust myself to be fair. I'd try to be, but I'd probably load a few challenges. Though in all honesty, traps and chests with anti-magic fields or in Dead Magic zones have been encountered by our group, and that DM has nothing in particular against wizards. One of his favorite classes, actually. Should be fun to watch, though.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Sounds like a fine challenge. You have to prepare your spells ahead of time, of course, not knowing what you'll face, as well as limit all magic items to those you craft yourself (which will be minimal, since to be fair you'd both be given the same amount of xp, so if you spend too much on crafting you won't be lvl 20) or purchase with RAW WBL. All ten challenges will be back-to-back, no rest period (I'm picturing a series of ten rooms, you must touch the objective in each). Sound fair? Not that I have time to arbitrate it myself... plus, I don't really trust myself to be fair. I'd try to be, but I'd probably load a few challenges. Though in all honesty, traps and chests with anti-magic fields or in Dead Magic zones have been encountered by our group, and that DM has nothing in particular against wizards. One of his favorite classes, actually. Should be fun to watch, though.

I think you're running afoul of the "plausible (not simply tailor-made for a single class, but the kinds of things that could actually come up in a game)" clause, because adventures usually come with preparation and even travel time, as well as at least some information on what and where the goal is. Also, they're supposed to be separate mini-adventures, not back-to-back "time attack" endurance contests. Tippy could probably overcome your obviously loaded version of the challenge, too, but give me some leeway as an extremely novice wizard optimizer.

Edit: Actually, I'll even let you cheat a little like you obviously want to do if I can substitute Tippy as my champion. :smalltongue:

[Rashmi]

I could arbite. Of course I fully expect the rogue will win based on the "only one time better equals win" but whatever.

Also, no creature is going to wish for the Wizard, period.

[Prophaniti]

I think you're running afoul of the "plausible (not simply tailor-made for a single class, but the kinds of things that could actually come up in a game)" clause, because adventures usually come with preparation and even travel time, as well as at least some information on what and where the goal is. Also, they're supposed to be separate mini-adventures, not back-to-back "time attack" endurance contests. Tippy could probably overcome your obviously loaded version of the challenge, too, but give me some leeway as an extremely novice wizard optimizer.

Edit: Actually, I'll even let you cheat a little like you obviously want to do if I can substitute Tippy as my champion. :smalltongue:

If you insist on seperate adventures, the most intel I'd give either of you would be along the lines of "rescue the princess" or "find the lost holy relic". Anything further would have to be learned on your own. But, like I said, I don't really have time, I'm going out of town for most of this next week. Rashmi sounds like he'd be pretty fair about it, especially if he's going to stomp on the Wish abuse that so many 'wizards are broken' people like to try. See my sig for how I feel about that. Generally, what I do with Wish when it comes up in my games is this: It can do only the things specifically listed in the spell reliably, though even then things might not happen the way you wanted. Only the literal fact of the wish must be fulfilled, and the wish must be a single sentence starting with "I wish" and only allowing a reasonable amount (DM fiat) of commas or conjunctions, and no qualifiers whatsoever. Ex: if you wished for 50,000 gold from an untracable source, only the first part would be fulfilled, and the qualifier ignored. Yeah, I'm pretty hard-line about crap like that.

So, yeah, if this goes through, definitely drop me a PM with a link to the thread you do it in, so I can catch it when I get back.

[Covered In Bees]

What's that? Skills?

Hi there, I'm a (Rogue/Spellthief/Scout/whatever) 1/Wizard 5/Unseen Seer. I can do all the stuff the Rogue does, and I cast spells at just one level behind the normal wizard! Wow!

[Curmudgeon]

Please. That's just an example of people using skill checks where they don't apply. You do not make spot checks for things that everyone would notice (yes, this requires a DM who has, not an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, but rather a modicum of common sense). The comment about the moon is just the extreme case. You also can't spot enemies in plain sight across a level plain until they're unrealistically close, and the rule does apply then.

[Curmudgeon]

Sounds like a fine challenge. ... or purchase with RAW WBL. You've already tilted things out of whack there. What self-respecting Thief Rogue is only going to have the average amount of wealth for someone with their experience? That's just absurd! It's like assuming a Wizard is only going to have the average number of spells that all character classes of their level would have.

Rogues get as much wealth as they can get away with -- and that's a lot.

[Guyr Adamantine]

You only make spot checks against hidden things. Never elsewhere.

"Spot" is not "sight", its "pierce the hidden".

[Curmudgeon]

You only make spot checks against hidden things. Never elsewhere. Check your PH, please. The beginning of the Skills chapter include some sample skill use DCs, including
Very easy (0): Notice something large in plain sight (Spot) Also, please see the highlighted word here:
Spot (Wis)

Check: The Spot skill is used primarily to detect characters or creatures who are hiding.

[Rashmi]

The reason I say Wish is not going to work is because there is one way that Wish is incredibly broken that very explicitly works and that would even easily beat your attempts to discourage it Prophanti:

Bring up any creature that has Wish as an SLA, say this: I wish for a +100 Cloak of Resistance to be created within 5ft of me.

(Normally the 5ft isn't even needed because creating items is a very specific aspect of wish and there is no reason for them to be created far away, but I knew you would try to screw it.)

You can of course replace that with creating a Staff of Wishes, and then Wishing for assorted Epic Items.

But I'm just shutting down Wish in general since it's only actually used to create items and otherwise abuse the system.

[Innis Cabal]

The player base

No seriously. Instead of enjoying the game, they sit around and complain about how others play it.

Of course thats no different then any other game, but of course, the above is just as interchangeable.

[Zyrusticae]

Unlike my post with 4th edition, this one'll be quite comparatively lengthy, so bear with me, here...


Linear non-casters and exponential casters. This was just a failure of a design element to begin with. There is nothing inherently fair about starting weaker than a house cat and later wielding near-godlike power while your friends are always riding on a linear power curve. It's simply not possible to balance.
Skills. The way the skill system works, the variance between trained and untrained individuals just grows with level. It never shrinks, ever, because the characters almost always have a rigid list of skills they can put points into without gimping themselves. Because, yes, sticking 8 ranks into a cross-class skill, which results in a +4 modifier, where you could do the same with a class skill and get a +8 modifier is simply not cool. In fact, it's punishing roleplaying, because that's the only reason you're going to be sticking ranks into non-class skills - either that, or a skill is just so incredibly awesome that you want it no matter what your class is (*coff* UMD *coff*). So you end up with rogues with +40 hide and move silently, and the party fighter STILL has a +0 to spot and listen. Because apparently he never learned anything about finding rogues during the time he spent adventuring with the party rogue. Or spotting monsters, for that matter.
Uniformity in combat. Unless you're a caster, at which point all the world's magic is available to you, and you can change your tactics completely on a daily basis. Fighters? Fighters get such lovely non-choices as grapple, trip, and bull rush, which sound great until you realize you're killing yourself by attempting them without the proper feats. And then even once you have the proper feats, a good number of monsters are completely immune to them. Meanwhile, said caster retreats and changes up his spell list to take down the monsters that the Fighter was absolutely bollocks against. Choice, indeed...
Magic item dependancy. This I just never understood to begin with. Apparently the hunger for loot is just so ravenous that everybody must have at least one item for every body slot available, and they're so essential that player characters never learn how to defend themselves. Wait, what's that? Yes, that's right. Player characters in 3rd edition never learned how to defend themselves. Sure, they might learn how to better clobber their opponents, and sure, they'll eventually become so incredibly powerful that entire words bend to their will, but once you remove that armor and those magic items, they're as vulnerable as they were when they started adventuring at first level. The only difference is in their plot armor, i.e. HP, which lets them avoid killing blows - unless that blow happens to be from a save-or-die effect. Oops. That brings me to my next point.
Save or suck/die effects. These are never fun. I don't understand why they're in at all. Sure, the DM can protect his monsters against them, but why bother having them at all if that's the case? Furthermore, what about when the player characters are killed by a sudden bad roll? A bad roll that, I might add, is statistically inevitable, because by the 20th time they're hit by yet another save-or-die they're going to fail at least once. And even better - it makes death a very common part of the game! Which brings me yet again to my next point...
Death is a status effect. That's right - death is almost always temporary in the world of 3rd edition. When you die, you might lose a couple thousand gold, but the party cleric can raise you with no trouble at all regardless. And then once you've reached higher levels death becomes a speedbump rather than a finality. Because, after all, the DM can't @#$% with the wealth by level tables - if you lose that gold he's going to make it up to you, unless he actually intends to force you to play with wealth below your level for being a horrible player (or being a horrible die-roller, in the case of those ubiquitous save-or-die effects). So then you're left with death becoming a money sink rather than a time to say goodbye to a valiant champion. Yay?


Okay, I'm just going to stop there. Yes, I really do think 3rd edition has no redeeming qualities other than the fact that it was the experiment that led to a better, more playable system. And you can quote me on that.:smalltongue:

[Kiara LeSabre]

The reason I say Wish is not going to work is because there is one way that Wish is incredibly broken that very explicitly works and that would even easily beat your attempts to discourage it Prophanti:

Bring up any creature that has Wish as an SLA, say this: I wish for a +100 Cloak of Resistance to be created within 5ft of me.

(Normally the 5ft isn't even needed because creating items is a very specific aspect of wish and there is no reason for them to be created far away, but I knew you would try to screw it.)

You can of course replace that with creating a Staff of Wishes, and then Wishing for assorted Epic Items.

But I'm just shutting down Wish in general since it's only actually used to create items and otherwise abuse the system.

But then it's a house rule, and my point is regarding the fact that wizards are broken as written. You can say anything you want with a house rule. You can rule that spells all take a minimum of 10 rounds to cast and only work if you dance a jig and recite poetry as part of the casting with a house rule.

If you're admitting you can't win against the wizard as written, then there's no need to go any further. My point is proven.

[Innis Cabal]

Chant this before you go to bed

"Wizards arnt broken, your just not saying no"

[Prophaniti]

Bring up any creature that has Wish as an SLA, say this: I wish for a +100 Cloak of Resistance to be created within 5ft of me.

(Normally the 5ft isn't even needed because creating items is a very specific aspect of wish and there is no reason for them to be created far away, but I knew you would try to screw it.)
See, if I was DMing, I'd screw you right there, since 'within 5ft of me.' is a qualifier, which I would ignore. That said, I don't usually screw too heavily with my party's wishes, that'd just piss them off. I only go all out when a player is abusing the system, as you say. Also, don't have the books handy, so correct me if I'm wrong, but by RAW don't you still pay the XP cost of a spell cast by an item, if it requires one? I know you don't if it's a SLA, by RAW, at least, but if it's an item does it, and if not where does it say so?


You've already tilted things out of whack there. What self-respecting Thief Rogue is only going to have the average amount of wealth for someone with their experience? That's just absurd! It's like assuming a Wizard is only going to have the average number of spells that all character classes of their level would have.

Rogues get as much wealth as they can get away with -- and that's a lot. Emphasis mine. Yes, it is just like that. That's the idea. The wizard in the competition WOULD just get the average number of spells, though they would be able to select them. I was just trying to be fair, viewing it as an arena-style battle. Both contestants must start on even footing, or where is the challenge?

[Shosuro Ishii]

Large amount of traps

Honestly, this is a rather big issue with the system, the sheer amount of traps that exist in the system (especially feats). If I had a nickel for every player I had to tell that toughness is a waste, I could buy a dozen new 3.5 books.

That being said, I'm gonna say that while I don't like the extreme power of Save or Suck spells, I do like that they exist. One of my major problems with 4ed is that it is almost impossible to play a non-combat oriented character. My current character is a dread witch, one who plays with mainly fear spells with a tad bit of damage as back-up. The only real 4ed conversion is a star pact warlock, who's primarly a damage dealer with a little bit of fear effect tacked on.

There really should be a middle ground on caster utility. Neither system really nailed it.

[Zyrusticae]

Emphasis mine. Yes, it is just like that. That's the idea. The wizard in the competition WOULD just get the average number of spells, though they would be able to select them. I was just trying to be fair, viewing it as an arena-style battle. Both contestants must start on even footing, or where is the challenge?

Um, you kinda missed the part where the poster you quoted specifically said all character classes. That includes non-casters, which means for every non-casting class out there you're dividing the number of spells known by 2. Just lettin' ya know...

[Prophaniti]

:smalltongue: Well, bloddy hell. Must be past my bed-time, can't even read straight... Let's move on, shall we? Nothing to see here...

[thegurullamen]

But then it's a house rule, and my point is regarding the fact that wizards are broken as written. You can say anything you want with a house rule. You can rule that spells all take a minimum of 10 rounds to cast and only work if you dance a jig and recite poetry as part of the casting with a house rule.

If you're admitting you can't win against the wizard as written, then there's no need to go any further. My point is proven.

Doesn't this render your point completely moot? You're essentially arguing that abusing the system is the only legitimate way to play the game and any system that can be abused on any level at all is worthless.

[Shosuro Ishii]

Emphasis mine. Yes, it is just like that. That's the idea. The wizard in the competition WOULD just get the average number of spells, though they would be able to select them. I was just trying to be fair, viewing it as an arena-style battle. Both contestants must start on even footing, or where is the challenge?

AS far as I can see, the true way to create balanced competition would be to have an optimized wizard and an optimized rogue both played by decent players, but not tell the wizard's player what he was in store for when the day begins. That way, he has a realistic spell list as oppsed to one with the expressed knowledge that all he's going to do during the day is compete with a rogue in 10 tests of group utility. If the wizard wakes up and does nothing but prepare spells to trump his opponent, than it's no contest, and never was one in the first place. Same with WBL, since if I know I'm creating a wizard just for this contest, his money is going into scrolls of spells I don't want to prepare, so I can save room for other more useful ones.

Let's be reasonable, no real in game wizard is going to prepare his spells everyday purely to outshine the rogue. Sure, his spell list will let him do it once or twice a day, but (in my experince, yours may vary) the rogue can be useful after the Wizard has burnt his 'rogue-esque' spells, he's left with his save-or-sucks spells, his defensive/escape spells and his utility spells. Still a force to be recokened with, but the rogue isn't made completly obsolete like the fighter, just a tad underwhelming.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Doesn't this render your point completely moot? You're essentially arguing that abusing the system is the only legitimate way to play the game and any system that can be abused on any level at all is worthless.

No, I'm arguing that playing the system as written can break it so badly that I can render a rogue (let alone a fighter) moot.

I'm also arguing, indirectly, that a system should be held responsible for how easily and badly it breaks. 3.x breaks very easily (the most blatant example is actually the druid, which starts out broken the moment you select it and then breaks utterly if you just take Natural Spell).

The primary class feature of wizards is arcane spells. Arcane spells in 3.x are broken (actually, all spells are broken, but especially arcane). Ergo, wizards are broken.

[darkzucchini]

But then it's a house rule, and my point is regarding the fact that wizards are broken as written. You can say anything you want with a house rule. You can rule that spells all take a minimum of 10 rounds to cast and only work if you dance a jig and recite poetry as part of the casting with a house rule.

If you're admitting you can't win against the wizard as written, then there's no need to go any further. My point is proven.

I would be willing to run 10 encounters with all core rules as written. PHB classes and races, standard array (16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10), no multiclassing, no prestige classes. If I was to run the encounters I would do it all as one adventure, needing to rest to regain spells is part of playing a Wizard and should be taken into account.

[Kiara LeSabre]

AS far as I can see, the true way to create balanced competition would be to have an optimized wizard and an optimized rogue both played by decent players, but not tell the wizard's player what he was in store for when the day begins.

No, the only true way is to plop them both into a pre-made solo adventure and see how they come out of it. If you shuffle the world around totally each and every day, yes, the wizard is going to have a hard time. Of course, so will the rogue, given that information and/or contacts gained through Gather Information, Diplomacy and etc. will be rendered obsolete each new day.

By contrast, if you have the world operating normally, the wizard can, once he/she has a clear goal, set about using divinations to learn whatever needs to be learned, then bypass travel time concerns by simply teleporting wherever he/she needs to be ... and so on. That's not a forum invention, either -- that's how an intelligent solo wizard would be be expected to operate.

[Zyrusticae]

I just don't understand why anyone would bother defending the design of the casters in 3rd edition.

Either they have too few spells and they're utterly useless due to the low caster level or they have too many spells and they're absolutely ridiculous both due to the high caster level and due to the more powerful spells.

Or they're utterly useless because they picked all the wrong spells for the day.

That's not really a recipe for fun, I don't think...

[Shosuro Ishii]

By contrast, if you have the world operating normally, the wizard can, once he/she has a clear goal, set about using divinations to learn whatever needs to be learned, then bypass travel time concerns by simply teleporting wherever he/she needs to be ... and so on. That's not a forum invention, either -- that's how an intelligent solo wizard would be be expected to operate.

I was refering specifically to the concept of the ten different scenarios contest laid out earlier. I'm not arguing that the rogue is anywhere near the power level of a wizard, I was merely saying that without a ludicriously specific divination spell, having a wizard in the party doesn't make the rogue completly obsolete unless the wizards goal is to make the rogue obsolete (which is doable, but has to be worked for).

[Aquillion]

Bards and beguilers do it be-e-etter.
I'm glad you've already admitted you were wrong, then.

Your assertion was that spellcasting renders rogues obsolete, not that there exist other skill-monkey classes. Bards and beguilers are a different story, since they're basically reflavored rogues who trade a few skill points and some rogue abilities for limited spellcasting. They do the same things, essentially; the spellcasting is a fringe-benefit, so the differences are fairly minor.

Likewise, your challenge is pointless. I never said anything about a lone rogue's usefulness verses a lone wizard; what on earth would that have to do with D&D, in any case? I never said that a rogue would be more powerful than a wizard, or even as powerful as a wizard. Yes, wizards are broken.

But you said this:

Rogues completely obviated, in their supposed primary role, by low-level spells! ~sigh~ It makes me all misty-eyed, remembering the good old days.
If you want to hold this competition, you're limited to second-level spells at best; I think most people would agree that third level casting is the big 'turning point', so beyond that point they're not low level anymore (and no, the rogue is not limited in what spells they can mimic via UMD. You were the one who set the terms, not me; you think the entire rogue can be obviated by low-level spells, which includes full UMD. Don't worry, I wouldn't use it much anyway -- just making this clear.)

I don't dispute that a wizard who spends mid- to high-level spell slots on challenges can accomplish things you'd use a rogue for; obviously, very little can't be solved by Teleporting or Dimension Dooring past it. But doing that for every single trap or potential 'skill challenge', in a game with lots of traps and such (where a rogue is useful) is going to burn up the wizard's spells; they're just duplicating a rogue, not oblivating them. That's not broken.

To answer your more specific points:

Summon Monster I is a 1st-level spell, and Find Traps is a 2nd-level spell.A spell you can cast, what, six, seven times with a decent int bonus? More with rings of Wizardry and so on? And it lasts, oh, two minutes at 20th level... and your intention is, I assume, to have a summon walk in front of you everywhere you go? Good luck with that. You can be the one to explain to your party that you intend for them to get about half an hour's walking time per day.

And then, of course, when you do it, it won't actually work. There are traps that won't go off every time (the internally-rotted bridge, the rusty mechanism) and therefore won't be detected by your summon. There are 'intelligent' traps intended to work against a group that will only go off on the second or third person to pass (to get the entire group at once rather than just their scouts). There are alarm traps, summon traps, traps that change the dungeon in nasty ways (slamming a large door far outside and slowly flooding the dungeon with lava), traps that release poison gas in a wide area... you get the picture. You're assuming, like most people do with this stupid strategy, that every trap is a generic 5x5 pit trap, and that just doesn't work.

And hey, detect traps is great! It lets you mimic a rogue, albeit with a much lower search skill unless you've been maxing it cross class. For 1 minute/level, mind you, so we're back to you explaining to your party why they can only move around for a limited number of minutes per day. You're only spending all your second level spells to mimic one maxed rogue skill out of, like, eight, and you're doing it worse than the rogue with severe limitations... and you're still going to have to waste spells to deal with the traps after you find them. Somehow, I don't think the rogue feels threatened by this.


Mostly thanks to having UMD as a class skill.Partially, at least. So? It's balanced for them to have it. They're not a Giamonk; it's a valid feature for their class, and they don't have to use it in every single encounter. It just makes something useful for them to fall back on when they need it.


But they mostly aren't. Sure, if you happen to play in a campaign called Nothing But Traps: A Game of Traps, Traps and More Traps That You Can't Afford to Simply Set Off, then a rogue will shine. I guess ... most games just don't turn out that way for some reason.And if you happen to play a campaign called "one giant anti-magic field", wizards will suck. Rogues are good in campaigns with lots of interesting traps, and their abilities are made with the assumption that the party will encounter complicated, dangerous traps that can't simply be bypassed by OOC cleverness with reasonable regularity. If you change the game so interesting traps are never encountered, obviously the rogue is weakened. (Although certainly not useless; they do have other skills.) But now you're complaining about the way people play the game, not about magic vs. rogues.


Usually, by the time Foresight is up and running more or less constantly, it's paired with Celerity when needed, which does more than avoid being flat-footed -- it also means, "Sure, you ambushed, but I go first anyway. Don't look now, but I'm about to stop time and basically defeat all of you in just one round."No Celerity. Celerity is broken on its own terms; if you have to resort to Celerity every time to deal with a rogue's ambush-prevention abilities, you're making the argument that Celerity is broken, not that magic as a whole was broken.

Also, I believe you said 'low-level spells' could render the rogue obsolete. Foresight is hardly low-level, but I'll grant you that I'm the one who brought it up. Celerity (I assume you meant greater celerity, since the lesser one just lets you take a move action) is hardly low-level, either. At this point you're spending two high-level spells to do something the rogue could have handled for free, and, again, you're doing it worse than them (because you'll still be standing in the middle of the ambush, and you're talking about using another ninth level spell and presumably even more than that to extract your party from it and save the day.) A rogue who spotted the ambush from a distance, meanwhile, could potentially have resolved the situation without spending any party resources at all, or could have helped you resolve it by actually only spending low-level spells (again, part of the rogue's effectiveness is that they work well with casters rather than competing against them.)

Finally, you only get Foresight at 17th level. That's an awful long time to be completely defenseless against ambushes without a rogue.


Also, druids have Spot and Listen as class skills, too, and they're better at it than rogues because Wisdom is their priority stat ... and they can turn into creatures with abilities like Scent. And have an animal companion along that has special senses, too.

Bards are better at this, from their base skill level to topping it off with spells that make them even better still.

And of course there are also beguilers.Your argument was that low-level spells, specifically, would render rogues obsolete. You're failing again. Bards and beguilers are certainly nice alternatives to rogues -- but they're not hugely powerful the way normal full-casters are, either.


Yeah, you know ... or you can just fly. If you're a caster.

But sure, a rogue can be sneakier (especially picking up HiPS). Okay? And? So what? If the goal is infiltration, wizards can do it better by using divination followed by a Teleport in (in a moment of stopped time, if they need that edge). If the goal is avoidance, wizards can do it better with Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion and Mind Blank.Flying doesn't say anywhere that it gives you a bonus to move silently, or that it lets you ignore move silently. You still make just as much noise as you would when walking. You do avoid terrain penalties, but that's all -- move silently is specifically "move" silently, not "walk" silently. Silly, isn't it? It's almost like they thought this out and decided that balance was more important than realism.

And for the other part, you're using high-level spells again (9th level spells, actually). Teleporting in requires knowledge of your destination, which would require scrying, and is likely to involve skipping most of the loot. It won't help you when your mission is broad ('clear out that nest of evil') or vague ('investigate, and bring back anything in there that looks suspicious.')

But isn't the fact that you keep needing 9th-level spells to try and duplicate the things the rogue can do for free at all levels telling you anything?


Great. So the rogue is useful if the game is the worst kind of roleplay-dead dungeon crawl with tons of inexplicably placed traps and locks. And then only if the traps are all specifically designed to destroy treasure if they're set off. At which point the wizard just shrugs, leaves, and goes to gank a dragon for its treasure instead.No? They're also at their best in social situations that call for delicacy and stealth; casting a visible spell in the middle of the Duke's ball is going to probably cause problems, while a rogue can silently palm whatever you need, sneak through the undergrowth outside, pick the lock on the door to the servant's quarters, disguise themselves as hired help, spot out the unexpected assassins in the crowd that you just learned about five minutes ago when the rogue made a listen check to overhear the shadowy figures talking about them, knock them out with a sap, tie them up and rapidly search their unconscious bodies for the evidence you need... whatever is necessary. And if something goes wrong, he can bluff the Duke into not executing you immediately, and diplomize things back onto good terms... all without dramatic effects that could permanently alienate important NPCs (sure, you could just teleport away, but don't expect to be invited back to one of the Duke's parties.)

Rogues are at their weakest when the game is a series of mindless dungeon-crawl monster encounters, toe-to-toe, with nothing else between them. (Even then, they have some useful talents, though.) Anywhere else, they shine.

[TheCountAlucard]

If I wasn't running my own game and stressing about moving, I'd run the "rogue vs. wizard" game and a "wizard vs. housecat" one. :smallbiggrin:

Oh, well.

[Jack Mann]

Anyway, I hate the fact that the focus of the game because less about making characters and more about making builds. While it certainly happened in previous editions, it got out of control in 3.x. For evidence, compare the number of "rate my build" or "how do I be mechanically optimal" threads on, say, this forum, against the number of threads about "how should I roleplay this character"?

Eh, this isn't really a fair critique of 3.5. Of course you get more threads asking about builds. That's the sort of thing people look for help on most of the time. The fact is, most people don't look for help in roleplaying. "Oh gosh, how can I convey my character's unending ennui as he faces the purposeless existence of the undead?" "Gee, what's the best quip for my dashing knight to make as he rescues the princess?" "What do you think my character would do?" Those people who probably could use that sort of advice are the least likely to realize and ask for it.

It's easy to realize that you need mechanical help, or at least to look for new ways of doing things. It's difficult for someone to admit that they might need help with playing their character or making their backstory. It doesn't matter what edition of the game you're playing, unless the mechanics are nigh non-existent, there will be more questions about mechanics than roleplay. And this forum typically isn't going to be the place where they go to ask advice. They're far more likely to be asking the people they're playing with (their friends in real life, or else on the recruitment and OOC threads), since those are the opinions that are going to matter most.

As well, mechanical answers tend to be more cut and dry, whereas with roleplaying, it's a lot more difficult, especially with those questions that people might actually need help with. I remember a series of threads a while back on good, evil, and paladins. There was absolutely no consensus on pretty much any issue. Don't get me wrong, these were great threads, but they didn't really give you any more hard and fast answers than you had going in. So, people are more likely to look for advice in areas where it's most likely the advice will be useful to them. Mechanics, not roleplaying.

The ratio of mechanics to roleplaying questions does not reflect on the system.

EDIT: Rogues vs. casters: Casters can replace rogues, and can sometimes do it better, but outside of classes like the beguiler that are built to fill the rogue's role, it's rarely worth their time to do so. Wizards have far better things to do with their spell slots than cast knock. This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of the rogue, of course, but the fact that the rogue is also able to contribute to combat helps. Sure, the wizard could do the rogue's job, but it makes it harder for him to do his own. As well, sometimes you do end up facing more traps, locked doors, and whatnot than the wizard has prepared for. So in a core game, the rogue's actually doing pretty good, compared to, say, the fighter. He can generally contribute.

Of course, there are other skillmonkey builds that work even better. But that's a different story.

[Irreverent Fool]

With the except of Full-attack and possibly Ride-by-attack, how the hell are any of the other things useful against enemies that are not humanoid shaped creatures of Large size of smaller? I mean, you can't Disarm or Sunder a Dragon. You *could* try to grapple it or trip it, but good luck. Same thing with an ooze, except oozes can't be tripped, and the ooze would THANK you for a free meal if you try to grapple it.

If you only fight humanoids in a campaign, then Fighters aren't too bad. You've got options when th eother person needs a weapon to fight back and you can disarm them or sunder the weapon. And they don't have like twice your strength so you actually can grapple or trip them reliably. But otherwise, you've got very little options.

I don't think you can trip something more than one size category larger than you.

"HA! I tripped the dragon! Ha, I say! Ha ha!"

I was going to contribute more to this thread but it has--as predicted--become a bit too well-done for my taste.

It's a shame. There are some good points buried under the flames.

[ghost_warlock]

It's a shame. There are some good points buried under the flames.

There really aren't that many flames in here, from what I've noticed. A lot of arguing, but no personal attacks really. Most of the best stuff is on the first page, anyway. :smalltongue:

Oh, and for my 2c, Aquillion won the rogue vs. wizard debate.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I like to think of rogues, fighters, monks, and all other non-casters as very important. I mean, they provide at least a few spell slots to the wizard right? You know, cause he doesn't have to prepare those 2 or 3 spells to replace them.

Do you know how much pearls of power cost!?

[Dove]

Hit Dice -- These lent the illusion of fairness to monster creation. Players get levels, monsters get hit dice; it evens out, right? Well, no. Players get a few levels, but each one counts for a lot. Monsters get roughly twice as many hit dice, but they're much crappier. Balance was random. Tying saves and attack rolls (to say nothing of save DCs!) to hit dice only served to skew them in random directions relative to the party.

Monster Advancement -- I've got a 20 hit die Balrog I'd like to take to 60 hit dice for an epic encounter. If I do it by the book, it takes over an hour. And likely dies in one hit. No thanks.

CR system -- It didn't work. It promised balance without providing it.

Encounters that scale poorly with the number of players -- CRs are intended for a four player party. What to do when you have six? Or seven? It was never so clear. A monster a couple CRs higher might have an attack the party totally couldn't handle, while mixing CRs led to dubious EL calculations. Solo monsters were the general expectation, yet had a wide action disparity with the party.

Crazy complicated monsters -- Dragons that couldn't be run without referencing three different pages of the monster manual. Demons with more spell like abilities than you can shake a stick at.

"Swarm Traits" -- Man, I hated seeing "Undead Traits" in an entry. Even odds I'd forget one, and be flipping back and forth during combat. I liked the consistency of types and subtypes, but it came with some confusing implications. It made sense that zombies were immune to mind-affecting effects. Liches, not so much.

One-trick pony classes -- Rogue: "I sneak attack it!" DM: "Construct." Rogue: "I . . . pout". I know, I know, a rogue with good UMD and some tricks can handle a lot. But that's besides the point. Played straight and normal, by default, Rogues are good at one thing, and it's a very easy thing to completely defeat. Barbarians are good at one thing. Fighters, too. Nobody likes to do the same thing round after round, night after night. Nobody likes to be SOL for a fight.

Monsters completely immune to random things -- "It's a golem, which means the wizard is next to useless!" Really? Who decided that would be fun?

Save or Suck/Die effects -- 3.5 seems to be built around all-or-nothing effects, and our tactics revolve around dealing with that. It feels powerful once or twice, but repeated frequently as the bread and butter of a combat system . . . it's like combat by Russian Roulette. It's not great design.

Crappy traps -- Search, disable device, lather, rinse, repeat. This wasn't fun or intresting for any of the other players, and it generally wasn't fun or interesting for the rogue, either. There's no strategy to it, no game. You put max ranks in the relevant two skills, and then you either make the check (resulting in . . . no encounter, just an extra die roll. Um, yay?) or you don't (You take some cheap damage you couldn't possibly avoid. Um, yay?). No thanks.

Epic combat that takes a ton of table-time and very little world-time. High level combat often lasted for half a round. The epic fight for the fate of the world, with a CR somewhere in the high 60s? Over in twelve seconds. The damage output and hit point values just diverged too much. This is an artifact of the hit die system.

Loads of magic items -- I had to make a spreadsheet to manage my character's inventory. I should not have to do this. Ever.

Loads of spells, some better thought out than others -- I had to make a spreadsheet for my character's spell selections and common alternatives.

XP costs -- Never fun, always introduced painful bookkeeping. One weird artifact was that playing one session a little behind could lead to gaining more XP than everyone else . . . and ending up way ahead!

Consumable items as the norm -- These are just on the wrong attrition curve. They tied sustained actions in combat (I can cast Magic Missile every round instead of just once per day!) to diffuse actions out of combat (I can cast Cure Light Wounds periodically, when we need it). These are things that should come at very different costs, yet they were spent from the same resource. To make matters worse, consumables also used irreplacable character resources (gold spent) on perishable bonuses. The end effect was that the costs never made sense--how could they? Yuck.

Crafting cost XP. And took AGES. -- Didn't make sense, wasn't fun. Closed off player options.

Healing was usually pointless in combat -- Either it was Heal to save someone's life, or it was Lesser Vigor while we waited around afterwards. All those Cure spells? Suboptimal trap. In 3.5, healing was a burden that someone had to bear. In 4E, the cleric/warlord is everyone's new best friend.

Players just got too powerful to tell stories with -- True Resurrection destroys the ability to tell stories about death. Commune destroys the ability to craft natural mysteries. Discern location destroys the ability to create lost locations. Late in the game, so many spells shut down entire categories of stories and tactics; Mind Blank, Antimagic Field, Ethereal Jaunt, Holy Word, Mordekainen's Disjunction. Greater Teleport, Scry, even Greater Arcane Sight. I spent so much time trying to work around these things to tell stories.

Fire! Fire Resistance! No, Seriously, Fire! Fire Immunity! No, Seriously, FIRE! Fire Immunity Double Plus Plus Infinity Squared! -- Tiresome. Seemed a lot of effects were like this; something that always worked until it was always defeated. Sometimes the cycle was repeated. Imprisonment and Freedom -- two spells which did nothing but cancel each other out. All or nothing combat meant that if the defense was available, you needed to have it. Which led to enemies which, after a certain point, always had Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, Greater Fortification, etc. Combat degenerates into "Did I think of a trick you forgot to defend against?"

Characters are primarily defined by race and class -- Still a problem in 4E, but that doesn't make it not one in 3.5. Ask someone about their character, and you get "She's an Elven Ranger". RP starts there, and branches off into "what's it mean to be elven" and "what's it mean to be a ranger". Some groups do better--my players do a lot better. But that's in spite of the system, not because of it. It's something I fight with every time I make a new character.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Your assertion was that spellcasting renders rogues obsolete, not that there exist other skill-monkey classes. Bards and beguilers are a different story, since they're basically reflavored rogues who trade a few skill points and some rogue abilities for limited spellcasting. They do the same things, essentially; the spellcasting is a fringe-benefit, so the differences are fairly minor.

You're quoting out of context. I said they do Diplomacy and Bluffing better than rogues. I never said that either of those two things are particularly necessary as compared with what a wizard can do without needing either.


Likewise, your challenge is pointless. I never said anything about a lone rogue's usefulness verses a lone wizard; what on earth would that have to do with D&D, in any case? I never said that a rogue would be more powerful than a wizard, or even as powerful as a wizard. Yes, wizards are broken.

But you said this:


Rogues completely obviated, in their supposed primary role, by low-level spells! ~sigh~ It makes me all misty-eyed, remembering the good old days.

If you want to hold this competition, you're limited to second-level spells at best; I think most people would agree that third level casting is the big 'turning point', so beyond that point they're not low level anymore (and no, the rogue is not limited in what spells they can mimic via UMD.

Again, out of context. By "their primary role," I obviously meant dealing with locks and traps -- and yes, you can completely dispense with a rogue in this capacity with 1st- and 2nd-level spells or items that cast them! The fact that a rogue is also capable of using items that cast those spells with UMD is not exactly much of a consolation.


You were the one who set the terms, not me

By the time I set them, the discussion had turned away from what I said that you quoted above and to a general discussion of the overall usefulness of rogues as compared with wizards. Therefore, the discussion no longer related to what you quoted above, nor did the challenge.

This is what I mean by "out of context." Please stop doing this. If you just want to obfuscate the facts and misrepresent my statements in order to "win" the argument, I'm going to step back and hand you victory uncontested because I know how these unending forum battles go, and I'm not interested.

You "win." Go collect a prize or something. I don't have time for that.

[Aquillion]

You're quoting out of context. I said they do Diplomacy and Bluffing better than rogues. I never said that either of those two things are particularly necessary as compared with what a wizard can do without needing either.Necessary? No. Not every class or skill has to be necessary; in fact, making things necessary is a bad thing, since it can end up forcing people to choose classes or builds they don't want to play. That is one of the things 4th edition got right; even less is necessary there, and everything can be substituted.

But are those unnecessary skills useful in 3.X? Yes. That's the important thing. If you have a Batman wizard and a rogue in a party, the rogue should still be able to find many useful places to use those social skills, at all levels.


Again, out of context. By "their primary role," I obviously meant dealing with locks and traps -- and yes, you can completely dispense with a rogue in this capacity with 1st- and 2nd-level spells or items that cast them! The fact that a rogue is also capable of using items that cast those spells with UMD is not exactly much of a consolation.I just indicated several reasons why you can't; refer to my previous post. Unless every trap you encounter is a straightforward pit trap, it can become very difficult to deal with them using just low-level spells; summons have very short durations, can set off traps that cause problems even to people at a distance, and may not trigger every sort of trap, while Detect Traps is usually weaker than a rogue and lasts only a short time.

You are suggesting that you would devote essentially all your first or second level spells to trying to emulate one application of one rogue skill. You will still miss secret doors, as well as hidden treasure; you'll often still have to burn additional spells to deal with traps when you discover them and, again, without ranks in Disable Device you'll be hitting them blindly and may end up setting them off; and even in exchange for all that, you're getting less protection than you'd get from an actual rogue.

I also described how the rogue has many useful places to use abilities other than simply dealing with 'locks and traps', especially if your game is a bit less of a dungeon crawl. I don't know what games you play, but Listen, Spot, Sense Motive, and so on are all extremely valuable in any I've encountered, Batman wizard or not. Knowing the exact situation around you is extremely valuable, and there actually isn't much you can do with scrying magic in this regard without burning new spells every few feet, wasting very very high-level effects, or both.


By the time I set them, the discussion had turned away from what I said that you quoted above and to a general discussion of the overall usefulness of rogues as compared with wizards. Therefore, the discussion no longer related to what you quoted above, nor did the challenge.

This is what I mean by "out of context." Please stop doing this. If you just want to obfuscate the facts and misrepresent my statements in order to "win" the argument, I'm going to step back and hand you victory uncontested because I know how these unending forum battles go, and I'm not interested.

You "win." Go collect a prize or something. I don't have time for that.If you really just meant that 'wizards are more powerful than rogues' -- well, yes, obviously. But as far as I could tell, you were replying exclusively to my post (you even cut it up into pieces! admittedly, it was a bit long), and my post was replying solely to your assertion that rogues were 'completely obviated' by low-level spells.

Even if you're backing off of that and just saying that two rogue skills (search and open lock) are rendered obsolete by the likes of Knock, Summon Monster I, and Detect Traps, I still think I've answered that twice. Open Lock, perhaps, although it can still be occasionally useful (Knock won't work on chains that merely lock things in place, or a locked portcullis, or a lock that doesn't specifically hold a door or trap, or a lock that is part of a larger non-door mechanism. I still think it would have been more intelligent for the skill to be folded into Disable Device in 3.5, though, yeah.)

But saying that spells can render Search obsolete is silly, even just for traps (and ignoring the usefulness of finding hidden treasure, secret doors, and other hidden things.) You can search every step you take in a large dungeon, and only be slowed down a little. If you do the same with magic, you'll be slowed down by days, since you'll have to stop and sleep every half-hour... and there will still be traps you miss or accidently set off, which search could easily have found. This isn't like Open Lock; uses for Search that can't be easily or completely replicated with spells come up all the time, even just when dealing with traps.

[Dhavaer]

Really, really long spell lists. I really like the Ultimate Magus, for example, but it's just so dull trawling through the books to find spells. Tome of Battle had a good thing going, I think.

[Morty]

Tome of Battle had a good thing going, I think.

Only because it was released late and wizards didn't manage to pull of a dozen of splatbooks using ToB. If core melee classes worked like ToBers(man, how I wish they did) they'd have boatloads of bizzare manuevers as well.

[namo]

Thanks to Jack Mann for arguing the point so excellently that I don't need to answer it myself. :smallwink:


Unlike my post with 4th edition, this one'll be quite comparatively lengthy, so bear with me, here...
Much wisdom you display here, and yet I disagree with a few bits. The ones I don't comment on I mostly agree with.



Linear non-casters and exponential casters.
Skills.
Uniformity in combat. Unless you're a caster, at which point all the world's magic is available to you, and you can change your tactics completely on a daily basis. Fighters? Fighters get such lovely non-choices as grapple, trip, and bull rush, which sound great until you realize you're killing yourself by attempting them without the proper feats. And then even once you have the proper feats, a good number of monsters are completely immune to them. Meanwhile, said caster retreats and changes up his spell list to take down the monsters that the Fighter was absolutely bollocks against. Choice, indeed...
Tome of Battle solves some of this.
Also a spellcaster that chooses his feats & spells as randomly as your fighter seems to do will also find himself useless.


Magic item dependancy. This I just never understood to begin with. Apparently the hunger for loot is just so ravenous that everybody must have at least one item for every body slot available, and they're so essential that player characters never learn how to defend themselves. Wait, what's that? Yes, that's right. Player characters in 3rd edition never learned how to defend themselves. Sure, they might learn how to better clobber their opponents, and sure, they'll eventually become so incredibly powerful that entire words bend to their will, but once you remove that armor and those magic items, they're as vulnerable as they were when they started adventuring at first level. The only difference is in their plot armor, i.e. HP, which lets them avoid killing blows - unless that blow happens to be from a save-or-die effect. Oops. That brings me to my next point.
I agree with some of that. But try contributing in 4E without a level-appropriate weapon/implement/cloak...


Save or suck/die effects.
Most save-or-die should be out ; save-or-suck I actually like, but some are too good.


Death is a status effect. That's right - death is almost always temporary in the world of 3rd edition.
(see below)


Okay, I'm just going to stop there. Yes, I really do think 3rd edition has no redeeming qualities other than the fact that it was the experiment that led to a better, more playable system. And you can quote me on that.:smalltongue:
*cough* No comment.
(I like 4E, but I like 3E better. Despite its flaws.)


Hit Dice
Monster Advancement -- I've got a 20 hit die Balrog I'd like to take to 60 hit dice for an epic encounter. If I do it by the book, it takes over an hour. And likely dies in one hit. No thanks.
Eh, of course you're going for the extremes. It's not too bad for a few levels.


CR system
Crazy complicated monsters -- Dragons that couldn't be run without referencing three different pages of the monster manual. Demons with more spell like abilities than you can shake a stick at.
I don't really mind that, but I can definitely see why people prefer more streamlined stat blocks.


"Swarm Traits" -- Man, I hated seeing "Undead Traits" in an entry. Even odds I'd forget one, and be flipping back and forth during combat. I liked the consistency of types and subtypes, but it came with some confusing implications. It made sense that zombies were immune to mind-affecting effects. Liches, not so much.
Same here.


Monsters completely immune to random things
Yes, partial resistances are better.


Crappy traps -- Search, disable device, lather, rinse, repeat. This wasn't fun or intresting for any of the other players, and it generally wasn't fun or interesting for the rogue, either. There's no strategy to it, no game. You put max ranks in the relevant two skills, and then you either make the check (resulting in . . . no encounter, just an extra die roll. Um, yay?) or you don't (You take some cheap damage you couldn't possibly avoid. Um, yay?). No thanks.
I was never a big fan of traps personally - but the 4E ones can be adapted to 3E if one likes them.


Epic combat that takes a ton of table-time and very little world-time. High level combat often lasted for half a round. The epic fight for the fate of the world, with a CR somewhere in the high 60s? Over in twelve seconds. The damage output and hit point values just diverged too much. This is an artifact of the hit die system.
Epic is... apart. In my current epic game, the DM uses completely homebrew monsters and they're doing well.


Loads of spells, some better thought out than others
Agreed, but that will be the case in any system... Hopefully just not as much as in 3E.


XP costs
Consumable items as the norm -- These are just on the wrong attrition curve. They tied sustained actions in combat (I can cast Magic Missile every round instead of just once per day!) to diffuse actions out of combat (I can cast Cure Light Wounds periodically, when we need it). These are things that should come at very different costs, yet they were spent from the same resource. To make matters worse, consumables also used irreplacable character resources (gold spent) on perishable bonuses. The end effect was that the costs never made sense--how could they? Yuck.
The norm ? Never saw that happen.


Crafting cost XP. And took AGES.
Healing was usually pointless in combat -- Either it was Heal to save someone's life, or it was Lesser Vigor while we waited around afterwards. All those Cure spells? Suboptimal trap. In 3.5, healing was a burden that someone had to bear. In 4E, the cleric/warlord is everyone's new best friend.
Suboptimal != pointless.


Players just got too powerful to tell stories with -- True Resurrection destroys the ability to tell stories about death.
In one of the campaigns I played in, we investigated why the dead never reached their assigned place. They were being diverted (no resurrection possible) to a weird plane


Commune destroys the ability to craft natural mysteries.
that was unaccessible even to divine senses.


Discern location destroys the ability to create lost locations.
Read the spell, it doesn't do that at all.


Late in the game, so many spells shut down entire categories of stories and tactics; Mind Blank, Antimagic Field, Ethereal Jaunt, Holy Word, Mordekainen's Disjunction. Greater Teleport, Scry, even Greater Arcane Sight. I spent so much time trying to work around these things to tell stories.
Agreed with Mindblank, AMF, Holy Word, Disjunction - they're too absolute. Teleport & Scry I never really had a problem with - it does require the BBEG to have access to some countermeasures.


Characters are primarily defined by race and class -- Still a problem in 4E, but that doesn't make it not one in 3.5. Ask someone about their character, and you get "She's an Elven Ranger". RP starts there, and branches off into "what's it mean to be elven" and "what's it mean to be a ranger". Some groups do better--my players do a lot better. But that's in spite of the system, not because of it. It's something I fight with every time I make a new character.
??
I've always seen characters that were determined as much by their alignment, and ability scores, and background... as by their class and race ?

[Gorbash]

Death is a status effect. That's right - death is almost always temporary in the world of 3rd edition.

So, it's a better idea to make PCs nigh unkillable by giving every class healing abilities? :smallconfused:

[Dhavaer]

Only because it was released late and wizards didn't manage to pull of a dozen of splatbooks using ToB. If core melee classes worked like ToBers(man, how I wish they did) they'd have boatloads of bizzare manuevers as well.

Initiators were also limited in that they could only choose from a certain amount of disciplines. If wizards had to choose from three or so schools, it would have helped keep down the glut, even with the spell compendium.

[Oslecamo]

-The organization of the rules on the books

I can understand why probably nobody in the world knows the 3.X rules perfectly, since it's a pain to find anything but spells.

My original group took months to find out how TWF exactly worked.

-That 3.X led to the word fallacy to lose any true meaning on gaming boards, due to being thrown left and right.

[Gorbash]

If wizards had to choose from three or so schools, it would have helped keep down the glut, even with the spell compendium.

Conjuration, Transmutation and Illusion. Still badass.


I can understand why probably nobody in the world knows the 3.X rules perfectly, since it's a pain to find anything but spells.

First of all, yes I do. Second of all, Rules compendium.


My original group took months to find out how TWF exactly worked.

That says more about your group than about 3.5.

[Dhavaer]

Conjuration, Transmutation and Illusion. Still badass.

But it's more minimalist badassery, which is my point.

[Sebastian]

I'm going to agree with this post.

Me too :D .

[Matthew]

Check your PH, please. The beginning of the Skills chapter include some sample skill use DCs, including Also, please see the highlighted word here:

That is an example DC, it doesn't follow that you need to check to see things in plain sight.

[Covered In Bees]

So, it's a better idea to make PCs nigh unkillable by giving every class healing abilities? :smallconfused:

Suggesting that healing surges make PCs "nigh unkillable" shows that you haven't played 4E. It's a completely inane assumption.

Healing surges mean that characters start every battle at full HP, basically. They don't help you survive any given battle, more than a very little.

[Gorbash]

Unfortunately, I did.


Healing surges mean that characters start every battle at full HP, basically.

Every battle at full HP and with all encounter powers. That makes it kinda harder to get killed.

[Covered In Bees]

Unfortunately, I did.

Every battle at full HP and with all encounter powers. That makes it kinda harder to get killed.

No, it doesn't, because the monsters are designed with that in mind. Duh.

4E isn't any easier--you're just less likely to be screwed by a single die roll. There's as much or more challenge.

[Matthew]

Every battle at full HP and with all encounter powers. That makes it kinda harder to get killed.

Nah, all it really means is that a difficult encounter is less likely to wear down enough of your resources (dailys) that a less difficult encounter becomes challenging. That is to say, it reduces the focus on resource management of those things.

[Kurald Galain]

Nah, all it really means is that a difficult encounter is less likely to wear down enough of your resources (dailys) that a less difficult encounter becomes challenging. That is to say, it reduces the focus on resource management of those things.

Yep. Also, attrition in the form of a shortage of food, lack of light sources, being exhausted from force marching, and so forth, is also not allowed in 4E. Unlike in earlier editions, the player characters are expected to be at maximum efficiency (or near-maximum efficiency, having spent a daily or two) 95% of the time. Assumedly that's what "heroism" means; hardship can't be part of that.

[Zyrusticae]

So, it's a better idea to make PCs nigh unkillable by giving every class healing abilities? :smallconfused:
No, it's better to take out the abilities that make death an inevitability and increase the cost of raising the dead to make death more than just an annoying speed bump. And whaddya know? They did! I daresay they did it well, too. Raise dead now takes eight hours instead of one minute, and the cost increases with tier. There is nothing better than it - no Resurrection, no True Resurrection.

As for the knock on healing surges, that's entirely a personal taste issue related to how one views HP. As I don't view HP as pure physical wounds, I have no problem with them.



Much wisdom you display here, and yet I disagree with a few bits. The ones I don't comment on I mostly agree with.
I pretty much assume that by default, but thanks for the heads-up. :smallsmile:


Tome of Battle solves some of this.
Also a spellcaster that chooses his feats & spells as randomly as your fighter seems to do will also find himself useless.
I'm aware of the Tome of Battle, and it's a great effort, yet a number of people actually hate the thing(!) for some indeterminable reason... That also doesn't change the fact that the Fighter is still core. Man, what a mistake that was.

And I actually knocked on the spellcasters' ability to suck when unprepared, too. Godlike power! ...Except when it's not. ...Yeah. :smallannoyed: I mean, the design is just... not right. So I start out with one first level spell, which will do only one die of damage if I choose to fill that spell slot with a damaging spell? And then by level 10 I have over 20 spell slots which can do anywhere from five to ten times as much damage as that spell I had at first level? Then I can choose to fill those slots with crap spells and suck in any situation regardless of that fact? Or I can make other party members redundant by picking the right spells?

As you can see, I feel casters in 3rd edition walk a very fine line between 'uselessness' and 'ridiculously cheesy'. (Except with Druids, who are always in the latter category). The fact that the line can always go to the former even at higher levels through spell selection doesn't reconcile the existence of spells like Wish or Gate, either...



I agree with some of that. But try contributing in 4E without a level-appropriate weapon/implement/cloak...
You say that, but it's actually extremely easy to remove items from 4e. Just add +1 to AC, all defenses, attack and damage every five levels. Because that's all the "mandatory" items in 4e contribute. (Or I could do it the other way around, by subtracting the bonuses from the monsters.)

3rd edition, on the other hand, I'd have to add bonuses to ability scores, saving throws, several types of AC bonuses (deflection, natural armor, enhancement), attack rolls, and damage rolls. I'd throw skill bonuses in there too, actually. What a doozy! :eek:



Most save-or-die should be out ; save-or-suck I actually like, but some are too good.Save-or-sucks I wouldn't have an issue with, except that they're often much more powerful than simply damaging an opponent. Why would I bother using spells like Cone of Cold (weak example, I know) when I can just stick my enemy with a massive penalty to Strength? It's actually much more useful to shut down the enemy in almost any instance, because this is a team game. Damaging the enemy won't stop them from crushing the party wizard. Destroying their ability to attack, on the other hand, will. I just don't know how to balance that next to solid damage-dealers without overshadowing them or making them useless...



(see below)
Huh? I didn't see anything regarding this below. Did you just forget?



*cough* No comment.
(I like 4E, but I like 3E better. Despite its flaws.)
:smallsmile: And that's perfectly alright. Me, you'd have to stick a pile of house rules on it to get me to play with the system. Whereas with 4th edition the only thing I feel needs house-ruling is the multiclassing (which I already stated in the other thread). Well, that, and the potential abusability of open-ended attacks like Blade Cascade... but that's just one power, thank goodness. :smalltongue:


Yep. Also, attrition in the form of a shortage of food, lack of light sources, being exhausted from force marching, and so forth, is also not allowed in 4E. Unlike in earlier editions, the player characters are expected to be at maximum efficiency (or near-maximum efficiency, having spent a daily or two) 95% of the time. Assumedly that's what "heroism" means; hardship can't be part of that.

Um, actually, that's a part of 4e as well. Chapter 9 of the DMG deals with things like enduring extreme weather and ignoring thirst and hunger. There's also rules for disease and poison in Chapter 3. I haven't seen any rules for forced marching, though.

[Starsinger]

So, it's a better idea to make PCs nigh unkillable by giving every class healing abilities? :smallconfused:

The Third approached the animal,

And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,

Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant

Is very like a snake!"


Every battle at full HP and with all encounter powers. That makes it kinda harder to get killed.


Nah, all it really means is that a difficult encounter is less likely to wear down enough of your resources (dailys) that a less difficult encounter becomes challenging. That is to say, it reduces the focus on resource management of those things.

Well, the problem with the scenario here, is that while yes you can start with full hp, its limited by your healing surges. Which you have a very limited amount of per day. It is not 3.5 where your limit of how often you can have full HP when you start a battle is "how many tubes of cure light wounds/lesser vigor do we have left?"

[Morty]

Well, the problem with the scenario here, is that while yes you can start with full hp, its limited by your healing surges. Which you have a very limited amount of per day. It is not 3.5 where your limit of how often you can have full HP when you start a battle is "how many tubes of cure light wounds/lesser vigor do we have left?"

Call me crazy if you want, but when it comes to starting battles at full HP, I prefer it to be done by magic instead of PCs "just getting better" somehow. That said, healing in 3.5 could be done better. Just not in the overblown way 4ed does this.

[Starsinger]

Call me crazy if you want, but when it comes to starting battles at full HP, I prefer it to be done by magic instead of PCs "just getting better" somehow. That said, healing in 3.5 could be done better. Just not in the overblown way 4ed does this.

I prefer a few encounters of the fighter saying "Yeah, it stings but I can keep going." over an entirely unlimited "Mm, thanks to that 750 tube of goodness, I can keep doing this all day!"

Even potions are limited by healing surges, so really I prefer this. Sure, you can be healed to full strength, but there's an upper limit on how healed you can be.

[Morty]

I prefer a few encounters of the fighter saying "Yeah, it stings but I can keep going." over an entirely unlimited "Mm, thanks to that 750 tube of goodness, I can keep doing this all day!"

Even potions are limited by healing surges, so really I prefer this. Sure, you can be healed to full strength, but there's an upper limit on how healed you can be.

750 tube of goodness isn't unlimited, especially if you're going through hard fights, and it costs money. On higher levels you'll blow through Wand of Cure Light Wounds rather quickly. Now, healing surges limiting how much you can be healed aren't a bad idea by themselves, but they'd be better if you couldn't just spend them at your leisure, because it doesn't make much sense for characters to "just get better" after being harrased by monsters all day. Non-magical means of regaining HP aren't bad either, but again, not in the way 4ed does this.

[Zyrusticae]

But you can't spend healing surges at your leisure; you have to make a "short rest" of about five minutes before you can spend however many healing surges you need to spend.

As for it "making sense", it only doesn't make sense if you assume HP to be physical wounds. Again, I don't do this, so it makes perfect sense to me.

[Morty]

But you can't spend healing surges at your leisure; you have to make a "short rest" of about five minutes before you can spend however many healing surges you need to spend.

Needing five minutes isn't much different than "at your leisure", unless you've got very little time; but in this case you can't use healing magic either.


As for it "making sense", it only doesn't make sense if you assume HP to be physical wounds. Again, I don't do this, so it makes perfect sense to me.

Not this argument again... HP aren't all about physical wounds but in at least half they are- if they weren't, why would characters need healing at all? If it's just luck/morale/whatever, why is there a limit of Healing Surges at all?

[Zyrusticae]

Needing five minutes isn't much different than "at your leisure", unless you've got very little time; but in this case you can't use healing magic either.I don't see why you'd need otherwise. What exactly would you do instead? What are you looking for?


Not this argument again... HP aren't all about physical wounds but in at least half they are- if they weren't, why would characters need healing at all?
Why wouldn't they? Fighting is draining. Over the course of a battle that character is going to be worn down, and their ability to escape close calls diminishes. Eventually it'll get to the point where they can no longer escape physical wounds (which is what happens when a character hits 0 HP).


If it's just luck/morale/whatever, why is there a limit of Healing Surges at all?
Why wouldn't there be a limit of healing surges? There's only so much someone can push themselves before the end of the day before they start dragging themselves, and that's what the limit of healing surges represents. Eventually the character becomes too tired to summon up that willpower once more, and becomes more vulnerable to damage.

[Starsinger]

Not this argument again... HP aren't all about physical wounds but in at least half they are- if they weren't, why would characters need healing at all? If it's just luck/morale/whatever, why is there a limit of Healing Surges at all?

That's when the party fighter, a total badass normal, wraps a piece of cloth around his arm, grits his teeth and says, "I'm fine, let's go." That's spending a healing surge without magically fixing physical wounds. And because D&D has never had a "damage punishes you statistically" mechanic, you can do that. Hell you can do that in 3.5 if you want, Cure Light Wounds doesn't fix your problem, it's magical morphine so you can keep going.

[Matthew]

Well, the problem with the scenario here, is that while yes you can start with full hp, its limited by your healing surges. Which you have a very limited amount of per day. It is not 3.5 where your limit of how often you can have full HP when you start a battle is "how many tubes of cure light wounds/lesser vigor do we have left?"

I dunno, Fighters have 9+ healing surges per day, which equates to the ability to recover a minimum of 2.25 times their hit point total. Daily powers like Cure Light Wounds are in addition to such things. So, let's say I have a Fighter with Constitution 13 (for the sake of argument). So, he starts with 28 Hit Points and 10 Healing Surges. Basically, he can recover 70 Hit Points per day or possibly 100 (if he had 10 Potions of Healing). It just looks like the same old, same old, to me with a bit of power creep.

Add in the fact that if you let a party take an extended rest, then everything is restored once per day (from my perspective, it was bad enough, with regard to resource management, when it was just spell slots that did this in D20).

[Morty]

I don't see why you'd need otherwise. What exactly would you do instead? What are you looking for?

:smallconfused:? I really don't get your question here.


Why wouldn't they? Fighting is draining. Over the course of a battle that character is going to be worn down, and their ability to escape close calls diminishes. Eventually it'll get to the point where they can no longer escape physical wounds (which is what happens when a character hits 0 HP).

Why wouldn't there be a limit of healing surges? There's only so much someone can push themselves before the end of the day before they start dragging themselves, and that's what the limit of healing surges represents. Eventually the character becomes too tired to summon up that willpower once more, and becomes more vulnerable to damage.

I can see this for once or twice a day. But when wounds sustained in four fights somehow become just "getting worn down" and "pushing yourself", I can't.


That's when the party fighter, a total badass normal, wraps a piece of cloth around his arm, grits his teeth and says, "I'm fine, let's go."

It sorts of stops being badass when you do this fifth time in the day. Also, you're talking about fighter. But wizards and rogues aren't "badass normals". The increased "badassery" of 4ed characters are entirely another issue why I'm not fond of it.

[Demonix]

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I'm 3 pages in and no one has mentioned the whole CR mechanic for matching players with appropriately challenging encounters? That system was the whole reason I could never run a damn campaign... the monsters were either far too easy or they stomped all over the PCs. And figuring XP? forget it!

I don't have a link, but can anyone post the link to The Damn Crab, which illustrates the point quite nicely?

[Starsinger]

Healing was usually pointless in combat -- Either it was Heal to save someone's life, or it was Lesser Vigor while we waited around afterwards. All those Cure spells? Suboptimal trap. In 3.5, healing was a burden that someone had to bear. In 4E, the cleric/warlord is everyone's new best friend.

Characters are primarily defined by race and class -- Still a problem in 4E, but that doesn't make it not one in 3.5. Ask someone about their character, and you get "She's an Elven Ranger". RP starts there, and branches off into "what's it mean to be elven" and "what's it mean to be a ranger". Some groups do better--my players do a lot better. But that's in spite of the system, not because of it. It's something I fight with every time I make a new character.

I want to agree with both of these points, well actually with the first one mostly, but I have something to say about the second.

In regards to the first point, this is true and makes me sad, I like to play blasters and I like to play healers. 3.5 makes you feel bad for doing either. When I say I like to play healers, I mean I want to play the White Mage in final fantasy. I want to be the Holy Priest in WoW. I'm the guy in Rifts who not only knows that there are around two healing spells, but my ley line walker knows both of them. I want to be the one slinging around the "Have more HP" spells. In Mutants and Masterminds, I'm the one with healing and resurrection. My name is Starsinger, here have some more HP! Unfortunately, in 3.5 that's wildly resource inefficient. That 1d8+2 HP I can recover at level one thanks to my healing domain? That's coincidentally the same range as the monster's weapon damage. Hrm.. that's no good. Those 200 hp I can recover? What's that matter when the enemy is casting Finger of Death (at-will even).

As for the second, while I don't mind races and classes having preconceived notions about what it is to be an elf or a ranger or an elven ranger, I do mind the idea that I can't rework that for my own. If we both are mechanically TWF rangers, why can't mine be a dancer who catches opponents off guard with her wild movement while dancing? Why do I have to be someone who learned how to dual wield scimitars because I spent a lot of time outside?

[Zyrusticae]

:smallconfused:? I really don't get your question here.
I thought it was fairly straightforward. What would you do instead of healing surges?


I can see this for once or twice a day. But when wounds sustained in four fights somehow become just "getting worn down" and "pushing yourself", I can't. And this is why I said it's a personal issue. You can't see it, but I can. I can see it as being the exact same thing that allows a character in an action movie to escape from bullet hells unscathed. The exact same thing that provides for lightsaber duels in the Star Wars movies, where the duelists never touch each other until the final blow.

I have no idea how you envision combat in D&D, but clearly you don't see it the same way the designers do.




It sorts of stops being badass when you do this fifth time in the day. Also, you're talking about fighter. But wizards and rogues aren't "badass normals". The increased "badassery" of 4ed characters are entirely another issue why I'm not fond of it. Rogues are "badass normals". They're acrobatic, they're dextrous, they're agile, they're all kinds of things that "normals" are not. I don't see where you come from saying such a thing.

Wizards, on the other hand, I can understand. Except what you're talking about is essentially "plot armor", so it makes perfect sense that a wizard can keep trucking along where a normal person could not. Because they're player characters. That, in itself, pretty well ensures that they're not normal people in any sense of the term.

Also, it only happens "the fifth time in the day" if you assume that the character got another such wound "the fifth time in the day". And I'd say you're pretty boring if you do, as clearly you're not making any effort to mix up the description at all.

[Morty]

I thought it was fairly straightforward. What would you do instead of healing surges?

Healing magic and some limited non-magical means to regain HP. Also faster healing by resting. In short: sacrifice realism for convenience, but not to the extent 4ed does this.


And this is why I said it's a personal issue. You can't see it, but I can. I can see it as being the exact same thing that allows a character in an action movie to escape from bullet hells unscathed. The exact same thing that provides for lightsaber duels in the Star Wars movies, where the duelists never touch each other until the final blow.

Was that ever a non-personal issue? Was anything about D&D ever a non-personal issue? Also, I very much don't like comparing RPG games to movies. If it suits you, go right ahead. But it doesn't suit me. When I wan't a movie, I watch a movie. I don't want them in RPGs.


I have no idea how you envision combat in D&D, but clearly you don't see it the same way the designers do.

I can see how D&D designers envisioned combat during 4ed design. I just don't like how they did it.


Rogues are "badass normals". They're acrobatic, they're dextrous, they're agile, they're all kinds of things that "normals" are not. I don't see where you come from saying such a thing.

None of this allows them to heal or resist damage. Avoid, yes, but not heal.


Wizards, on the other hand, I can understand. Except what you're talking about is essentially "plot armor", so it makes perfect sense that a wizard can keep trucking along where a normal person could not. Because they're player characters. That, in itself, pretty well ensures that they're not normal people in any sense of the term.

See, the problem here is I don't want my character to have plot armor. I want my character to survive thanks to what I, the player, do, not because my character is a PC and because of this is somehow better than everyone.


Also, it only happens "the fifth time in the day" if you assume that the character got another such wound "the fifth time in the day". And I'd say you're pretty boring if you do, as clearly you're not making any effort to mix up the description at all.

If I have to mix up the descriptions so that the mechanics start making sense, it means something is wrong. Descriptions are supposed to make the game immersive, enjoyable and fun. Not to make silly game features look normal.

[namo]

Death is a status effect. That's right - death is almost always temporary in the world of 3rd edition. When you die, you might lose a couple thousand gold, but the party cleric can raise you with no trouble at all regardless. And then once you've reached higher levels death becomes a speedbump rather than a finality. Because, after all, the DM can't @#$% with the wealth by level tables - if you lose that gold he's going to make it up to you, unless he actually intends to force you to play with wealth below your level for being a horrible player (or being a horrible die-roller, in the case of those ubiquitous save-or-die effects). So then you're left with death becoming a money sink rather than a time to say goodbye to a valiant champion. Yay?
You're right, I didn't address that. I tried to lump it up with Dove's "death is meaningless" but that's only part of your point.

It seems to me resurrection is just as easy in 4E. In fact, 500gp is pretty cheap when you first get it, and instead of losing a level you suffer from a minor penalty during 2 fights: who wouldn't use it ?
Then you have a perverse threshold effect since level 11 characters suddenly have to pay 5000gp which is a lot for them: it's a bad time to die. It progressively becomes negligible again over 5 levels or so... until low epic.

Other than this threshold problem, 4E has exactly the same wealth "problems" - i.e. if you use a lot of rituals, you'll be way behind on your wealth. How does it make you "say goodbye to a valiant champion" any better ?

In 3E Raising will often have to wait the next day... in 4E eight hours.

I also dislike that in 4E only PCs or DM-anointed NPCs can be raised. I understand the problems caused by widely available resurrection, but still... Ouch, getting off-topic here, I'm dropping it.

[Curmudgeon]

That is an example DC, it doesn't follow that you need to check to see things in plain sight. No, only when it matters. The table is a list of examples of how to set DCs for similar tasks -- but the DCs for the examples given are fixed by the rules. If there's a game reason why you'd want to distinguish between noticing something and not, like an ogre guard standing outside a camp, you do need to make a Spot check. If there's no game reason, such as a bunch of large bushes, you don't bother with a Spot check.

Somebody with a good Spot ability will never fail a DC 0 check. Somebody with a sucky Spot ability can still probably make DC 0 -- but maybe not every time, and that's the difference between those who have trained to be watchful and those who haven't.

[Aquillion]

That says more about your group than about 3.5.Any way you look at it, though, 3.5's two-weapon fighting mechanics sort of sucked. They were poorly-thought out, they cost too many feats, and since they weren't balanced against your other options (Power Attack specifically) you didn't get enough in exchange for all those feats.

In general, one of 3.5's biggest problems is that the designers didn't really seem to realize how serious a problem it was to bind melee characters to full attacks. There were other issues, but that one was just so basic -- and so easily avoidable, if they'd just stopped to think about it or playtested it a bit more.

The importance of full attacks doesn't just make melee characters weaker, though... it's also not very fun. Let's face it, standing in one place and full attacking every turn is dull. 4e had the right idea here -- your attack and your movement should, by default, always be totally seperate and unrelated actions. Maybe something like a Dwarven Defender-style class could have the ability to give up their movement for an attack bonus, but otherwise, leaving players the ability to move and attack keeps things much more interesting for everyone.

[LotharBot]

Monster Advancement -- I've got a 20 hit die Balrog I'd like to take to 60 hit dice for an epic encounter.


Eh, of course you're going for the extremes. It's not too bad for a few levels.

The thread title isn't "things that work good for a few levels of 3.x" it's "things you dislike about 3.x". Considering Dove was DM'ing encounters (http://blacksandsofsemferia.blogspot.com/2008/07/session-2851-2008-07-05-inevitability.html) where great wyrm dragons were mooks and the bosses were typically CR 40+ and had been buffed by a god... the hit dice/advancement system was seriously broken.


Epic combat that takes a ton of table-time and very little world-time. High level combat often lasted for half a round. The epic fight for the fate of the world, with a CR somewhere in the high 60s? Over in twelve seconds. The damage output and hit point values just diverged too much. This is an artifact of the hit die system.


Epic is... apart. In my current epic game, the DM uses completely homebrew monsters and they're doing well.

Yep. The boss fight in the campaign above (which I haven't yet written up) was completely homebrew... a god with 10,000 hitpoints and immunity to pretty much everything but hitpoint damage vs. a party of 5 level 17 and 6 level 27 characters* with temporary divine status. It was still a reasonably short fight (a bit over 2 rounds) in world-time and long (2+ hours despite multiple characters taking their turns in parallel) in table time. Which is exactly Dove's point -- when you get to that level, you simply have to homebrew everything, and even then, it's hard to make a fight that'll last more than 2 rounds without taking 6 hours to actually play.

* I know that sounds like a bad game setup, but it was totally awesome.


Healing was usually pointless in combat -- Either it was Heal to save someone's life, or it was Lesser Vigor while we waited around afterwards.

Suboptimal != pointless.

In the above campaign, Dove played a cleric from level 1 to 27. She is correct: those medium-level healing effects were almost always pointless. They were useful on rare occasions.

----------------

As for my own list:

Too much bookkeeping -- on the player side you had skill points, huge spell lists, piles of magic items, stacking-or-not bonuses from multiple sources, XP costs, level loss from Raise Dead, charged consumables (wands), spell durations that sometimes lasted from one fight halfway into the next... and on the DM side, you had to track XP, WBL, and deal with the aforementioned hit die/CR system while trying to keep all the numbers reasonably balanced.

Inconsistent power curves -- we all know about wizards/CoDzilla on the one end of the spectrum and fighters and monks on the other... only, at some levels, the melee types were actually really good (surprisingly, in my game, this included epic levels.) Certain casters get to be suddenly more powerful when they pick up certain spell levels, but other spell levels are virtually useless. Sorcerers are always a step behind. And it was no different for monsters; the aforementioned CR/EL/XP system was horked. A dragon 3 CR's above you could be a nice challenge at one level and a walk in the park at another, and then a horribly difficult fight at another.

Too many save-or-dies, immunities, etc. -- there were far too many occasions where a single bad roll took you from perfectly healthy to dead, as a PC or a monster. There were far too many occasions where something was totally immune to, say, sneak attack (making the rogue essentially a spectator in combat unless he had the anti-immunity feat/crystal/cybernetic grapefruit.) There were far too many situations where you had an occasionally-reliable win button, or where your character was nearly useless.

The world didn't take its own magic seriously -- in a world with scrying, teleportation, true resurrection, etc. everyone over a certain level, good or evil, should have "life insurance" in the form of a true res pact, as well as certain protective wards on their personal domain. In a world with plant growth, create water, etc. food should be ridiculously abundant and technology should be rapidly developing (it's what happens when you have surplus.)

[Matthew]

No, only when it matters. The table is a list of examples of how to set DCs for similar tasks -- but the DCs for the examples given are fixed by the rules. If there's a game reason why you'd want to distinguish between noticing something and not, like an ogre guard standing outside a camp, you do need to make a Spot check. If there's no game reason, such as a bunch of large bushes, you don't bother with a Spot check.

Somebody with a good Spot ability will never fail a DC 0 check. Somebody with a sucky Spot ability can still probably make DC 0 -- but maybe not every time, and that's the difference between those who have trained to be watchful and those who haven't.

I would more or less agree, but I probably wouldn't require a spot roll to see an Ogre Guard standing outside a camp. There would have to be some reason that they wouldn't ordinarily notice him.

[namo]

The thread title isn't "things that work good for a few levels of 3.x" it's "things you dislike about 3.x".
Far from me the idea of preventing anyone from complaining. It's healthy, let it all out. :smallsmile:

[Zyrusticae]

You're right, I didn't address that. I tried to lump it up with Dove's "death is meaningless" but that's only part of your point.

It seems to me resurrection is just as easy in 4E. In fact, 500gp is pretty cheap when you first get it, and instead of losing a level you suffer from a minor penalty during 2 fights: who wouldn't use it ?
Then you have a perverse threshold effect since level 11 characters suddenly have to pay 5000gp which is a lot for them: it's a bad time to die. It progressively becomes negligible again over 5 levels or so... until low epic.

Other than this threshold problem, 4E has exactly the same wealth "problems" - i.e. if you use a lot of rituals, you'll be way behind on your wealth. How does it make you "say goodbye to a valiant champion" any better ?Actually, I take that back. You're never going to just let a companion die in any edition of the game. The main difference here is that you actually have to spend a lot of time on working to bring them back to life. As opposed to one minute, it's eight hours - thus it is no longer simply a status effect. It's a debilitating occurrence that can result in the adventure's failure if you don't have enough time to raise the individual. Meanwhile, in 3e you only need to take a very, very short break to bring someone back from the void. You lose a level, yes, which is a good reason not to die, but the fact remains that it can be done very quickly.

As for the wealth, it can or cannot be a major deterrent as well - because the majority of a party's wealth is going to be in magic items, a sacrifice may have to be made to bring a party member back to life. This, in combination with the time required to raise the dead, can create a situation where a party may not be able to raise an individual for quite some time (as opposed to, again, 3rd edition, where it can often be treated as a status effect).

As 4th edition characters are considerably less likely to die than they are in 3rd edition (what with having to reach the negative of 1/2 their HP count and all), death is more of a major event, and any party that actually somehow manages to have a party member or two die frequently has... issues, to say the least. For this reason, I don't believe the wealth should actually result in an underpowered party - at least, not nearly to the degree it does in 3rd edition.

Oh, and it helps that 4e characters have less dependence on magic items than 3e characters.


In 3E Raising will often have to wait the next day... in 4E eight hours.
Wha? Why would 3e raising have to wait 'til the next day? Are you referring to the (needlessly arbitrary) requirement of the gold value to be in diamonds?


also dislike that in 4E only PCs or DM-anointed NPCs can be raised. I understand the problems caused by widely available resurrection, but still... Ouch, getting off-topic here, I'm dropping it. Um, yeah. Not touching it. :smallwink:

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Wha? Why would 3e raising have to wait 'til the next day? Are you referring to the (needlessly arbitrary) requirement of the gold value to be in diamonds?Because no one actually keeps that spell prepared, and the Craft system makes it fairly expensive to keep a scroll lying around. Who's going to have it on hand rather than, say, a spell that might actually have saved the party member's life in the first place?

Oh, and the Diamonds aren't really all that hard. When you start looking at your adventurer's money v. the weight of a platinum piece, it makes sense for it to be kept in the form of gems rather than as heavy metals.

[Frosty]

Huh. Well, I guess I'll just roll up a wizard, a druid, a bard and a beguiler and do four characters at once instead of playing a rogue.

No, you just need to roll up a Beguiler. They are one caster class that completely supercedes the Rogue. Unlike the other 3 casters, Beguilers actually have both Trapfinding, UMD, the Rogue skill list (more or less), and MORE skill points than the Rogue.

Except Sneak Attack, what can't the Rogue do that the Beguiler can't do better? they've even got the same hit-dice (d6) and the same armor proficiency (light armor). Oh right, Rogues have a better Reflex save. The least important of the saves.

[Kiara LeSabre]

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I'm 3 pages in and no one has mentioned the whole CR mechanic for matching players with appropriately challenging encounters? That system was the whole reason I could never run a damn campaign... the monsters were either far too easy or they stomped all over the PCs. And figuring XP? forget it!

I don't have a link, but can anyone post the link to The Damn Crab, which illustrates the point quite nicely?

Offhand, Dove mentioned it on page 4. I'm not sure whether anyone else did.

Oh, and ...

This crab I Googled, then brought here with a quick copy and paste? :smalltongue:

PSEUDONATURAL PARAGON ADVANCED HUGE MONSTROUS CRAB (CR 33)

N Huge Outsider (extraplanar, aquatic, augmented vermin)
Init +13; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision, scent, Listen +42, Spot +37
Languages Aquan
AC 83 (Size -2, Dex +13, Luck +15, Insight +12, +35 Natural), touch 48, flat-footed 70
hp 544 (16 HD)
Immune mind-affecting effects
Resist fire 10, cold 10, electricity 35, acid 35
DR 15/epic
SR 80
Fort +34, Ref +28, Will +28
Spd 180 ft. (36 squares)
Melee epic tentacle +78 (2d8+46) or
Melee epic claw +78 (2d6+46) or
Melee 5 epic tentacles +78 (2d8+46) and
Melee 2 epic claws +78 (2d6+46)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Base Atk +12; Grp +82
Atk Options constrict 4d6+46, improved grab, rotting constriction
Abilities Str 63, Dex 36, Con 39, Int 18, Wis 36, Cha 17
SQ amphibious, fast healing 20, constant insight, spell-like abilities, alternate form
Feats ToughnessB, Combat Reflexes, Improved Grapple, Power Attack, Awesome Blow, Multiattack, Improved Multiattack
Skills Balance +42, Climb +55, Hide +27, Jump +55, Listen +42, Move Silently +31, Spot +37, Tumble +42

Amphibious (Ex): Although an advanced Huge monstrous crab is aquatic, it can survive indefinitely on land.

Constrict (Ex): An advanced Huge monstrous crab deals damage equal to twice its normal claw damage plus its Strength bonus on a successful grapple check.

Improved Grab (Ex): To use this ability, an advanced Huge monstrous crab must hit with a claw or tentacle attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple with a +13 bonus as a free action without provoking attacks of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can constrict.

Rotting Constriction (Ex)
Once the creature has hold of an opponent, each successful grapple check it makes during subsequent rounds permanently drains 2d4 points of Constitution. At the same time, the creature regains 10 lost hit points.

Constant Insight (Su)
The creature makes all its attacks with a +15 insight bonus. The creature is not affected by the miss chance that applies to attacks against a concealed target. This bonus is included in the statistics above.

Spell-Like Abilities (Sp)
At will—blur, dimension door, shield, unhallow. Caster level 35th.
3/day—greater dispel, see invisibility, haste. Caster level 15th.

The DCs are Charisma-based.

Alternate Form (Su)
At will, a pseudonatural creature can take the form of a grotesque, tentacled mass (or another appropriately gruesome form), but all its abilities remain unchanged despite the alien appearance. Changing shape is a standard action. Other creatures receive a -1 morale penalty on their attack rolls against pseudonatural creatures in this alternate form.

[Morty]

That Damn Crab isn't the worst thing about CR system. Worse thing is how apparently 8 CR 2 enemies are a match for 10th level party, while 3 unoptimized 4th level guys were doing okay against eight dretches. I don't know why I haven't included it in my post...

[Curmudgeon]

I would more or less agree, but I probably wouldn't require a spot roll to see an Ogre Guard standing outside a camp. There would have to be some reason that they wouldn't ordinarily notice him. Like a WIS modifier of -1, zero ranks in Spot, and a -3 penalty for 30' of distance? I've encountered Barbarian characters who could miss seeing such an NPC.

My feeling is that a character who completely ignores a mainstay skill shouldn't be rewarded for doing so. I particularly enjoy enforcing the rules on the occasional caster with maxed-out Concentration, Spellcraft, and various Knowledge skills -- who occasionally can't target enemies because they fail to Spot them! An adventurer who's trekking about in a hostile world, yet with only the skills of a cloistered academic, should experience frustration and failure -- it's an educational experience.

[Matthew]

As I say, I probably wouldn't bother. If he was distracted, then that's another story. However, the encounter rules already take into account this sort of thing, so you shouldn't have to roll a spot check to 'see him', though you would roll a spot check to determine at what range the encounter begins as outlined on pp. 59-60 of the 3e DMG or pp. 21-24 of the 3.5 DMG.

[Curmudgeon]

you would roll a spot check to determine at what range the encounter begins as outlined on pp. 59-60 of the 3e DMG or pp. 21-24 of the 3.5 DMG. There's a big difference in those rules. 3.0 specified a maximum encounter distance, and you automatically engage if nobody has noticed the other party at half the initial possible encounter range. In 3.5 there's no encounter until somebody succeeds at a Spot check (OK, except for avalanches and forest fires, where they kept the automatic encounter rule).

[JupiterPaladin]

I normally read every bit of a thread before posting, but I had to skip those last 2 pages. All I saw was the same old arguments that always come up. So instead of poking the fire, I'll just respond to the OP, with a side note that I agree completely with Matthew and Prophanti so far.

How do I hate 3.X let me count the ways:

1. Full Casters - If I have to explain this one, you need more help than I can offer.

2. Nigh Infinite number of new base classes and PrCs - Instead of offering errata for the base classes WotC thought it would be best to just make new classes that trump the originals. What were there, 500 classes altogether? Really, 495 of them were crap copy/pasted from crap, which did nothing more than change the crappy hue. WotC dropped the ball on this hardcore.

3. Spells - Not every spell sucked, but having a spell for every situation nullifies the real need for other classes. Aside from the overabundance of spell options, they were almost always cheap or basically free to cast and had no chance of any drawback. Some were downright unfair, even to other casters. Greater Anticipate Teleportation can give the defending caster 3 rounds to screw the teleporting foe who gets no saving throw and is unaware he just hangs in limbo for 3 rounds. Mage's Disjunction makes people cry, even the DM.

4. The ToB - Yah I said it, flame away. The people that defend it saying it's not influenced by anime is just utter crap. It is. Not everyone likes it. How many of you play Oriental Adventures? I sure don't. I don't hate what the ToB tried to accomplish, I hate the fact that it was not offered as an expansion of options for the Fighter, Paladin, and Monk classes. There was NO real reason to make new classes, it could have been extra content for the core classes. It could have been done right.

5. Monks - Really there was no reason for a Monk in core. As somebody else said before, it should have been done better and in a different book.

6. Save DCs - At no point does this system ever balanced. Either your save is so high you have a 5% chance to fail the save, or it's so low you have a 5% chance to make it. Too many feats, items, and abilities can be changed to affect this system, so there is no way to balance it as written.

7. First level - 4th edition just did it so much better.

8. Wealth by level guidelines - This did nothing but encourage making characters above first level, which I feel reduces your attachment to that character. I never made a character above firat level that I really cared about. They all felt disposable because the status was not earned.

9. Skills - All classes could use more skill points, and the DCs should not be static.

10. Too many writers - The number of splatbooks was not the real problem, it's that one writer did not check against others before making new content, so we have Pun-Pun.

[Aquillion]

10. Too many writers - The number of splatbooks was not the real problem, it's that one writer did not check against others before making new content, so we have Pun-Pun.Pun-Pun has nothing to do with that problem; it isn't any combination of splatbooks that breaks it. It's the Sarrukh, which is a horribly, horribly designed monster that should never have been printed.

You can become Pun-Pun very easily with nothing more than the Sarrukh + core (just use Shapechange. Or, if you encounter one, Dominate Monster. Or Gate -- possibly via Candle of Invocation -- to force one to you and make it use Manipulate Form on you. Or, heck, you don't even need magic, just use Bluff, Intimidate, or Diplomacy to get it to give you what you need.) It's one thing not to worry about other splatbooks, sure, but if you ignore Core when making your splatbook then it's just a matter of the writer being an idiot.

Of course, Manipulate Form was an insanely stupidly-worded ability in the first place, even aside from the problem of PCs getting their hands on it. As written, Sarrukhs have the ability to turn any scaled one into a near-deity (possibly, something even stronger than a deity), and simply neglect to do so because it hasn't occurred to them or they don't want to or whatever. That's stupid.

If they wanted something like Sarrukh in the backstory, they should have just mentioned them in a 'myths and legends' sort of way, and never statted them out. But having the players encounter a Sarrukh is a terrible idea -- what, the PCs encounter a Sarrukh and his six scaled friends? How am I, as a DM, supposed to handle that? How should the Sarrukh use Manipulate Form, given that he could easily grant (or have already granted) one of the scaled ones an ability or set of abilities that slaughters the entire party (plus everyone else in the universe?)

What if one of the PCs is a kobold, and they encounter a Sarrukh? If an enemy, the Sarrukh could reduce their stats to 3 -- permanently, with no cure possible except another Sarrukh -- with a single touch attack. Obviously nobody but the most horrible DM would actually do that, but that's the power a Sarrukh actually has if used as a monster. Likewise, if they're an ally, should the Sarrukh use this power to help the party?

It's silly. It's not an ability that should ever have been statted out, because it's not something that fits into the D&D system or setting at all.

[Starsinger]

4. The ToB - The people that defend it saying it's not influenced by anime is just utter crap. It is.

1. There is a difference between "inspired by" and "is", said people don't defend ToB from allegations of being inspired by anime, as much as claims that ToB is anime.

2. The fact that it's inspired by Anime does not mean you have to yell out the name of your strike, shoot ki blasts out of your bare hands, speak in subtitles, or anything else having to do with generalized anime tropes.

3. Your Sailor Jupiter avatar amuses me greatly in regards to this discussion.

[Dove]

Hit Dice
Monster Advancement -- I've got a 20 hit die Balrog I'd like to take to 60 hit dice for an epic encounter. If I do it by the book, it takes over an hour. And likely dies in one hit. No thanks.
Eh, of course you're going for the extremes. It's not too bad for a few levels.

Yeah, it's well known that the system "worked" between levels 5 and 12, or thereabouts, depending on who you ask. But this was more by chance than by design--the designers have said as much.

My main beef with the Hit Dice system was that it was a lot of work for no benefit. Advancing a monster took a fair bit of time--if you went all out, you were picking feats, skills, and ability score adjustments for every hit die. And what did you get at the end for all that work? A monster that still had to be re-balanced against the party! Inevitably, something would come out too high or too low. The effect was that of generating a range of random numbers that were often in a reasonable ballpark, but were not really principled. As the game went on, the appropriate number of hit points badly diverged from appropriate save DCs, attack bonuses, and so forth. My dictum was, "The closer you get to epic, the more your monsters necessarily approach pure fiat." It was quite true.

Hit Dice were a lot of work for no benefit. It didn't show up too badly in the early levels because an accidental +2 here or there doesn't matter that much. But it started to show cracks around level 10, and ran completely off the rails in epic. I'll never forget the experience that triggered my loss of faith: the CR 9 Frost Giant that I gave five cleric levels to--the rules suggesting that this made him CR 11 or 12. Yeah. He trashed the level 10 party.




Crazy complicated monsters -- Dragons that couldn't be run without referencing three different pages of the monster manual. Demons with more spell like abilities than you can shake a stick at.
I don't really mind that, but I can definitely see why people prefer more streamlined stat blocks.

I didn't really mind it long term. But in any given combat, you saw only a tiny slice of what a monster could do. The result was that you had to fight them several times before they began to cohere.

Complex monsters faced once are not interesting from the PC's point of view. They are rather incoherent. The monster has seemingly random abilities that don't relate, and you don't get a feel for what its suite of abilities is, and how to defeat it. I found that for a monster in the CR 12 or so range, we had to face it a half a dozen times in different circumstances before the players began to really understand it.

In a way, this is a good thing. Over the course of many sessions, we come to know what demons and dragons are capable of, and we come to understand how to deal with them. We appreciate their many-layered complexity, and have a fair idea of what is and isn't feasible when one shows up.

But this is a bad thing in two ways. First of all, players must suffer through a long period of incoherence before they come to truly know their foes. And even this only works if you face them many times. Faced once, a lone Nightcrawler or Slaad or even a Stone Golem is an exercise in randomness. Types and subtypes give you little shreds of consistency to which you can cling, but the monsters are nontheless so wholly unpredictable in an isolated encounter as to make countertactics an exercise in guessing. You know, someone way back in the history of D&D evidently thought random damage and effects were fun, but I beg to differ. Guessing and randomness are never fun. They're tiresome.

Second of all, it taxes the poor DM. I cannot tell you how much I hated running dragons early on because I had to compile the poor beasts first. Many of my demons died with spell-like abilities that could have saved them, had I but taken the few minutes to scan the list and think carefully about the implications of all their myriad powers. You know, DMs have enough interesting things to think about. They don't need to be trying to run six monsters each with FIFTEEN DISTINCT COMBAT OPTIONS optimally.

Monsters that are simple and can be run straight from the book are a gift to DMs and players alike. They grant players consistency and ludicidy with which to puzzle out encounters, and they grant DMs the freedom to create ad hoc encounters with a few spare brain cells for storyline. I know, I know, an adept DM can do this in 3.5; I have in fact done it, and it's not as hard as all that. But my point was that it is much harder than it has any right to be. A monster that I can run from the manual with a 30-second glance is much better than one I need to spend an hour studying and doing dry runs with. I mean, that's an hour I could be using for world development.




Crappy traps -- Search, disable device, lather, rinse, repeat. This wasn't fun or intresting for any of the other players, and it generally wasn't fun or interesting for the rogue, either. There's no strategy to it, no game. You put max ranks in the relevant two skills, and then you either make the check (resulting in . . . no encounter, just an extra die roll. Um, yay?) or you don't (You take some cheap damage you couldn't possibly avoid. Um, yay?). No thanks.

I was never a big fan of traps personally - but the 4E ones can be adapted to 3E if one likes them.

I'm not a big fan of the 4E traps, either, but they are at least a step in the right direction. 4E looked at 3.5's trivial traps and recognized that they sucked. It then replaced them with combat-relevant traps that act on initiative and have complex and sometiems neutral effects. This does make things more interesting, but only so much.

It is possible to run good traps in 3.5; one of my favorite encounters ever was a room which was nothing but a giant trap. But this is not about what you can homebrew or mod in 3.5, but how 3.5 comes by default. And the traps in 3.5, by default, SUUUUUUCK. By comparison, the traps in 4E kinda suck. But it is at least a big improvement. And the encouragement to "make traps interesting" represents a huge change in philosophy; if I find the implementation mediocre, at least the attempt is admirable.







Quote:Epic combat that takes a ton of table-time and very little world-time. High level combat often lasted for half a round. The epic fight for the fate of the world, with a CR somewhere in the high 60s? Over in twelve seconds. The damage output and hit point values just diverged too much. This is an artifact of the hit die system.
Epic is... apart. In my current epic game, the DM uses completely homebrew monsters and they're doing well.

Aye. The closer a game approaches epic, the more the monsters' stats approach complete fiat. This is not a feature. This is a bug. And it's a BAD bug.

I'll grant that it's not fair to judge 3.5 by epic, but a lot of us do end up playing it. And truly, the higher you go in level, the more the system falls apart, and the more you have to rely on mods and houserules and homebrews just to keep the poor thing hanging together. Compare 4E: the math for how to extend the level progression indefinitely is relatively obvious.

There's no doubt in my mind that that constitutes an improvement.






Quote:Loads of spells, some better thought out than others

Agreed, but that will be the case in any system... Hopefully just not as much as in 3E.

This is a large difference between 3.5 and 4E. 3.5 went for the "loads and loads of spells" approach, and many of the spells are quite broken. This introduces paralysis on odd levels selecting new spells. In the core rulebook alone, one might find thirty spells of a given level for their class. The majority of them will suck. One or two are so broken they need to be house ruled. And then you buy Spell Compendium and all hell breaks loose. This was the major barrier that prevented some of my players from playing casters.

In 4E, the powers are few, well-defined, and designed for interesting tactical utility. At any given level, you will have three to five powers to choose from, and by and large, they're all decent. Yes, they vary in power, but none truly out-and-out suck. A cleric in 3.5 choosing three random level 3 spells might get Contagion, Helping Hand, and Water Walk. A cleric in 4E choosing a random level 5 encounter power might choose the worst of the set, but cannot possibly choose a bad one. Because there isn't a bad one.

This is a fundamental design philosophy change: 3.5 threw a long, long list of complicated stuff in a blender together with an elaborate framework of rules and guidelines, and hoped it would all balance out in the wash. It didn't. 4E gives us short lists of carefully-considered items designed and integrated to work well together. Oh, I'm not claiming 4E's perfect--there's bugs, there's things that suck unexpectedly, or are unexpectedly broken. But the philosophy of lots-of-complicated-low-quality-stuff vs. short-lists-of-simple-high-quality-stuff is a fundamental change.

And a big improvement. The 4E design exudes quality in a way 3.5 never did.





Consumable items as the norm -- These are just on the wrong attrition curve. They tied sustained actions in combat (I can cast Magic Missile every round instead of just once per day!) to diffuse actions out of combat (I can cast Cure Light Wounds periodically, when we need it). These are things that should come at very different costs, yet they were spent from the same resource. To make matters worse, consumables also used irreplacable character resources (gold spent) on perishable bonuses. The end effect was that the costs never made sense--how could they? Yuck.
The norm ? Never saw that happen.

It certainly was the norm, and we saw it change with MIC. Wands, staffs, scrolls, and potions are the standard way to extend your magical capabilities, and they are all consumable. Many wondrous items came charged. Yeah, we had persistant items that gave persistant bonuses--Cloaks of Resistance +3, for example--but in terms of added character ability, consumability was the rule. A hat that let you cast Searing Light twice per day was the exception; a hat that let you cast it thirty times before becoming inert was the rule.

MIC changed that. It contains one-shot items, sure, but search its pages high and low for the word "Charge" anywhere else, and you'll find that it's always charges per day. The items were permanent and reusable. Wands gave way to Eternal Wands, staffs to Runestaffs. This was a change for the better.

Actions are the true currency; frequency of use is the true measure of the value of an item. Consumables don't recognize this, and treat it as though a cast of Magic Missile is something which deserves a fixed cost. In reality, it's a cast of Magic Missile per round, accounting for actions used and down time, which is the right unit. MIC draws a sharp distinction between daily-use and expendable items, and allows your gold pieces to go towards supplementing your class features rather than being poured down the drain eventually. 4E embraces this, and that's no coincidence; I suspected at the time--and it's completely obvious in retrospect--that MIC was informed by 4E design principles.





Healing was usually pointless in combat -- Either it was Heal to save someone's life, or it was Lesser Vigor while we waited around afterwards. All those Cure spells? Suboptimal trap. In 3.5, healing was a burden that someone had to bear. In 4E, the cleric/warlord is everyone's new best friend.
Suboptimal != pointless.

No, it was actually literally pointless in most cases. Unless you could be sure you'd save someone's life, healing in combat was useless. It was pretty much never worth either the spell slot or the standard action to cast Cure Critical Wounds. It was big enough to be expensive, but small enough that a crit or a fireball would wipe it out and drop someone anyway.

Healing spells were simply on the wrong curve. 3.5 was right to understand that the unit of value is the rate of healing and not the amount, and correctly made spells which could heal more in a single action more expensive. What 3.5 missed, though, was that the right unit of measure is not the absolute amount of hit points healed, but the percentage of total hp healed. It utterly failed to scale those healing spells proportionately with the player's hit points and the damage being dealt, resulting in spells all over the map, mostly in the strictly dominated set (or "useless" region). Heal was overpowered; for a long time, it healed anyone you hit with it to full, and could absolutely save lives. The Cure series of spells starts out at a decent percentage of hp, but gains +1 as you gain 1d8 + CON, and eventually caps! They go from "decent" to "not worth it" in a few levels, and then fall completely off the map into "useless". As the healing fails to keep pace with the hp -- let alone with the damage! -- the strategy goes from "Hold 'em together so we can win the fight" to "Do some damage already! We can patch 'em up afterwards."

This is another instance of a general pattern in 3.5: Things that should have been on mathematically similar curves were on completely different ones, and eventually completely diverged. That's why there are so many "traps" in builds, in tactics, in general.








Players just got too powerful to tell stories with -- True Resurrection destroys the ability to tell stories about death.

In one of the campaigns I played in, we investigated why the dead never reached their assigned place. They were being diverted (no resurrection possible) to a weird plane


Commune destroys the ability to craft natural mysteries.

that was unaccessible even to divine senses.

Oh, aye, I'm not saying you can't do those things. Strictly speaking, you can do anything. It's just a question of how much your world falls apart. You can, strictly speaking, tell stories about death and craft mysteries by playing Trap the Soul, Mind Blank, and This Is Too Big For Even The Gods.

But if the story you want to tell does involve the death of, say, a head of state, and doesn't involve an epic necromancer out to kill him and make sure he stays dead . . . you can't tell it. Because of True Resurrection. Because 25,000 gp is a pittance for some folks. The head cleric of the church is never going to be martyred and mourned because his mourners are the very people who easily have the means to bring him back.

Some spells you get around by creating powerful homebrew defenses, or utilizing the in-game defenses far more than you reasonably should. Some you just ban from the game. Some you don't exercise and hope nobody asks questions. Yeah, there are solutions to these problems, but that's not the point. The point is that the system is broken. In general, but especially at high levels, it's not full of things that help you tell stories. Oh, no. It's full of things that actively kill stories. It's full of things that have to be banned or worked around.






Discern location destroys the ability to create lost locations.

Read the spell, it doesn't do that at all.

Oh, no, it totally does.

DM: "Long ago, the Ark of the Covenent was lost when the Island of Atlantis sank into the sea. Your first clue in recovering its whereabouts is--"
Player: "Hang on a sec. I cast Discern Location. Where is the Ark of the Covenenat?"
DM: "Oh . . . er, well, it's . . . " *checks spell description* *sighs* " on the elemental plane of water, in the southwestern ocean, five-thousandth fathom, take a left at the undersea vents. Here's the street address within Atlantis."
Player: "Thanks."

The spell description really is that bad. I quote verbatim, "Nothing short of a mind blank spell or the direct intervention of a deity keeps you from learning the exact location of a single individual or object." And mind blank doesn't work on objects. This has the effect that, at high levels, the only way to hide a location from the players is to make it so that they literally do not know any beings or objects that reside in it. None. So, why do they care about it?

Yeah, there are obscure homebrew magical defenses. Or it could all be obscure poetry without specifics. Or you could get deities involved. But those are your options. If you want to tell Raiders of the Lost Ark, and you don't want active divine defenders, you better tell that story before level 15. Or it better be one heck of a clever hack of a story. Either way. Discern Location destroys the ability to tell a very natural story about an epic treasure hunt. There is no following the trail. There is only skipping to the end.





Late in the game, so many spells shut down entire categories of stories and tactics; Mind Blank, Antimagic Field, Ethereal Jaunt, Holy Word, Mordekainen's Disjunction. Greater Teleport, Scry, even Greater Arcane Sight. I spent so much time trying to work around these things to tell stories.

Agreed with Mindblank, AMF, Holy Word, Disjunction - they're too absolute. Teleport & Scry I never really had a problem with - it does require the BBEG to have access to some countermeasures.

Well, the sin of Greater Teleport isn't that it lets you skip the bad guys' fortress defenses. I mean, that's one of its sins, but it's an instance of the greater problem: it lets you skip journeys. Any story where you know where you're going . . . you can just go there. So stories about adventures on the road have to be told before level 13.

Yeah, there are defenses against these things, and sometimes they're natural to come by. Anybody who tries to Scry and Die an epic wizard totally deserves what they get. But a dragon? That's iffier. I mean, does every dragon always have to have Mind Blank and Anticipate Teleport and a heavily Forbiddence-laden lair? Past a certain CR, yeah, they have to. And that's the problem. Master thieves, elder demons, ancient abominations, forces of nature. Everybody's gotta multiclass as a freakin' archmage so they don't die trivially.

[Covered In Bees]

[Logical Awesome]


http://www.wishbonix.com/images/heart.jpg

[namo]

@Dove: I think we are largely agreed on many issues. Advancement, monster abilities, traps...

About epic: yes, it approaches fiat. I agree it's a bug. On the other hand, IMO, 4E epic is just like 4E paragon which is pretty close to heroic. This was already touched in other threads, and for many it's a feature (extending the sweet spot)... but 4E just doesn't have the equivalent (of even levels 13-20 actually). Anyway, sorry for the tangent.

About powers: 4E exudes balance is what I would say. It is certainly a mark of quality, but not the only one. :smallsmile:
For instance, I wouldn't even mind the powers you mentioned as a Cleric - but then I'm biased in favor of out-of-combat utility. (Okay, I'm kidding - you did pick extremely situational powers.)

About consumables: ah, ok. Even before the MIC, the only consumables we used were wands (for healing) and whatever we received as loot so my experience is different.

About healing: at low levels, Cures work fairly well. Then indeed there's a hole until one gets to Heal and all is well again. (Again, in essence I agree with you.)

"It's full of things that actively kill stories." This I disagree with, but this becomes more about how things happen in our groups. (By the way, Thinaun (Complete Warrior) costs ~10k gp and traps the soul. The assassins hired to kill a High Priest should have access to that. :smallamused:)

To some it may smack of DM vs Players but in my group(s) we like being able not to go through the Forest of Doom and simply teleport - which doesn't mean we'll never go in there, after all there were these rumors... 3E forces players and DM to cooperate on the story ; 4E gives power squarely to the DM. Again, to many it's a feature but - as you can see :smallwink: - I'm biased against it.

Discern Location:

To find a creature with the spell, you must have seen the creature or have some item that once belonged to it. To find an object, you must have touched it at least once.
Did not touch the Ark ? Can't find it, sorry.

Scry & Die: Hallucinatory Terrain is a pretty good protection (though it depends on how you interpret the illusion "interact with" rules - another can of worms).
There are also lair wards in the Draconomicon which for instance create a Mindblank encompassing the whole lair.

Thanks for this thoroughly enjoyable conversation. I'm guessing your group has moved to 4E ?

[Matthew]

There's a big difference in those rules. 3.0 specified a maximum encounter distance, and you automatically engage if nobody has noticed the other party at half the initial possible encounter range. In 3.5 there's no encounter until somebody succeeds at a Spot check (OK, except for avalanches and forest fires, where they kept the automatic encounter rule).

Sure, I know. That's why I mentioned them both, rather than just one or the other. :smallwink:

[Curmudgeon]

Sure, I know. That's why I mentioned them both, rather than just one or the other. :smallwink:
OK, since the topic is "Things you dislike about 3.x" -- which of these do you dislike? Personally, I always thought the automatic encounter stuff was pretty arbitrary -- just a way to get combat started. I prefer 3.5, where the group with superior Spot ability can decide what to do -- and where unobservant groups will simply pass each other cluelessly. :smallbiggrin:

[nagora]

In keeping with the general theme of reflecting on the merits and (especially and most frequently) flaws of the newest edition of D&D, why don't we take a moment for retrospective and look back on what we remember (somewhat less than) fondly from the days of 3.x D&D?
I can't think of a single thing that I didn't dislike about 3e. 4e appears to be a better game in almost every way.

Character generation, the magic system (mostly the badly balanced spells), and the worthless combat system would be the three lowlights of 3e; closely followed by the terrible skill system, although to be fair it was inherited from 2ed/1e OA.

Classes, and especially the ridiculous multi-classing rules, were a mess. And the introduction of "for dummies" rules like wealth per level. And... oh, what's the point? Just chuck it on the fire already!

[Saph]

This is a large difference between 3.5 and 4E. 3.5 went for the "loads and loads of spells" approach, and many of the spells are quite broken. This introduces paralysis on odd levels selecting new spells. In the core rulebook alone, one might find thirty spells of a given level for their class. The majority of them will suck. One or two are so broken they need to be house ruled. And then you buy Spell Compendium and all hell breaks loose. This was the major barrier that prevented some of my players from playing casters.

In 4E, the powers are few, well-defined, and designed for interesting tactical utility. At any given level, you will have three to five powers to choose from, and by and large, they're all decent. Yes, they vary in power, but none truly out-and-out suck. A cleric in 3.5 choosing three random level 3 spells might get Contagion, Helping Hand, and Water Walk. A cleric in 4E choosing a random level 5 encounter power might choose the worst of the set, but cannot possibly choose a bad one. Because there isn't a bad one.

Unfortunately, the consequence of this is that 4e is a much more simplistic and limited game than 3.5 is. It's better for teaching new players, but it just doesn't have the strategic depth 3.5 did. I like 4e in some ways, but I can't get as excited about making a 4e spellcaster as I could about a 3.5 one.


And a big improvement. The 4E design exudes quality in a way 3.5 never did.

It's simpler and more limited. That's not the same thing as quality. Otherwise, everyone would be switching to 4e.

- Saph

[Emperor Tippy]

How melee was handled and all the stupid mistakes made by the writers. Melee should have been like ToB from the start. As for stupid mistakes, things like drowning healing you come to mind.

I don't really have a problem with the magic system (pre-epic at least) but a lot of things could have been tweaked or made more explicit.

Oh and just a point I want to clarify about the WBL system. That is what your wealth is supposed to be at any given time at that level, no matter what you have spent gold on (Tomes count as permanent and not disposable items). If you blow 40K in disposable items then you are supposed to find another 40K in items relatively soon. If you get hit with disjunction and loose 720K worth of items then you are supposed to find get 720K worth of items. This incidentally solves a lot of the problems with Wish abuse. Players just gate in solars and wish for whatever items they want, if they exceed WBL you whack them with disjunction or greater dispel+shatter and get rid of the extras, if they are under WBL then they just gate in a solar and wish up the items they need until they are at WBL.

[Kiara LeSabre]

It's simpler and more limited. That's not the same thing as quality. Otherwise, everyone would be switching to 4e.

While you have every right to your opinion about the 4e system, the bolded part is not a valid statement. It assumes that if a given thing were "quality," everyone would select it/switch to it/prefer it, when that's very clearly not the case and never has been the case, even if we can come to a consensus as to what constitutes "quality" in any given instance.

I also disagree with your statements about 4e being more limited and not quality, but that's just a difference of opinion. The part I bolded is simply, objectively untrue.

[nagora]

Players just gate in solars and wish for whatever items they want
Yes, Gate was very badly broken in 3e compared to previous editions. Sloppy, incompetent design by sloppy incompetent designers.

[TheCountAlucard]

As for it "making sense", it only doesn't make sense if you assume HP to be physical wounds. Again, I don't do this, so it makes perfect sense to me.

So, the spell should instead be called, "Cure Light Abstract Numerical Concept Representing One's Ability to Avoid Injury?" I'm all for it.

[Saph]

While you have every right to your opinion about the 4e system, the bolded part is not a valid statement. It assumes that if a given thing were "quality," everyone would select it/switch to it/prefer it, when that's very clearly not the case and never has been the case, even if we can come to a consensus as to what constitutes "quality" in any given instance.[/I]

Debatable, but that's not my point. My point is that if you really do believe that 4e is just objectively better in every single way than 3.5 (as you and Dove seem to) then you have a little bit of a problem in explaining why a largish fraction of D&D players - possibly a majority - are only partially switching over to 4e, instead of burning all their 3.5 books and raving about how much better 4e is. (FYI, it isn't because they're all too stupid/prejudiced to understand you.)

Or . . . you could just say that 4e is better than 3.5 in some ways and worse in others. Which happens to be supported by the available evidence.

- Saph

[Roderick_BR]

Most of what I disliked was already covered by the OP and the first couple replies:

Thousands of "options", where only a handful is really useful, making said thousands only a handful of options.

Overpowered classes compared to others, when the game is supposed to keep everyone at nearly same power level. Like, if a 20th level wizard can bend reality to his will, fighters should be no less than Kratos from God of War. But what a powerful and almost a deity 20th level fighter gains? 1 bonus feat... And that's only the most basic example.

Not the fact that magic is powerful, but the fact that powerful magic is too easy to earn. Get a "learn how to use magic in 10 lessons" book, and at 1st level your wizard is already breaking the world, and things get worse as he levels up.

And why are people commenting about 4E? This is about 3E.

@Saph: Did people burn their AD&D books and raved about how much better 3E was?

[Emperor Tippy]

Yes, Gate was very badly broken in 3e compared to previous editions. Sloppy, incompetent design by sloppy incompetent designers.

And yet again someone fails to grasp the point. Gate/wish abuse is broken if you run the game so that the total assets the get for a level is WBL, disjunction and dispel/shatter are banned, etc. If you run WBL and disjunction how they were supposed to be run/used then gate/wish isn't a problem.

Save or Die's are the same story. People complain all the time that it is far to easy to die and that SoD's/SoL's/SoS's are bad game design. They aren't. They would be bad if they had permanent effects but they don't. At level 20 at least one person in your party should be dieing every encounter or every other encounter. It's a valid argument that D&D makes death trivial, because it does, but it is not a valid complaint that the system has to many save or die effects, because death is trivial.

---
If you want sloppy, incompetent design then you should actually look at the published settings. They reinforce numerous misconceptions about the game rules.

Let's take the complaint that it's unrealistic for a BBEG to have everyone in his employ protected by Mind Blank 24/7. It's really not. A magical trap that casts Mind Blank on whoever stands on it and resets every round costs 60,000 GP.

Or the complaint that players always teleport into the BBEG's lair. Look at Forbiddance. It costs about 60,000 GP to protect a 2,000 square foot base from teleportation.

Does 3.5 have a lot of problems? Yes. Are most of them ones commonly complained about? No, most of the common complaints come from misconceptions.

[Saph]

The interesting thing about these discussions is that the things that some people dislike most about a system are often the ones other people pick out as their favourites. For instance:


Well, the sin of Greater Teleport isn't that it lets you skip the bad guys' fortress defenses. I mean, that's one of its sins, but it's an instance of the greater problem: it lets you skip journeys. Any story where you know where you're going . . . you can just go there. So stories about adventures on the road have to be told before level 13.

See, I'd say this is actually one of the good points of 3.5; as you go up levels, you get to be able to bypass things that you had to slog through when you were starting. I love hitting level 9 in 3.5 and finally being able to cast teleport, because it means that from now on, the only journeys I'm going to go on are the ones I want to. That's not a 'sin', that's my favourite feature. Teleporting or flying across an area that you once had to fight your way through inch by inch feels great.

- Saph

[Jayabalard]

3. Your Sailor Jupiter avatar amuses me greatly in regards to this discussion.There's really no conflict with the fact that someone enjoys watching anime but dislikes having anime influences in their tabletop gaming.

[Emperor Tippy]

See, I'd say this is actually one of the good points of 3.5; as you go up levels, you get to be able to bypass things that you had to slog through when you were starting. I love hitting level 9 in 3.5 and finally being able to cast teleport, because it means that from now on, the only journeys I'm going to go on are the ones I want to. That's not a 'sin', that's my favourite feature. Teleporting or flying across an area that you once had to fight your way through inch by inch feels great.

- Saph

Agreed. And it makes sense. I mean even if you walked, odds are you wouldn't run into anything that was a threat to you at that level (maybe a few things at level 9). I mean if you wanted random encounters at level 20 that would basically mean Balors, Solars, and Dragons just randomly start popping up and trying to off you.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Debatable, but that's not my point. My point is that if you really do believe that 4e is just objectively better in every single way than 3.5 (as you and Dove seem to) then you have a little bit of a problem in explaining why a largish fraction of D&D players - possibly a majority - are only partially switching over to 4e, instead of burning all their 3.5 books and raving about how much better 4e is. (FYI, it isn't because they're all too stupid/prejudiced to understand you.)

Or . . . you could just say that 4e is better than 3.5 in some ways and worse in others. Which happens to be supported by the available evidence.

- Saph

So, Kiara was likely referring to Switching Costs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_costs) here.

It is, in fact true, that people do not always choose a qualitatively "better" good if they find it too "costly" (typically in terms of time and effort) to do so. In gaming, these costs typically include the sunk cost (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost) of learning the old rule system, the prospective costs of learning the new system, the time spent adjusting to the new system, the sunk costs in developing house rules under the old system, the uncertainty associated with future product launches in the new system, and so on.

Of particular note here is the Sunk Cost Fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy) , which plays a large role in swapping information systems as opposed to normal suppliers. Of course, now we're getting into Behavioral Economics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics) which is a contentious field.

Now, why are there so many "4e Bigots" out there (as you seem to imply) who consider 3e fans churlish? Partly it's because many of the points made against 4e are simply not true (often the case due to hearsay or internet talking points, since few have had extensive experience with the system) but mainly because once people have decided to invest time and effort in something, they would rather believe it was the right thing to do. In this case, if one switches from 3e to 4e, it must be because 4e is better than 3e. The same is true on the other side, of course.

But hey, this is the Internet, no? It is where people come to debate whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight, which flavor of ice cream is superior, and whether one can be revived by sticking their head in a bucket of water! Why not argue about whether "HP works this way or that way" or whether "wizards are inherently better than non-wizards?"

[Starsinger]

There's really no conflict with the fact that someone enjoys watching anime but dislikes having anime influences in their tabletop gaming.

I only said that it amused me.

[DigoDragon]

Too much multiclassing: when I look at a level 1 Rogue, I expect at level 10 it to be some kind of Rogue. Not a mage/psion/Blackguard/Elder Thing/Catgirl bizzarro chimera.

Mmm... Catgirl Bizzarro Chimera... they must never know of our forbidden love. :smallredface: I think I found my new creature encounter for the next session. :smallbiggrin: :smalltongue:



[rant]I've said it before, I'll say it again. Wizards are only broken in internet-based rules discussions and thought exercises. In practice, applying these theories requires too much time and more DM leniance than I have ever seen present

Mind if I piggy back on this? Because I want to be your best friend here as I agree with your assessment, Prophaniti. :smallsmile: While perhaps In Theory D&D 3.x has a lot of overpowered busted builds and useless extras, In Practice I've never seen even 80% of these problems crop up. And believe me, I've been running games in this system for about five years with an ever-changing roster of players.

I think the success I've had with the system is attributed to two things--

1) The good communication of which rules/books/builds/catgirls/etc. I am using for the adventure and which are not prior to starting the character creation process. I feel that a good Dungeon Master should set a fair limit to what the players can build so that the DM still has control within the game. Otherwise... :smallwink:

2) I find that my players generally Work As A Group anyway because no single build can ever overpower Teamwork. Maybe class X can replace class Y, but in practice I usually see class X buffing class Y who's being assisted with cover from class Z.

Maybe for other DMs they've seen problems that I haven't. That's certainly possible. My own experience though has shown me that theory and practice don't always equal out. :smallsmile: I'm sure there are a number of horror stories out there, but I'd like to think it's the exception and not the rule. Unless I'm just really lucky?

[Saph]

So, Kiara was likely referring to Switching Costs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switching_costs) here.

(snip)

You've put more thought into this than I did. I was just looking for a simple way of explaining to Kiara and Dove that it's a bit more complicated than "4e is great, 3e sucks".

- Saph

[Starsinger]

Unless I'm just really lucky?


Not everyone has seen, or caused, that heart breaking sigh from the party's <insert weak class here>. Even worse is when someone finally realizes that their character build is a bit wimpy, but doesn't realize its because the rules are about as balanced as a roller-skate clad hippopotamus on a tightrope. They begin asking questions like, "What am I doing wrong?" "Why does my character seem to be contributing the least?" And they take it personally, and this makes them less anxious to play D&D since they obviously don't have what it takes.

On the other hand, you get people like my cousin, who, if I didn't know better, I'd swear was Giacomo. Fighters are the strongest class because they get the most feats. Wizards and Sorcerers are the weakest classes because they only have d4 hd. Monks are a solid choice because flurry of blows gives them so many extra attack rolls.

[Oracle_Hunter]

You've put more thought into this than I did. I was just looking for a simple way of explaining to Kiara and Dove that it's a bit more complicated than "4e is great, 3e sucks".

- Saph

Eh, it's my job :smalltongue:

Honestly though, so many of the arguments each way just come down to They Changed It And Now It Sucks (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks). For some people (full disclosure: me too), the changes in healing, treasure distribution, skills, and combat encounter design allow for, if not a system that better reflects how they would like to play, then at least a system with shiny new mechanics to toy with. Give it a few more months and the bloom will fall off the 4e rose for many, but there are some purely mechanical differences between 3e and 4e that will keep me in 4e:

1) Adventure Design is far easier in 4e than in 3e. You don't have to eyeball every encounter and reward and hope that it wouldn't break your adventure anymore; you can plan out a campaign by-the-book first and then start adding flourishes.

2) Character Building is far easier too. Not because there are fewer options, but because there really are fewer "traps" - even in core! - which can cause inexperienced players headaches. Powers can be easily written on cards, and can give even novice players a good idea as to what their character is capable of. Once the basics are covered, players can then start tweaking their character sheets to better reflect what they want to do - or, even better, think more about their character rather than their sheets.


And now, the stuff I just like because it suits my style:
3) The Economy doesn't encourage rag-picking PCs - it's just not worth it to cart every sword, breastplate, and club into town to eek out enough gold for another Wand of CLW. Adventurers now loot gold and jewels, which suits me better.

4) Magical items are more magical. Sure, you have your +1 gear, but even at 1st level you don't feel bad about handing out a +1 Vicious Greatsword. Heck, most of the gear running about has a little something extra which can be used to bring a sparkle to the eye even of the most jaded adventurer.

5) Serious Spellcasting is Serious Business. Routine casting doesn't require bat guano or other fiddly bits that bog down arcane characters, while serious magic isn't so easy to cast that you end up with Tippy Societies. Routine Casting is now routine, while the things that can break society now follow Tayler's First Law (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2008/05/18/writing-excuses-episode-15-costs-and-ramifications-of-magic/).

6) Classes matter again, specifically non-magical classes. In 2e (my first D&D) you needed a meat-shield to keep your casters safe, and magic items were rare enough that doing things "by hand" was usually better than wasting a precious spell slot on a work-around. In 3e, anyone could dip into any class and get enough of what they needed to get by - or just use cheap magic to mimic effects. Classes were meaningless! Now, if you say "I want to play a Fighter" then, by golly, you have certain things you do well, and certain things you don't do so well - no Rogue is going to dip two levels of Fighter and then start doing massive Sneak Attacks with Greatswords!

[Sebastian]

But you can't spend healing surges at your leisure; you have to make a "short rest" of about five minutes before you can spend however many healing surges you need to spend.

As for it "making sense", it only doesn't make sense if you assume HP to be physical wounds. Again, I don't do this, so it makes perfect sense to me.

Question. you are paralyzed, a ghoul feast on you with its power that make you a lot of damage while paralyzed, how this is not a phisycal wound?

[DigoDragon]

Not everyone has seen, or caused, that heart breaking sigh from the party's <insert weak class here>. Even worse is when someone finally realizes that their character build is a bit wimpy, but doesn't realize its because the rules are about as balanced as a roller-skate clad hippopotamus on a tightrope.

Well I certainly can say I've had the occasional player who feels their character was made too inefficiently as they reach later levels. This is a problem in 3.x, but in my circle usually because of inexperience with the player. I always lend a hand to the inexperienced ones and my group is pretty good about helping each other optimize. :smallsmile:

As for taking the game personally... um... :smallconfused:
I guess that's what I really don't like about 3.x- People taking it personally.

[Saph]

Honestly though, so many of the arguments each way just come down to They Changed It And Now It Sucks (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheyChangedItNowItSucks).

I'm not sure if you're right here. For example, I actually like both of the changes you list below, but I'm still lukewarm about 4e as a whole; it's not so much "they changed it and now it sucks" as "they left out my favourite parts". I'm fine with the stuff that's been changed; it's the stuff that's been stripped out that makes it less fun for me.

- Saph

[Tenadros]

Grappling. Mother Felching Grappling!

[nagora]

Let's take the complaint that it's unrealistic for a BBEG to have everyone in his employ protected by Mind Blank 24/7. It's really not. A magical trap that casts Mind Blank on whoever stands on it and resets every round costs 60,000 GP.

Or the complaint that players always teleport into the BBEG's lair. Look at Forbiddance. It costs about 60,000 GP to protect a 2,000 square foot base from teleportation.

If you can't see why the above sucks then I don't think any argument could possibly make you understand why I dispise 3e. 4e is bad but, by Odin. it shines in comparison to that sort of game.

[Emperor Tippy]

...making a BBEG spend 120K on defense at level 20 sucks? Why. Its easily doable and it makes sense.

[Starsinger]

...making a BBEG spend 120K on defense at level 20 sucks? Why. Its easily doable and it makes sense.

I'm one of those terribly internally inconsistant people who would prefer just giving stuff to the BBEG instead of working out a defense budget for him.

[Matthew]

OK, since the topic is "Things you dislike about 3.x" -- which of these do you dislike? Personally, I always thought the automatic encounter stuff was pretty arbitrary -- just a way to get combat started. I prefer 3.5, where the group with superior Spot ability can decide what to do -- and where unobservant groups will simply pass each other cluelessly. :smallbiggrin:

Good question. There's some problem with the 3.5 encounter rules, but I can't remember quite what it was off hand (haven't played D20 in ages). The 3e version was a little too arbitrary (randomly rolled encounter distances were an artifact of AD&D and assumed a number of things that don't quite fit with the assumptions of D20), but a certain amount of arbitration is needed even when using the 3.5 version.

I usually default to the 'taking 10' rule, and once a distance is reached at which both parties would certainly spot one another (assuming visibility), then spot becomes superfluous. That assumes the parties come within that distance of one another; if they don't, then they may well sail on by without ever noticing one another.

So, let's say an Orc [Spot 1, Listen 1] and an Elf [Spot 2, Listen 2] are walking down a road towards one another...

Under the 3.0 rules, the DM determines the encounter distance (let's say 220 ft.) and each gets a perception roll to notice the other with a Difficulty of 20. The Elf has a 5% better chance of noticing the Orc (15%) than the Orc has of noticing the Elf (10%) at 220 ft., but both will become aware of one another at 110 ft. distance.

Under the 3.5 rules, the DM determines the DC (or if there will be one, the Kobold Sorcerer in the DMG example sees the Player characters automatically from what I can tell) and then allows Listen/Spot Checks. We can extrapolate from the PHB that the difficulty begins at 0 and increases by 1 per 10 ft. of distance, though this is not explicitly stated. Working backwards from that and using the 'take 10' approach, the Elf spots/hears the Orc at 120 ft. and the Orc spots/hears the Elf at 110 ft. The DM could, of course, call for rolls once per round, until 'taking 10' would succeed.

I would probably use much larger increments on an open road, but I find the 3.5 approach generally preferable to the 3.0 approach in the context of the rule set.

[nagora]

I'm one of those terribly internally inconsistant people who would prefer just giving stuff to the BBEG instead of working out a defense budget for him.
I'm with you on this. I can't read posts about how a BBEG (another thing I hate) spends his/her/its budget and how WBL is a very sensible mechanic (!) without hearing Peter Cook doing his "whiney accountant" voice.

[Zeta Kai]

Grappling. Mother Felching Grappling!

Wow. It took 7 pages of low flames before somebody got around to mentioning the hideous grappling rules.

[Starsinger]

Wow. It took 7 pages of low flames before somebody got around to mentioning the hideous grappling rules.

3.5 has grappling rules? :smalltongue: I think most people block them out.

[Covered In Bees]

Wow. It took 7 pages of low flames before somebody got around to mentioning the hideous grappling rules.

The really sad part is that the 3E grappling rules are a huge improveent on the 2E grappling rules.

[Oracle_Hunter]

The really sad part is that the 3E grappling rules are a huge improveent on the 2E grappling rules.

What?

You didn't like the random table of punches, each with its own random KO percentage? Man, I may have to dig up my 2e books just to use that for bar brawls :smallbiggrin:

[Matthew]

The really sad part is that the 3E grappling rules are a huge improveent on the 2E grappling rules.

Ha, ha. Actually, they are the 2e grappling rules, just the ones published in 1995 for the Combat & Tactics expansion. I preferred the random table, myself. :smallwink:

*Rolls* 19, Wild Swing, 0 damage, 1% chance of being knocked out.

[Morty]

Okay, I'll bite: how do 2ed grapple rules look?

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm with you on this. I can't read posts about how a BBEG (another thing I hate) spends his/her/its budget and how WBL is a very sensible mechanic (!) without hearing Peter Cook doing his "whiney accountant" voice.

Then give him whatever items you want. WBL is there as a balance mechanism and if you use it how it was meant to be used it does an alright job.

[Telonius]

What I don't like ...

Grappling, as just mentioned.
+1 BAB requirement for Weapon Finesse.
No chaotic monks.
No lawful bards.
Awesome/useless dichotomy of Vancian casting.
Spell components.
Poorly-designed Monks (I'm not even talking about power level, I'm talking about how well features go with each other. No gauntlet proficiency? Great speed, but can't flurry until he's already in melee? The mess of unrelated special abilities?).
Favored Classes.
Dispel Magic. (Time-consuming!)
Counterspelling rules.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

Regarding missing the Ogre ... maybe they were paying attention to the people throwing the ball? (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2004/02/you_see_only_wh.html)

[Matthew]

Okay, I'll bite: how do 2ed grapple rules look?

Okay, it works like this by default for AD&D 2e (I'll convert the numbers to D20 for your convenience):

Aldros, a Level One Fighter armoured in mail (AB 1, AC 15, HP 12) attempts to grapple an Orc armoured in mail (AB 1, AC 15, HP 5). The Orc is armed with with a Scimitar (1d8).

Round One

Initiative is ignored, the Orc automatically strikes first because he is armed and attacks with +4 to hit and +4 to damage. He needs a 10 to hit Aldros and will do 1d8+4 damage.

Assuming Aldros survives this attack, he can attempt to make a grapple. He has -2 to hit from wearing mail, and +1 to hit from strength, for an overall modifier of -1. Aldros rolls to hit the normal AC of the Orc and rolls 17, which is modified to 16. The modified score is checked against the wrestling table...

The table indicates that 16 is an Elbow Smash, which does 1 damage + 1 point from strength = 2 damage.

Round Two

The Orc is not in a hold, Aldros attempts to wrestle him again. The same procedure repeats, but this time Aldros rolls a 16, which is reduced to a 15 and results in an Arm Lock, which also does 2 points of damage.

Round Three

The Orc is in trouble now. He will take cumulatively increasing damage from round to round [3+4+5+6] unless he breaks the hold, and he can't take that sort of punishment. Unfortunately, being in a wrestling hold, he can't use his scimitar, so he has to drop it in favour of a small weapon (luckily he has a dagger).

The Orc gets to strike first, since he is armed, and rolls a 20 to hit, resulting in 1d4 damage. This breaks the hold, so Aldros must now attempt to establish another (given that he isn't dead). Aldros rolls a 19, which is modified to 18, and which results in a Kick. The Orc suffers 2 damage and goes down.



Basically, a random table makes it a very unpredictable affair, and stupidly dangerous to attempt on an armed foe. It is quite fun, though.

[Covered In Bees]

Okay, I'll bite: how do 2ed grapple rules look?

By using their eyes!

Edit: basically, you roll on a random table to see what happens in the grapple. You're as likely to go down on them as you are to knock them out.

[Morty]

By using their eyes!

Argh...
As for the rules themselves: they don't look that bad. Sure, they're unnecesary complicated, but I've been expecting something more... spectacular after statement that 3ed are an improvement over them.

[kjones]

Oh, 2nd Edition unarmed combat, how I love you.

I really don't like how, in 3rd edition, the only distinctions between different weapons were size, proficiency, damage, and damage type. Oh, and crits. (Other than a few other minor things, like how you can trip with a spiked chain.) For all intents and purposes, a person fighting with a longsword was the same as a person fighting with a battleaxe, which is basically the same as the guy fighting with the flail. Then again, I'm the sort of person who thinks that they should never have gotten rid of weapon speeds from 2nd edition, so there you go.

But my bigger problem was that out of four possible styles of melee combat - single weapon, two weapon, two handed weapon, sword and shield - one of them was just better (aside from specific cases, like rogues and sneak attack). Shields were almost useless, and that's just silly.

[Dove]

To find a creature with the spell, you must have seen the creature or have some item that once belonged to it. To find an object, you must have touched it at least once.

Did not touch the Ark ? Can't find it, sorry.

:smallredface: Er. I knew that. Really, I did. You'd think I'd go to the trouble of actually, like, fully reading the spell description, wouldn't you?

But still, it's, um, still really bad. It was my Screw-the-DM spell of choice for several levels.

Really, my problem is with spells that present trivial solutions to problems. It's not just at high levels, either. Knock gave me fits when designing a thieves' hall. Cure Disease was a problem in putting together a plague. It's not so much that I dislike magical solutions existing; it's that these solutions are absolute. By which I mean, there's no way to make a lock hard enough that knock won't open it, or a (non-magical) disease degenerative enough that Cure Disease can't handle it. Except if you find the obscure item/counter-spell/rule that gives a special case where it doesn't work, and all of a sudden every single lock in the thieves' guild also has a pink charm hanging from it. That wasted a ton of my time on research, and added . . . what, exactly, to the game?

You know in Star Trek, how the teleporters always work . . . except when the plot needs them not to, in which case there's a Tachyon field or an ionized atmosphere or something and they're useless? And how cheesy that was? 3.5 feels like that to me across the board. It's full of effects that are too powerful, and which have to be balanced. And they're balanced by invoking obscure (and world-wise random!) things that completely nullify them.


To some it may smack of DM vs Players but in my group(s) we like being able not to go through the Forest of Doom and simply teleport

See, I'd say this is actually one of the good points of 3.5; as you go up levels, you get to be able to bypass things that you had to slog through when you were starting. I love hitting level 9 in 3.5 and finally being able to cast teleport, because it means that from now on, the only journeys I'm going to go on are the ones I want to. That's not a 'sin', that's my favourite feature. Teleporting or flying across an area that you once had to fight your way through inch by inch feels great.

Yeah, I agree. Teleport's awesome for convenience and for making players feel powerful. But it also does a lot of violence to the world, and needs to be limited a lot. For what it's worth, this isn't a problem with 3.5 specifically; it's with any story that includes some sort of teleport--be it Star Trek, Schlock Mercenary, or Portal. Teleport changes the way the world works in a lot of ways--economic, military, and cultural ways, not just gameish ways--and different stories that include it often have a hard time managing the fallout.

I'm not saying we should get rid of it entirely. I just don't like how absolute it is. Being able to go anywhere you've seen does kill a lot of stories, if you ask me.

In my last campaign, I house-ruled a lot of the spells that had been a thorn in my side, and was astonished at the freedom in storytelling I inherited. True Res was the major culprit, and banning it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=72467) opened up all sorts of possibilities for stories about risk, mourning, and sacrifice. They could be told so naturally! Teleport wasn't so much of a problem, but my world did boast a wide variety of homebrew teleportation-nullifying effects covering wide areas, and I contend that they made some of the world-shaking battles a lot richer.


I'm guessing your group has moved to 4E ?

Yeah. And I'm lovin' it, though we've only played for a couple sessions. It was actually a compromise, though, from my point of view. I'd have rather done Exalted as our next system, but I didn't think I could get them to go for it.



This is a large difference between 3.5 and 4E. 3.5 went for the "loads and loads of spells" approach, . . . In 4E, the powers are few, well-defined, and designed for interesting tactical utility.
Unfortunately, the consequence of this is that 4e is a much more simplistic and limited game than 3.5 is. It's better for teaching new players, but it just doesn't have the strategic depth 3.5 did. I like 4e in some ways, but I can't get as excited about making a 4e spellcaster as I could about a 3.5 one.

In my limited experience, I have not found 4E combat to be simplistic and limited at all. Even at level one, the wide synergistic relationship between characters' powers and positioning leads to very tactically interesting battles. In 3.5, I was generally able to figure out what I was going to do long before it was my turn--even as a full caster with lots of options. In 4E, I generally find that the battlefield evolves so quickly that even the player right before me often invalidates my plans! This is evidence that 4E combat is taking place in a much richer tactical space.

Evolving battlespaces is something, as a DM, I always had to strive for in 3.5, and I always felt that it could only be achieved in hokey ways. Bad guys attacking in waves. Things triggering mid-fight. Fights with THOUSANDS of goblins. On the other hand, 4E battlespaces evolve naturally. Each fight is a little story that ranges all over the room, involves gambits and retreats and moving battle lines. The interplay between players, terrain, and powers is quite rich and synergistic. There is room--in the sense that you have multiple good, feasible options each round--to role play in combat. Role playing in combat! Not that we strictly couldn't do that in 3.5, but it's a lot easier in 4E because the combat-space is so much richer. My level 1 fighter in 4E, just last session, held a battle line at risk to life and limb, when she would have been well-justified to retreat; she made a risky assault to pin down an archer, a gambit that ultimately paid off. I made these decisions for role-play reasons. I was astonished to find myself doing it, but on reflection I realized: the fact that I had multiple tactically valid options had gaven me room to think about what my character would do and act it out.

3.5 combat, by comparison, was mostly optimization-aligned, competitive and non-synergistic. It was a question of pairing up the right spell/character with the right target, and trying not to shadow each other. The barbarian's smacking it for 60 hp had no impact on whether the mage's save-or-suck succeeded, and vice versa. The mage's spell choice was deep in terms of finding the perfect spell to hit any given target with, but acually quite limited in terms of battlespace effects. Characters often chose different targets, or competed to first score the killing blow on the same target using non-synergistic mechanics. 4E, by comparison, sees one character aiding or outright setting up attacks for another--not as the exception, but as the rule.

I was astonished, actually, when I got my first taste of 4E combat. I was in the process of putting together a world-shaking epic fight, and trying to make it tactically interesting and nontrivial and so forth. I wanted a satisfying boss fight to finish out my 3.5 campaign, and it took weeks of hard (hard!) work and research to put it together. At the same time, I was dry-running some 4E, and went through the adventure at the end of the DMG. (Incidentally, I think this adventure is badly designed. But. . .) I was astonished: the boss fight for that adventure -- with a level 1 party, mind you! -- felt at least as epic as the true epic fight I had been designing for the past couple weeks. In a lot of ways, it was better. And it didn't require any jury-rigging or anything. It was a (badly designed, but still) thrashing, smashing, evolving, all-out, knock-down, drag-out epic fight. It felt like the dang cave troll fight from Fellowship. Holy cow!

You know, 3.5 combat is okay. I didn't come into this thread intending to compare 3.5 to 4E--It's a "complain about 3.5" thread, and some of my complaints about 3.5 are complaints about D&D in general. Limiting combat is not one of the things I would have picked on as being irritating about 3.5. But now that you bring it up, 4E combat is much tactically richer. Players have fewer options than old-school casters, and more than old-school non-casters . . . but the relations between those options are strong and deep. Calling 4E combat "simplistic and limited" compared to 3.5 is simply wrong.

Now, I know you said "strategic" depth, not tactical depth. If you were speaking technically, then you meant builds, not fights. I am of the opinion that 4E greatly increased the strategic depth on average. It's been said many places before and bears repeating: they myriad build choices of 3.5 only look like they offer a lot of options. Most are traps, some are good, and the rest are broken. And it takes obscene amounts of research and analysis to tell one from the other.

But I submit that for most classes there are many more build options in 4E. I mean, how many fighters can you really build in 3.5 core? There's a set of about ten feats that are good, with another five or so devoted to special use. Any given fighter is going to take almost all of them; it's just a question of when. Weapon choice is about deciding whether you want a Greatsword or a Greataxe. Or go exotic with a Spiked Chain. It seems silly to point out that 4E improves on this, with twenty-some-odd character customization points in powers alone.

But note! In 3.5, casters aren't interesting in terms of build, either. What feels so customizable is spell selection, and spell selection is ephermeral--it isn't a permanent part of your character. My cleric would occasionally wash out her entire spellbook to prep for a dragon fight or a demon fight or an undead fight or a boss fight . . . and play completely different. Spell selection isn't a strategic character-build decision.

And, I suggest to you that the depth apparent in 3.5 spell selection is--like the depth apparent in builds--only apparent. At level 5, 3.5 wizard has (probably) 9 spells, chosen from a list of (I count) 150 options--of which I estimate 85 of are good enough to warrant a spell slot for general use. That's a wall of options, but it bears little strategic depth: choosing spells is mostly an exercise in "finding the good one." Comparing core vs. core, a level 5 4E wizard has 5 powers with additional 2 or 3 he can daily swap, chosen from a list of 30, in addition to 5 rituals from a list of 20, and one implement power from a list of 3. He's not that far behind, and most of his choice are more generally applicable and far more interesting in relation to each other, his abilities, his feat selection, and his group mechanic.

4E builds have plenty of strategy to them. What they don't have, that 3.5 did, is loads of research. You no longer have to dig for the best 5 of 150 options. No, you get consider the 1 of 4 that seems best given a complex environment and party dynamic.

I do think the sentiment that 4E is easier for new players to approach is mistaken. I had the privelege of introducing three people who had never role-played--ever!--to 3.5. They rolled up a Fighter, Barbarian, and Rogue, and had no trouble playing their characters from the get go. A lesson here on crits, a lesson there on flanking, a little help with some math to add up base attack and AC. Done. We spent most of a session putting together some level 1 4E characters, and two sessions in, aren't really sure we "get" how to run them yet.

But I'll grant you this, and it's something I really worry about with 4E:


I can't get as excited about making a 4e spellcaster as I could about a 3.5 one

I can't get as excited about a 4E character in general as a 3.5 one. 3.5 had a way of making everyone a total bad***. Our super-hasted two-weaponing rogue could unload with a full attack round of sneak attacks, and drop a bucket of dice on the table. Well over 100d6. Our wizard unloaded for *2700* damage one round. Our bard could give everyone +9 to attacks and damage. Our barbarian could crit for 300, and had damage reduction in, I think, the low teens. We were all just SO awesome. And I sneak a peek at what's in store for my fighter around level 30, and I see . . . 7[W] + STR damage. And you know, that just does not make the heart go thump-a-thump in quite the same way.

We'll have to see how it plays, but I suspect we're looking at a low power game. I was kinda fond of playing superheroes.


My point is that if you really do believe that 4e is just objectively better in every single way than 3.5 (as you and Dove seem to) then you have a little bit of a problem in explaining why a largish fraction of D&D players - possibly a majority - are only partially switching over to 4e, instead of burning all their 3.5 books and raving about how much better 4e is.

Even at this early stage, I think I can say confidently that 4E is clearly a better game than 3.5 ever was. But I would not say it's objectively better in every single way. The system fixed almost everything I hated about 3.5, and a good number of things that I only realized were broken in retrospect. But it hasn't been around long enough for its own flaws to become apparent.

But 3.5 was better or merely different in certain ways, too. Healing surges provide a sharp limit on daily encounters, while a well-provisioned 3.5 party could go for a very long day. Likewise, encounter powers provide a sharp limit on the length of an individual encounter, and forces an encounter-rest cycle in a heavy-handed way. 3.5 encouraged the DM to blur the boundaries between one encounter and another--something I'll sorely miss. 4E changes the scale and pace of stories; battlefields are now at most 20 squares wide and 5 rounds long, while effects with ranges measured in miles and hours were not that uncommon in 3.5. I consider this a neutral change, but it is nonetheless limiting. 3.5 put players on a steeper power curve. I also consider this a neutral change--the sharp change in tone from gritty through superheroes could be a bit to manage, but I'll grant that nailing the range down to "Heroic" through "A little more Heroic" is limiting. Oh yes, and 3.5 had a full suite of puzzle-related and social spells and skills. 4E gives us little more than that unspeakable abortion of design, Skill Challenges.

But as for why more people haven't switched . . . lots of reasons. I'd agree the big one is probably sunk costs. Inertia. 3.5 works well enough for what you need. You have homebrew rules/settings/etc. that you like. Some of the neutral changes in 4E don't appeal to you. 4E is still new and unproven, and has nothing like the broad support 3.5 does. No splatbooks. No settings. No SRD.

I think the biggest reason people don't make the switch is emotional attachment. The 3.5 fantasy world is the one that our dreams and fantasies have lived in for years. Spells and settings trigger nostalgia and love. We know its dragons and its trolls and its crazy broken wizards. We know its historical markers, and we have stories that center around its idiosyncracies. Of course we don't want to trivially leave. If dracoliches don't have phylacteries anymore, if wizards don't have fly anymore, if fighters can heal themselves, that invalidates many of the stories I've come to know and love. You know, that's valid. It's a world and system you know and love, and not something you should feel pressured to leave unless you want to. (Me, I wanted to--I hated 3.5 as a system for many months before 4E even came out).

I still contend that on the whole, 4E is a much better game. I think it will endure much better than 3.5 has. I expect the community will largely change over in the coming two or three years, as 4E proves itself, and the horrors of Hit Dice and Spell Immunity will become stories to scare young players with. And there's a largish contingent of 3.5 grognards who -- for their own varied reasons -- will never make the switch, and will always be with us. I mean, heck, the 1E grognards are still around if you know where to look, and will argue loudly with anyone who'll listen that their game is better.

Meh. We're role-players. We're an idiosyncratic and persnickety lot.

[Morty]

I still contend that on the whole, 4E is a much better game. I think it will endure much better than 3.5 has. I expect the community will largely change over in the coming two or three years, as 4E proves itself, and the horrors of Hit Dice and Spell Immunity will become stories to scare young players with. And there's a largish contingent of 3.5 grognards who -- for their own varied reasons -- will never make the switch, and will always be with us. I mean, heck, the 1E grognards are still around if you know where to look, and will argue loudly with anyone who'll listen that their game is better.


In other, shorter words, you refuse to accept that some people migh not switch to 4ed because they, personally, think 3ed is better and not because they're "emotionally attached" or are "gorgnards with their own reasons"?

[FoE]

Dove, I read your post and agreed with every. Damn. Word.

Bravo. :smallbiggrin:

[LotharBot]

In other, shorter words, you refuse to accept that some people migh not switch to 4ed because they, personally, think 3ed is better and not because they're "emotionally attached" or are "gorgnards with their own reasons"?

I would think "lots of reasons" would include some people who, "personally, think 3ed is better".

[Morty]

I would think "lots of reasons" would include some people who, "personally, think 3ed is better".

Yet the "biggest reason" is apparently "emotional attachment". And "lots of reasons" combined with "grognards" sort of implies these reasons don't include reasonable belief that 3ed is better. To clarify: I'm not a veteran gamer and I've never played anything older than 3ed D&D, yet I prefer 3ed over 4ed for several reasons. I don't like it when someone implies I don't exist or I'm dead wrong because I don't agree with them.

[Matthew]

Edit: basically, you roll on a random table to see what happens in the grapple. You're as likely to go down on them as you are to knock them out.

Do note that "knock out" percentages apply to Punching attacks only (I only just noticed this myself).



As for the rules themselves: they don't look that bad. Sure, they're unnecesary complicated, but I've been expecting something more... spectacular after statement that 3ed are an improvement over them.
Nah, they're just really random. As I say, they're actually quite fun (unlike D20/3e grapples).



Oh, 2nd Edition unarmed combat, how I love you.

Heh, heh. Good times.



I really don't like how, in 3rd edition, the only distinctions between different weapons were size, proficiency, damage, and damage type. Oh, and crits. (Other than a few other minor things, like how you can trip with a spiked chain.) For all intents and purposes, a person fighting with a longsword was the same as a person fighting with a battleaxe, which is basically the same as the guy fighting with the flail. Then again, I'm the sort of person who thinks that they should never have gotten rid of weapon speeds from 2nd edition, so there you go.

But my bigger problem was that out of four possible styles of melee combat - single weapon, two weapon, two handed weapon, sword and shield - one of them was just better (aside from specific cases, like rogues and sneak attack). Shields were almost useless, and that's just silly.

Hmmn. Well, in AD&D 2e two weapon fighting was king, but that only really applied in the the wake of the CFHB. Two Handed Swords also sucked in 2e (but were great in 1e). The disparity isn't quite as apparent in AD&D as in D20, but it is there.

[Dove]

In other, shorter words, you refuse to accept that some people migh not switch to 4ed because they, personally, think 3ed is better and not because they're "emotionally attached" or are "gorgnards with their own reasons"?

Not at all. I listed several very valid reasons to stick with 3.5, many of which will mean more to one person than another. I do think you have a very hard sell saying 3.5 is a better game system than 4E, but whatever.

When I say I think emotional attachment is the big reason, I just mean that I think it's the most common thread. But don't take me to mean I think it's invalid. When we're talking about fantasy as a hobby, emotional attachment is totally valid. Totally. I'd take the setting I love over the system I love any day of the week. Or bits of the system so entrenched in the game that they're part of the setting. Whatever. Do what you love. Play what engages you. That's what you're here to do.

And I hope it's evident that "grognard" in my last paragraph is intended in sincere affection. Hehe, look, all you young 3.5 whippersnappers! You're the crachety OLD GUYS now! :D 'sawright, we still love you.

[Morty]

Not at all. I listed several very valid reasons to stick with 3.5, many of which will mean more to one person than another. I do think you have a very hard sell saying 3.5 is a better game system than 4E, but whatever.

Alright then, maybe I overreacted, but 4ed discussions grate on my nerves recently. Anyway, "better game system" doesn't mean much. Because it opens the question: better for what? For people for whom the things you listed as better done in 3ed are most important, this edition is a better system. Example: I enjoy 3ed focus on character optimization and boatload of spells to choose as well as Vancian casting. I also enjoy various different subsystems and NPCs and PCs working by the same rules. Which means that for me, 3ed is a better system.


But when we're talking about fantasy as a hobby, emotional attachment is totally valid. Totally. I'd take the setting I love over the system I love any day of the week. Or bits of the system so entrenched in the game that they're part of the setting. Whatever. Do what you love. Play what engages you. That's what you're here to do.

Well, I apologize in this case, I mistakingly took the part about emotional attachment as dismissive.


And I hope it's evident that "grognard" in my last paragraph is intended in sincere affection. Hehe, look, all you young 3.5 whippersnappers! You're the crachety OLD GUYS now! :D 'sawright, we still love you.

I've been called "18 in body, 80 in spirit" many times before.:smallbiggrin:

[Shatteredtower]

One thing I disliked about 3rd Edition rules was how many traps were more easily overcome by spellcasters than rogues.

Yes, I did read the rogue vs. wizards discussion on the previous pages of this thread, but it never really touched on the problems.

By the book, higher challenge rating traps were almost always magical in nature. Many of these magical traps were equipped with magical sensors with ranges of up to 100 ft-- and capable of triggering against anything they detected within the sensor's range.

Meanwhile, the Search requires that you be within 10 ft of the trap you're trying to detect. See the problem?

I know: detect magic is only good to a 60 ft. range, but the effect can be widened to 120 ft, if you think that's going to be necessary. It can also work through some walls or other forms of obstruction. A successful Spellcraft check might (might) reveal what the trap will do (from a safe distance the rogue would envy) and an idea of appropriate countermeasures -- such as dispel magic or antimagic field or protection from acid.

Sure, dispel magic wasn't any good against (most) mechanical traps, but Disable Device is slower than a magical response, whether it's levitate or disintegrate. The convolutions needed to keep rogues more effective at trap countering than spellcasters in a game designed around the idea of a limited number of challenges per day get silly pretty quickly.

[Kurald Galain]

I'm one of those terribly internally inconsistant people who would prefer just giving stuff to the BBEG instead of working out a defense budget for him.

You don't have to "work out a defense budget", of course. You just state that "this high-level villain has his lair warded against teleportation".

As a DM, you should either (1) be familiar enough with source books to know where to find the spell that does that, or preferably (2) don't care whether such a spell existed anywhere, just point out that it does now because your BBEG researched it or whatever.

[Kiara LeSabre]

You've put more thought into this than I did. I was just looking for a simple way of explaining to Kiara and Dove that it's a bit more complicated than "4e is great, 3e sucks".

- Saph

You know, I think I should point out that although I do happen to feel that 3.x sucks according to my personal criteria (and I give specific reasons here and elsewhere, just as Dove does ... and our reasons for feeling that way are every bit as valid as yours for disagreeing with us are), nowhere in this thread did I try to make the case that 3.x is objectively bad according to the needs of all possible players, nor did I try to reduce the issue to "4e is great, 3e sucks," and honestly, I find that implication a bit insulting. You won't find me accusing any 3.x fans of that.

What I did was look at the front page, notice there was a thread about things people dislike about 4e and not a thread for things people dislike about 3.x, and think, "Well, gee, that's not very balanced discussion."

To me, it seemed that the casual observer could draw the wrong conclusion from such a sight ("Hm ... it looks like everyone hates 4e"), while others who are less willing to start a thread this contentious for fear of being labeled antagonistic (don't forget -- several people did, in fact, accuse me of exactly that) might be left without a voice.

And now the thread's up to eight pages and still on the page 1 of the forum. I guess it was worth starting after all.

[Saph]

Yeah, I agree. Teleport's awesome for convenience and for making players feel powerful. But it also does a lot of violence to the world, and needs to be limited a lot. For what it's worth, this isn't a problem with 3.5 specifically; it's with any story that includes some sort of teleport--be it Star Trek, Schlock Mercenary, or Portal. Teleport changes the way the world works in a lot of ways--economic, military, and cultural ways, not just gameish ways--and different stories that include it often have a hard time managing the fallout.

I'm not saying we should get rid of it entirely. I just don't like how absolute it is. Being able to go anywhere you've seen does kill a lot of stories, if you ask me.

From the perspective of the DM, or the players?

See, the problem I have with people nerfing travel and mobility powers is that all too often, it comes down to "I don't want the players to be able to do things I don't specifically authorise". The times I've had easy access to teleportation and suchlike, I've generally really enjoyed the sense of freedom it gives. If the players are having fun, does it matter so much that it's not in the way the DM planned?


In my limited experience, I have not found 4E combat to be simplistic and limited at all. Even at level one, the wide synergistic relationship between characters' powers and positioning leads to very tactically interesting battles. In 3.5, I was generally able to figure out what I was going to do long before it was my turn--even as a full caster with lots of options. In 4E, I generally find that the battlefield evolves so quickly that even the player right before me often invalidates my plans! This is evidence that 4E combat is taking place in a much richer tactical space.

I don't think so. 4e combat usually comes down to an HP slugfest. Whichever side depletes the other's HP fastest wins. I had fun with 4e tactics for a while, but I hit the top of the learning curve very quickly. You're massively exaggerating the tactical depth of 4e combat; there just isn't that much to learn once you've got the hang of how your powers work.


You know, 3.5 combat is okay. I didn't come into this thread intending to compare 3.5 to 4E--It's a "complain about 3.5" thread, and some of my complaints about 3.5 are complaints about D&D in general. Limiting combat is not one of the things I would have picked on as being irritating about 3.5. But now that you bring it up, 4E combat is much tactically richer. Players have fewer options than old-school casters, and more than old-school non-casters . . . but the relations between those options are strong and deep. Calling 4E combat "simplistic and limited" compared to 3.5 is simply wrong.

It took me the best part of a year to get really good at playing a 3.5 caster. It took me about two weeks to get really good at playing a 4e character (of any kind). I'm sorry, but there just isn't that much there. No matter how much you tell me that 4e combat is supposed to be deep and complex and tactical, the fact remains that most 4e character builds could be run with only a minor loss of efficiency by an AI program.


Even at this early stage, I think I can say confidently that 4E is clearly a better game than 3.5 ever was. But I would not say it's objectively better in every single way. The system fixed almost everything I hated about 3.5, and a good number of things that I only realized were broken in retrospect. But it hasn't been around long enough for its own flaws to become apparent.

I think it has, actually. Its virtues are simplicity and balance. Its flaws are lack of versatility and lack of diversity.

Mort's already taken you up on the 'clearly a better game' stuff, so I won't go over that again.

- Saph

[Kiara LeSabre]

From the perspective of the DM, or the players?

Since you ask, and since everyone's so fond of MMO comparisons, here (http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101328)is what Teleport does.

You can almost see the Batman wizard as the one saying, "You WALKED? In MITHRIL? To MOUNT DOOM? Dude, there's a port in at Minas Morgul! WTF ever, okay? I'm outta here."

Except, of course, he'd just port himself directly from wherever he happened to be. :smalltongue:

[Saph]

To me, it seemed that the casual observer could draw the wrong conclusion from such a sight ("Hm ... it looks like everyone hates 4e"), while others who are less willing to start a thread this contentious for fear of being labeled antagonistic (don't forget -- several people did, in fact, accuse me of exactly that) might be left without a voice.

I didn't forget. And people labelled you antagonistic because, well, you frequently are fairly antagonistic, at least towards anyone who doesn't like 4e. I know it wasn't directed towards me specifically, and I know that some of the anti-4e people can be obnoxious, but that's not a justification for acting the same way.


Since you ask, and since everyone's so fond of MMO comparisons, here (http://community.codemasters.com/forum/showthread.php?t=101328)is what Teleport does.

Have you read DM of the Rings? (If you haven't, you should - it's awesome.) Being able to skip long journeys through unbroken stretches of wilderness is not always a bad thing. In fact, if you were the Fellowship and you'd just spent 5 sessions getting from the Shire to Rivendell, you might well be fed up to the back teeth with endless cross-country treks.

Journeys on foot can be fun, but sometimes it's nice to be able to avoid them.

- Saph

[Kiara LeSabre]

I didn't forget. And people labelled you antagonistic because, well, you frequently are fairly antagonistic, at least towards anyone who doesn't like 4e. I know it wasn't directed towards me specifically, and I know that some of the anti-4e people can be obnoxious, but that's not a justification for acting the same way.

Really? When have I been antagonistic toward people who don't like 4e, not counting times I'm defending myself or retaliating in kind rather than initiating, and not counting times I'm merely discussing my opinions of 3.x vs. 4e, without actually personally attacking anyone for liking 3.x?

You can't count starting a thread to balance the discussion, either. There was a discussion already in place, and I already told you why I did this, and it was most certainly not to be antagonistic. If you consider that antagonistic, then I can't quite think of what to say to you, given this is a discussion forum, and discussion must certainly be expected.

[Morty]

Journeys on foot can be fun, but sometimes it's nice to be able to avoid them.


Especially since on levels when you can use long-range teleportation reliably, you're not terribly likely to encounter anything in the wilderness you can't stomp to dirt with ease.
That said, teleportation spells in 3ed could be done better.

[Saph]

Really? When have I been antagonistic toward people who don't like 4e, not counting times I'm defending myself or retaliating in kind rather than initiating, and not counting times I'm merely discussing my opinions of 3.x vs. 4e, without actually personally attacking anyone for liking 3.x?

The thing about defending yourself or retaliating in kind on a web forum is that it tends to catch other people in the crossfire. Many of the people who hate 4e think they're just retaliating in kind, too; it's understandable, but not really a good idea in the long run.

- Saph

[Kiara LeSabre]

The thing about defending yourself or retaliating in kind on a web forum is that it tends to catch other people in the crossfire. Many of the people who hate 4e think they're just retaliating in kind, too; it's understandable, but not really a good idea in the long run.

- Saph

Regardless, I've never told anyone they're wrong to like 3.x or that they're bad people for it, and I would never have started this thread if there weren't already a thread like it bashing 4e in place, as well as good reasons to start a thread that balances the discussion.

That there may be people who misconstrue my intentions doesn't make me responsible for their incorrect assumptions.

[Eorran]

I don't think so. 4e combat usually comes down to an HP slugfest. Whichever side depletes the other's HP fastest wins. I had fun with 4e tactics for a while, but I hit the top of the learning curve very quickly. You're massively exaggerating the tactical depth of 4e combat; there just isn't that much to learn once you've got the hang of how your powers work.


I look at this a bit differently; to me, attacking HP was the original intent of D&D combat. BY 3.X, there were just too many alternatives (attacking ability scores, SoD, SoS, etc.) that were all end-runs around the HP system. Most unfortunately, almost all of these end-runs were available to casters only.



It took me the best part of a year to get really good at playing a 3.5 caster. It took me about two weeks to get really good at playing a 4e character (of any kind). I'm sorry, but there just isn't that much there.
- Saph

What do you mean by "get really good at"? I'd feel frustrated if it took me a year to find out how to make my character effective.

[Kurald Galain]

Really? When have I been antagonistic toward people who don't like 4e, not counting times I'm defending myself or retaliating in kind rather than initiating,

Whenever you're "retaliating in kind", you're by definition being antagonistic. "The other guy started it" really isn't much of an excuse.



That said, as a thought experiment, wonder what it'd be like if 3rd and 4th edition where reversed: we'd have the daily/encounter/utility stuff before, and now we get the widely divergent classes from the 3rd PHB. I suspect many people (including the WOTC marketing department) would have their reactions completely reversed :smallsmile:

[LibraryOgre]

closely followed by the terrible skill system, although to be fair it was inherited from 2ed/1e OA.

Pretty much in no way.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Whenever you're "retaliating in kind", you're by definition being antagonistic. "The other guy started it" really isn't much of an excuse.

It is when there's a reason to respond, and how you respond also counts. I still haven't been given a good example of my being antagonistic anyway (I hope you're not going to count the times I'm obviously being tongue-in-cheek :smalltongue:), so the accusation is rather empty.

If being opinionated and vocal is antagonistic, or if being silly once in a while qualifies, then very well, I'm guilty and a terribly antagonistic, awful, bad girl. Shame on me.

Now, can we finally move on? Or is this sort of silliness just unavoidable?

[Saph]

What do you mean by "get really good at"? I'd feel frustrated if it took me a year to find out how to make my character effective.

Always be able to spot the best course of action. Since HP is what matters in 4e, you can determine how effective any action in combat is by how it effects the ally/enemy HP scores. After you've done that a few times, it becomes pretty straightforward to pick the optimal choice each time - it's the one that will cause the enemy HP total to decrease as fast as possible relative to yours.

Don't get me wrong, 4e combat can be fun, but my attention keeps wandering during battles because there just isn't enough new stuff to learn.

- Saph

[FoE]

Have you read DM of the Rings? (If you haven't, you should - it's awesome.) Being able to skip long journeys through unbroken stretches of wilderness is not always a bad thing. In fact, if you were the Fellowship and you'd just spent 5 sessions getting from the Shire to Rivendell, you might well be fed up to the back teeth with endless cross-country treks.

Journeys on foot can be fun, but sometimes it's nice to be able to avoid them.

- Saph

I don't quite understand that. For me, journeys on foot (and horseback) have always moved at the speed of the plot: it might take a while to travel from one place to another if there's a good reason for it (the PCs run into trouble along the way), or it might take the length of time it takes for me to say this sentence:

"You leave the Shire. The journey to Rivendell is long but uneventful. A few days later, you reach your destination."

[namo]

@Dove: yes, Knock is a known-bad example. A common houserule is to have it give a bonus to Open Lock instead.

In the end, I should say one thing I dislike about 3E is that I keep wanting to houserule things. Most houserules are minor, touching just a feat/spell/PrC, but it probably does add up to pages.
(Still, in 4E I want to houserule multiclassing so it's unlikely to be less complex.)

Why would you absolutely want a non-magical disease ? There's little difference between magical and non-magical diseases... except that Cure Disease doesn't cure all of the former (because of CL requirements which much of the clergy won't meet) and isn't that what you're looking for ?

Strategic depth is depth at build time, true, but it's also doing things ahead of a battle. If we consider a large-scale battle, for instance: recon of various possible battlegrounds, preparations (Move Earth, Walls... for spellcasters, drilling the troops and establishing battle plans for martial characters). Like you said, in 4E the portion of the world that you influence is 20 squares by 20 squares. A good DM will manage to craft the story in such a way that what you do in your tiny square is really world-shattering... but your characters will need to be helped along.


I look at this a bit differently; to me, attacking HP was the original intent of D&D combat. BY 3.X, there were just too many alternatives (attacking ability scores, SoD, SoS, etc.) that were all end-runs around the HP system. Most unfortunately, almost all of these end-runs were available to casters only.

Just like in 3E, the most important resource in 4E is "actions". Now, HP damage and "action damage" coincide for minions (you hit them, you kill them) but for other types you're generally better off stunning them and doing little damage than doing a lot of damage.

This comes down to what Saph said : inflicting as much damage as you can while limiting the damage you take, which is not the same as inflicting a lot of damage.

I don't have a lot of experience with 4E combat right now, but for now I'm a bit disappointed : I actually thought I would really like the tactical options but I find them a bit hollow. Now, we're all new to this so I'm hoping it will get better ; the DM isn't very tactically-minded either.
I was asked to play a wizard because we didn't have a controller, and what I'm looking forward to using more are... the at-will cantrips. And Change Shape - he's a Doppelganger.

[Jayabalard]

Really? When have I been antagonistic toward people who don't like 4e, not counting times I'm defending myself or retaliating in kind rather than initiating, and not counting times I'm merely discussing my opinions of 3.x vs. 4e, without actually personally attacking anyone for liking 3.x?You're doing it now.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: Okay, could we please have less meta-discussion about how others are conducting themselves and just focus on the discussion at hand? If you believe that someone is violating the Forum Rules by trolling or flaming, please report the offending post and allow us to make that determination. Calling them on it is pointless at best, and likely to cause further flaming at worst. (Not to mention our rule against vigilante modding.)

[Oracle_Hunter]

Especially since on levels when you can use long-range teleportation reliably, you're not terribly likely to encounter anything in the wilderness you can't stomp to dirt with ease.
That said, teleportation spells in 3ed could be done better.

Actually, I found the 4e fix quite elegant. For most of the Heroic Tier, you have to walk and, to be honest, bandits and other random encounters are (and should) still challenge you. Hit level 6 though, and you can start using Teleportation Circles - but it costs money and it might take a quest to find 'em. So now, instead of just saying "hey, let's go to that bar in Northport *port*" you really have to work to use the teleportation network. IMHO, this makes teleportation feel more, well, magical, instead of just being a Magic Airplane.

Now, this does take a lot of mobility from the hands of the PCs, but now rather than the PCs saying "no, Camelot is a silly place, let's go see what's up in Moria *port*" and leaving the DM in a lurch, the DM will now be able to plan for these things.

Yes, it means 4e DMs will need to think about TP Circles when world-building, but I think this loss of freedom will do wonders for storytelling. It is for me, anyhow.

[Thurbane]

What I did was look at the front page, notice there was a thread about things people dislike about 4e and not a thread for things people dislike about 3.x, and think, "Well, gee, that's not very balanced discussion."
Then we definitely need OD&D, 1E and 2E versions as well, for balance sake... :smalltongue:

[Oracle_Hunter]

Then we definitely need OD&D, 1E and 2E versions as well, for balance sake... :smalltongue:

You know what I hated about OD&D? No way to multiclass elf/dwarf. :smalltongue:

[ZekeArgo]

You know what I hated about OD&D? No way to multiclass elf/dwarf. :smalltongue:

Hmmm, would that make it a Dlf or an Earf?

[Edea]

We would call it..."Ed."

[Dove]

4e combat usually comes down to an HP slugfest.

. . . you say that like it's a bad thing. ;)


Whichever side depletes the other's HP fastest wins. I had fun with 4e tactics for a while, but I hit the top of the learning curve very quickly. You're massively exaggerating the tactical depth of 4e combat; there just isn't that much to learn once you've got the hang of how your powers work.


Since HP is what matters in 4e, you can determine how effective any action in combat is by how it effects the ally/enemy HP scores. After you've done that a few times, it becomes pretty straightforward to pick the optimal choice each time - it's the one that will cause the enemy HP total to decrease as fast as possible relative to yours.

With respect to you as a gamer, I would suggest you give it a second look. Your second statement suggests hasty analysis; you may have thought you hit the top of the learning curve because of how 3.5 has taught you to play.

While it's true that everything in 4E keys on hit points, getting the best damage output is not nearly so simple as picking the power with the biggest number. Let me give an example:

Last week, my fighter Anna faced a situation with three viable alternatives. First, two skulks had the warlock flanked between them, and were doing sneak attack damage every round, for a pair of very nasty 1d8 + 1d6 + 3 attacks. Anna could have gone over there, cleaved through the skulks, and marked one, for a total damage output of 1d8 + 9 and a likely 1d8 + 5 if the skulk attempted to attack again, but the warlock would probably get shredded anyway. She could also have gone over and used Covering Attack on one of them, for a damage output of 2d8 + 5, allowing the warlock to shift two squares to safety, granting the warlock the margin of safety needed to attack on her turn for a minimum of 1d10 + 1d6 + 4. There was also a big burly Dark Creeper holding a doorway, preventing anyone from attacking the enemy wizard behind him, who was throwing out nasty daze attacks. Anna could have used Tide of Iron to push him out of the doorway, dealing a mere 1d8 + 5 damage, but setting up a flank with the rogue who would do another 2d6 and also exposing the enemy wizard, allowing us to deal who knows how much damage by not being dazed.

I judged these options to all be tactically valid. The first did the most damage, and was likely to drop the skulks the soonest. But the second would probably result in more damage, if the warlock was able to capitalize well, and the skulks didn't just disappear. Then again, the third did a lot of damage if the rogue made good on it, and might open up the wizard.

Notice that it was not as simple as just using the attack with the biggest damage output; for most of these attacks, the side effects were much more interesting than the attack itself. All of them set up allies for extra damage (if I get to count myself as an ally in case 1). All of them affect options open to the good guys and bad guys. Some save us from taking damage. One potentially saves us from taking status effects that prevent us from dealing damage.

A more clever player might have played this by the numbers. Me, I shoved the Dark Creeper around, cuz Anna likes to wrestle with things bigger than she is. And the next round--at a scant 6 hit points--she again had a couple valid tactical options. Shift around to limit damage and continue beating on the big burly, or dive after the wizard and shut him down, inviting being knocked unconsious by his rebuke (he was easily throwing around more than 6 for damage). Again, I judged that these were both valid, and went for option B. Cuz Anna's got cojones of steel.

I don't mean to pick on you (I'll try to scoot from this thread after this, honest), but I couldn't really let your statement go. 4E combat is fundamentally different than 3.5; it's not about optimizing your personal attacks in competition with the rest of your party. It's about setting up group tactics for glorious results. If you're thinking it works out to, "Use all your strikes from biggest to smallest", you may want to study the game more. If you're only thinking about your strikes, I guarantee you're playing it suboptimally. Yeah, everyone's attacking hp, but saying "oh, it's a simple game--you just do the most damage while taking the least" is a lot like saying, "All you really need to do to win is not die." That's true, but achieving it is complicated.

[clericwithnogod]

Then we definitely need OD&D, 1E and 2E versions as well, for balance sake... :smalltongue:

Maybe we should also add OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Hackmaster, and Castles and Crusades. And there were some rules for a Tractics/D&D crossover in Dragon, so we need a Tractics thread too. And of course, Gamma World and Boot Hill need a thread, because there were conversion notes for that in the 1st edition DMG.

I mean, just look at how the flamethrowers from Tractics were unbalanced in D&D. I mean come on...6-30 damage and burns for three turns!!!! And why do Myrlind's six-shooters do 2d4 damage when the DMG clearly states all western handguns do 1d8? And western handguns are overpowered anyway. 2d4 is as much as a heavy machinegun from Tractics and 1d8 is more than anything smaller than a heavy machinegun in Tractics. And Gamma World characters in AD&D getting no saves vs. spells?!?!?!

Wow, all games before 4e were so awful.

[namo]

@Dove: I can't really speak for her, but from what she said Saph is very much aware of how the party matters :

Since HP is what matters in 4e, you can determine how effective any action in combat is by how it effects the ally/enemy HP scores. After you've done that a few times, it becomes pretty straightforward to pick the optimal choice each time - it's the one that will cause the enemy HP total to decrease as fast as possible relative to yours.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Then we definitely need OD&D, 1E and 2E versions as well, for balance sake... :smalltongue:

~sigh~

I do in fact remember some of those games. But ... really, I just wanted more than anything to give a voice to people I felt were being shouted down by just one anti-4e thread dominating the discussion. I'm sorry if that truly upset some people, as I suppose it must have.

I'm just tired of all of this now, and a little sad, and I honestly wish I'd never said anything at all.

[nagora]

Especially since on levels when you can use long-range teleportation reliably, you're not terribly likely to encounter anything in the wilderness you can't stomp to dirt with ease.
Why are you and Saph assuming that you only meet opponents on a journey? Travel everywhere by teleport when I'm DMing and you'll arrive at your destination several allies/clues/items short of a victory.

[ghost_warlock]

~sigh~

I do in fact remember some of those games. But ... really, I just wanted more than anything to give a voice to people I felt were being shouted down by just one anti-4e thread dominating the discussion. I'm sorry if that truly upset some people, as I suppose it must have.

I'm just tired of all of this now, and a little sad, and I honestly wish I'd never said anything at all.

Perhaps a better route would have been a "what do you like about 4e" thread, focusing on the good aspects of the 4e rather than the negative aspects of 3e. This would have been much less inflammatory as the thread title in-and-of itself would not have been so provokative and players of 3e would not have seen it as an insult to their game.

The thing is, there used to be just such a thread however it seems to have been buried by other threads recently. It's still well within the time period for resurrection w/o threadomancy. It's unfortunate, as well, that the '4e sux' thread still remains on the first page, but short of locking it there's no way to really put an end the discussion taking place there.

[namo]

Why are you and Saph assuming that you only meet opponents on a journey? Travel everywhere by teleport when I'm DMing and you'll arrive at your destination several allies/clues/items short of a victory.
I don't want to misinterpret your words: your players have to take a certain road to obtain those allies/clues/items ? Or is it any road as long as they don't teleport ?

As for the former question: it's not about avoiding encounters, it's about avoiding encounters that don't further the plot (the so-called random encounters) and/or that both your character and you want to avoid (because you are in a hurry to obtain a MacGuffin, rescue a princess, interrupt a dark ritual... or you're lazy and don't like walking/riding :smallwink:).

If there are valid IC reasons to travel "slowly", characters won't teleport. After all, as someone pointed out, it can be shortened ("you arrive at X"). And it allows the druid to train his new horse companion, the wizard to collect mandrake and the fighter to get bored retrain Weapon Focus to apply to his new magical flail. :smallsmile:

By the way, I find it nice that the proponents of AD&D (and earlier editions ?) participate - it's less monotonic than only "3e vs 4e" (which again I personally sidestep by playing both).

[Saph]

While it's true that everything in 4E keys on hit points, getting the best damage output is not nearly so simple as picking the power with the biggest number. Let me give an example:

(snip)

I judged these options to all be tactically valid.

I admit I only skimmed that paragraph, but yeah, I'd say they all looked valid, too. The point being, it didn't really matter that much which one you picked (or rather, the differences are negigible in comparison to the short-term randomness of the dice). This is why I say 4e combat doesn't have that much depth; once you know the basics, it really doesn't matter that much what you choose to do; you can maybe squeeze an extra 10-20% of efficiency out of your turns by playing cleverly, but playing cleverly is strictly optional.


I don't mean to pick on you (I'll try to scoot from this thread after this, honest), but I couldn't really let your statement go. 4E combat is fundamentally different than 3.5; it's not about optimizing your personal attacks in competition with the rest of your party.

Neither is 3.5 - unless you choose to make it that way.


It's about setting up group tactics for glorious results. If you're thinking it works out to, "Use all your strikes from biggest to smallest", you may want to study the game more.

I think you're the one who needs to study the game more. When you're new to 4e combat, then yes, it can look really complicated, and it's easy to get hung up on the details of each individual potential action in 4e. However, once you realise that it all comes down to "What effect does this action have on HP totals?" you'll find that most of the depth is illusory. Sure, you can play elaborate tactical gambits and move enemies and allies into positions, but in terms of consequences, just jumping on the badguys and beating them all to death is functionally very similar.


If you're only thinking about your strikes, I guarantee you're playing it suboptimally. Yeah, everyone's attacking hp, but saying "oh, it's a simple game--you just do the most damage while taking the least" is a lot like saying, "All you really need to do to win is not die." That's true, but achieving it is complicated.

It's not actually very complicated. It can be fun, and it can be involving, especially if you get into the roleplay aspect of it, but that's not the same thing. The fact, is, a completely incompetent player who does nothing but hit the easiest/lowest-HP target with his biggest attack every turn will, in most 4e battles, achieve about as much as a tactical genius, because in most battles, beating on one target is what works. You don't need to be smart, you just need to be persistent.

- Saph

[Emperor Tippy]

You don't need to be smart, you just need to be persistent.

- Saph

My biggest complaint about 4e actually. It removed the strategic depth that 3.5 had and didn't add that much (if any) tactical depth.

[Saph]

Why are you and Saph assuming that you only meet opponents on a journey? Travel everywhere by teleport when I'm DMing and you'll arrive at your destination several allies/clues/items short of a victory.

I never said I travelled everywhere by Teleport. The times I've played as the party wizard in a highish level game, I used Teleport for three purposes:

• Shopping. Even at higher levels, you often lack the right item for the job, and if you have a few days spare it's convenient to go to the nearest metropolis and offload the junk you're carrying. (It also lets you get emergency cures, which I saved at least one party member's life with.)

• Emergency evac. When things go badly wrong (and in our game, that happened a LOT) teleportation magic is about the only way of getting away from attackers that mostly-guarantees you won't be followed.

• Skipping travel I didn't want to do.

The third use was actually the least common. For one thing, just because you can cast a spell doesn't mean that you want to. As Nagora points out, in the long run sometimes travelling the slow way is safer than taking a short cut. And sometimes I just felt like a walk. That's what's so cool to me about playing high-level characters in 3.5 - the sense of freedom. Want to take a road trip? You can. Want to fly there? No problem. Want to teleport? That's fine too. It's up to you.

In any case, I'd never even consider just teleporting straight into the BBEG's Castle-o-Doom. That's tantamount to suicide unless you've got one heck of a plan.

- Saph

[Kurald Galain]

However, once you realise that it all comes down to "What effect does this action have on HP totals?" you'll find that most of the depth is illusory.
After the last few sessions, I tend to agree with this. Even the much-vaunted moving-enemies-around powers (e.g. Tide of Iron) are, in pretty much every situation, either pointless (who cares where the enemy is as long as I can flank him) or obvious (hey, enemy next to a cliffside!)


The fact, is, a completely incompetent player who does nothing but hit the easiest/lowest-HP target with his biggest attack every turn will, in most 4e battles, achieve about as much as a tactical genius
That would seem to be the design intent, because catering to the lowest common denominator nets you the biggest market share.

[Covered In Bees]

It's not actually very complicated. It can be fun, and it can be involving, especially if you get into the roleplay aspect of it, but that's not the same thing. The fact, is, a completely incompetent player who does nothing but hit the easiest/lowest-HP target with his biggest attack every turn will, in most 4e battles, achieve about as much as a tactical genius, because in most battles, beating on one target is what works. You don't need to be smart, you just need to be persistent.

- Saph

Yeah, right. In my game, things like Tide of Iron and Leaf on the Wind have meant the difference between life and death multiple times. We'd have TPKed a few times now if we just beat on the easiest target all the time.


Oh, and:
"They're all valid" -- tactics don't matter!
"One is more valid" -- the tactics are obvious!
Really? I mean, really?

[Saph]

Yeah, right. In my game, things like Tide of Iron and Leaf on the Wind have meant the difference between life and death multiple times. We'd have TPKed a few times now if we just beat on the easiest target all the time.

Disagree. Most of the time, collectively beating on the easiest/most-vulnerable target is the best tactic, because it's the fastest way to reduce the number of enemies and, thus, reduce the amount of damage you're taking.

Like I said, you can play carefully and tactically, but the brute-force approach usually works just as well (and sometimes works better).

- Saph

[Covered In Bees]

Disagree. Most of the time, collectively beating on the easiest/most-vulnerable target is the best tactic, because it's the fastest way to reduce the number of enemies and, thus, reduce the amount of damage you're taking.

Like I said, you can play carefully and tactically, but the brute-force approach usually works just as well (and sometimes works better).

- Saph

Yeah, uh, I was there. But thanks for telling me about my game!

[Kurald Galain]

Like I said, the moving-enemies-around powers are, usually, either pointless or obvious.

Although of course I expected an angry reaction on that statement (I mean, anything that isn't praising 4E into the heavens will get you flamed into the ground these days), it doesn't mean the power can't sometimes save your life. Just that it tends to be extremely obvious when it does that, such as when an enemy stands next to a cliff. Point stands.

It's like the button mashing in some fighting games. Just because it works doesn't mean it's a deep strategy.

[Kurald Galain]

Come to think of it, it's like this:

3E is a :redcloak: game. It rewards planning, original approaches, and doing the unexpected.

4E is a :xykon: game. It rewards hitting things with fire until they break.

Predictably, some people favor either approach. And I probably should have stopped my post at that sentence, so sorry about the rest of it.

[Kiara LeSabre]

Although of course I expected an angry reaction on that statement (I mean, anything that isn't praising 4E into the heavens will get you flamed into the ground these days)

Oddly, the ones screaming "flames!" the loudest seem to be the ones lighting most of the fires?

Case in point:


Come to think of it, it's like this:

3E is a :redcloak: game. It rewards planning, original approaches, and doing the unexpected.

4E is a :xykon: game. It rewards hitting things with fire until they break.

Predictably, some people favor either approach. {Scrubbed}

I get accused of being antagonistic, and what is this?

I don't recall suggesting that 3e fans are passionately stupid, while 4e fans are bastions of reason and virtue. I would have thought that was antagonistic.