3e Therapy Group

[darkzucchini]

In the various pro/con 3e/4e threads, I have noticed that a large number of the pro-4e advocates have made the need for class balance a central theme of their argument, often citing their own gaming experience of imbalance ruining a game to back such arguments.

However, I have heard very few personal stories as to what incident turned such players against 3e. I am not looking for theory derived from looking at the books or delving into the darkest reaches of the message boards but instead would like to hear about actual events in your game that made 3e feel unplayable (or at least not as fun as it could be).

So pull down the shades, turn off the lights, and tell me where the bad 3e touched you.

[Covered In Bees]

From the other, forgotten thread:

I DMed a 3.5 one-shot recently. I mean, I expected to be playing both 3.5 and 4E for a while, but after the 4E games this was such a drag. It's been a long time since I DMed 3.5, and the experience threw some stuff in my face.

It started when I was designing the one-shot. I gave the sorcerer Fly, then swapped it out for something. Why? Because Fly would keep him totally safe from most of the things I was going to use. I didn't put in a whole big interesting noncombat part I had planned (based on the Alley in Planescape: Torment) because even without fly, things like Spider Climb and Shadow Jaunt were going to make it absolutely trivial. Same thing for several other minor challenges. Characters consistently get abilities that make whole categories of challenge pointless, and they do this very early on, as early as third level.
Is it possible to compensate for this? Yes. You can either devise something that takes these abilities away (magical no-fly zone), which isn't a good thing to do more than, oh, once, especially in a one-shot, since you're giving characters these abilities and then not letting them use them. You can come up with a different challenge. You can work around it. But it's restrictive.

Monsters? It comes with practice, presumably, but for any given group, it's very hard to tell what's too deadly, what's just right, and what's going to be a cakewalk. At the same time, abilities like damage reduction are almost trivial to some characters while they almost nullify others. Throwing an Erinyes at a level 6 party will barely slow down some of the casters, while others will be struggling with very good saves and SR 23. Devils pretty much all have Greater Teleport. Why don't all of them just pop off for reinforcements any time they're in a remotely tough fight? When they're clearly losing?
Anyway, monsters have hit dice just like players, only some monster hit dice rock and others suck. Want a monster with a high attack bonus? An outsider will have less HP than a high-AB animal. Spells and class abilities (turn undead, say) that work based on hit dice and the way monsters wind up having far more HD than the players is a fundamentally broken piece of the system. Monsters have various ridiculous abilities, and keeping track of them is a pain. Does the chain devil really need Regeneration 2 and, arbitrarily, immunity to cold rather than to fire and poison? Does its crappy "unnerving gaze" special ability really need to exist? It sure didn't add anything to my game.

Combat! Oh, man, combat is pretty fun... when it's your turn and you have something exciting to do. In a combat against a bunch of devils, what did the cleric-archer do? He cast one spell (Divine Favor). And then he full attacked. A lot. And he rolled multiple attacks, and the occasional crit confirmation, and damage, and it took a while. And then the next guy went, and he moved, and he attacked. Or sometimes he full attacked. At one point he tumbed and readied an action to sneak attack as soon as he got a flank, and that was pretty fun, but the rest of the time he was just rolling an attack roll for 1d6+4 (-5, for DR). Then the casters went, and the Beguiler had tons of options, and even multiple good options, but the sorcerer with Scorching Ray and Stinking Cloud just cast Magic Missile a lot. The Soulknife did a couple of points of damage in the whole fight, after DR; the enlarged barbarian smashed the hell out of the devils.
And each person's turn took forever. The whole fight too long, but more importantly, each turn took too long. People get bored, they talk, they get distracted.

Useful things the Ranger-dipping Barbarian could do out of combat: Intimidate. Track/survive in the woods... only there weren't any woods. I included some Survival rolls just for kicks, so they could find their way along the landscape of Avernus, but it's not like they wouldn't have gotten there without them. (Also, he wrestled a bear. He managed to win.)
Useful things the Fighter could do out of combat: are you freaking kidding me
Useful things the Rogue/Swashbuckler could do out of combat: tons.
Useful things the Sorcerer could do out of combat: Lie. Cast Benign Transposition.
Useful things the Beguiler could do out of combat: ALL of them. Often magically. Want something done? He'll cast a spell. Everyone else gets to, you know. Watch.


There's more. A lot more. 3.5 does not run smoothly. Building characters is fun if you're into that sort of thing, but I'm more worried about, you know, the game not sucking in play.

[Behold_the_Void]

Having been working on an RP system of my own, the major problem with 3e is it's just got many glaring holes of painfully bad game design. Balance issues being one of the major ones, obviously. It's also extraordinarily restrictive, having messed with the system to create thematic and viable characters, I more often than not come up short. ESPECIALLY if it's a noncaster. It's also something of a nightmare to homebrew for, the fact that it's balance is way off makes it difficult to judge what is too much.

[OneFamiliarFace]

After DMing and playing 3.0 and then 3.5 since they came out, I have to say I've never experienced any particularly glaring balance issues. My rogue was a little underpowered, but that's only because the DM didn't pay a whole lot of attention to dynamic scenery design. (which isn't totally his fault, as 3.x set it up to where enabling a skill monkey to do his thing properly often meant hampering the other players' mobility quite a bit, or just proving a wizard could do what a rogue does)

Any balance issues seem to be pretty easily dealt with by a good DM and helpful players (ie. ones who don't try to break the game). In my opinion, it shouldn't be the fault of 3.x that the game can be broken. It isn't a video game where people are competing against each other (in theory). It is a cooperative tabletop game where everyone should be contributing to the fun and not trying to overshadow the players. So I'm not even a fan of class balance and don't see it as imperative.

I still am switching over to 4e though. It makes it easier to bring new players into a gaming style that I love: the aforementioned cooperative gaming. That, and I like the new choices and powers of the DM. Sorry, I'm just here to offer support to those who might be suffering from said balance issues.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I posted this on a thread somewhere, cant remember though.

1. About a year ago I created a character which when partied with nothing stronger than a Warlock, was extreamly OP. I wont go into specifics, but in the end I had caused the DM to become so frustrated that he threw at us a boss which resulted in a TPK. Like it wasnt even a contest.

2. The last 3.5 campain I played in, I made yet another OP character (though I wasn't expecting this one to be so bad), and in the end I found myself taking on the BBEG by myself while my party members sat on the sidelines seducing the female prisoners.

3. I also had a similar problem in my first game ever, with a wizard. I cant remember much about that guy though.

So yeah, looks like im a custimization addict. Glad I can do it in a stable enviroment now.

[Kiara LeSabre]

I can recall a 3e game long ago wherein none of us were even remotely knowledgeable about optimization. Offhand, the fighter was useless, especially at fighting, the rogue was better at everything than the fighter, especially fighting, and the archer was a walking death machine because this was the 3e version of the arcane archer.

So the fighter, the one person who gave up everything just to be able to fight, was hands-down the least powerful in an actual fight in the entire group. Meanwhile, the DM, using the challenge ratings as written, was unable to find challenges the party didn't decimate with casual contempt, making the most exciting part of combat the part where you talked about how many damage dice you got to roll. Tension was usually nonexistent, and fights were more about trying to get kills before everyone else got them.

Excepting the fighter, of course, who neither rolled many damage dice nor got many kills.

By CharOp standards, everyone was pretty gimpy, but after all, this was just a random group of people with no knowledge of how to optimize picking up the game and playing. No Batman wizards, not even a druid ... still, gross imbalance all over the place.

[Tormsskull]

So the fighter, the one person who gave up everything just to be able to fight, was hands-down the least powerful in an actual fight in the entire group.

I hear people say this, and my first instinct is to question if this is actually something that took place, or if they are just regurgitating what they have heard from forums, other players, etc.

Of course, a lot of this calls into question what level you were playing at, what books you were using, etc. Without a doubt, the more supplements that came out, the weaker the Fighter class became.

I can honestly say that the only classes that my party has had problems with so far have been a Barbarian and a Wilder. My experience is mostly limited to Core + house rules, and levels 1-7.

[Covered In Bees]

Actually, the more splatbooks, the more viable a Fighter becomes. The core-only fighter blows goats.

[Feverdream]

Well, I think the thread was about how 3.x "bad-touched" you, but I just wanted to mention that if the fighter is "weaker", perhaps the DM could have made a quest for a weapon or something to help bring the fighter back into being a vital part of the group?

For me, while I still played 3.x for many years, there was this kind of... lack in allowing characters a little more freedom to flesh out numerically... if that makes any sense. But again, I still played it, lack and all.

[Eldariel]

First game we ever played in 3.5, we had a Blaster Wizard, a Cleric, an Arcane Archer (me - Fighter 6/Wizard 1, I kid you not), a Dwarven Defender, a Monk and an Assassin.


On level 1, the whole party was pretty well off. None of us knew what we were doing, so we all ended up doing some damage, Fighters more than others (since as a low level Fighter with high Str, you don't need to know anything), Monk being relatively useless and Assassin rarely hitting (he couldn't get Weapon Finesse due to the +1-clause).

Now, we leveled after some adventures and people urged me to go for Arcane Archer. I asked how is it possible and learned about multiclassing. Now, later on I realized that Arcane Archer was actually total waste and because I only had one level of Wizard, "Imbue Arrow" had no contribution whatsoever to me (and that the other abilities sucked). Since we were too dumb to use Greater Magic Weapon though, Enhance Arrow actually helped me as I had ~5 levels of Arcane Archer. In other words, my whole character was about equal to one Wizard-spell; the only reason I was contributing at all was because I had along the lines of 30% of the total party wealth (I was TWFing and an archer; little did I know the game does not want you to do that).


Later on, the Monk continued to do nothing (that is, missing attacks, Spring Attacking to safety and being overall useless), but then something happened. Around level 14, without smartly played opponents (we met a Dragon in a 20/30 room - go figure), suddenly I was the only combat guy doing anything, and that was because of my insanely expensive equipment. The Dwarven Defender suddenly just was never in the fight at all as opponents simply went after the casters, the Monk still kept not hitting anything, etc. Combats mostly just came down to Wizard or Cleric casting something along the lines of Hold Monster, Disintegrate, Destruction or so on and ending the combat (they never stopped tossing Magic Missiles, Blesses and Fireballs, but the fact that they had those spells meant that we others weren't really necessary).

In other words, in a party where nobody had much of an idea what they were doing, every encounter started to be solved by the casters. Imagine how much worse it would be if enemies had been played intelligently (that is, nothing ever engages in melee, enemies try to surprise us and take casters down first, etc.) and the players had known what they were doing. The Fighter-types might have acquired some niché roles, the Monk would've still been worthless and the Rogue would've been an extra caster. But oh boy, the Wizard would've been winning encounters from level 1, not after level 10, and the Cleric would've taken over as the primary melee of the group.

[Kiara LeSabre]

I hear people say this, and my first instinct is to question if this is actually something that took place, or if they are just regurgitating what they have heard from forums, other players, etc.

So basically, you're calling me a liar.

Yes, it actually took place in an actual game. Thank you very much for the insult, however.


Actually, the more splatbooks, the more viable a Fighter becomes. The core-only fighter blows goats.

This is true. The problem, though, is we weren't optimizers -- we were just ordinary gamers who'd never even heard of the CharOp boards or Batman wizards sitting down to play D&D. Also, this was 3e, not 3.5e. But most of all, the problem is that it takes an optimizer to make a fighter really work anyway, just as a fighter. I mean, should it really be that way?

[Saph]

However, I have heard very few personal stories as to what incident turned such players against 3e. I am not looking for theory derived from looking at the books or delving into the darkest reaches of the message boards but instead would like to hear about actual events in your game that made 3e feel unplayable (or at least not as fun as it could be).

Never seen it happen. Seriously. Even though I've been playing and DMing for years.

I think the reasons for this are: usually starting games at lowish levels; usually having DMs who make some effort to tailor encounters to the party; and having the good fortune to have a group where players get on well and play cooperatively.

That said, I have seen lots of games in which the more skilled players outshone the newbies, but that was mostly because the veteran players knew the rules and the newbies didn't. Giving the newbies a (supposedly) more powerful class didn't help. I've come to believe this is pretty much universal to all RPG systems, though if anyone knows a RPG where the new players can be on a level with the veterans, I'd be interested to try it.

- Saph

[Covered In Bees]

I've encountered plenty of balance issues in my time playing D&D. Most of my beefs with the game aren't even about that, though (as see above).

[Jayabalard]

@ the OP: I've never been involved in any of those situations. I'm kind of curious if anyone will post some specifics that are clearly the fault of the system and not of a disruptive player or poor GMing.


So basically, you're calling me a liar.

Yes, it actually took place in an actual game. Thank you very much for the insult, however./shrug ... it must be a horrible thing indeed to feel insulted by someone who questions whether the story that you're relating is one that actually happened to you or if it is (like so many others on internet forums) just hearsay.


a bunch of general statements about 3e.I believe that the OP is asking for specifics. We can generalized statements about why someone dislikes a game system in one of the other threads discussing that.

[Tengu_temp]

/shrug ... it must be a horrible thing indeed to feel insulted by someone who questions whether the story that you're relating is one that actually happened to you or if it is (like so many others on internet forums) just hearsay.


Sophistry. No matter how you put it, he doubted her story, practically calling her a liar. That's not an element of an adult discussion, is it?

And I, having never played DND 3.x in person, have no examples of my own for this thread. My dislike of pre-4e DND comes entirely from analysis and comparison, not personal experience.

[Tormsskull]

Actually, the more splatbooks, the more viable a Fighter becomes. The core-only fighter blows goats.

In an optimized party you are right, I am sure. If you take 4 players new to the game, or 4 players who are not optimizers, I think the fighter is a good class in a core-only game, especially at low levels when the d4 and d6 HD classes are dropping in a few hits.



So basically, you're calling me a liar.


If that's how you want to look at it. You were very sparing on the details of your experience so it seemed more like a general statement, not something specific.



Sophistry. No matter how you put it, he doubted her story, practically calling her a liar. That's not an element of an adult discussion, is it?


Assuming everything is correct/true is not part of an adult discussion/debate either. Questioning unexplained "facts" that are drastically different from my and others' personal experience is a healthy part of a debate.

If someone tries to assert a point in a debate, they should be willing to substantiate their point with an explanation/evidence.

[Tengu_temp]

Pray tell, how would that evidence you request look like?

[Covered In Bees]

Yes, the Fighter is fine at low levels. Nobody's claimed it isn't.



Jayala: I've provided some pretty specific points, based on things I ran last sunday.

But you can use "bad GM/players" to explain away anything. Is the Druid owning everything while the Fighter feels useless? It's not the system's fault, it's a bad player running the Fighter (built him poorly), a bad player running the Druid (didn't majorly self-nerf), and a bad GM (isn't constantly throwing encounters meant to shut the druid down at the party)! Really!

If you've got a group of mature, cooperative players with similar playstyles/interests and a high-quality DM who's very good with both the crunch and the fluff, you can make do with pretty much any game. Very few groups are like this, though.

[shadow_archmagi]

I once ran an Ennervation sorc, who used a silenced stilled maximized twin split repeating occular ennervation followed by a silenced stilled maximized twin split repeating ennervation, for a total of...

1 ray to start with.
2 rays because occular lets you cast two spells at once.
3 rays because of the quickened one.
6 because all were split.
12 because all were twinned.
another 12 next round.

So over the course of two rounds, I make 24 touch attacks, and for each one that hits I dealt four negative levels. This was at ECL 14 or so...

Of course, everyone in the party had agreed to bring overly broken characters, from the hulking hurler to the druid to the CoDzilla. Only the DM was suprised.

[Tormsskull]

Pray tell, how would that evidence you request look like?

Could be a number of things, just off the top of my head:

"In a level 5 Hack n Slash Campaign with all books available using X point buy the party fighter was totally useless. The other characters, a cleric, a rogue, and a warlock were all able to deal more damage than the fighter and the fighter was unable to hit anyone because Y."

Which is much more informative than "Offhand, the fighter was useless, especially at fighting, the rogue was better at everything than the fighter, especially fighting," + "So the fighter, the one person who gave up everything just to be able to fight, was hands-down the least powerful in an actual fight in the entire group." + "Excepting the fighter, of course, who neither rolled many damage dice nor got many kills."

In addition, simply by the way the above quotes were presented, it is obvious that this poster is trying to assert a claim i.e. "fighters are useless". Since my experience (and I'm betting several others) is radically different, I'm questioning if this was an actual play experience or not. And if it was, I'd like more details surrouning the experience so I can understand why/how this fighter is so useless.

[Eldariel]

Most of the Fighter-problems are simple inability to deal relevant amounts of damage and being open to just about any kinds of non-direct attacks. Midgame monsters like Purple Worms just chew Fighters for breakfast. In fact, most of the encounters our party had beyond level 10 would've been TPKs for a party of 4 Fighters and walkovers for a party of 4 casters. Fighter just lacks means to deal relevant damage so their role as a frontliner is pretty much lost as even if they hit, they don't really do anything (unless heavily optimized).

Ragewalkers (DC 28 Will-save on CR 14?! GFG), Purple Worms, Steel Golems, Vampires, Liches, Dragons, etc. would all pretty much walk over a party of 4 Fighters. Casters one-shot most of them (save Dragons, but even there the Orbs mean Wizards will be doing a LOT more than the Fighters sitting around reading a book, or shooting with their +5 bow, dealing 30 damage a turn (only 10 more turns, 'til it's dead! Oh crap, it cast Heal! 5 extra turns!), provided that the Dragon hasn't bothered to ward itself), have very potent protections from all of them (that we didn't realize to use; we burned quite a bit of resources on True Resurrections) and overall just are actually useful at that point. Our party encountered all those creatures over the quest and the one fight where Fighters really contributed was the fight with the Dragon in the 20'/30' room (it was a randomally generated Dungeon -.- Dragons totally sit around in rooms where they cannot move, waiting to be slaughtered). The Ragewalker? Without a Destruction penetrating the SR, we would've killed each other. The Purple Worm? Try beating that thing without Hold Monster. Steel Golem? It's kinda hard to kill without flight. Liches are just casters so there's an infinidesimal chance of them actually sticking nearby long enough to fight them; that Dimensional Anchor makes killing them actually plausible. And Vampires...energy drain ain't cool so getting near to them is just A Bad Idea.

[OneFamiliarFace]

Edit: to hide the stuff I was ninja'd on!


If someone tries to assert a point in a debate, they should be willing to substantiate their point with an explanation/evidence.

I think the point is that is exactly what Kiara did. Kiara was talking about "the" fighter, not "a" fighter. So he/she was, in fact, explaining a situation. But man is that semantics or what? (and, only slightly related to you Tormsskull, I always think of these things as discussions rather than debates. usually they are about opinion, rather than factual evidence, read on to see what I mean...)

I am also curious as to how many people experienced balance issues. In my two longest running campaigns as a player, I was a rogue/thief acrobat and then what basically amounted to a fighter with rage and some auras after a bunch of prestige classes. Both were decidedly unoptimized. The former had a DM who did not cater to non-combat types, and so I was underwhelming. The latter had a DM who focused on single bad-guy huge monster-saurus fights, and my fighter shone brilliantly (alongside the cleric and a fighter archer that kicked all of our butts in damage). I would wager that archer could stand toe-to-toe to most wizards and come out on top (we got up to level 12). The key is that my usefulness changed based on the DM, not the class.
Still, as I said earlier, 3.x can be broken (which is not, in my opinion, a flaw with the system), and some people break it. So unbalanced parties can arise when one person wants to break the system and one person wants to play Champmathieu the Benevolent Bard. Throw in Konk the Int 8 Barbarian Who Thinks He is an Invalid and Jason, the Uptight Paladin, and you have yourself some trouble brewing.

I would wager my last dollar, though, that you will find more (not all, but more) of these unbalanced situations on internet forums and among unfamiliar playing groups. I doubt it happens more than sparingly among people who play as friends. Perhaps the occasional monk finds that he is useless, but one can hardly hold that against 3.x over 4e, as 4e doesn't even have monks! I assume that when they come along, 4e'ers will cheer, and 3.x'ers will say that they are just a cookie cutter copy of the other classes. Welcome to the internet! :smalltongue:

[Tormsskull]

I think the point is that is exactly what Kiara did. Kiara was talking about "the" fighter, not "a" fighter. So he/she was, in fact, explaining a situation.


I assumed that *looks up gender sign* she used "the fighter" to specify the single Fighter in the group, rather than "a" fighter which could reference the fact that there were multiple fighters in the group or that she was speaking in general terms.



I would wager my last dollar, though, that you will find more (not all, but more) of these unbalanced situations on internet forums and among unfamiliar playing groups.

I would not take that wager as I am sure you are correct, and that was kind of my point about regurgitation.

[OneFamiliarFace]

I assumed that *looks up gender sign* she used "the fighter" to specify the single Fighter in the group, rather than "a" fighter which could reference the fact that there were multiple fighters in the group or that she was speaking in general terms.

Erm *cough* yes, I suppose I could have scrolled back and looked that up. Opening new pages or hitting back just seemed difficult at the time :smalltongue: Sorry Kiara!

I think we may be talkin bout the same thing here, and now I am moderately confused. Is there a therapy group for that?

[Telonius]

My experience of balance issues comes from playing Shackled City. Five players: Radiant Servant of Pelor, Wizard/Eldritch Knight, Rogue, VoP Monk/Tattooed Monk (me), and DM Error (a Fighter/Ranger/Order of the Bow Initiate that was accidentally allowed to port over some things from Sword and Fist that allowed it to do precision damage on all shots of a Manyshot :smalleek:). We had BoED, Complete Adventurer, Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Complete Arcane. Pretty much anything goes. We started the game in early 2004. The 3.5 conversion was in the relatively recent past, and a number of splatbooks either didn't exist or came out near the end of the campaign (such as ToB).

The Ranger obviously wrecked shop, but that was completely due to bad DMing, not game design.

The Radiant Servant made quite a few encounters of that adventure redundant with Greater Turning. That prestige class should never be allowed in an undead-heavy campaign. The character was very high charisma, and was basically the party diplomancer.

The Wizard was nowhere near as powerful as the boards suggest they should be, but was still very hard to hit due to clever use of Fly and Mirror Image. The Rogue was also pretty well balanced.

The DM houseruled that I could use regular feats instead of Exalted feats for my Monk, which bumped up the power level slightly. But still, I found that my damage-dealing was extremely sub-par compared with our Rogue (for whom I was the main flanking buddy).

My big contributions to the party were disarming, flanking, and not dying. Disarming was a huge advantage since we were fighting many, many human and human-like foes. I was actually able to disarm the BBEG of his Brilliant Energy Weapon, which significantly tilted the odds in our favor in the final battle.

I was not able to deliver a single successful Stunning Fist attack during the entire campaign, and not for lack of trying. That ability is forever dead to me.

So on the whole, my Monk was underpowered for damage but useful for tactics, the wizard and rogue were pretty well-balanced, the Ranger probably would have been okay if the DM hadn't totally screwed up, and the RSOP was ridiculously overpowered due to the nature of the campaign and diplomancy.

[PnP Fan]

Never seen it happen. Seriously. Even though I've been playing and DMing for years.

That said, I have seen lots of games in which the more skilled players outshone the newbies, but that was mostly because the veteran players knew the rules and the newbies didn't. Giving the newbies a (supposedly) more powerful class didn't help. I've come to believe this is pretty much universal to all RPG systems, .....

- Saph

I'm with Saph on this one. I've seen clever/veteran players make a big difference at the table, but not very often have I seen a single class make a noticable difference.
But I am experimenting now with one of my groups. I'm playing the Batman Diviner suggested by TLN, with only a slight deviation towards Scout 1, and Unseen Seer PrC. But I'm the only arcane caster in the party, so in theory I should still be way ahead of everyone else (*That's not the point* however, I'm testing the "Wizards are teh uber" mindset.). I'm curious as to When it will get Bad, and How it Actually plays out when I don't have 100% access to every spell ever written in a supplement all the time, and when I have to actually make up my own spell lists. With the more useful Divinations (which the uber-wizard relies on for selecting spells) being around 4th level, I'm not seeing anything truly great yet at 2nd level.

Thus far, using the save or suck method of spellcasting, I've been stymied by undead, who are immune to mind affecting spells (Color Spray), and reduced to playing an archer. (Still a pretty good one though!) Funny thing is, we had a pretty good idea what we were going to deal with, but in order to save the village we had to ride through the night without rest. No rest = no new memorized spells => no custom spell list to deal with undead. So far, TLN's method fails. I'm hoping that things will turn around soon. Scrolls will come in handy.

[Dausuul]

Okay, let's see, personal stories.

There was the druid I created. I decided I wanted an extra-cool animal companion, so I dipped Beastmaster for the +3 effective level and got myself a tiger. Then I discovered that my animal companion was so powerful it made the two fighter-types in the party look pathetic by comparison. (Heck, it made my own character look pathetic - there were a couple of times when I ran my companion and forgot to have my character act.) I scrapped that druid after a couple of sessions.

There was the player who simply could not create an effective character to save his life. Once he lucked into a more-or-less workable build, but the rest of the time he always wound up picking severely sub-par feats and class combinations that left him struggling to keep up. (He had no shortage of advice from the optimizers in the group, but didn't like being told what to pick.) The same player has created two 4E characters so far and both of them have had no trouble pulling their weight.

There was the master of shrouds in an evil campaign I ran, who could utterly pwn any creature that wasn't immune to Strength damage. I nerfed the heck out of that one (with the full support of the player) once it became apparent what he could do, but he wrought some serious havoc before then.

There was the high-level campaign I played in, where I made a sorceror and had to carefully avoid choosing any of the most powerful spells and concentrate on blasting, just so I could be on par with the other PCs.

Those are the ones that come to mind offhand. I daresay I could think of others.

[Lapak]

I was running a 3.5 campaign right up until a few months before 4 came out. No heavy optimizers were in the group, and it got to level 6 before we stopped. Despite the fact that 6 is right in the sweet spot of 3.x, where players are all strong but not unreasonably so, there was severe imbalance in the party in and out of combat and some people were just straight-up less useful than others. The monk, who was the only melee fighter in the party, found himself unable to accomplish much. The scout's turns consisted of 'move 10 feet, shoot one arrow with Skirmish damage, repeat.' Everyone was having a fine time, but I felt bad whenever I tried to create an interesting situation and half the players didn't have any substantial decisions to make in response.

Taking the most extreme example I came across, the players came up against a lizardman sorceror. He wasn't a lethal opponent, but he demanded that one of them defeat him in a one-on-one duel in order to proceed. He was level 5 to their individual level 6, so you'd think that any of them would have a shot to take him, yes? Not so much. He had no save-or-dies, and only a couple of attack spells, but it didn't matter - he had Levitate and Protection from Arrows in his spell list, making him essentially immune to all but one member of the party. I didn't design him that way on purpose; they just seemed like solid defensive spell choices and defending a particular area of the swamp was his basic purpose for existing.

They took three days to get by. (Only one challenge a day, by his rules.) He took down the monk easily, without so much as a scratch. He out-dueled the scout and knocked him out, though it came down to Crossbow vs. Bow, hit points vs. wearing away the Protection and was a fairly tense combat.

When the party wizard got his turn, it was over in two rounds. Now again, the players were all having a good time and that's the most important thing, but as DM it was irritating to me that the success or failure of the group was dependent on a single character's performance in 8 encounters out of 10. Guard dogs? Trivial encounter if the wizard blows a Sleep spell, dangerous otherwise. And so on; no one else had so much ability to determine the ease of any encounter.

They were all good social roleplayers, and we did quite a lot of social-encounter gaming, because it involved everyone more. And there were combat encounters that revolved around other players - one where the monk went alone to negotiate in the middle of the battleground with a bandit, or one where the cleric DID significantly affect the battle by choosing to flee - but they were strictly roleplay-centric reasons, and never mechanical ones. That was frustrating for me as a DM.

[Kurald Galain]

I also concur with Saph.

Furthermore, I have seen the exact opposite thing as the OP, in two fashions.

First, my latest 3.5 adventure contained an effective level-10 fighter (even if its player eventually considered it a somewhat boring one-trick-pony) and an obviously less effective level-10 ultimate magus. This is primarily the result of player skill; the fighter was an experienced player, whereas the UM considered meleeing a dragon a good tactic for a caster.

And second, in my latest 4.0 adventure, certain characters appear to be more effective than others, precisely because of their builds. Turns out that yes, there are a number of ineffective powers and feats out there, e.g. secure strike; and that focusing on a different stat than your prime, e.g. an int-based fighter, is not all that practical. Playing skill has not, so far, made a big difference in effectiveness.

[Jayabalard]

Sophistry. No matter how you put it, he doubted her story, practically calling her a liar. That's not an element of an adult discussion, is it?Yup; if someone appears to be parroting someone else's statement, then even an adult is likely to say "wait, this happened to you or are you just repeating what bob said?"

[CASTLEMIKE]

That said, I have seen lots of games in which the more skilled players outshone the newbies, but that was mostly because the veteran players knew the rules and the newbies didn't. Giving the newbies a (supposedly) more powerful class didn't help. I've come to believe this is pretty much universal to all RPG systems, though if anyone knows a RPG where the new players can be on a level with the veterans, I'd be interested to try it.

- Saph

Harnmaster (I like Harnmaster 3) probably comes pretty close due to the way skills are used for everything in game and quite a bit less magic than a WOTC D&D game.

A newbie can easily emulate a veteran player. In some ways the basic rules particularly spellcasting are a little harder to get a handle on without a veteran player or two handy.

http://www.lythia.com/

[only1doug]

Yup; if someone appears to be parroting someone else's statement, then even an adult is likely to say "wait, this happened to you or are you just repeating what bob said?"

I can recall a 3e game long ago wherein none of us were even remotely knowledgeable about optimization. Offhand, the fighter was useless<snip>.

(emphasis mine)

I can understand why someone would be peeved to be questioned about their role in a story being questioned. Are you sure it was you who experienced that which you just claimed to? you're just repeating someone else aren't you? don't you have any original thoughts? are all hurtful statements to the person who posted their experiences.

[valadil]

My biggest problem with 3e was the arguments over the rules. We all agreed that some stuff was overpowered, but the position of the line between overpowered and game breaking varied depending on who you asked. Different GMs had different tolerances for what was and wasn't allowed in their games and some players who wanted one set of rules got frustrated by that. I even saw players butter up GMs by requesting truly broken options before asking for what they actually wanted. That's a level of BS I don't want to deal with in my RPGs.

That said, I'll still happily play 3.5. It just has to be with players who would rather play the game than argue the rules. I don't know if 4.0 fixes any of these problems, but at the very least there are fewer rules to fight over.

[Jayabalard]

Jayala: I've provided some pretty specific points, based on things I ran last sunday.

But you can use "bad GM/players" to explain away anything. Is the Druid owning everything while the Fighter feels useless? It's not the system's fault, it's a bad player running the Fighter (built him poorly), a bad player running the Druid (didn't majorly self-nerf), and a bad GM (isn't constantly throwing encounters meant to shut the druid down at the party)! Really!Your example didn't mention anything in your example about a druid, let alone one that was actually causing those sorts of problems in a real game. Much of what you brought isn't clearly a problem with the system.

Question: Is your example from a group of 10-12 year olds you were going to be DMing?


I can understand why someone would be peeved to be questioned about their role in a story being questioned. Are you sure it was you who experienced that which you just claimed to? you're just repeating someone else aren't you? don't you have any original thoughts? are all hurtful statements to the person who posted their experiences.Since those are hurtful, it's a good thing that none of those are statements were actually said, eh?

[Chronicled]

attempts to defend a lost cause

Protip: a high horse can be quite the lonely place to be perched.

[Covered In Bees]

Your example didn't mention anything in your example about a druid, let alone one that was actually causing those sorts of problems in a real game. Much of what you brought isn't clearly a problem with the system.
No, my example didn't mention a druid, but if you want an example of druids stomping all over games, I can tell you about my Dark Sun game and how the Druid was better than all the other melee guys combined.

My examples pointed out problems with *the system*. Turns really do take too long, in 3.5. Characters really do gain a variety of abilities, early on, that make entire categories of challenge pointless. Half the issues I described were ones I ran into when designing the adventure.

I love how you're saying "oh it was probably the players" rather than actually addressing the issues. But then, I didn't expect anyone to address the issues.
I called it ahead of time. No matter what someone brings up, you'll blame it on the players or DM. Maybe a system that requires perfect players and a perfectDM is flawed?


Question: Is your example from a group of 10-12 year olds you were going to be DMing?
10-13, but yep. It turned out to not be particularly different from DMing for the kind of grown-up man-children that I've played D&D with before. :smalltongue: In fact, being 10-13 meant they were *more* entertained by rolling damage, my describing how the Bearded Devils were attacking/parrying with their beards, etc, than adult players would be. The fundamental game issues were still there.
They're also issues I've seen before, as a player; DMing really threw them in my face.

[Knaight]

Well there was that time my GM tried to wing a combat. He had to go reference feats, spells, and tons of other stuff, and it took forever. Granted this was partially a GM problem, but having to prepare to run a monster out of a manual sucks, you should be able to just look at the monster entry. Where in the games I currently play(Fudge incidentally, 3e has been pretty much replaced by now), I GM(all of them), and I can totally wing creating entirely new creatures/vehicles/NPCs(and the weapons of the last 2) on the spot, and combat moves far faster than even a prepared third edition fight.

[Karaswanton]

I hated the skills system of 3.5. Many of the skills were clearly useless the vast majority of the time--ie, Appraise, Decipher Script, Forge. Others were divided in ways that made no sense--why are Spot and Listen different skills, and why are Hide and Move Silently different skills? Why is Open Lock seperate from Disable Device?

Further, figuring out how many skills you have at any level beyond one is a pain. Especially when you are playing a character with a high Int that varies because you put all your points into Int. Oh, and you want to play a venerable Grey Elf so now you need to know at what level you aged into the next category.

Figuring out how many spells a Wizard at any level other than one is also a huge pain.

I like playing Wizards, but 3e makes them an enormous pain--balance issues aside. I hate Vancian spellcasting, and actually I'm a little angry that 4E has kept a tiny amount of that.

I also like playing Fighter-types, but having my abilities boil down to "five foot step, full attack" isn't great. And ToB isn't relvant as it's more like 4E lite--and not core so the one guy who would DM refused to allow it because "supplements are inherently unbalanced."

I also don't like the way that some classes have class features, and others more or less don't. Or how most PrCs are either inherently unbalanced or absolute trash.

I also hate all the situation bonuses in 3.5. 4E has this to a less extent, but 3.5 has them all over the place.

I don't like the save system of 3.5.

I don't like that fighter-types have MAD and casters don't. This is still a minor problem in 4E...but much, much less so. Actually it's barely a problem.

I don't like that 3.5 class design doesn't lend itself to one system. Fighters, Paladins and Barbarians have one system, and casters have another. I'm not even talking about power disparity here. Casters have an entire mechanic that the other characters don't. Not just one or two abilities, but an entire mechanic.

I don't like how their was no attempt at balanced race design in 3.5.
I don't like racial stat penalties.
I don't like Arcane Spell Failure.

[hotel_papa]

I've been running 3.5 games since shortly after the system came out. I've taught upwards of fifty different people how to play, and ran games from 2 to 10 people, from level one to (I think) level 16ish. Not to mention many of them were in "high-stress regions", we'll call them. (Rocket's red glare, bombs bursting in air, and so forth) I'd like to think I'm at least somewhat experienced.

I've never had a problem that arised from the game itself.

Every negative issue I've had with the game has been either my misreading of the rules (the rogue with manyshot and rapidshot stacking and each doing sneak attack... whoops.), my players acting like children and degenerating into "who-could-kick-whose-whatever" (bear in mind, most of these were Marines, the actual children were much more team-oriented), and truely disruptive additions of Decks of Many Things and other assorted game-destroying artifact nonsense.

Also, gotta cast my vote for the lady. If she's using an argument so overused that you think she's just repeating what she's heard, don't sit there and insult her integrety. Just use whatever oh-so-elegant counterpoint you used on the "original".

[Knaight]

The children always seem to act less like children.

Anyways that over, good for you, and good job brining so many people into the hobby(I'm only at 14 right now. Granted that was over only 2 years, but still, I'm dwarfed). For some of us, it doesn't fit that well, and the system itself causes problems, that go away when we switch systems (I found two systems over the internet, the first one was OK, and helped, then when we switched again to Fudge, bliss.)

[Covered In Bees]

I've been running 3.5 games since shortly after the system came out. I've taught upwards of fifty different people how to play, and ran games from 2 to 10 people, from level one to (I think) level 16ish.

I've never had a problem that arised from the game itself.
Really?

You've never had to look up the Grappling rules and try to puzzle them out?
You've never had someone build a character that seemed like a fun idea, but proved to be absolutely terrible (a STR low, DEX high, Finesse fighter, possibly going into Duelist, is a classic example)?
You've never had anyone cast Disjunction, Gate, or Shapechange?
You've never had Polymorph turn encounters trivial?
You've never had a monk feeling kind of useless?
You've never had to pause the game while you check a monster's stats, check all of its abilities, figure out whether you should use one of six SLAs (some of which are very similar), attack, or what?
You've never had low- to mid-level characters savaged by enemies with Improved Grab and massive grappling scores?
You've never had a first-level wizard sigh in disgust after using his two spells?
You've never had to scrap an idea for an obstacle, challenge, or etc because you realized that the PCs' abilities (from Detect Evil and question-asking divinations to Fly, Spider Climb, Teleport, etc) made it absolutely trivial?
You've never had what seemed to be an appropriate encounter turn into easy mop-up, or into PC death or near-TPK?
You've never had melee characters roll a 1 on saves vs. massive damage and die?
You've never had a Fighter or a Barbarian basically sitting out the noncombat stuff because he was absolutely useless in those situations?
You've never had someone give up a character idea because of pointless multiclassing XP penalties?
You've never had people take forever building characters, cutting into play time?
You've never had people getting bored and distracted because of the long wait time from turn to turn?
You've never had issues tracking which spell has how many rounds left, which monster has what condition, etc?



truely disruptive additions of Decks of Many Things and other assorted game-destroying artifact nonsense.
The Rod of Wonder is almost guaranteed to bring a game to a screeching halt. It's part of the rules.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Now, I've mostly DM'd 3e, and then usually with newbie gamers and at low levels (>5). There, I would often run into little issues which were possibly the result of bad DMing on my part (ex: one player making a Mounted Character, but then me not finding many opportunities to allow him to use his mount) or from sticking to 3.0 for far too long (ex: a lv 5 one-shot campaign where the munchkin wizard utilized Haste and a Wand of Fireballs to ridiculous effect).

But, my biggest disappointments started coming while I was playing a 3.5 game based entirely out of modules and the Ptolus setting. The DMing is top notch (guy's a big RPGA'er) and we have an excellent group, so I have to lay my problems at the feet of the system.

Long Post is Long
Ptolus is an urban setting, with an actual Magic Market, so we've been able to optimize our equipment fairly well (though we may be a bit underpowered... we just got stat boosters at LV 8) - though actually going and optimizing our equipment is something that is "immersion breaking" for me (I kind of like finding magic and using it, not just selling off looted equipment and converting it into +1 DEX Gloves) but that's just personal preference.

My character is a street-fighter. Now, I didn't know about the prestige class or any of the fancy things, but I thought "hey, we're in an urban campaign, so why not play a street tough." Being no fool, I took Rogue as my first level, getting Quick Draw and Improved Initiative, with a mind to pick up a level of Fighter here and there for extra feats and BAB. Seems like a good start, no?

My first problem came with traps. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I kind of expect Rogues to be good at avoiding traps, even if they do set them off. Since I was a street-fighter, I didn't put many points in Search or Disable Traps (or Bluff, since I planned to use Intimidate more than honeyed words), so when I hit my first trap, I wasn't too surprised.

But then I realized that Rogues are terrible at avoiding traps. They have very good Reflex, but virtually none of the traps in the DMG use Reflex Saves. They're almost all Attack Rolls at flat-footed AC with ridiculous modifiers. I would have been better off as a Full Plate Paladin!

This was irksome, and not a balance issue, per se, but it struck me as rather odd - if your Rogue isn't going to be able to see the traps beforehand, it's better to let some meatshield soak them up for you, 'cause the Rogue sucks at avoiding them. To get ahead of myself, when it came time to disarm the traps at a thieves' guild (level 8), I just put myself in heavy armor and a shield, and triggered the suckers. It was a Blade Trap, and still two of the blades hit me - fortunately the party cleric was around to patch me up. It was silly!

By level 3, I was getting the feel for my build (Now Rogue 2/Fighter 1) when I got hit by my second slap in the face: immunity to sneak attack. In the middle of negotiations with a Chaos Cultist, I QD my cocked Heavy Crossbow and pegged him one in the chest. D10+2d6, right? Wrong - the bastard had two levels of Barbarian! Later on I'd fight constructs, oozes, other rogues, other barbarians, and all sorts of other fellows who I couldn't sneak attack. So I was just a crappy fighter against them, getting hit all the time because I had MW Studded Leather instead of the Paladin's Full Plate. Sure, a light-weapon fighter shouldn't be as good as a paladin all the time, but at those middle levels there were fewer and fewer monsters I could Sneak Attack.

By level 4, I discovered a great combo: Improved Feint. Now, I hadn't been concentrating on Bluff before, but now I saw the ability to always get Sneak Attack (thanks to the +2 Feat and a bunch of synergies!), and I began moving out more in combat. At this level I also discovered I could auto-succeed at tumbling, and that with the Greatsword +1 I found, I was doing 4d6+4 damage every round (level 6 now). Except when I couldn't get Sneak Attacks (damn undead!). This turned out to be boring because now I just moved where I needed to go, and did an obscene amount of damage (consistently out-damaging the Paladin, our prime meleer)... except for the random encounters when I basically sat at the sidelines.

This was a coin-flip battle, and it only got worse when ability drainers were introduced. CON poisons - a half-dozen times myself or another character found ourselves failing Fort saves and realizing that we would either live or die depending on whether or not our Cleric made a good Heal Check (she had a +zillion, so usually it was OK). That isn't fun either - it's another coin-flip battle!

To deal with this stuff, we started loading up with Wands of CLW (at low levels, because the Cleric just couldn't pass out enough healing, and didn't want to be a healbot), and then scrolls of Lesser Restoration. So now we needed to carry around "healing tubes" which ate a bunch of gold out of our haul whenever they needed to be refilled. This isn't adventuring, it's accounting :smallyuk

Finally, the balance issues. We were not an optimized party (we had a bard for goodness sake!) and yet even we saw some ridiculous balance issues. Aside from me being little more than a squishy fighter for (and increasingly large) number of encounters, we had the Glitterdust Problem. Glitterdust is a ridiculously useful spell, and it is the one that our Bard used more often than anything else. Why wouldn't you - it solves everything. But when she ran out of Glitterdusts, she felt absolutely worthless - as a halfling bard, she just couldn't do any appreciable damage (much less hit) to the sort of things that the Paladin & I were tag-teaming.

The cleric... my god, the cleric wasn't even CoDzilla'ing and she would often outshine the pair of frontline fighters. She started off by summoning a Celestial Wolf at low levels, and then the Celestial Bison at higher levels. That Bison saved our tails more often than I care to remember, particularly against things I couldn't Sneak Attack.

And the damage she'd do to the plot! Deadly trap that I couldn't safely disarm (damn few skillpoints!)? Celestial Monkey. Level Draining Artifact that we needed to use? Lemure (yes, she was Neutral... and the paladin wasn't invited along). All with that one spell. And she was so green at gaming that I was usually asked to help her pick her spells for the day!


The summary:
1) Combat power sometimes feels like a coin-flip. Some encounters, you are god, and in others, you are useless. Sometimes "healing tubes" make you invincible to damage, and sometimes CON poison or some other Save or Die effect will kill you just because. This makes combat feel more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book than a duel for survival.

2) Skill points... my god, skill points! Since nobody else could disarm traps, and I was focused in social skills, I badgered the party's sorc (who had the highest INT of us all - a point above me) to MC Rogue and max out his ranks in Search. A quick Take 20 removed all threats of traps from then on, except for those we deliberately set off.

3) Class roles. As a Rogue, I was terrible at surviving traps (how many even use the Reflex Save?) and because I didn't specialize in it (two skills needed) I wouldn't even bother trying. Our Cleric stopped trying to heal (boring, and her Summon Monster was much more useful) after we got enough gold together for a CLW Wand... and our Sorcerer was a better thief than me, even before he took a dip in it!

[Jayabalard]

Just a general reminder: The topic at hand is "personal stories as to what incident turned [you] against 3e", not generalized things you dislike with 3e. There's a different thread specifically for things you don't like about 3e (and several other threads to debate generalities of 3e vs 4e). I'm personally pretty interested in first hand bad experience stories.


I love how you're saying "oh it was probably the players" rather than actually addressing the issues. But then, I didn't expect anyone to address the issues.I didn't comment on your post in any way other than "Much of what you brought isn't clearly a problem with the system." ... emphasis added. It means that I'm not really convinced that much of what you said was a problem with the system itself. Nowhere did I say that problems in your examples were probably the players.

Personally, I don't think it's worth it to make much more than a generalized remark when someone posts a large block of text; that just encourages more large blocks of text, rather than posts that are short and to the point. Besides, breaking your specific points up and debating in a quote-war is is just going to take this thread off-topic and turn it into a duplicate of all of the other 3e vs 4e threads (more than it is already).

[OneFamiliarFace]

I just like what 4e does for me as a DM. I don't dislike 3.5 a bit. Well, a bit. I would say that the experience that turned me from 3.5 is that my brother wouldn't play with me (yikes, really long!):

He liked to play an elven fighter (emulating the High Elf Greatswordsmen from Warhammer), and he didn't like roving through splat books to find obscure abilities that would bring him on par with other players. So Power Attack, Combat Expertise, WF, and WS started him off nicely, and then after level 4, it didn't really matter what he picked. Every round was just him saying he was going to attack, and then choosing whether to use power attack or combat expertise, and then doing a lot of simple, but annoying, math. With my other players not really wanting to go through the trouble of making complicated casters, most parties looked like this: Fighter, Rogue, Ranger (TWF), Cleric.

As you can imagine, this made encounters slightly difficult to build, as, if the cleric did not memorize Lesser Restoration that day, then an early battle with any of the plethora of Str/Dex draining monsters would cripple at least one member for the day, so those guys were out. Anything that required a will save was an almost automatic ejection from the battle for one player, so those guys were rare. It didn't make encounter design impossible, just annoying. We all still had fun.

With 4e, I feel like my players can more often play whatever they want without me having to do a terrible amount of adjustment, because the ONLY thing I have to do is mess with the balance of the Encounter Level. I don't have to worry about Oracle's "coin-flip" battles and abilities which make a character useless for a day. Sure, in real life, poison does effect you all day and could kill you after a few, but we aren't playing real life, and I have found that a lot of messy bookkeeping detracts from MOST players' experiences.
I enjoy it. That's why I'm a DM. But I have found that the large majority of players are not meta-gamers or uber-role-players. They are there to have fun, eat pizza, and get sick on mountain dew. I find that the pace of 4e better suits said fun.

Oh, back to my brother: He stopped playing because he preferred to play group video games, like MMORPG's or Smash Brothers, where you can just jump into the action. Moral of the story: he's rolling up a gnome rogue for my next 4e campaign. We'll see how he likes it!

[Knaight]

Three words for him: Mutants and Masterminds.

[Covered In Bees]

Just a general reminder: The topic at hand is "personal stories as to what incident turned [you] against 3e", not generalized things you dislike with 3e. There's a different thread specifically for things you don't like about 3e (and several other threads to debate generalities of 3e vs 4e). I'm personally pretty interested in first hand bad experience stories.
Running a game for the first time in a while helped turn me against 3E--I'd planned to keep playing both, but I'm not so sure anymore--for the listed reasons and more.


I didn't comment on your post in any way other than "Much of what you brought isn't clearly a problem with the system." ... emphasis added. It means that I'm not really convinced that much of what you said was a problem with the system itself. Nowhere did I say that problems in your examples were probably the players.
If it's not the system, what does that leave besides the players (or, of course, me)?

Yes, it is clearly a problem with the system. The things I described are either built into the system or a direct consequence of it. The inability to have a big wall or obstructed passage be a challenge or obstacle for PCs from level 3 on is solely due to the system.

And these problems that I mentioned? We either don't have them in 4E, or they're significantly diminished.


Personally, I don't think it's worth it to make much more than a generalized remark when someone posts a large block of text; that just encourages more large blocks of text, rather than posts that are short and to the point. Besides, breaking your specific points up and debating in a quote-war is is just going to take this thread off-topic and turn it into a duplicate of all of the other 3e vs 4e threads (more than it is already).
Then maybe you shouldn't comment at all. Leaving a single snide "well I disagree" isn't going to contribute anything, since you're not backing it up.

[OneFamiliarFace]

Three words for him: Mutants and Masterminds.

Man, I wish I could get a hold of this system. Everyone keeps saying such good things about it!

[Jayabalard]

Running a game for the first time in a while helped turn me against 3E--I'd planned to keep playing both, but I'm not so sure anymore--for the listed reasons and more.If you'll note, this reminder is at the top of my post rather than being in response to anything that you've said. The reminder is directed at the people who are posting generalities (why they dislike 3e, see Karaswanton's post for example) rather than specific, first person stories about bad 3e experiences.


Then maybe you shouldn't comment at all. Leaving a single snide "well I disagree" isn't going to contribute anything, since you're not backing it up.I didn't disagree; I simply pointed out that that based on the information in your post, it isn't clear that the problem is inherent in the system. It might be. Or it might not be. I didn't say that you were wrong, or that you were right. I'm more than a little confused as to why you are getting so defensive; it seems to me that you might be better off focusing on defending your statements from someone who is actually disagreeing and making a contrary claim.

[Covered In Bees]

You should pretend that your post wasn't dismissive some more. Maybe then it'll be true.

[Kiara LeSabre]

/shrug ... it must be a horrible thing indeed to feel insulted by someone who questions whether the story that you're relating is one that actually happened to you or if it is (like so many others on internet forums) just hearsay.


If that's how you want to look at it. You were very sparing on the details of your experience so it seemed more like a general statement, not something specific.

Yes, in fact, I take my word seriously. To me, being accused of lying is not a small thing. That may seem silly and trivial to you; to me, it is not.

In any case, yes, I was speaking of an actual game. No, I don't recall all of the details; it was 3e back before there even was a 3.5e, and frankly, I've slept since then. There was only one fighter who was basically about as effective in melee against anything as the rogue was against undead or constructs. The rogue ruled melee with feinting cheese, the arcane archer ruled ranged, the psion was a decent Batman-lite, and the fighter was just sort of there. The rest of the party fell somewhere between those extremes of powerful and weak.

[Jayabalard]

You should pretend that your post wasn't dismissive some more. Maybe then it'll be true.I honestly have no idea what you're talking about.


Yes, in fact, I take my word seriously. To me, being accused of lying is not a small thing. That may seem silly and trivial to you; to me, it is not.If you don't want people to question whether you're relating first hand experience or whether you are relating hearsay, you could always try to be clearer. Here on the internet, it's not uncommon for people to pass off hearsay as if it were personal experience, so like anyone else, you're going to be questioned on it from time to time unless you make it very clear, both by your wording and by your use of detail, that you're relating first hand experience and not hearsay.

You can get offended and fly off the handle about it when someone isn't convinced or isn't clear on what you've said, or you can explain. The latter can lead to productive discussions, the former doesn't. It's your choice.

[Tormsskull]

In any case, yes, I was speaking of an actual game. No, I don't recall all of the details; it was 3e back before there even was a 3.5e, and frankly, I've slept since then.

Ok, my bad then, see, I was thinking you were trying to make a statement specifically about the fact that the Fighter as a class is horrible.

What you were actually trying to say is that in your specific campaign, from 3rd edition, of which the details you are not sure about, the Fighter character was very poor as compared to the rogue in that same campaign.

No argument there at all from me then.

[CASTLEMIKE]

Man, I wish I could get a hold of this system. Everyone keeps saying such good things about it!

http://www.rpgnow.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=mutants+and+ma ster+minds&quicksearch=1&search_filter=&filters=&search_free=&search_in_description=1&search_in_author=1&search_in_artist=1&x=10&y=9

First Edition used was $17+ at Amazon and Second Edition used was $20+.

$5 starter 101 PDF at RPG Now.

[Covered In Bees]

Ok, my bad then, see, I was thinking you were trying to make a statement specifically about the fact that the Fighter as a class is horrible.

What you were actually trying to say is that in your specific campaign, from 3rd edition, of which the details you are not sure about, the Fighter character was very poor as compared to the rogue in that same campaign.

No argument there at all from me then.

"This happened."

"You're not providing a specific example! You're probably just repeating something you heard! This doesn't say anything about the game as a whole!"

"Okay, here are the details."

"That's just your specific game! This doesn't say anything about the game as a whole!"

[Charity]

The thing that has really turned me off 3e is the players reaching 8th level, there is too many regular buffs to track, too many choices for the 'combat paralysis' cleric player, Too many big fights over in two rounds...

But worse than any of these things, was watching Ikkie deliberatly get his character (that he loved to roleplay and everyone loved to have in the game) butchered by a dragon because as a beguiler all his abilities were save or lose and just made the combats dull for everyone, himself included.
Don't get me wrong, all power to him for recognising this and making that toughest of all player decisions, but it highlighted to me the deep seated problems inherrent to 3e's save or lose style casting, it just sucks for everyone.

[Knaight]

Man, I wish I could get a hold of this system. Everyone keeps saying such good things about it!

I just picked it up at Barnes and Noble(I didn't even know they had a roleplaying section, but its actually better than at my game store. It had some white wolf stuff, D&D stuff, Mutants and Masterminds, and Fourth edition for Dummies). And it was awesome. I was actually able to create a character I had been visualizing, and just reading through the powers came up with more stuff for him. Basically an electric and magnetic channeler, who couldn't generate electricity, only channel it, or make it magnetic, with a battery pack built into the suit. Abilities like warping through power-cables touching generators and throwing lightning bolts, a magnetic forcefield, touching someone and screwing up their nerve impulses, etc.