Fundamental flaws of the 3e system?

[Fizban]

I still think it's a problem for there to be monster abilities that completely disable skills with no check, especially when the game makes skill monkey a discrete niche. Couldn't you simply grant the monster a large bonus to spot or listen? I feel like a really dedicated sneak should still be able to sneak past a sleeping dragon and nab something from his hoard; blindsight makes that mechanically impossible outside of darkstalker.

Nah- there's gotta be limits, being undetectable is one of the true disruptive abilities, and the DM is supposed to have the final limit, not the players. Having to deal with limits is a fundamental part of making things interesting. An arbitrarily large spot or listen bonus just means complaining that the bonus is too high and expectations that they should be able to beat it. Better to be honest and say no, this monster can't be snuck past without magic (or just can't be snuck past), than to present false hope you intend to never actually fulfill. If you want to let people sneak past sleeping dragons, then say that blindX doesn't function if they're unconscious- does it even function when unconscious? Probably depends on the fluff, but an easy ruling. Same as getting rid of non-magical magic, or maintaining that no you can't charm a zombie with Diplomacy, or a Charm spell, etc.

Of course I also don't recognize "skill monkey" or "stealth master" as a niche that needs protecting from monster abilities, since nothing in the game actually requires stealth- only Search, Disable Device, and maybe Open Lock. For actual games where those are made a thing, sure, but it's not inherent in the system (and I've yet to see anyone present a skill package that makes all PCs fairly required participants the same way they're expected to in combat).

Well as I said, there are spot fixes to the individual issues, but the real flaw or problem from my point of view is the mindset that 'the character build/preparatory stages is (the major) part of the game'.

Which I also disagree with. It is a major part of the game for some people, but not actually expected or required- as long as you don't actively try to make your character bad. Preparing spells is part of play, as are good tactical choices. Characters can be built for those who lack that skill, or the game can be run entirely with DM-pre-made characters, or indeed the heavy builders can be directed to ease up to match the rest.

While some people think planning a full build is necessary, it is entirely possible that this will set them up for failure- the rogue who refuses to stop taking rogue when it becomes clear that undead are the order of the campaign. I find full 20 builds kinda superfluous- you've already made all the choices, why bother playing a character that will apparently refuse to be affected by the campaign? And once you're actually in a campaign, picking stuff for your next level up really, really shouldn't be that hard- you just participated in 13.3 fights over multiple sessions, if you can pay enough attention to fight them, you can pay enough attention to pick something that sounds good.

The ideal sort of balance from my point of view would be that if you have a situation in a campaign and someone brings in the most optimized build they could come up with, or someone brings in a baseline reference build, then there is some achievable quantity of player skill that could make up that difference for the full dynamic range of character build level optimization options available in the system. I don't necessarily mean that the one character could fight and kill the other, but that basically a sufficiently savvy player can make up for almost any level of mechanical gap in a valid character which they're handed to play.

A tall order. Though funny thing is that this is actually true at the proper baseline no-op level, the "zero-point" optimization of actually knowing how to use positioning and the basic combat rules is what separates a meatshield from a useless fighter, while baseline spells used imperfectly demand a competent fighter as backup.

That doesn't mean that character build shouldn't matter, but rather it means that character build shouldn't dominate. A good build can make the skill level required lower, or can make a character more compatible with ideas and styles of play a player is comfortable with. The reasoning behind this is that if there are gaps which can't be crossed, it emphasizes a player's activities away from the table rather than at the table. Which makes the time spent at the table become more passive. If you could hand over your build to someone else and end up with the same result, I think that's a problem.

The problem is that the player with pre-game skill will almost always have more in-game skill to go with it, and some players do in fact have a limit on their effective in-game skill. In that case you either have the other players ordering them around, or a character so simple it may be obviously insulting. In order for this to actually be true, you need a very narrow range of build efficacy.

Compare with something like chess, where its entirely about the player's choices during play and there are no out-of-play choices that matter aside from who is playing black. So games absolutely don't have to be this way - there's a spectrum of options in the system design, and 3e sits on one extreme of that spectrum.

I would argue that's completely backwards. The out-of-play choices for chess are learning how to actually win at chess, and it's far more important than picking the perfect feat or spell for a character. DnD is meant to function at essentially any non-negative-op if you act carefully. But chess is played out across so many dissociated moves that you can't just sit down and play and expect to do well based on reactions and knowledge of basic rules. Chess has more required pre-game investment than DnD by far.


Unrelated, I remember another fundamental flaw:

Non-standardized ability scores as a thing in just any way. Rolled scores do not work (nor do rolled hit points). You cannot expect the game to be consistent when the very base power level of the characters isn't even constant, and people make up even more powerful rolling methods or otherwise just let the players have obviously above average stats. Point buy sounds like a good idea, but again they just immediately go for extra powerful stats and some characters can super specialize and maybe never pay the price while others can't.

You want fair and balanced? Elite array. That's how the playtest characters did it, that's how every published NPC does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far.