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  1. - Top - End - #271
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    Default Re: Unpopular D&D Opinions

    Point buy is better than classes.

    Why can I see pitchforks in the distance?

    Okay, 'unpopular' might be pushing it here. But honestly, while I've liked a few games with classes those have tended to be very narrow and providing the suitable archetypes (like Scum & Villainy). Most of the time I want the ability to build my character as I want, with all the weird things I can think of.

    If I'm playing a wizard and want healing spells I should be able to just pick the healing spells (maybe in a logical order). I shouldn't have to multiclass into Cleric (or Bard), or pick a specific character option, just to get them.

    Yes it's harder to balance, but I'm actually going to agree with the 'balance is overrated' camp. We do want a rough kind of balance, but we should admit that there's some kind of usefulness in going broad as well as deep. Point totals do that just as well as level totals.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

  2. - Top - End - #272
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    I agree, although the biggest source of increased turn time in my experience is one or both of
    Also any kind of reactions. Anything that requires you to context-switch between players more often than is strictly necessary tends to drag the game down to a crawl, particularly if people end up checking out when it's not there turn, because you get "wait, I had something" rewinds.

    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Been my line for a while now. Druids started as a sub class of cleric. That's the better idea.
    I think that's backwards. The game should do away with the Cleric class entirely, as the variety of religions in D&D is orders of magnitude too broad to be represented by a single "holy man" class. Let the priests of Obad-Hai be Druids, the priests of Nerull be Necromancers, and the priests of Boccob be Wizards. You can write a "Priest" subclass if you really want to.

    They used to be: been there, done that, got the t shirt. I for one am happy for the change in 5e that makes it different.
    Separating PCs and NPCs was the wrong fix for NPCs taking too long to create. The game should have figured out a way to make creating PCs reasonably quick, or at least segmenting off recognizably Wizard-ish or Fighter-ish chunks so that you could have easy NPC Fighters without having the party's Hobgoblin Rogue behave differently from other Hobgoblin Rogues (a state of affairs that is inherently insulting to verisimilitude).

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Point buy is better than classes.
    It's kind of a stretch to call that a "D&D Opinion".

  3. - Top - End - #273
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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Point buy is better than classes.
    I used to play the character building pr0n game. And the more buttons and levers, the more research, the more fun that is.

    Nowadays I prefer games where it's super simple to pick up and start playing. 15-20 minutes thinking about making a character tops. Because I'd rather be playing than building characters. The time I used to use in character building pr0n can be used to argue on a forum instead.

    Edit: There are super simple point buy games. But usually not at all simple, because folks that like point buy tend to want tons of buttons and levers.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    I used to play the character building pr0n game.
    Ok, I know I will feel dumb once you answer, but what is the Character Building Pr0n Game?

    I don't even recognize what pr0n means?
    *It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude... seeming to be true within the context of the game world.

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    Quote Originally Posted by dafrca View Post
    Ok, I know I will feel dumb once you answer, but what is the Character Building Pr0n Game?

    I don't even recognize what pr0n means?
    I was going to make a joke about phrasing or making character building feel sexual and wasn't sure what to go with, but I think you did it better with your honest question about what pr0n means.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  6. - Top - End - #276
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    Quote Originally Posted by dafrca View Post
    Ok, I know I will feel dumb once you answer, but what is the Character Building Pr0n Game?
    Its where you make characters just to make characters, in an infinite loop for that small jolt of satisfaction with each one, not because you'll ever play them.

    It's basically an TTRPG form of getting Stuck.

    I don't even recognize what pr0n means?
    Exactly what it means everywhere else.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Exactly what it means everywhere else.
    You mean not much, because its internet slang I haven't read since the 2000's?
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


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    Quote Originally Posted by RandomPeasant View Post
    I think that's backwards. The game should do away with the Cleric class entirely, as the variety of religions in D&D is orders of magnitude too broad to be represented by a single "holy man" class. Let the priests of Obad-Hai be Druids, the priests of Nerull be Necromancers, and the priests of Boccob be Wizards. You can write a "Priest" subclass if you really want to.
    Hm... I don't think I can fault this logic, but I wager people wouldn't care for it in practice.

  9. - Top - End - #279
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    You mean not much, because its internet slang I haven't read since the 2000's?
    It's a typo joke. People search for porn on the internet, but fast typing leads to spelling it as pron and because of the closeness of the "o" and "0" keys on the keyboard that furthers the typo to pr0n.
    Quote Originally Posted by OvisCaedo View Post
    Rules existing are a dire threat to the divine power of the DM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    It's a typo joke. People search for porn on the internet, but fast typing leads to spelling it as pron and because of the closeness of the "o" and "0" keys on the keyboard that furthers the typo to pr0n.
    Yes, I know. One which I haven't seen since the 2000s.
    Last edited by Lord Raziere; 2021-10-13 at 12:03 AM.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


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    Quote Originally Posted by RandomPeasant View Post
    It's kind of a stretch to call that a "D&D Opinion".
    Ten that to the people making point buy D&D.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    I used to play the character building pr0n game. And the more buttons and levers, the more research, the more fun that is.

    Nowadays I prefer games where it's super simple to pick up and start playing. 15-20 minutes thinking about making a character tops. Because I'd rather be playing than building characters. The time I used to use in character building pr0n can be used to argue on a forum instead.

    Edit: There are super simple point buy games. But usually not at all simple, because folks that like point buy tend to want tons of buttons and levers.
    It's not about having levers to push, as the rest of my post mentions it's about choice. 3.5 character building was in practice just as complicated as GURPS charger building, but with kits ability to break archetypes.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

  12. - Top - End - #282
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    Default Re: Unpopular D&D Opinions

    The worst thing in D&D is the stacking of bonuses and effects.
    “The party was flying, invisible and quietened …” should not be the start of any story.

    “My Barbarian entered rage, had bullsblood and barkskin cast on him, was buffed by the bardsong, was wearing a belt of frost giant strength and was double wielding two +4 axes of fire …” is too much.

    Buffing spells shouldn’t stack
    Bonuses should be pick the best, not add them all up.

  13. - Top - End - #283
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    My somewhat unpopular D&D opinions:


    1. Vancian casting (or whatever D&D does that is commonly called Vancian casting) is more unique and interesting than just having an MP pool. It's fine to have classes that work that way too, but I think Vancian should always be a part of D&D.

    2. Alignment is mostly fine if you treat it as descriptive, not proscriptive. It isn't necessary at all, but it at least provides a quick, easy way to describe a character's outlook in broad fashion.

    3. Forgotten Realms is just fine as a setting. It's a little overstuffed, but you don't need to & probably shouldn't be using everything in the canon anyway.

    4. 4e should have been marketed as a separate game without the D&D brand, and 3.5 should have continued for at least a few more years (perhaps with another revision akin to the 3.0-to-3.5 transition).


    More to come as I think of them.
    Quote Originally Posted by 2D8HP View Post
    Work is the scourge of the gaming classes!
    Quote Originally Posted by Kish View Post
    Neither Evershifting List of Perfectly Prepared Spells nor Grounds to Howl at the DM If I Ever Lose is actually a wizard class feature.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    It's not about having levers to push, as the rest of my post mentions it's about choice. 3.5 character building was in practice just as complicated as GURPS charger building, but with kits ability to break archetypes.
    That is the consequence of "getting certain choices exactly at specific levels", "options having prerequisites to be chosen" and "certain choices lead to automatic consequences at later levels, powers evolve".
    When i started 3.x, that was basically the first time i learned to actually plan ahead character development. In all the other systems i played before either there were no meaningfull choices or you just bought/increased whatever ability intrigued you at the moment or felt natural as character development. You could always pick up the other stuff later, if you wanted. But the D&D 3.0 levelling process with all its heavily restricted and intertwined options somehow managed to make the building far more complex without providing a matching variety in possible results.
    Last edited by Satinavian; 2021-10-13 at 02:45 AM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    It's not about having levers to push, as the rest of my post mentions it's about choice. 3.5 character building was in practice just as complicated as GURPS charger building, but with kits ability to break archetypes.
    Indeed.

    with DnD I'm stuck with variations on rogue, wizard or fighter.

    with something more universal, I can make more. I can build a character first and a combat job second. I can build someone with wealth who has human bodyguards to fight for them at character creation. I can make someone with powers without going through a pesky wizard class, I can make a playable demon or vampire without any moral judgments from some cosmos because I can make the fluff to make it good or at least acceptably cursed with awesome, I can make a character entirely around a single power and all its applications, or someone with an amount of skills a rogue can only dream of with skills that can't ever learn without even being anything vaguely thief like, I can make a character that is a species more alien than anything DnD could ever produce as a playable race and do it to match my preferences, and I play all that, without a bunch of hassle involving leveling, classes or races acting as barriers and in-betweens, just all the parts I need to assemble into what I want exactly clearly labeled, no inexact kludges from a bunch of things with fantasy terminology that are not meant to go together.
    I'm also on discord as "raziere".


  16. - Top - End - #286
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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    It's not about having levers to push, as the rest of my post mentions it's about choice.
    Tomayto Tomahto

    3.5 character building was in practice just as complicated as GURPS charger building, but with kits ability to break archetype
    Thats a bold claim. GURPs is wildly complicated with far more buttons and levers. I don't recall 3.5 being anywhere near it.

    But also calling 3e D&D a class-based system is a misnomer anyway. It wasn't really, except maybe a little bit with the original PHB only. It's a point buy with really complicated pre-requisite rules, and multiple different kinds of points you can spend (levels, feats, stacked spell caster levels, BAB, etc).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pex View Post
    The high level power of D&D is fine. It is perfectly acceptable and appropriate that PCs can "rewrite reality" so to speak and do awesome powerful things. Such power does not need to be nerfed nor removed from the game. If the campaign you envision cannot exist with such power perhaps end the campaign before the level of the power that ruins it for you or maybe another game system is more suitable. If you still want to play D&D you are not wrong to remove or alter the power that bugs you, but D&D is not wrong to have had the power in the first place and is undeserving of scorn because such power exists.
    Concur. Play until that plateau hits, and then start another campaign with another one of the group as DM. Or play some one shots.
    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    I'm presuming that role playing existed in other contexts, particularly medical, and was interested to see if D&D used it to define itself (whether or not it used the term wargame).
    No, it did not, until after it was published. The term arose during early play, and the first printed TSR ref I could find was in about 1975 in the back of Greyhawk and in some of the articles in Dragon. The role played by the characters were the role of fighting man, cleric, or magic user if you read Men and Magic.
    FWIW: proto role playing under Braunstein and Blackmoor campaigns were an outgrowth of miniatures campaigns (at the strategic level) and Diplomacy being fused by the players in that group. Oddly, Dave Wesley has related that he would not call what he was running in Braunstein role playing games (From the recent film Secrets of Blackmoor). it was This Thing. The coining of the term role playing game, for D&D, came after it was published. But it stuck, and people tried to catch that same lightning in other bottles as soon as they experienced it. (See Tunnels and Trolls and original Traveller as but two examples).
    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    But if you want to encourage complex characters, especially among new to roleplaying players but also even with experienced players, suggesting a couple of categories of motivations/personality traits as starting places to think about, and encouraging explicitly listing them as opposed to burying them in a backstory, can be useful.
    Or don't bury them in a back story.
    I liked it more when as "Team pro-civilization", "Team anti-civilization", and those in between.
    It worked better before it got overcomplicated by a two axis grid.
    Quote Originally Posted by Lemmy View Post
    There's nothing wrong with racial attributes and penalties. And nothing wrong with racial alignment either. Neither is necessary, but both are perfectly fine tools for character creation. It's perfectly fine for the minds of non-human species to work differently from the minds of humans. specially in a world with magic, divine intervention and all sorts of unnatural phenomena.
    Yes, and those who get offended and insist that non humans are really humans are -- wait, RL stupidity, never mind.
    The Sorcerer class was a bad idea, and being designed as "Wizards for noobs" didn't help.
    Yep.
    I like kenders.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Telok View Post
    But no, D&D can't manage that. Its too married to the "human with funny ears/forehead" model of things.
    get rid of the horns and the tail idiocy, and I'd consider allowing Tieflings into my campaigns.
    Quote Originally Posted by KineticDiplomat View Post
    2. D&D was built around a very Tolkien perspective (not in of itself a bad thing)
    Flat out wrong.
    Quote Originally Posted by dafrca View Post
    When my son was about 5 or 6 he wanted to play with minis like Dad. So we took a bunch of LEGO people {snip} I had more fun with that dungeon crawl game with him over the year or so he wanted to play than I did with 95% of the published rules I have tried.
    The play's the thing.
    Quote Originally Posted by Telwar View Post
    There's also the sin you mention, not paying attention and tuning out, which is, admittedly, system-agnostic
    Yeah. Rude too.
    In one of the 5e games we have going, we had a player, single-classed rogue, who would take 5 minutes to attack, move, and hide. He left after he cried about getting in an enemy aoe because two party members were near him, and thought we should have avoided him so he wouldn't wind up in the splash zone, and the rest of the party told him how wrong he was.
    Good riddance.
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-10-13 at 08:52 AM.
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  18. - Top - End - #288
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    Quote Originally Posted by KorvinStarmast View Post
    Dante called, he's got a special circle of Hades set aside for you.
    Kender > Hobbits.

    Halflings were a joke before Kender drove them into a better direction. Fully on purpose too, the folks at TSR understood how lame hobbit-halflings were. I get that Kender are a different kind of joke, and total twerps at that. But they were necessary to break Halflings out of the Hobbit mold. Without them we wouldn't have had 3e nimble and lithe nomad halflings, and we wouldn't have had the fairly agile hobbits of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings either. Instead we would have just kept on with pot-bellied walking embarrassments.

    Kender, while not the best implementation, were the best thing to ever happen to halflings.

  19. - Top - End - #289
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Thats a bold claim. GURPs is wildly complicated with far more buttons and levers. I don't recall 3.5 being anywhere near it.
    The difference is that while GURPS has a fair amount of number fiddling, most of what you end up doing is fairly straightforward. Yeah, you end up doing some accountant work, but what you're doing is kinda just what's obvious. "I want to be a good fighter". Okay, you should probably be dextrous, and strong, and be good at taking a hit. And you should be good with a sword. There's a bunch of fiddling with numbers to optimize those factors, but what you're doing and why is pretty surface-level obvious.

    3.x OTOH - the book-diving that you need to do to figure out when to take class X to get the prereqs for prestige class Y so that you can get ability Z to get the bonus A high enough to make feat B work well......

    GURPS is a math problem, but the equations you're solving are straightforward. D&D 3 is an exercise in combinatorial complexity.

    (NOTE: If you assume all GURPS books are on the table, then yeah, GURPS can quickly eclipse D&D. But nobody does that. The default assumption for GURPS is that you start with the basic book, and maybe one or two others that make sense for the game).

    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    But also calling 3e D&D a class-based system is a misnomer anyway. It wasn't really, except maybe a little bit with the original PHB only. It's a point buy with really complicated pre-requisite rules, and multiple different kinds of points you can spend (levels, feats, stacked spell caster levels, BAB, etc).
    100%. It's a very complicated, very coarse, point buy system where each "skill" you buy has multiple values that all intertwine in unpredictable ways.

    This is a big part of why I don't like D&D. I have other games that do "complex building" in ways I like better. I have games that actually do "generic system" rather than approximating it. If I play D&D, I do it to get away from that complexity. And the optimization game doesn't bring me joy, nor does the zero-to-superhero advancement.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Point buy is better than classes.

    But honestly, while I've liked a few games with classes those have tended to be very narrow and providing the suitable archetypes (like Scum & Villainy). Most of the time I want the ability to build my character as I want, with all the weird things I can think of.

    If I'm playing a wizard and want healing spells I should be able to just pick the healing spells (maybe in a logical order). I shouldn't have to multiclass into Cleric (or Bard), or pick a specific character option, just to get them.

    Yes it's harder to balance, but I'm actually going to agree with the 'balance is overrated' camp. We do want a rough kind of balance, but we should admit that there's some kind of usefulness in going broad as well as deep. Point totals do that just as well as level totals.
    Quoted for truth.

    I prefer games with no classes at all, and actually see classes as a restriction system for the players. Classes just feel artificial to me.
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    Quote Originally Posted by OldTrees1 View Post
    There should be:

    A spellcaster that casts at will (unpopular but not too unpopular).
    I agree. Especially since that's what we see in pretty much every piece of fantasy media that isn't by Jack Vance

    Quote Originally Posted by NichG View Post
    Balance doesn't matter and balance-focused design often sells out the weird and inspiring soul of a thing in exchange for making stuff quantitatively comparable.
    And it often destroys believability as well
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    The difference is that while GURPS has a fair amount of number fiddling, most of what you end up doing is fairly straightforward. Yeah, you end up doing some accountant work, but what you're doing is kinda just what's obvious. "I want to be a good fighter". Okay, you should probably be dextrous, and strong, and be good at taking a hit. And you should be good with a sword. There's a bunch of fiddling with numbers to optimize those factors, but what you're doing and why is pretty surface-level obvious.

    3.x OTOH - the book-diving that you need to do to figure out when to take class X to get the prereqs for prestige class Y so that you can get ability Z to get the bonus A high enough to make feat B work well......

    GURPS is a math problem, but the equations you're solving are straightforward. D&D 3 is an exercise in combinatorial complexity.

    (NOTE: If you assume all GURPS books are on the table, then yeah, GURPS can quickly eclipse D&D. But nobody does that. The default assumption for GURPS is that you start with the basic book, and maybe one or two others that make sense for the game).
    I've found that with GURPS the true complexity is in the resolution, not character generation or advancement. By that, I mean do you include all the size and range and relative velocity and lighting and wind speed charts to modify your otherwise simple 3d6-vs-skill check, or micromanage your monthly income checks during downtime, and so on (or of course if using 3e Vehicles determine whether your vehicle has cramped or comfortable seats as the weight and volume differences will effect the vehicles performance).

    And agreed -- 3e D&D's complexity is how discrete components combine.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanarii View Post
    Kender > Hobbits.
    Hobbits in their original fiction were far and away better than Kender in their pseudo-original fiction. I read the Dragonlance stories, and a bunch of the supplemental stories, and the Twins trilogy.
    Halflings were a joke -
    As an OD&D PC, that's a fair point . (Where did those words go? edit)
    It was interesting learn, post hoc as he reminisced, that E.G.G. originally didn't want to include them, but during their play sessions before publication a lot of his players wanted one so he caved in and included them in Men and Magic.
    Wasn't until the thief class showed up (Greyhawk Supplement) that hobbit PCs came into their own. With a level cap of 4, Fighting Man (Hero) in the original game (3 books) were quite limited in their potential which was, more or less, "realistic" when compared to hobbits in the original fiction.

    Kender are a farce taken one step too far, to the point that the joke fails and the audience starts pelting the stage with overripe fruit and veg.
    (Yes, I realize that we have different tastes on that ).
    Last edited by KorvinStarmast; 2021-10-13 at 02:15 PM.
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    a. Malifice (paraphrased):
    Rulings are not 'House Rules.' Rulings are a DM doing what DMs are supposed to do.
    b. greenstone (paraphrased):
    Agency means that they {players} control their character's actions; you control the world's reactions to the character's actions.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
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    Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
    I've found that with GURPS the true complexity is in the resolution, not character generation or advancement. By that, I mean do you include all the size and range and relative velocity and lighting and wind speed charts to modify your otherwise simple 3d6-vs-skill check, or micromanage your monthly income checks during downtime, and so on (or of course if using 3e Vehicles determine whether your vehicle has cramped or comfortable seats as the weight and volume differences will effect the vehicles performance).
    It's weird because that complexity is very dependent upon which particular subsystem you're dealing with - the ranged weapon modifiers are way more complex than melee combat, but also way less complex than anything in Vehicles.

    GURPS is large and full of multitudes - it's hard to really make any sweeping generalization about it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    100%. It's a very complicated, very coarse, point buy system where each "skill" you buy has multiple values that all intertwine in unpredictable ways.

    This is a big part of why I don't like D&D. I have other games that do "complex building" in ways I like better. I have games that actually do "generic system" rather than approximating it. If I play D&D, I do it to get away from that complexity. And the optimization game doesn't bring me joy, nor does the zero-to-superhero advancement.
    Thankfully a lot of that mess went away in 5e. Especially played as designed, not played-as-forum-optimized (ie play without feats and especially without multi-classing). The rules-interaction graph got severely pruned. And I'll put in my usual pushback against the idea that D&D is a "generic system." 3e tried to be and failed because that's not what it is at its core.

    Quote Originally Posted by Easy e View Post
    Quoted for truth.

    I prefer games with no classes at all, and actually see classes as a restriction system for the players. Classes just feel artificial to me.
    Classes are supposed to restrict. Because that's what all rules do. Rules are a scaffold to assist people; the core state is free-form. But free-form is exhausting and prone to quarrels; rules provide a common language at the cost of restricting the possible. Classes, in particular, are designed to reduce the archetypes available to those that the system
    a) wants to support mechanically
    b) wants to "tell stories"[1] about

    If your goal is "generic genre emulator", then yes. Classes are probably not the way to go. But D&D doesn't claim to be a generic genre emulator. The d20 system did, but that was a framework for building systems. And was an abject failure at truly being generic. Classes do best when they represent strong archetypes fictionally that have clean, coherent mechanics. Class-as-grab-bag-of-mechanical-bits is a flawed use that gives all the restrictions but none of the benefits.

    [1] in the broadest possible sense, ie "include in the fiction of the world".

    ---------

    Unpopular opinion: level-by-level multiclassing was, is, and always will be a mistake for a class-based system. 2e's multiclassing (ie fixed choice, xp split between all classes) is better than 3e (or 5e)'s system; 4e/PF2e's feat-based "multiclassing" is another alternative (with tradeoffs so it's not a clear better/worse).
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    It's weird because that complexity is very dependent upon which particular subsystem you're dealing with - the ranged weapon modifiers are way more complex than melee combat, but also way less complex than anything in Vehicles.

    GURPS is large and full of multitudes - it's hard to really make any sweeping generalization about it.
    Okay, GURPSa probably a bad example, but it's also the heaviest point buy system I have real experience in, receipt maybe Shadowrun. I'm much more comfortable with stuff like Unknown Armies (which is maybe as complex as D&D 5e).


    Also, while D&D might not sell itself as a generic genre emulator, it's certainly how it's treated by many people. Of course the general view here is that doing that is likely to make D&D work a lot less well, because it's not set up to enable it.

    I still don't see the need for classes though, especially the messy kludge in modern D&D.
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    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Thankfully a lot of that mess went away in 5e. Especially played as designed, not played-as-forum-optimized (ie play without feats and especially without multi-classing). The rules-interaction graph got severely pruned.
    For sure! Unfortunately, it also feels really flat to me. I've tried it, multiple times with different groups. It's never "hit".

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    And I'll put in my usual pushback against the idea that D&D is a "generic system." 3e tried to be and failed because that's not what it is at its core.
    I agree it's not a generic system. I don't know that it tried to be. I think a lot of people saw the number of widgets, realized that with combinations they could do many things (even more than the designers imagined, probably), and decided they could use it as a generic system.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    If your goal is "generic genre emulator", then yes. Classes are probably not the way to go.
    100%. Classes create focus.

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    Unpopular opinion: level-by-level multiclassing was, is, and always will be a mistake for a class-based system. 2e's multiclassing (ie fixed choice, xp split between all classes) is better than 3e (or 5e)'s system; 4e/PF2e's feat-based "multiclassing" is another alternative (with tradeoffs so it's not a clear better/worse).
    I actually agree with this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Okay, GURPSa probably a bad example, but it's also the heaviest point buy system I have real experience in, receipt maybe Shadowrun. I'm much more comfortable with stuff like Unknown Armies (which is maybe as complex as D&D 5e).
    I think it's a fine example. My point is that D&D multiclassing is as complex, if not more so, than the most complex point buy systems. I don't know of any counter-arguments. And I absolutely think the complexity is worse because it's illogical. Like, a newbie GURPS character and an expert's will look broadly the same. The expert will just be better at allocating points and know a few tricks, all of which make sense.

    A beginner D&D character and an expert's will likely look nothing alike, even if they're targeting the same idea. "Don't be a monk, be an unarmed Swordsage" is like the tip of the iceberg.
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    Quote Originally Posted by kyoryu View Post
    I think it's a fine example. My point is that D&D multiclassing is as complex, if not more so, than the most complex point buy systems. I don't know of any counter-arguments. And I absolutely think the complexity is worse because it's illogical. Like, a newbie GURPS character and an expert's will look broadly the same. The expert will just be better at allocating points and know a few tricks, all of which make sense.

    A beginner D&D character and an expert's will likely look nothing alike, even if they're targeting the same idea. "Don't be a monk, be an unarmed Swordsage" is like the tip of the iceberg.
    I agree with this. Complexity is one thing, but hidden and trap-filled complexity is a pure evil. 3e character building above the very bottom of the optimization range is an exercise in tap-dancing across a dense minefield. Except many of the mines have their triggers well before the actual mine and are on a time-delay, so you tripped it way back when (when you chose to put 3 points into X instead of 4) but it didn't blow up until much later, and now you've got a sharply limited or distorted character.

    This also makes it a nightmare for anyone without full system mastery. Which creates a strong barrier to entry and means you end up playing the rules more than playing the game. Instead of using the rules as a scaffold to support the tricky bits (while leaving the rest free to flow), they're now a set of obtuse and strangely-placed hoops you must jump through to get anything done. It's red-tape, the game system. Couple that with lots of small, stacking, conditional modifiers that are necessary to hit arbitrary benchmarks and it's pain.

    In theory, you can do all these wonderful things. In practice, the palette is much more limited because most of those wonderful things are dredged in layers of contact poisons or just don't work when you try to use them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    This also makes it a nightmare for anyone without full system mastery. Which creates a strong barrier to entry and means you end up playing the rules more than playing the game. Instead of using the rules as a scaffold to support the tricky bits (while leaving the rest free to flow), they're now a set of obtuse and strangely-placed hoops you must jump through to get anything done. It's red-tape, the game system. Couple that with lots of small, stacking, conditional modifiers that are necessary to hit arbitrary benchmarks and it's pain.
    Really, it makes it a pain for tables with mixed levels of mastery. D&D3 works... reasonably well... for players that approach it in a pretty straightforward way. The problem is that the effectiveness cap for high mastery (even without getting into TO levels) is so much higher than the baseline of "person with a reasonable understanding of the system, making choices that appear reasonable".
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