Monte Cook IS working on 5th edition...

[ModelCitizen]

I really don't see a problem with fires that do different levels of damage, because different fires are different. Some are hotter than others.

Moving over a slow burning woodpile should probably be different damage compared to moving through a house engulfed in flames and that's different compared to jumping into the heart of a smelter or getting blasted by a high pressure steam vent. You're probably not going to have a table for all of these, so it's going to take some DM adjudication anyway.

Instead of rules for campfires and burning houses you could have rules for "small fires" and "conflagrations," with examples of each. The DM picks whichever one makes the most sense. (Which is fine, as long the DM who thinks "makes the most sense" means "serves my railroad plot" is consistently told to go put dicks in his mouth.)

But whatever type of fire you think you have, it needs clear rules. Writing rules for environmental damage takes a bit of thought. You either have to:

-pick a static number that will matter to mid-level creatures without accidentally oneshotting low-level creatures

-or pick a scaling number that won't outscale resistances.

I don't want to have to figure that out in the middle of combat. I've written fire rules I like better than 3e's but in an actual session I don't have time to think it through.[/i]

[hogarth]

The irony is that Monte is using this column to say, in essence, "Hey, remember all of those improvements I and my fellow designers introduced when we made 3E? They're terrible!" And he's wrong!

Leaving aside magic (which has always had a dysfunctional relationship in D&D since day 1), almost every rules change they made in the 3.0E core rulebooks was well thought out and an improvement on games of that era. The reason that people argue with 3E D&D rules is not because they're bad; on the contrary, it's because they're worth arguing about, rather than just saying "they're stupid, we don't use them".

My conspiracy theory is that Monte would be delighted for D&D to go back to 3E, but since Pathfinder is already occupying that slot, he and Mike Mearls have to sell themselves and everyone on something different.

[Swordslinger]

The irony is that Monte is using this column to say, in essence, "Hey, remember all of those improvements I and my fellow designers introduced when we made 3E? They're terrible!" And he's wrong!

Leaving aside magic (which has always had a dysfunctional relationship in D&D since day 1), almost every rules change they made in 3E was well thought out and an improvement on games of that era. The reason that people argue with 3E D&D rules is not because they're bad; on the contrary, it's because they're worth arguing about, rather than just saying "they're stupid, we don't use them".

I wouldn't go that far. There were a lot of great changes which Monte is considering revoking, like the turn/action structure (probably one of the best changes 3E made overall).

3E also made a lot of bad changes too. Most of them involved being overly tedious. It wasn't so much that they were bad ideas overall, but they were bad ideas for a tabletop game.

NPCs using the same system as PCs comes to mind first. Nice concept, but in a game with magic items and daily abilities, it just doesn't work and it ends up giving the DM a much larger workload for no good reason.

The magic item christmas tree started in 3E, where the game became about collecting as many bonuses as you could instead of using more miscellaneous cool items like 2E. In 2E, you had maybe 3 or so mainstream items. Magic swords, magic armor and rings of protection. 3E nearly doubled that: Amulets of natural armor, rings of protection, magic weapons, magic armor, a stat booster item for your main stat and an amulet of health plus an item to let you fly. 2E had it right here where you had only a few items that let you hit stuff harder.

I don't think I ever really encountered item slot bloat in 2E the way I see it in 3E/4E where people want to fill every possible slot. If this is Diablo 2, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because people enjoy just getting a string of mindless buff items to make their numbers bigger, but this is tabletop, having cubes of force and helms of teleportation are more interesting than the gauntlets of slightly higher attack bonus.

Temporary buffs to ability scores (like polymorph), Ability damage and drain were also nice ideas on paper but were very slow to handle in play, since they required several steps of recalculation. Okay for a CRPG, but tedious for a pencil and paper RPG.

The skill system was also just not good in 3E. It was too easy to get crazy broken levels of a skill, most skills were awful and the system went straight off the RNG.

There's plenty of things to want to change in 3E to make a better game, unfortunately Monte is talking about the wrong stuff for the most part. Of course, Monte is a terrible designer so I'd expect nothing less than him going off on stupid tangents.

[hogarth]

I wouldn't go that far. There were a lot of great changes which Monte is considering revoking, like the turn/action structure (probably one of the best changes 3E made overall).

3E also made a lot of bad changes too. Most of them involved being overly tedious. It wasn't so much that they were bad ideas overall, but they were bad ideas for a tabletop game.

NPCs using the same system as PCs comes to mind first. Nice concept, but in a game with magic items and daily abilities, it just doesn't work and it ends up giving the DM a much larger workload for no good reason.

I guess it depends on how you value "simulationism". But note that (a) in 3.0E, monsters did not use the same system as PCs (although it was mostly similar) and (b) in most games that I can think of prior to 3.0E, "classed" NPCs did, in fact, use the same system as PCs (even if some aspects were sometimes glossed over).

The magic item christmas tree started in 3E[..]

I don't think I ever really encountered item slot bloat in 2E the way I see it in 3E/4E where people want to fill every possible slot. [..]

Temporary buffs to ability scores (like polymorph) [..]

That's why I put in the caveat "Leaving aside magic..." There are plenty of things wrong if you include magic, I agree.

The skill system was also just not good in 3E. It was too easy to get crazy broken levels of a skill[..]

In the 3.0 core rulebooks? Without magic? You'll have to provide an example, I'm afraid.

[Swordslinger]

In the 3.0 core rulebooks? Without magic? You'll have to provide an example, I'm afraid.

The gap between specialists and non specialists keeps getting bigger. Your average untrained guard at level 1 has somewhat of a chance to spot a level 1 rogue, but at 20th, that chance is effectively nothing.

Basically everytime you're not pumping your skill, you're falling behind in level appropriate challenges, until you fall off the RNG completely.

The other problem with the skill system is a purely conceptual one in that it often encourages a bunch of tedious rolling for no reason. This could definitely use some simplification. I actually liked Mearls' idea with simplifying the skill system where your training in climb actually let you climb some things automatically. That's a good thing. If part of your character concept is that you're a climber, then just letting them climb mundane things without a roll is fine.

3E/4E were very roll heavy with skills. Want to forge a sword? roll for it. Want to avoid getting lost in the desert? Roll for it. Want to sail a ship? Roll for it. These rolls are in most case needless. It's fine to just say someone with weaponsmithing can make weapons. Do we really need to slow down the game with a roll? Lets just give him a time amount it takes to do it and go. D&D needs a move away from the check/DC system and more towards the concept of skill abilities that provide automatic things you can do. No roll required.


And the stealth system..damn. A spot/listen check for every creature and a move silent/hide for everything. That's just bulky as hell. There's got to be a faster way of handling that.

[hogarth]

In the 3.0 core rulebooks? Without magic? You'll have to provide an example, I'm afraid.

The gap between specialists and non specialists keeps getting bigger. Your average untrained guard at level 1 has somewhat of a chance to spot a level 1 rogue, but at 20th, that chance is effectively nothing.

And that's broken in your opinion? Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

3E/4E were very roll heavy with skills. Want to forge a sword? roll for it. Want to avoid getting lost in the desert? Roll for it. Want to sail a ship? Roll for it. These rolls are in most case needless. It's fine to just say someone with weaponsmithing can make weapons.

The 3.0 book's Take 10 rule was miles ahead of any other game of that era in terms of eliminating skill rolls, IMO.

I think you're missing my point a little bit -- I'm not saying that the 3.0 rules have the perfect skill system, for instance. But I can't think of another game from the same time (or earlier) that has a better one, with the possible exception of "just use Magical Tea Party".

[Username17]

Skill ranks are fairly bad. They are extremely divergent.

3e had an objectively terrible set of Stealth and Diplomacy subsystems. 2nd edition AD&D did better at both of those with secondary skills and the fucking bizarre Thief Hide in Shadows thing (even though that system was also bad).

But yes, Take 10 and Take 20 were fucking brilliant. And at low level, the skill values and DCs worked really well. The entire skill system seems to have been unplaytested past maybe level 5, and I would want to go to a system that was a lot more like 2nd Edition AD&D going forward. But most of the innovations were solid. And at very low level it works extremely well.

Except for Stealth/Perception. That doesn't work at any level in 3e. I can't even figure out how the designers thought that shit worked, and I have never played under two MCs who played it the same way.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Skill ranks are fairly bad. They are extremely divergent.

3e had an objectively terrible set of Stealth and Diplomacy subsystems. 2nd edition AD&D did better at both of those with secondary skills and the fucking bizarre Thief Hide in Shadows thing (even though that system was also bad).

Nope. The 2E Persuasion NWP is awful (or at least it boils down to Magical Tea Party because of the DM adding arbitrary modifiers). The idea that every character (except thieves) is equally bad at sneaking is awful, not to mention that the possibility of surprise is its own unrelated subsystem.

You're clearly getting "I have many specific complaints about the 3.0 system" mixed up with "I have only one general complaint about the 2E system -- it's bad". The 3.0E Diplomacy and Stealth systems are flawed (even if you ignore magic, which totally fucks them both to oblivion), but they're still miles ahead of 2E.

[violence in the media]

In the 3.0 core rulebooks? Without magic? You'll have to provide an example, I'm afraid.

The gap between specialists and non specialists keeps getting bigger. Your average untrained guard at level 1 has somewhat of a chance to spot a level 1 rogue, but at 20th, that chance is effectively nothing.

And that's broken in your opinion? Different strokes for different folks, I guess.

I read that as a 20th level guard has no chance to spot a 20th level rogue--not that he was referencing the same 1st level guard the 1st level rogue was avoiding.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Nope. The 2E Persuasion NWP is awful (or at least it boils down to Magical Tea Party because of the DM adding arbitrary modifiers).

I think he was talking about the reaction roll, not the NWP

[Kaelik]

I read that as a 20th level guard has no chance to spot a 20th level rogue--not that he was referencing the same 1st level guard the 1st level rogue was avoiding.

That's how I read it too, but I read it as a 20th level guard who is untrained in spot.

And... yes, that should be the case. If you went 20 motherfucking levels without trying to spot better, or learn how to spot better, you should not be able to spot the guy who spent those same 20 levels learning every trick in the game to be good at hiding.

If you are 12, and you enter a math competition even though you never spent any time outside of mandatory math classes even thinking about math, you stand a chance, though not a good one, of beating the nerdy math kid.

When you are 86, and you still never spent any time doing anything math related, you will lose 1000 out of 1000 times to that nerdy math kid if he went on to become a mathematician.

[Swordslinger]

Nope. The 2E Persuasion NWP is awful (or at least it boils down to Magical Tea Party because of the DM adding arbitrary modifiers).

Sadly this is true, but it's still better than 3E's diplomacy system. This is actually case where having no rule (or one grounded in DM adjudication) is superior to a straight up bad rule.

There are games where the 2E system can work if the DM is good enough at adjudicating it. There are however no games where the 3E system works well.

Vague or unwritten rules are better than having rules that are concrete but terrible. Which actually should be a general rule of game design.

Don't write it down unless you know it works.

Breaking of that rules is actually probably responsible for most of 3E's problems. As Frank said, 3E actually runs very well if you stay at 5th level and below. This is because it was the range where the game was extensively playtested. Once you start getting to the bullshit where the designers wrote shit without knowing if it'd work or not, that's where the game really fell apart.

[Username17]

The idea that every character (except thieves) is equally bad at sneaking is awful, not to mention that the possibility of surprise is its own unrelated subsystem.

So? Yeah, it's bad. So fucking what? The 3e stealth/perception subsystem is unusable. It's contradictory, it's fiddly, and the outputs don't make any sense. It is a worse subsystem than Champions' "roll a 15 or less on 3d6 to have the GM agree in some abstract way that you were stealthy". 3e Stealth/Perception is so awful that it is basically a joke.

I mean for fuck's sake, if you look in the DMG, it tells you that the base DC is to spot people at maximum visual range, with every point you fail by decreasing the range you spot the target at. If you go by the PHB, the base DC is to spot someone at point blank, with the DC increasing by 1 for every 10 feet. By the DMG, everyone is defacto invisible inside, because maximum range is like ten feet away. By the PHB, everyone is invisible on the plains because encounter distances are more than the entire RNG worth of spot penalties. Both of them are worse and more insulting than rolling a d6 and being surprised on a 1. And having both of them together makes it a fucking nightmare.

3E D&D has the worst stealth and perception subsystem of any edition of D&D. Which is fucking amazing, because that subsystem is fucking awful in AD&D, 2e, and 4e.

-Username17

[hogarth]

So? Yeah, it's bad. So fucking what? The 3e stealth/perception subsystem is unusable.

Oh. My. God. I used it in a game.

HOLY SHIT...I'M CEASING TO EXIST!!!

[Username17]

So? Yeah, it's bad. So fucking what? The 3e stealth/perception subsystem is unusable.

Oh. My. God. I used it in a game.

HOLY SHIT...I'M CEASING TO EXIST!!!

You know what? I'll bet you didn't. When was the last time you had people take observe actions? When was the last time you counted squares and gave out Spot/Listen penalties? When was the last time you had sneaking people make a move silently check for every move action?

-Username17

[hogarth]

So? Yeah, it's bad. So fucking what? The 3e stealth/perception subsystem is unusable.

Oh. My. God. I used it in a game.

HOLY SHIT...I'M CEASING TO EXIST!!!

You know what? I'll bet you didn't. When was the last time you had people take observe actions? When was the last time you counted squares and gave out Spot/Listen penalties? When was the last time you had sneaking people make a move silently check for every move action?

Okay, that's fair enough. It's more often than not that I've ignored some bits of the rules (on both sides of the screen), although I have played in the Core Coliseum on the WotC message boards where all of those things were observed religiously (and tediously). As I admitted above, there are a number of legitimate complaints against the Hide/Move Silently/Spot/Listen

On the other hand, I've never used the 1E or 2E Move Silently/Hide in Shadows rules. Ever. Not even a variant thereof. And I don't think anyone even understood how it worked, other than the thief/rogue player rolls and then the DM either obeys or ignores the roll as the case may be.

It is a worse subsystem than Champions' "roll a 15 or less on 3d6 to have the GM agree in some abstract way that you were stealthy".

Yeah, like that. If you're arguing that GM fiat is better than the 3.0E system, I cannot disagree more. I'm surprised that you can't disagree more, considering all of your statements in favour of taking power out of the GM and into the hands of the players.

[Username17]

It is a worse subsystem than Champions' "roll a 15 or less on 3d6 to have the GM agree in some abstract way that you were stealthy".

Yeah, like that. If you're arguing that GM fiat is better than the 3.0E system, I cannot disagree more. I'm surprised that you can't disagree more, considering all of your statements in favour of taking power out of the GM and into the hands of the players.

"Fuckit, the DM just decides something." is a terrible rule. But it's still better than a rule that is contradictory and unworkable, because that just ends up like that anyway.

-Username17

[hogarth]

It is a worse subsystem than Champions' "roll a 15 or less on 3d6 to have the GM agree in some abstract way that you were stealthy".

Yeah, like that. If you're arguing that GM fiat is better than the 3.0E system, I cannot disagree more. I'm surprised that you can't disagree more, considering all of your statements in favour of taking power out of the GM and into the hands of the players.

"Fuckit, the DM just decides something." is a terrible rule. But it's still better than a rule that is contradictory and unworkable, because that just ends up like that anyway.

-Username17

I don't know which parts are supposed to be contradictory in 3.0E. Some parts are clunky, but that's not unworkable. Certainly not as unworkable as "Mother May I"!

[Username17]

I don't know which parts are supposed to be contradictory in 3.0E. Some parts are clunky, but that's not unworkable. Certainly not as unworkable as "Mother May I"!

What is the DC to see someone at the start of the encounter? Reconcile the rules for Vision and Spot. One of them has a low DC that ramps up as you move away from yourself, the other has a high DC that ramps down as things approach you. Unless line of sight is exactly 200 feet, the two numbers are absolutely nothing alike.

Direct contradiction is worse than Mother May I. At least in Mother May I, both you and the MC know that is what you're playing. With direct contradiction, there is a very real chance that the two players will not know that the other person is operating under extremely different preconceptions.

I'm not saying that Mother May I is good. I hate it. It's just that there is in fact one thing worse than Mother May I, and that is definitive rules stated in contradictory manner so that you're playing Mother May I anyway plus the added unwelcome effect of not knowing that you are doing it going in. At least overt Mother May I has an implied social contract.

-Username17

[Swordslinger]

I'm not saying that Mother May I is good. I hate it. It's just that there is in fact one thing worse than Mother May I, and that is definitive rules stated in contradictory manner so that you're playing Mother May I anyway plus the added unwelcome effect of not knowing that you are doing it going in. At least overt Mother May I has an implied social contract.

Also a rule that outright breaks the game is worse than Mother May I. Having no rule at all is almost always superior to having a game breaking rule.

[Koumei]

HOLY SHIT...I'M CEASING TO EXIST!!!

We could be so lucky.

[hogarth]

HOLY SHIT...I'M CEASING TO EXIST!!!

We could be so lucky.

I knew it was only a matter of time before someone would swing at the softball.

[hogarth]

I don't know which parts are supposed to be contradictory in 3.0E. Some parts are clunky, but that's not unworkable. Certainly not as unworkable as "Mother May I"!

What is the DC to see someone at the start of the encounter? Reconcile the rules for Vision and Spot. One of them has a low DC that ramps up as you move away from yourself, the other has a high DC that ramps down as things approach you. Unless line of sight is exactly 200 feet, the two numbers are absolutely nothing alike.

It's confusing, but I don't think it's contradictory (in one case it's talking about potential encounter distance and in the other case it's talking about actual hiding). But I'll concede and say it's just as bad as previous games (even though I think it's easier to fix).

[Josh_Kablack]

Frank's leaving out the silliness that results from spotting with illumination levels: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm

Try to wrap your head around how those interact on a battlemap wherein Galstaff, sorcerer of light has a light spell on his pointy hat and The Amazing Darkon has a darkness on the knife in his hand.

You know the old joke about the guy looking for a quarter under the streetlight because there's more light there than where he dropped it - well there's at least one possible interpretation of the 3.5 lighting rules that make them actually work like that.

[hogarth]

Another basically content-less column from Monte:
http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... l/20111213

TL; DR version -- "Why don't we let the DM adjudicate stuff that isn't in the rules?"

Uh....duh?

The sentence that I'm skeptical about is this: "The game is filled with things that the DM can do better than the rules, and the rules can do better than the DM."

While it's true, it's also clear to me that Monte overestimates the amount of good rulings that the average DM can make up on the fly.