You still haven't mentioned anything at all that is remotely relevant in the games most people played. Even activating boots of speed wasn't really something you wanted to do very often if what you were going to do was cast spells. Spending any resources to be able to dump spells faster is only remotely relevant if you actually have enough spell slots that you have extra slots for battle spells that you otherwise won't be able to cast because battles are going to end before you can cast them all. That's just not the kind of first world problem that Wizards actually had before about level 10.maglag wrote:You didn't even need to burn spells, just buy some super cheap boots of speed you noob. And yes casters could dominate an encounter with a well aimed spell thanks to all the elegant mathematic, but haste meant casters were never in real danger of failing anything because anything that managed to survive that first spell probably wouldn't be able to survive the next. Whereas the fighter got to stab again at -5 and -10, yay for elegant math!
Yes, the game broke down in various ways in the double digit levels. You haven't done a very good job of describing the ways in which that happened, but we'll all grant that it did. But your characterization of that as "half the game" is fucking absurd. People stop playing any particular campaign after some finite amount of time. Some people stop after level 2. Some people stop after level 5. The people actually playing at level 13 who give a single shit what you can do with a 7th level spell slot is a minority of a minority of a minority of a minority of a minority.
I still don't know what you think this statement is supposed to demonstrate or prove. Ogres were a good example of a well balanced challenge at the level they were presented in 3e. Dangerous, but handlable at the level described (2nd) by a standard party. There will of course be some monsters that are more dangerous and in melee and some monsters that are less dangerous in melee. And obviously, Ogres fall into the 1st category.maglag wrote:Also notice how the ogre has only a +1 Will save, so still easy caster fodder.
At 2nd level, the Fighter gets plenty chances to shine by having a longsword and cleave. That makes him MVP against a lot of enemies. It's totally OK that there are also some encounters at 2nd level where the Wizard casts sleep and then the PCs just win. Like, why wouldn't it work like that?
It's just very weird that you keep pointing to things that legitimately were not problems, that actually were very good examples of the game working like a very finely tuned machine, and acting like they somehow prove the opposite point.
There are things about 3e that don't work. But they weren't important for hardly any groups until they'd been playing for quite a while. None of 3e's problems are actually a problem at 1st level and few of them matter much at 4th.
-Username17