A Shift to D&D Concepts? Too bad ...

[User3]

As a long time admirer and reader of the Gaming Den's IMHO, I've noticed a shift over the last few months regarding post content and emphasis.

Seems there are much more posts about conceptual and philosophical D&D ... and less about game mechanics.

Which leads me to think that the current glut of recently published sourcebooks (Underdark, PGtF, CW, CD, XPH, SerpK, Eberron, PlanarH, etc.) is probably a bit too much to absorb for the frequent posters here - at least in regards to being able to have a comprehensive discussion about the entire 3.5 D&D megaverse's comparative game mechanics.

After all, it's hard to find anyone who has all these books, knows the book contents backwards and forwards, and can cogently discuss comparative mechanics and min/maxing.

So ... is it just easier to discuss the game's fluff its crunchiness? Or is this forum more interested in game theory, direction, metaphyics, ethics/morals, etc.?

.............

BTW, I do miss the min/max emphasis of this forum - especially Frank's stuff. Also note, the Nifty board is going through this same transition.

D. Quigley

[Username17]

So ... is it just easier to discuss the game's fluff its crunchiness?

Yes and no. Mostly no. It's way easier to look at column A and column B and check to see that column B is bigger than it is to decide whether that means that Column A needs to be made larger, Column B needs to be made smaller, Column A needs to be bigger and Column B needs to be smaller, both Column A and Column B need to grow, but Column A needs to grow more, or both Columns need to be made smaller and Column B needs even more shrinking.

So Crunchy Bits Analysis is actually by far the easiest portion of any of this. Setting "Design Goals" is extremely difficult, which is why its taken up so very much discussion lately. Anyone can see that the Fighter is getting an NPC level half the time and the rest of the way isn't all that great either. What that actually means in terms of what the Fighter and Wizard should look like, however, isn't at all obvious to anyone and never has been.

That being said, I've been homeless since June, and so sitting down with some D&D books and analyzing the latest output hasn't been high priority. And of course, the paradigm shift of 3.5 has been that there is no longer really a baseline for people to talk about. The people who still played AD&D 2nd Edition after Y2K could be safely laughed at because 3rd edition was a massive improvement.

But 3.5 isn't. The improvements are mostly stuff like "now the diplomacy DCs are actually on page 72 of the PHB under the Diplomacy skill instead of hidden in the DMG on a random page that makes no sense". The disimprovements are things like "noone even knows what Polymorph is even supposed to do".

So there is no longer a constant rules platform used by people. So many of the 3.5isms were so random that people use houserules so freely that having a discussion about what the rules are is simply difficult. Standing up from Prone doesn't provoke an attack of opportunity in 3rd edition rules, or current d20 Modern. It does in 3.5. Many people think that it should, many people think that it shouldn't - and since the rules are fluxable, people just go whichever way they feel like.

So Andy Collins has made having a conversation about crunchy rules bits hard. Very hard. And when I saw him at GenCon, I think I may have an answer as to why:

Frank: So who's going through all the errata and the FAQs to make sure that they all agree with each other? [snip example]

Andy: Yeah, there's been a lot of confusion about that, always has been. I don't really know who does it. I mean lately... yeah I guess that's my job, come to think of it.

-Username17

[Maj]

Which leads me to think that the current glut of recently published sourcebooks (Underdark, PGtF, CW, CD, XPH, SerpK, Eberron, PlanarH, etc.) is probably a bit too much to absorb for the frequent posters here

May I be perfectly honest? I don't find the latest books worth spending the money on.

Hey, WotC - I want to spend money on D&D products. But I am not going to waste money on stuff that is full of errors and doesn't address the major problems with the system. I am not going to waste money on reprints of prestige classes that I already spent money on. I am not going to waste money on campaign settings that are incompatible with the D&D universe as a whole.

The sad part is that without these books, the world hasn't ended. I don't even miss them. But it does make having rule discussions about their contents very difficult.

[User3]

Min/maxing D&D in its present form is like kicking the crutches out from under a crippled blind kid. It's not much of a challenge, it's not much of an accomplishment, and, honestly, it feels kind of shameful. When even the game designers can't adequately explain how some of the rules are supposed to work, and yet are still cranking out supplements that introduce new stuff on a regular basis, that there's a bushel full of broke as f*** combinations is less a surprise than an inevitability.

Stuff like figuring out how to make particular character concepts not suck utterly is interesting to me from an academic perspective, but it seems like most of the people reading this board have already either mastered the techniques required to do so, or else have ninja-trained their minds not to have any concepts that can't be adequately represented by the system as it is.

And, since I'm not actually involved in any games at the moment, philosophical and conceptual issues are much more interesting and immediate to me than making the mechanics do cartwheels.

--d.

[User3]

The recent books out have dissapointed me a bit with flat-out badness.

For example:
Eberron:
---Warforged can be healed by craft checks, and they don't die from damage. Basically, they are immortal since they can be immune to several kinds of death attacks.
---Druids were made better. Why? Why?
---Dragonmarks would be cool if you didn't have to wait 15 levels to get the powerful ones(since once you get a Dragonmark, even an ass one, you can't really advance it or get a better one).

Serpent Kindoms:
---There's a spell that allows you to steal supernatural abilities in exchange for your own Su. abilities, and it has a casting time in the hours. Once you slap that into a spell-like ability(using Archmage or that feat from PGtF), you can suddenly trade out your Supernatural abilities to talk to your familiar and get to cast this uber-spell at a casting time of one action to get superpowers. (And you can keep your petrified enemies in your garden so that you can steal their powers later).
---Using a combo of the "become a yaun-ti" potion, and by mind-controlling those super-serpent guys, you can change around your character's stats(add, I mean), and you can add arbitrarily powerful Extraordinary or Supernatural abilities. It could have been kinda sorta balanced if they had said that it mechanically worked like magic item creation, but they didn't.

Planar Handbook:
---Planar substitution levels are more power for no reason and little trade-off, meaning that anyone who doesn't take them is a sucker.
---One of those planar locations you can hook into lets you indirectly break all kinds of multi-classing rules. Find it and I'll give you a cookie!


The Draconomicon was not too bad(it was bad, but rather balanced when compared to this later stuff), so I'm hoping that the new Frostburn, Complete Magic-dudes and Mortis Libris books won't fall into the traps set by the other race/class books.

I'm not holding my breath though.

[User3]

d.,

With all due respect, I disagree with you that the posters here are bonafide min/max experts. Granted, I agree that the posters here are without a doubt the creme de la creme of the D&D intelligentsia regarding game concepts. But delving back into the Gaming Den's old post archive, I don't see tons of genius creativity in character optimization. There are indeed, exceptions (Frank is one, as stated earlier). None of this is meant as an insult either. It's pretty crystal clear that this forum attracts people with certain strengths. And min/maxing is not one of them.

I also disagree with your assessment that min/maxing is "easy". For example, you can min/max the daylights out of a Monk build and actually make it "good". But if it isn't a top tier build wielded by a strong mechanical player, than that character will fall into the pile of "suck" along with all the other Monk builds in god's creation. What I'm saying is, you need to WORK certain builds and character concepts to get them into the realms of being a highly min/maxed or optimized character. And unfortunately, that is best done with all of WotC's official 3.0 and 3.5 books sitting on your desk during a mad 1-3 hour session of cracking open those books to find the hidden "crunchy" nuggets of brokenness and synergy to make your min/max efforts really shine. :tonguesmile:

[RandomCasualty]

1093297249[/unixtime]]Min/maxing D&D in its present form is like kicking the crutches out from under a crippled blind kid. It's not much of a challenge, it's not much of an accomplishment, and, honestly, it feels kind of shameful. When even the game designers can't adequately explain how some of the rules are supposed to work, and yet are still cranking out supplements that introduce new stuff on a regular basis, that there's a bushel full of broke as f*** combinations is less a surprise than an inevitability.

Yeah, I agree. It gets to a point where you're saying "Yeah, we realize the rules have lots of loopholes." and squeezing another +2 bonus out of some latest overpowered feat or spell just isn't that interesting. Everyone just nods their head, the thread drops to the bottom and everyone ceases to care. I don't doubt that anyone here can't abuse the rules in one way or another. And honestly, excessive min/maxing just isn't fun. It turns the game into a series of one shot kills, gives you infinite money and generally does all the stuff you'd expect breaking the system would do. IMO the only thing the excessive min/max threads are good for is pointing out problems with the system so they can later be fixed.

The philosophical stuff is a lot more interesting, because it actually creates a debate, which is good for keeping a thread alive, and it could promote some interesting changes to make the game more fun to play.

[User3]

RC, unfortunately, you are painting min/maxing as only one color - that of the abuses that munchkins can drool over. It's not as simple as that - there are many forms of min/maxing both by players and DM's. Some of it is good for the game, and adheres to the real life maxim "Never bring a knife to a gunfight". As a player, you are obligated to arm and equip your character with the best game mechanics that a character can get. Especially since your character's life is on the line. And never at any point does this compromise roleplay or flavor. Picking sub-optimal or inappropriate feats, starting magical gear, or skills can be a death sentence for many characters.

In essence, I'm saying there are defining parameters to being a min/maxer, an optimizer, a powergamer, and a munchkin. The first two are smart, the latter two have game complications.

And honestly, excessive min/maxing just isn't fun.

That's subjective. And different for each group.

Honestly, debating min/max or optimization can be just as interesting. Especially since number crunching and game mechanics have an immense profound impact on the philosophical bent of this game.

D. Quigley

[The_Hanged_Man]

I'll pile on teh "min-maxing isn't fun" bandwagon. You can play a cleric and do better than anybody else at just about anything, so what's the point of looking for obscure feat combos that let get an extra +10 damage?

Also, once you get outside the core rules, it's hard to even have a discussion. My wife is making a cool fighter-type, but . . . it's a ranger/ftr/barbarian/bunch of PrC's from CW, an Eberron weapon and some houserules. So besides basic things like "this is how I changed the shifter," what is there to discuss here?

[Username17]

Yeah, a big pile of the latest Eberron discussion has been "With the right Dragon Mark, you can have unlimited wealth by like 12th level!"

And then everyone just sort of nods their head and says "...right, we did that 3 levels ago dude, get with the program (take your pick of: Fabricate, Lesser Planar Binding, or Plane Shift, depending upon class)".

Finding new infinite loops just doesn't mean much when the Spelldancer is still street legal, unless you want to tar and feather another designer - and I don't think anyone needs a whole lot of new feces to throw at Andy Collins right now when he said that the only problem he could think of with the Complete Divine is the "Check ToEE" favored weapon on a minor god. I mean, that statement alone is basically grounds for laughage, so tweaking things out just isn't that impressive.

If someone wants a specific tweaked build, all they really have to do is ask, but I haven't seen a lot of requests for that sort of thing lately.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

Lots of the new books either suck (the Complete series) or are heavy on the fluff. Being able to break stuff while useing CD isn't even hard. The only people trying are munchkins, the min/maxers want some form of challenge.

I think most people here have realised that they can break the game in more ways than they can count. Its also obvious that WotC isn't likely to fix squat. So people discuss how to fix stuff rather than the latest product that noone cares about.

[User3]

That's a pile of bull. The truely broken stuff in the game right now continues to be the stuff from the Core Rules. That being spells like Astral Projection, Shapechange, Gate, Polymorph Any Other, etc.

Core Rules spells break the game ... not PrC's, not feats, not equipment. CD and CW didn't break dikk.

[rapanui]

Well, yes my focus is on design for several reasons:

1. I am in the painful process of designing something new myself (over 100 pages of new material written thus far, but still a lot of revision/writting to be done). It could be seen as an overhaul system to d20. Even if it sucks once it's done, it will have been a learning experience.

2. I already know the game is brokety broken, but I like some of the rules problems discussions here and (more occasionally) on Nifty. Discussing problems with existant mechanics leads inevitably to design problems. Nonetheless, these discussions are mostly tread over old territory.

3. Gamers are sensing that WotC might be getting ready to start brewing the next edition within the next 2 or 3 years (if that), and it's never too late to fill the memepool with interesting ideas (forsake Gigax being the new wave, or at least MY wave).

By the way, I agree with Bran. In the end, it is the Core Rules that bring forth the cheese. When somthing is wrong with the foundation, the whole building looks crooked. I would know, I went to Pisa not 1 month ago.

(Note, this is not intended as a 3e bash. I had fun with it for a while, it was better than 2e, but for god's sake, Andy is a fvcking moron)

[Draco_Argentum]

1093316360[/unixtime]]Core Rules spells break the game ... not PrC's, not feats, not equipment. CD and CW didn't break dikk.

So?

1. This thread is about min/maxing noncore stuff, not core problems.

2. Those abuses are old hat so no suprise people are bored talking about them.

[The_Hanged_Man]

DA, that's the problem we're talking about. The new, non-core stuff is just the old core stuff w/ a new name.

So there's another way to make infinite gold. So there's a new way to get free metamagic goodies. So there's a new way to get free wishes.

It's all been done before - in the core rules. So it's not much fun, and only vaguely interesting, to discuss it. IMC, we even talk about the dragonmark as the new Fabricate rule when we don't talk about it as the new Wall of Iron rule or the new whatever rule.

It's more interesting IMO to talk about the basic design problem that leads to all this mechanical brokenness.

[canamrock]

I would guess that what's bringing about this shift in the paradigm of the discussion. People are done looking at what's stupid and wrong, and want to make things good instead. Therefore, min/maxing has given way to figuring out what people even want to begin with. Personally, I'm more inspired every day to make my RPG idea into a fully-developed system.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1093297558[/unixtime]]The recent books out have dissapointed me a bit with flat-out badness.

For example:
Eberron:
---Warforged can be healed by craft checks, and they don't die from damage. Basically, they are immortal since they can be immune to several kinds of death attacks.

They are destroyed at -10 hp, just like every other PC race.

[User3]

They are destroyed at -10 hp, just like every other PC race.

Where does it say that? I looked pretty hard for sections of that book that said that.

They have rules saying that warforged, unlike constructs, do not die at 0. It does not say when they die, although
I assume everyone has been playing with the standard -10 rule.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

It doesn't explicitly say warforged die at -10, but it strongly implies it. The warforged description says they are disabled at 0 h.p. and "inert" when their h.p. are "less than 0 and greater than -10." This means that some change of state happens at -10 h.p. Unless you think they wake up again at -10, it's safe to assume that's when they die. It was sloppy of WotC not to explicitly mention that, though, given the IQs of some gamers.

K's also wrong about dragonmarks unless he's talking about the Syberis marks you can only get from the Heir of Syberis PrC. You get standard dragonmark feats from a feat chain. One of the prerequisites for Lesser Dragonmark is Least Dragonmark, and you have to have both to get Greater Dragonmark.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I'll look it up again in my book . . .

It seems to imply that unless the description says otherwise, they react as if they are normal living creatures. Usually, that is the case.

But I can see how you can browbeat a stupid person into thinking that they don't die. But I think anyone with two brain cells to click together would know better.

[User3]

It doesn't explicitly say warforged die at -10, but it strongly implies it. The warforged description says they are disabled at 0 h.p. and "inert" when their h.p. are "less than 0 and greater than -10." This means that some change of state happens at -10 h.p. Unless you think they wake up again at -10, it's safe to assume that's when they die. It was sloppy of WotC not to explicitly mention that, though, given the IQs of some gamers.

Right, there's no reason why they don't wake up again when they have positive HP.

Its not even a shifty interpretation. I mean, the rules specifically give a condition past -10 that is not "dead." How is that supposed to be misinterpreted? I mean, a Construct should die at 0, but those rules are overwritten by the Warforged-specfic rules.

It could have been an editorial mistake and they intended to say "less than" when they said "greater," but until I see errata that says that Warforged die at greater than -10 damage, the rules say that they can absorb an unlimited amount of damage(and given enough craft checks or healing magic, they can be returned from "inert" with no XP or Con cost).

K's also wrong about dragonmarks unless he's talking about the Syberis marks you can only get from the Heir of Syberis PrC. You get standard dragonmark feats from a feat chain. One of the prerequisites for Lesser Dragonmark is Least Dragonmark, and you have to have both to get Greater Dragonmark.

Right, the Syberis marks are the only really good dragonmarks, but to get them you need a high level and have not taken another dragonmark.

The whole dragonmark system involves "don't do this now so you can do this later." For example, the entry-level Abberant dragonmark is better than a entry level regular one, but you can't spend more feats to build on the power of your Abberant dragonmark. If you got either of those, you can't get the truly powerful marks of Sybil when you're like 15th level.

Trading power now for less later is a crap system, as is a system where you give up power now for power later.

[Username17]

It could have been an editorial mistake and they intended to say "less than" when they said "greater," but until I see errata that says that Warforged die at greater than -10 damage, the rules say that they can absorb an unlimited amount of damage(and given enough craft checks or healing magic, they can be returned from "inert" with no XP or Con cost).

There's no mistake. The Warforged have an inert condition that happens between -9 and -1. At -10 it doesn't saying anything about what happens to them, but they don't have any special rule that keeps them from acquiring the dead condition, so that's what happens to them.

At -10 they are not inert, your two choices are that they are then totally fine and run around fancy free taking normal actions, or that they are dead. Since they have a special rule that makes them not die at 0, but don't have a special rule that makes them not die at -10, it is presumptive that they die.

End.

-Username17