The Gaming Den

Wow. I'm looking at my library of 3.0 & 3.5 WotC books (since 3.0 books are still technically legal) ... and its totally overwhelming the amount of fluff and crunch that sits before my eyes. Books that encompass the Core Rules Trio, 3.0 Splatbook series, 3.5 Complete series, 3.5 Geography Books, Forgotten Realms (tons of them), Eberron, 3.0 Ghostwalk, Oriental Adventures, the XPH, & nearly a half-dozen creature tomes.

I have a reputation of being a top-notch character optimizer (and a decent tactician as well). And to keep my chops sharp, I really have to know the unique mechanics of all these books inside and out. And its turning out to be a real challenge! I never played 2nd Edition, but I'm sure that 5 years into 2nd Edition, a similar situation arose with a glut of sourcebooks to reference and memorize.

My game group as well as most others I see and know, allow most if not all of the above books in order to allow players to have access to the full gamut of possible character variables in the game. And to DM's who promote or allow this, I tip my cap to you. That's an assload of rules and game mechanics to constantly have to reference or ajudicate at the gaming table.

The primary "power" core-classes (Druid and Cleric) are especially more challenging to play. Assuming that is, you want to wring out the most power and flexibility you can out of the classes. Which is expected, since you always want to be one who brings the superior firepower to the knife-fight ... or be the utility toolbox to fix or enhance any given scenario.

The Druid and Cleric have access to an ever-expanding suite of spells since every sourcebook in creation seems to have divine spells. And the Druid and Cleric automatically have knowledge of them. Heck, they also get knowledge of the arcane spells through a savvy acquisition of domains and/or the Anyspell or Greater Anyspell spells.

Smartly optimized Druids and Clerics have some serious decisions to make each morning when they prep their spells. Me and others literally need to bring notebooks or reference cards just to keep a keen recall on all the hundreds of niche spells that exist out there. I can see why some people who want a more escapist and carefree game chose the rather simple Sorceror or the Miniature Handbook's Cleric-Sorceror (forget what he's called).

Druids have even more complex and numerous decisions to make. Wildshape now just isn't animal, plant, and elemental shapes. Via the right feats, druids can assume the form of dragons, certain templated creatures, good magic beasts, cold-based magic beasts, and even aberrations. Meaning druids need to memorize content from a dozen or so monster manuals and related sourcebooks just to stay on top their game. Yeah, issues of familiarity with a given animal can come up - but that's less of an issue for organically-created higher level druids where background storylines can fix that.

Still so, even weak classes such as Fighters and Monks still have a ton of reference material to keep up with regarding familiarity.

Being a top-tier minmaxer or optimizer these days means doing a ton of homework and permutation testing. Not like the early days of 3.0 when you had just a few books to peruse - and figuring out strong combos and neato buildcrafting took very little time and effort.

The OTHER limiting factor that challenges the "every book ever" DM (or even a relatively small selection DM) with this plethora of books is weight.

Those books are damn heavy damnit, I'm running a game now at someone elses place and I'm carting around a passengers worth of weight in my car (and thats just a small selection).

These books are putting a measurable impact on my fuel expenses for the trip to the game and back, I'm a farm boy, son of the land and all that, so the lifting and risk of back injury is no big deal but the fuel costs...

The shelf that I keep my D&D books decided it had had enough when I put Sandstorm on the shelf. It broke.

Game On,
fbmf

I honestly only bring monster books to games, and even then only if I'm DMing and someone wants to play a conjurer/pokemaster. I figure any rule too obscure for me to ambiently know it already doesn't need looking up in the middle of a game.

And 3.5 angered me enough that I haven't bought any of it. I just give each new book a read-though and min/max off the top of my head from the stuff I've seen.

-Username17

fbmf wrote: The shelf that I keep my D&D books decided it had had enough when I put Sandstorm on the shelf. It broke.

And THAT is why I wisely store most of my D&D books on the floor, burried beneath all the other junk I leave lying around for months on end.

I knew there was a reason.

Frankly, I have never heard of anyone around here allowing an "anything goes" game. That might just be because going anywhere in Pittsburgh usually involves something like this:

every weekend

Damn straight they're heavy. I had to bring 10 books along last session and that certainly pissed me off. The old class books were a lot lighter.

I usually don't bring more than 3 books to a session. The rest of the group can tell me what they want in advance, because I'm the one who has all the books.

Oh, come on Frank! 30 books + a knapsack + that stairwell = a heavy-duty cardio workout for free!

Or alternately, it means cardiac arrest and a trip to the morgue.

Which really puts the kibosh on gaming night fun.

1. I'm not Frank Not yet at anyrate.

2. It's not those steps, it's the two miles to the base of the hile and then half mile uphill to get to the bottom of those steps.

3. The books aren't everything. I mean I gotta carry dice and pencils too.

Wow, what's the average of that d20?