Some of the better ideas to come out of 3E D&D

[User3]

I think it's safe to say by now that this edition has pretty much hit rock bottom. However, we as a playing public have definitely learned a lot from this game. Here are what I think are some of the better ideas/concepts of this game:


Ability Gain- I've been playing other systems, even some non-d20 ones, and I have to say that D&D is one of the most generous systems when it comes to ability gain. Unlike games like Exalted, where you're pretty much locked into the rails with your specializations, or Shadowrun 4E, where you gain extra abilities only because you eventually hit a glass ceiling in schtick advancement (unless you're awakened and even then), D&D hands out free abilities for no real reason and it's not even really that hard to get your bennies without sacrificing character advancement.

I mean, a lot, and I mean a lot of the abilities that D&D hand out is crap, especially when you get into things like expanded books and prestige classes, either because they detract too much from your main schtick or cost too much. And different classes gain quality and quantity at shockingly different rates. But the principle generally states that even if you're a dumbass single-classed fighter, it's really easy to make your character a sailor on the side and then have him change his mind in the middle of advancement and become a blackguard. Yes, there is some generation railroading, but this game is much more liberal about changing or adding schticks in the middle of things than pretty much any system I've ever played. This includes games like Final Fantasy Tactics. I mean, just getting a ring of blink or a cloak of the bat adds a whole new dimension to your character and the game suggests that you eventually get these things as booby prizes. That's awesome.


Prestige Class- On the whole, I think they're a failure, but I think it's more the gaming groups than the idea. The idea basically states that if you have a collection of abilities and sometimes some roleplaying requirements then at a certain point in time these should allow your DM to start making up classes to tailor-fit your character.

We all know that things don't work out that way, mostly because people rip things out of sourcebooks and look down on their noses at homemade made-up classes. But it was a really good idea in principle. Prestige classes really make your character stand out and reinforce the primary benefit of the game (see above).


Tactical feats- These things rock. Basically they state that from now on, they will make all feats equal to each other. Of course, that's not really possible, since some people really really want things like track and 3.5E whirlwind and some people want things like elusive target. So tactical feats attempt to solve that little problem by grouping shitty individual abilities together and keep adding on to them until the package becomes good.

It's almost the same thing as just making the feat system point-based, except it adds more flavor to a character by giving them consolation prizes that do affect the progress of the game but that people don't want to use up finite resources acquiring them. I mean, even if people got 5 feat points a level and Endurance only took up .2 feat points, people still wouldn't pick it up unless for some reason they were forbidden from picking up things they really wanted and this was all that was left. Tactical feats solve that problem by making minor abilities free if you take them alongside good ones.

Of course, D&D fuct it up by making three the magic number, therefore completely negating its major advantage. But the idea was a good one IMO.

More later.

[erik]

About point-buy feats, I'm just starting to run a d20 campaign where characters can choose between 3 archtypes which give up to 8 feats per level. Starting at level 4, the character creation process took like 2 hours, mostly because the more skilled players were drowning in options (and also pestering the hell out of me with comments like "I don't want to take PrC ability X as a feat, but could I if I wanted to?" over and over). After all was said and done, the characters look about proper (on the high end of min/max, but not broken). I've got a couple more friends to help through character creation and then we hopefully will begin campaigning on Friday.

Character types so far are a human sneaky/ninja wizard(enchanter-conjurer), a human monkish primary caster, and a half-orc polearm-specializing trapfinding barbarian pirate.

I think that character creation would have gone much faster if we started at level 1, and also I actually had a huge frickin book of feats for them to choose from, instead of skimming many builder books and running ideas past me for the ok.