3.5X Edition's Biggest Design Problem

[RandomCasualty]

1146847596[/unixtime]]
Lately the rules have become so complex, so contradictory, that I don't think anyone knows what they say or mean. Certainly no living human has actually read all published 3.5 material - it's like the frickin GATT treaty. Noone knows what text might be hidden away somewhere.

Well, yeah, the rules have become super complex, but I don't think that's Cops and Robbers Syndrome, that looks more like the American Legal System, where you've got all kinds of crazy precedents and loopholes eveywhere. And especially where you have cases where the designers don't even understand the rules, as with the knight, things get real problematic. But the rules being an incomprehensible leviathan is actually the opposite of Cops and Robbers. It looks similar to some degree, but it's not the same.

In C&R, your arguments are all flavor based, when asked a question as a GM, you pretty much don't turn to the rulebook at all. It went like all my 2nd edition rulings. You know there isn't anything there, so you just make something up. In D&D 3E, the arguments are based around legal style argument, it's just that law is so complex that sometimes you've got no idea what it means. And we've got practices like triple and quadruple inheritance chains that further muck things up. These arguments aren't about saying "there's nothing there", it's about citing a bunch of sources and trying to make your case. And due to bad cross-checking for the designers, sometimes those sources aren't in agreement, like the whole PrC prereqs debate.

Still it's definitely different from C&R, it may feel like C&R simply because you're arguing about rules all the time, but it's a totally different problem altogether. The answer to C&R was creating rules and making them more complex, where the answer to D&D's problem is eliminating and simplifying rules.

[User3]

Where I play at, there are locally about 7-8 very competent D&D DM's in a rather large pool of players involved in sanctioned Living Greyhawk games, Forgotten Realms clubs, and just casual get-together games.

Last year, there were about 10. The year before that, about 15.

The reason for the decline has been that the good DM's aren't interested in keeping up with the ever-burgeoning rulesets, erratas, FAQ's, and "Rules of the Game" articles. So those good DM's who've had enough have joined the player pools.

Conversely, the player pools are growing by leaps and bounds (in addition to the fed-up DM's). These players are also evolving into character emphasis on mechanical optimization over RP interests. This is due to the fact that there are now dozens of sourcebooks out that allow you to create any character in creation that you desire.

More Players + More Interest in Player Rules Finessing/Optimizing - Rules Savvy DM's

=

Many Frustrated Gaming Tables

Seriously, there's just not enough DM's out there any more who really have their finger on the pulse of 2006's version of the mega-complex D&D Rules Set.

The game is way too complex now. And the proliferation of "powergamers" aren't making the situation any easier.

[RandomCasualty]

1146834085[/unixtime]]There is a very big, very important difference between Magic and D&D: Magic is competitive, D&D is not. There is a pressure to have at least one cheesy power deck in your box among the vanity and theme decks because if nothing else, every once in a while, you want to win. D&D is different because there really isn't a way to win, and seeing the game as a competition against the DM or other players is one of the few ways you can not be playing the game right. You don't HAVE to play characters based on cheesy power combos or rules loop hopping because the power of your enemies is supposed to be based upon the power of your party.

That's what the game is supposed to be, but it's not what it has actually become. And often the competition aspect of D&D isn't between PC versus DM, but rather PC vs. PC. You've got PCs stealing the spotlight from others with power builds and forcing the other PCs upgrade thier own builds.

This in turn makes the DM's job harder and since the PCs now start slaughtering the DM's encoutners, he has to escalate the situation.

And so it creates a competitive cycle.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Then the problem isn't with the game, it's with the players.

I have had two powergamers in my group, one who is fairly reasonable about things, and doesn't enjoy overshadowing people. He just wants to make effective characters that fit the flavor he's going for. He has never had a problem with taking steps to make his characters less overpowering and has on a few occasions done so voluntarily. On the other hand, I have had someone in my group who was of the kind you mentioned, who built character solely to be more powerful than the other gamer I told you about.

We tried talking to him about this, and in the end, we did what you have to do with bad players who will not try to be better, we kicked him out of the group.

-Desdan

[power_word_wedgie]

1146867801[/unixtime]]That's what the game is supposed to be, but it's not what it has actually become. And often the competition aspect of D&D isn't between PC versus DM, but rather PC vs. PC. You've got PCs stealing the spotlight from others with power builds and forcing the other PCs upgrade thier own builds.

That's if you caught up in trying to keep the spotlight and admittedly this is dependant from player to player. Personally, as a player, I don't have a problem with another player having a more powerful character than mine. My biggest problem is that if he tries to do everything himself and no work as a team. After all, as a first level character, if the fighter of the group gets a +1 longsword as the first magic item, do you as a group start saying, "OMFG - this group is now going to really suck hard because one of us is more powerful than the rest."?

This in turn makes the DM's job harder and since the PCs now start slaughtering the DM's encoutners, he has to escalate the situation.

And so it creates a competitive cycle.

But he's escalating the situation to provide to the group a bigger challenge so that the group doesn't just grow bored easily slaughering monsters, not with the intent to slaughter the group. If the DM's intent is to do the latter, IMHO, they have really missed the point of the game.

As for DMs leaving in droves due the rulesets, errata, FAQ, and "Rules of the Game", actually IMHO this is the fault of the entire group. What the DM should do is say, "Look, I'd like to stay DMing for you but the myriad of information is a little overwhelming - thus I'd like to keep it to the core rules and the Complete series: no FAQ, errata, or Rules of the Game." Then the entire group can decide and determine whether they want to run a group to that ruleset. If the DM is really good, they'll agree with the DM. Frankly, the few groups that I've games with don't even consider the errata, FAQ, or Rules of the Game.

And in a way, this brings us to the spending of $1000 for my D&D material and whether it is worth it. Is it? For me, heck yeah for the following reasons:

1) As Josh mentioned earlier, for my area, it is the only game that I can get started up. I live in an area that has roughly 200,000 people. However the only thing that sells is the D&D system because it is the only system where you stand a decent chance of forming a group. Yeah, there may be more perfect systems out there (I haven't seen them all), but to me they are little use if you can't play them.

2) I didn't plop down my $1000 at one shot. It is roughly from material spent at $40-$50 a pop over rough 5 years. Trust me, if it was $1000 at once, my wife would have let me have it.

3) Really, to play the game, I only had to roughly put down $100. Really, as I expressed in one of the previous paragraphs, usually that $100 of books are the only ones that I have played in any serious degree at a gaming session because that is what the DMs have limited to their game. Thus, out of the other $900 of material, I usually just buy modules and Forgotten Realm books for flavor aspects.

[RandomCasualty]

1146923744[/unixtime]]
That's if you caught up in trying to keep the spotlight and admittedly this is dependant from player to player. Personally, as a player, I don't have a problem with another player having a more powerful character than mine. My biggest problem is that if he tries to do everything himself and no work as a team. After all, as a first level character, if the fighter of the group gets a +1 longsword as the first magic item, do you as a group start saying, "OMFG - this group is now going to really suck hard because one of us is more powerful than the rest."?

Nah, that's a minor power fluctuation. You probably barely notice it based on actual game performance.

Really, min/max doesn't actually start to get felt hard until you start hitting level 7+. That's when you start seeing all the PrCs come into play and the different feat combos. When you've got a core fighter with only passable feat selection versus a half-ogre trip machine or a frenzied berserker, now min/maxing differences really come into play.

But he's escalating the situation to provide to the group a bigger challenge so that the group doesn't just grow bored easily slaughering monsters, not with the intent to slaughter the group. If the DM's intent is to do the latter, IMHO, they have really missed the point of the game.

Well, the problem is that escalating bigger challenges in D&D tends to be about moving closer to an eggshell with hammer paradigm. The more optimized something is, the faster combats with it tend to be, and that is dangerous gamewise, because to make a combat feel challenging, PCs are probably going to have to get killed.

And in a way, this brings us to the spending of $1000 for my D&D material and whether it is worth it. Is it? For me, heck yeah for the following reasons:

Yeah, spending $1000 for the core ain't gonna happen. Ever. It's a pretty dumb idea. Mainly because a $1000 game isn't going to attract new players. You're going to have your diehard cult following and your new players are going to come from people pirating the thing on file sharing networks. And chances are when they already own a pirated copy, they won't be willing to shell out $1000 for the actual book. Spending $40 or so for a tangible paper copy is something people may actually do. When the value gets to something crazy like $1000, you can forget about that even being an option.

Not to mention, bookstores aren't going to want to carry a $1000 book.

I don't see how the $1000 book idea could work at all. It's the best way to utterly kill the hobby and whoever did it would get run out of business in no time.

[dbb]

It's been said before and deserves to be said again: 3.x just doesn't work well past about 9th-10th level. This is not a new problem; 1st edition didn't work well past that point, and 2nd edition didn't either. The whole reason for the existence of monsters who drain levels -- as was explicitly admitted by Gygax -- was to keep the game at that point longer.

The difference is that 1st edition encouraged you to retire and become king once you reached 10th level. 2nd edition made it more plausible to keep going. And in 3rd edition there's really no sign that you're supposed to do anything but keep going.

If we were smart, we'd go back to the old way of handling things, where 1-10 was the arc of a campaign and then it more or less ended. Or else we'd rewrite the game so that 1-20 covers the same territory as 1-10. For all the dumbassery of MMORPGs in general, one of the likeable things about Stormreach is that it essentially splits the 1-10 game up into 50 separate levels without massively inflating the power scale involved.

--d.

[User3]

If we were smart, we'd go back to the old way of handling things, where 1-10 was the arc of a campaign and then it more or less ended. Or else we'd rewrite the game so that 1-20 covers the same territory as 1-10. For all the dumbassery of MMORPGs in general, one of the likeable things about Stormreach is that it essentially splits the 1-10 game up into 50 separate levels without massively inflating the power scale involved.

Thats not the smart path, but instead the easy path.

The smart path looks like this: you reach a certain level, and your power level stops going up and starts going left and right.

"Left and Right" advancement involves getting more powers that cover more situations and add more flavor to your character, but you don't actually get better powers.

Lets say, for the sake of argument, that we said that we'd start lefting and righting at level 10. That'd mean that spellcasters would gain additional 5th level spells known(and lesser spells), fighters would gain different +3 swords(fire swords, ghost touch swords, spell storing swords, etc), rogues would pick up crazier magic items to activate with UMD(medium items, of course).

Or you could give character a feat for every level past 10 at the only reward for advancing a level(no skills, HP, caster levels, class features, etc). Since it'd all be balanced by the 10th level cap, you'd doing things like letting fighters invest in different styles of fighting(arching, mounted, melee) and letting spellcasters pick up feats like Transdimensional Spell(crazy good vs incorporeals, asstastic the other 95% of the time).

Stopping the game is neither required or even desirable. People want to play the same characters over and over again, and they want to gain substantial rewards each time they adventure. MMORGs have tried to provide that, but have failed because they are so in love with the level system. They can't seem to see that left or right power gain is very satifying because then the game becomes about player tactics and skill, and less about character power.

If player skill and tactics becomes the center of a game, people might find out that they are not good players, and a MMORG can't let that happen, since they'd lose subscribers then since all adventure are a binary "I have the skills and tactics needed to beat this/I don't have the skills and tactics to beat this."

Its actually OK that RPGs do that, since DMs can tailor adventures to the skills and tactics that PCs have, and can move plotlines to adjust for unexpected events. For example, if luck and bad tactics means that you lose a battle, you might be found later by kind healer or be captured by your enemy, setting off a new and flavorful adventure. In a MMORP, failure is a death screen and pissed off friends and a failed quest. In a RPG, failure is just fodder for new and better adventures.

[power_word_wedgie]

But, by definition, if you're getting "horizontal" power, you're still getting more power through versatility. Thus, you'll still get more powerful monsters thrown at you to keep your challenge level appropriate. After all, the whole point of leveling is to show that you have at least mastered your current challenge level. I'm thinking that with this lateral power level, you're still going to get more people killed at "higher levels" and you'll still run into the difficulties of running D&D after 10th level. I'm thinking that dbb is correct at retiring characters at 10th level - actually, I've been retiring mine at around 12th level so it's in the ballpark.

[RandomCasualty]

1146949045[/unixtime]]
The smart path looks like this: you reach a certain level, and your power level stops going up and starts going left and right.

"Left and Right" advancement involves getting more powers that cover more situations and add more flavor to your character, but you don't actually get better powers.

Actually this isn't really a great idea either, as this eventually caps out. Remember the Final fantasy 3 magic system where eventually everyone had every spell? That'd pretty much be how a left/right advancement would look after a while.

Lets face it, there's only so much people can actually do and sooner or later you have to start stepping on your other party member's toes.

Numerical advancement is actually the way to go for infinite levels, the key is making it nondivergent. Basically the max bonus gap between any two level 1 characters has to be the very same gap for two level 20s. Thus if level 1s can be from -4 to +6 on attack rolls, then level 20s should be +16 to +26, or whatever. The numbers don't matter, but the gap has to always be the same.

The most obvious example of this not happening in D&D is spot vs hide checks. At 1stlevel a spot score and hide score will be somewhat close, so it's possible to spot someone who is hiding even if you're untrained. At level 20, this is impossible. Because being untrained is progressively worse. Instead of saying that an untrained guy is at a -10, it progressively becomes a bigger and bigger penatlty. Until you can't succeed at all being untrained.

[Username17]

Actually this isn't really a great idea either, as this eventually caps out. Remember the Final fantasy 3 magic system where eventually everyone had every spell? That'd pretty much be how a left/right advancement would look after a while.

Not with Hasbro's release schedule. At two products a month it would take you longer to get every ability than it would for new abilities to appear that you didn't have.

You really could keep going indefinitely. The ceiling would flee from you faster than you could reach it. Clerics only manage to cap out now because they automatically get everything from every sourcebook. I instead they had to catch em all like wizards, they would never collect all the powers.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

Also, lefting and righting doesn't include opportunity cost. In FF3, while you could eventually learn every spell in the game, there are good reasons not to ever learn shitty spells like W.Wind and Quake. Even with good spells, like Fire 3, everyone just stopped learning them once they got Ultima. Even if the cost is just time, campaigns have a finite amount of time they can devote to power acquisition. With just the spells in 3.0E edition, if it took a wizard merely 10 minutes of game time to get a scroll outside of their normal advancement they'd never get all of the spells within the scope of a campaign.

In 3.5E, that time has gone down to 5 minutes.

Also, it costs things like gold to get these things. You know, to pay for use of a wizard's spellbook (if they will let you have it at all) and to copy new spellbooks.

[dbb]

Actually, K, I agree with some of that. I'd point out, however, that shallowing out the power curve and getting more "horizontal" power are not at all mutually exclusive.

In fact, that was kind of the point of the high-level 1E game. Gaining additional character power was supposed to become intractably slow and difficult -- so you went out and established a kingdom instead. You personally didn't acquire a whole bunch more ass-kicking (unless you were an extremely persistent cleric or wizard); if you were a fighter, once you passed 9th level even the main reason for you to be in a party -- damage absorption -- slowed down almost to nothing, improvement-wise.

The real problem was that it didn't go far enough. Because you could keep getting better, people kept adventuring, and DMs adjusted the amount of XP they gave out so you still levelled in a timely manner, and eventually you ended up with people playing arch-mages.

Now, I don't necessarily agree with all the types of horizontal advancement you mention, but that's neither here nor there -- there's always going to be some disagreement.

Where I do disagree with you -- and then only partly, and more philosophically than anything else -- is here:

1146949045[/unixtime]]
Stopping the game is neither required or even desirable. People want to play the same characters over and over again, and they want to gain substantial rewards each time they adventure.

Stopping the game eventually is desirable. But stopping the game before the story is over is definitely not. So in that sense, if the story needs to continue, and the game can't accomodate the players getting better in the ways they've been getting better up until now -- they'll just have to get better in some new way.

--d.

[RandomCasualty]

1146956428[/unixtime]]
Not with Hasbro's release schedule. At two products a month it would take you longer to get every ability than it would for new abilities to appear that you didn't have.

You really could keep going indefinitely. The ceiling would flee from you faster than you could reach it. Clerics only manage to cap out now because they automatically get everything from every sourcebook. I instead they had to catch em all like wizards, they would never collect all the powers.

The problem isn't necessarily a limit on abilities, but rather a limit on viable party roles.

I mean, a lot of abilities that are produced fall in the same role, so taking them is another way of non-numerically increasing your power. Getting an extra attack from karmic strike for instance isn't actually numerically improivng your attack bonus, but your average damage is going up anyway. Throwing on more attacks or getting battlefield control abilities don't help in capping someone's power level. In fact they're probably more dangerous than just handing out +1 attack, +1 AC for each level.

To go truly left/right, you start learning crap that you couldn't do before, and stuff that doesn't give you much synergy. The problem is that someone else in your group probably could do it already if it was anything actually worth doing.

[User3]

The problem isn't necessarily a limit on abilities, but rather a limit on viable party roles.

I mean, a lot of abilities that are produced fall in the same role, so taking them is another way of non-numerically increasing your power. Getting an extra attack from karmic strike for instance isn't actually numerically improivng your attack bonus, but your average damage is going up anyway. Throwing on more attacks or getting battlefield control abilities don't help in capping someone's power level. In fact they're probably more dangerous than just handing out +1 attack, +1 AC for each level.

To go truly left/right, you start learning crap that you couldn't do before, and stuff that doesn't give you much synergy. The problem is that someone else in your group probably could do it already if it was anything actually worth doing

You actually can't do it like that. Damage, AC, BAB, attacks, etc all has to be capped.

"Lefting and righting" involves "new" abilities, not inprovements on existing abilities. For example, there are a mess of feats needed to get good at mounted combat, archery, and melee, and evren mnore if you want esoteric stuff like unarmed combat and non-role hook-ups like Earth Sense or other feats that add random stuff.

Lefting and righting involves gaining a whole slew of abilities, many of which are great only in rare situations(Trandimensional Spell) or in odd circumstances(Improved Grapple).

[RandomCasualty]

1147143236[/unixtime]]
Lefting and righting involves gaining a whole slew of abilities, many of which are great only in rare situations(Trandimensional Spell) or in odd circumstances(Improved Grapple).

The problem is that in general, you don't need those abilities and thus you don't use them very often enough to make them really count.

Also, casters tend to be very versatile anyway, so they could care less.

[Username17]

1147196997[/unixtime]]

1147143236[/unixtime]]
Lefting and righting involves gaining a whole slew of abilities, many of which are great only in rare situations(Trandimensional Spell) or in odd circumstances(Improved Grapple).

The problem is that in general, you don't need those abilities and thus you don't use them very often enough to make them really count.

Also, casters tend to be very versatile anyway, so they could care less.

Well, Casters already work that way, at least if they are Wizards. And Wizards are usually pretty happy to get a new spell as an adveture reward, noone complains about it. And of course, if a Sorcerer could get a new spell as a quest reward he'd piss on himself with excitement.

Clerics don't care because they already get all the fvcking spells. But that's retarded. Clerics shouldn't have all the spells just for being a Cleric. They should have some very limited number of spells and then accumuate more as Wizards do. So should Druids. The thing where you automatically know every spell on your spell list of a level you can cast is only balanced for te Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror.

---

And then once you've made that concession, is it so much of a stretch to say that Fighters should work that way as well? Wouldn't a Fighter be OK with getting Proficiency in a new exotic weapon as a quest reward?

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1147199102[/unixtime]]
And then once you've made that concession, is it so much of a stretch to say that Fighters should work that way as well? Wouldn't a Fighter be OK with getting Proficiency in a new exotic weapon as a quest reward?

Not really. He'd probably be shaking his head and saying, "What the hell am I going to do with this?"

Unlike with spells, weapons aren't radically different from each other. There's a reason to use a baleful polymorph instead of a fireball, and a fireball instead of a lightning bolt. As a fighter, there's simply not much reason to ever switch up your weapon. It takes time to swap weapons, and the weapon mechanics tend to be rather uniform.

Further, since all feats are contingent on one fighting style, you're better off just sticking to what you were good at. While your greatsword may be slightly more effective against undead than your falchion, All the weapon focus and weapon spec feats pretty much negate that very small numerical benefit. Even agaisnt a larger numerical penalty like DR, you're still better off just using your favorite magic weapon rather than a nonmagical version of another weapon. And fighters just can't afford having a rack of different magic weapons.

So getting proficiency in an exotic weapon is pretty much dick unless you plan on totally switching over to that weapon as your primary. But you can only do that once. Aside from that, it's like handing a wizard who has fireball another 3rd level spell with the exact same specifications as fireball, save that it deals only d4s of damage instead of d6s.

[The_Matthew]

Well, at that point it depends on what you do to exotic weapons. In Frank's FF D20, for example, an exotic weapon was a basic weapon with some niftly template added on, and people would care if they got one of those.
In D&D 3.X, I don't think a fighter would wipe his ass with Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Meter Stick.

[Crissa]

But there's a reason to use a spiked chain or a flaming flamberge - though the Fighter does have the problem of only being able to have a limited number of weapons deployed.

I see the problem is that some tools - like strength and intelligence - apply to both sides of the equation, but most don't. And the current set of sideways abilities mean ditching things like BAB and extra attacks forever.

The 'getting all abilities eventually' is annoying, sure... But maybe it's because some abilities are too vague - polymorph, alter self - and some are too specific - Skill Focus, Endurance.

-Crissa

[The_Matthew]

See, the issue is that a fighter can only really use more than one weapon in a fight if he is a practitioner of sword-chuck fu, whereas every single spell that a spellcaster gains can be used if they really want to. And while the fighter using all of his exotic weapons might actually have his GM pull weight allowance crap on him, the Wizard or Sorcerer get off scott free.

[Crissa]

Honestly, if a Fighter is supposed to be doing fighting, and required to do typed damage or magic damage... That really should come from the class, and not the weapons, specifically.

But that's really a different topic.

-Crissa

[Crissa]

Huh, that brings me to think...

...Why can't a fighter work like a spellcaster, with a list of manuvers/tactics/abilities like spells are?

-Crissa

[The_Matthew]

Well, there is only one reason: 3.X hates fighters, so they aren't allowed to have nice things.

Seriously though, I am currently working on a system for which fighters, and indeed everyone, work on the same rules setups just so we can have fighters playing alongside clerics and being more than just sword caddies and second-stringers.

[dbb]

In fact, one of 3.5's best ideas for fighters was the Tactical Feats, which are sort of a very small and tentative step in the direction of making fighters more like spellcasters, in that you got multiple options for different situations every time you took one of them. As long as WotC is going to pretend that getting a feat every other level is a class feature, those feats should probably all be more like Elusive Target or Shock Trooper, and less like Dodge or Weapon Focus.

Of course, we do have to contend with the fact that any time the discussion shifts around to giving the Fighter the same variety and power of tactical options as the Wizard, we run the risk of someone piping up with the notion that at that point we're no longer playing D&D, we're just playing Struggle of the Spellcasters or something. But there's a fairly easy way to handle that objection.

--d.