3.5's problems?

Morzas · Post by **Morzas** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 8:49 am

I am new here, and I'm aware of some of 3.5's problems (CoDzilla, scry and die, save or dies, Incantatrix, etc), but I was wondering if there's a thread that lists them all and summarizes them, along with their proposed fixes? I'd like to know more about what's wrong with the rules of DnD.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:09 am

Magic types and non-magic types dont play the same game.

You nerf the casters or you uplift the non-casters.

Frank and K's Tome uplifts the non-casters.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:20 am

There are basically two kinds of problems: balance problems and accuracy problems. The first is when you are handed two things that are supposed to be equal and they are to one degree or another not. The second is when you are told by the game that something or other works in some manner in the world and the rules show it doing something else.

DnD has a lot of both.

At the core level of Balance issues is the fact that past the first few levels, guys with swords just are not nearly the equal of guys throwing spells, or even the sword wielding giants and toothy monsters they are supposed to swing their swords at.

At the core level of Accuracy issues is the fact that much of the game is supposed to be centered aröund Lord of the Rings, King Arthur, and other recognizably Medieval European crap. And well, it´s not. Not even close. The personal power of a single individual as compared to entire kingdoms makes the existence of nobility as described simply laughable. The economics described would invalidate peasantry in a day.

DnD simply isn´t the game it presents itself as, and the degree to which that is a problem depends entirely upon what you wish DnD actually was.

-Username17

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:54 pm

As for balance issues there are many I have learned about since coming to the boards. To expand a bit on why casters and non casters aren't playing the same game:

1) A number of mechanics in the game cannot be achieved by those without spellcasting. Changing the landscape, teleporting, gaining extra actions, planeshifting, Wish, changing shape, etc etc can only be done by casters with no other way to reproduce the effect save for magic items.

2) The abilities of non casting classes don't measure up to those of casting classes. For a caster each new spell they receive has great potential and come with a myriad of options that often times scale. While noncaster abilities often don't hold a candle to these abilities, feats not being worth much, skills being in the same boat after a while, and many class abilities just being worthless or useful at first but not scaling appropriately.

3) Monsters get better abilities than non casters and noncasters would be hard pressed go on an adventure that is level appropriate for them without specific builds and a myriad of magic items. While a caster can handle their adventures shirtless and barefooted.

Archmage · Post by **Archmage** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:48 pm

MGuy wrote:2) The abilities of non casting classes don't measure up to those of casting classes. For a caster each new spell they receive has great potential and come with a myriad of options that often times scale.

And you don't even have to be playing "high-level" D&D for this to be true. When the wizard and the fighter each hit third level, the wizard gets second level spells and the fighter gets...another +1 BAB, making him +3 versus the wizard's +1.

You just can't compare glitterdust and web to being two points of BAB and a couple fighter bonus feats ahead, and the disparity just gets worse from there.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:55 pm

Even if you could make the characters equal to each other in combat, the biggest problem still is that the sword-based classes don't actually get to do a whole lot.

At around level 8 or 9, skills and swordery are just completely superfluous to the outcome of an adventure. The fighter is just there as a beat-stick who gets ferried around and let out of their cage when it's time to fight.

I'm sure that the whole nerfing of out-of-combat magic was to prevent situations were the fighter just sort of twiddled their thumbs while the cleric and wizard were busy constructing demiplane fortresses. But see, the thing is that I liked demiplane fortresses. I just didn't like the fact that not everyone got to help with the creation of them.

So what was 4E's solution to this obvious problem? Get rid of demiplane fortresses altogether. That way the fighter won't feel excluded anymore when it comes time to building a super-secret fortress! Fucking ARGH.

One of the things that's supposed to be coming out of Martial Power 2 are Martial Scripts, which are sword-based class exclusive rituals. I approved of the idea at first (even though rituals suck) but then I saw the rituals were really lame bullshit like 'gain a bonus to bluff checks'. Which goes back to the whole issue of fighters not getting nice things again.

Give me a friggin' break. By paragon tier fighters should be able to cleave mountains in twain and throw cannonballs at fortresses miles away from them and actually win. And if such overpowered characters like Frog/Glenn and Bowser can do that shit I don't see why fighters can't.

I really really hate that fucking bastard Andy Collins. I will smile like the Joker for a week if he's reduced, Sean K. Reynolds style, to writing bullshit feats to raise money for his kitty. But there's just no justice in this world.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 11:03 pm

As an aside, you know what 4E apology I hate more than any other one?

When I point out that with the 4E setting you can't do as much with magic as you could in earlier editions, even if you're willing to pay the bullshit gp costs, is that it's okay because 4E doesn't worship on the altar of magic as much.

Except that this excuse is beyond retarded. 4E is still Dungeons and Dragons so we're still supposed to have necromancer armies and flying castles and underground fortresses of iron and all that happy horseshit. But there aren't any rules for them anymore so the DM has to make up some justification about why they exist. Which means that the setting becomes less believable since everything exists of arbitranium.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 3:41 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: When I point out that with the 4E setting you can't do as much with magic as you could in earlier editions, even if you're willing to pay the bullshit gp costs, is that it's okay because 4E doesn't worship on the altar of magic as much.

Except that this excuse is beyond retarded. 4E is still Dungeons and Dragons so we're still supposed to have necromancer armies and flying castles and underground fortresses of iron and all that happy horseshit. But there aren't any rules for them anymore so the DM has to make up some justification about why they exist. Which means that the setting becomes less believable since everything exists of arbitranium.

Honestly though, I don't really find that all that bad. I mean, D&D was really never about blowing up mountains and all that in the first place. At it's core it was based off of things like Chainmail and LotR, things that were about armies clashing and relatively low magic heroes. I mean the default in 2E (and probably 1E) was that you couldn't even buy magic items, they were so precious. Making them was a total pain in the ass to the point that people really didn't want to do it. Magic items were made of arbitrarium effectively, because there was no real rationale why most of them got made.

Heroes really weren't supposed to be one man armies. Honestly most people consider spellcaster dominance to be more of a game bug that was never fixed by lazy designers. I mean 3E they basically admitted they never really playtested beyond like 5th level or something much, and there wasn't hardly any high level playtesting. The high level spells were basically just copy/pasted from 2E and no thought was put into their conversion.

It's no real surprise that there are balance problems at higher levels in 3E (or 4E for that matter) which suffer from the same "we just care about low level" playtests. But honestly for the most part, D&D wasn't about a world that made a heck of a lot of sense. There was a shitload of arbitrarium in most of the other editions. 3E had far less arbitrarium, it just created a world that made no sense, since it didn't fit with the established settings at all. Even Eberron, which was supposed to be high magic, still didn't seem to address the main questions of 3E magics ability to utterly destroy the economy.

I mean lets face it, no edition of D&D has ever made sense.

I actually liked that 4E dialed back the magic a bit. They just went way too far in many cases. But I'm okay with removing most of the game breakers in 3E that existed yet somehow nobody used them yet to destroy the world. That shit just really bothered me. More than arbitrarium based stuff ever did. How you'd have genius wizards who literally never thought of breaking the economy... fucking stupid.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:00 am

I really think the whole "you can make your own magic items" thing is what warped the game out of control.

Yes, sure, a 10th level wizard is WAY beyond the power of a 10th level fighter...but if the only items they find in those ten levels are a ring of protection +1, sword +4, +5 plate mail, Shield of Spell Turning, and a few other things like that? Then the fighter is at least arguably on some level in the same league as the wizard in some ways.

At least, it's the only way I ever managed AD&D or 2E to be sort of balanced to low double digits. (Obscure anecdote: even scrolls were tough to make in my campaign, requiring difficult to acquire components for the ink and sometimes paper. One time I did screw up, and said a scroll of dispel magic required the eyebrows of a magic-using creature...both the wizards started shaving their eyebrows off regularly, giving them at least those scrolls in sharply limited quantity.)

Granted, 3E did MANY things to make wizards stupidly more powerful, but snuff out the relatively cheap magic item manufacturing to make certain the wizard had loot as good as anyone else, and at least some balance is in the DM's hands.

4E tried to achieve balance by making everyone wizards and making magic items weaker, but I really think the power creep of the last few books has nuked that to some extent.

Gelare · Post by **Gelare** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:00 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:But see, the thing is that I liked demiplane fortresses. I just didn't like the fact that not everyone got to help with the creation of them.

So what was 4E's solution to this obvious problem? Get rid of demiplane fortresses altogether. That way the fighter won't feel excluded anymore when it comes time to building a super-secret fortress! Fucking ARGH.

Incidentally, this is exactly the way I feel. Did anyone ever come up with shit for the other classes to do while the casters are busy making demiplane fortresses?

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 4:58 am

Gelare wrote:Did anyone ever come up with shit for the other classes to do while the casters are busy making demiplane fortresses?

Easy. Hercules using his manliness redirects the slurry from the Aygean stables to some desert to make a forest bloom out of fucking nowhere and Joe Musashi slices up the forest into nice little beams of wood with fourteen slashes of his bokken while some famous bard sings a bold war song so hardcore that spirits rise from the dead and construct and staff the castle.

RC2 wrote:I mean lets face it, no edition of D&D has ever made sense.

I actually liked that 4E dialed back the magic a bit. They just went way too far in many cases. But I'm okay with removing most of the game breakers in 3E that existed yet somehow nobody used them yet to destroy the world. That shit just really bothered me. More than arbitrarium based stuff ever did. How you'd have genius wizards who literally never thought of breaking the economy... fucking stupid.

Then either finish deconstructing D&D magic power or play some other game. I'm not interested in your or Andy Collin's twee little Lord of the Rings bunnypants teaparty hobbit-masturbation simulator where owning a shiny aluminum chain shirt is the height of awesomeness for your boring characters.

LotR-clone RPGs are a dime a-fucking dozen. I do not think that D&D needs to be another one of those. I mean, honestly, Exalted sucks even more ass than 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons but I still like the setting better--fucked up ethically as it is.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 6:52 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Then either finish deconstructing D&D magic power or play some other game. I'm not interested in your or Andy Collin's twee little Lord of the Rings bunnypants teaparty hobbit-masturbation simulator where owning a shiny aluminum chain shirt is the height of awesomeness for your boring characters.

LotR-clone RPGs are a dime a-fucking dozen. I do not think that D&D needs to be another one of those. I mean, honestly, Exalted sucks even more ass than 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons but I still like the setting better--fucked up ethically as it is.

Well, I mean if you're going to have a battlemap with such a small scale, then generally you're looking at wargame style skirmishes, not epic battles across entire forests or mountain destroying attacks.

Half the problem with D&D is that they try to make it everything, but when you're playing on a tactical grid with individual spaces, it's not an easy thing to run superhero style fights. There's no problem with a high powered magic superhero game, but D&D just isn't set up to be that. And that for the most part is D&D's main issue. It really can't figure out what it wants to be.

There are some people pushing for it to be this high magic mythic "blow up the planet" superhero game, and others are dialing it back to LotR.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:05 pm

RC2 wrote: There are some people pushing for it to be this high magic mythic "blow up the planet" superhero game, and others are dialing it back to LotR.

Well, D&D can't support both. The entire plot of LotR hinges on the fact that there are no zombie apocalypses, no teleportation spells, no burrowing spells, no fast-speed flight, and no dimensional transport spells.

I can see a market for LotR games, but honestly there are way too much such games out there already. Even discounting j/cRPGs, everyone and their mother has one. We have Fantasycraft, we have the Dark Eye, we have that... that FanPro RPG setting that's like Shadowrun but really not, we have that fantasy supplement Green Ronin is churning out (Wizards and Warriors? I forget), so on.

The only game that tries to come close to replicating the scale of D&D is Exalted and that game specifically says in its preface that it's trying really hard not to be another LotR-setting.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:16 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Well, D&D can't support both. The entire plot of LotR hinges on the fact that there are no zombie apocalypses, no teleportation spells, no burrowing spells, no fast-speed flight, and no dimensional transport spells.

That's true. A world can't really be both.

I can see a market for LotR games, but honestly there are way too much such games out there already.

The problem is that D&D in name generally evokes feelings of LotR for most people. As a basic descriptor people are going to say "It's the game where you get to be Legolas or Conan."

Those fringe games came out simply because people were dissatisfied with how D&D wasn't the game that they thought it was, or wanted it to be. Keep in mind that as the most popular and well known RPG, it's the one people start with. If they branch off to another RPG, it's generally because D&D failed to provide them with an enjoyable experience.

Most people enjoy low level D&D, and then get to mid or high level with a competent wizard and think the game totally turns to shit.

The only game that tries to come close to replicating the scale of D&D is Exalted and that game specifically says in its preface that it's trying really hard not to be another LotR-setting.

Well if anything this is probably a sign that the high powered games are less popular and more of a niche market.

As for D&D's "scale", that's one of the major problems. It really has a terrible scale. It's based of 5 ft squares, and small skirmish combats. Yet it lets you summon planar binding armies and crap like that. Yet there's no mass combat system, or really any mechanic to handle what your summoned stuff does offscreen. You can bring it into the dungeon with you, but that grinds combat to a halt as the game isn't even suited to handle masses of creatures.

It's really still told in the scale of an LotR game, In fact, there's not even any way to handle world spanning combats where people blow up cities or get thrown over mountains.

Until D&D can ditch the battlemat, it's just never going to be suited for a superhero scale. Having a battlemat at all leads to low level tactical maneuvering.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:33 pm

Lago PARANOIA wrote: I can see a market for LotR games, but honestly there are way too much such games out there already. Even discounting j/cRPGs, everyone and their mother has one. We have Fantasycraft, we have the Dark Eye, we have that... that FanPro RPG setting that's like Shadowrun but really not, we have that fantasy supplement Green Ronin is churning out (Wizards and Warriors? I forget), so on.

Nitpicking:

Dark Eye has mind switch, Demon Summoning and a Wish Economy
FanPro's Earthdawn is also High-Magic (Demons, Dragons, all Classes are Magic Powered)
Warriors & Warlock is Sword & Sorcery Comic style (Warord, Arion, Son of Atlantis, Arak, Son of Thunder, etc. --> since I dont know those comics, it may be that they are LotR-like)

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:57 am

RandomCasualty2 wrote: The problem is that D&D in name generally evokes feelings of LotR for most people.

Not to me, and I am 100% of the people who I actually care about the opinions of in this matter.

Those fringe games came out simply because people were dissatisfied with how D&D wasn't the game that they thought it was, or wanted it to be.

Or as a result of the post-2Ed boom where every man and his dog released their own set of house rules and called it a unique game.

Most people enjoy low level D&D, and then get to mid or high level with a competent wizard and think the game totally turns to shit.

Right, and they can eat a dick.

Well if anything this is probably a sign that the high powered games are less popular and more of a niche market.

Sure. MY niche. Therefore it had better fucking stay that way, or move in the direction of Disgaea and TTGL. LotR fantards can go play Adventures of Middle Earth, or huff paint or beat off to the LotR films or whatever it is they do.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:27 am

Koumei wrote: Sure. MY niche. Therefore it had better fucking stay that way, or move in the direction of Disgaea and TTGL. LotR fantards can go play Adventures of Middle Earth, or huff paint or beat off to the LotR films or whatever it is they do.

Honestly I'd go the opposite direction and have D&D be the LotR game and have a second game to handle the high powered stuff. A game that drops the battle map entirely and is built from the ground up to include mythic battles (as opposed to a tacked on system). That way you can have crazy battles actually blowing up mountains and stuff. And you don't have to put up with bullshit expectations like trying to model rangers off Aragorn and barbarians off Conan.

Forking D&D into two games would be the best for both groups. Otherwise people's expectations just end up stepping on each others toes.

You'd have Dungeons and Dragons for the LotR style and Planes and Primordials for the the high powered game.

I'm not saying you shouldn't have your niche, I'm just saying it should be a different game title than D&D.

Absentminded_Wizard · Post by **Absentminded_Wizard** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 7:40 am

RC wrote:The problem is that D&D in name generally evokes feelings of LotR for most people. As a basic descriptor people are going to say "It's the game where you get to be Legolas or Conan."

This probably depends on the age of the person. D&D basically became popular shortly after LotR became mainstream, so the oldest grognards definitely associate the two. People my age (39, feel free to get me a walker for my 40th) tended to discover the two about the same time or first be introduced to fantasy through parents'/uncles' LotR books, so the association still holds. On the other hand, the push for a more high-powered D&D probably comes from people now in their teens and 20s, many of whom were first introduced to fantasy through anime.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:44 am

RC2: I instead propose the high powered awesome one be called D&D, and your one be called "Oh god not another LotR game".

A_W: quite possibly, though I was introduced to The Hobbit, LotR and Hero Quest at ~6 years old, and both D&D and animu* a lot later. I just never really *liked* LotR, and thus was delighted to discover that fantasy could cover far better things.

*Though I still can't see the resemblance

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:54 am

Koumei wrote: RC2: I instead propose the high powered awesome one be called D&D, and your one be called "Oh god not another LotR game".

How many games are molded after LotR?
LG's examples dont cut it for me. At least 3 of his 4 arent LotR clones/based (too much magic).
Dont know about Fantasycraft. Didnt read it yet.

Koumei wrote: *Though I still can't see the resemblance

+1

Edit: And the RPG's which where definitly LotR based... how well did they sell? Not so good IMHO. So I would argue --> LotR is a niche genre

Ice9 · Post by **Ice9** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 10:11 am

I know it causes problems, I know it doesn't scale well ... but there is something enjoyable about getting those mountain-shattering powers in a game where you started out trudging across swamps LotR style.

To an extent, it's context - when everyone has mountain-shattering strikes and has always had them, it's a bit hard to get excited about also having them. I mean sure, there are theoretical mooks that don't have them, but that's like saying we should be excited to be 6' tall and able to talk, because there are theoretical ants that don't have those powers. But when you started out fearing an ogre with a boulder, and neither you, nor your foes, nor even the things you ran away from could so much as dent a mountain ... it gives a certain spice to shattering one.

And you certainly appreciate the utility power more. Being able to hover instead of walking is especially enjoyable when you remember having to walk across swamps and pit-trapped hallways, for instance.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:43 am

I don´t see what the big deal is. In LotR, the high end people also shatter fucking mountains. Like, literally even.

The fact is that LotR doesn´t make any fucking sense, and the only reason they don´t solve everything day one by having the elven high magicians cut a hole in Mount Doom with their literally Ëarth-shatteric magic and then have the fucking eagles fly over all the bullshit obstacles and solve everything all at once is because author fiat was there to make sure there was still a goddamn story.

Yeah, the moment you allow people who are goal oriented to have access to the shit that´s actually in LotR, you can´t tell the LotR stories. At all.

Which is again the problem with DnD, and indeed most fantasy RPGs. The authors don´t spend near enough time contemplating the things people can actually do with the abilities they have been granted. And then, because it´s an RPG and not a bed time story, people actually use those self same abilities in the ways the author didnn´t expect and then the world doesn´t make any logical sense and collapses like a wet paper bag. Which frankly shouldn´t be a surprise to anyone, since the actual story arcs of literally all this LotR-inspired crap, from LotR itself straight on through Shannarrah and Wheel of Time involve irrevocably changing the world into unrecognizabilty.

Hell, even deliberately low fantasy stuff like Song of Ice and Fire and Krull seriously obliterate and remake the world with the powers they throw around. Any game system that faithfully represented any of that shit would by definition alter the world beyond recognizabilty pretty much every campaign.

-Username17

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:19 pm

Yeah, there was a whole section in Complete Mage giving DMs advice on how to deal with divinations, invisibility, flight, teleportation, and similar things without outright banning them. I've played in games like that too, where the DM has some crazy contrived puzzle based on the envoironment, and we all immediately start looking for easy ways around it. This is, or course, followed by even more contrived reasons why we can't use said powers.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:03 pm

When I use puzzles, I expect the players to use their powers to bypass them. Example: an underwater 3d maze constructed from walls of force. With gaze-attack monsters. Sure, they could use Prestidigitation to draw on the walls and work out a way through, or amazing Spot checks to see where the water doesn't flow and work the whole thing out...

...or they could smash/disintegrate the walls of force and wander on through. My expectation is the latter, because the powers are supposed to fuck the puzzles.

Mask_De_H · Post by **Mask_De_H** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 3:55 pm

Koumei wrote:
RandomCasualty2 wrote: The problem is that D&D in name generally evokes feelings of LotR for most people.
Not to me, and I am 100% of the people who I actually care about the opinions of in this matter.

Those fringe games came out simply because people were dissatisfied with how D&D wasn't the game that they thought it was, or wanted it to be.
Or as a result of the post-2Ed boom where every man and his dog released their own set of house rules and called it a unique game.

Most people enjoy low level D&D, and then get to mid or high level with a competent wizard and think the game totally turns to shit.
Right, and they can eat a dick.

Well if anything this is probably a sign that the high powered games are less popular and more of a niche market.
Sure. MY niche. Therefore it had better fucking stay that way, or move in the direction of Disgaea and TTGL. LotR fantards can go play Adventures of Middle Earth, or huff paint or beat off to the LotR films or whatever it is they do.

Have I mentioned that I love you lately?

This is basically why I can tolerate mid-high level D&D, because after a while it stops being LotR dung-farming and becomes what Exalted wishes it was. If you aren't kicking reason to the curb and going beyond the impossible in double-digit levels, then you're out of the D&D-dan and rightfully so. The game can and should be able to support a wide variety of playstyles as long as they fit within the basic world. D&D does this, to an extent. This is why somebody came up with that level breakdown chart; because D&D becomes a completely different game every five levels or so. This is why E6 exists, and why the Tomes work with and allow the Wish Economy.

That being said, the biggest problem with D&D is that it is not complicit with the players that this is happening. You get people who want to be Awesome McBadass from level 1 and people who think hitting the thing with the other thing will take them into D&D Joke Book material playing at the wrong ends of the spectrum. If you're in the wrong quadrant for the game you want to play, then the whole thing turns to shit.