# I like 3E, but I miss...



## Mouseferatu (Oct 25, 2003)

Not sure why I'm on the "old edition" kick today, but here we go.

This is the thread for you to reveal your deep, dark secrets. I think most of us enjoy playing 3.x, but come on. We've all got the skeletons in the closet (until we can find a cleric to turn them).

So come on, I dare you. Finish this sentence:

"As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."


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## Dirigible (Oct 25, 2003)

Fighters being a _punnishment_, rather than an attractive multiclass choice.

"You are a bad paladin! I curse you to forever more be the lowest of the low...... a fighter!"
"Noooooo!"


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## Ranger REG (Oct 25, 2003)

Would "nothing" be a qualified answer in the blank?

If there is one thing that I miss, it would be the "_Birthright_ political system."


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## the Jester (Oct 25, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."





...the potion miscibility table!!!!


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## maddman75 (Oct 25, 2003)

The Forgotten Realms when they were still cool.  The gray box, from the end of 1e.  When Elminster was like a 10th level mage.  When there was no time of troubles, no Cyric, no Drizzt, no Seven Sisters, and the gods of evil were Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul.  Does anyone else remember the fantastic parchment pages i that boxed set?


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## Dark Jezter (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss THAC0.  I mean, come on, we all know that an abstract, over-complicated system is vastly superior to the simple, straightforward system used by 3e. 

Okay, here's a serious one....

I like 3e (love it, actually), but I miss there only being one or two elf subraces.  Over the last decade or so, the number of elf subraces has kept growing and growing until it's reached a downright absurd level.


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## maddman75 (Oct 25, 2003)

That's all about what you let into your game.  THere's a total of two subraces IMC, both homebrewed.  (of course, one is just 'regular elf')


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## the Jester (Oct 25, 2003)

maddman75 said:
			
		

> The Forgotten Realms when they were still cool.  The gray box, from the end of 1e.  When Elminster was like a 10th level mage.  When there was no time of troubles, no Cyric, no Drizzt, no Seven Sisters, and the gods of evil were Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul.  Does anyone else remember the fantastic parchment pages i that boxed set?




The only FR that I enjoyed.  Sigh...

Yeah, actually one of the coolest things about the FR was the Bane-Bhaal-Myrkul thing.  I remember this paragraph about the differences between the three with great fondness...


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## the Jester (Oct 25, 2003)

Dark Jezter said:
			
		

> I miss THAC0.  I mean, come on, we all know that an abstract, over-complicated system is vastly superior to the simple, straightforward system used by 3e.




Bumper sticker idea:

"THAC0 kept the riffraff out."

That's long been a joke in my group; just mutter that phrase and you'll evoke gales of laughter.


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## rushlight (Oct 25, 2003)

Since converting over to 3e, I've lost two players who would finish that sentence like this: "When thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss how abusable it was."

I curse Skills and Powers to the Ninth Layer of Hell!  

I miss the number of good, fluffy books done in 2nd edition.  Thankfully, they can still be used, with some modification.


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## Teflon Billy (Oct 25, 2003)

The 1E "Wandering Prostitute" table in the DMG.

1-10: Slovenly Trull
11-25: Brazen Strumpet
26-35: Cheap Trollop
36-50: Typical Streetwalker
51-65: Saucy Tart
66-75: Wanton Wench
76-85: Expensive Doxy
86-90: Haughty courtesan
91-92: Aged Madam
93-94: Wealthy Porcuress
95-98: Sly Pimp
99-00: Rich Panderer


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## Wycen (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss some of the kick butt magic items like Amulet of Life Protection.


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## Darrin Drader (Oct 25, 2003)

maddman75 said:
			
		

> The Forgotten Realms when they were still cool.  The gray box, from the end of 1e.  When Elminster was like a 10th level mage.  When there was no time of troubles, no Cyric, no Drizzt, no Seven Sisters, and the gods of evil were Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul.  Does anyone else remember the fantastic parchment pages i that boxed set?




Your memory is flawed! The FR novel line launched at the same time as the gaming product line (or at least within a year of one another). The Crystal Shard, the book in which Drizzt was first introduced, was the second FR book to be released. So, unless you count the time when the realms were just an ongoing series of Dragon articles, Drizzt has always been part of the realms.

So what do I miss? For the most part I think the rules are far and away better than they were in 1E and 2E. So what does that leave? The art! OK, a lot of it was far worse than what we have now. What I miss is the Elmore art. His art is fairly realistic and definitely conveys a traditional fantasy feel. I miss it quite a bit. Easley had some great stuff too. In addition to that, I miss the Dragon covers that actually showed a scene as opposed to being just a character study. I miss the comics in the DMG. Papers and Paychecks, the +4 backscratcher, that sense of humor was cool and its gone, gone, gone. Last, but certainly not least, I really miss Gary's quirky writing style. That man can lay donw some truly convoluted sentences that are just plain cool to read.


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## Dark Jezter (Oct 25, 2003)

Baraendur said:
			
		

> Your memory is flawed! The FR novel line launched at the same time as the gaming product line (or at least within a year of one another). The Crystal Shard, the book in which Drizzt was first introduced, was the second FR book to be released. So, unless you count the time when the realms were just an ongoing series of Dragon articles, Drizzt has always been part of the realms.




Quite true.  In fact, in the old 1st Edition FR suppliment _The Savage Frontier_ (released in 1988), Drizzt is listed as being only a 10th-level ranger, Bruenor is an 8th-level fighter, Wulfgar is a 6th-level barbarian, and Regis is a 5th-level thief.  So, it looks like Drizzt and his friends have done a little leveling up since their humble beginnings in _The Icewind Dale Trilogy_.


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## Tessarael (Oct 25, 2003)

I think what I miss most are the Spells and Magic, Skills and Powers (Pills and Scours), and Combat and Tactics books. Why?

In some respects, they allowed more detailed customization of your class. Multiclassing and dual classing were nicely fixed in 3E, but prestige classes giving armor and weapons or spellcasting levels can be unbalanced sometimes. I like the fact that you could create spellcasters with penalties such as taboos and other things.

Fatigue spellcasting, free spells, spell points instead of fixed spells of each level. These were nice ideas. They didn't work perfectly, but it's a pity 3E stuck to a fixed  x spells of level y system - spell points is much nicer.

Oh and the high level handbook in some respects. More choice for what special ability your character got, and you could get that with CPs - in some respects, feats were not as scarce.

I'm not entirely happy with the 3E feat system ... I'm always lacking enough feats, unless I take a Fighter, and it's even worse for multiclassed characters. Feat chains are painful.

Magic item creation: no feats needed! This was a nice 2nd edition feature ... It's a pain to take a spellcaster and then have to burn multiple feats on magic item creation, when it would be more fun to take metamagic feats.


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## Carnifex (Oct 25, 2003)

...the Planescape campaign setting.


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## Celtavian (Oct 25, 2003)

*re*

the newness of the game. Especially when every monster was a surprise, when a new magic item actually took time to figure out, and a new spell level sent you sifting through your _Player's Handbook_ in search of a new spell. I would spend hours reading the spells trying to figure out the one I thought would be best to pick.


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## Staffan (Oct 25, 2003)

mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."



... Dark Sun. Also, adventures that aren't dungeon crawls. Oh, and priests that actually differ depending on the god they worship - a priest of Apollo could be as different from a priest of Hades as a druid is different from a genericleric.


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## JeffB (Oct 25, 2003)

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




The underlying "philosophy" and "tone" of the previous versions


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## John Crichton (Oct 25, 2003)

The elitism of things like Weapon Speed and the unstoppable dual longsword wielding elf.  

Actually, I miss viable multiclassed spellcasters.  While I really dig the balance of 3e with the classes, there just simply isn't a happy medium where mutliclassed spellcasters can survive like in 2e.  That's really all I can think of...


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## Gnarlo (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss that special feeling that we were doing something new, exciting, and different. It was like being part of a secret club of mages, that we and we alone had discovered this new magic and were determined to wrest out all its secrets.

That, and I miss being young, quick, having a full head of hair, and being in middle school and not having any responsibilities except going to school during the day and spending the evenings gaming or planning on gaming. 

Don't know which of the two reasons take first place


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## Shadeus (Oct 25, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




Gary Gygax

Although Gary is still around, it's not the same as when he was running the show.


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## Wormwood (Oct 25, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."



A small part of me is wistful for the the lower hit points, magic item rarity and "roll 3d6 once for each stat in order" of 1e. 

I wouldn't trade any of them for the ramped-up action and myriad options of 3+, mind you. 

But it *was* a simpler game in my salad days.


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## Richards (Oct 25, 2003)

Definitely the artwork.  Oh, for the days when PCs weren't covered in tattoos, multiple body piercings, and spikes, and monsters actually looked like their descriptions!

Johnathan


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## jester47 (Oct 25, 2003)

If I had to miss somthing, I miss the Easly coveres and the sheer strangeness of 1E.  I don't miss 2E a bit.

Aaron


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## astralpwka (Oct 25, 2003)

I liked the random dungeon in the 1E DMG. I spent a lot of would-be bored time taking solo characters or groups all controlled by myself through random dungeons. I've kept my 1E book just for that dungeon.


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## Tyler Do'Urden (Oct 25, 2003)

I really miss the look of 2e... the feel of 90's RPGs, with their lower (yet higher than 80's) production values gave the books a different sort of ambience- especially D&D and Earthdawn.  The only 3e books I've seen which have brought back that feeling are the Arcana Unearthed books.  The 3e art just looks like a video game.

I miss the huge adventures that were more than dungeon crawls... even though the dungeon crawls were great too.

Planescape, undoubtably... even though 3e has settings that I like as well or better (Diamond Throne, Midnight, Oathbound, WoT)

Sourcebooks that were more than just encyclopedias of power-ups.

Of course, despite all that, there's lots of stuff I don't miss-

THAC0

Useless low-level wizards

Inflexible classes that a character was stuck in for it's entire career.

Unbalanced kits.

Exceptional strength.

Terribly abusable brawling and called shot rules.

Racial class restrictions that made no sense (Elves can't be Druids or Bards?  Pixies can't be Mages?)

The Humanoids Handbook- nothing in there was balanced.  ECL is a much better mechanic- and generally discourages most players from playing non-core races, other than the occasional Tiefling, Drow, or Half-Celestial)

While I really liked the Player's Option series, I often had to write a book of modifications and errata just to turn 2e into a game that I could actually want to play or run.  I certainly don't miss that.  D&D 3e plays right out of the box- I hardly have to tweak it at all.  It's like a swiss watch compared to the old system.

So, on balance, I'll take 3e over 2e any day of the week and sunday, even if I do miss the old aesthetics... and Planescape.


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## Wombat (Oct 25, 2003)

I'm the wrong person to ask, but I'll answer anyway  

I played D&D, but dropped out when it turned to AD&D because the whole game had gotten, well, _rather silly_.

I switched to _RuneQuest_

Later I switched to _Ars Magica_ and _Over the Edge_

I have been playing 3e, but won't bother to switch to 3.5, because the mechanics were cleaner than in the past and, after a move, it was much easier to get a D&D group together than anything else.

So what do I miss from 1st & 2nd ed AD&D?

Mucha nada...


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## Staffan (Oct 25, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> ... Dark Sun.



Speaking of which, I just got off my butt (well, not literally...) and posted my outline for a Dark Sun conversion in the Conversions forum. Everyone's welcome to take a look at it and comment.


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## Achan hiArusa (Oct 25, 2003)

From the Red Box D&D I miss the quick character creation.  In D&D you rolled your ability scores, you choose your character class, you picked a basic character class equipment set, if you were a wizard you choose your two spells, and you had a character.  AD&D 1E broke the races and classes into different steps which slowed creation down a little bit (and allowed wizards a wider variety of spells to start with), then Unearthed Arcana introduced subraces, new classes, new equipment, and new spells which slowed things down even further, AND they didn't have equipment kits like Basic D&D.  The wilderness survival guide and the dungeoneer's survival guide added proficiencies which really, really slowed down character creation.  The 2nd ed Player's Handbook sped things up a little bit by putting stuff in one place again (though I still complain about how they nerfed clerics, druids, and rangers).  Then the Complete Handbooks came out and introduced kits which again slowed down character creation (not to mention if someone wanted to Psionicist, then everyone ended up waiting around for the Psi player).  Then the Player's Option books came out, with its point pimping system, character creation slowed to a crawl (almost as bad as Champions).

The Slowest part of 3e and 3.5e is the skill system.  You have to allocate skill points, determine racial bonuses, class bonuses, feat bonuses, and synergy bonuses.  That also applies to determining saving throws, base attack bonus, and initiative.  With the staggering amount of choice in equipment, spells, feats, and skills players spent a lot of time creating their characters.  And if they player wants to modify the basics of his class like the example at the end of the heroic characteristics chapter then it gets even longer.

Even combat is slower, with different types of combat options, and rules everywhere.  Even the critical system slows down combat.

Sigh, I would check out Savage Worlds except my Players would never make the switch, and I like D&D too much.  Maybe it has a few good ideas.

Sincerely,




Sammy Grimes


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## Grand_Director (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss rolling every round for inititive.

""Oh No!  If we don't go first next round, that wizard will launch a fireball and kill us all."  Ahhh.  Epic struggles.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 25, 2003)

rushlight said:
			
		

> Since converting over to 3e, I've lost two players who would finish that sentence like this: "When thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss how abusable it was."
> 
> I curse Skills and Powers to the Ninth Layer of Hell!
> 
> I miss the number of good, fluffy books done in 2nd edition.  Thankfully, they can still be used, with some modification.




FIRST edition was abusable?  They haven't seen a tiefling monk/wizard/incantatrix/archmage yet.  Of all editions 3e is by far the most abusable.  It's simply a by-product of all the supplements.


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## RSKennan (Oct 25, 2003)

The real demon summoning rituals and *True Power* that were hidden in the rules. The new demons, while more "balanced" when I conjuure them, don't offer the same kinds of off the wall pacts that the old ones did. Orcus just don't seem the same.  

I also miss how women would swoon as I juggled polyhedral dice and liltingly recited poetic passages from the 1e PHB or DMG, such as "Dwarven fighters with less than 17 strength are limited to 7th level; those with 17 strength are limited to 8th level." or "As soon as the die roll determines that the party is lost, determine the direction." Those were the glory days.  


Seriously though, although I like the smoother mechanincs of 3e/3.5- I have to say i desperately miss not having to use a battlemat. I also miss the time when being a 'rules lawyer' was worse than being in a boy band. 

The only redeeming factors for 2e were some of the 'official' worlds, like Dark Sun, Planescape etc, and to a lesser extent the ideas behind some of the complete class guides. 1e had a charm that didn't carry over to 2e for me.

Still, I'm very happy with 3e, and aside from the possibility of a few short returns for nostalgia's sake, I doubt I'll be playing the older ediions again.


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## Pants (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss the newness, but that can apply to any edition.  I started playing back in the last run of 2ed, only core books mind you and everything was new.

"How do I level up my Fighter?"
"A Gnoll!? Oh crap, run!"
"What the hell is a 'Stirge?'"
"I charge the Giant Weasel!"

Oh it was great fun, I barely knew the mechanics, but I had great fun nonetheless.  Any magic item I got was something to be worshipped with awe and it was all great.
One more thing that I miss is the old 2ed Monstrous Manual.  That was a great book, terrible art, but the writing in it was beautiful, the ecologies, the histories, the combat section, the one-monster per page.  Beautiful.


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## Marimmar@Home (Oct 25, 2003)

I miss...

...making item saving throws for all my stuff after failing a safe against a fireball.

...the days when creating magic items was an epic task and noone could explain where all the magic stuff came from.

~Marimmar


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## Psion (Oct 25, 2003)

The Player's Option book.

Yeah, you had do very judiciously house rule it, but it provides a greater degree of control over character abilities.


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## Aristotle (Oct 25, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> ... Dark Sun.




Yeah! My Dark Sun campaign was the first one I ran where the emphasis wasn't on hack-n-slash gaming, but rathert on an underlying story that I had cooked up.

Oh, and that amazing cloth map that came with the original Dark Sun box. Paper maps would wear through and tear in months. My Dark Sun map was used all the time and is still in perfect condition. Coolest gaming accessory ever...


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## heimdall (Oct 25, 2003)

The assassin as a core class. 
Rangers having 2d8 hp at 1st and casting druid and m-u spells. 
The illusionist as a core class and not a specialist wizard.


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## woodelf (Oct 25, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




Priests/clerics whose abilities were tailored for their god.

Rangers who were commandos instead of nature boys (1e only).

Opposition schools for magic.

Bards who were performers and diplomats, rather than jack-of-all-trades (1e only).

The Complete Psionics Handbook. [Damn! the powers in the new psionics handbook are cool.  But they don't feel at all like "psychic" powers to me.]

Simple combat rules.


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## johnsemlak (Oct 25, 2003)

--Greyhawk  


...seriously

I'm not saying I want the following things _back_.  IT's just that some 1e things seemed cool at the time.


Exceptional strengh.  It seemed to allow for a much more Conanesque strength.
Level Titles--very cool, but certainly unnecessary.
1e multiclassing.  I still have a soft spot for the elf fighter/magic-user (I know, some people dumped 1e because of them).  It gave elves a little more flavor, them being the only ones that could cast spells in armor (except gnomes).
Some race/class restrictions.  Again I know many players got tired of the same old combinations, and many 1e restrictions were stupid (no elf bards or whatever), but the complete lack of them is a bit much for me.  I sometimes think in 3e some players try to be too original with their race class combinations (half-ogre paladin/wizards or whatever) and don't try to do original roleplaying with their characters.  I'm of a mind that you can be very original playing a standard cliche character (particularly with all the wonderful options that 3e provides)


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## Mercule (Oct 25, 2003)

... how simple it was to create a PC/NPC. As a DM, I could stat one in my head in about 20 seconds, unless it was a mage.

... wild talent psionics. I had a whole order of "knights" that were made up of wild psionic teleporters. Still not sure about the best way to bring them back, since the order is critical to my world's history.

... 2E cleric spheres. Only a handful priesthoods in my world had unrestricted access to healing, and only two could raise the dead (and neither had major healing). Priesthoods were different from one another and actually reflected the deities they served.

... Heirophant druid (from 1E, not 2E). Just plain cool.

... Non-TWF Rangers. That's a thread in itself, though.

... Rangers with arcane spells.

... Random dungeon tables. So many good times.

... Random demon tables. Lessee, how could you not love the ability to spawn a demon like this:
-pelican-headed
-antlered
-gibbering
-elephant ears
-protruding metalic eyes
-a snout
-mandibles
-long rubbery rat-like body
-stingered tail
-vomit odor
-slimy skin
-primarily orange in color
-hunched back
-insectoid wings
-four tentacles ending in pincers
-hooved feet

... The 1E DMG appedices. All the colors, textures, dungeon trappings, etc. Also the list of theoritic supernatural properties of gems and herbs.

... Level titles.

... A time before FR. I never even cared for the gray box. I got it and said, "What a lame setting. It'll never last." I still have a hard time thinking of the setting as anything other than Lorainne Williams only success.

And, things I don't miss:

... THAC0. What a weird concept. A player/DM screen with the charts on it was better that THAC0. Looking back, even the idea of the inverted AC and "BAB" doesn't make much sense, but we didn't know any better.

... Five vaguely categorized saving throws.

... A myriad of odd-fitting rules. High is good on this role, low on that. Percentile for some things, d20 for others. Many classes roll odd dice for surprise or initiative.

... Humans are more versatile, so they can only persue one class at a time; while elves with their long life and level limits can never adopt a new profession.

... Lorainne Williams. I'll let that one lie other than to say that I've only ever boycotted one company's products because of the way they did business. In 1993 (ish), I stopped playing D&D and even _threw all my houserules and world development in the trash_ because of the way TSR was behaving as a company. They immediately went so far off my radar that, despite remaining an active gamer for the next several years, I actually heard no news about TSR until WotC released 3E (at which point, I had to ask, "Huh? Doesn't TSR own D&D?").


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## woodelf (Oct 25, 2003)

Monsters that always had info on something besides how to fight them.

Art that was representational, instead of stylized--dammit, i want to know what the beast actually looks like!


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## pogre (Oct 25, 2003)

not much.

Tom Wham's art.

I skipped from 1E to 3E thank goodness.


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## Achan hiArusa (Oct 25, 2003)

*Level Titles*

Oh, yes.  Level titles, I had almost forgotten about those.  Players knew what level the character was by his level title (unless I lied about it, heh, heh), and I could use them instead of saying "he was a 2nd level ranger..." I could use the proper level title instead, keeping those who didn't spend the time memorizing all the level titles from figuring out what class the character was.

Of course, they could be brought back.  We have level titles for every class except the sorceror, the psychic warrior, and the new classes from the miniature's handbook.


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## Michael Tree (Oct 25, 2003)

Birthright.  Spelljammer.  Taladas.  The original FR boxed set.

Effective multiclass spellcasters.  I have fond memories of ranger/wizards and druid/wizards.

Specialty priests whose abilities and spells actually reflected the diety they worshipped.

The cuztomizability of the Players' Options books.

A game where massive numbers of magical items and enhancements weren't needed for the balance of the game.  Where magic items were cool additions to a character, not a primary source of a character's power.


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## Teflon Billy (Oct 25, 2003)

Wombat said:
			
		

> I switched to _RuneQuest_
> 
> Later I switched to _Ars Magica_




Same here...Ars Magica remains one of my favorite campaign games ever



> ...and _Over the Edge_




Are you allowed to complain that your game has gone "silly" then move to Over the Edge? 




> I have been playing 3e, but won't bother to switch to 3.5, because the mechanics were cleaner than in the past and, after a move, it was much easier to get a D&D group together than anything else.
> 
> So what do I miss from 1st & 2nd ed AD&D?
> 
> Mucha nada...




Not even Wandering Prostitutes? You have no soul my friend


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## Staffan (Oct 25, 2003)

Aristotle said:
			
		

> Oh, and that amazing cloth map that came with the original Dark Sun box. Paper maps would wear through and tear in months. My Dark Sun map was used all the time and is still in perfect condition. Coolest gaming accessory ever...




That was the revised box (where the rulebook was called "Age of Heroes"). The original box had paper maps


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## De Arco (Oct 25, 2003)

Hmmm... what I miss most about 1st or 2nd edition?

Rangers that were a giant's worst nightmare.
Elven Fighter/Mages that were effective.
Illusionists that weren't just another kind of wizard.
The random dungeon and encounter tables.  The city encounters were great!
The abstract combat.  It used to be more cinematic.  Now it's like a wargame.


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## Allanon (Oct 25, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."



 Planescape, Sigil... Sigh, just thinking back of the times we dodged the lady of pain. The Great art (I know not everyone agrees) of the books. And the sheer endless supply of adventures the DM and eventually me could create (I started DM'ing with Planescape, probably part of my fondness of the setting).


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 25, 2003)

1> Actual Dragon Hordes. Ugh. In 3rd edition a Great Wyrm Dragon might have as much as 10 gallons of gold in coins (about 80 thousand gp). To put that in perspective: the Great Wyrm Dragon is _eighty feet long_ - and is thus about six thousand times the volume of his treasure horde. What happened to Dragons sleeping on treasure? If the Great Wyrm spead his gold pieces out underneath his body it would be only 0.7% of an inch thick!

2> Planescape. Enough said.

3> Multiclass Spellcasters that don't suck.

4> Related to number 1: the ability to give out huge piles of wealth to players without breaking the game.

----

There's so many things  don't miss that I couldn't even fit them here.

-Frank


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## Teflon Billy (Oct 25, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> 4> Related to number 1: the ability to give out huge piles of wealth to players without breaking the game.




*Sigh* Yeah.



> There's so many things  don't miss that I couldn't even fit them here.




*Sigh* Yeah.


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## Particle_Man (Oct 26, 2003)

For the dragon's hoard, you can make it look bigger by making it all the equivalent wealth, in copper pieces.  That also provides an additional challenge to dragon-slaying looters.  

But what I miss the most is the 1st ed core-class illusionist, that had spells that the regular magic-users had no access to at all, and other spells that were up to 3 spell levels lower than the magic-users had them at (Maze).  It worked both ways -- there were a lot of spells illusionists did not get.  Also (and I guess this was too abusable, but oh so versatile) Shadow conjuration to Shades could create a shadowy version of just about ANY creature as long as you respected the HD limit.  It didn't just mimic other spells.  And the only illusion spell that regular magic-users got was the equivalent of silent image (as a 3rd level spell) -- no shadow magic at all, if memory serves.

The trouble is, I would have a hard time convincing people to "prune down" the spell lists of all non-illusionist wizards in 3e just to be able to capture the feel of the 3e illusionist.  Ah well.  A lost battle there, I suppose.

I'm surprise no one has posted that they miss when Assassins were neutral, but that was way before 1st ed.


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 26, 2003)

> For the dragon's hoard, you can make it look bigger by making it all the equivalent wealth, in copper pieces. That also provides an additional challenge to dragon-slaying looters.




That makes it about 300 times as large. Which sounds big until you realize - that makes the Great Wyrm's horde about 2 inches deep.

And he still doesn't have a resting place for his wings.

-Frank


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## Deadguy (Oct 26, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> 1> Actual Dragon Hordes. Ugh. In 3rd edition a Great Wyrm Dragon might have as much as 10 gallons of gold in coins (about 80 thousand gp). To put that in perspective: the Great Wyrm Dragon is _eighty feet long_ - and is thus about six thousand times the volume of his treasure horde. What happened to Dragons sleeping on treasure? If the Great Wyrm spead his gold pieces out underneath his body it would be only 0.7% of an inch thick!
> 
> .... _and_
> 
> 4> Related to number 1: the ability to give out huge piles of wealth to players without breaking the game.



 That's because after a few levels 'money' didn't actually _mean_ anything in a typical campaign. You grew to the point where you could buy anything out of the PHB that you wanted, and the only alternatives were investing in castles and lands _if your DM could be bothered!_. Otherwise PCs just accumulated a dragon-sized hoard of their own. 

 At least you knew why dragons slept on their money: there was damn all else they could do with it!


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## BryonD (Oct 26, 2003)

I miss how cool *any* new game book was when I was 16.


----------



## Ukyo the undead (Oct 26, 2003)

PLANESCAPE...

... initiative modifiers...

...low power level feel...

...clerics with something dufferent from each other than just domain spells.


----------



## Magius del Cotto (Oct 26, 2003)

Critical Hit Tables (from the Combat and Tactics book): Made spells like Regeneration more important, and it made items like the Stump Knife actually make sense.  That's about it, really.  Yes, this is helped somewhat by the Torn Asunder book, but it doesn't take into acount comparative weapon/creature sizes, so you could end up beheading someone with a tiny dagger, if it's magical enough.
Magius out.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 26, 2003)

heimdall said:
			
		

> ...Rangers having 2d8 hp at 1st and casting druid and m-u spells. ...





He still does in my game.


----------



## Thresher (Oct 26, 2003)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> The 1E "Wandering Prostitute" table in the DMG.




Aye, I'd second that... damn politically correctness and sensitivity...

"As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss multiclassing."


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## Valiantheart (Oct 26, 2003)

The dual wielding rules.  Sure they were broken but at least you got something for all the proficiencies you had to drop into it.  Now you drop the same amount of proficiencies just to be less effective than somebody with a great sword.

Initiative rolled each round.

Magic items that you couldnt churn out like a factory de magica.

Effective multiclassing of spell casters.

The general feeling of exploration and surprise.


----------



## Michael Morris (Oct 26, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




Networlds and netprojects.  d20, for all the great things it brought, killed online community projects because it siphoned off all the great writers to work for all the publishing companies that sprung up.  Not that this isn't a bad thing, but it is something I miss.


----------



## Darrin Drader (Oct 26, 2003)

Michael_Morris said:
			
		

> Networlds and netprojects.  d20, for all the great things it brought, killed online community projects because it siphoned off all the great writers to work for all the publishing companies that sprung up.  Not that this isn't a bad thing, but it is something I miss.




Too true, but those net worlds and net projects sure made good resumes for would-be freelancers wanting to work for the up and coming publishers.

Of course my greatest fear is that every fan of D20 products will realize how easy this stuff is to produce, join a company, and start producing it rather than buying it, thus killing the market from within. ...Oh wait, I guess that *is* what happened.


----------



## Alzrius (Oct 26, 2003)

...the holisticity of AD&D 2E.

Back in the previous edition, the campaign worlds were all interconnected, and this led to what I felt was a very rich amount of diversification through the various campaign models cross-pollinating.

Khelben Arunsun the Younger lives in Greyhawk. A section of Sigil is named New Tyr by gladiators from Athas. Baba Yaga has a living wall she got from Ravenloft. Teldin Moore visited Astinus of Palanthas to learn more about spelljamming. An awnsheigh named The Blowfish lives on Gehenna. All these things added great color to the multiverse TSR developed because it reinforced the fact that the characters lived in a huge existence that was not composed of isolated little worlds.

I found it highly ironic that when WotC stepped in, they revolutionized the mechanics of the game to a wonderful new level, and simultaneously destroyed this particular storytelling aspect that I loved. I feel, contrary to what is now the popular opinion, that AD&D 2E had not gotten to the point where you needed a large number of books to play the game due to them all referencing each other. Even in world-specific campaigns that just didn't ring true to me. (Although it was true that TSR was killing themselves by dividing their own market with different supported worlds simultaneously.)

On that note, I feel WotC has gone too far in the other direction. It can be just as bad to go out of your way to make sure none of the books borrow from each other, also. Just look at the mess that happens when you compare _Deities & Demigods_ with the _Epic Level Handbook_. And I won't even go into the whole part of them giving the Realms some new cosmology based on a tree, just so you wouldn't feel any pressure to buy _Manual of the Planes_.


----------



## Rashak Mani (Oct 26, 2003)

Funny no one mentioned... I miss that Prot from Evil 10' aura that Paladins had !  I thought it was just awesome idea.  (It basically gave -1 to attacks for any evil in the area). 

   I could vizualise a paladin covered up in civilian clothes entering a city... and then suddenly that evil creature he is seeking and approaching a moment before just getting that tingling sensation... that feeling that something supernatural and holy had just gotten close... very close.

    This made Paladins IMHO true beacons of their gods... for they couldn't even disguise themselves. (At least to evil doers.)


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## Ycore Rixle (Oct 26, 2003)

Another vote here for level titles, neutral assassins, rangers with magic-user spells, effective multiclassing spellcasters, and a DMG that included a treasure trove of tables, miscellaneous info, and reading recommendations.

My biggest vote goes for the idea of balance, however. (/rant on) In 1e, Gary Gygax didn't believe in the idea of balance as we know it today. He said right in the PHB that the magic-user and the monk may be the most devastating classes at higher levels. I miss having unbalanced character classes. The weak-at-low-levels, strong-at-high-levels magic-user and the reverse-designed fighter made a lot of sense to me. I don't think it's possible to perfectly balance every character class at every level, and I think it's up to the campaign and the DM to make sure that the game is fun for everyone. If someone doesn't want to play a class because it's not 'powerful' enough, then the DM should adjust his campaign accordingly. It's all about the players. Having unbalanced classes gave them more options. They could choose, by their class, to play in a low-powered or high-powered campaign - as long ast he DM adequately adjust the campaign to keep the game fun for the players. Balance as we know it today is a misguided port to D&D from computer games. In computer games, the computer can't adjust the campaign world on-the-fly to the choices of the player, so in a computer game, the designers have to make sure that all the class choices are equally fun and balanced to play. But in a pen-and-paper world, the DM can adjust the game for each individual character, even in a group - and she should. Given that DM adjustment, the inclusion of unbalanced classes gives players more options. Namely, they can choose to play in a high-powered or low-powered game by their choices.(/rant off) 

Still, there are many more things that I don't miss.


----------



## Walter_J (Oct 26, 2003)

I miss the simplicity of 1E and D&D.  Roll your stats, pick a race, class, equipment and spells and your character is ready to go.  Same with monsters, NPC's and overall game play.  I don't at all miss the grappling rules from the 1E DMG.

The only thing about 2E I miss is the time and money we wasted on a game that didn't work for us.


----------



## Junkheap (Oct 26, 2003)

God this thread makes me miss the pre 3e editions so much...

My list

Clerical individuality....speciality priest were all different.  You were always on your toes with not knowling what abilities the cleric had.

Planescape...my god i miss this campaign

AlQuadim....another campaign i miss dearly

The mysteriousness of previous editions.....everything was made up by your imagination, it didn't have to make sense, it was all magical, and everyone was fine with it.   In 3e it HAS to make sense or it isn't possible.   Too many rules laywers.

Iniative every round.

Magical items.  Mysterious and amazing.  You couldn't create, or was very hard to.  Sure you had a ton of money later on in your career with nothing to spend it on, but heros should.  

Adventures...epic high level adventures.  Or campaign adventure like dead gods, modron march, al quadim box sets, the conjunction stuff from ravenloft.  I just find going over 18lvl in 3e just stupid.  

3e to me feels more like a video game than a gritty mysterious wonder that 2e was.  

The various supported worlds.  

The monster manuals, more specifically 1 page 1 monster.

I still love 3e, but i find i had much more fun playing 2e.  We have already quit 3e a couple of times!!!  Maybe its cuz i grew up with 2e.


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## Ferret (Oct 26, 2003)

All that I know of 2ed is from the baldurs gate system but......


As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss High level thieves and bouncing lighning round a room. I miss Flat bonus' on MR for drow (Viconia) and Clerical spheres


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## Mercule (Oct 26, 2003)

Alzrius said:
			
		

> ...the holisticity of AD&D 2E.
> 
> Back in the previous edition, the campaign worlds were all interconnected, and this led to what I felt was a very rich amount of diversification through the various campaign models cross-pollinating.



Now, see, this is one of the things that I decidedly don't miss from 2E and is one of the reasons why the game lost its shine, IMHO.  I hate having FR in Greyhawk and vice versa (feel free to interchange Darksun, Dragonlance, and Ravenloft for either of the above).  I still cannot understand the lure of Planescape on any level.  And Spelljammer was simply an abomination.

Really, I thought the whole interlinking of the worlds served more to homogenize everything than diversify.


----------



## ThoughtBubble (Oct 26, 2003)

I miss being able to describe combat with the rogue rolling back out of the room, dodging the axe-master's attacks, and ducking under a table, only to have it split in half by a blow, and kicked away. 

If I tried that now, I'd get screams of protest that the player didn't choose to move his character. Can someone have theatrical retreats after making a full attack option? Does it provoke an AOO if he's moved past an enemy's threat range? What's the cover granted by the table? How much damage gets past it's harndess? Between the grid and all these useful, well thought out rules, my DMing style is getting cramped.

Other things:
Another vote for clerics having limited access to different domains.
2E bards having the ability to use any weapon.
Half an hour to do the minimalist 3D6 rolled 6 times, pick class, race and equipment to start a new game. Where are my optional rules for a faster game?
edit: My players describing things to me in actions, instead of lifting up their miniature, counting out a movement path, putting their figure down, and saying "That one."


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## Thanee (Oct 26, 2003)

Except for the original and inherent coolness of these days, I think I mainly miss decent multiclassed spellcasters as well. 

Altho my all-time favorite magic-user/thief is still pretty well represented with the Arcane Trickster nowadays! 

From the original D&D, besides that mysterious something it had about it, I really liked the mass combat rules (simple and still quite good (altho the +100 modifier for being completely unable to harm your opponent in any way was a bit hilarious )) and the super cool campaign Test of the Warlords. That one was great fun!

For those that miss the quick and simple original D&D rules, you might want to take a look into Talislanta. While it is completely different in style and quite exotic from a standard fantasy point of view, it's extremely simple and still very cool.

Bye
Thanee


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## woodelf (Oct 26, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> That was the revised box (where the rulebook was called "Age of Heroes"). The original box had paper maps




Thanks--i was starting to wonder if i'd lost my mind, 'cause i had most of the pre-revised Dark Sun stuff, and could've sworn i'd never seen a cloth map.


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## jasamcarl (Oct 26, 2003)

Ycore Rixle said:
			
		

> Another vote here for level titles, neutral assassins, rangers with magic-user spells, effective multiclassing spellcasters, and a DMG that included a treasure trove of tables, miscellaneous info, and reading recommendations.
> 
> My biggest vote goes for the idea of balance, however. (/rant on) In 1e, Gary Gygax didn't believe in the idea of balance as we know it today. He said right in the PHB that the magic-user and the monk may be the most devastating classes at higher levels. I miss having unbalanced character classes. The weak-at-low-levels, strong-at-high-levels magic-user and the reverse-designed fighter made a lot of sense to me. I don't think it's possible to perfectly balance every character class at every level, and I think it's up to the campaign and the DM to make sure that the game is fun for everyone. If someone doesn't want to play a class because it's not 'powerful' enough, then the DM should adjust his campaign accordingly. It's all about the players. Having unbalanced classes gave them more options. They could choose, by their class, to play in a low-powered or high-powered campaign - as long ast he DM adequately adjust the campaign to keep the game fun for the players. Balance as we know it today is a misguided port to D&D from computer games. In computer games, the computer can't adjust the campaign world on-the-fly to the choices of the player, so in a computer game, the designers have to make sure that all the class choices are equally fun and balanced to play. But in a pen-and-paper world, the DM can adjust the game for each individual character, even in a group - and she should. Given that DM adjustment, the inclusion of unbalanced classes gives players more options. Namely, they can choose to play in a high-powered or low-powered game by their choices.(/rant off)
> 
> Still, there are many more things that I don't miss.




Uh, no thanks. I would rather the option of which class i take not be dictated by whether you are running a low or high-powered campaign. And as a DM I would rather base my encounter choices on solid assumptions of party capability per level, as oppossed to having to guestimate what they are capable of thanks to a few lazy, loose design descicions.

DM and Plurality of the Party: "Hey, let's fight demons at 3rd level!!!"

Lone Player: "But I wanted to play a fighter!"

Rest of the Group: "That's your the beauty of 1e/2e, you have the option to be weak and die over and over. The communist conspiracy, aka 3e, would have limited your option to do that by telling you that you are screwed or, even worse, seducing you with the option to play a compitent fighter, thereby forcing you to play at a lower level to be worthless!!!"

LP (pondering): "Ok, carry on then..."

In conclusion, if a dm wants options in designing a high-magic/low-magic game or tougher/easier challenges, intentionally misbalancing the classes is the worst way of doing this, because you trade off a great deal of ingame tactical options in the process. If you want to add/subtract effectivness from the players, making such a change class neutral is the way to go, by slicing off xp/gp awards or some other method. Atleast 3e gives you some definitive base from which you can develop such a change...


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## Gothmog (Oct 26, 2003)

Things I miss:

Lower power level

One page, one moster- really, the info on culture, ecology, etc WAS more useful than a pile of stats.

GP value/level requirements- let the DM give whatever level of treasure he felt was appropriate.  Now its so tied into the system, that giving differing amounts of treasure has effects across the board.

Decent, non-spikey dungeonpunk art- I want a pic to depict what something looks like- be representational of the creature, not a stylized drawing

Gotta agree with Teflon Billy- wandering prostitute table- as well as all the cool tables in the DMG

Non-generic clerics- the 2E sphere system was SO much better than domains

Weapon skills- all characters of the same class being able to use the same weapons is dumb


Things I DON'T miss

Super-elves

weird multiclassing rules- old multiclass characters were MUCH more powerful than regular characters

Non-weapon proficiencies

Old saving throws


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## Ycore Rixle (Oct 26, 2003)

jasamcarl said:
			
		

> Uh, no thanks. I would rather the option of which class i take not be dictated by whether you are running a low or high-powered campaign.




I thought I said the reverse: that class choice could dictate the power level of the campaign. You are saying that the power level of the campaign dictates class choice. I think 1e allowed for the former possibility. 3e still allows for it, as well. My gripe is that too many people moan incessantly about precise 'balance.' I think that the idea of balance only comes from computer games that have to pre-balance their worlds for all character choices. With a GM who is able to adjust the campaign world on the fly for each individual character, there is no need to pre-balance the character class choices beyond a reasonable limit.




			
				jasamcarl said:
			
		

> And as a DM I would rather base my encounter choices on solid assumptions of party capability per level, as oppossed to having to guestimate what they are capable of thanks to a few lazy, loose design descicions.




Well, I guess we just have a difference of opinion there. Your "loose" design decisions - presumably the decision to not exactly balance each character class - are perfect for me. I like the idea of a Guide and a Handbook, not a rule book.



			
				jasamcarl said:
			
		

> In conclusion, if a dm wants options in designing a high-magic/low-magic game or tougher/easier challenges...




My point was that unbalancing the classes gave this option to the player, not the DM. A DM has all the options he'll ever need to design high-magic/low-magic etc. games, and they're all called Rule 0. Players, who are the focus of the game, need this option too.




			
				jasamcarl said:
			
		

> ...intentionally misbalancing the classes is the worst way of doing this, because you trade off a great deal of ingame tactical options in the process.




I'm sure I could think of some worse ways.  Seriously, a lot of people seem stuck on the idea that all the classes in the game have to be, as close as possible, exactly the same in power and utility. Absolutely not. All of the players must be so balanced, but all of the classes do not. It is up to the DM to make sure that the players are all of having fun. Classes that aren't balanced makes an interesting world and gives meta-game power to the players.

About the situation where three players in a group choose relatively higher-powered classes and one player chooses a relatively lower-powered class, well, that scenario just screams with opportunity. From LOTR to One Tree Hill, literature is filled with underdogs.




			
				jasamcarl said:
			
		

> If you want to add/subtract effectivness from the players, making such a change class neutral is the way to go, by slicing off xp/gp awards or some other method.




Again, it's not about what the DM wants. It's about what the players want. The player has the choice: does he choose a fighter or a magic-user? His choice forces the DM to change the world to make that player feel challenged and effective.

Finally, don't get me wrong. I love 3e. I even love 3.5e. I think the game is getting better all the time. I just think hyper-intensive 'balancing' of classes is burdening the game and taking away some of the sense of wonder.


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## Wormwood (Oct 26, 2003)

Ycore Rixle said:
			
		

> I just think hyper-intensive 'balancing' of classes is burdening the game and taking away some of the sense of wonder.



While I agree in theory, my group played 1e/2e for so long that when the 'sense of wonder' eventually wore off, we were left with the unbalanced underpinnings of the system.

Bladesingers. Lots of Bladesingers. 

*shudder*


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## MrFilthyIke (Oct 26, 2003)

Thanee said:
			
		

> For those that miss the quick and simple original D&D rules, you might want to take a look into Talislanta. While it is completely different in style and quite exotic from a standard fantasy point of view, it's extremely simple and still very cool.




I adore Talislanta! 

I even asked Monte at a seminar at GenCon if they had based 3.0 on
Talislanta (which WotC owned briefly).  One of the best worlds, evar.


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## woodelf (Oct 26, 2003)

MrFilthyIke said:
			
		

> I adore Talislanta!
> 
> I even asked Monte at a seminar at GenCon if they had based 3.0 on
> Talislanta (which WotC owned briefly).




As opposed to Ars Magica, which WotC owned for about the same amount of time, which practially looks just like D&D3E under the hood, and which Jonathan Tweet was codesigner of?  I keep hearing the Talislanta thing, but, beyond the general idea that i'm sure they borrowed ideas from lots of places, i think the fact that D&D3E looks exactly like a 50/50 cross of AD&D2 Players' Option and Ars Magica pretty much answers the question.


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## jasamcarl (Oct 26, 2003)

Ycore Rixle said:
			
		

> I thought I said the reverse: that class choice could dictate the power level of the campaign. You are saying that the power level of the campaign dictates class choice. I think 1e allowed for the former possibility. 3e still allows for it, as well. My gripe is that too many people moan incessantly about precise 'balance.' I think that the idea of balance only comes from computer games that have to pre-balance their worlds for all character choices. With a GM who is able to adjust the campaign world on the fly for each individual character, there is no need to pre-balance the character class choices beyond a reasonable limit.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Ok, but I think in many ways that is even worse. So now if I wish to play a fighter I have to coordinate with the other players in order the excercise these options you claim many people like and I'm likely to be outshined or rendered worthless in atleast half the games. 

Not to mention that you seem to be assuming a group where the players talk amongst themselves to see what type of game they want, but not with the dm. If everyone decided what type of game they wanted to play, then the dm could structure the game beforehand to deal with that while maintaining class balance in 3e, as oppossed to having to work with the selection of classes the party provides, which limits ingame (as oppossed to metagame options), which is what you are suggesting.

You know, 3e can do exactly what you seem to want. All the players have to do is ignore any level limit. Then you can have four 20th level character to present to your surprised dm and he can put himself into an Epic mindset. Or perhaps all 4th level fighters. You can even slow or stop xp handouts so the players can remain in this sweetspot and just shift their equipment around for customization. This would do everything you say earlier editions did, but also ensure that the integrity of the level system is still there...


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## Teflon Billy (Oct 26, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> ...I keep hearing the Talislanta thing, but, beyond the general idea that i'm sure they borrowed ideas from lots of places, i think the fact that D&D3E looks exactly like a 50/50 cross of AD&D2 Players' Option and Ars Magica pretty much answers the question.




I thought the same thing. The D20 mechanic looks like the Ars Magica mechanic is you replace AM's D10 with, well, D20.


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## dougmander (Oct 26, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




I do miss:
--the wacky tables in the 1st Ed. DMG
--the artwork of Dave Trampier
--cringing 1st level magic users who grow up to be godlike killing machines
--not knowing all the monster stats and spells by heart
--quick and easy character generation
--3d6 stat generation (when an 18 was something truly extraordinary!)
--character kits from 2e

I don't miss:
--the psionics and unarmed combat rules
--the saving throw system
--having to consult a table to see who hit whom
--d20s that wear down to spheroids after 20 or 30 hours' play
--having to rely on my mom to drive me to a game


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## Trickstergod (Oct 26, 2003)

So many things, some of them already gone over, but let's see what I have to add, or at least, further support....

...no magic item shops. I liked how in the old Players Handbook or Dungeon Masters Guide said that even a lowly +1 sword was far too valuable for its owner to part with. I like magic items being special, not groceries. Which of course leads into...

...magic items not being overly necessary. Give the melee types a suit of magic armor and a magic weapon, and keep a good supply of magic arrows for any archers, and you were good to go. Which relates to...

...stats that didn't need to range into the low twenties to mid thirties just to be effective. So long as the Wizard had an Intelligence of 18, and the Cleric a Wisdom of 18, a character essentially didn't need much else. The stats from 1st level would still be about as effective at 20th. You didn't need a Cloak of Charisma, or a Belt of Giant Strength, or buffs out the wazoo. They were nice, but not necessary. 

...I'd actually have to look into the books a bit and am feeling lazy, but I'm just going to shoot out and hope I'm right that Wizards were not more common than Rogues and Fighters in the DMG. Perhaps this changed with the revision, but the original 3rd edition handbook claims that amongst randomly encountered NPC's, a Wizard is more likely to be run across than Fighters and Rogues. What the crap? 

...oh, yeah, and Planescape. The $40 I wouldn't plunk down for the Forgotten Realms hardcover, and that I'm leary about spending on Dragonlance, would likely go quite swiftly into a properly done Planescape book for 3rd edition. And this is in light of the fact that I think some of the philosophy behind it is rather cracked and silly. Despite its flaws, it's still a really good setting.

I'm sure there's more. For the most part I do like 3rd edition over older ones. I like balance. I like simplicity. I like options. But some of the flavor, some of the wonder, well, Wizards just killed it. Or at least isn't helping it much.


----------



## drothgery (Oct 26, 2003)

Gothmog said:
			
		

> Things I miss:
> Non-generic clerics- the 2E sphere system was SO much better than domains



No it wasn't, at least not in the world-generic products (Priest's Handbook, Player's Option stuff, etc.). You got a lot of variation in abilities, but it was at the price of having nothing even vaguely resembling balance among the old sphere-based priests.


----------



## KeithHays (Oct 27, 2003)

Gnarlo said:
			
		

> I miss that special feeling that we were doing something new, exciting, and different. It was like being part of a secret club of mages, that we and we alone had discovered this new magic and were determined to wrest out all its secrets.
> 
> That, and I miss being young, quick, having a full head of hair...QUOTE]
> 
> ...


----------



## qstor (Oct 27, 2003)

I miss rangers just being good.

In Dragonlance I miss the racial class limitations. I think that the Knights of Solomania and the Wizards of High Sorcery should be limited by race. Wizards to elves, half elves and humans which wasn't done...<sigh> Kender wizards...


----------



## Impeesa (Oct 27, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> As opposed to Ars Magica, which WotC owned for about the same amount of time, which practially looks just like D&D3E under the hood, and which Jonathan Tweet was codesigner of?  I keep hearing the Talislanta thing, but, beyond the general idea that i'm sure they borrowed ideas from lots of places, i think the fact that D&D3E looks exactly like a 50/50 cross of AD&D2 Players' Option and Ars Magica pretty much answers the question.




Incidentally, I've taken up Rolemaster over the last year, and I see a lot of things that are suspiciously familiar. Of course, it's no secret that Monte Cook did a lot of work for ICE before coming to D&D. 

--Impeesa--


----------



## woodelf (Oct 27, 2003)

Impeesa said:
			
		

> Incidentally, I've taken up Rolemaster over the last year, and I see a lot of things that are suspiciously familiar. Of course, it's no secret that Monte Cook did a lot of work for ICE before coming to D&D.
> 
> --Impeesa--




Out of curiosity, what?  I recently got to read a copy of Players Option: Combat and Tactics for the first time, and discovered to my surprise that AoOs and essentially the current feat system were already in the game at that point.  What does D&D3E have that isn't found in one of AD&D2, AD&D Players' Option, or Ars Magica?  I can't off the top of my head think of anything whose clear antecedent isn't already accounted for.  (But then, my head is pretty much asleep right now, i've never actually played with the Players Option books, i haven't played or really read the AD&D2 books for a decade, and i'm not super familiar with D&D3E, so i could easily be missing/forgetting something.)


----------



## Chacal (Oct 27, 2003)

I miss...

- the specialty priests (at least the balanced ones, essentially in Monster Mythos). I truly despise the concept of a generic cleric (and just 2 little options are not enough to distinguish them IMO)

- the additional info about monsters (ecology...)

- the fact that multiclassing spellcasters was a viable option (ok it was seriously unbalanced, but we gained nothing in going from an extreme to another)



Chacal


----------



## National Acrobat (Oct 27, 2003)

maddman75 said:
			
		

> The Forgotten Realms when they were still cool.  The gray box, from the end of 1e.  When Elminster was like a 10th level mage.  When there was no time of troubles, no Cyric, no Drizzt, no Seven Sisters, and the gods of evil were Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul.  Does anyone else remember the fantastic parchment pages i that boxed set?




Funny you should mention that. I was mentioning that to my group about 6 weeks ago, almost verbatim. Since then, we have gone back and started from scratch, a 1E campaign using said Grey FR Edition, pre-time of troubles and all that and we have had a blast. So much fun, less rules, more role playing and the funny thing is that the younger players are learning about the Realms from a whole new perspective and loving it. 

One of the best things we've ever done.

I don't hate 3E though. Still, we are having more fun with less dice.


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## Grazzt (Oct 27, 2003)

Alrighty- the things I miss (in no particular order):


- The artwork of Trampier and Otus

- artwork featuring a lot less of a "dungeonpunk" theme. While I have no problems with body piercings (I have several myself) and "dungeonpunk" in general, it doesnt fit (IMHO) D&D.

- the non-video game feel that was prevelant in 1e (and 2e too I guess).

- Lower power level overall.

- the Illusionist class. The speciality illusionist does not evoke the same feel the 1e illusionist did. (Guys that ever played a 1e illusionist will know what I am talking about.)

- rarity of magic (items). Magic items in 3e/3.5e have become common place (thanks in part to the Item Creation feats).

- A lot of the random charts in the 1e DMG (potion miscibility, random powers for artifacts, prostitute table, etc., though these three are easily converted to 3e/3.5)


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## Li Shenron (Oct 27, 2003)

I have to say that I played previous editions very little compared to 3ed, but still I toyed around with borrowed D&D and AD&D books from those editions for quite some time even if we played very little. I also have to say that I consider 3ed immensely superior from the point of view of mechanics. Anyway, there are things I miss from those imperfect old rules...

- I miss when being 5th level gave you the feeling of being one of the most powerful individual around for hundreds of miles, while nowadays there are campaigns starting at epic level already and when people discuss about interesting character combinations, they very rarely start with something below level 15th

- I miss when some rules were so unreasonable that they actually gave you the feeling of being playing something too magical to understand why it was written that way

- I miss when nobody cared about balance

- I miss when there was nothing to miss from previous editions


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## Henry (Oct 27, 2003)

What I miss:

1st edition Druids. Those wacked out nature priests that could cast 3rd level spells -- at THIRD LEVEL.
Lightning-fast character creation from Basic D&D.
1st edition Ranger's "Giant class" damage bonus - horribly broken, and still awe-inspiring. The 3.5e version begins to make up for it, though.
Being 18 again, and the most important thing being what dungeon I was going to be running the guys through.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

JRRNeiklot said:
			
		

> FIRST edition was abusable?  They haven't seen a tiefling monk/wizard/incantatrix/archmage yet.  Of all editions 3e is by far the most abusable.  It's simply a by-product of all the supplements.




Umm, right. Because a 1st Edition Grey Elven Fighter/Magic-User (who, at 9th/10th level had the same experience point total as a 10th level single classed fighter) or Drow Elven Ranger/Druid (who, at 8th/12th level had the same experience point total as a single classed 9th level Ranger) wasn't an overpowered monstrosity beyond the power of any possible 3rd Edition character.  

In 1st or 2nd edition, was there ever a reason to play a single classed character?


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## Junkheap (Oct 27, 2003)

Yea, now that i think aout it, the non balanced classes are the thing i miss the most.  Every body understood and had no problems with it.  We put away with level restrictions anyway.  But mages were uber weak in the beginning and uber powerfull in the end.  AFAIK most stories about mages, they ended up being more powerfull later on in life.  

I miss it when the DM says something, NO ONE argied or had to look to the rules to see if it was legit.  Players like myself loved the sense of wonder and really didn't care if it made sense or not.  Everyone just went with the flow.  We had more roleplaying, more rhythm when playing, instead of the jerkiness we have now due to the ruleset.

I love the 3e ruleset tho, only that it doesn't give me the sense of wonder that the older editions did.


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## Henry (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Umm, right. Because a 1st Edition Grey Elven Fighter/Magic-User (who, at 9th/10th level had the same experience point total as a 10th level single classed fighter) or Drow Elven Ranger/Druid (who, at 8th/12th level had the same experience point total as a single classed 9th level Ranger) wasn't an overpowered monstrosity beyond the power of any possible 3rd Edition character.




Now, the interesting thing here is that, by the rules, as I was given to understand it, such a thing as a drow ranger/druid could not exist, and not at 8th/12th, anyway. Also, a Druid over 11th level had to fight for his position on a rgeulr basis, making it internally a harder thing to maintain.

The multiclassed concept was definitely flawed at lower levels, no doubt in my mind, even considering training times.



> In 1st or 2nd edition, was there ever a reason to play a single classed character?




There was if you planned for your game to go past 7th level or so. In 2nd edition the level limits were as high as 12th to 15th, so there was less need. 

In 1st edition, there was also a rule that demihuman characters who were single classed only got to advance up to two levels higher than the level limit listed; therefore, it did have some advantage.


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## Voadam (Oct 27, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> Not sure why I'm on the "old edition" kick today, but here we go.
> 
> This is the thread for you to reveal your deep, dark secrets. I think most of us enjoy playing 3.x, but come on. We've all got the skeletons in the closet (until we can find a cleric to turn them).
> 
> ...




Quick character generation.

1st level, nonmagical, core class assassins (1e)

in depth monster descriptions (2e)

Specialty priests (2e)


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## diaglo (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> In 1st or 2nd edition, was there ever a reason to play a single classed character?




yes. the answer was:

because you wanted to.

and b/c players back then (at least the ones i knew) weren't looking for the "Power Ups" of today.

but you knew i'd say that. just like i have for the last 2 and half years having this same discussion with you.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

Henry said:
			
		

> *Now, the interesting thing here is that, by the rules, as I was given to understand it, such a thing as a drow ranger/druid could not exist, and not at 8th/12th, anyway. Also, a Druid over 11th level had to fight for his position on a rgeulr basis, making it internally a harder thing to maintain.*





You obviously never used the 1st Edition Unearthed Arcana rules. Since the suggested overpowering of 3rd Edition includes its supplements it is only fair to include the supplements for 1st Edition, and they did support that character.



> *There was if you planned for your game to go past 7th level or so. In 2nd edition the level limits were as high as 12th to 15th, so there was less need.*




And using Unearthed Arcana also pushed the level limits up to the teens for most multiclassed characters. Once again, if you include the 3rd Edition supplements (and you are if you are talking about a tiefling monk.wizard/incantantrix/archmage), then you have to include the 1st Edition supplements, including Unearthed Arcana, Oriental Adventures, the Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> *yes. the answer was:
> 
> because you wanted to.*





That's not an _in game_ reason though, so it has little to do with a rules discussion.



> *and b/c players back then (at least the ones i knew) weren't looking for the "Power Ups" of today.*




Then you played with an atypical group of players, unseen by most other gamers in the 1970s and 1980s.


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## Korgan26 (Oct 27, 2003)

I miss Inititive every round... if you went first you lived if not, well you got good at making characters.
Weapons speed. I mean really a human with a great sword is the same speed as an equal human with a short sword.

ah the good old days


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

Korgan26 said:
			
		

> I miss Inititive every round... if you went first you lived if not, well you got good at making characters.
> Weapons speed. I mean really a human with a great sword is the same speed as an equal human with a short sword.




True, that is silly. The guy with the greatsword should be able to attack much quicker than the guy with the short sword. At least then the weapon use would mimic the real world more closely.

Oh? That's not what you meant? You thought that short swords are "quicker" for attacking than the longer and more deadly greatsword? I guess you thought wrong then.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> That makes it about 300 times as large. Which sounds big until you realize - that makes the Great Wyrm's horde about 2 inches deep.




Actually, in 1st Edition, that would make it 400 times as large.


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## Grazzt (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]
> Then you played with an atypical group of players, unseen by most other gamers in the 1970s and 1980s.




Saying "most" might be a little bit of a stretch. Exactly what qualifies as most? Of all the groups I saw or played in, most (there's that word again) of the guys and chicks were NOT powergamers and really didnt seem to have the desire to be. 

So, bottom line? Was 1e balanced? Nope, not in some cases. Does that make it bad? Nope. Were their ways to make powergaming/broken characters? Of course. No rule system can prevent that. Someone will always find a way to exploit the rules. But, overall, the power level of 1e and 2e was significantly lower than it is in 3e.


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## Mercule (Oct 27, 2003)

Trickstergod said:
			
		

> ...stats that didn't need to range into the low twenties to mid thirties just to be effective. So long as the Wizard had an Intelligence of 18, and the Cleric a Wisdom of 18, a character essentially didn't need much else.



Interesting.  One of the first things that I noticed (and loved) about 3E is that that bonuses started much lower than in 1e/2e.  That means you can have a stat of 14 in something and still not be effectively average.  

IMHO, 3E is so much better oriented toward lower stats, it's not even funny.  My group would barely be able to tolerate characters without an 18 in their prime requisite in 2E.  In 3E, we have had a truckload of characters that have had no 18s whatsoever.  At least at 1st level.  By 12th or so, the extra stat points usually result in an 18 or better.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> *Saying "most" might be a little bit of a stretch. Exactly what qualifies as most? Of all the groups I saw or played in, most (there's that word again) of the guys and chicks were NOT powergamers and really didnt seem to have the desire to be.*





And yet, virtually every group was dominated by multiclassed elven characters. Why? Because, not only were elves "cool", they were also just flat out better than other races, and multiclassed characters were just flat out better than other choices for classes.



> *So, bottom line? Was 1e balanced? Nope, not in some cases.*




Not in the most important sense. Balance between players.



> *Does that make it bad? Nope. Were their ways to make powergaming/broken characters? Of course. No rule system can prevent that. Someone will always find a way to exploit the rules. But, overall, the power level of 1e and 2e was significantly lower than it is in 3e.*




The important thing is the _relative_ power level. And in terms of _relative_ power level, 1st and 2nd Edition were badly out of whack. PCs of supposedly the same experience were of wildly different strength, to such an extent that gauging what would challenge them (as opposed to what they would roll over, or what would kill them instantly) was an enormous pain in the butt, and would potentially vary wildly _within a given party_.

Plus, in 3e you have to actually work to "unbalance" a character, using supplements and tweaking a character through a dozen levels of advancement, picking just the right combination of feats, skills, and attributes. In 1e and 2e, the unbalancing is built right in to the core mechanic, with no work required other than to say "I want to play an elven fighter/magic-user/cleric".


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## Grazzt (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> *
> 
> And yet, virtually every group was dominated by multiclassed elven characters. Why? Because, not only were elves "cool", they were also just flat out better than other races, and multiclassed characters were just flat out better than other choices for classes.*




Again, not true of the groups I was in or saw. Sure, some peeps played elves, but no one really ever multiclassed or dual classed at all, not that I remember. There was that level limit thing remember. Of all the memorable characters I can think of, none were multiclassed. And most were human.



> *The important thing is the relative power level. And in terms of relative power level, 1st and 2nd Edition were badly out of whack. PCs of supposedly the same experience were of wildly different strength, to such an extent that gauging what would challenge them (as opposed to what they would roll over, or what would kill them instantly) was an enormous pain in the butt, and would potentially vary wildly within a given party.
> *




It wasnt that badly out of whack, IMO. Yep, PCs varied in strength (even when they had the same experience), but so what? Not everything is balanced. Just works out that way. And we never had trouble challenging PCs regardless of experience or level or whatever. 



> *
> Plus, in 3e you have to actually work to "unbalance" a character, using supplements and tweaking a character through a dozen levels of advancement, picking just the right combination of feats, skills, and attributes. In 1e and 2e, the unbalancing is built right in to the core mechanic, with no work required other than to say "I want to play an elven fighter/magic-user/cleric". *




Actually, you can unbalance a character in 3e using nothing more than the core rulebooks. But yeah, adding in the supplements (esp the splatbooks) makes it really easy to unbalance a character.

Yeah, I can see the elven ftr/m-u/clr being used to unbalance things I guess...but, it all depends on how one plays the game I guess. None of us ever played one. Just didnt have the desire to multiclass or whatever.

So- lets just agree to disagree on certain things (1e was unbalanced in areas, 2e was unbalanced in areas, 3e is unbalanced in areas) and steer this thread back on topic....stuff we miss about 1e or 2e.


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## woodelf (Oct 27, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> Saying "most" might be a little bit of a stretch. Exactly what qualifies as most? Of all the groups I saw or played in, most (there's that word again) of the guys and chicks were NOT powergamers and really didnt seem to have the desire to be.




_Shared Fantasy_ is a book-length sociological/anthropological study of RPers.  All of the research was done, IIRC, in the 1980-82 range.  His sample was so far skewed to what i would consider the powergamer style of play that one of the primary flaws in his study is it presumes that that is the defining style of play, with others being exceptions.  That's not a definitive answer, but it's the only non-anecdotal one any of us have.


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## woodelf (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> In 1st or 2nd edition, was there ever a reason to play a single classed character?




Well, duh: in order to dual-class and qualify to become a bard.  Now *there's* an overpowered class--it even got to break the dual-class rules.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> *Again, not true of the groups I was in or saw. Sure, some peeps played elves, but no one really ever multiclassed or dual classed at all, not that I remember. There was that level limit thing remember. Of all the memorable characters I can think of, none were multiclassed. And most were human.*





After the first year I played, I don't think I saw any human characters played by anyone who wasn't me. And I played 1st Edition from 1978 through 1989. And the overpowered _human_ strategy was to dual class. Which was just like multiclassing, with none of the drawbacks.



> *It wasnt that badly out of whack, IMO. Yep, PCs varied in strength (even when they had the same experience), but so what? Not everything is balanced. Just works out that way. And we never had trouble challenging PCs regardless of experience or level or whatever.*




Except now, for the most part, PCs of similar experience are fairly balanced against one another. As opposed to an elven Ftr7/MU8 supposedly being equivalent in power to a human Ftr8.



> *Actually, you can unbalance a character in 3e using nothing more than the core rulebooks.*




Demonstrate. Many people make this claim, but no one yet has backed it up with an example. Make a 28 point character with appropriate wealth that is wildly unbalanced. Use 3.5. Core rules only.



> *Yeah, I can see the elven ftr/m-u/clr being used to unbalance things I guess...but, it all depends on how one plays the game I guess. None of us ever played one. Just didnt have the desire to multiclass or whatever.*




Then your party missed the biggest power-up to exist in the history of D&D, of any edition. The multiclassing (and dualclassing) rules were not just ripe for abuse, if they had not been part of the 1e PHB and been proposed by someone as an add-on to the system, they would have been tagged as one of the worst examples of abuse one could have thought of.



> *So- lets just agree to disagree on certain things (1e was unbalanced in areas, 2e was unbalanced in areas, 3e is unbalanced in areas) and steer this thread back on topic....stuff we miss about 1e or 2e. *





What do I miss about 1e and 2e? Not much of any significance. There is a reason I switched between D&D (for players) and other games (for value) through the 1980s, and stopped playing D&D altogether in 1990 or so and played other, better designed games that weren't rife with abusable rules.

I miss some of the silly tables in the 1e DMG. I don't miss _anything_ about the pile of rehashed drek that was 2e.


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## diaglo (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]
> Except now, for the most part, PCs of similar experience are fairly balanced against one another. As opposed to an elven Ftr7/MU8 supposedly being equivalent in power to a human Ftr8.





you still get this formula wrong.  

a ft7/mu8 = 8 (highest class) + 7/2 (other class lvls added divided by total number of classes) = 11.5 but since they don't have 1/2 classes. it should roughly = an 11th lvl character in some encounters and 12th in others.

not that i'm disagreeing about multiclassing necessary. just your facts and therefore the logic based on the miscalculated facts.


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## the Jester (Oct 27, 2003)

I just want to point out that multiclassed characters in earlier editions weren't the sum of their levels.  They got _half_ the hp, the best of their saving throws but not both put together, etc.  

Storm Raven, I assume you remember that a dual classing human _couldn't use his old class_ until his new class' level exceeded the old one?  And he gained no hp or anything until this happened?  This included his saves and THAC0 (essentially his BAB, for those of you not around in them days).  

Also, you were done advancing in your first class- there was no going back.

So when you say that dualclassing was "just like multiclassing, with none of the drawbacks," you're pretty far off imo.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> *you still get this formula wrong. *





You still have never read the 1e experience point tables have you?



> *a ft7/mu8 = 8 (highest class) + 7/2 (other class lvls added divided by total number of classes) = 11.5 but since they don't have 1/2 classes. it should roughly = an 11th lvl character in some encounters and 12th in others.
> 
> not that i'm disagreeing about multiclassing necessary. just your facts and therefore the logic based on the miscalculated facts.*





Your assumptions are ireelevant and inaccurate.

At the _same experience point total_, a single classed human fighter will be 8th level, which his multiclassed elven fighter magic-user counterpart will be 6th/7th level or 7th/8th level.

You can do all the mental math you want, but it doesn't change the fact that these characters have _the same experience point total_. In other words, according to the _rules of the game_ a 7th/8th level Ftr/MU is equivalent to an 8th level Fighter.

Perhaps you should go back and read your source material before spouting the nonsense that comes out of your mouth.


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## Mercule (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> you still get this formula wrong.
> 
> a ft7/mu8 = 8 (highest class) + 7/2 (other class lvls added divided by total number of classes) = 11.5 but since they don't have 1/2 classes. it should roughly = an 11th lvl character in some encounters and 12th in others.



I suppose it depends on what formula you're using.  I understand the basis for the one you threw out, but a much more reasonable comparison would be of two characters that started adventuring together at 0 XP and assume an even XP progression.

A level 9 MU requires 90,000 XP (all numbers from 1E PH).  That same number (multiclass XP must be split evenly) gives a 7th level Fighter.  So, 180,000 XP is the baseline XP for a 7/8 F/MU.

Take that 180,000 XP and see where the single classed Fighter gets.  Hmm... 8th level is 125,000 to 250,000 XP, and 180,000 fits quite nicely in that range.

The baseline for the 11th level Fighter you threw out is 750,000 XP.  That would be 375,000 per class for a F/MU.  That gives us a 9/11 F/MU.


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## Henry (Oct 27, 2003)

Ladies and Gentlemen, we need to drop back to "civil" out of "redline hostile."

Let's disagree, but dispense with personal attacks and assumptions, please.


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## Henry (Oct 27, 2003)

the Jester said:
			
		

> Storm Raven, I assume you remember that a dual classing human _couldn't use his old class_ until his new class' level exceeded the old one?  And he gained no hp or anything until this happened?  This included his saves and THAC0 (essentially his BAB, for those of you not around in them days).




Correction: He could, he just would not gain any XP for that adventure, and only half for that level.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

the Jester said:
			
		

> *I just want to point out that multiclassed characters in earlier editions weren't the sum of their levels.  They got half the hp, the best of their saving throws but not both put together, etc.*




Sure, but it didn't really matter that they only got half the hit points from each class, because they got hit points from both classes. And their saves were invariably better than the saves of a single classed character, since they took the best for each.

To sum up: a multiclassed 1e/2e character took the best saves of both classes, the best THAC0, all of the class abilities of both classes, and had about the same number of hit points. All for the "cost" of lagging about a half level to one level behind due to the exponential structure of the experience point tables.

Better THAC0, better saves, almost as many hit points, double the class abilities. Where was the real drawback here?



> *Storm Raven, I assume you remember that a dual classing human couldn't use his old class until his new class' level exceeded the old one?  And he gained no hp or anything until this happened?  This included his saves and THAC0 (essentially his BAB, for those of you not around in them days).*




Right, a time frame that, due to the exponential experience point tables took about one adventure. Yippie. A 7th level fighter, for example, who dual classed as a cleric, only needed enough experience points to advance from being 1st level to 2nd level as a normal 1st level cleric needed. Which meant (since he was adventuring with a bunch of 7th level characters), that his "lag time" would be about the amount of time they needed to advance a _single_ level.

So, instead of becoming an 8th level fighter, he could become an 8th level cleric/7th level fighter in the amount of time it took his buddies to go from 7th level to 8th level (or thereabouts). In other words, almost no cost. And if things got too tough, he could use his previous classes abilities (he just would earn no experience points for using them).

And he kept his THAC0, his saves, and his hit points. And he could use them without penalty. So, suppose you wanted to dual class from fighter to cleric (fairly common choice). You still use armor, shields, cleric weapons, and so on. Your THAC0 was that of your previous fighter level, your hit points were the same as you had already gained. Effectively, you are a better fighting cleric than any single classed cleric could be at that level, all for no cost to you at that point. When your 7th level Fighter/4th level dual classed cleric runs out of spells, he can still swing a mace around while carrying a large shield and clad in full plate just as well as any 7th level fighter could, and suffers no penalty for doing so.



> *Also, you were done advancing in your first class- there was no going back.*




Which is why you picked a class and went to a "break point" before switching. Not a big deal. Usually people advanced for a few levels as a fighter, then then switched to their real class, basically adding a bunch of hit points, the ability to use a lot of weapons, and so on before they switched to their "real" class.


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## National Acrobat (Oct 27, 2003)

I don't think that any version of the game is balanced really. I mean if characters don't roll stats as good as others then that is a moot point. I run a 1E and a 3E game and in both cases I have characters who have stats that are much worse than others. In the 1E game however, the 8's and 9's don't affect them like they do in 3E. I have a character in the 3E game with all 11's and a 12, and a character with 2 8's and a 9 and they certainly don't have as easy a time as the others, but everyone rolled using the same method, so everyone had the same chance. In the 1E game I have a cleric with a 16 wisdom and everything else are 9's and 10's but it doesn't affect him as bad.

Plus in my new 1E game I have 4 humans and 1 half-elf, and no multiclassed characters, so I guess that's a bit different than traditional players of a 1E game.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

National Acrobat said:
			
		

> I don't think that any version of the game is balanced really. I mean if characters don't roll stats as good as others then that is a moot point. I run a 1E and a 3E game and in both cases I have characters who have stats that are much worse than others.




There is a simple solution for this in 3e: point buy.


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Actually, in 1st Edition, that would make it 400 times as large.



Well, closer to 1,200 times as large in 1st edition. The density of copper is about a third of that of gold. Since all coins are the same weight - copper coins have three times the volume.

They could be 3 times as thick, or just 44% larger in every direction - it's not important.

-Frank


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## diaglo (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Your assumptions are ireelevant and inaccurate.




and your use of using what you want and ignoring what you don't is amusing. you want a broken 1ed game. so you use the rules accordingly. just like people can do with the newer editions.

you compare based on xps. and use the xp charts of the classes. and then you want to base it on what is "equal and or balanced" vs classes.

i gave you the formula for comparing the ECL of a multiclass which is really want you want to use. not one for one xp comparison when you use 1edADnD.


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 27, 2003)

> you compare based on xps. and use the xp charts of the classes. and then you want to base it on what is "equal and or balanced" vs classes.




But Stormraven is right. People got absolute amounts of XP in that game - getting to 7th level in Fighter and then spending the rest of your life as a wizard cost you less than a level in absolute XP.

And since there _was_ no scaling XP awards like we have now - that's all that matters. Dual Classing was 100% good and 0% bad. The XP charts in previous editions were not intended to be balanced - and it showed.

Right about the time a Wizard starts getting more power per level than a Fighter - he's also taking less total XP to rise in level than a Fighter. The Wizard hits level 9 _first_ - and gets more for doing so.

-Frank


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## diaglo (Oct 27, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> But Stormraven is right. People got absolute amounts of XP in that game - getting to 7th level in Fighter and then spending the rest of your life as a wizard cost you less than a level in absolute XP.
> 
> And since there _was_ no scaling XP awards like we have now - that's all that matters. Dual Classing was 100% good and 0% bad. The XP charts in previous editions were not intended to be balanced - and it showed.
> 
> ...




i said i didn't disagree with multiclassing just the logic he used to present his argument.  


the only "balance" is the stat requirements. dual classing had a major stat requirement if you rolled normally. only if you used the alternate UA ones did you really have a shot statistically.

heck, i never had anyone qualify for the paladin class pre-UA.


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## Mercule (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> i gave you the formula for comparing the ECL of a multiclass which is really want you want to use. not one for one xp comparison when you use 1edADnD.



Okay, can you drop it down a notch for those of us not interested in a grudge match?  (this isn't necessarily directed just a diaglo)

Seriously.  I'd really like to know how you figure that the formula you gave is the best option.  

Sure, I understand that if you're making high-level characters from scratch, the 7/8 F/MU is a fair match for the 11th level Fighter.  Still, are you saying that if two characters spend their entire adventuring career together, that the F/MU is going to end up travelling with an 11th level Fighter rather than an 8th level one?  

That seems counter to logic to me.  I have to assume that I'm missing something, and would really like to know what.


----------



## WizarDru (Oct 27, 2003)

Two things:

1) As much as it suprises me to say so now, the Artwork, particularly Erol Otus, Dave Trampier and Jeff Dee.  Back in the day, I often viewed Otus as an untalented, cartoony hack.  I now feel 180 degrees opposite, and miss his distinctive style terribly.  Pity that Trampier is driving cabs instead of doing artwork, but c'est la vie.  The artwork was just more distinctive and evocative, back then.  Things like the 'Magic Mouth' drawing or the 'Paladin in Hell' in the PHB....they made you want to know the story behind them.  They _intrigued_ you.  The artwork these days is nice...but it seems very calculated, somehow.  As often as not, they're just character studies of some fantasy being, and don't really tell a story.

2)The Sense of Wonder.  And that's not something that has anything to do with the edition, but with the newness.  I remember saving my allowance for weeks to buy the Red Box set, and how excited I was, when I was reading through it.  I remember how eager I was to make my own dungeon.  I remember the excitement of getting my PHB, DMG and MM, and just flipping through them.  I remember making my first 'module', using some of the old TSR 'blue maps' and then writing a big module, during summer vacation.

_sigh._

Good times.  Good times.

(And guys, you did hear Henry ask you to take it down a notch on the ol' hostility meter, _right_?  I mean, we're all friends here, so relax.)


----------



## CleverName (Oct 27, 2003)

I miss...

...being able to play all day and all night long on snowdays in my friend's basement with roaring fire at my back, a cold coke in front of me. 

...which is to say that what I miss can be chalked up to nostalgia for being a  young gamer geek without so many real-world responsibilities. 

I would not trade the new system for any of its earlier incarnations.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> *and your use of using what you want and ignoring what you don't is amusing. you want a broken 1ed game. so you use the rules accordingly. just like people can do with the newer editions.*





I use the rules _as written_. You see, experience poiint table are part of the rules of the game. Your formula appeared nowhere in the rules for 1e. Ever. Basically, you made up a metric for assessing the true power of a multiclassed character. The only valid basis for comparing the power of two characters is to compare them _at equivalent experience point totals_, since that is supposed to be the measure of their relative power.

But all your metric does is establish that the standard rules are broken. Since the standard rules use _epxerience points_ as the measure for characters, and those experience point totals show that characters at the same total can vary in power terms by huge amounts.



> *you compare based on xps. and use the xp charts of the classes. and then you want to base it on what is "equal and or balanced" vs classes.*





I want to base it on how the rules of 1e actually worked, which is what we are talking about. Perhaps you want to base it on your mental image of what the game _should_ have been, but here, we are dealing with what the rules _actually were_.



> *i gave you the formula for comparing the ECL of a multiclass which is really want you want to use. not one for one xp comparison when you use 1edADnD.*




ECL is a concept that didn't actually exist in the 1e rule set. So your argument is irrelevant to the discussion of what the 1e rules considered to be equal characters. Experience point totals were what mattered, since that was how characters were measured. Your metric is nonsensical when applied to 1e material.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> *i said i didn't disagree with multiclassing just the logic he used to present his argument.  *





Given that your logic has no basis in the actual rules of 1e D&D, I'd say that your disagreement can be noted, and discarded as irrelevant as lacking in factual basis.



> *the only "balance" is the stat requirements. dual classing had a major stat requirement if you rolled normally. only if you used the alternate UA ones did you really have a shot statistically.*




And the alternate UA rules were part of the 1e rule set. Core rules no less.

Plus, multiclassing had extremely low qualifying requirements, and was just as powerfully broken overall as dual classing.


----------



## diaglo (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]Your formula appeared nowhere in the rules for 1e. Ever. Basically, you made up a metric for assessing the true power of a multiclassed character. The only valid basis for comparing the power of two characters is to compare them _at equivalent experience point totals_, since that is supposed to be the measure of their relative power.
> 
> But all your metric does is establish that the standard rules are broken. Since the standard rules use _epxerience points_ as the measure for characters, and those experience point totals show that characters at the same total can vary in power terms by huge amounts.





you must know i didn't make that rule up arbitrarily? it came from somewhere else. 



> ECL is a concept that didn't actually exist in the 1e rule set. So your argument is irrelevant to the discussion of what the 1e rules considered to be equal characters. Experience point totals were what mattered, since that was how characters were measured. Your metric is nonsensical when applied to 1e material.




yes, i know the term ECL wasn't in 1ed. i was trying to put it in terms so others would understand. the concept did exist then. just b/c you didn't personally read it, doesn't mean much to me either.

you and i both know i am not that Original. i only use terms and concepts from other sources. and since we are talking about 1ed. it must have been a source from then.


----------



## Cedric (Oct 27, 2003)

By the time I've gotten around to reading this post, I see it's now devolved into an argument of the balance of 1st edition play. 

Well...let me throw in my thoughts then. 

1st edition play had no balance. You want to know what I miss? I miss the complete lack of balance...

Everyone in the group does NOT have to be equal to contribute and have fun. Everyone can still bring something unique to the group without being able to deal out the same damage per second across the board. 

Balance was completely irrelevent. Why did you play a single class elf? Because you wanted too. Because your character was more about who and less about what. 

The image meant more than the stats. No one messed with a high level wizard. The ability to cast 9th level spells placed you in the same power range as some of the gods. This was a lifetime worth of work and effort. A human at this point in their life would be contemplating turning into a Lich (if evil) or continued existence with wishes, potions of longevity, clones and simulacrums if not evil. 

In terms of pure power, they would be second to none. Able to destroy armies and lay waste to countries...but they didn't. Why? Because they understood what Steven Brust said, "No matter how powerful the wizard, a knife between his shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style."

I miss simple character creation. Dang, I'm bored...what are we going to do? I dunno...hey, let's play D&D, I'll run. *10 minutes go by* Ok, you guys enter a small village...

I miss the random chance of having psionics. Don't get me wrong...they were completely broken, you had to change your whole campaign if someone had them. But what people don't realize is that if you roll psionics and don't roll well for your follow up rolls, you are eventually a dead man. If you GM is rolling "by the book" the random psionic encounter table (25% of rolling on that, if an encounter happens and psionics have been recently used) has Demon Lords on it...and the like.

But let me tell you...there is nothing in 3e to compare to the heart stopping thrill of watching those dice roll and come to stop on the table while you pray for a 97+ (roughly) to get psionics. 

Don't get me wrong...3e is a lot more advanced game system and includes a much, much needed skill system. But there is a lot to miss in 1e and a bit worth missing in 2e.

Cedric


----------



## Cedric (Oct 27, 2003)

By the way...there is precident in 1st edition for calculating the approximate character level by taking the highest level of a multi-class character and adding 1/3rd round down for any other levels. 

This was the way the 3e conversion guide recommended doing it...but there was some stuff from way back in 1st ed that had you do it this way too. 

Yes, the xp doesn't equal out that way. But then, in 1st ed it was assumed you handed xp out secretly and everyone did NOT get the same xp. That depended on GM though. 

Cedric


----------



## Staffan (Oct 27, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Right, a time frame that, due to the exponential experience point tables took about one adventure.



Actually, one adventure per level. You can't get more than one level per adventure - if you earn enough XP, you stop short of where you'd actually advance to the second level.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> Actually, one adventure per level. You can't get more than one level per adventure - if you earn enough XP, you stop short of where you'd actually advance to the second level.




I was using "adventure" in the sense that it would be a single dungeon. However, you could garner experience points on a session by session basis and take breaks between forays, thus keeping yourself up to speed.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 27, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> *you must know i didn't make that rule up arbitrarily? it came from somewhere else. *





I assumed that you didn't. I also know that _it didn't come from the actual rules of 1e D&D_. You see, since we are talking about how the _rules_ are unbalanced, your citation to a _non-rule_ metric means that your entire argument is irrelevant to the discussion.



> *yes, i know the term ECL wasn't in 1ed. i was trying to put it in terms so others would understand. the concept did exist then. just b/c you didn't personally read it, doesn't mean much to me either.*




The concept didn't exist _in the rules of the game_. Just because it may have appeared in a Dragon article as a variant a decade after the PHB was first published doesn't make it relevant to the discussion.

The formula you describe, while potentially useful for evaluating the _actual_ power levels of multiclassed characters is _irrelevant_ for the actual balance as provided by the rules, since the balance provided by the rules is based upon experience points. Basically, your argument is based on something that has no bearing on the balance of the 1e rules.



> *you and i both know i am not that Original. i only use terms and concepts from other sources. and since we are talking about 1ed. it must have been a source from then. *





Or, a source that wasn't from then that you are trying to jam into the discussion. (I know you aren't original. Most of the time it seems like the last original thought you had was in 1972 or so).


----------



## National Acrobat (Oct 27, 2003)

Point Buy? Feh, artificial balancing if you ask me. I like the randomness of the whole thing. Characters aren't supposed to be equal, there is supposed to be differences between them. People aren't all equal. My players didn't like it the only time I tried it either. We're quite happy with random rolling of abilities.


----------



## National Acrobat (Oct 27, 2003)

I hate double posts...grr


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## Mista Collins (Oct 28, 2003)

I seriously miss the Planescape Setting. It was so nice....     

<drinks from mug> one for me
<pours mug on ground> This one is for my homeys


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

Cedric said:
			
		

> The image meant more than the stats. No one messed with a high level wizard. The ability to cast 9th level spells placed you in the same power range as some of the gods. This was a lifetime worth of work and effort. A human at this point in their life would be contemplating turning into a Lich (if evil) or continued existence with wishes, potions of longevity, clones and simulacrums if not evil.




Actually, 1e wizards were heavily dependent upon stats. If they didn't get a high Intelligence score, they could simply write off the chance they ever had of being able to cast high level spells (since there were some pretty severe limitations on a wizard's ability to cast spells based upon his Intelligence score, check the 1e PHB Intelligence score table). Since there were precious few ways to raise an ability score, this meant that you had to roll well, or your wizard would be handicapped at higher levels.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

Cedric said:
			
		

> Yes, the xp doesn't equal out that way. But then, in 1st ed it was assumed you handed xp out secretly and everyone did NOT get the same xp. That depended on GM though.




Actually, according to the 1e DMG you are incorrect. Experience was supposed to be divided evenly among surviving PCs. Check the pages on awarding experience in the 1e DMG, it explicitly states that any PC who participated (no matter how slight their participation) and survived should be awarded an equal share of experience points.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

National Acrobat said:
			
		

> Point Buy? Feh, artificial balancing if you ask me. I like the randomness of the whole thing. Characters aren't supposed to be equal, there is supposed to be differences between them. People aren't all equal. My players didn't like it the only time I tried it either. We're quite happy with random rolling of abilities.




It was only suggested as a means of balancing characters based upon their ability scores, since that is what you were griping about.


----------



## National Acrobat (Oct 28, 2003)

Actually Storm Raven, I wasn't griping about ability scores, I was mainly griping about people who think that the game needs to be balanced and characters all need to be on the same level as far as stats, abilities, level, etc. My point was that it doesn't and shouldn't matter. The game isn't interesting that way, at least not from my and my player's point of view. We like the randomness and the fact that some characters may have weaknesses while others don't. Characters should be different in many aspects and some should just naturally be better or worse than others simply because that is life.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

National Acrobat said:
			
		

> Characters should be different in many aspects and some should just naturally be better or worse than others simply because that is life.




Except that games aren't life. Games are meant to be fun. And fair.


----------



## National Acrobat (Oct 28, 2003)

What's wrong with using the recommended die rolling technique to create characters? It's always been a viable option, rolling characters randomly is part of the game. I tried point buy once and got a bunch of copied, homogenized characters that were really quite bland. I also got a ton of fighters that way. But I also happen to be one of those people that reminded the players that I wasn't going to go easy on them because they created a bunch of fighters and had no cleric either. The game can be fun regardless of the manner in which you create the characters. It's up to the DM to create the challenges but the players inject the life into the character, regardless of stats. My group didn't even worry about balance until we started playing 3E and brought some new blood into the group. 

And the games I run are quite fair. The players are rarely forced into any situation, they usually have viable alternatives and are always well prepared to launch their endeavors. I don't like to have time spent creating breathing, living characters only to arbitrarily destroy them. But, I do not like point buy either. That's just me. To each their own.


----------



## Grazzt (Oct 28, 2003)

Anyone remember what this thread was SUPPOSED to be about?


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

National Acrobat said:
			
		

> *What's wrong with using the recommended die rolling technique to create characters?*





Nothing. If you don't mind characters of widely varying power. Which is fine.

But doing that because it is "just like life" is silly. Games aren't life. Games should not seek to emulate life as a primary concern. Games should be fun and fair. Life usually isn't either.



> *It's always been a viable option, rolling characters randomly is part of the game. I tried point buy once and got a bunch of copied, homogenized characters that were really quite bland. I also got a ton of fighters that way.*




Then I would say that the players who made those characters were bland and homogenized and wanted to play a collection of fighters. Point buy doesn't lead to bland and homogenized characters unless the players want it to. I've seen wide variety in point buy built characters (in point of fact, for a newbie start-up, I recently designed six point buy charatcers: two rogues, two clerics, a paladin, and a druid, all very different, all built on a 28 point buy to make things easier for me).


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> Anyone remember what this thread was SUPPOSED to be about?




Haven't you encountered topic drift before?


----------



## Grazzt (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Haven't you encountered topic drift before?




On the internet? On a messageboard? No way! Never!  

I just don't wanna see the thread dissolve into arguing and sniping which in turn will lead to it being shut down.


----------



## Aaron2 (Oct 28, 2003)

What I miss .....

1) Erol Otus
2) Art where the monster isn't screaming at you. 
3) Lizardmen, mermaids, etc. I don't like the fold remedy.
4) Haflings that weren't afraid to admit they were hobbit knock-offs.
5) Art that actually showed adventurers going about their adventuring business.
6) Humor.
7) DM screens made of cardboard instead of paper.
8) Important characters that were -only- 10th level.

What I don't miss ....

1) Weapon speed and the weapon vs. armor table.
2) "Magic Items are rare and precious", yet every adventure is overflowing with them.
3) Silly class restrictions. Only NPC dwarves can be clerics.
4) Modrons
5) Character write-ups (in dragon and Deities & Demigods esp.) that didn't follow the rules. 


Aaron


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## The_Gneech (Oct 28, 2003)

I miss the, er, "Gygaxian" feel, for lack of a better term. I've been playing the _Temple of Elemental Evil_ CRPG lately, and when those giant frogs came bursting out of the water at the moathouse, it was like a trip back in time. The monsters in my old blue booklet are things like goblins and skeletons and rot grubs and giant rats, things that felt like they were derived from myth and/or the world around me.

These days, monsters are things like digesters and yrthaks and ethereal marauders, and it's just a matter of time before any campaign goes off to Sigil. Woe betide the ranger who wants to fight orcs in the woods, go Against the Giants, etc.

I also miss when there weren't fiendish half-whatsits all over the place. ;P

    -The Gneech


----------



## Skade (Oct 28, 2003)

...save versus DEATH!!!

My favorite thing to say as a DM.    It was perfectly ominous back then.  

I think I miss the being able to own every book made.  Not every adventure and boxed set, but every hard and perfect bound book, and pretty much all the settings.  Now, I could not even dream of, nor would want, every book made.


----------



## diaglo (Oct 28, 2003)

Aaron2 said:
			
		

> 3) Silly class restrictions. Only NPC dwarves can be clerics.





elven NPCs could be clerics too. pre-UA elven cleric PCs did not exist.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> elven NPCs could be clerics too. pre-UA elven PCs did not exist.




Umm, huh? Pre-UA elves could be PCs. I'm not sure what you are trying to (apparently humorously) describe.


----------



## Orias (Oct 28, 2003)

Carnifex said:
			
		

> ...the Planescape campaign setting.



AGREED!


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## diaglo (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Umm, huh? Pre-UA elves could be PCs. I'm not sure what you are trying to (apparently humorously) describe.




i forgot the word cleric. i'll go back and edit it.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> i forgot the word cleric. i'll go back and edit it.




Ah. That makes more sense now.


----------



## CleverName (Oct 28, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> Anyone remember what this thread was SUPPOSED to be about?




Nope, but I thought I had been ported over to RPG.net due to all the flaming bile...


----------



## JEL (Oct 28, 2003)

Specialty priests.  I think the return to the generic cleric was a huge step backwards.


----------



## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> Pity that Trampier is driving cabs instead of doing artwork, but c'est la vie.




Hey, do you actually know that's what he's doing, or is that just a turn of phrase?  Last i'd heard, nobody'd been abple to actually get in touch with him--they closest anyone'd come was a family member who basically said, "he wants to be left alone."


----------



## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> And since there _was_ no scaling XP awards like we have now - that's all that matters. Dual Classing was 100% good and 0% bad.




um...


			
				AD&D1 DMG (Dec 1979 printing) said:
			
		

> You must weight the level of challenge -- be it thinking or fighting -- versus the level of experience of the player character(s) who gained it.  With respect to monsters, each hit die balances 1 experience level... Dividing the total adjusted hit dice equivalent of te monsters slain by the total of all levels of experience of all characters...yields a fraction which is the measure of challenge.... If the denominator is greater, use the fraction to adjust the amount of experience by simple multiplication.




You know, in 10 years and multiple dozens of characters, made by a couple dozen different people, i think we had 2 dual-class characters--and one of those was dual-classed off screen, simply coming back to the game with the new abilities (and, for RPing reasons, pretty much ignoring the old abilities).  I find it hard to accept that it was *that* universally and obviously good and yet i had a large group that never used it--there must be some campaign factors.  I'm not sure the difference, but i suspect part of it was relatively slow advancement--a couple thousand XP, maybe every 2nd or 3rd session, doesn't get you through those low levels all that quickly.  If dual-classing is going to involve spending a season or two (real time) significantly lower than the rest of the party, it's a bit more of a disincentive [than if it's the bare minimum of one session per level].


----------



## MerakSpielman (Oct 28, 2003)

astralpwka said:
			
		

> I liked the random dungeon in the 1E DMG. I spent a lot of would-be bored time taking solo characters or groups all controlled by myself through random dungeons. I've kept my 1E book just for that dungeon.



Me too! Partly because I couldn't find anybody to play with... It was great making random dungeons that made no sense... trying to figure out what to do when the dungeon looped back onto itself, etc... Good times.


----------



## WizarDru (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Hey, do you actually know that's what he's doing, or is that just a turn of phrase? Last i'd heard, nobody'd been abple to actually get in touch with him--they closest anyone'd come was a family member who basically said, "he wants to be left alone."



No turn of phrase, that's actually what's been discovered.  I'd have to do a search back through the boards, but the mystery (such as it was) has been solved.  He was actually discovered in an article in a newspaper completely unrelated to gaming...instead, it was interview with him as a local cab driver, discussing the crazy things he would see on a daily basis.  The article named him, and had an associated picture of him with his cab.  Several people who knew him of old (people associated with TSR back in the day) positively IDed him as being the same Dave Trampier we all know from the 1e days and for Wormy.

Erol Otus did a module cover for Hackmaster just recently, and has, as I understand it, been doing commerical artwork for advertising for some time.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> *um...*





Note that if you had lower level characters, this worked to the PCs benefit. This made dual classing an _even more_ attractive option, since the character was factored in at his current level (as, by the rules, except for his hit points, saves and attacks he was treated "for all other purposes" as a character of the level of his new class). This _inflated_ the amount of experience awarded. As stated before, dual classing was 100% good, and 0% bad.



> *You know, in 10 years and multiple dozens of characters, made by a couple dozen different people, i think we had 2 dual-class characters--and one of those was dual-classed off screen, simply coming back to the game with the new abilities (and, for RPing reasons, pretty much ignoring the old abilities).  I find it hard to accept that it was *that* universally and obviously good and yet i had a large group that never used it--there must be some campaign factors.*




Your group probably just never realized the tremendously unbalanced potential of a dual classed character. Some people didn't. But when you work through the rules, it is clear, it was 100% good, and 0% bad.



> *I'm not sure the difference, but i suspect part of it was relatively slow advancement--a couple thousand XP, maybe every 2nd or 3rd session, doesn't get you through those low levels all that quickly.*




It got you through a level each time experience was awarded. Did the higher level characters advance through their levels that fast?



> *If dual-classing is going to involve spending a season or two (real time) significantly lower than the rest of the party, it's a bit more of a disincentive [than if it's the bare minimum of one session per level].*





It's a minimal disincentive. You kept your attack bonus, you kept your saves, you kept your hit points. The only thing you used at your "lower" level was your class specific abilities.

So, for example, if you were a 7th level fighter, who dual classed as a cleric, you were effectively a character with the hit points, saves, and attack capabilities of a 7th level fighter (although you were limited to blunt weapons until you reached 8th level as a cleric), plus you had minor (and rapidly increasing) clerical spell casting and turning capabilities. There is no drawback other than you couldn't use a longsword for several sessions, but you could still be decked out in plate and shield.


----------



## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]Demonstrate. Many people make this claim, but no one yet has backed it up with an example. Make a 28 point character with appropriate wealth that is wildly unbalanced. Use 3.5. Core rules only.




For what campaign?  It's pretty easy to make a fighter and a bard by the same rules and have the bard *way* more powerful than the fighter.  How? Put them in a court setting where social skills are everything, and fighting is strengverboten, and focus on the bard's social abilities while min-maxing the fighter for optimal combat prowess to the expense of all else.  Voila: horribly unbalanced characters.  

Now, obviously you can change this, both at the level of making the character differently (though, in this particular scenario, the fighter is always gonna get shafted), and at the level of changing the rules.  But, by the rules, D&D3E is only balanced to the degree that your game resembles the style of game for which it is balanced.  Start to skew the relative importance of skills, social abilities, combat, magic, wilderness survival, traps, and so on, a lot, and the balance goes all out of whack.  

The problem with absolute mechanical balance is that it can't take into consideration everything else (group, playstyle, setting, etc.).  It can work pretty well for a narrowly-defined setting.  But the more open-ended the actual play, the harder it is to pull it off.  Point-buy systems run into this with things like fixed costs for "Can't swim"--regardless of whether the setting is Caribbean pirates or Tattoine.  And there, the fix is the judgement call: adjust the costs for problem (dis)ads or skills (most even build this into the rules for the likely suspects).  However, with a class-based system, this is a lot harder, because the factors you might need to adjust don't come in individual wrappers, they come in big packages.  Not saying it can't be done, just that it needs to be done--balance is heavily campaign-dependent, and simply can't be embodied in the rules alone.


----------



## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]
> The important thing is the _relative_ power level. And in terms of _relative_ power level, 1st and 2nd Edition were badly out of whack. PCs of supposedly the same experience were of wildly different strength, to such an extent that gauging what would challenge them (as opposed to what they would roll over, or what would kill them instantly) was an enormous pain in the butt, and would potentially vary wildly _within a given party_.




I find that a little suspect.  I ran an AD&D (mostly 2nd ed) campaign for years, and never ran into this problem.  In fact, i was pretty new to the whole GMing thing at the time, and, especially early on, i did a _lousy_ job of balancing encounters.  I'd basically just eyeball it (which, for someone without much experience as a GM, isn't a terribly accurate method).  I frequently misestimated wildly.  And yet, i never had problems with balance between the PCs, in term of encounter effectiveness.  Were the PCs of "wildly" different strength?  Oh, heck yeah!  Throw in a few magic items (not everybody had the same number, nor of the same power), and it only gets worse.  My encounter planning was frequently not much better than random guessing, and yet i never ran into the problem you speak of. 

The D&D3E game i was in ran into the problem a lot more--in order to give the brick a combat challenge, the creatures frequently had to be tough enough that most of the rest of us (including the other fighter) couldn't even hit them.  Likewise, a creature that was a serious threat to the brick would take most other members of the party out in a round.

This is not to say that AD&D2 was better than D&D3E in this regard, just that it is only slightly worse, and the differences between them in this particular regard (class balance) are overshadowed by the differences between playgroups.



> Plus, in 3e you have to actually work to "unbalance" a character, using supplements and tweaking a character through a dozen levels of advancement, picking just the right combination of feats, skills, and attributes.




Or just play in a game with little-to-no combat.


----------



## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> For what campaign?  It's pretty easy to make a fighter and a bard by the same rules and have the bard *way* more powerful than the fighter.  How? Put them in a court setting where social skills are everything, and fighting is strengverboten, and focus on the bard's social abilities while min-maxing the fighter for optimal combat prowess to the expense of all else.  Voila: horribly unbalanced characters.[/b]




No, they are not unbalanced. They just have different strengths and weaknesses. The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas. Having a vareity of strengths and weaknesses in a group of equivalently levelled characters is not a sign of imbalance, it is actually a sign of balance. If any one character could excel at all things, then he would be unbalanced.

For example, take the classic 1e Fighter/MU. At the same level of experience points, a 7th/8th level Ftr/MU would match a 7th level Ftr. The Ftr/MU is unbalanced, since, not only is he _as good_ as the Ftr at fighting (and remember, Ftr/MUs in 1e could wear armor and cast spells), he has tacked on 8 levels of MU to boot. The Ftr/MU is equal to or better than the Ftr in every respect.

The same is true for any 1e multiclass you care to throw out there. Bascially, you have all (or virtually all) of the powers of a single classed individual of one of your classes at the same experience point total, and tack on all the class abilities of another class to boot. Show me a 3e 28 point character that is similarly unbalanced, someone who can equal or exceed a number of other characters in all areas.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> *I find that a little suspect.  I ran an AD&D (mostly 2nd ed) campaign for years, and never ran into this problem.*




You have also said that you played in groups where multiclassing and dual-classing were rare. Which means that your PCs did you a huge favor by not exploiting one of the most overpowered loopholes in the game.

I'd say either you got (a) very lucky, or (b) are remembering your experiences with rose colored glasses. How many TPKs did you have by accident? How many did you have to stave off by secretly fudging the rolls? How often did one PCs start to outshine everyone else to an annoying extent?



> *In fact, i was pretty new to the whole GMing thing at the time, and, especially early on, i did a lousy job of balancing encounters.  I'd basically just eyeball it (which, for someone without much experience as a GM, isn't a terribly accurate method).  I frequently misestimated wildly.  And yet, i never had problems with balance between the PCs, in term of encounter effectiveness.  Were the PCs of "wildly" different strength?  Oh, heck yeah!  Throw in a few magic items (not everybody had the same number, nor of the same power), and it only gets worse.  My encounter planning was frequently not much better than random guessing, and yet i never ran into the problem you speak of.*




Not that you know of, or remember. Which, as I said before, makes you either incredibly lucky, or the victim of a selective memory.



> *The D&D3E game i was in ran into the problem a lot more--in order to give the brick a combat challenge, the creatures frequently had to be tough enough that most of the rest of us (including the other fighter) couldn't even hit them.  Likewise, a creature that was a serious threat to the brick would take most other members of the party out in a round.*




And yet, I have never had this problem. Of course, that is because I realized early on that you don't challenge the brick by giving him monsters with bigger hit points and higher ACs and attack bonuses. You challenge the brick by giving him combat situations that he has to solve by maneuver, combat tactics, and other things more than "I swing at the monster" stuff.



> *This is not to say that AD&D2 was better than D&D3E in this regard, just that it is only slightly worse, and the differences between them in this particular regard (class balance) are overshadowed by the differences between playgroups.*




Of course, the main problem with 1e/2e was that the hugely unbalancing rules were _written directly into the core rules_, and hence, most DMs simply assumed they were fine and went with them. Never realizing that they were hideously broken.



> *Or just play in a game with little-to-no combat.*





In 1e (and 2e to some extent) it was trivially easy to make a non-combat oriented character who dominated other characters both in and out of combat. Did you ever see the 1e bard in action? He would overwhelm every other character in just about every way.


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## Grazzt (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Hey, do you actually know that's what he's doing, or is that just a turn of phrase?  Last i'd heard, nobody'd been abple to actually get in touch with him--they closest anyone'd come was a family member who basically said, "he wants to be left alone."





WizaDru is correct. Trampier is still driving a cab (or was about a year ago). Me and another Necromancer Games persona decided to see if we could track him down and actually got a hold of the cab company where he WAS employed. He had quit that company about 3-4 months prior and moved to southern Illinois. We tried a few "leads" and made some phone calls, but nothing every came of it.


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## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> You have also said that you played in groups where multiclassing and dual-classing were rare. Which means that your PCs did you a huge favor by not exploiting one of the most overpowered loopholes in the game.




No, i said dual-classing was rare.  Multi-classing was fairly common--probably about half the PCs (without pulling out the character sheets--i still have most of them--to double check).



> I'd say either you got (a) very lucky, or (b) are remembering your experiences with rose colored glasses. How many TPKs did you have by accident?




Zero.  I've never run into the phenomenon personally, and it took me a fair bit to parse that acronym when i started running into it online.  [And, i'll note that i managed to hang around on r.g.f.misc and r.g.f.advocacy for years before RPGnet or EnWorld came onlin, and nobody ever had need of that term in any context that i ever ran across.  I find it a curious phenomenon, and it seems to strangely only be a frequent-enough occurrence in D&D games to have coined a phrase.  Not saying that this is inherent to D&D of any flavor, or that it never happens in other games.]  Partly, i believed in fudging, and partly i had players who knew i wasn't going to save them, and thus sensibly retreated when things got rough.  A fair %age of battles ended in retreat, rather than victory for either side.  This partly gets back to the fairness issue: For me, a game where every encounter is tailored in difficulty for the group may be "fair", but it isn't fun.  I tailored encounters for the situation (make the guards of the temple as tough as the guards of that temple should be) and relied on the players to have some common sense (either find out ahead of time how powerful the guards are, or have a plan to retreat if you discover you're in over your head).



> How many did you have to stave off by secretly fudging the rolls?




None that i recall.  I remember saving individual characters through fudging or, more often, creative interpretation of ambiguous results.  But those were few and far between, and the few battles where they were in over their heads, i don't think i had to do that.  (And the party was typically 12-20+ PCs, so there was a fair bit of redundancy and a single PC death wouldn't, generally, cascade to everyone else.)



> How often did one PCs start to outshine everyone else to an annoying extent?




Twice.  Neither was because of the rules, and in fact they were specifically due to me ignoring/breaking the rules.  Both were due to blatant GM favoritism (one of my brother's characters, and my girlfriend's character).



> Not that you know of, or remember. Which, as I said before, makes you either incredibly lucky, or the victim of a selective memory.




Granting for the moment that my memory is sufficiently good on this point (something i can't really prove--and on which i could, of course, be wrong), there's probably another contributing factor.  Except for the two guys i got into gaming with, and one of my brother's friends who learned D&D somewhere else, i introduced pretty much every one of my players to RPGs, and was their first (and, in most cases, for the run of my game, only) GM.  Thus, their playstyles tended to be a reasonable mesh for mine and for each other because they didn't have any contrary examples of how to play.  And, for me, balance is irrelevant--spotlight time is what matters.  As long as everyone gets to contribute equally, it's all good, and you do *not* need balance to facillitate that.  You need niche protection.



> And yet, I have never had this problem. Of course, that is because I realized early on that you don't challenge the brick by giving him monsters with bigger hit points and higher ACs and attack bonuses. You challenge the brick by giving him combat situations that he has to solve by maneuver, combat tactics, and other things more than "I swing at the monster" stuff.




So, in other words, the classes are only properly balanced if you play in the style assumed?  The further you stray from that (such as by using tougher, rather than more-capable, opponents to challenge a group of disparate combat ability), the less balanced it becomes?



> Of course, the main problem with 1e/2e was that the hugely unbalancing rules were _written directly into the core rules_, and hence, most DMs simply assumed they were fine and went with them. Never realizing that they were hideously broken.
> 
> 
> > Hideously unbalanced?  Sure. Hideously broken?  Depends on what it takes for a ruleset to work for your group and playstyle.  The only ways in which i found AD&D2 to be broken are things that are still there in D&D3E: fire-and-forget magic, the initiative/multiple attack system, alignment, probably some others i'm not thinking of right now.  In fact, i, like most AD&D2 GMs i've known, had extensive houserules for the game.  In my case, about 40pp of small type for the players, plus a bunch of tables and such that i didn't bother to give to them.  And yet, when D&d3E came out, they had not fixed a single thing that i thought needed fixing--most were essentially unchanged, and a few things that i thought were broken they had made worse--and the things they felt needed fixing were things that i had left untouched--it either had never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with them, or i'd considered the problem so minor as to not be worth the effort to change.    My point is not to rip on D&D3E, but to point out that "broken" is a very subjective term in RPGs.  Your "broken" is my "not a problem", while your "fixed" is my "aaagh!".
> ...


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## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Except that games aren't life. Games are meant to be fun. And fair.




Fun? Yes.  Fair?  Depends.  A game of Call of Cthulhu wouldn't be much fun if it were fair.  For me, personally, a game where every challenge is scaled to the PCs isn't fun--i want the verissimilitude of varying challenges, some way too easy, some way too hard.  I *like* playing radically underpowered characters.  

Which, i suspect, is the crux of this argument.  For some people, fairness is an important component of the fun factor in RPGs, and that includes the fairness of close mechanical balance between PCs.  For others, fairness is either significantly less important, or can, if overzealously applied, actually detract from fun.  Basically, the classis gamist vs. others (probably simulationists, in this case).

Add into these differing priorities differing experiences, and we're not likely to ever persuade one another.  Saying "A is broken because it caused [or even just allowed] X to happen" simply can't be countered, because X did happen, and A was being used--and the causality of the matter is pretty fuzzy.  Similarly, "B isn't broken because it prevented Y" can't be argued against--Y didn't occur, and B was being used.  The fact that Y happened in another game, also using B, or that X didn't happen in a game using A, isn't a counter, it's just a different data point.


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## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> No, they are not unbalanced. They just have different strengths and weaknesses. The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas. Having a vareity of strengths and weaknesses in a group of equivalently levelled characters is not a sign of imbalance, it is actually a sign of balance. If any one character could excel at all things, then he would be unbalanced.
> 
> For example, take the classic 1e Fighter/MU. At the same level of experience points, a 7th/8th level Ftr/MU would match a 7th level Ftr. The Ftr/MU is unbalanced, since, not only is he _as good_ as the Ftr at fighting (and remember, Ftr/MUs in 1e could wear armor and cast spells), he has tacked on 8 levels of MU to boot. The Ftr/MU is equal to or better than the Ftr in every respect.
> 
> The same is true for any 1e multiclass you care to throw out there. Bascially, you have all (or virtually all) of the powers of a single classed individual of one of your classes at the same experience point total, and tack on all the class abilities of another class to boot. Show me a 3e 28 point character that is similarly unbalanced, someone who can equal or exceed a number of other characters in all areas.




OK, i think i see part of the problem: we're talking past each other.  I was using "unbalanced" to refer to two characters who are not equally influential on the game over the course of the life of the characters (i.e., it doesn't count as unbalanced if it's for an encounter, or even an adventure, only if it's always, or on balance, for th ecampaign).  You seem to be using "unbalanced" to refer to two characters that, no matter the situation or campaign they're dropped into, would lack equal influence.  Is that correct?

Also, it sounds like you're only concerned about overbalanced characters, not underbalanced.  Would you also consider it a problem if there was a by-the-book character that was less than most other characters in all (or nearly all) areas?


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## woodelf (Oct 28, 2003)

Wormwood said:
			
		

> While I agree in theory, my group played 1e/2e for so long that when the 'sense of wonder' eventually wore off, we were left with the unbalanced underpinnings of the system.
> 
> Bladesingers. Lots of Bladesingers.
> 
> *shudder*




You know, there's a reason some of us never used anything from the Complete Elflovers Handbook...

Though i'm not sure the "Complete" books, especially those after the first 5, should really be considered the "underpinnings of the system."


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## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> *No, i said dual-classing was rare.  Multi-classing was fairly common--probably about half the PCs (without pulling out the character sheets--i still have most of them--to double check).*





Given the volume of characters you apparently had, it is hard to see how you could remember things that accurately, but we can take your word for it. It is likely, though, that you got used to the idea that demin-human multiclassed characters were overpowered compared to other PCs, and it entered into your gaming pysche as being the "right" way for the game to be.



> *Zero.  I've never run into the phenomenon personally, and it took me a fair bit to parse that acronym when i started running into it online.  [And, i'll note that i managed to hang around on r.g.f.misc and r.g.f.advocacy for years before RPGnet or EnWorld came onlin, and nobody ever had need of that term in any context that i ever ran across.  I find it a curious phenomenon, and it seems to strangely only be a frequent-enough occurrence in D&D games to have coined a phrase.  Not saying that this is inherent to D&D of any flavor, or that it never happens in other games.]  Partly, i believed in fudging, and partly i had players who knew i wasn't going to save them, and thus sensibly retreated when things got rough.*




Well, since you played with enormous parties (12-20 players is an enormous party, typical RPG group size usually has been three to four players, borne out by reaserch conducted by multiple organization, including WotC), it seems logical that you would not have TPKs that often. That much mass simply overwhelms the problem.



> *None that i recall.  I remember saving individual characters through fudging or, more often, creative interpretation of ambiguous results.  But those were few and far between, and the few battles where they were in over their heads, i don't think i had to do that.  (And the party was typically 12-20+ PCs, so there was a fair bit of redundancy and a single PC death wouldn't, generally, cascade to everyone else.)*




So, basically, this is a confirmation that your RPG experience _is_ very atypical. Groups that size are (and have been for many years) atypical, and change the dynamic of the game considerably. In other words, your experiences are not particularly valuable for evaluating the impact of the system for the typical player who played in a group with 4-5 people.



> *Twice.  Neither was because of the rules, and in fact they were specifically due to me ignoring/breaking the rules.  Both were due to blatant GM favoritism (one of my brother's characters, and my girlfriend's character).*




Then you are (a) lucky, or (b) not remembering or (c) didn't notice. Given that you had more than a dozen players at the table, I'd say that there is a strong liklihood that you simply didn't notice.



> *So, in other words, the classes are only properly balanced if you play in the style assumed?  The further you stray from that (such as by using tougher, rather than more-capable, opponents to challenge a group of disparate combat ability), the less balanced it becomes?*




No, they are only balanced if you act as an intelligent DM. If the only way you can think of the challenge the brick is to throw monsters with high ACs, piles of hit points, and massive damage output at him, then you aren't doing your job very well. Sure, the brick opponent has its place, but if that's all you got, then you should find another spot at the table.



> *Hideously unbalanced?  Sure. Hideously broken?  Depends on what it takes for a ruleset to work for your group and playstyle.  The only ways in which i found AD&D2 to be broken are things that are still there in D&D3E: fire-and-forget magic, the initiative/multiple attack system, alignment, probably some others i'm not thinking of right now.  In fact, i, like most AD&D2 GMs i've known, had extensive houserules for the game.*




Which is a sign of a _problem_. When I played 1e/2e D&D, I too had a pile of house rules. Now, the only ones I have are campaign specific, and almost trivial in nature.



> *In my case, about 40pp of small type for the players, plus a bunch of tables and such that i didn't bother to give to them.*




40 pages of small type? And you don't find this to be a sign of a problem with the design of the game?



> *And yet, when D&d3E came out, they had not fixed a single thing that i thought needed fixing--most were essentially unchanged, and a few things that i thought were broken they had made worse--and the things they felt needed fixing were things that i had left untouched--it either had never occurred to me that there was anything wrong with them, or i'd considered the problem so minor as to not be worth the effort to change.    My point is not to rip on D&D3E, but to point out that "broken" is a very subjective term in RPGs.  Your "broken" is my "not a problem", while your "fixed" is my "aaagh!".*





Sure, it could be. But if I had 40 pages of small type in house rules on a game, I'd go looking for another game. If not 3e, then some other RPG that didn't require me to have piles of home-brewed jerry-rigged solutions.



> *I'm not dismissing your complaints--most of them are true and correct, as far as the rules go.  But, simply looking at the rules in a vacuum is not a very useful measure of a game as open-ended as an RPG, IMHO, and proper balance is impossible for the rules, alone, to manage.*




It should not be my responsibility, as the consumer, to fix the product to eliminate huge problems with the game from the get go. Large volumes of house rules fixing the game are a sign of a _problem_ not a strength. The only house rules you should have to put into place are ones that are campaign specific. If you have to fix something as basic as how characters are built, then there is a problem with the game's design.


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## Shard O'Glase (Oct 28, 2003)

more magical magic.  i liked the uncertainty of certain spells like fly lasting a turn a level +1d6 turns, and then you fell, not this lame wussy feather fall crap of 3e, and fireball filling a volume, and lightning bolt rebounding etc.  That was cool and it gave the magic a feeling now it fels more sterile and lifeless.


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## Grazzt (Oct 28, 2003)

Shard O'Glase said:
			
		

> more magical magic.  i liked the uncertainty of certain spells like fly lasting a turn a level +1d6 turns, and then you fell, not this lame wussy feather fall crap of 3e, and fireball filling a volume, and lightning bolt rebounding etc.  That was cool and it gave the magic a feeling now it fels more sterile and lifeless.




LOL- I remember those. We have actually house-ruled those (and a few other 1e spells) to work the way they did in 1e. (My players, all being 1e vets, dont mind it at all. )


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## Dark Jezter (Oct 28, 2003)

_*shudder*_

That's another thing I definately _don't_ miss about 2nd Edition:  The Complete Book of Elves.

The Complete Book of Dwarves was actually pretty cool, providing lots of information that could be used for running dwarven campaigns.  The Complete Book of Elves, OTOH, was a disaster; it presented the elves as being perfect in every way, and introduced some really unbalancing rules (Str 19 for Sylvan Elves, the Bladesinger class kit, bladesong rules, etc).

The author of the book must have been an elf.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 28, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> *OK, i think i see part of the problem: we're talking past each other.  I was using "unbalanced" to refer to two characters who are not equally influential on the game over the course of the life of the characters (i.e., it doesn't count as unbalanced if it's for an encounter, or even an adventure, only if it's always, or on balance, for th ecampaign).  You seem to be using "unbalanced" to refer to two characters that, no matter the situation or campaign they're dropped into, would lack equal influence.  Is that correct?*





I'm referring to characters who equal in most areas, and exceed in some, other similarly situated characters in all respects. Like I said, the Ftr/MU equals the fighter in all respects except for spellcasting, where he hvastly overpowers the straight Fighter. Multiclassing should have some _real_ drawbacks, you should give something up to get the benefits. In 1e, this simply was not the case. Multiclassing (and dual classing) were pretty much 100% good, 0% bad.



> *Also, it sounds like you're only concerned about overbalanced characters, not underbalanced.  Would you also consider it a problem if there was a by-the-book character that was less than most other characters in all (or nearly all) areas?*





To some extent yes. Some PCs choose to play underpowered characters, intentionally making their character less capable in some area by design, and that's a choice they make. But the point is that the game system should support the idea that most similarly situated characters will be of similar levels of overall power (although they may have different strengths and weaknesses).


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## Arnwyn (Oct 28, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."



"... Planescape."
"... Al-Qadim."
"... Forgotten Realms not having a screwed up continuity."
"... weapon/spell speed factors."
"... initiative every round."
"... slower XP progression."
"... the artwork."

However, the neat thing about 3e is that it's still D&D, and I can add everything above into my 3e game very easily.

Edit:
"... habitat/society and ecologies for monsters."
"... one page per monster format."


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## francisca (Oct 28, 2003)

I don't miss a darn thing about 1E, because I still play it every other saturday.

I also DM a 3E game.  You know what?  They both feel like D&D to me.  Sure mechanics are different, and sometimes I wish one had aspects of the other, but I'm not looking to try to blend the two together to get the ultimate RPG, because there is no such thing.  I like them both, mostly the way they are (gotta have at least one or two house rules).  

Now if I could just find some guys to play basic/expert or 1E Gamma World, I'd be set.


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## Zaruthustran (Oct 28, 2003)

I miss...

* Unique clerics [2E]
* Extremely simple characters [Basic]
* Rolling up random treasure and not having to worry about it being "useless" (like a +1 Axe when the party fighter has weapon focus: spiked chain) [Basic]
* Not powergaming/not rules lawyering. For some reason, 3E encourages both. 
* The Complete books. Kits were neat, but the fluff was even better.
* Good art. Dungeonpunk is not to my liking.

I don't miss:

* Crazy saving throws
* Wacky multiclassing
* THACO and other lame mechanics
* Dense layout/monochromatic type.
* Racial restrictions on class

-z


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## Mercule (Oct 28, 2003)

I miss...

... the black box Masters set rules for weapon specialization.


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## Dark Jezter (Oct 28, 2003)

Zaruthustran said:
			
		

> * Not powergaming/not rules lawyering. For some reason, 3E encourages both.
> -z




In my expirience, there are a lot less arguments over the rules in 3e than there were in 1e/2e.  The 3e rules are consistant and clearly defined than the 1e/2e rules, which could be pretty damn vague and inconsistant at times.

When I played 1e/2e, I often witnessed rule disagreements that resulted from unclear definitions, and the game would grind to a screeching halt as the player and the DM begin searching rulebooks and referencing endless charts until a final decision was made.

In 3e, when there is a disagreement over the rules, the game might pause for a minute or two at most while the DM does a quick search of the rules.

I also disagree that 3e encourages powergaming any more than 1e/2e did.  While it's true that 3e has some very powerful prestige classes and feats, previous editions had character kits like Kensais and Bladesingers.  Not to mention that mages in previous editions were near-godlike at higher levels, reducing the other classes to support roles.


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## Mercule (Oct 28, 2003)

Dark Jezter said:
			
		

> In my expirience, there are a lot less arguments over the rules in 3e than there were in 1e/2e. The 3e rules are consistant and clearly defined than the 1e/2e rules, which could be pretty damn vague and inconsistant at times.



Agreed.  Most of the time, the rules are clear, the arguments are now over whether something should be house-ruled or not.  *sigh*


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## fuindordm (Oct 28, 2003)

*Missing 1e...*

The only thing about 3rd edition that I really regret is the move towards stripping spells of their versatility and non-combat oriented functions.  Magic doesn't feel very magical anymore--it's
tech, not something mysterious and dangerous.

1e/2e: Enlarge (reversable) was a pretty cool low-level spell.
3e: Enlarge and Reduce are two separate spells, but still each
has a bit of versatility.
3.5: Becomes Enlarge Person.

Symbol and Emotion have been split into a half-dozen spells. Emotion no longer allows the caster to pick any emotion they can think of. Command is limited to three possible words, and so on.

Occasionally I have a yearning for psionics.  1st edition was actually fairly balanced (or at least no more unbalanced than
the rest of it) if you applied the rules carefully--even if you got lucky and rolled a lot of nice powers, you acquired them gradually as your character advanced.  And as someone else mentioned, many psionic characters were dogfood for the psionic random encounters.  The second edition psionics handbook was also pretty good even though it was tied to the non-weapon proficiency rules.

3rd edition psionics, on the other hand, leave me cold.  I'm not sure why--the powers are too flashy? The disciplines too exquisitely balanced?

--Ben


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## Geron Raveneye (Oct 28, 2003)

I miss

- clerics actually having a spell list defined by their god's portfolios, not a generic "catch all" with some nice bonus bits on top for following a specific god

- players and designers spending less time worrying about if something is "balanced", or how many goodies it gives away, and spending more time actually playing it out in a game.

- psionics being *really* different


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 28, 2003)

Dark Jezter said:
			
		

> In my expirience, there are a lot less arguments over the rules in 3e than there were in 1e/2e.  The 3e rules are consistant and clearly defined than the 1e/2e rules, which could be pretty damn vague and inconsistant at times.




One thing that happened in a lot of AD&D games was an effect I call "ruleslawyer truce". The rules were simply soo unclear about... well... everything, that people _gave up trying to make sense of them_. Simply, the rules were so arguable that many groups never bothered.

In 3rd edition there are precisely _four_ ways to get infinite power in the Core rules (Shadow Farming, Simulacrum Factories, Efreeti Chain Gangs, and Self Awakening). And we can talk about them because the rules are clearly layed out to the point where we can actually discuss that sort of thing.

In the AD&D DMG and PHB there were probably about twenty or thirty things which were _arguably_ infinitely powerful in the Psionics chart alone. Recall that the Disintegation Psionic Thingy didn't even bother to say whether or not the target was granted a save (let alone what kind of jank save it might be). But it was all unclear enough that the DM would just sort of announce something, people would shrug, and the game would move on.

So in AD&D you would activate your Disintegrate Psioinic Widgit and then the DM would have the prospective victim make a save vs. Paralysis or something - and then he probably wouldn't even die. If your victim did not die, the DM might arbitrarily cause him some damage. Whatever.

This wasn't because the rules said to do that - the rules didn't address how the power would go about failing in the first place - let alone what would happen if it did.

And so on for just about everything. The rules weren't clear enough for people to actually know what was going on most of the time. The only time you got really bitter arguments was when people from different playgroups sat down at the same table - _oogh_. People who had been playing by rules they had essentially made up themselves for years were in for a rude awakening when they ran afoul of the fact that every other play group had been doing the same thing - almost invariably to the effect of having different aggregate rules.

-Frank


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## woodelf (Oct 29, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> [/b]
> 
> Given the volume of characters you apparently had, it is hard to see how you could remember things that accurately, but we can take your word for it. It is likely, though, that you got used to the idea that demin-human multiclassed characters were overpowered compared to other PCs, and it entered into your gaming pysche as being the "right" way for the game to be.




That's certainly possible.  Mind you, i also played in other people's games, both during that time, and later.  And talked to still other gamers.  While my experiences were very atypical in some ways, in others (such as the absence of TPKs), they were very typical of gamers i talked to in the mid-late '80s.  It was just a given that (1) the GM would not set up potential TPK situations and (2) the PCs would have the common sense to retreat if necessary.  

Oh, and as for remembering the characters: i don't.  I remember their demographics.  I couldn't tell you exactly how many characters i had, but i could tell you that a disproportionate number of them were priests.  And, like i said, i still have almost everybody's character sheets, and have somewhat recently pulled them out and compiled said demographic data, for other threads.



> Well, since you played with enormous parties (12-20 players is an enormous party, typical RPG group size usually has been three to four players, borne out by reaserch conducted by multiple organization, including WotC), it seems logical that you would not have TPKs that often. That much mass simply overwhelms the problem.
> 
> So, basically, this is a confirmation that your RPG experience _is_ very atypical. Groups that size are (and have been for many years) atypical, and change the dynamic of the game considerably. In other words, your experiences are not particularly valuable for evaluating the impact of the system for the typical player who played in a group with 4-5 people.




First, to be clear, this was one campaign.  The main campaign.  I also ran groups as small as 2 players/2 characters at the same time.  And played in a couple of "normal-sized" groups (5-6 PCs--which, from talking to people and being in games, seems to be the norm that i've run into, WotC's research notwithstanding--i've always thought of 4 PCs as on the small side for D&D games, and only known one 3-player game that was healthy (as opposed to dying or trying to grow).  [Oh, and i don't trust the WotC research to be representative on two bases--one, they won't show us the data so i'm suspect on principle (never trust a survey that won't give you the raw data), and two, i saw the preliminary questions, and realized that, according to their screening, a "wasn't an active RPer", despite having 3 weekly games, because i wasn't playing D&D at the time.]

Second, i said 12-20 characters quite deliberately--it was always much fewer players.  Due to circumstances too lengthy to go into here, the game started out with multiple PCs per player, and slowly weaned itself down to one player/one character. At any given point, there were typically 3-7 regular players, and 0-12 occasional players, with any given session generally having about half the occasionals show up.  So, most nights, we had 5-9 players.  And, like i said, i simultaneously ran campaigns for 3 or 4 different small groups: 2-4 players, one PC each.  And never had any TPKs for them, either.



> Then you are (a) lucky, or (b) not remembering or (c) didn't notice. Given that you had more than a dozen players at the table, I'd say that there is a strong liklihood that you simply didn't notice.




Rarely had more than a dozen players--usually more like 7 or 8.  Though, i did have 18 or 19 players *once*.  But, anyway, as for imbalance: it could be (c)--but i doubt it.  I regularly solicited feedback--going so far as to make up questionaires--to make sure i was giving people the game they wanted.  We changed rules if necessary.  As for not remembering--possible.  But the only times i remember really blatant balance problems were when we broke the rules. (The quickling monk, with 8x normal attacks per round, was definitely a problem.)



> Which is a sign of a _problem_. When I played 1e/2e D&D, I too had a pile of house rules. Now, the only ones I have are campaign specific, and almost trivial in nature.
> 
> 40 pages of small type? And you don't find this to be a sign of a problem with the design of the game?




I probably should have finished that off with two further bits of info.  First, none of those noticably (dis)empowered any class or race.  If anything, they exacerbated existing situations (wizards got more spells memorized (basically like the system in Arcana Unearthed); multiclassing had fewer penalties and more possibilities--things like that).  Most of them either applied to everybody equally (such as the death rules), or didn't really affect game balance at all (new alignment rules).  Oh, and by small type i meant 9pt, maybe 10pt (going on a visual estimate--i no longer have the software or hardware to read softcopy of those rules).

But my point was not that i don't think there are any flaws with AD&D2--it's that i don't think they are noticably more severe than the problems with D&D3E.  The only element of the combat system i changed, frex, was initiative/attack order (oh--and made large shields a bit more effective).  Most of my changes were either small, or far from in-play balance (ability generation was significantly changed, frex).  

The 2nd bit i should've mentioned is that it'd take me a *lot* more houserules to make D&D3E into a game i'd accept.  To get D&D3E to the same point as i'd gotten AD&D2 to would take every rule i'd used before (as i said, none of the changes i felt were "necessary" made it into the new version), plus a whole bunch of new ones.  And yet a few more if i were starting from D&D3.5E as the baseline.  

So, should i really judge the quality of a game based on the houserules used to play it?  No--the quantity of houserules only tells you how closely the game approaches the group's ideal , not absolute quality.  I'm not about to claim that D&D3E is an all-around worse game, just because it would take me more effort to turn it into something i'd like.



> Sure, it could be. But if I had 40 pages of small type in house rules on a game, I'd go looking for another game. If not 3e, then some other RPG that didn't require me to have piles of home-brewed jerry-rigged solutions.




I never said i still played D&D of any flavor.  I did go looking for other games, and found them--at last count, i have about a hundred RPGs that i think are better than D&D (of any variety).  Some of them are D20 System.  I do know that, given the choice between AD&D2 or D&D3(.5)E, both run by the book with just the core rulebooks (and a quality GM), i'd pick AD&D2--i had less frustration with the rules, and thus more fun.  Now, the underlying framework of D20 System is a heck of a lot better--i'd pick Arcana Unearthed over either of the above options, and a fantasy system with a simplified Spycraft or BESM D20 combat system would be still better yet.



> It should not be my responsibility, as the consumer, to fix the product to eliminate huge problems with the game from the get go. Large volumes of house rules fixing the game are a sign of a _problem_ not a strength. The only house rules you should have to put into place are ones that are campaign specific. If you have to fix something as basic as how characters are built, then there is a problem with the game's design.




So, by that standard, D&D3E is broken.  Or are you suddenly the sole arbiter of when houserules are "necessary"?


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## woodelf (Oct 29, 2003)

fuindordm said:
			
		

> 3rd edition psionics, on the other hand, leave me cold.  I'm not sure why--the powers are too flashy? The disciplines too exquisitely balanced?
> 
> --Ben




Hypothesis: because they don't have a destinctively "this is psychic powers" feel to them.  I know that's why i don't like them.  The purely mental stuff should be lower levels (as in, 3 or so) than the magical equivalent, and able to do stuff that magic has real trouble doing.  The physical-world stuff (i.e., the whole metacreation discipline) should be hard-to-impossible.  If they're leveled the same as spells, i'd expect it to take a 3rd level psionic power just to fling a small stone, and a 6th level psionic power to create something--IOW, lagging 4 or more levels behind the magical equivalent.  Instead, they  can do most of the same stuff at roughly the same level, and only the flavor is really different. Plus, for me, the displays are both a game-breaker and a genre-breaker.  I want psychic powers to be like Scanners or Babylon 5 or Blake's 7--they're mental, dammit, and if the power itself doesn't have a physical effect, nobody should know they're happening.


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## Krieg (Oct 29, 2003)

> I like 3E, but I miss...




D&D

D20 is nice, but it ain't the same game.


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## Mercule (Oct 29, 2003)

fuindordm said:
			
		

> 3rd edition psionics, on the other hand, leave me cold. I'm not sure why--the powers are too flashy? The disciplines too exquisitely balanced?



Um... because your character gets coated in snot whenever he uses psi?  I know that's a big one for me.  

Even so, I agree that there is _something_ else that turns me off about 3E psionics.  In 1E and 2E, I loved psionic enough to make its manifestation an important part of the game world and turn my cliched "evil empire" into a psionic powerhouse.  In 3E, I'm actually trying to figure out if there is some way that I can backpedal and edit history so that it isn't psi, but something else -- I'd just as soon have psionics gone at this point.

I can't put my finger on exactly why, though.  Like I said, the ecto-snot is part of it, but not all.  I think it's something to do with the system.  It's too close to a Sorcerer with spell points.

And snot.  3E psionics are too much like a sorcerer with spell points and snot.


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## National Acrobat (Oct 29, 2003)

I miss drow being mysterious and spooky. Now they're just everywhere.

I miss Psionics being mysterious and spooky. Used to be you never knew who had them, even a dumb fighter could get lucky on the dice and have powers they couldn't always manifest. Now they are just a class.

Also, I also DM a 1E and a 3E game, and they both also feel like DnD but the types of players that I have are different in both games. The 1E game is full of role-playing and intrigue, and the ages are all over 34.

The 3E game is full-tilt action, and everyone is under 25 except me, the DM. 

Just thought that was interesting to mention.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 29, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> First, to be clear, this was one campaign.  The main campaign.  I also ran groups as small as 2 players/2 characters at the same time.  And played in a couple of "normal-sized" groups (5-6 PCs--which, from talking to people and being in games, seems to be the norm that i've run into, WotC's research notwithstanding--i've always thought of 4 PCs as on the small side for D&D games, and only known one 3-player game that was healthy (as opposed to dying or trying to grow).  [Oh, and i don't trust the WotC research to be representative on two bases--one, they won't show us the data so i'm suspect on principle (never trust a survey that won't give you the raw data), and two, i saw the preliminary questions, and realized that, according to their screening, a "wasn't an active RPer", despite having 3 weekly games, because i wasn't playing D&D at the time.][/b]




I've found data from other sources that hold the 4-5 person playing group to be true. One of the newspapers in my area did an extensive survey on RPG groups in the last couple of years, and they found that the most common RPG group (no matter the game system) was a GM and 3 players. You don't have to just trust WotC, there are other sources out there that confirm this.



> *The 2nd bit i should've mentioned is that it'd take me a *lot* more houserules to make D&D3E into a game i'd accept.  To get D&D3E to the same point as i'd gotten AD&D2 to would take every rule i'd used before (as i said, none of the changes i felt were "necessary" made it into the new version), plus a whole bunch of new ones.  And yet a few more if i were starting from D&D3.5E as the baseline.*




Which, in my experience, makes you atypical.



> *So, should i really judge the quality of a game based on the houserules used to play it?  No--the quantity of houserules only tells you how closely the game approaches the group's ideal , not absolute quality.  I'm not about to claim that D&D3E is an all-around worse game, just because it would take me more effort to turn it into something i'd like.*




No, but when houseruling is the norm rather than the exception, then that is evidence of a problem. In my epxerience (and the epxerience of just about every other veteran D&D player I've discussed this with, including you), they used pages and pages of house rules when they played 1e/2e. On the other hand, I have met very few people who use extensive house rules when playing 3e, most people I have communicated with on this issue maintain that they have a page, or maybe two of house rules, or simply no house rules.



> *So, by that standard, D&D3E is broken.  Or are you suddenly the sole arbiter of when houserules are "necessary"?*





You are one of the few people I have dealt with who thinks that reams of changes are necessary for 3e. Most people I have found have said things along the lines of "when I played 2e, I had 50 pages of house rules, now that I play 3e, I have tossed them all away". That makes my statements based upon much more than being the "sole arbiter", it makes them based upon "many arbiters".

Basically, everything you have said in this htread indicates that your RPG experience has generally been completely atypical. Hence, I'm inclined to argue that your observations are not of a particularly valuable nature for evaluating the usefulness of the various editions for the typical D&D player.


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## National Acrobat (Oct 29, 2003)

Hmm, I'd be curious as to the average size of most people's gaming groups. My long running group has 10 players, and before I moved to my current location 15 years ago, I played in a 12 person group. I've never played in a group with less than 7 or 8 players. Which probably explains some of the difficulties we've had with 3E and the whole CR issue.


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## diaglo (Oct 29, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> Basically, everything you have said in this htread indicates that your RPG experience has generally been completely atypical. Hence, I'm inclined to argue that your observations are not of a particularly valuable nature for evaluating the usefulness of the various editions for the typical D&D player.




not too atypical.  

i said close to the same things.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 29, 2003)

National Acrobat said:
			
		

> Hmm, I'd be curious as to the average size of most people's gaming groups. My long running group has 10 players, and before I moved to my current location 15 years ago, I played in a 12 person group. I've never played in a group with less than 7 or 8 players. Which probably explains some of the difficulties we've had with 3E and the whole CR issue.




The CR system is scaled for a group of 4 characters, which WotC maintains its research showed was the most common size for an RPG group. If you play with a group of more PCs, then you need to make adjustments based upon that.

Usually it is pretty simple. If a group of 2 orcs would be a good challenge for a party of 4 PCs, then 4 orcs is probably about right for a party of 8 PCs. You could also up the CR of the opponents. Each +2 of CR is equivalent to roughly a doubling in the opponent's effectiveness, so a CR 3 opponent (like an ogre) would theoretically give an 8 member 1st level party an appropriate challenge.

Note that a party that faces a challenge "equal" to their abilities is expected to expend 20%-25% of their resources in defeating that challenge. It is _not_ intended to be an encounter that takes them to the brink of death, or cause them to exhaust their resources.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 29, 2003)

diaglo said:
			
		

> not too atypical.
> 
> i said close to the same things.




I believe that it has been conclusively established by dozens of your posts that you have very much had an atypical experience with RPGs. Note that a handful of data points does not make something "typical", especially when you are talking about a data pool of hundreds of thousands of individuals.

If a hundred people showed up right here and said "hey, I played in 10 player groups exclusively", that wouldn't amount to more than a blip on the data, since the data is dealing with the experiences of tens of thousands of individuals.


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## diaglo (Oct 29, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> I believe that it has been conclusively established by dozens of your posts that you have very much had an atypical experience with RPGs.




yeah, i started to wonder if *woodelf* was one of the former gamers from my area when i was younger.


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## Remus Lupin (Oct 29, 2003)

I'm with Gnarlo. What I miss most about earlier versions is that I was young and had no responsibilities. Rules, balance, epic levels? Bah! All I knew was that Kardor the Magic User would be out for blood that night!

Ah, to be young, to have 3 hit points, and to only be abel to cast magic missle.


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## Gothmog (Oct 29, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> No, but when houseruling is the norm rather than the exception, then that is evidence of a problem. In my epxerience (and the epxerience of just about every other veteran D&D player I've discussed this with, including you), they used pages and pages of house rules when they played 1e/2e. On the other hand, I have met very few people who use extensive house rules when playing 3e, most people I have communicated with on this issue maintain that they have a page, or maybe two of house rules, or simply no house rules.
> 
> You are one of the few people I have dealt with who thinks that reams of changes are necessary for 3e. Most people I have found have said things along the lines of "when I played 2e, I had 50 pages of house rules, now that I play 3e, I have tossed them all away". That makes my statements based upon much more than being the "sole arbiter", it makes them based upon "many arbiters".




Actually, most people I knew who ran 1E/2E had under 5 pages of house rules, including me.  3E has so many assumptions built into the system, that if you want to do ANYTHING differently, you have to change large portions of the system since so much is interconnected.  3E assumes a very high magic level, combat-heavy game set in a dungeon- none of which appeal to me.  My current 3E campaign has over 70 pages of houserules- including things like rituals, spellcasting rolls, alt hp system, new feats, spells, revised clerical domains more like spheres, etc.  We have modified the system so it suits our needs, but it requires a lot of revision to do so.


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## JRRNeiklot (Oct 29, 2003)

Zaruthustran said:
			
		

> I miss...
> 
> 
> I don't miss:
> ...





Hmmm.  A barbarian/fighter/ranger/rogue/bard is not wacky?  I've seen worse than that in 3e.


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## woodelf (Oct 29, 2003)

Mercule said:
			
		

> Um... because your character gets coated in snot whenever he uses psi?  I know that's a big one for me.
> 
> Even so, I agree that there is _something_ else that turns me off about 3E psionics.  In 1E and 2E, I loved psionic enough to make its manifestation an important part of the game world and turn my cliched "evil empire" into a psionic powerhouse.  In 3E, I'm actually trying to figure out if there is some way that I can backpedal and edit history so that it isn't psi, but something else -- I'd just as soon have psionics gone at this point.
> 
> ...




I think the problem with D&D3E Psionics Handbook for those who liked psionics in one or more previous editions can almost all be boiled down to feel.  Psionics no longer has the "right" feel.  First, there's the issue of niche protection: they changed the way psionics works to be considerably more like magic (same 9 levels of powers, roughly the same progression for gaining them, every power of the same level has the same cost), and they introduced the sorcerer, which works considerably more like previous psionics (learn a small fixed number of powers, decide which to use as you go).  So the sorcerer and psion basically do the same thing, just with a bit different flavor.  Likewise the monk and psychic warrior--too much the same conceptually.

Which then gets to the flavor bits.  First, much of the distinctive flavor as it was embodied ni the rules is now gone.  Activating a power and casting a spell are mechanically identical, right down to concentration/interruption, activation time, and the fact that both are reliable and have no side-effects.  It used to be that psionics felt different at even the most basic of levels: die roll instead of automatic, on-the-fly rather than prepared, spend points instead of just do it, different powers of the same nominal magnitude had wildly different costs, pay maintenance cost for duration instead of getting it automatically.  You can change a few of these (frex, priests in my old AD&D2 game picked their spells on the fly), but when you change basically all of them, it loses its specialness.  Instead, they introduced some *new* ways in which it was different--but less different than before.  Sure, the save DC vs. a power is random, instead of fixed (as for spells), but it's gonna average out to the same, and it's still the same mechanic at its heart, rather than something distinct (such as basing DC on point spent, thus allowing you to burn points to boost DC).  Add displays to "balance" the lack of components--and, since the system is almost identical to spells now (including effectiveness at a given level), you do need something to make up for lack of components. Use variable stat to base things on, instead of just one (as the spellcasters do).

Which gets to the second flavor problem: 3E psionics seems to have lost most of what made it feel like psychic powers.  IMO, psychic powers, at the default, should have a few traits in common: invisible/undectable to the non-psychic (or, at least, not without nifty lab equipment); requiring intense concentration; tiring/draining; very good (better than magic) at direct mental stuff, moderately good at manipulating other people (same as magic), poor at dealing with intangibles like energy and lifeforce (a bit weaker/higher-level than magic), and very poor at manipulating the nonsentient material world (much worse than magic).  D&D3E psionics pretty roundly ignores those ideals, especially the relative magnitude of ability: mental control powers are only a bit lower in level than their equivalent spells, and physical manipulation/creation powers are all over the place, often the same level as their magical equivalent.  Along the way, a bit too much has been borrowed from visual media, such as superhero comics and anime, which have gotten more and more in the habit of giving psychic powers cool visual effects--'cause it's boring to have three comic panels of the hero scrunching up her forehead, with no dialogue or anything else.  Though you'll note that in many of these, the displays are for the viewing audience only, and other characters obviously can't detect them.  Not only the displays element, but the flavor of what is possible seems to have more to attribute to supers than to scifi or fantasy mental powers.

Finally, there's the balance issue: psions get double-whammied all over the place, compared to spelllcasters.  Displays are meant to be equivalent to components, but components only affect you casting, giving people a chance to detect it.  Displays generally last for the whole duration, and are particularly egregious when they function as a dead giveaway on purely-mental powers ("Gee, Thron doesn't usually act that way, but he's generally trustworthy, so i guess it's ok to do what he says.  Oh, except for the strange buzzing coming from him--maybe we should check him for enchantment, first.").  And there are 5 displays, vs. 3 components, so it takes more feats to overcome them.  Next problem is the stat-dependence.  None of the spellcasters need more than one stat to do all their niftiness--and very few classes really depend on more than 2 stats, and none of them need them to the degree taht spellcasters/psions do.  A psion has to have all 6 stats high (19s, if you're playing to high levels), or just kiss whole levels of powers goodbye.

-----
Anyway, since you seem to agree with me, might i suggest a third course of action for your campaign?  Use psionics of a different flavor.  You can see the psionic system i'm going to be porting to D20 System in my Ars Fantasia (http://www.tiltingatwindmills/old/ars/).  It needs to have a few more balance checks thrown in for D20 System, and the effect descriptions made more specific (and defined in D20 terms), but the bulk of it is there.  It's based on some of the principles i've outlined above, and started out from the Complete Psionics Handbook, in terms of the conceptualization of what a psionic can do.  I hope you'll like it.


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## WizarDru (Oct 29, 2003)

Gothmog said:
			
		

> Actually, most people I knew who ran 1E/2E had under 5 pages of house rules, including me. 3E has so many assumptions built into the system, that if you want to do ANYTHING differently, you have to change large portions of the system since so much is interconnected. 3E assumes a very high magic level, combat-heavy game set in a dungeon- none of which appeal to me. My current 3E campaign has over 70 pages of houserules- including things like rituals, spellcasting rolls, alt hp system, new feats, spells, revised clerical domains more like spheres, etc. We have modified the system so it suits our needs, but it requires a lot of revision to do so.



Which sounds more like a campaign setting than houserules.  I played 3E with four house rules.  I play 3.5 with none.  [shrug]


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## woodelf (Oct 29, 2003)

Gothmog said:
			
		

> Actually, most people I knew who ran 1E/2E had under 5 pages of house rules, including me.  3E has so many assumptions built into the system, that if you want to do ANYTHING differently, you have to change large portions of the system since so much is interconnected.  3E assumes a very high magic level, combat-heavy game set in a dungeon- none of which appeal to me.  My current 3E campaign has over 70 pages of houserules- including things like rituals, spellcasting rolls, alt hp system, new feats, spells, revised clerical domains more like spheres, etc.  We have modified the system so it suits our needs, but it requires a lot of revision to do so.




Ditto.  Outside of my group, every group i've ever met that played AD&D1/2 (and i at least met a lot of them when i was in college) had no houserules more extensive than which classes/races they were using, and which optional rules.  IOW, just listing the options from the rulebooks (and maybe Dragon, for those that used some of the alternate classes published there).  In fact, i lost a whole bunch of players precisely because of my houserules--not because they particularly disliked them, but because they just didn't want to deal with them, vice the book. They also didn't use a lot of the official rules i used (Tome of Magic, specialty priests, etc.)--they just wanted a simpler game, all-round.

Also, Gothmog said it better than i was: one of the advantages to the pastiche of unrelated rules in AD&D2 was that you could often change a subsystem without affecting anything else, so it made alterations easier in that way.  In D&D3E, one simple change echoes all over the place, necessitating further changes to compensate (or carry through), and so on.  And to varying degrees, depending on your opinion of the current degree of balance, and the desirable degree of balance.  Frex, i'm currently in the midst of a fairly heated argument over the proposition (someone else's, just for the record) of switching touch attacks and/or light-weapon attacks to be Dex based by default.


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## Greg K (Oct 29, 2003)

Here are the things that I can currently think of that I miss.

1) the artwork of Caldwell, Elmore and Easley. 

2) specialty priests (2e)

3) The non-raging barbarian (especially David Howery's rewrite of the 1e Barbarian from Dragon Magazine)

4) Illusionists (and other specialists) having their own spell lists

5) The Complete Thief's Handbook kits and The Complete Druid's Handbook

6) characters starting with a limited number of weapon proficiencies

7) weapon groups from both the "Complete Fighter's Handbook" and "Combat & Tactics".

8) PO: Criticals where you had to hit by more than 5 to threaten a critical.  Critical threats were actually based on the ability of the attacker.

9) Optional Magic Systems from PO: Spells and Magic.

10) Slower experience progression at mid to higher levels.  I don't want to see the almost impossible to level at high levels found in 1e//2e, but the current version 3. versions allow leveling at too fast a rate for my tastes.

11)The feel of DM relevance.  Monte Cook has said that one of the goal's of 3e was to remove the DM from the equation.


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## jasamcarl (Oct 29, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Ditto.  Outside of my group, every group i've ever met that played AD&D1/2 (and i at least met a lot of them when i was in college) had no houserules more extensive than which classes/races they were using, and which optional rules.  IOW, just listing the options from the rulebooks (and maybe Dragon, for those that used some of the alternate classes published there).  In fact, i lost a whole bunch of players precisely because of my houserules--not because they particularly disliked them, but because they just didn't want to deal with them, vice the book. They also didn't use a lot of the official rules i used (Tome of Magic, specialty priests, etc.)--they just wanted a simpler game, all-round.
> 
> Also, Gothmog said it better than i was: one of the advantages to the pastiche of unrelated rules in AD&D2 was that you could often change a subsystem without affecting anything else, so it made alterations easier in that way.  In D&D3E, one simple change echoes all over the place, necessitating further changes to compensate (or carry through), and so on.  And to varying degrees, depending on your opinion of the current degree of balance, and the desirable degree of balance.  Frex, i'm currently in the midst of a fairly heated argument over the proposition (someone else's, just for the record) of switching touch attacks and/or light-weapon attacks to be Dex based by default.




I just have to note how dumb an argument this is. The reason that 3e is so tightly integrated is because it actually has a balance point. You can alter the rules just as easily as in earlier editions, but the problem many seem to have is that they miss the balance when they do so. Earlier editions, on the other hand, did not have a mainline balance and so making houserules did not come at a cost. But that was because the rules as written had no value to begin with. Many who wish to houserule 3e just don't like to be faced with the fact that their rules lack value, often adding needless complexity or butchering the options presented by the game as written, so they crow about 'tight integration' and unified mechanics. Some people just like to turn the virtue of a transparent design intent into a vice, because they can't do better....


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## Ashrem Bayle (Oct 29, 2003)

Gothmog said:
			
		

> 3E assumes a very high magic level, combat-heavy game set in a dungeon- none of which appeal to me.




Played Midnight?


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## Quasqueton (Oct 29, 2003)

> Actually, most people I knew who ran 1E/2E had under 5 pages of house rules, including me. 3E has so many assumptions built into the system, that if you want to do ANYTHING differently, you have to change large portions of the system since so much is interconnected. 3E assumes a very high magic level, combat-heavy game set in a dungeon- none of which appeal to me. My current 3E campaign has over 70 pages of houserules- including things like rituals, spellcasting rolls, alt hp system, new feats, spells, revised clerical domains more like spheres, etc. We have modified the system so it suits our needs, but it requires a lot of revision to do so.



"rituals, spellcasting rolls, alt hp system, new feats, spells, revised clerical domains more like spheres, etc."

These would be house rules in AD&D too. So, do you mean to say that your AD&D house rules were 75 pages long? 70 for the flavor, 5 for the mechanics?

Quasqueton


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## Hardhead (Oct 29, 2003)

Alzrius said:
			
		

> ...the holisticity of AD&D 2E.
> 
> Back in the previous edition, the campaign worlds were all interconnected, and this led to what I felt was a very rich amount of diversification through the various campaign models cross-pollinating.
> 
> ...





I agree one thousand percent.  

I also liked the Realms a lot better in 2e.  The Dwarves and Elves (especially the Dwarves) felt like tragic races on the decline.  I have no idea why WotC changed it, unless it was just to make them less interesting.  Admitedly, both were somewhat Tolkien-ish (ESPECIALLY the elves sailing into the west), but D&D borrows virtually everything from some other source, and you can't borrow from better than Tolkien!  

Also, the dwarves "fix" was mind-bogglingly inconsistent.  2e took place 9 years after the Time of Troubles.  3e is only one or two years after *that*.  Yet the 3e box talks about the Thundering and increase in dwarven birth rates as if it happened 50 years ago (dwarves born during that time are coming to maturity now).  That really irks me.

I also agree that the number of elven subraces has gotten ridiculous.  I especially hate the wood elves.  Elves should not be a better melee fighter race than half-orcs and dwarves!  Star Elves make excellent sorcerers.  Sun Elves are great Wizards.  Once we get a +WIS elf, we'll have one for every class!

And I LOVED Planescape.  I really wish they'd bring that setting back.


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## fuindordm (Oct 29, 2003)

*Psionics*



			
				woodelf said:
			
		

> Hypothesis: because they don't have a destinctively "this is psychic powers" feel to them.  I know that's why i don't like them.  The purely mental stuff should be lower levels (as in, 3 or so) than the magical equivalent, and able to do stuff that magic has real trouble doing.  The physical-world stuff (i.e., the whole metacreation discipline) should be hard-to-impossible.  If they're leveled the same as spells, i'd expect it to take a 3rd level psionic power just to fling a small stone, and a 6th level psionic power to create something--IOW, lagging 4 or more levels behind the magical equivalent.  Instead, they  can do most of the same stuff at roughly the same level, and only the flavor is really different. Plus, for me, the displays are both a game-breaker and a genre-breaker.  I want psychic powers to be like Scanners or Babylon 5 or Blake's 7--they're mental, dammit, and if the power itself doesn't have a physical effect, nobody should know they're happening.




Yeah, I think you're right.  There should have been fewer psi powers overall, but each more versatile than a spell could be.
The list of powers given looks just like a spell list, and is too finely balanced against the wizard spell list.

The end result is that psions just don't feel very psychic.

Oh--that and the power crystals.  Must all classes have a familiar these days?

And the snot, as mercule so rightly pointed out.

--Ben


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## Endur (Oct 29, 2003)

I miss the 1e notion that combat wasn't about the buff spells.

In 1e, I don't ever remember asking a wizard or a CLERIC for a buff spell before combat.

I remember clerics healing people and turning undead.  I remember clerics casting other spells, maybe the occassional protection from evil to protect against summoned creatures, but that was about it.  

At high level, a fighter might have a ring of spell storing with spells in it, but except for the real cheesy fighter with a Tenser's Transmutation in the ring, it usually was spells like Teleport, Heal, and Word of Recall in the Ring of Spell Storing.

Now, the bad part about 1e, was that it was all about the magic items.  The fighter with magic armor and a magic sword walked all over the fighter with neither.  And that hasn't changed in 3e.


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## Henry (Oct 29, 2003)

Endur said:
			
		

> In 1e, I don't ever remember asking a wizard or a CLERIC for a buff spell before combat.




Strength, Enlarge, Stoneskin, Permanency from the Magic-user.

Goodberry, Barkskin, Protection from Fire and Lightning from the Druid.

There were TONS of buffs, in some cases (like enlarge) MUCH more powerful in 1e/2e than today. Ask a 15th level mage to cast a 1st level spell on the toughest fighter in the group, and watch the bodies of your enemies fly!!! I did it all the time, and the DM actually started planning the combats expecting us to throw that much forethought into our combats.



> I remember clerics healing people and turning undead.  I remember clerics casting other spells, maybe the occassional protection from evil to protect against summoned creatures, but that was about it.




I will agree, clerics have some God-awful powers now in the offensive area, and I dislike them in certain circumstances having access to Power words, Bigby's hands, lightning bolts, etc.



> Now, the bad part about 1e, was that it was all about the magic items.  The fighter with magic armor and a magic sword walked all over the fighter with neither.  And that hasn't changed in 3e.




Not nearly as true in my experience, thanks to the levelling of the playing field with feats. All things being equal, a fighter with magic will still probably win over the non-magicked fighter, but nowhere near as sure a bet as first edition, where ability-wise, a fighter was a fighter was a fighter. To me, the neat part is reducing the amount of magic in a game, and watching the players still have tons of options and fun things to do, without missing the magic quite that much!


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## Henry (Oct 29, 2003)

As an aside, I have a personal rant on the HORRIBLE term, "buff spells",which has only seen serious use in the past five years or so (thanks, Everquest, for NOTHIN'!!!!) I hate that term, because it sounds like the characters are preparing spells to polish their cars...


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 29, 2003)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> Which sounds more like a campaign setting than houserules.  I played 3E with four house rules.  I play 3.5 with none.  [shrug]



Do you allow people to use Shapechange to transform themselves into Balors and drop Vorpal Swords on the ground and then Shapechange into _different_ Balors, dropping another Vorpal Sword, and so on, creating hundreds of thousands of gold pieces for the purposes of magic item creation in minutes?

If not - you are using Houserules.

Do you allow player characters to create and control Shadows, who in turn run around killing squirrels in the forest making more shadows under their control until they have an army of hundreds of thousands of incorporeal slaves?

If not - you are using Houserules.

Do you allow player characters to Polymorph themselves into Badgers and then use Limited Wish to Awaken themselves gaining 2 hit dice and a stackable unnamed bonus to Charisma at the cost of 300 XP each time with no upper limit?

If not - you are using Houserules.

Do you allow players to use Planar Binding to capture Efreeti and then force them to use their Wish Granting ability to create Epic Magical Items now that Wish has no upper limit on how powerful of a magical item it can create?

If not - you are playing Houserules.

Everyone plays with Houserules. In every edition. All the time. Without exception. Whether you _notice_ the house rules you are using Houserules or not is a separate - and irrelevent - discussion.

Every time you've ever said "that's dumb, they _obviously_ mean...." you are creating a House Rule. That you haven't felt the need to write them down in your game simply means that other people from different games will be more confused when they attempt to join your group.

-Frank


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## MerricB (Oct 30, 2003)

I miss Tracy Hickman writing the coolest adventures I've ever seen.

I miss elves that looked like elves, not like mutants. (I detest the look of 3E elves, with the exception of the one picture of elven chainmail in the 3.5E DMG).

Apart from that - not much.

I *really* don't miss 1E Initiative.

Cheers!


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## WizarDru (Oct 30, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Do you allow people to use Shapechange to transform themselves into Balors and drop Vorpal Swords on the ground and then Shapechange into _different_ Balors, dropping another Vorpal Sword, and so on, creating hundreds of thousands of gold pieces for the purposes of magic item creation in minutes?
> 
> If not - you are using Houserules.



I'm missing where you got that from, frankly.  Even the unerattaed version of the spell doesn't indicate that you get it's equipment.  Trying to use sophistry to imply that since it says you gain the Balor's attacks that you get it's magical equipment is more than a little bit of a stetch.  I'd say you're the one using the house-rules, actually.  The same applies to the other things you've mentioned.  Given that the ShadowDancer entry specifically mentions how many shadows she can have, you're the one house-ruling, again.  

And if WotC came and said these were valid strategies, I'd allow them..and the consequences such actions would engender in-game. If you think that the Djinni princes would tolerate such behavior, you're welcome to their wrath when it descends upon you.  How many Djinn can you control at one time?  Of course, it helps that I don't have players who are jerks.


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## Endur (Oct 30, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Do you allow people to use Shapechange to transform themselves into Balors and drop Vorpal Swords on the ground and then Shapechange into _different_ Balors, dropping another Vorpal Sword, and so on, creating hundreds of thousands of gold pieces for the purposes of magic item creation in minutes?




Nowhere in the rules does it say that shapechanged creatures get equipment or that the equipment doesn't go away when they change shape.  No house rule necessary.



			
				FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Do you allow player characters to create and control Shadows, who in turn run around killing squirrels in the forest making more shadows under their control until they have an army of hundreds of thousands of incorporeal slaves?




Nowhere in the rules does it say that one shadow can control a hundred thousand shadows.  Besides, that's why the Sun domain was invented.



			
				FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Do you allow player characters to Polymorph themselves into Badgers and then use Limited Wish to Awaken themselves gaining 2 hit dice and a stackable unnamed bonus to Charisma at the cost of 300 XP each time with no upper limit?




Nowhere in the rules does it say that a player can awaken himself.



			
				FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Do you allow players to use Planar Binding to capture Efreeti and then force them to use their Wish Granting ability to create Epic Magical Items now that Wish has no upper limit on how powerful of a magical item it can create?




Wish does have an upper limit on creating magic items.  You have to pay double the XP cost plus 5000 xp.  So, if your character has saved up 25,000 experience points, he is able to use 10,000 experience points to create a magic item.  I don't see that as an issue.  If a player doesn't have access to 9th level spells, but he does have planar binding, I don't have a problem with him summoning up the Efreet and following the persuasion process to offer the Efreet 25k exp for wishing up a magic item worth 10k exp.

Your overall point is valid,  We always interpret the rules.  But a house rule is something else.  It is a specific formulation, typically in writing, that this is how you will interpret a rule, or it is a specific formulation changing a rule in the book.  

House rules aren't necessary to deal with any of the points you brought up.


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## Endur (Oct 30, 2003)

We never bothered with the Strength spell.  It had an 18 str maximum and most of our fighters had 18 strength, or they had higher strength from girdles.

Nor did we ever use enlarge.  My recollection of AD&D 1e enlarge was that it didn't increase damage at all.

We didn't use stoneskin because our wizards preferred fireballs and magic missiles and lightning bolts.

When we had a Druid, Protection from Fire and Protection from Lightning were interesting, but they were much more valuable for the Druid himself, then they were for other characters.

Likewise, my recollection is that barkskin didn't stack with armor, and all the fighter types were wearing plate.



			
				Henry said:
			
		

> Strength, Enlarge, Stoneskin, Permanency from the Magic-user.
> Goodberry, Barkskin, Protection from Fire and Lightning from the Druid.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

Endur said:
			
		

> Nowhere in the rules does it say that shapechanged creatures get equipment or that the equipment doesn't go away when they change shape.  No house rule necessary.




The Balor's sword is a [Su] ability, not equipment, and Shapechange grants [Su] abilities.

However, the ability is phrased that "Every Balor _carries_ a vorpal sword", so it actually requires a house rule to allow him to drop it.  If the ability is active, he "carries a vorpal sword", so he can't drop it.  If the ability is suppressed, he's no longer carrying a vorpal sword, so there's nothing to drop.



> Nowhere in the rules does it say that one shadow can control a hundred thousand shadows.




Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds.

Now, since squirrels aren't humanoids, Frank's example needs work.  But the shadow can rampage through the kobold warrens, creating dozens of spawn under its control, who produce hundreds of spawn under _their_ control, who produce thousands of spawn... and since the first shadow is under _your_ control, the chain of command works its way back to you.  You just need to make sure you order your shadow to order all its spawn to obey and not harm you, and to order them to pass that order down the chain...



> Nowhere in the rules does it say that a player can awaken himself.




Wildshape, Polymorph, and Shapechange in 3.5 all grant the type of the form.  A Druid who wildshapes into an animal _is_ an Animal, and Awaken targets any animal.

Nowhere in the rules does it say an animal who can cast Awaken _cannot_ cast it on himself.



> Wish does have an upper limit on creating magic items.  You have to pay double the XP cost plus 5000 xp.




... unless you have Wish as a Spell-like Ability... like an Efreet, say.

Spell-Like: Spell-like abilities are magical and work just like spells (though they are not spells and so have no verbal, somatic, material, focus, *or XP components*). 

-Hyp.


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## Ridley's Cohort (Oct 30, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Also, Gothmog said it better than i was: one of the advantages to the pastiche of unrelated rules in AD&D2 was that you could often change a subsystem without affecting anything else, so it made alterations easier in that way.  In D&D3E, one simple change echoes all over the place, necessitating further changes to compensate (or carry through), and so on.  And to varying degrees, depending on your opinion of the current degree of balance, and the desirable degree of balance.  Frex, i'm currently in the midst of a fairly heated argument over the proposition (someone else's, just for the record) of switching touch attacks and/or light-weapon attacks to be Dex based by default.




I have great respect for your opinion, Woodelf.  I really do.  So with hesitation I pronouce that this argument has always struck me as the _Dumbest Thing Ever Said About D&D_.  This idea has always been the most bizarre defense of the rabid D&D faction when arguing (pointlessly) about the relative merits of game system on Usenet.  

In my mind it boils down to arguing: "AD&D 1e/2e has such hopelessly bad mechanics that nothing I do will noticeably improve or damage the system.  Therefore D&D is an easer system to customize."

By the standards of 3e, every single customizable of 1e/2e is an utter _failure_, because the end result is a hopelessly unbalanced system.  (No big surprise if that is what you started out with.)

For those of you who care not about play balance, it is theorectically possible that 3e is not an improvement for your style of play over 1e/2e.  But then it becomes impossible to logically argue "one simple change echoes all over the place" in 3e.  The echoes are all irrelevant -- they are mere play balance issues.


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## Ridley's Cohort (Oct 30, 2003)

Well said, jasamcarl.


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## Endur (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Now, since squirrels aren't humanoids, Frank's example needs work.  But the shadow can rampage through the kobold warrens, creating dozens of spawn under its control, who produce hundreds of spawn under _their_ control, who produce thousands of spawn... and since the first shadow is under _your_ control, the chain of command works its way back to you.  You just need to make sure you order your shadow to order all its spawn to obey and not harm you, and to order them to pass that order down the chain...




Sorry, that won't work.  

Did you ever play the communications game in school where the teacher has written a sentence on a 3 x 5 card, he shows the card to the first student, the student then whispers the sentence to the second student and the whispering goes all around the classroom until the last student stands up and says what the message is.  

By the time you go through several levels, your orders will be all confused.

Especially since I don't think Shadows can talk.  

So you have a boss shadow mentally commanding another shadow.  Boss Shadow has no way to communicate directly to Shadow 4th generation.

This is all GM interpretation stuff.  Nice try.



			
				Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Wildshape, Polymorph, and Shapechange in 3.5 all grant the type of the form.  A Druid who wildshapes into an animal _is_ an Animal, and Awaken targets any animal.
> 
> Nowhere in the rules does it say an animal who can cast Awaken _cannot_ cast it on himself.




First sentence of the spell.  "You awaken a tree or animal to humanlike sentience."  If you already have humanlike sentience, then obviously the spell won't do anything.






			
				Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> ... unless you have Wish as a Spell-like Ability... like an Efreet, say.
> 
> Spell-Like: Spell-like abilities are magical and work just like spells (though they are not spells and so have no verbal, somatic, material, focus, *or XP components*).




Except that Wish says Exp Cost, not Exp component.  Any port in a storm, I always say.


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## Pants (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> The Balor's sword is a [Su] ability, not equipment, and Shapechange grants [Su] abilities.
> 
> However, the ability is phrased that "Every Balor _carries_ a vorpal sword", so it actually requires a house rule to allow him to drop it.  If the ability is active, he "carries a vorpal sword", so he can't drop it.  If the ability is suppressed, he's no longer carrying a vorpal sword, so there's nothing to drop.[/b]



Nowhere does it say in the Shapechange spell that you _keep_ Su abilities when the spell ends or when you Shapechange to something else, so the sword disappears when you change back.



> *
> Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds.
> 
> Now, since squirrels aren't humanoids, Frank's example needs work.  But the shadow can rampage through the kobold warrens, creating dozens of spawn under its control, who produce hundreds of spawn under their control, who produce thousands of spawn... and since the first shadow is under your control, the chain of command works its way back to you.  You just need to make sure you order your shadow to order all its spawn to obey and not harm you, and to order them to pass that order down the chain...*



Yeah, but if your shadow dies, then you have an army of shadows to deal with.



> *
> Wildshape, Polymorph, and Shapechange in 3.5 all grant the type of the form.  A Druid who wildshapes into an animal is an Animal, and Awaken targets any animal.
> 
> Nowhere in the rules does it say an animal who can cast Awaken cannot cast it on himself.*



From the SRD: You awaken a tree or animal to _humanlike_ sentience. 
If you already have humanlike sentience, then you just wasted 250 xp.


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## WizarDru (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Create Spawn (Su): Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds.



Right, and since " If a shadow companion is destroyed, or the shadowdancer chooses to dismiss it, the shadowdancer must attempt a DC 15 Fortitude save. If the saving throw fails, the shadowdancer loses 200 experience points per shadowdancer level. A successful saving throw reduces the loss by half, to 100 XP per prestige class level. The shadowdancer’s XP total can never go below 0 as the result of a shadow’s dismissal or destruction. A destroyed or dismissed shadow companion cannot be replaced for 30 days." 

That shadow dancer is going to be a vegetable after a single cleric of Pelor comes along and destroys all those kobold shadows. 




> Wildshape, Polymorph, and Shapechange in 3.5 all grant the type of the form. A Druid who wildshapes into an animal _is_ an Animal, and Awaken targets any animal.
> 
> Nowhere in the rules does it say an animal who can cast Awaken _cannot_ cast it on himself.



True. But now the druid is permanently transformed into a magical beast or animated plant (and can't wildshape back to his original form), if you wanted to be literal. But that would ignore the text that says things like "An _awakened _tree or animal can speak one language that you know, plus one additional language that you know per point of Intelligence bonus (if any)." Which makes it clear that the animal/tree and you are two separate entities...requiring you to play sophistry games again.

And forgetting the logical progression of things with the Djinn, Planar Binding still requires you to get the Djinni to help you...he can't be compelled to give you those wishes. Good Luck with that.


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 30, 2003)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> I'm missing where you got that from, frankly.  Even the unerattaed version of the spell doesn't indicate that you get it's equipment.  Trying to use sophistry to imply that since it says you gain the Balor's attacks that you get it's magical equipment is more than a little bit of a stetch.  I'd say you're the one using the house-rules, actually.




That's a great come-back - but Balors have a Supernatural Ability to have a Vorpal Sword. You get Supernatural Abilities, and items removed from your body remain. Everyone I've talked to (including myself) agrees that this doesn't work - but the rules as written unambiguously give this the A-OK.



> The same applies to the other things you've mentioned.  Given that the ShadowDancer entry specifically mentions how many shadows she can have, you're the one house-ruling, again.




I never mentioned the Shadow Dancer. I'm talking about Create Undead and Control Undead. You control the Shadow you create - which is the one right out of the Monster Manual. The Monster Manual Shadow has no limit on how many times it can use its Create Spawn ability. It controls everything it makes from Create Spawn - which can come out of any Creature (which is darn near anything).

In closing - if you make a broad statement about how you aren't using House Rules, and then get written rules _wrong_ in a subsequent post then you manifestly _are_ using House Rules. House Rules is any time you do things in-game different from how they are written in the books. Whether that's from a deliberate choice to change the rules or blatant ignorance of what the books say is irrelevent - you are House Ruling either way.



			
				Pants said:
			
		

> Nowhere does it say in the Shapechange spell that you keep Su abilities when the spell ends or when you Shapechange to something else, so the sword disappears when you change back.




Actually - it doesn't have to. The Vorpal Sword remains for exactly the same reason that Poison remains toxic in enemy veins after you transform. Anything removed from you retains its shape indefinately.

The way most groups get around this is by houseruling the Vorpal Sword into _equipment_ instead of a transferable Supernatural Ability. Mine certainly does. But that _is_ a House Rule, and in no way supported by the rules.



			
				Pants said:
			
		

> From the SRD: You awaken a tree or animal to humanlike sentience.
> If you already have humanlike sentience, then you just wasted 250 xp.




Are you saying that a Druid Polymorphed into a Frog cannot Wildshape into a Tiger because it turns you into an Animal? Because nowhere _else_ in the rules does the game work like you describe.

As soon as you need to pull out a bizzare, one-use, interpretation of the rules which calls upon words to mean something that they don't mean anything else - you are making a House Rule.

And of course, once you've done that it's easier and more fair to simply House Rule that the combination doesn't work. The Awaken Spell does not say that it requires a target of animal intelligence, and even if it did you could still get the benefits after hitting your friend with a Feeblemind. But you can _and have_ House Ruled the game into not allowing the combo.

And there's nothing wrong with that. No rules system is ever going to be perfect. The fact that you can get by with Core Rules D&D with less than 20 _total_ House Rules is a testament to a workable system.

1st Edition required literally hundreds - remembering of course that anywhere the rules weren't clear _required_ a House Rule before the game could even commence.

-Frank


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

Endur said:
			
		

> Did you ever play the communications game in school where the teacher has written a sentence on a 3 x 5 card, he shows the card to the first student, the student then whispers the sentence to the second student and the whispering goes all around the classroom until the last student stands up and says what the message is.
> 
> By the time you go through several levels, your orders will be all confused.




Except that you're under a couple of limitations there:

1. You have to whisper, and 
2. You only get one try.  

Watch any submarine movie, with orders, repetition of orders, confirmation of orders.  Tell your Boss Shadow to _make sure_ they have it right.

They can't speak intelligibly, but they are _under control_.

If you get paranoid about it, every few generations pick a random sample, cast Rary's Telepathic Bond, and check they've got it straight.  As long as they get the "Obey the Wizard!" order, you can feed them anything else they need verbally.

_You_ can speak intelligibly.



> First sentence of the spell.  "You awaken a tree or animal to humanlike sentience."  If you already have humanlike sentience, then obviously the spell won't do anything.




Why?

The spell simply confirms your state of humanlike sentience, and then all the other effects of being an awakened animal take place.  Your type changes to Magical Beast, you gain Hit Dice, etc, etc... and then you Wildshape into an Animal again and repeat.



			
				Pants said:
			
		

> Nowhere does it say in the Shapechange spell that you keep Su abilities when the spell ends or when you Shapechange to something else, so the sword disappears when you change back.




Except Shapechange specifically says that anything you drop remains when you change.  If you Houserule Balors to allow them to drop their swords, the sword remains when you change back.



> Yeah, but if your shadow dies, then you have an army of shadows to deal with.




Yup.  So every few generations, once you're sure the command to obey you has been passed on properly, you send the oldest active generation down into the middle of a mountain to wait.  They're incorporeal and undead, so they can hide forever.  There's still a chance someone will hunt them down and destroy them, but in the middle of a huge lump of solid rock, it's much harder...

-Hyp.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

WizarDru said:
			
		

> That shadow dancer is going to be a vegetable after a single cleric of Pelor comes along and destroys all those kobold shadows.




Well, firstly, Shadowdancer's companion shadows can't create spawn.  But even if they _could_, only the three he gets as class features are shadow companions.  All the others would just be spawn-of-shadow-companions, and wouldn't cost him XP.

But since they can't create spawn, that's irrelevant. 



> True. But now the druid is permanently transformed into a magical beast or animated plant (and can't wildshape back to his original form), if you wanted to be literal.




What on earth makes you say that?



> And forgetting the logical progression of things with the Djinn, Planar Binding still requires you to get the Djinni to help you...he can't be compelled to give you those wishes. Good Luck with that.




Hmm?  You can force him to comply with an opposed Cha check...?

-Hyp.


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## Pants (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Except Shapechange specifically says that anything you drop remains when you change.  If you Houserule Balors to allow them to drop their swords, the sword remains when you change back.



True.  However, the Sword is still listed as a Su ability and _You gain all extraordinary and supernatural abilities (both attacks and qualities) of the assumed form, but you lose your own supernatural abilities._  You lose it, even if it's not attached to your body, its still an Su ability.



> Yup.  So every few generations, once you're sure the command to obey you has been passed on properly, you send the oldest active generation down into the middle of a mountain to wait.  They're incorporeal and undead, so they can hide forever.  There's still a chance someone will hunt them down and destroy them, but in the middle of a huge lump of solid rock, it's much harder...
> 
> -Hyp.



Then you're left with a milling mass of shadows that you can't control anymore.  Wow, great.  And considering the low intellect of the average shadow, long complicated orders will confuse it and will lead to misunderstandings.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> True.  However, the Sword is still listed as a Su ability and _You gain all extraordinary and supernatural abilities (both attacks and qualities) of the assumed form, but you lose your own supernatural abilities._  You lose it, even if it's not attached to your body, its still an Su ability.




By that logic, poison and implanted eggs would cease to function when you change back... and they're pretty much the whole point of the detached-stuff-remains clause.



> Then you're left with a milling mass of shadows that you can't control anymore.




Not at all.  The last thing their master said to them before going into hiding was "Do what that guy tells you", so they're bound to follow your instructions.

-Hyp.


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## Creamsteak (Oct 30, 2003)

Just talking about the original topic at hand...

I've only played OD&D and 3e. A friend brought over OD&D books, and I was natural choice for DM about 4 years ago. We played one of the best campaigns I can remember having. Death everywhere, blood, guts, treasure, made up items, huge fun...

3e feels better as a player, but from my DMing perspective I found OD&D much more fun to DM. I didn't feel bad to just come up with rules off the top of my head in that version, whereas in 3e theres a right way to handle so many things that I felt like I had to know all the rules.


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## Pants (Oct 30, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> Actually - it doesn't have to. The Vorpal Sword remains for exactly the same reason that Poison remains toxic in enemy veins after you transform. Anything removed from you retains its shape indefinately.



Hm, I never thought of the poison issue...



> Are you saying that a Druid Polymorphed into a Frog cannot Wildshape into a Tiger because it turns you into an Animal? Because nowhere _else_ in the rules does the game work like you describe.



No I'm not saying that, and I have no idea where you got that from.



> As soon as you need to pull out a bizzare, one-use, interpretation of the rules which calls upon words to mean something that they don't mean anything else - you are making a House Rule.



Actually, I call it being anal retentive because as soon as someone starts twisting the rules like that, I'm gonna make darn sure that I read the ability. In the case of Awakening yourself, it says that it raises you to human-like sentience right and if you already have human-like sentience, then it can't raise you to anything. It may be anal retentive, but it is by the rules



> And of course, once you've done that it's easier and more fair to simply House Rule that the combination doesn't work. The Awaken Spell does not say that it requires a target of animal intelligence, and even if it did you could still get the benefits after hitting your friend with a Feeblemind. But you can _and have_ House Ruled the game into not allowing the combo.



Nope, not really, because I haven't changed the spell at all, I'm just reading it.



> And there's nothing wrong with that. No rules system is ever going to be perfect. The fact that you can get by with Core Rules D&D with less than 20 _total_ House Rules is a testament to a workable system.



And I agree, I have no problem with House Rules, I just take issue with the Awaken spell workaround.
Shapechange still sucks, even if you don't allow the Balor/Sword thing and I'm still trying to find a way to make it less abusable.



			
				Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Not at all.  The last thing their master said to them before going into hiding was "Do what that guy tells you", so they're bound to follow your instructions.
> 
> -Hyp.



This is, by far, the dumbest and cheesiest way to break a spell. If there was ever a reason to suggest that 3e is videogamey, then this is that example. Ugh, it boggles the mind and it rivals the 'bag of rats' crap.
If anyone ever brought this up to me, I'd hit them with a shovel.


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## WhatKu (Oct 30, 2003)

Things I miss about 2ed:
People not constantly whining about either 3.5/3.0. I wasnt around for the 1st/2nd shift, but it seems there is a massive amount of "2nd ed was better because...." people. Rawr.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> In the case of Awakening yourself, it says that it raises you to human-like sentience right and if you already have human-like sentience, then it can't raise you to anything.




That doesn't prevent the spell taking effect.

3E Divine Power granted a cleric an Enhancement bonus to Strength sufficient to raise his Strength to 18.  If his Strength was 20, that didn't mean he wasn't a valid target for the spell - as long as he satisfied "Target: Personal", he could cast the spell, and it would come into effect, and last for one round per level.

If you cast Blindness on someone who has the "blinded" condition, the spell still comes into effect.  If their pre-existing condition was temporary, and wears off... too bad, they're still blind from the spell.

As long as someone satisfies "Target: animal or tree touched", they can be awakened.  Even if they already have humanlike sentience, they are now "awakened", and all the consequences of that occur.

-Hyp.


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## Pants (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> That doesn't prevent the spell taking effect.



No, but it stops it from working.



> 3E Divine Power granted a cleric an Enhancement bonus to Strength sufficient to raise his Strength to 18.  If his Strength was 20, that didn't mean he wasn't a valid target for the spell - as long as he satisfied "Target: Personal", he could cast the spell, and it would come into effect, and last for one round per level.



However, Divine Power had the clause _if it is not already 18 or higher_. If his Strength is 20, it goes down to 18.



> If you cast Blindness on someone who has the "blinded" condition, the spell still comes into effect.  If their pre-existing condition was temporary, and wears off... too bad, they're still blind from the spell.



That's why the Feebleminded workaround would actually work.  I never said it was perfect.   



> As long as someone satisfies "Target: animal or tree touched", they can be awakened.  Even if they already have humanlike sentience, they are now "awakened", and all the consequences of that occur.



You still have to read more than the Target listing.
How can you raise something that has human like sentience TO human like sentience?  Would they lose Int if they were super smart?  Or could you make the stupid Half-Orc slightly more intelligent?  It's quite ambiguous, but if anyone ever tried to pull this on me, I'd point to the 'human-like sentience clause' and laugh.


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## Hypersmurf (Oct 30, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> If his Strength is 20, it goes down to 18.




No way.  There's no such thing as a negative bonus.  A negative modifier is a penalty.  Divine Power never _reduces_ a Strength score.



> Would they lose Int if they were super smart?  Or could you make the stupid Half-Orc slightly more intelligent?




Yes, and yes.  Their Int becomes 3d6.  If their Int was previously 21, and they roll a 5, they now have a 5 Int.  And then someone has to carefully and slowly explain to them that they need to Wildshape into another animal and cast Awaken again, which lets them roll 3d6 again (plus giving them a Cha bonus and two more hit dice).

-Hyp.


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## Pants (Oct 30, 2003)

Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> No way.  There's no such thing as a negative bonus.  A negative modifier is a penalty.  Divine Power never _reduces_ a Strength score.



Whoops, I missed the not.   



> Yes, and yes.  Their Int becomes 3d6.  If their Int was previously 21, and they roll a 5, they now have a 5 Int.  And then someone has to carefully and slowly explain to them that they need to Wildshape into another animal and cast Awaken again, which lets them roll 3d6 again (plus giving them a Cha bonus and two more hit dice).
> -Hyp.



I still don't buy it, but I see where you're coming from.


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## Gothmog (Oct 30, 2003)

jasamcarl said:
			
		

> I just have to note how dumb an argument this is. The reason that 3e is so tightly integrated is because it actually has a balance point. You can alter the rules just as easily as in earlier editions, but the problem many seem to have is that they miss the balance when they do so. Earlier editions, on the other hand, did not have a mainline balance and so making houserules did not come at a cost. But that was because the rules as written had no value to begin with. Many who wish to houserule 3e just don't like to be faced with the fact that their rules lack value, often adding needless complexity or butchering the options presented by the game as written, so they crow about 'tight integration' and unified mechanics. Some people just like to turn the virtue of a transparent design intent into a vice, because they can't do better....






			
				Ridley's Cohort said:
			
		

> I have great respect for your opinion, Woodelf. I really do. So with hesitation I pronouce that this argument has always struck me as the Dumbest Thing Ever Said About D&D. This idea has always been the most bizarre defense of the rabid D&D faction when arguing (pointlessly) about the relative merits of game system on Usenet.
> 
> In my mind it boils down to arguing: "AD&D 1e/2e has such hopelessly bad mechanics that nothing I do will noticeably improve or damage the system. Therefore D&D is an easer system to customize."
> 
> ...




Its not as dumb as you might think.  3E was engineered with a dungeon adventuring environment in mind ("back to the dungeon" sound familiar anyone?).  That means spellcasters were balanced against fighters in 3E/3.5 with the assumption of 3-4 encounters in a row before a break was needed and rest required.  If you stick to that formula, 3E is very balanced and plays pretty well.  If you don't focus on dungeon-delving and lots of fights however, 3E is even more lopsided balance-wise than previous editions in many cases.  Spellcasters have more spells per day than in previous editions, so allowing more rest periods means more high firepower spells being used in every fight and spells being in situations where they might not have been in the dungeon hack style.  If you don't follow the baseline assumptions the designers did when they designed 3E, the vaunted balance goes right out the window.

House rules then become a viable option if your play style differs from what the 3E designers inferred.  This doesn't mean that house rules have "no value" or are "butchering" the system- in those cases where they are introduced, they are present to patch a hole the designers didn't consider that suits that group's play style better.  The fact that 3E has trouble handling other styles is a design fault- and the fact that it is integrated into the core system makes it that much harder to rectify without changing a lot of variables.

As far as my house rules go, I said I had 5 pages in 2E, and over 70 in 3E.  If I cut out new spells, feats, monsters, and PrCs I have made up, I'm still left with over 30 pages of houserules.  These include the spellcaster classes for my world (I don't use wizards and sorcerers- I have 13 different magical traditions), domains than un-vanilla clerics (not needed in 2E), alt hp system, spellcasting roll rules, magical aura interactions, weapon skill grouping rules (similar to proficiencies but with classes of weapons- not needed in 2E), etc.  Granted my world has developed over the years since my 2E houserules, but its still a big increase in houserules compared to previous editions to fix holes and/or bring D&D more in line with my world and playstyle.  The 70 pages of houserules AREN'T my campaign setting though- that occupies over 700 pages of material.  

Oh, and Ashrem- I have Midnight, played it, love it, and even played a session with Jeff Barber.


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## diaglo (Oct 30, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> This is, by far, the dumbest and cheesiest way to break a spell. If there was ever a reason to suggest that 3e is videogamey, then this is that example. Ugh, it boggles the mind and it rivals the 'bag of rats' crap.
> If anyone ever brought this up to me, I'd hit them with a shovel.




hey, i know you.


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## The_Gneech (Oct 30, 2003)

I miss when this thread was on-topic!  

   -The Gneech


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## WizarDru (Oct 30, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> That's a great come-back - but Balors have a Supernatural Ability to have a Vorpal Sword. You get Supernatural Abilities, and items removed from your body remain. Everyone I've talked to (including myself) agrees that this doesn't work - but the rules as written unambiguously give this the A-OK.



If it's so unambigous, why are there so many people disagreeing on an interpetation of the spell?  Apparently it's more ambiguous than you might think.  Where does the intersection between supernatural abilities and items remain intersection occur?



> It controls everything it makes from Create Spawn - which can come out of any Creature (which is darn near anything).



Well, only if you mean that a humaoid is any creature, as in:
"*Create Spawn (Su):* Any humanoid reduced to Strength 0 by a shadow becomes a shadow under the control of its killer within 1d4 rounds."
And if 

And if we're to abide by your strict intpetation of the wording, that means a Wiz 36 would, when killed, become a CR 3 creature.  And one control undead spell would take the entire legion away from you in a heartbest.



> In closing - if you make a broad statement about how you aren't using House Rules, and then get written rules _wrong_ in a subsequent post then you manifestly _are_ using House Rules. House Rules is any time you do things in-game different from how they are written in the books. Whether that's from a deliberate choice to change the rules or blatant ignorance of what the books say is irrelevent - you are House Ruling either way.



Well, to begin with, I haven't used any of these rules, period.  Hence the reason that I'm not as familiar with them.  I spend more time actually playing the game than arguing about it.  Now, considering you misquoted the rules yourself, I'm not sure that you can tell me what is and is not a house-rule, yourself.





> Are you saying that a Druid Polymorphed into a Frog cannot Wildshape into a Tiger because it turns you into an Animal? Because nowhere _else_ in the rules does the game work like you describe.



Actually, I was being pedantic, there, but no, that wasn't what I was saying.  The wording of the spell makes it clear that you are not the target at several points.  If you were to ignore those, and be literal, then the animal's type (namely you) has changed to magical beast.  You are no longer a wildshaped human/elf/what have you, but a magical beast that happens to be an awakened squirrel.  You can't change back to your original form, because it doesn't apply to you any longer.  The awakened squirrel can still wildshape to a tiger all he wants...he just won't be ponying up to the bar at the local tavern any time soon.  

To my mind, a house rule is a change because you don't like the particular rule or think that it's broken, and change it to correct the problem.  Everything you've mentioned are potential loopholes that _might_ exist depending on campaign style and extremely literal and inflexible interpetations of a particular entry under a specific spell.  I don't consider ruling with the obvious intent of the spell and consistency to be a house-rule, but we could agree to disagree on that point.  I will gladly create a house-rule when I see the need for one, but as often as not, I find that the house-rule needs a lot of work to make sure that it doesn't have unexpected consequences that are as bad as the original intended correction.



			
				Hypersmurf said:
			
		

> Hmm? You can force him to comply with an opposed Cha check...?



You can, but the spell also mentions " Impossible demands or unreasonable commands are never agreed to."  Getting 3 free wishes without compensation would be, to me, an unreasonable demand.  Now, you might argue otherwise.  In such a case, I'd argue that Djinni would have protections and guards against such an event, and probably even have something similar to what you see in "Lord of the Iron Fortress", where the Noble Djinni merchant has a non-Djinn guard who he grants wishes to in times of danger.  Kidnap one Noble Djinn, and you get five to twenty more, with their bodyguards, to educate why you don't force them to do anything.

Even in a case where the mechanic could be potentially abusive, this isn't Everquest.  A good DM makes in-game examples of why abusive tactics are a bad idea.  And that has nothing to do with the version of game you're playing, or it's relative merits.  I often find, when reviewing AD&D, that a ton of mechanics existed that we just ignored or didn't use properly.  And it turns out, we still enjoyed the game.  YMMV.


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## Krypter (Oct 30, 2003)

I don't miss Planescape...because I'm running it right now! And it's great.
Not using 3E rules mind you, but it's still the best campaign world
that TSR ever created. Though I think that rewriting planescape for 3E
would suck it dry of all the fun and originality that Cook and Baer put
into it.  In Planescape, the gods didn't even have stats of any kind;
they just did what they wanted, and PCs trembled in fear of their every
breath. 

I also miss the Level Titles, the pleasure of levelling up without having
to consult 13 different sourcebooks about which PrC to take, and the
description tables from DMG2. 

The cover art in 2E was much better, IMHO. I especially detest the 
"fake pastiche jewel" look of the core 3E rulebooks. Awful. The cover
of the 2E DMG with the evil wizard opening the doors was the perfect
picture of a GM in his prime. 

I also miss the monster and NPC descriptions that didn't have a whole
column or page of complicated stat blocks.  The flavor text for the monsters,
for example the fabulous Fairy Dragon, it sorely missed. 

God, it takes me hours in 3E just to make one NPC. In 2E - albeit with a lot of 
fudging - I could have done it in my head. 

As Mr. Nostalgia would have said if he were still alive: "Those were simpler days..."


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## Staffan (Oct 30, 2003)

Greg K said:
			
		

> 8) PO: Criticals where you had to hit by more than 5 to threaten a critical. Critical threats were actually based on the ability of the attacker.



They still are. That's what the confirmation roll is for.


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## Staffan (Oct 30, 2003)

Speaking of house rules, I think it's rather important to differ between *kinds* of house rules:
1. Changes in the rules structure itself. This would include things like dying at -Con instead of -10, or changing the rules for breaking weapons, or something like that.
2. New stuff added. Stuff in this case includes spells, feats, domains, classes, whatever.
3. Changing stuff. Same definition of "stuff" as above.


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## FrankTrollman (Oct 30, 2003)

> How can you raise something that has human like sentience TO human like sentience?




The same way you transform an animal to an animal?

Or if it really bothers you, just cast Feeblemind on your friend and _then_ awken him. Now he has the intelligence of a lizard, and we know we can awaken those!

Seriously, this is a complete non-argument. Like people trying to say you can't cast Bull's Strength on cows.

-Frank


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## Grazzt (Oct 31, 2003)

The_Gneech said:
			
		

> I miss when this thread was on-topic!
> 
> -The Gneech





I'm with you.


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## Gnarlo (Oct 31, 2003)

Grazzt said:
			
		

> I'm with you.




Amen

And I'll back it up with another example:

I, too, miss being able to make a cookie cutter character in less than 15 minutes. I guess I could start using the NPC tables from the 3.0 DMG to speed things up, but that would feel like using a pre-rolled character from the back of a module. 

So what if my character I rolled up was just like the pre-rolled, he was *my* identical character, darnit!


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## Greg K (Oct 31, 2003)

Staffan said:
			
		

> They still are. That's what the confirmation roll is for.




Yes, but I really like the idea of the threat being based on the attacker's skill rather than the type of weapon.


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## ciaran00 (Oct 31, 2003)

The defiler dragon.

But hey, I've fixed all that   

ciaran


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## jasamcarl (Oct 31, 2003)

Gothmog said:
			
		

> Its not as dumb as you might think.  3E was engineered with a dungeon adventuring environment in mind ("back to the dungeon" sound familiar anyone?).  That means spellcasters were balanced against fighters in 3E/3.5 with the assumption of 3-4 encounters in a row before a break was needed and rest required.  If you stick to that formula, 3E is very balanced and plays pretty well.  If you don't focus on dungeon-delving and lots of fights however, 3E is even more lopsided balance-wise than previous editions in many cases.  Spellcasters have more spells per day than in previous editions, so allowing more rest periods means more high firepower spells being used in every fight and spells being in situations where they might not have been in the dungeon hack style.  If you don't follow the baseline assumptions the designers did when they designed 3E, the vaunted balance goes right out the window.
> 
> House rules then become a viable option if your play style differs from what the 3E designers inferred.  This doesn't mean that house rules have "no value" or are "butchering" the system- in those cases where they are introduced, they are present to patch a hole the designers didn't consider that suits that group's play style better.  The fact that 3E has trouble handling other styles is a design fault- and the fact that it is integrated into the core system makes it that much harder to rectify without changing a lot of variables.
> 
> ...




And again, you repeat the same dumb argument without adding any substance. Notice how you failed to make an argument conscerning 2e's strength in houseruling? The one example you provided was the larger amount of spells per for wizards making a rest heavy campaign more difficult for balance purposes. By that same token, a rest lite standard dungeon crawl would not work as of earlier editions. But lets be clear, NOTHING worked in earlier editions, because it had no viable balance assumptions. They were messes of ambiguous rules and subsystems that required houseruling and constant fudging to make them work anywhere; circumstantial, ad hoc ruling were more rife than they are today. Just because it had no center does not mean that it was easier to houserule, it just means that you aren't giving up anything when you do. You can just as easily houserule things in 3e and retain some awareness of what effects it will have on the mainstays of the systems, i.e. tactical combat; there is always a tradeoff when houseruling, but atleast you have something to give up in the first place. That is not a design fault, but merely an option; you don't have to houserule (atleast as often), but you can if you want....

I maintain that you made houserules were more numerous in 1e/2e for just about everyone, but because the rules were so much crap, dms judgement was taken as a given. Now that 3e has introduced solid rules to DnD, the houserules you do make stand out more and there is a greater benefit to attempting to make them fit in the whole; that is not a bad thing, because it means that if you manage to make a good houserule, it can be applied consistently. Higher expectations..


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## Storm Raven (Oct 31, 2003)

Greg K said:
			
		

> Yes, but I really like the idea of the threat being based on the attacker's skill rather than the type of weapon.




It is.

Higher level attackers get more attacks per round, hence, more chances to score criticals. A high level attacker using a longsword with the Improved Critical feat (since we are going with a _skilled_ attacker) is likely to score a critical threat every other round.


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## Storm Raven (Oct 31, 2003)

FrankTrollman said:
			
		

> The same way you transform an animal to an animal?
> 
> Or if it really bothers you, just cast Feeblemind on your friend and _then_ awken him. Now he has the intelligence of a lizard, and we know we can awaken those!




The awakened animal gains the benefits of awaken. The benefits accrue and change his type to magical beast (augmented animal). Once he's no longer a magical beast (augmented animal), he loses the benefits. They only apply to the magical beast (augmented animal) form, not the humanoid form.


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## JeffB (Oct 31, 2003)

> But lets be clear, NOTHING worked in earlier editions because it had no viable balance assumptions...




Let's be clear here:The O/AD&D game worked fine for alot of people, and we had (or still have) fun with it (which is the point of playing)...it was not so "boken" or "unbalanced" to render it unplayable for everyone...had that been the case the 3E ruleset would have surfaced soon after the games introduction, not 25 years later.


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## woodelf (Nov 1, 2003)

Ok, now that i know this:


			
				Storm Raven said:
			
		

> I'm referring to characters who equal in most areas, and exceed in some, other similarly situated characters in all respects. Like I said, the Ftr/MU equals the fighter in all respects except for spellcasting, where he hvastly overpowers the straight Fighter. Multiclassing should have some _real_ drawbacks, you should give something up to get the benefits. In 1e, this simply was not the case. Multiclassing (and dual classing) were pretty much 100% good, 0% bad.
> 
> To some extent yes. Some PCs choose to play underpowered characters, intentionally making their character less capable in some area by design, and that's a choice they make. But the point is that the game system should support the idea that most similarly situated characters will be of similar levels of overall power (although they may have different strengths and weaknesses).




let me get back to your previous post (I wanted to be sure i understood your stance, so that i wasn't arguing against something you never advocated).



			
				Storm Raven said:
			
		

> No, they are not unbalanced. They just have different strengths and weaknesses. The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas. Having a vareity of strengths and weaknesses in a group of equivalently levelled characters is not a sign of imbalance, it is actually a sign of balance. If any one character could excel at all things, then he would be unbalanced.
> 
> For example, take the classic 1e Fighter/MU. At the same level of experience points, a 7th/8th level Ftr/MU would match a 7th level Ftr. The Ftr/MU is unbalanced, since, not only is he _as good_ as the Ftr at fighting (and remember, Ftr/MUs in 1e could wear armor and cast spells), he has tacked on 8 levels of MU to boot. The Ftr/MU is equal to or better than the Ftr in every respect.
> 
> The same is true for any 1e multiclass you care to throw out there. Bascially, you have all (or virtually all) of the powers of a single classed individual of one of your classes at the same experience point total, and tack on all the class abilities of another class to boot. Show me a 3e 28 point character that is similarly unbalanced, someone who can equal or exceed a number of other characters in all areas.




I guess part of this is degrees of unbalance.  I agree: given two characters, A, and B, if A is always as good as B or better, regardless of the situation, then A is clearly overbalanced.  Similarly, if A is 90% as effective in some situations, while being 200% as effective in others, then it is almost certainly overbalanced (basically, unless the latter situations are *extremely* rare).  And so on.

Our difference of opinion seems to come in the less-absolute cases.  I look at balance within a game, not within the mechanics, as, IMHO, that's the real test.  That leads to my assertion that the balance of D&D3E characters is heavily dependent on the campaign.  Let's take two example characters:

A fighter. all feats and skill points have been spent to optimize her fighting ability, specifically against hordes of weaker combatants.  Likewise, physical stats are very high, while Int and Cha were used for dump stats.
A bard.  her skill points have been spread around into many things, but most of them are social, with a smattering of physical capabilities (climb, jump, etc.) to support them.  Feats all boost her social-interaction abilities.  Cha, Int, Wis, and Dex are high, while Str and Con were her dump stats.  Her spells are heavily focused on divination and illusion.

Now, assuming both were built by the book, they are nominally balanced.  Let's stick them in a campaign.  

Campaign X: The characters are adventurers, working for a "problem-solvers" guild.  Basically, people hire them to take care of problems: usually marauding monsters, but sometimes cleaning out a crypt of undead, or retrieving an important artifact from a dungeon, or figuring out which son killed the local lord.  Many of their problems can be solved with force, most require cleverness and problem-solving.  A few can't be solved with force, and rely purely on problem-solving and/or social skills.  In this campaign, which runs from 1st to 15th level, the fighter and the bard get to contribute about equally.  There are entire scenarios where the fighter is a fifth wheel: she can't do much to suss out the evil son, since they have to leave it to the authorities to deal with him.  But there are also entire scenarios where the bard is pretty much useless: her magics aren't helpful fighting the golem guardian, and she can't hit the thing, much less damage it.  Overall, everybody contributes equally (let's say, 90% of the time), and the times when one character is completely useless are few and far between.

Campaign Y: The characters are 3rd- and 4th-sons of minor nobles, participating in the Queen's court.  All action takes place within the capitol city.  Scenarios almost always revolve around political intrigue, and violence is almost never an option--not even in small measure: laws are very strict about violating another person, and enforced by a powerful and magic-assisted constabulary.  A few scenarios dip into the seedy underworld, where some fighting is allowed, but even there the repurcussions of a body turning up could come back to haunt you.  The same opponents come back over and over, because you don't generally kill them.  Most of the scenarios involve a mix of social skills and cleverness, many require problem-solving, and almost none involve force.  In this campaign, which also runs from 1st to 15th level, the bard shines: she has exactly the right mix of skills--even in her weakest area, combat, her BAB and hps carry her through, since the combat encounters are generally more like minor scuffles.  The fighter, OTOH, is bored.  At best, she gets to be the intimidator for the rest of the party, implying violence that she can't afford to actually use.  She's not particularly good at social stuff, due to poor stats and almots no relevant skills.  And she isn't very bright, so doesn't have much to do in problem-solving, either.  Overall, the fighter contributes, say, 20% of the time, while the bard contributes 95% of the time--and there are no scenes where the fighter is the only one who has the necessary ability, and no scenes where the bard is completely useless.

Now, i'd say that Y is a perfect example of unbalanced characters, despite them being exactly the same characters that were balanced in X.  I'm loath to pin the blame purely on the system: obviously, if the above occurred the group has a hefty bit of blame to share for allowing the situation to occur: the fighter's player should've made the character differently (at least at higher levels, once she saw how things were going), and the GM should've accomodated the PCs.  And, of course, what i picked is almost certainly hyperbole.  But i took things to extremes to make the point more quantifiable: i think that if an area of ability is never, or almost-never, utilized during the entire life of the character--and not just for that character, but for the whole campaign--being good in that area "doesn't count".  It is no longer a tradeoff of "i'm good at combat but lousy at negotiation" if the game has no combat--or no negotiation.  It instead becomes, for all practical purposes, "i'm lousy at negotation" or "i'm good at combat"--without the offsetting counter.  

And it is possible for such situations to occur with much-less-extreme characters than i've described.  I would restate your definition to be "The problem of imbalance occurs when you have characters who are equal to or better than all other characters in a variety of areas, within the context that the characters exist".  If the characters get to contribute equally, by any reasonable measure you choose to use, then they are balanced.  This can not be taken beyond the confines of a particular campaign, or at best campaign style, IMHO.  It is simply meaningless to look at two characters in a vaccuum and conclude that they are or are not balanced.  

So, back to the original disagreement: it is trivial to make two wildly unbalanced characters in D&D3E if the campaign style deviates significantly from that assumed by the core rules.  But, on the flip-side, even your AD&D1 example (Ftr vs. Ftr/MU)might not be unbalanced in a given campaign.  If the campaign was, again, one of political intrigue, it might not matter: outside of the bard class, there really wasn't any mechanical support for those sorts of activities, so both would be equally unprepared, and neither would get to make much contribution due to their class abilities (especially if the Ftr/MU was loaded down with artillery spells, and no divination, charm, illusion, etc.).  Now, before you jump on me: i don't think this is a fair example, and it doesn't excuse the horrible balance problems in AD&D1 (and, to a lesser extent, AD&D2) due to multiclassing.  I'm simply pointing out that those who say they never had balance problems due to multiclassing could be telling the truth--their playstyle might be (or might have been) such that the problems were minimized or sidestepped.  Similarly, i think it is overly simplistic to say that there are no balance problems with the core rulebooks in D&D3E.  Yes, the classes are much better balanced for the expected playstyle of D&D.  However, that expected playstyle doesn't appear to match any D&D game i've played in (under any edition), so balance problems are a real possibility, not just some symptom of whacked-out weirdo games.  And, moreover, "more balanced" does not equal "balanced"--it is a matter of degrees, and the fact that D&D3E is much less unbalanced than previous editions doesn't mean that it, too, can't be unbalanced.


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## woodelf (Nov 1, 2003)

jasamcarl said:
			
		

> I just have to note how dumb an argument this is. The reason that 3e is so tightly integrated is because it actually has a balance point. You can alter the rules just as easily as in earlier editions, but the problem many seem to have is that they miss the balance when they do so. Earlier editions, on the other hand, did not have a mainline balance and so making houserules did not come at a cost. But that was because the rules as written had no value to begin with.



OK, "no mainline balance" and "no value" are NOT synonyms.  You're completely discounting the possibility that one of the appeals of AD&D2 was not attempting to enforce balance mechanically.

My experience is that, for all the improvements made at the mechanical level in D&D3E, the actual game play is no better, and in some ways worse.  Thus, i conclude that mechanically-enforced balance is not a virtue--it may even be a vice, though it is more likely just irrelevant.



> Many who wish to houserule 3e just don't like to be faced with the fact that their rules lack value, often adding needless complexity or butchering the options presented by the game as written, so they crow about 'tight integration' and unified mechanics. Some people just like to turn the virtue of a transparent design intent into a vice, because they can't do better....




Oh, i can do better--i just don't know if i can do better on a high-complexity system.  That said, i can point to empirical evidence that it can be done better: Spycraft, M&MM, Everquest D20, Traveller D20, Arcana Unearthed--all do "the same thing" better than D&D3(.5)E, and within basically the same mechanical framework.

Also, "transparent design intent" does not necessarily equal "transparent design": Over the Edge--hell, Archmage is more transparent than D&D3E.  I get a kick out of anyone referring to "needless complexity" as though contrasting with the existing D&D3E combat rules.

That said, it seems to me not at all unreasonable to claim that, *if the AD&D2 rules were balanced for your group*, it was possible to make a change to one element that would, for the most part, not propagate to others.  While, *if the D&D3E rules are balanced for your group*, any change is likely to have meaningful propagations to other subsystems.


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## Pants (Nov 1, 2003)

woodelf said:
			
		

> Oh, i can do better--i just don't know if i can do better on a high-complexity system.  That said, i can point to empirical evidence that it can be done better: Spycraft, M&MM, Everquest D20, Traveller D20, Arcana Unearthed--all do "the same thing" better than D&D3(.5)E, and within basically the same mechanical framework.



I would challenge that.  The games you listed above are not trying to be like DnD.  Just the fact that they are built off of the d20 system does not make them the same in any way.  They dod not do things 'better' in any objective way, they do it differently. This just shows that the d20 system can be a very flexible system, not that DnD 3.x is somehow flawed.



> That said, it seems to me not at all unreasonable to claim that, *if the AD&D2 rules were balanced for your group*, it was possible to make a change to one element that would, for the most part, not propagate to others.  While, *if the D&D3E rules are balanced for your group*, any change is likely to have meaningful propagations to other subsystems.



I seriously doubt that.  People have removed AoO and miniature combat without destroying the system and others still houserule.  So DnD 3.x isn't the 'brittle iron' that everyone makes it out to be.


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## woodelf (Nov 1, 2003)

Ridley's Cohort said:
			
		

> I have great respect for your opinion, Woodelf.  I really do.  So with hesitation I pronouce that this argument has always struck me as the _Dumbest Thing Ever Said About D&D_.  This idea has always been the most bizarre defense of the rabid D&D faction when arguing (pointlessly) about the relative merits of game system on Usenet.
> 
> In my mind it boils down to arguing: "AD&D 1e/2e has such hopelessly bad mechanics that nothing I do will noticeably improve or damage the system.  Therefore D&D is an easer system to customize."
> 
> ...




hmmm... that's a good point.

I don't *think* i've ever argued quite that, but maybe i have.  I'd have stated it like this:

"AD&D has a mess of only-loosely-interconnected systems which can be easily used to produce a balanced game.  Therefore, changing one element won't generally propagate to others (loosely-connected), and any subsequent changes that are necessitated in the interrelationships are easy to implement, leading to a possibly-new balance that is no less stable than the original point."

vice

"D&D3E has a tightly-interconnected set of subsystems, all built around a couple core elements.  Therefore, changing one element almost always has propagations which must be addressed, and the fixes for those are likely to have propagations of their own.  Thus, re-establishing balance in the face of a change often takes a fair bit of effort, and may not be as stable as the original balance point."

I certainly never intended to argue that "AD&D had no balance, so you couldn't make it any worse" (or words to that effect)--rather, i think the balance was embodied in the interaction of rules and group, rather than in the rules alone.  I'm still undecided as to whether or not this is a good thing.  On the one hand, you don't want to be fighting the rules to have a good game.  But i, personally, find myself fighting games like D&D3E (and Storyteller, and GURPS, and...) more than games like Over the Edge (and Dread, and Four Colors al Fresco, and ...).  Perhaps i have an atypical balance point in mind, so shifting a game with its own balance point is a chore, while simply setting the poin there with a more open game is easy.  But, on the other hand, you also don't want a set of rules that requires your efforts just to achieve *any* sort of balance.  Personally, I think it's this latter that frustrates so many who love D&d3E about AD&D: for them, it simply couldn't be played "out of the box".  Me, i don't see the advantage.  That is, IME, the much-vaunted balance of more-complex systems doesn't actually translate to better play, so i'm left with a lot more effort (D&D3E vs. OtE, frex) for no perceptible [to me] gain.  In short, while i can see that D&D3E is better balanced on paper, there must be some other element (i suspect the campaign style, but it might be a player-dynamics issue) that contributes to balance, because my empirical experiences with it are that it's no better.

Oh, and I'd say that very few of the changes i made to AD&D were for reasons of balance--almost all were to improve verissimilitude, simulation, or flexibility.  The only thing i felt needed to be changed to improve balance was racial level limits--i went to XP penalties instead.  [And, i still prefer that solution, even if it takes some  fasttalking to justify it completely, to the all-races-are-equal solution of core D&D3E.  Though ECLs are a pretty good fix, too, and much less math.  I guess i'd have preferred elves to be an ECL +1 or +2 race, and closer to how they were depicted in earlier editions (and thus, to Tolkien).]


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## Hypersmurf (Nov 2, 2003)

Storm Raven said:
			
		

> The awakened animal gains the benefits of awaken. The benefits accrue and change his type to magical beast (augmented animal). Once he's no longer a magical beast (augmented animal), he loses the benefits. They only apply to the magical beast (augmented animal) form, not the humanoid form.




Awaken changes the animal's type to magical beast, _and_ it grants extra hit dice.

Analogy - Divine Power grants an enhancement bonus to Strength, augments BAB, and grants temporary hit points.  Now, temporary hit points are always lost first, so if the cleric gets hit a couple of times, he probably doesn't have any temporary hit points any more.

_That doesn't mean he loses the Strength and BAB_.

The spell grants more than one effect; each is not dependent on the persistence of the others.

Awaken changes type, _and_ it grants hit dice.  Just because your type subsequently changes to something other than magical beast has _no effect_ on those extra hit dice.

-Hyp.


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## ciaran00 (Nov 2, 2003)

My particular observations

3e balance and 2e balance are two different beasts. Neither is completely broken, though 2e IS more problem-prone than 3e. PrCs contribute in a major way to 3e unbalancing issues.
2e's major issue is consistency of rules. Spells are half-explained and rules are patched together when things break the system (like Advanced Beings in Dark Sun).
3e _appears_ to be more abuse-prone since it has no formal upper maximum. 2e appears to be less so because it placed an artificial 30-level limit on its characters with draconian multiclass rules.
3e consistency is still half-assed: ie, the monster/PC line is still pretty thick. AU tried to solve this in one way with Racial Levels. All in all it still bothers me... so I've "fixed" it.
A lot of 3e balance comes from subtraction. This is probably safer anyway (2e classes on the whole are a bit more powerful... the only ones who are about the same are fighters and rogues).
Much of 3e often forgets about "fantasy" itself in preference of rule consistency. Much of this is due to people who forget DM's Rule #0... Also, disturbingly, 3e mages tend to not resemble classic magely figures (Merlin, Gandalf, etc.)... they are more like statistic blocks part of a system than wizards with mysterious power. Of course 2e showed us how hazardrous "mysterious" can be to balance...
Hands down, the basic framework of 3e is great to build your own system on. Side note: Several 2e systems (such as the class construction from Player's Options), which cannot be found in 3e, are too cool to pass up.
Why 3.5 came around is as much of a mystery to me as it makes sense.
Unwieldy/Inelegant 3e mechanics:
Obsessive separate spell selections for each class (as opposed to Bard/Wizard + Ranger/Paladin/Cleric/Druid). This I can see has been done to make multiclassing work.
Skill class/cross-class -ness: System with heavy history element (ie: you have to account for every level as opposed to being able to draw up skills from scratch for any level)... 18th level character's skills takes a while to add up from scratch, esp. if the guy's multi-classed; allows one or more levels of player error/cheating which is unresolvable without some involved checking/calculation.
CR mechanic to encompass all player improvements non-existent. Ie, what if the players like to graft things?
Setting-specific CLASSES still around: ie... a Paladin does not belong on 95% of worlds, like say... a fighter.
Save vs. Spell mechanic that does not scale with level or saving throws (ie: a 50th level undead creature is flinging attacks with a save DC of 10 + 1/2 * 25 + say Cha... a wizard of equiv level is flinging spells with a save DC of 10 + 9 + Int. These aren't equivalent if the Wiz has to buy feats to compensate for 16 points).
Handling of items in distress... a potion sitting on a dias hit by a fireball just... croaks.


Anyway, enough rambling... just some thoughts.

ciaran


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## ciaran00 (Nov 2, 2003)

jasamcarl said:
			
		

> Now that 3e has introduced solid rules to DnD, the houserules you do make stand out more and there is a greater benefit to attempting to make them fit in the whole; that is not a bad thing, because it means that if you manage to make a good houserule, it can be applied consistently. Higher expectations..



Also, I have noticed that 2e house-rules were mainly done as additions to a system that failed to cover things (like punching and wrestling, for example). 3e house-rules are often changes to something existent in the system as opposed to adding a totally new mechanic.

ciaran


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## woodelf (Nov 5, 2003)

Pants said:
			
		

> I would challenge that.  The games you listed above are not trying to be like DnD.  Just the fact that they are built off of the d20 system does not make them the same in any way.  They dod not do things 'better' in any objective way, they do it differently. This just shows that the d20 system can be a very flexible system, not that DnD 3.x is somehow flawed.




So, Arcana Unearthed _isn't_ trying to be a class-based, tactically-oriented, middling-to-high complexity, high-fantasy game?  Everquest D20 isn't?  And, other than favoring modern over fantasy, and thus gadgets over spells, how are Spycraft's goals significantly different from D&D3E? You'll notice that i carefully left out BESM D20, which goes for a very different style of combat (looser, less tactical), and several systems, like CoC D20, that have significantly different goals in some other way. [I probably shouldn't have included M&MM--i'm not familiar enough with it be certain it supports close enough to the same goals.  I got carried away.]



> I seriously doubt that.  People have removed AoO and miniature combat without destroying the system and others still houserule.  So DnD 3.x isn't the 'brittle iron' that everyone makes it out to be.




I never claimed it was a "brittle iron", or even a particularly inflexible system.  But are you really going to tell me that D&D3E-by-the-book is indistinguishable, balance-wise, from D&D3E-minus-AoOs?  It may still be balanced, but it's a different balance.


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## bardolph (Nov 5, 2003)

Mouseferatu said:
			
		

> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




All from 1st Edition:

The Disease and Parasitic Infestation Table
The Weapon vs Armor Class Adjustment table
Saving vs Rods, Staves, and Wands
Rolling for Psionic Ability
Cacodemon
Alignment Languages
Infravision
Hex Paper
Bend Bars/Lift Gates
Pummeling, Grappling, and Overbearing
The "Assassins Table for Assasinations"
The Intoxication Table
Calculating "XP per Hit Point"
The Fauchard-Fork, Lucern Hammer, Glaive-Guisarme, Bill-Guisarme, Bec-de-Corbin, Partisan, and Spetum
The Gamma World Armor to AD&D Armor Class Table
The Potion Miscibility Table
A "Tome of Creatures Malevolent and Benign"
Asmodeus, Baalzebul, Tiamat, and Demogorgon
The Grand Master of Flowers


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## Aberzanzorax (May 7, 2009)

*Thread necromancy!!!*

I was searching the forums via Google for a different thread and I came across this one.


It's very interesting in light of 4e being out. I thought it would make a fun read for others as well, so consider this an UBER bump.


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## DM_Jeff (May 7, 2009)

*advertisement*



Mouseferatu said:


> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




Not as much as I thought I would have. If I'd been told back then that rolling for psionics, alignment restrictions, 10' protection from evil from paladins and the like would have been taken away I would have crumbled. Thinking carefully, I can do all this now in my 3.5 game if I want. But I don't want. 

On the other hand, the one fondness that always gets me is...



the Jester said:


> ...the potion miscibility table!!!!






Teflon Billy said:


> The 1E "Wandering Prostitute" table in the DMG.






astralpwka said:


> I liked the random dungeon in the 1E DMG. I spent a lot of would-be bored time taking solo characters or groups all controlled by myself through random dungeons. I've kept my 1E book just for that dungeon.






Mercule said:


> ... Random demon tables. Lessee, how could you not love the ability to spawn a demon like this:






dougmander said:


> I do miss: --the wacky tables in the 1st Ed. DMG






Grazzt said:


> - A lot of the random charts in the 1e DMG (potion miscibility, random powers for artifacts, prostitute table, etc., though these three are easily converted to 3e/3.5)




Yup. LINK. Now back to the thread. 

-DM Jeff


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## Aberzanzorax (May 7, 2009)

HA!

I like that post DM Jeff!



I like 3e, but I miss: clerics having limitations to the spheres their gods could grant (as opposed to every cleric spell in the book).


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## Greg K (May 7, 2009)

Aberzanzorax said:


> I like 3e, but I miss: clerics having limitations to the spheres their gods could grant (as opposed to every cleric spell in the book).




Agreed.  One of the first things I did was make clerics (and druids) spontaneous divine casters (as per the Unearthed Arcana variant) and then tailored lists by deity.  Clerics got access to spells from their deity's  list and a short list of general cleric spells.


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## Aberzanzorax (May 7, 2009)

That's a good solution!


In my campaign (Midnight setting by Fantasy Flight games), the PCs will eventually become godlings (and get servants). 

We're going to alternate sessions between the gods and their followers (clerics) (my players will play both).

Each level from 21-30, the godlings will be allowed to pick another domain. Their followers will be able to then choose spells from that domain.


That's going to be my solution.


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## billd91 (May 7, 2009)

I miss the days when looking like an idiot by arguing from unassailable logic, exacting reading of rules, and cutting jibes could be excused because of youthful foolishness.


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## avin (May 7, 2009)

Teflon Billy said:


> The 1E "Wandering Prostitute" table in the DMG.
> 
> 1-10: Slovenly Trull
> 11-25: Brazen Strumpet
> ...




Win!


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## wingsandsword (May 8, 2009)

Mouseferatu said:


> "As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."




I missed official materials willing to fully throw balance to the wind if it was fun for the setting.  Dark Sun had hideously broken things left and right, but it was fun.  Some of my favorite 2e books were the "green books", the Historic Reference series for playing D&D campaigns in a lot of different historic eras with notes on how to make them historic (typically being no magic outside of artifacts and the very rare NPC caster, usually a divine caster) to a fantasy world based strongly on a historic era, which monsters were thematic, ways to change the currency around, the society of the era, plot hooks, ect.  So what if Cure Light Wounds was as rare in one of those games as Wish was in a typical D&D game, it was fun and we didn't care if it wasn't "balanced" or not.

I miss books that were all about the fluff.  Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue.  That little book was a treasure trove of neat stuff, devoting page upon page to the minutiae of shopping in the Realms: including an entire chapter on the various cheeses that are sold in Faerun, with typefaces and paper and printing to look like a 19th century Sears Catalogue except for a D&D world.  A some items had small-print footnotes of game mechanics of how they could be used as improvised weapons or how they aided some skill or another, but it was pretty much just nifty fluff.

I miss Psionics having a "wow!" factor of being something really alien and different.  Now, I think it went too far with 2e, like Telepathic powers not having saving throws, ignoring Magic Resistance, and being pretty much unstoppable unless you were also Psionic, not to mention how characters could learn to Teleport at 1st level, or throw a Disintegrate effect by 3rd level, but I missed powers having a completely different scale than the 0 to 9 of magic with Devotions, Sciences and High Sciences, and having truly weird things you could do that didn't look anything like magic.  PsiHB and XPH were more balanced, to be sure, but with things like Astral Constructs that were just psionic clones of summoning spells it seemed like Magic with a point-based system added and some different fluff.  

I miss Paladins being something special, something that stood out and wasn't just another booth at the Adventurer's Career Fair that was for people that wanted to be fighter-types but also had decent Charisma and Wisdom and "Lawful Good" stamped on their sheet.

I miss playing a Wizard (and sometimes a Cleric) being all about creativity.  It seemed like back in my AD&D days playing a spellcaster was all about finding creative and innovative uses for the spells you had, and designing and researching new ones, and then finding new unintended uses for those spells too.  I miss spells being a lot more open ended.  I liked Command being any single-word command, as long as the course of action was crystal clear.

Level titles.  They were sometimes fairly setting-specific, or at least specific to setting presumptions, but at least the rulebook saying that a 6th level Monk is a "Master" that an 8th level Cleric is a "Patriarch", or a 7th level Fighter is a "Champion" seemed to remind people that mid-to-high single digit levels was mighty compared to average folks and that you didn't need to be 15th or 20th level to be "high level" and stand out.


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## Nikosandros (May 8, 2009)

I don't miss anything, because with one face to face group and three play-by-post, AD&D comprises the majority of my gaming currently...


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## UngeheuerLich (May 8, 2009)

- Complete book of bards

- fast character creation

- speedy combats

- announcing action before rolling initiative each round

- the power of fireballs (filling a volume of 32000 cubic feet)

- illusions and other spells which could be used in creative ways

- DMG and MM were DM-exclusive resources

- no way to figure out what the monster should be able to do!


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## Festivus (May 8, 2009)

I miss the lack of a rule for everything.


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## Herobizkit (May 9, 2009)

... Bards being the jack-of-all-trades.  True, in 3.x, Bards are alleged to be such, but with the wealth of options available to players for character customization, any character can be a jack-of-all-trades and the Bard role becomes less special.

In 2e, being a Bard meant you had a sprinking of the best options of a fighter/mage/thief, and with the addition of the Bard's handbook, you could multiclass into Cleric and then you were REALLY a jack-of-all-trades.  3e tries to duplicate this and does so poorly, creating a seemingly watered-down version of any other class that can "do it better".  At least, that's how I felt ever since I fist grok'd a 3.0 PHB.


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## I'm A Banana (May 10, 2009)

The lack of rules for stairs.


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