D&D 3rd Addition

In My Humble Opinion
21

Nah, I love HeroSystem myself. I just have always been a D&D fan for my fantasy gaming. I suppose if I had been working on Hero versions of everything for the last (takes off shoes) . . . 16 years, I might have a credible HeroSystem monster manual by now, but the NPC’s would still take so damn long to work up. (My one and only complaint about the HeroSystem, btw.)

I should really show you a copy of my group’s completely reworked Players Option: Skills & Powers character creation method. And our various martial arts systems. In general, I agree with you on the Cleric thing, but occasionaly we run these Warrior-Priest Knights Templar knock-offs and it’s nice for them to occasionally hit the broad side of a barn.

Well, Monkeys don’t gain most of their benefits while wearing heavy armor. (Leather or Padded armor is a running theme in this game, much like Full Plate / Field Plate in 1st edition. Just typical overcompensation, I guess) Their attack abilities require them to either be barehanded or use “Monk” weapons. As far as the Perks v. Stuff debate, the answer is, sadly, neither. The items and other assorted stuff are not only more common in the new game, but much more Diablo-esque. Anyone for a Piercing Sharp Energy Javelin? How about a Cleaving Vorpal Dire Flail of Flame? They’re all in there.

Greyhawk is the default world. Default in the sense of “We’ve given it over to the harpies and vultures of the RPGA and won’t be producing any sort of new supplements aside from more printings of the PHB.” The Realms isn’t the default setting, it’s just the money maker of Wizard’s current line. Besides, who needs a new and original world when you’ve got the rights to produce Wheel of Time and Harry Potter (and shudder Pokemon) campaign settings?

I will remind you that those are priveleged corporate documents, with strict penalties for revealing them to the outside world. This version, btw, is going to be an EXACT mirror of the spell system. 9 “levels” of psionics, X “powers” per level, etc. An excellent method of sucking out what little flavor remained in the game, I suppose. Geez, I thought gamers were supposed to be fairly smart, but now I find out we can’t figure out that magic and psionic powers might work different. I can only imagine what they’ve got planned for their Arcanum campaign world. . . Different levels of devices. Can’t build a proper clock until you get level 5?

22

Lynn,

Don’t mention centaur anythings to my current GM; she had a couple in a previous game. There are no more centaurs on her world. :smiley:

Actually, I lied, anyway. I’m a half-werepanther fourth level transmuter-thief, TYVM. Which I suppose means I won’t be converting to 3E any time soon.

And not all of us like the Zero system. Frankly, (and I’ve made this comment in other threads that I’m too lazy to go look up), any system where a two minute combat takes five hours to complete is not a system I enjoy. But then, I’ve been talking about running Underground, which is a “limited edition” game designed around a (literal) “flip a coin” system; it’s pretty free-form. Which has its own share of problems.

23

The monk is “overpowered” because he has to sacrifice:

Money;
Space for his “collection”
and ability to wear Armor.

The monk sacrifice worldly goods for increased wisdom, knowledge, and a great means to protect himself. He suppresses desire for creature comforts, in order to cultivate the desire to improve himself. The monk class requires a higher level of sacrifice of himself than any other character class. And you cry over the goodies he gets?

Don’t switch rogues’ and clerics’ to-hits. It is not enough for you that rogues have the enhanced backstabbing system, while there is no such combat bonuses unique to clerics (with the possible exception of kits)?

24

I’d rather fall on a d8 than step on a d4…

25

I’m gonna have to bet on my Ogre Mage Fighter. :slight_smile: Who, by the way, isn’t min-maxed. Or at least he wasn’t. But he keeps getting power upgrades that I didn’t ask or plan for. He ended last session with a 21 STR (up from 18/54). Which isn’t what I wanted. 23 if he uses his dark gift super-sayen form, which again isn’t something I asked for. Some people choose powergaming, and some have it thrust upon them. :frowning:

Real fun to play though. “Bad guy samurai” is stll pretty much the most entertaining architype I’ve found. And I got a chance to use the “Humans are weak and pathetic, but they’re our only prey!” speach from Ogre Slayer. Palidin wasn’t wild about that one. It just dosen’t get much better than that.

You mean the system from Gundam, that takes into account all possible futures and feeds it directly into your brain? What more could a RPG ask for? :slight_smile:

S’price you pay for flexiblity. But with a little practice, I’ve found it goes a lot faster than that. As long as you don’t have more than about ten people involved, hero combats can go pretty quick.

Course, if you want fast, I’d go with Cyberpunk. Just don’t get TOO attached to your charactor . . .

I’ve actually found in practice, that both Storyteller and Rolemaster take considerably longer than Hero. (I once watched a Rolemaster fight with a porcupine take over three hours. Admitadly it was a giant porcupine, but that hardly justifies it)

I have seen one five hour Hero combat, but that was a)because everyone was inexperiened, so we had to look everything up, b) there were 8 players (Hero works best with four or five) and c) the GM gave us 56 people (well, gnoll types) to fight. A bad combo. He never did that again, I assure you. :slight_smile:

–
“Are we more of a threat to humans than they are to themselves?”

26

I’d rather step on a d4 than admit it took the gaming public as a whole almost 20 years to realize they’d work a lot better if you put the numbers on the top edge. :slight_smile:

27

If you consider elder dragon stats, your characters, even at high levels, would still look wimpy in comparison.

28

Well, I still haven’t seen enough of third edition, but in 2nd, clerics already have much better armor, more hp, and loads of spells.

Swaping the Thaco tables makes rouges good on offense, but in deep trouble if they get caught out in the open, while clerics are defensive powerhouses and good blockers, but not great on offense. Which is, I thought, much more appropriate to each.

In practice, a non-minmaxed theif’s backstab ends up doing about equal damage than a fighters normal attack, with a slightly higher thaco. And they’re such a pain in the butt to set up, at least with every GM I’ve ever played with, they should be at least signifigant.

They were awesome in Baldur’s Gate, tho. Mostly becasue sneaking was much easier, and the multiplier affected bonuses as well. I once got over 70 damage with Shar-Teel dueled to a thief. God, I’m a geek. :slight_smile:

Mabye I should start a “Lets argue about RPGs” thread, huh? Add a “Lets argue about anime” and “lets argue about computer games,” and I’ve proably found the most fun I can possibly have. Without taking my clothes off, anyway.

–
“Dear Agent Scully. Did not appricate your lawyer’s tone . . .”

29

But all this stuff can be had with just a simple set of house rules. Anyway, with all the options, humans could usually multiclass, and even tho i have some VERY high level char, I never had one who ran into the race/level limitation, especially with all the options.

And they still have all the std problems- 1st lvl mages are too weak, archmages too powerful. Thieves are weaker yet. They kept Magic resistance- source of more arguements than any other feature. Psionics were unnessesary to have in the basic game, as are Monks. They still have druids, which just should be a special specialty priest, thus their weaknesses would be equaled out by strengths, point for point. And what did we “gain”? the loss of “thaco”, so the math challenged can figure it out better. But that is offset by mindnumbingly difficult charts, feats, exps, and all. Great. :rolleyes:
Hero is Ok, if you are playing in some other genre other than fantasy. The combats take WAY too much freaking time, and really get in the way of the role-playing. Same as with Runequest, except I liked Glorantha, as it was different. (And note that AH ruined that game, by coming out with a “3rd ED”, which completely cahnged the game, and turned it into yet another western fantasy world, with elves, dwarves, sorcerors, etc. Many die-hard RQ players refused to make the switch, and AH AND RQ 2rd ED bit the weasle. At cons, I still see folks playing RQ…2nd ed.)

30

FWIW, one of the FFs had: white, black, blue (enemy powers), gray (time magic), call, and knight (enchanted sword) spells–all of which could potentially be learned by each character. I may have missed some, too–certainly there was the “red magic” classification, but that was just a mix of black and white spells. The job system was interesting, but the PITA factor was very high.

31

All I can sya on the subject is that our erstwhile GM took one look at 3rd edition and went off and put together a Greyhawk campaign. We’re trying it out this weekend. :smiley:

32

Can’t really add any thing until we try it out. (besides my DM won’t let his book out of his sight and I can’t get my own until payday) Our first campaign is Labor day weekend so we’ll find out soon.

chrisbar

33

Things I like about third edition:

I think the multi-class system is brilliant–beats the hell out of having to divide everything in two, and it makes the whole concept alot more playable.

I like skills/feats instead of profeciences–they seem more sensible, and the fact that they improve as you level is a nice change.

I am glad they broght back the half-orc and the barbarian. These are charecter types that can really spice up a campaign. We had a half-giant in a Darksun campagn once that made the party by role playing his int. . .

I like the new combat rules. We had some ad-hoc rules we used for things like bull rushes, but these are more consistient.

They finally reduced the lengh of a combat round to 6 seconds. Everyone knew it was really six seconds, but hte old book said a minute, which was frankly silly.

I am simpleminded enough that the fact that high roll=good seems wonderful. Certainly will be easy to introduce new players to the game.

Saving throws make sense now, instead of all these specific catigories htat you would be instructed to make weird saves against (Players must save vs. wand or be struck by the falling boulder. … ). And ability modifiers to saves make sense.

I love that all the spells are listed together alphabetically. Beats a frantic scrambe for “What class casts free movement? What level is it?” Everytime someone finds a scroll, and again whenever the scroll is used because no one remembers.

I like that the bard now has a medley of types of spells to choose from–this is a much closer to the concept of a jack-of-all-trades.

There are other things, but that is all I can think of off the top of my head.

Things I don’t like:

Halflings are now little elves, and not just a code word for “hobbits”. Hobbits are a neat addition to the world–we already have elves! look at the pictue on 13–the female halfling looks like a crack whore.

The disclaimer that the game is not “real” (pg 6).

The disclaimer that evil alignments are not for PCs.

I miss Thac0, only because we call it thwacko, which is fun to say.

I am reserving judgement on the increases in ability scores–really need to know how that will work out in play.

A note on “balence”: In a pencil-and-paper RPG balence is ultimitly in the hands of the GM, not the system. A good system obviously helps, but no system is so good it cant be thrown out of whack by a sloppy GM and manipulitive players, and few systems so bad that a talented Gm can’t rein it in. Personally, I think that while players can play rule-lawyer, for any game to be sucessful the gm has to have ultimate authority and use it as they see fit. In any case, it is hard to say anything about how balenced 3rd edition is until the Monster Manual comes out in 2 months.

Right now we are using a mix of 1st edition, second edition, players option, and house rules. I imagene that we will continue to do the same with 3rd edition, taking what we like and leaving out what is silly or ill-thought out–which is the great benefit to pen and paper RPGs.

If we are bitching about neglected systems, I have to mention Alternity. I thought it was a fantastic, easy to play skill based system (once you set up an Excel file for charecter generation). I understand that WoC dosen’t want to supprt two SF systems, and that Star Was is likely to be more popular, but I wish they coulda made Star Wars a campagin setting for Alternity or something. To put out a new system and then quit supporting it in a year really sucks.

34

Of the three game rule limits that you listed for the monk, only one is actually mentioned in the character description; armor use. A monk loses his “natural” armor class bonus (max +4 at 20th level) and his wisdom armor class bonus (max +6 with a 22 Wisdom at 20th level). The monk also suffers penalties to his special attacks. BIG DEAL.

Space for his “collection”, and Money are not listed as monk-ish restrictions and as for sacrificing of himself YOU DON’T USE ROLE PLAYING RESTRICTIONS TO BALANCE OUT GAME MECHANIC BONUSES!. Even if you did, would you offer the other players in the campaign Spell Resistance = Lvl+10 in exchange for being poor all the time? And that is just one of 21 different special powers the monk gains as he advances in level, for free. He still gains the usual assortment of skills and feats, as well as the above mentioned bonuses to armor class, increased unarmed damage (up to 1d20), the best saving throw table in the game, and the ability to move up to 90’ on a single action (180’, or 360’ on a double move or run).

A monk, depending on his ethos, should be written as either a warrior or a priest. The priestly monk would focus more on the mystical and spiritual powers (you know, spells?) that the monk gets. The warrior monk would be the arrow-deflecting, martial arts bad ass. With the multi-classing flexibility of 3rd edition, you could even make your human monk a warrior/priest . Heck, you guys seem fluent in 3rd edition speak, write up the Monk as a prestige class to switch your fighter/priests into at higher levels, but please don’t try to explain how he’s on the same level as the Rangers, Bards, or even Fighters in the party.

35

I agree completely. We had done away with those things in our campaign a long time ago, anyway. I was just trying to point out things that I like about the system.

The art is, for the most part, better than in any D&D Sourcebook in years (with the exception of some of the Planescape stuff).

The Half-Orc in the Core Rulebook is also a nice addition. I already had the Complete Humanoids Handbook, and Skills and Powers so I can’t say it’s going to change a lot in my game, but nice to see them trying to expand a little.

This represents the kind of revisionist history that I have come to despise on the official 3rd edition message boards. It’s fine to say, ‘We always thought the 1 minute round was too long, and we shortened it in our campaign’, but I would be really curious to see how you and the fine people at Wizards happened to arrive at the same exact figure of 6 seconds. In our campaingn, we had likewise shortened the round - to 10 seconds. “Everybody” most certainly didn’t know it was “really” 6 seconds.

Sorry, that’s just one of the things that gets on my nerves. No offense intended.

36

You know, JDeMobray, although it sounds as though you won’t use the system at all, you can always choose not to allow the Monk as a PC (or NPC) class. House rules have always been part of any game system I’ve played in, from Hero to D&D to Star Wars to Deadlands. Our primary GM, for example, has already disallowed Barbarians as a class.

As far as the hobbits…erm, I mean halflings…go, I thought they were supposed to be the bastard children of Tolkien Hobbits (prefer luxury to money, comfort over all and why the heck am I adventuring anyway) and Dragonlance ::shudder:: Kender. I wasn’t pleased with that change, either, but I understood it. After all, the Tolkien Estate is almost as known for (how shall I put this) their C&D requests as T$R was.

37

grrr…damn simulposts.

38

We had THe combat round set at six seconds so that ten rounds=1 minute. Not that it really mattered all that much–I dont think that the EXACT lengh of a combat round has ever been an issue.

That reminds me, one thing I do like is that they have decimilized the money: 1000cp=100sp=10gp=1pp. Much easier than the old system. And the electrum piece was superfulous.

39

Who cares how long a "round’ is supposed to be? It’s a round, it could be a minute or a second.

The money was decimilized some time ago.

40

I have yet to run, in any FRPG, a character who would willingly take on a dragon. When cornered, yes…oh, wait. That’s actually not true, but the alternative was (or so we thought at the time) much worse.

I dunno. I’m not ready to condemn 3E until I’ve played more than half a game with the rules. All systems have their flaws.

The art is great - I particularly like the female half-orc.