One of my DMs uses a laptop. He’s the slowest DM on the planet. His games border on rage-inducing boredom. He’s so concerned with accuracy over speed that the game suffers in a massive way (each individual creature has its own initiative instead of lumping groups, i.e. 5 kobolds, into one initiative).
Actually, I was referring to the standalone games like Neverwinter Nights and Temple of Elemental Evil. TSR (WotC (Hasbro)) does make DM tool software, as well, but the only piece I’ve actually used is the character generator, so I’m not sure exactly what all they do.
And don’t I seem nerdy enough to you? Of course I’m a gamer!
Tactical Studies Rules. Gamespy ran a 30-year retrospective of D&D recently, and although it’s got a computer gaming bias, it’s still a good summary if you’re interested.
Because of the shift from tables to formulas, there really isn’t that much to look up or calculate that a laptop during play would help with. I could see one being useful at doing magic item generation, random encounters, or XP calculation, for example, on the fly, but most of these things are probably better done beforehand or afterwards.
The (admittedly not that many) groups I’ve played in since 3e’s release have used just the DM screen and miniatures, counters, or a battlemap of some sort. And as far as the screen goes the only thing I can remember using from it is the skill check difficulties, which don’t follow a general formula. Most other rules we look up during gameplay are either uncommonly used (grappling) or much too specific to be reasonably condensed (spell descriptions).
There’s abother downside to d20: Prestige classes.
They were a cool idea in the beginning - special classes for special talents and skills. Unfortunately, the end was fairly obvious…
There are hundreds of PrC’s. Thousands, in fact. Forgotten realms alone has been pumping them out a very ridiculous pace, until PrC’s are now so specialized we should probably just go to point buy. Honestly, its rapidly getting to the point where every Mage guild, thieves’ guild, religious order, social group, and nation has at least one and often more. The problem is, they just aren’t very prestigious.
Some of them are interesting. But far too many fall back on the same thing, essentially: give the character “X point bonus in situation Y”, and “use a spell X number of times per day”.
Do you have to use miniatures in 3.5?
WoTC has published a program called eTools for creating and printing monsters, characters, and magic items. You can pre-set campaign standards for starting languages, equipment packages (like a standard backpack full o’ stuff). It seems not to be overly robust. I get GPF’s all the time; other people swear by it.
There are also a great many third-party Excel and word versions of character sheets that you can download, but the standard for running a game is still a module on paper, dice, battlemat & figures.
Oh. Duh. :smack: NeverWinter Nights. It’s been out for several years and allows you to create your own modules & maps. You can play online and have a bunch of people form up a party and run through other modules that have been posted to a huge number of servers. It’s a lot of fun and I play it all the time, but only single-player or LAN because my Internet connection suxx0rs.
Nope. They did clarify a lot of the miniatures movement rules so that those people who use them can run a more consistent game, and there are a bunch of skills & feats that come in handy when you’re moving things around on the battlemant, but you can still play air D&D.
Prestige classes. Guh. When 3.0 first came out, they were described as some uber-special thing that your character might be allowed to join into, if he ever even found out about them, kind of like getting into a secret society, or becoming a Knight of the Round Table. Now, everybody aims for them, plans for them, and, in most of the campaigns I’ve seen starting, blows off playing through the first five or six levels so they can just start out as the prestige class, rather than taking 4 levels of fighter, 1 level of sorcer or bard, then (at 6th level) taking Red Dragon Disciple.
Other people I have handled the technical details, so I’ll just give my opinion.
I love the changes. I love them, I love them, I love them, I love them, I love them!
I started off with first edition. We refered to those books as “log books” because they looked like accounting charts, but it was fun to play anyway, even if a lot of didn’t make sense (Why on earth couldn’t elves be druids? What was this prejudice they had against non-human races?)
The system was so inflexible that we gradually evolved house rules. The rigidity of the original system was so extreme that it interfered with our ability to role-play. More rules meant more rules lawyers, more searching through books, and even more notes than I have to keep now.
I have a few players this time around who are relatively new to the game. One of them is used to Vampire the Masquerade, and she’s never played Dungeons and Dragons before. A couple of times she said the game had too many numbers to keep track of, so I showed her how it worked in second edition. Somewhere between the six numbers that are connected to strength (hit adjustmment, damage adjustment, bend bars/lift gates, etc…) and the the saving throws (Petrification and Polymorph, Brath Weapon, etc…) she got the message.
How did we ever put up with all that? Why did it take teams of highly intelligent people thirty years to figure out “strength adjustment” and “fortitude, reflex, and will saves”?
I’ve heard of it happening, but I just use copious notes on pen and paper – every map and every stat. Not dialogue, though. I have to keep dialogue, even pivotal dialogue in my head, because it doesn’t come out right if I read it off a page.
Because until 3.0, D&D wasn’t really designed. It just sort of evolved.
Does anyone know how to build the dart fighter of second edition? We were never much on munchkinizing in any edition (although it’s a fun exercise on messageboards), but I understand that in 2E, you can build an absurdly deadly fighter just by going high-strength and specializing the heck out of fighting with darts. Each dart is a separate attack, and you get three darts per normal attack, and you can add your strength and specialization bonuses onto each dart, leading to absurd damage.
Having a gameable system isn’t something new to 3E; indeed, as I pointed out in the other thread, most of these silly powerplays in 3E involve taking advantage of an ambiguous rule, and interpreting it in a manner that allows silliness. In actual gameplay, I’ve never seen anyone try something like that.
Daniel
Really, the gee-whiz factor of prestige classes depends a lot on your DM. If the DM allows unlimited access to every prestige class the books have to offer, then yeah, they don’t mean much. If, on the other hand, your DM takes the time to select a few classes to really integrate into the setting and restricts access to prestige classes that don’t fit the setting, they really can be pretty cool. The easiest way to limit access to prestige classes and to make them carry more weight is to associate them with particular groups. For instance, anyone can kill people for money, but only members of the Kung-Fu Movie Ninja Society get to take levels in the assassin prestige class.
Nah. Darts (and bows, for that matter) only give you one attack per round, unless you have multiple attacks (at -5, -10 etc). Besides, there’s the whole Attack of Opportunity thing - try throwing darts in a melee and you’ll get wiped out by the bonus attacks.
He said 2E.
Where a specialized Dart Fighter had an attack rate of 6/round.
What does that term mean, “munchkinizing?” I never heard until this week.
You and I talked a bit about “type changes” in another thread, and I think that serves to illustrate this point.
(For those of you who don’t know, in 3rd-edition the outcome of many prestige classes – and one standard class, the monk – is that you become something other than “humanoid” – there are classes that make you a transcedent being like an “outsider,” and even one each that turn you into the “shapechanger,” “dragon”, and “plant” types)
This seems like a system open to exploitation, and yet I love it.
When our monk first found out that if he got to 20th-level, he would transcend his body and be made of the stuff of angels and demons, I reminded him that not only did this mean he could never be resurrected if he dies, but that he could be caught in an iron bottle, trapped in a magic circle, summoned, and enslaved.
He’s considering changing classes at 19th 
Anyway, a good DM will plug the holes in the rules, the rules lawyers be damned. That goes for any edition, but I feel like my hands aren’t as tied in 3rd – I have more rabbits to pull out of my hat.
Yep–I knew it was something like that. And you got +3 damage on each dart, I think, plus a str bonus that could easily hit +6 or so; at a relatively low level, with nonmagical darts, you could be doing 6d3+54 points of damage every round.
Thank Og that 3E got rid of the munchkinizing ;)!
Hamish, “munchkin” is a derogatory term referring to someone who takes advantage of rules in a way that you don’t like. There’s not a clear definition for it beyond that: some people think it’s munchkinny to multiclass, whereas other people think it’s not munchkinny to build, under 3E, the keen-improved-critical-vorpal-claw-hands-of-doom fighter, who can get 6 attacks, any of which are instantly fatal on a d20 roll greater than 8.
Daniel
Odd that some would think multiclassing is munchkinny. I’ve found most multiclass combinations to be marginally weaker than straight class characters.
We have one player (the aforementioned DM, actually) who loves to break and bend the rules as much as possible. He’s a headache to play with, because he’s not above arguing forever on a rule in order to get it interpreted in his favor. Even worse, he never knows the actual rules as well as the rest of us. (I actually know the grapple, bull rush and overrun rules more or less by heart now).
Oh. I though he was asking whether such a character was possible in 3E.
Particularly when 2 or more spellcasting classes are included.
Certainly multi-class techniques are iffy - the canon example for 3.0 is one level of Ranger to get a free TWF - doesn’t work in 3.5, since Rangers don’t get their combat styles until level 2 - but multiclassing as a whole is either balanced or a way to weaken your character (although some PrCs mitigate the weaknesses of certain multi-classes).
Depends on the combo. A rogue (in 3.0) benefits greatly from a single level of ranger, for the TWF stuff. A druid who wants to fight while shapeshifted benefits a lot from a level of monk, for the AC bonus. A fighter can do a lot worse than to take a level or two of barbarian.
Daniel
And vice versa - a barbarian can do a lot worse than to take a level or two of fighter (bonus feats!).
I must say I vastly prefer level- and class-less systems. It may be harder to balance… but man, is it easier to customise a character Just The Way You Want. For a system with levels and classes, DnD 3.5 edition is pretty much As Good As It Gets.