D&D

[Unglef]

The group I'm in, we have to try and make our characters as powerful as possible, so we can freakin' survive! Every five minutes someone says "I drink a potion" whether we're in combat or not. We still have fun playing, but it seems like somebody's on death's door at least once a session.

 

But.....

 

You're the DM. If some of your characters get too powerful for your campaign, do some things to take them down a notch, as many others have suggested here. Or just take them to the Undermountain. Or Ravenloft. Doesn't really matter how powerful you are there, you're still gonna die.

 

A few sessions of this, and maybe your players will start to listen to you when you ask them to tone down the powergaming.

 

 

Oh, and I feel the need to say something to folk who have been ragging on "New" players. In my group, I am the baby. I only started about four or five years ago, and only played in one 2nd Edition campaign, and liked it. I consider myself new to the game, and enjoy both the dice rolling driven and the storytelling game. I just like to play. I just like the idea of the game. I don't even care what game it is, or whether I'm playing or DMing. Star Wars, D&D, Wheel of Time, Ragnarok!, T2K, Call of Cthulu, or even Kobalds Ate My Baby, it doesn't matter. 2nd, 3rd, Twody-two, I could give an at's rass.

 

Folk have been complaining about the mentality of new players, and talking about how good it was "back then". Maybe the new players don't know about whatever it is you're referring to. Try explaining it to them, give them a new perspective.

 

 

 

P.S. I still don't get negative armor class and THAC0. Not the rules and mechanics, but the idea. How can negative be better than positive other than a golf score or a paternity test?

[Eric Swiftblade]

I played a little of 2ndEd D&D and vastly prefer the 3+ Ed.

 

I always though THAC0 was very odd, and hated running the calculation in the middle of a fight. I much prefer roll and add.

 

But I always thought 3rd Ed gave more options to players. 2nd Ed had your fighting abilities and a few odd skills chucked in to make it fun. My last character had Fletcher, Blacksmithing, Mountaineering and Swimming.

Now you can give your characters varying levels in all sorts of skills...much more customisable.

 

The new feats do the same thing. I was once considering a fighter who went into battle unarmed. But he would disarm the enemy and use their weapons instead.

 

And best of all. Any race can play any class. Dwarf wizard - sure. Half-Orc paladin - go ahead.

[spiritual_exorcist]

In a fairly low level campaign (I think around 3rd level PCs) I had a bard as one of my minor villians. He went around town often disgracing the 'So-called Good' antics of the PCs through speech and song, denouncing their actions and winning ther local population over to his way of thinking. He even proved fairly effective in combat, bolstering his minions with a well crafted speech, and buffing badies with his spellcasting powers while Tumbling between the PCs and poking them with his Rapier.

 

I'd say go for it, Bards make sweet villians I think.

[Arvok]

I played a little of 2ndEd D&D and vastly prefer the 3+ Ed.

 

I always though THAC0 was very odd, and hated running the calculation in the middle of a fight. I much prefer roll and add.

 

But I always thought 3rd Ed gave more options to players. 2nd Ed had your fighting abilities and a few odd skills chucked in to make it fun. My last character had Fletcher, Blacksmithing, Mountaineering and Swimming.

Now you can give your characters varying levels in all sorts of skills...much more customisable.

 

The new feats do the same thing. I was once considering a fighter who went into battle unarmed. But he would disarm the enemy and use their weapons instead.

 

And best of all. Any race can play any class. Dwarf wizard - sure. Half-Orc paladin - go ahead.

That's one of my biggest complaints about 3e--the removal of the uniqueness of each race. Dwarves have always been (at least until Monte Cook and company got a hold of them) highly resistant to magic; that's why they couldn't be magic users--their bodies just wouldn't be conduits for arcane magic (Divine magic was different, since it was channeled through a deity).

 

Now that anybody can be anything every demihuman race is just a human in strangely shaped body. Actually, that's not the only reason, but it's one of the most glaring examples of the lack of role-playing in a lot of games today.

 

While I agree the d20 mechanics are easier, I've never understood what was so hard to get about Thac0. Don't they teach negative numbers in school anymore? I've run into some teenagers (teenagers!) who have to count on their fingers to accurately add dice rolls in the d20 system.

[Eric Swiftblade]

I guess thats one way to see it. Though I see a Half-orc Paladin as an opportunity to roleplay rather than a lack of it.

 

You have to exist in a world that sees you as an outsider or even as evil. And no matter what people may think of you, you have to defend them from the true evil that wanders the realm.

 

I think its the subtract a negative number, giving an addition.

I'm in the middle of a desperate fight with an elemental and...damn, two negatives make a positive, so add the....I need a 15.

 

It's a matter of preference I guess.

[Unglef]

Y'know, Tommy, that's really profound and all, but I worry about you sometimes. Actually, it's most of the time. Ok, ok, all the time.

[mooseyjoe]

Yeah, have the players fight and endless series of mindless opponents...why not just play Diablo?

 

The problem I've seen with the newer players who grew up on a steady diet of Diablo, Halo, and M:TG is that their idea of a campaign is a quest to kill some big, bad villian with smaller, less important encounters along the way. There is no plot or character development either by the players or the DM. I blame the mentality of the new rules and the attitudes the new authors brought in.

 

As a Kid who has grown up blowing up bad guys in Diablo (both 1 and 2, go sorcs!!!) and shredding various hordes of aliens in Halo I would like to point out that there is some fun to be had in killing the baddies. Look at any good adventure story, it consists of a big mean hard to attain goal, and a pile of smaller obstacles along the way. Frodo spent the entire course of his adventure trying to destroy the ring, and his toughest battle and closest encounter with failure comes right at the end. All along the way he meets various smaller problems, and these help to actually create a story and keep things interesting. Although The game isn't much more than tossing dice around without the role playing, I'm sure if you look back on your Role-Playing High Lights there will be a couple times where you had the most fun just walking in and killing some monsters, without much in the way of character advancement.

 

And he didn't say to have them fight nothing but oozes, i pretty sure he is trying to convince you to mix it up, your players might not want to deal with einsteins or ambassadors at every corner.

 

As far as power gamers who just try and win at the expense of a good story, don't allow them too. Make them roleplay, and if they don't, kill 'em off (but PLEEEEASE don't be mean or vindictive or un-fun about it). And the next time they bring you another crazy powerful min-maxed barbarian-cleric-mage half dragon prince, just tell them NO.

[Eric Swiftblade]

In my current campaign all the characters are combat monsters (its a military campaign, so fair enough), but so far I've killed three.

 

It's actually quite amusing to have an arms race between me and them to make the most powerful thing. Though I wouldn't want to do it all the time.

 

The best was I sent an assassin after them and he stabs one in the back.

DM: Assassin makes a death attack, make a save.

PC: A 2.

DM: Umm. Ok. You take 26 hp damage, 1 Con damage, and die.

 

The players all burst out laughing. I've never seen the death of a character cause such hilarity.

[Arvok]

Yeah, have the players fight and endless series of mindless opponents...why not just play Diablo?

 

The problem I've seen with the newer players who grew up on a steady diet of Diablo, Halo, and M:TG is that their idea of a campaign is a quest to kill some big, bad villian with smaller, less important encounters along the way. There is no plot or character development either by the players or the DM. I blame the mentality of the new rules and the attitudes the new authors brought in.

 

As a Kid who has grown up blowing up bad guys in Diablo (both 1 and 2, go sorcs!!!) and shredding various hordes of aliens in Halo I would like to point out that there is some fun to be had in killing the baddies. Look at any good adventure story, it consists of a big mean hard to attain goal, and a pile of smaller obstacles along the way. Frodo spent the entire course of his adventure trying to destroy the ring, and his toughest battle and closest encounter with failure comes right at the end. All along the way he meets various smaller problems, and these help to actually create a story and keep things interesting. Although The game isn't much more than tossing dice around without the role playing, I'm sure if you look back on your Role-Playing High Lights there will be a couple times where you had the most fun just walking in and killing some monsters, without much in the way of character advancement.

 

And he didn't say to have them fight nothing but oozes, i pretty sure he is trying to convince you to mix it up, your players might not want to deal with einsteins or ambassadors at every corner.

 

As far as power gamers who just try and win at the expense of a good story, don't allow them too. Make them roleplay, and if they don't, kill 'em off (but PLEEEEASE don't be mean or vindictive or un-fun about it). And the next time they bring you another crazy powerful min-maxed barbarian-cleric-mage half dragon prince, just tell them NO.

I've never really had a problem with players abusing the rules in 3e because I disallow many of the game-breaking aspects. I don't allow most Charisma-based skill checks ("Role-Play, don't Roll-Play" I always say), Magic is much harder to come by (Enchanted Weapon is again a 4th level spell, Enchant an Item is 6th, and Permanency is 8th, with the loss of Constitution, etc.), and I've reinstated race restrictions and minimum ability scores (in the real world you can't be a chemist with a 60 IQ, you're then just a guy who plays in a lab).

 

As for great times rolling dice, the only time I've had a lot of fun with simple hack and slash was once we had richly developed characters. Take for instance the time the party Paladin charged into the climactic battle against the evil Cleric NPC and his minions and, as his first action of the battle, proceeded to throw his legendary warhammer across the room (he rolled a "natural 1"). That was hilarious because of the reactions of not only the players, but also of the characters. Heck, that hammer had more character development than many characters I've seen players today running.

[Arvok]

IMHO, the "specialty priests" of 2e really sucked, and I have NO desire to go back to that format, especially since on campaign more often than not the specialty priest features were a hinderance rather than added to the character.

 

Damon.

I loved the 2e Priests. 1e Clerics were very strictly based on Medieval European Christian clergy, which was fine if that was what you were playing. But if you wanted to play something else, like a non-Christian Priest, for instance, you were pretty limited. With 2e's move away from a game based around Christian Europe in the middle ages (actually their panicked flee from any reference to any real-world religious reference--does anybody else hate the terms Ta'nari and Ba'atezu?) they created a system for customizing your Priest.

 

With the advent of 3e (groan), Priests (oh, sorry--they're all Clerics now) retained some of their customizability(?) but lost a lot of their uniqueness. Now every Cleric has access to a core set of spells plus gets to add a few others based on his choice of domains. In effect, all Clerics are the party first aid kit (even those that worship a god of pestilence or death) with a few added features. I'm sorry, I just have a hard time believing Vecna would grant Mass Heal to one of his priests.

 

The idea that it's "unfair" to deny a character access to a certain spell or group of spells is one of the things that really bothers me about 3e.

[Froggy the Great]

Actually, I like the terms Tanar'ri and Ba'atezu. This could be because I cut my teeth playing Planescape where they had a place in the setting, or it could be that I could never remember which side the demons were and which had the devils. They'd always been synonymous to me.

[Xindra]

I feel like I'm jumping into a hornet's nest here, but hey...I can't seem to stop myself. I have to agree with Arvok about 3e. Compared to previous editions, it's over-simplified. The point of having races in D&D is so that certain characters are more capable fighters and others are more capable thinkers, healers, etc. This is what led to the need for parties - no one character could do things alone.

 

3e removes that and basically tells you that your character can be good at everything if he/she is just "lucky enough" to roll well. The only point I see to races in 3e is so that PCs look different and we can all happily paint our minis to look like our latest characters and so that new players will want to buy D&D-related products.

 

Perhaps the 3e stuff should have simply been titled something other than D&D. It is, after all, a different game than 2e was.

[Qwyksilver]

3.x editions get around the spell issues by requiring players to have alignments within 1 degree of their god. Their spells are limited based on the players alignment as well. Evil priests cannot take spells with good, chaotic with law, etc.

 

Further, just because a player can theoretically cast a spell, does not mean that the player should or has to. This is where role playing comes into play. A player can choose not to make use of a specific spell because it does not mesh with their concept of their character. A cleric of Kord might refuse to take a spell that removes a player's strength (I am thinking of Ray of Enfeeblement even though this is a Wizard spell...as an example) because that would not allow for an honorable hand to hand combat and test of strength. A cleric of Nerull might never cast a healing spell, even if his party demands it because Nerull welcomes death, and the cleric would not allow others to falsely extend their lives through the blessings of his god. A cleric of Boccob may never cast a Dispel Magic (a Domain spell I believe) because no magic should ever be utterly removed from this plane. All opportuities to flesh out your character. If other players complain that the cleric is screwing them. Too bad. And reward the player for not going the easy route with his character and sticking to their guns.

 

Numbers are guidelines. Even a really high skill modifier can be adjusted by this amazingly simple tool called the Situational Modifier if players are seeking to power game. Numbers also do not prevent the ability to role play, much as spell selections should not as a priest.

 

 

For example:

I have a 3rd level rogue w/ a +11 in Diplomacy and a +7 in Bluff. I am not the party spokeman. Nor will I ever be (at least not for some more levels if I start to become a little cleaner and more socialized) because I am a gutter rat raised on the edge of the Goblin slums in Lower Dura (Sharn) in an Eberron Campaign. He never starts negotiations. That is for the more cultured Dragon Marked swashbuckler (even though I have a better Charisma and Diplomacy and Bluff, and would theoretically be better at this). I will however be the first person in the party to try and lie and fast talk and finagle my way out of a sticky situation. This is where I choose to use my skill ranks because that is where my character learned his honey tongue. Surviving and escaping trouble when caught or cornered by people who could physically kill him. Even with the number and the rules and everything. It is all about how you play the character within those numbers. Sure I could walk up and with my high diplomacy and try to enter a noble house. But a good DM would also point out the fact that my clothes are a bit worn and tattered (or with the nice outfit I have - clearly last year' s style and I am not clearly comfortable in them) and although I might be charming and polite, there is an undercurrent of danger behind my words, or maybe I didn't wash as thoroughly as I should have - dirty fingernails for instance. Look, there are those Situational Modifiers again, coming in to balance out situations where a power gamer could try to run rough shod.

[spiritual_exorcist]

I don't allow most Charisma-based skill checks ("Role-Play, don't Roll-Play" I always say), Magic is much harder to come by (Enchanted Weapon is again a 4th level spell, Enchant an Item is 6th, and Permanency is 8th, with the loss of Constitution, etc.), and I've reinstated race restrictions and minimum ability scores (in the real world you can't be a chemist with a 60 IQ, you're then just a guy who plays in a lab).

 

Perhaps it has never occured to you, but not every player is a charismatic diplomat, nor are all players super-creative.

 

Why should this limit them to what types of characters they can play? Why shouldn't Bob the half-wit be allowed to play a diplomatic character even if he isn't the most creative and wordy person. I'll always dish out bonuses for a well-roleplayed situation, but I don't disallow all charisma based rolls. Doing so would be the equivalent of throwing out all strength based rolls simply because my little brother can't lift more than 20lbs. but is playing a character with an 18 strength.

 

Forcing players who are not intuitively creative and articulate to play characters who are are likewise uncreative and unituitive when it comes to problem solving and diplomacy pigeonholes them into the power-gamer role that you seem to despise so much.

 

As far as the various D&D races being minor variations on the same shade of colour (ie. Humans), I'd have to strongly disagree, I'm not even sure where to begin to refute this idea, because as far as my perceptions are concerned nothing can be further fromt he truth, in terms of gameplay I honestly believe the new rules set has injected the various races with a huge dose of flavour that makes them extremely unique. Just because you can play a Dwarf-Wizard doesn't mean that such characgter are common, or anything but a rare freak of nature. If you deem Dwarven wizards taboo you can either forbid your players from playing such a character, or you can (more creatively) make that sort of character an extreme abnormality who has to deal with the social reprocussions of being a 'freak' from the perspective of his fellow Dwarves (in the case of a Dwarf Wizard at least).

 

I for one think 3.0+ (while hardly the best ruleset on the market) bar-none the best D&D rules set that has ever seen the light of day.

[Arvok]

3.x editions get around the spell issues by requiring players to have alignments within 1 degree of their god.

That is one part of 3e I find utterly incomprehensible. Since when does a GOD allow his spokesman, whom he favors with spells and special abilities, allow his priests to disagree with him on the fundamental questions of life?

 

"Oh sure, I agree with Kord on his views about Law and Chaos, but I think he's mistaken on the nature of Good and Evil."