here's your alternate goddamn thread.

You TRAITORS.

Oh, thank goodness.  I was so worried about a thread on the RPG Site going off topic...

I hope Benoist comes in here and explains himself for saying 1st and 3rd are more similar than 1st and 2nd.  I'll lie asleep (I mean, awake!) all night tonight if he doesn't.

But, huh, they are basically the same, dude. Speaking about the three core books respectively, that is.

That's crazy talk.

Or, in the local dialect of theRPGsite, you guys are lunatic assholes who are legally blind and have never seen polyhedral dice and have no friends or brains.

I think 2E (which I still have affection for), was a general updating and cleaning of the various sprawling 1E rules.

Whereas ... 3E was a major shift in how the rules fit together. (In a good way, 3E is my favorite edition.)

Visual diagram:

1E --- 2E -------- 3E ------------ 4E

(Where each "-" represents a static unit of "differentness")

Quote from: BWA;414072That's crazy talk.

Or, in the local dialect of theRPGsite, you guys are lunatic assholes who are legally blind and have never seen polyhedral dice and have no friends or brains.

I think 2E (which I still have affection for), was a general updating and cleaning of the various sprawling 1E rules.

Whereas ... 3E was a major shift in how the rules fit together. (In a good way, 3E is my favorite edition.)

Visual diagram:

1E --- 2E -------- 3E ------------ 4E

(Where each "-" represents a static unit of "differentness")

 YEAH!  What he said!

okay let's throw down

Streamlined rules: are overrated.  Particularly, experience points and saving throws.  

Experience points should vary by class.  Is a math professor a ditch digger or a cook or a neurosurgeon?  What they learn and how they learn what they learn and how they apply what they learn in their profession, their class, if you will, differs from person to person.  You take ten people of ten different professions and put them through the same experience and they're going to take and apply what they learned in different ways altogether.  The magic user may not get as much out of the toe-to-toe slugfest with the orcs (he'll get an equal share of XP, but mayhap not enough to raise his level).

Saving throws: boy howdy this one drives me up the wall.  So a fireball is cast at Bork the Unlucky over there.  In 3e...does he make a reflex save to duck and cover and take less damage?  Or does he make a will save to at least somewhat disbelieve that it's a real, tangible fire?  Or is it a fortitude save so he can man up and soak up some of the damage without harm?

In AD&D, we have a specific save (vs. spell), plus we have the granularity of magic armor(s) and a high DEX score adding to a save in that case.  More granularity = more variety = better.

3e/d20 is soft.  Get grabbed by a wight?  Say goodbye to a character level!  If you see a wight and you don't have a cleric able to turn or a magic or silver weapon handy, run.  Not all challenges are supposed to be pushed over.  Your Adventuring World is supposed to be dangerous.

Formulas, formulas, formulas.  I'm not talking about the this-adder-plus-that-adder-versus-this-stat-the-other-guy-has "opposed checks", I mean the edict to DMs that so-and-so level monster is to be set against PCs at such and such level and after this-or-that number of adventures the party will be whatever level.  BAH.  If the party whips up on some bandits - or just sneaks past them and hauls off some of that sweet, sweet Treasure Type "A" and gains a level right out of the box and they won it, then by god they won it!  What level was Bilbo when he faced down Smaug?  Or those stone trolls?  Young Peregrin stood up to the Witch King of Angmar!  (Okay, backstab, but that's not the point!)  Don't tell me the "CR" "must be" something Ryan Dancey thought was a good idea.

"Anyone can be an anything of any class".  God don't get me started on this.  "My kobold paladin of Lolth will..." get thrown out of my game is what he will.

and that's just for starters.

The building blocks, they remain the same. All other differences are one of CULTURE. And oh hell yes, the 3E CULTURE changed for the worse after a while, removing it from AD&D IN SPIRIT but not in its building blocks or rules.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;4140763e/d20 is soft.  Get grabbed by a wight?  Say goodbye to a character level!  If you see a wight and you don't have a cleric able to turn or a magic or silver weapon handy, run.  Not all challenges are supposed to be pushed over.  Your Adventuring World is supposed to be dangerous.

Formulas, formulas, formulas...Don't tell me the "CR" "must be" something Ryan Dancey thought was a good idea.

"Anyone can be an anything of any class".  God don't get me started on this.  "My kobold paladin of Lolth will..." get thrown out of my game is what he will.

and that's just for starters.

I may not agree with you on the first few, but you know what?  I think these last few are the best places to just plain ignore the RAW in 3rd.  I've never calculated a CR or EL since I started running it, basically just eyeballing any encounter.  Have there been mistakes?  Sure, but surprisingly few, all things considered.  Experience, and playing combats as something other than a tactical competition between the DM and the players goes a long way.

Oh, and anyone trying that kind of multi-classing at my table is going to get turfed so far so fast they'll leave skid marks in my driveway on the way out.

I have rolled my Will save and will not go into a point by point argument. Three observations, though.
1) Our vanilla 3.0 games - when we were still playing 3.0 - were relentlessly deadly. Characters died left, right and centre, to ogres, traps, critical hits, ogres, carrion crawlers, evil clerics with the Death domain (death touch!), and did I mention ogres? There was that particular session that had a TPK, then the rescue squad went in to loot the corpses and had another TPK. That's, uh, not soft. 90s style AD&D was soft.
2) TSR's products were weak sauce in the 90s, consisting of either bland filler or things that actively made our great spontaneous campaigns less enjoyable (exceptions like Dungeon magazine, the first Undermountain box and, in hindsight, Dark Sun noted). At the time, AD&D was actively dismissive to things like dungeon-crawling or playing anything wholesome like CE half-orc assassins killing CE half-orc clerics. D&D  3.0 returned D&D to its adventuring roots where it belongs, thus making it more D&D than 95% of 2nd edition. It introduced its own problems, of course.
3) Palladium is the second most Gygaxian RPG on the planet. It is The Other AD&D©®™.

[edit]Hah, Century Gothic! Sorry, delver.[/edit]

I literally had the same experience with 1e to pathfinder, with the only differences being in quality of content. I'd bet dimes to dollars I could have everyone in my pathfinder games write up equivalent 1e characters and once they got used to no AoO (which they would like better) and grappling being gm fiat (which they would like better) I doubt they would know the difference.

I get the feeling that this revolves around published supplements, as opposed to the core books (i.e. PHB, DMG & MM).  If I look at the core rules of the 3, 1 and 2 are pretty similar, 3 is a significant departure (clean-up, modernization, whatever).

Quote from: Melan;414087I have rolled my Will save and will not go into a point by point argument. Three observations, though.

BOCK BOCK BOCK

Quote1) Our vanilla 3.0 games - when we were still playing 3.0 - were relentlessly deadly. Characters died left, right and centre, to ogres, traps, critical hits, ogres, carrion crawlers, evil clerics with the Death domain (death touch!), and did I mention ogres? There was that particular session that had a TPK, then the rescue squad went in to loot the corpses and had another TPK. That's, uh, not soft. 90s style AD&D was soft.

Then you had a DM who definitely went against the grain.  Also, fuck 90's AD&D  I agree it was (probably) soft then too.

Quote2) TSR's products were weak sauce in the 90s, consisting of either bland filler or things that actively made our great spontaneous campaigns less enjoyable (exceptions like Dungeon magazine, the first Undermountain box and, in hindsight, Dark Sun noted). At the time, AD&D was actively dismissive to things like dungeon-crawling or playing anything wholesome like CE half-orc assassins killing CE half-orc clerics.

 D&D  3.0 returned D&D to its adventuring roots where it belongs, thus making it more D&D than 95% of 2nd edition. It introduced its own problems, of course.

Hey, I am not even remotely trying to defend AD&D from '86 onward.  Dreck, all of it.

Quote3) Palladium is the second most Gygaxian RPG on the planet. It is The Other AD&D©®™.

You misspelled "Dangerous Journeys".

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Experience points should vary by class.  

Is a math professor a ditch digger or a cook or a neurosurgeon?  

There are two ways of doing this. Either you can make a class give it abilities distributed by levels and assign a cost in xp for each level. Add them up and get your xp table. This produces varying xp charts per class. This also means that a 5th level X is not the same power level as a 5th level Y. Each class has to be considered in of itself as to what X level means.

Or you can make a single XP charts and with the assumption that a single level means an equivalent increase. Note that I am deliberately vague here. What the increase means it up to the game designer. You could view it as spent learning, as effectiveness in the game, or any number of other criteria.

If you have the same assumptions for both method then neither is "better" than the other it just boils down to personal preference.

For example

I could say that a class get +1 to hit per level like this and for the purpose of this it is the only ability the class gets.

0 to 1000 xp +0
1001 to 2000 xp +1
2001 to 4000 xp +2
4001 to 6000 xp +3
6001 to 10000 xp +4
10001 to 14000 xp +5

or I could go like this

0 to 2000 xp +1
2000 to 6000 xp +3
6000 to 14000 xp +5

for the first class the 3rd level character is weaker than a 3rd level character of the second. But both require the same amount of xp to get to the same power level.

So it is perfectly feasible to make a version of D&D where every class has the same "increase" per level. With that you can use a unified XP chart.

Now whether you LIKE that is an entirely different point. Like Ascending AC vs descending it may be the same but you just plain prefer one over the other for whatever reason.

Plus it is a debatable point whether D&D 3.X achieved this in it's design. My opinion that it did so only partially and they let it fall to the wayside in the later books.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Saving throws: boy howdy this one drives me up the wall.  So a fireball is cast at Bork the Unlucky over there.  In 3e...does he make a reflex save to duck and cover and take less damage?  Or does he make a will save to at least somewhat disbelieve that it's a real, tangible fire?  Or is it a fortitude save so he can man up and soak up some of the damage without harm?

Because the author made it up? Gee whiz why should a Fireball shot by a wand be a different save then a spell casted by a major-user? Because Gary said so? Something in D&D make sense from real-life while other whatever Gary Gygax said so.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076Formulas, formulas, formulas.  I'm not talking about the this-adder-plus-that-adder-versus-this-stat-the-other-guy-has "opposed checks", I mean the edict to DMs that so-and-so level monster is to be set against PCs at such and such level and after this-or-that number of adventures the party will be whatever level.  BAH.  

Mmm Monster & Treasure Assortments? Encounter by Dungeon Level? It is silly to criticize 3.X for having Challenge Ratings. Now it is a legitmate criticism of a referee if he choose to continually build "level appropriate encounters" at every step of a campaign. It is a crictism that I agree with when a company all their modules this way.

What 3.X tries to do is make so that if you X group of monster you know that they are of equal power level to Y group of characters. The problem is that this useful tool was applied poorly to campaigns and published adventures.

 

Quote from: thedungeondelver;414076and that's just for starters.

You are focusing your criticism the rules themselves. When it either personal preference or an application of the rules. Should I shout to the world at how D&D is broken because it allowed Monty Haul campaigns, and Gods to be hunted because now they have stats thanks to Dieties and Demigods?

No the problem is either how the company choose to present the game or how the referee choose to run his campaign. That is in my book is legitimate grounds for criticism. Not a rant on how bad the other guys rules sucks.

Quote from: Settembrini;414083The building blocks, they remain the same. All other differences are one of CULTURE. And oh hell yes, the 3E CULTURE changed for the worse after a while, removing it from AD&D IN SPIRIT but not in its building blocks or rules.

I am afraid now I actually got what Sett was talking about.

Your brain has been incapable of learning if it can't handle the improved saving throw system.  Half the time, AD&D didn't make sense on save - especially with thing s that didn't fit the half a dozen categories.
 
Differing XP charts is an unneeded complexity that doesn't add to the game.  It would be ok if the differences really made sense.  In some versions, MUs suddenly advance quickly around levels 5-8 - for no fucking reason.
 
CRs are a rough guide for new DMs estimate encounter difficulty.  Nothing says they have to be used and they aren't used much - though used far more often than weapon type vs. base AC in AD&D.