Re: [DL] D20 ? OTish

[balance@tubas.net]

On Sunday, March 3, 2002, at 02:02  PM, Allan Seyberth wrote:
> Now THIS I have to disagree with.  And I will utilize just one specific 
> at this point - Attacks of Opportunity.

My group's had some issues with the same thing in our D&D game.

> For a more general proof - I will point out that my Sunday night DnD 
> game is composed of an eclectic lot of old school gamers - grognards, 
> ASL veterans, Champions aficionados, gaming devotees who have mastered 
> dozens of esoteric systems and even one who claims to understand the 
> byzantine rules of Magic:the Crackmongering.

Again, I play D&D with much the same sort of group... The newest player 
is at least a five year veteran. Our regular GM even has a homebrew 
sci-fi system that is said to be very good.

> It took this group over 6 months before we stopped having to constantly 
> refer to the books to look up this or that esoteric rule.  Even now the 
> game manages to get stopped at least once every two or three sessions 
> as we have to hit the books to look up what this or that stat/die 
> roll/situational/whajamaffut/ modifier is.\

3rd Edition D&D did a great job overall. It's concise and pretty 
consistent, although there are definite faults. Attacks of Opportunity 
work OK in miniatures-based combat, but are much harder to use in normal 
dramatic-style combat. The issue is that AoO don't fit the theme of D&D 
that well: They are a break from the theme D&D supports that characters 
are heroic and larger than life, and combat is very abstracted.

> > For those who don't
> >like D20 system, what is your major complaint?
>
> Levels.  Hit points.  Classes.  A combat system that is both complex 
> and unrealistic.  The spell system.

Levels DO provide a rough way to balance characters. As a nice bonus, 
3rd Ed seems to equalize characters much more effectively, although 
there's still some of the  situation from previous editions where a low 
level mage is dead meat compared to a similar level fighter, but the 
situation reverses at high levels.

Hit points work with what I mentioned above. D&D is meant to inspire a 
heroic feeling, so characters can burn HPs in a similar fashion to the 
way as Deadlands characters burn fate chips.

Classes are, well, a necessary evil . D&D is very iconic, and this 
shows. 3rd edition has done an admirable job of rebalancing classes. The 
Fighter is now the choice for the character who wants to take advantage 
of Feats (Note that I think the feat system is far inferior to a true 
edges/flaws style system) and the rogue is useful for any character who 
is a master of skills. Even the cleric has been upgraded to make it less 
of a chore. The only real flaw is that almost every group of adventurers 
needs to have representation from each class. For example, my group 
justr started a campaign, and we have a paladin, two rangers, a fighter, 
one monk, and a sorcerer. We hit hard, but then we have to rest for a 
few days.

3rd edition is a good product...  When i get around to picking up 
Deadlands d20, I'll try to look at it with an open mind, even though I'm 
not particularly interested in it at present. The problem with D&D is 
that the base rules are aggressively platform-agnostic. While some 
settings have added feats and skills to be more specific, these tend to 
be unused by many GMs...

> Pretty much all the old baggage from the old DnD system that they had 
> to retain in order to have some form of backwards compatibility.

The funny thing is... It's really not that much alike. A lot of systems 
use classes, levels, hit points, etc. However, they've gotten rid of the 
idea of a dozen inter-linked separate systems that make very little 
sense.

Anyway, 3rd Ed. D&D is a good product, and d20 products are not 
necessarily bad, but there's no guarantee of quality either. (Weird Wars 
is nifty, and is a great 'one-shot' because so many know the system.)

--
Brett

LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER 
MAN? (Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett)