Are 3e's tactics very different from AD&D's?

[Sir Neil]

Teleport ambushes.
Druidic tjeese.
Fabricate.
Magic-item dependency.

Were these always problems in earlier editions, or did the designers screw up 3e somehow? I never played much AD&D, and I'm still stunned by how different 3e is from Basic D&D.

[rapanui]

In 2e it was more like:

1. Fighters with cheesy kits owned everyone else.
2. Thief is OK, when backstab works. Kind of.
3. Cleric = walking bandaid. Druid kind of suxxors.
4. Wizy is a useless dork at low levels, best at mid levels, OK at high levels... if it can get past spell resistance and use spells that don't ask for saves.
5. Bard: The Heritage of Suckage continues.

From what I remember, the worst part of 2e which makes me not ever want to play it again was: inconsistent rules, bad mechanics and fighter types running the show completely.

[User3]

I heard that Elf "spellsword" type character kits were all the rage. Apparently the perfect synthesis of Fighter and Wizard.

Can anyone confirm this?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Bard: The Heritage of Suckage continues.

If you played the bard's spell acquisition rules by the book, yes. However, I never played in a group where a bard couldn't find a way to learn fireball if he wanted to. And yes, in 2e a bard could learn to cast any wizard spell. Also, the Complete Bard's Handbook had some cheese of its own.

[User3]

Teleport ambushes still existed in 2E.

Fabricate wasn't so great, because gold was virtually meaningless. You really didn't care if a wizard went into buisness for himself, because you could hand out 200,000 gp to 6th level characters and not care one bit. Magic items weren't for sale, nor did you create them with gold.

Druids were very weak in general, You didn't turn into dire crap or anything, you turned into normal animals, and you didn't gain ability scores (because monsters didn't have any), nor did natural armor stack with worn armor. Also, there was no magic fang spell, so anything that required materials or magic weapons was completely invulnerable to you. Also, no natural spell either. Wild shape was purely a movement/scouting ability.

Magic item dependency is a bit of a more complex issue. 2E characters often weren't decked out in magic items as 3E characters have to be, so in that regard the dependency is less. However, the individual 2E magic item made a much bigger difference than the 3E equivalent. A girdle of giant strength could turn a mediocre fighter into a superman. Similarly stuff like the cloak of elvenkind or boots of haste were very powerful.

Also, there were no such things as CR in 2E, which makes magical item dependency a bit of a bigger question. In 2E you were never really expected to be able to take on a certain threat at any given level, it was all more or less approximation. Magic items had a huge impact, but for the sake of class competition, no class required magical items more than others (as the fighter does in 3E).

2E generally wasn't balanced well class wise in the first place so it's hard to determine what exactly magical items do to a system that doesn't work well from the beginning.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I just thought of another difference between 2e and 3e. In 2e, half-elves were a cool race to play because they had more possible multiclass combinations than anybody else and multiclassing only put you a level or two behind a single-classed character on average. The downside was, under 2e RAW, you had to deal with level limits; but level limits were one of those things that many (if not most) DMs either eliminated or modified.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1085909858[/unixtime]]

Bard: The Heritage of Suckage continues.

If you played the bard's spell acquisition rules by the book, yes. However, I never played in a group where a bard couldn't find a way to learn fireball if he wanted to. And yes, in 2e a bard could learn to cast any wizard spell. Also, the Complete Bard's Handbook had some cheese of its own.

I didn't realize the 2E PHB said anything else, you find a scroll or a spellbook, it has fireball on it, you cast read magic, BOOM, you're in business.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I was referring to the fact that 2e bards--after the 1d4 or so spells they got at 2nd level--were supposed to only get new spells from scrolls and spellbooks they found. Theoretically, this gives the DM a lot of power to control what spells a bard gets. In fact, if there was a wizard in the party, the bard could end up fighting for scraps for his spell repertoire. However, every DM I played under gave bards a certain number of spells every level--making it easy to learn whatever you wanted.

Under these kinds of houserules, the only drawback to the 2e bard was ASF, which was, of course, always 100% in 2e.

[User3]

Bards also gained XP as a Rogue, which meant that they got Fireball before a Wizard.

They slowed down later, but as a low level class they were playable.

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2e was all about the Elven Fighter/Mage/Thief. All the class abilities and you were only about 2 levels in all your classes behind people for most of the game. Fabulous low level guy. Add Kits for flavor, as they were extra power at no cost.
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The Katana was also the deadliest, fastest weapon in the game. When going on a solo adventure, my PC would steal one from a Samurai PC or NPC, because it was basically a nonmagical +3 weapon.

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Blaster mages were playable, since no one got Con bonuses, making a 1d6 per level damaging spell a two hit killer.

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Money was for buying lands, castles, and the like(roleplaying). People gave a damn about magic items, since it wasn't just "and then we took a week and made all our +2 stuff into +3 stuff."

Many people often rolled the monster treasure after the battle on a chart, meaning that sometimes PCs got items that were way too powerful.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I played a few bards in 2e. They were actually halfway decent "Jack-of-all-Trades" types.

-Desdan

[Username17]

Yes. Remember that Fireball was decent back then because people had a craptonne less hit points than they do now. Also remember that Fireball did damage based on your level, so the fact that the Bard gained spells slower and levels faster was a huge advantage. A Bard did more damage than a wizard of his experience group, and was thus the preeminent evoker in the game. Weird, but true.

Now, as to the original questions:

Teleport ambushes.
Druidic tjeese.
Fabricate.
Magic-item dependency.

People had less spell slots, durations were incomprehensible, and evocations ruled combat - so nobody bothered with buff spells particularly. As a direct result, the teleport ambush was only for killing people in their sleep - a job which it did with greater facility because there were less counters to it (if you can imagine that).

The net result is that high level characters arranged to never sleep and never take off their armor, making them easily the equal in combat regardless of whether they were being ambushed or not. It was kind of dumb.

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Druidic Tjeese was totally there, but it was different. Back then, form transformation wasn't defined at all (monsters didn't have stats). So what, if anything, happened when you turned into a bear was up for debate. However, as stated, evocations ruled combat. So the fact that Druids had call frickin lightning and fireseeds, mother fucker made them automatically win.

I mean Fireseeds does enough damage to make you stand up and take notice now. Can you imagine what it would do if a Troll had about 30 hit points instead of about 70? Back then, the combat round was one minute long, and the effect of Call Lightning was pretty much the same as in 3e. So you could call one every ten rounds, and combats lasted twice as long in rounds at least. So Call Lightning let you throw about two of those bolts per combat and people had less hit points. Basically, Druidic Evocations were "the win".

---

Fabricate worked exactly the same, except that you couldn't buy or create magic items for money. So the fact that it gave you unlimited cash in a huge pile was entirely irrelevent.

---

Magic Item Dependency was still there. You couldn't be a Fighter without your +4 sword. You couldn't, however, buy or create such a device. It could only be given to you by the DM directly out of treasure piles. Many characters languished in obscurity quite a bit.

The DM effectively was God. He was the sole source of things which were essentially the entire schtick of your character which in turn were completely nonexistant in the world. How exactly these magic items came into being so they could be found in Kobold dens was anyone's guess.

Note that you also couldn't change your class once play started unless you were a human. So you were locked into the starting rails forever. This means that the only way your character could develope as play progressed was by magic items, which were handed out by the DM. So the DM controlled your character developement as well as the monsters you were fighting and the terrain you travelled through.

-Username17

[Sir Neil]

So they fixed one thing and ruined another.

Would it help if dimensional anchor created a no-teleport zone, or is scrying the problem?

K's idea of replacing your druid's stats with the monster entry might work for wildshape, since she can only change into animals. (Right now we let the druid change into a silver dragon, and it hasn't thrown off balance, so we must be doing something wrong.)

Would using UA's craft point system be a good way of making money worthless again, without forcing them to worship the deific DM? Players would use the market price to determine craft point costs, but in-game, artificers could charge whatever they feel like.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1086079246[/unixtime]]. In fact, if there was a wizard in the party, the bard could end up fighting for scraps for his spell repertoire.

Yeah, if the wizard player was a jerkass who wouldn't share his spellbook. Spells disappeared after you copied them from a scroll, but not when you copied them from someone else's spellbook.

[Username17]

Would it help if dimensional anchor created a no-teleport zone, or is scrying the problem?

Both are the problem, as is the existence of short-duration buffs. All these individually make the attacker always win. Long duration buffs just make casters always win and aren't balanced either.

As is, the logical extension of the rules and the supposed system of government is that the entire world is like Afghanistan, except the warlords don't have to pretend to suck up to the US, and when they send assassins after each other the most likely outcome is that the assassin succeeds and gets away with their own life.

If you wanted anything remotely stable, you'd need to drop the whole concept of buffing spells - and then you could end up like AD&D, where high level characters never sleep and bathe in their armor.

Would using UA's craft point system be a good way of making money worthless again, without forcing them to worship the deific DM?

It's a start, but you'd want it to not apply to masterwork items, on account of that's retarded. Mostly, you want to set the items people can make to their level, like Leadership and followers.

Rather than giving them a big pile of points to spend (which will naturally go into one big crazy object), simply give them the ability to have up to one item of value X, n items of value Y, and m items of value Z at any one time.

It would take a little bit of juggling to get scrolls to come out the way you want, because what you desperately don't want is a high level organic character who has made and used a bunch of scrolls to be objectively inferior to a ready made high level character who hasn't used any scrolls. I suggest that the one place where spell slots should really exist is in charged magic items - you get the scribe scroll feat, and then you can make certain numbers of scrolls of different levels which are then replaceable with different scrolls of the same level once they are gone.

Wands even more so, but I really think that wands should give you a bonus on your spells, rather than give you 50 fireballs. The huge number of fire and forget charges makes massed armies basically ricockulous.

-Username17

[User3]

1086112417[/unixtime]]
Note that you also couldn't change your class once play started unless you were a human. So you were locked into the starting rails forever.

The ironic thing is that multiclassing in 3E gives you more freedom for character builds, but it really doesn't help at all for character development, it just means you have more classes to choose from, but pretty much all the decision making processes are made at level 1 and you just follow a build.

The fact that PrCs exist at all and that they require feats ensures that the game plays exactly like 2E, except with more choices. The basic idea of 3E multiclassing just doesn't work. You really don't have any freedom to multiclass, not without cutting your own throat. You can't start out as a fighter 8, then become a cleric because of all the good stuff the temple happened to do for you during play. Well you could do this, you'd just suck really really bad.

It's kind of funny, because when I first saw the multiclass system I thought it might open up more character versatility, but after actual play you realize that all the planning is still done at 1st level anyway.

[Username17]

It's kind of funny, because when I first saw the multiclass system I thought it might open up more character versatility, but after actual play you realize that all the planning is still done at 1st level anyway.

Not quite, your wizard can decide that he really wants to be a Fire Mage at about level five and take a related feat at level 6 and take a prestige class at level 7, and such like.

Also, since the Prestige Classes are really there to act as examples of things to do (except for the Spell Dancer, which is an example of something to not do) - it actually encourages you to provide prestige classes to players as ways of specializing their character in the direction they want to go.

Of course, many people don't play that way, instead taking the prcs out of various splat books directly and then wondering why their characters are locked into rails again...

-Username17

[Sir Neil]

As is, the logical extension of the rules and the supposed system of government is that the entire world is like Afghanistan...

Yeah, on another thread I noticed people wasting time arguing with you instead of working to fix it.

If scrying and teleport were removed, I think the High Priestess of Lloth would have to actually make an effort to obliterate the party, and it'd be more plausible when she just sends flunkies to handle them.

It's a start, but you'd want it to not apply to masterwork items, on account of that's retarded.

Yes, yes it is. Didn't remember that part.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

1086269282[/unixtime]]

1086079246[/unixtime]]. In fact, if there was a wizard in the party, the bard could end up fighting for scraps for his spell repertoire.

Yeah, if the wizard player was a jerkass who wouldn't share his spellbook. Spells disappeared after you copied them from a scroll, but not when you copied them from someone else's spellbook.

That's true. Even if the DM didn't just give the bard a spell or two per level, you could always make friends with the party wizard and get access to their spellbook. I often played in groups where intra-party combat was a favorite passtime, so this wasn't always a given. But that doesn't change the fact that it was possible.

But we actually agree on the basic point. 2e bards were designed to suck in the original PHB, but they didn't in actual playing conditions. In fact, in the right hands and under the kind of house rules that were often in effect, the 2e bard could be a munchkin class.

[Username17]

If scrying and teleport were removed, I think the High Priestess of Lloth would have to actually make an effort to obliterate the party, and it'd be more plausible when she just sends flunkies to handle them.

Yeah.

It would also be better, I think, if the forces were represented within societies instead of as societies. As is there is literally nothing holding people back from going completely ape on your enemies, because the Dark One civilization has no commerce with your civilization anyway.

Unless you have some sort of overlap of needs with your enemies you share no social contract with them, and there is absolutely nothing reigning in your actions. At all.

-Username17

[User3]

I've already given Frank one of my fixes for Teleport.

Make it that after using the spell you are dazed for 2d4 rounds. Its pretty tough to ambush people hwne you can;t take any actions.

[Username17]

It goes a long way, but it just becomes "Scry + Teleport + Invisibility + Pass Without Trace Ambushes".

Making it more resource intensive doesn't ultimately solve the problem. If you can do it at all, people will.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

Or this is just trying to patch on the problem and is not flavorful in the least, but, why not give teleport a (much) longer casting time, multiplied by the number of people you're taking with?

Taking along yourself and four friends has an 5-hour casting time. Taking along 20 goblins takes a little under a day. Further, you cannot take along called or summoned creatures, and halfway into the casting time of the spell sigils show up where there is someone is about to teleport, along with a really easy-to-hear wooshing noise. That'd kill almost all of the buffs (except for the really-long duration ones, which defenders have already) and this would give the defenders a fighting chance.

Nerf the ever-living shit out of polymorph any object to get rid of the free titan armies, and voila.

[User3]

How about this:

--Only permanent effects can travel with you. Buffs vanish when you teleport.

--A loud noise and sigils precede you.

--All polymorph effects need to operate on a full character replacement process and a "no swag changes with you" rule . Turning into a giant sucks for a fighter if he looses all his class abilties, hp, stats, and use of his swag and just be a giant.

Have a "go bigger spell" or "ogerize" for people who want to play anime guys, but don't make Polymorph a necessary combat tactic for every fighter. Achilles should not be forced to become a Firbolg just to kill a few Trojans.

PAO should duplicate these effects:
-Major creation, with same duration, but equal weight in material.

-Animate Objects/Polymorph, same duration as Poly.

-Poly, with a permanent duration, or Poly same duration as PHB but with a HD cap of your level, not the creatures level.

-Orginal durations: Rock to Mud, Stone to Flesh, Item

[Username17]

Or this is just trying to patch on the problem and is not flavorful in the least, but, why not give teleport a (much) longer casting time, multiplied by the number of people you're taking with?

Because you don't give two shits whether it takes 6 seconds or six months on your side of the teleport ambush - you aren't in combat yet. The problem isn't that a Teleport Ambush is too quick to set up (although it is), but that it is too effective.

That'd kill almost all of the buffs (except for the really-long duration ones, which defenders have already) and this would give the defenders a fighting chance.

No, it would make Teleport Ambushes happen in tag teams. One Wizard to transport a pack of ass whuppers, and one cleric to buff all the participants just before the bus leaves.

Nerf the ever-living shit out of polymorph any object to get rid of the free titan armies, and voila.

We aren't even going to pretend this doesn't need to be done, although how it is to be done is still open to debate. Skip Williams and Andy Collins have both written out editorials and rewrites on this spell and announced that it was "fixed" at various times. Laughable, but true.

-Username17

[Desdan_Mervolam]

I think it'd be easier to make it so you can only teleport to places you've set up an "anchor" of sorts. This anchor would probably work best within the context of the game as a teleportation circle, but even a properly prepared object would work well. Then you could still do teleport ambushes if you really want to, but it requires alot more creativity, especally if the teleport anchor-stone can be identified by a spellcraft check. At that point the High Priestess of Lolth can TA the party, once she finds a way to get the stone into the party. In most situations, there would have to be someone present to give them the stone, at which point why isn't she attacking then?

-Desdan