What is your opinion of D20? What do you think D&D 3.5?

First, my hedged and "political" answer:

"I feel that d20 admirably, and completely, fills its niche within the industry. The d20 flagship, D&D, has always been largely considered the beginning of roleplaying games, and it is good to see that, despite the advances and creativity that has become increasingly prolific throughout the industry, there are still some people that will preserve and protect the heirlooms of the RPG market."

My honest opinion:

It sucks so hard that it almost makes me feel that censorship may have an upside.


Take your pick, either works.

Dav

depends on what you mean.

if you mean games using the basic d20 resolution mechanic (roll d20, add modifiers, beat TN,) plus the concept of race, class, and level, I don't mind it a bit. I do think the spell, skill, and feat list is a little cluttered. I don't like the way character generation and development turns into an extremely complicated tactical exercise. but I'd like to see a "d20 lite" that replaced the fixed lists of skills, spells and feats with guidelines for creating simpler versions of the same. that would be quite usable.

if you mean the actual published d20 rules, which are mainly endless lists attempting to classify every potential tactical situation and provide hard rules for how to handle them all, then I don't like it a bit. and since D&D 3.5 is a rules clarification for D&D 3 (d20), I never even bothered to look at it,because it's more of what I don't like.

some people like that stuff. I have no problem with that. but I'm getting simpler in my old age.

My opinion:

When turned into a computer game, it makes a pretty good turn-based, small-group, tactical wargame.

At the table it's the basically the same only much, much, MUCH slower.

And don't even get me started about 3.5. A project driven by marketing if ever I saw one.

I have some considered opinions on this, but they'll have to wait. In brief:

3.0 was a reasonable attempt to update an old classic. It's ultimately a disaster, but it has some good points, and for 1 on 1 gamist romps and PBeM's (where handling and search time are not issues) I've had some good fun with it.

3.5 sucks the high, hard one. It takes the D&D out of 3.0. Of course, if you don't like D&D, this may be a feature. But if you don't like D&D, why would you play it at all?

Honestly, I don't really care about it one way or the other. The only thing that kind of bugs me about d20 is...well, there's another BBS I frequent, created & attached to someone who used to be something of a minor celebrity. (The guy in question is also a major geek & an old-time gamer.) Anyway, anytime RPGs are brought up in the fora, people invariably are playing D&D & act as if they've never heard of or considered anything else. I'll post about the games I play, & no one seems the least bit interested (except for the few people who post there who also post here &/or on RPGnet--Matt Wilson, I'm lookin' at you, boyo). It's like the world froze for them in 1986 or something. (Except in 1986, there was more variety in games. Dragon Magazine had articles about all sorts of different games & advertised them, too, which is how I found out about stuff like Villains & Vigilantes, Thieves' Guild, Traveller, & others.)

But otherwise, when I walk into a gaming store, my brain just tunes out most of the d20 stuff. (I may glance through some Mutants & Masterminds stuff, but that's mostly for the pictures.) Conan looks okay, but otherwise...I just ignore it.

As for "industry glut"...since I learn about RPGs almost entirely from the Internet, & I buy most of my stuff online, I don't perceive any "industry glut." What people are doing with d20 interests me only very slightly. I pay more attention to what people are doing with HeroQuest, Burning Wheel, Sorcerer, & Riddle of Steel than I do anything else. I really don't care what most gaming stores & bookstores are selling.

d20 is mechanically broken. Pretty much unforgiveably mechanically broken.

Consider: you have a random range that goes from 1 to 20 and then typical modifiers that seperate the best from average by single digits.

If memory serves 3E maxes your skill level at 3 plus level.

Take the absolute best 5th level character you can have. 8 skill levels +4 from attributes. Compare him to a completely average person in that skill. 4 skill levels with no attribute bonuses. +8 seperates the best you can be from average...+8....on 1d20. Worse take a guy who's actually not that good. 1 skill level and -2 from Attributes. +13 seperate the dedicated practioner from the total newb. These numbers might be suitable on a d10 but not on a d20.


Then go a step further and realize that D&D characters never actually get better at anything. The DC of their opposition is geared to increase at roughly the same rate as their abilities increase. So instead of having a tough time but barely managing to kill an orc, you level up. And now you have a tough time but barely manage to kill an ogre. Same challenge, same net effect. Sure you've got weapons that do more damage now but you're facing more hitpoints.

D&D is just one big never ending hamster wheel.


But it gets better. d20 did not unify the D&D mechanic. Oh no. That's a myth. Fans like to point out that everything is handled on a d20 +modifiers high is better system now...to which I can only shrug and say big deal. Its still not a unified system.

Consider. Because the modifiers have relatively little effect on the d20 roll results, the difference in skill between the best and the average guy (from above) will only reveal itself reliably after several rolls. You make a half dozen or a dozen checks and you'll begin to notice that yes, in fact, the best guy does wind up with higher average results than the average guy.

That's why combat is a war of attrition. Hitpoints work in D&D because they FORCE combat to take multiple rolls. You HAVE to have multiple rolls for the difference in ability to manifest.

But yet NOTHING else but combat works this way. Everything else is handled with a single roll where the whiff factor is fantastic.

If D&D were truly a unified system the idea of Difficulty Class and opposed rolls would have to be completely discarded. Instead EVERYTHING should be handled with Hitpoints (or the equivelent thereto). Lets call them Difficulty Points.

The Lock shouldn't have a Difficulty Class of 15. It should have say 30 Difficulty Points. The Thief should "roll to hit" based on skill and then "roll damage" based on the quality of the lock picks. When the Difficulty Points reach 0, the lock opens. Similiarly the Trap on the lock should roll to hit against the Thief and the theif's Disarm Trap ability should serve as hitpoints. If the lock gets the thief to 0 points first, then the trap goes off.

ONLY THEN would the system be truly unified. Only then would the d20 skill system allow a great lockpicking theif to reliably do better than an average lock picking thief and not get bested by a bad roll by a mediocre lock picking thief.

But funny; if you put this "war of attrition" to non combat stuff it highlights how truly ludicrous and unwieldy a system it is. Yet for some reason folks think it works perfectly well for combat...absurd.


Oh, and by the way. D20 combat is not a single die system. Its a die pool system...where you roll each die in the pool 1 die at a time. Is it any wonder why its so cumbersome.

Blech. When it first came out I thought...hey this ain't bad. But when you actually study the numbers and how they fall in play...its horrible. I mean truly abysmal.

As long as I don't have to play by the rules, I think D&D (3, 3.5, etc) is wonderful.

Here are the mods that I commonly use:

1) Gritty Fantasy! When I run "dark" games (usually one-shots), I put this mod into play that I made up back in college in the days of 2E: Everyone starts off with their Constitution Score in Hit Points, and then from there, 2nd level, you start rolling hit points as per the rules. Then, you declare that for every point between your Attack Roll Score and the Armor Class that you score by, you add that to the damage roll. Grit-ty! Note, I don't use this all the time, only when playing "dirt under the fingernails" fantasy.

2) Fuck Feats! You get your normal amount of feats per level to start out with. From that point on, all bets are off. I usually know how long a D&D campaign I run is going to last, so I hand out Feats like there was no tomorrow. Like, usually, tell everyone to choose a new one at the end of each adventure (usually). Or if they do something in the story that I feel is cool (roll a brilliant series of moves in a fight, save up cash and prestiege and train with a legendary master, etc) then I hand out more. Effect: Takes away the most nauseating aspect of D&D for me, which is the whole "Career Pathing at Level 1" Syndrome. I hate career pathing in real life, it is a real source of grief for me. So I want it OUT of my fun.

3) Heroquest/Sorcerer It! This is a mod that I thought of two days ago and haven't tried it out yet, but I will the next time I play: As successes carry over from one play to his comerades for similar actions in Sorcerer (One dude Surprises the Monster, gives his successes to his buddy to Kill the Monster), they do for skill and attack rolls in D&D. Can't kill the dragon alone? Give the thief's sneak successes to the priest, who uses his charm successes to give to the mage, who uses his alchemy (some potion or other) successes to give to the fighter, who by then can nail that dragon like there was no tomorrow. Encourages teamwork. Or, at least, I hope so- I haven't acutally tried it yet (I first came up with this mod for BESM), but swear that it ought to work for D&D, now that everything uses a d20, be it Saving Throw or Skill Roll or Attack Roll.

4) Back to the mods I actually use: 2d10 instead of 1d20. I just like the bell currve, that's all. 00,09,90,99=Crit, 11,12,21,22=Fumble. Works surprisingly well, and gets really loopy when you...
4.5) Roll again and add for doubles! Anytime anything other than 11 or 22 comes up on the dice, you roll again and add the total together. If you happen to get a 11 or 22 on the second roll, you add it up and continue. This adds a "wild die" effect to the game. Great for mythic fantasy. I just like the way it shakes shit up.

5) Steal from Unearthed Arcana. I sold my 3.0 PHB a few months ago (I have the BESM d20 book now that serves as my PHB), but I actually picked up this book. It's phenomenal, tons of cool mods and explanations. My next mod to adapt will be Gestalt Classes (I can't believe that I didn't think of this one sooner!).

-Andy

Oops, that was me.

I find it frustratingly difficult to hack, but that's why I have Riddle of Steel :-) Actually, in truth, I'm getting better at hacking it these days.

I really like D&D 3e. It can't do a lot of things that 2nd edition could do, especially sim-wise, but it is a really pretty sweet little game design at its core. I'm not going to try to defend it point-by-point against all the viritrol levelled at it in this thread, but I'll say this:

Two of my three best Narrativist experiences in recent play have been under D&D 3e (the last was Riddle of Steel.) Those "wow, blam, right on hit the premise" moments. Note that these were both shockingly "non-drifted" games -- They emphasized skills checks more than they ought to, I suppose, but otherwise were straight-up, by the rules D&D 3e.

From a Gamist perspective, the damn thing is a brilliant work of art, and I will punch out the man who says otherwise. It's a flat-out multiple path egg-hunt, with an incalculably large number of paths. I will be posting soonish in Actual Play about my experiences playing Foxholm, a wonderful game run by a friend of mine, and the brilliant tactical situation of being an alpha wolf in the context of the AoO heavy combat system.

If you strip off a lot of the baggage, the core system is a pretty simple little lite-game engine. Its variance is high *at low levels* and *with poor system manipulation skills* but that rapidly disappears, and when you consider that 5th-7th level is the optimum for most play, a bonus = to half the dice roll+ seems reasonable.

yrs--
--Ben

BTW: Highest skill level for a starting character is higher than you think: +4 from attribute, +4 from skill ranks, +3 from skill focus feat, +2 from cosmopolitan or dual-skill feat for a total of +13. Which makes a pretty big difference on d20. And, yes, I've played this character before, so don't say it's "unrealistic."

Ben Lehman wrote: From a Gamist perspective, the damn thing is a brilliant work of art, and I will punch out the man who says otherwise.

talysman wrote: cool, a fight! are you gand Ralph going to be doing this in Jell-O? heh.

I like 3e very much.

I can understand why people might not like to play it, but I can't understand the ridicule, hostility and even hatred directed at it.

I also think that 3.5e is well worth it, as it manages to improve on what is already a very good thing.

Regards,

Hal

Ben Lehman wrote:
BL> No, we'll settle this like men. Pudding.

yrs--

Ben Lehman wrote:
BL> No, we'll settle this like men. Pudding.

Valamir wrote:
Alright, but only if its 1) cooked pudding, and 2) I get to eat the skin.

Hi folks,

I've found D&D to be a dysfunctional relationship. It only works as long as you don't play by the rules as written, and its way more work than it needs to be. Players got headaches dealing with character creation, I got headaches having to guess challenges because the challenge rating system is horribly inadequate for estimating things.

Feats, Spells, Special Abilities, etc. It's like playing Magic except you have to keep looking up the rules for each card across half a dozen books.

D&D is like the girl you love but can't never seem to get things to work out.

Chris

I beg to differ. D&D, 3 or 3.5, plays just fine when played exactly as written.

But you gotta want it, and you gotta work for it.

Hi Ethan,

I should qualify "works" as a fun game experience for me and anyone I play with. Granted, fun is different for everyone, but playing by the rules as written brought zero enjoyment to me, nor anyone in a group of 5 players, even with the understanding that we were going balls to the walls gamism.

What I found particularly broken was the challenge rating system...one CR 3 challenge was a breeze for the group, the next would almost slaughter them, and that's not even with any weird magic or special powers! The differences between AC, Attack, and Damage alone create a completely complex set of issues that would make an expert Gamist DM worthy of analyzing how fish prices in Peru affect global market economics :P

Chris

I hate levels sooooooo much...

That is... the D&D style levels where -everything- happens at once. You know... can't get better at Diplomacy 'till you also get better at swinging a sword.

I hate them! I hate them! I hate them! *pouts*

Know what I hate more than d20 D&D? d20 Star Wars. Ewwwwww....


-Eric

The positives:

D20 improved a lot of the issues I had with older versions of D&D.. Namely, how cookie cutter characters were. With feats, and skills being a little bit more prolific, My 3rd level Paladin differs from yours sufficiently to make me happy. I also like some of the alternate systems of hitpoints, such as those used by Star Wars D20.

The negatives: I still hate classes and levels. I have ever since I figured out that there was another way to do it. I think the alignment system is BS, too. Still hate hitpoints, even if they've improved their methods with them. Mind you, these problems aren't specific to the D20 version of D&D.

D&D 3.0 and 3.5 are fine games and very well designed and playtested for balance. I used to not really like D&D all that much, but then I started playing Living Greyhawk a couple of years ago. The people that are complaining that the encounter levels aren't balanced are wrong. My guess is that their DM didn't know how to play the monsters / opponents to the fullest extent, because I felt that exact same way before playing LG. Playing a lot of LG is like going to a DnD clinic; You learn about all aspects of the game from rules, tactics and character advancement paths.

You should play knowing full well that there are classes, levels, and alignments. A lot of people complain that these are "broken" but really they are the essence of what makes DnD. You should also play with miniatures and a battle mat. DnD is intended to be a minis game (plastics ones are available at $9.99 per collectible box :-)..).

Anyway, anytime RPGs are brought up in the fora, people invariably are playing D&D & act as if they've never heard of or considered anything else.

Bankuei wrote: I should qualify "works" as a fun game experience for me and anyone I play with.

I have 2 things to say about d20 and D&D3.5:

1) Most of the improvements they made really were improvements, and the new D&D really is superior to earlier versions.

2) A piece of crap with a nice red ribbon on it is still a piece of crap.

But I'm probably too judgemental.

Scourge108 wrote: 2) A piece of crap with a nice red ribbon on it is still a piece of crap.

Don't know don't care. I prefer other systems. I've never really been able to get into the d20 systems.

I don't agree that the new version is superior, but it really, really depends on what you want to do with it.

If you want to do dungeon crawls, though, which on some views is what D&D is about, the new version is by no means superior in all respects. The combat system is grainier and better defined, which can make for reasonably entertaining miniatures skirmishes. However, this is offset by the addition of a clunky skill system, which is not relevant to dungeon crawling at all, and the fact that monsters now have stats, skills, and feats, meaning that the amount of work necessary to design a dungeon for yourself has increased astronomically.

If you're playing more of a 'generic fantasy adventuring game', the flexibility of skills, feats, and prestige classes does allow for more meaningful characterization of your character. However, this is sort of a trap, in that when you sacrifice combat effectiveness (which you will unless your character idea happens to be an asskicker) the joys of playing the game will gradually decrease as the players who wanted to be combat asskickers always outshine you in the tense situations. The main reward of playing 3e is being able to take shit out in combat. If you are ineffective and your cohorts are effective, the game becomes a drag. So actually all that flexibility is really there for the minimaxers more than anything else.

Another problem is that if you play with only the official feats, there is a right answer as to which ones your character should take, but if you play with unofficial ones, many are broken or poorly integrated into the game as a whole. This means almost everyone I know who plays it patches the feat system for their home game.

Blah, blah, blah.

One thing I will say is this: I'm an old D&Der from back in the day, and I've had grand times playing the old game. But what I loved most about it, especially from the pre-1e/AD&D days, was the experimental spirit that came from everyone essentially having to reinvent the game for themselves. 3e does not foster this creative spirit. The Forge does. So I'm here at the Forge, not necessarily as someone who has a deep need to leave my fantasy roots behind, or as someone who had bad or broken experiences in D&D, but as someone who loved the challenge to my creativity that game represented. 3e doesn't give me that challenge any more. This place does. So I'm here learning from you all even as my Arduin Grimoires, yellow caltrop d4's, old Gygax and Jaquays modules, and all the rest still stay at the ready. Because even though I'm in many ways a simple-minded fantasy gaming grognard, I know what real progress and real creativity look like, and this is the one place I consistently find it in the current world of gaming.

My opinion about D20 (at least as it manifests in those gamebooks that put the "D20" label on them) can be summed up thusly:

Ralph was too generous and forgiving. But bully to you, those who have the fortitude and make-up to enjoy it.