The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I know that there are lots of people out there who really like the d20 system and D&D 3rd edition. I would agree with you that this work stands far above any of the previous works by TSR, especially the D&D line. But that still does not make this a great game. In my opinion, it doesn't even really make this game any better than a lot of other games on the market.

First, I would like to start with all of the really positive things about this game.

First, WOTC was very smart in setting up the open gaming license. It really allowed this edition to take off. When other people support your game for you, and also say that they have to use your product in order to use their product, that is a good thing. In addition, they really did it the right way. There are a lot of good things happening with D&D, and most of it has very little to do with WOTC. I take my hat off to them, that was very well done.

Second, this book is pretty well laid out. The graphics and art are very pleasing. The descriptions are very good, and there aren't any obvious editing errors (I haven't seen any at all). In this industry, that is pretty hard to come by.

Third, they did make this system more flexible. The skill system allows for a lot more gradiation between skills and players and makes it so that your characters do become more skilled as they go up in level (something you couldn't do before). It also gives stat increases and makes some efforts at making it possible for two fighters to be very different even though they are still two fighters.

Fourth, they made the races make much more sense. There was really no reason in the other editions to not play a demi-human. They got lots of really cool powers and stat increases basically for free. It made it rare to have any humans in the game, when humans were supposed to be the most populace race.

Fifth, the class system is much improved. The muliclassing and dual classing rules never made sense in the previous editions. These rules are definately an improvement.

Sixth, the system is much simpler now. The d20 roll for basically everything but damage is very nice and is easy to teach new players to the game.

Now, some of the lower points to the game.

First, the game still has a class system. No matter how much improved the system is, it still pigeonholes the players into a finite number of classes. There are a lot more variations, but the fact that it is impossible to play a wealthy wizard (starting gold second only to the ascetic Monk in how low it gets), just never made sense to me. Yes, you can take other classes and you can do lots of nifty stuff with it, but at the same time, there is literally no way to do many character concepts without either the Prestige Classes (more on this later) or making up a new class altogether. To me, if the system did not have classes, this would make a lot more sense.

Second, this is a level based system. Again, the level system is much improved, but it is still there. The characters are these static beings who learn nothing at all for months, and then suddenly gain a revelation and learn all these things at the same time. Poof! You are now harder to kill than yesterday. You have been building up to this point for a few months now, and suddenly you get more hit points. Not a few at a time, but all at once. It is simple and it gets the point across, but at the same time, there are a lot of better ways to do it.

Third, there are some serious flaws with the skill system. Again, it is much improved, but there are some things that can happen that just blow my mind. Here are a few examples just from the game that I am running right now:

Example 1 - Dwarven fighter who actually has the jewelry making craft skill. He has played his character very well and uses this as his motivation to adventure. Great so far. He finally gets his hands on one gem and enough gold for a ring. He is now third level, and has been consistently working on his craft skill (he now has a 4 rank). With his stat bonus, he has a 5 to his roll. Supposedly, he is basically an apprentice, or maybe just becoming a journeyman jeweler. He decides that, since they had some time in game while the party healed from that nasty Ogre combat, that he would craft his ring. He of course rolls a 20 on his die and creates a masterwork ring on his first attempt at doing such a thing. This wouldn't seem so bad, except that the next time he tries to do the same thing, he doesn't roll so well and creates something merely okay.

Example 2: Our wizard has a very low strength (he has a 7). He got into a bad situation and basically got into a wrestling match with a local brawler (Str 16). The party was 2 rounds away from helping him, so what was this hapless scawny wizard to do? Well, break free from the strength hold of course! On this purely strength related feat of amazement, the wizard not only broke the hold, but actually succeeded in holding the brawler down until the party got there. Why? Because statistically he has about a 30 percent chance of doing so. In actuality, the weakest of the weak (STR 3) vs the strongest of the strong (STR 18) has a 25 percent chance of winning in a purely strength based action.

Now I am not saying that a someone new to a craft can't have a spark of supreme inspiration. Nor am I stating that a very weak human being will never stand a chance in an arm wrestling contest with Mr. Universe. What I am saying that DC 20 for a great result from a skill gives a 25% chance for a begineer to have that spark of supreme inspiration and that my 2 year old daughter is not going to beat me arm wrestling 25% of the time.

Fourth, the classes that they created for this game have some serious flaws. I have heard that the creators of this game tried to make the classes as balanced as possible. No one class is to be more powerful than any other. I must say that they failed miserably. The cleric class is by far more powerful than any other. Before the weakness of the class was that if they wanted to have those nice healing spells everyone was counting on, they couldn't have much else. No more is that a problem. They also get many of the spells that wizards get, some of them at lower levels, and some of them they get more powerful versions! Not only this, but they outpace the wizard in the number of spells they get per day, even if the wizard specializes and gets a bonus spell. On top of all these advantages, they get d8 HP per level, can cast in armor with no chance of spell failure, can use all of the metamagic feats, and get a decent selection of weapons. People will also often forget that clerics can select spell from the entire spell list, while wizards can only memorize what they have in their spell books, which cost 100 gp per page. They also only have spell focuses most of the time, where as wizard sometimes have consumable spell components that can cost even more per casting.

The worst part in my mind is the example of a necromancer. This is the evil bad guy from almost every book. In D&D 3rd edition, this better be a cleric. Animate dead is a 3rd level spell vs. 5th level for wizard (it is the same exact spell). In addition, the cleric gets two advanced version of the spell where they can not only animate ghouls, ghasts, and wights, but even vampires and ghosts. On top of everything, the spells state that the character can only control so many hit dice of undead at a time. This is to "control" the undead horde that the character can create. It then states that this does not affect, nor is it affected by, the cleric rebuking the undead and controlling them that way. Oh, and by the way, clerics have access to all of the monster summoning spells, a better version of wish (miracle), better version of summon elemental, fireball, acid storm, and the list goes on and on. They even get more granted powers based upon what aspects of their gods they want.

Druids are almost as bad, although they don't get quite the number of spells, they still outpace wizards in their casting ability eventually (including speciallists). They don't get that nice turning thing, but they do get twice their hit dice in animal friends. This of course means that eventually they get their own group of animals that can help destroy basically anything. Just imagine the 10th level druid with another 20 HD of animals and some summon sylvan ally spells, and you get the picture.

Fifth, the main books (Player's Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual) give setting information in the book. Things like deities, and the like. I have my own world, and I do not use their deities. I have had no less than four players try to create characters based upon the deities found in the PH, simply because it is assumed that you are using them. This means that a lot of the information in these books are completely extraneous. Since the system and the classes are supposed to be generic, so that anyone can do what they want to it, why didn't they put this in their setting book?

Sixth, they did a really poor job on their Prestige classes. I really thought that this was a good idea. It really gives a player something to work their character toward. In addition, with all the splatbooks coming out, we could get a whole lot of variety on the characters played, which is a good thing in my opinion. What did they screw up? 80 to 90 percent of the prestige classes put forth by WOTC require the character to be evil. This is a hobby that has traditionally been criticized for its glorification of evil characters. Why open it up even further? The PH even states that players should not play evil. Why in the player's guides are the vast majority of the prestige classes require the character to be evil? It even happens the DMG. The fully half of the prestige classes require an evil character. I don't have a problem with this in the DM oriented books, like the DMG, but in the player's guides, this was really silly. They really should have made the prestige classes more for players and less for NPCs. They didn't do this.

Seventh, there are still some pretty obvious flaws with the races. The best example is the Gnome. The biggest real advantage to playing a Gnome is that they get some cool little cantrips. Play a wizard or Illusionist Gnome, and you lose a lot of the advantage of getting them for free. The result? I have never once seen a Gnome Illusionist. I have seen two or three Gnome Fighters, quite a few Gnome Rogues, even a Gnome Ranger.

The small races are also a wonder to me. If you want to min/max your character, always play a small race. Why? Well, you get bonuses to hit, bonuses to AC, and a lot of your equipment simply weighs less, simply because you are smaller. Yes, you do get a negative to your strength, but the 2 to dex for the Halfling more than makes up for that. At GenCon they had a session on min/maxing your character. Their first recommendation? Always play a Halfling unless you are a Barbarian or Monk. Then play a Half-Orc. This will generally be the best way to make your character more powerful. Yes, they did a better job on their races. They still need some work.

Eighth, the index in each of these books really sucks. It is really hard to read and does not have nearly enough of the important references to actually find stuff in the book. To me, this is fairly minor, as this happens quite a lot.

Personally, I think that on its own merits, there is more bad about 3rd ed. D&D than good. However, I also think that this has been very good for the industry and has brought in a lot of new players that would not have even looked at the hobby without this game. I just wish that they had done a better job with it.

D&D 3rd Edition
D&D 3rd Edition Playtest Review by Nightshade on 08/11/01 Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 2 (Sparse) This product stands head and shoulders above the previous editions of the game. That still does not mean this is a good game. Product: D&D 3rd Edition Author: Various Category: RPG Company/Publisher: TSR Line: D&D Cost: $20 Page count: Year published: 2001 ISBN: SKU: Comp copy?: no Playtest Review by Nightshade on 08/11/01 Genre tags: Fantasy	I know that there are lots of people out there who really like the d20 system and D&D 3rd edition. I would agree with you that this work stands far above any of the previous works by TSR, especially the D&D line. But that still does not make this a great game. In my opinion, it doesn't even really make this game any better than a lot of other games on the market. First, I would like to start with all of the really positive things about this game. First, WOTC was very smart in setting up the open gaming license. It really allowed this edition to take off. When other people support your game for you, and also say that they have to use your product in order to use their product, that is a good thing. In addition, they really did it the right way. There are a lot of good things happening with D&D, and most of it has very little to do with WOTC. I take my hat off to them, that was very well done. Second, this book is pretty well laid out. The graphics and art are very pleasing. The descriptions are very good, and there aren't any obvious editing errors (I haven't seen any at all). In this industry, that is pretty hard to come by. Third, they did make this system more flexible. The skill system allows for a lot more gradiation between skills and players and makes it so that your characters do become more skilled as they go up in level (something you couldn't do before). It also gives stat increases and makes some efforts at making it possible for two fighters to be very different even though they are still two fighters. Fourth, they made the races make much more sense. There was really no reason in the other editions to not play a demi-human. They got lots of really cool powers and stat increases basically for free. It made it rare to have any humans in the game, when humans were supposed to be the most populace race. Fifth, the class system is much improved. The muliclassing and dual classing rules never made sense in the previous editions. These rules are definately an improvement. Sixth, the system is much simpler now. The d20 roll for basically everything but damage is very nice and is easy to teach new players to the game. Now, some of the lower points to the game. First, the game still has a class system. No matter how much improved the system is, it still pigeonholes the players into a finite number of classes. There are a lot more variations, but the fact that it is impossible to play a wealthy wizard (starting gold second only to the ascetic Monk in how low it gets), just never made sense to me. Yes, you can take other classes and you can do lots of nifty stuff with it, but at the same time, there is literally no way to do many character concepts without either the Prestige Classes (more on this later) or making up a new class altogether. To me, if the system did not have classes, this would make a lot more sense. Second, this is a level based system. Again, the level system is much improved, but it is still there. The characters are these static beings who learn nothing at all for months, and then suddenly gain a revelation and learn all these things at the same time. Poof! You are now harder to kill than yesterday. You have been building up to this point for a few months now, and suddenly you get more hit points. Not a few at a time, but all at once. It is simple and it gets the point across, but at the same time, there are a lot of better ways to do it. Third, there are some serious flaws with the skill system. Again, it is much improved, but there are some things that can happen that just blow my mind. Here are a few examples just from the game that I am running right now: Example 1 - Dwarven fighter who actually has the jewelry making craft skill. He has played his character very well and uses this as his motivation to adventure. Great so far. He finally gets his hands on one gem and enough gold for a ring. He is now third level, and has been consistently working on his craft skill (he now has a 4 rank). With his stat bonus, he has a 5 to his roll. Supposedly, he is basically an apprentice, or maybe just becoming a journeyman jeweler. He decides that, since they had some time in game while the party healed from that nasty Ogre combat, that he would craft his ring. He of course rolls a 20 on his die and creates a masterwork ring on his first attempt at doing such a thing. This wouldn't seem so bad, except that the next time he tries to do the same thing, he doesn't roll so well and creates something merely okay. Example 2: Our wizard has a very low strength (he has a 7). He got into a bad situation and basically got into a wrestling match with a local brawler (Str 16). The party was 2 rounds away from helping him, so what was this hapless scawny wizard to do? Well, break free from the strength hold of course! On this purely strength related feat of amazement, the wizard not only broke the hold, but actually succeeded in holding the brawler down until the party got there. Why? Because statistically he has about a 30 percent chance of doing so. In actuality, the weakest of the weak (STR 3) vs the strongest of the strong (STR 18) has a 25 percent chance of winning in a purely strength based action. Now I am not saying that a someone new to a craft can't have a spark of supreme inspiration. Nor am I stating that a very weak human being will never stand a chance in an arm wrestling contest with Mr. Universe. What I am saying that DC 20 for a great result from a skill gives a 25% chance for a begineer to have that spark of supreme inspiration and that my 2 year old daughter is not going to beat me arm wrestling 25% of the time. Fourth, the classes that they created for this game have some serious flaws. I have heard that the creators of this game tried to make the classes as balanced as possible. No one class is to be more powerful than any other. I must say that they failed miserably. The cleric class is by far more powerful than any other. Before the weakness of the class was that if they wanted to have those nice healing spells everyone was counting on, they couldn't have much else. No more is that a problem. They also get many of the spells that wizards get, some of them at lower levels, and some of them they get more powerful versions! Not only this, but they outpace the wizard in the number of spells they get per day, even if the wizard specializes and gets a bonus spell. On top of all these advantages, they get d8 HP per level, can cast in armor with no chance of spell failure, can use all of the metamagic feats, and get a decent selection of weapons. People will also often forget that clerics can select spell from the entire spell list, while wizards can only memorize what they have in their spell books, which cost 100 gp per page. They also only have spell focuses most of the time, where as wizard sometimes have consumable spell components that can cost even more per casting. The worst part in my mind is the example of a necromancer. This is the evil bad guy from almost every book. In D&D 3rd edition, this better be a cleric. Animate dead is a 3rd level spell vs. 5th level for wizard (it is the same exact spell). In addition, the cleric gets two advanced version of the spell where they can not only animate ghouls, ghasts, and wights, but even vampires and ghosts. On top of everything, the spells state that the character can only control so many hit dice of undead at a time. This is to "control" the undead horde that the character can create. It then states that this does not affect, nor is it affected by, the cleric rebuking the undead and controlling them that way. Oh, and by the way, clerics have access to all of the monster summoning spells, a better version of wish (miracle), better version of summon elemental, fireball, acid storm, and the list goes on and on. They even get more granted powers based upon what aspects of their gods they want. Druids are almost as bad, although they don't get quite the number of spells, they still outpace wizards in their casting ability eventually (including speciallists). They don't get that nice turning thing, but they do get twice their hit dice in animal friends. This of course means that eventually they get their own group of animals that can help destroy basically anything. Just imagine the 10th level druid with another 20 HD of animals and some summon sylvan ally spells, and you get the picture. Fifth, the main books (Player's Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual) give setting information in the book. Things like deities, and the like. I have my own world, and I do not use their deities. I have had no less than four players try to create characters based upon the deities found in the PH, simply because it is assumed that you are using them. This means that a lot of the information in these books are completely extraneous. Since the system and the classes are supposed to be generic, so that anyone can do what they want to it, why didn't they put this in their setting book? Sixth, they did a really poor job on their Prestige classes. I really thought that this was a good idea. It really gives a player something to work their character toward. In addition, with all the splatbooks coming out, we could get a whole lot of variety on the characters played, which is a good thing in my opinion. What did they screw up? 80 to 90 percent of the prestige classes put forth by WOTC require the character to be evil. This is a hobby that has traditionally been criticized for its glorification of evil characters. Why open it up even further? The PH even states that players should not play evil. Why in the player's guides are the vast majority of the prestige classes require the character to be evil? It even happens the DMG. The fully half of the prestige classes require an evil character. I don't have a problem with this in the DM oriented books, like the DMG, but in the player's guides, this was really silly. They really should have made the prestige classes more for players and less for NPCs. They didn't do this. Seventh, there are still some pretty obvious flaws with the races. The best example is the Gnome. The biggest real advantage to playing a Gnome is that they get some cool little cantrips. Play a wizard or Illusionist Gnome, and you lose a lot of the advantage of getting them for free. The result? I have never once seen a Gnome Illusionist. I have seen two or three Gnome Fighters, quite a few Gnome Rogues, even a Gnome Ranger. The small races are also a wonder to me. If you want to min/max your character, always play a small race. Why? Well, you get bonuses to hit, bonuses to AC, and a lot of your equipment simply weighs less, simply because you are smaller. Yes, you do get a negative to your strength, but the 2 to dex for the Halfling more than makes up for that. At GenCon they had a session on min/maxing your character. Their first recommendation? Always play a Halfling unless you are a Barbarian or Monk. Then play a Half-Orc. This will generally be the best way to make your character more powerful. Yes, they did a better job on their races. They still need some work. Eighth, the index in each of these books really sucks. It is really hard to read and does not have nearly enough of the important references to actually find stuff in the book. To me, this is fairly minor, as this happens quite a lot. Personally, I think that on its own merits, there is more bad about 3rd ed. D&D than good. However, I also think that this has been very good for the industry and has brought in a lot of new players that would not have even looked at the hobby without this game. I just wish that they had done a better job with it.

D&D 3rd Edition