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 Jesse Ariston |
D&D |
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Posts: 763 (06/27/09 7:19)
Jedi Knight
Master Mechanic Crippled Healer |
We have a lot of folks here who play or have played D&D - I'm wondering just how many!
What editions have you played and which did/do you like? What are your favourite classes? Races? Got any memorable stories from around the gaming table? Go go go!
Last Edited By: General Ceel 09/28/09 7:23.
Edited 1 time.
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Tristan Nathos |
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Posts: 827 (06/27/09 7:24)
Sith Knight
Death's Scion Something of a Killer |
"So how many Detect Evil At Wills do I get a day?"
^ I need say no more. I've played 3 and 3.5, and they were fun. I tended to play arcane casters because I like raw, destructive power. Woo! Oh, and let's not forget the time I managed to manipulate the Eberron setting to make the most ridiculously overpowered weapons ever using conductor spheres, and the time I fell from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil because I failed six consecutive Will saves against a succubus as a Paladin.
Last Edited By: Tristan Nathos
06/27/09 7:28.
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Shery |
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Posts: 4418 (06/27/09 7:42) Lady Shery deWinter
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I've played 3 and 3.5, but the tabletop roleplay campaign I enjoyed the most was a Hackmaster campaign (which was written as a pure parody for ad&d). I
was a half elf bard and rolled everything 15 and over for the stats
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Curt Falnath |
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Posts: 1439 (06/27/09 8:42) Pirate Prince
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I've played 3.0, 3.5, and 4e, my favourite is 3.5 and I'm not a fan of 4e. I've played most things, but my eternal favourites are skill based
classes, rogues/rangers/scouts, etc. As for races, I vary a lot but I tend to like Halflings, that said I really don't think I could make a solid choice
because I tend to like them all too much.
Funny story: We were playing a campaign which continued on from a previous one three game years later, one of the previous party (Elf Monk) had kept their old character. In the old campaign the Sorceror (Xull Daer) had been a skilled alchemist and had even ended up designing many alchemical creations for the world's mage guild, including an approximation of a grenade. The monk and the sorceror had also had a troubled past, which had been part of the reason for the old party breaking up, the monk being lawful good and the sorceror being a chaotic neutral/evil drow turned human. Our party in the new campaign was on a quest which I won't go into the details of for ease, and were overlooking a vast battle from a distance. Through a spyglass we were able to see small explosions being tossed about, which the monk identified as grenades, causing him to yell out in a fit of rage "%#%$ YOU XULL DAER!" We lolled. |
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General Ceel |
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wrong forum. Moving this to boxoffice and et
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Ayden Cater |
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Posts: 230 (06/27/09 10:14)
Rebel Adept
Part-time Smuggler Corellian Good Guy |
I've never gotten the chance to really PLAY a D&D campaign, owing to a lack of wanting GMs. Anna and I both prefer to play, and Anna's the only one
in our little group with the knowhow and even an inkling to GM, and GM well. But I've been soaked in 3.5, with some drabbling in AD&D and 4e.
I gotta say, I like 3.5 the best. AD&D was almost ridiculously complicated and 4e just never got that right chord struck with me. As far as classes go, I'm a fan of mage/warrior types, whether it be playing a Druid, Cleric, or Ranger, OR, multiclassing Fighter with Sorcerer or Wizard. Either way, it drives Anna up the wall sometimes. Admittedly, I'm a bit of a speciesist. I play almost strictly humans. I've made a few Elf and a couple Halfing characters, but I seem to drift back to humans. |
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Admiral Disra |
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Posts: 1328 (06/27/09 3:13) Imperial
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I've played 3rd Edition
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Jesse Ariston |
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Posts: 765 (06/27/09 5:05)
Jedi Knight
Master Mechanic Crippled Healer |
Sorry, didn't know whether this counted as the sort of media that goes here. >.<
I've played 3.5 and 4e, and I vastly prefer 4th. I joined the hobby pretty late in the 3.5 days when there were already two dozen sourcebooks out, and by that point the game was broken beyond repair. Maybe it didn't help that a lot of the people I was playing with were mathematicians who could point out exactly HOW 3.5 was broken, but our games often ended up with a huge variation of character usefulness that made things less than thrilling from a statistical point of view. In the few months before 4e came out we gave up statted roleplay altogether and just played freeform at the table. 4e's balance made the stats side of things interesting again, though it's not a great platform for RPing given the very set progression of characters - something I'm hoping new sourcebooks will change. |
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Ayden Cater |
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Posts: 242 (06/27/09 7:18)
Rebel Adept
Part-time Smuggler Corellian Good Guy |
I've heard mixed things about 4e. Some say it's great, others think it's absolute #@#+.
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 Anna Sachae |
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Posts: 1788 (06/27/09 7:21)
Imperial Deserter
Genius Technician Law-Abiding Criminal |
3.5 FTW. 4e is for WoW rejects.
Lessee, I tend to stick with humans or somewhat exotic races (merfolk, centaurs, etc.) because I either like to RP familiar, or very bizarre. I've played just about every class, but I tend to gravitate towards rogues and more subtle (enchantment, illusion, etc.) casters. Now, since 3.5 is senselessly and numerically broken for anyone munchkin enough to care about the zillions of sourcebooks (I have four, and I only use two), let's move on to pointing out how it's going to be completely impossible to break 4e, since everyone is the exact same. There's no variation on the way the power system works for anyone, everyone's abilities are based on combat to such a degree that most of them seem totally identical, and anyone can cast non-combat magic, thus taking much of the appeal out of the mage classes. I'll take "broken" 3.5 to blandly violent 4e any day. |
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Jesse Ariston |
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Posts: 766 (06/28/09 9:01)
Jedi Knight
Master Mechanic Crippled Healer |
4e is definitely a combat system, but at least it knows what it's trying to be. 3.5 is trying to do everything and not doing any of it well.
Even straight out of core with no additional sourcebooks, the caster classes' usefulness scale exponentially while the martial classes have a linear scale, making combat pointless for half the party anywhere other than between 5th and 10th levels. Heals as standard actions makes the support characters astonishingly dull to play since you can wait half an hour for your turn to come round and then pass it in thirty seconds saying "I cast cure light wounds at Tom. He heals six HP". Fights are generally slow and stodgy. Outside of combat, 3.5 does offer more specific rules for things, but with a half decent DM I'm not convinced that's such a good thing. Probably the most epic skill-based encounter I've ever been part of was a rooftop chase using the 4e skill challenge rules which seem a lot more interesting than the 3.5 single role system. I'll admit, I do miss the ability to buff sixth level characters up to the point where they were making skill checks from the Epic Level Handbook, but not enough that I'd trade the streamlined nature of 4e's skill system for it. |
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Corringath Ventraas |
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Posts: 2751 (06/28/09 9:38) C'orringath Ven'Traas |
One thing I like about 4.0 as opposed to 3.5 is how some of the skill challenges work. If you want to do something 'cinemtic and awesome' in either
edition, different things happen.
In 4th that cinematic thing (let's say, jumping on a stair railing hopping off, grabbing on to a chandelier and swinging to a far-distant door) is one Acrobatics check. Pass it, you're done. In 3.5? If you go straight by-the-book or are in a situation where you can't 'take 10' on something, that's a jump check to get on to the railing, a balance check to stay there without falling, another jump check to jump to the chandelier, and probably a climb check to grab on to the thing if the DM is playing everything straight. Oh, also, you may have to tumble to deal with fall damage too. That's 4, possibly 5 checks that you have to make, or rather 4, possibly 5 checks that you have a chance to fail, and thus, look like an ass.
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Darth Phantom |
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Posts: 7347 (06/28/09 10:12) Sith Master
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I used to play. I can't remember which edition it was though.
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Anna Sachae |
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Posts: 1793 (06/28/09 10:44)
Imperial Deserter
Genius Technician Law-Abiding Criminal |
The "streamlined" skill system is an excuse to get back to combat quicker. One skill check for five actions? No problem, now ride that chandelier
down and go fight more people! The extensive non-combat abilities that 3.5 has is what makes it fun for those of us who don't subside on violence 24/7.
Ayden and I like a bunch more violence than the rest of our group, and we still only want 40% of the campaign to be killing things in mass quantities.
Imagine how the other people feel about it.
No, 4e is out of the question if you're not so hopped up on killing things that you're willing to sacrifice the finer points of non-combat drama, suspense, strategy, and a host of other things just so you can have a more "streamlined" system. 4e is for combat nuts and WoW gamers. 3.5 is for people who want an engrossing roleplaying experience. |
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Peiori Caligga |
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Posts: 1695 (06/28/09 10:53) Rational Monster
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I suppose so. I play with a group of people that, killing things or no, like to be 'cinematic' with how their characters move and act, and 3.5
doesn't really facilitate that; that said, the fact that 3.5 has SO MANY sourcebooks is the reason I love it so much more than 4th. You can make a much
more interesting character mechanically in 3.5 than you can in 4th, assuming you're not making a crapton of homebrew stuff.
The increase in splatbooks also helps balance out the party; core cleric, druid and wizard, even with JUST the core are already much more powerful than the martial classes it's not funny at all (to the point that, when one of our friend's is faced with a SUPER restrictive DM, we just say "Go Druid 20 and make him/her cry."). By letting your players use the splat books, all you're doing is giving the martial characters more options and more power, you're giving the casters that power as well, but because they're already leaps and bounds ahead of martial characters by core, it's not nearly as big a deal. Many will say 'powerful characters are not needed', but with the CoDzilla it is very easy to ACCIDENTALLY make a very powerful character, and thereby risk making a party member, or party members, wholly extraneous and ruin their fun. That makes the game less fun for the member involved; why shoul Fritzbald the Fighter bother adveturing since Dave the Druid can perform his role twice over AND cast spells? I started playing about a year and a half ago, and the honest truth is, after looking at all the things you can do with 3.5 character creation, I'm just not ready to move on to any other system before I field a whoooole bunch of my ideas and characters, you know?
Last Edited By: Peiori Caligga
06/28/09 10:59.
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Anna Sachae |
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Posts: 1795 (06/28/09 11:44)
Imperial Deserter
Genius Technician Law-Abiding Criminal |
I'll go with that. I have to concede that, even with my hatred for the zillion sourcebooks that 3.5 has (thus making it so easy to munchkin), my favorite
concepts have come from sourcebooks. Drunken Master, Apostle of Peace, and perhaps the very top, the Dragonstalker...all of those are non-core prestige
classes. The "extra classes" for 4e boil down to three new attacks and one new ability. Someone catch me, I'm overwhelmed. *mock faints*
The one thing I think I like better about 3.5 than 4e is the fact that 3.5 is totally customizable in every way. In 4e, your customization boils down to choosing attacks, feats, and paragon paths. In 3.5, you chose your feats, skills, spells, specializations, and you can go with entirely different classes to do it all over again. In 4e, your "muticlassing" is restricted to a single extra ability. In 3.5, you can multiclass anything you want to and as many times as you want to, even if it makes your character insanely complicated or very weak, it's still totally up to you how you do it. |
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Jessan Solo |
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Posts: 6698 (06/28/09 2:32) Sith Master
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As a Wizard player, my preference actually lies within 3.0 Ed as opposed to 3.5 ed
. (Nerf my Fly to 1 min/level you wankers!)
Granted, we never used a bunch of sourcebooks. We had the three main books, and the Libris Mortis Book of the Dead, and maybe one of the setting sourcebooks for ideas (like Frostburn for winter campaigns). |
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Anna Sachae |
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Posts: 1798 (06/28/09 2:53)
Imperial Deserter
Genius Technician Law-Abiding Criminal |
House-rule it in. They attempted to nerf mages in general in 3.5, and make bards and fighters more powerful. They failed considerably on the second point.
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Ayreon Faraway |
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Posts: 1532 (06/28/09 2:56) Crimson Elite
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I've heard that Libris Mortis is a GREAT book for clerics, and just general undead stuff overall. I've only managed to peruse it a bit though... Seemed
cool.
Personally, I'm a fan of "The Tome of Battle", call it what you want, "the book of weeabo fightan magic" as some would call it, but it gives martial characters 'maneuvers', these actions that are akin to 'per encounter spells', but they're much weaker than the average Vancian per-day spell that it's more than balanced. It also gives martial characters something to do other than go "I hit it....Again.". I've heard many reviews of this book, and the general cosensus is that it makes martial characters more powerful and gives them choices in and out of combat; it's also been called "one of the most balanced splatbooks", and I've had fun with it, though one could argue that the three classes presented (the Warblade, the Swordsage, and the Crusader) are just flat-out BETTER than the fighter, the monk, and the paladin, and thus encroach on those areas, but I've always enjoyed playing a swordsage....
Last Edited By: Ayreon Faraway
06/28/09 3:08.
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Phylis Alince |
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Posts: 7738 (06/28/09 3:03) Jedi Master
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I don't like 4th Ed. I tried...I bought a couple of the sourcebooks and stuff. However, I just found that that as Anna said, it's now 90% combat. Now
you have to have a grid, miniatures, work out sliding and movement on a board...you might as well play warhammer! The good thing about the original D&D is
that you didn't NEED any of that!
The biggest problem is that wizards now only have combat powers. The rituals idea is interesting, but they're merely background waffle, rather than anything important. Of course, 3.5 had so many +#%$ books and stuff out that you could find ridiculous stuff. However, if you just take the official books and sourcebooks then it's pretty balanced. |
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Anna Sachae |
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Posts: 1799 (06/28/09 3:12)
Imperial Deserter
Genius Technician Law-Abiding Criminal |
Actually Phylis, I have to concede that at the core level it's the most unbalanced. Druids and Clerics are gods at later levels, wizards and
sorcerers grow exponentially and far outstrip any warrior class, and the only warrior classes that can do anything worthwhile are the ones that combine it with
supernatural powers. Paladins and barbarians are the staple melee characters for most campaigns because fighters really are underpowered.
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