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homullus posted:My inference from your post is that I did not make my point clearly. As a writing exercise, here is my point, made entirely with words that are one syllable: Straining your paragraph to make a condescending point actually makes it harder to read.... Anyway I don't think we can blame D&D for uncritical cargo cult design choices that permeates tabletop rpgs, and really any creative field.
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Apr 20, 2017 00:05
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Another thing to keep in mind is that prior to 3e all your class choices were finished the second you left chargen. Most classes got proficiencies at an incredibly low rate (skills, essentially), there were no feats to buy, and only humans could pick up classes as they leveled, with extreme penalties for dipping.
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Apr 20, 2017 00:07
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Don't forget about templates! You're not just making a Fighter1/Thief1/Sorcerer1/Baneblade4, he's also a half-dragon half-tiefling were-dire-shark. God that reminds me, I once made a character that was a were-deinonychus, because the were-creature template let you pick any animal and in 3.5, dinosaurs were technically animals.
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Apr 20, 2017 00:12
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plus, the 2001 3e class books were relatively chill, except for Defenders of the Faith. nobody had twigged to how ridiculous clerics were yet, and almost all of the other things people really complained about - arcane trickster, orb spells - turned out to be no big deal. the 2001 book that everyone noticed was full of OP player material was Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. so much so that the entire 3e FR line developed a rep for being overpowered splats tied to sourcebooks about minor details of every damned place in the stupid realms
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Apr 20, 2017 00:16
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Kai Tave posted:Back in the day a player rolling up to the table with the Complete Book of Whatever and saying he wanted to use this or that kit was more often than not viewed with suspicion, but when 3E baked feats and prestige classes into the core game it seemed to normalize it to the point that combing sourcebooks for more of them was just business as usual. Anecdotally this also might have been caused by 90s WoD stuff, where this kind of insane character cross-over stuff was more accepted.
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Apr 20, 2017 00:18
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Anecdotally this also might have been caused by 90s WoD stuff, where this kind of insane character cross-over stuff was more accepted. also the origin of the word splatbook, because of the asterisk noting that clanbooks etc. were not required to play
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Apr 20, 2017 00:30
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Kwyndig posted:Another thing to keep in mind is that prior to 3e all your class choices were finished the second you left chargen. Most classes got proficiencies at an incredibly low rate (skills, essentially), there were no feats to buy, and only humans could pick up classes as they leveled, with extreme penalties for dipping. hahaha no they weren't, let me tell you about AD&D 2E dual-classing
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Apr 20, 2017 01:08
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Nah, the splatbook name came from them being (blank)books - tribe, clan, etc. * designates a wildcard in some forms of programming, and is also called a splat. (Like you pointed out) So they got referred to first as *books, and from there, splatbooks.
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Apr 20, 2017 01:10
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:hahaha no they weren't, let me tell you about AD&D 2E dualclassing You'll see I mentioned those already, only humans could dual class and outside of a very long running very particular type of campaign was not worth it.
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Apr 20, 2017 01:11
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Kwyndig posted:You'll see I mentioned those already, only humans could dual class and outside of a very long running very particular type of campaign was not worth it. ah, sorry, my bad but dem AD&D dual-classing rules though
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Apr 20, 2017 01:11
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You think dual classing was bad, try becoming a Bard before they made it a starting character class.
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Apr 20, 2017 01:16
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I recall at one point having a detailed and solid understanding of the differences between multiclassing and dual-classing. God.
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Apr 20, 2017 01:38
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I liked the 4e Hybrids
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Apr 20, 2017 01:47
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Kwyndig posted:You think dual classing was bad, try becoming a Bard before they made it a starting character class. To become a bard, a human or half-elf had to begin with very high ability scores: Strength 15+, Wisdom 15+, Dexterity 15+ and Charisma 15+, Intelligence 12+ and Constitution 10+. These daunting requirements made bards one of the rarest character classes. Bards began the game as fighters, and after achieving 5th level (but before reaching 8th level), they had to change their class to that of thief, and after reaching 5th level as a thief (but before reaching 9th level), they had to change again, leaving off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage. Why? Verisimilitude I guess.
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Apr 20, 2017 01:56
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Plutonis posted:I liked the 4e Hybrids I would have liked 4E Hybrids more if they weren't the elfgame equivalent of an Early Access release. To their credit they said in big bold letters that the rules weren't at all well tested and the game hadn't been designed to accommodate unzipping half of one class and stitching it to half of another but regardless it was very much a return to the style of "you must possess THIS MUCH SYSTEM MASTERY to ride this ride" thing which 4E had largely moved away from until then, to the betterment of the game imo. It could have benefitted from a lot more polish but by that point in the line the tank was running on fumes so it's honestly pretty fortunate they work as well as they do.
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Apr 20, 2017 02:07
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4E Hybrids were basically "Figure out what counts as a basic attack and go loving nuts."
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Apr 20, 2017 02:19
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Plutonis posted:I liked the 4e Hybrids i would have liked feat multiclassing if they had done it better!
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Apr 20, 2017 02:32
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Kai Tave posted:I feel like there was also a shift in attitude regarding player-facing crunch as well. Back in the day a player rolling up to the table with the Complete Book of Whatever and saying he wanted to use this or that kit was more often than not viewed with suspicion, but when 3E baked feats and prestige classes into the core game it seemed to normalize it to the point that combing sourcebooks for more of them was just business as usual. This might have also been because it was piss-easy to snap 3E over your knee simply by playing a single-class Druid or Wizard right out of the corebook to level 20. What's funny is that, in my experience, people were a lot more skeptical that the guy who said he was Half-Dragon Fighter 1/ Rogue 3 / Totem Barbarian 2 / Whatever 3 was going to ruin their game than the person who just wrote "Cleric" on his sheet. I guess it's the same vague, unfounded fears that made people say Monk was the true overpowered class in 3.5e.
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Apr 20, 2017 02:37
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Was there a trend of popularity for class-less/point-build-type games in the late 90s/early 2000s that would have nudged 3e's design towards the modularity that it ended up having as being "in-vogue"?
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Apr 20, 2017 02:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:Was there a trend of popularity for class-less/point-build-type games in the late 90s/early 2000s that would have nudged 3e's design towards the modularity that it ended up having as being "in-vogue"? That was all White Wolf published.
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Apr 20, 2017 02:48
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gradenko_2000 posted:Was there a trend of popularity for class-less/point-build-type games in the late 90s/early 2000s that would have nudged 3e's design towards the modularity that it ended up having as being "in-vogue"? This was the time when GURPS was fresh and new, people didn't realize BESM was awful yet, and as Kwyndig said, every White Wolf vampire game was point buy (although they limited what you could buy based on what type of monster you were). This is also the era Champions and HERO came out. Point Buy was very much a big thing in the tabletop sector, at the time.
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Apr 20, 2017 02:52
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GURPS, regardless of its actual merit, did not strike me as the new hotness at any point in the 90s. But yeah, everything trended toward no races or classes. Bear in mind that the last version of D&D before 3e was published around 1995. So it was widely seen as painfully behind the times yet still dominating the market, and almost everyone else defined themselves in opposition to it, in one way or another. My pet theory is that this is why so many games in the 90s were simultaneously concerned with both "roleplaying not rollplaying" but also realism.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:01
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gnome7 posted:This was the time when GURPS was fresh and new, people didn't realize BESM was awful yet, and as Kwyndig said, every White Wolf vampire game was point buy (although they limited what you could buy based on what type of monster you were). This is also the era Champions and HERO came out. I wouldn't say GURPS was new, but the 90's were an exciting time for the game with Third Edition and the Compendiums out making it the most comprehensive universal system on the market. Of course it wasn't necessarily good, but it was comprehensive.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:03
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I think GURPS and Call of Cthulhu are the kings of selling supplements to people who don't even like the base system. I've never played GURPS, but I have a copy of Warehouse 23. (Has anyone F&Fed that yet?)
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Apr 20, 2017 03:10
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The Saddest Robot posted:To become a bard, a human or half-elf had to begin with very high ability scores: Strength 15+, Wisdom 15+, Dexterity 15+ and Charisma 15+, Intelligence 12+ and Constitution 10+. These daunting requirements made bards one of the rarest character classes. Bards began the game as fighters, and after achieving 5th level (but before reaching 8th level), they had to change their class to that of thief, and after reaching 5th level as a thief (but before reaching 9th level), they had to change again, leaving off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage. Okay, get to 7th level Fighter (70,001 xp) then 8th level Thief (70,001 xp) then 10th Level Bard (110,001 xp). You'd still tie a single class Fighter going to 9th level (250,001 xp) plus you'd have 7d10+11d6 (plus any Con bonus) for Hit points versus the FIghter's 10d10 plus Con bonus along with Thief Skills and up to 4th level Druid spells. I played an AD&D Bard and he was a complete badass.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:19
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gradenko_2000 posted:Was there a trend of popularity for class-less/point-build-type games in the late 90s/early 2000s that would have nudged 3e's design towards the modularity that it ended up having as being "in-vogue"? Monte Cook wrote for Rolemaster before he joined 3e's design team.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:27
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Kai Tave posted:I would have liked 4E Hybrids more if they weren't the elfgame equivalent of an Early Access release. To their credit they said in big bold letters that the rules weren't at all well tested and the game hadn't been designed to accommodate unzipping half of one class and stitching it to half of another but regardless it was very much a return to the style of "you must possess THIS MUCH SYSTEM MASTERY to ride this ride" thing which 4E had largely moved away from until then, to the betterment of the game imo. It could have benefitted from a lot more polish but by that point in the line the tank was running on fumes so it's honestly pretty fortunate they work as well as they do. So as far as system mastery gatekeeping, it's pretty benign. I'm sure I'm forgetting about an over the top hybrid combo that wasn't errata'd out, but I can't conceive of one that couldn't be identified and appropriately nerfed into acceptability quickly.
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Apr 20, 2017 03:38
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Comrade Gorbash posted:One thing hybrids expose is just how well set up most of the base classes are, because it takes a lot of effort to make a hybrid that works as well, let alone one that works better, even with basic attack shenanigans. They have a niche in that they can handle some corner case concepts better than any default class build, but I've never felt the need to build a hybrid in order to compete in terms of power. If you could find a hybrid class pairing that shared a primary and secondary stat you could make some fun combinations at least, like paladin/barbarian or shaman/invoker.
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Apr 20, 2017 04:22
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Nuns with Guns posted:If you could find a hybrid class pairing that shared a primary and secondary stat you could make some fun combinations at least, like paladin/barbarian or shaman/invoker. While they weren't strictly superior in any real way, I had fun in two different games playing a Monk/Invoker (to do a Divine mostly controller melee/spellcasting mix) and a Swordmage/Warlock (that existed to give the DM as many Catch 22's as possible during play with as many conditions triggering as possible on ignoring a mark or attacking the character). There's a few degenerate builds and a lot of non-functional results you can get from it though.
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Apr 20, 2017 04:39
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The Saddest Robot posted:To become a bard, a human or half-elf had to begin with very high ability scores: Strength 15+, Wisdom 15+, Dexterity 15+ and Charisma 15+, Intelligence 12+ and Constitution 10+. These daunting requirements made bards one of the rarest character classes. Bards began the game as fighters, and after achieving 5th level (but before reaching 8th level), they had to change their class to that of thief, and after reaching 5th level as a thief (but before reaching 9th level), they had to change again, leaving off thieving and begin clerical studies as druids; but at this time they are actually bards and under druidical tutelage. I always felt like the original bard was trying to emulate the myth of Väinämöinen. Almost certainly not true, but it always made me think of it.
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Apr 20, 2017 04:43
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Alien Rope Burn posted:I always felt like the original bard was trying to emulate the myth of Väinämöinen. Almost certainly not true, but it always made me think of it. Druidic training is a reference to the OG bards of pre-saxon Britain who trained under druids as well.
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Apr 20, 2017 04:53
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Yeah, I just meant the combination of the shamanistic training with being a supernaturally good singer and a badass sneaky warrior and basically anything else the story needed out of him. At least until a baby trash-talks him so bad he decides to exile himself from Earth.
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Apr 20, 2017 05:10
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I just meant the combination of the shamanistic training with being a supernaturally good singer and a badass sneaky warrior and basically anything else the story needed out of him. Please stop doxxing me.
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Apr 20, 2017 06:21
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Countblanc posted:Please stop doxxing me. Well maybe you shouldn't trash-talk people then.
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Apr 20, 2017 06:24
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Yeah, I just meant the combination of the shamanistic training with being a supernaturally good singer and a badass sneaky warrior and basically anything else the story needed out of him. Väinämöinen is a 3E Bard. The baby is a 4E bard. The Kalevala was written by a hardcore edition warrior. 
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Apr 20, 2017 10:09
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gourdcaptain posted:There's a few degenerate builds and a lot of non-functional results you can get from it though. Oh, definitely. A game designed around niche-based abilities that key off specific stats as a whole didn't play well with rules based around awkwardly stitching together two halves of separate classes. It didn't help that the hybrid rules were super inconsistent on which class features would be lost/locked behind a feat, which left some classes gutted as hybrids and some not
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Apr 20, 2017 12:57
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I love how AD&D evolved to reward you rolling high stats by giving you a better class, too. Then this became the basis for Wizardry.
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Apr 20, 2017 14:17
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The fun part is when you look at the probability of being able to play these classes when using the default option of 3d6 down the line for stats. This blog might be poo poo generally, I haven't read any of its other posts, but it has a decent rundown of the odds of being able to play various classes. Highlights: in 1e, assuming 3d6 down the line, your odds of qualifying for Bard are 0.0017%.
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Apr 20, 2017 14:39
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Mors Rattus posted:The fun part is when you look at the probability of being able to play these classes when using the default option of 3d6 down the line for stats. It was a head-scratchingly bad idea for AD&D 2nd Edition to go back to 3d6-down-the-line as the default stat generation mechanic, when AD&D 1st Edition's default stat generation was 4d6-drop-lowest-arrange-as-desired. I still don't understand it. Gygax was telling people ten years prior that 3d6-down-the-line was a bad method now that they weren't playing OD&D anymore.
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Apr 20, 2017 14:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:It was a head-scratchingly bad idea for AD&D 2nd Edition to go back to 3d6-down-the-line as the default stat generation mechanic, when AD&D 1st Edition's default stat generation was 4d6-drop-lowest-arrange-as-desired.
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Apr 20, 2017 15:31
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