3.0E's Jump The Shark moment?

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:18 am

Templates all suck. All of them are either broken, pathetic, or transition from one to the other during the course of the character's career.

Losing your class levels 3-6 is a lot less painful than losing levels 7-10, which means you are paying a scaling cost (as you level up, the stuff you're missing out on gets better and better) for static bonuses (very few templates actually give any abilities based on the user's level). That was never going to work, and I don't know who thought it was a good idea. And it's also why fighter sucks - because his levels 7-10 are the exact same as his 3-6, meaning he's falling behind everyone else whose higher level class features are actually higher-level class features and better than their lower-level class features.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:42 am

There was another stupid template, Saint. Everyone was clamouring for it for a while, so I'm tempted to assume it's shit and they're retards. But IIRC, it was one level (because "you should be serious about this, it's a roleplaying reward") in return for bonuses to everything (even save DCs), Fast Healing, DR, and some other junk.

Played half dragon a few times. Once, I accidentally became MVP (everyone else was useless, due to either bad tactics (the rogue) or being an Enchantment-specialist (specifically Hold Person/Monster) only for the MC to decide we should mostly fight constructs). The other two occasions, the level loss resulted in getting killed so hard his grandparents felt it.

And no joke, I once ran a game starting at level Big (15-ish), where one player wanted to be a Paragon Drow. That's like 13 levels right there, according to the book. She was looking at 64 HP (after massive stat mods, auto-Wishing everything to +5, and the max+12 that Paragon gives). Which is what, a single attack?

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:34 am

I'm pretty sure that 'paragon drow' is, in fact, all 15 of those levels.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:46 am

Oh yeah, that's right. It's apparently worth 15 levels to be Paragon (protip: it isn't. I don't care how fucking big the bonuses are), never mind Drow on top of that theoretically being worth dick.

ubernoob · Post by **ubernoob** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:24 pm

Saint is... pretty good. I wouldn't put it on a caster, but I'd gladly eat the LA on a charisma or wisdom DC based character.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:51 pm

I thought paragon by itself was 13, based on the ECL listed for the mind flayer in the, what was it, "complete joke book"?

EDIT: Drow is 2.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:45 pm

My moment was relatively late. MM4 and Codex Diabol...(?) comes to mind.
Didn't buy those books initialy, but got weak after D&D4 got out.

But I even have a bunch of 'The Dark Eye' rulebooks. Still hoping for an Frank-Style review from anyone for it...

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 11:18 pm

Is that the "Realms of Arcania" rules set? I totally trashed some of their recent computer game franchise offerings a while ago...

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:18 am

The Dark Eye is the (as far as I know) unsucessful english translation of Das schwarze Auge.
The character generation is GURPS like, with a (bad) twist.

You choose a race

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 8:27 am

The Dark Eye is the (as far as I know) unsucessful english translation of Das schwarze Auge.
The character generation is GURPS like, with a (bad) twist.

You choose a race, a culture and a proffesion.
Those give you 'stuff', but you can buy stuff afterwards too. Only this time you need to pay full price. If you have the orportunity to get stuff throug a race, culture or proffesion you get an massive discount.

The resolution mechanic is mostly 3d20 roll under.

The rules are seperated into basic, optional and expert...

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 6:11 pm

I rather liked the computer game for it.

PhoneLobster · Post by **PhoneLobster** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 2:04 am

I rather thought it was a terribad game of epic proportions, the modern one that is.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 5:13 am

The resolution mechanic is mostly 3d20 roll under.

3d20 roll under

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 6:53 am

I played DSA I think 2nd Edition, 20 years ago. It involved rolling three d20, and each was supposed to roll under a different target number. A similar system was determinded to see if you'd gain skill when leveling up as I recall - roll to see if you advance.

And that does not even touch the combat system's "roll attack... target rolls parry... roll attack again... target rolls parry... roll attack, target rolls parry yet again... roll attack... ah, you can roll for damage now! Or don't bother, your dagger won't go through the armor" set up, or the "You can cast a fireball for 6 magic points, and you regen 1 point per day..." magic.