Design defects in DnD

Ok here are three things that have always drive me up the wall in DnD.

My first pet peeve is the insanely low spells per day. If instead they had went with a mana pool or you can only cast X spells per hour with some big ones limited to per day (or per month even) then it would make sense. Here is how my level 1 adventurers go about their business.

Do a battle, expand spells. If no one is hurt wait 8 hours. Wash/Rinse/Repeat.

This is also related to my second complaint, it takes FOREVER to heal. Its at something like 3 hp per day. While somewhat realistic, what happens is you end up resting for an absurd amount of time (especially with TOEE lacking the cast heals while resting feature). Since I don't have the patience to rest 8 hours, have the cleric heal, rest etc I usually just let them rest for 10-15 days at a stretch. This means clearing to the temple takes a good 2-3 months! In that time I am sure some plans would of been fufilled and the temple politics would be completely different.

Which leads us to my third complaint. Hit points are an awful sytem to determine health. If a level one person has 8 hit points, meaning they can take 1 stab to the chest before dying, can a level 5 person take 5 stabs in the chest? A level ten 10 stabs in the chest? It makes no sense! I know that some argue its ability to dodge etc but thats not how its represented. The other big problem with hit points is there is no gradual degredation. If you are a level 10 fighter with 100 hit points and you have been reduced to 1 hit point, you fight just as good as you did at 100. Even though at this point your bleeding from 10-12 wounds, many of them pretty deadly. But as soon as you hit -1, you conk out.

Feel free to post your own mini rants on the Dnd system

 

yes. i have another one.
why does it take LONGER for someone of higher level to heal from the same approximated damage that a level 1 person has taken?

Sorry Errand Boy Niel, because of your incessant fed-exing, you're now twice as hard to heal after falling down that long flight of stairs than Barbarian George who's only ever kicked a giant rat in the nads.

Wtf?

 

You're forgetting the important rules... think of arnie movies where he gets a spike through his leg and just pulls it out and keeps on going - when he should've bleed to death in about 2 min. what this means is that heros can survive masive injuries and live - also heros almost never get hit in vital spots, thats how xenas armour works it doesn't cover any vital spots but it covers any part of her that her apponent will hit.

 

And we all know how heroic those fedexers are

Or how about this one:

"Because I delivered this package for that random man i met on the street, I now know the spell Cone of Cold! Amazing! And killing goblins really teaches me a lot about picking locks."

 

You're over-simplifying it. It's a combat simulation system, and not a perfect one at that...granted. But no one can take the 5 stabs in the chest, or the one. That isn't how it works. They don't get the deadly stab until they're at 5-8 hit points from combat losses, whatever their max may be. Experience points awards are different in the PnP game as well to reflect role playing, which is not possible to emulate with a computer combat simulator. The first level wizard using produce flame to ignite flammable materials & burn out a nest of rats would get more xp than if s/he stomped them to death; but not necessarily more than a rogue who did some similar feat within their skill set.

 

Depends on the battle, though. If you don't expend spells, then you don't have to wait. It's called resource management, you know. It's a core part of the actual strategy.

It's a pity Troika didn't let clerics automatically expend heal spells at the end of the day, like the IE games did. But it doesn't matter, since ToEE doesn't really track time. Good thing too, or crafting would be worthless.

I'll buy that hit points are kind of dopey, but they perform a very important function for the system. They let wizards cast really devastating spells without having them completely dominate the game. If the system tracked real injuries, then a fireball that killed a room full of orcs would also kill a room full of 10th level fighters.

 

Ah your supposed to post your own nitpicking, not defend the DnD system.

The healing of high level characters taking forever is a good point. I never thought of that.

I tihnk brunchingshuttlecock, now defunct, once pointed out that while Cleric heals are supposedly the gods granting power to heal grevious wounds, most players treat it about as sacred as ordering a big mac sandwich. "Yeah Ill take a lesser heal and a greater heal. Oh yeah I need a cure disiease too."

I think the points on resouce management are kinda mute, since I am a lame person who just fire balls each room and then retreats and has the mages wait 8 hours.

 

first off a character heals their level in HP per day (or level plus con bonus if your dm uses that optional rule). So a 10th level character does heal a bit faster than a 1st level character. A 1st level fighter heals roughly 10% of his wounds perday just as the 10th level fighter does. Actually, since a 1st level fighter starts with max HP he probably heals, by percentage, less than the high level character. That is unless the 10th level fighter has rolled maximum HP at each level increase. I guess its all in how you interpret HPs. Some people see HP as a measure of how durable your character is. I dont see it that way completely. In my opinion its a measure of both skill and durability. Each time you gain a level you get your constitution bonus (additional toughness) but you also get to roll additional HP based on your class. Fighters get more hit points because they learn to roll with blows, deflect solid hits, or anticipate the moves of a skilled attacker that would more seriously wound (by percentage of total HP) or kill a less skilled defender. Wizards get fewer HP because they focus on matters of the mind. Rogues fall in between but concentrate on evading blows (high dexteritry and reflex saves) as opposed to resisting blows. Another way to look at it is if a 1st level fighter is hit by 22 pts of damage it will likely kill him. If a 9th level fighter is hit by 22 pts of damage he is likely far from death. Is the 9th level fighters body more durable than the 1st level fighters? Maybe slightly (con bonuses built up over time) but the primary difference is skill. Another example is the Rogues sneak attack. When catching an opponant flat footed you are essentially depriving the opponant of their ability to defend themselves, whether it be a fighters ability to roll with the punches or a rogues mobility. Certainly a HP isnt the best way of tracking hits but from my experience it a is a system that doesnt involve too much paper work and doesnt slow down the game as much as other systems where a number of rolls are required to determine the severity of a blow.

TOEE is not exactly D&D either. When you mention the spells you should not be able to regain your spells every 8 hours. THey are spells per day (24 hour period). For example, a priest of pelor is granted new spells, with proper meditation, at the dawn of a new day. Bogging down the system by splitting some spells into mana based spells and others into perday/month etc may seem like a good fit but as someone who has played with systems like that I know that it tends to overpower spellcasters...that is if your into the game for roleplaying as well as combat. If you want to play miniatures then by all means blast away with your mana. True a fighter gets to swing his sword for as long as he has HP pumping through his body but when it comes to other aspects of the game like the use of knowledge skills, creation of magic items, or matters of stealth he is often left in the dust. As a whole a low level arcane caster is a terrible combatant but makes up for it in other ways during roleplay.

 

Ah you guys are no fun. I wasn't asking for defenses or explanations of systems cuz I have heard them all before My favorite roleplaying system has always been the first Marvel roleplaying system since it was so basic and easy that it really helped the game flow, so I completely agree that realism is not as important. Thats my main complaint with the spells per day system. It adds bookkeeping and forces the players and GM to provide safe resting places and villians who never do anything while the heros rest for another week or so.

Ok here is a big design defect with the 3.x version. The skill selection sucks! While the combat skills are ok, the non combat choices need a complete overhaul. Also the fact that non class skills cost so much should be changed. Every time my characters level they have a handfull of skills I actually want raised (more for rogues) and the rest I really don't care about. I just put them whereever to get past the screen.

 

Sorry man, but you can't seriously expect to bash d&d in a site with a game based on d&d and expect no rebuttal. Specially when most of us are big d&d players in the first place. As for your first complain about wizards, you should have seen the 2nd edition rules, I mean they're amount of spells was seriously horrible...in fact, I find that wizards in 3rd ed are dramtically overpowered. You get a bunch of more spells now, but that actually made the game fun. Eventually, a wizard probably becomes the most powerful class in the game, but a 1st lv wizard should never travel alone. He needs back up from other classes until he can develop his skills. As for a mana pool, if you want one play a psionicist. They're my fav class and have what you call psychic power points (PSP's), which works exactly like a mana pool and lets them use they're various psychic powers...which can be quite powerful. Too bad ToEE never included that class. As for healing, why wait to heal when you can use priest spells and potions? You're heroes damn it! I think mattra made a pretty good explanation on hp so there's no need to defend that. If you want a more realistic rpg you can also try GURPS. I don't know if anyones played it but I don't think you can get more real than that...at least in terms of rules. I, however, don't find it to be too impressive. There's one thing that everyone should remember, cRPG's never completely reflect real D&D. A serious DM won't allow you to gain Cone of Cold for completing a fed ex quest, it's absurd. Sure you can award a little experience, but a fed ex quest should usually involve slaying a dragon or two...or at least a random beholder who just happens to be guarding that wizard locked trapped chest which hold's the gate key to the 742ed layer of the Abyss, where you must travel to plant a rose..why? Because your God said so...oh, and you've gotta return that Balor's head he wanted too...of course, it was still attached to the Balor when he wanted it.

 

I think the class skills (especially Rogues and bards) give you more character defining choices. Many of the Class Skills are uneeded for other classes but the rogue is all about variant class skills. I wonder how you managed to waste your points? maybe perform or concentration? The healing rogue?:icon_chuc .

Perform is available as a Rogue skill (white) but has no use in Toee other than For the Bard's song ability. Maybe someone has since tweeked it:questionm but putting a point in it is, according to Toiksta, a bad bad idea.

 

So your saying the system is broken because DMs need to provide resting places for spellcasters when their spells run out? Thats not a broken system, thats a broken DM. My players have only ever tried to rest in the middle of a dungeon/villain stronghold once. After that we got to run the slavers series. Spellcasters learn to ration their abilities and prepare more carefully with wands, scrolls and potions.

You provided no examples here of any kind and called for a "complete overhaul." Have you ever even played the tabletop D&D 3.5 or are you basing this on TOEE which has only a fraction of the skills that the tabletop game has? Please at least make some kind of argument...right now you have no argument at all.

I will say this, when i was young I did enjoy the marvel roleplaying game. My friends and I actually pulled it out about a year ago to give it another whirl. While it was fun to relive some funny moments we found the game to be too simple and quickly gave it up for good. The 3.5 system is more complex but at this point I want my game to be more sophisticated.

 

woah, damn... you guys are taking this thread way too seriously.

 

I dont mind someone discussing the problems with the system. Thats how they get fixed but when you spout misinformation with nothing to back it up then it becomes annoying. No game system is perfect but if it bothers you that much then play something else.

BTW one minor mechanic of the game that I dont like is that if you want to use a spear one handed you are stuck with the short spear. What about the Hoplite or Phalanx? Those guys used massive spears with one hand and a shield in the other!

 

This was supposed to be a funny thread but it appears that when Moses came down from the mountain he had a third tablet with the DnD rules on them. So since the geeks living in their mom's basements are getting so offended I'll let this thread go.