By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
HoloDust on 29 July 2024
Edit Thread
Mummelmann said:
HoloDust said:

Ah, the fabled 3e - I always thought of it as being better as a VG RPG system, then actual TTRPG system - and one of the reasons is precisely of those min-maxer shenanigans you described. I think old D&D of players playing their roles, instead of their character sheets, died with release of 3e, to make room for best build optimizers and VG crowd, and that remains til present days, both in D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e.

Agreed, min-maxing is still a thing, but less problematic in Pathfinder 2E. Personally, I find that D&D 5E is too streamlined, and it's prone to to ending up as a demi-god simulator past level 10-12. They probably wanted to retain that epic sense of being a superhuman hero, but that spoils much of the experience for me. From what I understand, TPK practically never happens in 5E, and even single character deaths are rare. P2E manages to keep the sense of peril, without losing the sense of progress and achievement.

One good thing with my particular group of friends when playing 3.5, was that we were all already veterans, more or less. We were also, to a man, concerned with the "RP" part of RPG, and thus avoided min-maxing in favor of strong, personality/background/motivation-driven character builds. To me, the min-maxing occurred more often with new players, looking to bolster themselves for future encounters and wanting to be effective in combat. I suppose to each his own, even the min-maxers enjoy playing, but for different reasons. With my current group, which is a bunch of autistic guys aged 18-22, I find that combat motivates them more than roleplaying, for obvious reasons.

Oh, TPKs do exist in 5e, especially first few levels can be extremely deadly...but it's nowhere near as lethal as the old editions, or some newer OSR systems. As for Demi-God simulator, yeah, that's pretty much 5e at higher levels, though GM tools to support that kind of play are beyond terrible.

I concur with your assessment of 3e - if you were already familiar with D&D before that and resisted the push to get into min-maxing of 3e, system itself could be used fairly successfully for "proper" character TT roleplaying. But newcomers to hobby often saw character puzzle to be solved for maximum damage output and went for min-max optimizing, going on to play quite different game than what D&D was supposed to be. Personally, I never really bought into 3e much, it felt like WOTC's attempt to make sort of skilled based system, but not fully so, but let's have some, and let's add feats to it as well...and honestly, there was no reason for me to play, from my POV, subpar skill based system, with others doing it much better - so I mostly remained with 2e when it comes to D&D, until I made a mistake and bought into 5e for a while (which on surface looked like continuation of AD&D, but it's really not). I've only read Pathfinder 2e and it looks like much better system than 5e for what it's supposed to do, but it's not the type of game I'd personally run anymore.

My older son has High-functioning autism, and yeah, he is mostly interested in combat part of the game - pretty much all other parts are boring to him - so I absolutely get what you mean. Unfortunately, I tend to run exploration/puzzling/social interaction worlds, in systems that are not geared mainly toward combat, so lately he's been opting out of playing. I suppose I'll have to come up with some parallel, more of a murderhobo campaign for him, if I can get enough players for that type of game. ;)

Anyway, happy dice rolling, your country is in a way spearheading alternatives in TTRPGs via high quality products of Free League Publishing - I tend to really like their stuff, so far I own Forbidden Lands, Pirate Borg and Dragonbane (newest version of Drakar och Demoner), and been eying ALIEN The Role Playing Game - though I have to be honest, that last one is for the great art mostly and maybe more for ALIENS experience, I think for best ALIEN experience, Mothership RPG is probably the way to go.