Is D&D 3.5E better than Pathfinder 1e?

Okay, here we go. Prepare for impact.

I love Pathfinder 1e, one of my all-time legendary games. No question the entire game is a masterpiece. It fixes many of the 3.5E problems. The design is solid. The expansions are legendary. The volume of work, to this day, beats any edition of the game.

I love Pathfinder 1e.

Is it an S-Tier game.

Hands down.

But the game has problems, in fact, it inherits all the 3.5E ones and adds its own. There are a lot of "gimme" powers, like the force missile (and other similar 3 + INT mod per day) shootee-powers that all wizard schools got, which were the precursors of today's cantrips. In 3.5E, the wizard is closer to the AD&D 2e wizard, and you get no "laser pistol" like you do in Pathfinder or 5E - your memorized spells are it.

Yes, that means in 3.5E, wizards are back to slings, hand crossbows, or buying wands of magic missiles, but that is spending money and thinking cleverly at the low levels. This is old-school and cool; it isn't a problem. Also, you are spending money, which is good. Too many modern games have nothing to do with money, and it is useless as a concept.

The hit dice are too high in Pathfinder 1e. I like the classes with the d4 hit die, and that feels like D&D to me. Damages are higher in Pathfinder 1e than in D&D 3.5E.

Pathfinder 1e also has the Golarion new-car scent all over the game, and it is hard to break it apart. It heavily leans into the imagery of Golarion, with the football-headed goblins and Paizo tropes, and I can't get away from that flavor. Pathfinder makes the same mistakes D&D 4 did, as it heavily leans into product identity and owned IP. Pathfinder and D&D 4E do not feel like generic fantasy games.

Some of the cutesy tropes in Pathfinder changed the world. Goblins are not enemies anymore since they are so iconic to the world and setting. You make the art appealing and endearing, and the entire game slides down into relativism, making every monster your best buddy and pal. Evil doesn't want its own space, and any land given will be used as a base to attack others. They want to sack, desecrate, and burn down everything that doesn't worship the horned devil.

Why?

The horned devil says so.

The line between good and evil was obvious in D&D 3.5E. There were no "story game" mechanics tracking corruption (Rise of the Runelords, later, Pathfinder Horror Adventures) that gave you an excuse for why your character did something evil. In D&D 3.5E, if your character did something evil, it was 100% player choice, and you lived with the consequences. I was shocked when I realized how stark the choices are in D&D 3.5E versus Pathfinder "padding" your choices with "uh-oh!" style rules.

In Pathfinder, the line between good and evil is blurred, and in Pathfinder 2E, there is no line. the evolution of tieflings from being half-demon blooded dhampirs who fought against demonic urges to pastel-skinned cosplay costume horn and tail options to use with a Russian accent - and this tells you everything you need to know about modern performative, influencer-friendly gaming.

Today's games are Fortnite-inspired dress-up pop-culture tripe. We left story gaming a while ago; it is all cosplay adventures. It might as well be the "banana guy" in the dungeon.

D&D 3.5E felt more generic and usable for any fantasy world.

Pathfinder 1e was written for Golarion.

The classic D&D 3.0 Deities and Demigods book had 40 pages devoted to the D&D pantheon. Another 100 pages were devoted to classic pantheons, such as the Greeks, Egyptians, and Asgardians. Most of today's DDG-style books focus exclusively on the "Licensed IP" deities, and Pathfinder does that, too.

Generic fantasy gaming feels like it died with D&D 3.5. Past this point, you either had to go to the OSR, or ignore huge parts of Pathfinder, D&D 4, and D&D 5 just to get what we had back then.

A nice 3.5E SRD can serve as a generic set of fantasy rules for any world, and it makes consistent sense while preserving a lot of the old-school assumptions of magic, classes, and how a fantasy world works. A 3.5 SRD does not have the "owned IP" of Wizards and Paizo and feels genre-neutral.

We need a Creative Commons 3.5E SRD, and that would go the next step into fixing the damage done to the community. I hope this happens, and I am ready to mend those bridges.

Besides, if I were running Wizards, there would be a drop down of "what edition do you want to play" on D&D Beyond, and it would be an inclusive, for every fan place - zero-edition all the way to 5.5E. The company needs to get out of "owning rules" and deeply into the "social network" part of the hobby, and this is where there is money to be made. Same maps and figures, same micro-transactions, the rules are just the backend parts you swap out for your favorite version.

Wizards, please, Creative Commons all your edition SRDs. This is the only way to force yourself to move forward. Holding onto these will force you into "old think" and keep you from realizing the dream of creating a space where everyone can play, no matter what edition they prefer.

You won't make money selling books.

You will make money being the place to play them.

D&D 3.5E feels closer to AD&D than it does 4E or 5E. Pathfinder 1e feels closer to D&D 4E and 5E. There was a point there in the 2010s where things moved away from the old-school, and embraced the Internet and social networking. The games embraced identity. The old-school assumptions were cast aside. You saw this even in the creation of the OSR at this time, D&D 3.5E could hold its own against the OSR, and you didn't need older editions. When Pathfinder 1e came along, the same rules felt and played like something modern and slick. This was the fork in the road that created the split between modern gaming and the OSR.

D&D 3.5E is the last of the old-school games. I still criticize it for the scaling-hit points, but that trend started in AD&D 2nd Edition. It is also heavily inspired by MtG, but not to the point where character builds take over the game. Since you don't get "heaps of special abilities" when you multiclass, it isn't as beneficial as in Pathfinder or D&D 5.

If you do multiclass, you are likely working towards a prestige class, which was mostly done away with for the most part in Pathfinder and all versions of D&D after this. Prestige classes are fantastic, and they give you something to work towards. I miss these. In new games, they constantly make "new classes," and you have nothing to work toward. The prestige classes in 3.5E are still amazing; you have a laundry list of prerequisites to fill, and once you do, you can start leveling up a new excellent class.

Parts of 3.5E are hilariously anarchistic and silly, like the "use rope" skill (that had a synergy with the climb skill) or how there is no "acrobatics" skill, and it is split into "jump, tumble, and balance." But these quirks make the game endearing. Skills have synergies! There is no penalty for unskilled use; it just defaults to your ability modifier. Some skills disallow unskilled use. You get a lot of skill points and can customize deeply.

In fact, these skills are very narrowly defined and apply to specific dungeon situations. I could see a wizard buying a few points of the balance skill (not a class skill for them), especially if dungeons have parts like shimmying along cliffs or narrow ledges. I can't see a wizard in modern games buying "acrobatics," a terrible skill with an awful name. Acrobatics sounds like my character will jump through flaming hoops in a circus. Pathfinder 1e adopted the acrobatics skill and piled jump, balance, and tumble under it - and it was a terrible decision.

D&D 3.5E skills were designed with the dungeon in mind.

Pathfinder 1e was designed as a generic RPG ruleset.

Skills' quirky and clunky nature is a charm of the system, not a problem that needs to be fixed and streamlined. Sometimes I feel the "acrobat" skill in newer games gets ignored, whereas here, having three different parts to improve means you will use them - or decide a few parts aren't for you, so you will pass on them. Plus, "use rope" is so stupidly nerdy and geeky that it has a charm of its own.

Pathfinder 1e was designed to sell "adventure paths," which were the beginning of "story gaming." Thus, the skills had to be more like a generic game to cover all the situations in the paths. D&D 3.5E was designed as a tabletop miniatures game, with skills and abilities that laser-focus on dungeon crawling. In D&D 3.5E, the story was equally the reasoning for the dungeon and the stories the players wrote through play. In Pathfinder, the story was primarily a sales vehicle for adventures.

I can play D&D 3.5E without a story and just as a dungeon crawler. Oh, you need to make a balance check for these squares to pass! D&D 3.5E was designed for a younger audience as a board game.

With Pathfinder, I can, too, but the game is designed for story gaming and leaned into mature themes to sell itself as such (and, in many cases, pulled them back from 3.5E).

Pathfinder 2E, ironically, abandoned the mature themes and returned to being a board game.

Story gaming is not dungeon crawling. I can play story gaming with any rules-light game and have a better time. True dungeon crawling is a board game.

Pathfinder has a lot of flashy, beautiful art. This was the game to play in the 2010s. It did a lot of things right. But it changes a lot, and it introduces a lot of modern mechanics. The game exists because Wizards made mistakes and abandoned a good thing. Pathfinder and D&D 5 feel closer to ARPGs and MMOs than the tabletop gaming I grew up with. Pathfinder 2 went its own way.

Pathfinder 2 also has this corporate aesthetic, a definite look and feel, and it is warping into an extreme style today, almost entirely stylized and overly careful and in some ways, oddly pedestrian with a softer feel. Pathfinder 1e had an edge to it.

D&D 3.5E has a unique style, stylized but classic in some ways. I liked the "lost tomes of knowledge" feeling, like the books were a part of the world you were playing in. Parts of the art were sketchy, like the books were created by adventurers or wizards, and informing you on how to survive in this world.

But more than presentation, playing D&D 3.5E felt like you were navigating through rules, class progression, levels, stories, and the world. When you got to a prestige class, it was the feeling of arriving to a new land after a long voyage. The books as tomes of knowledge helped reinforce the concept, and they were a part of the game.

No, it isn't better. Both games are products of their times. But D&D 3.5E is completely different than Pathfinder 1e. Calling Pathfinder 1e "D&D 3.75E" is a false statement, since Pathfinder embraces modern design theories, which you see advanced in Pathfinder 2E.

Also, D&D 3.5E feels more like Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms to me than D&D 4 or 5E ever will, or for that matter, Pathfinder 1e. This is the world's "home system," and this is when all the new content for these worlds stopped. The world books, gazetteers, and guides all stopped here - and there is a reason for that. Modern designs need to do specific worlds better, while 3.5E's design, especially with prestige classes, could see you working towards taking a particular job or role in the world as part of your progression. I can buy a book covering a part of the world and find new prestige classes in there.

In 5E? Every character multi-classes and combos these generic base classes, and you don't work towards anything except more damage and greater power.

But 3.5E exists as a system that was "taken away from us."

Pathfinder 1e was a reimagining with a modern style and art, and it was not the same thing. A lot of the rules were SRD clones, but going back and reading 3.5E again, I can say PF was a different game entirely built out of the same parts with a few upgrades and designed for a specific setting and story gaming.

We have never had anything like 3.5E since.

While D&D 3.5E and Pathfinder 1e are almost the same game, there are two key areas of difference.

Design and tone.

One is a story game that sells a world and adventure paths and begins the slide into identity gaming.

The other is a dungeon game meant to be played with miniatures, which preserves the old-school tone.

Dungeon Crawl Classics: The 3.5 Mod

I was doing some thought experiments on the best game to use as a Dungeon Crawl Classics expansion, and I went over the normal ones from Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, Old School Essentials and a few others. But one obvious one crossed my mind...

D&D 3.5E. These are still available, and the core books have PoD options, so it is an interesting combination of systems. There is even a nice SRD available, and the combination can be run for very low cost. Note, even though Pathfinder 1e is D&D 3.5E, I am sticking to the originals since there is less added "fluff" to the characters, like the force missiles wizards get for free. Pathfinder 1e is a "gimme" game, and it is modded to give everyone lots of cool powers. It gets way more complicated as a result, and that comes at a price.

DCC feels like a 3.5E set of rules. They preserve the Fort/Ref/Will saves. The class attack bonuses are in-line with 3.5E. The games feel and play very similarly.

So, why use the game as an expansion? Well, DCC says "steal a magic item system," so 3.5E does a good job of being that game. Another reason is for the monsters, since the attack values are close, the monsters should be usable, given the AC values.

"Should" is relative, since the AC values in 3.5E tend to start at DCC values, and then move up to about 5 points higher than DCC's monsters at the high end. DCC caps its levels at 10, and 3.5E goes up to 20, so the higher-level challenge needs to be there in 3.5E versus DCC. There is a "max level" difference between 3.5E and DCC that causes the values to skew off at higher levels. Where a giant has an AC of 20 in DCC, the same giant in 3.5E will be AC 25.

Also note, that the ability score modifiers are higher in 3.5E than in DCC, where in DCC a 15 is a +1 and a 16 is a +2; in 3.5E, a 15 is a +2, and a 16 is a +3. This makes a difference in to-hits and in general raises the AC values a few points between the games. If you use 3.5E monsters for DCC, AC and hit points in general should be about 20% less. Attack damage is about the same, though that could be 20% less, if you find it too hot. If a monster has multi attacks, those should be given dice down the chain as the action die, just to be fair (and to use all the dice).

So, as a "stuff book" 3.5E works for gear, magic items, and monsters - given a few tweaks and changes.

The 3.5E Mod for DCC

But what if you used DCC as the 3.5E game engine? This is using DCC to drive the game, but most all of 3.5E as the content. The parts of 3.5E we use are:

• Use 3.5E monsters, gear, and treasure, as-is.
• Use the 3.5E ability score modifiers.
• Use 3.5E's races, as-is, any race can be any DCC class.
• Use 3.5E character generation.

What parts of DCC do we use?

• DCC classes and spells are used.
• DCC combat is used.
• Spell burn, spell checks, divine power, spell duels, and all magic rules use DCC.
• The DCC engine runs the game.

So, what is not used?

• The 3.5E classes and spells are not used.
• Except for magic items and spell-like abilities.
• DCC's race-as-class is not used.
• Or it is optional, racial modifiers and abilities apply.
• The CR and encounter balancing system is not used.

It does not seem all that special, other than now using a tougher set of 3.5E monsters, along with higher ability score modifiers to offset the higher AC's and hit points. Well, there are two new additions to the game with this mod:

3.5E Feats

The DCC rulebook mentions adding a feat system. Well, this is how you get it! I may eliminate feats that impersonate the mighty deed of arms die, such as cleave. If you had cleave, it would probably let you do that without doing a mighty deed, and let your deed die add to attack and damage as usual.

Remember all characters get a feat at first level, and humans get a bonus feat. This will go a long way to helping to-hits with weapon focus and help bring down that higher AC, and the increased power should help with the more challenging monsters.

Also, remember that fighters get bonus combat feats according to their class chart. This will begin to make them very overpowered, but the monsters are far tougher in this mod, so it should balance out. Who knows? You aren't using the CR system anyway, so tough is relative.

You could just say, "A feat at level one and every even level," for all characters, and be fine.

3.5E Skills

This is optional, but it sounds really strange. You could use the 3.5E skill system, with a few modifications. Since the thief skills "are" 3.5E skills, being forced to buy them does not make sense, and it overwrites the DCC thief skills. So skills only as an option, and with these special rules:

• If a character has a skill given by a level, the modifier is as-is.
• No points need to be spent on these!
• Skill point costs are as-per 3.5E.
• The highest level of a skill is the one that counts.
• Use the 3.5E DC system and suggested difficulties.

So a lawful thief, with a +1 pick pocket skill in DCC, could but the 3.5E skill "sleight of hand" up to a +4 at level one, and have that as their "pick pocket" skill, overwriting the +1 innate to the DCC thief class. At level 4, this skill increases to a +7, and if the thief spent no more points on that skill, they would have a +7 (overwriting the lower of the two, the 3.5E skill level of +4).

That same character, if all they want to do is use their innate pick pocket skill in DCC, does not need to spend points to raise the 3.5E skill "sleight of hand" to that level, or spend any points at all on it, if they choose.

This will lead to thieves having a lot of skill points to spend, but it also reduces the need to have a high INT to have all those points to spend, which was a flaw of the 3.5E skill system. This also frees up points for knowledge, craft, and performance skills; since skills are not crucial to class abilities anymore. If a class gives you it, you get it, no points needed.

Normally, DCC has no use for a skill-system - everything is covered with ability checks. This lets you have an optional skill system that is not tied up in keeping class skills maxed out. Some classes will get new abilities (fighter and the class skill of climb, jump, ride, and swim) to spend points on. The characters will be a bit more heavy, but be able to interact with 3.5E adventures and skill challenges.

Also, note the skills search, spot, sense motive, and listen (all WIS) will become very important, since 3.5E has these "sensory skills" and DCC does not. These will often be untrained skills (in 3.5E a +0 modifier for skills, plus any ability modifiers), and work as normal.

Wargaming Roots: Wargame Complexity

A fun little snip on the design of the Tunnels and Trolls Adventures mobile game's "about" page strikes an interesting point here about the development of pen-and-paper games and the hobby's wargaming roots:

In 1975, as role-playing games were beginning their rise to popularity among the gaming community, Ken St. Andre found himself dissatisfied by the complexity and inaccessibility which rules systems of other games presented newcomers to the genre. Seeking a game with which to introduce his friends to the world of interactive storytelling, Ken set out to create a lighter and more flexible rules system which would provide players with greater latitude for heroic feats. He did away with the often times dauntingly complex stat sheets and tables found in the wargames from which the first RPG was descended, and created a game more inspired by the deeds of comic book superheroes. Ultimately, Ken named his game Tunnels & Trolls.

We have come a long way from the Chainmail "wargame" style rules to a more player-focused and I feel accessible B/X style, and then from there I feel we went deep into the wargaming side of the hobby again with D&D 3rd and 3.5 Edition, Pathfinder, D&D 4, and then D&D 5. Our wargame roots are clearly on display and this has spawned an entire group of games these days that are more accessibility focused than complex wargame focused.

More Complex These Days?

In some ways, I feel we are way beyond the complexity of the 1970's wargame-roots games, especially with Pathfinder, D&D 4, and software like Hero Lab. D&D 5 I feel took a step back from the abyss, but I still feel the older B/X games and their clones do a better job at controlling complexity and focusing the action more on the adventure rather than the character.

Some products make me smile, like the Pathfinder Strategy Guide, a great book that tries to tamp down the complexity of the base game, explain things to beginners, and make a complex system easy to use. But really, when I think about it, I get this feeling if the effort were put into making the system easier and not needing a book like this would be a more laudable goal. Games that are simple and accessible to beginners do not need how-to books.

Part of me likes the complicated game though, and there are fans of this hyper-detailed genre of gaming, again, hearkening back to our wargaming roots and having detailed World War II wargmaes with rules for jammed turret rings, smoke capacity, the ammunition capacity and depression limits of of bow-mounted tank machineguns. I have played wargames like those, and while the one or two times that level of detail comes up in a 6-hour game you may be happy to have these rules, more often than not I find rules like this slow the game down more than they do add value.

I feel the same with detailed character generation systems. Our tendency as designers is to add more, to make options for every possible character type and background, and through universal inclusivity we weigh the system down so much we end up needing multiple pages for one character. Genesys requires three sides of paper for each character, and that has hurt our desire to play what should have been a simple storytelling game. Pathfinder, the king of complexity, requires Hero Lab these days, and it is not uncommon for us to be printing out six to twelve sides of paper for each character.

Less is More

And I look at the single-sided one-page character sheets of Labyrinth Lord and other B/X games and I see a lot of wasted space, and that is a good thing. I could do a B/X character on a quarter sheet of paper and put four to a side and still have plenty of room. Back in old-school Traveller we put one character on two lines of a sheet of notebook paper.

We still had fun with those games because we ran fun adventures and we didn't need detailed character essays for each player to pour over. I get this strange feeling at times that games use complexity to drive interest these days, that somehow a detailed character generation system makes up for a lack of compelling adventures and stories. That is really an unfair statement for many games, but I see so many games that are 90% character creation systems and then assume everything else, story, adventure, and how to have fun comes for free.

I would rather play a game that was 10% character creation and 90% story and background. Call of Cthulhu and Dragon Age are good examples of modern pen-and-paper games that minimize the game rules while maximizing story content and background information. I would put T&T in this category as well, especially with the incredible world-book in the Tunnels and Trolls Deluxe Edition in the latest version of the rules.

B/X and Labyrinth Lord? These are more giant toyboxes with 10% character design and the rest of the 90% are monster, spell, and magic item lists. That toybox content is the story and background. There are times when I like this, since I make my own stories and worlds anyways, and other times when I miss having that world and story to play through (and save me the work).

How far off are the more modern games from the toybox model? It is a bit tougher to judge I feel, since you have a good portion of these games tied up in character design and it grows in size the more books you add to the system. My generic rule is: if a computer program makes character creation easy and error free, the character design system is heavy. If it takes me more than 5 minutes and a sheet of paper to design a character that is too long.

If you need to pass a book around the table for players to design characters you have dependencies in there that should be streamlined onto the character sheet (or eliminated from the game). If I play Pathfinder with a group again I would love to have class-specific character sheets, one for paladins, one for rogues, and so on...

Everything to Everybody?

It brings to mind the question, "How much character design do you need to tell a story?" There is a point where there is too much, where you are making a feat to cover a bonus to every possible action and interaction, such as a feat that allows you to call a truce during combat. These sorts of feats rub me the wrong way in two ways: this is codifying roleplaying and creativity, and you are adding unneeded complexity to the character design system. Without this feat...you can't roleplay this? When I am refereeing the game it becomes another added "thing I have to remember" in order to play when the one character in a thousand's player actually bought this feat and expects it to come into play.

In T&T or B/X? Hell, make a CHR saving roll or roll under Charisma at a minus whatever and we are done. In most every other game it is an ability score roll, the current situation, and referee judgment. Done.

In the 1970's wargames there was this tendency to start simple, and then balloon complexity with each new expansion and revision. Track performance in taiga and mud for armored vehicles. Fuel performance and ambient temperature. Snowshoe size versus snow type. Curvature of the Earth and muzzle velocity of off-board artillery. Most of the rules had some historical event behind them and they probably affected the outcome of some real-world battle somewhere...but there is a point where enough is enough.

If I equip my desert soldiers with snowshoes does that give them a movement bonus? If my winter partisans carry large desert water packs at what point do those freeze? Do I need a table for that?

And the more complicated wargame goes in the closet and the new game that was designed for fast and fun play goes on the table. That is where I am with Pathfinder. Completely bought in with both books and Hero Lab and we never play it really all that much. Great customers and lousy players.

Simple Games are More Fun for Me

So I come back to the old versions of games, the retro-clones, and some of the classics made back in the day where they saw this problem and designed against it. Labyrinth Lord and B/X. Tunnels and Trolls Deluxe Edition. Other classics. There are some new games, such as Savage Worlds and FATE, that attack complexity of character design versus story and those are worth mentioning too.

I see a collection of huge books for a gaming system and my reaction is, "I don't have enough time for these anymore." Instead of feeling bad I switch games that I do have the time for. I am sensing another round of boxing games up coming here soon. It is a sad thing but also a good thing, since it lets me focus on games I want to play (and it frees up space for more games, like Traveller's new edition).

My thing is, play what you love - and some people love the complexity. I have moods when I love all the detail and choices. Be happy if you can find people who love what you do and play with them. As my players dwindle and I find myself more and more alone, my tastes and needs change. I want less record keeping and design. I want solo play. I want smaller rules and tighter designs. I want more story and world, and less rules. I want attribute systems that handle many things, and less flipping through books to find a rule that handles a special case.

My tastes are changing more towards the retro-clones and classic games that I started the hobby with because those are what I love and where I find the most comfort.

Character Design and Balance

Going back to Labyrinth Lord and it's simpler characters made me think about the supposed advancements in character design from D&D 3.0 and forward. This also includes  non D&D systems with detailed character design systems where the variance in character power (the min-max factor) varies widely based on design choices. Let's do some charts!

The above reflects B/X systems, Basic Fantasy, Labyrinth Lord, and most other pre D&D 3.0 designs. As your character goes up in levels, their power goes up on a predictable, fixed rate. A 5th level fighter is pretty similar in powers and fighting ability as most every other 5th level fighter in a B/X style system, given average hit point rolls (that and gear determine character power). As a result, the balance curve is tighter.

Note that this chart only compares characters of the same class, the differences in balance between classes, such as mage and fighter, is still wildly different and follows D&D's asymmetrical system of balancing the glass cannon spellcasters versus the front-line meat shield martial classes. So we are comparing fighters to fighters, and mages to mages here. Let's turn the clock forward to newer games and look at systems with a wider variety of character design choices:

The next chart is character design as we expect systems with a lot of character customization. You can pick feats to enhance your combat power, you can make all sorts of other tweaks and design decisions to favor a weapon or power, and there is a wide latitude in choices of character design. This chart also reflects games with a wide difference in choices where a great character design can blow out the game's difficulty curve. This is also what we by default expect as well - since we want our choices to matter, and we expect good choices to be rewarded well.

The yellow area reflects abilities, feats, class powers, and other abilities outside of the normal hit points, to-hit, and spells from B/X. Pathfinder and the D&D games 3.0 and up have this "extra added" group of abilities normally found in character creation and  bonus class abilities (like a Pathfinder mage's force missiles or D&D 5's infinite-use cantrips). In short, the yellow area covers all the possible customization and extra powers that differ from B/X characters.

Above the red line are optimal designs, while below it are less-optimal - and this definition can vary depending on the referee and how the group plays. If you play all combat, then good designs will focus on combat. If you play mostly social, then good designs will be social-focused. Balanced social/combat games will see balanced social/combat character designs push above the line.

There is also a baseline difficulty adjustment that should be mentioned as well, since a B/X level one character is the weakest, a D&D 3.5 level one is a little stronger, and so on up to Pathfinder - at least among the fantasy game versions I am used to. D&D 4 and D&D 5 are a little more difficult to compare since hit-points and damages are scaled up.

But this covers these games well and a high-level view of character design expectations. I say expect here because this is often how a game looks when you first play it. You see hundreds of options and your first assumption is they are all good. As you play, you naturally discover the good from the bad, the feats and characters design choices that make your character excel, and the chart shifts a little to the actual chart below:

Character designs have a tendency to min-max towards the greatest effectiveness. As a result, the game's balance trends towards that area in green, because everyone wants the game to be exciting and fun, with encounters that challenge well-designed characters. As a designer, you want to narrow the range for balancing content, because there will be less variance in monster strength and encounter design.

Balancing All This

If I am a game designer, I want that green area to be as tight as possible (while still feeling good). You don't want too much difference between an average character and an optimized one, because you don't want min-max'ed "best" character designs blowing out average encounters. You want them doing well and feeling good about their choices, but you don't want them pushing everything over with ease.

Less than optimized characters? I don't really care about them and they can fall off the balance curve if they are terribly designed. You want some of this "lots of terrible designs" thing going on so you can create that 'system mastery' feeling in your game where you try repeated designs and discover what works best and what gets you towards that red line of average expected competence and character power. I remember somewhere where the designers of D&D 3.0 said they included less-than optimal choices in character design just to fill out a range of good choices and bad choices, just like deck building in Magic the Gathering. The silly non-historical double-ended greatswords and warhammers come to mind...

Now, if every character design choice is equal? You are back to the B/X chart and none of this matters. I am sort of reminded of D&D 5's system, where if you want to be a certain type of fighter you pick the ability you are expected to take, such as the Fighting Styles and Class Archetypes in that system. The entire character design system in D&D 5 is a lot tighter than games like Pathfinder, with less choices but more focused in both balance and the abilities you are expected to take given how you want your character to perform. The envelope is tighter in D&D 5, but there are still bad choices given what you want to do (taking an archery fighting style as a fighter and never using a bow, for example).

Why This Matters

As a player? I want to design and min-max, and that is a big part of the fun for me. I also want the game to be balanced and have the fights not be too easy or too hard.

As a referee? I want to be able to predict player power to balance encounters and not have the game either be too easy or result in a total party wipe. I also do not want "design as distraction" where players experience choice paralysis or the entire design system takes over the game.

Both players and referees want balance and to avoid the extremes of too easy or too hard. I like the encounter balancing systems of the newer rules, but for me as a referee, I never really had a problem balancing a B/X experience either - although I know that opinion is outside the current view of things.

To me, in a B/X experience, balance was more of a player-focused concern - they knew what they could fight (based on experience), and they were the ones who had to judge if they should open that next door. My secret "good DM" promise to players was not to put any monsters on the current level that would wipe them all out in the blink of an eye (something again, I learned through experience and the simple and mostly predictable nature of B/X combats plus limited monster lists). No ancient red dragons above dungeon level 7, please. Keep hit dice equal to dungeon level and player level, and use quantity and encounter composition to match party strength. Got it.

If I screwed up encounter balance and things started to go very badly? GM fiat time. Make some monsters weaker, have some run away, give the players an out, or make the monsters hold back a little out of caution. Fudging rolls was usually a last resort for me, and if I did, it was usually on monster to-hits while the players made a hasty retreat to lick their wounds and regroup.

Player Skill versus Design Skill

There are times when I want to take character design skill out of a game and just have a system that rewards creative play and player ingenuity. If your level 5 fighter is just like every other, then how you play them will make a big difference in your success or failure. Of course, there is the factor of random chance, but part of playing an old-school B/X game also involves a bit of risk mitigation and understanding random chances and trying to control odds.

I have had games where the character designs felt like they took over the game, and the players were focused on getting a numerical advantage through character design. I have seen games where a character's design and numerical advantage acted as a disincentive to attempting actions outside of their area of expertise. It is like am archery-focused fighter way above the range-combat power curve hesitating to get into melee combat because their character is only average at melee fighting.

A good referee will force characters outside of their comfort zones, but I found game systems with heavily min-max'ed character design systems make doing that a lot harder. I have had players disengage rather than be forced to fight outside of their numerical comfort zones. I don't blame the players though, I blame the game for putting them in that mindset. Some games tend to punish you hard for that risk-taking and out-of-the-box play, such as D&D 4 and the amount of optimizing needed to keep up with the content's ever-increasing challenge level (at least when we played, it changed several times as new monster manuals and revisions came out).

System Forgiveness and Flexibility

D&D 5 for us tends to be a very forgiving system. There is a lot of healing, character death is more difficult, there are many options and infinite-use spells for casters, and the game feels more like D&D 4's sort of MMO-inspired experience that is more player-friendly and focused. Characters are also mechanically complex with a lot of design options given the type of character you want to play. The game is also more story-focused like a modern narrative game, and as a result tends to reward "story based play" rather than the old-school "slay and loot" style.

B/X systems, for us, are a lot simpler, the characters are fast to design and die often, and the entire system is a lot less forgiving of bad luck or mistakes. They can approach the difficulty level of today's "rage games" in some insta-death adventures, and I find my players are a lot more crafty when they have less options and character advantages to fall back on. With less mechanical abilities, my great players are always trying to come up with creative ways to manipulate the situation to their advantage despite not having the "rules tools" to do so.

I have also seen less experienced players in old-school games "freeze up" because they don't think they can do much outside of "cast the spell" or "roll an attack." This is one of the hardest skills to pick up in systems that ;eave a lot up to interpretation, knowing that you as a player are free to come up with anything you can imagine you could do, and also that you are the referee should encourage and support those crazy plans and actions through fair judgments using the dice and/or ability scores to determine the chances to succeed or fail.

D&D 5 moved back from the "cover everything" sort of rules design where there are detailed rules for every action and leaves a lot up to players and referees. B/X systems are already there and I feel as a whole that moving back to more interpretive systems where less is more is a good thing. I don't need rules for everything, just guidelines on general things and me and my group  can take it from there.

My Current Feelings

I like what they did in D&D 5 to tighten up that character design curve. I don't like the double-scale hit-points and complexity of characters, though I can see why they did that in regards to player-friendliness. As a player, I like the character design choices because they let me specialize (at the cost of complexity though).

I like B/X a lot, because the numerical and design model is simple and the choices stark and unforgiving. It is like a pure form of chess to me, where the danger level is high and the rules unforgiving and completely straightforward without a high degree of complexity. I like the glass-cannon and simple nature of B/X casters, and even their power level compared to martial characters. That asymmetrical balance, especially if you severely limit 15-minute adventuring days through good refereeing, and this really appeals to me.

I like B/X resource management a lot, with casters worrying about an ever-dwindling supply of magic, the party's resources being drained, and that whole elevation of risk as the dungeon crawl goes on. B/X does this for me, as a player I love the discussions among the players about "should we tackle the next room?" There is a very strong risk and reward cycle going on here for me, and there are no distractions with factoring in numerical superiority through character designs into that calculus of character life and death.

It is a strange sort of realization. When I play a game with less character design options, and less story options, what I find interests me comes out better. There are times when I crave a good story and a great mathematical min-max'ed character, but I don't need them all the time and actually enjoy the lower-level risk-based play B/X excels at - at least for me and my group. I enjoy all of these games for different reasons, and no one is better than the other, and some do things better than others.

My Ideal Dungeon Game

I really like B/X games like Labyrinth Lord though. There is something to that 7 hp level one fighter and his longsword in some spooky abandoned keep fighting spiders and rats that appeals to me - even without all of the character design options of newer games. I can almost play that game in my head. I could play a game like this solo with just a character sheet and an encounter table.

It is that simple yet focused feeling, almost like a dungeon-game version of solitaire. I can't wait for my fighter to get to level two, get a slightly better to-hit, some treasure in his backpack, and maybe he now has 13 hp now. With every level he can go deeper and deeper, and my character really doesn't get all that more complex as he levels up. When he is hurt, he drinks a healing potion (if he has one), or heads back to town. The dungeon may restock when he comes back, and random encounters are always present in the halls, so getting back to where he was will be tricky.

He is still that guy, with a sword, using the wits as me (the player) to keep him alive down there. I don't have any other character design choices to fall back on. That character's story is completely determined by my choices in that dungeon, not by the rules, not by character design, but by my risk-management skills and dealing with runs of good and bad luck.

With simple characters I could run a whole 4 character party myself one one sheet of  paper for record-keeping - no computer programs needed to design characters and level them up. My fighter has chainmail and a sword, my rogue a dagger and leather armor, my mage a magic missile spell and a staff, my cleric chainmail, a shield, a mace, and cure light wounds. Some ability scores and hit points, some saves and to-hit numbers - and we are done. I don't have to reference the class areas of a player's handbook to know what special powers and feats each one can use - it is all here on the sheet.

This is B/X - I know this.

As I have less time for reading through 1,000 of pages of rules and options spanning a library of books and character options, that B/X style simplicity of both play and design is a feature of pen-and-paper games that I feel has real value. Playing old-school simpler games means the difference between playing and not playing, at least to me.

Easy to Design, Hard to Balance

I am reminded of some of the games that came out around the original AD&D game's creation, most notably Squad Leader and its successor, Advanced Squad Leader. Games back then existed in the age before personal computers, where the game's rules were written out almost like computer code:

• Run the game turn in phases
• Every rule is laid out in detail
• Structure of the rules was paramount to understanding them

They played like pen-and-paper versions of computer games, because, that is what they were. From Car Wars to Battletech, we had a whole generation of games which required players to run through turn phases, long lists of rules, and players acted more like human computers than players.

We haven't gotten away from this design philosophy much with today's games, especially with the d20-based games like D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, D&D 4, and D&D 5. To be fair, there are plenty of older games that fall into this mentality, such as Aftermath, Rolemaster, Runequest, Space Opera and many others. These are games which draw heavily on the "pen and paper computer game" design mentality, where players are more "computer code interpreters" than "game players."

Combat Conditions

Games need rules, but I feel I am getting to a point where enough is enough. Take, for instance, conditions in d20-based games:

• D&D 5 has about 15 conditions
• D&D 4 has about 16 conditions
• D&D 3.5 has about 24 conditions
• Pathfinder has about 36 conditions
• Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord have 0 conditions

These are all "specially defined rules conditions" which can potentially apply during combat, have special durations, effects, removal conditions, and special rules - in addition to special conditions applied by spells (charm, hold person, etc) or things like death. This is just one area of the game, as there are vast numbers of feats, powers, combat rules, movement rules, and other fiddly and complicated interlocking rules that control how players act and what they can do during a turn.

The more rules a game gives you, the slower it will run. In general, the thicker the book, the slower the game will play. These "big book" games are easy to design since you just keep adding rules and options, but in practice very difficult to balance, and very easy to break.

Old School Games

It is interesting to note there are no "special conditions" in the old-school games, beyond what spells did to you. They are, in general, simpler games where you do not have to worry about special effects being applied to you during a turn. There was a point in d20's history where the Magic the Gathering design philosophy took hold and numerous special conditions were added to the game.

It's like the AC and hit point system felt too abstract and realism needed to be added though the use of conditions to flavor combat, when the old-school games embraced the abstract nature of d20 combat and left things how they were. In an old-school game, if a goblin bonked you on the head, the referee could rule you were "stunned" and lost a turn - if that was important. Otherwise, AC, to-hit, damage, and hit-points were all that were needed to simulate everything that went on during combat - including the millions of possible conditions that could happen during a turn of battle.

Roll a "1" on damage during a turn in an old-school game? Maybe you were stunned, staggered, or weakened during that blow, who cares? Miss the to-hit entirely? Maybe you got knocked down that turn and got back up, who knows, make it up and go with the flow. It doesn't matter what happened during the turn, just the outcome of the roll.

AC and hit-points are intentionally abstract systems, like "money" or "property" in Monopoly. There is a simplicity and beauty in leaving them the way they are, and not over-designing "reality" systems on top of them. Really, once you add "realism layers" on top of abstract systems, all you do is show the weakness of the original underlying systems instead of making them work better.

"Play How You Want?"

Note that this discussion only applies if you want to play the game by the rules as written, any one of these games can be played "fast and loose" by omitting rules, but then again, you are not really playing the game at that point and taking advantage of rules that were written to give you the full experience of the game. A complicated game will always have the line "play however you want" in there because this is the only way the designers of these games have to control complexity, they need to tell players it is okay to omit rules to speed play.

Writing complicated games is easy, since all you have to do is keep piling rules, feats, conditions, special rules, new class structures, new powers, and more options onto the book. Writing a simple game is very hard, because you need to write rules that can handle a lot with a little.

Modern and Old-School Designs

Contrast these games with more modern designs, such as FATE or Savage Worlds. These two alone are very impressive designs, and make the d20-based games feel like flip-phones to play versus a smartphone - at least for our group. To be fair, D&D 5 did try to follow the more modern design philosophy and simplify, but for our group, we felt too much baggage (with specific and single-purpose feats and powers) was held over from the older rules to really place the game into the more modern design style.

Modern designs do a lot with a little. Old school games also did the same, but intentionally abstract away parts of the game which could slow things down. Balance exists in the simplicity of the design, and in universal rules. Special cases are handled through the referee. Are you tied up? You can't act but could struggle out of your bonds, maybe...referee's call. We don't need a restrained condition and a page of rules for escaping bonds, plus feats to support "escape artists," and spells that free people from ropes.

Big book games over-design everything and add every feature and whistle, like Homer Simpson designing a car. Modern designs simplify, and handle many things with a single mechanic, leaving the referee to handle special circumstances. A "gunfighter" in a big-book game needs a special class, powers for that class, feats for that class, and special rules for that class. A "gunfighter" in a modern design or old-school game is likely a skill at using guns and that's it, it is handled the same way as any other attack.

Modern games tend to be more streamlined and handle everything with unified mechanics. Old-school games typically handle one type of action under an abstracted mechanic. It is not uncommon for an old-school design to use parallel but different diced mechanics for different actions (d20 to-hits and d100 thief skills). A modern design would put those all in the same dicing mechanic and unify action resolution.

No Clerics? No Problem?

What do the above two games have in common?

No divine magical power sources or cleric classes. They keep to a holy-less trinity of fighter-rogue-mage where the only source of otherworldly power is the mage. No clerics, no gods, no paladins, no praying for power, and no second column of magical power exists in these worlds - it is just the mage.

The duality of mage vs. cleric seems like a staple in fantasy, right? Well, Tolkien's well-known world of Middle Earth just had wizards as the "magic users" as well, and the beings that could be considered "gods" weren't your typical D&D high-fantasy style gods who gave everyone who prayed to them cure light wounds. The holy-less trinity defines these stories as well, as magic was practiced by mages.

And speaking of no-clerics, then there is Game of Thrones as well...

D&D has always had this injection of spiritualism, even in the original 1974 edition of the game had fighter, mage, and cleric as the trinity classes (thieves/rogues being added later in the first Greyhawk supplement). MMOs are rife with divine power sources, like World of Warcraft and other games. There is always this "occult versus the divine" conflict going on in the more D&D style of fantasy, feeling like Westernized religious values being placed on top of Tolkien-style fantasy to create a conflict of power sources.

And D&D's history with divine beings has been notoriously messy, at least in our experience. The old Deities and Demigods book made gods monsters out of the Monster Manual. They were superheroes and super-characters in D&D 3.5, and finally MMO horrendously under-powered end-game raid bosses in D&D 4. Thankfully Pathfinder and D&D 5 (and games like Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord) leave the monster stat blocks for gods at home and makes the gods stat-less beings, making them something like "Q" in the old Star Trek: The Next Generation lore - there to affect outcomes and make snarky remarks, but as monsters or characters on the tabletop? No way, and no thank you.

Seriously, the injection of "gods as monsters" thing has messed up so many of our campaigns that it leaves a bad taste in our mouths when we play these versions of the game. Whenever the "gods got involved" in our past games the players rolled their eyes, wondered when it was going to end, and wished for the times of searching a dresser drawer full of silver pieces and a giant spider guarding the horde. When a game goes "big divine" it becomes "all about the gods" and the focus shifts away from the heroes and onto a divine soap opera worthy of Greek tragedy. For us, at least, and we prefer the heroes to be the focus of the game, and leave the divine super-characters to the background.

If the Forgotten Realms had that supposed problem of high-level NPCs "messing up" adventures, in our experience and our games it was "super-character gods." Give us a high-level NPC any day, because at least those can be ignored, walked away from, or made enemies of and smacked upside the head every once and a while to keep them in line. Making Elminster a recurring enemy to insult and mess with is fun, while having various gods show up again to stop the party in the real world is not.

But removing the cleric and divine power source entirely? It feels like heresy in high fantasy RPGs nowadays, but there is a simplicity and elegance in the world structure once you remove the "power for worship" access to magic. Power is not gained through faith, but in the three historical forces of humankind: might, deception, or knowledge. Removing faith from that mix creates a darker world, where access to magic is controlled by the mage, and there is no "faith versus knowledge" conflict.

"Faith versus knowledge" can also be summarized as "religion versus science" and you can see why this conflict feels natural to us, but in high fantasy this conflict is typically hand-waved off because we need the magic user to be able to adventure with the cleric and the band of merry men. In many high fantasy game worlds and MMOs you will see the "holy church of X" sitting right beside the "mage college of Y" and no problems whatsoever between them. Does it bother the church that those faithless mages have power equal to their followers? Does the mage college feel threatened by the mass of worshipers who only need to pray for power and not need knowledge?

You take that conflict out and the world feels a little strange, but then again we can't have the cleric and the mage fighting in the dungeon because it would slow up play and start real-world fights when the mage doesn't get a heal, right? Ah, dungeon crawling and the sacrifices we make for party-based play.

Take out clerics and divine power sources, and the problem is removed. Hand-wave the divine-arcane conflict off and it is gone as well, but something feels interesting when mages are the only ones who hold the keys to power. It does feel more Tolkien, and magic feels more arcane and special.

What is the lesson here? I guess it is "know your game" and understand the basic assumptions a game makes changes the world. Don't always be so beholden to the typical tropes of high-fantasy and MMO gaming, and games where divine magic is removed create interesting world models of power and how people acquire the same. What you play is your preference, but be open to games which may take you out of your comfort zone and experience "the power of magic" in a new light.

Pathfinder: SORD PF

http://www.rpgnow.com/product/81817/Sord-Pf

This is an oldie, but a goodie. If you find yourself missing the good-old (or even not so good old by some people's opinions) days of Pathfinder, this PDF is a life saver. If you play by the basic book and even use Trapdoor's Playbook on the iPad to run a basic-book only game, this is the PDF to get.

Imagine a PDF that eliminates the need to flip through the book to reference rules. This PDF was created to help you play the game more accurately, faster, and with a deeper depth of complexity than you are normally used to. The goal was to save at least 15 minutes per encounter, and having used this in play, I can attest it is a huge time-saver and it clears up not only how something should be handled, but sets forth easily-followed procedures to handle complex rules.

Pathfinder's strength is its complexity, so any product that helps you cut through that complexity and lets you enjoy it more helps you enjoy more of the game.

So what is this? It is a 40-page booklet of charts and rules summaries for Pathfinder, covering combat, actions, maneuvers, movement, modifiers, spells, and skills. It is useful for both players knowing what they can do and referees figuring out how to handle things. If you are a new player, it clears up how the fiddly parts of the rules work and how your character's stats are used by the game. If you are a referee, this is your cheat-sheet of notes and helps you run the game 'by the book' across a wide variety of situations.

This Means I Provoked an AoO!

Part of why our group doesn't like the Pathfinder or D&D 3.5 combat systems (for most light gaming sessions) are the fiddly Attack of Opportunity systems in these games, but this PDF makes that easy, and in fact explains AoO so well it becomes clear when it should be used. To be fair, AoO is one of those 'simulationist' sort of combat systems that you can't really remove from Pathfinder because so much of the game's intricacies are wrapped up in triggering, not triggering, buying feats to enhance, and giving melee characters rules to pay attention to (and exploit for effectiveness).

If you are complaining about magic being too powerful in Pathfinder, you are probably ignoring some of the melee combat rules meant to throw some sand in the gears of spell-casting in combat. You threaten any square you can make a melee attack into - even when it is not your action. Using a spell-like ability? Provokes an AoO. Casting a spell? Provokes an AoO unless defensively casting. Quickened spell casing does not provoke an AoO, nor does channel energy. And this PDF summarizes them all.

See? You start applying the rules and spell casting in melee gets a lot more complicated. Your magic-wielding character needs to play by the rules, take a couple hits, and make those concentration checks to keep casting. The rules exist here for a reason, and this lower-level combat sim is one of the huge differences between Pathfinder and D&D 5. You can build a character to take advantage of the low-level combat sim in Pathfinder, and if you enjoy that rules complexity, you should be playing Pathfinder. If you find yourself ignoring the low-level combat sim rules in Pathfinder because of a need for simplicity, you should be playing D&D 5. It is not a question of which game is better, it is a question of what type of game you enjoy better.

I Did Not Know You Could Do That...

The skill reference sheets are invaluable. Did you know a bard with Intimidate and Comedy Performance skills could demoralize all enemies within earshot for 1 round plus 1 more for every 5 points they beat the target DC - just by telling a joke? By the way the shaken condition gives the enemy a -2 to attack rolls, weapon damage rolls, saving throws, skill checks, and ability checks.

"You guys suck so bad you can't even swing a sword half straight."

And bam, the other side sucks at what they do to the tune of a -2 for everything they do just because you walk around making quips like Steve Buscemi. Oh, and that comedy-combo applies to Bluff checks as well, so have fun. You don't need a spell that does this, GM Fiat, or any other special rules - the game handles it. These charts make it easy to come up with fun uses of skills like this for all types of interesting uses, and lays things out in a simple way so when a referee or other player stares at you slack-jawed in disbelief "you can do this" you can show them.

They will inevitably open the book and check, but you will still be right.

And you will be right without having to look in the book.

The Warhammer Method and Appeal

We have played in a lot of Warhammer and Warhammer 40K games at hobby shops, and there is a certain population of players who like to be "good at the rules." If you know your stuff, you can lay your army down, play fast, use the rules to your advantage, and sail through many battles with ease. When you meet another player who can play as well as you, it becomes the battle of two chess masters and an epic confrontation.

But to get to this point - you have to know the rules. You have to be able to recite them from memory, or have a quick reference chart handy that can lay out the rules in an easy-to-understand format and be accessible quickly. Moreover, you have to be right and correct in the application of the rules to an event or situation that happens at the game table.

You seek out players with a high system mastery to play with because this gives you a greater enjoyment of the game. It is the same with Warhammer as it is with Pathfinder. The SORD PF charts can help you get to this high level of play. If you enjoy that 'rules heavy' play, that is, and some people prefer a more simple experience, such as a Savage Worlds or even a D&D 5 style game.

Also, there is a certain magic when you play with a referee with a high system mastery of the game, when the referee can rifle through a list of modifiers and ways to handle something without having to flip through the book. You get a more complete enjoyment of the game, you start to see why the rules were written the way they were, and all of a sudden the way you built your character matters. Or the way you didn't build him or her matters, given the types of things you want to do. This matters in an option-heavy system like Pathfinder, and a great referee will sit down with you and explain why the choices you made on your now dead (and thoroughly sucky) first character were the wrong ones (given the way you wanted to play), and explain to you how you should build your new character the next time to make them work better within the rules.

In a game that protects you from bad choices, none of this matters. I don't usually like games where there are 'bad choices' built in, but the way D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder were designed these bad parts are essential because games with system mastery need both optimal and less optimal paths. To be fair, a lot of the choices in Pathfinder (and even the bad ones) are useful in some situations, but when you are trying to build a specific character, 80-90% of the choices you are presented with are bad choices. You need to know how the system works to build the character you want to play, and the system does not protect you from making bad choices.

We Always Play With This...Always

If we are playing Pathfinder, you can bet a copy of SORD PF is sitting right by my side. DarkgarX also has his copy open and ready near him (as a player) should he want to reference a rule or attempt something which could force a check of the rules. It just makes playing easier, keeps us from flipping through the book, and it saves us time during play - which is exactly what this PDF was advertised to do. Granted, this PDF only covers the basic rules, so if you are a "complete system" multi-book player there may be some holes - but 90% of this information is still highly useful and the other books you play with should just be exceptions rather than the rule.

With the newer Pocket Editions of Pathfinder coming out (and the basic book only Playbook experience), there are more players just sticking to the basics - and that experience is still a great and fun game. For these players, this PDF is the resource to get and stick by, since it saves you time and increases your enjoyment of the game. It is also a 'cheat sheet' towards system mastery, and that is always a noble goal. Being a great player or referee who 'knows their stuff' makes you a more desirable player for groups and play experiences.

Check it out, highly recommended.

The MMO Magic Item Economy and Mjölnir

The MMO-style magic-item economy has all but ruined fantasy gaming for us. D&D 4 was this high point of this insanity, where if you did not keep up with the natural 'progression' of magic items your character could not fight monsters rated at their level effectively.

Add to the fact random magic items were mostly useless for most builds, which required specific items and combinations to play effectively 'at level.'

It got so bad the game's designers suggested - in the rules - players come up with a list of magic items their characters wanted to find, and the referee should use that to award magic items from.

This was a fantasy game living in a fantasy land of insanity.

In the old days, if you found that +1 magic sword, you were set for life. It hit the check-boxes:

• Gave you a +1 to-hit and damage, check
• Could hit 'creatures only hit by silver or magic weapons', check
• Was cool, check

The invention of the +2 sword started the insanity to +3, +4, the theoretical +5 maximum best sword, and then in the 3.5-era Epic Level Handbook, went all  the way up to +20.

Well, since they have +2 swords, we need +2 armors! And the lists of magic items blew up. The game was never the same, and AD&D made a mess of the magic item charts with percentage charts of incremental and really worthless upgrades, sure a +2 sword was "even better" but it really only gave a 5% to-hit chance bonus over a +1 sword and 12% or-so extra damage given a d8 damage.

Mjölnir is not a +5 Hammer

+2 swords were epic-sounding, but they weren't superhero-level gear like Mjölnir. Even a +5 hammer didn't come close to the Mjölnir we saw in Marvel Super Heroes, and we sat there feeling D&D characters lived in a world with really weak magic weapons that really at most with +5 had a +25% chance to hit and did 50% more damage than a normal melee weapon. Big deal, but that was the best you could do in D&D.

Mjölnir in Marvel Super Heroes could take out a truck or the Hulk, your choice. Or both.

Mjölnir in an MMO is this insanely damaging 300 DPS weapon that still feels like that gray weapon you started the game with because the world scales with you and you will never truly feel epic. You can splat a level-1 with it, but really, every day you spend out there grinding it doesn't really feel epic because the game assumes you need it to keep up with the content. Sounds like D&D 4 to us, and that's what they did with every item in the game, with forced upgrades in every equipment slot. Though in D&D 4, things maxed out to a +6, and it still didn't feel like the Mjölnir we know and love.

You will find a lot of high-level magic weapons in D&D with extra powers, like lightning bolts or other spells because the plus-damage thing really doesn't make them into the weapons we expect them to be on the silver screen.

Fixed Damage Modifiers are King

But there was a reason for that +2 sword after all, despite the minor 5 to 10% upgrade. The fixed damage modifier.

In D&D 3.5 the fighter's multi-attack leveled the playing field, and the concept of multiplying stacks of fixed-damage bonuses across multi-attacks created the MMO "damage per turn" thing we have going on today in Pathfinder and D&D 5 (done in different ways). The base damage die of your weapon in D&D matters a lot less than the amount of fixed +damage modifiers you can get - because those multiply and stack up fast.

I would rather have a +2 dagger that does a d4 than a +1 swortsword that does a d6. The average damage for the dagger is 2.5 + 2 or 5 points of damage, and the sword does 3.5 + 1 or 5 points of damage. Sure I could roll higher with the sword, but that +2 is guaranteed damage every turn, multiplied across multiple attacks. With five attacks, that +2 is 10 guaranteed points of damage versus the "higher damaging" but less enchanted shortsword with 5 points of guaranteed damage - across five attacks.

You see this on five attacks per turn or five attacks across five turns. Guaranteed damage is king.

This adds up when you stack strength-enhancing magic items and high ability scores for greater fixed-damage adders, and all of a sudden you are adding +5 for STR, +3 for a weapon and you have 8 points of guaranteed damage in an attack. Always go for the higher "plus" and the dice is secondary, especially if you consider multiple attacks per turn (or multiple turns of attacks). Eight points of guaranteed damage across five turns or attacks is 40 points of damage. It adds up.

We are back in the Farmville-style world of spreadsheet games and MMO "dps" numbers, and never feeling like we have a Mjölnir and could smack some sense into the Hulk (or a truck) with our weapon. We still have a problem with the D&D and Pathfinder concept of magic weapons and the implementation of them feels more like a numbers game than it does something living up to our idea of epic fantasy.

The Rules Do Not Allow Epic Greatness

Throw Thor in there, and the gamer in me feels like it breaks down and GM-fiat is needed to say, "well, Thor's +5 hammer can bust right through that 10-foot thick castle wall!" And the player with their +4 spear can't even poke through a locked heavy wooden door. If this was a comic book, the player with that +4 spear could hold it in front of them and run straight through several doors leaving a trail of splinters and kindling in their wake.

No, not working. The rules do not allow for what we expect to happen, especially for epic weapons and the superheroes we want to be (and expect the rules to handle).

Low-Powered High Fantasy

Warriors in the D&D games have always felt less than epic to us, like they were the classes meant to play the spreadsheet part of the game with numbers and modifiers.

Or just...play a wizard in D&D. That is where you will get that superhero experience of larger-than-life powers. This has always been a problem for us, and spells feel like their movie counterparts where the weapons and armor of warriors do not.

One exception is Tunnels and Trolls, where the damage from warriors is so high you could say "you do 200 points of damage in this turn with your spear, and since I said each door had 20 hits, you can slice through 10 doors as you move this turn. Enjoy yourself and try not to destroy the furniture." It's one damage roll for the turn, use it any way you want. 

You could do that in D&D too, but the game goes all simulation-ist with object strength and AC values - so pure mayhem in D&D is discouraged under a wet blanket of simulation. If you are fighting a truck, I am going to need rules for trucks now. In T&T, I say the truck has 100 hits, and you flatten it in one blow. Even with a normal hammer because T&T discourages the MMO magic item economy and you fight with mostly normal weapons. So yes, you could be awesome enough in T&T to take a ball-peen hammer and flatten a truck to a pile of crushed debris in one blow.

Or two trucks.

Just don't damage the furniture.

Rules Anthropology and System Mastery

One thing that always amazes me about the d20 rules is how the rules feel stuck in anthropology. D&D 3, D&D 3.5, Pathfinder, D&D 4, and D&D 5 all rely on the theory of system mastery, which requires a set of rules to have a certain level of in-built complexity. This complexity means players need to learn the game, and it creates a class of  'player experts' who are walking encyclopedias of game knowledge and reference.

Following the theory of system mastery, the game in theory cannot be simple. There needs to be built-in exceptions, tricks, little twists and turns of rules, gotchas, and I-don't-know moments of vague presentation that require a college level of mastery of a particular rules set. The more arcane, the better, because this allows the 'player expert' to become more valuable to a particular group or setting.

Anthropology? You feel like a scientist digging through the history of these games to just be able to play them. They are incompatible with each other, have enough small changes between them that one game is realistically all an average person can play, and some of the assumptions you carried over from previous editions will trip you up. It's why I still like Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy as my go-to D&D games, they stick to the core design, there isn't much to learn, and there isn't much to mess you up.

Self-Taught Experts

That "power of knowledge" is an important thing. It both creates a barrier to entry (noobs suck at the game), and it creates a barrier to exit (why would I give up all this knowledge and power). It gives those who invest the time a certain level of importance in communities, power over others, and value. If the game is widely played, the more value that person has in a community, gaming group, or forum. Also, if the books needed are expensive and voluminous, the investment in the game keeps people from leaving as well. No one wants to have wasted all that money.

You can short-circuit all of this and say, "I don't have the time," and walk out. You can go to a simple rules system. Many modern designs cater to people without the time to learn all this complexity, and these keep today's time and interest-strapped people in the hobby. They are also exit-points for people that are tired of the heavy games, as a group can only really maintain interest in one large game at a time.

Some modern non-d20 games follow the system mastery model as well, such as Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG. While the basic mechanic is simple (as presented in the starter sets), once you go all-in with the main rulebooks there are enough gotchas where you need an expert to sort things out. This is similar for Shadowrun, GURPS, and other games where the weight of expansions and rulings have turned a once-simple game into something more complex.

Games do not need to be that complex. Complexity is not depth. A simple game can have wonderful depth without complexity, take chess, for example. This is where great design comes into play. Some designers seem to give up on designing elegant, simple, yet very deep in strategy rules, and go for the arcane, complex, and exception-filled almost spaghetti computer-code level of complexity when depth by the base mechanic cannot be achieved. The depth is obfuscated in the complexity of the rules.

Modern Designs

Some games are by-design simple, and this applies to the OGL retro-clones, Savage Worlds, Legend, AGE System, FATE, and many modern designs. These games have simple rules of thumb, unified mechanics, and a simple set of core rules which are extended to handle anything. If you know how to do one thing in these games, you can assume many other things work similarly and you are on your way. Some players love the elegance of unified design simplicity, while others love system mastery and the power of that complex knowledge.

A lot of indie games embrace simplicity, because it is a lot easier to test and balance a small set of rules-of-thumb than it is an encyclopedia of specific and carefully-balanced rules. I feel the age of huge, complex systems is passing us by, as even D&D 5 has recognized the need to simplify to increase "what can get done" at the table during a session. They streamlined and simplified monster stats, character complexity, and the amount of modifiers and conditions you needed to remember, and players reacted positively to the changes. As a result, the games move faster, players can cycle through more encounters during a session, and a game session can end with a feeling of progress and completion in regards to a story.

Savage Worlds goes in a different direction than D&D 5, with combat meaning less and all actions taking on an equal level of importance in regards to story completion and advancement. Conversions of modules from Pathfinder, OGL games, and D&D 5 to Savage Worlds typically eliminate encounters meant to "level up" the party and focus more on tasks, social encounters, and roleplaying. D&D 5, in comparison, is the more 'video game' and 'XP and loot' type experience, where Savage Worlds is the more the story-based experience.

There Comes a Point...

When you don't have the time to invest in heavy games anymore. It is happening to us, and I have this feeling Bestiary 5 and Ultimate Intrigue will be the last Pathfinder books we will buy for a while. I love the world, I love the mod-able-ness, I love the art, and I love the system, but enough is enough. I can't run this much, and I can't manage this much complexity anymore. If I play, it will be with a subset of books, but even then I question if investing myself in a reduced subset of that complexity will be worth the payout. Learning and mastering a simpler game at this point may give us more bang for the gaming buck.

Even the new Star Wars RPG still feels bloated to us, and we've reduced the game to the base three books. It is the problem with everything being a heavy game, you want to play them all, but one person really can't master and maintain interest in this many large games. They makes these games complex with the theory of system mastery so you won't leave for another game, and then when you collect too many of them, everything in your gaming world collapses under the weight of complexity.

OGL games are cool, and they "get there from here" in terms of providing a dungeon experience for the complexity and time spent learning them. Savage Worlds is also cool and simple, and covers so many genres that it is worth learning because the payout in "fun for time" is very high. D&D 5 is interesting, but we haven't had the time or interest to put into it as much as I'd hoped, plus the OGL games do a good job at the dungeon and loot experience anyways so we haven't had much pressure to jump in.

In our group and for our time, Pathfinder, Shadowrun, and the new Star Wars RPG feel like the losers here. We don't have the time to put into and enjoy them as we would like, and something has to give. When you need to make choices, you typically start throwing the heavy systems overboard first (or you stick with one heavy system and throw out everything else). This isn't to say they aren't deep and fun games, it is just the complexity and time needed to put in to enjoy them fully is very high.

I will probably reorganize my shelves to reflect the new order, and focus on what is right for our group. This is also a consideration when you design a game, do you want it to be so complex that is pushes out other systems, or do you want it to be rules-light and easily accessible? I don't think many games nowadays can compete with the big heavy-hitters out there, so writing a large and complicated game will put you at a disadvantage of competing for attention of players and also being pushed off a shelf due to the heavy nature of your rules.

We do have a lot of large, complicated games sitting in boxes because we don't have the time or mental space to run them (Rifts, GURPS, and others). I feel bad about a couple more being on their way to storage, but really, what can we do? It is best to focus on the games you love, and the ones you have time for, rather than so many you are unhappy you don't have the time and mental effort to play them all.