[3.P] We know core is broken, but what breaks it, when, and how?

[Endarire]

By "broken" I mean that if you run a game from levels 1 to 20 using only the core rules, you'll encounter such a balance disparity that someone needs to fudge their abilities just so eveyrone can contribute. In short, classes and abilities are nowhere close to being balanced over 20 levels, since what non-magical abilities can compete with level 6+ spells?

Some believe the very inclusion of magic breaks the game. Others say the game is fine or mostly fine until level X (usually between 6 and 12).

What are your thoughts on this?

[Sir Giacomo]

Core is not broken.

Mostly just many of the rules interpretations out there are.

And some broken RAW loopholes exist in theory, but could normally never happen in practice (e.g. Gate/inifinite wishes), simply because they would require massive metagaming and/or be prevented by npc behaviour.

- Giacomo

[Endarire]

I'm not talking loops here. I DMed a game where the players had L9 spells. I know of no extraordinary abilities that stand up to time stop + gate/summon bigger fish/high level Wizard tactic.

Even at lower levels, Evard's black tentacles can rip apart fights. A DM got so frustrated that we trivialized his encounter by one casting of this spell that he gave his enemies antimagic field as a (Su) ability.

This post is partly inspired by one I made yesterday regarding the game's paradigm shift at level 7.

[Xefas]

I know most posters will go for the obvious "Well, balance this, and spellcasting that, and quadratic spellcaster with linear fighter, etc, etc", but I'll go in an entirely different route which I believe is even more valid.

3.5 D&D is focused incredibly heavily on combat. 99% of the mechanics in the game have to deal with combat, and using the system as-is, there is no way to make a character that isn't composed primarily of statistics dealing with combat.

That premise is fine. A game focused on combat is fine. Even the premise of a roleplaying game focused on combat is fine.

The problem is that D&D combat is boring, painfully slow, and for half the classes in the core game, very tedious.

So, D&D is broken because the primary thing that it focuses on doing well, it does badly.

[WinWin]

resource disparity becomes noticable at high levels. Melee classes require significant resources in the form of arms, armour and trinkets to keep up with challenging opponents.

Where the spoils of an adventure is distributed equally, this means that magic based classes have less demands and can afford to cherry-pick or create optimal gear and still have cash left over. Creation may put you behind slightly in xp, but who cares when you can spam your best abilities all day.

I have other concerns, but many are situational and do not apply to every game. Such as flying mongols and incorporeal singularities. Treasure and magical items though, are almost always a constant feature in every game.

[Mastikator]

Magic breaks it past level 6.
Remove all magic and make it E6 and it will never break.

Problem is that this makes it also boring, since D&D doesn't have any fleshed out implemented rules for other activities than combat and magic.
Economics, crafting, farming, hunting and social interaction implementations are absurd at best, and at worse counter-intuitive (which they absolutely shouldn't be, magic is the only thing that may be counter-intuitive imo).

[Eldariel]

It should be around level 7-8. The one purely Core-only game we played from level 1 up though we didn't really realize how bad it was until level ~13 when the non-casters in the party started wondering why they were even being brought around; they killed trash but nothing truly dangerous and whenever something had to be done, be it gathering information, searching the environment, moving or resurrecting people, we mostly sat around and twiddled our thumbs.

The reason it took us so long was because our casters didn't really pay attention to the options the spell lists presented back then. We only had one PHB and we didn't know of the SRD so outside sessions, it was circling through the playgroup of 7-9 people (some joined and dropped throughout the campaign) and thus it took us all a while to get to know everything; as such, it was hard to actually scan through such things since people didn't want to waste session time on that.

Polymorph, Black Tentacles, Solid Fog, Slow, Glitterdust or even Web saw basically no use in the campaign. It was only once crap like Hold Monster, Forcecage, Planar Binding and company started showing up that we kinda got to think "what do we get?" and realize the answer was simply "+1 to hit". We had that one hilarious part of the adventure where a Glabrezu was bound to assist us on some task and it effortlessly, while being its usual demonic unhelpful self, did more than our frontliners. Mostly by snatching things and snapping them in half. Occasionally teleporting somewhere and feasting on something. Oh, and it used Reverse Gravity a few times, mostly to amuse itself, I guess.

[Mystic Muse]

Core is not broken.

Mostly just many of the rules interpretations out there are.

And some broken RAW loopholes exist in theory, but could normally never happen in practice (e.g. Gate/inifinite wishes), simply because they would require massive metagaming and/or be prevented by npc behaviour.

- Giacomo

Giacomo, there are dozens of threads here explaining why core is broken. If you're going to claim that it isn't please bring proof.

EDIT: Forgot to address the OP. There are a myriad of problems in core. There's no easy way to balance it but there are plenty of good fixes for classes on this site and you can always just ban the most abuse prone spells.

[awa]

id say 7th level for wizards and clerics. differing degrees of optimization will change this but 4th level you start getting spells better than entire classes. like greater invisibility and poly morph self.

now not all dnd games break if you stay away from tier one and two the game is much less likely to break than if you have a wizard and a monk in the same party.

edit
please don't turn this into a thread about how the monk is the equal to a wizard cant we just start with the conclusion that not all classes are created equal?

[WinWin]

I made the mistake of ending a campaign with a battle against a single opponent.

8 hours later the combat was still not resolved. Epic campaigns are extremely difficult to end with a climax. I understand why the ELH is referred to as the Joke Book by some people. For example, action economy busting in addistion to summoning spam may be entertaining the first time you do it. It is just becomes tedious after that. I had players walking out during the summoners turn and coming back half an hour later. The douche had still not completed his action.

Prior to that, combat was relatively fast. Rarely more than a few rounds/15 mins. Resolving accounting after the fact took longer in some cases. The game had high player fatalities, but rez was fairly common. Most of the fun past level 13 was about suverting the system and taking on opponents that could also subvert the system. A great campaign except for that one player taking a dump over the finale.

[Aran Banks]

WHEN: Magic breaks the game.... at around... level 1.

WHAT: I assume you're playing a game where the bard and the rogue are balance points.

Which means that color spray, sleep, and wall of smoke totally rain on everybody's parade. EBT, SoS/D/L spells, and stuff like freezing fog can wreak havoc at later levels, but level 1 is just bad like every other level. This is a fantastic list of spells that win. Give it a look.

HOW: The best spells are the disabling ones. Sleep is stronger than wail of the banshee for weak monsters; it's literally an "I win" button. Non-casting classes (that aren't ToB or psionics) usually don't have disabling abilities. They just hit stuff hard. So when the Duskblade and Bard need to stab and blast and sing to kill baddies, the wizard can drop a color spray and walk off when the monster fails its save... or coup de grace it.

[JonestheSpy]

Even at lower levels, Evard's black tentacles can rip apart fights. A DM got so frustrated that we trivialized his encounter by one casting of this spell that he gave his enemies antimagic field as a (Su) ability.

See, to me this is just an illustration of Giacomo's point. There are TONS of monsters at CR7+ to whom a +15 grapple check is no big deal, not to mention flying monsters, incorporeal, etc. A DM doesn't need to throw in Anti-Magic fields, just do a bit of intelligent planning to create encounters that actually challenge a party.

Flying is similar. I see lots of posts that seem to contend that Flight= "spellcaster gets to avoid every encounter they want", conveniently forgetting all the flying monsters there are out there, which can now easily swarm a single flier and fill all 26 spaces around said caster.

stuff

Edit: Yeah, that's totally true when your DM never throws more than one or two encounters at you a day and the monsters always fail their savings throws. That must be a pretty sweet world to adventure in.

[Xefas]

See, to me this is just an illustration of Giacomo's point. There are TONS of monsters at CR7+ to whom a +15 grapple check is no big deal, not to mention flying monsters, incorporeal, etc. A DM doesn't need to throw in Anti-Magic fields, just do a bit of intelligent planning to create encounters that actually challenge a party.

Flying is similar. I see lots of posts that seem to contend that Flight= "spellcaster gets to avoid every encounter they want", conveniently forgetting all the flying monsters there are out there, which can now easily swarm a single flier and fill all 26 spaces around said caster.

I think the typical rebut is that if you fill your encounters with flying, incorporeal monsters that balk at grapple checks to protect them against the casters' tricks, you've also mostly excluded all the non-casters from the equation as well.

So, sure, a caster always has Overland Flight on. To counter, the DM sends a bunch of flying enemies at the caster. Well, the fighter, rogue, and barbarian don't have any way to make themselves fly, so they're screwed too.

Just being the Devil's Advocate, here. I don't find any of this to be a problem, really.

[olentu]

I think the typical rebut is that if you fill your encounters with flying, incorporeal monsters that balk at grapple checks to protect them against the casters' tricks, you've also mostly excluded all the non-casters from the equation as well.

So, sure, a caster always has Overland Flight on. To counter, the DM sends a bunch of flying enemies at the caster. Well, the fighter, rogue, and barbarian don't have any way to make themselves fly, so they're screwed too.

Just being the Devil's Advocate, here. I don't find any of this to be a problem, really.

Not to mention that having to specifically and constantly counter a character or type of character to make the game work sort of means it does not really work.

[JonestheSpy]

I think the typical rebut is that if you fill your encounters with flying, incorporeal monsters that balk at grapple checks to protect them against the casters' tricks, you've also mostly excluded all the non-casters from the equation as well.

So, sure, a caster always has Overland Flight on. To counter, the DM sends a bunch of flying enemies at the caster. Well, the fighter, rogue, and barbarian don't have any way to make themselves fly, so they're screwed too.

Just being the Devil's Advocate, here. I don't find any of this to be a problem, really.

No, the point is not to design every encounter to go after the wizard, but to vary the types of encounters so the characters don't know what to expect and just say "I'll just cast web/Tentacles/glitterdust WIN" every time. And they have to carefully wiegh whether it's a better to cast a spell now or save it, because they don't know what's coming.

And actually, the fighter, rogue, and barbarian are in a much better defensive position on the ground than a flying character when that flock of gargoyles shows up. Yes, the flier can land - I'm just pointing out that flying does not=untouchable, which seems to be an awfully common opinion.

[Eldariel]

Edit: Yeah, that's totally true when your DM never throws more than one or two encounters at you a day and the monsters always fail their savings throws. That must be a pretty sweet world to adventure in.

Well, I agree with this to a degree but it's more than two encounters a caster can roll on first level. After all, if you're facing lots of enemies and fighting them, chances are the ones that do make the saving throw can still just be gunned down with plain ol' bow.

But level 1 is certainly "even" in that everyone (including monsters) can one-shot everyone. If you're equipping for a long day, caster's 4 spells per level limitation is very real and this side of Abrupt Jaunt, they're quite squishy if not spending one of the 4 slots on defense.


It's "balance" but very much a rocket launcher taggy balance. Level 3 is still fairly balanced; sure, Web, Glitterdust, Pyrotechnics, Grease, etc. put the casters tactically ahead but generally damage is still a relatively solid contribution and area control provided by e.g. Trippers is very efficient. Indeed, I found one of the easiest ways to kill higher (5+) CR monsters on level 1 in a Coreish environment without gimping yourself for the future is a team of Barbarian (or Orc Fighter, but Barbarian's speed bonus + light armor is v. key for kiting some enemy types like Tendriculous) + Wizard with Enlarge Person and Ray of Enfeeblement and a focused tripper Barbarian. Two of each for good measure.

[Eloel]

We know core is broken

True,

but what breaks it, when, and how?

Wizard & Sorcerers. Starting level 1. With encounter-ending spells.
Druids. Starting level 1. With a companion better than an average fighter out of the box.
Clerics. Gradually, starting level 1. Being better (eventually way better) than fighters at their on shtick.
Monks. Starting level 3. Not getting any useful abilities.
Druids. Starting level 6. Being a casting bear.

Edit:
Premise:

A DM doesn't need to throw in Anti-Magic fields, just do a bit of intelligent planning to create encounters that actually challenge a party.

True

See, to me this is just an illustration of Giacomo's point. There are TONS of monsters at CR7+ to whom a +15 grapple check is no big deal, not to mention flying monsters, incorporeal, etc.

Monsters with over a good +20 grapple (to have a good chance at dodging +15). Flying monsters. Incorporeal monsters.
Sure, they might challenge a Wizard. Guess what they do to a fighter?

[Tvtyrant]

First let me make a statement:

A flying creature is the MOST obvious target in sight. If the DM has the enemies archers/mages ignored the guy who can fly to attack the relatively normal guy on the ground he isn't playing the enemy realistically. No one in history has seen an attack helicopter and ignored it to keep working on the guys trying to charge them on the ground. Sure one or two guys might continue suppressing fire, but flying things are incredibly visible and obvious targets.

That having been said, given two people who both know the rules they can play any two classes equally well until around level 3 (even bard! Did you know they can get improved trip with a 15 foot reach at level 1?), when the casters start their take off. Sure you can cast color spray before then, but 3-4 encounters is supposed to be the usual amount, meaning your supposed to have more encounters then spell slots at that point. At level 3 the spell slots exceed the encounters, but not the amount of enemies. So while you can shape the battle, you still are limited to only taking out so many enemies. Casters at this level excel at group versus 1 enemy, but they simply don't have the spell slots to deal with several mixed enemy groups (like two ogres and some goblin archers).

Personally I think the game only shatters into little tiny pieces at around level 8, when the full casters have a LOT of spell slots, Druids begin their march to T-rex shape, and the cleric becomes the most melee dominant armor wearer. Look upon the CoDzilla and Batman and weep yea muggles!

[JonestheSpy]

Monsters with over a good +20 grapple (to have a good chance at dodging +15). Flying monsters. Incorporeal monsters.
Sure, they might challenge a Wizard. Guess what they do to a fighter?

Um, get blood on their armor as they get chopped down?

[Xefas]

No, the point is not to design every encounter to go after the wizard, but to vary the types of encounters so the characters don't know what to expect and just say "I'll just cast web/Tentacles/glitterdust WIN" every time. And they have to carefully wiegh whether it's a better to cast a spell now or save it, because they don't know what's coming.

And actually, the fighter, rogue, and barbarian are in a much better defensive position on the ground than a flying character when that flock of gargoyles shows up. Yes, the flier can land - I'm just pointing out that flying does not=untouchable, which seems to be an awfully common opinion.

The problem is that anything that catches the casters off guard has a high chance of catching the non-casters off guard as well. Casters don't really have to weigh the opportunity cost of casting a spell now or saving it, because any encounter that is sufficiently threatening to give them pause, is going to be threatening enough that it's a decision of "Dead now, or possibly dead later".

And I wouldn't call the ground a safe place when fighting flying enemies. The best you can hope for is that they don't have ranged attacks, and instead leave to go get stuff to drop on you while you shake your fist angrily at them.

[Eloel]

Um, get blood on their armor as they get chopped down?

Wrong. They fly out of fighter's reach and pepper with arrows while the fighters sits there with his trip/grapple/charge feats. Or pop in and out of ground and laugh at the fighter's pathetic touch AC as they damage his Str so he gets even more useless.

[Pyre_Born]

Let me start out by saying that I do think core is broken big time.

But...it all comes down to the players and the DM, while the rules are easy to break, it is up to the people involved in the game to make it fun, and core allows you to do that somewhat. I'm not saying the fighter won't be left out quite often, which brings me back to core IS broken.

However, in my personal opinion it is the *edit*Power Gamers/Munchkins*/edit* that like to make everything about their one man army and the DM who refuses to say no when he realizes something is wrong that truly breaks the game.

As to when, who, etc:
If someone in the party wants to be the star then it comes down to the tier 1 and 2 classes, these allow too much damage to the fun for lower tier players. This can honestly start as early as 1st level.

In my experience though, when players seek to use each others abilities to make a PARTY, with each class filling in for the others weaknesses, then their is no reason for rampant brokenness.

Just my view,
Pyre

[Xefas]

But...it all comes down to the players and the DM, while the rules are easy to break, it is up to the people involved in the game to make it fun, and core allows you to do that somewhat.

I would argue that a system that is so fundamentally broken that it requires effort just to keep it from breaking is a bad system. There are other systems that actually do function on their own, and the players and DM get to expend their effort enhancing the game from enjoyable to highly enjoyable, rather than expending their effort trying not to look at the gaping holes and scurrying cockroaches and forcing the system to work even a little.

Ironically, I don't find the whole "Casters trivialize everyone else" to really be one of the fundamental problems of D&D as a roleplaying game. The above paragraph doesn't take that into account even a little. D&D has other issues that don't get much attention on these boards.

[Mystic Muse]

Let me start out by saying that I do think core is broken big time.

But...it all comes down to the players and the DM, while the rules are easy to break, it is up to the people involved in the game to make it fun, and core allows you to do that somewhat. I'm not saying the fighter won't be left out quite often, which brings me back to core IS broken.

However, in my personal opinion it is the Powergamers or munchkins that like to make everything about their one man army and the DM who refuses to say no when he realizes something is wrong that truly breaks the game.

As to when, who, etc:
If someone in the party wants to be the star then it comes down to the tier 1 and 2 classes, these allow too much damage to the fun for lower tier players. This can honestly start as early as 1st level.

In my experience though, when players seek to use each others abilities to make a PARTY, with each class filling in for the others weaknesses, then their is no reason for rampant brokenness.

Just my view,
Pyre

Just before anybody else, does, I'd like to say "Fixed it for you". The above depends on your definition of the two terms (Powergamer and Munckin) but optimization itself is not a bad thing. It's when you go to extremes and don't care about the other people in your party and want it to be all about you that it becomes a bad thing. optimization is just taking a concept and making your character be good at that. Before anybody says anything, there is a world of difference between "good" and "gamebreaking"

[Pyre_Born]

Just before anybody else, does, I'd like to say "Fixed it for you". The above depends on your definition of the two terms (Powergamer and Munckin) but optimization itself is not a bad thing. It's when you go to extremes and don't care about the other people in your party and want it to be all about you that it becomes a bad thing. optimization is just taking a concept and making your character be good at that. Before anybody says anything, there is a world of difference between "good" and "gamebreaking"

True enough, optimizer was a bad term to use, you corrected it perfectly, thank you

[Pyre_Born]

I would argue that a system that is so fundamentally broken that it requires effort just to keep it from breaking is a bad system. There are other systems that actually do function on their own, and the players and DM get to expend their effort enhancing the game from enjoyable to highly enjoyable, rather than expending their effort trying not to look at the gaping holes and scurrying cockroaches and forcing the system to work even a little.

Ironically, I don't find the whole "Casters trivialize everyone else" to really be one of the fundamental problems of D&D as a roleplaying game. The above paragraph doesn't take that into account even a little. D&D has other issues that don't get much attention on these boards.

I'll agree with you here, d&d is not my game of choice for these reasons. I think that it's been long enough since these holes in the system have become common(enough) knowledge that it now falls to the players and dm to even out the party if they choose to use the system.

And as to spellcasting being the game breaker, I agree 100% on this too, their are far to many areas that need fixing to believe nerfing spellcasting will make it a fixed system

[Endarire]

Remember, optimization is using a screwdriver to put in screws instead of a hammer. If you go for a +2 to your main thing instead of a +1, that's optimizing.

Mind you, these are rudimentary examples. The example of "I get world-shattering power this level!" versus "I get +1 to hit" exemplifies the great disparity between casters and non-casters.

[oxybe]

out of the starting gates really. i've spoken far more then i have to about my issues with 3.5, mostly due to how non-casters are far too limited in their options.

my problems with non-casters:

-not enough viable options built-in. with so few non-combat abilities gained through class features, non-casters are forced to rely on feats, items and skills to get viability out of combat.

-most of a non-caster's feats will be used to make it a better combatant. with 10 feats on average (6 from levels, 1 from level 1, and a few from class/crossclassing), very few characters take their first few feats to get extra non-combat options, especially if they're going for a particular style of combat. this leaves us with skills an items

-there are 45 skills listed in 3.5 phb. only 3 out of 11 classes get 6+int or more skill points per level. only one of the 8 classes that get 4 or less actually use Int to power class abilities (wizard). this means the average int (10-11) character knows less then a 10th of the skill list, and of what little he can learn a large part is cross-classed, which makes it far harder to be properly trained in it

-so items. a non-caster eventually becomes VERY reliant on their items to be successful. the main problem is that items may or may not be accessible. while the game assumes they generally are, these items REQUIRE a caster to create them. effectively telling a non-caster: "to gain options you must emulate the caster, which has options". which kinda sucks.

-the last problem is since the non-casters have so little built-in support for anything that isn't "i hit it with my [weapon of choice]" or "i hit it REALLY hard", non-casters rely almost entirely on the GM's adjudication of player skill and metagame information when it comes to options. that might be ok for some people, but it really grinds my gears that Edward the Headsman's ability to bypass a traps is reliant on Oxybe the Player's ability to creatively use a crowbar, a pully, several dozen yards of rope, a handful of pitons and a log.
------------------------------------------------------
problems with casters:
-too many options. most of the early casters were built to be catch-all archetypes. the wizard is meant to be Gandalf, Elminister, Tim the Enchanter, Dumbledore, etc... while many of the non-casters were built around very specific archetypes, like the savage Barbarian or the wuxia-influenced Monk.

the problem with this is the your wizard, cleric, druid or whatnot could change each day if he wanted to if he was Gandalf, Elminister, Tim the Enchanter, Dumbledore, John the Horrible Necromancer from down the lane, etc... or worse, in one day simply amalgam the stronger aspects of these and wreck havoc as flying, invisible, huge-sized, man-eating millipede that has a furnace for a stomach.

-too many "i win" or Win/Lose binary spells. a lot of spells simply did stuff... and a lot of this stuff was quicker or more reliable then what the non-casters could do.

want to go over the chasm? polymorph into a bird/fly/teleport/etc...
want information from the NPC? change his attitude via magic/force him to give you information via dominate or kill+speak with dead.
want to know what is in store for you/what could help? divination. divination. divination.

a lot of these types of spells could be gained quickly enough and scribing a scroll or two of situational spells is a drop in the bucket money-wise. a bit later on, you can easily craft wands / staves for these spells and with splats runestaves that let you convert prepared spells into those on the staff.

-many spells were simply better then the non-spellcaster options. a slightly less then 500 GP collection per PC (assuming a 5 person group) would allow a 5th level wizard to create a wand of Open Lock that has a 100% success rate per lock (50 in total) and can be used at a safe distance to open the locks on most doors without fear of getting hit by the trap. note that is effectively paying 10GP per lock picked, per group member, magical lock or otherwise.

an unseen servant can be used to open the doors. and a wand thereof is quite cheap to make 75GP a PC if you don't feel like risking a PC opening it.

and this is if you're worried about the locks+doors. there are several dungeon bypass spells at later levels that simply allow you to obliterate the door from a safe distance, or just go through the wall adjacent to the door.

a flight spells is in almost all situations better then the jumping or climbing option, and alter self (10 minutes per level) into a creature with a swim speed (lilke a locatah) is far safer then swimming.

i think you can see my point.

and this is simply based on non-combat options alone. in combat a decent spellcaster can usually debuff or cause enough issues to the enemy side in one or two turns that the non-casters are effectively the mop-up crew.

---------------------------------------

outside of the spellcaster/non-caster thing there are several issues i do have:
-low level HP is FAR too low for a heroic character. at level 1, a 16 con fighter has 13 HP. a 14 str enemy one-handing a longsword deals 1d8+2 damage, so 6.5 damage on an average hit. in 2 hits he can down the fighter. in one he can down a wizard with 14 con, or any d6 class with the human average con, 10.

it's only at around level 3-5 your lower HD PCs start being able to take a few hits without dying, and even then as one of my last PF sessions has proven, taking 34 damage as a level 5 wizard can kill quite easily. especially when you seem to be unable to hit the broad side of a barn with a ranged touch attack and misjudge a creature's range.

-high level combats are too swingy. even with a low level of optimization it's VERY easy to have PCs that deal hundreds of damage per round. a Lion Totem Barbarian (complete champion) with shock trooper (complete warrior) can full attack on a charge for a pretty decent amount of damage without taking a hit to his attack. add in some actual power attack optimization or simply taking a level into frenzied berserker and you turn the dial to "ludicrous damage". casters can easily enough drop powerfull debuffs to transform enemies into a state of near vegetation, turning a potential brute into a blind, helpless 20-ft tall kitten with cleaver-like claws it can't even lift.

on the flipside, a single bad roll of the dice can kill a PC with ease unless he stocked up on the right protective wards that morning. Woe to the PC who didn't prep anti-death effects that one morning and gets jumped with a finger of death (and happens to have a low Fort save to boot).

many combats seem to rely on who can get initiative first and launch the first big attack.

the downside is if each side is prepared against a series of potential effects, things can really drag on as each side flails ineffectively at one another. see this comic for an idea of what can happen, except replace a few "made my saving throw" for "i've got a buff that makes me immune to X"

-several subsystems are bit too more unwieldy then they need to be. grappling, tripping, turning undead, disarming, ect... are made a bit too complicated for my liking. they're usable but rely on a non-standard method of conflict resolution that will easily require some pageflipping if it's not one that you use often.

-speaking of some subsystems, many like grappling/tripping usually have penalties (sometimes very hefty ones) attached to them unless you're trained and even then quickly become useless against non-humanoids unless you're focused in that combat style above all else (which can easily be 2+ sizes larger then you with several legs and a strength score that doubles yours, or simply don't use anything but natural weapons).

-multiclassing. among casters, multi-classing simply isn't done unless you have a VERY specific build you're going for the loss of extra spells and caster level hurts too much that not increasing your caster potential is something you just won't do. for non-casters, multi-classing is a VERY easy way to gain extra abilities and with the right tinkering and mix and matching (due to many classes being front-loaded with their good stuff early on) you can be much stronger then the individual parts.

honestly i much prefer the way all editions barring 3rd handled classes & multiclassing. you picked your archetype/class that fits best and you stuck to it (or reworked / reflavored the class who's mechanics fit best). the ease of multi-classing in 3.5 diluted the point of classes to a point where it sometimes seemed like it was trying to be a very awkward point-based game. now this could be good or bad depending on your point of view, but i much rather like how 2nd ed's handled multiclassing and when 4th ed introduced hybrid classes (though i still use multiclassing as means of dabbling rather then a core part of the PC).

-generally speaking the use of skills in all editions of D&D. i generally don't like how skill have been handled in all editions. 4th ed is close to how i like it, but still not quite there. to build on my previous point, it sometimes feels like an awkward point-based game, and when it comes to skill it's in my opinion (and from what i hear, a common one) that overall, you don't get enough points to fully flesh out your character with a wide array of skills, especially if you hope to succeed at several level equivalent challenges (usually opposed ones, like bluff VS sense motive, but several static ones can require a high point value that isn't possible for low level PCs or even high level ones due to how cross-class skills work).

------------------------------------------------------
side note:
-the social contract thing. i'm all for playing nice with your buddies, but while you chose to play the wizard, you buddy chose to play the fighter. if your concept is that of a warmage, a veteran of combat who marches onto the field not in armor, but wearing the skin of a monster, transforming himself into a beastial war machine as he wades into combat armed with the flight and talons of a Roc, the mouth and furnace-like stomach of a Remorhaz, the brutal and destructive strenght of a Treant, etc...

why are you in the wrong when the fighter complains that your flying, invisble giant millipede is devouring enemies left & right?

why is the cleric of Kord in the wrong when he wades into combat fully buffed as a giant avatar of destruction, preaching the teachings of his god as he strikes down his foes, reveling in the ecstasy of the adrenaline rush? why should you tone down your concept for the fighter?

what of the cleric of olidamara hoping to strike it rich in the next lost city? or the tomb-raiding and treasure-hunting wizard who both dream of excavating lost heirlooms of a bygone era and have chosen their spell list to help them navigate subterranean areas & bypass traps? should they tone it down so the rogue can go into harm's way and try to pick the locks and check for traps himself?

i agree that that there should be some give & take within a group, but telling those who are playing the casters to willingly hold back so the fighter can pretend he's needed is just as insulting to the casters as they are being to the fighter by doing his job and more.

[Pyre_Born]

Remember, optimization is using a screwdriver to put in screws instead of a hammer. If you go for a +2 to your main thing instead of a +1, that's optimizing.

Mind you, these are rudimentary examples. The example of "I get world-shattering power this level!" versus "I get +1 to hit" exemplifies the great disparity between casters and non-casters.

You're right about this, no argument here. The system "as-is" has a major gap in this area. To be honest, "fixing" 3.x would really need a brand new system based on the d20 chasis, starting from ground up. At this point in time their is so that doesn't fit well together.

Peace,
Pyre

[Morph Bark]

he gave his enemies antimagic field as a (Su) ability.

PARADOX!

IT HAS TO BE!