Pros and Cons of every D&D edition?

[Selene Sparks]

Selene, show me what a Gargantuan creature with 3 RHD looks like.

A bugbear psychic warrior. Oh, look, even when you make arbitrary challenges, I can meet it within the SRD.

See, I'm finding this really funny, that y'all are trying to push this onto me, when it's others that are asserting correlation without evidence.

[JNAProductions]

A bugbear psychic warrior. Oh, look, even when you make arbitrary challenges, I can meet it within the SRD.

See, I'm finding this really funny, that y'all are trying to push this onto me, when it's others that are asserting correlation without evidence.

Allow me to rephrase-show me a creature that is naturally Gargantuan and has 3 RHD. JUST 3 RHD as well-no other hit dice.

[Rhedyn]

@Rhedyn: again, the crazy part isn't trying to model equivalent characters symmetrically (PC human fighter versus NPC human fighter, etc.), it's trying to expand the same system to model vastly non-equivalent characters or types which aren't meant to be played (PC human fighter versus an orca, a beholder, a giant spider, an elephant, a dragon, a cosmic horror from beyond time and space, etc.)

Older editions of D&D have no trouble using different or simplified rules for the latter sort. The d20 iteration is unique in the extent it tries to model and describe the latter in the same terms as PCs - and is byzantine and bloated because of that. Ironically, even d20 doesn't aim for full symmetry, as it still has LA: - templates and creatures, which are arbtrarily omitted from being available as player characters, despite using most of the same framework!

Well the edition that gets blasted for this the most (now a days) is 5e because fighting NPCs with PC levels is terribly imbalanced.
That's where I draw the line. If NPCs using PC rules are something your system handles poorly then you have lost symmetry.

Racial classes and LA and all that noise are just ways to expand PC options, but in the two system of D&D I saw with those (3.5 and Basic splat books PC1-4), those new PC options can be used for NPCs without issue.

Would a player character werewolf ever look like the NPC one in 5e? Because Basic has line on the table for when you hit equivalent to a "normal monster".

[Knaight]

See, I'm finding this really funny, that y'all are trying to push this onto me, when it's others that are asserting correlation without evidence.

The correlation is obvious and immediately visible, and that we haven't gone to the effort of actually finding the RHD by size distribution to quantify exactly how big this obvious correlation is doesn't mean that it's not there.

[Mendicant]

You have a citation on this?

...was "elementals, giants and dragons not a citation? This is such a weird hill to die on. The huge giants have more RHD than the large ones. The first four iterations of elementals are literally catagorized by their size. Dragons have an obvious correlation between size and HD. There are 11 devils listed in the SRD. The tiny one has 3 RHD. The medium ones average 7.4 RHD. The large ones average 13 RHD. Vermin have more RHD if they're bigger. Demons do this as well. Between animals, elementals, vermin, dragons, demons, devils and giants there's not much Monster Manual left.


So let's organize this by power, rather than category.

I just now went through every CR 3 monster, just as an experiment. Removing swarms and creatures that advance by level, the average small CR 3 monster has 2.6 RHD (this drops to 2.1 if you remove the under-cr'ed white dragon), the average medium CR 3 monster has 3.1 RHD, the average large CR 3 monster has 4.3 RHD, and the only huge one has 6. The only exception to this obvious trend are the two tiny monsters--quasits and imps both have 3 RHD.

Bigger monsters generally get more HD even if they're nominally of the same power.

We have no text that indicates they don't behave exactly like everything else in the game that I can see.

You're begging the question. You're assuming PC/NPC symmetry in order to prove PC/NPC symmetry.

The rules for PC advancement aren't "everything else in the game." Monsters clearly have alternative advancement systems to XP like "eat enough people" and "get older." The two models we have for actual NPC advancement explicitly work differently from the PC rules, so if anything, other NPCs would run on those. The reality is that DM-controlled NPCs don't have rules for gaining XP, and thus don't interact with that system because they don't need to. Symmetry here has no real value, and as Bohandas might put it, their advancement is left half-adzed. They have arbitrary levels based on their purpose in the game.

[zimmerwald1915]

The rules for PC advancement aren't "everything else in the game." Monsters clearly have alternative advancement systems to XP like "eat enough people" and "get older." The two models we have for actual NPC advancement explicitly work differently from the PC rules, so if anything, other NPCs would run on those. The reality is that DM-controlled NPCs don't have rules for gaining XP, and thus don't interact with that system because they don't need to. Symmetry here has no real value, and as Bohandas might put it, their advancement is left half-adzed. They have arbitrary levels based on their purpose in the game.

You're arguing on the terrain of why advancement happens, but as far as I can tell, people who like PC/NPC transparency in advancement (including me) like it not for the why of it,* but for the how. In 3E and its derivatives, PCs advance by gaining hit dice from class levels, and occasionally templates. Likewise, NPCs advance by gaining hit dice, whether from class levels or from some other source, and occasionally templates.

* Incidentally, it's quite common for the XP-award system to go by the wayside and have PCs advance just like NPCs - when the GM tells them to. And just like that we have full transparency as to both why and how.

[1337 b4k4]

For the Wish thing, isn't it pretty explicitly laid out in the 5e SRD that yes, you totally can wish for more stuff than what's listed?
...
Unless the SRD Im looking at is wildly incorrect, or we're not looking at 5e's version, it seems fairly clear. Time travel is definitely not one of the listed effects, and yet is given as an example of a wish gone bad.

I quoted the same back on page 12, it didn't seem to make a difference. Personally I tend to argue that if the game designers put text in a rule book, they meant for it to have relevance and meaning. Splat book folks might get paid on a per word basis, but I'm pretty sure the WotC guys aren't. It seems other people think some text has no meaning other than to fill space

Non-symmetric PCs and NPCs are pretty much the exact definition of half-assed

An interesting bit of linguistic trivia I did not know, and a fairly adequate analogy. As I see it in a game, there can be 3 types of NPCs:

1) "full assed" NPCs would be constructed as PCs. Any game with PC creation rules obviously supports a "full assed" NPC. In my own games these NPCs are rare, either built as DM PCs for the sake of properly interacting as a PC for the purposes of adventuring with the party or as major characters who need and deserve that sort of detail and effort. Sometimes the GM can get "full assed" NPCs from the player discards (Traveller with its death in character creation is well known for this)

2) "half assed" NPCs are NPCs that are partially constructed. These tend to be the sorts of NPCs that have a rough PC like template, and then have abilities or attributes applied as thematically rather than mechanically appropriate. In games with both human (or other player race) characters that the players might interact with beyond a single type of interaction (e.g. more than just the tavern keeper, more than just a grunt), this will generally be the type of NPC I'll use. A standard GRUPS NPC is a good example of this. They get 10s in all their attributes, with a +1-2 in their best and a -1- -2 in their worst) and skills as appropriate for their narrative niche. They look like real PC type characters from one side, but behind the scenes they're not nearly as fleshed out

3) Lastly there are the "no assed" NPCs. They're just not built like PCs because it's not relevant or they're just different. Most of the monsters in non 3.x D&D fall into this category. Any "one roll" NPC for Starts Without Number would be another example of this, as would "Part-timer"'s in Red Markets and pretty much anything that isn't a PC in DungeonWorld. They're "no assed" not because they don't have rules governing them, but because they're not the engraved wood a full or half assed PC would be. They're metal work or the glue and nails that hold something together.

Dude, Basic D&D had NPCs using PC class levels. Sure you couldn't just add them to monsters (well actually you could since the CR system is to just compare HD totals), but person NPCs used the player rules.

Can't really say PC/NPC symmetry isn't traditional when it goes back to at least '83 if not '74.

Some human (and demi-human) NPCs were treated as a Level X Class character, but for the most part, NPCs didn't have classes, or levels. Heck monster entries in early D&D don't even have any of the six main attributes save for "intelligence"

Funny. I see it all the time. I see one kid deciding that they're all telling a story, and the others going along. My brother and I did that for years (decades in fact) growing up. Entirely freeform, entirely non-symmetric. Also one of the things I found most precious about my childhood, something that kept me mostly sane despite other struggles.

Yep, one of my earliest lessons in GMing games came before I even knew what a TTRPG was when I was a wee tyke and an adult pulled me aside and said "Look, just because the other kids look to you to decide on the story doesn't mean you get to pick and choose favorites, make sure you're being fair to everyone". Someone "calling the shots" in kid play sessions was absolutely normal in my experience.

[Rhedyn]

Some human (and demi-human) NPCs were treated as a Level X Class character, but for the most part, NPCs didn't have classes, or levels. Heck monster entries in early D&D don't even have any of the six main attributes save for "intelligence"

Bandits are level 1 thieves RC page 158
Halflings are level 1 Halflings RC page 182
Hadsman and Thugs are just different levels of Thief RC page 184
Lycanthropes follow the Lycanthrope classes from Creature Crucible - PC 4 - Night Howlers RC pages 190
Men on page 193
Mystics are Mystics on page 195
Cavemen are fighters on page 196

Sure they assume average stats (no bonus 9-12) and are presented as entries. But all your custom NPCs do just follow the PC rules and it isn't a balance issue.

[2D8HP]

Bandits are level 1 thieves RC page 158
Halflings are level 1 Halflings RC page 182
Hadsman and Thugs are just different levels of Thief RC page 184
Lycanthropes follow the Lycanthrope classes from Creature Crucible - PC 4 - Night Howlers RC pages 190
Men on page 193
Mystics are Mystics on page 195
Cavemen are fighters on page 196

Sure they assume average stats (no bonus 9-12) and are presented as entries. But all your custom NPCs do just follow the PC rules and it isn't a balance issue.

Oh!

I want to play the "Quote old rules" game as well!

Originally a First level Fighter was a normal human:
.
Check out the 1974 Attack Matrix:



(Note: "Normal men equal 1st level Fighters", despite the level title being "Veteran".
Dirty Peasants of the world unite!)


And here's the AD&D one only a few years later:



(Note: the introduction of "0 level humans", so snooty PC's can have people that they fight better than, starting the whole rotten PC's start as and are always "exceptional" junk)

I just happen to feel that someone who struggles to do good when the odds are long is more heroic than someone who does it easily.

I respect Captain Miller, and Jim Casy more than Bruce Wayne and Kal-El.

Minority taste I suppose.

[1337 b4k4]

Bandits are level 1 thieves RC page 158
Halflings are level 1 Halflings RC page 182
Hadsman and Thugs are just different levels of Thief RC page 184
Lycanthropes follow the Lycanthrope classes from Creature Crucible - PC 4 - Night Howlers RC pages 190
Men on page 193
Mystics are Mystics on page 195
Cavemen are fighters on page 196

Sure they assume average stats (no bonus 9-12) and are presented as entries. But all your custom NPCs do just follow the PC rules and it isn't a balance issue.

Ok, are only half the things I type getting onto the page? I could swear I specifically wrote "Some human (and demi-human) NPCs were treated as Level X Classes". Yes, I can see it now, I did indeed write those words.

Bandits would be "humans", Halflings would be "demi-humans", "Humans" are ... well "Human", as are Mystics and Cavemen.

You will however note that there is also a monster entry for "Normal Human" (197) where they are not assigned classes. I would also argue that Headsmen are not thief class characters, their entry does not say they are thieves (as the bandit entry does) and the only thief ability they appear to have access to is move silently. I will admit maybe I'm missing something in my reading but I see nowhere that Lycanthropes are given classes, and I do see an explicit note that PCs who become lycanthropes become NPCs, which seems to imply heavily they are not assigned classes.

And that addresses the "Monster Type: Human" entries, please don't now make me go through and list all the monster entries that don't have classes.

[Rhedyn]

Ok, are only half the things I type getting onto the page? I could swear I specifically wrote "Some human (and demi-human) NPCs were treated as Level X Classes". Yes, I can see it now, I did indeed write those words.

Bandits would be "humans", Halflings would be "demi-humans", "Humans" are ... well "Human", as are Mystics and Cavemen.

You will however note that there is also a monster entry for "Normal Human" (197) where they are not assigned classes. I would also argue that Headsmen are not thief class characters, their entry does not say they are thieves (as the bandit entry does) and the only thief ability they appear to have access to is move silently. I will admit maybe I'm missing something in my reading but I see nowhere that Lycanthropes are given classes, and I do see an explicit note that PCs who become lycanthropes become NPCs, which seems to imply heavily they are not assigned classes.

And that addresses the "Monster Type: Human" entries, please don't now make me go through and list all the monster entries that don't have classes.

And the very next entry is an NPC party which showcases how you can have encounters with other groups of PC classed NPCs.

It's clearly not the 5e "oh god please don't use PC classes on NPCs because the game can't handle it / A DM should be very careful when creating NPCs with PC classes".

[JNAProductions]

You know it works fine, right? The NPC would have a relatively high Offebsive CR, and a low Defensive, but you could just calculate it like any other NPC.

It’s just not needed, in many cases. You can make an NPC far quicker and more effectively if you don’t restrain yourself with just what players can do.

[Mendicant]

You're arguing on the terrain of why advancement happens, but as far as I can tell, people who like PC/NPC transparency in advancement (including me) like it not for the why of it,* but for the how. In 3E and its derivatives, PCs advance by gaining hit dice from class levels, and occasionally templates. Likewise, NPCs advance by gaining hit dice, whether from class levels or from some other source, and occasionally templates.

* Incidentally, it's quite common for the XP-award system to go by the wayside and have PCs advance just like NPCs - when the GM tells them to. And just like that we have full transparency as to both why and how.

Which is fine. I mostly prefer symmetry here as well. (Though I'd be lying if I claimed to always assign every skill point. )

I'm responding to a specific contention that NPCs gain experience, which isn't anywhere in the rules and really shouldn't be, and seems to be coming from an almost reflexive insistence that there not be any daylight between the way npc's tick vs. pcs.

[1337 b4k4]

And the very next entry is an NPC party which showcases how you can have encounters with other groups of PC classed NPCs.

It's clearly not the 5e "oh god please don't use PC classes on NPCs because the game can't handle it / A DM should be very careful when creating NPCs with PC classes".

Are we arguing over my wording not being precise enough? If I changed my original statement from:

[3.x] was pretty much the only edition of d&d that did pc/npc symmetry

to

[3.x] was pretty much the only edition of d&d that tried to eliminate pc/npc asymmetry

is that a statement you can agree with? Because I've sincerely not been trying to argue in this thread at all that PCs and NPCs should NEVER have any symmetry. I've even said that where existing rules work and it makes sense, one should go for using the existing rules rather than remaking something. That's the reason is in my mind why early D&D bandits are thief and fighter "classed" NPCs, they were close enough that writing a completely separate set of Bandit, Bandit Under Boss, Bandit Boss entries was more work for less payoff than writing an entry that says "they're pretty much 1st level thieves, except for Under Bosses that are 3rd level and Bosses that are 5th level, and here's the relevant differences".

But if you were interpreting my original statement as "no edition other than 3.x has ever had NPCs at all that were symmetrically built with PCs", and you otherwise agree with my rewording, then that was a failure on my end to be precise enough and I apologize.

[Mordaedil]

There is plenty of room for disagreement in all sorts of rules text. My objections on the rules in particular have primarily been on people trying to frame what is not, in fact, in the rules as something that is within the rules.
Dealing with people getting creative is part of the job of the DM. Even the most robust system can't over every edge case. There is, however, a line between "Okay, here's how we're going to handle that" and "who even needs an objective framework for the game that the players can observe?" Having every problem, challenge, or anything else resolved with "make something up," from NPC abilities to the entire skill system, falls very far into the latter. Furthermore, it's very much worth keeping in mind that the line of thought here is part of what led down this tangent in the first place. The GM "laying the law" directly ties into the whole DM power fetishization nonsense that this tangent started from.

As a final note here, RAW's brokenness really is a matter of both interpretation and group tolerance. What's obviously dysfunctional in one group is a reasonable baseline in another.

I agree entirely. Which is why there are a lot of rules that are written down with firm limits and only some cases where it is left open. Wish is one of those where it is left open in text, because well, the spell itself is just that kind of spell, where they want players and DMs to get creative, while they put down strict guidelines for what wish should be able to do without screwing over the player in the same text.

The idea behind Wish, is that it sets these guildelines to prevent the DM from thinking "every wish must be a monkey paw's wish" and players just to wish for immortality and then be immortal.

For example, if you wish for a ring of wishes, you might get a ring with no wishes left, if the DM doesn't want to put too much effort into it, or as the text describes, you might get a ring of wishes, but with the former owner still attached. This doesn't replicate any other spell, that I know of, since it'd be a combination of an extensive planet-scale locate object and some sort of teleportation cast on the target with a set destination to your location. It doesn't even specify if the owner of the ring of wishes would be hostile or not.

I dunno why I am going on about this, just wanted to be clear about it, I don't think we disagree.

[Rhedyn]

Are we arguing over my wording not being precise enough? If I changed my original statement from:

[3.x] was pretty much the only edition of d&d that did pc/npc symmetry

to

[3.x] was pretty much the only edition of d&d that tried to eliminate pc/npc asymmetry

is that a statement you can agree with? Because I've sincerely not been trying to argue in this thread at all that PCs and NPCs should NEVER have any symmetry. I've even said that where existing rules work and it makes sense, one should go for using the existing rules rather than remaking something. That's the reason is in my mind why early D&D bandits are thief and fighter "classed" NPCs, they were close enough that writing a completely separate set of Bandit, Bandit Under Boss, Bandit Boss entries was more work for less payoff than writing an entry that says "they're pretty much 1st level thieves, except for Under Bosses that are 3rd level and Bosses that are 5th level, and here's the relevant differences".

But if you were interpreting my original statement as "no edition other than 3.x has ever had NPCs at all that were symmetrically built with PCs", and you otherwise agree with my rewording, then that was a failure on my end to be precise enough and I apologize.

Oh well sure if that was your claim.

I was just bulking at the notice that 5e gets a pass on this because you thought only 3.5 had more symmetry. Where I think 5e has more asymmetry than the last version of Basic D&D.

[Dimers]

A bugbear psychic warrior. Oh, look, even when you make arbitrary challenges, I can meet it within the SRD.

While JNA's response is more meaningful ...

Allow me to rephrase-show me a creature that is naturally Gargantuan and has 3 RHD. JUST 3 RHD as well-no other hit dice.

... I myself would like to poke that beehive, Selene. Okay. So hit dice were specified, not ECL. Fair enough. That means a 3-HD bugbear psychic warrior is ECL 4 thanks to LA. Our Large psywar can't have the manifester level to go up two size categories to Gargantuan -- that takes ML 7 at minimum. So she must be using an item someone else made, presumably a power stone.

ML7 times power level 1 times 25gp = 175 gp. WBL for a level 4 character is 5400gp (if using the more generous PC chart instead of NPC, of course). So this gal can have 30 such power stones. Those will last ... let's see ... 210 rounds, so ... 21 minutes. Gosh, it's been more than 21 minutes since you made that post -- can you still show me a Gargantuan 3HD creature? No? Hm.

Well, okay, let's kick up that manifester level to 11 so that we can use both the duration augmentation and Extend Power feat. That's 220 minutes per power stone, but you can only buy nineteen of them at the increased cost. 4180 minutes max, almost three days. You've got two days left before you're proven incorrect again.

Two days left while we're assuming perfect availability at a magic-mart and PC levels of wealth. Oh, and I feel sorry for the poor bugbear that can't get any real sleep since she's got to re-manifest every three-and-two-thirds hours.

[Selene Sparks]

Allow me to rephrase-show me a creature that is naturally Gargantuan and has 3 RHD. JUST 3 RHD as well-no other hit dice.

Pass. Again, you're the ones making a positive claim, so you're the ones who have to back it up.

The correlation is obvious and immediately visible, and that we haven't gone to the effort of actually finding the RHD by size distribution to quantify exactly how big this obvious correlation is doesn't mean that it's not there.

Again, citation please?

...was "elementals, giants and dragons not a citation? This is such a weird hill to die on. The huge giants have more RHD than the large ones. The first four iterations of elementals are literally catagorized by their size. Dragons have an obvious correlation between size and HD. There are 11 devils listed in the SRD. The tiny one has 3 RHD. The medium ones average 7.4 RHD. The large ones average 13 RHD. Vermin have more RHD if they're bigger. Demons do this as well. Between animals, elementals, vermin, dragons, demons, devils and giants there's not much Monster Manual left.

I've no intention of dying on this hill, because it's honestly not something I really care too much about. My primary objection has been the blanket assertion without evidence.

So let's organize this by power, rather than category.

I just now went through every CR 3 monster, just as an experiment. Removing swarms and creatures that advance by level, the average small CR 3 monster has 2.6 RHD (this drops to 2.1 if you remove the under-cr'ed white dragon), the average medium CR 3 monster has 3.1 RHD, the average large CR 3 monster has 4.3 RHD, and the only huge one has 6. The only exception to this obvious trend are the two tiny monsters--quasits and imps both have 3 RHD.

Bigger monsters generally get more HD even if they're nominally of the same power.

Wonderful. You have successfully established some correlation within CR3. This is progress.

You're begging the question. You're assuming PC/NPC symmetry in order to prove PC/NPC symmetry.

The rules for PC advancement aren't "everything else in the game." Monsters clearly have alternative advancement systems to XP like "eat enough people" and "get older." The two models we have for actual NPC advancement explicitly work differently from the PC rules, so if anything, other NPCs would run on those. The reality is that DM-controlled NPCs don't have rules for gaining XP, and thus don't interact with that system because they don't need to. Symmetry here has no real value, and as Bohandas might put it, their advancement is left half-adzed. They have arbitrary levels based on their purpose in the game.

XP, in the DMG, is something characters get. It doesn't say PC, despite PCs being referenced several times in other parts of those sections. So, unless you want to argue that non-player characters are not, in fact, characters, I don't see how you have a leg to stand on.

I agree entirely. Which is why there are a lot of rules that are written down with firm limits and only some cases where it is left open. Wish is one of those where it is left open in text, because well, the spell itself is just that kind of spell, where they want players and DMs to get creative, while they put down strict guidelines for what wish should be able to do without screwing over the player in the same text.

The idea behind Wish, is that it sets these guildelines to prevent the DM from thinking "every wish must be a monkey paw's wish" and players just to wish for immortality and then be immortal.

That's fine if you want to run Wish like that in your group, but on the topic of Wish, my objection was with the idea that it granting things outside of what's stated is in the text, as the text has no provisions explicitly allowing such.

For example, if you wish for a ring of wishes, you might get a ring with no wishes left, if the DM doesn't want to put too much effort into it, or as the text describes, you might get a ring of wishes, but with the former owner still attached. This doesn't replicate any other spell, that I know of, since it'd be a combination of an extensive planet-scale locate object and some sort of teleportation cast on the target with a set destination to your location. It doesn't even specify if the owner of the ring of wishes would be hostile or not.

That'd just be a basic example of the transport travelers function. The problem with this example, though, is that Wish allows the creation of magic items.

I dunno why I am going on about this, just wanted to be clear about it, I don't think we disagree.

That's good to hear.

While JNA's response is more meaningful ...



... I myself would like to poke that beehive, Selene. Okay. So hit dice were specified, not ECL. Fair enough. That means a 3-HD bugbear psychic warrior is ECL 4 thanks to LA. Our Large psywar can't have the manifester level to go up two size categories to Gargantuan -- that takes ML 7 at minimum. So she must be using an item someone else made, presumably a power stone.

The criteria put forward was having 3 racial hit dice. I'd recommend, in the future, actually reading posts before responding, just as a general rule.

[Dimers]

*grin* You're adorable.

[Mendicant]

XP, in the DMG, is something characters get.

Weird, since followers explicitly don't get it, even though they're non player characters.

I honestly think you're just trolling at this point.

[Rhedyn]

Weird, since followers explicitly don't get it, even though they're non player characters.

I honestly think you're just trolling at this point.

Retainers do get a share (share determined by number of PCs so as not to discourage retainers) in RC D&D and the number of Retainers you could have was determined by Charisma.

[Mendicant]

Retainers do get a share (share determined by number of PCs so as not to discourage retainers) in RC D&D and the number of Retainers you could have was determined by Charisma.

Yeah but Selene is specifically talking about 3e here.

[Selene Sparks]

*grin* You're adorable.

How wonderfully dismissive. Why not add in shrill while you're at it?

Weird, since followers explicitly don't get it, even though they're non player characters.

Yes, followers are explicitly called out as getting no XP, and cohorts gain XP in a non-standard way. These are both specific rules, which trump general rules when they apply, but that doesn't change the general rules.

I honestly think you're just trolling at this point.

Funny, from where I'm sitting the opposite looks more true, and yet I have the sense to assume that there's a lack of malice, despite the nonsense like being asked to prove a negative.

[JoeJ]

I'm a little surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but one of the pros of 2e for me is priestly spheres that give clerics of different deities different spell lists.


The very large number of campaign settings is also a pro, especially the historical supplements. Even if you don't want to run any of them they serve as worked examples of how to adapt the rules to do something different. I did that to run a game, inspired by the legends of King Arthur and Charlemagne, where knights and warriors dominated. Spells, while powerful in there own way, were too slow to be practical in combat, and even the most powerful characters would count themselves lucky to have a single magic item. I would not try that in 3.x. However, as an experiment I tried doing the same thing using 5e rules and found it was even easier than it had been with 2e (although I haven't tested the result in play yet), so there's that.