The D&D Guidebook, 3rd Edition Part 3: Styles of Play

There is an old argument against the Dungeons & Dragons that goes like this: "D&D is a game built around the idea that the players should largely engage in combative behavior without worrying about the 'story' of the session or campaign. The game emphasizes combat by rewarding players only for killing monsters and looting treasure, and not for accomplishing important moments for the character in the context of the game's larger story. Therefore it is not a game that anyone concerned with the idea that the world is more meaningful than the next walking experience point waiting to be felled should spend any time playing."

When 3e was published the argument became louder with many of its proponents posting on a wide array of forums decrying the way that this newly popular version of the game was being played. Too often, for them it seems, D&D players were gleefully killing Orcs, Dragons, and Trolls and too rarely talking about how the death of the Duke's daughter affected their character's emotional well-being. The 'murder-hobos' were decried for their lack of imagination and 3e was pointed to as the source of this murderous non-sense. "The game," they reasoned, "did not reward true creativity and only indulged in the baser instincts of its players - never challenging their moral understanding of the world."

They are, of course, full of shit.

D&D is a robust game that allows for a wide array of play styles from the aggressive play of the most notorious, bloodthirsty player to the deeply immersive explorations of what it means for a character to navigate the political intrigues of the free cities of Dyvers and Greyhawk. D&D is a game that reflects the play style of the group playing the game - Dungeon Master and players alike. If your group is looking to go from dungeon crawl to dungeon crawl spending as little time playing out their characters' time away from that exploration than that's something that D&D can provide you through monstrous encounters, deadly traps, and vile malefactors in every wild space of the campaign world. By the same token if the group wants to spend weeks dallying with Dukes and petty nobles of various houses, exploring the political intrigues associated with them and pitting each against the other for the players' benefit, than D&D, and especially 3e, can accomplish that with ease.

While Dungeons & Dragons is a game that can provide players with an experience that focuses on either end of the spectrum (murderous vagrants or political dilettantes), it works best somewhere between each spectrum. In the Dungeon Master's Guide it was put this way:

". . . Most campaigns are going to fall between these two extremes. There's plenty of action, but there's a storyline and interaction as characters too. Players will develop their characters, but they'll be eager to get into a fight as well. Provide a nice mixture of roleplaying encounters and combat encounters. Even in a dungeon you can present NPCs that aren't meant to be fought but rather helped out, negotiated with, or just talked to . . ." (Cook, 8)

Reading that paragraph again for the first time in a few years I find myself remembering how I was sitting at my desk plotting out Duke Niles's motivations when I picked up the DMG and read that paragraph. It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and suddenly I stopped worrying about every possible plot hook and instead concerned myself with focusing on what my players wanted when they played. I started listening to what they were talking about - the next fight, what would happen to the little girl if they didn't figure out what was going on, whether they could stop everything from collapsing in on itself and save the world - and began attempting to provide them with an opportunity to find out.

In the eleven years I've been running D&D since I've had games that ran the gamut from deeply immersive experiences to murderous rampages where no ogre was left alive and the game has always provided me with a framework to experience the game we had been looking to play (which isn't to say that I've never played other games or that they didn't provide me enjoyable experiences as well). During the majority of that time I've played a lot of 3e and enjoyed the hell out of it; which is why I decided to start this series for the D&D Guidebook with 3e.

Works Cited

Cook, Monte. Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide, Core Rulebook II. Wizards of the Coast. USA, 2000. PRINT. pg. 8

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The D&D Guidebook, 3rd Edition Part 2: Let’s Talk About All That Funny Math

Shortly after you open the 3e Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) you’ll find a little section titled General Guidelines. It’s here that the mathematics that you’ve grown up with are going to begin abandoning you and it’s here that our exploration of 3e really beings.

Rounding Fractions

In 3e you’re going to encounter fractions and like when you were in elementary school these fractions are always to be rounded to the nearest whole number. Only unlike the math you learned alongside your letters and what it means when a pretty girl slides you a note asking if you want to be her boyfriend in Third Edition there is no artificial demarcation line drawn at 1/2. Everything rounds down to the lowest number – except for when it doesn’t. Certain types of damage, hit points, and on a few other occasions it isn’t possible for the math to give you a result lower than one.

Congratulations, we’ve just run into our first exception of the game and we’re only on page six of the 3e DMG. Get ready because there are going to be a lot more.

Multiplying

So let’s talk about how you multiply in 3e because this is going to come up eventually in any game you play. Now normally multiplication works as it always has when you have a single multiplier. For example, if you make a critical hit (the best result in combat) then your weapon damage is multiplied by its critical modifier as always (the numbers here for new players are going to look a bit crazy but don’t worry about them right now as this is just putting a little bug in your ear so that you will remember it later). Let’s say that your fighter is swinging a war-hammer which has a X3 critical modifier. When you roll that critical you multiply your normal damage as follows:

3(1d8+6) = 3(1d8) + 3(6) = 3d8 + 18

Pretty standard stuff, right?

Now where things get weird is when you have an additional multiplier to factor into the equation for combat.  Let’s say that you have a special magical effect that happens when you fight a particular enemy that multiplies your damage by two every time you attack that creature with your war-hammer, and on this particular occasion you score a critical. How would you imagine that you would combine those two multipliers? For some of you it would be obvious that you should follow the order of operations. First you would resolve the doubling of the damage, since it happens every time you attack that enemy, and then applying the triple for the critical to arrive at a result similar to this:

3[2(1d8+6)] = 3[2(1d8) + 2(6)] = 3[2d8 + 12] = 3(2d8) + 3(12) = 6d8 + 36

Not so fast my friend. In 3e you combine the multipliers through an addition of a subtraction. Sound odd?

It is.

When you have two multipliers in combat you’re supposed to take one away from the lesser of the two multipliers and add the results. Let’s again consider our magical war-hammer and the critical strike. 3e would like us to combine the 3 multiplier and the 2 multiplier, minus one. This results in a multiplier of 4. To put it in a mathematical formula:

((3 + 2) – 1)(1d8 + 6) = (5 – 1)(1d8 + 6) = 4(1d8 + 6) = 4(1d8) + 4(6) = 4d8 + 24

In the revision of 3e, lovingly referred to as three-five, this would be explained as follows:

“. . . Another way to think of it is to convert the multiplication into additions. Tordek’s critical hit increases his damage by 2d8 + 12, and the dwarven thrower’s doubling of damage increases his damage by 1d8 + 6, so both of them together increase his damage by 3d8 + 18 for a grand total of 4d8 + 24 . . .” (Tweet, 304)

Over the years I’ve played Third Edition using both systems of math, that found in the real world and that found in 3e, and honestly, the game plays better when you use the 3e method. Oh, it’s a strange math all right, but the game is more challenging and exciting when you use it.

Before we close up this section of the Guidebook I should note that at the time 3e was first published the multiple multiplier rule was confusingly written and implied that this sort of math should be applied to all situations where multiple multipliers were in play. This would be cleared up in the revision of the game to show that only combat modifiers as described above should be handled in this way. All other similar situations should be handled like the rest of the world deals with all math: in a standard order of operations, with a calculator, and avoided whenever possible.

Works Cited:

Tweet, Johnathan. Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, Core Rulebook I v.3.5. USA: Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 2003. Print. 304

The D&D Guidebook, 3rd Edition Part 1: Welcome and Remember These Two Things

Hi, my name is Charles and I like Third Edition Dungeons & Dragons (3e, 3ED&D, 3.5e, or 3.5ED&D*). I know that probably sounds odd considering that the game is wrapped up in moth balls and that most of the people online who love D&D mean either: Original D&D (OD&D); one of the Basic versions of D&D edited by either Holmes, Moldvay, or Mentzer (HBD&D, MOBD&D, or MEBD&D respectively); Fourth Edition D&D (4e or 4ED&D); Fifth Edition D&D (5e or 5ED&D); Pathfinder; or some retro-styled indie variant of the earlier editions of D&D (like Swords & Wizardry or OSRIC). The focus always seems to fall on these other versions of the game with Second Edition D&D (2e or 2ED&D) and 3e receiving little love among the role-playing game blogs. 

Trust me, I know. 

So why focus on 3e? Because I fucking love it. 3e was the game that got me to actually spend time on D&D and it was the one that got me playing role-playing games after years of wanting to but never having the opportunity. It was the game that opened itself up to me and that I completely got from the get go; so much so, that I've run well over 800 sessions of it in the last decade. This, then, is my love letter to Third Edition. 

This series will be looking at 3e, warts and all. It won't cover every book that was produced but it will focus on the ones that I liked and that got me excited to play the game. Some of the parts that I'll be looking at might sound a bit boring (I'm looking at you grapple rules) but stick with me and I promise it'll be worth it. Before we go any further though you need to remember two things about Third Edition: (1) we always, always round our fractions down; (2) the math you learned to get here will be meaningless. 

Welcome to Third Edition; you're in for a fun time.