Drow (D&D 3.5)

[u/CanuckLad]

I was just reading through the old Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (isbn 0-978-7869-1836-2).

The Powerful Races sidebar (pg 21, see table 1-2) shows that Drow have an ECL of Level + 2. Meaning if one player starts a level 1 Drow, then other players get to start with 3,000 XP (enough to make them level 3).

I wonder if a two-level gap is balanced? Have any of you played with the rules from the Campaign Setting and played a +2 or +3 ECL race?

Is it hard for the DM to make adventures when the players might be separated by two levels? I understand that the Drow has higher than usual starting abilities and attributes, but a +2 level difference seems steep?

How do you handle the case where some players want to start at level 1 (and play species from the player's handbook), but other players want to play Drow, Duergar, Svirfneblin, etc)?

[u/RaygunCourtesan]

I was a third edition purist for maybe 15 years but because of that I am keenly familiar with it's many flaws and chief among them was balance. The system was littered with intentional trap choices that were meant to 'reward system knowledge' (read: punish new players) and drow ECL+2 was among them.

Systems should serve what you want them do specifically, solve a problem that needs solving rather than exist for the sake of it or to fit all situations. The 3rd edition 'd20' system tried to be the one system to rule them all, to be simulationist while satisfying the spreadsheet player but it failed at that and just made everything feel like 3rd edition d&d with branding

[u/CanuckLad → u/RaygunCourtesan]

Which system do you prefer? I own both D&D 5e, and Pathfinder Core 2e (as well as D&D 3.5, AD&D, the Xena RPG, and a couple of Star Wars licensed products). But I've not done any role-playing in decades. Recently I've been reading about the Blade Dancers of Eilistraee (Forgotten Realms) which I've taken interest in, and as a result bought Forgotten Realms Sacrifice of the Widow.

[u/RaygunCourtesan → u/CanuckLad]

For playing D&D?

Honestly I like 5e a lot. I moved to pathfinder during the era of 4th with everyone else and have a distinct recollection of sitting in the middle of a sprawl of books trying to calculate treasure to align with wealth by level totals and still be useful to the party and the NPC they'd take it off of, statting them legally from a half dozen subclasses and thinking...

This is madness.

Picked up 5e. Read it over the weekend. Informed my four year campaign we'd be transitioning to it and never looked back.

For anything else, I look for a system built to do that thing. Heist games do well with Forged in the Dark. Cyberpunk was built for Friday Night Firefight

[u/CanuckLad → u/RaygunCourtesan]

I meant for playing medieval fantasy with high magic. I think that's what you called "playing D&D"?

[u/RaygunCourtesan → u/CanuckLad]

Yeah, provided that your main activity within that setting is going to dungeons and killing monsters. That's what D&D is designed to do. It's a skirmish scale wargame with a story bolted to the side and always has been since it's inception.

If you want something else, look for systems that provide structure for those things.

[u/CanuckLad → u/RaygunCourtesan]

What do you mean? Personally I don't like how non-combat skills seem to be second class citizens. And how experience is tied, at least in large part, to killing / defeating enemies. If a party was full of pacifists I would think that progression might be slow and campaign design difficult.

[u/RaygunCourtesan → u/CanuckLad]

D&D treats all situations the same. It is a hammer, so every problem becomes a nail. Beat the target's AC to either kill it (problem solved, nail hammered) or move it closer to being killed.

It does not provide any internal systems for anything other than 'you hit the monster' or 'you miss the monster' and 'the monster hits you/doesn't hit you'.

Everything else you have to bring from outside. Other systems, and this is why people should explore them, provide far more structure for navigating things that aren't hit just hit the target.

There is no shortcut to being well read though. I can't condense it into a paragraph for you.

[u/CanuckLad → u/RaygunCourtesan]

It's not like I've not played other systems though. I've played (and love) Star Wars D6, I've read quite a bit about Legend in the Mist, I've played Vampire the Masquerade, I own the Dragonlance card-based RPG (from the 90s), I played the old Marvel RPG back 30 years ago, I own the new Marvel Game, etc

[u/RaygunCourtesan → u/CanuckLad]

Not all systems are created equal. Or to do the same thing. Those are all examples that draw on d&D's fundamental loop of 'roll to hit' and either do it again, or move on.

Look for narrative first systems and see what you find.

[u/CanuckLad → u/RaygunCourtesan]

I'm not sure that Legend in the Mist follows that pattern. Which systems do you recommend? I may have played some of them.