What’s Wrong With Third Edition Anyway

Greywulf posted what he feels needs to be fixed with D&D “third edition”. On his points I...

1. Grapple: Disagree
2. Attacks of Opportunity: Disagree
3. Dead levels: Disagree
4. Preparation Time: Ambivalent
5. Challenge Ratings: Agree
6. Experience point calculation: Agree

I thought the grapple rules were pretty good and not too complex. Not well presented, though. Attacks of opportunity I also found to be fine and not too complicated but poorly presented.

I get the “dead level” point, but I just don’t think it’s that important.

Prep time is only bad if you feel the need to dot every I, cross every T, and are overly concerned about “breaking the rules”. The real issue is that the rules are—for many people—overly complex. I’ve still seen people “wing” the game just fine, though.

In my experience, CR is no better than HD for judging how dangerous a monster will be. Likewise, the arcane XP calculations didn’t really add anything to the game.