Jediphile

2e had rules for creating your own classes from scratch - no bloody need for prestige classes (which would force you to go through a core class first). Sure, it was a trade-off - the more powerful the class got, the more it cost to reach the next level of experience - but then doing it any other way would have been unbalanced.

Really? Well, I might even agree with that, but 4e rules would not, it seems:

No, it wouldn't. Looking only at levels, it would make him a 12th-level character, since you cannot convert xp values directly between 2e and 3e, as they are too different. However, in your example that still leaves us with the problem of the character magically losing the ability to cast 4th, 5th, and 6th level spells in the transition. For a new "edition" of the "same game", that does not seem particularly elegant to me. I had a on-going campaign of several years at the time 2e went to 3e, and since the rules would not allow smooth conversion, there was no choice, even if I had liked 3e. So it was an easy choice. If the rules force the choice, then the rules lose. Period. Besides, none of the players asked for the change. Those of them who like and play 3e today still don't.

This is true, of course. But 2e Player Option rules allowed a lot of the classes to "infringe" a bit on the territory of other classes. A priest could take weapon specialization, but he would lose spell potential for it. A rogue could take the warrior's to-hit progression, if he was willing to sacrifice some of his usual thieving skills in the deal. It wasn't a classless game, but it was the step just before it. 3e, however, made the classes more rigid than 2e did. In 2e, you could take proficiencies outside your class, you just had to pay a bit more for the first increase, whereas in 3e, you have to pay double for the cross-class skills for each increase in rank, making it very clear that you really shouldn't take skills outside your class. And if you do, they really won't be much good anyway, since skills "scale" in 3e, unlike in 2e. In 2e, using a proficiency was always at the same basic level, meaning that if you got it to a decent value, you did not have to increase it more to keep it useful. Getting it there could be costly, but that's the price, of course. Not so in 3e. In 3e, everything is progressive, even skills, so if you want a skill to be useful, then you must build it to the maximum constantly - your 5 ranks of concentration might have been pretty good, when you were level 6, but once you reach level 12, it's virtually useless. And since skill ranks are linked to class and level in 3e, the progress is forced on the player. That's one thing that really bugs me in 3e. 2e and even the original D&D might have been just a rigid, but they were at least up-front and honest about it - no denying it. 3e, however, imposes these restrictions clandesinely under the guise of wanting to appear flexible in the spirit of "hey, if you don't want to build that skill, then you don't have to". No, but it'll just be a useless waste of skill points if you don't, which the rules don't bother to tell you...

Fine. How do I convert an dwarven fighter/cleric level 11/11 from 2e to 3e? Answer: You can't. The character does not have enough experience to be level 22, which is what 3e rules would dictate, so he would either lose a lot of his warrior skill in an effort to make him a cleric of a comparable level, or he would have to lose a lot of spell-potential from his priest class in order to give him decent warrior ability. Yes, I like 3e multi-class rules better, but they are not compatible with the earlier games called D&D. Then there is the minotaur fighter. Both 2e and 3e allow that, but they are totally different. In 2e, the character was just a fighter with some massive modifiers (good and bad). In 3e, however, being a minotaur counts as having eight or so levels, reducing the level potential proportionately. The character was built specifically towards using a large weapon in each hand in combat, which required traits/abilities like ambidexterity. Beyond that, the character had focus on Strength and Constitution, and in order to achieve that goal, other stats were sacrificed, including Dexterity, which was fairly low (7, IIRC). However, in 3e, you cannot take ambidexterity feat unless you have a fairly high Dex, and since the characer would lose fighter levels in the exchange as well, the player did not want to convert, and I can't blame him. Oh, and this is a person who plays and enjoys 3.5e today, I should add. 2e-to-3e conversion works only for single-classed characters that do stray from the basic norms in any way. As soon as you look to multi-class or odd race/class combinations (which are allowed in 2e), the option to convert goes south quickly. Besides, given the highly average quality of 3e, there wasn't much point... Converting to a new edition is not a goal onto itself to me. Especially not when it forces me to choose between my campaign and the new rules. In that case, the new rules will always, always lose.

Who says it was better? Of course we needed a 3e. 2e was horribly outdated. Trouble is: 1. 3e was a different game (and I know people who play and like 3e who say so) 2. While it fixed some of the notably crap parts of 2e, it easily introduced as many new ones... 3. While 2e can be excused to some extend for its age, 3e was still horribly, inexcusably outdated for its time. I can accept a horribly rigid, inflexible system coming out in the late 90s. I cannot accept a horribly rigid, inflexible system coming out in 2000. And frankly, 2e Player Option rules were less rigid than 3e and 3.5e. Looks to be less rigid than 4e, too, from what I can tell... 4. 3e did not feel as much like a revolution as it did an inquisition, with 2e material being exorcised from the pages of Dungeon and Dragon in the holy war against those who would not convert...

If you give people a choice, then they'll pick the one they like better, canon be damned. Especially in Revan's case...

There are people who still PLAY 2e. Not because it's good, but because, frankly, 3e just isn't better... And because there was no way to convert on-going 2e campaigns to 3e without screwing the players over royally.

Interesting. In fact, very interesting. Assuming that is a correct quote, it means that Lucasarts have now actually told us, that whatever Bioware is working on for them is NEITHER KotOR3 nor KotOR MMORPG. That is news to me, since it's the first time I hear Lucasarts confirm that this is NOT KotOR in any way. I thought at one point that the talk might be about Indiana Jones, but I doubt that now, since that movie is much closer now, and surely LA would then have lifted the veil about the game at the same time that they revealed details about the movie itself. And note that while LA said this was not KotOR, they did not say it was not Star Wars. Bioware's involvement in this project has puzzled me, because while they have said in the past, that they are not doing KotOR3, they have also said they were interested in doing only their own IP. However, that cannot be the case here, since I doubt LA would have been involved in that case. It seems obvious to me that whatever this project is, it is tied to a franchise owned by LA. I also suspect the announcement about the project was made only because people noticed that the site lucasartsbioware.com had been registered, in which case it's best to make a statement to either confirm or deny the inevitable speculation that follows. I mean, it's almost five months since they made the statement, and we still don't know what this game is? Very odd. Unless, of course, the collaboration was unveiled before it was intended. Despite recent rumors to the contrary, I'm beginnig to think that this is indeed Bioware's MMORPG to be set in the Star Wars universe. Why is it not announced yet? Well, there is already a Star Wars MMORPG. However, it's popularity is questionable at best. And IIRC, SOE has the licence for Galaxies only until 2009, which just happens to also be the time when the Star Wars live-action tv-series set between Episodes III and IV is rumored to hit the screens. Hmmm....

The only good thing about 4e? Now lots of people will understand how those of us who played 2e felt seven to eight years ago...

http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?s=...st&p=830781

While I don't like "Squinquargesimus" as a surname for Malak either, you cannot hold the comic book responsible for that, since as of issue 25, that name has yet to appear in its pages. The comic book called the character "Squint" in issue 0, then had him tell one of the protagonists in issue 10 that they should call him Alek, because Squint was just a name they guys (presumably his fellow jedi) came up with because his "last name is a bit of a mouthful". So the comic book named him Alek with a long surname, which made people call him "Squint", but that's all. No, "Squinquargesimus" originates not from the comic book, but from "Jedi vs. Sith: The Essential Guide t the Force", which was also the source that identified Alek as Malak and The Revanchist as Revan. In the comic books, those characters are still known only as Alek/"Squint" and The Revanchist/Revanchist Leader.

Before people get too excited about Bioware doing KotOR3, Bioware has already debunked this rumor on their boards. http://swforums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?...6259&stag=0 Sorry. It appears KotOR3 remains vapourware in limbo...

Precisely. That's my problem with Alan's stance. Then again, you may be implying by the above that I have not tried 3e. Who says I haven't? I actually do own the 3e rules, I have played 3e, and I've even written a few adventures for 3e, because we wanted to attract people to Mystara. Writing for 3e gives you pretty good insight into the system, but the more I learned about it, the less I liked it. My initial skepticism did not go away. And at some point I have to acknowledge that 3e is just a bad system from where I'm sitting. It doesn't matter how much WOTC plug or how much people say it's wonderful and dandy - if I dislike it, then I have to admit that. That's what I did, and now I say why. I'm not saying people have to agree with me - I'm just described why I feel the way I do. If people then resort to direct or indirect trolling against my person rather than against my observations, then I don't exactly see that as support for their claims of 3e's quality... Well, let me take a classic example that illustrates why I dislike 3e. Say I want to play a cleric. His father was a fisherman, so he lived by the sea, and he swam in the ocean almost every day. When he became older, he became a cleric with the god of the sea as his patron. As a cleric he put most of his ability into Wisdom, and only a little into Strength (+1 modifier). Now the cleric goes on an adventure. One companion is a powerful half-orc warrior (Strength 18, possibly even higher), who comes from somewhere in the mountains. During the adventure, both the cleric and the warrior are thrown into a lake and have to swim to safety. The cleric has paid 4 skill points to max his skill, but since it's a cross-class skill for a cleric, he gets only to have 2 skill leves in it plus his +1 Strength modifier for a total of +3. The half-orc warrior has lived in the mountains all his life and never swam before, so he has no skill levels whatsoever. His strength gives him a massive +4 modifier, though, so he's actually a better swimmer than the cleric, who swam all his life... Now, as if that isn't bad enough, after the adventure, both the cleric and the warrior advance to level two. They both agree that swimming was really useful and want to be better at it. The half-orc can take up to five skill levels now, if he has the skill points for it, pushing his modifier to a whopping +9 on every check, even though he only just began swimming for the first time a few days before. The cleric, however, still has to fight the cross-class and gets to spend only 1 measely skill point on swimming, and it doesn't even improve his modifier, because it'll end at +3

My Mystara campaign runs under 2e Player Option rules with the tidbits of 3e I've already described and my own fairly extensive house rules that attempt to reconcile it all (44 pages in Word at the last count...). The campaign is likely to end soon, however, since the players are pushing level 16+, and under Player Option rules that makes them pretty powerful and difficult to challenge. What I'll be playing then is anybody's guess, though... GURPS, Call of Cthulhu 5th Ed., LUG Trek, Exalted, or even more AD&D 2e/Player Option are all being considered, but then maybe I just won't even have time to play anymore... Real life has a way of cutting in on my role-playing these days, and my work as GM is now continuing solely on the basis of preparations I made years ago.

I'd like to respond to this, but what would be the point - you'll just delete my posts...

That doesn't neccesarily mean Kavar recognized her as Arren Kae - only that he recognized her as someone from the wars. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> True, but with the other observations, it is circumstantial evidence that establishes many similarlities between Kae and Kreia. And some people have argued in the past that Kreia did not fight in the wars. Kavar's statement suggests otherwise, methinks.

I think it's pretty poor taste to paint those of us who don't like 3e as grumpy old hawks just because we don't like 3e. For example, you could try to actually READ the reasons I gave for not liking 3e. I even said that ACs and to-hit going up is fine and that I like the 3e multi-class system better than the 2e one. And yet you claim that people like me say that any change is bad? I say: Bias, your name is Alanschu! Try actually considering the points that other people make before you troll them - it does tend to improve on the level of discussion and civility...

1. Arren Kae was believed to have died on Malachor V, but her body was never recovered. When Kreia confronts the council, Kavar's first comment to her is, "I thought you had died in the Mandalorian Wars!" 2. Kreia tells us that she was Revan's first and last master. Disciple tells us that Arren Kae had Revan as a padawan, and that he returned to his original master in the end. 3. Kreia was exiled from the jedi order for her dark side teachings. Kae was apparently exiled for having a child (Brianna), but was exiled for it only a decade later. Compared to Jolee Bindo's transgressions (teaching his wife against the will of the council, watching her fall to the dark side, failing to kill her when she tried to murder him, then watching her kill other jedi), it seems very harsh to exile her, when Jolee was completely forgiven for his crimes, which are far worse. Hint: Only Kreia tells us that having a child is why Kae was exiled. In fact, she just says that the order exiled Kae when they found out she had a child - she didn't actually say that was the reason for Kae's exile, and knowing Kreia that can be a rather important distinction. 4. K(ae)+(T)raya=Kraya=Kreia. 5. Atris tells the Exile, "Kreia? That is not her real name." And no, her "real" name is not Traya. When you confront Atris, the first thing she says is that Atris is gone and has been for some time, clearly suggesting that Atris thinks that she is now Traya, making Traya more of a position than a name. Whatever Kreia's real name is, it is neither Kreia, nor Traya. And the masters seem to not know the name "Kreia", if we take the cut content into consideration, since Vash actually mentions the name "Kreia" without connecting her to the outcast master. Conclusion from these observations: Kreia may indeed be Kae. Facts that clearly contradict this theory: none.

I've looked all over, but can't find them all. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Try here

Time for Team America to step in, I guess... :ph34r:

Oh please. Stop trying to be clever, it's not like you are new here. I was in fact granting you the benefit of doubt, as only someone that hadn't watched the games could say that France plays defensively. Usually I'd agree with that statement applying to Italy, but their last two matches at least prove they don't always do that. It's not a matter of opinion either, pally. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, it is, as it almost always is with sports, except for the facts (number of goals scored, players booked or sent off, etc.). The french have been very defensive, and have survived because nobody can seem to break through their defense. Apart from that they have used the fast breaks they get well. This does not mean that they play very creatively - they looked old against South Korea. IMHO they are efficient mostly at destroying the play of the other teams, but if they were good offensively, they would have scored many more goals than they have. They scored three goals against Spain, which is the only decent game they've played, and they scored nearly as many goals in that match as they did in the rest of the tournament. Teams winning because the opposition beat themselves to pieces on France's defense and then lose only from very few goals scored on the fast breaks when they push the issue suggests destructive football to me. Apart from the match against Spain, the french game has been very boring and defensive. Whatever. I have a right to my opinion, just as you have a right to your's, no matter how misguided I may think it is. He's overrated. He dives when he should take it like a man and keep going. He would rather get a penalty kick than a fair goal. That's enough for me to dislike a player. Sure, he's not the only one doing that. But I don't like those others that do the same, either. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Well, I'm not going to argue there. Fact is, as long as players are not punished more for diving, they will continue to do it, because it can decide matches. Sent them off the field and it'll be fine by me, as long as it's done fairly and across the board.

I'm going to assume you haven't been watching the last games. So, before making this sort of clueless comment, watch the games. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ooh, I have been trolled! How quaint. And obviously I can't have seen the games, since I have an opinion. After all, you can't have an opinion, if you've actually seen the game, as you have now clearly demonstrated... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't understand why people hate this guy so much. He's a good player, though Portugal sadly didn't get enough out of him. He is a bit green, though. And he should dive a bit less. The ref would probably award more of the fouls against him with a free kick if he did... It was unflattering how much the Portuguese tried to cheat, but then I don't think they're much worse than any of the other teams.

Get the paper backs - they're more complete anyway.

They had a bond, yes, but it's nothing like the one between Kreia and Exile. The typical bond is the one between master and padawan, but Obi-Wan doesn't die or even get hurt just because Qui-Gon is killed. The same is true for Revan/Bastila or Vash/Kaah. That Kreia losing a hand hurts Exile at all makes their bond unique, since that is practially unheard of.