Castle Whiterock

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I finally worked my way through this monster and it just kind of fed my increasing despair for 3e stat bloat.
It started out great! Lots of interesting lore and ideas. Cool sidequests meticulously tracked and interwoven throughout the megadungeon. Lots of neat ideas.

But bit by bit, level by level, the stat blocks grow; and with them, the tactical instructions. There was a noticeable decline in description quality to go along with that. Like they had space concerns and all the fun stuff had to give way for pages and pages of feats and special abilities.

And I love this stuff. I love building up a super powered character and pitting him against well-thought-out monster encounters. I'm just thinking there's a happy middle ground. Not every encounter needs to be a life or death combat simulation. Maybe just the Boss, the mini-bosses and maybe one weird'n wild one/level (the old bridge over the chasm etc.) Otherwise, just give me a heavily truncated stat block. The PC's will make mincemeat of the oversimplified monsters, but everyone will have a lot more fun. I'm prepping 3e stuff here and my stats are printed on a different pile of papers to my notes. It may be as simple as that...

Anyway, it was a fun read. The authors made a genuine effort to knit it all together. There's lots of good stuff, but the maps are poorly connected which makes me wonder if the dungeon levels were designed independent of each other and hooked up with stairs/ramps/elevators etc. as an afterthought. And, god damn but those stat blocks make it impossible to read by the end :\
 
I know we don't like 5e here, but it kind of sounds like 5e is what you're looking for. If you want
building up a super powered character and pitting him against well-thought-out monster encounters.
5e supports that, but it doesn't feel the need to tell you how many ranks of Improved Grapple a grick has or whatever. The statblocks are still big compared to Ye Olde Schoole, but they're manageable.
 

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
I know we don't like 5e here, but it kind of sounds like 5e is what you're looking for.
I think 4e is most maligned (poor Beoric!) on this forum. There seems to be a resigned acceptance that 5e is somewhat better than 3 and 4, and at least workable with regards to publishing for a wider audience.
3rd and 4th edition don't really lend themselves to the style of adventure discussed here, but I've been converting my hoard of 1e modules for years and think it's entirely doable; so here I am. I also happen to think a number of the 3e DCC adventures aren't entirely irredeemable, and kind of get that oldskool vibe. (bring on the torches and pitchforks!)

But yeah, there's a growing chorus among the members of our group to make the leap to 5e (now that they're writing up an exquisitely woke 5.5e), but honestly, I could run 3 parallel campaigns a week for the rest of my life and I still wouldn't run out of all the published 3e material we've gathered over the last 23 years at this point...
 
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