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Emasculate - v. to deprive of strength or vigor; to weaken; to render effeminate; to vitiate by unmanly softness. Synonyms: sissify, undermine, unstrengthen.
Recently, I've begun using the word "emasculate" to describe the effect of 3E on the D&D game. I believe this applies in many ways.
Before I get into this rant, let me be clear...I am not ripping on anyone for their choice of game edition. I don't fault someone just because they play a game or edition I don't like. I am referring to the game itself, the edition, the effect on the game instituted by WOTC. And yes, this is going to be a long one.
Emasculation is a fitting word to describe 3E. I look back on the days of 1E/2E (which for me is not just the past, but the present and future as well), and I see a tough game where players took great risks to receive great power and great reward. That has changed in so many ways with 3E.
First, I'll address the idea of mortality. In earlier editions there was the possibility of death. Death as in real world death, ie you die, you are not coming back, end of life, end of story. That concept was reflected in several game mechanics such as the CON limit on resurrections and the Resurrection Survival Roll.
For those of you unfamiliar with earlier editions, there used to be an absolute limit on the number of times you could die and be raised or resurrected, and that number was your CON score. If your CON score was 10, then you could only die and be raised 10 times. After that, you stayed dead, period. Each time you died, you had to make a Resurrection Survival Roll to see if you could come back at all. It mattered not if it was your 10th death, your 5th, or even your very 1st death. Each and every time you died, if an attempt was made to raise or resurrect that character, you had to roll your resurrection survival roll. If you failed, the character was permanently dead, period, end of story. Only godly intervention by the DM could change that fact, and such action was rarely if ever taken in a well run game. And each time you came back, you lost a point of CON permanently, which lowered your Resurrection Survival Roll percentage for next time. In other words, each death made the next death more likely to be a permanent death, as in "ok, roll up a new character, this one ain't comin' back!". Each death became progressively harder to come back from.
Death was a true risk, an actual threat, something to be avoided at all costs. Why? Because any death, even your first, could be your last. Those two mechanics, the CON limit on resurrections and the Resurrection Survival Roll were put into the game to give a sense of mortality. In other words, they made the characters mortal. There was no question that if you died, there was a good chance you were not coming back. And there was the knowledge that even if you came back, there was a limit...eventually your luck would run out and the character would have to be given up for dead, permanently. It was inevitable.
This threat, this mechanic, was totally and utterly dismissed in 3E by WOTC. Why? Why would anyone remove a mechanic that provided mortality to characters who were meant to be mortals, unless the intent was to make them immortal, un-killable characters? Yes, I've heard the weak counter-argument that says:
"But Halaster, just because the spell Resurrection exists in the game does not mean the characters can gain access to it."
Yeah, I've heard that time and again. And yet again I say that I am not talking about what the DM can do if he likes, I am talking about the mentality espoused by the very rules themselves, or in this case, the lack thereof. By removing rules that lent a sense of mortality to characters, the rules encourage the mentality that favors unlimited resurrections. Bottom line, those spells were put into the game because people expect to have a chance of raising a character who dies. The very existence of the spell argues for the intent of using it, otherwise why include it at all?
The difference is that in earlier editions, you could make the spell available without it being a sure thing. Death was still a risk because even when the DM allowed access to those spells, it did not ensure your continued survival. At any time, you could fail that roll, and you were dead. It also simulated the idea of fate and the will of the gods by not forcing the DM to decide in every case whether or not to allow a character to come back from the dead via allowing or disallowing access to a spell. That's not something a DM should be forced to decide constantly.
By removing the risk of permanent death altogether, the game becomes emasculated. It's not dangerous in the sense that the rules always allow for yet another resurrection, yet another raise dead, yet another push of the reset button on a video game character. Inherent in the rules themselves is no concept of ultimate mortality. Nothing kills you forever, and there is never any chance that an attempt to raise the dead fails simply because there is no game mechanic to govern this...if you cast the spell, you come back from the dead, 100% guaranteed.
Emasculation. Weaken the game, sissify it. All I have ever heard from the 3E crowd that backs the 3E rules is that they "never liked the idea of dying based on a dice roll". That's faulty logic. What they object to is the idea of staying dead, because they want immortal characters. A single die roll can cause death from a dragon's breath, or a wizard's power word, or the stroke of the enemy's sword. The only difference is that the in all those cases, there is a guaranteed "out"...you can always get a Raise Dead or Resurrection spell and come back. Only with the Resurrection Survival Roll was the ultimate fate of your character decided on a die roll. And even then, that depended on the player. If he played the character wisely, the character tended not to die. Poor play resulted in higher likelihood of death. So really the only objection boils down to someone stomping their foot and saying "but I don't waaaaant my character to die!". It's an emasculated way to play. Because there is no chance of permanent death according to the rules themselves, the game is emasculated...it's a weaker version, with less threat, less danger, less risk. It's emasculated, and a sissified way to play. A person who plays a character and who acknowledges that the character is mortal should be mature enough to accept the fact that death is a reality even in the game, that no character is guaranteed immortality, and that sometimes death comes too early for our liking. To rally against that concept is to promote an immature, juvenile attitude towards the game. It's emasculation attitude.
"Weaken the game because I find it too dangerous/risky".
Moving on, we get to the other issues of risk management. In earlier editions, many spells which were very powerful were tempered by risks, costs, and consequences which made the character have to think long and hard about whether or not to use the spell. Let's look at some examples.
Both Petrification and Polymorph cause excruciating and devastating shocks to the person being affected by the them. Imagine having the cells of your body turned to solid stone and back again, and how dangerous that would be. Or having them warped into a chicken form, or a cow's form, having your organs twisted into different shapes, even into organs you never had. That has to be hard on a body. In the old editions, we had something called a System Shock Roll, and it was related to your CON score, the same way that Resurrection Survival Rolls were. The lower your CON, the less likely you were to survive a system shock.
So in vintage games, you did not recklessly turn your dwarf companion into a stone statue in order to batter down a door, because he had to make a System Shock Roll first when he was turned to stone, then again when he was restored to flesh and blood. These were dangerous spells, as spells in mythology were, as they are meant to be. Magic is a risky business, because the people casting them are mere mortals (at least, they are in old editions of the game), and mastery of such magic is not 100%. You also did not polymorph your companions into better fighting forms (perhaps grizzly bears?) just to gain an edge in combat, because again there was a chance those characters would either die from the shock of the spell, or they would permanently gain the mentality of the form they assumed. Either way, it was a risk, a danger. And if you died from failing your System Shock, remember...you also had to roll a Resurrection Survival Roll if you got raised. These spells were nothing to screw around with mindlessly. They were serious issues. Not so in 3E. Again we encounter the emasculation of the game, and the "I don't want any risk" mentality. Some have argued with me (yet another weak argument), that spells cast by your friends should not be dangerous. Why? Just because it's your teammate casting it instead of an enemy wizard? Why should any spell be totally safe anyway? Why should there not be a risk involved with spells that cause severe and unnatural stresses on the body?
Again, the only possible reason to take out all risk associated with these spells is to render them totally safe for the characters to use. No risk involved, no danger...all benefit, no sacrifice or cost. That's emasculation...they gave us a sissy version of D&D geared towards sissy mentality.
"I don't want my fighter to have a chance of dying from being changed from a human to a fly and back again! Not fair! Waaaaahhhh!"
And there's spells like Wish or Gate which age a character artificially. Cast Gate in 2E and you may get a powerful ally...but you also age 5 years. That could very well place you in a new age category in which you would lose a point of STR as well as a point of CON, perhaps also a point of DEX. This would lower your hit points, worsen your Armor Class, it would make your ability to withstand shocks to your system lessened (ie your System Shock Roll goes down) and it made you less able to be resurrected since your Resurrection Survival Roll would go down as well. It was a risky spell for sure. You could technically cast Gate, age 5 years instantly, die from the shock, try to get resurrected but fail because of your lowered Resurrection Survival Roll and never come back. Even if you did get raised, you may come back with less hit points, worse natural AC, etc. Regardless of all that, you are now older than you were. Friends and family may not recognize you. There are all sorts of problems inherent in artificial aging, many of which involved roleplaying and not just game mechanics.
So in earlier editions you did not cast Gate lightly, because it had possibly terrifying consequences. In 3E, we have the emasculation effect yet again. You can cast Gate carefree, as often as you like, because there are no negative side effects. You can't age, you can't die of shock, you can't stay dead because of failing a resurrection roll, etc. The average character, assuming starting his adventuring career at the minimum age of 16 (15+1d4), would take at least a few years of game time to get to 18th level where he could actually cast Gate. Well, it would take that long in any sane game, at least. Assuming he cast Gate 8 times after reaching that level (at say age 20), he would age 40 years. That means he would now be 60, and would lose 3 points of STR, 2 points of CON, and 2 points of DEX. Permanently. Cast it 4 more times and he loses another point each of STR/CON/DEX. That has devastating consequences, no matter what range your ability scores were in.
In 3E we have no such risks. A character who casts Gate 100 times in 3E suffers less detrimental effect than a character casting it once in 2E. In truth, he suffers absolutely no detrimental effect. The same issue comes into play with Haste, Wish, Limited Wish, etc. Emasculation. Obviously, in 3E you are meant to be able to cast devastatingly powerful spells with no cost. Apparently WOTC/3E mentality is that nothing should be costly, risks are to be avoided, so let's make everything risk free and take out every detrimental effect that originally existed to balance the game. Emasculation.
We also look at the various spells like Resurrection, Raise Dead, Regeneration, etc. Back in the old days, a character who died and was raised had to have complete and utter bed rest of 1 day for each day (or part thereof) which he was dead. So a 15th level fighter who died and was raised (again, assuming he made his Resurrection Survival Roll) and who was dead for 3 days needed 3 days of bed rest. During those 3 days he could not memorize spells (had he been a wizard) or fight or do anything strenuous. And he would heal 3 hp per day, meaning after 3 days he'd have a total of 10 hp (he has 1 hp upon being raised, plus 3/day). He's still not up to par for some time. In 3E they threw all that out. A 15th level character who is raised automatically comes back with 15 hp, plus he can jump right back into combat or spellcasting or whatever the very next round. No need for bed rest. And he heals naturally at the rate of 15 hp per day, which back in 2E would be considered regeneration as in the way trolls regenerate. He'd regenerate almost as many hit points per day as a 2E character with a 20 CON (even if the 3E character only had a 10 CON). That's absurd.
And what argument do I see each and every time that this comes up?
"But it's not fun to need bed rest or to spend time healing! Waaahh!!! I want my character to get back to the important stuff, like fighting and getting lots of xp and treasure!"
What an immature attitude, which stems from the very emasculation of the game that I'm speaking of. Apparently 3E mentality demands that nothing which detracts from or slows the jet-paced race up the ladder of level gaining is to be tolerated. There is no sense of roleplaying here, no sense of character development or the need to formulate plans to deal with such powerful setbacks. No, let's just do away with anything which slows the rapid advancement, which in 3E is much faster than any other edition.
And Raise Dead is way too powerful in 3E. It raises the dead with a ton of hit points, it enables them to jump right back into combat, it heals all disease, all insanity, it raises any ability score reduced to 0, and it neutralizes any poison in the body. Also, there is only a 50/50 chance of losing any particular memorized spell. The only thing this spell does not do is wipe the character's ass from when his bowels let loose when he died in the first place! Basically, this 3E spell translated to 2E terms would be a combination of Raise Dead, Neutralize Poison, Cure Critical Wounds, and Heal. And the cost? Zip. Nothing. Just jump right back up and get into combat and keep raking in the xp. Even the 2E spell Resurrection pales in comparison, where the cleric would need 1 day of bed rest for each level of the person he resurrected, and would need to make a system shock roll from the obligatory aging of 3 years which he experiences for casting the spell. Resurrect a 14th level fighter, and after aging 3 years and hopefully surviving your system shock roll, you're bed ridden for two weeks.
So a character that dies in 3E loses a level. Big freaking deal. With the ridiculously fast advancement pace in 3E, that doesn't matter much, and since the same character in a party does not die every time (ie this time it's the wizard who dies, next adventure it may be the thief), there's really no risk of anyone falling far behind. Everyone will still be within +/- a level or two no matter how often people die. Death in 2E had real consequences.
Restoration ages both the caster and the recipient by 2 years, requiring yet another system shock roll for each. At least, it did in 2E.
None of these spells in 3E cost anything. There is absolutely no risk whatsoever involved in casting them. And the argument always boils down to people not wanting to take risks, not wanting to have anything permanently bad happen to their characters.
On top of all this, character regenerate 1 hp/level/day, which is fantastic compared to earlier editions where 3 pt/day was the utmost you could heal resting, regardless of level. They can raise ability scores in 3E every few levels, which makes any ability score loss much less detrimental in the long run.
Ultimately, there is no other conclusion other than that WOTC purposely emasculated the game to cater to the immature mentality that demands immortal characters and favors mindless power gaming over all else. Again, that's not to say powergamers are scum, or that 3E gamers are stupid or anything of the sort. But the bottom line that cannot be avoided is that the 3E rules as WOTC designed them cater to the immature powergamer mentality in which all that matters in an unimpeded, lightning fast pace of power/level accumulation. And in order to cater to that, the game had to be emasculated, because in a real man's world, risks are real, and consequences are accepted and dealt with. 3E is designed for little boys, not men. It's an emasculated version of a once powerful and challenging game.
I salute those who are able to play 3E and make it challenging and provide a fun game, because the rules as they stand, the 3E philosophy, it that of emasculation and a free ride, where consequences are no longer tied to actions, and great power comes at no cost. It's a shame, but it seems even our games reflect our sad culture nowadays, where such mentality is rampant.
Again, if you play 3E, don't come crying that you've just been insulted or offended...that's an emasulated attitude.
I'm not criticizing 3E gamers or even power gamers, I'm eviscerating the mentality that went into the development of 3E, and the attitude the game espouses by the very existence (or rather non-existence) of its rules.
