D&D General Why was 3.5 needed?

[amethal]

Yikes! Had to look back - 3.5 PHB was released in July 2003, Miniatures Handbook came out in October 2003 - so you are correct it's 3.5. I bought the plastic minis left, right and center for my D&D games to replace my metal minis, but never played the Minis game.

I was an early adopter of 3.0, but it was about 6 months to a year before I switched to 3.5. D&D was my life back then, and I had invested a lot of money into 3.0. I disliked the idea of buying the new core books, even though I was buying the other 3.5 books as they came out. I sort of gave up and switch core books when the conversion guide was ~40 pages.

If I'm remembering things correctly, the Miniatures Handbook invented the concept of the swift (and immediate?) action.

Seemed like a useful thing to have included in the 3.5 Players Handbook, but instead they had to keep explaining it in every new splatbook that used it - although it is in the 3.5 SRD, so maybe I am misremembering?

3.5 was a strange mixture of helpful changes (beefing up the Ranger, moving a few key class abilities of other classes to 2nd level to make 1-level dipping less attractive), neutral changes (horses now take up 2x2 space instead of 2x1) and changes that arguably made things worse (I seem to remember changes to the Charge description and/or the Ride-By Attack feat meant that the latter didn't actually work as written).

I bought the 3.5 Players Handbook as soon as it came out, but couldn't see any reason to buy the other two books - although I eventually gave in and did so, since there were enough tiny changes that the cumulative effect eventually became too much for me to ignore.

I suppose it was good practice for switching to Pathfinder - I am still occasionally finding changes to 3.5 there!

 

[Zardnaar]

At the time they came out, I remember thinking that it was a precursor of what was coming for the next edition. I've always thought those books were 4E rules bent backwards into the 3.5 system. You could also see the way the winds were shifting with the release of Star Wars SAGA, which obviously used an early pre-iteration of 4th. By the time the Rules Compendium dropped, everyone knew 4E was coming soon.

Yeah I bought those minis by the case.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

"Need" is always a tricky concept with game design.

That said, 3.0 did in fact have some glaring weaknesses that needed to be addressed, ones that would have been hard to fix purely through errata--they ran a bit too deep for that. Unfortunately, a lot of the changes were only for relatively small, superficial fixes, rather than overhauling the serious issues with the system.

3.0 could have been hit with a truly substantial overhaul and been republished as 3.5e--nerfing spellcasting hard because it's stupidly overpowered in all 3e-derived games, making feats actually good, rewriting the Fighter and Monk classes, fixing the deep flaws of the skill system, etc. But it wasn't, and I'm not sure WotC was actually interested in doing that level of overhaul.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I remember that one of my friends bought the 3.0 books and we played off those. We home brewed some stuff and later, when 3.5 came out, we all bought the books because some of the changes we had made were already in there. We never played with any of the splat books usually. Any new books were looked over very carefully and lots of new content got nerfed by the group. When things like ‘Swift’ actions came out in the later books, we stopped playing 3.5.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I remember that one of my friends bought the 3.0 books and we played off those. We home brewed some stuff and later, when 3.5 came out, we all bought the books because some of the changes we had made were already in there. We never played with any of the splat books usually. Any new books were looked over very carefully and lots of new content got nerfed by the group. When things like ‘Swift’ actions came out in the later books, we stopped playing 3.5.

Ironically, "swift" actions were actually a way to legitimately improve 3.5e's balance. Because if all you have are standard, move, and free actions, you're either asking for a huge investment (because Iterative Attacks are so important and eat up both Standard and Move actions), or you have to accept that a character can stack any number of free actions all at once without limit.

The "swift" action idea, which (as far as I can tell) goes all the way back to at least 3.5e baseline* because it's part of the SRD, allows you to have something that is midway between those two things: it has the speed and lowered investment of a free action (something you can do basically any time), but is limited in the same way standard and move actions are limited.

Swift actions went on to become Minor actions in 4e and, despite the linguistic song-and-dance 5e does to conceal it, still exist as Bonus actions in 5e. And both of those things are extremely useful, indeed critical to a number of mechanics in both editions.

*Finding info online is hard because almost all SRDs switched to the 3.5e content. But from what I can find, "swift" actions didn't exist in 3.0 and were a new idea in 3.5, there to deal with balance issues caused by too many overpowered free actions or underpowered "partial" actions (which were removed in 3.5e.)

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

Ironically, "swift" actions were actually a way to legitimately improve 3.5e's balance. Because if all you have are standard, move, and free actions, you're either asking for a huge investment (because Iterative Attacks are so important and eat up both Standard and Move actions), or you have to accept that a character can stack any number of free actions all at once without limit.

The "swift" action idea, which (as far as I can tell) goes all the way back to at least 3.5e baseline because it's part of the SRD, allows you to have something that is midway between those two things: it has the speed and lowered investment of a free action (something you can do basically any time), but is limited in the same way standard and move actions are limited.

Swift actions went on to become Minor actions in 4e and, despite the linguistic song-and-dance 5e does to conceal it, still exist as Bonus actions in 5e. And both of those things are extremely useful, indeed critical to a number of mechanics in both editions.

I’m not arguing the truth in that but, at the time, we were neck deep in 3.5 and adding extra actions seem to be a way to add more power and complexity to the game. We never played it, so we never really understood how it would change the game. Some of us went to new systems and the rest of us moved away.

Our overall tendency was to nerf stuff though. We had a very critical eye. And besides, the base classes didn’t include swift actions so it seemed unfair to allow some classes/feats/prestige classes use them while others couldn’t. And we didn’t all own all the splat books so the road to power was always who owned the most books and could find the most powerful combos. (Not in my group but when I moved away and played with pick up groups, it was crazy)

 

[BigZebra]

When I first read the 3.5 PHB I was surprised there was no mention of the swift action, but as mentioned above, it came later in 3.5's life cycle. I took a picture of this side bar from my 3.5 Rules Compendium:

 

[Corinnguard]

Near the tail end of 3.5's lifespan, there was actually a stealth 3.75 around 2007, with the release of the 2nd wave of Complete Books (Complete Mage, Complete Scoundrel, Complete Champion & Tome of... books), PHB/DMG2, MM4 and the uptake of the Delve Format in adventures.

Interesting. I always thought 1st Edition Pathfinder as being D&D 3.75 because it mostly kept what was in 3.5 and threw in some new material for the races and classes to use.

 

[Fanaelialae]

The biggest issue with swift actions, IMO, was that they were tacked on immediately after the 3.5 release, rather than having been incorporated into the 3.5 release. We sometimes had core 3.5 characters being played alongside characters with swift actions, and the difference was definitely noticable. At least 2 of my DMs wanted to ban swift actions for that reason (I don't recall whether they ever actually did, but I remember having discussions with them about it).

 

[Minigiant]

Because 3.0 was so obviously unbalanced and had a poor skeleton that everyone knew it needed revisions.