Be honest, how long would it really take you to notice all of this stuff...?

[Zardnaar]

In AD&D with no hivemind we missed the dart specialist exploit. We did find the dagger one and multiple attack goodness and things like weapon grand mastery along with some of the better kits. We also found some spell combos.

In 3.0 without the hivemind I missed a lot of non core builds as I did not buy a lot of 3.0 class books. Also missed wands of CLW independently and how to really abuse the stacking rules via persistent spell and natural spell feat which was not core in 3.0. We did carry over a few 2nd ed combos, found out how good haste was and how to stack spells independently but not to the extent of the 3.0 cleric archer build. Also cheap scrolls using scribe scroll (+haste).

Missed the Spelldancer abuse but spotted spell power via Shadow Adept and Red Wizard without using the net.

 

[Neonchameleon]

How much do you really scrutinize all these +1's and bonuses and this statistical makeup? Personally me? I STILL don't notice the 3.x brokenness, and probably wouldn't know about any of that if I didn't go on message boards. What about you? Not saying things are balanced or not, I'm just saying it escapes me or maybe our group doesn't really care about that stuff and it's usually completely unnoticeable. I'm sure its a big problem with some people though, just curious.

All of it? I'm not aware of all of it now.

Enough of it? It took me a single readthrough of the Summoner in Pathfinder to realise that if you turn the Eidolon into a scout you can out-sneak the rogue without much trouble, and if things go wrong it's not a catastrophe if the Eidolon dies. It took me actually playing the Summoner to realise that even if you discount both the Eidolon and Summon Monster you are almost as good a caster as a Sorcerer who has chosen a good spell list; Summon Monster pushes you over the top. And it took brute force work to work out where the Summons could hold their own.

Likewise it took me a single readthrough of D&D 3.0 to work out that the ability to buy or craft a Wand of Cure Light Wounds quite literally changed the nature of hit points and the game itself. And that the spellcasters with 9 levels of spells were the most powerful classes. It took actually playing a few sessions online to realise that (a) multiclassing spellcasters was really bad and (b) the Monk had complete anti-synergy and was a whole lot weaker than it looked.

So. How long does it take? It varies. And I'm not always right.

 

[Storminator]

Actual quote from my last Pathfinder session (another player, talking to me): "I have +22 to hit. Why do you only have +21?"

Some people notice . . .

PS

 

[Ratskinner]

Actual quote from my last Pathfinder session (another player, talking to me): "I have +22 to hit. Why do you only have +21?"

Some people notice . . .

PS

I don't think that's a particularly edition-dependent thing though. I'm playing in an OSR group and one of our guys is constantly auditing other people's character sheets. (It doesn't help that we are constantly modifying the rules.)

 

[keterys]

I notice this stuff pretty quickly, but I find it hard _not_ to notice math.

It was most obvious to me in 3e because variance was so much more extreme; you'd have people with 10-15 difference between attack or AC, or 5-10 for save DCs, and you could see the steady creep as it happened bit by bit (2 this level, 2 that level, etc), but it doesn't really matter which edition of D&D (or any other TTRPG).

 

[Evenglare]

Follow up question. A lot of you have said you immediately noticed 3.x problems or pathfinder problems. Why do you think those problems exist if they are so blatant? Why would the devs stick with them if it was just so completely obvious? What was going through their heads?

 

[an_idol_mind]

I've played either 3rd edition or Pathfinder for almost 15 years now and still haven't noticed these supposedly broken parts. Either the handful of house rules I use dodges these issues or I run games differently than the way most folks on these forums run them. (Or there's a lot of theoretical "brokenness" that doesn't show itself during typical play.)

 

[Campbell]

Follow up question. A lot of you have said you immediately noticed 3.x problems or pathfinder problems. Why do you think those problems exist if they are so blatant? Why would the devs stick with them if it was just so completely obvious? What was going through their heads?

I think a lot of it has to do with emergent properties of play. When most of the play testing was done for 3e most players were still immersed in optimal behaviors for playing previous editions. If clerics mostly heal and buff other characters, wizards focus on artillery, and etc. most of the issues with 3e are not readily apparent. Scenario design also plays a big part. There's quite a lot that DMs can do under the surface to make play function more smoothly. Also in many cases systematic redesign is necessary to fix issues which have knock on effects that need to be accounted for. In general we're pretty good at coming up with good enough solutions if no one is pushing too hard at the game.

I don't consider 3e and Pathfinder bad games. I do think they are particularly fragile games, especially without some of the later 3e patches to Wildshape, Polymorph, etc.

It might also be interesting to look at a game like World of Warcraft. In raiding environments melee damage dealers have been sub-par for a long time as ranged character classes have improved in mobility. Guilds just changed their comps if they wanted to be more competitive, muscled through it regardless, etc. Now that there is a focused effort to decrease caster mobility there is much gnashing of teeth because it means updating rosters, having people switch to alts, etc. People have a wonderful capacity to adjust to the environment they find themselves in. I know when I actively played 3e one of my solutions was just to stop playing fighters and move towards more martially oriented clerics, psychic warriors, warblades, etc.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Follow up question. A lot of you have said you immediately noticed 3.x problems or pathfinder problems. Why do you think those problems exist if they are so blatant? Why would the devs stick with them if it was just so completely obvious? What was going through their heads?

it was a mix...

Some just plain awful design (monte cook called it ivory tower design)
some just slip through the cracks (we redesigned saving throws from the ground up and didn't realize we nerphed half the classes)
some were things that just could not be forseen... I mean really how much playtesting does it take to revile all the brokenness
some were a biased look at the game... I'm sure they thought Bards rocked...

then after years of feed back, pathfinder could not make the sweeping changes it would need to and still be a 3.5 retroclone...witch is what they needed to sell it day one "See we will give you this edition back"

 

[Neonchameleon]

Follow up question. A lot of you have said you immediately noticed 3.x problems or pathfinder problems. Why do you think those problems exist if they are so blatant? Why would the devs stick with them if it was just so completely obvious? What was going through their heads?

3.0 Groupthink and lack of playtesting.

3.0 works up to about level 8 if you play it as if it was 2E. What it took to break 3.0 was a fresh pair of eyes. Someone who'd barely played 2E and started almost from scratch. Unfortunately the designers were all big 2E players, and the playtesters were people who had connections, and therefore jumped to playing as if it was 2E. And they fixed the problematic strategies. Also 3E was only IIRC playtested up to about level 6. One of the huge breakpoints is that in pre-3E, level 10 is endgame play. The fighter gets a small army to make up for the wizard's spellcasting going off the charts. In 3E they don't get that or any real replacement. Because they didn't playtest it at those levels much.

Pathfinder? Pathfinder's aiming its balance issues between the Pathfinder Wizard and the Pathfinder Rogue. Or more accurately between the ground set out by the 3.X wizard and the 3.X monk. And they even managed to upgrade wizards significantly due to relaxing further the requirements to create items (being fair they downgraded both druids and clerics who were the other two real problem cases in the 3.5 PHB). That's a vast area to make things seemingly broken in.