Love it or hate it, 3e style

[KidSnide]

I checked "mixed bag." 3.x was a tremendous improvement over the quite outdated 1e/2e mechanics, and I really enjoyed playing at levels 3-8. Of course, OGL produced a lot of junk, but there was some very good material as well that much more accessible because of the familiar d20 base.

But DM prep time could be nightmarish and - at high levels - it would take my PCs 30-45 minutes to organize all the buff spells that they cast before battle. Also, while it was tremendously flexible in theory, many of the choices were "false choices" that may have accurately simulated an idea, but left the player with a character that was too weak to participate in the game. Furthermore, in my experience it required a grid to play complicated battles, but it still left the players with comparatively few interesting choices that related to the grid, mostly because "stand still and hack away" was such a dominant strategy.

-KS

 

[Mallus]

I like 3e.

I love one of its variants, ie Mutants and Masterminds.

And sometimes, I kinda miss the 3e character-building mini-game (but not when I'm DM'ing).

 

[Festivus]

As a player, I like the options available. The rules are something I am very comfortable with at this point, but if I was just starting out it wouldn't be my first choice. As a DM I really don't like it much at all, it's a lot of work to put things together.

 

[renau1g]

Mixed bag for me. I like a lot of stuff, but also disliked a lot of things. Soem of the likes aren't about the system, but rather what OGL spawned so it's probably less that I liked 3e, but liked OGL.

 

[Voadam]

Love it. I use a metric ton of ogl and d20 stuff to house rule it to my tastes when I DM but even in the core game there is enough mechanical diversity in classes for me to play with the types of game mechanics and resource management styles I prefer while being flexible enough to accomodate options for the varying tastes and playstyles of other players.

And I have a ton of cool stuff for it I own and more that is available for me to get at prices I am interested in paying.

 

[Desdichado]

Like it. A lot. The modular nature of it, especially as more and more OGL got released, really appealed to the tinkerer in me. I can do anything I want to with the game engine and still predict how well it will work (I never grokked at all even a tiny bit the complaint that everything was so "tightly interwoven" that you couldn't change something without worrying about unintended consequences of that change somewhere else. I routinely changed all kinds of things about the game. I mean, all the freakin' time. Literally every single game I ran. Ahem. Anyway.)

It wasn't perfect, but it worked pretty darn well. I had fixes for my pet issues, so that they didn't bother me, and what more could I want from it?

I never even bothered with 4e. If I had what I wanted, what was 4e going to offer me other than a brand new hit to my gaming budget that I really didn't need? Plus, 4e took a few of the things that I didn't really like about 3e and actually expanded on them; if anything, it went the wrong way in a lot of aspects.

 

[Vael]

Picked "Like it", because I love to play it, loath to DM it. I like all the different subsystems, from Psionics to Incarnum to Tome of Battle. Even my 4e wizards sometimes miss their spell slots. But I won't DM 3.5.

 

[Ainamacar]

I voted "Like it." (c.f. "mixed bag" for 4e). I liked it a lot (perhaps reaching "loved it") early on (I started playing it soon after 3.5 came out) but eventually burned out on certain aspects. I did absolutely love the character building mini-game, and that probably helped make DMing more enjoyable to me. I would play 3.5 again, and DM again as well, but perhaps not above level ~12.

 

[Lilaxe]

I really like 3E when it first came out. It got me playing RPGs again - something I had stopped doing in the early 90s when 2E came out (not that 2E made me stop - girls and clubs did that).

After playing 3E for awhile, I started missing 1E, so started playing that as well. I wanted a simpler system. I did not know why.

It dawned on me recently. I re-read the 3E PH and DMG. 3E is fairly simple as it stands in the core books. What made me want something simpler was not the core 3E - it was the splat-book 3E, the optimized characters. I really like 3E again and think it is a great system. But when I run it, I will run it pretty much "basic" - no crazy splat-books!

 

[Mercule]

I said "dislike". I'm still suffering from burn-out, so I'll mitigate the DM in me screaming, "Hate it with the fury of a million suns." It's just too freakin' mechanics-heavy. I could run Hero with less convolutions -- and end up with a better rendering of PCs and NPCs. I don't see me ever DMing 3e, again.

I'd consider playing it, though, with the right DM. I've never liked Vancian magic, and rogues really aren't that bad, as a player. It wouldn't be my first choice, but a good GM can make almost any system fun.