When did you enjoy 3.x?

[Njall]

I don't get what the 3.x bashers (particularly the WotC staffers) are smoking to be honest. Was it perfect? Of course not, and neither will 4e be for that matter, but it certainly wasn't this unholy abomination of a game that WotC and the 4e fanboys seem to have turned it into over the last 6 months or so.

[OT]
Uhm, IMO, most WotC staffers aren't bashing 3.x, at all.
It's just that they're releasing an improved version of the game...so, they're comparing the two, and explaining why they think the changes they've done will make the game better.

I don't think I've read anything that sounded like: "Ah, you suckers! We tricked you into buying this parody of a game for the last 8 years! Luckily for you, now we're releasing the Real Thing!";
it's more like:
"This is how the game was. This is what we think we learned from it. Hence, this is what we've come up with, and here's why we think it's better".

[/OT]

That said, I still like 3.x...and I still like 2e, to an extent. It's just that I feel 4e will be a better game.

 

[Rzach]

I really liked 3.0 when it launched. I played a sorcerer with spells from the Diablo expansion. For a while the game was fun.

Then they started making splat books for the classes. Ninja of the Crescent Moon.... Suddenly the game was not so much fun. But we still played and we made house rules and printed errata so that we could keep the game balanced.

But our games never seemed to hold together. We would play a campaign for months only to have half of the party loose interest because their characters were not as good as some of the other players characters.

Right before 3.5 came out we actually managed to finish a campaign that took us to level 23. We decided it was time to upgrade to 3.5 for the next game.

3.5 was a blessing at first. Everyone felt useful and powerful. We even had players who considered playing bards. Then the splat books came out again. And 3.5 showed it's true colors. While 3.0 was broken in very obvious ways, 3.5 was a little more subtle.

Druids with maximised spells. Clerics who fought like fighters. Two weapon Swashbuckler/Fighter/Tempest elven thinblade crit machines. These were the problems of 3.5.

As a dm of both editions there were many things that I disliked. One was having to customize monsters to challenge certain players characters. When an Ancient red dragon is killed in two rounds of combat you have a problem. When the party kills TWO ancient red dragons in two rounds of combat you have a real problem Especially since each dragon took over an hour to stat out. The problem gets worse when you have to give the dragon weapons so it can fight the party. Scimitar wielding prestige classed dragons are not what I had in mind when I was designing my world. When said dragon slaughters half of the party in one round while the other half are untouchable the problem gets even worse. And when your dragon is defeated by a patch of thorns that do con damage and are maximized you begin to really get frustrated.

Prep time was always a problem in both 3.x editions. I would have to spend several hours a week designing monsters to place in the encounters. This becomes tedious very quickly. And when the monsters are no challenge for the party it begins to feel unrewarding to both the players and the dm.

So far 4e has been awesome. I managed to get a copy of KotS on Saturday and I have ran two sessions of it so far. If this is how characters are in 4e then I am really happy. Monsters are a definite challenge to the party. I like the system both as a player and a dm. I don't know if the game will stay balanced or not but it is definitely an improvement over the 3.x games at this point.

I know that if I want to keep playing 3.x games I would have to ban every book except the core rule books and disallow all prestige classes. Too much work for me to do there so 4e it is.

Later,
Rzach

 

[Brown Jenkin]

I still enjoy 3.x and did even last Friday.

I also remember less than a year ago on these boards whenever anyone mentioned the possibility of a 4E (before it was announced) that they would be set upon by hordes of posters saying how 3.x had years to go and that they didn't want a new edition until somewhere between 2010 and 2012. What happened to all those people?

 

[hong]

I still enjoy 3.x and did even last Friday.

I also remember less than a year ago on these boards whenever anyone mentioned the possibility of a 4E (before it was announced) that they would be set upon by hordes of posters saying how 3.x had years to go and that they didn't want a new edition until somewhere between 2010 and 2012. What happened to all those people?

Apparently, they are all now posting in General Discussion.

 

[Wormwood]

What happened to all those people?

I wouldn't know, having only returned to ENWorld after the 4e announcement.

My guess? Try Paizo.

 

[DeusExMachina]

I enjoyed 3.5 right up until 2 weeks ago when we finished our campaign. However enjoyable it was, doesn't change the fact that there are some serious flaws in the game that I think 4e will improve upon, much like I saw many improvements going from 2e to 3e.

 

[Lord Xtheth]

Having played AD&D 2nd ed for years before 3.x came out, I LOVED the upgrade.
AC that goes up instead of down
More than a handful of skills
Varying monster xp
Magic items that benifieted everyone, not just a select few (Ie. +2 str, instead of 18/00)
No more charts that seemed like some insane mage threw together (sorry Gary)
My characters could be different each time I made them, WITHOUT a players option supliment
Being able to take big attack chains
No level cap
Monks!

There were a whole caravan of reasons that I liked 3.0, and 3.5 made things a little clearer and easier to follow.
I hope 4th does the same again

 

[beholdsa]

I started playing in 2002, but after a couple of years lost interest in D&D. The game didn't scale down well-enough for me--I wanted more time and advancement options for common-man PCs, less time for over-the-top pseudo-supers. I also wanted the system to be more simulationistic and more flexible than it was.

Unfortunately, 4e doesn't improve this for me.

 

[Wolfspider]

First encounter: a horde of skeletons! Enough to make for a CR of 14, to give the characters a chance to show off without burning through too many of their resources. They opened the door, saw the writhing mass of bones, and rolled initiative. Druid is up first, he fires off a good-sized area damage spell.

A really good-sized area damage spell.

An area damage spell big enough to fill the room.

And that's it for the skeletons. Minimum damage with a successful save is still sufficient to kill them off. No showboating, no people behaving awesomely because there's only a tiny risk, just the druid naming a spell and the enemies keeling over.

This wasn't the only encounter that didn't go as I'd expected.

A party of 14th level characters against a horde of basic skeletons?

I can't imagine what you could have really expected to happen other than ending up with a pile of charred bone.

 

[Shabe]

Lets see, well that would have been last week, as long as the flaws are hidden the game can be fun, but to me it seems like 3.x ed needed both players and dm to try to hide the flaws.
Players need to build characters that are around equivalant in power if they want an equal share of the killing fun.
Parties needed to have certain classes else some things were closed off to them, trapfinding, identifying magic items, being able to get pass DR with power attack (I don't think i've ever been in a campaign where it made sense for a knowledge skill to reveal the monsters weakness and if it was you could never find enough adamantine weapons for all the characters), healing.
Then the DM need to either not put in the monster of doom or alternatively play the monster quite dumb, mind you as long as the druid had his animal companion mage armoured then the DM could throw what he wanted at that.
It was quite swingy as well, for a party of 7 7-8th lvl characters one 7th lvl wizard with evards black tentacles killed all but one of the party.

Its fun at the moment, as long as everyone takes care, but for the most part from what I've seen 4th ed will be more fun.
So to analogise it why should I be content to go down a hill on a bike with wheels that fall off when i'm just getting to a decent speed, when i could be riding the slightly more fun inflatable zorb all the way down.
(Okay so maybe thats a bit too optimistic, for all i know the zorb may very well pop two thirds of the way down the hill)