When did you enjoy 3.x?

[Dragonblade]

I like playing 3.5 from about level 5 to 15, if my house rules are being used, otherwise, I won't play at all. I want to enjoy high level play, but it can be so frustrating. I have played in too many games where I rolled a low initiative, got attacked by a spell, failed a save, and was basically out for the rest of the combat. Which in 3.x combat, often meant hours and thus out for the rest of the night.

I don't spend hours making a character and and then driving all the way to my friends house so I can play for about a minute and then spend the rest of the night watching my friends play. EFF that! That right there is the single biggest thing I despise about 3.x. And don't even get me started on crappy design like level drain, rust monsters, disjunction, etc. And yes, I'm aware that some of this crappy design goes back to 1e. That doesn't excuse it.

Monte Cook once jokingly referred to the 3rd edition design team as a bunch of hacks. I'm increasingly convinced that statement is truer than he intended. Especially considering that some feats were intentionally designed to suck so players could avoid them and attain "system mastery". A ridiculously stupid design tenet, IMO.

I did play a 40th level game once, and that was a blast, but I attribute that solely to my awesome DM and his house rules (Hi SHARK!).

I like DMing 3.5 from about level 1-5. Anything beyond that and its just too much work. Even published adventures are no better. I still have to spend a couple hours before each session looking up monster stat blocks and then having to look up their abilities to refamiliarize myself with them. Ugh, I just want to run the monster right out of the book with ZERO prep before doing so.

I should never need anything more than a monster's stat block to run it. And published modules should always print the stat block in the adventure, not refer me back to the stupid Monster Manual. I consider that lazy design, especially in OGL products. (I'm looking at you, Paizo!)

4th edition looks to fix all of this. I personally could have been on the 4e design team and I don't think the game would have turned out any more brilliantly.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

When I read "why 3.x sucks and 4E will solve it all", I sometimes wonder if the poster enjoyed 3.x at all. Ultimately, I know they had too: like couples before a divorce, they forget what brought them together in the first place.

So, for you folks switching to 4E, what did you enjoy when you first started playing 3.x?

Well, your conclusion isn't the necessary outcome. I think a lot of people never liked 3rd edition, and some of them believe that 4e will solve the problems they saw in 3e.

That said, I still like 3.x. It's an excellent system and there is a great wealth of material out there to enjoy. It is not perfect, but nothing is. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if I played nothing but 3rd edition for the next 15 years, I'd be pretty happy.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

What happened to all those people?

I saw what 4e was and it blew me away.

 

[reanjr]

I liked many aspects of 3e when it was released. Then the players got ahold of the books and it was all downhill from there.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

[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]

Your right I haven't seen them come out and specifically say 3.x sucks. I have seen them say that having played 4E they can't imagine ever going back and that they didn't like playing 3.x anymore. Now one way that can be interpreted is that while 3.x is good 4E is so much better. It can also be interpreted to read 3.x sucks.

While they may not have come out and said 3.x sucks. That was the feeling I got at least reading all the promo stuff.

They have also come out specifically and said certain things in 3.x were either broken or badwrongfun (yes they didn't use that exact word), several of which I didn't think were broken or badwrongfun. To me that is also negative advertising as they are promoting something by saying that either that the thing I am playing doesn't work right when I think it does or I am playing wrong.

 

[Lacyon]

Your right I haven't seen them come out and specifically say 3.x sucks. I have seen them say that having played 4E they can't imagine ever going back and that they didn't like playing 3.x anymore. Now one way that can be interpreted is that while 3.x is good 4E is so much better. It can also be interpreted to read 3.x sucks.

If they think 4E really is that much better, why would they want to go back?

If they don't think it's that much better, why make 4E in the first place?

 

[ThirdWizard]

I played a 3.5 game this weekend, 18th level characters, leveled to 19 after the session.

Encounters included:

A Orcus Blooded Half-fiend Very Old Red Dragon, angel of decay, and 2 demonflesh golems.
A Balor Blackguard 4 and his two marilith guards who were covered in magic gear.
And finally a demon general with an 18-20 x4 crit ability on a mortal bane weapon, 500 hp with DR 5/-, swift abilities, a greater dispel magic counter ability, and so on and so forth.

Overall, it was a good game. The players have almost completed the quest they set out to accomplish in 1998, and next session should be pure, unadulterated, insanity (Far Plane insanity that is).

So, that's the most recently I've enjoyed 3e.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I started to like it when I first read the players handbook. I loved the classing structure, the feats, templates, the skill structure, PrCs. It was as if the game were moving away from classes defining your character to being nothing more than a skill package you picked up. The explosion of classes, feats and such only helped me with that approach. I loved that monsters could be PCs, that monsters, NPCs and characters were all using pretty much the same construction system.

I stopped playing, not because I was tired of the game, but just because I didn't find time to play. Hero is my favorite system, and I took some time to analyze what D&D game me in play that Hero didn't. It wasn't hard to see - I love the openness of Hero, but I also enjoyed finding interesting powers to work together and looking for combos (if you will). So I found a way to convert that to FH, and I stopped playing 3.x.

I still like 3.x and would play if I found a group that approached the game the same way I did. Our weekly group is Hero only (and I love that), but I wouldn't mind playing some 3.x

 

[Krensky]

I find 3.X to still be fun.

One of things I like the most is that the system felt coherent. Everything ran under the same general rules and could be modified and grow the same way. I like coherence in a game system. The idea that everything plays by the same rules with the same numbers has an elegance and simplicity that I find appealing. Yes, I realize 3.X in many cases looks better then it runs in this instance, but it still plays to my love of that design aesthetic.

3.X had lots of options and toys to play with in building fun, cool characters. This feeling likely has a lot to do with the fact that people I play with (on both sides of the screen) aren't into building characters for power, but for (lacking a better term) cool. The fighter 4/sorcerer 4/bladesinger 4 I'm playing in a relatively low magic (the best anyone has is a +1 weapon) may not be the most efficient build, but he's fun to play and manages to intrigue and fight with the best of them.

That said, while I still play 3.X, other games like Spycraft 2 have snared my attention as a GM. Essentially the same coherent system with some fine tuning under the hood, simpler prep, fewer odd NPC/PC interactions, and classes that are diverse, customizable, and really shine.

I've ordered KotS and the Core books, but I'm still very definitely of mixed feelings on the whole thing. Mostly because from what I see it seems the game is becoming more incoherent few if any universal rules or mechanics and everything breaking the rules in it's own special way. Time will tell, and I'm sure someone I play with will want to run a game, so I'm sure I'll get a chance to try it first hand.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

If they think 4E really is that much better, why would they want to go back?

They might go back for the same reason I go back to HERO and CoC. They are different games with different priorities and feels. They might go back for the same reasons people go back and play OD&D, 1E and 2E. I am not saying that I won't play 4E, I might it looks fun, but that I will probably play both because they have different priorities and feels. For the designers to say they won't go back says that they game isn't worth playing period. To me that comes off as saying the game sucks.

If they don't think it's that much better, why make 4E in the first place?

Cynically: because higher ups saw that the revenue steam was weakening and they needed to reinvigorate it.

Not Cynically: Doing amateur game designing I have worked on many games. There are always new thing I want to try and do. This doesn't mean that the old things I have done suck or that I don't want to play them anymore. As a designer I would love to have a shot of designing a new fantasy combat game system from scratch. I'm sure the designers love what they are doing and love what they created.