Who Did Not Like 3rd Edition Because of Too Many Fixes/Tweeks/Changes Needed to Play

[Gallo22]

Ok, I'm curious as to how many of you wanted 4th Edition so you did not have to put up with all the tweeks/fixes/house rules?


FOR THE RECORD: I did not think (and still do not think) that 3.X needed/needs many fixes. I'm just curious as to how many of you thought otherwise because I was told today that this was not the case. That is to say, that 4th Edition players DID NOT switch because they believed 3.X was broken but for other resons enterly.

Just curious.

 

[pawsplay]

I thought the 4e announcement was premature, but I did consider the possibility at the time 4e might be an upgrade in that department. However, 4e decided to be an entirely different game with an entirely different set of problems, so I'm back to patching 3e. Honestly, I ran my longest campaign out of the book, no house rules, so it should be pretty painless to get it to do what I want.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

That is almost entirely the reason I want it. I admit, I wasn't really eager for a new edition, but I knew where the problem in 3e lay.

The big ones being that characters had such huge differences in power. It was beginning to remind me of the issues I had with Rifts. I ask people to make up characters and I end up with: a dragon, a glitterboy, a coalition soldier with body armor, a martial artist, and a vagabond with no weapons or armor. They had such HUGE variations in power that there was no way to use enemies against them without killing someone.

I was starting to have those problems in 3e. Although, normally in reverse. The PCs were so strong that I couldn't use enemies against them since all the enemies would be dead in one round. The only way I'd have a chance of effecting them was to use monsters of CR 4-6 levels above them. And it had extremely unpredictable results. One monster would still die in one round, the next one would result in a TPK.

 

[Cadfan]

I liked 3e, and honestly didn't think it required too many patches. The biggest patches were things that my casual groups of friends did almost automatically, like, "Don't play a druid with natural spell and then walk around all day as a bear," or "don't play a cleric and then stack this specific list of buffing spells," or "don't play a War Weaver."

I like 4e because it seems to be more mechanically sound, it incorporates the best things I liked about Book of Nine Swords more directly into the game, and it has a greater emphasis on ease of play.

 

[Turanil]

Who Did Not Like 3rd Edition Because of Too Many Fixes/Tweeks/Changes Needed to Play

3e was too cumbersome for me, but there were good fixes such as E6, yet, I saw True20 and C&C even better answers to my concerns. Now, I could play 3e with a few tweeks, and I did enjoy 3e under the 10th level. However, I never believed 4e would do anything I would have liked, and once released it looks like even worse than I thought. As far as I am concerned, I could play 3e (especially with E6), but not 4e.

 

[Wormwood]

I stopped running 3.5 when I realized that after grafting on so many rules from Unisystem and Fudge that I'd rather just play those games instead.

As far as being a player? Well, my last 3e DM had a 30-or so page house rule document. He's a great DM, but it was a drag watching him fight against the rules so much.

Needless to say, we're both very pro-4e

 

[ProfessorCirno]

To answer the question in the title:

Not me

 

[The Little Raven]

I stopped running 3rd Edition about three years ago, because I was frustrated with the amount of time for prep, the amount of book reference during play, and the swingy nature of CR. I stopped playing 3rd Edition about a year ago, because I was frustrated with the complexity of some of the mechanics as compared to the amount of reward (fun) gained from the mechanics, the length of character creation (especially at higher levels), and the relative ease of inadvertently making a sub-par character.

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

I pretty much decided to give up D&D a short time before 4th Edition was announced because I was getting tired of how much I couldn't grasp the tactical aspects, especially the expectation of resource management. When 4E was announced I was hoping they'd finally decided to dump all that, but enough of it's still in there that I'm not even going to bother.

 

[nute]

Ok, I'm curious as to how many of you wanted 4th Edition so you did not have to put up with all the tweeks/fixes/house rules?

To preface: I have never played OD&D/1st Ed.

I played AD&D a few times, and it quickly became a game of "Who's got the best 'kit' book?" If you were playing a character straight out of the core rules, but someone had The Complete _____? It was almost like they were an order of magnitude more awesome and heroic than your poor generi-fighter.

When 3rd Edition came out, I jumped in with both feet, ecstatic about things like "every class advances at the same rate!" and the ease of the D20 mechanic and "big numbers are good". (Seriously, I never could wrap my brain around the idea that a -6 Armor Class was a GOOD thing.)

I never saw the game imbalances that necessitated the shift to 3.5, but I felt that the change streamlined the game more. Yet as the core WotC product line grew, the modular and open-ended nature of the 3.5 rules began to be a bit of a problem. The Paladin2/Monk1/Sor6/Wiz3/Clr2 "mix-and-match" concepts got abusive, and really detracted from my enjoyment.

Yet, if 4e had never come around? I would have been happy with 3.5. It's a good game and a good system.

4th Edition is an awesome system. This doesn't negate the fact that 3.5 is still fun. I would rather play 4e because I feel the flavor of the game as well as the new rules and concepts fit more with the things I enjoy.

As well, I'm a total neophile, so new and shiny = awesome.