D&D General Why was 3.5 needed?

[Micah Sweet]

Except at low levels, when the Barbarian can totally wear Medium armor until they get higher AC naturally.

Depends on the stats of the PCs involved, but yes, potentially.

 

[James Gasik]

Depends on the stats of the PCs involved, but yes, potentially.

I'm mostly used to point-buy, thanks to AL; a lot of DM's get nervous when players have rolled stats for some reason, lol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm mostly used to point-buy, thanks to AL; a lot of DM's get nervous when players have rolled stats for some reason, lol.

We've always rolled stats. My wife insists on it, and since she's by far the most honest gamer I've ever met, I really can't fault her for it.

 

[James Gasik]

We've always rolled stats. My wife insists on it, and since she's by far the most honest gamer I've ever met, I really can't fault her for it.

I grew up rolling stats, so it's my preferred, but I hate it when that results in an unbalanced party. The last time my group made characters, everyone rolled an array, and everyone had the option to use whatever array they wanted to.

In my next game, I might try an ability score draft, or even an attribute auction (I have fond and probably rose-colored memories of how this worked in Amber).

 

[billd91]

It has been a long time but my impression was the change was mainly about fine tuning numbers, making miniatures more essential to the game, and nerfing some of the abilities (this last point may be debatable). My memory is it came out around the time that optimization was really a big thing, and so you could have wildly different experiences if you had players who were drawing on optimization boards. I don't remember 3.5 making a huge change to that though. It was also kind of odd because it was so filmier to 3E and came out pretty soon after, so I recall finding it awkward to read the new books and try to understand what had changed (sometimes you weren't sure if something was a change or a detail you just forgot about or missed in 3E). I do remember having fun with that edition. It had its problems and I didn't like the push towards miniatures but I did get a ton of gaming out of it and I had players who absolutely loved 3E

Some of it may have been targeting some of the optimization - for example casting a few stat boosters with the maximize or empower and/or persistent metamagic feats to boost their effect. Others to nerf certain tactics like the one I just mentioned or the harm spell. And still others to fix up things that weren't working as hoped like the bard and ranger classes. Some of those changes were important to game play.

But a whole lot of changes that affected the game weren't really classifiable as fitting any of those reasons. Changing how weapon sizing worked - 3.5 (and PF built off the 3.5 SRD) are still the only versions of D&D that went that route for small vs medium vs large weapons. And it was a hassle. As far as I can tell, that was just a bee in some developer's bonnet. Other changes started to reveal that WotC was increasingly focused on a combat encounter as the unit to balance things around - like the drastic reduction of spell durations from hours to minutes.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But a whole lot of changes that affected the game weren't really classifiable as fitting any of those reasons. Changing how weapon sizing worked - 3.5 (and PF built off the 3.5 SRD) are still the only versions of D&D that went that route for small vs medium vs large weapons. And it was a hassle. As far as I can tell, that was just a bee in some developer's bonnet. Other changes started to reveal that WotC was increasingly focused on a combat encounter as the unit to balance things around - like the drastic reduction of spell durations from hours to minutes.

It was desperately important to remove tons of options from Small characters.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But a whole lot of changes that affected the game weren't really classifiable as fitting any of those reasons. Changing how weapon sizing worked - 3.5 (and PF built off the 3.5 SRD) are still the only versions of D&D that went that route for small vs medium vs large weapons. And it was a hassle. As far as I can tell, that was just a bee in some developer's bonnet. Other changes started to reveal that WotC was increasingly focused on a combat encounter as the unit to balance things around - like the drastic reduction of spell durations from hours to minutes.

I recall the weapon size thing being a bit perplexing at the time

 

[jgsugden]

If you really care, there are a HUGE number of chats, threads and the like that document the development process. Andy Collins was very generous with his time in explaining how they were approaching 3.5, and why it was seen as a worthwhile activity. You can use some of those 'Wayback machine' search skills to uncover them. Personally, I thought it tuned up 3E to a large degree and made it a far better product. It was worth the cost.

 

[James Gasik]

I had forgotten about the reduction of spell durations; I was pretty torked about it at the time. I liked being able to drop a buff on another player and have it last for more than one encounter. "Minutes per level" was always this nebulous and generally useless amount of time.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I absolutely love D&D history and "archeology". I played AD&D 2nd back in school, and then after a long hiatus in 2018 I returned to the hobby with 5e. I have since bought some 3.5 and 4e stuff so I could see what I have missed (and absolutely fell in love with 4e in the process).
There is one thing though I don't really understand: the need for 3.5. What was it in 3.0 that necessitated a new version with a new PHB and DMG so early in 3.0's life cycle? I have googled a bit but didn't really get a definitive anser. Perhaps there are some players from back then on this board that can enlighten me?

If you read Art & Arcana, the art/history book that was created in conjunction with a ton of research and interviews with current and former WotC folks, the answer is ... money. The book is pretty clear that it wasn't done for game reasons.