D&D General Why was 3.5 needed?

[Willie the Duck]

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).

There were some other systemic or conceptual changes as well. One I remember is: in 3.0, getting a special ability on a magic weapon would cost pluses, so a +1 flaming sword would effectively count as +2, for instance (in gp cost, level needed to make, whether it counted as epic, etc.). However, enemies might have Damage Reduction of '30/+2', against which the +1 flaming sword would not penetrate. Thus there was a strong incentive to always just take the pluses. With 3.5, they (presumably thinking games with energy weapons were more fun than everyone just chasing pluses) changed it so that Damage Reduction was more like '15/magic' and thus any magic weapon would work, (and the flaming would just be a overall plus to the gp cost, kinda solving the problem twice). There were subtle little quality of life changes like that. They just usually get dwarfed in the discussion by the larger concerns like the devs bizarrely picking on small races or them not fixing spellcaster vs. fighter/monk/everyone else, etc.

3e was made on the idea that it would run like 2e. The problem, they changed so many rules that it was nothing LIKE 2e in how it could be used and abused. They closed several loopholes for power gamers and munchkins that were in 2e, only to open a HORDE of loopholes for them in 3e.

They didn't expect people to analyze the rules and then change the way they played accordingly. They didn't expect that it would be the RULES changing to feel of the game and the way people saw how it could be played. This unexpectedly meant that there were players out there that found these new loopholes to create crazy chaotic unbalanced insanity in the game.

There certainly is an aspect of that. Just how much (and how many ways) they tried to make sure extra attacks didn't run away with the game -- no more than 5' step to get multiple attacks, massive feat trees for two-weapon fighting, amulet of mighty fists* costing 3x what an equivalent magic weapon would cost, etc. -- suggest that they really thought that whatever was a problem in 2e would be the problem in 3e. They also just did some things like realizing that X in 2e was widely considered unfun, so changed it to something else without reassessing whether the new version would then be unbalancing . Such as - no one liking being a caster whose spells are constantly disrupted, and when they do get to cast them they end up facing fixed percentage** Magic Resistance and enemies that saved X% of the time, regardless. So they changed it, making magic more reliable, easily cast in-combat (even without a special feat, just a skill check), and significantly more likely to land on the opponent -- without thinking about what that did for caster-noncaster balance.
*which would apply to offhand and flurry attacks as well as your regular allotment.
**changed from 1E, where MR went down 5% per level over 12 the caster was, IIRC.

3.5 was their attempt to bring balance back to the game. It probably worked for around 3-6 months. Then it became crazy again.

I don't know that 3.5 really did anything to fix balance. I remember Natural Spell becoming core in 3.5, and many of the persistent balance issues (other than haste) not really being addressed.

 

[BigZebra]

As I remember it, Pun Pun only works if you interpret (obscure Forgotten-Realms-specific monster whose name I've thankfully forgotten)'s vague ability to add spell-like and supernatural abilities to a reptilian creature, followed by a few low-powered examples, as meaning they can add any ability that appears in any book ever written for 3.5 D&D. Which is a stretch.

And it is just a thought experiment anyway, since it was created for a "create the most ridiculously overpowered character you can" competition. There's no point playing in a game that featured Pun Pun as a PC as it would be no fun for anybody involved. The campaign probably wouldn't survive the first session.

Exactly.
There's actually a great video on PunPun:


It's all theory and he wasn't meant to be played. And as you mention it requires a very lax interpretation of some rules.

 

[BigZebra]

Just wanted to say I really appreciate all the replies in this thread. Love it. Thanks to all of you.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

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?

planed from the beginning according to Monty Cook.

However conseracy theory aside, there really wasn't a need. There was not a huge outcry that haste was too broken or that find familiar didn't work.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Near the tail end of 3.5's lifespan, there was actually a stealth 3.75 around 2007, with the release of the 2nd wave of Complete Books (Complete Mage, Complete Scoundrel, Complete Champion & Tome of... books), PHB/DMG2, MM4 and the uptake of the Delve Format in adventures.

the reserve feats basicly gave a scaling at will spell, Bo9S gave complex fighters...

 

[GMforPowergamers]

What "new ideas" do you think they're testing out now? So far I haven't seen anything creative or inspirational in the upcoming new edition materials. Admittedly I'm inclined to dislike it.

I don't have anyreason to assume that it worked... but strixhaven has a buncxh of things that are social based. Rules for having connection, making friends, and influencing NPCs
It also has rules for researching and getting a bonus for it.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I house ruled several of them back - specifically the stat buffs and invisibility. I was OK with the stat bonus given to the buffs being regularized at +4 instead of +1d4+1 so that it wouldn't be fodder for empower/maximize spell. But the duration cut was abysmal.

i forgot they used to be a roll so you could empower them...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4e was the answer to that. They found out that many people prefer the a more open game than what 4e brought.

5e was their answer to that. With 5e they finally said...we keep trying to balance the game, but that doesn't really make it fun. Instead of trying to balance it completely, let's just try to make it appeal to people and figure out what the core of D&D is. Once we figure what the core ideas that really make D&D...D&D...the rest of the game can follow.

And here we are.

Both of these arguments are rather poor and don't actually reflect what happened though.

It isn't balance people dislike. People actually really do dislike imbalance. It's why there were so many hand-wringing threads about whether silvery barbs was OP or not. You don't get threads like that if balance is pointless.

Trying to pursue "fun" in and of itself is like trying to pursue "happiness" in and of itself. It sounds nice, but in practice it doesn't work. Actually achieving happiness generally requires that you dedicate yourself to some particular thing, because you really want to and because you enjoy doing it, and then almost magically you find that you become happy in the doing. Fun works in very similar ways (being, in some sense, a form of happiness.) People are just so used to having to force things into being what they want, they don't realize there are other approaches.

What people mistake for "balance" is stuff like enforced uniformity and denied or frustrated contextualization. But neither uniformity in general nor restrictions on how context-specific you are allowed to be are bad in the abstract either. Moving to the unified d20 mechanic was one of the best design decisions of WotC D&D, making the game substantially easier to learn without taking away any of the interesting complexity of actual play. (I'm sure some old-school fans will quibble over that claim though.) Likewise, everyone recognizes that games are necessarily limited and require some degree of abstraction in order to function. No one is expecting the player to physically swing a sword in order to make an attack roll. But abstraction necessarily means a bit of lossy compression; you have to accept that some details won't be considered relevant even if you think they should be supremely relevant.

So the problem is, and has always been, people not getting the right mix of uniformity and diversity, of details and abstractions, of "balance" and variability. And there are several ways in which 5e simply drops the ball on this front. It just covers that up with "well it's the DM's job to figure literally everything out, so we're totally cool."

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

It wasn't needed. Some of the minor revisions they needed to make were made, others weren't even addressed, and the rest were pointless or caused more problems.