D&D 3E/3.5 AD&D 2nd vs 3.5

[Nellisir]

That's my take on it as well, though I think 2ed and 1Ed are the most closely related editions (but for 3Ed & 3.5Ed, of course).

Ditto. 2e streamlined and organized 1e, and added things that had been optional or later additions to 1e, such as nonweapon proficiencies (which were in Oriental Adventures, Wilderness Survival Guide, and Dungeoneers Survival Guide, but not the PH or UA), but didn't really overhaul the system. Classes were tweaked (bard was completely overhauled into essentially a new class; in theory you could have played a 1e bard and 2e bard in the same party and they would be completely different), but percentile Strength (for instance) remained. Schools of magic were standardized, but I think most spells remained basically the same.

It was a big jump from 2e to 3e. Even though some people had been playing with some house rules for a period of time, a lot of it was completely new. At the big 3e announcement at Gen Con (in 1999, I believe - the only one I've attended), WotC handed out t-shirts with a check list on the back. We spent hours studying that list, trying to figure out how a gnoll could be a 4th-level ranger, or what a 24 Strength would look like. The idea of a unified bonus progression for abilities was both too simple and too different to be obvious.

My house rules for 2e were approaching the PH in page count; I was more than ready for a change.

 

[Nellisir]

Others cite the demise of THAC0 as some big deal...to me, that seemed trivial.

I had discovered ascending AC online a year or two earlier (via the Unearthed Arcania document, which is still apparently out and floating around) and embraced it instantly. I loathe THAC0.

I'd also add that the whole "Options" line had really shaken up 2e for several years before 3e. The idea of tinkering with your character in all those fiddly ways was fairly well established by the time 3e debuted.

The Options line changed things up, but largely stayed within the lines of 2e. Building characters with points was the thing that really caught on from that, and splitting up ability scores, but neither survived to 3e.

 

[Orius]

3.5 is more internally consistant. The d20 mechanic makes things easier to learn and play, and there's less DM arbitrariness involved.

2e has better balance among the classes. There's no tier nonsense that makes the primary casters practically gods while the fighter is rubbish. Combat's also faster because there's less grid reliance, and hp totals tend to be lower.

Rules lawyers certainly existed back in 2e, and sometimes things could honestly be worse with the way the rules could be vague and arbitrary. And house rules seemed to be the norm with 2e as well. There were plenty of optional rules the DMs could us or ignore as they saw fit, then start throwing in splats and/or Player's Option and you've got stuff that overlaps but is inconsistant because 2e's overall design was a mess.

I'm with Stormonu on one point -- the charop boards really perverted 3e's customization options into a hideous orgy of min-maxing. I liked the basic idea behind these option as it was intended to allow lots of different types of builds, but the idea thast some builds are simply inferior and only some options are worth taking nauseates me.

Sigh, totally did not notice the threadomancy on this thread. Until the sixth page when I realized I was reading my own posts. Oops.

Heeeheee.

I still stand by what I said earlier though. 3e is a massive change from 2e. The tone of the game is completely different, and I really don't understand how anyone can say you can make easy translations between 2e and 3e. The characters got scaled WAYYYY back in relation to the monsters. The classes are very, very different than their 2e counterparts and the approach to the game is completely different.

I played through a good deal of 2e, and went right to 3e when it was released. And while 3e had some pretty sharp differences, a lot of those differences were a sort of natural evolution of 2e. So moving up to 3e wasn't that difficult.

The classes have varying amount of differences IME. Take a look at the classic 4 classes from most to least changed:

Rogue had the biggest change from thief, so much so the class got a name change! The class went from having a bunch of various thief abilties to becoming the party skill specialist. I think the rogue is better than the thief; the skill focus allows more class customization, and the rules for Sneak Attack were better described than the old Backstab ability.

Cleric went back to having a defined spell list and spheres were simplified into domains. The cleric also picked up the spontaneous casting ability. The real difference comes from the spell list, a few spells were added that made the cleric very powerful. The designers were trying to eliminate the cleric as the class everyone wants in the party for healing, but no one wants to play. They succeeded alright -- by unleashing CoDzilla upon us all.

Fighter isn't too different. The main difference is that the fighter became the party combat feat specialist, which kind of greatly expanded on the various sorts of specializations the fighter could take from the Fighter's Handbook or Combat and Tactics in 2e. This did boost the fighter in comparison to the 2e fighter; unfortunately, the casters got even more boosts to the point where the poor fighter is seen as worthless.

Wizard's mostly identical between the two editions. 3e pretty much folds the mage and specialists into a single class, which 2e had already been doing for a while. Main difference is that the 3e wizard doesn't need spells for familiars or metamagic, and gets feat focuses on item creation and metamagic which really isn't much. The 3e wizard can start scribing scrolls at level 1 unlike his 2e counterpart, but unlike the 2e wizard, might not be able to make any sort of magic item depending on his feats (of course that assumes the 2e DM isn't being a hardass about item creation to begin with, given how undefined those rules were in 2e). The 3e wizard has less restraints on spellcasting though, which can make him pretty powerful. The 3e's best spells are different too depending on the situation: straight up damage spells are worth less because of damage caps and higher monster hp, while crowd control and buff eventually become more valued.

 

[pemerton]

Fighter isn't too different.

<snip>

The 3e's best spells are different too depending on the situation: straight up damage spells are worth less because of damage caps and higher monster hp, while crowd control and buff eventually become more valued.

I think that these two points actually show that fighters changed a lot from classic D&D to 3E. In classic D&D fighters have two strengths: damage output, and saving throws (in B/X D&D they start with good saves; in AD&D they have to wait a few levels to get them).

In 3E fighters have bad saving throws, and while their damage output grows in purely numerical terms, my sense is that monster hit points grow even more, so that doing damage becomes less important than the "crowd control" abilities to which they have little access.

Given how much information is in the powers, and how difficult they are to read, I struggled with it. The recharge mechanism is tough to comprehend; the only things that give you uses per day are mostly monster abilities and a few class abilities. Do I understand what the phrase "once per day" literally means? Sure. Do I know how to use such an ability in play or value it during character creation? No. The writing of the powers themselves also has a lot of new jargon and formatting conventions that I'm sure are fine once you get used to them but are really imposing for non-initiates.

This is very surprising to me, but then I have read a wide variety of RPG rulebooks. When I look at how spells and psionic abilities are statted in nearly any fantasy or sci-fi RPG, I find powers pretty similar in their statting.

As for ascertaining their worth, I don't find that any harder than working out how much a fireball spell is worth in 3E - ie you need play experience, plus a sense of how your group is going to run the game, in order to have a good feel for that sort of thing.

how is 4e closer to 2e in being a "shared story"?

Because the players have a greater degree of narrative control, and the overarching structures of play - the "scene-framing" approach, the "XP not as reward but as progression of the background fiction" approach, the "magic items are not a reward but a fiction-embedded element of PC growth", etc - are based not around "step on up" gamist play, but around shared participation in, and shaping of, a heroic fantasy adventure story.

4e, like 3e, is based almost entirely around "here is the combat scene".

(1) Whose experience are you drawing on here? Your own? Reports you've heard? 4e certainly has robust support for non-combat scene resolution (ie the skill challenge).

(2) There is no contrast between "combat scene" and "shared story". Combat is a preeminent site of conflict in most fantasy RPGing, and so can be expected to be the place where story unfolds. I find 4e does this particularly well because of the way its PC build and action resolution rules focus less on process simulation, and more on expressing the underlying thematic idea of the character.

You're not supposed to lure the orcs out of the room or try to subvert the encounter - the encounter is balanced for you to approach it in the intended fashion.

4e, by D&D standards at least, draws a pretty sharp boundary between scene framing - which is the GM's purview - and action resolution. Given that this is the heart of the basic model for play for contemporary "indie" RPGs, it's hardly at odds with the game being aimed at production of a shared story.

 

[Ahnehnois]

This is very surprising to me, but then I have read a wide variety of RPG rulebooks. When I look at how spells and psionic abilities are statted in nearly any fantasy or sci-fi RPG, I find powers pretty similar in their statting.

As for ascertaining their worth, I don't find that any harder than working out how much a fireball spell is worth in 3E - ie you need play experience, plus a sense of how your group is going to run the game, in order to have a good feel for that sort of thing.

With regards to both I think the issue is that 4e has a more distinct jargon. I'm sure once you're used to reading 3[W] damage and keywords and recharge times and such, it makes sense. Once you're used to playing with those abilities, I'm sure they make sense. I just don't think that prior D&D experience gets you there (whereas most of 3e's changes were extensions of 2e elements that existed, and were written in a more common-language style, and playing a 2e fighter or cleric or thief is much the same as playing their 3e versions).

 

[pemerton]

playing a 2e fighter or cleric or thief is much the same as playing their 3e versions

Again, this is something on which we have different responses. I find a fighter quite different in 3E for the reasons I mentioned earlier. And I tend to agree with [MENTION=8863]Orius[/MENTION] on the cleric and thief.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm with Stormonu on one point -- the charop boards really perverted 3e's customization options into a hideous orgy of min-maxing. I liked the basic idea behind these option as it was intended to allow lots of different types of builds, but the idea thast some builds are simply inferior and only some options are worth taking nauseates me.

I wanted to echo this. The CharOp boards created a way of viewing, judging, and playing the game that I think was very poisonous. Worse, I think that this fed (I'm not sure if it created, but it certainly abetted) the idea that a game was fundamentally flawed if you could find a way to break it, something that I think makes about as much sense as saying that your car is based off of a faulty design if you're able to strip the gears by not shifting them correctly.

 

[Ratskinner]

I wanted to echo this. The CharOp boards created a way of viewing, judging, and playing the game that I think was very poisonous. Worse, I think that this fed (I'm not sure if it created, but it certainly abetted) the idea that a game was fundamentally flawed if you could find a way to break it, something that I think makes about as much sense as saying that your car is based off of a faulty design if you're able to strip the gears by not shifting them correctly.

My experiences agreed with this. During the early 00's, I played mostly with folks who didn't really troll the internet for tabletop gaming purposes. I never saw a CoDzilla or any of the huge character or balance centered issues that folks commonly cite about 3e. (I saw some wonkiness with the application of some spells in combination, but that's par-for-the-course in D&D.) I did come to despise things like the profusion of fiddly bits combined with monsters-as-characters, which made my DMing life much harder after the first few levels. I still have a love/hate feeling about 3e's sequential multiclassing.

 

[Hussar]

playing a 2e fighter or cleric or thief is much the same as playing their 3e versions).

Again, I have to wonder where your experiences come from.

Fighters are very, very different between 2e and 3e. A 1st level 2e fighter is easily capable of killing trolls in a single round of combat. A 1st level 2e party can take on giants and reasonably expect to win. That's how powerful 2e parties are. By 3e, the fighter is falling farther and farther behind. He does about half as much damage as his 2e counterpart until he hits double digit levels, but the monsters are scaled WAY higher.

But, let's look at actual play experience. Take something as simple as initiative in 2e and compare it to 3e. A 2e initiative works like this:

Each player declares his action before initiative is rolled. Each player rolls a d10, adds his weapon speed factor, subtracts his Dex bonus and the lowest score goes first. This will be repeated every round of combat.​

In 3e, it works like this:

Each player rolls a d20 and adds his dex modifier. High roll goes first. This will remain static (barring a few exceptions) for the entire combat.​

Note, 4e works exactly the same as 3e here.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I think 2e was much more inspirational, but the rules are just clunky. Thac0 for instance. The balance was probably better in 2e and the leveling progression was better. 3e had some cool multiclassing and prestige classes which I liked. I won't go back to 2e. I hope 5e will be a streamlined flexible 2e/4e hybrid.