D&D 3E/3.5 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[payn]

Wasn't that for Pathfinder, or was there a version for 3.5 as well? Mine was for Pathfinder.
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It was for Pathfinder, but I dont see any reason many of the ideas within couldnt be applied to 3.5.

 

[Schmoe]

Wasn't that for Pathfinder, or was there a version for 3.5 as well? Mine was for Pathfinder.
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Interesting, I've never seen that before! I'll have to check it out.

 

[Voadam]

I can honestly say, I've never understood why the iterative attack penalty existed in the first place. Especially with the existence of natural weapons and Multiattack. So a monster (or Druid) can charge and toss out a bite at full BAB and then 2 claws at -2 followed by 2 rakes, but my Fighter has to make 1 attack at full BAB, one at -5, and one at -10? With an additional -2 if I dare to use Two-Weapon Fighting? Yeah...ok.

It also gave a minor benefit to having an AC that was mediocre instead of just terrible, mediocre ACs would block the later iterative attacks at -5 and -10 while terrible ones would not.

But why? I mean seriously. Why not do what AD&D and 5e did and say "at level X, you can make Y attacks". Why tie # of attacks to BAB at all?

This way it works better with different classes and the 3e multiclass system just using one chart/formula so that fighters get more attacks than clerics or rogues. That is a separate issue from the iterative penalty though.

 

[Voadam]

I would have given Fighters less Feats, but instead "wild card" Feats. That is, a Feat that you have to qualify for, but that you can change out each day. So if you feel the need to have Improved Grapple one day, or Improved Trip the next.

I realize that some people would balk at that suggestion "how did you forget how to grapple good?" of course. Perhaps an equally good idea would be to give them fewer Feats, but let them cheat the prerequisites how the Ranger and Monk can, but with more flexibility in choices.

Again, I think the sheer number of bonus Combat Feats really put a spanner in how Combat Feats were designed.

Later 1e Pathfinder added a martial class that did something similar in the Advanced Class Guide, the brawler hybrid monk/fighter class.

Martial Flexibility (Ex): A brawler can take a move action to gain the benefit of a combat feat she doesn't possess. This effect lasts for 1 minute. The brawler must meet all the feat's prerequisites. She may use this ability a number of times per day equal to 3 + 1/2 her brawler level (minimum 4 times per day).

The brawler can use this ability again before the duration expires to replace the previous combat feat with another choice.

If a combat feat has a daily use limitation (such as with Stunning Fist), any uses of that combat feat while using this ability count toward that feat's daily limit.

At 6th level, a brawler can use this ability to gain the benefit of two combat feats at the same time. She may select one feat as a swift action or two feats as a move action. She may use one of these feats to meet a prerequisite of the second feat; doing so means that she cannot replace a feat currently fulfilling another's prerequisite without also replacing those feats that require it. Each individual feat selected counts toward her daily uses of this ability.

At 10th level, a brawler can use this ability to gain the benefit of three combat feats at the same time. She may select one feat as a free action, two feats as a swift action, or three feats as a move action. She may use one of the feats to meet a prerequisite of the second and third feats, and use the second feat to meet a prerequisite of the third feat. Each individual feat selected counts toward her daily uses of this ability.

At 12th level, a brawler can use this ability to gain the benefit of one combat feat as an immediate action or three combat feats as a swift action. Each individual feat selected counts toward her daily uses of this ability.

At 20th level, a brawler can use this ability to gain the benefit of any number of combat feats as a swift action. Each feat selected counts toward her daily uses of this ability, and can be used as a prerequisite for any of the other feats.

 

[Voadam]

It also gave a minor benefit to having an AC that was mediocre instead of just terrible, mediocre ACs would block the later iterative attacks at -5 and -10 while terrible ones would not.

Also it affects the calculus on power attack and combat expertise and such if you have later iterative attacks at lower attack bonuses.

 

[teitan]

I've recently been going again through the old 3rd edition books Manual of the Planes, Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Lords of Madness looking for ideas for a campaign concept I am entertaining. There's a bunch of really interesting content in those books, and it occurred to me that I don't know any other game or even edition of D&D that would let you replicate many of those without very extensive rewriting. Pathfinder 1st edition maybe, but that's still mostly the same game. And that in turn had me opening up to at least entertaining the idea that perhaps 3rd edition might be a game that actually plays decently well if you run it the right way.

I first started to be interested in RPG just a few weeks before 3rd edition came out, and so I actually waited that long to get the new books right on release as the very first game system I would try to learn. I stuck to it exclusively through its entire run and then to Pathfinder for another two or three years. I think I had close to every single 3rd edition book that was released for at least a while before I resold about half of them. (Except for the Prestige Class, spells, and items books.) I've also been a lot on the Giant In the Playground forum and RPG.net (before it went mad). So unlike with all the original OSR discussions where I only had other people's words to go with, with 3rd edition I lived through it all myself.
While I was all in on all of that at the time, I've seen first hand all the stupid nonsense about the reception of, and culture around that game, which at the end of it convinced me that 3rd edition was a complete mess and the d20 system a really terrible engine for "Roleplaying™" Games. (Yes, I partook generously in that OSR stuff that became popular at the time.)

But considering now how the game would play in practice now that I have some 15 more years as GM under my belt with a far broader horizon of what games and campaigns can be, I've actually been a bit appalled at how I remember myself running this game (and Pathfinder) in the 2000s. Man, I was really bad. But so seems to have been everyone else I've encountered in the common discourse around the game back in those days.

I don't really have much of a thesis here on what exactly 3rd edition did wrong and what about it was actually really bad design. But I have developed a hypothesis over this month that perhaps the way I have seen 3rd edition played, and heard it self-reported being played by other people, and the general sense of disappointment I've seen about it in recent years, might not actually be primarily the fault of the game rules as they are designed, but by the way we tried to use them.

Maybe the negative and disappointing experiences many people seem to have made with the game are not because it is a bad tool, but because we tried to make it do things it was not meant for?

One thing that I find to be very noticeable with 3rd edition in hindsight is that there seems to be a very considerable disconnect between the people who designed the main rules set of the game, and the people who actually wrote the majority of supplements over the game's seven year run. Manifested very strikingly here at the introduction to Prestige Classes in the Dungeon Master's Guide:

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Yeah, everyone who has read more than three 3rd edition books knows that this is not at all how the D&D product catalog evolved after the release of the Core Rulebooks. I'm going entirely by memory here, but the old 3rd edition website had index lists of all feats, PrCs, and spells that appeared in the official WotC 3rd edition rulebooks and supplements, and I am pretty sure the total list of PrCs was over 700. (Also over 1,000 feats.)
WotC was always in the money business, and money is made by selling books. And character options sell books. So as long as players were paying for it, they spewed out an endless stream of races, classes, prestige classes, items, and spells. As I remember it, PrCs were the main selling points of the dozen or so book specifically addressed to players. And of course 90% of them were complete shovelware junk that nobody remembers. But the remaining ones really fed the leviathan that was Character Optimization. In my perception, CharOps became the dominant aspect of the 3rd edition online culture and discourse. I agree that it was a very fun hobby where you can sink hundreds of hours into discovering new unintended combinations of abilities and items that were probably written by two people who had no awareness of each others' works. And it's something that you can argue about and defend in discussions much more so than the vague generalizations of how you prepare adventures. But that was playing with the rules of the game. It was not playing the game.

Okay, rhetoric ramblings aside, my current interest is in re-reading, re-examining, and researching the actually written mechanics of the three Core Rulebooks and separating it from what players in the 2000s thought the game to be or wished the game to be, and what the publisher found to be the most efficient way to sell books. Was 3rd edition a hot mess? Yes. But was it a badly designed game system from the start or did the problem lie with how the game was received?
For a very long time, D&D 3rd edition was widely regarded as the game that can do any kind of fantasy campaign that you could think of. (And even non-fantasy games with the many d20 spin-off game systems.) But I think this can very unequivocally dismissed as wrong. I think pretty much everyone now agrees that no game system is a good for any imaginable campaign. Any good system is still only good at the one thing it is made for.

What I am wondering now is, what kind of adventures, campaigns, and play style is D&D 3rd edition actually best at? What part of the rules seem to have been widely misunderstood or misapplied? And what small tweaks might make a major positive difference?

I found that without Prestige classes and multi-classing that 3e and 3.5 were much better experiences, at least with carefully curated PrC lists. It was better balanced because multi-classing, even in 5e, ultimately knee caps the character, even if it fits the concept, eventually you will be outclassed unless you're a wizard or cleric. With limited PrC and MCing, the curve shifts a little and with none, yeah Wizzies and Clerics are still insanely powerful... as they should be... if it were 1e or 2e and had the balancing factor of increased XP tables.

 

[Voadam]

I found that without Prestige classes and multi-classing that 3e and 3.5 were much better experiences, at least with carefully curated PrC lists. It was better balanced because multi-classing, even in 5e, ultimately knee caps the character, even if it fits the concept, eventually you will be outclassed unless you're a wizard or cleric. With limited PrC and MCing, the curve shifts a little and with none, yeah Wizzies and Clerics are still insanely powerful... as they should be... if it were 1e or 2e and had the balancing factor of increased XP tables.

Huh, I found single classed wizards, clerics, and druids out of the core the strongest classes at higher levels and multiclassing and prestige classes one of the options that could slow down the power of casters as they most often give up at least a caster level to do so. Abilities from different classes are often neat and attractive, but push you back on the power scale compared to higher level spells with more slots and higher caster level.

Very few caster prestige classes gave full casting, and few of those gave significant powers.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Of course in 3e, prior to certain PrCs, multiclassing almost always kneecapped any spellcasting classes.

 

[teitan]

Huh, I found single classed wizards, clerics, and druids out of the core the strongest classes at higher levels and multiclassing and prestige classes one of the options that could slow down the power of casters as they most often give up at least a caster level to do so. Abilities from different classes are often neat and attractive, but push you back on the power scale compared to higher level spells with more slots and higher caster level.

Very few caster prestige classes gave full casting, and few of those gave significant powers.

Late 3.5 provided a ton of caster levels in PrC or maybe one level less. I prefer 3.0 myself of the 3 versions.

 

[Schmoe]

I found that without Prestige classes and multi-classing that 3e and 3.5 were much better experiences, at least with carefully curated PrC lists. It was better balanced because multi-classing, even in 5e, ultimately knee caps the character, even if it fits the concept, eventually you will be outclassed unless you're a wizard or cleric. With limited PrC and MCing, the curve shifts a little and with none, yeah Wizzies and Clerics are still insanely powerful... as they should be... if it were 1e or 2e and had the balancing factor of increased XP tables.

That actually raises the interesting option of changing the XP table for full casters. Something like +25% XP required for full casters might actually provide a better balance experience, especially in the late game. I'd have to figure out multi-classing, but I'm now intrigued