Is There Possibility of a PF1.5 or a 3.5 Revival? Whether Directly or Something With Similar 'Ethos'

[payn]

In every version of D&D, it's the responsibility of the GM to ensure that the party has the potential to acquire the resources necessary to overcome the challenges he presents. If you don't do that, you are as bad as the Monte Haul GM who gives away many more resources than are necessary to overcome the challenges he presents. I don't deny that there are out there bad GMs that enjoy beating the players and lauding their power as a GM over the players, but my impression of the players based on talking with them is that any attempt to test the players ability to solve problems was bad GMing. For example, they would claim that in 3e it was wrong to have hidden treasure, since if a treasure was hidden then that might imply the treasure would not be found and in that case the GM was not fulfilling his contract to supply wealth to the players. This is surely not D&D.

I never found in 3e D&D I had to run the game differently than I had run it in 1e AD&D. The only difference was running it was much smoother because I had more tools and the game was better balanced and the players had more abilities to mitigate against bad luck (at least under my house rules). But I could hide treasure, not have magic shops, and otherwise run the game in a very Gygaxian manner.

I found 3E to run differently than past editions in its magic item assumptions, and many of my old school GMs didn't understand that. I agree its the responsibility of the GM, but traditionally a lot of folks dont read the newest DMG assuming they know how it all works. So, its easy to just say they are bad GMs, but that isnt going to reduce the instances of it happening. Discussing how the game works will.

 

[Bohandas]

I'm not expecting a "revival" - but PF1 is still a great game. The breadth it makes available is unmatched except by PF2. And PF1 and PF2 are entirely different games. I appreciate the careful - even mathematical - balance in PF2. But I'm not sure I like it better than PF1/D&D3.5.

Nobody liked it when it was called 4e D&D either

 

[Bohandas]

I still wish that someone would go back and fill in what I consider the gaps in the original 3.5e sourcebooks. They never finished the line of books on the different creature types (they did dragons, undead, aberrations, and two books on fiends, but they never did constructs, fey, or elementals) or the books on different environments (they did desert, arctic, sea, underground, and cities but never got around to mountains, jungles, or swamps)

 

[Alzrius]

I always thought that was poor design.

My suspicion is that a lot of the 3.X designers would agree with you. Looking back on certain things that they changed over the life of the edition, it really gave off the same vibe as when a computer operating system gets patches released: people think "why didn't they fix these problems before the product was released?" not realizing that the product is so large and with so many interacting components that it's almost impossible to do that, even with playtesting.

For instance, I can't remember where I read this, but I recall reading someone talking about how the presumption was that sorcerers, with their ability to decide on-the-fly what spells they were going to cast, were a much stronger class than wizards (even with a limited set of spells known). That was why they made their spell progression lag one level behind wizards (and made it so sorcerers using metamagic had to use a full-round action, which locked them out of Quicken Spell). In fact, that turned out very much not to be the case, since sorcerers were the ones who took a hit to their overall utility via the "spells known" limit.

Or how they didn't realize that paladin spellcasting was so drastically limited by making it Wisdom-dependent, when paladins already needed Strength and Constitution to be a front-line combatant, and used Charisma for several of their special abilities. Complete Champion's Battle Blessing feat (which made all paladin spells be cast as swift actions if their normal casting time was a standard action, or be a standard action if their normal casting time was a full-round action or longer, all for no spell level adjustment) was clearly an attempt to make paladin spellcasting at least a little better without rewriting too much.

Or the late-stage removal of polymorph among monsters that had it in favor of the "change shape" special quality.

It's easy to forget that a lot of 3.X's design was made blindly (for lack of a better word) with the full realization of how it actually worked in play only becoming clear years later.

 

[Celebrim]

I found 3E to run differently than past editions in its magic item assumptions...

I'm told that it did, but that seems to be more of a function of high level play (13th level and up) and compensating for the increased gaps between poor saves and expected DC of saving throws. I never had that experience, both because I never ran a campaign that got to 13th level given the slow levelling rates I prefer and because I had house rules that prevented saving throw DC inflation.

I never noticed much in the way of a difference. Players found loot I placed in dungeons. It was more or less the same loot I would have placed in a 1e dungeon, down to sometimes rolling randomly on the 1e AD&D DMG table when I wanted inspiration. Occasionally when I would go lengthy periods without dungeons because the campaign didn't have a dungeon focus at the time and so loot was getting scarce, I'd supplement that with gifts from wealthy patrons and allies thanking the PCs for their aid. But I would have done that in 1e AD&D as well.

"Christmas tree required" problems are a combination of three things, most of which I've already mentioned, but to reiterate - wide tier gaps between classes resulting in differences in gear dependency to be useful, too many spells with absolute effects, and increasing gaps in the DC of saves versus the bonus of the poor saves. And even then, that's mostly high level 3.X problems. I suppose you could exacerbate it with encounter design where you run one single high CR foe per day of adventuring.

 

[payn]

I'm told that it did, but that seems to be more of a function of high level play (13th level and up) and compensating for the increased gaps between poor saves and expected DC of saving throws. I never had that experience, both because I never ran a campaign that got to 13th level given the slow levelling rates I prefer and because I had house rules that prevented saving throw DC inflation.

I never noticed much in the way of a difference. Players found loot I placed in dungeons. It was more or less the same loot I would have placed in a 1e dungeon, down to sometimes rolling randomly on the 1e AD&D DMG table when I wanted inspiration. Occasionally when I would go lengthy periods without dungeons because the campaign didn't have a dungeon focus at the time and so loot was getting scarce, I'd supplement that with gifts from wealthy patrons and allies thanking the PCs for their aid. But I would have done that in 1e AD&D as well.

"Christmas tree required" problems are a combination of three things, most of which I've already mentioned, but to reiterate - wide tier gaps between classes resulting in differences in gear dependency to be useful, too many spells with absolute effects, and increasing gaps in the DC of saves versus the bonus of the poor saves. And even then, that's mostly high level 3.X problems. I suppose you could exacerbate it with encounter design where you run one single high CR foe per day of adventuring.

I think you are entirely discounting your knowledge of the system and its workings in comparison to the average player. None of this was obvious to many of the folks I have played with, and probably not even obvious to many folks online I discuss it with.

 

[Reynard]

In every version of D&D, it's the responsibility of the GM to ensure that the party has the potential to acquire the resources necessary to overcome the challenges he presents.

This is only true in the broadest sense -- as in the PCs have the potential to escape and level up and come back. Otherwise it implies a neo-trad paradigm lots and lots of folks simply reject.

 

[Celebrim]

This is only true in the broadest sense -- as in the PCs have the potential to escape and level up and come back. Otherwise it implies a neo-trad paradigm lots and lots of folks simply reject.

"Potential" is carrying a lot of weight in my statement, but as a concrete example of design the Tomb of Horrors has a door that can only be opened by a magic ring, and has a magic ring to find before that point, and there is a puzzle which is by far most easily solved if you have a True Seeing spell, and so there is a magic item that offers a True Seeing to discover. That the same party would discover both is relatively unlikely and it's not easy, but it's there.

 

[Reynard]

"Potential" is carrying a lot of wait in my statement, but as a concrete example of design the Tomb of Horrors has a door that can only be opened by a magic ring, and has a magic ring to find before that point, and there is a puzzle which is by far most easily solved if you have a True Seeing spell, and so there is a magic item that offers a True Seeing to discover. That the same party would discover both is relatively unlikely and it's not easy, but it's there.

Tomb of Horrors is not a useful metric given the design intent behind the adventure.

 

[Alzrius]

In every version of D&D, it's the responsibility of the GM to ensure that the party has the potential to acquire the resources necessary to overcome the challenges he presents.

This is true, but I think it's important to remember that 3.X gave players a lot more resources to be self-directed in this regard than any edition before or since. This is largely through the use of magic item creation feats (magic items could always be created by players in earlier editions, of course, but there was a heavy hand of GM fiat over the entire process, since not only were the exotic ingredients necessary for creating an item made up by the GM, but so was their availability; item creation feats, by contrast, simply require time, gold, and a perfunctory skill check or two), but even skills like Craft, Perform, and Profession systematize the routine acquisition of gold (albeit not very much). And don't even get me started on the inherent presumption of magic item shops.

Presuming something like a sandbox campaign and/or some intelligent information-gathering on the part of the players (which could very well just be a Gather Information check), then they could very well foresee the challenges ahead of them enough to equip themselves accordingly.