D&D 3.x I miss 3.5 edition

[Dannyalcatraz]

While I eventually warmed up to 4Ed somewhat, part of my initial negative reaction to it was how many things in the later stages of 3.5Ed that were simply abandoned. One of the biggest ones was the Reserve Feats. They weren’t perfect, but I really felt they were a nice expansion of the mechanics for spellcasters.

(Now, there’s obvious mechanical reasons why Reserve Feats didn’t port across the editions, but that’s not the point.)

There were other 3.5Ed feats I liked that I thought added a lot of flavor & flexibility to the game- Bloodlines, Heritage, Devotions, etc.- that disappeared in 4Ed that had become major tools in my character designs.

 

[neceros]

4e felt too much like an mmo

 

[kigmatzomat]

I ran 3e 1st-23rd level and played 5e 7th-20th level.

I prefer the overall granularity of 3e and would happily go back. Oddly, all the attempts at setting bounding boxes seems to have made getting the encounter's right even more difficult. The 3e CR system was imperfect, but imo once you figured out your player's "handicap" and adjusted the CR accordingly, it was fine.

I will say if I ever do get the chance of running 3e, I will use 5e spell progressions + Tome of Battle because I think at that point martials and casters may be balanced.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I miss the era. I miss the wild west feel of publishing and eventually the wheat separating from the chaff. We got some really solid 3rd party material in terms of mechanics as settings. I'm thinking specifically of Necromancer Games / Frog God Games and Malhavoc Press' Diamond Throne, Arcana Unearthed Arcana Evolved and Ptolus.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I miss the era. I miss the wild west feel of publishing and eventually the wheat separating from the chaff. We got some really solid 3rd party material in terms of mechanics as settings. I'm thinking specifically of Necromancer Games / Frog God Games and Malhavoc Press' Diamond Throne, Arcana Unearthed Arcana Evolved and Ptolus.

Two of my favorite 3rd party products for 3/3.5Ed were Book of the Righteous and Hyperconscious.

 

[Marc17]

3.x/PF is pretty much what I want out of D&D idea wise. Trouble is that the designers just didn't have the chops to come up with good system for those ideas in my mind. I'd love to run a game, try and fix the tier system and put some thought into how skills are used and run. I just don't think I could find a long term group willing to do that really.

 

[el-remmen]

I played 3.xE for 16+ years from when it first came out (2000 to 2016). I was not into all the 3.5 changes, so I just added what I liked from 3.5 but kept along with the 3.0 chassis (with the caveat that I house rule every version of D&D I play from Day One and never look back). I never even bothered getting the 3.5 Monster Manual or DMG. When I started running 5E in 2019 (after a 3 years D&D gap), I ended up grandfathering a few 3.xE things and my homebrew rules hack (Vanity Frankenstein 5E) incorporates even more (and a couple of 5E 2024 and Level Up A5E things too).

In the end, I found 3.xE to be a little to granular/crunchy for my tastes but 5E not quite granular enough (and Level Up A5E more granular in ways I didn't like), so I did what I think D&D is all about, mixed all up until I was left with a ruleset I was more into.