D&D 3E/3.5 Are You Still Playing D&D 3.0?

Mecheon said:

Therein lies the problem though. Because 'breaking 3E' consists of 'y'know, what if, rather than buff someone else, I buff myself?' Or 'what if, rather than be any other class.... I be a wizard and suddenly I can outdo literately everyone in the party?'

You complain about build but, frankly, the crazy build stuff is the only way you can compete with just stock wizards

And that's before we even get to 3E rangers being the mess they are.

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Well, I guess that's what happens when Wizards ends 2E on an Adventure that LITERRALLY gave magic, within the entire Multiverse, a legit/canon in fiction power boost as a means of explaining the edition change. Which is kinda interesting/stupid all at the same time.

Mecheon said:

You complain about build but, frankly, the crazy build stuff is the only way you can compete with just stock wizards

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I don't buy it. Straight 3.0 wizards are just as squishy and low resourced as AD&D wizards. They are glass canons. But then I never bought the whole argument that wizards obviated fighters in 1E or 2E, either.

I think 3E is much for a direct successor to AD&D than most people admit, despite it having eliminated THAC0 and wonky thief abilities. It played very much like AD&D, which ALSO suffered if you intentionally tried to break it.

I like 5E and the modern design sensibilities it is built around but it's not inherently superior to 3.0 for that reason.

Reynard said:

I don't buy it. Straight 3.0 wizards are just as squishy and low resourced as AD&D wizards. They are glass canons. But then I never bought the whole argument that wizards obviated fighters in 1E or 2E, either.

I think 3E is much for a direct successor to AD&D than most people admit, despite it having eliminated THAC0 and wonky thief abilities. It played very much like AD&D, which ALSO suffered if you intentionally tried to break it.

I like 5E and the modern design sensibilities it is built around but it's not inherently superior to 3.0 for that reason.

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Like all games, 5E is guilty of quirks as well.

Mecheon said:

Therein lies the problem though. Because 'breaking 3E' consists of 'y'know, what if, rather than buff someone else, I buff myself?' Or 'what if, rather than be any other class.... I be a wizard and suddenly I can outdo literately everyone in the party?'

You complain about build but, frankly, the crazy build stuff is the only way you can compete with just stock wizards

And that's before we even get to 3E rangers being the mess they are.

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No, this is just more internet forum metagame nonsense that I never saw at an actual table.

I never saw real, flesh and blood 3e players (besides the one guy who insisted on making everythign some optimal "build") think they needed to play some insanely specialized "build" to compete with wizards. I never saw people who thought that a stock wizard was that overshadowing.

3e wizards are glass cannons that can do a lot of damage, then run out of spells and are pretty squishy. They can dominate for a few fights, then are weak for the rest of the day, whereas fighters and rogues can fight all day long. If that wizard uses utility magic and buff spells, then their ability to do damage drops as well. In a long, grinding dungeon crawl, a Wizard can excel in a few fights, use utility magic to bypass or overcome some threats, use buffs to help the whole party overall, then they're the weakest member of the party.

People played what they wanted to play, people played their character concept, and it worked.

The ways that people broke 3e weren't "be a wizard" or "buff myself", they were more "this class feature just says it works based on your level, it didn't specify class level or character level, so I'm going to assume that means character level, so I can take 1 level in the class as a dip, and now at high levels I can use a key ability of a class I have 1 level in as if I am 20th level in that class in addition to everything else I have" (the Strength domain ability for the Cleric was a powergamer choice for a 1-level splash for this trick).

This idea that spellcasters somehow massively overshadowed EVERYTHING else to the point the entire game needed to be rewritten to accommodate that is the sort of thing I only heard on internet message boards, not at actual gaming tables.

wingsandsword said:

This idea that spellcasters somehow massively overshadowed EVERYTHING else to the point the entire game needed to be rewritten to accommodate that is the sort of thing I only heard on internet message boards, not at actual gaming tables.

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I know this thread is starting to divert away from the original poster's question, but I did personally observe spellcasters completely dominating gameplay in an actual game, in fact, the last 3.5e game I played in before moving on to 4e. In this case, we had a gnome druid (may have been multiclassed with something else as well, not sure, I was never into builds and always played single class characters) who was really overpowered and dwarfed everyone else at the table. The party consisted of a Fighter, Ranger, Soulknife, Cleric, and this Druid. The Cleric, and especially the Druid, were really powerful and it made for a not very fun gaming experience. Characters were in the 6th to 8th level range, if that makes any difference.

I was playing the Ranger and I think I was the least effective character at the table, followed by probably the Soulknife.

All this to say, I don't fault 3e for this issue. I have read many interviews with 3e's game designers where they basically stated the game was designed to embrace system mastery. They built it from the ground up to reward that style of play, and it served its function well.

I would never go back to 3.xed. Be it 3.0 or 3.5 or Path. Too much work for DM. A single dragon encounter could take forever. No, it was way too much work.

Reynard said:

I don't buy it. Straight 3.0 wizards are just as squishy and low resourced as AD&D wizards. They are glass canons. But then I never bought the whole argument that wizards obviated fighters in 1E or 2E, either.

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And this is why playing 3E wizards as blasters is a bad idea: Playing it as a pure blaster is not where the problem lies. The 3E wizard is the unstoppable force it is because of Control

Scrap all of those blaster spells and instead load yourself up with crowd control, and you being a glass cannon is no longer relevant because your enemies are dazed, asleep, blind, or presently being bodyblocked by your various meatshields. That's where the wizard's power comes from and the reason they're too strong, they outdo other classes and have a disproportionately large effect on the overall battle compared to other classes. Add in how summons work in 3E and things get worse.

Orius said:

I don't buy how 3.5 supposedly fixed 3.0 which is sometimes held up as unplayably broken. I didn't have serious problems in my 3.0 games, and 3.5 was responsible for a hell of a lot more bloat than 3.0.

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I don't think it was ever an issue with 3.0 being unplayably broken. However, there were things that came up that needed to be addressed - the harm spell, the weakness of the bard and ranger, the dominating strategy of the buff spells+metamagics. Those could all have been handled with a much smaller document or supplement than a full on revision with so many changes.

But I wouldn't blame 3.5 for bloat more than 3.0. 3.0 didn't have the opportunity to bloat any further than it did. It's bloat-potential was cut off early with 3.5 occupying and filling that space.

Mecheon said:

And this is why playing 3E wizards as blasters is a bad idea: Playing it as a pure blaster is not where the problem lies. The 3E wizard is the unstoppable force it is because of Control

Scrap all of those blaster spells and instead load yourself up with crowd control, and you being a glass cannon is no longer relevant because your enemies are dazed, asleep, blind, or presently being bodyblocked by your various meatshields. That's where the wizard's power comes from and the reason they're too strong, they outdo other classes and have a disproportionately large effect on the overall battle compared to other classes. Add in how summons work in 3E and things get worse.

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You are still theory crafting in a white room once per day to get there. Consider the wizard's squishiness, how spellcasting interacts with Attacks of Opportunity, and the limits on their resources and wizards have the potential to occassionally, momentarily outshine other classes, unless they get one-shotted by the power attacking orc before the spell goes off.

EDIT TO ADD: And how do you avoid this? By having other character back up the wizard and protect them while they decimate the battlefield. And then suddenly it is a non problem because THE PARTY defeated the encounter, not the wizard.

I used 3.0 stuff in my 3.5 and PF 1e games all the way through running them.

I yanked things like the poison golem from Creature Collection II for a serpent person temple in Freeport and then later Slaad from my hardcopy 3.0 MM for use at the table in the last Pathfinder game I ran.

I still use a lot of 3.0 stuff for flavor in my 5e games.