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

Loved 3.0. It was wonky and uneven but it had actual flavor and the classes and abilities actually felt different from each other. This was undoubtedly a carry-over from earlier editions, before rpgs in general had converged into the modern Semi-Narrativist Melange.

I’d play 3.0 again in a heartbeat. Loved harm, haste, heal, polymorph and the rest. Bring it on.

wingsandsword said:

Honestly, I blame the internet and message boards.

When we got 3e, it worked wonderfully, it was far, FAR more balanced and playable than 2e. By the time 3e came out, every 2e group I knew had to heavily houserule 2e to make it playable.

Then came message boards, with "build optimization", and "tiers" and similar rubbish. The gaming groups I played with generally ignored the stuff, I remember playing with one guy who played characters with elaborate "builds" of powergamed multiclass combos with elaborate feat chains exploiting ambiguous wording, who tried to lecture us on the "right" way to play characters:
"Clearly, sir, you aren't playing a melee build right, what you need is two levels of fighter, one level of Ranger, a level of Barbarian. . ."
"But I just want to play a Paladin!"
"Dude, whatever, this build is far more efficient than a Paladin!"

If you play 3e and you AREN'T actively trying to break it, and are playing it like 1e or 2e, then it worked really well. If you listened to people on the internet actively trying to exploit the system, then it didn't work, because then it became an arms race between people looking for system exploits and WotC trying to patch the exploits.

I remember reading repeatedly that when 3e came out, it had been playtested more than any previous edition of D&D. I remember people not believing that later, but it made complete sense when you realize it was being playtested by longtime AD&D 1e and 2e veterans, who were playing it like a normal, classic D&D game, not some contest of creating "builds". Maybe that was a shortcoming of WotC R&D twenty years ago, but it did produce a game that worked wonderfully as long as you weren't actively trying to break it.

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Oh, I agree. The whole charop mentality is what I hate most about 3e. I don't like playing the game that way, but if I'm going to DM 3e, I need to have some grounding in it so I can prepare material properly, know what material needs to be banned to keep things balanced right, and so on. Min-maxing was always a potential problem, but the more limited options before 3e kept it under a modicum of control. 3e had so much material though that it was able to far eclipse what even unrestricted Skills & Powers could do even with all the related Dragon articles.

It's not just that though, it's the related problems on top of it. Like charopers bullying other players into playing optimized builds they don't want to play or the player entitlement mentality.

Weiley31 said:

I don't know: Duskblade was pretty cool for a base class.

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While I see it as another class that hits the poor fighter in the groin while he's down.

wingsandsword said:

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.

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Well, if you've got a smart player he's going to know that a wizard's strength isn't the direct damage spells, but the things like buffs, save or die, etc. He doesn't even need to go out of his way to break things. One problem here is that 3e removed some limits on casters that helped keep them from getting too powerful. But there was also nonsense like 15 minute workdays as well.

billd91 said:

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.

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That I don't disagre with. There were a few spells that did need to be fixed. Harm's a big one, with the issue being that touch spells rolled against full AC in 2e, but only partial AC in 3e, while the cleric's BAB in 3e is 3/4 level where it was only roughly 2/3 level with 2e's THACOs. Also everything in 3e tends to have more hp than previous editions, so harm had less impact when few enemies topped 100 hp.

Going well beyond simple errata though made it much harder to use 3.0 and 3.5 material together.

billd91 said:

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.

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I'll concede this point. I've taken a look at the monthly release schedule of both 3.0 and 3.5, and both seem to have been on nearly one release per month. 3.0 was a little slower but not by significantly much. 3.5 did have more books overall and they were usually hardcovers, so it skews a bit more material than 3.0. It's hard to tell exactly though, because maybe the first year and a half of 3.5 had a good amount of reprinting from 3.0 as well.

Orius said:

I'll concede this point. I've taken a look at the monthly release schedule of both 3.0 and 3.5, and both seem to have been on nearly one release per month. 3.0 was a little slower but not by significantly much. 3.5 did have more books overall and they were usually hardcovers, so it skews a bit more material than 3.0. It's hard to tell exactly though, because maybe the first year and a half of 3.5 had a good amount of reprinting from 3.0 as well.

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3.0/3.5 at least had some variety in the books that were released. 5E seems to be too predictable and regimented in the type of books it releases.

Maybe.

3.5 does have some general categories for its books -- class hardcovers, race hardcovers, monster splats, and environment books. There's a few things that don't neatly fit into those boxes, and of course there's MMIII-V, but monster collections are usually useful for the DM unless the monsters themselves are lame.

3.0 was a bit more eclectic, with many of the releases calling back to the 1e hardcovers (except the Survival Guildes, but the general opinion of the 1e fanbase is that they sucked), and some shoutouts to a small number of 2e books. And there were the 5 class splats that were something of a callback to 2e's PHB splats.

I'm not really that familiar with 5e's stuff. I get the impression that they're divided between adventures and rulebooks and the rulebooks have a mix of materials -- archetypes, magic items, spells, monsters, etc and occasionally rule expansions . A lot of it WotC's marketing here seems to be to avoid a lot of DM only material to maximize sales.

Not running anything during COVID. If I were, my main choice would be Savage Worlds, but I also want to give Tiny Dungeons 2e and Barbarians of Lemuria a spin. That all stated, I would be willing to run a level 1-10 house ruled 3.0 for a group (or even 5e now that I have found several third party options I like and Tasha's has a few customization options that have me want to take another look at 5e)

Reynard said:

I was specifically asking about 3.0. There is no option to tag just 3.0.

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Why in nine hells would I suffer that "#$% if I can play 3.5/PF1?

I would. In a heart beat. I loved 3.0. I think it was the last "pure" D&D edition. If played like some old school upgraded AD&D it's still aces, I even like the class sourcebooks and stuff for 3.0. It lacked the baggage that came from it's success if that makes sense. 3.5 started wildly swinging towards more out there, less core assumption concepts and that was cool and all but the bloat made it hard to run an easy, smooth game. I did run 3.5 and even converted over very quickly because my players thought the previews were cool. I'd just do some 3.5 style tweaks to the Ranger and bump the skill points for the the Ranger & Bard by 2 per level.

I wish I was but no, not in a long time.

I'd rather not. We had a high-level 3.5e campaign back in the day and I still have nightmares.