It adds more complications.
Towards the end of my 3.X I just started saying no
Nod, totally agree with “just say no”.
IMHO, editions get gunked up by extra rules. 2e did it first, with what we called splatbooks. More “player options” = more complexity, a world whose physics keeps changing, and a game that begins to look more like the Internal Revenue Code.
Back in 2e times (1990’s), I decided to DM Core Rules AD&D 1e only, with “extra rules” in only with DM approval.
Since 2003, I’ve run D&D 3e with Core Rules only, extra rules on approval.
Only about 1/3 of my players have ever wanted anything more complicated, and only two (of 30+) asked for something I turned down, in both cases because they were vague. People who referred me to a specific published rule somewhere got what they wanted, or we worked together to use a different rule or build it for our group. (Our homebrew version of non-casting Ranger works for us.)
Mostly 3.X became problematic at higher level which I suspect most people didn't play at anyway.
Agree. IMHO, around 13th level for 3e is where the rules complexity and superpowers crowd out more human stories.
AD&D seemed to turn into “get initiative or die” at levels like that. Deadly fights are what I remembe, but that was last millennium!
I never played 4e, PF1, or 5e that high, but I suspect for folks who don’t want to use TurboTax to stack all their actions for each round and play Olympians, those are similarly unsatisfactory at high levels.
Things like Druids were rare picks in actual game tables at the time at least in my experience.
For me, in 18 years of 3.5e, Druid has been one of the rarer PC picks, but about 2x more popular than the least popular, which was Barbarian.
Prestige Classes and NPC’s classes (one PC took first level as Expert for Skills, then Fighter) are also rare in my games. I only remember one Arcane Archer and a Warmaster.
