2nd vs 3E rules. Most difficult transition?

[WSmith]

I liked the way Spycraft cleaned up the action entries. (half and full) I wished it was like that from the start.

AoO with regards to movement was painful to digest because of the way they were worded the PHB. On top of that, the whole piece of errata on page 122, of striking the "first" square and chanign it to "second" was, IMO, the single most factor for confussing gamers on how it worked. The WOT book fixed the description.

 

[Henry]

AoO's, without a doubt - if they ever put out a 3rd printing of the PHB, I would love to see them polish it up with the AoO explanation from the New Star Wars Revised Rulebook. They were excellently done there.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Attacks of Opportunity and classification of action (Partial, move-equivalent, full round etc).

Drove us to fits when we were first trying to play.

Everything else tidied up the old D&D rules so well that we were forgiving though

 

[thalmin]

As a DM, keeping track of all the different skills and feats for npc's.

 

[Vanye]

The bonuses

I still have to go "Huh?" when my PC's are routinely hitting in the upper 'teens and low twenties, at first and second level. It's legal, but it still throws me....

 

[KnowTheToe]

Actions in the round - full action , partial action, movement wquiv. action ....

 

[kamosa]

Hey WillieW

I just got done springing "nine tenths" on my party last week. What do we need to do to get you to write more modules????


To your question.
I found as a GM the attacks of opportunity and the segmented combat round to be somewhat tricky.

I also found creating monsters to be more difficult. Old nebulous abilities need to be more concrete for use in the 3e combat round. I used to say things like, "They can fight in ranks". Now I have to figure out reach weapons and facing issues.

I've found deciding on appropriate magic items much more difficult as well. This is mainly due to players ability to create their own items. I'm still struggling to find the right campaign balance between handing them stuff and letting them make it themselves.

I also found the difference in XP progression between 2e and 3e interesting. I was used to lingering at the levels between 5th and 9th. Now, for the same adventures, I would shoot through those levels in 10 to 15 sessions instead of the 25 to 30 I was used to.


As a player I found the narrowness of the 3e skills and spell selection hard to deal with. I was used to the end of 2e in which mages had four 200 page books to select spells from, and priests had lots of flexibility to select their spheres. Characters had lots of skills and you knew them all at max level. Now most priests look almost exactly alike and so do most mages. The skills system is nice, but in practice most players seem to be ending up with less skills then they did in 2e which makes spell casters seem narrower then they were at the end of 2e.

 

[Joker]

For me it was the oversimplistic nature of 3E and the rehab from being addicted to creating magic items .

Tata.

 

[Joker]

Actually, now that I think about it, it wasn't hard to get used to the simplistic nature (wouldn't that be a contridiction of terms), it was the fact that the unrealism of it all went through the roof, not that it wasn't like that in 2E, it just seems "worse" in 3E.

Also something hard to get used to is that cleric's went from magic medics (sounds like a drug) to the most powerful creature in the multiverse. Second only to gods .

Tata.

 

[jollyninja]

AoO's, action types and pc's creating magical items like they were candy. many a dm has had to change up thier style just a little bit now that every elf magic user can make the cloak and boots for his buddies if he has the nessisary prerequisites. rogues with +10 to hide and move silently are just frightening.

yes the lack of customisation compared to s&p sort of sucked but in some ways that system really made some characters simply better then others. at least the kits are dead, of wait, the quintessential -------- series insisted on bringing them back. damn you!