3.5e -- What REALLY needed fixing?

[Reigan]

Add "Thread Necromancer" as a prestige class. You can bring a thread back from the dead so long as it's only one year old per class level...

 

[Votan]

3) Nothing is static. 4e unfortunately took this and charged merrily along with one of the things I saw to be the worst change. AC saw the skies as it's limits, ending up with each person having natural armor, insight bonuses, dodge bonuses, armor bonuses, shield bonuses, magic bonuses...etc, etc, etc. Stats, too, went from being static on creation to going through the roof, which incidentally heavily altered items in a way I think is bad - you lost the Belt of Giant's Strength, which gave you the strength of a giant, and instead gained "Belt of +2 strength." And of course, with so many ways to increase your stats and saving throws...well, just refer to problem #2.

Curiously, the stat adders (along with bonuses scaling so high) actually killed off another thing that I liked about 2E which was the ability to play an effective character with weak startng stats.

If you had a Fighter with 14 strength in AD&D then she still could find gauntlets of Ogre power and end up with the same strangth as the 18/51 character wearing the same magic item. In 3E, a charceter with 14 strength goes to 16 with this item while a charcter with 20 strength goes to 22. In 2E, the characters would actually start to even out as magic items became available -- in 3E the gap only seems to increase. It also meant that giving the magic item to the weak fighter was the better movie in 2E while in 3E making the strong fighter stronger (so they can hit tough monsters) seems better.

This also shows up with Constitution -- with no cap for non-fighters, wizards are able to make their hit die meaningless compared to the hit point ained from a con in the 20's.

Finally, it makes rolling for stats into a bad idea. If one player rolls poorly they can be surprsingly ineffective compared to another player; 3E granted +1 LA for +2 to 2 stats (plus minor powers). It's quite possible to end up with gaps much larger than that with 4d6 drop one. SInce so much more of the game is powered by stats (right down to feat pre-requisites), the character with bad stats just feels permanently weakened.

 

[wingsandsword]

Curiously, the stat adders (along with bonuses scaling so high) actually killed off another thing that I liked about 2E which was the ability to play an effective character with weak startng stats.

To the contrary, I believe that the 3e approach got rid of the problems that came with low starting stats.

In AD&D, if you started with a 15 or 16 INT as a Wizard the highest level of spells you could cast was already set and you'd never be casting 9th level spells, end of story, and you also had a total cap on the number of spells you could know unless you had a 19 INT so it could be quite possible to have your character's spellcasting permanently cap out long before the end of the campaign. With 3.x as long as you started with a 15 you'd never be unable to cast your highest level spells, even without stat boosters, just by raising your scores as you level, and they got rid of the maximum spells known per level.

The uniformity of constitution bonuses to HP meant that there were real reasons for characters other than Fighters, Rangers and Paladins to have a high CON score. Yes, a Wizard or Sorcerer with a 20 CON getting 1d4+5 per level might not need good rolls as much, as they would otherwise, but that's compared to them getting no difference from a 18 CON as a 14 CON (especially with no bonuses to saving throws from a high CON until 19 in 2e IIRC, there really was little mechanical difference for a nonwarrior to have an above-average CON score aside from System Shock and Resurrection Survival chances).

In AD&D 2e you only needed a 9 STR to be a fighter or a 9 DEX to be a Rogue, the biggest direct aid you got from high ability scores was the XP bonus for a high prime requisite. In 3.x if you for some reason wished to play a rogue or fighter with middling physical stats, you could have that character gain significantly throughout their career, as opposed to the AD&D way of hoping to find Wishes to ramp up your scores and that's pretty much it.

Well, there were strength-boosting items, but no items for other ability scores and the game was very heavily intended to make it so you could never outright buy magic items and having to permanently spend a Constitution point to make magic items other than potions and scrolls meant that PCs never, ever wanted to make magic items, ever. They might not have gotten as much benefit from their CON score most of the time, but they didn't want to trade a time they could be resurrected (and the odds of it succeeding) for a party member to be able to hit harder. In my experience, magic items in most campaigns were rare until 3e with even parties in their teens having maybe one or two items per person, and they were randomly determined so you weren't likely to get really useful items like Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, and only the fighters having magic weapons (and often having to quest and beg/bargain/steal to get those), but of course YMMV.

 

[Plane Sailing]

To the contrary, I believe that the 3e approach got rid of the problems that came with low starting stats.

I had a druid PC (1e) who couldn't be translated into 3e because of their stats a Con of 8 and Dex of 6 which was survivable in 1e became horrendously bad for a PC in 3e!

I'm sorry that your experience was with 'randomly rolled' magic items turning up all the time. I think in any versions of D&D it would be more difficult if the DM doesn't decide carefully what he is going to place most of the time!