D&D 3E/3.5 3.X Retrospective 19 Years in Production.

[Stalker0]

4e definitely had some great ideas, some kind of ended up in 5e, others which I think would have been good to keep for 5e were left out, things like tougher 1st level PCs and healing surges.

4e is a perfect example of good mechanics getting destroyed by terrible presentation. 4e is very mechanically solid, especially after it had a few years and the MM3 style design.

but it really does read like a video game, and the books feel like boring reference books rather than cool “tomes”.

4e also tried to reuse old names in new ways without respecting the flavor weight those names carry. Saving Throws are a good example. The saving throw in 4e is a perfectly fine mechanic to control durations, but it’s not a “saving throw”...and should have simply had a new name. Instead it sparked countless angry debates because of its flavor history being something much different.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, I think they do support that particular point, which is that so long as a pretext can be established - and those crossovers do exactly that, regardless of whether you find the writing terrible or not - then the charop is justifiable, regardless of how flimsy it is.

I hard-disagree. It's straight-up cheating to combine spellfire and being an Avangion. It may even be specified as illegal in the spellfire rules to be a caster, I forget. I don't think equally-broken 3.XE combos required that level of rules/lore-ignoring (nor for you to be so ridiculously high-level).

They should have done more play-testing, to be sure, but releasing eight books in one year isn't a ridiculous output of material in and of itself.

The amount of player-facing material was absolutely ridiculous, particularly as it took the game from "poorly balanced" to "a complete and utter mess". Notably 4E put out a lot of material but it was in a far smaller number of books, far better balanced/playtested, and didn't change the face of the game in the same way. It was still quite a bit less than this though.

 

[Alzrius]

I hard-disagree. It's straight-up cheating to combine spellfire and being an Avangion. It may even be specified as illegal in the spellfire rules to be a caster, I forget. I don't think equally-broken 3.XE combos required that level of rules/lore-ignoring (nor for you to be so ridiculously high-level).

Well, regardless of how hard you disagree, "cheating" has specific connotations, i.e. that you're breaking the rules, and that doesn't match what's there, since the rules allow for all of the listed possibilities and the settings have established connections between them. So you're objectively wrong in that regard (and about spellcasters not being allowed to have spellfire, according to the rules for spellfire laid down in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical).

The amount of player-facing material was absolutely ridiculous, particularly as it took the game from "poorly balanced" to "a complete and utter mess". Notably 4E put out a lot of material but it was in a far smaller number of books, far better balanced/playtested, and didn't change the face of the game in the same way. It was still quite a bit less than this though.

You're moving the goalposts, here. First it was that "eight books in one year is INSANE," and now it's "that much player-facing material is ridiculous," despite the fact that three of those eight books weren't player-facing anyway; Oriental Adventures was a campaign setting book, Manual of the Planes was a book on cosmology construction, and Enemies and Allies was an NPC codex. So now it's just five books with player-facing material in one year (six, if you count the crunch in Oriental Adventures). Is five or six books of player-facing material in one year INSANE?

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, regardless of how hard you disagree, "cheating" has specific connotations, i.e. that you're breaking the rules, and that doesn't match what's there, since the rules allow for all of the listed possibilities and the settings have established connections between them. So you're objectively wrong in that regard (and about spellcasters not being allowed to have spellfire, according to the rules for spellfire laid down in Volo's Guide to All Things Magical).

You're moving the goalposts, here. First it was that "eight books in one year is INSANE," and now it's "that much player-facing material is ridiculous," despite the fact that three of those eight books weren't player-facing anyway; Oriental Adventures was a campaign setting book, Manual of the Planes was a book on cosmology construction, and Enemies and Allies was an NPC codex. So now it's just five books with player-facing material in one year (six, if you count the crunch in Oriental Adventures). Is five or six books of player-facing material in one year INSANE?

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

You don't seem to want to discuss 3E, but to try and inaccurately argue the toss over 2E, by claiming there's an "objective" standard to cheating (ROFL, frankly). It's clearly cheating to combine that stuff, imo, and you dodged my other point, that it was orders of magnitude easier to build game-breaking characters in 3.XE, which strikes me as bad faith.

As for "moving the goalposts", that's further bad faith. This discussion is about 3E, and you tried to shift it to purely the "number of books" when the key point is what the material was. Eight books is particularly ridiculous, but that six of them had significant amounts of player-facing material, huge amounts in most of those cases, is the real, underlying issue that 3.XE had. It had it year after year, just churning out insane amount of player-facing, untested, unbalanced, and generally ridiculous content. The stuff in 2001 set the tone and created some of the most abusive things though.

Beyond LFQW, this is why 3.XE had so many problems - the relentless pursuit of giant amounts of content, without much effort to make it balanced.

 

[Cyber-Dave]

My opinion is that 2000-2007 isn't 19 years. I don't consider Pathfinder to be a legitimate extension of 3e, merely a savvy product picking at the scraps of the OGL and the division caused by 4e. If we are going to treat Pathfinder as a legitimate extension of 3e, I think that the various OSR games should be treated as extensions of AD&D. Ultimately, I think 3e, like 4e, was an important lesson in D&D game design. I think 5e is the first time WotC actually got D&D "right." I don't think they could have done that without the important lessons learned from their failures with 3e and 4e. I'm not a fan of the experience of actually playing 3e, though. 2e and 5e I can enjoy. I'm a no-go on 3e (including Pathfinder) and 4e games. Obviously, just my 2 cents.

In terms of D&D success stories: AD&D had a 12-year run. AD&D 2e had an 11-year run. D&D 3e/3.5e had a 7-year run. 4e had a 6-year run. 5e is currently at 8 or 7+ year run (depending on whether you count from Vault of the Dracolich or the Starter Set. As I understand it, in the TSR years, 1e was the best-selling edition of the game. As I understand it, across the entire life-span of the game, 5e is the best-selling edition of the game (by a terrifying margin). Personally, 2e and 5e are my two favorite editions of the game.

 

[Greg K]

Your examples hardly support what he's doing though, and that a terrible writer decided to break Dark Suns setting and have people from the FR pop in for a cup of tea sucks but it remains nonsensical.

Also, no Dark Sun did not turn up frequently in Planescape. It was pretty damn rare and generally one way.

Pun-pun is closer to genuine charop than this but the problem with 3E wasn't Pun-pun, it was vastly more straightforward stuff.

And, if I recall correctly, the only reason that Dark Sun was, officially, accessible, to other campaign settings was Bill Slavicsek's love of Star Wars and its extended universe which led him to insist that travel to Dark Sun be possible. I also happen to think Dark Sun was ruined by Slavicsek's contributions as a freelancer and eventual role as the designer/editor of the Revised Setting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Personally, 2e and 3e are my two favorite editions of the game.

I think you typo'd 5E as 3E here given the statements you made in the rest of your piece though maybe I misunderstand.

Certainly 2E and 5E has an alike-ness that I noticed as soon as I read 5E. I personally also hugely enjoyed 4E but it was very, very different.

And, if I recall correctly, the only reason that Dark Sun was, officially, accessible, to other campaign settings was Bill Slavicsek's love of Star Wars and its extended universe which led him to insist that travel to Dark Sun be possible. I also happen to think Dark Sun was ruined by Slavicsek's contributions as a freelancer and eventual role as the designer/editor of the Revised Setting.

Couldn't agree more. The Revised setting is one of the worst things that happened to Dark Sun (I'd argue it was relatively worse than the 4E stuff, which at least was justifiable as being in another edition over 15 years later, thus a very different environment).

 

[Alzrius]

You don't seem to want to discuss 3E, but to try and inaccurately argue the toss over 2E, by claiming there's an "objective" standard to cheating (ROFL, frankly).

If you think that "cheating" can't be objectively defined as "breaking the rules," then I'm not sure what to say except that you're using a definition of the word that's unique to you. Presumably you mean "something not allowed in my game," which is not what that word means to everyone else.

Likewise, I'm fine with discussing 3E; don't forget that I did so when I demonstrated how your counting eight different books as containing player-facing content was wrong, since not all of those books had such content.

It's clearly cheating to combine that stuff, imo, and you dodged my other point, that it was orders of magnitude easier to build game-breaking characters in 3.XE, which strikes me as bad faith.

Again, it's not cheating when it's entirely rules-legal. All of those campaign settings have in-universe connections, and all of the rules cited work in conjunction with all of the other rules listed, without any restrictions being violated. Ergo, it's not "cheating" per se. You might say that it's a set of broken combinations, that it's not something most DMs would allow, or any number of statements of personal dislike, but that's not what "cheating" means.

As for whether or not it was "easier" in 3E, that actually wasn't your point; your point was that the 2E combinations cited were somehow less legitimate, which is factually incorrect.

As for "moving the goalposts", that's further bad faith. This discussion is about 3E, and you tried to shift it to purely the "number of books" when the key point is what the material was.

Actually, the one who shifted it to a "number of books" discussion was you, as you were the one who linked to Wikipedia and started listing titles; here's the post where you did, see? I simply pointed out that the example you were trying to make in doing so was flawed. Your "bad faith" claim is itself made in bad faith, ironically enough.

Eight books is particularly ridiculous, but that six of them had significant amounts of player-facing material, huge amounts in most of those cases, is the real, underlying issue that 3.XE had. It had it year after year, just churning out insane amount of player-facing, untested, unbalanced, and generally ridiculous content. The stuff in 2001 set the tone and created some of the most abusive things though.

You keep using words like "ridiculous," "huge," "significant," "insane," and other terms of personal opinion in a failed attempt to present your opinions as facts. They're not. Five or six books of player-facing content in one year wasn't a notable amount of books for WotC to produce. Likewise, the idea that they "created some of the most abusive things" is a situation that only lasted until 2003, when those 3.0 books were rendered obsolete by the release of 3.5.

Beyond LFQW, this is why 3.XE had so many problems - the relentless pursuit of giant amounts of content, without much effort to make it balanced.

I don't disagree, I just don't think this was in any way unique to 3E in the manner you're suggesting.