D&D 3E/3.5 3E sucks, but keep playing it for next few months

[Asmor]

Presumptuous or not that is what a salesman must believe. He must believe that his product is the best. Likewise he must believe that a new version will be even better. If he believed anything else he would not be doing his job.

Actually, that's what a salesman has to get you to believe. He can think whatever it is he's selling is a shoddy piece of crap, as long as it doesn't allow that to interfere with his selling ability.

What? I like playing devil's advocate.

 

[Doug McCrae]

And that is precisely the source of the contradiction. You can't be "more number 1."

There's no contradiction. Let us say that Vampire is the second best rpg in the world and that D&D 3.5 is the current best. Let's assume 4e will be better than 3.5. When it is published, 4e will become the best, 3.5 will be second best and Vampire will be third.

 

[Agamon]

Really bad.

Really, really bad. My mother's family is European French and I'm a huge fan of the Montreal Canadiens (French Canadian), so I know those accents very well, and, as you can see, it wasn't even one of my top three guesses.

 

[pawsplay]

There's no contradiction. Let us say that Vampire is the second best rpg in the world and that D&D 3.5 is the current best. Let's assume 4e will be better than 3.5. When it is published, 4e will become the best, 3.5 will be second best and Vampire will be third.

We're not talking about syllogisms here. It's a matter of realizing what belief systems it takes to believe something is both the best and also always getting better.

I'm going to offer one example that may lend insight, and then I'm done with this tangent. Fact is, doublethink is sneaky stuff, and we do it all the time.

Let's imagine you're a Ford salesman. You sell Fords all day. Fords are, goshdarnit, the best vehicles on the road for what they were designed for. Now let's say you end up switching to another dealership, and now you're a Toyota dealer. Well, that's fine with you, because Toyotas are the best cars on the market.

Of course, there is no contradiction if you are simply lying. But to effectively lie, you have to lie to yourself. That's doublethink. Because presumably the day you switch jobs, you can't simultaneously believe Toyotas and Fords are both the best. Even if you hedge by saying they are best at a particular thing, the bottom line is that when you talk about each one individually, it is the best.

So, once 4e is here, you will have no cause to feel dissatisfaction, because 4e is the best. But once 5e rolls around, it will fix everything about 4e that you were dissatisfied with.

 

[Agamon]

Congratulations Agamon. Somehow you managed to come up with another original and creative motive for grumbling!
Much better than the old "Beh, 2E is just better!".
I think Grognardism is evolving alongside D&D, they are on their 2nd edition now. Or is it just a revised 1.5 edition? who knows?
Keep up the good work!

Woo hoo!

Really, I'm not grumbling, just pointing out something out that I've noticed. You may or may not have noticed that I'm kinda neutral in this whole thing.

 

[RFisher]

I have to smile every time I hear one of them say, "Keep playing!" I think it was a good idea, but I can't help but smile at the co-ordinated, rehearsed nature of it.

This is probably going to sound kind of snarky, but I don't really mean it to be. It's just something I find interesting. One thing I'm going to be looking at next May is how many of the 3.5 changes survived into 4. Were they really, in the long view, important enough for a dot-revision?

 

[Agamon]

I have to smile every time I hear one of them say, "Keep playing!" I think it was a good idea, but I can't help but smile at the co-ordinated, rehearsed nature of it.

Yes, yes, exactly! Subtle, these guys are not.

 

[pemerton]

The one thing I dont understand is about 3e being complicated. Aside from a few AoO questions at the beginning, my group hasnt had any problem figuring things out. Is it really that complicated or is this just an excuse for the need of 4th?

For my money, here are some of the more evident flaws with 3.5:

*Excessive complexity in generating creature and character stats (too many sources of bonuses, too many skill points, etc); John Cooper's unofficial errata in his reviews on this website are proof enough of this - if the core designers and developers for the system have trouble generating rules-legal stat blocks, something has gone seriously wrong;

*Some overly complex resolution systems (grapple, aspects of AoO, rules for non-lethal damage, unarmed attacks, overlapping mechanics of spell resistance and saving throws, contrast between full-action spells and one round spells, to name a handful);

*A degree of incoherence in the relationship between the metagame and in-game aspects of rewards: treasure is both a reward for players (as it improves their PCs) and also has a clearly defined in-game significance, but XP are far more ambiguous - at times the suggestion is that XP, levels etc are purely metagame concepts (and this is also suggested by the fact that they are earned in a way that can only be given a metagame justification, namely, by adventuring) but the spell component and magic item rules treat them as an in-game character resource also;

*Coherence problems also in the ways characters/creatures are modelled - hit points, BAB etc suggest a focus on high fantasy, but skill definitions and rules for skill use are much closer to RM or RQ-style simulation of gritty fantasy;

*Related to the above, a lack of rules to facilitate fairly common tropes of high fantasy, such as pursuits, acts of derring-do, and characters pushing the limits of their power (either physically or magically) and exhausting themselves as a result - in part this is a consequence of the absence of metagame mechanics for giving players a degree of narrative control over the outcome of PC actions;

*The use of Raise Dead (which has in-game as well as metagame significance, and is subject to sometime arbitrary GM interference) rather than Fate Points (a purely metagame device) to give players narrative control over the fate of their PCs;

*An inability to decide whether alignment is purely descriptive (as the PHB suggests) or also prescriptive (which is implied by the assumption in most modules and campaign worlds that PCs are Good), and a related inability to coherently explain the internal psychology of "ordinary" Evil people (as opposed to serial killers and other psychopaths).​

Obviously none of these make 3.5 unplayable, given the amount of play that it sees. But indications are that 4E will tackle many of these issues, and that will make it a better set of rules.

I don't quite understand what is so "complex". What if something is too bothersome to niggle about all the details? So what. Just ignore it, or make a loose judgement and move on. Someone misses an AOO? No biggie. Just move on, and when the get it, great. If they never remember to use it, so what?

A top-quality set of rules doesn't need parts that get ignored or applied in a haphazard way. The rules should play smoothly as written. This sort of clunkiness was typical of AD&D, but one aim of 3E was to get rid of it. Where 3E failed, 4E might have a chance of success.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Much better than the old "Beh, 2E is just better!".
I think Grognardism is evolving alongside D&D...

2E Grognards? Isn't that an oxymoron?

1E, 2E, 3E = OD&D

Now you're getting nasty...

 

[SHARK]

For my money, here are some of the more evident flaws with 3.5:

*Excessive complexity in generating creature and character stats (too many sources of bonuses, too many skill points, etc); John Cooper's unofficial errata in his reviews on this website are proof enough of this - if the core designers and developers for the system have trouble generating rules-legal stat blocks, something has gone seriously wrong;

*Some overly complex resolution systems (grapple, aspects of AoO, rules for non-lethal damage, unarmed attacks, overlapping mechanics of spell resistance and saving throws, contrast between full-action spells and one round spells, to name a handful);

*A degree of incoherence in the relationship between the metagame and in-game aspects of rewards: treasure is both a reward for players (as it improves their PCs) and also has a clearly defined in-game significance, but XP are far more ambiguous - at times the suggestion is that XP, levels etc are purely metagame concepts (and this is also suggested by the fact that they are earned in a way that can only be given a metagame justification, namely, by adventuring) but the spell component and magic item rules treat them as an in-game character resource also;

*Coherence problems also in the ways characters/creatures are modelled - hit points, BAB etc suggest a focus on high fantasy, but skill definitions and rules for skill use are much closer to RM or RQ-style simulation of gritty fantasy;

*Related to the above, a lack of rules to facilitate fairly common tropes of high fantasy, such as pursuits, acts of derring-do, and characters pushing the limits of their power (either physically or magically) and exhausting themselves as a result - in part this is a consequence of the absence of metagame mechanics for giving players a degree of narrative control over the outcome of PC actions;

*The use of Raise Dead (which has in-game as well as metagame significance, and is subject to sometime arbitrary GM interference) rather than Fate Points (a purely metagame device) to give players narrative control over the fate of their PCs;

*An inability to decide whether alignment is purely descriptive (as the PHB suggests) or also prescriptive (which is implied by the assumption in most modules and campaign worlds that PCs are Good), and a related inability to coherently explain the internal psychology of "ordinary" Evil people (as opposed to serial killers and other psychopaths).​

Obviously none of these make 3.5 unplayable, given the amount of play that it sees. But indications are that 4E will tackle many of these issues, and that will make it a better set of rules.


A top-quality set of rules doesn't need parts that get ignored or applied in a haphazard way. The rules should play smoothly as written. This sort of clunkiness was typical of AD&D, but one aim of 3E was to get rid of it. Where 3E failed, 4E might have a chance of success.

Greetings!

Good points all, Pemerton! I agree, in part. Some of the rules are time-consuming, and annoying to deal with. I'm just not convinced that the problems are

(1) So huge, so pervasive, that it demands a whole new edition to fix. (And the required additional outlays in expenses to customers in buying yet more *versions* of a dozen or two dozen books we already have, many of which were just produced and purchased in the last year or so).

(2) Speaking of the problems of 3.5E, whatever they may be, to whatever degree that people guage them at--why couldn't these problems, such as they are--have been dealt with in the DMG II, PHB II, or an Unearthed Arcana II, instead of an entirely new edition?

And yes, top-notch rules *shouldn't* require on the fly improvisation, and so on--however, (and I'm dating myself here a bit--yes, I'm a 1E AD&D/D&D Grognard from 1979)--I have not played in *any* edition of D&D where some people, if not everyone--at least some of the time--doesn't do this. In fact, I can also say I have never seen it happen in Warhammer, Rolemaster, CoC, Pendragon, Talislanta, or Gurps. Ignoring/modifying/improvising various rules on the fly have been present in nearly every RPG I have ever played or DM'd in. I suspect few would have any disagreements with that, true?

So, I'm not sure, again with my above questions (1 and 2)--how these problems necessarily demand a whole new edition to address, because while they may be problems, they are not necessarily that *big* of a problem. If that makes any sense?

I look forward to your responses!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK