D&D 3E/3.5 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Greg K]

This post right here. You nailed it. Any gripe with any system can be eliminated by eliminating what you don't like within it. The DM disallows it IS A RULE if you want it to be.

The DM determining which rules/mechanics are or are not used was stated several times in the DMG

 

[AMP]

The DM determining which rules/mechanics are or are not used was stated several times in the DMG

Oh, I know. Seems like a lot of players forget that.

 

[Greg K]

No 4x skill points at 1st character level.

Personally, I changed all of the 2+Int classes that were not Int based to 4+Int and kept the x4 at first level.

 

[Shardstone]

IMO, all 3rd Edition ever really needed was for someone to officially put everything into different tiers, and then organize it into different games for teach tier of optimized power. Things that rely on really jank ideas to be high-tier are ignored. If you do it that way, you get several very diverse games that touch very unique worlds and character concepts between them.

 

[Maxperson]

Speaking of which, I realized literally only yesterday what the purpose of the Multiclass XP penalty and Favored Classes was. What it does is to discourage players from dipping one or two levels in a class to collect their front loaded main abilities. Like 2 feats for 2 fighter levels, or 8+Int skill points for 1 rogue level, which you can all put into a single skill if you do it at a later point.
Elves are free to dip wizard, dwarves are free to dip fighter, and halflings are free to dip rogue. Which all seems appropriate to give each race as a whole more character and evoke their niche.
But I have to say, in the good 7 or 8 years that I had been casually hanging around Char Op subforums, I am pretty sure I have never seen anyone even mention that Multiclass XP penalties could be a factor. This was something that was in the rule, everyone saw once and thought it was stupid (because they didn't understood what it was supposed to do?), and immediately became common consensus to completely ignore for the entirety of the game's run.

I never saw anyone else enforce the penalties, but I had them in my game. The thing to remember is that favored class doesn't count for uneven levels, so if your favored class is the high level one, you can do 10/1/1/2/1/2 without an XP penalty. The 10 doesn't count and the rest are within a level of one another.

If you want to stop dipping, you'll need to keep that in mind and change something.

 

[Maxperson]

The higher levels (13-20) weren't really playable space.

I DMd and played in literally several dozen campaigns that reached those levels and had a blast, as did my players and those who played along side of me. It was a very playable space. You just couldn't play it like you did at low levels. The kinds of adventures had to change to keep the challenge going.

 

[Greg K]

Looking at the rules for characters, you generally are good at one niche and are rewarded for specializing. You can be OK at a couple things by spreading some resources around, which can be decent, but big power is really at specializing.

If you are a fighter with one or two skill points per level it pays to get intimidate and be decent at it and generally leave most everything else to others.

Until the GM puts the party in situations where they have to split up.

 

[Greg K]

More and more, not only do I think you should keep the penalties but given how much time is downplayed in 3.X campaigns, I think a DM should institute more stringent training times for multiclassing

I did this not only for multi-classing, but also for PrCs. I told players, as a general rule, not to plan out multi-classing builds or PrCs other than for theoretical exercises as they never knew where their characters would be in the world at any given time.

 

[Voadam]

Until the GM puts the party in situations where they have to split up.

Even then I'd say it is likely a better overall strategy to have a +5 in one thing and have the bonus significantly help you get a shot instead of having +1 in five things and likely not make a difference. Going from an 11 to a 12 on a knowledge roll and a move silent and hide rolls and a spot and listen series of checks does not get you much, going from an 11 to 16 on a spot check in that same series with 11s in everything else can be significantly more impactful.

 

[Maxperson]

Personally, I changed all of the 2+Int classes that were not Int based to 4+Int and kept the x4 at first level.

I also got rid of the cross class silliness. A fighter who served in Halruaa where people drink magic knowledge in starting as children and serving as a guard in a wizard tower, should be able to get arcana and spellcraft without spending double points.