Mindless undead seem to have just been there to make the cleric feel like the belong on the team. The rogue and bard have to sit on the sidelines while the wizard politely chooses not to solve the problem and let Timmy believe they're riding their big boy bike without the training wheels for the first time.
I had a DM that only let us use Core, the Spell Compendium, and one book of our choice. Aberration Wildshape + Enhance Wildshape + Natural Spell was sick. I had the Wild full plate and Wild tower shield and could turn into an always invisible wil-o'-wisp that had spell immunity, fly speed of 90', full spell casting, and an AC of over 30. I don't remember all of the details but i think this was by level 9.
IMO They should’ve been a halfcaster with much more emphasis on magical secrets, to really play up that versatile jack of all trades role.
Kind of agree. Illusionist falls into one of two problematic bins ime. Either it needs a cooperating gm and ultimately kinda feels like cheating when it works in ways other than a job for Aquaman.... Or on the other side of the coin there is a cooperating GM and other classes are cooler because you have a cooperating gm plus some other class with a more useful tool belt of cool thematic fluff and cool mechanical abilities that avoid the "feels like cheating" almost always applicable illusionist pitfall by leaning on the two combined when cooperating with the gm.
I personally would not have used that comparison, because of how fundamentally confusing and poorly-handled THAC0 was.
Fundamentally, I disagree.
Not at all. Druid + Natural Spell is PHB, achievable at level 6. Plenty of what you can do in 3.5e that is stupidly broken is PHB or early supplements and comes online within the first 10 levels. Nightstick abuse, for example, ain't hard to achieve and uses a book from 2004, literally almost immediately after 3.5e launched.
Again, I disagree. It can be fine if everyone in the group is specifically on board with a very particular playstyle and actively avoids certain kinds of things. You basically have to intentionally ignore what the rules actually are, and actively work to play purely with the incentives and playstyles of 2nd edition. Which, you might be surprised to hear, is exactly what the 3e designers did. They presumed people would choose to continue playing exactly the way they did in 2e, and thus tried to make a system that would be rewarding. That's why Clerics are so powerful, because it was expected that they would be Brother Bactine more than half the time, and thus the power would be mitigated by choosing not to use it.
