AD&D revised 2E [VS] D&D 3.5E

[rossik]

well..thats just my opinion, but..

i always played 2e revised, and never felt a need to change.

maybe i had bad experiences, but all times i played 3.0 (when it come out), i felt that everyone was a "one army man", and nobody neede nobody.

the mage could fight very well, so the "protect the mage" fighter thing never come to table.

thats just one exemple i can remember now, but FOR ME, pre-3.X games stimulate more group gaming, as one needed another abilitys to survive.

but that was just me

sure, i loved the easy way u can teach someone aboy "the higher the better", and not "higher is good here, lower is good there, and "minus" is good, but nor for this."


but overall, i stick where im having fun

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

As I REALLY do not wish to begin a new rules system again unless this one is a MAJOR improvement.

In my opinion 3.x is not a major improvement and I imagine you will see little benefit in making the switch. If your group is enjoying 2e, play that.

3.x is a massive paradigm shift. In some ways it's closer to 1e than 2e was (e.g. with the focus on dungeons), but in other ways it's a game entirely on its own.

The design principles of 3.x were to try to maximise balance between the player character classes and flexibility in character design. On the flexibility, I think they succeeded well; on the balance, perhaps not so much. But a key thing to understand is that these changes were for the benefit of players, and I think they had two real costs:

1. Relative to 2e, 3.x disempowers the GM; and
2. Character creation is a more complex and elaborate process.

In fact, I think character creation and optimisation is almost a separate sub-game within the 3.x paradigm. People who're good at it, and understand how to optimise their feat combinations, create much more effective characters than people who don't worry so much about optimisation. This is in itself a balance issue replacing the issues that 3.x resolved (in the sense that character classes are balanced against each other, but an understanding of the character creation subgame will unbalance the process in favour of those who can do it well).

 

[Piratecat]

In my opinion 3.x is not a major improvement and I imagine you will see little benefit in making the switch. If your group is enjoying 2e, play that.

Hard to say. We loved 2e, and we definitely prefer 3e by a large margin. But every group differs. The OP has a difficult decision if half his group refuses to play 3e, and half refuses to play 2e. Tricky! That's why I'm thinking something like C&C might be a good compromise.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

The OP has a difficult decision if half his group refuses to play 3e, and half refuses to play 2e. Tricky! That's why I'm thinking something like C&C might be a good compromise.

That depends, too. If the pro-3E members of the group want 3E because of the skill and feat systems, C&C may be a hard sell, for them. (IMO, C&C's SIEGE engine provides a powerful and flexible way to handle skill and feat like actions without all the overhead, but not everyone agrees, of course.) Like you said, though, the situation is pretty tricky, with no obvious solution. If everyone is willing to compromise, C&C may indeed be the best choice. I know I've had great success running C&C.

 

[WayneLigon]

Basicly says the 3.0 system is too complicated to learn. An says that he does not have the time to totally relearn yet AGAIN from 2e-to-3e an now from 3.0 -to- 3.5e.

Not really anything to do if he refuses to learn it. I'd say that the 3E system actually has fewer rules (but many more options) in many ways than 2E did and they should be easier to learn, not the other way around, until you get to some parts of the combat system. And you can just cut out those parts easily enough: other d20 games drop AoO and a couple other things and they don't come tumbling down. Everything he did in 2E, he can do in 3E and do it better. One hint is to ignore most of the DC's you see in modules; they're typically set way too high. And I feel a lot of the ones in the core books are set too high, as well. Adjust some of the DC's and you'll find that everything you did with GM fiat in 2E are just as doable with a skills system in 3E.

It might not be the rules per se that he's having problems with but all the various options available to him. When some people have too much perceived choice, they often decide to reject all choices and walk away from something. You might want to consider looking at the number of books you're using and the exact reason you're using them. There's no need for a great deal of the books out there to begin with. You don't need a book on airships or whatever to introduce them into your campaign, or one for giant mechas, or whatever. Just stat the thing out as you want to and run with it.