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D&D Older Editions
Are You Still Playing D&D 3.0?
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<blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 8053953" data-attributes="member: 8863"><p>I want make a return to 3.0. I like the basic structure to 3.0, and there's less to do to house rule it to my taste than I would have to do with 2e. 3.5 however....</p><p></p><p>I'm not a fan of what 3.5 did. The necessary errata was not justification to buy the core books all over again, and it altered and added enough that buying them again really was necessary. My inner cynic says the biggest thing fixed by 3.5 was WotC's cash flow. At best the number of changes introduced were far too many too close to the release of 3.0.</p><p></p><p>I don't like how it promiscuously added new base classes to the game. New base classes IMO, should be rare and reflect archetypical characters, but 3.5's base classes all feel artificial. Worse, they undermine existing classes that ARE archetypes. It doesn't help that many were introduced in PHB 2, which is a lousy name for a book and prejudices me against it. Naming books PHB 2 and DMG 2 makes it sound like the core rules themselves are incomplete. The worst new base classes are a toss up between the stuff from Book of Nine Swords which set out to improve weak base classes and utterly failed to do so by making new base classes that made those classes even weaker, or the Factotum, which was utter cheese on the level of an overripe wheel of casu marzu on a hot summer day.</p><p></p><p>I don't buy how 3.5 supposedly fixed 3.0 which is sometimes held up as unplayably broken. I didn't have serious problems in my 3.0 games, and 3.5 was responsible for a hell of a lot more bloat than 3.0. 3.0 had 5 class splats, a race splat for non-standard options, and a few rules expansions that largely harkened back to popular books from 1e and 2e, I think something like 8-9 of these at most? 3.5 comes along and cranks out 8 class splats, something like 4-5 race splats, 5 environment books, 5 books on specific monster types, 2 compilation books, and several more rulebooks which bloated things beyond all reason. There's no way that all that material that 3.5 was less broken than 3.0. Some of those books were padded out with updated material from 3.0 as well, so there's the added displeasure of buying duplicate material for the sake of dubious errata. To be fair, I think earlier on 3.5 did have some decent ideas, like the stuff published in 2004. But stuff from 2006 or 2007 tends to be poor quality from what I've seen of it. And that's just core; I'm not even aware of the full extent of stuff from the Realms or Eberron.</p><p></p><p>Nor does it help that the flavor of the material got worse as time went by. Another erroneous complaint about 3.0 was its lack of flavor. That was one of its strengths! 3.0 didn't disrupt existing campaigns by rewriting a quarter century of existing flavor, but 3.5 started to rewrite things while it was putting out stuff like Factotums, spiked chain fetishes, and pokemounts. </p><p></p><p>Bottom line is that 3.5 was hyped as improved and better, and a lot of fans accepted that without question, but many of 3e's problems are 3.5 and not 3.0. And the worst part is that 3.5 has too many fixes that the game needs to outright ignore.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Orius, post: 8053953, member: 8863"] I want make a return to 3.0. I like the basic structure to 3.0, and there's less to do to house rule it to my taste than I would have to do with 2e. 3.5 however.... I'm not a fan of what 3.5 did. The necessary errata was not justification to buy the core books all over again, and it altered and added enough that buying them again really was necessary. My inner cynic says the biggest thing fixed by 3.5 was WotC's cash flow. At best the number of changes introduced were far too many too close to the release of 3.0. I don't like how it promiscuously added new base classes to the game. New base classes IMO, should be rare and reflect archetypical characters, but 3.5's base classes all feel artificial. Worse, they undermine existing classes that ARE archetypes. It doesn't help that many were introduced in PHB 2, which is a lousy name for a book and prejudices me against it. Naming books PHB 2 and DMG 2 makes it sound like the core rules themselves are incomplete. The worst new base classes are a toss up between the stuff from Book of Nine Swords which set out to improve weak base classes and utterly failed to do so by making new base classes that made those classes even weaker, or the Factotum, which was utter cheese on the level of an overripe wheel of casu marzu on a hot summer day. I don't buy how 3.5 supposedly fixed 3.0 which is sometimes held up as unplayably broken. I didn't have serious problems in my 3.0 games, and 3.5 was responsible for a hell of a lot more bloat than 3.0. 3.0 had 5 class splats, a race splat for non-standard options, and a few rules expansions that largely harkened back to popular books from 1e and 2e, I think something like 8-9 of these at most? 3.5 comes along and cranks out 8 class splats, something like 4-5 race splats, 5 environment books, 5 books on specific monster types, 2 compilation books, and several more rulebooks which bloated things beyond all reason. There's no way that all that material that 3.5 was less broken than 3.0. Some of those books were padded out with updated material from 3.0 as well, so there's the added displeasure of buying duplicate material for the sake of dubious errata. To be fair, I think earlier on 3.5 did have some decent ideas, like the stuff published in 2004. But stuff from 2006 or 2007 tends to be poor quality from what I've seen of it. And that's just core; I'm not even aware of the full extent of stuff from the Realms or Eberron. Nor does it help that the flavor of the material got worse as time went by. Another erroneous complaint about 3.0 was its lack of flavor. That was one of its strengths! 3.0 didn't disrupt existing campaigns by rewriting a quarter century of existing flavor, but 3.5 started to rewrite things while it was putting out stuff like Factotums, spiked chain fetishes, and pokemounts. Bottom line is that 3.5 was hyped as improved and better, and a lot of fans accepted that without question, but many of 3e's problems are 3.5 and not 3.0. And the worst part is that 3.5 has too many fixes that the game needs to outright ignore. [/QUOTE]
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