D&D 3E/3.5 Comparison to 3.5e

[Lucas Blackstone]

I think the only thing I liked about 3rd/3.5 was the concept of feats. 3rd/3.5 was pretty awful game design vs 5th edition. Many people equate more complicated to but it usually just slows down gameplay. Almost every round at least one of the many many many unneeded modifiers or abusive stacking buff effects would be forgotten and cause a problem.

Sure, you could just ignore the mistake and go on, or you could just play a system that didn't support the abuse and needless heaps of extra modifers in the first place and play a smoother running game.

5th edition is also far more balanced, but balance isn't a good thing to some people so while it is a valid comparison point it may be a positive or negative one depending on one's point of view.

I also prefer the 5th edition mechanics when it comes to moving, attacking and moving again ( and attacking again if applicable ).

At the end of the day you can tell all the same adventures with 5th edition as you could with 3/3.5 but none of the time consuming minutiae that came with managing a needlessly complicated system.

 

[Samloyal23]

I hate the 5E skill system, it is too watered down, it has no crunch, and I miss feat chains. Character creation since 4E has been a straight-jacket. While 5E is a little better, it is still does not allow that breadth or depth of character development that 3E enabled. Seen one 5E Paladin, seen them all.

 

[Voadam]

I hate the 5E skill system, it is too watered down, it has no crunch, and I miss feat chains. Character creation since 4E has been a straight-jacket. While 5E is a little better, it is still does not allow that breadth or depth of character development that 3E enabled. Seen one 5E Paladin, seen them all.

Are you trying to suggest feats made 3e paladins more mechanically distinct than 5e's paladin subclasses and 5e's fewer feats? Paladins throughout editions have always seemed rather "seen one seen them all" mechanically until you get into various antipaladin and champions of specific gods/alignment/causes.

 

[Mercule]

Early in playing 5E, I made this observation:

3.x, 4e, and 5e are almost more of alternate offshoots of AD&D (2E). 5e borrows most strongly from the "good stuff" in 3e, but it also pulls a few things from 4e. In other places, it feels like they went all the way back to 2e and fixed something that didn't work without worrying about what has come since.

That's not to say that 5e will feel alien if you've only played 3e. 5e and 3e probably play the most similar of all the editions (other than 1e and 2e, which were pretty much the same game with alternate versions of the classes and such, but the skeleton was the same). It's just that, if you've played all the editions, you can see where things share common ancestors rather than one being a child of the other.

 

[Mercule]

I hate the 5E skill system, it is too watered down, it has no crunch, and I miss feat chains. Character creation since 4E has been a straight-jacket. While 5E is a little better, it is still does not allow that breadth or depth of character development that 3E enabled. Seen one 5E Paladin, seen them all.

For perspective, you're naming the things I love about 5E, especially compared to 3e. I think the 5E skill system is the best, yet. It's not perfect, but it allows a certain level of skills while keeping it simple enough to be in the background.

The feat system is one of the main reasons I'll never play 3e again. 3e feats are about char-ops with certain chains that are clearly better (statistically) than others. 5e feats have some mechanical feats, but most are more balanced and offer PCs a way to reflect story elements (even flimsy, cheesy ones) in a meaningful way.

This is, very much, a subjective definition of "better". I'm capable of running numbers on PCs, but I just don't see it as a worthwhile focus. I'm here for the story and the interaction. If I'm going to see how many mooks I can squish, I'm more likely to go back to a miniatures skirmish game, like Gloomhaven or even one of the D&D board games. If I want all the dials I can possibly get on my character, I'm going to skip a coarse-grained class-and-level-based system and go to something like Fantasy Hero. Hero System has roughly the same level of complexity as 3e, but exposes the components, rather than a crap-shoot of rule-by-exception.

 

[ccooke]

I think people underestimate the 5e chargen system, to be honest.

Sure, there are fewer decisions to make, but each of the decisions has a large impact on the character I will play. Even if all else was the same, a paladin with the Urchin background is going to be very different to play (and noticeably different in what they can do) than one with the Soldier background.

Broadly - 5e has a character gen system that's less precise (than 3e), but can reach a larger design space with a smaller number of moving parts. I have yet to see a character concept that does not require exact specific mechanics that I haven't been able to implement in 5e by level 3.

 

[Horwath]

I hate the 5E skill system, it is too watered down, it has no crunch, and I miss feat chains. Character creation since 4E has been a straight-jacket. While 5E is a little better, it is still does not allow that breadth or depth of character development that 3E enabled. Seen one 5E Paladin, seen them all.

yes, having +30 skill modifier at 10th level was sooo deep...

while I do agree that 5e skills could be a little more scalable by effort put into certain skill, they are by far the best of all 5 editions.

 

[Horwath]

Only thing that I do not like about 5E is that combat feats, "flavor" feats and ASIs are bundled into same resource pool.

it should have been separated.

1st. make all feats half feats in power level.

then

racial/flavor/skill feats: levels: 1,4,7,10,13,16,19
combat feats(the good feats): levels: 2,5,8,11,14,17,20
ASIs(+1 to one ability): levels: 3,6,9,12,15,18

You can also take "flavor" feats instead of combat feats, but not other way around.

 

[HJFudge]

5e runs fairly well, its a simple system. It works until higher levels, then it has similar problems with balance that...well, every edition of D&D forever has had.

My issue is that it feels lacking in choice when it comes to character abilities and such. I do like the concept of meaningful feats, I just feel like it doesn't quite hit the mark.

Obviously a lot of folks find it fine, so I am in the minority here. But I absolutely do not have the character design options I want, mechanically, without additional homebrew and house rules...enough that I might as well just play another system heh.

 

[Voadam]

Broadly - 5e has a character gen system that's less precise (than 3e), but can reach a larger design space with a smaller number of moving parts. I have yet to see a character concept that does not require exact specific mechanics that I haven't been able to implement in 5e by level 3.

Enchantment and divination focused wizard or sorcerer or warlock for Psion/Telepath? Its a stretch though.

Soulknife I guess you could kind of go hexblade warlock if you removed all the patron flavor and chose less spell like spells and powers.

Warlord I guess bard and call it nonmagical pep talks for healing word?

Alchemist from Pathfinder? Gunslinger?

Those are the biggest non-core classes from prior editions and D20 offshoots that come to mind.