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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZeshinX" data-source="post: 8054721" data-attributes="member: 6793656">I didn't find it died when WotC took over, but it become something very different.  Oh it still had all the right terms, the basic mechanics were there (and cleaned up to boot), better organized and 3e felt very much like a cohesive system whereas 2e felt like a hodge podge of various mechanics.The big difference I found (but only in time) was that 3e leaned far more heavily in the simulation approach (rules for everything), while 2e was much more abstract (DM ruling).I'd played 1e/2e for quite a while (started around '85, but played regularly starting in '88).  I loved it dearly, but as time passed (and I got older), I started to get annoyed with many of the restrictions and seemingly arbitrary rules.  Why were classes restricted by race?  What the heck was the point of level limits?  Racial minimums and maximums?  Why did non-weapon prof checks roll low and saves roll high?  Etc, etc.  We used some houserules to mitigate some small things, but we kept playing and enjoying it for what it was.Then 3e came and it was remarkable.  The rules made sense!  They were cohesive!  Classes and races banished in 2e by the idiotic moral panic were back...it was excellent.  Classes had more variability, more customizability (via feats)...it was D&D on steroids.  It was a little more complex but easy enough to follow due to wildly better organization of rules (and the d20 mechanic was easy to use).  Then 3.5 hit and it was great.  A significant housecleaning.Then, as time passed, and we moved to PF 1e as we skipped 4e (it felt more like a changeling to us than actual D&D)....I started seeing the cracks.  So many fiddly bonuses and penalties and a gawd damn rule for every damn thing.  The term "build" crept into the lexicon to such a disgusting degree that seemingly everyone I talked to at my FLGS had forgotten this is a role-playing game...a game about creating interesting characters that did wonderful and terrible things (at least that was always my biggest take away from D&D).  They couldn't tell me a damn thing about WHO their character was, but they could rattle of a comprehensive list of all the bonuses, feats, abilities and DPR and whatthehellhappened????  It got to be so repugnant to me, I just stopped going to the FLGS and ordered books on Amazon instead.  For a time I even called them the FLBS (Friendly local build store).3.x/PF 1e also introduced this curiously bizarre aura of a Players vs DM sort of approach to rules.  Maybe it was always there in D&D...but holy crap did I see a LOT of contests between DMs and players where players could actually out-maneuver a DM if their system mastery was sufficient, and actually overrule a DM.  This boggled my mind.  Sure, disagreements have always been part of the game, but 3.x/PF 1e has that unique escalating quality to it for some reason.  My table was spared this, since we've been playing together for the better part of 30 years...but yeesh.My group and I enjoyed the hell out of 3.x/PF1e but we burned out in 2016 and immediately dropped that ruleset and campaign and started over in 5e.  Been enjoying it since and you wouldn't be able to pay us to go back to 3.x.I checked out PF 2e, but that left me with the feeling of "this is to Pathfinder what 4e was to D&D".</blockquote>

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