D&D 3E/3.5 Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play 3rd Edtion D&D? How Was/Is it?

How Did/Do You Feel About 3E/3.5E D&D?

  • I'm playing it right now; I'll have to let you know later.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

CleverNickName

Limit Break Dancing
Just occurred to me that a choice on this poll should have been "My hat of d02 know no limit"

edit: just ninja'd by @CleverNickName !
It was the worst of times,
it was the worst of times.

I really do hope that the next survey doesn't dissolve into a seething froth of hatred and bile, like so many Alka-Seltzer tablets of Awfulness. There are good aspects of every edition, and I hope we can keep the focus there, on the good stuff and good memories.

But, you know, Internet.
 
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Theo R Cwithin

I cast "Baconstorm!"
It was the worst of times,
it was the worst of times.

I really hope the next survey doesn't dissolve into a seething froth of hatred and bile, like an Alka-Seltzer tablet of awful. There are good aspects of every edition, and I hope we can keep the focus there.
You're brave to test those waters.
I salute you!
 

teitan

Legend
Manual of the planes is a very good book for a broad number of reasons (planar handbook is good too but there is little overlap and although it updates some things in manual of the planes, manual of the planes is honestly just a better book. Not just because of knowledge of the planes it offers. Its the way its built too)

And the other one. UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME.

Libris mortis. I know it has problems, but it gives dms an awful lot of material they can work with to make their undead and certain types of dark magic better. It also has the knock on effect of showing how you can do the same in many other areas. Best used with restraint. And also care for possible ways it may screw around with things.

"Johnathan"? Were you signing off with that or is it a reference to something?

Addendum. I forgot. The list is a bit longer if i include other editions.

Not a whole lot longer. But a bit.

Libris Mortis is amazing. People can fight me on that one too. And I also loved Dungeonscape as a late 3.5 product. It had a lot of fun ideas for DMs. Plus I still love BoVD.
 



Eyes of Nine

Everything's Fine
Oh man, there were so many houserules at the time. But my favorite is still E6. It covers so many problems with a single, easy rule.

Eh...not really. I mean, it's doing okay (more than 2/3 of its votes have been positive experiences*), but every other edition except OD&D has it beat.

OD&D: 61.0% <--- Lowest
AD&D 1E: 75.4%
Basic D&D: 88.4% <--- Highest
B/X: 78.8%
BECMI/RC: 80.8%
AD&D 2E: 80.0%
D&D 3E: 69.6%

*A positive response means that it got either a "remember liking it," "I like it," or a "I would like to try it" response.

EDIT: numbers updated as of today, 5:00 p.m. PST

Looking forward to the 4e poll. Assuming it will beat out OD&D for lowest. Personally, I like 4e, but I know the feels most have for it.
 


ccs

41st lv DM
Yep, played & enjoyed 3x + PF.
Still playing them in fact, all blended together (admittedly it's long been PF1 as the core with whatever we need pulled from 3x).
ATM though we're giving PF2 a shot. But I'm sure we'll pick up 3x/PF1 again soon - just depends upon who's DMing & what system they feel like.
 




DammitVictor

Druid of the Invisible Hand
--twitch-- Stacking bonuses...st-stacking b-bonuses... --twitch--

Yep, right there with you-- I would be perfectly happy with a rule that said that multiple alignment/bane bonuses didn't stack, that limited stacking AC bonuses, and so forth. While it's very obvious that the RAW and RAI are both for all of these modifiers to stack, one: it's irritating to juggle so many different little numbers, and two: encounter design did not get the memo about expected attack and defensive values.

I really did love a lot of 3rd Edition. And there are a lot of things about it that I miss in 5th Edition. But having to manage dozens of different bonus types and whether or not they stack? (and when? and how?) Nope. This is the biggest reason why I would ever only run 3.X D&D again with the E6 houserules.

(I'd also cap ability scores at 18 + racial mod. So Dwarves could have up to a 20 in Constitution, but only up to 16 in Charisma. But that's another houserule for another thread.)

But then, dear god no, why would you do this? E6 and "core only" are probably the two biggest offenders-- aside from 5e itself-- when it comes to deliberately ripping the vibrant heart out of D&D. "Low level PHB only D&D" is a playstyle that dozens of other games do, and most of them do it better than D&D.
 

While it's very obvious that the RAW and RAI are both for all of these modifiers to stack, one: it's irritating to juggle so many different little numbers, and two: encounter design did not get the memo about expected attack and defensive values.
Really? By my reading, it was fully expected that everyone would stack at least four different scaling AC bonuses (enhancement to armor, enhancement to shield, deflection, and natural armor). There's no other way for your AC to keep up with BAB.
 



Orius

Hero
I switched to 3e as soon as it came out, and I was not disappointed. The internal consistency and freedom was a big improvement over the previous editions. Early on, the edition really built on stuff that came before, and provided a lot of options for DM world building. For the player, there was a nice selection of material as well.

If there is one problem I have with 3e, it is 3.5.

I didn't like when it came out, and felt it was little more than a cash grab. Everything I've read about the release of 3.5 since has only really strengthened my view as such. The initial rules really needed errata in places, but 3.5 went far beyond errata and introduced more problems along the way. Honestly, I strongly feel that the biggest impetus behind 3.5 was to change just enough and add enough new stuff so people would feel the need to buy new books all over again, sooner than it should have been and to undercut the third party competition. The worst part is some of the little things changed here and there are actual improvements, so one can't just ignore 3.5. That and the majority of the 3e fanbase seems to like 3.5.

I want to run it again, but there are some things I'd need to address first. First, I'd need to keep a pretty tight grip on magic. Magic always has the potential to unbalance the hell out of everything in any edition of D&D, and nowhere is that more evident than in 3e. Access to spells would need some strong restrictions, and I'd need to put some controls on magic item creation, particularly access to specific items. I'm strongly considering requiring the acquisition of formulas somewhat like 5e does things. Second, material from splats would need to be sharply controlled too. I'd probably slow XP gain a bit and sort of reduce campaigning after level 10, or at least look to how classic D&D handled high levels with domains and have less dungeon adventuring. Another thing to do would be to reduce bonuses to keep the math properly tamed.
 



teitan

Legend
I think, were I to run 3e again, I would run 3e itself or Pathfinder, which cleaned up 3.5 but it would be core only because whoooboy 3.5 and PF go off the raaaiiiiiillllllllllsssssssss
 


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