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

[teitan]

How does PF1 differ from PF2? Any opinions on that?

I would compare that difference to 3.5 versus 4e but without all the drama. P2 is a well designed game that is very feat heavy but it doesn't drag the game down. I think 3.5 vs 4e is an apt comparison because they changed a lot of the system. It's very crunchy but stream lined. Also leans into politics pretty heavily which one can either take or leave. I found it a very well done game. I sold off my set a few months back and regret it.

 

[Lanefan]

Played 3e for a good long run of seven years or so, and DMed a mighty total of three sessions within that campaign (long story how I ended up DMing in the middle of someone else's campaign, but it did happen).

For most of the run the game was a somewhat-modified version, using the 3e chassis, and this for me-as-player gave an enjoyable game - though I gather it was hell for the DM!. Later it converted on the fly to near-RAW 3.5 and the flaws really started to show.

Without going into huge detail...

Good things:

Clear distinction between classes, with each having strengths and weaknesses.

Simpler mechanics in some ways, when coming from 0-1-2e. (sometimes)

The system was still flexible enough to allow for a wide variety of play styles (compare with 4e which really focused on heroic-fantasy)

Bad things:

Power curve too steep - far too much difference between low level and mid level and high level, for both monsters and characters.

Simpler mechanics in some ways, when coming from 0-1-2e. (sometimes)

Level advancement way too fast by RAW (4e and 5e have the same problem), and too complicated.

Too many feats and powers and so forth; system mastery becomes overly rewarded, cheesy optimizing and specialization is encouraged instead of punished.

Far too much emphasis on pre-play character 'building' and planning, as cost of focus on play itself.

Multi-classing: a disaster unless none of that character's classes cast spells. (this due to the IMO awful design idea of levels in different classes being additive rather than independent; and 4e and 5e didn't fix this)

Putting relatively-easy magic item creation in the hands of the PCs and making all item info player-side knowledge was sheer lunacy.

Biggest problem: the underlying M:tG-fueled philosophy change from 0-1-2e (you can try anything unless a rule says you can't) to 3e (you can't try something unless a rule says you can); and 3e's corresponding attempts to have a rule for everything.

End result: voted "played but did not like".

 

[Neonchameleon]

... but I’m all sorts of done with with the whole plotting out a characters progression from level 1-20 with multiple class dips etc. I don’t blame it on 3.5 as a system. I blame it one the culture that evolved out of the game with the ignoring of prerequisites and roleplaying.

I blame it entirely on the 3.X lack of balance and the prestige class system - and even Pathfinder, despite being almost a carbon copy of 3.5, doesn't have this issue to the same degree.

By having something that took as many pages in as many supplements as Prestige Classes 3.0 and 3.5 told you that that was something you were supposed to be engaging with. By making the feat requirements for many prestige classes so tight 3.0 and 3.5 told you that you were supposed to plan in advance your feats and many of your skills - and that you should stick tightly to your plans without allowing room for character growth. And with "sacrificial" prerequisite feats that were near-useless but often needed to get to the good stuff (Dodge, Toughness I'm looking at you) 3.0 and 3.5 were telling you not to pick the fun stuff until later - and that the best way of playing was to stick rigidly to long term plans. And the lack of balance provided extra incentive to not be the person weighing down the rest of the party.

This mostly went away with 4e of course - Paragon Paths, although narratively related to prestige classes didn't have the tight build requirements and I don't remember any prerequisite feats in 4e. Instead the challenge for people who enjoyed builds was what could they do; the iconic 3.X character optimisation builds are to me Pun-Pun and the Ur Priest/Nar Demonbinder/Mystic Theurge with a caster level somewhere round 50 and level 8 arcane and level 9 divine spells while the iconic 4e character optimisation character is the Lazy Warlord who never makes an attack roll. And 5e, while allowing back 3.X multiclassing, doesn't keep the feats or the tight prerequisites.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

For casual gamers I stick with stuff like settlers of cattan. Much as I love fantasy dealing with people who simply don't care enough to learn the in's and outs is a night mare.

Less fiddly systems like S&W, or even older BECMI D&D work perfectly for what we are doing. Actually the 5e game I ran went pretty good but I wasn't a huge fan of the system. The backup 5e game we play in is doing pretty good so I think that is a good system for those who don't feel the need to pour through 5 different tomes looking for build options.

 

[Salamandyr]

I think the move to 3.5 was a bad move.


3rd edition, any version, is the edition I am probably most frustrated by. It is, in a lot of ways, the most "complete" edition, with a mechanic for anything you want to do.. But it's fundamentally at war with itself, with built in flaws to encourage system mastery, and mastering the game involved moving further and further away from the assumptions of the genre.

 

[billd91]

I think the move to 3.5 was a bad move.

I think there were some fairly necessary fixes, as people have posted before. But most of them could have been handled with a decent update document and included in later printings. The wholesale tinkering throughout the edition (it really was a lot of changes) was a pretty bad example of unnecessary mission creep.

3rd edition, any version, is the edition I am probably most frustrated by. It is, in a lot of ways, the most "complete" edition, with a mechanic for anything you want to do.. But it's fundamentally at war with itself, with built in flaws to encourage system mastery, and mastering the game involved moving further and further away from the assumptions of the genre.

I think the whole idea of built in flaws is overstated. Monte Cook tried to explain it, but even that was pretty badly misinterpreted as reinforcing the exact idea he was trying to refute.

 

[3catcircus]

All I really need in a D&D game is a set of rules that allow me to provide a better "feel" for a simulationist mode of game play for those grim-n-gritty "pink eye" campaigns while also allowing me to cut back the detail in the rules for a more beer-n-pretzels style campaign.

I don't think any edition of D&D ever really did that all that well. 3.x provided more details for more granular gameplay, but it doesn't really provide any "simulationist" aspects because of the class levels, hit points, and saving throws essentially being the same as they ever were.

There were, however, some really great attempts to do so.

Magical Medieval Society Western Europe's economic simulator was great for eliminating the "We buy from adventurer's for half book price. Sure you can buy a +1 longsword in this hamlet of 12 people" stuff.

Toxicant was really great at fleshing out poisons, toxic chemicals, and venoms and establishing more interesting effects ("Oh, its medium snake venom, no big deal. DC 11 or 1d6 Con. Wait - what do you mean its a DC30 save? Why is my PC having slurred speech and blurry vision? What do you mean he feels faint? What do you mean that he take 1d4+6 points of damage each round for the next 4d4 hours?")

SSS's Advanced Player's Guide had some really interesting rules to make spellcasting more like combat in terms of crits and fumbles, armor as DR, piecemeal armor, splitting of AC into active and passive defenses (Block/Dodge/Parry/Armor) and re-introduced the idea of weapon speed factors.

 

[CleverNickName]

Prestige classes were introduced in 3rd Edition, but they were an optional rule in the DMG. It wasn't until the "Complete" splatbooks came out (Complete Divine, Complete Adventurer, etc.) that they became a player expectation. Remember the Radiant Servant of Pelor? "I want to play a cleric, but with extra levels of cleric..."

Like so many "optional" rules, they quickly became absolute must-have features. And restrictions that had been put in place to keep them in check (prerequisites and favored classes, for example) were the first things on the chopping block for house rules and later editions of the game.

This will all be covered in my upcoming TED Talk, "The Myth of Optional Rules."

 

[Don Durito]

There were some really, really important fixes in 3.5 - the ranger, the bard, the Harm spell. But there were also a lot of changes that just seemed like mission creep and were largely unnecessary even if they did continue regularizing aspects of the game.

Yes. And there was a certain formalisation of the mission creep that was already happening.

Prestige classes had gone from "here's a cool option you can use to customise your campaign setting" to splats, splats, splats. That had already happened before 3.5, but it felt that 3.5 formalised it.

The nerf to buffs - a lot of buffs had those coming because they had emerged as dominating strategies. How many spell casters tied up their resources in stat buffing spells? With the right metamagic, they had gotten out of control and needed pruning back - though I might agree that 1 minute/level was pruning them back too much.

This is part of the issue with 3.0 I think. So much of the changes were clearly necessary that you can't easily go back and just run 3.0. I think as soon as you encounter some of these issues you start bringing in the the 3.5 changes.

 

[CleverNickName]

So I'm not just collecting the votes in this survey poll; I am also listening to (and tracking) the comments and other "added nuance" in the comments. Like the votes, it has produced some rather interesting trends...

For example, here in the 3rd Edition survey, folks have posted 189 comments...well, 190, counting this one. Compared to another, ah, more recent survey, there has been a lot less arguing and moderation intervention than I expected. Grouping the comments into broad (very broad) categories, we find that this edition has sparked a lot more talk about the Days Gone By than any before it. Here's how they break down:

"I remember when..." = 124 comments (65.6%)
Questions or speculation about the survey itself = 23 comments (12.2%)
"The rules in this edition were..." = 13 comments (6.9%)
"Let's talk about this other edition..." = 12 comments (6.3%)
Unrelated posts = 11 comments (5.8%)
"You're wrong, I'm right, let's argue, etc." = 2 comments (1.1%)
Links to other pages = 2 comments (1.1%)
Moderator warnings = 1 comment (0.5%)
The introduction post = 1 comment (0.5%)

I expected a lot more edition-warring and hurt feelings. I'm proud of us.

Sure, this data is far less scientific than the poll (and that poll is already far less scientific than most want to admit.) In fact, I hesitate to call it "data" at all; it's more like an editorial. I read each post, and made a judgment call about its intent, then decided which of about a dozen categories to file it under. So take this with a grain of salt, and understand that it has been filtered and adjusted. By me, a noted moogle and BECMI fan.