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

[teitan]

Same for me. 3e to me is perfect - 100% real D&D feel, but cleaned up and rational.



You found the secret! 3.5e Core Books is the platonic ideal of D&D, and works best in levels 1-about 10, maybe 12. That’s assuming you lIke low-level D&D, which I wholeheartedly do. Fireball is awesome, but when you get into 4th and 5th level spells, PC’s are a little too much for normal adventures, IMHO.

Just as pure 1e AD&D Core Books is awesome, if you can deal with the messiness and ignore a lot of it (weapon speed?) - 3e is the streamlined version.

Nah just get Swords & Wizardry! Lol I kid. I love me some 1e AD&D!

 

[Viking Bastard]

Same for me. 3e to me is perfect - 100% real D&D feel, but cleaned up and rational.



You found the secret! 3.5e Core Books is the platonic ideal of D&D, and works best in levels 1-about 10, maybe 12. That’s assuming you lIke low-level D&D, which I wholeheartedly do. Fireball is awesome, but when you get into 4th and 5th level spells, PC’s are a little too much for normal adventures, IMHO.

Just as pure 1e AD&D Core Books is awesome, if you can deal with the messiness and ignore a lot of it (weapon speed?) - 3e is the streamlined version.

I prefer higher level play. Or rather, I prefer higher-PC-power play. 5-15 is probably what I'd have preferred in 3e, but I just found everything too cumbersome to bother past 10th (and it was already shaky at that point).

Maybe it was better in 3.5, I don't know, we never switched.

There's some perfect balance of crunch and smoothness of play for me and 3e ultimately went too far into crunch for me.

Eventually I just burned out on it and I think I had burned out on it a while before I abandoned it, leaving a bad aftertaste.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Nah just get Swords & Wizardry! Lol I kid.

Hey, I ran a short campaign using S&W inbetween 4e and 5e and I enjoyed it very much!

 

[Voadam]

I liked a lot about 3e. The OGL was amazing spurring a ton of material I liked and guaranteeing D&D could be available later. The online SRD meant I could reference the rules easily in a time when I started playing by email, doing a lot of play by post games, and discussing D&D on forums like EN World.

While I loved Basic and AD&D and had felt I'd be playing them for life, 3e addressed a lot of the issues I had with those systems: xp was no longer a balancing mechanic between classes or high level effectiveness versus low level effectiveness, 1 hp 1st level characters, one shot only 1st level magic users, some classes being like others but with just more powers, AD&D's reverse bell curve stat benefits, percentile strength being such a mechanically significant difference, detect evil detecting evil intentions, save or die, energy draining.

It had a design goal of classes being balanced for combat which I was appreciative of. It allowed any race class combo and had no level limits. Intuitive save categories. It allowed more player build choices throughout the game.

3e/3.5/d20 had a huge array of playstyle options. The wizard was high resource management tracking but if you wanted a magical low resource tracking caster class you could (after they came out in 3.5) play a warlock and never track spell slots.

There was a ton of ways to easily mod the game to tune it to a different preference and these were out there in a ton of published games and game books. I liked a lot of options out of Unearthed Arcana for example.

There are enough issues with balance, fiddly mechanics, and specific mechanics that it is no longer my system of choice, but I enjoyed a lot of it as a system and would play it again.

 

[teitan]

Hey, I ran a short campaign using S&W inbetween 4e and 5e and I enjoyed it very much!

It’s almost exactly how we played in High School!

 

[Gladius Legis]

That’s an opinion. My players and I had zero issues with the Pally and I don’t recall seeing many complaints about them or the monk. Just the Ranger. Even looking back on these forums to see there aren’t any. You’re just showing off edition warrior tendencies here.

Paladins were Tier 5 in the 3.5 tier list, written up by 3.5 players. Calm down with your edition warrior accusations. They were demonstrably an ineffective class. They were subpar melee characters. Their spellcasting was a joke. Their Smite Evil was weak even when it could be used at all.

 

[teitan]

Nothing to calm down for but okie dokie.

 

[Voadam]

Paladins and Rangers were also probably the best classes in 3e to solo with or for smaller parties. They were more durable with the d10 HD, had decent offense with martial weapons at full BAB, could use cure light wound wands for self healing, and the paladin had great AC and saves while rangers could go stealth. Clerics and Druids are good as well but the difference in hp and BAB makes more of a difference for a solo and spells run out quicker.

 

[CleverNickName]

On April 24th, I compiled the survey results and posted them in this thread. Not just the survey results; I also collected and analyzed (to the best of my ability) the comments and "nuance" I requested in the comment section as well. I have linked that survey to the OP in this thread, and in all of the other edition surveys as well.

But discussion continues, and votes are still coming in. I'm continue to collect and update the survey info, and I will be updating the summary soon. Thanks everyone for your (continued) participation! This has been a fun and enlightening exercise in the history of our hobby.

 

[Bohandas]

I played a little in college but my class schedule changed before I could actually do anything in the game