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

[nevin]

My point was people loved the modified classes with different abilities. there was a lot of complaining at 3e launch that they didn't have the spheres and specialty priests. Anyone who thought players weren't going to eat up being able to min/max/modify character classes was just not paying attention.

 

[Ancalagon]

My feelings have changed.

when it came out I was a big fan. But as time passed and I grew more experienced with other systems, my dissatisfaction grew. Pathfinder, which seemed like a "better" 3.X at first, made me realize that "better" (as in more complete, more complex) rules weren't the solution.

Now I see it as bloated, poorly balanced and much to complex. 5e or simpler is my preference. I have been having a lot of fun with the GLOG and Troika! lately.

 

[Zardnaar]

Then he didn't pay attention to anything in the 2e forgotten realms book or how popular specialty priests were. I don't think I had a single just cleric from the time 2e launched to the time I started running 3e games. People ate that stuff up.

I saw a cleric early in 2E for us (1995). Once we got Faiths and Avatars no more clerics picked.

 

[MGibster]

I have mostly positive things to say about 3rd edition. My biggest negative was Prestige Classes. I liked the idea, but I hated how someone needed to plan their character out in advance to get the Prestige Class they wanted later. And I mean really plan by making sure they took just the right feats, skills, and level combinations to get what they wanted to by level 8.

Edit: Oh, and the two bladed sword was really, really stupid. It was obvious that it was there because of Darth Maul.

 

[Alzrius]

But to be fair 3.0 was advertised as a game that the DM was supposed to balance. The developers never intended a game where players set down and demand to play whatever was in thier favorite splat book, because it was an official Wizards of the Coast supplement..

This matches what I remember. Right around when the game came out, there was a lot of talk about the "toolkit" approach, where the unified game engine (compared to the relatively independent subsystems of AD&D) meant that the DM would be able to add, remove, and alter parts of the game with ease, making it much simpler to run whatever sort of campaign they wanted. The primacy of the RAW (Rules As Written) that emerged sometime thereafter was very much not in the same vein as this.

Justin Alexander talks about a similar thing on his blog with regard to encounter design in 3.0:

Revisiting Encounter Design

One of the first reviews I ever received for a book I had written was for the mini-adventure The Dragon's Wish, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games during the early D20 boom. The reviewer hate

thealexandrian.net

 

[teitan]

This matches what I remember. Right around when the game came out, there was a lot of talk about the "toolkit" approach, where the unified game engine (compared to the relatively independent subsystems of AD&D) meant that the DM would be able to add, remove, and alter parts of the game with ease, making it much simpler to run whatever sort of campaign they wanted. The primacy of the RAW (Rules As Written) that emerged sometime thereafter was very much not in the same vein as this.

Justin Alexander talks about a similar thing on his blog with regard to encounter design in 3.0:

Revisiting Encounter Design

One of the first reviews I ever received for a book I had written was for the mini-adventure The Dragon's Wish, which was published by Fantasy Flight Games during the early D20 boom. The reviewer hate

thealexandrian.net

This is a great article that addresses many of my issues with even 5e design. They tried very hard to address these things in 4e and 5e but the idea of “balance” has been warped to everything has to be a challenge.

 

[billd91]

I have mostly positive things to say about 3rd edition. My biggest negative was Prestige Classes. I liked the idea, but I hated how someone needed to plan their character out in advance to get the Prestige Class they wanted later. And I mean really plan by making sure they took just the right feats, skills, and level combinations to get what they wanted to by level 8.

Well, that's if you wanted to get into the prestige class by level 8. There was a lot of hand wringing over this issue, but you never had to take a prestige class at the first opportunity, nor did anyone ever need to acquire all of the levels in that prestige class. It was a mindset that people found trapping more than the rules.

 

[Don Durito]

Prestige classes would have worked better and made more sense if you had to do something in the game world - rather than hosts of garbage mechanical requirements.

I.e to become an "Undead Slayer" you must have slain a vampire.

 

[MGibster]

Well, that's if you wanted to get into the prestige class by level 8. There was a lot of hand wringing over this issue, but you never had to take a prestige class at the first opportunity, nor did anyone ever need to acquire all of the levels in that prestige class. It was a mindset that people found trapping more than the rules.

I didn't have an objection to the concept. Much like kits in 2nd edition, I just didn't like how the idea was executed.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

I GM more than I play, so I have the GM power to rule-zero out the parts I don't like.

Right now I'm running a "Brotherhood of Rangers" campaign where the PCs are all gestalt-rangers (fighter-ranger gestalt, wizard-ranger gestalt, cleric-ranger gestalt, etc.) I'm trying to keep the house rules in this one down to a minimum, with the biggest change being to disallow a list of teleport/travel spells that would ruin the "ranger" feel (IMHO). The second biggest would be allowing feats instead of favored enemies - none of my players wanted favored enemies if they could have feats instead.

For a more general D&D game, I'd have more house rules - but still many fewer than in earlier editions. And I'm meh-to-yuck on Pathfinder, 4e, and 5e, so when I run D&D, it's going go be 3.5.

I have an old (c. 2006) rant about 3.x that I might as well unload here:

The Things I Love and Hate about Third Edition D&D
(AKA the Good, the Bad and the Ugly)

This rant has been building pressure in my head for some time, but only now has it burst out in actual written words. It's divided into three sections, the "Things I Love" about 3.0/3.5, the "Things I hate" and the stuff I have mixed feelings about.

Things I Love
1. Skills: At last D&D has a decent skill system. I have quibbles about it (e.g. the cross-class penalty being too big), but my quibbles are just quibbles.

2. Feats: I first went "huh?" when I first encountered them, but they've grown on me since as being a really good idea.

3. A set of battle-mat combat rules actually usable by Mere Mortals, as opposed to the 1e rules that were only usable by Total Wargaming Geeks, and that most players (including myself) therefore ignored.

4. The d20 mechanic itself: A nice job

5. The general rationalization and simplification of saving throws, xp needed per level, ability score bonuses, etc.

6. The rules for creating magic items, and the wealth guidelines in general. It is a good thing that the rules no longer try to stupidly pretend that a +1 sword is a [reverberation]BENISON BEYOND PRICE[/reverb] And I have no sympathy for the DMs who whine that they can no longer act like Gawds; that they no longer have the unquestionable authority to insist that their players smile and say "thank you sir" if they choose to inflict such poverty and suffering on the PCs as would make a sane person envy Job.


Things I Hate
1. The double-power-every-two-levels power curve: Works OK up to about 8th level, starts to break down at levels 9-12, completely wonky at levels 13+

2. Magic as a Trump Card: The general philosophy that has magic trumping non-magical abilities, and that only more-powerful magic can counter less-powerful magic. There are exceptions, yes, but they strike me as being rare and grudging.

3. Disposable/expendable magic items: Some items do have to be consumable, like potions or scrolls. But I find it annoying that so many other items are consumables as well. Wands. Staffs. A lot of the miscellaneous magic. And it really bugs me that it costs xp to create those consumable magic items.

4. Spellcasters as the ultimate source of all good things. This is related to (2) above, but the issue would be less annoying if non-spellcasters had a greater ability to create magical or otherwise special items. For example, if crafting magic arms and armor were something fighters could do. Or possibly even something they could do better than wizards.

5. Prestige Classes. Bah! I say, and Bah! again. They're munchkin-bait; things that actively encourage the unspeakable practice of trying to produce the uber-build. ("Rogue 1/druid 1/milkmaid 2/divine rennet 1/munchkin cheese 15 - ha! Let's see you beat that build")

Mixed Feelings
1. The great number of magic items that characters have. Yes, magic items are a necessity given how D&D is set up to be a high-magic game. I'd prefer, though, that characters have a smaller number of really cool & powerful items, rather than the larger number of weaker ones that the game gives by default.

2. Multiclassing. In some ways 3e fixed multiclassing, and made it sane and rational. In other ways, it created new problems (with those unspeakable "prestige classes" then being offered as the kludge to "fix" those problems).

3. The rigidity of the wealth guidelines. It would be nice to have an analysis of just how much extra wealth boosts a character's power, and just how much relatively poverty diminishes it.

4. Rangers. I imprinted on the 1e ranger as "the" ranger, and I though the 3.0 ranger was almost perfect - it just needed to be a little less front-loaded, and to have more combat flexibility than that hard-coded TWF ability, and it would be good to go. The 3.5 ranger felt like a step backward to me; a change to "wilderness ninja" from "Paladin of the Forest" (Which is what a ranger should be, in my completely arrogant opinion). And that TWF or Archery choice, while an improvement, still felt like a horrible kludge.

5. Healing. Healing via divine magic is such a deeply rooted D&Dism that any change will have huge, far-reaching effects. On one hand, I'd like to see less dependence on the party medic, er, cleric. But on the other hand, it just wouldn't be D&D without this element.