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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play 3rd Edtion D&D? How Was/Is it?
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<blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 7982841" data-attributes="member: 6701872"><p>My experience with 3rd edition was rough for reasons both in and out of the game.</p><p></p><p>Out of game, and entirely my fault for not putting myself at a high enough priority, I was running that system even though I didn't want to be. The players I had in my group wanted to be playing it, and I let it be a vote, so I ran 3rd and 3.5 for the entirety of their being the current edition even though I was not at all interested in the game for the in-game reasons I found it rough.</p><p></p><p>Compared to AD&D 2nd, many of the design choices made going into 3rd edition felt like a severe change in paradigm without a reason. Such as saving throws going from something with huge chances of success at high-level play to things which were a lot trickier to succeed at - but the other side of the equation, the effect of spells, wasn't altered. And then there were a lot of other limiters to spell effectiveness that were trimmed out of the game, and I'm not opposed to the idea of that but the execution came off as "just make magic, the already most powerful and versatile part of the game, unquestionably better - and also give casters more spells per day"</p><p></p><p>There were some aspects which were improved (like making race options feel balanced by a means other than class and level limitations), but the overall experience for me was that the game had been designed to fail anyone that hadn't achieved system mastery.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AaronOfBarbaria, post: 7982841, member: 6701872"] My experience with 3rd edition was rough for reasons both in and out of the game. Out of game, and entirely my fault for not putting myself at a high enough priority, I was running that system even though I didn't want to be. The players I had in my group wanted to be playing it, and I let it be a vote, so I ran 3rd and 3.5 for the entirety of their being the current edition even though I was not at all interested in the game for the in-game reasons I found it rough. Compared to AD&D 2nd, many of the design choices made going into 3rd edition felt like a severe change in paradigm without a reason. Such as saving throws going from something with huge chances of success at high-level play to things which were a lot trickier to succeed at - but the other side of the equation, the effect of spells, wasn't altered. And then there were a lot of other limiters to spell effectiveness that were trimmed out of the game, and I'm not opposed to the idea of that but the execution came off as "just make magic, the already most powerful and versatile part of the game, unquestionably better - and also give casters more spells per day" There were some aspects which were improved (like making race options feel balanced by a means other than class and level limitations), but the overall experience for me was that the game had been designed to fail anyone that hadn't achieved system mastery. [/QUOTE]
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Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play 3rd Edtion D&D? How Was/Is it?
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