Evaluation of 3.5 Rule Changes.

[airwalkrr]

Or perhaps you're not considering man-hours?

If Gary had 6 groups who spend 5 years and WotC had 30 spending 2, theoretically that's about the same, no?

Yea, except that WotC had no more than 4 or 5 groups provide direct concrete feedback (their R&D team, which consisted of many overlapping members). They sent the rules out to a lot of people for play-testing, and from what I gather, most of it was not very helpful. The 3rd edition rules were basically based on Monte Cook's campaign. He and Skip Williams were the architects of 3rd edition in much the same way that EGG and Dave Arneson were the architects of basic and AD&D. MC and SW were just "adjusting" a game and not inventing one, so arguably, that could make things a bit different.

 

[Aaron L]

Or perhaps you're not considering man-hours?

If Gary had 6 groups who spend 5 years and WotC had 30 spending 2, theoretically that's about the same, no?

I Think PC, who was among the playtesters, could give us an idea of how many people were involved in the testing.

A handful of groups playtesting for a few years doesn't outweigh many dozens of groups playtesting for a year.

 

[Hypersmurf]

yes, I would to order a side of facts with that conjecture...

It's not conjecture - it's based on something said by one of the 3.5 developers (I want to say Andy Collins) in a column around the time 3.5 came out.

The gist was that 1.5x was okay for Strength bonus to damage, because essentially Strength bonus is a static figure (or maybe you need to know Raging and non-Raging, or whatever), so you could calculate 1.5x in advance.

But the number you allocate to Power Attack can change every single round, and they decided it's easier to multiply by 2 than by 1.5 on the fly.

Frank's not making this up - "Multiplying by 1.5 is hard!" was the reason given to explain 2-for-1 Power Attack.

-Hyp.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

thanks for explaining to me. I personally have never experience a problem with a 1 to 2 return on power attack. with it, one barely comes close to a mage in damage. it was always one of things i liked most about 3.5.

Perhaps that one cant do .5 damage was also a factor? well thats just me making a conjecture, but it seems strange that one would have to power attack only even numbers to get a benefit over other fighting styles.

still if thats the reason given, is it not fallacious to use that to prove its unbalanced? All it shows was that it was created that way for simplicity, which is a good thing. it doesn't show that it makes it unbalanced.

 

[Griffith Dragonlake]

still if thats the reason given, is it not fallacious to use that to prove its unbalanced? All it shows was that it was created that way for simplicity, which is a good thing. it doesn't show that it makes it unbalanced.

Two thoughts: 1) Giving up a magical shield can be a big deal especially one with the high level mods. 2) Historically many knights in the 15th and 16th centuries fought with polearms when dismounted rather than sword & shield.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Interesting factoid: more time was spent play-testing AD&D than play-testing 3rd edition.

If that's true, then hen my respect for his "design" has dropped even more. I honestly didnt think that was possible.

That's a fine idea for a game. But it is not D&D.

Thanks for proving my point. "Jocks bullied me, so the smart guys should be best! I'll get rich and take their girls and I'll show them!" A flaw shouldnt be kept just for nostalgia reasons. Thank Kord it is D&D now.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I find it extremely doubtful that there were less manhours spent playtesting 3E than there were for 2E. Sure, Gary might have spent years playtesting 2E but I doubt he had anywhere near the number of people or resources that WotC had.

If he did then I agree with ehren37, he didn't do a very good job.

Olaf the Stout

 

[BRP2]

I don't like the balance between (and I use the word "Fighter" here loosely) finese fighters, power fighters, and oddball ones like single-hand/shield and dual-wield fighters. It doesn't really 'break' the game, but it might break the spirit of the game.

And I really don't like when people justify insane melee damage boosts(like Two-Hand x3 critting Power Attacks for +100 damage at level 4 or something) with "so they can keep up with spell-casters". As far as I'm concern, the problem isn't only that melee are too weak, its that spell-casters are too strong. All this does is, kind of help a melee playing style to keep up with those insane Cleric/Druid metagamers while leaving all the other melee styles in the dirt.

 

[Elemental]

Yea, and while we're at it, we need to make caster's able to kill stuff in one hit at 1st level just like fighters too!

Well, Sleep and possibly Colour Spray can certainly do that well enough.

 

[Victim]

It's more like casters don't keep up with melee in terms of concentrated damage. Melee's problem isn't the amount of damage, it's that most melee characters don't have anything else. Tactically speaking, pretty much all of our 3.5 games have been dominated by buffed melee damagers. The upgrades to Resist Energy in particular can be problematic for casters attempting to do damage, since it's powerful enough to hurt high level spells, and low enough level that it's easy to cast on groups or to create a full set of energy resistances. But spellcasters have to do pretty much everything else, since the abilities of fighter types outside of personal combat leave alot to be desired.