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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7749088" data-attributes="member: 29398">My 3e experience was all from the player side, watching the DM try to tweak the game to suit what he/we were after - a more-or-less 1e style using the 3e chassis - and seeing/playing through the results.  We didn't use many if any add-on books, just 3e core and maybe some setting-specific stuff...and whatever monster books the DM could find. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Six years in he switched the campaign to 3.5 on the fly in something of a gesture of surrender, and abandoned many of the changes and tweaks he'd done in favour of a more RAW-based approach.Most of the problems he'd found involved unforeseen knock-on effects both short and long term - one example was that he'd drastically slowed down the advancement rate from what 3e RAW would have in order to make the campaign remain viable for a longer time, which looked fine on paper but eventually knocked-on into throwing wealth-by-level completely out the window.  We ended up far too rich* for our character levels, and this in turn knocked-on into making encounter design a bit of a crapshoot.  And so it went... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I left that game not long after the 3-to-3.5 jump, in order to free up the time to start my own then-new campaign.* - there's really no such thing as a PC who is too rich - it's outright impossible.  The term is here used only in reference to game design. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That, and the power curve was much steeper between levels than in 0-1-2-5e.  In 1e a 3rd-level character can find ways to survive and to usefully contribute in a 5th-ish level party.  In 3e that same 3rd-level character would either spend all its time fleeing or be dead very quickly.Another way of looking at it: I've found that 1e will comfortably allow for about a +/-2 level range around the party average, e.g. if the party average is 6th you can easily have a 4th-8th range within the group.  The power curve is flat enough to support this; though anything beyond it can get problematic.  But 3e (and from what I can tell, 4e) had trouble with as little variance as +/-1 level within the party (a 3-level range) and wasn't even happy with a 2-level range e.g. some are 4th, some are 5th.This power curve issue also covered monsters.  In 1e a 2nd level party, if careful and maybe a bit lucky and willing to accept a casualty or two, could reasonably expect to take down a hill giant.  In 3e a hill giant wouldn't even work up a sweat in annihilating said 2nd level party, no matter how lucky they got.  To me this is a design flaw rather than a feature.Lan-"it seems to be my day to ramble"-efan</blockquote>

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