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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blackwind" data-source="post: 3345262" data-attributes="member: 1205">I played 2E, owned a great deal of the splatbooks, and used almost all of the 'extra' material -- specialty priests, elven bladesingers, even Player's Option.  At the time, I welcomed the new ideas.  On the other hand, I was in junior high.  Even then, though, I realized that my friend's Wood Elf Bladesinger with 19 Str (iirc) was ridiculously overpowered and was ruining my campaign.  By the time we were playing with all three Player's Option books, our group was starting to fall apart.  Mind you, that might have happened anyway; we were a scrappy bunch of kids.  As for 3.x, yes, I am getting tired of the splatbooks.  Yes, I think the situation is *similar* to the situation at the end of 2E (i.e. when they came out with the PO books).  It is interesting that you say you are getting so much inspiration from the new supplements; personally, I don't like them so much.  I liked the *flavor* of (most of) the 2E supplements (favorites included the Complete Book of Elves and the Complete Paladin's Handbook as well as the blue DM series and the green Historical Reference series).  Like I said though, I was in middle school.  I would certainly react to these products differently if they were released now.  That said, I am not a big fan of the 3E splatbooks.  The 'statistical optimization' aspect of the game does not appeal to me at all, and the fluffy parts of the new books are not really to my taste.  I like very little of the art, and I think most of the writing is either corny or legalistic.  I have said before that some of the setting materials are well done (Eberron is very well designed, even if after running a game in it I've decided I don't like the feel) -- here I am referring mostly to the rules supplements like, say, PHB2.Completely subjective aesthetic problems aside, though, the new sourcebooks present a great deal of crunch that I would never want to use in my game.  Obviously, other people do and that's great.  But I see the direction all this new material is taking my game in and I don't like it.  As the DM, it's my responsibility (and prerogative) to intervene before all these new rules get in the way of a fun game, and you can bet that I will do whatever it takes.  YMMV.Sorry for rambling; it's Valentine's Day and I've had a few glasses of wine.After re-reading the OP, let me just say this -- I used to read and re-read my 2E supplements all the time for inspiration, while I have a huge stack of 3.x books that I never even finished reading because they were so boring (once again, IMHO and YMMV, etc).Sorry if this comes off as rude or edition-warsy, that is not my intention at all.  I play 3.5 and do like a few of the writers and game designers who currently work for WotC.</blockquote>

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