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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Noumenon" data-source="post: 4807329" data-attributes="member: 70102">I just started DMing last year.  So I can't really compare 3.5 to anything.  But in my learning curve, it felt like D&D 3.5 was working against me becoming a good DM, while the D&D 3.5 community was doing all of the teaching and helping.  The online monster advancers, the SRD, Enworld, the blog network, RPGnow... these are all awesome, but they're the result of the Internet, not D&D 3.5.  Online Chinese-to-English dictionaries don't mean China itself is making it easier to speak Chinese.Things 3.5 did that made it easier to DM would be things like wealth-by-level where you can just look up in a table and find out what you should do.  Rules like "feat every third level" that you can remember easily and use.  The d20 mechanic.  Listing commands that work under the command spell.  Having "undead traits" the same for all the undead.Now I can't judge what 3.5 did that made it harder to DM, because it's the only one I tried, but I know that it did a lot to make it hard.  The monster manual hides the undead traits in the back, puts evasion in the stat block instead of by the Reflex save number, makes you look up all the spell-like abilities in the PHB.  The level advancement system makes it almost impossible for a new DM to advance monsters by character class.  I guess basically that's my main complaint.  3.5 made it too hard to learn and run monsters, and that keeps you from learning anything else.  Corinth said "3.X made it possible for just about anyone to become good enough at running the game to run modules."  That seems like exactly the opposite.  To run a module like White Plume Mountain you have to be able to run an undead.  Then a flying harpy.  Then a bunch of rogues with nets.  Then an underwater combat.  Then <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225434" target="_blank">improved grab and constrict</a> -- oh my god.  Then invisibility.  All different rules, all taking so long to look up.  In a homebrew, you could conceivably just learn how to build fighters and wizards and spend your time actually designing -- NPCs, adventure hooks, etc.  But 3.5 said "Nope.  To run this system, you need to put about 100% of your time into learning how to run monster combats for the first ten sessions, and then figure out how to make adventures later."  I have to think that made for better combats in the end, but worse DMs.</blockquote>

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