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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8960790" data-attributes="member: 6877472">Now I won't claim that 3e is, or ever was balanced.  It attempted to be, but the developers were still assuming people would play 3e the same way they played dungeon crawling D&D.  They were caught completely off-guard by the emergent gameplay of 3e, which didn't go far enough to balance character classes fully against one another.By balance here, I mean, that each character gets an equal amount of "spotlight".  Everyone shines equally.  But once people started evaluating the different options available to them, and campaigns almost instantly busted out of "ye olde dungeon crawl", things got wonky.The most amazing thing to most old players was the realization that nothing really forces monsters to engage with a Fighter.  In fact, 3e radicalized the Fighter to a great degree.  The high AC, more hit points than a small keep, sword and board character now had more AC, more hit points, but their attack was defanged by a combination of the new multiattack rules, the weakening of weapon specialization, and increased monster hit points.A lot of terrifying spells no M-U would ever touch because of the dreaded "save neg." were suddenly being used to shut down combats entire, due to the fact that their saving throws typically got harder to make as they went up in levels, and the fact that no one had bothered to adjust their damage (that 5d6 fireball that murdered in AD&D was now quite sad).Clerics being able to actually prepare and cast spells other than Cure X Wounds was an eye opener as well.  And it wasn't like spells were radically changed from AD&D, it was just how spells were used shifted, and again, no one was really prepared for it.So yeah, you can't just change a bunch of rules and expect the game to function the same way, a lesson I learned trying to make house rules in AD&D as a DM.  Sometimes changing even one rule can have unseen repercussions.  Maybe that's what Gary was trying to say when he told us that we could both change the game how we wanted to, but if we did, we weren't play "AD&D".But to really understand why people left 2e, you have to go back to examine why people left 1e.  Or even original flavor D&D.  And I think a lot of this people naturally assume "newer and shinier is better".  Oh sure, there are individual selling points that may have drawn you in, maybe there was a rules change you liked.  Or the presentation was more crisp.  Or the art more eye popping.Maybe Gygaxian prose made a rulebook read less like stereo instructions and more like a secret tome of knowledge, and you were being inducted into a secret club of "true gamers".  As a younger man, I was one of those idiots who always championed the newer, shinier thing, because I mean, it just had to be better, right?  Now that I'm older, when people get all hyped about some new thing, I'm like "uh huh, and that's better than what we have now, why?"And I usually get blank stares.  So maybe it is an age thing.</blockquote>

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