I like 3E, but I miss...

[Teflon Billy]

The 1E "Wandering Prostitute" table in the DMG.

1-10: Slovenly Trull
11-25: Brazen Strumpet
26-35: Cheap Trollop
36-50: Typical Streetwalker
51-65: Saucy Tart
66-75: Wanton Wench
76-85: Expensive Doxy
86-90: Haughty courtesan
91-92: Aged Madam
93-94: Wealthy Porcuress
95-98: Sly Pimp
99-00: Rich Panderer

 

[Wycen]

I miss some of the kick butt magic items like Amulet of Life Protection.

 

[Darrin Drader]

The Forgotten Realms when they were still cool. The gray box, from the end of 1e. When Elminster was like a 10th level mage. When there was no time of troubles, no Cyric, no Drizzt, no Seven Sisters, and the gods of evil were Bane, Bhaal, and Myrkul. Does anyone else remember the fantastic parchment pages i that boxed set?

Your memory is flawed! The FR novel line launched at the same time as the gaming product line (or at least within a year of one another). The Crystal Shard, the book in which Drizzt was first introduced, was the second FR book to be released. So, unless you count the time when the realms were just an ongoing series of Dragon articles, Drizzt has always been part of the realms.

So what do I miss? For the most part I think the rules are far and away better than they were in 1E and 2E. So what does that leave? The art! OK, a lot of it was far worse than what we have now. What I miss is the Elmore art. His art is fairly realistic and definitely conveys a traditional fantasy feel. I miss it quite a bit. Easley had some great stuff too. In addition to that, I miss the Dragon covers that actually showed a scene as opposed to being just a character study. I miss the comics in the DMG. Papers and Paychecks, the +4 backscratcher, that sense of humor was cool and its gone, gone, gone. Last, but certainly not least, I really miss Gary's quirky writing style. That man can lay donw some truly convoluted sentences that are just plain cool to read.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Your memory is flawed! The FR novel line launched at the same time as the gaming product line (or at least within a year of one another). The Crystal Shard, the book in which Drizzt was first introduced, was the second FR book to be released. So, unless you count the time when the realms were just an ongoing series of Dragon articles, Drizzt has always been part of the realms.

Quite true. In fact, in the old 1st Edition FR suppliment The Savage Frontier (released in 1988), Drizzt is listed as being only a 10th-level ranger, Bruenor is an 8th-level fighter, Wulfgar is a 6th-level barbarian, and Regis is a 5th-level thief. So, it looks like Drizzt and his friends have done a little leveling up since their humble beginnings in The Icewind Dale Trilogy.

 

[Tessarael]

I think what I miss most are the Spells and Magic, Skills and Powers (Pills and Scours), and Combat and Tactics books. Why?

In some respects, they allowed more detailed customization of your class. Multiclassing and dual classing were nicely fixed in 3E, but prestige classes giving armor and weapons or spellcasting levels can be unbalanced sometimes. I like the fact that you could create spellcasters with penalties such as taboos and other things.

Fatigue spellcasting, free spells, spell points instead of fixed spells of each level. These were nice ideas. They didn't work perfectly, but it's a pity 3E stuck to a fixed x spells of level y system - spell points is much nicer.

Oh and the high level handbook in some respects. More choice for what special ability your character got, and you could get that with CPs - in some respects, feats were not as scarce.

I'm not entirely happy with the 3E feat system ... I'm always lacking enough feats, unless I take a Fighter, and it's even worse for multiclassed characters. Feat chains are painful.

Magic item creation: no feats needed! This was a nice 2nd edition feature ... It's a pain to take a spellcaster and then have to burn multiple feats on magic item creation, when it would be more fun to take metamagic feats.

 

[Carnifex]

...the Planescape campaign setting.

 

[Celtavian]

re

the newness of the game. Especially when every monster was a surprise, when a new magic item actually took time to figure out, and a new spell level sent you sifting through your Player's Handbook in search of a new spell. I would spend hours reading the spells trying to figure out the one I thought would be best to pick.

 

[Staffan]

"As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."

... Dark Sun. Also, adventures that aren't dungeon crawls. Oh, and priests that actually differ depending on the god they worship - a priest of Apollo could be as different from a priest of Hades as a druid is different from a genericleric.

 

[JeffB]

"As much as I like 3E, when thinking back to 1st or 2nd edition AD&D, I have to admit that I miss _____________."

The underlying "philosophy" and "tone" of the previous versions

 

[John Crichton]

The elitism of things like Weapon Speed and the unstoppable dual longsword wielding elf.

Actually, I miss viable multiclassed spellcasters. While I really dig the balance of 3e with the classes, there just simply isn't a happy medium where mutliclassed spellcasters can survive like in 2e. That's really all I can think of...