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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9745542" data-attributes="member: 907">Well, for one thing different people identify different problems with 3e. But there are some commonly identified.For example, one issue with 3e is that specializing in a skill quickly gives you a much higher skill bonus than not doing so, so pretty quickly any challenge will either be aimed at the rubes and be a cakewalk for competent people, or be aimed at the specialist and be impossible for someone untrained. The obvious solution is to compress the potential values somewhat. In 4e, you get +level/2 to all skills, with an additional bonus if you're proficient and an additional potential bonus for taking the Skill Focus feat. In the playtest version of PF2, they gave you +level to all skills as well, with an additional +1/2/3/4 depending on proficiency level (in the release version, they changed those to +2/4/6/8 and removed the +level for being untrained and gave you the option of getting that via a feat). These are not exactly the same, but they're close. History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.Another 3e issue was that while multiclassing in general was pretty weak, there were some combinations, particularly of front-loaded classes where abilities synergized too well (e.g. rangers getting free two-weapon fighting or rapid shot which was great when combined with something like the rogue's sneak attack). So 4e removed 3e-style multiclassing and added the ability to get curated abilities from another class via feats. PF2 did... pretty much exactly the same thing. Not implemented in quite the same way, but the same structure.A third issue was that building monsters in 3e was unnecessarily complicated, because you treated the monster type (e.g. Monstrous Humanoid or Dragon) as a class with the hit dice being levels in that class. So if you wanted a chonky monster with lots of hit points, you'd have to load it up with many hit dice, which also made it good at attacking and gave it enormous amounts of skill points. Or you could give it a very high Constitution, but that would in turn bring its Fortitude save up and create a discrepancy between an amazing Fortitude save and a crap Will save, giving most big chonky monsters a very obvious achilles heel. 4e's solution was to do away with monster types as something that had inherent meaning, making it only something that was relevant if something made it relevant (e.g. +2d6 damage vs fish). Instead monsters had one of a small number of roles, and role + level gave you what stats the monster was supposed to have, with some wiggle room. You want a level 5 brute? That'll be about 60+Con hp, AC 17, other defenses 17 (but maybe Fort 19, Ref 17, Will 15?), attack bonus +8, about 2d8+4 or something else averaging about 13 points of damage. You want a level 5 artillery instead? That's 36+Con hp, AC and other defenses 17, attack bonus +12, and dealing about 1d10+4 damage. PF2 does a similar thing, except they don't have formal roles and instead give low/medium/high ranges for most stats, and then tells you "If you want a ranged attacker you should use low AC and hp, high accuracy, and moderate damage". Again, similar solution to the problem.</blockquote>

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