Love it or hate it, 3e style

[pawsplay]

We're certainly past the honeymoon stage, but I like the unified mechanics, the large monster library, configurable options, and good support for character development. Third party support was a huge plus for me as well, though I think I ended up writing more than I borrowed.

 

[Gothmog]

Hate it.

I tried to love it, and played/DMed a lot of 3.x until 2005 or so. The laundry list of things I dislike about 3.x are too long to get into here, but its the only edition of D&D (along with Pathfinder) I'll never run or play again. It was the abberation and "New Coke" of the D&D line for me and my players. The only positive things I can say about it was that 4th edition grew from it and learned from its mistakes, and some cool OGL worlds were made during the 3.x time (Arcanis, Midnight, Conan).

 

[carmachu]

Love it. We're still playing it. 3.X era had alot of stinkers in the glut, but there were also many many gems out there. We love playing in Ptolus......

 

[Dragonblade]

I think the poll results are muddied by virtue of lumping the OGL in there. I despise 3e D&D, but I love M&M, and Spycraft, and some people love Castles and Crusades. I also think Pathfinder is an improvement over the original 3e rules as well.

Many of these are fantastic games that diverge from 3/3.5 D&D quite substantially. In most cases, the designers of these d20 variants remedied or resolved a lot of the poor game design issues that plagued 3/3.5 D&D.

 

[Dragonblade]

Love it. We're still playing it. 3.X era had alot of stinkers in the glut, but there were also many many gems out there. We love playing in Ptolus......

Case in point. I love Ptolus too. But Ptolus is a setting, not the core 3e D&D ruleset. Ptolus is the setting of a 4e campaign I'm currently playing in.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Case in point. I love Ptolus too. But Ptolus is a setting, not the core 3e D&D ruleset. Ptolus is the setting of a 4e campaign I'm currently playing in.

I'm not so sure: I think the line between setting and edition is an interesting one here. Ptolus was Monte's home campaign and influential on the 3e ruleset. Obviously as a setting ported to 4e, it loses much of its edition roots.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[NewJeffCT]

I like a lot of aspects of 3E/3.5, but it's really been a bear to DM for the past year now of my 27 month long 3.5E campaign that is hopefully wrapping up soon. The players are at level 18 and coming up with challenges really takes a lot of work, and I still find myself forgetting certain skills/feats/class abilities/magic items that each villain or monster has - not to mention keeping track of the various buffing spells/items is a lot of work.

What I like is that they have a much more unified mechanic than 1E or 2E, and I think feats & skills add a lot to the characters, and it's also easy to change/adapt your characters into a concept you want. In older editions, it was usually desirable to play a non-human: why be a 7th level human ranger when you could be an elf fighter/mage and be 6th level in both classes? So, it was nice to have a reason to play human again.

 

[ferratus]

As a DM, I hate it with a passion when I think about all the time I wasted on prep.

As a player, I miss the wizards but not any other class.

If I was to play another version of D&D, it would probably be a heavily modified 2e.

 

[Remathilis]

Love, but kinda by default.

Earlier editions have enough inherent flaws* that I don't think I could realistically play them.

Check out the 4e version of this for my 4e thoughts.

So 3e is kinda what I'm left with. While its still a beast in a LOT of areas (HL play, for example) I generally find it the best mix of classic elements (spell slots, 9 alignments, etc) and new innovation (upward AC, skill set) that it feels the best mix for me.

Pathfinder addressed many of my gripes for now, and the wealth of modules and supplements insure plenty of options for me in the future.


* By flaws, I mean things that bug me enough to not really play it further, like downward AC and some inherent class balance issues. My nostalgic itch can be scratched by a retro like Basic Fantasy.

 

[Herremann the Wise]

Out of interest, I find the two spreads of votes in both the 3e and 4e threads interesting. 4e is completely polarized (how's the anti-bell curve on that sucker), whilst the 3e spread is at least at this stage heavily skewed (towards the positive). Does this say anything interesting? Or are online polls meaningless?

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise