His list of the bad things, and my thoughts:
* Facing (now called space) is now always square. In order to facilitate miniatures play (apparently), horses are no longer 5 feet by 10 feet when you put them on a grid, they're a 10-foot square. The horse has to "squeeze" to get through a 5 foot wide space. Three 9-foot-tall ogres require a 30-foot-wide passage in order to walk abreast. D&D, with its already abstract combat system, did not need this extra layer of abstraction. Not to mention the fact that this changes game play in strange ways, such as how many of the charging ogres you can get with your fireball spell.
I agree with this one. I hate the idea of a horse now taking up a 10x10 square.
* The game has an even stronger focus on miniatures. 3.0 had a strong focus on miniatures, but we wanted to at least address the fact that you might not want to play the game that way. But everyone in the Wizards of the Coast offices does, and so now you have to as well. And Wizards has a new line of miniatures to sell you. Seriously, though, for those wanting to play the game sitting on the couch, the game now offers a new barrier for you. The Combat chapter in the Player's Handbook now reads like a miniatures game. More and more of the game stats use "squares" rather than feet (or both). This is a huge step backward toward the "inches" used in 1st Edition.
I play with miniatures, so it doesn't bother me. But I think there was already plenty of rules support for miniatures, so I don't see the need to make them
more important.
* Now weapons are organized by handedness rather than by size. Perhaps the worst change and almost certainly the largest step backward 3.5 has to offer, the new way of handling weapons causes a lot of problems. As you know, in 3.0, weapons were categorized by size, and that size was compared to your own size. So a weapon of your size was a one-handed weapon for you, a weapon one size larger was a two-handed weapon, and a weapon one size smaller was a light weapon. Now, weapons are categorized by handedness, and they do different damage based on size. Thus, it's no longer the case that a longsword is effectively a greatsword for a Small character and a short sword for a Large character. Now, there is a small longsword, a medium longsword (and by implication) a large longsword. So what's the difference between a large longsword and a medium greatsword? About 20 gp. Aside from that bit of humor, though, there's actually a serious design problem here. Because in 3.0, a halfling picks up a magical longsword and uses it in two hands -- no problem. In 3.5, that longsword (presumably a medium longsword) is -2 in the halfling's hands because it's the "wrong size." The DMG doesn't hint one way or the other, but logic assumes that you've either got to roll randomly to determine the size of the magic sword in the treasure hoard, decreasing the chances that any given character will actually find treasure he can use -- and that's not fun. It's more complicated, it's clunky, and it hurts game play.
This is my least favorite change in 3.5 for exactly those reasons. Bleh. Sure, a Longsword for a human probably wouldn't be exactly like a Greatsword for a halfling. But there are
far worse realism sacrifices in D&D than this! What's the point?
* The NPC tables in the DMG are now more open ended, and thus less useful. The NPC tables used to be there when you needed a 7th-level fighter or a 13th-level rogue right then and there, in the middle of a game. They came completely statted up and equipped. Now, if you want to use them in that way, you've got to stop in the middle of the game and decide which weapons the fighter uses and spend 8,000 gp on gear for the rogue. Thus, they are useless for the original goal. I guess the designers felt the charts were "boring," because you got the same 7th-level fighter every time. Now, they are clearly meant to be used as pre-game development aids to help make NPCs. Unfortunately, each 7th-level fighter is still going to be an awful lot like every other one using this method. What's more, if you're not in the middle of the game, there's no reason not to just make one up from scratch (or use one of the excellent character generators out there, many of which are free online).
I've only used the NPC tables once or twice, so I could care less. OTOH, the one or two times I did use them were for NPCs I needed *right then*, not for character building (for that, I used PCGen).
* The duration for ability score enhancing spells has been drastically shortened. Talk about changing the way the game is played. Cat's grace used to last an hour per level, mostly so you could cast it, adjust your stats, and not have to worry about it until you rested (again, it was that way to make game play easier and more fun). Now it lasts one minute per level, which means it sees you through one encounter, or two if you rush in between them. These spells have been rendered nearly worthless -- in particular a spell like endurance, now bear's endurance, for extra hit points are far more useful over the long term than just for one encounter, particularly for those who really need it, like wizards.
The buffs probably were a bit too powerful. I like the new buffs better, I think.
* Lots of the new feats are the kind that just add a +2 bonus to two skills. For this we paid $90 for new books?
* Inevitables are now in the Monster Manual. I (and a legion of 2nd Edition Planescape fans) miss the clockwork modrons these guys supplanted for some reason. Chalk it up to personal preference.
Yeah. And I doubt these feats will see hardly any play in my group.
* Taking levels of a prestige class now apparently forces you to pay multiclassing XP costs. Whether intentionally or by accident, the prestige class chapter no longer states that they are free of this cost.
Holy crap! Can we get a confirmation on this? This makes classes like the Mystic Theurge arguably balanced.
* Some of the new prestige classes are uninteresting (eldritch knight, mystic theurge) and poorly designed. A cleric just falls into the requirements of the hierophant and any 5th-level sorcerer can become a dragon disciple. The requirements for the eldritch knight are also a joke. I won't rehash the whole mystic theurge debate here, but I will complain that there are far too many spellcasting prestige classes -- conceptually, having the archmage, the loremaster, and the Red wizard seems rather silly.
This has been a common complaint. The new PrCs are uninteresting with laughable requirements and "pushing the envelope" level benefits.
* Lots of the "new" material in the DMG is just pulled in from other products -- prestige classes from the various 3.0 supplements, a big chunk of the Manual of the Planes, and the traps from Song and Silence. Lots of D&D fans already own this material.
I know I do. And, personally, I'd prefer if they'd just left it out and let me buy $20 books.
* There are no playtester credits. At all.
Sucks for the playtesters. If there were any!
Things that should have changed, but didn't:
* Caster level is still a prerequisite for magic item creation. This was an error in the 3.0 DMG and remains. You still have to be 17th level to make a 1st-level pearl of power.
Amazing they couldn't even get such basic errata included.
* Speaking of magic items, while the rules for pricing magic items have changed (in some cases, particularly those of constant items or 1 round/level spells), most of the prices haven't conformed to these changes.
What a surprising oversight. The last six to eight months of books have gotten me to start wondering if WotC has
any editors left at all.
* Keoghtom's Ointment: Why is this a wondrous item and not a potion/oil?
Eh.
* Still no good guidelines for creating prestige classes, just more of them in the DMG.
Eh.
* And the big one: The vast majority of the art in the books is the same. So we're expected to plunk down $90 for three books that cost us $60 three years ago, and most of the art is the same?
The price
is high.
