D&D 3E/3.5 Problems with 3.5 I don't wanna see in 4th

[Keenath]

1. Darkness spells casting 'shadowy illumination'. Please make it 'dark'...!

But on the other hand, I dislike the idea of a darkness spell just sucking away all light and making the game into Blind Man's Bluff.

My preference is that a Darkness spell reduces the light within its radius by one step -- bright becomes shadowy, shadowy becomes total darkness. As an added bonus, that helps to answer the question of how darkness and light sources interact.

2. Invisibility. Where to begin. Either start giving saves for this spell, or create much more readily available methods of overcoming it. This has always been a problematic game mechanic.

More to the point, it's always been that Invisibility was overpowered early on, and then worthless at high levels (when See Invis is cheap and many monsters have that or true sight all the time, automatically).

3. Ethereal/Incorporeal/Gaseous/'Touch' attacks. My god... do I need to even mention the issues with these? Please simplify it. 2nd ed was 'need +1 weapons to hit' and it was on with the show. The very name of 'touch attack'... sigh.

AFAIK this stuff is going to be totally rewritten. There's no ethereal now, but incorporeality certainly will still exist -- but hopefully a rules rewrite will make it work properly. I'd definitely expect to see any Jaunt-like abilities turn into "turn incorporeal for X rounds" instead... but they should be more rare, as the devs have noted how plot-breaking it is to have the ability to bypass walls and doors at will.

Touches are out as a seperate mechanic; now you just make an attack against the target's Reflex Defense instead of their AC.

4. Our 3.5 Silence is broken. I hope we get a new one.

I agree! I wrote a new silence spell years ago that I called "Cloak of Silence", which applied a listen penalty to hear sounds produced inside it. Each square of the spell's effect applied a -5 penalty on a listener's check (replacing all normal range penalties for that area), so four squares of Cloak would add up to a -20 penalty to hear the guy in the center -- but it didn't stop spellcasters or whatever, and it was not as obvious if the edge of the effect brushed somebody else -- and somebody in the center of the spell with you could hear you pretty clearly.

I'm hoping to see something like that.

5. Evards Black Tentacles is also on the fritz. With the new grapple rules, this will of course get a tune up.

That just made me laugh, "on the fritz".

6. Rope Trick/Non-Dimensional spaces/Bags of holding/Portable holes. Please explain in more detail. Make it clear if it's bad, then what happens after combining these effects. Oh and also, Rope Trick is broken. At the least, it's like a 'save our game so we can rest again in the middle of the dungeon' button.

I'd be more than happy to see portable holes go b'bye, and rope trick too. Though on the other hand, at least a rope trick would be less interesting now that the wizard won't run out of spells in twenty minutes and demand a full day in the rope trick to recover.

7. Fly. Need more mundane methods of taking down someone who's flying. Arrows and javelins are 'nice', but there needs to be a greater limit on who can fly and for how long IMO.

I concur there -- I like flight, but I'd like to see less "fly spell" and more "I gots wings", and probably some Earthbind type effects to stop enemies from flying.

8. Related to the below comment, Undead and Demons... please, if you do only one of the changes I've asked for, please, please, PLEEEEEASE make it that UNDEAD and DEMONS/DEVILS can see in natural darkness to any range...!! For both a mechanical and common sense point of view, I hate to have Pit Fiends and Liches ordering minions to carry torches around or light a corridor because they can't see further than 60 feet in the dark. Sigh.

Wish granted, I think. First, most monsters are losing their Dark and Low Light vision (geez, in 3.x, virtually EVERYTHING had LLV!), and if it works like in SWSE, they allow you to "ignore concealment from darkness", with DV also ignoring total darkness.

**9. Detect Evil. Again... please, do something about this. As a DM, this would always make your Chaotic Evil sweet-talker dooomed to dangle on the end of a Paladin's spiked chain.

So far as I know, it's just gone gone gone. Aligned creatures in general are rare, and Dave said in one of the Podcasts that you had to figure it out by watching their actions, not by casting a spell.

 

[Craw Hammerfist]

I always thought this was ridiculous. In the real world, just about any active flyer (wing flapping vs. just gliding) can hover. Maybe not for very long, but at least for a 6 second round. Flying and gliding should be two different modes of travel.

Nah. Hummingbirds are the only vertibrates that actually hover. Wings do two things to make you fly. They provide lift and thrust. Lift is dependent on air speed. In an actual hover, you get no airspeed and thus no lift. That is called a "stall." It rhymes with "drop like a rock." The other component, thrust, is what generates the airspeed. Hummingbirds actually create enough thrust to counteract the force of gravity, hence, they are able to fly without lift. The power to weight ratio for all other birds is too low. That said, many birds can maintain lift at a few miles-per-hour. Even a mild breeze can cause them to be stationary relative to the ground, but they are still generating airspeed.

 

[Gundark]

Here's another to add to the list:

Golf Bag Syndrome (ala Monte Cook's description).


DR was and is a mess. Just a headache not needed. Carrying around a Mace, Sword and silver arrows, cold-iron spear... on and on. As a player, a major pain in the arse. Monte's response was to make +1 through +5 able to overcome DR, like +2 overcomes DR Silver etc. Has there been any word on DR yet? I haven't seen or heard anything. Closest I've seen was something about 'Damage Threshold' but it's murky as to what that means. Maybe a damage cap per hit.

Well 3.0 DR was broken as well. 3.5 was somewhat better but not perfect. Hopefully 4e fixes the issue

 

[Keenath]

DR was and is a mess. Just a headache not needed. Carrying around a Mace, Sword and silver arrows, cold-iron spear... on and on. As a player, a major pain in the arse.

I never really saw that happening, myself. As a meleeist, I just *accepted* that some enemies will be weapon-resistant, and I didn't try to carry around a golf club for every situation. I'd get my main weapon with one special material -- MAYBE -- and just assume that if I meet a golem or something, I'll have to hack through his DR.

Closest I've seen was something about 'Damage Threshold' but it's murky as to what that means. Maybe a damage cap per hit.

In SWSE, Threshold is a number calculated based on your Con. When you take more damage than Threshold in one hit, you take some additional negative effects (moving down the condition track). In other words, the threshold represents an 'all or nothing' effect.

Extrapolating from that, Damage Thresholds would mean, for example, if a monster has DR 10, any hit that deals less than 10 damage deals nothing, while any hit that deals more than 10 deals full damage. So if you roll 9 damage, that does zero; if you roll 12, that deals 12 damage (not 2).

Elemental resistances would work the same way. If you have Fire Resistance 15, a hit that deals 20 damage deals 20 damage to you, not 5.

There are a few advantages to that. First, it allows an attacker to deal decent damage even through resistances; it removes the "plinking" issue (where a fighter attacking a golem would deal 5 or 6 damage per hit, which is virtually nothing compared to the monster's HP total). Second, it removes an extra step of math you have to do ("So I deal 24 slashing damage plus 5 fire, minus the monster's DR 15..."), which never really bothered ME -- but some people can't do subtraction in their heads, and either way it's simply less steps you have to do before you come up with a damage total.

 

[Will]

I also hope darkness spells just make it dark, rather than magically dark. But maybe have some other 'magical dark' spell.

It just annoys me that I can't just shut out the lights in D&D without making darkvision and low-light vision shut off. Nngh.

 

[allenw]

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8. Related to the below comment, Undead and Demons... please, if you do only one of the changes I've asked for, please, please, PLEEEEEASE make it that UNDEAD and DEMONS/DEVILS can see in natural darkness to any range...!! For both a mechanical and common sense point of view, I hate to have Pit Fiends and Liches ordering minions to carry torches around or light a corridor because they can't see further than 60 feet in the dark. Sigh.

**UPDATE: After viewing the new 4E Pit Fiend monster entry, I noticed that Pit Fiends still have 'Darkvision', yet, there is hope. The Darkvision entry no longer has a measly 60 foot range, though who knows what the range actually is. For the love of all that is unholy, please, please make sure that this new Darkvision doesn't have a range of 60 feet! Omfg.

Actually, most Devils in 3.5 (and 3.0) *can* see in *all* darkness at any range. They almost all have:
"See in Darkness (Su): X can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, even that created by deeper darkness spells."
I wonder what a 3rd-edition Devil sees if it looks up into a clear night sky? (Besides its old house )

 

[ChaosShard]

Here's another to add to the list:

Golf Bag Syndrome (ala Monte Cook's description).


DR was and is a mess. Just a headache not needed. Carrying around a Mace, Sword and silver arrows, cold-iron spear... on and on. As a player, a major pain in the arse. Monte's response was to make +1 through +5 able to overcome DR, like +2 overcomes DR Silver etc. Has there been any word on DR yet? I haven't seen or heard anything. Closest I've seen was something about 'Damage Threshold' but it's murky as to what that means. Maybe a damage cap per hit.

I houseruled the golf club problem away with alchemical weapon oils that acted as the substance (silver, cold iron, adamantine, etc.) for 10 rounds or 10 swings, which ever comes first. 1 use, and over 250g/vial was enough to balance it out at higher levels, especially for high BAB classes.

 

[Ninja-to]

Actually, most Devils in 3.5 (and 3.0) *can* see in *all* darkness at any range. They almost all have:
"See in Darkness (Su): X can see perfectly in darkness of any kind, even that created by deeper darkness spells."
I wonder what a 3rd-edition Devil sees if it looks up into a clear night sky? (Besides its old house )

Pretty sure you're confusing Devils with Demons. Demons have that Su ability, not Devils IIRC.