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Message: <blockquote data-quote="earthsea_wizard" data-source="post: 9711906" data-attributes="member: 7049259">Some good stuff in here. I think your About Section 1 afterward expects way too much from Hasbro haha, but is relevant to this thread.The "original writers" you mention are the three who wrote 3e, before Hasbro owned WotC. Two of them were pushed out before the 3.5e revision and the one who stayed onboard for 3.5 was, I think, freelancing at that point (Skip Williams), and mostly did the Monster Manual and then did very little work for the 3.5 line. The entire approach to 3rd edition shifted with Hasbro. The original 3 designers didn't even intend to publish new classes for the edition, they felt that their new approach to multi-classing, their feat system and their skill system all combined would enable you to cover the fantasy archetypes you needed, and in a broad sense they are correct. Notice none of the 3.0 splat books have new classes.The team who revised 3.5e, a move largely known to have been too-soon, mostly for profit, and in many ways to adjust the rules to better fit with the new miniatures game (even something like the change to way the cover worked, and other rules that required a DM to adjudicate being altered), were not in a position to care or be motivated to provide players with the type of patch you mention.I love the 3e chassis, the flavor of it, the approach that Cook, Tweet and Williams took to writing the game in a way that conceded to the then vocal majority shouting that D&D was 20 years behind every other RPG in terms of mechanics and useability while aslo keeping so much of the DNA of the original editions. I have gone back to 3e using the errata that was released for it and about two pages worth of updates from 3.5 and I am happy with it. The era of having to run into tables of wotc messageboard players is over and I think core 3.0 actually fits a niche that a lot of people would love and maybe have forgotten existed (many people in time have fallen prey to the myth that 3.0 and 3.5 are largely the same game. In reality there were thousands of changes to the game. Here is every change just in the PHB alone: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090216171437/http://www.users.bigpond.com/steven_cooper/dnd/" target="_blank">Changes for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, collected by Steven Cooper</a>). It really does read and play like late 2nd edition with the better of the combat and tactics rules added on, and none of the 3.5 baggage to go with it. And given that it was designed in the 1990s, by AD&D players and playtesters (Peter Atkinson himself was obsessed with 1e AD&D, Wizards of the Coast was the name of his home campaign group, probably the last time the D&D brand was entirely directed by a D&D player. And actually the only time it was run by a D&D player other than when Gary was in charge), it makes sense that it would read as an evoltuion of the D&D line. 3.5 started taking major steps away from this, the new iteration of the internet being to blame for much of it.As an aside: Anyone interested enough in the thousands of changes who takes the time to look through that link might be surprised to find that there are countless changes, additions, and "clarifications" to the text between 3e and 3.5 that simply amount to the text treading the reader as if they have 0 intelligence. Things are spelled out that for most groups would never need to have explained to them, because the answers are already inherent in what was written. Another known motivation for many of the 3.5 changes was to cater to RPGA play, and this is a sign of that. I've read the entire document and it is actually quite embarrasing in retrospect. It also is the culprit for a lot of added verbosity to the rules. Things that were covered with a few obvious sentences in the 3e text become a paragraph of ifs, ands and buts in 3.5.</blockquote>

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