The Best and Worst Rules of D&D

[Sejs]

Best: AC going up rather than down, BA replacing THAC0, consolidation of saves, revised leveling system, the replacement of the old NWP system with skill ranks, feats, PrCs replacing kits, plug-and-play monsters, item creation.

Worst: Rapid leveling, monsters as PCs (no, you can't play an Eladrin. stop asking), the idea of 'throw-away' feats (Toughness, Endurance, Skill Focus, Dodge) that suck but get shoehorned in as gateways to cooler stuff. Fighter class skill list. Spiked chains. PrCs that are hideously overpowered but still get released anyway.

 

[Sir Whiskers]

Best:
Multiclassing
Prestige classes (as conceived)
Armor Class goes up
BAB vs. THACO
1d20 + mods for checks
Templates!
Adding classes to monsters

Worst:
Multiclassing (XP penalty, class restrictions)
Prestige classes (as implemented)
Grappling rules

 

[Katowice]

Best: Feats (great way to customize your character)

Worst: Energy Drain attack (still sucks 1, 2, 3, 3.5 editions later.)

 

[Ottergame]

+ no racial restrictions on classes, no level caps, uniform d20 rules, easy to use and understand tactical combat options, spontaneous casting for clerics.

- rule 0, it's ruined more games than its helped.

 

[Liolel]

Best: Templates, and other customizing goodness (monsters with class levels)
Good: The rules for creating new monsters in the 3.5 monster manual
Worst: Trying to assign 8 skillpoint plus int bonus per hitdice for an new outsider monster.

 

[PennStud77]

Best:
--1d20 + mods for just about every roll
--spontaneous casting for clerics
--Feat System
--Skill System
--AC going up
--Initiative System
--Magic Schools and Separate Magic Class lists
--Scrying as a spell, not a skill
--LOVE the ranger's de-specialization in 3.5

Worst:
--Lack of specialization for spellcasters without going into prestige class
--Two-weapon Fighting
--Equal mourning periods for losing and dismissing Familiar
--Sorcerers having to be just as exclusionistic (low skill pregression, etc.) on focusing on their spellcasting as a Wizard, even though the idea is that the magic is somewhat natural to them (as opposed to a Wizard)

Okay, I got a little carried away.

Also, I must confess that I've forgotten what Rule 0 means. Anyone care to refresh my memory?

 

[Darklone]

Rule 0: The DM is right.

 

[Tzarevitch]

Worst:
-CR system blows. It is as inaccurate as any previous xp system, but now it takes more time because xp varies with character level AND with creature HD.
-Prestige classes were a great concept but the implementation was vary bad. Some classes have multitudes of prestige classes (the spellcasters and warrior-types) while others (bards, monks and rogues) are left with few real choices. Many spellcaster prestige classes are trivially easy to get into allowing you to take 1 or 2 levels of nearly a half-dozen different classes. This makes the prestige classes no more prestigeous than the core classes, they just don't have restrictions on how you can take them. There should be a multi-class restriction on the prestige classes just as there is for the core classes. You should not be able to bounce through 1-2 levels of 6 different prestige classes to cherry pick one or two good abilities.
-Cleric Domains - Terrible, terrible implementation. This is the single poorest thought-out aspect of 3e in my opinion. Most domains don't give you any real benefit in terms of additional spells(most of the spells are already on the cleric list making the domain slot simply a very restricted bonus spell slot) or in terms of the domain power. Domain powers are so widely variable in terms of power that there are certain domains that you ALWAYS choose if you can get them.

My understanding was that the intent behind the domains was to provide some clerical differentiation similar to the old cleric "Spheres" concept. It fails miserably. The domains overlap so much with the normal clerical spell list that there really is no variety. All the domains do is produce bookkeeping headaches. You have a "special" limited-use slot which usually only allows you to cast a select number of spells that you already know as opposed to the entire list like all of your other slots. Dumb idea! Dumb idea!! Dumb idea!!!

Template bloat - These have gone from great idea to downright stupid through sheer overuse. Many of the original templates were necessary and made a lot of sense. The new ones are reaching the level of silly. Next we'll see the Half-Barney template where the right side of the original creature's body is transformed into a plush, purple dinosaur which can produce mind-control effects on children with its song.

Vorpal - God I wish WoTC designers would just kill this damn sacred cow. The ability is grossly out of balance. It is more powerful than even epic weapon enhancments yet costs less and is easier to make. No epic enhancment produces a no-save-insta-kill like this does yet ALL epic enhancements cost more than it does. It was so out of balance that the designers reduced the power of Keen and Improved Critical AND reduced vorpal weapons so that the special effect only has a chance of triggering on a natural 20 yet it is still out of whack. It just is now only out of whack on a 1 in 20 chance instead of up to 10 in 20 under 3.0.

The Best:
Pretty much all of the rest of 3.5.

 

[Gez]

Worst: The Holy Word spell killing neutral persons and creatures. If Good is just another flavor of Evil, "just to have all alignment balanced", then it defeats the purpose of calling alignments the way they are. Just name them Arm and Core, or Atreides and Harkonnen, or whatever. If they're philosophies, they're bound to have differences. (Reminds me how in Warcraft 2, the only difference between an alliance unit and a horde unit was its graphics. All stats were the same. Oh, and spellcasting one had different spells. That's all. Even the upgrades were the same.)

Best: The Skill + Feat thingie was pretty clever. But there's an overload of feats.

 

[Ottergame]

Rule 0 is "there are no rules you must use or cannot change."