D&D 3E/3.5 The indispensable 3.5

[Gold Roger]

Customization of characters and monsters (though not necessarily through feats, multiclassing and prestige classes).

D20 AC and saves.

3rd had the best set of conditions, imo.

I also agree with the jester that avolakia are really cool.

 

[Steely_Dan]

-Playable monsters (Savage Species, I want my Treant Monk).

-Weapon damage types (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing).

-Multiple attacks per round.

-Spell interruption.

-The multi-class system (if they take care of the front-loaded and cherry-picking problem).

 

[Derren]

- Monsters/NPCs build the same way as PCs
- Non combat abilities, also for monsters
- Non combat skills
- No encounter based powers/healing
- Free multiclassing

 

[HardcoreDandDGirl]

I was about to put this in a 2e thread, but since mayfair games was 3rd party I guess 3e fits more.

I like prestige classes, things you grow into. Archmage, Master of 9, Lore master.

 

[Lanefan]

Not a huge 3.x fan overall but one thing in it was to me a revelation:

Spontaneous slot-based casting, as used in the Sorcerer class. No gawd-awful pre-memorization and guessing what you'd be doing that day, and no grinding to a halt half an hour in because you guessed wrong this morning and can't reload until tomorrow.

All casters - divine and arcane - should work like the Sorcerer. (and the irony that this would in fact make the Sorcerer class utterly redundant is not lost on me)

Lanefan

 

[Bobbum Man]

Armor types balanced by max dexterity score bonus to AC.

That is the only 3rd edition rule that I want to see in 5E.

 

[TimA]

skills and feats
customizable monsters
the sorcerer
prestige classes
DR
spontaneous heal switching
everything based on time not gamist notions like encounter

I also agree with Lanefan that ALL casters should function like the sorcerer.

 

[eamon]

I also agree with Lanefan that ALL casters should function like the sorcerer.

The sorcerer's mechanic is beautifully simple, but I'd hate to see that kind of mechanical homogenization. I think it's great that some classes have to work around different limitations than others!

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

There is surprisingly little that I would consider "indispensible" about 3E/3.5. At first I couln't even think of anything, but after going through the thread the ONLY ones I can agree with are:

1) Cleric heal swapping. Simply because it begins to remove the onus upon clerics to be healbots. Doesn't cure it entirely but it was a step in the right direction.

2) Base Attack Bonus. Not because THACO or even using attack charts were so vile and evil, but because BAB is merely a better means to accomplish the same task. Of course, this goes in hand with ascending AC - hardly a new CONCEPT but had not been formally implemented before.

3) Standard creature types like construct, undead. I don't believe ANY monster MUST adhere strictly to some arbitrary set of abilities but it often helps to at least have a standardized place to start when designing certain critters. Too much of this sort of thing, however, simply begins to put arbitrary limitations upon monster design simply for the sake of standardization - and that is a recipe for uninspired design.

4) A list of standardized conditions. Something the game had been needing since 1E - the difference in effects of stunned, dazed, paralyzed, held, etc.

EVERYTHING else I've seen listed I find to decidedly BE dispensible, to have been a design choice whose course ultimately proved to be a mistake, or was a concept that may have had some merit at the outset but was ulitmately allowed to be perverted to where it is actually undesireable.

That's not even to say that I think an earlier edition did it any better. Just that SO MANY of 3E's supposedly terrific improvements turned out badly in the long run. For example, even so simple a thing as cyclic initiative. At first I thought it was brilliant, elegant and so much more sensible but I ultimately found it to merely contribute to combats being tedious and predictable. A simple thing like rolling initiative every round retained an element of randomness and unpredictability that the game NEEDED. Thus cyclic initiative is DISPENSIBLE; nothing wrong with it being an option but definitely not something the game can't do without.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Not a huge 3.x fan overall but one thing in it was to me a revelation:

Spontaneous slot-based casting, as used in the Sorcerer class. No gawd-awful pre-memorization and guessing what you'd be doing that day, and no grinding to a halt half an hour in because you guessed wrong this morning and can't reload until tomorrow.

All casters - divine and arcane - should work like the Sorcerer. (and the irony that this would in fact make the Sorcerer class utterly redundant is not lost on me)

Lanefan

Much like was pointed out in the similar 4E thread: If you're not a 3.x fan then why are you posting here? I'm not a 4E fan so even though there were things that I do like about 4E I refrained from posting in that thread.

Please show us the same respect.