D&D 3E/3.5 Things from 3e (inc PF) not done well

[Olaf the Stout]

1. Cross-referencing monster/NPC stats. I know others like them (and they are fine if you know the system inside out), but having to look up several spells, feats, or even common abilities is a nightmare for keeping combats fast. (Case in point - I bought PF Beastiary. Looked at my good old fav, simple orc? Two powers I did not know. 1 was 'Light Sensitivity', with no description, so I look it up in the back and it tells me orcs are dazzled in bright light. So I find Dazzled in the massive core book. It turns out Orcs are -1 to attack (I think) in bright light. Why not write that in the original statblock? Would have been shorter. Anyway, broke my own list rule, will create thread if others wish).

Even worse for me was some of the spell cross referencing. From memory Shapechange was the worst offender. The spell description was quite long and would tell you it worked just like Polymorph apart from (several) differences.

You would then look up Polymorph, which also had a long spell description and would tell you it worked like Alter Self apart from (again) several differences.

At that point, you would look up Alter Self, see the lengthy spell description and just find another spell with a shorter spell description to cast!

It would be funny if it wasn't such a nightmare to try and deal with during play. At the very least they could have told you what page the spell it referenced was on.

Instead you had to madly flick through the book to find it. The spells are in alphabetical order, but it still took time that could have been saved with a page reference.

The other thing I would add to this list is indexing. A lot of the 3.x edition books did not have an index in them. Those that did were often quite lacking. A good index is a godsend when you need to find something quickly in a game.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Zireael]

* Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards
* PrC bloat
* Feat bloat
* Save-or-die or save-or-suck
* Polymorph
* Teleportation
* critical misses and critical successes
* Levels, attributes scaling indefinitely
* Some classes in too many forms (Clerics vs. Favored Souls)
* Wealth by level
* Encounter Level

 

[kitsune9]

Probably, my only complaint about 3.5 and PF is that monster stat blocks are too big. I think they should have found a way to condense information. I actually did like the smaller blocks in 3.0 but at times, the info was hard to read (which led to the long format in 3.5 and PF).

 

[Number48]

* Combat that involved everyone moving forward and then just stopping until something fell. Not too epic.
* Combat that could be over before it began with sneak attack/save-or-die/or high-damage crit. These should be lucky but not combat-ending.
* Prestige class implementation. The concept is awesome. The execution? If I have an organization of the Heroes of the Fallen Temple and want to express that as a prestige class, I assume every Hero of the Fallen Temple was a fighter for 4 levels, a rogue for 2 and picked up 3 languages? No. Make prestige classes fit better with a concept that might apply to far more characters instead of a way to super-maximize a combat specialty.

 

[WheresMyD20]

The two biggest mistakes 3e made had to do with monkeying with two traditional core D&D mechanics:

1. Hit Point inflation: Allowing full hit points + Con bonus for every level past traditional name level (usually between levels 9 & 11, inclusive) lead to mountains of hit points at high levels. This made attacks that do hit point damage far less effective than they should be.

2. Saving Throws adjusted for attack source: Previously, saving throws were based on the target's class and level. This meant that high level characters almost always made saving throws. Since they almost always made their saving throws, they had good protection against high-level spells which were often save-or-die. By modifying for the attack source, high level characters in 3e no longer made saving throws with such consistency. This meant that high-level save-or-die spells were much more effective than they should be.

I think it was these two factors, more than anything else, that broke high-level play in 3e. Attacks that did hit point damage were far too weak and attacks that did save-or-die were far too strong.

I'm still baffled that the designers of 3e didn't realize that this would be the outcome when they made those two fundamental changes. I'm even more surprised that it wasn't caught in playtesting.