Thumbs Down to 3.5 Edition

[Camarath]

Let me see if I have this straight. Are you saying you want D&D to be nothing more than a more complex game of chess? Or are you saying you think all DMs are control-freaks looking to humiliate and belittle the players? (Neither, I suspect, but y'see, that's the trouble with interpreting things out of context).

I am sorry if I took you post out of context but I just don't see how having rules and being a "quality" DM are necessarily in conflict. IMO the job of a rule system is just that to be a system of rules that allows me to run a game rather than merely tell a story. I think that story telling and role-playing are important parts of the game but it is not the responsibility of the rule system to mandate and facilitate them IMO that is the DM's job. I also see nothing wrong with playing D&D as just a more complex game of chess, while I do not play that way myself it is nice that the rules are adequately thorough enough that I could do so if I wanted to. I am not sure how you extrapolated some sort of bias agianst DMs from my post.

There's a happy medium between rule-free free-form role-playing and rule-heavy table-top miniatures battle. I personally believe 3E almost got it right, although weighing slightly more towards the table-top miniatures battle than the free-form role-playing. I personally think 3.5E has taken a step further towards the table-top miniatures battle end of the spectrum. Where it goes from here, I can't say, but as a matter of personal choice, I'm not prepared to go much further than 3.5E towards the chess-like D&D. YMMV

Cheers, Al'Kelhar

So you liked the the system of which you said "The philosophy underlying 3E is to remove the DM from the game". I am sorry I missed that in your post. I had thought you did not like 3e or 3.5e because their rules covered areas you thought should be the DM sole domain (note: I am not sure what rules you find objectionable). One thing I especially like about 3(.5)E is its transparent modular nature which makes it ease for me to alter and amend the rules to suit my game and my group's game playing style in a way that would be diffcult with a less substantial and less assessable rule system. I look at the rules as being a tool to helping me arbitrate in-game situations and occurrences rather than an impediment to my doing so.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not sure that 3.5 has really polarized gamers; most seem to look at it and say, "eh, who cares?" rather than loving or hating it. Certainly there are folks doing both of the latter, but I don't think 3.5 is really that big of a deal.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Let me see if I have this straight. Are you saying you want D&D to be nothing more than a more complex game of chess? Or are you saying you think all DMs are control-freaks looking to humiliate and belittle the players? (Neither, I suspect, but y'see, that's the trouble with interpreting things out of context).

I really don't see it as a bad thing that the DM doesn't have to adjudicate every rule out there. This isn't the DM's sole function. IMO it isn't that much of a DM function at all. Why have rules that force the DM unnecessarily to adjudicate the rules? Let the house-rulings that spring from unclear rules be at a minimum, I say. So the DM has more time house-ruling those rules he doesn't like, preparing the story the game is to tell, run the NPC's and Monsters as real persons/creatures, and handling the details. I'd really hate it if the DM couldn't have his villain have some quirks because he needed his time figuring out how rule x works and didn't get to fleshing out the NPC

 

[Tzarevitch]

I must admit I almost totally disagree with your conclusions.

1. Playtester credits.
I don't see how there is an exact corrolation between number of playtesters and time spent playtesting, and the quality of the playtesting. Playtesting is an imprecise art. Two years spent playtesting by 500 people does not mean that something was better playtested than 4 months and 100 people. More is not necessarily better especially since as has been pointed out, a great deal of 3.0 and 3.5 is the same. One could also easily argue that since 3.5 is a follow-on to 3.0 that it actually was playtested MORE because it could reuse much of the original playtest data or they could playtest less because they didn't see the need to make many wholesale changes (and they didn't).

Failure to credit the playtesters is an issue between WoTC and those playtesters. I fail to see how that has anything to do with how good or bad 3.5 is (other than poor editing if the credits were forgotten.)

2. Unnecessary rules changes.
Weapon Sizing - This is a trivial change. If you DMed anything other than size M creatures in 3.0 you already had to deal with weapon-size issues, just under the 3.0 name. It has no impact pro or con on my opinion of 3.5.

Damage Resistance - A change for the better in my opinion. 3.0's system was horrible. By about 12th level DR was useless under 3.5 because by then Greater Magic weapon would breach almost any DR you were likely to encounter. If you couldn't breach the DR for some reason then YOU were useless because the damage threshhold was frequently too high to breach at the levels you were encountering them. I could have lived with the 3.0 system if I had to but 3.5 is better. It adds variety and actually makes having a DR matter.

As for the oft-repeated "Golfbag of Weapons" argument, regardless of the complaints of some, it is not a huge handicap. Well prepared melee characters carry several weapons anyway, if nothing else to deal with creatures like clay golems with complete immunities to certain weapons. If you do think it is a huge handicap, get a bow and different types of arrows. It has the same net effect but is lighter.

CRs - This needed fixing. The rule on CRs and advanced monsters in 3.0 was a mess. Personally I despise the CR system itself but at least 3.5 made it clearer and fairer.

Paladin Mounts - I think the mount-summoning bit is stupid but it is not without precedent. There is a 3.0 psychic warrior power that does much the same thing.

Subdual Damage/Non-Lethal Damage - Name change, who cares? (Enough said.)

Spell Focus - This point I agree with. I do not see the change was necessary. However, I disagree that Greater Spell Focus was a problem.

Major Spell Alterations - As far as I am concerned, most of these were necessary, the remainder were not crippling. I agree with the changes for haste, harm, heal and polymorph other. I don't think that the stat boost spells, hold person, disintegrate and a couple of others needed changes but I don't have a problem with the reasoning why they were changed. The change to the darkness spells however was just plain stupid. I also have issues with the changes to Freedom of Movement, and Death Ward. Other than that however, I find the spell changes overall positive if for no other reason than it removed the need for many DMs to house-rule changes.

Fantasy Flavor Removal: I don't understand your point on this one. The rules don't give flavor. The DM and his setting give flavor. 3.5 has no more or less "flavor" than 3.0 did (or 2.0 or 1.0).

Breakdown of Open Gaming: You are implying that 3.5 did not take into accound the requests of WotC's customers when in fact from what I saw they did. They heard the requests that most of us were making and made changes accordingly. I don't see the breakdown issue that you refer to.

Tzarevitch

 

[Junkheap]

I stopped posting or visiting here a month ago because I was sick of every other topic being a DnD 3.5 whine session.

Have we not YET moved onto more interesting conversation items?

I know eh! Personally me and my group LOVE 3.5 10 lvl + adventures on 3e with spellcasters broke the game down to the point that it was not fun anymore(unless you play necro stuff like necropolis). And the new DR rules rock. It gives a much more strategic element to the game than just hack, hack, hack, is it dead yet? hack , hack...etc. Only problem i have is that the DR rules should not apply to weapons of +5(IMO) +5 weapons are ultrarare and special, but i can live with that.

Minis: Don't really care. We play the mini game as well, plus we can use the figures in our games. Pretty damn cheap too, have bills to pay but $10.99 per pack CDN, is pretty damn cheap.

Changes to spells: Mostly perfect. Haste was a huge problem before. Harm wasn't really used much. Will spells against fighter types was pure death before, not it isn't as bad, but survivable.

Our only gripe with 3.5 was that we bought all the splat books(which the life of me thought it was only a 2e thing), and again they are completely useless. Our group is one of the groups that like only wotc stuff(official). We always find it much more balanced to the core rules than addins from other companies. A bit sore that they nerfed my fav prestige class(dueslist), but i can live with it.

I seriously don't see how this can ruin a game for you. And we have about 10 people in our group, most of us playing since basic d&d, where i just used to be a dwarf(so simple back then!)

 

[Olorin]

Yes, beforehand if I didn't have the +3 weapon, I couldn't do anything at all, but I could find a caster to solve that problem, or I could get sure strike on my weapon. Now there is no way to have one weapon which you can use all the time.

That is the point.

 

[Mercule]

We're just in the process of upgrading to 3.5. So far, I'm liking most of what I'm seeing.

The thing that kills me most is when someone can actually complain about both the loss of "Fantasy Flavor" and the new DR rules in the same breath. Back in 1987 or so, I got tired of the fact that werewolves' weakness to silver never mattered, so I determined that resistance to everything but silver (etc.), meant just that.

Yup. That means that for 10+ years I ran a game where werewolves took I ZERO damage from from a +5 Holy Avenger unless it was silver. Likewise for wolfweres and iron. And so on and so forth. Strangely enough, I never, ever, had any players with a "golf bag". In fact, that was one of my best received house rules. Why? Because it improved the mythic feel of the game.

All that 3.5 does is save me from having to go through the books and evaluate all the monsters -- which I've been too lazy/busy to too. Heck, WotC did a more thorough job than I would have. The holysilver or whatever for pit fiends is such a great idea. If you think it makes the monster too tough for a 15th level party, just up the CR. Easy as pie.

As far as creating magic items goes, I have had a long-standing guideline in my game that "anything an NPC can do, the PCs can too" (with obvious exceptions like deities). I don't care if the PCs ever create the items. I just think that any DM who denies the ability to his players' characters is playing dirty pool. It's basically saying, "Well, you guys are heroes and all, you just aren't the heroes."

I especially like that PCs can create items that no one has ever heard of before. The PCs are the focus of the story. If everything they have is just a knock-off of someone else's stuff, that's pretty bland. Pretty unheroic. In fact, it's pretty un-fantastic.

I'll also stick my head up and say that I like the revisions to most of the spells. I'm not entirely sure about all of them, but most are good. Why? because it better reflects fantasy works. In most fantasy, the casters are support. Gandolf went off and did his own thing. Merlin played more advisor to Arthur than artillery. Conan regularly chopped up mages. I don't have a problem with wizardly heroes -- Geb of Earthsea is awesome, as is Merlin in the Crystal Caves. I just want sword slingers to be able to do their thing without the casters being the only way to win.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I agree wholeheartedly. For those who play con games or living games (or those in home games that don't have any particular theme monster--"we're travelling to Haven to return this sword we found in the ogre's lair to its rightful owner and along the way we run into a werewolf, a demon-summoning cult, a coven of hags and their guardian golem in a cursed wood, the devil they summoned to infest the nature spirit, and the corrupted fey that were the result of the nature spirit's corruption" would account for DR/Silver, DR/cold iron, DR/good, DR/adamantine, DR/Cold Iron AND magic (the corrupted (fiendish) fey) and possibley DR/Silver (or cold Iron) AND good (if the demon or devil was particularly powerful), they need to be prepared for all eventualities because they don't know what they will encounter next.

I have to say I was glad I followed the golf bag approach (steel longsword, silvered light mace, cold iron dagger, silver and cold iron arrows, and oil of bless weapon) with my Living Greyhawk first level rogue the other day. We were tracking down an escaped prisoner and "Boom!" all of a sudden some devils appeared (it made sense in the context of the story but we weren't expecting it). I was the only character with a silvered weapon. It doesn't take very long at all for the golf-bag approach to demonstrate its necessity.

Which unearths an old point that I made a long time ago WRT the DR issue. I personally don't have a problem with the DR rules themselves (well, I didn't see the point of collapsing +1 -> +5 to "magic", but that's easily remedied.) What creates the problem is that so many creatures in the MM use specific material DRs now. Sure, having a few things like Rakshasas and Lycanthropes having their signature weaknesses is flavorful and appropriate, but almost every single outsider has some sort of specific material or alignment DR.

It doesn't take a golfbag of exotic monsters. My campaign was only 2nd level before my players found it necessary to carry a 2nd weapon to beat skeletal undead. At low levels where some PCs only do 1d6 or so damage, 5/bludgeoning DR is way more telling than the old half damage restriction.

 

[JoeBlank]

I stopped posting or visiting here a month ago because I was sick of every other topic being a DnD 3.5 whine session.

Have we not YET moved onto more interesting conversation items?

By my count there are currently 24 other topics on the front page, and only one of them mentions 3.5. Check a few of them for "interesting conversation items."

 

[Cerubus Dark]

By my count there are currently 24 other topics on the front page, and only one of them mentions 3.5. Check a few of them for "interesting conversation items."

I think he means "Why won't this post die!"


To sum up...
1. If you don't like 3.5 DON"T PLAY IT!
2. If you don't like the Minis DON"T USE THEM!
3. If you don't like D&D WHY ARE YOU HERE!