Top Ten Reasons I Love 3E

[gribble]

While I have nothing against core-only games, but Gnome Fighter? Gnome "-2 strength, must use weapons one-die smaller" fighter? Ranger, I'd buy (skills) or even gnome barbarian (for the lolz) but fighter?

See things through 4e coloured glasses much?


Seriously, I think the OPs point is exactly that these kinds of quirky characters are possible (even if not 100% optimised) in 3e. Heck, one of my favourite 3e characters was a human fighter/monk (actually a samurai/monk, but there's no reason why he couldn't be done as a fighter) with 10 Str and 10 Con, and he lasted right up to about 24th level...

Theres no way you could play such a character in 4e and have a fun time (at the moment at least).

 

[S'mon]

I do like how 3e can accommodate a wide range of play styles, as long as GM and players are on the same page. The WotC/Paizo default tends towards high-crunch min-maxed hackfest, but you can do a lot of other things with it.

The biggest benefit to 3e is that it gives players a lot of mechanical options in creating their PC, but a starting character can still be created quickly and is not mechanically complex. I do think complexity escalates too much, and the classes are not well balanced at high level - casters tend to dominate, certainly in the default play mode. The first 10 levels of play are very solid though; Fighters are powerful up to about 6th level, Clerics and Wizards are more powerful 7th-10th, Rogues are decent across all levels, but nobody totally dominates.

 

[Piratecat]

Ok, I promised myself I wasn't going to do this, but dammit I can't look at this list without comment anymore....

Stop threadcrapping, please. This isn't appropriate in a "Why I love..." thread.

 

[Shades of Green]

What I loved in 3E:
1) OGL and SRD. Finally a license that does two important things: 1) clarifies and clearly defines what is allowed and what is not; and 2) allows you to create fan (or even commercial) material for d20 within these guidelines without having to deal with any significant copyright/licensing issues. This led to an explosion of new creative material, both fan and commercial.
2) Anyone could be anything; no level limits, no race-class restrictions.
3) Bonus spells for most spellcasters (2E had only for clerics).
4) The ability to add class levels to most monsters so if you want to fight, say, orcs at level 20 you CAN do it without it being a cakewalk.
5) Easy multiclassing (except for the math at higher levels, that is) without 2E's many restrictions on this.
6) AC that goes UP! No THAC0!
7) A unified core mechanic rather than having a different system for each portion of the rules.
8) A wide selection of options - you could find sourcebooks for almost any conceivable campaign type.

What I didn't like in 3E:
1) Prep time, prep time and more prep-time. This was the big fun-killer for me: it made running a game incompatible with my sometimes-tight RL schedule. It also made prepping a game into a chore rather than an enjoyable task.
2) Too many options, some of them having pitfalls; the need for rules mastery and optimized characters to avoid character-building pitfalls; building a higher-level character became a chore.
3) Too much of everything. This was both a blessing and a curse: on one hand it added a lot of variety, but on the other hand it meant too many skills, too many stats on the character sheet, too many stats per monster, and too many things to consider during combat (especially with higher-level characters).
4) Page-flipping and book-referencing during gameplay. This slows down the game and interrupts the fun.

 

[Fenes]

My number 1 reason for loving 3.X:

After several years of use, I have houseruled it to my satisfaction and know the rules.

 

[Runestar]

At the moment, I am still preferring 3e's rules for playing powerful monster races compared to 4e's. I am not trying to start another edition war here, but looking at 4e's take, it simply strips away everything that made the race unique, down to the bare minimum, leaving you with a watered-down version of the original race.

At least in 3e, if I wanted to play a troll PC, I really was a troll as statted in the MM, with all the signature abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Not some green-skinned orc masquerading as one.

 

[CapnZapp]

What I loved in 3E:
1) OGL and SRD. Finally a license that does two important things: 1) clarifies and clearly defines what is allowed and what is not; and 2) allows you to create fan (or even commercial) material for d20 within these guidelines without having to deal with any significant copyright/licensing issues. This led to an explosion of new creative material, both fan and commercial.
7) A unified core mechanic rather than having a different system for each portion of the rules.

The first one is undeniably a major asset.
I picked your #7 to cover all of the "yes, it's way better than AD&D" points. I agree, but that doesn't mean it isn't time to move on.

What I didn't like in 3E:
1) Prep time, prep time and more prep-time. This was the big fun-killer for me: it made running a game incompatible with my sometimes-tight RL schedule. It also made prepping a game into a chore rather than an enjoyable task.

This point alone disqualifies 3E for me.

[sblock]While I would have loved True20 to blossom into a fully-fledged class-based fantasy D&D replacement, that never came to be. I will have to make do with 4E while I await the perfect edition... [/sblock]
But that can't take away the fact that 3E did a tremendous job of modernizing the game, and really the entire industry. Its attention to detail and balance raised the bar into the realm of the professional, where poorly designed homegrown games with non-existent balance simply don't cut it anymore.

So while I can't stand playing you anymore, thank you Third Edition!