Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

[Anthtriel]

For those who say it's not fundamentally flawed: What about casters and multiclassing?

All sufficiently complex rule systems are fundamentally flawed, some more than others.

I'll go ahead and say that I saw problems with 3E the first time I read it. The toughness feat comes to mind, and I didn't believe multiclassing would work properly (It worked better than I believed, but nowhere near as well as advertised, or believed by significant parts of the player base). Most of the designers are bound to have seen problems themselves.
But that's fine. If you try to do the "perfect rule set", you won't ever get done, there are always problems asking to get fixed, sometimes requiring an overhaul of the entire system. At some point, the deadline approaches, and you just have to be happy with what you did, hoping the flaws don't ruin too many games.

4E will certainly have fundmental flaws of its own. But since the designers have a lot of experience with 3E and (against popular belief) are not a bunch of complete morons, there will be less, or at least different flaws.

The fact that a 95% compatible rulesset (Star Wars Saga Edition) fixed the vast majority of what I considered flaws demonstrates how surface-level and superficial those flaws were.

Star Wars Saga is vastly different as far as I'm concerned. Completely different class and "magic" design. And without the 3E legacy, I would go ahead and call it flawed. Differences in Bab between classes is not meaningful if there are just two different progressions, random hitpoints are the devil (though nicely mitigated in Saga).

 

[Votan]

The fact that a 95% compatible rulesset (Star Wars Saga Edition) fixed the vast majority of what I considered flaws demonstrates how surface-level and superficial those flaws were.

True but that might be the transition to 4th edition.

In a more general way, I think that the flaw of 3.X was complexity. When DMing, I found it to be a real challenge to deal with the need to stat out NPCS/Monsters and to keep track of all of their options. A dragon is a cool beast but you need to spend a lot of time figuring out how to run one effectively.

I'd rather the same overall effectiveness from fewer (flashier) powers.

But it wasn't a fundamental flaw so much as room to improve. And that can be true no matter what you do -- even very good pieces of work can be improved. No piece of my writing has ever been so good that no editing or rewriting is possible.

 

[Morrus]

Anyhow back to the topic at hand...Was 3e fundamentaly flawed and WotC knew it and contintued to work with a seriously flawed ruleset...Or is this just the designers trying to convert us to 4e? Or what degree of in-between is there?

There is no such thing as a product that cannot be improved - whether that be cars, computers, training shoes, cosmetics, or RPGs. That doesn't mean the previous version was "fundamentally flawed", but that evolution and development continues all the time, and at some junctures along that evolution, things are released.

 

[Shroomy]

Yes, I think that 3.5e is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn't make it an unplayable or unfun game. Here is what I mean. In the core system, the game is designed to be viable from levels 1-20, but the game's "sweet spot" only extends from levels 4-14. The sweet spot is an aggregate result of the system's fundamental assumptions and mathematics. This is the 3.5e fundamental flaw.

 

[Cadfan]

Of course it was "fundamentally flawed," as in, "the fundamental rules of 3e had problems in them."

The job of a new edition is to update the game to match evolved gamer tastes, fix the flaws in the rules, and then reach further. Chances are, the updates will anger older gamers but will be well done, the fixes to the flaws in 3e will be pretty good, and the parts of 4e which reach further will be decent, but with flaws in them as well. And even if those flaws are subtle, the longer we all play 4e the more apparent they will become.

Eventually a 5th edition will be released, which will do the same thing.

I am at peace with this.

 

[Stormtower]

Cadfan's description of how rules evolve and why editions change in the crucible of "actual play" (the thousands of game groups around the world, as opposed to smaller scale pre-release playtesting) is very articulately laid out in Bill Slaviscek's essay "The Living Game" (Rules Compendium p.37).

 

[Stalker0]

At its core, the game system is just that....a system. And all systems are abstractions of reality, and as such, are flawed.


I learned this lesson well in school. Take a quick lesson from astronomy. I'm sure many people have heard about Gallileo and the Earth-centric vs Sun-centric theory of the solar system.

People are taught that the sun-centric theory was proven "true" and the earth-centric one "false", but that's not really the case.

What happened was there were certain events in the solar system that required a LOT of complicated math by the earth-centric theorists to explain correctly. But they did explain them. Its not like earth-centric people lived in some kind of cosmic blackhole of ignorance. Their equations did the job they needed them to do.

However, along comes sun-centric, and suddenly equations that took blackboards on top of blackboards to complete could now be done in a few lines. The model was cleaner and smoother, so eventually it was chosen as a better tool for the solar system, not because it was truely more "correct" but it was more "convenient". Keep in mind, the original solar-centric theory wasn't perfect, it had plenty of problems of its own. But these were less severe than the earth-centric ones.


Dnd is the same. 3e is a fine system, but we all know there are a few cases with those blackboards full of headaches it causes. However, we've all gamed with it for years so its obviously done its job. However, if 4e provides a cleaner, better way of providing this enjoyment, then its a good next step and we should adopt it.

 

[Odhanan]

Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

I don't think so.

 

[WayneLigon]

Anyhow back to the topic at hand...Was 3e fundamentaly flawed and WotC knew it and contintued to work with a seriously flawed ruleset...Or is this just the designers trying to convert us to 4e? Or what degree of in-between is there?

Most of the other posters echo my own thoughts: that as you develop something, you learn about it. Eventually, you think of better ways to do something. It might take mnutes, it might take years for certain ideas and problems to reveal themselves and then longer to fix them.

 

[Psion]

Anyhow back to the topic at hand...Was 3e fundamentaly flawed and WotC knew it and contintued to work with a seriously flawed ruleset...Or is this just the designers trying to convert us to 4e? Or what degree of in-between is there?

I think, to be fair, it's hard to separate the two.

Comments by designers in various venues make it pretty clear that there are elements of the 3e design that had major differences with. The design staff has changed over the years; I think part of the criticisms stem from differences in philosophy.

A lot of these criticisms are, frankly, things that I have NEVER seen be a problem in my home game, but I could see arising in the RPGA. I remember Sean Reynolds commenting in defense of the (fundamntally flawed ) ECL rules that they were written to be so restrictive because they had to take into account the most abusive players.

To me, this means that the system as played by an average group will be less than optimal, because the game is written to the "most munchkin common denominator".

This will continue to be the case for 4e (and 5e and 6e). New editions are never going to make a game fit your playstyle exactly, and the notion that there exists and "objectively pure" game is faulty. The thing you eventually have to do is find a game and/or edition that fits your groups playstyle close enough, and then make it your own.

Edit: THAT SAID, jumping back to the idea of "differences of philosophy", I would not dismiss at all the notion that the designers would sell their decisions as improvements as they shift into "marketing mode".