Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

[Li Shenron]

Anyway, I think 3.5 suffered from too many supplements, Rules systems get weighted down and can collapse under that pressure. Limiting choice was the price you paid to keep it flowing. Which is sad, but not horrible.

'Nuff said! Too much unrelated character material, and too many rules addictions. At some point it turned into a character design-fest, many players had more fun building perfect combos than actually playing the game at the table. At least that's the impression I got from the forums... I basically stopped adding character material after the 5 splatbook of 3.0 and MotP (although I later added some FR stuff and UA options).

 

[delericho]

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?

It's somewhere in between.

3e was flawed, and some of those flaws were very deep. Multiclassed spellcasters is one example, LA monsters-as-PCs is another. Fixing those flaws requires a fairly fundamental revision of the game. On the other hand, though, it was also possible for groups to work around most if not all of the flaws without too much hassle.

It's worth noting that 4e will certainly be flawed as well, and will probably contain at least one flaw on the scale of the multiclassed spellcaster issue. That's not an attack on 4e or the designers thereof - it is a reality of a project of this size. And, no matter how much design work they put in, and no matter how much playtesting they did, it would still be the case.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

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

I suspect we differ on the definition of 'fundamentally' in this context.

IMO, a fundamental flaw is one intrinsic to the system or to the base elements thereof.

FUNDAMENTALS of the d20 system, IMO, are: the roll d20 + mods vs. TN resolution mechanic, and the breakdown of abilities into Race, Class, Level, Skill and Feat. I would be disinclined to admit specific examples of the five categories above as 'fundamentals' of the game, because as d20 Modern in particular demonstrates, they can be swapped out with no or almost no change to the mechanics for using them.

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).

Vastly different, perhaps, but pretty much all non-caster material can be ported from one system to the other with little difficulty.

I get the impression the same won't be true of 4e, just as it isn't true of, for example, True20 or Mutants and Masterminds.

I agree that SWSE is flawed, albeit less so than D&D 3.x, but again, I don't consider the flaws fundamental.

 

[Quasqueton]

It just occurred to me that Quasqueton's old thread about differences in WW I, WW2, and jet era airplanes is a great analogy. The P-51 Mustang was not fatally flawed - but it could be improved upon.

With D&D4, we'll get to add another plane era to the list. Yay!

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?p=3263976

It was a sad thing that so many took the analogy as offensive.

Quasqueton

 

[Doug McCrae]

Was 3e fundamentaly flawed

No. Definitely not. No edition of D&D has been fatally flawed, though all have been flawed, even BECMI. The core of the system - character classes, d20 to hit, hit points, Vancian magic, dungeon crawls, a plethora of monsters and magic items - is 100% sound imo.

The major difficulties throughout editions have been keeping the game working all the way up the level track and balancing the casters vs non-casters. These two issues are closely connected.

4e promises to fix them.

 

[Desdichado]

I would say emphatically yes. It seriously did not work well at higher levels, IMO. It was so tedious that even with a laptop to help you run your character it was still more work as opposed to fun. There's a few other subsystems that I think worked poorly, but mostly I think it was a great system from levels 1-10. After that it started getting seriously strained at the seams, and by level 15 I considered it completely unrunnable.

 

[Mercule]

Nope. Not fundamentally flawed.

It is a system with some significant flaws, some of which have really frustrated me. At the same time, it is a system that improved upon its predecessors in many ways.

Not every change was an improvement, which is too be expected. 4E will, no doubt, keep the changes that appear to be improvements and roll-back those that don't. Along with that, they'll make some more changes. Some of those will be keepers, others not so much.

 

[amethal]

No, it isn't fundamentally flawed.

Some of the additional rules that came out over the years were flawed, either in themselves or in conjunction with other rules, but the fundamentals work perfectly well.

At high levels the game does not suit certain DMing styles, but I don't consider that a fundamental problem.

 

[jester47]

I think 3.5 is pretty robust with a few medium tweaks until you start getting 6th level spells. But from levels 1-10 it is pretty solid. If you limit your campaign to level 10 and add the right tweaks (spells lvl 6+ are almost impossible to get and even then are crazy rituals, easier access to wands for wizards and sorcerers, rolling stats in order, rolling hp, function based magic item pricing ala AE, Damage system and healing tweaks) the game works very well statisticly.

Still while 3.x fixed surface math, there was some systemic problems in the math that needed fixing (not just 15 min work day and level vs danger). Statting a monster was just right out after 10 hd. Christmas tree, and magic items needed rethinking. I expect 4e to take care of a lot of this and the tweaks above. But weather I adopt 4e all depends on implementation.

 

[DaveMage]

No, it isn't fundamentally flawed.

Some of the additional rules that came out over the years were flawed, either in themselves or in conjunction with other rules, but the fundamentals work perfectly well.

At high levels the game does not suit certain DMing styles, but I don't consider that a fundamental problem.

Ditto!

This will continue to be the case for 4e (and 5e and 6e).

Oooh...first mention of 6e that i've seen.