Was 3rd edition fundamentaly flawed?

[Riley]

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?

Neither. 3e is a very good system, but - like so very many things in life - it is not perfect. It made tremendous advances over all that had gone before, but like all games, it has its frustrating bits.

Now WOTC has rebuilt the system to address those shortcomings (a very small subset of its overall traits) - hopefully adding to D&D's net greatness without either 1) creating more frustrating bits than it eliminates, or 2) losing the "essence" of what D&D is (whatever that is, exactly).

We'll have some idea whether or not they succeeded in July 2008.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Flaws? Yes. Fundamentally flaws? No, not really, considering that SWSE uses the same fundament. And from what we can gather from 4E, it rests on the same foundation.

BAB, d20 mechanic, classes - these fundamental things are remaining. Stuff, that was built on that (spells, the way the classes were designed) - no.

And Iron Heroes, AE, Modern, Conan and many other stuff rests on the D&D as a fundament and do quite well.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Howndawg]

3e definitely has its flaws, but I would not go so far as to say it is fundamentally flawed. The biggest problem IMHO was the CR system and how it was based on party balance, the right amount of gear, and four encounters between resting.

 

[Anthtriel]

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.

Wait, no one argued that the d20 system is fundamentally flawed.
3E is another beast. The strong connection between level in a caster class and casting power are fundamental in 3E, as far as I'm concerned. And I don't just mean caster level, but also access to high-level magic and spell slots. This connection is essentially what makes the multiclassing rules for casters broken.
Without a complete rewrite of all the caster classes this problem cannot really be fixed. And even then, there are a couple of other classes (like the monk) with similar problems, showing us that there were fundamental errors in class design.

Then you have the entire problem of Vancian magic and per day abilites with the 15 minute adventuring day, requiring a rewrite of the entire magic system (because spells are currently not balanced for per encounter), because again, fundamental assumptions for spells were wrong.

Along with that, you have the overly complex stat blocks, which make DM preparation, especially at higher levels, a pain. To mitigate that, you need to rewrite every single monster, because the fundamental assumptions of monster design were flawed.

All flaws that require rewriting of vast amounts of material are fundamental flaws, as far as I'm concerned, you cannot really solve them with anything but a new edition.

BAB, d20 mechanic, classes - these fundamental things are remaining. Stuff, that was built on that (spells, the way the classes were designed) - no.

BAB is bad. At low levels, there is next to no difference between fighters and wizards in terms of hitting things, at high levels the difference is so large that everything is either hit by fighters automatically, or cannot ever be hit by wizards. That is why the sweet spot is right in the middle.

A static difference (i.e. fighters always have around +5 on hit more than a wizard) extend the sweet spot to all levels, which is exactly what is required.
Saves suffer from the same problem, which is why in Saga, classes give static boni to them.

 

[Grog]

I think there were a few fundamental flaws. The big one I can think of right offhand is multiclassing. 3.X multiclassing works just fine - unless you're playing a spellcaster. Then, it's totally broken. It was broken so throughly that it warranted the release of PrC band-aids for it with the 3.5 revision, but that really didn't do anything to address the flaws in the system.

Another problem is the power imbalance between spellcasters and non-spellcasters (the game is too heavily weighted against spellcasters at low levels, and too heavily weighted in favor of them at high levels). Though, in fairness, this isn't unique to 3.X - it's been a problem in every edition of D&D.

And then there's the matter of CoDzilla, and the fact that high level characters are FAR too dependent on magic items.... So, yes, while I think 3.X D&D was a good system, it definitely had some fundamental problems.

 

[Odysseus]

well assuming we're talking about DnD 3rd edition and not D20. Then I would say there are fundamental flaws.
Such things as resource management , fighter MI dependancy & monster/npc design at high level come to mind.
Neither can readily be changed without large scale changes so I believe that they are fundamental flaws.
However I should say that 3rd ed is an advance of 1st and 2nd, and that I'd never go back.
So perhaps 3e could be described as an evolutionary dead end. As I think you have to take a step back and try again.

 

[Li Shenron]

BAB is bad. At low levels, there is next to no difference between fighters and wizards in terms of hitting things, at high levels the difference is so large that everything is either hit by fighters automatically, or cannot ever be hit by wizards. That is why the sweet spot is right in the middle.

How...? A Figther 20 has BAB +20, a Wizard 20 has BAB +10. There is a 10-points difference only. It's a large difference but there's a lot of room for AC in between so that the Fighter does not hit nearly automatically and the wizard does not miss nearly automatically either.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

The notion that the added supplements is what eventually brought the game down is largely flawed, I think. While it is true that many feats, spells, and classes were introduced were not quite play tested as completely as they ought to have been, many of the primary flaws were present to begin with:

- Players as christmass trees of magical items that they were obligated to have to be effective.

- Saving throws that would get screwy with multi-classing

- Saving throws that become either 'always save' or 'always fail' depending on if it is a primary or secondary save progression

- Too many variables when tracking attack and damage rolls. (ex: bab + str + magical weapon bonus + weapon focus + bless / prayer type buff + strength buff + flanking - iterative attack),

- Ability Damage that forces you to recalculate potentially many different things)

- A late game that skews way too heavily towards spell casters

- A late game that either causes secondary melee types to become useless since they will always miss a Fighter appropriate AC, or have monsters die easily because a fighter type can always hit with even his 3rd attack.

- An early game where the wizard or sorcerer class is always 1 hit away from being dead.

- A spell system that in the late game has wizards dominate important fights because they will expend all their spells early.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Since the announcement of 4th edition we've been seeing the R&D people talking about ways that 3e was deficient as a game and how 4e is going to fix that. In fact J.Tweet talks about how he stopped running 3e as the . I myself came to a point where the thought of running 3e made me scream out in terror. I've always viewed 3e as the players game, it was fun to play however could be a nightmare to run.

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 was fundementally flawed. So was 2E and 1E, etc. So will be 4E, but we won't know what the flaws are until we play it for a while and feel it out. I suspect that we will see very few of the problems we're currently having with 3E, and that overall it will be an improvement. However, problems they currently don't expect (or know to expect) will crop up over the next three or four years, and they'll start designing 5E with those issues in mind.

I like 3E, but 4E will be easier to DM. Prep time and unnecessary complexity make 3E a chore to run. That's its fatal flaw. I don't think anyone noticed that flaw at the time they were writing it, because the rules were such an improvement over 2E that it didn't matter if it took a bit more time to write a 14th level character--at least you had a more unified system that made internal sense. But these are things that come out over time like a nail in your floor. The more you walk on that floor, the more it snags you, until one day you come at it with a hammer.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

How...? A Figther 20 has BAB +20, a Wizard 20 has BAB +10. There is a 10-points difference only. It's a large difference but there's a lot of room for AC in between so that the Fighter does not hit nearly automatically and the wizard does not miss nearly automatically either.

Note, however, that the fighter is carrying around a +5 sword, has feats that improve his to-hit with said sword, a huge Str score, and assorted buffs from various party members. The wizard has none of those things, because he doesn't want to be in combat, and so isn't wasting his resources on things that make him better at smashing stuff with his staff.

It's not a 10 point difference, and it's not really about BAB. Christmas Tree Effect, remember?