What changes from 3.0 to 3.5 should *not* have been made?
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Liminal Syzygy
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People have mentioned the square bases but another thing along those lines that has bothered me is the general size increase. As their bases are so huge now, fighting Ogres or other large creatures in the typical D&D environ - a dungeon - is a lot easier since they can only come at you 1 by 1 down a passage. And at higher levels, where PCs are fighting huge or even larger creatures it really becomes a problem. Especially when you try to convert 3.0 or even older modules to 3.5... Anyone tried to play the G series? I bet the giants can barely fit in and move around their living quarters.
billd91
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(Psi)SeveredHead said:
In LotR, using a palantir wasn't exclusively a ranger ability, true. Though Aragorn was the only one able to actually wrest control of it from Sauron and not be corrupted by it.
My point was that the original D&D Ranger was so based on Aragorn that it even alluded to using an item that was typically a wizard's item - the crystal ball. And someone thought it was a reasonable interpretation of Aragorn to include both Druid and Magic-User spells then. The tradition of using spells has been handed down since whether directly in homage to Aragorn or not.
Personally, I find modeling Aragorn's abilities with magical spells works just fine and have no trouble with the 3.5 Ranger having spells.
VirgilCaine
First Post
All of them.
Except for splitting up Symbol and Emotion.
Maybe the ranger changes, though the skill and hit die changes are obviously necessary to anyone who thinks about rangers for a second.
Assassins getting spontaneous spells and not wizards spells is just a stupid thing that wasn't looked at hard enough in the change from 2e to 3e. Just like the Ranger's skill points and HD.
Haste should have been given some additional costs, not mangled beyond recognition. Ability damage, subdual damage, high material component cost, maybe XP cost, or some combination of these, NOT a paradigm shift in the spells effect.
Except for splitting up Symbol and Emotion.
Maybe the ranger changes, though the skill and hit die changes are obviously necessary to anyone who thinks about rangers for a second.
Assassins getting spontaneous spells and not wizards spells is just a stupid thing that wasn't looked at hard enough in the change from 2e to 3e. Just like the Ranger's skill points and HD.
Haste should have been given some additional costs, not mangled beyond recognition. Ability damage, subdual damage, high material component cost, maybe XP cost, or some combination of these, NOT a paradigm shift in the spells effect.
Arnwyn
First Post
Changes in 3.5 I don't like:
- weapon sizes
- paladin mounts
- bard is gnomes' preferred class
- cover
- DR: removal of pluses for "magic"
- square bases
- removal of much of the demon/devil Sp abilities
I fixed every one of these IMC.
(And thankfully I have yet to encounter the darkness creating light thing - once somebody casts it, there's going to be a lot of "WTFs" going around the table...)
- weapon sizes
- paladin mounts
- bard is gnomes' preferred class
- cover
- DR: removal of pluses for "magic"
- square bases
- removal of much of the demon/devil Sp abilities
I fixed every one of these IMC.
(And thankfully I have yet to encounter the darkness creating light thing - once somebody casts it, there's going to be a lot of "WTFs" going around the table...)
Paladin Mounts are about the only thing I dislike (although Paladins as a base class bother me so it don't much matter). I'm indifferent about gnome bards. I like most of the other stuff. I'm really surprised at some of the complaints in this thread...
Weapon sizes make a certain amount of sense to me. I loved the idea as soon as I saw it.
Square bases... I have no idea what this complaint is all about. As was already explained the critter doesn't take up a square base when not in combat. The square base, and the ajoining threatened areas, are just there to show you how much space the creature can 'control' in a fight. You could obviously fit a horse down a 5' wide corridor or fit two people into a 5' box... but if they had to be fighting while in those situations they wouldn't have the room they need to properly operate.
*shrug*
Weapon sizes make a certain amount of sense to me. I loved the idea as soon as I saw it.
Square bases... I have no idea what this complaint is all about. As was already explained the critter doesn't take up a square base when not in combat. The square base, and the ajoining threatened areas, are just there to show you how much space the creature can 'control' in a fight. You could obviously fit a horse down a 5' wide corridor or fit two people into a 5' box... but if they had to be fighting while in those situations they wouldn't have the room they need to properly operate.
*shrug*
Aristotle said:
Get your mind out of the dungeon for a minute. Do a unit of charging horsemen have to stay 10' apart? It bothers me. That and the horde of minis and counters I own that assume a horse is 1x2. Plus its a fix to a problem I never had, nor do I recall others complaining about.
Pants
First Post
How does a horse that is taking up a space 5ft. wide and 10 ft. long effectively move in combat when the game has no rule for facing? The horse clearly has both a front, a back, and two sides in such a scenario.maddman75 said:
Also, remember that the 10 ft. square represents the amount of the space the horse manuevers in, not the amount of space it takes up. It's simply an abstraction for an already abstract combat system. If you didn't complain about the no facing in 3.0 (and the creatures that clearly HAD facing) then you can't really complain about this either.
Both are abstractions and both are pretty far from perfect.
Edit: Forgot to list my problems
My actual problems with 3.5:
- Breaking up spells and thus making them less versatile (emotion and symbol are examples)
- Simplifying of cover (this wouldn't be a bad thing if the old cover system were implemented as a variant rule somewhere)
- Changing some spells (darkness comes to mind, harm is now somewhat ambiguous in its wording, shapechange made into a freaking overpowered spell!, sleep kind of sucks now)
- Not changing some spells (Mord's Disjunction and Astral Projection SHOULD have been changed, but weren't)
- Removing some Demon/Devil SLA's
- Not putting Yugoloths in the 3.5 MM
- Not enough new art in the books
Most of these aren't really big problems, but they're kind of annoying. I'll still play 3.5 over 3.0 since a lot of the changes I agree with.
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