What did you never like in 3e?

[delericho]

when i see these complaints about wizards, i think to myself, how is this any different than wizards were in 1 ed? or 2 ed?

Wizards (and especially Clerics) generally had access to a lot more spells than they did in previous editions. They also got to cast them significantly more often, especially if they used scrolls and wands (which were much more readily available) to make the common utility spells much easier to get than before.

However, it's not hugely different than what went before. To a large extent, this is a long-standing issue with D&D.

 

[joethelawyer]

Wizards (and especially Clerics) generally had access to a lot more spells than they did in previous editions. They also got to cast them significantly more often, especially if they used scrolls and wands (which were much more readily available) to make the common utility spells much easier to get than before.

However, it's not hugely different than what went before. To a large extent, this is a long-standing issue with D&D.

i just never heard anyone complain about it before. read thru the 1 ed players hb and it specifically states that wizards start out weak but become the most powerful character class in the game at high level. nothing changed in that regard. why complain about it? they can still get killed fast with their low hp's if they dont play their character smartly.

same thing with people complaining about save or die spells. so what? that was always the case in all editions. life sucks. someone might be able to kill you in real life in one second and there isn't anything you can do about it. same should be true for people who put themselves in dangerous situations in D&D. especially for them.

as for the 15 minute game day, if you have that going on in your game sessions, your dm sucks. he shouldn't let it be that way, especially if you layers dont want it that way. i have never experienced it. i have never had a dm who alowed it in any edition. he drains us down to the last blood vessel and memorized cantrip before we can rest. there are times where i am down to my last few spells and have to find some creative way to use them in order to affect the sitution at hand. thats the fun part.

 

[Loonook]

i just never heard anyone complain about it before. read thru the 1 ed players hb and it specifically states that wizards start out weak but become the most powerful character class in the game at high level. nothing changed in that regard. why complain about it? they can still get killed fast with their low hp's if they dont play their character smartly.

same thing with people complaining about save or die spells. so what? that was always the case in all editions. life sucks. someone might be able to kill you in real life in one second and there isn't anything you can do about it. same should be true for people who put themselves in dangerous situations in D&D. especially for them.

as for the 15 minute game day, if you have that going on in your game sessions, your dm sucks. he shouldn't let it be that way, especially if you layers dont want it that way. i have never experienced it. i have never had a dm who alowed it in any edition. he drains us down to the last blood vessel and memorized cantrip before we can rest. there are times where i am down to my last few spells and have to find some creative way to use them in order to affect the sitution at hand. thats the fun part.

Completely agree with this, and would award XP if I could (already did in your vain attempt for godhood... apologies). However, the real issue I have is that everyone thinks that all spells should be available to everyone at any time...

Yeah, to an extent spells should be readied, and domains replaced spheres with something less restrictive... but my favorite chart in the entirety of D&D history has to be the series which can be found in the 2e Spell Compendiums. These charts split spells between 'every mage probably has a few of these' to 'The spell is lost to time, but may be accessible if you found it in a dusty tome in a sepulchre deep beneath the ruins of a city'. I think magic in this sense, forcing wizards to research or develop knowledge through adventure, helps to limit wizards from 'cherry-picking' their spells and becoming the Batman types which everyone claims they must be in 3e.

To each his own... maybe I should stop mixing up my edition AWESOMENESS.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Remathilis]

i just never heard anyone complain about it before. read thru the 1 ed players hb and it specifically states that wizards start out weak but become the most powerful character class in the game at high level. nothing changed in that regard. why complain about it? they can still get killed fast with their low hp's if they don't play their character smartly.

Well, there are some people who believe the "start strong/finish weak" (found in demihuman level limits) and "start weak/finish strong" (found in magic users and clerics) are poor ways to balance things. But I don't want to rehash that argument.

As for wizards being "squishy", I'll take it you never faced a wizard with stoneskin (pre 3e version), flight, improved invisibility, dimension door, and spells that can kill the fighter long before he can get in melee range.

same thing with people complaining about save or die spells. so what? that was always the case in all editions. life sucks. someone might be able to kill you in real life in one second and there isn't anything you can do about it. same should be true for people who put themselves in dangerous situations in D&D. especially for them.

I don't play "real life". I play heroic fantasy. Dieing because one single die roll came up snake-eyes is at best a waste of time (getting ressed, making a new PC) and at worst a terrible ending.

If I wanted reckless danger, I'd go play in traffic.

as for the 15 minute game day, if you have that going on in your game sessions, your dm sucks. he shouldn't let it be that way, especially if you layers don't want it that way. i have never experienced it. i have never had a dm who allowed it in any edition. he drains us down to the last blood vessel and memorized cantrip before we can rest. there are times where i am down to my last few spells and have to find some creative way to use them in order to affect the situation at hand. that's the fun part.

Good for you.

Now, for others, we find that 3e encourages going nova because (as you said yourself) monsters can kill you in a single die roll. If I'm facing a frost giant, I'm gunning everything I got at him because I (the "squishy" mage) is toast if that giant breaks my defenses and hits me.

You can't have both ways. If you want combat nasty and brutal, you need to expect I'm giving it my all and not saving that spell for "next time" because with powerful monsters, save or dies, and all the other riggers your advocating, there might not be a next time.

If you want to continue the classic 15-min workday, save-or-die, and "wizards aren't broken" arguments though, lets take it to another thread and not clutter this one.

 

[Allister]

Um, you guys are kidding right?

The 1e/2e magic system is VASTLY, VASTLY different....The changes from the underlying mechanics is what made the 3e wizard so strong EVEN though the spells are almost a one to one match...

 

[Hussar]

Um, you guys are kidding right?

The 1e/2e magic system is VASTLY, VASTLY different....The changes from the underlying mechanics is what made the 3e wizard so strong EVEN though the spells are almost a one to one match...

Are you honestly going to try to argue that 1e and 2e MU's didn't get fantastically powerful? The fact that monsters had FAR fewer hit points and there were no caps on the damage that wizards could do meant that wizards could level armies by about 10th level. Add to that the fact that magic resistance was not terribly common meant that direct damage was king.

3e wizards get overly powerful, not so much from direct damage, but because they can just pump the party up to extreme levels and then overshadow every skill check. Why bother with Diplomacy when Charm person is faster, far more likely to work and WAY more powerful? Open Locks? Knock. Search for traps? Unseen Servant or even Mage Hand. When the wizard can stock up on scrolls and wands, it means that he almost never runs out of utility spells.

 

[thecasualoblivion]

While 1E/2E's magic and 3E's look similar, in practice they were wildly different:

1. In 1E/2E, Cleric's had to actually memorize healing spells. The nature of the game required you to use at least half of your slots to heal, so Clerics were very limited prior to 3E.
2. Prior to 3E, there were no bonus spells for high INT for Wizards. This makes a huge difference, particularly at lower levels.
3. In 1E/2E, monsters tended to have far fewer HP. This made Fireball the primary offensive spell for the entire game, no matter what level. In 3E, dealing damage as a spellcaster was largely a waste of time.
4. In 1E/2E, as you got higher in level save or die spells became less effective. Combined with optimization, as you gain higher levels in 3E save or die spells become more effective.
5. In 1E/2E, combat was very fast. Because combat was fast, DMs generally threw more of them at you before resting. Going nova and the 5 minute workday were a lot rarer. In 3E, combat is slow and its not uncommon for adventure design to use 1-3 encounters per day as the norm. Thus, the 5 minute workday.
6. The tendancy in 1E/2E to have to deal with more encounters between resting due to adventure design, combined with fewer bonus spells for higher abilities and having to memorize healing resulted in combat spells becoming more important, and noncombat spells becoming less important. You really needed all the firepower you could get. Healing/utility wands and scrolls were also less available and in particular more difficult to create. 1E/2E spellcasters tended to be more artillery and less toolbox thanks to the nature of the game.
7. In 1E/2E, the exp system and plateau of character power around levels 9-11(particularly multiclass characters) tended to result in games going beyond that plateau being a rarity. Saying that 80-90% of 1E/2E games never went past level 11 isn't unreasonable. High level play ended up being far more common in 3E. Spellcasters become a bigger problem at higher levels, and high level spellcasters were less of a problem in earlier editions because people tended to not play those levels.

I'm sure theres even more you can say here.

 

[WayneLigon]

The best thing about this thread is that 3E fans don't feel compelled to trample all over the thread attacking everyones dislikes or writing paragraphs of fluff to justify some stupid aspect of the game, if only 4E fans coud be more like this...

Oh, I could certainly do so for almost everything mentioned that are not my personal 3e dislikes* - some of the things mentioned are such bizarre dislikes that it makes me wonder just what in the world these people have been playing for the last eight years and makes me yearn for the ability to post well-deserved personal insults of people's lack of taste and/or intelligence - but it's just an exercise in fulility. I think the last year or so of 4E posts have convinced most people that there simply is no convincing people of anything they don't already believe.

*to be on topic:
Really, when it comes down to it, there's nothing I dislike that badly in 3E as long as I remember that I'm playing D&D. There are a number of problems but most of those are easily overcome.

Attacks of Opportunity and Grappling are really my main pet beefs. They take up too much 'room' in the system and return very little in terms of added play experience.

I could add in some dislike for how the multiclassing system doesn't allow you to make a decent fighter/mage but when it's all said and done the fighter/mage is a 'have your cake and eat it too' concept that seeks to have all the advantages and none of the disadvantages of the two most archtypical classes in the game. The multiclassing system is on the whole the single best thing about 3E.

I don't much like the idea of prestige classes. Well, I take that back. I like the idea of them, just not the implementation. I think a better system would have been something very much like the substitution levels, or the ability to customize certain class abilities to better fit a narrow concept.

 

[billd91]

The things about 3e that I didn't like much:

Too easy to make magic items--subtly changing the strategy from wanting buffing items like magic weapons, rings of protection, bracers of armor/magic armor, girdles of giant strength to making it easily within reach to have them, at the expense of other interesting magical item development.

Multiclass spellcasting

Grapple rules were, truly, clunky though manageable

Too many stacking buffs for too many caster classes

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Count me in as someone who never had a problem with wizards or clerics. I can understand that they could potentially be problematic in theory, but in my experience, they're only an issue when the player is a douche and is capable of running rings around the DM.