What is 3.0 & 3.5 missing that previous editions had?

[JRRNeiklot]

Here's my own list of what 1e had that 3e doesn't. I barely played 2e, so I don't have much to say about it.

Save or die - this kept the fear of death in players.

Encountering a great wyrm at level one on a random encounter roll - see above.

Undead that drained levels, period. Nothing like a 10th level fighter wetting his pants over a 2 hit die wight.

Magic that was just, well, magic. A door that requires the key from room 2a to open. Period. No bloody dim-door, teleport, stoneshape, etc will work. Go find the key, damnit.

Magic not being for sale. Makes the +1 cloak of protection, actually last longer than 1st level.

The lack of true resurrection - death should mean something, not just be a delaying action.

No halfling paladins.

A melee fighter could hold his own, and indeed best an archer in most cases.

No stats in the fricking 40s.

Real rangers.

20th level fighters with 100 hit points.

The fact that characters were NOT supposed to have x amount of magical items to face a certain creature.

A stone golem in an anti-magic zone was just FUN.

Combat that didn't last 14 hours.

Characters who are not ranger1/rogue2/wizard5/bladesinger6/incantatrix3/arcmage3

Thieves, not rogues.

Backstab, not sneak attack. It just sounds better.




I could go on, but I'll stop there for brevity.

Don't get me wrong, 1e was not without its flaws, but some of what a lot of people call flaws, I call a feature, and actually prefer it that way. I like the power in the hands of the dm. I like to attack the ogre, not move 5 feet, draw my sword as part of a move action, tumble past the goblins, use my spring attack feat to deny the ogre an AOO, and return to the spot I was in. I prefer simplicity over options.

That said, 3e is not a bad game, and I enjoy it. It just seems cold and mechanical, not free-flowing like the games of old.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

could you expand on this?

from my point of view, it seems easier to remove an option than it does to remove a restriction.

and people who may lack experience or confidence in their game design skills can feel that they are causing less harm to the system overall when they remove options than restrictions. you usually don't question whether its going to wreck the consistency or (that dreaded word) balance of the system when you remove an option, but removing a restriction does carry that risk.

Sure. Removing an option takes something away from the players and makes the dm the bad guy. Removing restrictions, say letting someone play a half-orc paladin in a 1e game gets the dm free beer. Removing all the options in 3e would take forever. I have to shoot something down every time we start a new game. Yeah, it's "optional," but when a player shells out 30 bucks for a book and then can't use it, he's gonna be pissed.

 

[Mouseferatu]

i'm sorry, but i don't really see the issue.

if a 17th-level wizard is more powerful than a 17th-level rogue, then either the wizard or the rogue aren't really 17th-level. by making power not equate to level, you are essentially depriving the term "character level" of a lot of its meaning, IMO.

in 1e, for example, it was obvious that a wizard and a thief of the same level were not at the same power level. but thieves progressed faster. would you say that a wizard and a thief with the same amount of experience points were at the same power level?

if so, then simplifying the system so that they are also at the same level is IMO a good thing (it makes character level actually mean something, as i alluded to above). if not, then the game is inherently unfair to thieves WRT wizards (or any other combination where this comparison holds), which i also don't think is a good idea.

Oh, I'll agree with you that it's almost entirely an issue of semantics. There's no true mechanical difference; ultimately, it's all the same thing. I just like the notion of theives gaining benefits more frequently than wizards, but those benefits not being as good.

As I said, it's a minor issue for me, and purely one of flavor. I don't in any way pretend that it's a flaw in the current system.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Sure. Removing an option takes something away from the players and makes the dm the bad guy. Removing restrictions, say letting someone play a half-orc paladin in a 1e game gets the dm free beer. Removing all the options in 3e would take forever. I have to shoot something down every time we start a new game. Yeah, it's "optional," but when a player shells out 30 bucks for a book and then can't use it, he's gonna be pissed.

Can't agree with you, JR. As I see it, the current rules system is the kitchen, and any given campaign is the meal. You're not going to use every ingredient in every meal, but it's better to have them than not. And I truly believe that any player who gets pissed at a DM for restricting specific options for specific campaigns isn't worth gaming with. Sure, you don't want the DM to restrict the same thing all the time, if you're playing multiple campaigns. But AFAIAC, that's part of what gives individual campaigns their flavor--not only what is included, but what isn't.

You've stated you don't like halfling paladins. Nothing wrong with you disallowing them, then. OTOH, some people like the idea of halfling paladins. An ostensibly settingless (or at least setting-lite) rules system shouldn't disallow them when there's no mechanical reason for doing so.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

I think his point was not that arbitrary death was a good thing, but that the threat of arbitrary death was a good thing. It wasn't that DM's went around killing parties with insta death spells all the time, at least not in the games I played in or DM'ed. It was that the players were more wary about taking on encounters because of the palpable threat of death or atleast a serious beat down.

This is a very mystical argument.

So your players feared arbitrary death without having experienced it? What does that mean?

I couldn't disagree more about the risk of serious beatdown issue. 3e has it like 1e/2e never did. I know that my conniving DM might give that orc with the greataxe a level or two of barbarian, and he might get a lucky crit for 50 points damage. I know that my DM is not afraid of putting up in a roomful of scorpions and watch the knight in shining armor collapse to the floor from encumberance after failing a few poison saves.

3e combat has just as much risk as 1e/2e ever had. It is just dispensed in a measured and more predictable manner -- that gives the DM more control.

 

[Ottergame]

I don't want to sound rude, JR, but none of the stuff you thought was good about the old D&D I like. It sounds like you are more interested in playing a war game or a computer RPG with fixed, constrictive rules.

Distinct, narrow roles for PCs to fall into. Fighters Fight, Thieves Steal, Wizards blow things up, and Clerics Heal. Thats all.

Arbitrary restrictions with "flavor text" to explain them (Halflings don't trust magic...)

A higher dependancy on Luck/good die rolls.

Clear Inbalance in favor of the DM.

Save or die.

Magic that was just, well, magic. A door that requires the key from room 2a to open. Period. No bloody dim-door, teleport, stoneshape, etc will work. Go find the key, damnit.


How are any of those considered valid game design decisions, much less FUN ones? You want to limit players to overcoming challenges in one way. Why shouldn't a group be able to circumvent a magicaly locked door? Why should smashing it down, teleporting, or stone shaping around the door be invalid actions?

I enjoy playing a game where I have -OPTIONS-, not restrictions. Why shouldn't I be able to play a halfling paladin with teleport scrolls and a maxed out Use Magic Device? Just because it doesn't fit your defintion of what the game should be?

 

[Ottergame]

Somewhere buried in this thread someone complained about the saves used in 3rd edition. I don't see what the problem is, most spells I can name off what it's save is. Any spell that is dodged to save against (fireball, and such) are reflex. Spells that attack the body (energy drains, poison) are fort. Spells that attack the mind (charm, fear, doom) are will. And figuring the save DC is easy, all you do is add three numbers. Take 10, add the modifier of the caster for the ability requirement, add the level of the spell. A 9th level spell cast by someone with a INT of 20 will have a DC of 24. A 3rd level spell cast by someone with a 15 INT will have a DC of 15. And so on. What's hard about that? It makes more sense then having a different save for wands than for spells.

 

[Zappo]

Ok. The argument about threat of death versus actual death makes a certain amount of sense. It takes skill, but when you can make the players think they are going to get killed very soon without actually kill them, you can have a very good game. The adventure I'm writing *points at his signature* is designed to look a lot more lethal than it really is, because I want the players to be scared and once you're dead, nothing can scare you.

However, I strongly disagree that 3E's system is less suited than previous editions to this end. Quite the opposite. The threat of death is only scary when the players have some degree of control. When they know that they will survive if they do the right thing, provided that they can figure out what it is, and that they will die if they do something stupid. This way, they'll be scared and tense in the good way that makes for real excitement. With the deadly 3E combat depending much more on smart tactics and less on luck than previous editions, the current D&D is best suited for this.

OTOH, knowing that every hour there is a 2% chance of meeting a horde of demons who will slaughter the party with ease is not particularly dramatic. There's nothing I can do about it. I can't predict from where the fiends will come, I can't know in advance where they'll go, I can't avoid them or prevent their arrival, because they are only a random encounter table, they don't actually exist until rolled. The only thing I can do is get out quickly, if I am a good player, and even then I could very well be unlucky and still die. So why getting worried?

The threat of random death doesn't really work. The real deal is simply the threat of death, normal death that makes sense and has a reason, because the player knows that staying alive is the reward for smart playing.

As for JRRNeiklot's list - that probably describes the 1E feeling to him. But my eyes on that list can only see either flaws that I am glad to have left behind (combat reduced to "I attack"), or concepts that really have no feeling at all, good or bad (no stats in the 40? Ftr20 with 100 hit points? They are just numbers, it's only a matter of scale). Or objections to 3E that just don't apply to 3E - in what game that isn't ultra-high level, or where the DM isn't going wild with treasure, death becomes "a delay"? In the totality of my 3E games, I count exactly one true resurrection out of dozens of deaths.

 

[FireLance]

Don't get me wrong, 1e was not without its flaws, but some of what a lot of people call flaws, I call a feature, and actually prefer it that way. I like the power in the hands of the dm. I like to attack the ogre, not move 5 feet, draw my sword as part of a move action, tumble past the goblins, use my spring attack feat to deny the ogre an AOO, and return to the spot I was in. I prefer simplicity over options.

YMMV, and in this case it varies quite a lot from my preferences. From what I hear, many games went wrong simply because too much power was in the hands of the DM. There's another thread on terrible games that alludes to that. Favored players, pet NPCs, railroading, arbitrariness, you name it - all of these were the result of too much DM power.

What 3e did was to place more power in the hands of the player. Players were no longer mindless PC-bots whose actions in the game world were at the whim and fancy of the DM. Players could have expectations now. They could expect a certain amount of equipment for their characters. They could expect that most encounters can be overcome with good tactics and a bit of luck. They could expect to play characters that made a difference to the game world. They could expect that their actions would be resolved in a particular way, despite what the DM felt to be the preferred outcome. And they could find another DM if they didn't like the current one's style (see below for elaboration).

In a way, the 1e and 2e systems tended to DM authoritarianism. It didn't always result in bad games, just as not every authoritarian regime will result in pain and suffering for a country (apologies for the oblique political reference), but the danger is always there, and is more likely than not to happen. 3e was the democratization of role-playing, or at least its Magna Carta.

That said, 3e is not a bad game, and I enjoy it. It just seems cold and mechanical, not free-flowing like the games of old.

And this sentence sums up why 3e could democratize role-playing. It made it easier for anyone to run games. It made the role of the DM less mystical and esoteric. Not everyone wanted to be a DM in 1e and 2e, perhaps because they didn't think they had the time, energy or imagination to do a good job. The more mechanical and formulaic approach to 3e gave more people the confidence to run games, so if any particular DM had bad habits, someone else can run the game. It didn't have to be a particularly good game, but once in, he could improve and everyone would be better off as a result.

 

[FireLance]

Just as a follow up to my previous post, the fact that more people are now willing or able to DM may have partly created the impression that 1e or 2e games were more flavorful. It might simply have been due to the fact that only the most imaginative and creative people (or those who thought they were) dared to DM in 1e and 2e. The games were good only because the DMs were good, not through any superior quality of the game system. Take a simple +1 longsword, for example:

Good DM: The longsword bears the mark of a crossed shield, identifying it as one of the blades crafted by the master swordsmiths of the realm for the Hundred Heroes who fought against the fiendish beasts from the Shadow Gate.
Player: Wow.

Average DM: This is a generic +1 longsword.
Player: OK, I use it to make a generic attack against the generic orc.

Bad DM: You swing your sword at the orc, but it shatters harmlessly against its skin. While you are staring at the broken blade in amazement, the elven archwizard Thalor the Mighty teleports in, blasts the orc with a barrage of magic missiles and saves you all. How are you going to show your gratitude?
Player:I'm starting my own game.