What is 3.0 & 3.5 missing that previous editions had?

[Ottergame]

Don't want to risk death? Run from poisonous monsters. Don't go opening locked chests that don't belong to you. Don't go skulking around trap & monster filled ruins.

Meaning, "Never leave the inn the game starts in."

 

[RFisher]

Meaning, "Never leave the inn the game starts in."

(1) Yes. If you want reward, you have to risk. If you don't want to risk, you get no reward.

(2) The risk of "save or die" in OAD&D wasn't so great that you needed to stay at home. A cautious character could do lots of adventuring and avoid most "save or die" situations. Again, look at Robilar. He made numerous solo forays into the Castle Greyhawk dungeons and was the first PC to make it to the lowest level. He adventured alone in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and (the following in rot13 to protect possible spoilers) qryirq qrrc rabhtu gb eryrnfr Mhttgzbl. He survived the Tomb of Horrors. How did he survive all that? Surely some luck was involved, but for the most part it was being very cautious.

(3) Some inns aren't the safest places.

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Someone mentioned "A Wargamey Feel" and I'd like to comment on it.

I believe that 3.0 and 3.5 have a feel more akin to a wargame than earlier editions. I never used a Battlemat with earlier editions nor ever was inclined to. Most sessions just involved everyone sitting around a coffee table rolling dice on it... mini's were used to establish marching order and that was pretty much it. If someone needed position clarification then you'd draw out a quick sketch and then press on. Flip through the Core Books and you'll see that the new editions are pretty much intended to be played with miniatures and battlemats from the illustrations and rules for combat. Now players crowd around the table thinking in small unit tactical terms trying to move their PC's into the most advantageous positions without opening themselves up to attacks of opportunity. You quit thinking of your PC as a character and more like a unit in a Real Time Strategy game (Warcraft 3 comes to mind). Feels more like when I used to play WH40K than my old 1E & 2E games.

 

[Kormydigar]

That was a flaw. My favorite was when you would come across a room that would have some random type of monster that A) couldn't get out of the room. B) Seems to have been there for ages with no obvious source of food, and C) was ready to attack you the instant you showed up.

It was silly and did need to be improved. However, I don't think taking out of the game the fear of death was a good thing. Insta death threat added to the drama and I think we could come up with a system that both had the threat and seemed plausible.[/QUOTE

I don't have a problem with encounter tables that make sense for the area. I have always laughed at powerful undead roaming a dungeon and having no impact upon the other inhabitants. The Problem I have with the CR system is the definition of a "challenge". Using resources to overcome obstacles was always just a part of the game in earlier editions. An encounter was not considered challenging because you used a spell or drank a potion. A challenge meant engaging in an encounter where a loss of one or more party members was possible if you screwed up. Not that every encounter had to prove fatal to one or more pc's to be considered challenging, just the possibility of this is what made the challenge. The current rules consider two orcs with 4hp each a worthy challenge to a party of four 1st level characters, and I contend that this represents a speed bump, not a challenge.

 

[kenjib]

I just noticed this comment from Gary Gygax on the Dragonsfoot.org boards for Lejendary Adventures and I thought it was interesting pertaining to this thread.

...TSR began mainly as products of my imnagination, but I kept the D&D game system as open and "user friendly" to participants' input as possible. Frankly, I believe that the game succeeded as it did because about half of any campaign came from the DM and its participant players. As TSR, and now WotC, moved away from that, quantified and qualified, the spirit and soul of the game changed. If there were no DMs around from the former incarnations of original D&D, I truly wonder what the new game would be...

I hadn't thought of that, but now that I think of it, it's a very interesting comment. I also note that Lejendary Adventures is a fairly rules-light game.

The entire thread is here, but the quote above is only tangential:

http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3750

 

[milotha]

I’m just going to note that I enjoy 3.X edition, and I am currently playing it. I think that it has made many improvements over 2ed, but I also think that it isn’t perfect and there were some things about 2ed that were better.

I miss second edition priests. I miss the fact that every priest under second edition had different granted powers and different spell lists. I know that there are Prestige Classes for priests, but there are only a limited number of these, and you have to buy more books to get access to them. The old Legends and Lore made every priest a different prestige class based on deity choice. I miss the fact that you could play a priest that didn’t even have access to the curing spells. This is quite different from not taking curing spells, especially since casters can spontaneously cast cure. Nowadays, some fighters simply view the priest as a #D8’s of curing. It’s like crack for the fighters. Fighter- “Hey man, I’m wounded give me another curing. I need another one.” Priest- “Nope, I’d really like to have spell X for the upcoming challenges. No curing for you until the end of the day.”

I miss multi-classing spell casters from 2ed. I’ve given multi-classing as a spell caster in 3.X a chance, and I have to say that it doesn’t work nearly as well as multi-classing as a fighter or rogue type. A multi-classed 6th level wizard/6th level priest just isn’t on par with a 12th level priest or a 12th level wizard. Those higher level spells make all the difference, and at 12th level a 6d6 fireball just isn’t all that impressive. Now, I realize that there are Prestige Classes such as Mystic Theurge and Arcane Trickster that have been added, but this requires them to add Prestige classes for every possible combination and once again requires the purchasing of more books. It also narrows the types of mutli-class casters you can have. Yes, the GM can modify all of this, but I wish that the multi-classing option in the core books worked for spell casters.

I miss the rapid speed of designing up characters – especially at higher levels. It takes a lot longer to design up an effective character in the new system with Feats, skills, sta bumps, and magic item creation feats. With more complexity, more options, and more rules, 3.X has lost one of D&D great strengths. This also made the characters easier to play. While I like the diversity this affords, I wish that it hadn’t comprised speed.

Clearly defined party roles- All of the diversity opened up the classes is a great thing, but it can often lead to imbalanced parties. It used to be that the GM could look down and go- let’s see I have a mage, a priest, a thief, and fighter. I pretty much know what these classes are capable of since all fighters/mages/thieves… a fairly alike, it was the role playing that differentiated them. They all had different areas of expertise. Now you can have the same party with everyone stepping on eachothers toes or worse whole skills missing when it seems like they should be there. Example: GM: presents party with a locked door. Fighter- I’m a dex based fighter, I can’t bash it open. Thief - I don’t do the open locks skill. Mage - I specialized in Y, I don’t do Knock. Another example: Hey, the whole party specialized in distance damage and light/no armour with low cons, who is going to take the hit if the BBEG runs up to us? I think that a lot of people hate the class system in D&D, but in some ways the structure provided by classes allowed for balanced parties.

I miss the wonder and uniqueness of magic items. Getting a +1 sword or a +1 ring of protection has lost its specialness. Hey, with X gold I could have made this myself. In addition, I’ve noticed that everyone seems to prefer to trade in items that are not optimized for their vision of their character in lieu of getting some preferred item. This takes out some of the wonderful moments in gaming where some seemingly useless item suddenly saves the day. Who knew these bolts of Water Elemental slaying would come in handy? I think that the magic item creation feats are a great idea, but I feel like with so many spell casters, magic shops are like fast food chains. Yes, you can have a low mana world or you can ban magic item creation feats to bring this wonder back, but now you have to take something away from the party to do this, and you have to provide something to the spell casters in compensation.

Last but no least, I miss the slower level advancement. In 3.X, I feel that characters are flying through the levels so quickly that you don’t get to know your character’s abilities as well at each level. It used to be that you would spend enough time at each level to really have tales associated with each level. Also, your magic items outlive their usefulness more rapidly. That +1 sword you got two adventures ago, just isn’t so nice anymore now that you are three levels higher, and the GM has to up the challenges more rapidly for the players. Yes, as a GM you can slow the advancement down by awarding less XP, but not all GMs are doing this.

 

[Gothmog]

Well, it looks like a lot of people miss the old 2E style sphere priests. For the last year or so, I've been using a house rule variant of the old 2E spheres and converted them into the domains structure. Under this system, all casters have access to a Divine domain, and can choose two other domains. However, each domain's spell lists are different (about 8-10 spells per domain level), and lead to a diverse set of abilities for every cleric. Even clerics of the same religion will not have all the same spells- it depends on their selections. I have drawn from over 50 sourcebooks and compiled a honking list, which I posted recently in this thread.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=79721

Its a work in progress, and I'm still trying to come up with some good granted powers for new domains, but comments are welcome.

 

[MerricB]

The 2E speciality priests are the one thing I really don't miss from 2E.

Actually, I see their attraction, I just don't think 2E handled them well at all. To be done proper justice, you need to treat each a separate class and design them that way - if that is done, I don't have a problem with it at all.

Cheers!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

...TSR began mainly as products of my imnagination, but I kept the D&D game system as open and "user friendly" to participants' input as possible. Frankly, I believe that the game succeeded as it did because about half of any campaign came from the DM and its participant players. As TSR, and now WotC, moved away from that, quantified and qualified, the spirit and soul of the game changed. If there were no DMs around from the former incarnations of original D&D, I truly wonder what the new game would be...

It is all well and good for a designer of the game to brag about how he felt free to change his own system. But I have played with DMs under 1e/2e that adhered as strictly as possible to the rules and it was often not a pretty sight.

In my personal experience, I find 3e DMs more open to input now that they have a sensible framework with which judge tweaks to the system. YMMV

 

[Geoff Watson]

(2) The risk of "save or die" in OAD&D wasn't so great that you needed to stay at home. A cautious character could do lots of adventuring and avoid most "save or die" situations. Again, look at Robilar. He made numerous solo forays into the Castle Greyhawk dungeons and was the first PC to make it to the lowest level. He adventured alone in the Temple of Elemental Evil, and (the following in rot13 to protect possible spoilers) qryirq qrrc rabhtu gb eryrnfr Mhttgzbl. He survived the Tomb of Horrors. How did he survive all that? Surely some luck was involved, but for the most part it was being very cautious.

Wasn't he the one that had unlimited numbers of orc followers that he used to check for traps/etc by sending the orcs in first?

Geoff.