What made you stick with 3.x?

[John Little]

Funny how the two biggest cited reasons for sticking with 3.x are "I've spent too much on 3.x to spend more on Pathfinder" and "5e isn't giving me enough to spend my money on".

To me, "sticking to 3.x" probably includes Pathfinder. If not, it has to exclude a lot of other 3pp support/house rules (such as Arcana Unearthed).

I was thinking about that the other day; not only do I exclude certain Pathfinder and many third-party products, I *also* wind up excluding some things that 3.5 did after leaving 3rd edition behind. (They cut back on things you could make with Brew Potion, and I just didn't like that, for starters.)

Now, while there *are* things from Pathfinder and other third-party things I'll use, I think the truth is that I don't actually play any of these games. I play some sort of generic, d20 fantasy game, and of the official products that exist 3.5 just happens to bear the closest resemblance to what it is that I'm playing.

 

[Starfox]

A bunch of people here have said "I actually play Pathfinder now, but...". So I made an ancillary thread to this one: What Made You Switch To Pathfinder?.

 

[ccs]

Does simply using our vast libraries of 3.x books as additions to PF count as sticking with 3x?
Because the group I play 3x/PF with simply swapped the core mechanics and classes from 3.5 to PF. After that we've just mixed 3.x stuff & PF together freely.

 

[Maxperson]

Does simply using our vast libraries of 3.x books as additions to PF count as sticking with 3x?
Because the group I play 3x/PF with simply swapped the core mechanics and classes from 3.5 to PF. After that we've just mixed 3.x stuff & PF together freely.

I tried to start adding Pathfinder stuff to my 3e games, but it just caused the power level of an already too powerful game to skyrocket. This new campaign I took out the Pathfinder stuff.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

For those who still play 3.x, what made you stick with it rather than jump over to Pathfinder?

Well, I don't really still play 3.5. I got my players to go back to a house-ruled 1E game. I had wanted to give up 3.5 earlier because I disliked the power spiral. REALLY disliked it. However, I did use it one more time for a game where I was introducing a number of new players to D&D because I thought it would be easier to teach them a game that DID have more rigid structure to its rules, where I COULD run it without house rules without driving myself crazy) and because I had several spare 3.5 Players Handbooks for them to use.

I owned Pathfinder but was not overly enthused about some of the changes it made to the overall 3.5 system, and again, didn't have copies of the rules to pass out to players. I also had 4E rules but 4E was so... ALIEN to me that I knew I'd never be able to run it as a DM. Play it - MAYBE, but almost certainly never run it.

I later decided that if I were to run 3.5 again I'd actually make it an E6 game since that would address my overwhelming complaint about 3.5 power spiral, but as I said, what I really like is house-ruled 1E. 5E? Bought the PH and looked through it but I just don't care about it. I have what I want for now. Players seem satisfied. There is no reason for ME to attempt to learn yet another edition, no reason for players to suddenly volunteer to similarly abandon what they've learned about older editions in favor for the latest and greatest with go-faster stripes. No version of D&D has an expiration date. We don't have anything DRIVING us at this point to go to 5E. Even if they become dissatisfied with my house rules we'll likely go to a more 2E based game or the E6 take on 3.5 as noted. Anything else would be a long-shot.

 

[nijineko]

well, seems i'm the odd one out. my campaigns are usually high powered and epic in scope, scale, and nature - even if they don't start out there, they always end up there. therefore, 3.x is the perfect system for the play style favored by my players and dm style by myself.

i avoid pathfinder as they went off in a direction that didn't fit, and some of their ideas seem... off to us (monk, anyone?). the complete lack of 1st party psionic support is also lame to my view. (not that dreamscarred isn't doing a decent job of it, but still... lame.) they've fallen into the classic trap that most who rebel and overthrow their predecessors fall into - they become exactly what they started off not being, i.e.: a wotc and 3.x clone, complete with upward spiral.

we've never really had any trouble playing 3.x as is, it's a great system (despite or sometimes because of its flaws) and it works well for us.

so, we stay with 3.x because it works great for us, and nothing out there fits our needs better or offers any real incentive to consider switching.

 

[Random Bystander]

I guess the reason I stick with 3.5 is that it strikes me as the most concrete, well-defined and well-structured system. (I don't own 3.0) To get an idea of what I mean, first read this blog post. If you have an issue with the blog post, it might be addressed in one of the comments or supplementary threads, but in any case, I don't intend to debate it here, and this isn't the thread for that, either; this is just the blog post I found that is the basis for how I view 3.5:

Calibrating your expectations

In short, the basic structure, framework, design, and math of the system models realism with a high degree of fidelity for a gaming system. Afterwards, a whole bunch of things were added, some of which were just bad. The overall framework, the non-adventuring support, the general math is very good. I can make a quite competent 1st-level weapon and armour smith with just the Commoner class, or a true 1st-level expert with just the Expert class.

However, the rest of it unfortunately varies wildly in quality. For an arbitrary selection of examples:

True Strike. This spell alone renders Touch AC nearly irrelevant.
Binding.
Wall of Iron. If you do not think this is overpowered, calculate its economic impact.
Time Stop.
Imprisonment. Making any non-reach weapon a liability if you do get within melee range of a wizard, or many sorcerers.

A few notes about these, without regard for obviousness: First, they are all caster options. Second, they are all in core. Third, even if a non-caster can get access to them, they do so by paying money for options that casters get for free, and the casters can still buy cheaper magic items.

There's a beautiful game in there. But it's buried under layers of varying design quality, and good, bad and questionable design decisions.

I just wish more people published their house rules, because I'm not that enthused to roll my own.

As for Pathfinder, much like some others in this thread, I view it as published house rules; ones I don't view as being, overall, enough of an improvement to switch. In addition, the overall increase in power level of all classes is not something I greet with enthusiasm.

Edit: Fixed blog link. Apologies.

 

[Diffan]

I still keep 3.5 in the rotation of games to play mainly because I know that particular system throughout and have a LARGE library for it. I've invested far too much of my time to just abandon it completely for Pathfinder or 4e or 5e.

I also still make 3.5 content as well and because I know it AND there's the SRD, making things like adventures fairly easy when I'm away from the books. I also like plugging stuff from PF and 4e and 5e into 3.5 games to make it more enjoyable.

 

[krull]

I started gaming in the early 80's on the 'Red Box' OD&D it was easy to switch to AD&D because I was a kid and my parents paid for it. In High school I had no obligations so I was able to switch to AD&D2e with my own money working part time and entry lvl jobs.
I started playing 3.5 but Pathfinder and 4e had already come out by the time I was willing to spend the money. I have bills and all that (you give them money and they keep wanting more.....) finally when I switched to 3.5 I spent hundereds of hard earned gold peices.. err I meen dollars. I just can't justify spending more on a new system when I already have one that works and a large group of players that love it. As a referee I play loose with the rule book anyway as we focus more on storytelling than combat simulation.
I just did a quick count of my books and I have over 200 books for OD&D and AD&D1/2 and a good 150 books for 3.0/3.5 including 3rd party books.

 

[delericho]

True Strike. This spell alone renders Touch AC nearly irrelevant.

Touch AC is nearly irrelevant, and intentionally so. 3e spells generally either required a touch attack or allowed a save, with the assumption being that the vast majority of touch attacks would hit but far fewer saves would be failed. That's why, for example, cause light wounds does 1d8 + level damage, while fireball does 1d6 per level.

Expending a True Strike spell to turn a single likely hit into a near-certain hit isn't an unreasonably trade-off.

Of course, they then promptly dropped in loads of ways for Wizards to boost those save DCs to unbeatable heights, or they didn't follow their own conventions about spell damage (leading to madness like shivering touch), but that's another rant.