D&D 3E/3.5 What was the original intended function of the 3rd edition phb classes?

[Mannahnin]

Don't forget 6th level heal.

Fair. I don't think we ever had an AD&D game last to 11th+ level. (Although we had a few one-shots or limited series games at high level).

 

[HammerMan]

The erroneous nature of your assertion that pre-3e save or suck spells only came into play when fighters were good at saving against them can be addressed on its own merits.

except that ignores the above part about skipping HP...
yes at low level 1 lucky crit can kill your fighter, also 1 failed save... as you level your HP goes up and 1 lucky crit is UNLIKELY to kill your fighter, and 1 low roll on a save is equally unlikely...

You took out the part where it was not low level she was talking about...

SHe had 0 problem with hold person maybe ending a fight at 2nd level... but when it still could at 13th and was still a 2nd level spell it was BS...

My assertion that pre-3e low level saves were tough to make was not an attempt to disprove that high level pre-3e saves were easier to make than 3e high level saves.

except even low level pre3e SoS spells (like tasha laugh even before hold, or sleep) YOU GOT BETTER AT RESSITING THEM, and so did the monsters.
2e wizards could not reliable say "I bet this monster has a low will save, tasha laugh/hold person," and end a fight at 7th or 8th level... let alone 12th or 13th... a 3e one could.

that whole "the caster had no say in the DC was a feature... it was the intent, not a bug or an opps to be fixxed.

Saves where the resisting to major battle ending effects pre 3e... in 3e (and a bit in 5e) they are NOT any more.

Pre-3e low level characters often missed on attack rolls, saving throws, and level based abilities like thief skills. They got significantly better at mid to high levels with high level pre-3e fighters in particular often hitting and making saving throws.

Yes and 3e (and 5e after, and pathfinder) all took the physical toughness from the fighter... no more could they just shurg off effects...

 

[Staffan]

3E introduced more Cures (at each level, as I recall), and introduced Domain spells so Clerics could always cast a Domain spell in place of a prepared spell of the same level, with the idea that you'd always have the option of a cure or something else with any given slot on any given day.

Close, but it was the other way around. Clerics could turn any prepared spell except their domain spells into cure spells. One of the later books may have had a feat or something that allowed for turning prepared spells into domain spells, but it wasn't part of the core cleric.

It wasn't the lack of playtest but the lack of outside playtest.

They only playtested how they'd play. They barely playtested how others would play.

I distinctly remember there being articles on the D&D web site that had brief interviews with external playtesters, and I think the PHB had like a whole page of names written in really small type with playtesters. I don't know how tightly controlled those playtests were, though – there's a difference between "Here are some rules, go do your thing" and "Make characters according to these guidelines and play this particular scenario and see how aspect X of the rules work in these circumstances.".

 

[Charlaquin]

Another problem is that it's boring design. Three encounters out of four are basically only preparation for the major encounter, where the point is to wear you down to where the final encounter becomes exciting. That's the same kind of thinking that gets you the scoring in Britannia*, and that's no way to run a game.

Eh, that’s a matter of personal taste. Some folks (myself, for example) quite enjoy the long-term resource management game. And, that type of play has been part of D&D‘s DNA from the beginning.

 

[Charlaquin]

I think the value of 3e Cure Light Wound wands was pretty self evident from the books and approaching it from a critical/analytical/actual use perspective in thinking about the game and in actual play.

Anyone who played pre 3e D&D generally knew the use and importance of healing in D&D.

In 3e a new big not obscure thing was you could buy magic items commonly. AD&D had selling items for gp, but the 1e DMG stressed buying items was a big not common deal. 3e changed that at least for low powered items. A first level wand of a common spell was designed to be easy to get. 50 cure light wound spells on hand is awesome for a D&D adventurer so buying them when you see that is a relatively cheap and common option is an obvious, but fantastic idea.

Playing as you did in 2e naturally led to looking at 3e with the same ideas which meant those who looked at 2e mechanical options with anal analytical eyes looked at 3e's mechanical options the same.

No internet required.

Casual players who did not go deep into the mechanical options did not see them on their own in pre 3e games. I see the same today with casual 5e players. Most of the people I have played face to face D&D with have never been on a D&D forum. D&D forums have their own self-selecting community that is geared to those more into discussions of D&D stuff so there will be more discussion of and transmission of insights, but it is not necessary. Analytical people who play D&D exist outside of the forums.

Forums make it easier to see these ideas and discussions, but not necessary. All it takes is someone to look for mechanical options critically or to have someone in your group who does who wants to discuss them.

I agree about CLW wands, but some of the optimized builds like CoDZilla were something most folks wouldn’t just come up with on their own. They were the products of multiple analytical people putting their heads together. Which doesn’t require the internet, but the internet sure makes it easier and allows those ideas to spread farther, faster.

 

[HammerMan]

I agree about CLW wands, but some of the optimized builds like CoDZilla were something most folks wouldn’t just come up with on their own. They were the products of multiple analytical people putting their heads together. Which doesn’t require the internet, but the internet sure makes it easier and allows those ideas to spread farther, faster.

and without the super cheap 50d8+50 healing stick they would not have been anywhere near as effective.

 

[jgsugden]

Andy Collins (and his peers) made huge efforts to be transparent about the development of 3E and 3.5E. You can look back on these boards, on Andy's own message boards (All) and on archives of the old WotC boards (as well as archived interviews with him and other people listed in those core 3E books) and get the full story - from design philosophy to playtesting to the whole 9 yards.

My short hand view: They built a game that was intended to be versatile and balanced. They, at first, underestimated the amount to which the D&D community would unite on the internet between 1999 and 2005 and did not realize how much they'd see optimization. They also did not realize the extent to which the community would have unified opinions that were wrong from a statistical / numerical standpoint.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The designers expected people to play the game just as they had in 2e, with only the barest minimum of strategy change. This is why Clerics got the "spontaneous conversion" stuff, and decent attack actions--Clerics were expected to be Brother Bactine almost all the time, so they were given a bunch of benefits to cushion that blow. Instead, players looked at all those benefits and the inefficiency of in-combat healing and said, "Why would I ever heal when I could do a bunch of other, more-useful things instead?" This type of disconnect, between "we expect players to keep playing just like in 2e, so we should adjust things assuming that they will" and "analyze the game for what it actually rewards and then pursue that," characterizes about half of the problems with 3rd edition's balance.

About a third of its issues center on the failure to test scaling beyond relatively low levels. People have mentioned E6 and how 6th level is about the last level where things still work right--well, that's because that's about as far as they playtested, from what I've been told. They presumed that patterns which held fine up to that point would hold fine forever after, and...they don't. You can see this most strongly with the Fighter class: having tons of feats was supposed to be extremely powerful, but in practice because of the long and tiny-fiddly feat chains, most Fighters actually require a TON of optimization just to be halfway decent, let alone great. A failure to test and examine how feats actually worked when spooled out over many levels meant the designers had a false idea of how valuable a feat-slot was.

Most of the remainder is down to simply not considering whether features played nicely together, best exemplified by the Monk. The Monk is supposed to be a mobile combatant flying around the battlefield, doing cool martial arts things. The problem is, in order to do the best damage you can in 3rd ed, you must stand completely still. They then stapled on several other random grab-bag features that don't actually cohere together into any meaningful whole; the 3rd edition Monk just frankly sucks and there's very little you can do to fix it that doesn't effectively become "replace it with a different class." (As an example, there are feats that allow characters to count their Monk levels as advancing psionic powers, essentially suturing together Monk and whatever psionic class you prefer.)

The final little bit--which has a disproportionate impact for its size--is the presence of specific spells and feats that blow the game balance wide open, semi-related to my second paragraph above. Infamous examples being the spell glitterdust and the feat Natural Spell. The former is simultaneously excellent crowd control and completely defeats enemy stealth or invisibility when it's successful (and it's easy to make it successful). The latter allows essentially every Druid ever to become an incredible powerhouse, taking on animal forms that rival the Fighter's power while also being able to cast spells. That feat is almost single-handedly responsible for the D in "CoDzilla," and it seems pretty clear that the designers just....never considered how powerful they were making the Druid class.

So...yeah. The designers of 3e expected an unchanged culture of play from 2e, they didn't test the game beyond low levels, and they more than once failed to actually make cohesive design goals for some of the classes. Druid was incoherent but incredibly powerful (suturing together "pet class," "shapeshifting class," "full nature spellcaster," and "summoning specialist" all in one package!) while Monk was incoherent in a way that made it weak.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They also did not realize the extent to which the community would have unified opinions that were wrong from a statistical / numerical standpoint.

What opinions are these, exactly? Because to the best of my knowledge it was the designers who got several things wrong. Like the utility of in-combat healing (which simply drags combats out) or the wildly inconsistent value of a single feat.

 

[Zardnaar]

the lack of playtest shows

Then as now no one really plays higher level.

And they didn't realize they spawned a new "meta" with the changes.