D&D 3E/3.5 What will we miss from 3.5E?

[Falling Icicle]

Sure.

Name one other PnP RPG that uses the Vancian System. I can only think of one and that is Dungeons and Dragons. Nearly every other fantasy role playing game out there has what boils down to as Spell Points, may it be called Mana, Essence, or whatever. I like the way that DnD does spells because it doesn't go into that whole Spell Point nonsense that you see in other such as RIFTS or Rolemaster.

It is what makes DnD unique. That is one of the reasons why I like it.

Now I am not saying there can't be improvements on the baseline 3.5e vancian system. In fact I love how Monte Cook's variation of it with Arcana Evolved and if that became the primary way of doing it I would be very happy, but ditching it will just make DnD yet another bland generic fantasy RPG.

I don't want anything to do with that.

I haven't heard anything that indicates that they will be using any kind of spell point system in 4e. In fact, they said you would still have daily spells, it's just not ALL that your character can do. It's only for the biggest and most powerful spells, and that makes sense to me.

In any case, I'm going to wait until I actually see the new spell system before I either commend or condemn it.

 

[Waylander]

It may be just the style of play we have but the complexity of character generation has never really been a problem for players as we tend to start new characters of at low levels (1-3) and then they grow from there. Levelling up has never been an issue since each class only gains a managable amount of new stuff.

So the simplification of the feat, skill system, etc. may mean that our players miss the granularity of having very specific abilities about their characters.

Don't get me wrong, as the person who is usual the DM I'd prefer a simplified approach to generating characters of all levels for the DM but i think something along those lines should be easily doable with 3.xE (beyond just using the stats in the DMG).

 

[Aloïsius]

Whatever mechanic they go with, as long as we can still shoot lighning bolts and fireballs from our fingertips, fly, polymorph, teleport, go invisible and the like, it will still be D&D.

We may miss teleport, polymorph, disintegrate, scry, etherealness, wail of the banshee and other so called "game breaking" spells. If it happens (I hope not !) then I will miss them.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

not quite sure of this but, possibly the sterilization of nature magic. the range is loosing alot of his nature flavor, and the druid seems to have no mentions at all.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Name one other PnP RPG that uses the Vancian System. I can only think of one and that is Dungeons and Dragons.

Arcana Unearthed/Evolved... and that system does it much more elegantly.

 

[jasin]

AU/E doesn't have prepared spells as discrete entities which are used up. IMO, the defining characteristic of D&D/Vancian spellcasting is not so much the selection/preparation period, but the fact that you "forget" spells when you use them, which AU/E doesn't have.

 

[Szatany]

Without the Vancian Spell System its just not DnD. Its just yet another generic fantasy RPG that should be ignored.

Then what are you still doing here?

I think I'm gonna miss non-neutral non-evil paladins.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

AU/E doesn't have prepared spells as discrete entities which are used up. IMO, the defining characteristic of D&D/Vancian spellcasting is not so much the selection/preparation period, but the fact that you "forget" spells when you use them, which AU/E doesn't have.

They sort of do. The only difference is that you 'forget' the spell slot once you use it. This is a semantics quibble, really.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Since they've essentially all but stated they're using the SWSE rules for skills, I'm going to miss the ability for fine tuning the skill ranks to get the exact match you want. Hopefully they'll have optional rules for this in there somewhere (And if not, I'll likely just houserule it in some way)

 

[Doug McCrae]

The many options available with all the spaltbooks. Moving to 4e will mean the game becomes much smaller, for a while. Ofc that may turn out to be a good thing.