Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 8640467" data-attributes="member: 6877472">The funny thing about 3e is, really, the reason it was busted was it had lots of classes and feats that seem as if they were never meant to coexist, but WotC never came out and said so.Like, if the Samurai and Swashbuckler were just different brands of Fighter, and ditto for the Knight, they were probably fine coexisting with the Fighter.  The Warblade, not so much. What the Hexblade was trying to do, the Duskblade did better.  Many of the later caster classes were actually a downgrade from their predecessors (with the exception of the Archivist; I'm mostly talking about Favored Soul, Warmage, Dread Necromancer).The Rogue might be able to coexist with the Scout and the Ninja, but it's dubious if they were meant to coexist with the Spellthief, and certainly not meant to hang out with the Factotum.  The Beguiler has a funny place in this paradigm as well, being technically a more balanced caster class, but accidentally doing pretty much everything you'd expect a Rogue to do, but better.And that's not even getting into all the setting specific stuff that just sort of ended up bolted onto characters without a care- I really really really doubt you were meant to combine nutty Forgotten Realms content with deliberately gonzo Eberron content- but people did it, and we all saw the results.Basically WotC left the decision of what to allow and not allow to the DM, but didn't give the DM any real guidance on how to make decisions.  A simple complexity or power level rating would have done wonders.Then once they started tinkering with different kinds of resources later in 3.5, like the very conservative Warlock (and his slightly better cousin, the Dragonfire Adept), Binders, and the Tome of Battle, everything got thrown out the window.  And meanwhile, the core casters remained top shelf, since at no time did they ever stop getting new options and spells.I remember the conversation I had with a player who refused to admit that the Warmage was any weaker than an Evocation specialist.  First I had to explain to him that Evocation was a weak school, and the Warmage's best spells were Conjuration.  Then I had to point out all the crowd control, buffing, and defensive spells the Warmage lacked.And then finally, I had to point out that the Wizard has a huge spell list that keeps getting improved, while the Warmage is basically set by what spells were in the PHB and Complete Arcane that the developers decided to give it, without much guidance for how/why/should you add more spells to the classes' list.Was 3e busted...yes, but it didn't have to be.  You could easily assemble a game of variable power levels from it's pieces, but you lacked a "how to" guide.</blockquote>

Verification