When did you enjoy 3.x?

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Isn't that what David Noonan has done with our smelly buddy the druid?

Yes. That's where I got the number.
(Conspiracy Theory: The real goal of the designers was to create a system that meant they would never go out of work, since you need a full-time job to create new classes! )

The loophole in the paladin's ability to mark, run away, and kill wasn't discovered til very late in the design process. I'm sure there are plenty more similiarly flawed powers just sitting there waiting to be exploited by eager powergamers.

If that's the worst kind of loop-hole, it's tame. If I was to bet, I would bet against you.

Well, but I am bad at this stuff. Monk? Mystic Theurge? Totally overpowered. I knew it the moment I saw them.

 

[Steely Dan]

(Conspiracy Theory: The real goal of the designers was to create a system that meant they would never go out of work, since you need a full-time job to create new classes! )

Aha, they're padding the job!

…But who doesn't?

 

[malraux]

One of the things frequently listed as "most-broken" in 3.x is sudden metamagic... isn't that a fairly recent addition to the game, seen as a "fix" for the "problems" with core meta magic?

Or persistent divine metamagic. Sure, that makes some problems worse. But the real problem there is the greater power of magic casters over the other classes.

 

[DeusExMachina]

Incidentally, I also think that 4E shifts a lot of work from the DM and the players to the designer. You have to create your "exception-based" powers yourself. And if you want a new class, be prepared to create 80 powers for it!

This is something I considered somewhat worrisome about 4e. I had all these lovely homemade classes lined up for my new campaign that I was building when I found out they were making 4e. It's going to take an awful amount of time to take all that work and make 4e classes out of them because of all those powers...
Designing new classes was one of the great things about 3e, because it was so much easier than in 2e, and it seems that now it might be somewhat harder again...

Then again, that is all stuff you can do in your spare time way in advance of any sessions or actual campaigns. I'd rather have more work designing than more work DM'ing...

 

[Will]

I enjoyed 3.x from the get-go. I couldn't stand previous editions (BD&D, AD&D, AD&D 2nd ed), found them TERRIBLY designed and I thank them mainly for inspiring me to play _other_ RPGs that actually functioned.

3.x was the first edition with a coherent game system where you could round out a character at all, mechanically. And it was the first time I saw folks play non-hacknslash D&D. (I realize people did so before 3rd, but I certainly never saw it)

My interest in 3rd flagged for a bit until I started picking up Complete books and reached a critical threshold; I suddenly saw new possibilities and sophisticated interactions than I had appreciated before. The samey clerics that annoyed me could alter, were a lot more fluid than I had realized, with crucial abilities like Domain Spontaneity, even before considering the variant class abilities offered in the various books.

There are definitely things I don't like about D&D as a whole and 3rd edition in particular, but I still enjoy it very much.

 

[jaer]

I liked 3.0 and 3.5 when I first started playing them. There was a time when ignorance was bliss and everything looked new and shiny and awesome. After playing through a few games, we all learned how to customize, which spells were the win, which feats were the suck, and which PrCs really offered the bang for the buck.

Once several players learned how to really min-max and just how potent the Big 6 were, I started to not enjoy the game. As a DM, once the players knew how to "break" the math, I was forced to alter every creature and encounter. CR went out the window, and planning the games so that they were challenging without just being High-HP, High-BA, High-damage creatures became a beast.

And, with some players designing characters to be awesome, those players who were just creating a character for flavor and not worrying about power or balance, they feel very outclasses throughout the game.

I hope that the paragon paths and epic destinies cut down on the way players could use PrCs to break the game. I hope that part of the balance of 4e does not rely on players not realizing what is awesome and what sucks. I hope that the burst-type characters and swingy damage are minimized (I have had too many players have characters who, through design, can either dish out a ton of damage with proper preparation or stand around not able to do anything in combat - I cannot balance encounters based on whether the death star has a firing solution or not). And I hope that feats are more evenly balanced and useful so that there are no longer feats that are only taken as pre-req, which mainly meant that a later feat or PrC was punishing the player by making them expend a feat.