When did you enjoy 3.x?

[MyISPHatesENWorld]

I enjoyed 3.x from the time it was released and still do. Playing or DMing.

EDIT: Note, I'm considering switching, but I'm still on the fence.

 

[Xanaqui]

The reality is that I'm still pretty happy with 3.x. after running and playing games through the low 20s several times, I have a pretty good idea of how to run with relatively few problems.

I'll probably be stealing some ideas from 4.x, though. And I may eventually switch.

Until we ran into the will-o-the-wisp.

We'd managed to work our way up to level 6 or 7 by this time, so it had a CR in a reasonable range of our party level. But we couldn't kill it. All of our casters' spells would just bounce right off, and it went invisible every other round, in addition to flying around, so I was only occasionally able to reach it with my great flail. I was whiffing at it every time it came close enough(I'd like to say smacking it, but it had this crazy high AC), and the rest of the party was buffing me and trying to give me flanking bonuses. Eventually I managed to land a couple of solid blows on it and take it down. In the interim, it had done more damage to the party than any other single monster in the entire campaign. After it was over we made the GM show us the monster manual and found the line that gave us all the trouble:

Immune to all spells except magic missile and gate.

It didn't have too many hit points, a single volley of missiles from an appropriately levelled mage would probably have killed it. A second volley certainly would have. But we didn't have an appropriately levelled mage. So we couldn't hit its AC, which was apparently supposed to be irrelevant, and we couldn't bring magical might to bear because we didn't have the correct spell. We were just out of luck, and that's all there was to it.

In the unlikely event that this encounter repeats itself, grapple it. It is very painful to get the initial grapple, but once you've gotten one grappled, the combat is pretty much over.

P.S.: It's Maze, not Gate.

So I threw some encounters together, quickly invented a couple of traps(I remember being surprised that there weren't any traps with a CR on the order of my party in the DMG), and fired up the game. First encounter: a horde of skeletons! Enough to make for a CR of 14, to give the characters a chance to show off without burning through too many of their resources. They opened the door, saw the writhing mass of bones, and rolled initiative. Druid is up first, he fires off a good-sized area damage spell.

A really good-sized area damage spell.

An area damage spell big enough to fill the room.

And that's it for the skeletons. Minimum damage with a successful save is still sufficient to kill them off. No showboating, no people behaving awesomely because there's only a tiny risk, just the druid naming a spell and the enemies keeling over.

This wasn't the only encounter that didn't go as I'd expected. The CR 16 encounter(a couple of golems) took forever, because the golems I'd chosen had some strange immunities I hadn't accounted for. Those selfsame immunities severely restricted the party's options, so only the first three rounds were interesting. The party circumnavigated my traps with very little expenditure of resources, because they had mobility options that rendered the traps irrelevant. And the CR 17 dragon at the end of the dungeon destroyed the party almost as quickly as the druid had taken out the skeletons.

Yeah, in 3.x, DMing high level PCs is rough if you aren't used to it. Traps need to be more complex and often designed differently, or integrated as part of the encounter with creatures, and creature encounters can be difficult to have turn out the way you expect - I remember numerous high-level (EL 21+) encounters ending prior to any creature getting an action. One of the problems is that CRs aren't very accurate overall, and the discrepancies show up more and more at higher levels. One solution that works pretty well is the scaling encounter. Essentially, have the party meet a few creatures at first, and then add more each round until they seem sufficiently challenged, then stop, or change it to a trickle. Another solution is to have the party enter into a combat between two (or more) other groups. If the party acts powerfully enough, the other groups will try to take out the party; otherwise, they'll leave at least some forces on each other.

Even worse, though, is that the differing power curves mean that certain classes are intrinsically far stronger than others at high levels. When a single party member is stronger than the rest of the party, it can be difficult to keep the weaker party members feeling useful. I ended up having to design various encounters to showcase different PCs. This time, I'm planning to try to make melee more useful at high levels via deliberately modifying the equipment curve.

 

[Rex Blunder]

Last time I DMed 3.x was a week ago, and I had a great time. 3e is a great game. It has its warts though.

Last time I DMed 1e was about three weeks ago, and I had a great time. 1e is a great game. It has its warts (much more so than 3e).

I'm very excited about 4e. I plan to "switch", but I'll still probably play games of 3e and occasionally 1e. I'm sure 4e has its warts.

About the developers: let's cut them some slack. Sure, they're hyper-aware of 3e's shortcomings. How could they not be? They just spent 3 years trying to identify them and fix them. They've been focused on them for 8 hours a day for years.

Also, don't forget about the sense of ownership and pride they must feel. They MADE this new game. Of course they think it's the greatest thing ever. This is a labor of love for them.

Sure, they may err on the side of criticizing 3e too much, but let's cut them some slack. Think of a time you made something you were really proud of.

 

[vagabundo]

Come on! Third edition isn't THAT bad. It has plenty of merits.

Your beloved 4th edition would never have existed without 3rd edition, so show some blasted respect.

It is if you only DM and never play, IMO. I will never never willing DM 3rd edition again. Way too many warts, all the good stuff is in 4e as far as I'm concerned.

The thoughts of DMing 3e actually does make me a little ill... Seriously, I'm done with it. Same way I was done with 2e when 3e came along, but this time it is possibly even worse, it could been that my last two campaigns dragged to a screaming halt at 13+lv. I was contemplating a custom homebrewed E6 campaign before 4e was announced, 4e had most of the stuff I was going to do (and more).

So 3e was a great idea, fabulous evolution but it was a drag to DM, unless you had loads of prep time or wanted to wing it. Last thing I wanted to do late on a sunday night was winging 3e monsters, trying to squeeze some fun out of the MM.

I'm going to run 4e through the gamut (yoink from piratecat) before announcing it as the cureall, but from what I've seen (and ran) so far fixing the math saved my game!!

 

[Wormwood]

Your beloved 4th edition would never have existed without 3rd edition, so show some blasted respect.

True enough. Similarly, without australopithecus afarensis, Jessica Biel probably wouldn't exist.

But I'm still not inviting Lucy back to my place.

 

[Ktulu]

I started playing 3e when the ph hit my FLGS. We played our first pick-up game the following weekend. When 3.5 came out, we decided to switch, cuz I hate having to constantly edit things to different editions.

I ran games up until winter of 2006. There were many things that began to bother me over the years, though I won't go into all of them (everyone's mentioned them), so I started inputting variants and house rules to try and fix my irritants. Unfortunately, that just made the game harder to run/play when you have 4 different books to look up what you're doing for AC or skills this week.

While we'd still play some D&D occasionally, no one really wanted to run it. When I heard what Saga was doing with the d20 system, I got interested, hoping it could fix the things I didn't like.

For the most part, Saga did the job, but didn't really address creating high level characters any better, nor did it work "perfectly" for settings other than Star Wars (you can take the game out of star wars, but you can't take star wars out of the game )

I would still play in a 3.x game if someone in the party really wanted to, but my group is on board for 4e and has no interest in anything else, right now.

 

[Wolfspider]

True enough. Similarly, without australopithecus afarensis, Jessica Biel probably wouldn't exist.

But I'm still not inviting Lucy back to my place.

 

[Wormwood]

Hmmmm. Maybe I spoke to soon . . .

 

[Stormtower]

When did I enjoy 3.X? Since around 2001, and for all the years since. I most recently enjoyed it running a long session on Saturday in Goodman Games' World of Aereth (wiki link in my sig).

I am really excited about 4E but I'm still in love with 3.5. It was the game that brought me back to D&D, and though it has warts, it still has the look and feel of classic, nostalgia-evoking D&D to me.

4E looks like a fine game, and I am truly looking forward to running it for years to come. However, it's definitely a departure from the D&D I've grown up with since I found the Moldvay Basic Set in 1982... so 3.X will be part of my gaming alongside 4E. My gaming group is focused on using our game time to intentionally try out different mechanical styles of D&D, so there ought not to be a problem switching between 3.X campaigns such as Pathfinder or Aereth, and trying out all the new shiny tricks of 4E. If we absolutely love 4E and find it suits our gaming styles better, we will switch eventually to all 4E... but I find that unlikely at best, even given 4E's improvements.

So I'm still a fan of 3.X, and I find it enjoyable and rewarding to play AND to DM. My primary role is as DM, and while I see 3.X's flaws it's still worth my time to run.

 

[habaal]

Well, just got back from a session. My PC's are six 9level party, and thay just leveld up.
The leveling was slow and tiring, and it seems just one of the PC's isn't some kind of a spellcaster (Cleric, Bard/rogue/Assasin, Druid, Ranger/Wizard/Arcane Knight, Druid/sorcerer/spellthuerge (?), and the non-caster Monk/Drunken Master.)
The rules do get complicated by that level and the battle they had took over an hour and a half (which is standard in our group). Maybe it's just my incompetence as a DM, but the system isn't very helpfull at the speeding issue.
I'm devided in my opinion of 3.X: Even though my PCs are at the "sweet spot" , and at my slow rate it took about two and a half years of very fun gaming to get there, the players got the notion that only spellcasters are fun to play (it was a gardual process of trial and error, but at the end the players learnd they had more options of play, etc). We all enjoy tha game immensely, but it's probably mt DMing and their characters more than all the interesting options the game provides.

So, in order gain a much more fluid play expirience I pre-ordered 4E, and I hope for the best.