When did you enjoy 3.x?

[Saeviomagy]

I liked 3e when I first started playing it. Low level adventuring was exciting, rules were new etc.

Then there were more and more rules. Not just from buying more books, from levelling up too. And more rules means more broken rules.

Then 3.5 came out and fixed some of the broken rules. But again - more books, more rules, more broken rules and more ways to break them.

Still had fun, but definately looking for something better.

It's not a phenomenon directly linked to 3e either. The same happened to shadowrun and 2e.

I think this time I'll not buy a rulebook outside the core 3.

 

[psionotic]

I've always enjoyed playing it, still do. But that doesn't mean I haven't wished for something better.

Running it, however, is a different matter entirely. I swore I'd never run 3.x above level 13 or so again. Looks like now I won't have to.

 

[zoroaster100]

I enjoyed running a 3.5 game for characters levels 1 through around 12. After that things started going downhill as the character levels got higher and the preparation time for adventures skyrocketed, and battles started taking four hours to play through two rounds, and the players started taking 45 minutes of real time to prepare their buffs, etc.

 

[AtomicPope]

For me not much, I much preferred playing WoD then D&D. It was more my friends (gaming group) who had me play D&D since that was their preferred system.

This has changed greatly with 4e, and now I would be perfectly fine playing either.

This is my situation exactly

I play and run WoD. A group of friends wanted to play D&D so I did. It's not that 3e was the best, it's just a way to hang out with my pals.


Nothing in 3e was compelling. I was in it for friends and nostalgia. When I started playing 3e I saw it as an improvement over 1e or 2e but not the end all be all. When I first started playing 3e I immediately saw some problems. Most of the classes were "front-loaded" which favored heavily dipping over single classes or multiclassing. Then 3.5 came out which fixed the Bard and improved other core classes but introduced its own host of problems. Fighters were lamer than in 3.previous Feats. *yawn* Then the worst part - as the campaigns matured, the characters became nigh unstoppable.

It was obviously frustrating for GM's when we could kill a dragon before it could react. Once we min-maxed it became clear that combat wasn't going to be a challenge anymore. Monsters had to start dipping into classes just to compete. Designer monsters was the only challenge but even that wasn't enough. The CR for a "class monster" is was too high so they didn't last. Then the DM's would resort to custom monsters with At Will "save or die" powers like Finger of Death and Disintegrate.

And that's where 4e comes in. After having campaign, after campaign peter out because either the challenges were ridiculously high or "too equal" I'm ready for a change.

 

[AtomicPope]

I enjoyed running a 3.5 game for characters levels 1 through around 12. After that things started going downhill as the character levels got higher and the preparation time for adventures skyrocketed, and battles started taking four hours to play through two rounds, and the players started taking 45 minutes of real time to prepare their buffs, etc.

Yeah, my bard had 10 stackable buffs going.

Combat was a clunker at higher levels and game preparation was even worse. I hate DMing at level 14+. I start to feel it at 10th level. By the time the players reach 12th level I can see the iceberg in the water. At 14th level the ship has sunk. Higher level monsters have a hard time challenging a party unless they've drank every potion and are equipped with every piece of magical gear the PC's will ultimately gain. It's time consuming to have to equip the monsters. Every adventure becomes character creation.

 

[bramadan]

I loved the idea of feats.
I loved the notion that "martial" classes may become as interesting as the spell-casters
I quite liked the simplified mechanics - at least in principle

I ceased to enjoy it in RAW form as soon as wizard in the party I DMed for reached 5th level.

I tinkered with d20 for some year after that but never really liked it. It felt over-designed and unbalanced at the same time. Sometime before 3.5 came out I gave up on it and felt like I am done with DnD (after playing it for well over a decade). I was not at all inspired to read 3.5 books. I was even non-pulsed when I heard about the 4E (I was even at Gen-Con and did not care to go hear the news).
Now I am *very* excited about the 4e and planning a campaign.

 

[Njall]

Like someone else posted above, it hasn't so much been what they've said as how they've said/presented it. Certainly "3.x sucks" is the impression I've taken away from posts/talks/articles/etc from the WotC staff (whether that was their intention or not). How many threads have you seen which open with "I'm not trying to start a flamewar, but...". The words used don't necessarily reflect the meaning/intent behind them.

Well, most children feel like they're neglected when they first have a brother. It doesn't mean they are.
WotC staffers like 4e, that's no surprise, considering they've come up with it, so they've probably done everything they could to make it as good as they think, and now they're telling us why they think they've improved the game. Unsurprisingly, they're using the best term of comparison they have: 3.x.
And why are they comparing it to 3e? Because 3.x is a solid game.
What would the merits of 4e be if 3.x sucked?

Getting quite off topic here, but something that just occurred to me: WotC have been aware that 3.x has been "broken" for a number of years now and have released "fixes" for this brokenness in dribs and drabs (i.e.: PHB2, MIC, Complete series, Bo9S, etc). What if a lot of the "fundamental" problems in 3.x aren't so much a problem with the system as it was but rather problems with their "fixes"?

Well, while this is a good question, I'd say that no, those problems were there even in core.

Polymorph: broken by itself, IMO, simply because most monsters were not assumed to be played as PCs in the first place. And sure, with splats it got even nastier.

The math, at higher levels, doesn't really work unless you "fix it" with magic items: that was considered a problem since 3.0. If you are familiar with the ELH, BAB and saves progression are 1/2 level, just like in 4e.

Unbalanced classes: just compare the average high level spellcaster and the average high level fighter/monk.

The problem, here, is that they couldn't really fix all of these problems even if they wanted to, because core had to be playable by itself. Would you consider a game that requires 100 or so pages of errata as "playable"( and I'm not saying it isn't, but as a customer I'd probably get the impression that they screwed up)?
They released a "hotfix" (3.5) that was as backwards compatible as possible, but they couldn't rehash the entire system in just 3 years.

As for 4e, every game has issues, but I think many of 3e's problems come from the fact that they couldn't move far enough from 2e.
Was 2e balanced at higher levels? No, but few people actually got there, so it was not perceived as a problem. Monsters were generally weaker, so Poly was weaker as well...
and so on.

In that respect, at least, it seems like 4e is covered, but only time will tell.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I last enjoyed 3E a few months ago, around the time my gaming group broke up because of geographic/feasibility reasons. If it were not for that, I would probably still be enjoying the game. Playing 3E is a lot of fun, after all. A little slow at times, but a lot of fun, especially after the introduction of the Tome of Battle.

Of course, that is my experience with the game as a player. As a DM, the game's terrible flaws affected me from the very beginning, so even eight years of trying to grit my way past the overly obnoxious necessities of prep work and get a campaign running proved fruitless. I really want to DM a few campaigns, but 3E was too awkward a system for me to do so. In that regard, 4E looks a lot better.

 

[Jack Colby]

I liked 3rd edition when it first came out. I bought into the promises that they were finally going to make sense of the game. At first it seemed like they did, and I was happy with it.

Once I started playing more regularly, I realized the gameplay experience was no better than it was before, it just took longer to prepare (DM chores and making new PCs), and there were a lot more things to consider during play which didn't enrich the game or add to the fun at all.

I never bought anything for 3.5, barely played 3E after that, and have since sold my books.

 

[Steely Dan]

For some reason, all this talk about different editions is really giving me a hankering to run a Basic or 1st/2nd Ed campaign (been 14 years).

In fact, I can see in the future running a Basic or 1st/2nd Ed campaign, and a 4th Ed.