D&D 3E/3.5 Why 3.5 Worked

[Don Durito]

But they didn't make D&D-like sales.
The problem with your assertion wasn't that 3e's complexity & imbalance drove players away, it was that it drove them to other games.
More likely, they just concluded the hobby wasn't for them.

Plenty of people went and played other games. Savage World's success for one seems to have been built on taking in D20 refugees.

If people want to quibble over the word "vast" in a post that ended with a wink then I couldn't give a monkeys.

 

[ccs]

Why are you asking me a question that seems to presume I said you couldn't when I did not in fact do that.

Look it's very simple. I can plan my character ahead and choose feats or prestige classes in advance or I can choose them reactively in response to events that happen in the game. I can't do both.

I don't really see how that's debatable.

You're right. It's not debatable that you, Don Durito, cannot do this.

Some of us can though.
It's pretty simple. You do the whole pre-planning thing (likely wasting a bunch of time & effort on lv ranges you'll not see). And, unless there's a reason to change course during play, you just stick to the plan.
But you remain flexible & open to altering the plan in response to how play actually goes.

 

[Maxperson]

You're right. It's not debatable that you, Don Durito, cannot do this.

Some of us can though.

I'd go with most can. I saw far more people plan some and go on the fly some, than I saw go completely one way or the other.

It's pretty simple. You do the whole pre-planning thing (likely wasting a bunch of time & effort on lv ranges you'll not see). And, unless there's a reason to change course during play, you just stick to the plan.
But you remain flexible & open to altering the plan in response to how play actually goes.

Or what I saw more often, was someone looking ahead at a feat or two that had a level requirement, planning on taking that at that level, and then choosing the lower level feats on the fly.

 

[ccs]

Gladius Legis said:
It doesn't speak well for a game's design when it breaks apart with even moderate levels of optimization effort.

It doesn't. It took extreme levels to break it.

And often a combination of intent + DM inability*.

*Inability to:
Say NO.
Make choices about what they want in their game.
Take into account what the characters being played are actually capable of. If you can't do that you'll have a hard time challenging/rewarding them.

 

[Celebrim]

Congratulations. Your solutions are either (a) move away from how they design foes in 3.x and use the techniques that they introduced in 4e and continued in 5e to get away from 3.x foe design or (b) just reuse something that someone else already put the work in.

Thank you, you provided a great example of how foe design was broken and how it's been fixed. I know you didn't intend to support my point, but you strongly have.

That's a really bizarre take considering the technique of just jotting down the essentials has been in use, even in published modules since 1e AD&D.

 

[Tony Vargas]

just jotting down the essentials has been in use, even in published modules since 1e AD&D.

It was, but 3e went into more depth with monsters and NPCs, that actually mattered to resolution. Feats, for instance, and skills - there were just more essentials to jot down. And, more synergies amongst them to be aware of both when creating and running them.

 

[Gladius Legis]

It doesn't. It took extreme levels to break it.

Natural Spell = Broken Druid. PHB only.

 

[Maxperson]

Natural Spell = Broken Druid. PHB only.

Except not. It might have been broken for you, but it never once broke my game and all the druids took it.

 

[Gladius Legis]

Except not. It might have been broken for you, but it never once broke my game and all the druids took it.

Except yes. It might not have been broken for you, but it always broke my game every time a druid took it.

 

[Don Durito]

You're right. It's not debatable that you, Don Durito, cannot do this.

Some of us can though.
It's pretty simple. You do the whole pre-planning thing (likely wasting a bunch of time & effort on lv ranges you'll not see). And, unless there's a reason to change course during play, you just stick to the plan.
But you remain flexible & open to altering the plan in response to how play actually goes.

This often happens. You post something at length and try to explain it. Then someone gets it entirely wrong. So you summarise a long post in a sentence or two. Then people come along and argue with the sentence summary.

Of course the midpoint between A and B is a little of A and a little of B. Equally obviously it is not "All of A plus all of B".

If this seems trivial and obvious it's because it is.