D&D 3E/3.5 Why 3.5 Worked

[Celebrim]

Compare that to the table in the 5e DMG that simply tells me the numbers to use for a given CR.

My response to that will be interpreted as edition warring, so I'm going to have to drop this line of thought here.

 

[Celebrim]

The 3.0 edition worked for me...Then came 3.5 and it did NOT work for me.

I stuck with 3.0e and have never regretted it. After years of playing I'm still finding things that 3.5 changed that just make my jaw drop.

Despite superficial similarity, 3.5e was a vastly inferior game to 3.0e, that was clearly changed without a lot of playtesting based solely on theory and whim and a misguided notion of "elegance" that removed so many balancing elements from 3.0e, especially in terms of the spells. 3.5e famously fixed Haste and Harm, which was probably needed, but then it broke dozens of other key spells in ways that were not only terrible for balance, but terrible for gameplay. In particular, 3.5e broke wide open shape changing spells of all levels from Alter Self to Polymorph and it broke wide open summoning spells. Both not only killed balance, but they set up a situation where the most optimized play of the game centered around the games most complex and difficult to resolve elements. And it didn't help that in the process of breaking these spells, they'd also made the process of resolving them at the table more time consuming.

As a DM with decades of experience, reading the new versions of say the shape shifting spells made me feel like they were written by someone that hadn't GMed a table a day in their life. I mean it was that ridiculously and obviously bad. Emotional response bad. Profanity inducing interjection bad.

And then there were the changes to 'Blasphemy' and related spells and even little things like 'Ray of Enfeeblement'. For years I'd be playing and look at a spell in the SRD and then go, "Wait... I don't remember this spell being broken...", and then look at the 3.0e Player's Handbook and go, "Oh. It wasn't broken. They just changed it for no darn good reason." This has happened to me dozens of times, often taking me by surprise at the sheer naïve inexperienced and inept revision and baffled at the reasoning behind it.

 

[Quartz]

The point was that a 3.5 character required a multi-tab spreadsheet in order to be run at a reasonable table speed.

I realy don't recall that problem. When debuffing is common, PCs pre-buff sparingly.

 

[Blue]

I realy don't recall that problem. When debuffing is common, PCs pre-buff sparingly.

The quote that was being replied to referred to a 18th or 19th level martial caster who had the possibility of lots of different self (and party) buffs up including shapechange. And needing a spreadsheet to keep track of what modifiers stacked and which overlapped depending on what spells were currently up as well as calculate ripple effects like increases on ability scores and how that impacted skills, to hit/damage, and everything else.

Loads of PC pre-buffs were available. That's the basis of the "CoDzilla" type builds. If they were used sparingly at your table does not mean that the game did not support large numbers of them. Considering that many lasted for hours, pre-buffs could be very common.

 

[CapnZapp]

As brokenness in this case is completely subjective, it can't be less broken objectively. For something to be objectively broken, it has to be like the broken math in 4e that required the expertise feats to fix.



I'm enjoying 5e. I enjoy it less than 3e, but that ship has sailed with my group so for better or worse, 5e it is. A game that is less enjoyable does not impress me more than one that is more enjoyable.


You are certainly entitled to your opinion on 5e and its design, but there isn't an objective measure here. Whether design is more or less "evolved" depends on whether the game is more or less enjoyable to those who play it. If the next edition of a game is more enjoyable to a majority those who play it, it has evolved. It is is less enjoyable to a majority of those who play it, it has devolved.

It is exactly this relativizing outlook - a game can be better for me but worse for you - that makes my interest in a rules design discussion drop like a stone. No, if everything is just a matter of taste there can be no advancements in the craft of rpg rules design, and then there's nothing to discuss. At least nothing that holds my interest.

If you can't or won't see the clear improvements 5E made upon the 3E framework, especially in the area of magic and spells (all while making missteps in other areas) and you instead maintain there are no parameters we can gauge objectively, then I'd like to stop this dialog - please consider my posts to not be directed towards you. Thank you.

 

[Quartz]

The quote that was being replied to referred to a 18th or 19th level martial caster who had the possibility of lots of different self (and party) buffs up including shapechange.

Yes indeed, and many, maybe all, of those would be negated by a mass debuff like Disjunction. At that level, PCs should expect to face at least one Disjunction every significant fight.

 

[Blue]

Yes indeed, and many, maybe all, of those would be negated by a mass debuff like Disjunction. At that level, PCs should expect to face at least one Disjunction every significant fight.

And just what is your point? Are you saying the rules didn't support buffing, and require cascade effects that required re-figuring other things, and that some bonuses stacked and others didn't which needed to be kept track of?

Because the system did, and we're discussing the system. You're point about an in-game counter that could occasionally occur has nothing to do with that.

 

[Quartz]

And just what is your point? Are you saying the rules didn't support buffing, and require cascade effects that required re-figuring other things, and that some bonuses stacked and others didn't which needed to be kept track of?

Of course not. It just wasn't a problem.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Yes indeed, and many, maybe all, of those would be negated by a mass debuff like Disjunction. At that level, PCs should expect to face at least one Disjunction every significant fight.

I don't really agree, as I played some epic 3.x and we rarely saw Disjunction. We generally didn't go crazy with optimization either though.

The idea that an archmage was required in every encounter just to challenge the party seems fairly ludicrous to me. I haven't weighed in on whether the system was broken or not because I feel it's largely irrelevant in the grand scheme. However, were that true, it would scream "broken" to me.

 

[Blue]

Of course not. It just wasn't a problem.

Since I started this with an example of it as a problem that actually occurred at my table, you are in fact dead wrong when you make an assertion that it could not become a problem. Because we are talking about every table since we're talking system issues. And there are plenty of examples out there where there was stacking. Again, see CoDzilla - a real thing.

It may not have been a problem at your table, but that doesn't mean that every DM had every encounter someone capable of casting (multiple) disjunctions and would always get them off earlier in the initiative.

And if it does, that also shows there is a problem. So there is no way you can be correct that this isn't a system problem, because either case where what you are saying is true or false both point at system problems.