D&D 3E/3.5 Why 3.5 Worked

[Zardnaar]

Out of all the editions 3.5 is one I don't have a lot of nostalgia for 3.5.

However 3.5 is still one if the bigger out of print editions played online.

And it lived on another 10 years via Pathfinder.

But 3.5 is a broken hot mess right? At higher levels absolutely. However I had my suspicions most people didn't play high level games.

Much like AD&D before it.

Now with D&D beyond showing 7% of games being above level 10 and 30% being above level 6.

So the old sweet spot IMHO is still level 3-7. It's nothing to do with game mechanics but more real life stuff. I suspect the few high level games are established groups of friends.

3.X slayed 4E even if 4E fixed it. But the old saying if it's not broke don't fix it seems to apply. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

5E to me tops out around level 8 this is roughly when ability scores hit 18-20 with a feat or two thrown in. Anything higher than that's a bonus, level 12+ may as well be moon landings made it to 13 once in 5 years.

 

[Anoth]

3.5 wasn’t broke. It just ran its course and was time for a new edition. The same thing that will happen with 5E. And then people will say 5E was broken. They were all good games. But once so many copy sales and/or people want to try something with new bells and whistles then it will stop selling and it will be time for 6E.

 

[Weiley31]

My only prob with 3rd edition was Prestige Class bloat. Which, despite the quirks with it at times, I like the 5E Subclass mechanic alot more.

But the 3rd edition books are still great for all that juicy lore/world building they add.

 

[Celebrim]

The reason 3e works is that at its core the D20 mechanic of d20+modifier >= target DC is a fundamentally solid mechanic that can be versatility applied to different procedures of play according to the needs of the table. It supported a wide variety of aesthetics of play at a wide variety of power levels from the grittiness of casual realism below about level 6, to epic levels of power at level 13 or higher. Moreover, if you didn't super optimize tier 1 and tier 2 characters, you had play balance up until about level 9 or 10. You are correct that probably most groups didn't play beyond those levels, but if they did the core mechanic still supported it, and groups were able to negotiate some sort of metagame that kept the game functional.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

I'm an odd duck in that 4E is my edition of choice, but 3.5E was a great edition in which I ran my longest-running and highest level campaigns. As the OP correctly points out, it works perfectly well up to the levels that most people seem to play their D&D games. Frankly, if 3.5E had the same electronic tools that 4E had (and has - thank God for the offline tools!), I'm not sure I would have bought the then-new edition.

 

[Acolyte of Zothique]

3.5 wasn’t broke. It just ran its course and was time for a new edition. The same thing that will happen with 5E. And then people will say 5E was broken. They were all good games. But once so many copy sales and/or people want to try something with new bells and whistles then it will stop selling and it will be time for 6E.

Back in the day I both ran and played in high level (level 12+) 3.5 games. 3.5 was broken to hell and back. It was so broken that my own group and I agreed to end a 4 year campaign and take a break from D&D.

My break lasted 10 years until 5e; in the intervening period I played and ran other RPGs.

 

[Don Durito]

I think groups probably either embraced the complexity of 3.5 and its system building or played it loosey goosey and ignored huge chunks of the rules, playing it essentially in a similar way to 5E. (For example, when I first ran it I never once cracked the book open to check what an appropriate DC was for a particular skill, I just used what I felt was appropriate, and I never used miniatures, so we never had any arguments about when Attacks of Opportunity were used.)

I imagine groups that fell into the middle jumped ship and went to play other games.

 

[Richards]

I still play 3.5 - two current campaigns, actually, one where I'm a player and one where I'm the DM. I've DMed a full 20-level campaign using 3.5 (as has my son) and the PCs in my follow-up campaign are right now at the high end of 18th level. We haven't experienced the "broken hot mess" assigned to high-level play in 3.5; granted, it takes longer to stat out a high-level foe but that's likely to be true (to some extent) of any high-level play.

Anyway, we're still enjoying it so that's what really matters. We never saw the need to ditch it for 4E and we have no real need to try out 5E when 3.5 is still fulfilling our gaming needs.

Johnathan

 

[JeffB]

Running and playing are two completely different things. 3.x drove me away from D&D (3.5 was the nail in the coffin), 4E brought me back.

I was actually rolling through all the editions Monster Manuals last night (1E, OD&D,2E,3E,PF1,PF2,4E,5E,13A) comparing high level creatures (like Demons, dragons, etc) In each case, 3.X,PFx creatures were just over the top with needless at the table complication for the DM.

I would play 3.5/PF1 with no problem assuming a good DM. But running the game past that 6-8th level sweet spot? Never again

 

[NaturalZero]

I didn't get seriously into actually playing and running DnD until the summer 3.5 dropped and I've probably spent the most hours playing that edition. I think the big strength of 3.5 was that you got a ton of choices and there was at least the illusion of meaningful freedom. The thing for those who cared about, or at least noticed, game mastery was that the longer the edition was out, the more it became obvious that where a handful of overpowered options in a sea of "timmy" choices. I found myself buying 80 page books and using 1 page because the rest of options had a tiny fraction of the usefulness and eventually I was burned out on finding needles in haystacks.

It's important to note that 5 years in, the online community had a strong grasp of how and why 3.5 was broken from an optimization point. We're now that far along with 5e and we see nothing even remotely close to that kind power disparity.