hawkeyefan
Legend
Of the many complaints about 3.X that are made, often for very understandable reasons, this is one I understand the least.
You do not have to make certain that PC's have the correct "wealth by level". In 10+ years of DMing 3.X, I've never once calculated PC wealth or tried to calculate treasure based on expected wealth by level. Likewise, while I have on occasion gone through the step by step process of modifying a monster to achieve a custom result, no one is forced by the system to either modify monsters in the first place (as opposed to just playing them straight out of a Monster Manual or other resource) or use some system when creating a monster. Whatever you do as a DM is perfectly right and valid - assign hit points, skills, or whatever as you see fit. Or don't. Just write down the minimum you need to know to run an encounter, and fill in the details on the fly when and if you find you need them.
Sure, I can see that. But that is a burden you put on yourself, and not something imposed by the system. It's something of an open question if a system can actually impose anything on a GM, but what you are talking about is simply guidelines that exposed the underlying math, and not hard and fast rules that a GM has to abide by. (Seriously, is there such a thing as a hard and fast rule that GMs have to abide by?)
While I agree with you that a lot of the elements could be easily ignored (and were, by my group) there were many where that decision was a harder one to make. Sure, Wealth by Level and Monster Creation rules are best as guidelines, and can easily be ignored....but I think it's harder to do that with options for player characters. The Complete series of books...Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Complete Scoundrel, etc.....is where things really started to get tough for my group.
Players would see these books and get excited and pick them up....and then they'd want to use the options presented within, and I couldn't blame them. But then it's a new book of material that the DM either needs to be familiar with, or willing to accept that there's going to be new mechanics and elements that he's going to have to learn on the fly in play.
This was a real sticking point in our game. Especially in the form of third party books that weren't even known commodities. It led to all kinds of issues.
Yes, we could have instilled a "core only" rule or something similar. I really didn't want to do this because it was a case of me being the most aware of the problem because I was the primary DM. It was much more obvious to me because I was constantly changing the game on the fly to account for a steady stream of new mechanics and players' options. For the players, it seemed like there were minor issues here and there, and they only started realizing there was an underlying cause as time went on, and some took longer to realize it than others.
So I didn't want to be the kind of DM who decides everything for the group, and I kept trying to adapt and deal with the problem. In retrospect, I should have addressed it head on much sooner.
So that's not to say that I didn't like the edition, or that it wasn't worthwhile....far from it. I'd probably say that It was the edition I played the most and had the most fun with (although 5E is great, too). But as a system, I think the criticism that it became more cumbersome and unwieldy over time is valid. Your decision to keep to "Core Only", although a good decision, doesn't excuse the edition for the bloat problem.