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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants
Why 3.5 Worked
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<blockquote data-quote="Don Durito" data-source="post: 7886760" data-attributes="member: 6687260"><p>I agree that 3.0 felt more like a toolkit and 3.5 felt like it was for the hardcore rules and build obsessives, but I don't know how much of that was just me and how much was the culture of play that developed (or how universal that was).</p><p></p><p>I do know that something seemed to change. I think a lot of it was the D20 glut and bubble exploding. I know that with early 3.0 we were pulling in a lot of 3rd party stuff especially the Scarred Lands material such as Relics and Rituals which may have been shaky rules wise, but added awesome flavour, and I was also making my own setting prestige classes and the like. There was the obvious awareness that a lot of this material was unbalanced (but so was the WOTC material). There was also the understanding that it was up to everyone to play fair and that the GM would overrule anything broken.</p><p></p><p>I found over time attitudes seemed to change. 3rd party material was increasingly frowned upon (and to be fair part of that was because so much of it was so bad), and there was increasing pressure to accept anything that was WotC. 3.5 seemed to ditch a lot of Greyhawk setting elements in the splat books - and this increasingly opened up the idea that prestige classes were less about cool directions to take your character in setting and more about ways to achieve the biggest powerups. At a certain point I started to find this distateful and drifted away from D&D until Castles and Crusades came out and gave me an alternative.</p><p></p><p>I wouldn't claim that this was a universal experience - but it was how I experienced it - and it wasn't completely divorced from what was happening in the rules.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Don Durito, post: 7886760, member: 6687260"] I agree that 3.0 felt more like a toolkit and 3.5 felt like it was for the hardcore rules and build obsessives, but I don't know how much of that was just me and how much was the culture of play that developed (or how universal that was). I do know that something seemed to change. I think a lot of it was the D20 glut and bubble exploding. I know that with early 3.0 we were pulling in a lot of 3rd party stuff especially the Scarred Lands material such as Relics and Rituals which may have been shaky rules wise, but added awesome flavour, and I was also making my own setting prestige classes and the like. There was the obvious awareness that a lot of this material was unbalanced (but so was the WOTC material). There was also the understanding that it was up to everyone to play fair and that the GM would overrule anything broken. I found over time attitudes seemed to change. 3rd party material was increasingly frowned upon (and to be fair part of that was because so much of it was so bad), and there was increasing pressure to accept anything that was WotC. 3.5 seemed to ditch a lot of Greyhawk setting elements in the splat books - and this increasingly opened up the idea that prestige classes were less about cool directions to take your character in setting and more about ways to achieve the biggest powerups. At a certain point I started to find this distateful and drifted away from D&D until Castles and Crusades came out and gave me an alternative. I wouldn't claim that this was a universal experience - but it was how I experienced it - and it wasn't completely divorced from what was happening in the rules. [/QUOTE]
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