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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="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7886836" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. </p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7886836, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]
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