Why doesn't 3.5 make SENSE?

[Dandu]

Pathfinder still has some serious balance issues at high level. The Fighter is unfreaking real now, especially a dedicated fighter archer. We had to tone down crits in our campaign because of the archer. I don't quite understand what the Pathfinder design team was thinking by giving the archer so much including the equivalent of Power Attack.

Paladin is pretty sick at high levels too. Immune to every type of relevant crowd control, very effective DR, and smite evil is sickeningly tough now.

Also, full casters can still make most other classes cry.

 

[Beginning of the End]

Learning D&D 3.5 just makes me mad sometimes. It doesn't make any sense. 9th-level Shapechange gives you +28 to AC, SR 32 and myriad other benefits. 8th-level Shield of Law gives you +4 to AC and SR 25 conditionally. Why would anyone build a system like that?

Dude. The issues with polymorph/shapechange have been known for 20+ years at this point. It's not news. It's a problem without a solution. Either you:

(a) Embrace completely dissociated mechanics in an effort to preserve mechanical balance.

(b) Allow for logical applications of that type of magic which will inevitably allow a mechanical loop-hole to be found.

These are fundamentally incompatible design goals. There is no right answer. And everything is a compromise between them, except:

(c) Not allowing for a brand of magic which is a major staple of the genre.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Pathfinder still has some serious balance issues at high level.

. . .

I hope Pathfinder powers up some of the monsters.

Many folks who find Pathfinder wasn't enough of a fix, but still want to stay with 3.5, have looked to Trailblazer as a toolbox for more solutions to their Pathfinder/3.x game. It is a dirt cheap .pdf.

I mentioned it up thread, but the Trailblazer guys are now attempting a go at redoing 3.5 monsters as a patronage project. I hope anyone who likes 3.5 would consider contributing funds to the Trailblazer monster project. A $25 dollar contribution also counts as a pre-order for the physical book when it goes to print.

 

[Celtavian]

Also, full casters can still make most other classes cry.

True enough. They just aren't the primo damage dealers save for AoE damage they used to be.

But a prepared caster versus melee is still a caster win. The fly spell alone still trumps just about any melee class except an archer.

Though I might put my money on an archer to kill a caster if the archer wins initiative. Archers deal crazy damage now and they were still good damage dealers in 3.5. And since Dex is one of their primary stats, they most likely will win initiative. Archers aren't limited by range like melees and they can motor through hit points like a buzzsaw. But a prepared caster can deal with them if they get initiative.

And I don't mind casters being the strongest class. They are in storybooks, at least the majority that I read. I like the storybook feel to a game over it being balanced. I want people to fear the arcane caster that wields power that few can stand against or priests that wield the power of their god as a weapon. It is as it should be.

I just finished reading The Blade Itself not too long ago and I'm reading The Name of the Wind right now, two more modern fantasy tales, and they still stick to the tradition of the wizard being one of the most powerful paths a mortal can travel. I'll always prefer that to making all classes balanced.

 

[Celtavian]

Many folks who find Pathfinder wasn't enough of a fix, but still want to stay with 3.5, have looked to Trailblazer as a toolbox for more solutions to their Pathfinder/3.x game. It is a dirt cheap .pdf.

I mentioned it up thread, but the Trailblazer guys are now attempting a go at redoing 3.5 monsters as a patronage project. I hope anyone who likes 3.5 would consider contributing funds to the Trailblazer monster project. A $25 dollar contribution also counts as a pre-order for the physical book when it goes to print.

I don't know if I was looking for a fix. I kind of like hyper-powered characters. I like holy knights that even powerful evil monsters fear to face. I like fighters that can rip apart armies in hand to hand. I'm a high fantasy kind of a guy. But I also DM so I understand I gotta tweak things to make them harder than they are. High fantasy heroes need high fantasy enemies, that means enemies that can give them a battle worthy of their abilities.

 

[Dandu]

Though I might put my money on an archer to kill a caster if the archer wins initiative. Archers deal crazy damage now and they were still good damage dealers in 3.5. And since Dex is one of their primary stats, they most likely will win initiative. Archers aren't limited by range like melees and they can motor through hit points like a buzzsaw. But a prepared caster can deal with them if they get initiative.

Just hope Pathfinder fixed the awful 3.5e spot rules which meant that a normal human couldn't spot a damn mountain off in the distance...

And I don't mind casters being the strongest class. They are in storybooks, at least the majority that I read. I like the storybook feel to a game over it being balanced. I want people to fear the arcane caster that wields power that few can stand against or priests that wield the power of their god as a weapon. It is as it should be.

My main gripe with casters being overpowered in general is that it is not fun for a decent amount of players when they realize that their level 12 monk is overshadowed by the party's Druid, Wizard, and Cleric, and the complaint I have against caster power in Pathfinder is that they said they were going to fix it.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Pathfinder still has some serious balance issues at high level. The Fighter is unfreaking real now, especially a dedicated fighter archer. We had to tone down crits in our campaign because of the archer. I don't quite understand what the Pathfinder design team was thinking by giving the archer so much including the equivalent of Power Attack.

Paladin is pretty sick at high levels too. Immune to every type of relevant crowd control, very effective DR, and smite evil is sickeningly tough now.

I guess there were different ways to render the wizard and sorcerer balanced against the melee classes. As far as damage dealing goes, the fighter, paladin, and barbarian are probably the strongest damage dealers now. Even the ranger against his favored enemy is pretty sick, especially an archer ranger.

I hope Pathfinder powers up some of the monsters. They don't stand much of a chance against higher level character parties.

That's not really high level as much as it is "level 20"

You're effectively upset that level 20 characters are very powerful, which strikes me as being somewhat odd, to say the least.

 

[Snoweel]

(If so maybe the answer is the same as to my DMing troubles... stop focusing on the details.)

This is the mindset that set me free as a DM, however it also started my slow falling out of love with 3.x - it's so detail driven that I had trouble 'glossing over' the speedbumps.

4e came out at a good time for me personally, because it essentially plays rules-lite (like BECMI) except for the combat mini-game which is a lot of fun. Of course there's still a few fiddly bits but that's solveable with fewer and harder combats.

If you really do want to "stop focusing on the details" you should give 4e a try. But don't let the game mechanics dictate the world for you (an easy path to go down if you did your apprenticeship in 3.x's 'quantify everything' mechanical set) - 4e mechanics are a well balanced abstraction that mostly gets the rules out of the way. Of course, many gamers are totally into the details (we are nerds after all - I myself find 3.x statblocks a lot more interesting to peruse than those of 4e but at the table interesting statblocks run a distant second to story elements) and those gamers haven't been too impressed with 4e.

 

[Snoweel]

Just hope Pathfinder fixed the awful 3.5e spot rules which meant that a normal human couldn't spot a damn mountain off in the distance...

I think this is another area where the rules should just get out of the way. Why would anyone need a spot check to see a mountain?

The rules are only designed to adjudicate where there's a realistic chance of success or failure.

 

[haakon1]

Did they write spells based on "things it would be cool to do with magic" instead of "things it would be possible to do in a game"?

Yes. Well, actually OD&D and AD&D did that, in the 1970s, and 3e continued the tradition.

Pre-4e D&D is about fantasy (invisibility and polymorph are in fantasy, so we need spells to do that!) and medieval wargaming logic into a shared reality of a character-focused role playing game. 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition and 3.5 were updates on that chassis -- which is why some spells and items in 3.5 read word-for-word the same as they did in AD&D.

That's the beauty of those games -- shooting an arrow works like reality, translated to a game -- you fire, and your chance to hit depends on your coordination, your training/skill/experience, how far the target is, whether the target is armored and/or has a shield, and how fast they can flinch.

And X weapon can be just plain better than Y weapon -- no balancing trade offs other than cost, a composite longbow just is better than a regular shortbow, because it really was better, historically -- the stats are like that to be "right" to the feel of history, not to balance a game mechanic.

4e -- which would be much more your ticket -- is all about the game balance you seek. It's all game logic, not fantasy or history/wargaming logic. "This is your power, it goes what it does because that's balanced and it's what the rule says" logic, with everything carefully spreadsheeted into balance. I suggest you play it instead.