D&D General Why was 3.5 needed?

[Vaalingrade]

If you really care, there are a HUGE number of chats, threads and the like that document the development process. Andy Collins was very generous with his time in explaining how they were approaching 3.5, and why it was seen as a worthwhile activity. You can use some of those 'Wayback machine' search skills to uncover them.

And, presumably, another designer I will not name, writing the word 'Dwarf' in fonts of various sizes and types.

 

[billd91]

I had forgotten about the reduction of spell durations; I was pretty torked about it at the time. I liked being able to drop a buff on another player and have it last for more than one encounter. "Minutes per level" was always this nebulous and generally useless amount of time.

I house ruled several of them back - specifically the stat buffs and invisibility. I was OK with the stat bonus given to the buffs being regularized at +4 instead of +1d4+1 so that it wouldn't be fodder for empower/maximize spell. But the duration cut was abysmal.

 

[Pedantic]

I had forgotten about the reduction of spell durations; I was pretty torked about it at the time. I liked being able to drop a buff on another player and have it last for more than one encounter. "Minutes per level" was always this nebulous and generally useless amount of time.

Yeah, ideally the buff question should be "how many spell slots am I willing to give up today?" It's the same paradigm that controlling undead works under in 5e, but it gets lost when you start looking at the spells themselves. It might honestly have been better to write it up as like a cleric class ability that cost spell slots.

 

[Minigiant]

You'd be surprised how many "monks are too strong!" threads there were even in 2003.

Well monks were strong in D&D video games at the time. So if your DM ran like Neverwinter Nights, you would not realize the problem with that and many other statements.

 

[James Gasik]

Well monks were strong in D&D video games at the time. So if your DM ran like Neverwinter Nights, you would not realize the problem with that and many other statements.

Though the reason for this was two fold; the "have combat, then rest to regain spells" paradigm wasn't fun in NWN, and NWN had items specifically to buff Monks, like the handwraps that gave you elemental damage, plus you could get silly stats with the Companion Items.

A key design flaw of the Monk is their MAD-ness; once you can get high scores in multiple abilities, plus magic item support, yeah, they really take off.

Of course, lol, a lot of people liked the Monk because they felt the class didn't need magic item support ("they get so many abilities!"), even though they really needed it more than anybody, save for maybe Wild Shape Druids (who could solve one of their big problems by taking a Monk dip!).

 

[Minigiant]

Though the reason for this was two fold; the "have combat, then rest to regain spells" paradigm wasn't fun in NWN, and NWN had items specifically to buff Monks, like the handwraps that gave you elemental damage, plus you could get silly stats with the Companion Items.

A key design flaw of the Monk is their MAD-ness; once you can get high scores in multiple abilities, plus magic item support, yeah, they really take off.

Of course, lol, a lot of people liked the Monk because they felt the class didn't need magic item support ("they get so many abilities!"), even though they really needed it more than anybody, save for maybe Wild Shape Druids (who could solve one of their big problems by taking a Monk dip!).

Most of this was because 3.0 wasn't designed in the same way games are designed today. A lot of it seemed to be designed of the premise of Rule of Cool and not enough about what really happened.

So if was less "monks didn't need items" and more "if your DM stole all items,the monk is the only class that works".

You could see the differences clearly betweeen the 3.0 ranger and bard and their 3.5 versions as the latter actually had the skill points to do their job. Since "weight of skill importance" wasn't a thing in D&D yet. 3.0 was the first edition with a universal spread skill system over the whole game and it showed.

 

[GreyLord]

Because 3.0 was so obviously unbalanced and had a poor skeleton that everyone knew it needed revisions.

Yes, this is one of the major things stated.

Pun Pun.

The idea spawned the crazy creation. They recreated it somewhat with 3.5, but that relied a lot more on circumstantial situations and DM decisions.

3e was made on the idea that it would run like 2e. The problem, they changed so many rules that it was nothing LIKE 2e in how it could be used and abused. They closed several loopholes for power gamers and munchkins that were in 2e, only to open a HORDE of loopholes for them in 3e.

They didn't expect people to analyze the rules and then change the way they played accordingly. They didn't expect that it would be the RULES changing to feel of the game and the way people saw how it could be played. This unexpectedly meant that there were players out there that found these new loopholes to create crazy chaotic unbalanced insanity in the game.

3.5 was their attempt to bring balance back to the game. It probably worked for around 3-6 months. Then it became crazy again.

4e was the answer to that. They found out that many people prefer the a more open game than what 4e brought.

5e was their answer to that. With 5e they finally said...we keep trying to balance the game, but that doesn't really make it fun. Instead of trying to balance it completely, let's just try to make it appeal to people and figure out what the core of D&D is. Once we figure what the core ideas that really make D&D...D&D...the rest of the game can follow.

And here we are.

 

[James Gasik]

Point of order. Pun Pun is a bad example. Pun Pun only works if:

1) all sourcebooks are available for players to use.
2) the DM is a computer not able to make judgement calls of any kind, but must slavishly obey rules as written.
3) someone would actually build a character with the expressed purpose of abusing the poorly-written special ability of a monster.

You might get two of those, but never three.

 

[amethal]

Point of order. Pun Pun is a bad example. Pun Pun only works if:

1) all sourcebooks are available for players to use.
2) the DM is a computer not able to make judgement calls of any kind, but must slavishly obey rules as written.
3) someone would actually build a character with the expressed purpose of abusing the poorly-written special ability of a monster.

You might get two of those, but never three.

As I remember it, Pun Pun only works if you interpret (obscure Forgotten-Realms-specific monster whose name I've thankfully forgotten)'s vague ability to add spell-like and supernatural abilities to a reptilian creature, followed by a few low-powered examples, as meaning they can add any ability that appears in any book ever written for 3.5 D&D. Which is a stretch.

And it is just a thought experiment anyway, since it was created for a "create the most ridiculously overpowered character you can" competition. There's no point playing in a game that featured Pun Pun as a PC as it would be no fun for anybody involved. The campaign probably wouldn't survive the first session.

 

[Vaalingrade]

A lot of 'power creep' throughout D&D's history is essentially the thought crime of the RPG set.