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I'd like to know your opinions on the following:

Regarding the three systems (3E, 3.5 and Pathfinder):

What issues were there in 3E that 3.5 fixed?
What issues were there in 3.5 that Pathfinder fixed?
What issues were there that 3.5 made worse?
What issues were there that Pathfinder made worse?
What have you house ruled in your 3E / 3.5 / Pathfinder game?  What have you rolled back to a previous version?

I'll start with an example - 3E allowed Keen to stack with Improved Critical.  3.5 removed that.  I don't think that was an issue, and have house-ruled it back in my games.

My answer is from someone that checked out of 3.5 early, and thus never had any interest in PF.  So consider the source on these answers:

1. 3.5 added a lot of language around 3E rules that didn't really clarify anything, but rather provided more text for the GM to wade through (if so inclined) before making a ruling.  Since sometimes both 3E and 3.5 were "wrong" compared to the GM ruling, this was something 3E did "better".  Though it might be more accurate to say that 3E was "less bad".

2. The 3.5 Ranger and Bard are better than the 3E equivalents, but still not fixed.  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

3. The rules for 3.5 skills are better than the 3E version, but still not fixed (and not even fixable, given how embedded they are in core system problems).  Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I hear rumors that some of the later 3.5 supplements had some nifty options, but by then I'd burnt out on all 3.*/PF mechanics and their various derivative systems.

Quote from: kythri;1090769What issues were there in 3E that 3.5 fixed?

Rangers and bards were made less garbage, if I recall correctly.

Nerfing haste was probably a good call, just because of action economy.

Most of the other changes were fiddly and/or dumb. Messing with buff durations didn't make the game noticeably better, for instance, but it didn't make things worse, either - just different.

QuoteWhat issues were there in 3.5 that Pathfinder fixed?

...racial ability scores, maybe?

PF compared to 3.5 is mostly just rearranging the chairs. 3.5 had a lot of acknowledged problems, none of which PF actually fixed. While the skill system is a mild improvement, it's still a lot of bookkeeping and has its own set of weird results.

QuoteWhat issues were there that 3.5 made worse?

I don't recall seeing anything that made me actively prefer 3e over 3.5. As I said, there were fiddly changes, but there were enough good changes (bard, ranger) that it was worth dealing with the minor changes.

QuoteWhat issues were there that Pathfinder made worse?

At first it seemed like a fair improvement. At this point, though, the system is bloated as all hell, and it has way too many fiddly bits.

QuoteWhat have you house ruled in your 3E / 3.5 / Pathfinder game?  What have you rolled back to a previous version?

Wrote a whole list of homebrew classes, banned all the original classes, ripped out the skill system, rewrote feats, wrote new spell systems, reworked equipment and magic items, made significant modifications to how wealth works, went to a 4e-style monster design paradigm, changed how HP and damage scale across the board...

I think at this point the only things that my games have recognizably in common with 3.5 are (1) it's vaguely d20-based, (2) we have the six traditional D&D ability scores (plus some others), and (3) we have the standard D&D races, along with a whole bunch of others.

You could not bring a vanilla 3.5 character into my games. Wouldn't even begin to work.

Well, my recollection of some highlights includes the following:

3.5 fixed issues with spider climb and spiders (3.0 had spiders and spider climb users making skill checks and falling to their death frequently*); rangers were fixed, prestige classes with spells were fixed, and a ton of combat mechanical language/focus was shifted toward an emphasis on minis/maps use (not a fix, but a change to help focus marketing the WotC's figures and maps sales by making it harder to play without them. 3.5 also, as I understand it, codified some of the rules in place which made the CoDzilla problem more prominent. It also didn't fix grappling or make maneuvers easier to determine.

Pathfinder fixed a bunch of stuff: skill system became better, class designs more flexy overall, and the thematic intent became important in classes that shifted it away from endless class and prestige class designs (a bit, anyway). Stacking modifiers were brought a bit under control. The concept of low cost orisons and cantrips was implemented to good effect. Some trap feats were modified or removed. It introduced a fairly accessible Combat Maneuver mechanic for unarmed and trick maneuver actions.

Pathfinder still led to system bloat. It still had balance issues at high levels. Stacking wasn't fixed anywhere close to enough. Some of the depth of class design led to decision paralysis for players, or felt like quibbling over piles of crumbs to figure out which pile was bigger. Pathfinder design often erred on the side of caution, aiming for somewhat mitigated designs but this did not please the base who hated it when a new class or feature wasn't as (or more) mechanically valuable as prior classes, leading to situations where entire tomes (Wilderness Adventures cough) would get derided as useless.

--probably a lot more than I can think of, but that's what I've noticed. I personally like Pathfinder quite a bit, but barring some serious oddities in 3.0 felt I got the best (albeit brief) play experience with it in those three short years when it was 3.0 D&D but we were all still playing it like it was an actual old school D&D game and players hadn't succumbed to the system mastery min/max mindset.

I had a mix of house rules but the only one I liked much was a spell point mechanic I used.


*If you sense that I lost more than a few characters to a failed climb check with spider climb you would be right. The DM also lost more than a few spiders.

3.0 > 3.5: As mentioned, the ranger and bard were notably improved. I consider the Bard the gold standard for what 3.5e class should be; strong in its area of expertise (party buffing), good in other areas (skills, fighting, utility spells), but lacking game breaking abilities that DMs can't reasonably begin to account for (ex. high level clerics, druids, wizards and sorcerers).

A number of spells got tweaked. Without the danger of aging with every use spellcasters using Haste to cast two spells per round became so pervasive that modules had to have enemy casters use the same tactic or present no challenge at all. Hold Person and similar spells picked up a save to end the effect early every round instead of putting someone out of action for 30+ rounds due to one failed save as in 3e.

Another critical change was to damage reduction and energy resistance, which in 3e were scaled so high that it often functioned as invulnerability (DR 20/+2 meant that without a +2 or better weapon you were knocking 20 points off each hit from a weapon when a fighter's attacks are unlikely to ever do 20 damage without a +2 or better weapon and significant magic buffs on top... DR 30/+3 or 40/+4 should have just used AD&Ds "need +X or better weapon to hit" as it would have been more honest).

Instead they dropped the DR down to 5 (low-level) 10 (high level) or 15 (very high level) with materials needed to bypass (ex. any magic weapon, silver, cold iron, adamantine). 5 points is annoying to a low level fighter trying to bring down a werewolf without a silver weapon, but two-handing a longsword and a 16 Str would let them do 1d8+4 so only their worst rolls are doing nothing... and a silver dagger (1d4+3) becomes a viable choice in that case.

The other thing that 3.5e had over 3e was time to grow. I've mentioned before that late 3e with all the splats but all the tier 1-2 and 5-6 classes banned runs much much smoother than early 3.5 or any version of 3e precisely because it had sufficient time to work out the kinks.

3.5e > PF lost almost all that late 3.5e strength because the OGL only covered the core books and a bit of other pieces like Deities & Demigods and Unearthed Arcana options. It was absolutely a step up from early 3.5e, but the Paizo crew didn't do much but imitate rather than innovate (many of the strongest PF options like "Spheres of Power" were third-party supplements which could have just as easily been written for 3.5e). Their primary strength and marketing model was its Adventure Paths (and even there the mechanics were mediocre; the Kingmaker domain rules fall apart if you squint at them too hard for example... you're better off using the Basic domain and mass combat rules).

Limited to just those three options, late 3.5e wins every single time... particularly with Reserve feats, Skill Tricks and classes like the Warlock, Totemist, Crusader, Swordsage and Warblade in the mix (the latter three essentially being fixed versions of the Paladin, Monk and Fighter... the three weakest classes in the PHB).

The thing with 3.5 was they had different sized weapons. Like you'd have a regular longsword and then a small longsword (for small people). Every weapon had different sizes. It seemed like overkill to a problem that probably didn't exist.

3.0 to 3.5 to PF

The books kept getting better.  PF has some choice books in the series.  The Bestiaries, Advanced Player's Guide, NPC Codex, Monster Codex, Ultimate Magic, etc.

They cover the spectrum well.

I never played 3.0 as I started playing RPGs right as 3.5 came out.

PF fixed some of the worst spell offenders (polymorph and a few other self-buffs) but they did make summoning spells a bit worse.

Overall the class balance got better over time. In PF there was actually a good reason to play a fighter beyond a 2 level dip to qualify for a prestige class. In class balance PF>3.5>3. For the first 8ish levels of Pathfinder pretty much any class can sit down at the table together without feeling overshadowed so long as rogues & monks use the unchained variants. (or a monk who knows what he's doing with multiple archetypes) Though much into the double digits and the system starts to break down just like 3.x as the framework just starts to break.

PF also streamlined the maneuver system (trip/disarm/grapple/etc.) though in the process they accidentally made it less viable at high levels (in the teens) against many monsters.

PF made crits & sneak attack work against nearly everything. (Exceptions for oozes & elementals - and that's about it.)

I'd say that overall PF's quality of supplement was a bit better, and I generally preferred PF's archetypes to 3.x's prestige classes, because you could play your character concept from level 1 instead of having to pick weird stuff until level 5-6 to qualify. However, an unintended negative consequence of less multi-classing for martials was that their average saving throws dropped a bit, as most builds in 3.x had lots of extra +2s from those first level boosts. That, and I have mixed feelings about all the +0 LA races with bonuses to mental stats. With a few (generally considered OP) exceptions, bonuses to mental stats in 3.x guaranteed LA - and the change meant that all wizards were either elf or one of the three anything races (human/half-orc/half-elf), all sorcerers were gnome/halfling/anything race etc.

Rangers and Bard as another poster pointed out were not that great as classes imo in 3E and 3.5 fixed that. Spell Buffs durations were downgraded because apparently having Mage Armor and other buffs from spells last longer than usual broke too many tables. Monsters had feats added to them in the 3.5. Monster Manual which I liked because why would the monsters not have feats like players.

Pathfinder was and is a mixed bag in terms of what it did good and bad. Good it made the Paladin class viable past tenth level. As after tenth level your getting crap in therms of class options imo. More removing disease and smite evil options. I also like what they did with Bards and Barbarians. More importantly they actually made Sorcerers well feel interesting as a class instead of 3.5 "the blood of dragons flows through one veins" trope with the addition of bloodlines. Charon is correct that they made the Combat Maneuver section better and worse at the same time.

What Pathfinder did worse they did very little to address the Linear Fighter Quadratic issue if one tried to bring it up as an issue apparently according to one of their devs whomever does has an agenda they are trying to push. Their Archetypes were hit or miss and usually very much miss than hit in terms of design. Taking away a major class feature of say the Druid to replace it with a +1 to hit or skill check is not going to make me want to take the Archetype. Playtesting process for their products which is a sham more than anything else and less to fix actual issues with their rpg. Many playtesters told them over and over before their gun rules went to print to not keep them as is because it would make one ranged weapon better than the others. They told everyone involved that it was being taken under advisement and last minute left them as is with a polite "too bad so sad suck it up" because of that guns are too powerful imo. Stubborn refusal to find the proper middle ground in terms of designing new material either it is too good  say like Sacred Geometry or not worth taking such as the Geisha Archetype. Hopefully the group always has ten minutes or more to waste before a battle so the Geisha to use her special class ability. To nerfing things such as Crane Wing because Organized play DMs could not handle certain builds using that ability.

To thinking that fluff beats crunch which is never the case imo becase no matter how one puts pretty prose in the description of a +1 feat it still is a +1 feat. To doing half assed jobs when offering new options such as the Grey Paladin downgrading the class. To taking so long and in some cases fixing the issues poorly that once 5E was released they lost much market share because lo and behold when the competition actually fixes the issues of an rpg engine many gamers will buy the new edition rather than deal with an older editions flaws.

Quote from: sureshot;1090857Pathfinder was and is a mixed bag in terms of what it did good and bad. Good it made the Paladin class viable past tenth level.

To be fair, 3.5 also fixed the Paladin, they just called it the Crusader (also their fixed fighter is called the Warblade and the fixed Monk is called the Swordsage). After the gripes of having to rebuy everything going from 3 to 3.5e they'd never have gotten away with a third iteration of the PHB, so they made them new classes instead.

Indeed, if you use the splats there are solid tier 3-4 subtitutions for all the overperfoming and underperforming classes;

- Barbarian: Already tier 4, but skill tricks and some of the later feats really make it shine.
- Bard: the definitive tier 3 class, particularly with skill tricks and complete adventurer spells.
- Cleric: The tier 3 approach is to use the Divine Bard option (from the SRD). The Adept NPC class is a tier 4 alternative, but could be bumped to Tier 3 by giving them cleric domains and spontaneous casting of their domain spells.
- Druid: Use the Savage Bard variant (available in the d20 SRD) combined with the "Other Variant" from the SRD that drops its Bardic Lore and Music to gain the Druid's animal companion, nature sense, resist nature lure and wild empathy features. For one more focused on Wildshape, go with the Wild Shape variant Ranger (also from the SRD).
- Fighter: Replace it with the Warblade. It's everything the fighter should have been.
- Monk: Replace it with the Swordsage or Psychic Warrior depending on your preference.
- Paladin: Use the Crusader. It is to the Paladin what the Warblade is to the Fighter.
- Ranger: The Ranger is a strong tier 4, but look at alternate class features since the previously mentioned Wildshape variant can hit a solid tier 3.
- Rogue: The Rogue is also tier 4. For a more flexible skill monkey type, go with the tier 3 Factotum.
- Sorcerer and Wizard: Pick a focus and use one of the following classes; Beguiler, Binder, Dread Necromancer or Warmage. If you want sorcerers to feel very different from traditional casters, try the Warlock, Dragon Disciple or Totemist.

If you hated WotC for what it did to D&D, you bought Pathfinder. Plain and simple. That was the only reason for buying Pathfinder.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1090970If you hated WotC for what it did to D&D, you bought Pathfinder. Plain and simple. That was the only reason for buying Pathfinder.

I must admit 4e is a pretty damn good reason for buying Pathfinder.

Quote from: Shasarak;1091003I must admit 4e is a pretty damn good reason for buying Pathfinder.

Ha!!!  I own 4E too.  It's different...

I still think what killed 4E was the presentation of less like an traditional rpg and more for the mmo crowd. Not I am not saying it runs or plays like one just how they presented the rules. As 5E has many aspects of 4E included in it yet written more like a traditional rpg.

Being mainly a 3.5/Pathfinder player, the weird thing about these editions is how easy it is to cast spells (compared to the old ones). This resulted in the spelcasters rule meme and then resulted in the slow but sure descent to modern dnd spellcasters having weaker spells. Just see the spell durations and effects in 5e and playtest pathfinder 2nd.
3rd edition and co really dropped the ball with spellcasting mechanics and feats.

I mean there should be a middle ground between the super difficult way to cast spells into combat in adnd and the super easy in dnd 3.5.

Mind you in previous editions I found it way too easy to use a spell I could understand taking a certain amount of damage. Yet one point of damage and one loses the spell despite being a high level caster. It's not even so much the magic as well so much that feats unlike spells do not scale upwards by level. The Dodge Feat is simply a +1 to AC. It never gets worse nor better. Yet spells that cast damage even lower level ones gets stronger. I think if they had at least made it so that Feats scale like spells the casters would be less stronger. As well may spells simply make many skills obsolete. Who needs Climb when a wand of Spider Climb will do.

Pathfinder was more balanced. No PC class except for the Shifter is lower than tier 4 and it is possible to make Fighter that is OK at high levels. Pathfinder is also Mathfinder. Their answer was to add lots of fiddly numbers and most of the options they printed were absolute crap which lead to power seep rather than creep (hence why anyone thought the Shifter was a good class to end the edition on).

The Shifter is hot garbage.

Quote from: Chris24601;1090933To be fair, 3.5 also fixed the Paladin, they just called it the Crusader (also their fixed fighter is called the Warblade and the fixed Monk is called the Swordsage). After the gripes of having to rebuy everything going from 3 to 3.5e they'd never have gotten away with a third iteration of the PHB, so they made them new classes instead.

Indeed, if you use the splats there are solid tier 3-4 subtitutions for all the overperfoming and underperforming classes;

- Barbarian: Already tier 4, but skill tricks and some of the later feats really make it shine.
- Bard: the definitive tier 3 class, particularly with skill tricks and complete adventurer spells.
- Cleric: The tier 3 approach is to use the Divine Bard option (from the SRD). The Adept NPC class is a tier 4 alternative, but could be bumped to Tier 3 by giving them cleric domains and spontaneous casting of their domain spells.
- Druid: Use the Savage Bard variant (available in the d20 SRD) combined with the "Other Variant" from the SRD that drops its Bardic Lore and Music to gain the Druid's animal companion, nature sense, resist nature lure and wild empathy features. For one more focused on Wildshape, go with the Wild Shape variant Ranger (also from the SRD).
- Fighter: Replace it with the Warblade. It's everything the fighter should have been.
- Monk: Replace it with the Swordsage or Psychic Warrior depending on your preference.
- Paladin: Use the Crusader. It is to the Paladin what the Warblade is to the Fighter.
- Ranger: The Ranger is a strong tier 4, but look at alternate class features since the previously mentioned Wildshape variant can hit a solid tier 3.
- Rogue: The Rogue is also tier 4. For a more flexible skill monkey type, go with the tier 3 Factotum.
- Sorcerer and Wizard: Pick a focus and use one of the following classes; Beguiler, Binder, Dread Necromancer or Warmage. If you want sorcerers to feel very different from traditional casters, try the Warlock, Dragon Disciple or Totemist.

This is exactly the sort of thing which makes me dislike modern D&D.  Picking a class by combat power instead of actually something you'd like to roleplay is anathema to me.

Quote from: goblinslayer;1091093This is exactly the sort of thing which makes me dislike modern D&D.  Picking a class by combat power instead of actually something you'd like to roleplay is anathema to me.

Actually the tiers are explicitly NOT about combat power. If it were the Fighter might score higher. The tiers are about overall ability to solve problems.

The Bard ranks significantly higher than the Fighter not because it's better in a straight up fight; best case it's about 2/3 of a fighter on it's own; but because it can also handle social situations, has bardic knowledge, lots of skill points and has a suite of flexible spells that range from enchantments to illusions to buffs and healing. In short, they're good problem solvers in a wide array of situations (but unlike wizards and clerics rarely has a flat-out "I win" button they pull out of their spell list).

Tier 3s are considered ideal because they're flexible enough to be able to contribute in a variety of situations, but lack the ability to warp the campaign world to their whims like a high level tier 1-2 character can).

By contrast fighters have such limited skill points and such a restricted skill list and no features other than a list of combat related bonus feats that it really only has use in one situation; combat; and is pretty mediocre at that compared to other options. It's tier five because all it can do is fight and there are others who can it as well or better (or as well and do other things too).

The reason the Warblade (i.e. Fighter+) ranks so much better in the tiers (3) is that unlike the fighter it has a broader skill list, more skill points (and class features that encourage a good Int score so you'll have even more than those listed) and other abilities that are actually useful outside of just hitting things (ex. the White Raven discipline makes you a competent at persuading and directing others and the Diamond Mind discipline sharpens your senses and mental defenses).

So no, those options I provided had nothing to do with actual combat strength, but overall flexibility and being able to do interesting things without also having options that let them completely obviate whole challenges with a single spell.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1091058Pathfinder was more balanced. No PC class except for the Shifter is lower than tier 4 and it is possible to make Fighter that is OK at high levels.

I don't disagree about the Shifter being garbage, but I disagree that Pathfinder improved the fighter out of tier 5 (in fact I've seen tier guides for PF that explicitly put it at tier 5; bottom of the barrel for PC classes.

The Pathfinder fighter still has the same 2+Int skill points and crappy skill list and all it's additional class features focus only on marginally improving it's ability to deal damage while constrained to the "if you move more than 5' you only get one attack" paradigm.

The main reason the Ranger is tier 4 while the fighter isn't is that the ranger gets enough skill points with a nice enough list coupled with class features and spells that let it do more than just hit people for a lot of damage.

The Rogue is also tier 4 because of all the skills (notably Use Magic Device), skill points and class features (Trapfinding) it gets that allow it to pull off more than just sneak attacking (the people who've assembled the list also stated the only reason it's not tier 3 is the Factotum flat-out does skill monkey problem solver who can fight if they have to better).

Meanwhile the Pathfinder Wizard gets a better HD and, improved cantrips and improved spell school (univeralist casters getting some free metamagic) over their 3.5e kin.

So no, I don't buy for one second that Pathfinder made things "more balanced." It bent them all up a bit and, I'd argue the wizard actually got made even stronger and more flexible while the fighter got a few trinkets to let them hit a little harder.

Compare a 3.5e Warblade to the PF Fighter and it's no contest who figured out how to fix the fighter. The Warblade can actually do more than just fight if it chooses to.

One of the most solid D&D games I've ever played in was a "classic party" consisting of a Warblade (as the Fighter), Factotum (as skill-monkey Thief), Divine Bard (filling the role of Cleric) and Binder (Magic User of the "messes with things mortals aren't meant to know" variety). Everyone had a solid niche and was flexible enough to be useful in other areas while still able to be challenged by general encounters (instead of needing specialized opponents with exploitive munchkin tricks to provide any sense of danger... The 3.5e CR system actually WORKED as written).

My experience with Pathfinder is that the people in charge were okay when they were just hanging things off the existing framework WotC had provided, but had no real understanding of WHY that framework worked the way it did so their attempts to innovate beyond it were absolutely scattershot in terms of balance and usability (see the Shifter as an extreme miss).

By contrast, as 3.5e developed, its design innovations more consistently skewed towards a sort of sweet spot (i.e. tier 3-4 in the case of PCs) that indicated they were getting a better understanding of the system's strengths and weaknesses the more they worked with it.

Quote from: Chris24601;1091096By contrast, as 3.5e developed, its design innovations more consistently skewed towards a sort of sweet spot (i.e. tier 3-4 in the case of PCs) that indicated they were getting a better understanding of the system's strengths and weaknesses the more they worked with it.

   I'm not well-grounded in late 3.5 ... how obvious is the connection between it and 4E? I do know Star Wars Saga Edition pretty well and can see the precusors and abandoned directions there.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1091098I'm not well-grounded in late 3.5 ... how obvious is the connection between it and 4E? I do know Star Wars Saga Edition pretty well and can see the precusors and abandoned directions there.

There are definitely some points of connection. The 4E designers mentioned in their preview books that many of their later products were definitely testing grounds for some ideas that made their way into 4E.

At the same time though you can still tell these are concepts solidly rooted in 3e's ethos. The manuevers used by the crusadee, swordsage and warblade look a bit like 4E powers if you squint, but each class knows a different number of maneuvers and employs and regains them differently so there's nothing like the AEDU framework for their use.

The warblade regains every maneuver they can employ just by using a swift action and then making a normal attack (or using a standard action to recenter), but has the least manuvers. The Swordsage by contrast has the most (and, like the monk it supercedes, only a medium BAB) but it must use a full-round of meditation just to regain use of one maneuver. The Crusader has only limited control of which maneuvers it can employ (they're described as divine inspiration and many are actually supernatural) and regain any expended ones as soon as they cycle through that control system with no action at all needed by the PC.

So you can see the Tome of Battle as the something of a starting point for 4E's martial classes, but it's rather like comparing a velociraptor and a bird; you can see the shared ancestry if you squint, but there's a LOT more differences than similarities.

Most notably for all the late 3.5e material was the complete absence of narrative-based mechanics. The Warblade wasn't arbitrarily limited to 1/encounter or 1/day for their maneuvers; just can't use the same one twice in a row and has to periodically make a "basic" strike to regain any they've already used.

A lot of 4Es DNA shows up earlier than you'd think in 3.5e too, but as optional rules. The roots of 4Es approach to skills, scaling AC, defenses instead of saves and heroic surges can all be found in the 2004 Unearthed Arcana that is also included in the 3.5e SRD (3.5e only launched in 2003).

One of the other notable elements that worked its way into 4E that showed up mid-to-late 3.5e was the Reserve feat; a way to give spellcasters some at-will spellcasting abilities in exchange for keeping one or more spells "in reserve" (i.e. you trade a spell slot for an at-will spell whose power was scaled to the slot used (ex. Fiery Burst did 1d6/spell slot level fire damage to a 5' burst within 30' with a Reflex save for half that equalled a spell of the slot used... so by not casting your fireball, you could use drop a 3d6 fireball on a target or two each round as a standard action). Basically, these were the precursors of the at-will attack spells every class got in 4E (and the cantrips in 5e).

A lot of people act like 4E was some vast break from what came before it, but it's right there on the continuum (and I think lends a lot to the argument that marketing and presentation did as much to kill 4E as anything specific to the mechanics). A lot of the "this is so different" sense was largely if you were just looking at 3.5e as it existed in the core books from 2003 and 4E as released in 2008 (versus what was being released in 2006-7).

But if you compared even the late 2e Skills & Powers era material to the first printing of 3e though... you'd see an even greater divergence there than there ever was between late 3.5e and 4E.

Quote from: Chris24601;1091124A lot of people act like 4E was some vast break from what came before it, but it's right there on the continuum (and I think lends a lot to the argument that marketing and presentation did as much to kill 4E as anything specific to the mechanics). A lot of the "this is so different" sense was largely if you were just looking at 3.5e as it existed in the core books from 2003 and 4E as released in 2008 (versus what was being released in 2006-7).

But if you compared even the late 2e Skills & Powers era material to the first printing of 3e though... you'd see an even greater divergence there than there ever was between late 3.5e and 4E.

Except the reason that a lot of people "act" like there was a vast break from one edition to the next is that they were not playing with every book leading up to the edition change.  Most likely they were going from one Players Handbook to the next.

Quote from: Shasarak;1091125Except the reason that a lot of people "act" like there was a vast break from one edition to the next is that they were not playing with every book leading up to the edition change.  Most likely they were going from one Players Handbook to the next.

Yeah - there were a lot of us who never liked the vibe of Tome of Battle.

I can recognize that it was better balanced with full casters while still not liking it - largely for those non-narrative reasons Chris24601 mentioned. I was pretty active on the 3.5 boards, and there was a pretty substantial schism of those who thought Tome of Battle was amazing and those who disliked it. And that's amongst players who knew about it.

And of course - 4e made it worse by having all classes use variations of the same mechanics. (Symmetry is the easiest & most boring way to balance. Fine for 1v1 games - but not a good choice for co-op long-running games like TTRPGs.)

Quote from: Chris24601;1091124The warblade regains every maneuver they can employ just by using a swift action and then making a normal attack (or using a standard action to recenter), but has the least manuvers. The Swordsage by contrast has the most (and, like the monk it supercedes, only a medium BAB) but it must use a full-round of meditation just to regain use of one maneuver. The Crusader has only limited control of which maneuvers it can employ (they're described as divine inspiration and many are actually supernatural) and regain any expended ones as soon as they cycle through that control system with no action at all needed by the PC.

Most notably for all the late 3.5e material was the complete absence of narrative-based mechanics. The Warblade wasn't arbitrarily limited to 1/encounter or 1/day for their maneuvers; just can't use the same one twice in a row and has to periodically make a "basic" strike to regain any they've already used. .

I have to say, the last time I played 3.5, I played a Barbarian/Warblade, and it was probably the most satisfying experience I have ever had playing a marital character.  When I had a maneuver to actually ... deflect a spellcaster's spell with the flat of my broadsword... that was pretty friggin cool.

Quote from: Charon's Little Helper;1091126And of course - 4e made it worse by having all classes use variations of the same mechanics. (Symmetry is the easiest & most boring way to balance. Fine for 1v1 games - but not a good choice for co-op long-running games like TTRPGs.)

Topic adjacent, but relevant to a project of mine; what do you think of a system where symmetry is possible, but not required? Specifically, the mix of always available, recharge with short rest and recharge with long rest abilities is not determined by your class, but by assigning scores. Making one score strong gives you more short rest ability uses (but fewer long rest uses), making another strong gives you the opposite and going medium on both gives you a balance.

Likewise, you can choose between getting and focusing on just one attack (be it a weapon maneuver or spell) or can learn  several different types (with less focus on each). But the choice is determined outside of the character class.

Ex. You could have one Maledictor (a spellcaster who focuses on damaging spells) with everything focused on a single spammable attack spell that is basically steady state with no daily ability uses to speak of and another Maledictor with multiple offensive spells and almost no short rest ability uses, but enough daily uses to completely dominate a big fight (or parcel the uses out throughout the adventuring day on smaller fights).

Does the fact that you can make these sort of choices for every class count as symmetry to you or does the fact that any one character can only choose one version from those choices (and people who make different choices could be in the same party) make it asymmetrical?

In 3.0 / 3.5 / PF, Wizards were casting spells from their spell list.

In 4.0, all classes had powers.  Ritual magic was a thing, but casting spells from your spell list was not.

Did WOTC really think that wouldn't piss off long time fans of D&D?