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Does anybody still play D&D 3.5?

It's the only Players Handbook I own.  Is it any good, or has 5E just eclipsed it completely?

I ask as I see plenty of OSR games based on B/X, and even a few for AD&D.  But 3.5 seems like it's just the one everyone forgot about. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 06, 2023, 10:26:36 PMIt's the only Players Handbook I own.  Is it any good, or has 5E just eclipsed it completely?

D&D 3e is a great game. I'd put it as the second best version of D&D ever made but I haven't played 5e so my ranking isn't quite fair. I know it gets a lot of flack for being "new school" but I'd argue that most of what is in 3e is just rephrasing or simplifying stuff that was already in D&D 2e (Feats are just 2e's NWP renamed.)

That being said, I don't play it as I've personally moved away from miniatures and battlemats and those two things are too baked into the 3e rules to easily remove. I found it easier to start with OD&D at add 3e-isms to that game. The way OD&D handles hit dice (where different classes get a different number of hit dice rather than better hit dice as they level up) is just so mechanically superior that I'll never use any other system.

I ran a 3e game for a good five years back in the day so I can answer any questions you might have.

I really like Pathfinder 1e, and the last game I ran was a mix of Pathfinder and 3.5.  That being said, that entire table wants nothing but 5e now, just like apparently the rest of the world.

Because 5e has swept everything, it has completely devoured 4e and mostly wiped out 3e.  I suspect there are more people playing the small d20 3.X-ish variants than playing 3.5 proper these days.

There is an entire subreddit for D&D 3.X though, and the fact that 3.0, 3.5, and Pathfinder 1 are basically all the same game provides access to an incredible trove of content.  Unlike 5e, you have plenty of room to design items and spells too.

I think the only stuff 5e didn't eat was the stuff that was too far away- even though 5e has several obvious inspirations from OSR, it's far enough from OSR that it can't eat that, and it can't eat other IPs that have other things going on either.

I will say, given that 3.X was effectively all of tabletop gaming for a few years straight, it's shocking how thoroughly it has been devoured by 5e.

I don't hate it as much as some. I got a lot of years of fun play out of it. And whatever else, I'll always give it credit for being an injection of lifeblood into the community at a time when it needed it.

But am I fan of it? No. It's too beholden to miniatures, it's poorly balanced and scales poorly, the absolute bloat of content - particularly prestige classes - is oppressive and tedious, and, while I admit this isn't fundamentally 3.x's fault, per se, I find there's something about it that just absolutely brings out the worst of otherwise even pretty good players, vis a vis things like minmaxing and munchkiny behavior.

I include myself in this; I find myself not thinking of "what would be interesting to play" and more "how can I best make a combat monster that's useful in play and can hold their own", thinking about fun and interesting characters concepts only as a depressed afterthought when I realize what I actually want to play is mechanically garbage.

So no, not a fan.

I'll say this about 3.x: It, more than anything else, pushed me away from a love of crunchy, fiddly systems. I used to be a huge fan of things like Shadowrun, 3.x, etc. But now, I'm more in a "sometimes less is more" camp. If all one handed weapons are "Hand Weapon, 1D6 damage", I don't have to deal with internal angst because I want my dwarf to use an axe, but longswords are just inherently better. You can go too far in the other direction, too, but... yeah.

I've pretty much only played some of 3rd and less of 5th in my own life, as much as I want to play any of the older editions.

I'm currently playing in a Ravenloft 3.5e game with some old friends that I've reconnected with, another one in the same group next month.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 06, 2023, 10:41:21 PMparticularly prestige classes

I still remember when I read the sage advice saying that yes, of course you can have as many prestige classes as you can qualify for.  I actually felt like a physical twang, like I couldn't believe they would be so dumb.  To me the entire concept of the prestige class was about really digging deep into a specific kit, doubling down on certain strengths, or expanding to a very new and precise mechanical and lore based set of elements.

Instead they apparently intended it as a grab bag to sell product.  Easy enough to houserule it to one prestige class per, of course (a reasonably popular houserule), but it meant that the game as discussed on forums became very divergent from tables that I saw actually played- and the couple I ran into that actually had some level of optimization were completely absurd to me.

It's said that people buy the next version just to escape all the splatbook enhancements, and 3.5 really made the case for that.  If nothing else, the book of nine swords made the giant in the playground forum into unreadable shit, as everyone told anyone asking for "how to make a paladin" exactly which combination of swordsage and that Great Value Paladin nine-swordsy thing they needed to do INSTEAD and how to trick your DM into letting you do it....

Whatever, it was a great system if you set some common sense limits.

While I have no hate for 3 or 3.5, I do generally view them as obsolete. Smartphones have drained average player attention spans to not quite zilch and the Forge lived out it's entire short and miserable existence since 3.5 was published.

Fundamentally, I view 5E as 3.5 under a coat of varnish. In fact, upon reading the book upon launch I immediately dubbed it "3.5 Magnum," because the spell lists had been changed, a good number of the die sizes had been stepped up, and the modifiers had been replaced with an all in one (dis)advantage mechanic, but otherwise the 3.5 DNA was quite obvious.

I don't play D20 games that often--I don't think they actually do that much with their mechanics--but if I were to run an oldschool D&D game, I would probably run 5E and replace the (dis)advantage mechanic with the Shadow of the Demon Lord Boons and Banes, so you can have stacking modifiers with diminishing returns. It's not perfect, but that's a pretty drag and drop replacement which gives you access to both 3.5 and 5E's OGL content if you interpret 3.5's standard +2 modifiers or 5E's Advantage as adding a Boon, gives you most of the crunch of 3.5 proper while still not allowing min-maxing to go too far into bananas because of diminishing returns, and on general, Boons and Banes is a good compromise mechanic between 3.5's modifiers to the sky and 5E's "OP Advantage FTW" mechanics.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 06, 2023, 10:26:36 PM
Does anybody still play D&D 3.5?

It's the only Players Handbook I own.  Is it any good, or has 5E just eclipsed it completely?

I ask as I see plenty of OSR games based on B/X, and even a few for AD&D.  But 3.5 seems like it's just the one everyone forgot about.

Sadly I sold my 3.5 collection years ago to purchase Rogue Trader books. It was't that i didn't like it, just people moved on to 4e and pathfinder. And the internet optimization forums made the game feel unplayable, even though it was't. But the Tiers, combined with player investment could really make for wonky results at the table.

I love D&D 3.5. I don't have a gaming group, but if I had one....then I'd play D&D 3.5. :D

3E is a really good edition. I would play it.

Here's the things I don't like about it:

* The game assumes you're going to run with characters that have a glut of magical items.
* No really good CR / encounter building system for GMs
* The game encourages fiddly number-stacking -- This can be solved to some extent via GM fiat saying, "You can get up to 2-3 bonuses, and no more." or just by playing with players that have outgrown the "I'm going to make the most OP character" phase

You can fix a lot of the problems running E6.

"The game assumes you're going to run with characters that have a glut of magical items."
For me this was a selling point.  I always wanted to give out more magical items in 2ed, but I always went over in really long campaigns, and it was always a struggle to stay under what was quite obviously a moderate-magic-item power budget.  Like yes, your paladin was supposed to get a holy avenger, but like, at level 17 or whatever, and there were rules about his OTHER items.  The fighter could become a real beatstick with good items, and it wasn't obvious except with a lot of experience when you were going over.  Meanwhile, 3.X had a wealth by level chart that was reasonably tested (and worked well barring the real outlier items), AND it had compensations for high magic, which I could easily use.  Now I knew I was doing something with at least minimal testing, and was actually intended.

5ed is worse than both in my opinion- a tight power budget that the devs refuse to officially disclose, that you can easily gimp your players by going under or ruin your encounters by going over, with no mention of what is a high magic game or a low magic game.  You can find people claiming that 5ed was designed to work with no magical items, and at medium and high levels that is just absolutely 100% false.


"No really good CR / encounter building system for GMs"

Yea this was and is a big problem.  Eventually you get good at it, but that's not really a defense, merely a "at least it's not entirely a mess" argument.

"The game encourages fiddly number-stacking"

Even without munchkins you still have this.  It's quite reasonable to assume that you will take feats an items that add to your hit, add to your attacks per round, add to your critical confirmation, expand your crit range, and add to your critical damage.  All of these stack multiplicatively, and all are available together from the higher end of the mid levels.  A typical PC will land on a few of these just leveling and looking at feats.  Put a magic item shop in there, and they'll request at least one weapon affix that they think is good, and there you are.

I do think that having a few of these things is good design, but there's just too many of them right away, and they are all priced a bit in a vacuum, be it as spells, items, or feats.

QuoteYou can fix a lot of the problems running E6.

You can, and I really like E6.  But there are longevity issues there- there simply aren't enough cool feats to have that alone as a reward mechanism.  I think for really long E6 games, you would want some more typical epic boons, most of which are balanced for games where the epic players are level 10-20.

Ultimately, I want a way to advance characters in a way that is meaningful but not just painfully exponential or world altering.  3.X isn't any worse at this than other D&D versions though, and OSR kind of gives you a better angle here anyway.

The reason you don't see a lot of OSR games based on 3rd edition is that most people define the OSR as games based on 2nd edition or earlier. A surprising amount of influence from it does creep in though. Dungeon Crawl Classics uses the 3.x save system, and Helveczia uses quite a lot from 3.x.

And of course there are plenty of games based on 3.x  (essentially anything with "D20" in the title), but they're not considered OSR, and most of them are out of print now.

3.0 was my first RPG, so it's always going to have soft spot in my heart. Some of the criticisms are valid. Some of them really aren't:

Like Hedgehobbit pointed out, the idea that it "isn't D&D" doesn't hold water, as a lot of what it was doing is just rephrasing and clarifying mechanics that were already in AD&D. Personally, I'm completely baffled by people who say it requires miniatures and grids.  We played the game for years and never once used either. In fact, the first time I used miniatures was for 5e, and the first time I used a grid was for Hyperborea. It falls apart at high level, but IME that's true of every single edition of D&D.

3.5 is still the edition of D&D with the greatest degree of character customization, and the closest D&D ever got to the level of customization you get in classless games. Unfortunately, the munchkinism that its famous for is a direct consequence of that. At root level, it's the same problem 5e has started experiencing in it's latter years. When you publish so many character options, you place the onus on the DM to restrict which ones will be available in each campaign, and players inevitably pressure DMs to include all of them.

And a lot of the optimizations that got passed around on message boards were based on exploits, if not outright cheats of the system. Prestige classes are a good example. I actually think they're a great idea, in principle. The whole point was that they were classes you couldn't just choose because they represented organizations in the game world you had to earn membership in. They should be roleplaying rewards that might or might not even come up in a campaign. Problem is that people just ignored the roleplaying requirements and treated them as "advanced classes" you could plan into your build optimization. The 5-class stack builds you saw are a similar thing. Those should (a) require a roleplaying justification for how your character is trained in five different professions, and b) come with a crippling XP penalty, but a culture developed that ignored those restrictions.

As far as the pros of the system, there's a few things from 3.x that I would really like to see carried over into more OSR games:

--The 3-save system: Far and away the most intuitive save system D&D has ever had. If something attacks your body from the inside, it's a Fortitude save. If it attacks from the outside, it's Reflex, and if it attacks your mind or spirit it's Will. That's one of several places where 5e is a strict downgrade (WTF is a Charisma save?).
--The weapon balancing: Out of the D&D editions, 3.x does the best job of giving different weapons pros and cons, chiefly by varying their critical ranges. For example, A longsword and a battle-axe might do the same damage, but the sword crits more often, while the axe does more damage per critical hit. A rapier does less base damage than a battle-axe, but crits three times as often. Having more frequent or more powerful critical hits also helps mitigate the HP bloat problem, which is still plaguing 5e, even after they generally nerfed weapon and spell damage.
--Skill ranks: The original 3.0 skill system was admittedly a mess. 3.5 cleaned it up a bit, and Pathfinder cleaned it up further, but at the base level I think it's a good idea to give every class some ability to customize their skills. It does a lot to help alleviate the D&D problem of every character of a certain class being extremely similar. Feats do that as well, but feats I could honestly take or leave. The skill system was far from perfect, but it could have been perfected with a bit more iteration.
--Prestige classes: Like I said, it's a great idea in principle; it just needs a better execution.

I don't think 5th edition makes 3rd obsolete at all. In fact, I think it's generally an inferior game. 5th edition sits in an awkward compromise position where it lacks the customization and granularity of 3rd, but also lacks the simplicity of OSR games. It tries to do both and does neither well.

What made 3.x obsolete was Pathfinder. 1st edition Pathfinder took the design ethos of 3.x to it's next step, further streamlined some of the clunkier mechanics and fixed a lot of the balancing issues. These days, most people who like 3.5 are playing Pathfinder instead. As much nostalgia as I have for 3.x, if today I wanted to play a high fantasy game with a high degree of variety and depth in the character building, I'd go with either Pathfinder 1 or more likely Shadow of the Demon Lord. Both games achieve the same design goals more elegantly than 3.x does.

The only reason I kept my 3E rules is that I rather like the flavor in Arcana Evolved, and just conceivably might run it again when I've forgotten how much the 3E skill system annoys me no end. :D

Seriously, far as I'm concerned, except for an improved bard and ranger, the 3.5 changes were just rearranging deck chairs, sometimes into worse spots.  If I were to run AE/3.5 again, though, there is one easy fix that I'd do that would let me skip E6 (which doesn't appeal to me):  No prestige classes.  All spell casters can take exactly one of the major caster classes, and they must multi-class into a non-caster (or at least a very weak, unrelated caster class) every other level.  Yep, you max out your wizard or druid or cleric part at 10 levels at level 19 or 20.  Do relatively low magic items and use monsters to match.  This is where the CR system not really working doesn't matter, because just like before, you are figuring it out using your own good sense.  Without the nagging thought  that the CR information is useful as more than a coarse estimate.

There, most of your insane stacking that causes combat to be buff, buff, buff, kill is handled.  The AE classes mixed in gives you some variety despite the above limits.  Instead of the game starting to frazzle around level 7 and being unplayable dreck by level 13, you've shoved those limits back.  It will still get bad at the very end, but the campaign is unlikely to last that long anyway. 

The 3.X/d20 system has always eluded me. I found it an mechanical improvement regarding streamlining AD&D. But too confined. While AD&D 2ed seemed more as at tool box where you could easily pick and choose what you wanted to use and not to use. 3.X was a much more complete package-deal. And it just felt too clunky in practice and overwhelming. And that (for me) it seemed really hard to play without minis and grid.

That and having to deal too often with toxic problem-players that was obsessed with the char-build minigame. I never caved to the demands of adding splatbooks and tried to run standard D&D 3,5 with core books only. Most people interested in the game refused to play anything at all if they hadn't free access to any splatbooks they wanted. And so my very short attempt of playing 3 X came to an abrupt end. I went back to TSR D&D and then hoisted the battleflag of the OSR. I  also dabbled a bit with with 4e via the Essentials line found it much more approachable than 3.X. Though that didn't not run for a long time either.

That said for me the allure of 3.X was all the cool third-party supplements, settings and alternative games. Like Conan D20, Midnight, D20 Modern, Star Wars D20/Saga, Warcraft, Game of Thrones, CoC D20, Dragon Star etc etc.

I'm a very rules lite GM at default and almost nobody I play with seems to have any interest in such a complex game as 3.X. If I had really dedicated players I wish to someday give both Conan D20 and CoC D20(for some reason) a fair chance at the table.

Regular D&D 3.X? I don't really see me picking it over either 5e, TSR D&D/OSR etc. If I did I would try out using it for a 3e Forgotten Realms campaign for some early 00's nostalgia.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 07, 2023, 09:48:59 AM
... Personally, I'm completely baffled by people who say it requires miniatures and grids.  ...

3.5 is still the edition of D&D with the greatest degree of character customization, and the closest D&D ever got to the level of customization you get in classless games. ... When you publish so many character options, ... players inevitably pressure DMs to include all of them. And a lot of the optimizations that got passed around on message boards were based on exploits, if not outright cheats of the system.

Prestige classes are a good example. I actually think they're a great idea, in principle. ... They should be roleplaying rewards that might or might not even come up in a campaign. Problem is that people just ignored the roleplaying requirements and treated them as "advanced classes" you could plan into your build optimization.

As far as the pros of the system, there's a few things from 3.x that I would really like to see carried over into more OSR games:

--The 3-save system: Far and away the most intuitive save system D&D has ever had. ... (WTF is a Charisma save?).
--The weapon balancing: Out of the D&D editions, 3.x does the best job of giving different weapons pros and cons, chiefly by varying their critical ranges. ...
--Skill ranks: The original 3.0 skill system was admittedly a mess. 3.5 cleaned it up a bit, and Pathfinder cleaned it up further, but at the base level I think it's a good idea to give every class some ability to customize their skills. It does a lot to help alleviate the D&D problem of every character of a certain class being extremely similar. Feats do that as well, but feats I could honestly take or leave. ...
--Prestige classes: Like I said, it's a great idea in principle; it just needs a better execution.
...

I'm keen on limiting the character options by limiting the components you can combine to create a character, something like standard array baskets (pick one), B/X classes, 2e Kits, and 5e backgrounds as an example. Given how little time most players have to carve out for gaming, they will generally go for this build method 9/10 times.

If someone wants a very specific kind of character, then they'd have to build it by hand from the bottom up, with a feats and a point buy system balanced to the above designed like Skills & Powers; but if you do that at the last minute the rest of the table may start the game without you. Plan ahead, or hop in the middle.

I think a big solution to the "prestige class" problem is to design it more like a "heroic destiny." This is how your charscter will be remembered in epics, myths, and legends, the thing distinguishes you from any other warrior, even one from the Amazon. It should not have any level up conditions to its powers whatsoever: you gain each and every power by accomplishing certain roleplaying goals from a set of certain ways, and you don't have to hide those indications from your players outright if you want to keep them fun. Beyond whatever you get to start off with, of course.

I might venture that a save involving Charisma has something to do with your characters vitality or faith. Some people can be shaken from their religious or metaphysical convictions in ways that has nothing to do with willpower, and might provide some opportunities to explain changes in alignment, if so desired. You can even in a condition of being damned, or spiritually hollow otherwise, such that you cannot be raised/resurrected if you die without resolving this problem first; or at least be ailed by minor hexes that plague many of your ambitions. If I were to include a Perception attribute, it would also involve your receptiveness to the supernatural and not just your ability to look and listen your organs, so for a faith/vitality save like this you'd pick the higher between Cha or Per.


I have a question about weapon damage... I'm partial to going back to a d6 for all weapons, but is there a possibility that you could have critical damage just explode at 6, but be capped in explosions by a multiplier? The battleaxe gets three explosions, the rapier explodes at 5-6 but only gets two explosions, maybe some other weapons explode at 1d3 beyond the first dice.

"Apply the highest of all modifiers of the same type."

Reduces a bit of stacking, no?

You could go a step further (would be fiddly) where fire and water/ice damage cancel out 1:1, but then fire and lighting wouldn't.
Could be a mess of a chart trying to figure that out.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb on February 06, 2023, 11:55:54 PM
I love D&D 3.5. I don't have a gaming group, but if I had one....then I'd play D&D 3.5. :D

I would sacrifice you and your books.

I'm an old saw on this. If, today, you're ever going to go to 3.x for you gaming fix. Go Fantasy Craft.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 07, 2023, 10:33:22 AM
I have a question about weapon damage... I'm partial to going back to a d6 for all weapons, but is there a possibility that you could have critical damage just explode at 6, but be capped in explosions by a multiplier? The battleaxe gets three explosions, the rapier explodes at 5-6 but only gets two explosions, maybe some other weapons explode at 1d3 beyond the first dice.

Well... WFRP does something sort of like this, but it doesn't vary it by weapon as much. Most one handed weapons (sword, axe, mace, etc) are just a "hand weapon", which does 1D10 + strength bonus(SB) damage. All weapons in WFRP, in fact, do 1D10 +/- something. This keeps all weapons in a narrow range of deadly. Yes, a dagger is "less" deadly, at 1D10+(SB-3), but it's not wildly different. And all weapons explode on a roll of 10.

WFRP's major differentiation between weapons is in qualities. A "fast" weapon gives a minor penalty to someone trying to parry or dodge, a "slow" weapon gives the same minor percentage of a bonus to the same, and so on.

Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2023, 10:43:21 AM

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb on February 06, 2023, 11:55:54 PM
I love D&D 3.5. I don't have a gaming group, but if I had one....then I'd play D&D 3.5. :D

I would sacrifice you and your books.

I'm an old saw on this. If, today, you're ever going to go to 3.x for you gaming fix. Go Fantasy Craft.

OT
I considered Fantasy Craft myself for a while back when it was fairly new. Mainly because I found a fan made supplement named Planescraft. A truly indepth beautiful conversion of Planescape. I found the pdf on an old hard-drive and was overjoyed it was not forever lost.

I still maintain to this day, Fantasy Craft is the finest 3.x design ever put to print. It's the apotheosis of 3.x design... and it should have been the 4e of D&D.

But alas... that happened in another timeline.

Quote from: Zelen on February 07, 2023, 01:07:35 AMHere's the things I don't like about it:

* The game assumes you're going to run with characters that have a glut of magical items.

This isn't true. The Wealth Per Level chart is meant to be a maximum value, not a minimum. So 3e was the first edition to actually put a limit on how much magic the party was carrying. When I ran AD&D adventures for my third edition group, I would have to radically reduce the amount of magical treasure available to be found.

Plus, 3e finally adjusted the value of high level magic items compared to more common low level ones. For example, in AD&D, a +5 sword was only worth 7.5 the price of a +1 sword whereas in 3e it was worth 25 times as much as a +1 sword. This alone dramatically reduced the power level of low to mid level adventurers compared to their AD&D counterparts.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 07, 2023, 11:04:31 AM
This isn't true. The Wealth Per Level chart is meant to be a maximum value, not a minimum. So 3e was the first edition to actually put a limit on how much magic the party was carrying. When I ran AD&D adventures for my third edition group, I would have to radically reduce the amount of magical treasure available to be found.

It was both. If you didn't keep to the expected levels of magic items, the CR ratings became even more meaningless than they already were. Plus, different classes were more or less reliant on magic items - the power imbalance became even worse between the classes if you tried to run a low-magic-items game.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 07, 2023, 11:04:31 AM
Plus, 3e finally adjusted the value of high level magic items compared to more common low level ones. For example, in AD&D, a +5 sword was only worth 7.5 the price of a +1 sword whereas in 3e it was worth 25 times as much as a +1 sword. This alone dramatically reduced the power level of low to mid level adventurers compared to their AD&D counterparts.

Which was only ever relevant if you ran a setting where there was Ye Olde Magick-Mart for players to go on shopping sprees.

Quote from: tenbones on February 07, 2023, 11:02:13 AM
I still maintain to this day, Fantasy Craft is the finest 3.x design ever put to print. It's the apotheosis of 3.x design... and it should have been the 4e of D&D.

But alas... that happened in another timeline.

   Imagine Fantasycraft's design and principles with the user-friendly presentation of things like 4E or OSE...

I think 3.5 is a decent edition with lots of cool ideas.

I find BAB superior to THAC0, prefer ascending AC, enjoy the idea of feats (if not 3.5 implementation), and the numbers are in the right ballpark for me (the 15th level fighter SHOULD have a +20 BAB!). Melee weapons are better balanced than 5e. Fort/Reflex/Will is better to me than 5 abstract saves.

It is just too fiddly and crunchy for my tastes, and probably too unbalanced (especially spells).

And yeah, 5e is better for me because of that( although I've abandoned that too in favor of my B/X / 3.5e and 5e hybrid).

I almost think I could re-write 3.5 to make it easier and more balanced, but:

a) I no longer thrust the OGL.
b) It would be a lot of work and not enough interest, I think.
c) FantasyCraft exists.

Never played FantasyCraft but it looks awesome upon reading it.

My big observation on 3.5e is that it plays a ton better if you remove most of the core classes and use the splats. If you've ever seen the 3.5e class tiers list, the most extreme outliers (god-tier and trash-tier) largely come from the PHB; fighter, monk and paladin on the trash side (owing mostly to the combo of low skill ranks and the multi-attack with movement issues) and cleric, druid, sorcerer and wizard in god-tier (for those not keeping track that makes Barbarian, Bard, Ranger and Rogue (and the NPC Adept class which is ranked as more effective than fighter, monk or paladin) in the effective but neither able to break the campaign over their knee with various spellcasting options nor so weak that some other class actually does their schtick better.

Basically, as they got more feedback they learned how to better make classes in the sweetspot. The Book of Nine Swords was basically all about creating non-suck versions of the Fighter (Warblade), Monk (Swordsage) and Paladin (Champion).

But the bitter irony of 3.5e is that, as is often the case with RPGs, most GMs (c. 90% in my experience) would only play "Core Only" under the misguided notion that anything additional would actually be poorly tested and less balanced when the truth is the opposite was true; the core classes were assembled with the LEAST feedback and largely based on the assumption that people would play under the same assumptions as AD&D without consideration for how their rule changes actually changed the dynamics of risk and reward.

A prime example is "save or die" spells. If you build under AD&D assumptions, then save-or-dies are high risk options (because the high level critters they're worth using on can make their saves rather easily) and spells like fireball with their saves for half damage (and much lower bloat when an ancient huge red dragon has 88 hp) were the reliable go tos (10d6 averages 35, half that is 17.5 or 20% of that ancient huge dragon's hp). They also stacked with the damage output coming from the fighter and the thief's backstab to bring the thing down as a team effort.

But in 3.5e that red dragon now has 700+ hp and even a 20d6 meteor swarm is doing at best 10% of that dragon's hp if the dragon fails (or 5% if the dragon succeeds). And if you played that way with wizards prepping cones of cold to take on the red dragon and engaged in relatively static battles where the fighter didn't have to move more than 5' per round then the core 3.5e mechanics work fine.

Except, since in 3.5e a caster can increase the difficulty of the saves vs. their spells by buffing their casting stat and various feats and because the curve for saves actually falls behind this rate of improvement (particularly for the less strong saves), it becomes much more effective to prep save-or-dies and wipe that dragon out with a single failed saving throw... and also making the damage track the fighter and rogue were working on irrelevant as soon as the failed save hits. Plus the dragon just needs to keep the melee types moving 10'+ and half to three quarters of their effectiveness disappears due to how multi-attacking worked.

Classes designed further in had realized these things and started giving melee types more ways to deliver damage spikes with single attacks and reducing access to all those save or die spells.

GMs by contrast didn't want to deal with a bunch of splatbooks and so limited things to core only and then wondered why their campaigns kept falling apart around level 10-12.

As a result I have far more love of 3.5e splats than I do of the playstyle mentality that hovered around the system.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 07, 2023, 10:59:22 AM

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 07, 2023, 10:33:22 AM
I have a question about weapon damage... I'm partial to going back to a d6 for all weapons, but is there a possibility that you could have critical damage just explode at 6, but be capped in explosions by a multiplier? The battleaxe gets three explosions, the rapier explodes at 5-6 but only gets two explosions, maybe some other weapons explode at 1d3 beyond the first dice.

Well... WFRP does something sort of like this, but it doesn't vary it by weapon as much. Most one handed weapons (sword, axe, mace, etc) are just a "hand weapon", which does 1D10 + strength bonus(SB) damage. All weapons in WFRP, in fact, do 1D10 +/- something. This keeps all weapons in a narrow range of deadly. Yes, a dagger is "less" deadly, at 1D10+(SB-3), but it's not wildly different. And all weapons explode on a roll of 10.

WFRP's major differentiation between weapons is in qualities. A "fast" weapon gives a minor penalty to someone trying to parry or dodge, a "slow" weapon gives the same minor percentage of a bonus to the same, and so on.

I think it was Hackmaster that included rules like weapon heft, which may involve much of the same thing. They're probably not the only system that does this, but those weapon properties are definitely something I've always wanted to use with initiative order.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 07, 2023, 01:14:07 PM
It is just too fiddly and crunchy for my tastes, and probably too unbalanced (especially spells).

Only 4th edition has really balanced spells.  And at least in 3.X, you have several ways to interrupt a cast, including readying an arrow

Quote from: Eric Diaz on February 07, 2023, 01:14:07 PM
a) I no longer thrust the OGL.

Unlike Pathfinder 1e, only the core rules are part of the OGL.  All the splatbooks and extra everythings are simply not under the OGL with 3.X, meaning you either have a pile of books or a pile of pirate pdfs- I'm pretty sure they never sold any PDFs either, as by the time it was obvious they should, they were trying to kill it to shove everyone into fourth.

But yea, the fact that they haven't given us any statement LEGALLY AFFIRMING that they have no right to "unauthorize" the OGL means that anything not explicitly entered into public domain or creative commons is highly sketchy for building anything real on top of.  You could, of course, still build a CAMPAIGN on such a platform.  We've never required an open source license to run games.

It used to be my favorite version of D&D, but I don't play it anymore cuz my group wants to play 5e, and TBH I'd rather play 5e too. It isn't necessarily that 5e is so great (although it has its merits), but rather that 3e's flaws are so great, it's easier for me to put up with any misgivings I may have about 5e than to go back to 3e and try to fix it, then somehow convince my group to play my own fixed up version of 3e. If I'm gonna put that amount of effort into a game it's going to be my own system, not an old edition of D&D that's hardly played anymore.

That being said, I firmly believe that every single gripe that people have about 3e is either Grognard syndrome or a problem of implementation (or likely both) rather being some fundamental issue with the game's core concepts or mechanics themselves. The idea of Feats is great, for example, but the way that 3e handled them is utter crap—most of them a too weak, gate functions that should be available to everyone behind a feat, or rely on feat-chains that require you to get a bunch of seemingly unrelated garbage tier feats just to get to the "good" ones somewhere down the line (assuming you even play that character long enough to get enough feats to get there).

Skills are also too many, too complicated (if you multiclass) and can get too high. Listen and Spot, for example, should be a single Perception skill IMO (the way it's handled in 5e), and Move Silently and Hide should also be a single Stealth skill. The idea of keeping these skills separate is a carryover from earlier editions that was stupid then too. Skills should not get beyond +10 or so (not counting ability score modifiers or class bonuses), and I don't like the idea of having to pay double for so-called cross-class skills, since it's too clunky, punitive and overcomplicates skill selection, like having to spend a bunch of points across dozens of skills isn't already nerve wracking enough, particularly for casual players who don't know WTF to do with those points or how to spend them without gimping their characters.

I could go on, but I have other stuff to do and others have pointed out many of its other flaws already. All in all, 5e is more simple and straightforward, less flawed (and it has many, just not remotely as many as 3e does out of the box), and far less punitive of bad build decisions, which is why it's gobbled up so much attention away from earlier editions.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 07, 2023, 01:54:33 PM
My big observation on 3.5e is that it plays a ton better if you remove most of the core classes and use the splats.

I just buffed the martial classes some, it was never as dire as the tier charts made it sound.  Oh no it can fly, let me remember to use any of the million ways to fly a fighter has!

QuoteIf you've ever seen the 3.5e class tiers list

...then you know why we got 4th edition.  These rabble-rousers bled so many tears that the developers honestly thought that straight game balance via direct comparison of chart-granted abilities was the most important thing.

Quote(and the NPC Adept class which is ranked as more effective than fighter, monk or paladin)

Oh man, I remember arguing with this bad take years ago.  Did you ever see this happen at a table?  I sure af did not.

QuoteThe Book of Nine Swords was basically all about creating non-suck versions of the Fighter (Warblade), Monk (Swordsage) and Paladin (Champion).

I've never allowed any of that munchkin crap.  Core-only was imbalanced, but that stuff  was simply beyond the pale.  They had friggin spell charts!  The fact that 3.5 became infested with this, the truenamer guy, and incarnum, was a reason why Pathfinder was welcomed with open arms, a promised reset away from powercreep junk like that.

QuoteA prime example is "save or die" spells. If you build under AD&D assumptions, then save-or-dies are high risk options (because the high level critters they're worth using on can make their saves rather easily) and spells like fireball with their saves for half damage (and much lower bloat when an ancient huge red dragon has 88 hp) were the reliable go tos

1ed Dragons had incredible saving throws (your dragon would save as if it had 22 hit dice, not the 11 that it actually had), but 2ed dragons had magic resistance, and so did 3rd edition dragons.  The "ancient" category goes away as you move from 1st to 2ed, and dragons gain more total categories, so I'm not sure whether we should look at the great wyrm in 3.X as equivalent, but you did, so lets go.

QuoteBut in 3.5e that red dragon now has 700+ hp

The great wyrm red averages less than 540 hit points.  That's a big increase, but it's not totally immense.
But he also has a spell resistance of 32, and has feats available to up that value if he likes (building a 3.X dragon is pretty time consuming!)  The spell resistance of 32 means that a 12th level caster has a 5% chance to affect the dragon with a spell, long before a saving throw occurs.  A 20th level wizard has a 45% chance of affecting the dragon, unless he has a feat to up that amount, or some special item or whatever.

Blasting spells definitely are weaker, but all spells are annoying to land against a dragon.  Since most dragons learn spells that protect themselves, casters normally spend the early rounds of draconic combat trying to unweave the dragon magic, a rather orthogonal plan that definitely goes along with the primary strategy of the rest of the party.  It takes quite a bit of effort to land save-or-die spells versus the dragon as well, especially in core, where you are mostly limited to Will and Fort saves, which dragons normally do amazing at.

Quoteit becomes much more effective to prep save-or-dies and wipe that dragon out with a single failed saving throw

This is really not my experience with dragon combat.

Also regarding a different post entirely:

Quote from: hedgehobbit on February 07, 2023, 11:04:31 AM
This isn't true. The Wealth Per Level chart is meant to be a maximum value, not a minimum.

Neither.  It's meant to be an average.  Read the section in the DMG, page 135, and you'll see.  It explicitly calls it out, then points out that at a level where the average wealth by level is 19,000 gold pieces, no adventure will be written assuming the party has an item that costs 20,000 gold.  Nothing in there implies it's a maximum, and in fact, as an average, it can NEVER be a maximum.

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 07, 2023, 03:41:38 PM...
Skills are also too many, too complicated (if you multiclass) and can get too high. Listen and Spot, for example, should be a single Perception skill IMO (the way it's handled in 5e), and Move Silently and Hide should also be a single Stealth skill. The idea of keeping these skills separate is a carryover from earlier editions that was stupid then too. Skills should not get beyond +10 or so (not counting ability score modifiers or class bonuses), and I don't like the idea of having to pay double for so-called cross-class skills, since it's too clunky, punitive and overcomplicates skill selection, like having to spend a bunch of points across dozens of skills isn't already nerve wracking enough, particularly for casual players who don't know WTF to do with those points or how to spend them without gimping their characters.

I could go on, but I have other stuff to do and others have pointed out many of its other flaws already. All in all, 5e is more simple and straightforward, less flawed (and it has many, just not remotely as many as 3e does out of the box), and far less punitive of bad build decisions, which is why it's gobbled up so much attention away from earlier editions.

Agree with all that, except I don't think 3E/3.5 skills are fixable without almost a complete rewrite of the system from the foundations.  That is, part of the reasons that skills are so messed up is because of the flaws in the classes, feats, etc.   Even the spells get into the game a little, though that's more fuzzy and depends somewhat on how you view magic working.

The biggest difference between 3E and 5E is that 3E's flaws are central to its design, and thus hard to fix, while 5E's flaws are largely peripheral to its design and/or vestiges that can be dropped on a whim.  Plus, being a somewhat simple game, it's easier for the GM to compensate, and house rules are less likely to have unexpected side effects.  And by that I mean from a design intent. 5E does a better job of doing what it was designed to do, however much some people don't like that intent.

Eh, every game has its fault lines, where it gets deceptively tricky to change it.  I free admit that about half of my dislike for 3E is that its fault lines fall right where I can least tolerate them.  All that really means is that it wasn't designed for me.

Edit:  Should also mention that the 5E designers cheated.  They recognized they and all of WotC didn't the slightest idea how to attach a quality skill system to a class-based game.  So they compensated by making so minimal as to almost not matter.  If they'd had the courage of their convictions, 5E wouldn't even have a skill system (which many people have suggested with backgrounds taking up the slack).

While I think it's totally possible to use the 3.5 skill system (and I also prefer Hide and Move Silently merged, as Pathfinder did, and 5ed copied), you're in very good company complaining about the skills in 3.5.  If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships because of its beauty, the alternating extremely prescriptive and very vague skill system of 3.5 was the Ruleset that launched a thousand OSR products.  The entire OSR is due in some serious part to the 3.5 skill system being very much not to the taste of every table.

Quote from: Venka on February 07, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
While I think it's totally possible to use the 3.5 skill system (and I also prefer Hide and Move Silently merged, as Pathfinder did, and 5ed copied), you're in very good company complaining about the skills in 3.5.  If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships because of its beauty, the alternating extremely prescriptive and very vague skill system of 3.5 was the Ruleset that launched a thousand OSR products.  The entire OSR is due in some serious part to the 3.5 skill system being very much not to the taste of every table.

Fair enough, and I DO think 5e skills to be better than 3.5... but the RC and AD&D 2e skills weren't that great either, so 3.5 is in many ways an improvement.

D&D 3.5 received the greatest most extravagant retro clone treatment, of all time.

Pathfinder 1st Edition.  It isn't note for note D&D 3.5, but it was a very close emulation and expansion.  It was so robust, it had 6 hardcover Bestiaries and a hardcover Monster Codex.  7 Monster Books released by Paizo, alone.  Plus dozens of other optional hardcovers.  You could play different things in Pathfinder for the rest of your life, and still be playing close to D&D 3.5

Or, you could play straight up D&D 3.0 or 3.5

Just imagine a crunchier version of D&D 5E, with many more options.

Quote from: Venka on February 07, 2023, 04:34:15 PM
While I think it's totally possible to use the 3.5 skill system (and I also prefer Hide and Move Silently merged, as Pathfinder did, and 5ed copied), you're in very good company complaining about the skills in 3.5.  If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships because of its beauty, the alternating extremely prescriptive and very vague skill system of 3.5 was the Ruleset that launched a thousand OSR products.  The entire OSR is due in some serious part to the 3.5 skill system being very much not to the taste of every table.

Ehh. On the list of actual, crippling problems with 3.x, the skills system is pretty far down. The skill system was annoying, fiddly bullshit - but it was also pretty easy to just ignore the worst of it's problems, most of the time. Not so the massive fundamental imbalances, bloat, and so on.

If you grafted the 3.x skill system on an otherwise-sound and good system, you could probably manage to live with it. Grafting a good skill system on to 3.x doesn't save 3.x. 

Played 3.x for years when it first came out. Spent way too much money on all the supplement /expansion books. Houseruled the fukk out of it to fix all the stupidness. Eventually stopped playing and never went back.

The skill system was trash, but as Bruwulf pointed out, it wasn't the worst part of the game. The class imbalance, good Feats gated behind shitty Feats, and just general bloat (leading to groan-inducing powercreep) are worse offenders.

Twenty years ago I would have called myself a fan. Not now. With the amount of work needed to fix the clases, feats, and spells, you're better off just playing something else. Unless that "something else" is your fantasy heartbreaker of 3.x, in which case, have at it hoss.

What's wrong with 3.x skills? Yeah, there were a few hiccups at first:

Use Rope
Hide + Move Silent
Balance + Tumble
Listen + Spot

But those were fixed in later games, like Pathfinder or True 20.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 07, 2023, 04:09:46 PMAgree with all that, except I don't think 3E/3.5 skills are fixable without almost a complete rewrite of the system from the foundations. That is, part of the reasons that skills are so messed up is because of the flaws in the classes, feats, etc. Even the spells get into the game a little, though that's more fuzzy and depends somewhat on how you view magic working.

That's the thing about 3e; every fix requires you to gut it out from the heart, and just keep the core components, like Ability Scores/Modifiers, BAB, and Saves (and even that needs work), then reimagine it from the ground up, with a version of Skills, Feats and even Classes that actually work. Which means a new skill system, reworked classes and a new list of feats that don't suck. Which means you might as well do your own game, cuz you're gonna end up doing the same amount of work anyways, and it's gonna end up being something not quite 3e regardless.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 07, 2023, 11:06:54 PM
What's wrong with 3.x skills? Yeah, there were a few hiccups at first:

Use Rope
Hide + Move Silent
Balance + Tumble
Listen + Spot

But those were fixed in later games, like Pathfinder or True 20.

I'll use one example that's easier to explain, but with a note that if you start to dig, you'll find this same kind of problem in almost every 3E/3.5 skill.

Listen + Spot is supposed to fix a real problem.  The problem is that a single Perception skill is way too valuable compared to other skills.  You can get around that somewhat by rarely calling for skill checks (i.e. player skill matters when they say they look somewhere), though that is swimming upstream against what the rest of the system is pushing.  You can try to buff out the rough edges with class skills, fiddly ranks, etc. to force people to take something else.  Sound familiar? 

Just because the initial 3E fix was worse than the problem in some ways, that doesn't remove the problem that was there.  The 3.5 solution is half correct.  It removes a "cure" that is worse than the disease.  Then it kind of scrapes by ignoring the real issue, hoping no one notices with the zillion fiddly changes throughout.

To actually fix the problem, you have to do what Vision Storm said in the post below yours.  Which is hard, thoughtful design work, with payoffs that aren't obvious until you've done most of it.  Oh, and doing it will almost assuredly send a herd of sacred cows trampling over a garden, through a house, and ripping up a vineyard before they finally plummet over a ravine where the survivors drown in a raging torrent. :D

Thus the conclusion that some of us have come to that there are really only two reasonable courses of action, given that in the "hard, thoughtful design work" area, WotC seems to be rather limited, and to running off the people that tried:  Ignore the warts and enjoy it for what it is.  Or if that isn't possible any longer, give it up as a lost cause.

I'm not trying to convince so much as explain.  When some of us say that 3E/3.5 isn't fixable, we don't mean there's no conceivable route to fix it.  We mean practically, it won't happen, and if it did, many of its current fans wouldn't recognize it.  Note that 4E and 5E both tangled with some of the hard core issues in 3E/3.5, with some success.  They both also handled some hard core issues by writing them effectively out of the game entirely, to more or less success depending on who you ask, and their preferences. 

I don't have the slightest doubt in my mind that both Chris's suggestion for using non-core classes or Tenbones's suggest to get Fantasy Craft are great options, if they happen to appeal.  That is, I'm fairly certain, despite having never even read either, that they are both more coherent than 3E/3.5 as a system at the table.  They are also going to be a bit more narrow in appeal, as any well-designed fix will be.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 08, 2023, 08:45:15 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on February 07, 2023, 11:06:54 PM
What's wrong with 3.x skills? Yeah, there were a few hiccups at first:

Use Rope
Hide + Move Silent
Balance + Tumble
Listen + Spot

But those were fixed in later games, like Pathfinder or True 20.

I'll use one example that's easier to explain, but with a note that if you start to dig, you'll find this same kind of problem in almost every 3E/3.5 skill.

Listen + Spot is supposed to fix a real problem.  The problem is that a single Perception skill is way too valuable compared to other skills.  You can get around that somewhat by rarely calling for skill checks (i.e. player skill matters when they say they look somewhere), though that is swimming upstream against what the rest of the system is pushing.  You can try to buff out the rough edges with class skills, fiddly ranks, etc. to force people to take something else.  Sound familiar? 

Just because the initial 3E fix was worse than the problem in some ways, that doesn't remove the problem that was there.  The 3.5 solution is half correct.  It removes a "cure" that is worse than the disease.  Then it kind of scrapes by ignoring the real issue, hoping no one notices with the zillion fiddly changes throughout.

To actually fix the problem, you have to do what Vision Storm said in the post below yours.  Which is hard, thoughtful design work, with payoffs that aren't obvious until you've done most of it.  Oh, and doing it will almost assuredly send a herd of sacred cows trampling over a garden, through a house, and ripping up a vineyard before they finally plummet over a ravine where the survivors drown in a raging torrent. :D

Thus the conclusion that some of us have come to that there are really only two reasonable courses of action, given that in the "hard, thoughtful design work" area, WotC seems to be rather limited, and to running off the people that tried:  Ignore the warts and enjoy it for what it is.  Or if that isn't possible any longer, give it up as a lost cause.

I'm not trying to convince so much as explain.  When some of us say that 3E/3.5 isn't fixable, we don't mean there's no conceivable route to fix it.  We mean practically, it won't happen, and if it did, many of its current fans wouldn't recognize it.  Note that 4E and 5E both tangled with some of the hard core issues in 3E/3.5, with some success.  They both also handled some hard core issues by writing them effectively out of the game entirely, to more or less success depending on who you ask, and their preferences. 

I don't have the slightest doubt in my mind that both Chris's suggestion for using non-core classes or Tenbones's suggest to get Fantasy Craft are great options, if they happen to appeal.  That is, I'm fairly certain, despite having never even read either, that they are both more coherent than 3E/3.5 as a system at the table.  They are also going to be a bit more narrow in appeal, as any well-designed fix will be.

I guess it depends on the specific instance of 3.x.

D&D 3.5: Search, Listen, Spot
D20 Modern: Search, Listen, Spot
Spycraft: Search, Listen, Spot
FantasyCraft:Search, Listen, Spot

True 20: Search and Notice (This is the ideal arrangement for me.)
Mutants and Masterminds 2E: Search and Notice

Pathfinder: Perception
SW Saga: Perception
Mutants and Masterminds 3E: Perception

I've arranged the games (roughly) chronologically. The idea of a unified Perception started around 2007, and persists to this day, but I don't think it's fair to say that is a universal 3.x problem. There's too much variation in the sample set. I do think it's on target to say it's a problem for 5E, however.

Here's the True 20 skill array. I don't see any glaring problems here. I'd delete Concentration, and Escape Artist never seemed to be useful in our games, but other than that it's pretty solid.

Acrobatics
Bluff
Climb
Computers
Concentration
Craft*
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Disguise
Drive
Escape Artist
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Intimidate
Jump
Knowledge*
Language
Medicine
Notice
Perform*
Pilot
Ride
Search
Sense Motive
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Survival
Swim

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 07, 2023, 09:48:59 AMWhat made 3.x obsolete was Pathfinder. 1st edition Pathfinder took the design ethos of 3.x to it's next step, further streamlined some of the clunkier mechanics and fixed a lot of the balancing issues. These days, most people who like 3.5 are playing Pathfinder instead. As much nostalgia as I have for 3.x, if today I wanted to play a high fantasy game with a high degree of variety and depth in the character building, I'd go with either Pathfinder 1 or more likely Shadow of the Demon Lord. Both games achieve the same design goals more elegantly than 3.x does.

I've talked to some 3.5 grognards and they claim PF is actually worse -- that Paizo basically took some 3.5 house rules and made them official, but it didn't necessarily improve the game, just took it in a direction that Paizo liked.

SotDL is like 3.5? Really? I am surprised. I thought it was supposed to be more like 5e.

As a 3.5 clone, I was always partial to Justin Alexander's unreleased Legends & Labyrinths (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/30465/roleplaying-games/legends-labyrinths-black-book-beta). It has a copy of 3.5's skill system, as opposed to a more streamlined one, but it smoothed out a lot of the cruft that was accreted to 3.x over its run. Of course, you can still add in 20,000 splatbooks to it and make it bloated, but with some judicious use of a GM's fiat, you can curate what gets included and what gets left out. The game by itself is rather solid.

I remember that I really looked forward to Legends&Labyrinth
by Justin Alexander. I thought it was really  sad that it was never finished.

3.5 had it's hiccups, but it's still my favorite system. Now that I think on it, might be because its the one I played the most on tabletop and computer games, but even if I'm biased, I'd say it's still an amazing game.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on February 08, 2023, 12:14:51 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 07, 2023, 09:48:59 AMWhat made 3.x obsolete was Pathfinder. 1st edition Pathfinder took the design ethos of 3.x to it's next step, further streamlined some of the clunkier mechanics and fixed a lot of the balancing issues. These days, most people who like 3.5 are playing Pathfinder instead. As much nostalgia as I have for 3.x, if today I wanted to play a high fantasy game with a high degree of variety and depth in the character building, I'd go with either Pathfinder 1 or more likely Shadow of the Demon Lord. Both games achieve the same design goals more elegantly than 3.x does.

I've talked to some 3.5 grognards and they claim PF is actually worse -- that Paizo basically took some 3.5 house rules and made them official, but it didn't necessarily improve the game, just took it in a direction that Paizo liked.

I'm sure there's arguments either way. Honestly most of my experience with 3.5 was as a teenager, and most of my experience with Pathfinder is from the video-games, so I'm really not the guy to judge between. I also don't bother too much with the minutiae of game systems, because I usually just homebrew them away anyway. My general sense is that Pathfinder simplifies the 3.5 skills, but makes the feats more complete, and generally buffs up the class abilities and adds a lot more classes (often 3.5 prestige classes that have been turned into base classes). As to my comment about 3.5 players having moved to Pathfinder, that's just the impression I get looking around the hobby.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic on February 08, 2023, 12:14:51 PM
SotDL is like 3.5? Really? I am surprised. I thought it was supposed to be more like 5e.

As far as systems go, it's not all that similar to either. It uses six attributes, AC, and a d20 to attack, but that describes dozens of games. There's no skill ranks, feats, proficiency modifiers, base attack bonus, or advantage/disadvantage (though there is a similar system in boons and banes). The reason I brought it up is a bit esoteric, but I'll try and explain:

I'm not generally someone who is looking for the "best" RPG. Rather,  I figure there are certain games that do certain things well, and I try to pick based on what I want for a particular campaign. The reason I would choose 3.5 or Pathfinder for a campaign would be if I wanted a game with complex character building, and a large number of classes. SOTDL achieves that goal through its mix-and-match system of multiclassing, and it's a system that these days I would probably choose over either 3.5 or Pathfinder.

Quote from: Aglondir on February 08, 2023, 11:30:56 AM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 08, 2023, 08:45:15 AM

Quote from: Aglondir on February 07, 2023, 11:06:54 PM
What's wrong with 3.x skills? Yeah, there were a few hiccups at first:

Use Rope
Hide + Move Silent
Balance + Tumble
Listen + Spot

But those were fixed in later games, like Pathfinder or True 20.

I'll use one example that's easier to explain, but with a note that if you start to dig, you'll find this same kind of problem in almost every 3E/3.5 skill.

Listen + Spot is supposed to fix a real problem.  The problem is that a single Perception skill is way too valuable compared to other skills.  You can get around that somewhat by rarely calling for skill checks (i.e. player skill matters when they say they look somewhere), though that is swimming upstream against what the rest of the system is pushing.  You can try to buff out the rough edges with class skills, fiddly ranks, etc. to force people to take something else.  Sound familiar? 

Just because the initial 3E fix was worse than the problem in some ways, that doesn't remove the problem that was there.  The 3.5 solution is half correct.  It removes a "cure" that is worse than the disease.  Then it kind of scrapes by ignoring the real issue, hoping no one notices with the zillion fiddly changes throughout.

To actually fix the problem, you have to do what Vision Storm said in the post below yours.  Which is hard, thoughtful design work, with payoffs that aren't obvious until you've done most of it.  Oh, and doing it will almost assuredly send a herd of sacred cows trampling over a garden, through a house, and ripping up a vineyard before they finally plummet over a ravine where the survivors drown in a raging torrent. :D

Thus the conclusion that some of us have come to that there are really only two reasonable courses of action, given that in the "hard, thoughtful design work" area, WotC seems to be rather limited, and to running off the people that tried:  Ignore the warts and enjoy it for what it is.  Or if that isn't possible any longer, give it up as a lost cause.

I'm not trying to convince so much as explain.  When some of us say that 3E/3.5 isn't fixable, we don't mean there's no conceivable route to fix it.  We mean practically, it won't happen, and if it did, many of its current fans wouldn't recognize it.  Note that 4E and 5E both tangled with some of the hard core issues in 3E/3.5, with some success.  They both also handled some hard core issues by writing them effectively out of the game entirely, to more or less success depending on who you ask, and their preferences. 

I don't have the slightest doubt in my mind that both Chris's suggestion for using non-core classes or Tenbones's suggest to get Fantasy Craft are great options, if they happen to appeal.  That is, I'm fairly certain, despite having never even read either, that they are both more coherent than 3E/3.5 as a system at the table.  They are also going to be a bit more narrow in appeal, as any well-designed fix will be.

I guess it depends on the specific instance of 3.x.

D&D 3.5: Search, Listen, Spot
D20 Modern: Search, Listen, Spot
Spycraft: Search, Listen, Spot
FantasyCraft:Search, Listen, Spot

True 20: Search and Notice (This is the ideal arrangement for me.)
Mutants and Masterminds 2E: Search and Notice

Pathfinder: Perception
SW Saga: Perception
Mutants and Masterminds 3E: Perception

I've arranged the games (roughly) chronologically. The idea of a unified Perception started around 2007, and persists to this day, but I don't think it's fair to say that is a universal 3.x problem. There's too much variation in the sample set. I do think it's on target to say it's a problem for 5E, however.

Here's the True 20 skill array. I don't see any glaring problems here. I'd delete Concentration, and Escape Artist never seemed to be useful in our games, but other than that it's pretty solid.

Acrobatics
Bluff
Climb
Computers
Concentration
Craft*
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Disguise
Drive
Escape Artist
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Intimidate
Jump
Knowledge*
Language
Medicine
Notice
Perform*
Pilot
Ride
Search
Sense Motive
Sleight of Hand
Stealth
Survival
Swim

No one said that it was a universal problem with all 3e derived games in general, but with D&D 3e, which is the core rule set being discussed. That other games eventually addressed this later on doesn't really disprove that it was an issue, but rather highlights the fact that it was, or other games using the 3e engine wouldn't have had to do it differently. And all of those games involved a significant rework of the core 3e rule set, which highlights what we said about how much you'd have to change to make 3e work.

This is also a D&D specific issue AFAIK, because no other game that I recall uses three different skills to handle spotting things through sensory perception, which is a carryover from earlier editions, where Find Traps and Listen were separate Thief abilities, like noticing a tripwire was some type of specialized tasks that required special training. The 5e distinction between Perception and Investigation is silly and confusing too. Sifting through junk to find something not immediately apparent to the naked eye is not some sort of specialized skill that requires separate training. The deductive reasoning aspect of the skill might be easier to justify as a separate skill, but that's something I'd usually prefer to leave to the players to figure out on their own rather than have a skill check do the thinking for them, and would handle as an actual Deduction/Reason skill if I wanted to include it.

But if a task involves finding stuff, I'd rather handle that under a single skill—not just for simplicity's sake, but also because in my experience it is. You don't need extra training to notice that the seams that you found on an otherwise bare wall are actually a secret door. That's just a needless complication that adds extra steps. The one exception to this would be what I would term "knowledge-based perception", such as Tracking attempts, or Survival checks to find food and water, since those types of tasks require specific knowledge to attempt.

Sensory perception might work (at a penalty) to find a specific type of plant if you know what you're looking for, for example, but generally speaking, identifying a specific plant (or whatever) would require a relevant knowledge skill, such as Herbalism. So I do think that knowledge-based perception is a separate skill using the appropriate knowledge skill. Intuitive or instinctual perception (Sense Motive in 3e, Insight in 5e) is also its own skill as well. But sensory perception without specific knowledge is just "Perception" (or Notice, Observation, whatever).

Regarding True 20's skill list, it's not bad compared to D&D 3e or even many skill-based systems (which tend to have ridiculously inflated lists). But I'd probably fold Climb, Jump, etc, into a single Athletics skill (at least for a 3e based game), and Drive and Pilot into a universal Piloting skill. 3-4 skills to handle athletic type stuff is too much for a game with limited skill points that expects you to invest a ton of points into every skill individually, and vehicle operation rarely even comes up in actual play to treat every vehicle type as a separate skill.

I also don't think that vehicle operation is such a specialized task that every vehicle type needs to be handled separately, even to the degree that certain vehicles need specific training to familiarize yourself with them, cuz ultimately the core talent that determines your level or how good you are at steering vehicles is basically the same. It's more like you need to become qualified to handle a vehicle without penalty, but once you do, it's all the same thing. Granted, 3e and most systems don't handle skill level and specific qualifications as separate, but that's closer to how I view piloting vs specific vehicle types, than every single vehicle being this thing you have to level independently. Same with weapon skills. All melee weapons share the same body mechanics in my experience, you just need to familiarize yourself with specific weapons or specialize in them.

TL;DR: Sensory perception shouldn't require separate skills, unless it involves specific knowledge, in which case the appropriate knowledge skill trump Perception skill. The only other type of "perception" skill is Intuition (Sense Motive/Insight). And general skills, plus specialties and qualifications make more sense than every tiny skill variant being this separate thing you need to level independently.

I had a 13 years long campaign based on D&D 3/3.5E, so, obviously, I have fond memories of it. Other's mileage may vary.

The two best things this edition offered were the incredible amount of "tool-boxy" material and the quality of the writing (I'm strictly talking about WotC's products). Regarding the latter, I have a lot of books that I never used but still are a pleasure to read. Pathfinder had a young adult approach to the fluff but 3E just spoke to everybody. The Forgotten Realms 3E were full of lore and, IMHO, the peak that this setting had to offer. "Draconomicon" was a book about dragons written by Leonardo da Vinci. Two friends of mine bought it just for the lore.

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this edition. Some "players" tried to show that it was "broken" by creating Thanos-level characters. They always forgot how:

A) 20th level Characters don't spring in existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. They evolve organically. Example:

The characters start in Northlandia, a far off province of the Empire up in the Far North. They spend levels 1-7 fighting giants and orcs coming down from the Utter Mountains during the bitterest winter in centuries. Be assured that feats useful in urban, desert and tropical environments will not be part of their painstakingly researched "builds" (a word that I hate but whatever). After their victory the Emperor, who has heard about their valor, calls them to fight the War in the Steppes, against the Reptilian Invaders. All of sudden, the characters' "builds" makes them unprepared for the new situation. This is how a real campaign works.

B) A corollary of the above: no one ever said that [Gary Oldman]EEEEEEEEVERYTHIIIINGG!!![/Gary Oldman] in the books is available. The DM can rule that, for example, in his campaign there are no Wizards and no Sorcerers: the only magic is the Divine one. Some feats are either not allowed or, at least, not available in a certain region/culture - maybe because you need a teacher for them and no one is around. Same for certain spells. Maybe barbarians do not exist because in that area their tribes were civilized centuries ago. Maybe clerics pray for their spells but it is up to their gods if to grant them or not - for whatever reason. When the players scream foul, the DM can simply point out how every official world has specific rules. Dragonlance starts with no clerics. The Forgotten Realms have Regional Feats. The list goes on.

[A nice counterpoint to the above is how 3E allows incredibly absurd builds if the players and the DM want to really have fun. You can play as an ancient green dragon half ranger(!)/half witch(!!) if you want. 3E was build from the ground up to allow any sort of shenanigans - which, in turn, allow for very creative campaigns. I ran "CSI Waterdeep" for one year, after finishing my gigantor magnum opus, and 3E plus some supplements gave me everything that I needed.]

Regarding the need to use miniatures, this was introduced with the 3.5E revision. 3E allowed for "theatre of the mind" just fine. Personally, I never used miniatures in my games. When there was the need to clarify who was where, from dice to pencil scrawlings were enough. We are doing the same with CoC. I started playing RPGs when I was 16 and miniatures always were an imagination killer which turns imagination into a tabletop game.

I admit that 3/3.5E were not perfect (but I house-ruled them into being :D ) and how 5E, rule-wise, is probably the best edition for the modern players. However, I never felt the need to learn it. You simply can't find "Frostburn" or "Lords of Madness" for 5E. Tools like "eTools" (a very underrated aid for Windows) greatly simplify the creation of characters, encounters and treasure. And the fluff is still unsurpassed.

I cut my teeth on 3.5 so I have a fondness for it.

My original gaming group consisted of two old school players and a bunch of newbs.

We played a lot, though never really in high levels, but enough to become exasperated with some of the usual suspect stuff (like grappling, playing with mini/grid rules).

We switched to 4e and after a handful of sessions, no one said they hated it, but we hated it. Group fell apart (not solely b/c of the edition swap, but I think that accelerated the process). Then we talked forever about going back to 3.5, but no one wanted to DM. So when dndnext started up, fearing it wouldn't be good and that the second hand prices would shoot up, I purchased the 3.5 DMG and MM and planned on DMing to get the gang back together.

It didn't happen.

Phandelver comes out, and with the excitement of a new edition, I get the group back together. All agreed it was essentially 3.5, but streamlined in a way that actually fit our gaming style. Old school guys liked the gridless play and 3.5 guys felt it alleviated a lot of things that were issues for us. I don't think 5e is popular for nothing. A group like ours was probably what they had in view I'd guess. But I like 5e because I first liked 3.5.

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 10, 2023, 06:06:48 AM
The 5e distinction between Perception and Investigation is silly and confusing too. Sifting through junk to find something not immediately apparent to the naked eye is not some sort of specialized skill that requires separate training. The deductive reasoning aspect of the skill might be easier to justify as a separate skill, but that's something I'd usually prefer to leave to the players to figure out on their own rather than have a skill check do the thinking for them, and would handle as an actual Deduction/Reason skill if I wanted to include it.

Also: An "Archives/Research" where you're sorting libraries of records, lore, encyclopedias and whatnot. Deduction/Reason might as well handle that though.

Gather Information should not exist if the players could otherwise roleplay talking from NPC to NPC, following the trail of "I heard from Jim Bob! He heard it from Vincent Fernando!" Why would they want to roll away opportunities to notice the guy tipping the apple cart trying to get in earshot of the players, or out of the line of sight? Failing that, you'd have moments to use Intimidation, Bluff, Diplomacy, "Haggle" skills in town or out on the field. I doubt most people get a chance to use any of those social skills much. Too much worldbuilding left unmade.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 10, 2023, 11:47:33 AM

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 10, 2023, 06:06:48 AM
The 5e distinction between Perception and Investigation is silly and confusing too. Sifting through junk to find something not immediately apparent to the naked eye is not some sort of specialized skill that requires separate training. The deductive reasoning aspect of the skill might be easier to justify as a separate skill, but that's something I'd usually prefer to leave to the players to figure out on their own rather than have a skill check do the thinking for them, and would handle as an actual Deduction/Reason skill if I wanted to include it.

Also: An "Archives/Research" where you're sorting libraries of records, lore, encyclopedias and whatnot. Deduction/Reason might as well handle that though.

Gather Information should not exist if the players could otherwise roleplay talking from NPC to NPC, following the trail of "I heard from Jim Bob! He heard it from Vincent Fernando!" Why would they want to roll away opportunities to notice the guy tipping the apple cart trying to get in earshot of the players, or out of the line of sight? Failing that, you'd have moments to use Intimidation, Bluff, Diplomacy, "Haggle" skills in town or out on the field. I doubt most people get a chance to use any of those social skills much. Too much worldbuilding left unmade.

TBH, I have mixed feelings about Information Gathering because it sounds like something that might make thematic sense, and often comes up in fiction as the streetwise character who tends to go "hit the streets" for information from their underworld contacts and such. But the fact of the matter is that in practice it rarely comes up, and when it does, characters just RP it out, and the GM gives them what he's gonna give them regardless, making a skill roll superfluous and pointless. And when a check actually makes sense in context, it's always some other social skill that applies, like you point out. So it might be better to just remove it, and just replace it with some sort of "Contacts" feat that automatically gives them info or who to go to for favors and such, to the degree that such an ability might arguably be even necessary, and perhaps a situational bonus to relevant social skill rolls when they come up.

Quote
This is also a D&D specific issue AFAIK, because no other game that I recall uses three different skills to handle spotting things through sensory perception, which is a carryover from earlier editions, where Find Traps and Listen were separate Thief abilities, like noticing a tripwire was some type of specialized tasks that required special training. The 5e distinction between Perception and Investigation is silly and confusing too. Sifting through junk to find something not immediately apparent to the naked eye is not some sort of specialized skill that requires separate training. The deductive reasoning aspect of the skill might be easier to justify as a separate skill, but that's something I'd usually prefer to leave to the players to figure out on their own rather than have a skill check do the thinking for them, and would handle as an actual Deduction/Reason skill if I wanted to include it.

But IIRC the Investigation is used also for 3,5 Search qualities that do not fit easily with Perception - like seeking forbidden knowledge in Grimoire.
I'd probably rename Perception to be Vigilance - and keep difference between general kinda passive surrounding Awareness and purposeful search/research of something very specific. It's kinda intuitive for me to keep those two separate.

QuoteTBH, I have mixed feelings about Information Gathering because it sounds like something that might make thematic sense, and often comes up in fiction as the streetwise character who tends to go "hit the streets" for information from their underworld contacts and such. But the fact of the matter is that in practice it rarely comes up, and when it does, characters just RP it out, and the GM gives them what he's gonna give them regardless, making a skill roll superfluous and pointless. And when a check actually makes sense in context, it's always some other social skill that applies, like you point out. So it might be better to just remove it, and just replace it with some sort of "Contacts" feat that automatically gives them info or who to go to for favors and such, to the degree that such an ability might arguably be even necessary, and perhaps a situational bonus to relevant social skill rolls when they come up.

General Streetwise skill - with wide array of options just like Survival contain multiple aspects of Wilderness.
If you wanna interrogate very specific NPCs - sure go with social skills. If you wanna go with abstracted night of bard listening to gossip in taverns of Orc Quarters - Streetwise roll is fine.

I have mixed opinions. On one hand very nostaglic, on the other hand, the game just implodes at higher levels because of the required GM prep.

Quote from: Wrath of God on February 11, 2023, 07:25:44 PM
But IIRC the Investigation is used also for 3,5 Search qualities that do not fit easily with Perception - like seeking forbidden knowledge in Grimoire.
I'd probably rename Perception to be Vigilance - and keep difference between general kinda passive surrounding Awareness and purposeful search/research of something very specific. It's kinda intuitive for me to keep those two separate.

I think I already covered some of this in the quoted post. If it involves finding stuff through sensory perception that's not a separate skill, even if you're actively looking. If it involves figuring things out, that's usually a player task rather than something that should be handled by rolls that replace players thinking.

RE: renaming Perception, I would say that the confusing part is Investigation, since it's supposed to be a cerebral skill (at least in part) but the name implies looking for stuff, which is what Perception already does (unless by "looking" you mean "in a book" or searching for stuff that requires specific knowledge). I'd rename Investigation to something like Deduction instead, or Research if it involves digging through books. But like I mentioned, that's usually something that players do, not something that's handwaved with dice. And "Research" feels a bit too specialized to base an entire skill around that (maybe make it a more broad "Academics" skill that also covers general knowledge or some such?).

Plus forcing players to roll to find a bit of information needed to advance the plot seems counterproductive, since it would make progress throughout the adventure contingent on a check relying on a very situational skill. If PCs REALLY need a piece of info to move forward they should usually just find it if they look in the right place. A roll should only be necessary if they're just trying to get an edge, or there are multiple ways to get there and you want to make it more challenging.

QuoteGeneral Streetwise skill - with wide array of options just like Survival contain multiple aspects of Wilderness.
If you wanna interrogate very specific NPCs - sure go with social skills. If you wanna go with abstracted night of bard listening to gossip in taverns of Orc Quarters - Streetwise roll is fine.

That's probably the best way to handle it. Streetwise could handle info gathering type stuff, plus also stuff like identifying gang signs, knowing who the big players are in town or who to go to to buy or sell illegal stuff, which are the bad parts of town, etc.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 11, 2023, 08:04:05 PM
I have mixed opinions. On one hand very nostaglic, on the other hand, the game just implodes at higher levels because of the required GM prep.

Not just because of the required GM prep, but because the math became unwieldy (for example, attack bonuses far outstripped ACs). This is why by the end of 3e, somebody came up with the "E6" concept and neatly sidestepped most of the problems of 3e high-level play...

QuoteI think I already covered some of this in the quoted post. If it involves finding stuff through sensory perception that's not a separate skill, even if you're actively looking. If it involves figuring things out, that's usually a player task rather than something that should be handled by rolls that replace players thinking.

And that I generally disagree because at least in my experience it's kinda very different to search something specific (clues, minute details) and very different to be generally aware to threats and so on. So one skill to Search actively and another to let's say passively detect enemy Stealth, oncoming enemies from distance, being aware of let's say enemy in some disguise is very different.
On functional level.

I'm decent in former, but terrible in latter so for me difference is very very intuitive. Maybe rename them for Awareness and Investigation...
The question is to apply it's consistently in game.

QuotePlus forcing players to roll to find a bit of information needed to advance the plot seems counterproductive, since it would make progress throughout the adventure contingent on a check relying on a very situational skill. If PCs REALLY need a piece of info to move forward they should usually just find it if they look in the right place. A roll should only be necessary if they're just trying to get an edge, or there are multiple ways to get there and you want to make it more challenging.

Only if you play very linear adventure. Then yes. With more sandbox approach... not necessarily.
Also there are tactical choices that can influence roll - for instance - how much time do you want to spend searching.

Quote from: Wtrmute on February 12, 2023, 09:13:45 AMNot just because of the required GM prep, but because the math became unwieldy (for example, attack bonuses far outstripped ACs).

Id say its other huge issue is the constant buffs you gotta juggle. As a player, and as a GM. At a certain point greater dispel just becomes the most combat optimal action to use every time.

Quote from: Wrath of God on February 12, 2023, 11:28:29 AM

QuoteI think I already covered some of this in the quoted post. If it involves finding stuff through sensory perception that's not a separate skill, even if you're actively looking. If it involves figuring things out, that's usually a player task rather than something that should be handled by rolls that replace players thinking.

And that I generally disagree because at least in my experience it's kinda very different to search something specific (clues, minute details) and very different to be generally aware to threats and so on. So one skill to Search actively and another to let's say passively detect enemy Stealth, oncoming enemies from distance, being aware of let's say enemy in some disguise is very different.
On functional level.

I'm decent in former, but terrible in latter so for me difference is very very intuitive. Maybe rename them for Awareness and Investigation...
The question is to apply it's consistently in game.

This goes completely against my own experience, and attentiveness/observation is something that I've consciously cultivated since I was a kid*. And there's been zero difference in my experience between actively looking for something or becoming suddenly aware of it through instinct. It's all about pattern recognition, and that applies more or less equally whether you notice a noise that sounds like someone is entering your house, or you're actively using your hearing to guide you to the source of the noise or track where they're going. The only difference is that in one instance you weren't expecting it and aren't trying to do something specific about it, and in the other you're consciously focusing that same attentiveness that allowed you to suddenly notice something to track its source.

Unless by "searching for clues" you mean trying to figure something about what you found that isn't apparent through sensory perception alone (such as where it came from, if it fell from somewhere, or something to that effect), your ability to notice things pretty much has you covered whether you're doing it actively or passively. And even when you're trying to deduce stuff, if that deduction involves finding additional stuff through sensory perception so you can put two and two together to figure something out, your ability to notice things may still be relevant in finding those secondary clues (maybe that thing you found fell from somewhere that left a trail. But how do you find the trail, assuming there is one...? And if you need a second Perception check to find that trail, do you really need a third Deduction check to figure out that's where the thing came from when the player probably can figure that out the moment you tell them they found a trail? And if the player figures it out but the character fails the Deduction check, do you prevent them from acting on that assumption, cuz skill checks trump player agency?).

*and know that I'm good at it cuz I'm frequently annoyed at how inattentive people around me seem to be, often stumbling onto stuff I immediately notice and such, or scaring off crickets when I'm trying to catch one that's trying to nest in the house, cuz I'm apparently the only one in my family who can spot them effectively.

Quote

QuotePlus forcing players to roll to find a bit of information needed to advance the plot seems counterproductive, since it would make progress throughout the adventure contingent on a check relying on a very situational skill. If PCs REALLY need a piece of info to move forward they should usually just find it if they look in the right place. A roll should only be necessary if they're just trying to get an edge, or there are multiple ways to get there and you want to make it more challenging.

Only if you play very linear adventure. Then yes. With more sandbox approach... not necessarily.
Also there are tactical choices that can influence roll - for instance - how much time do you want to spend searching.

Meh, even in sandbox play I don't see the point on requiring a check if they player specifies that they're searching in the exact spot where the thing they're searching for is actually at. Stuff like that is the point where I actually agree with old school players that complain about overuse of skills to handle everything. Skill checks are for when there's doubt. But if you, as a player actually specify the exact spot where something happens to be at, there's no doubt that if dig around you'll stumble onto it eventually, if only by accident, unless there's pretty strong magic or something masking its presence.

As far as noticing features in your environment, maybe you also have a high Perception score, as vapid, flightly, clumsy, and otherwise inattentive people would have lots of difficulty. This would probably because they may not have the instincts of the hunter-gatherer in them, as opposed to the farmer who doesn't also hunt, but a lack of good rest or being intoxicated can also change your chances.

It's not that you can't get trained to be a better "spotter," if you can remember a pattern of where to look first, but some people will have a natural edge.

Vision Storm,

Your last several arguments are more or less the route that I go.  Except, I take it the next logical step, that "Perception" that pervasive is an "ability", not a skill.  At least in game terms, where things like Strength, Dexterity, etc. represent a combination of natural talent and broadly developed ability.  In contrast, where "skills" are so few and so broad as to not even really count as skills, then maybe not.  Though I'd argue that's not a skills-based game, either. 

Given a Perception ability or attribute, than depending on how you want the game to handle some aspect, it might make sense to then include an "Observation" skill or similar, to reflect the parts that can be actively learned in a more narrow sense.  Or if you really wanted "Perception" for that more narrow role, then take the broad part and stuff it into an Awareness attribute.  The naming does affect how people view the nuances.

This has the not inconsiderable effect of making getting that broad Perception (or Awareness) properly valuable in comparison to how many people play the kinds of games where this discussion is relevant, because getting a higher ability or improving it is typically costly compared to skills.

Quote from: Shrieking Banshee on February 12, 2023, 11:40:34 AM

Quote from: Wtrmute on February 12, 2023, 09:13:45 AMNot just because of the required GM prep, but because the math became unwieldy (for example, attack bonuses far outstripped ACs).

Id say its other huge issue is the constant buffs you gotta juggle. As a player, and as a GM. At a certain point greater dispel just becomes the most combat optimal action to use every time.

Dispel / Disjunction type effects are one of the worst things because the game's fundamental math requires PCs to have a slew of magical items, but recalculating your basic bonuses if your items were antimagicked is a huge PITA.

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AM
There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this edition. Some "players" tried to show that it was "broken" by creating Thanos-level characters. They always forgot how:

A) 20th level Characters don't spring in existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. They evolve organically. Example:

Except a lot of players basically planned out every level before they even rolled a die. That was how a lot of players played.

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMB) A corollary of the above: no one ever said that [Gary Oldman]EEEEEEEEVERYTHIIIINGG!!![/Gary Oldman] in the books is available. The DM can rule that, for example, in his campaign there are no Wizards and no Sorcerers: the only magic is the Divine one. Some feats are either not allowed or, at least, not available in a certain region/culture - maybe because you need a teacher for them and no one is around. Same for certain spells. Maybe barbarians do not exist because in that area their tribes were civilized centuries ago. Maybe clerics pray for their spells but it is up to their gods if to grant them or not - for whatever reason. When the players scream foul, the DM can simply point out how every official world has specific rules. Dragonlance starts with no clerics. The Forgotten Realms have Regional Feats. The list goes on.

Except the players did scream foul. "If WotC publishes it, I can play it" was a mentality that infected a huge swath of the 3.x community - I was told as much several times on TBP when I dared to admit that actually I considered everything at my discretion. That wasn't right, I was told. That was not the expected player/DM contract, I was told. That was not how WotC intended, I was told.

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMRegarding the need to use miniatures, this was introduced with the 3.5E revision. 3E allowed for "theatre of the mind" just fine. Personally, I never used miniatures in my games. When there was the need to clarify who was where, from dice to pencil scrawlings were enough.

Disagree completely. 3.0 was pretty much just as beholden to miniatures as 3.5 was. Yes, you can play it without them. But a huge chunk of the rules - feats, spells, class abilities, etc - are designed with the expectation you are, and if you aren't, they become either completely meaningless, or very arbitrary to use.

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMAnd the fluff is still unsurpassed.

Oh lord, you have to be kidding. The fluff for 3.x was garbage, only made look good in comparison to 4 and 5 afterwords.

I think I've only ever played a game of 3.X with miniatures once. After returning to my local player group, I still don't use them.
Maps are very helpful though.

The fear of dead levels is probably why planning out every character level ahead of time even happened. I mostly agree with Delta's Hotspot that giving every class access to feats was a really notable mistake, as I'm guessing most people used them as patches for multiclass melting pots. Class feature bloat failings...

Quote
Except the players did scream foul. "If WotC publishes it, I can play it" was a mentality that infected a huge swath of the 3.x community - I was told as much several times on TBP when I dared to admit that actually I considered everything at my discretion. That wasn't right, I was told. That was not the expected player/DM contract, I was told. That was not how WotC intended, I was told.

They seem to be the type who would want Dark Sun classes adventuring in the Forgotten Realms merely because WotC published both.

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AM
I had a 13 years long campaign based on D&D 3/3.5E, so, obviously, I have fond memories of it. Other's mileage may vary.

The two best things this edition offered were the incredible amount of "tool-boxy" material and the quality of the writing (I'm strictly talking about WotC's products). Regarding the latter, I have a lot of books that I never used but still are a pleasure to read. Pathfinder had a young adult approach to the fluff but 3E just spoke to everybody. The Forgotten Realms 3E were full of lore and, IMHO, the peak that this setting had to offer. "Draconomicon" was a book about dragons written by Leonardo da Vinci. Two friends of mine bought it just for the lore.

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this edition. Some "players" tried to show that it was "broken" by creating Thanos-level characters. They always forgot how:

A) 20th level Characters don't spring in existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. They evolve organically. Example:

The characters start in Northlandia, a far off province of the Empire up in the Far North. They spend levels 1-7 fighting giants and orcs coming down from the Utter Mountains during the bitterest winter in centuries. Be assured that feats useful in urban, desert and tropical environments will not be part of their painstakingly researched "builds" (a word that I hate but whatever). After their victory the Emperor, who has heard about their valor, calls them to fight the War in the Steppes, against the Reptilian Invaders. All of sudden, the characters' "builds" makes them unprepared for the new situation. This is how a real campaign works.

B) A corollary of the above: no one ever said that [Gary Oldman]EEEEEEEEVERYTHIIIINGG!!![/Gary Oldman] in the books is available. The DM can rule that, for example, in his campaign there are no Wizards and no Sorcerers: the only magic is the Divine one. Some feats are either not allowed or, at least, not available in a certain region/culture - maybe because you need a teacher for them and no one is around. Same for certain spells. Maybe barbarians do not exist because in that area their tribes were civilized centuries ago. Maybe clerics pray for their spells but it is up to their gods if to grant them or not - for whatever reason. When the players scream foul, the DM can simply point out how every official world has specific rules. Dragonlance starts with no clerics. The Forgotten Realms have Regional Feats. The list goes on.

[A nice counterpoint to the above is how 3E allows incredibly absurd builds if the players and the DM want to really have fun. You can play as an ancient green dragon half ranger(!)/half witch(!!) if you want. 3E was build from the ground up to allow any sort of shenanigans - which, in turn, allow for very creative campaigns. I ran "CSI Waterdeep" for one year, after finishing my gigantor magnum opus, and 3E plus some supplements gave me everything that I needed.]

Regarding the need to use miniatures, this was introduced with the 3.5E revision. 3E allowed for "theatre of the mind" just fine. Personally, I never used miniatures in my games. When there was the need to clarify who was where, from dice to pencil scrawlings were enough. We are doing the same with CoC. I started playing RPGs when I was 16 and miniatures always were an imagination killer which turns imagination into a tabletop game.

I admit that 3/3.5E were not perfect (but I house-ruled them into being :D ) and how 5E, rule-wise, is probably the best edition for the modern players. However, I never felt the need to learn it. You simply can't find "Frostburn" or "Lords of Madness" for 5E. Tools like "eTools" (a very underrated aid for Windows) greatly simplify the creation of characters, encounters and treasure. And the fluff is still unsurpassed.

Greetings!

I agree, Reckall. For the most part, 3E was an excellent game system and version of D&D.

I ran several groups, and had a huge, multi-year campaign, which I ran very much into Epic Levels.

The game system's flaws were not immediately noticeable, and in my view, grew over time. Game-design wise, the system more or less developed increasing problems as a consequence and reflection of the system's relative success. I find some historical design connection going back many ears to another game system, Rolemaster. Before joining WOTC, one of the major designers of 3E was Monte Cook, who was a designer for Rolemaster for many years. Thus, it is no surprise that many of 3E's strengths resembled Rolemaster--and eventually, 3E's relatively subtle flaws, were also a reflection of Rolemaster's system flaws. Shorthand, the system became too bloated with too many books, too many options, too many feats, classes, skills, spells, monsters, everything. When a Player Character died--well, it was a genuine pain. Generally speaking, a player could *easily* spend 8 full hours or much more, on making up a new character. Even as a DM, making NPC's--especially suitably commensurate levelled NPC's as companions or whatnot for the Player Characters after some important NPC's had died in battle--I admit, also became a huge time demand and chore. These dynamics subtly influence *against* Player-Character and even NPC death--as the time investment became, admittedly again, huge.

Adventure and module design, as a DM, likewise became over time, a major chore. I'm a detail-oriented guy. I *love* detail, development, and all the goodness. However, it's like a "Love/Hate" relationship when I come up with some scenario--say, the Players have gone off on the sandbox and decided to investigate clues leading to an interesting villain's magical stronghold--I was sometimes faced with literally *weeks* of work. A good dozen major NPC's, two dozen important secondary NPC's, a gaggle of minions and troops, plus spell lists, skill points, Feats, Classes, Prestige Classes, a shopping cart of magic items, a strong menu of curiosities, tricks and traps--and 5 or 6 Monster Manuals to painstakingly go over for just the right mix of creatures. Oh, and also do some good development on a dozen relevant NPC's, plus some love for a half dozen or so allied NPC's that were important for the scenario as well.

Unfortunately, this is kind of where the subtle success dynamic of design comes into play. Half a dozen or more books needed to make up a Player Character, or an NPC. So many *cool*options, rules, and widgets. It could easily take a few hours straight o reading just to get your mind warmed up good on a concept for whatever, right? Making up an awesome Wizard of some kind, or a really cool Paladin that is an experienced knight Templar from some distant temple outpost. The details are *huge* Lots of fun, inspiring, and more, but the time sink, the effort at adventure development, monster rosters, and character design became tiresome for a Player, or even a DM such as myself. The system became overwhelmed with so many options, cool rules and development, it was staggering.

Eventually, I really learned to appreciate--or "re-appreciate" the relative restraints, restrictions, and simplifications of AD&D for example. Indeed, for example, a DM could devote hours to adventure design for AD&D--but there were so many shorthands that it was not often necessary. 3E, system-wise, really urged time-sink demands in reading, research, preparation, and all the details from a dozen sourcebooks to do pretty much everything. Such are the main system flaws of 3E in my view, and contributed to myself and many Players experiencing a kind of "System Fatigue" with 3E.

I definitely think that the absence of such "System Fatigue" in 5E has been a major source of enjoyment for myself, and a primary driver as why I became an early fan of 5E, both as a Player, and just as importantly, as a DM.

I always have fond memories of 3E however. So many fun times!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Besides Starfinder, the only 3.5e-derived game that I know to still be actively supported is the French rpg Chroniques Oubliées. It greatly streamlines 3.5e. Among other things, it ditches feats and Vancian magic, although the latter is still included in an optional rule. Various variants of these rules exist, including one for the excellent French comic book series Les Terres d'Arran. There's also Chroniques Oubliées Contemporain, which is a bit like d20 Modern. A Cthulhu variant (Cthulhu Origines) and a sci-fi version (Chroniques Oubliées Galactiques) are scheduled to be released this year.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 12, 2023, 07:49:51 PM

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AM
There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding this edition. Some "players" tried to show that it was "broken" by creating Thanos-level characters. They always forgot how:

A) 20th level Characters don't spring in existence fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. They evolve organically. Example:

Except a lot of players basically planned out every level before they even rolled a die. That was how a lot of players played.

Good luck to them, then, if A) their "planning" involved elements that the DM ruled they didn't exist and/or B) went against the contingent situation. You only needed a DM who said "Spell casting feats are only taught in the Imperial Winterhold College far south" to throw a spell caster "build" out of the window - exp. if the character was a Elf and the Empire explicitly forbad teaching magic to elves.

Quote

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMB) A corollary of the above: no one ever said that [Gary Oldman]EEEEEEEEVERYTHIIIINGG!!![/Gary Oldman] in the books is available. The DM can rule that, for example, in his campaign there are no Wizards and no Sorcerers: the only magic is the Divine one. Some feats are either not allowed or, at least, not available in a certain region/culture - maybe because you need a teacher for them and no one is around. Same for certain spells. Maybe barbarians do not exist because in that area their tribes were civilized centuries ago. Maybe clerics pray for their spells but it is up to their gods if to grant them or not - for whatever reason. When the players scream foul, the DM can simply point out how every official world has specific rules. Dragonlance starts with no clerics. The Forgotten Realms have Regional Feats. The list goes on.

Except the players did scream foul.

Amen to that. There is always a moment when the fundamental question must be answered: "Who am I? The DM or a puppet in the hands of the players?" Your world, your rules.

Quote
"If WotC publishes it, I can play it" was a mentality that infected a huge swath of the 3.x community - I was told as much several times on TBP when I dared to admit that actually I considered everything at my discretion. That wasn't right, I was told. That was not the expected player/DM contract, I was told. That was not how WotC intended, I was told.

You can always find another group, they were told.

As an aside, one of the few times I managed to play I choose to be a cleric (I don't find clerics boring so maybe it's me who is strange). The first time I used the old trick to cast Light on a coin and then throw it in the "dark pool" so to see what there was in the water, everybody around the table was just astounded. In a RPG you are there. Do what you want. The rules exist to support this, not the other way around (like in a board game). Creativity will always beat a "build" (and there is a reason as why a weak character can be more interesting to play than a superhero).

Quote

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMRegarding the need to use miniatures, this was introduced with the 3.5E revision. 3E allowed for "theatre of the mind" just fine. Personally, I never used miniatures in my games. When there was the need to clarify who was where, from dice to pencil scrawlings were enough.

Disagree completely. 3.0 was pretty much just as beholden to miniatures as 3.5 was. Yes, you can play it without them. But a huge chunk of the rules - feats, spells, class abilities, etc - are designed with the expectation you are, and if you aren't, they become either completely meaningless, or very arbitrary to use.

Disagree to disagree. Movement, distances, even spell area of effects were surprisingly easy to "imagine" after a bit of effort. In dubious cases we pulled off a ruler and a caliper, and used common items to show who was where - but it is surprising to note how little we needed to do that. The brain can adapt if it avoids (unnecessary) "aids". I want to imagine, and live in, a fantasy world, not to move a painted miniature on a grid.

Quote

Quote from: Reckall on February 10, 2023, 06:19:22 AMAnd the fluff is still unsurpassed.

Oh lord, you have to be kidding. The fluff for 3.x was garbage, only made look good in comparison to 4 and 5 afterwords.

Have you even read "Draconomicon"? "Lords of Madness"? "Libris Mortis"? Sure, there were some dogs, but, generally speaking, the fluff in 3/3.5E was for everybody. Pathfinder was for young adults, 4E was incredibly dire, and 5E succumbed to wokeness.

Looking back, fluff for 2E was surprisingly hit-and-miss. For every Planescape there was a 2E Ravenloft. Generally speaking, however, 2E was worse than 1E. I would save only Planescape and Birthrigth from that era.

Quote from: Reckall on February 13, 2023, 08:11:49 AM
Good luck to them, then, if A) their "planning" involved elements that the DM ruled they didn't exist and/or B) went against the contingent situation. You only needed a DM who said "Spell casting feats are only taught in the Imperial Winterhold College far south" to throw a spell caster "build" out of the window - exp. if the character was a Elf and the Empire explicitly forbad teaching magic to elves.

Sure, you can do that, but... just setting aside for a minute the player whining and protesting...

As much as 3.x had horrific balance issues, it could potentially get much, much worse if you just started doing stuff like that. Fighter-types, for example, particularly at higher levels, were already at a disadvantage, if you started gating mechanical elements behind arbitrary RP restrictions you were potentially crippling them even further. Part of the reason players did plan characters out so intricately was because it was so easy to completely gimp a character if you didn't get certain feats.

That was one of the common complaints with feat design - that basically feats didn't really feel like they were choices. At X level, you better take Y feat. They were just quasi-mandatory character development, but they make you feel like you have choice. People wanted feats to be character customization on top of their class and race, to give you ways to make your character feel unique and different. Instead, with feat chains and harsh mathematical targets and poor balance issues, they didn't really end up being that. At least not to the extent players wanted.

To some extent magic items were similar, hence why the default assumption was that magic items would be regularly available and characters would have access to a certain amount at a certain time.

Quote from: Reckall on February 13, 2023, 08:11:49 AMYou can always find another group, they were told.

Sure, and I can always just play a different game. The point was discussing common problems with 3.x, and that sort of player mentality was a common problem with 3.x.

Quote from: Reckall on February 13, 2023, 08:11:49 AMDisagree to disagree. Movement, distances, even spell area of effects were surprisingly easy to "imagine" after a bit of effort. In dubious cases we pulled off a ruler and a caliper, and used common items to show who was where - but it is surprising to note how little we needed to do that. The brain can adapt if it avoids (unnecessary) "aids". I want to imagine, and live in, a fantasy world, not to move a painted miniature on a grid.

::)

I'm pretty anti-grid myself, but enough with the bullshit "I want to use my imagination" superiority complex. Plenty of gamers did and do play perfectly imaginative games while using a grid for combat. I've done both. I didn't have to "turn off" my imagination or something when I used a grid. It was just a different way of playing.

Doesn't change the fact that a great deal of the rules of 3.x were geared around using a grid. You can say you didn't use one all you like, that doesn't change anything.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 12, 2023, 06:26:29 PM
Vision Storm,

Your last several arguments are more or less the route that I go.  Except, I take it the next logical step, that "Perception" that pervasive is an "ability", not a skill.  At least in game terms, where things like Strength, Dexterity, etc. represent a combination of natural talent and broadly developed ability.  In contrast, where "skills" are so few and so broad as to not even really count as skills, then maybe not.  Though I'd argue that's not a skills-based game, either. 

Given a Perception ability or attribute, than depending on how you want the game to handle some aspect, it might make sense to then include an "Observation" skill or similar, to reflect the parts that can be actively learned in a more narrow sense.  Or if you really wanted "Perception" for that more narrow role, then take the broad part and stuff it into an Awareness attribute.  The naming does affect how people view the nuances.

This has the not inconsiderable effect of making getting that broad Perception (or Awareness) properly valuable in comparison to how many people play the kinds of games where this discussion is relevant, because getting a higher ability or improving it is typically costly compared to skills.

A lot of this depends on how you structure your game and what you want to get out of it. I don't think that noticing everything sensory related through just one skill is such an issue, though. That's a pretty specific type of task, and there's still intuitive perception and stuff that takes specific knowledge to get noticed, plus there's a ton of other stuff that PC's could potentially do, depending on what's available in the game.

I do treat Perception (or Notice, Observation whatever we wanna call it) as effectively equal to Strength in the system I've been working on, though, cuz Strength is basically just a skill based on a more general Fitness ability that encompasses everything STR and CON do in D&D. While Perception is grouped into a more general Awareness ability that also covers Intuition, Reason and other stuff.

Quote from: Reckall on February 13, 2023, 08:11:49 AMFor every Planescape there was a 2E Ravenloft.

So it was all good then? Cuz 2e Ravenloft was pretty good. I always regretted not getting it when looking back on it (only read it cuz a friend had most of the books). Never read Birthright, though. Group was going through a lull at the time and totally missed my boat. Dark Sun was the best, though. Spelljammer was pretty good too.

Beyond that...don't really agree with either side of this tangent. Bruwulf has a couple of valid points, but are totally overstated. And the miniatures stuff is easy to ignore. But then again I've always been willing to gut the RAW to fit my purposes.

DM might be able to put their foot down, but depending on the player pool they have available they might not have much choice if they want to play the game. And the fact that the DM has the finally say (or can house rule the hell out of it, like I did) doesn't change the fact that there were serious issues with the ruleset, or the DM wouldn't have to pull rank to wrangle in legit builds.

3e wasn't really made for organic play. If you somehow managed to do that, you did it so despite of the system (only to achieve suboptimal results), not because the system facilitated it. 3e was made to reward "system mastery", and IIRC Monte Cook explicitly said so at one point, not for characters to organically grow in the direction the campaign took or the whims of the DM or their world's specs.

That's one of the many reasons I don't miss it, despite thinking it was my favorite edition of D&D at one point. Truth is some of the core components where more cleaned up and elegant that earlier editions, but the implementation was horrendous and customization outside of "broken" builds was usually crap.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 13, 2023, 11:39:50 AM
::)

"Are they both within thirty feet?"

"Well, this garden is about fifty, and he only just started running, so let's just say 'close enough.' The other guy's flown across the small lake now, so I think not."

I've only finally used them for a few 5e games, they're pretty good for knocking over and scattering with the salad bowl measuring your blast radius, moving around the melee trying to mind the extended spears, longswords, and wingtips, whenever you may need to measure variable fly speeds with no ceiling, even better when you don't have the ones you need on hand. I guess I wouldn't be surprised to see them at tournaments and some conventions, and they'd have everything they'd need on hand: buildings, terrain, copses of trees, sand mounds covered with green fabric, fishing line pulleys for flying minis, actual water moved by a fish-tank pump, perhaps some miniature fog machines and laser lights (to scale) for sight conditions and other special effects.

There must be horror stories somewhere where they were necessary for casual play...

Quote from: VisionStorm on February 13, 2023, 12:07:28 PM
3e wasn't really made for organic play. If you somehow managed to do that, you did it so despite of the system (only to achieve suboptimal results), not because the system facilitated it. 3e was made to reward "system mastery", and IIRC Monte Cook explicitly said so at one point, not for characters to organically grow in the direction the campaign took or the whims of the DM or their world's specs.

I'd rather just use it for adjudication training. Too many details? Here's your safety scissors...

Oh, you want to use every supplement published? That's interesting, I'll think about it before the game starts and call you later.

Quote from: Reckall on February 13, 2023, 08:11:49 AM
Good luck to them, then, if A) their "planning" involved elements that the DM ruled they didn't exist and/or B) went against the contingent situation. You only needed a DM who said "Spell casting feats are only taught in the Imperial Winterhold College far south" to throw a spell caster "build" out of the window - exp. if the character was a Elf and the Empire explicitly forbad teaching magic to elves.

I mean, as long as you told them that ahead of time, it would be fine, but not to these online hardhats.  I've said it before in this thread, but the online 3.X D&D fan infesting forums with builds that had like five prestige classes and built the most optimal whatevers definitely influenced 4ed, and if those people were the majority of players, 4ed would still be dominant today.  Out of the dozen people I know who still play tabletop RPGs, only two of them have ever used a forum or reddit for anything related to it (one being me).  Of all the many who used to play and don't right now, only one used to, back in the late 90s.  Ultimately, people who go online and talk about games are either DMs (full or part time) who want to be sure they understand everything so that they can rule it correctly (or houserule it correctly!), and players who discuss it like a video game.  There's an obsession with RAW, for instance.

Is this because the internet collects pedantic people?  Maybe, but I think it's simpler.  If you want to discuss something about the game system (as opposed to your particular game), you have to use what is the common denominator.  Everyone has the same PHB, the same DMG, etc.  It's only natural that an online discussion board would go with what is written.

3.X core-only was way more balanced than if you started adding in other things.  It was also easier to prune, because the first time you realized there was an issue with a spell, you could just nerf the spell a bit.  The most powerful feat, Leadership, was always either banned or everyone had it, and then got a second dude to roleplay.  Playing a game with two or three people?  You could probably allow leadership if everyone was ok with longer combats.  Four or more players?  You'd ban it for sure.  It wasn't so much a feat as it was a nod to different playstyles.  Many of the spells were in some way as well, such as Awaken or whatever was utterly ludicrous in 3.0 and still pretty strong in 3.5.

But core-only makes for boring discussions, and there aren't many mechanically different martial classes available.  Later versions successfully added a lot more flavor+mechanics bundled- that dervish, for instance, was super cool- but they also let the power leak out in some directions.  A totem barbarian could select "lion", which granted the ability that all cats have in 3.X monster templates- pounce.  This ability lets you charge and then full attack.  Full attacks in 3.X were bizarre because you could deal an absolute horrendous amount of damage, but it required an opponent to allow it to happen.  By mid level, you'd rather the fighter charge you and then you provoke an attack, for two attacks, rather than let him do like six attacks (the charge plus the later five for next round).  The full attack issue remained a problem for the lifetime of the game, and solutions like "lion totem barbarian" simply made the game even more explosive and absurd than before, as the moment an optimal melee character wasn't in a force cage and could strike a corporeal opponent without huge damage reduction, he would kill it in a single round.

I've never talked to, in real life, a single DM who ever allowed a lion totem barbarian an their table.  And I actually asked about it because I was curious, and absolutely no one ever did.  But to go online, you'd think this was common.

Another issue inspired by this was the book of nine swords, which basically brought over the vancian-style of abilities to martial characters.  This was a preview of what 4ed would do- forcibly achieve balance by making almost everyone have extremely similar resources, both in power and recharge.  The nine swords martials could get their stuff back easier than a wizard, and their ninth-level maneuvers were no Wish, but it closed the power gap by allowing them to have ways to answer abilities that otherwise would form hard shutdown on scenarios for them.  In other words, it demystified the mid and late game.

I've also never met, in real life, anyone who ever allowed that at their table either.  Online, it was the only way you could discuss anything.

The 3.5 online crowd simply falsely represented what the game really was.  The 5ed crowd is vastly closer to the reality at tables.  Many 5e tables do allow official content, or simply eliminate things that should have never been printed, such as Silvery Barbs.  But as broken as a few things are like that, a conversion for 5ed where the guy says "I have a Twilight Cleric but twilight sanctuary is nerfed" proceeds as normal.  No one goes into religious debates about how if you want to make a ranger, you haven't seen the swordsage light yet, and here's how you "refluff" a class with a prexisting story and lore into "whatever ball of crap we think your DM will eat", and this abuse was normalized.


At this point, I'm quoting from the post, but not all are the same people or anything, so this, for instance, is something Reckall responded to, not his words.

Quote
"If WotC publishes it, I can play it" was a mentality that infected a huge swath of the 3.x community - I was told as much several times on TBP when I dared to admit that actually I considered everything at my discretion. That wasn't right, I was told. That was not the expected player/DM contract, I was told. That was not how WotC intended, I was told.

I saw this online all the time.  Did you ever see a physical table with this though?  How often?

Quote3.0 was pretty much just as beholden to miniatures as 3.5 was. Yes, you can play it without them. But a huge chunk of the rules - feats, spells, class abilities, etc - are designed with the expectation you are, and if you aren't, they become either completely meaningless, or very arbitrary to use.

This was also my experience with 3.0, and 3.0 was what made me get a dedicated mat.  I suspect this experience is very ubiquitous.  The big offender here was sneak attack, which generally requires a map to make any sense out of.  Others, such as attacks of opportunity, were somewhat hard to track without a map, and became nonsense if you had a bunch of people in a moderately confined space with no map.  The game is extremely hard to play in a mindscape compared to 2e or 5e, and there were no alternative rules suggested ("Each round make a DC 15 Intelligence check; if you pass, you can use sneak attack on any opponent, otherwise it only works on people who an ally meleed who didn't flee", or whatever).


The entire 3.5 era will be rediscovered by people who have good intentions at some point in the next ten to twenty years, and it will get played by people who sticklers about a method of play, not ensuring that every game includes that dumb Incarnum book, or that every martial take two levels of barbarian for pounce.  Honestly at this point if you made a giant list of "allowed/banned" out of purely WotC 3.5 stuff, you could make a pretty top notch ruleset.

Quote from: Venka on February 13, 2023, 12:31:19 PM
I saw this online all the time.  Did you ever see a physical table with this though?  How often?

Only a little, personally, but for most of the 3.x era I had a pretty consistent group of friends that made up most of our games. But when for one reason or another I ventured outside of that group, yes, I ran into it a few times. Including from people who should "know better"... by which I mean people with GM experience. I've heard similar reports from other people I talk to.

People outside of forums, I mean.

Real people.

Not cats dancing on keyboards, like you all.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 13, 2023, 12:22:52 PM
"Are they both within thirty feet?"

"Well, this garden is about fifty, and he only just started running, so let's just say 'close enough.' The other guy's flown across the small lake now, so I think not."

Again, I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm saying the rules assume you're using a grid, and if you aren't, a lot of rules and abilities - which the system is nominally balanced around, to the extent that the 3.x system can be called balanced at all - become either radically more effective, or radically less so.

I'd say that I've stuck too closely to some classes that just don't encounter these problems as much.

Another thing that sort of annoyed me with 3.X was all of the weirder third party supplements. The sex book was one thing, and then you get those settings talking about some "new cultists" in corporations or whatever. Largely a fantasy fan, the modern stuff never really caught on for me.

One of Dungeon & Dragons' Oldest Iterations Remains Its Best (https://www.cbr.com/dnd-advanced-1e-best-edition-ttrpg/)

I always knew this.
8)

Interesting thread.  If I can include D&D 3.0 in this 3.5 discussion; what would you get if you put OSE Classic Fantasy, and D&D 3.0 Core Rules into a blender?  The perfect version of D&D, might be a Hybrid of BX and 3.0

Is Basic Fantasy, the only obvious answer?

My experiences with 3.x run deep. They very much mirror Shark's - when 3.e dropped I dove in. Started writing and designing professionally on it, ran some of my greatest D&D campaigns with it. But it broke me...

It *really* underscored, like Shark, my realization that the constraints of 1e and 2e were *genius* in their design. Whether it was intentional or not - it was genius. But the problems of 3.x are manifold.

- dead levels
- Linear Fighter/Quadratic Mage (which itself is a compression and force-multiplier of other issues in the system)
- Stat weighting. The stats were *not* used in balance of their class needs.
- 20-level spread. Completely unnecessary and a sacred cow that exists for no reason. Again another thing that contributed to other problems.
- Skills/Feats quality disparity. Mechanically they do not express solid core design values. Most were dogshit and lead to the insidious notions of "builds" over organic play.
- Horrendous multi-classing rules. The promise of clean multi-classing only lead to the current freakshow. Whether this is an indictment of "classes" or the "design" is its own debate. The downstream effect of how 3.x is designed almost demands "class" purists to hang their heads in shame. Otherwise what is the point when no one sticks to a class for purely mechanical optimization needs? Again this is supercharged by the other issues in the system.
- Crafting is dogshit. It pretends to backwards engineer cleanly what the system is supposed to assume for fantasy-play. It does so in a piss-poor fashion.
- Stat-bloc Bloat. I have NPC's (not PC's) that have stat-blocs *4-pages long* - this includes gear, spells, attack-grids (because sweet jesus the attack matrixes depending on what an NPC is using round by round in terms of gear/spells/melee is alone enough to drive some people insane). It adds necessary system mastery requirements at higherlevels that most GM's will never attain - and *shouldn't* be required, to run efficiently.

These are just a few problems off the top of my head. I could drill down on them forever. I fought against WotC Editorial constantly when I was writing for Paizo in Dragon... and it was a fuuuuucking headache.

Then when I was done, I discovered Fantasycraft. MOST, if not all, of these issues were resolved in that system. Not Pathfinder, not D&D in any of their incarnations did this. They *still* didn't achieve it in 5e. And people that come into D&D think it's "normal" and have just resigned themselves to "this is how it's always been, and this is how it should always be."

I SAY THEE NAY!

3.5 is a broken dream that has only been realized once, in Fantasycraft (maybe twice - I'd give a nod to True 20.... maybe thrice... if I'm drunk I'd toss in Mutants and Masterminds). Pathfinder?  That's makeup and lingerie on a sweathog. 5e? That's an inbred monster that has too much 3.x DNA in it to do what *could* be doing.

All these systems only point at the obvious: D&D fantasy is its own genre that doesn't require any of the mechanics used to express it to enjoy that genre. You could run D&D on any number of systems that would allow you to play faster, cleaner, with better fidelity than 3.x. Just ask any OSR fan. (And I'm saying this as a non-OSR player/GM).

Quote from: tenbones on February 14, 2023, 11:08:46 AM
It *really* underscored, like Shark, my realization that the constraints of 1e and 2e were *genius* in their design. Whether it was intentional or not - it was genius. But the problems of 3.x are manifold.

...
All these systems only point at the obvious: D&D fantasy is its own genre that doesn't require any of the mechanics used to express it to enjoy that genre. You could run D&D on any number of systems that would allow you to play faster, cleaner, with better fidelity than 3.x. Just ask any OSR fan. (And I'm saying this as a non-OSR player/GM).

Isn't this largely because 1E was built as rules to solve specific issues that happened at the table?  Then 2E mostly consolidated those same rules.  3E was trying to rebuild everything from the foundations but without the understanding of why things were built the way they were.  Chesterton's Fence all over again.

I moved away from generic systems because I found what people said about Hero System to be true of all generic systems:  You can play any genre you want in Hero, as long as you don't mind it playing out like all the other Hero games.  :D  My Fantasy Hero "Forgotten Realms" game generally ran better than my D&D 3E games, but that was because we wanted it to be more like Fantasy Hero than D&D in some respects.  The more I made that FR game like D&D, the less we liked it.  Whereas, we initially enjoyed the 3E game because it was more like D&D. 

I find it hilarious, because a stated aim of the 3E designers was to make the "Hero System version of D&D"--meaning customization. But what made Fantasy Hero fun was not the customization. That was actually a bit of a chore.  Rather, it was how smooth the system played once you were done with the work of customization.  Had they really thought hard about their goal, then 3E would have been even more complex to build characters, but not had all of those glitches in play.  Whether that hypothetical "played like D&D" might have been a sticking point.

Quote
This goes completely against my own experience, and attentiveness/observation is something that I've consciously cultivated since I was a kid*. And there's been zero difference in my experience between actively looking for something or becoming suddenly aware of it through instinct. It's all about pattern recognition, and that applies more or less equally whether you notice a noise that sounds like someone is entering your house, or you're actively using your hearing to guide you to the source of the noise or track where they're going. The only difference is that in one instance you weren't expecting it and aren't trying to do something specific about it, and in the other you're consciously focusing that same attentiveness that allowed you to suddenly notice something to track its source.

That's why Perception/Awareness in my opinion should be a Attribute not skill.
From my experience many people will be skilled in only one of sub-sets - be great in thought research of crime scene and finding clues but terrible in avoiding stealthy assassin following their tracks.

Just like with Strenght you can train it as Attribute - in wide range, but you can also train only some specific use of Strength while sucking at others.

QuoteUnless by "searching for clues" you mean trying to figure something about what you found that isn't apparent through sensory perception alone (such as where it came from, if it fell from somewhere, or something to that effect), your ability to notice things pretty much has you covered whether you're doing it actively or passively. And even when you're trying to deduce stuff, if that deduction involves finding additional stuff through sensory perception so you can put two and two together to figure something out, your ability to notice things may still be relevant in finding those secondary clues (maybe that thing you found fell from somewhere that left a trail. But how do you find the trail, assuming there is one...? And if you need a second Perception check to find that trail, do you really need a third Deduction check to figure out that's where the thing came from when the player probably can figure that out the moment you tell them they found a trail? And if the player figures it out but the character fails the Deduction check, do you prevent them from acting on that assumption, cuz skill checks trump player agency?).

Sure Investigation skill IMHO implies well knowing what you are looking for, wider picture, not mere sensory. Like for instance checking how some mechanism work would be Investigation in my book, noticing that it is there, passively without effort would be Perception check (assuming it's not visible at first glance). Or any Research through pile of information (that's totally out of Perception range basically, though maybe High Perc. should give bust to how fast your research goes).

QuoteMeh, even in sandbox play I don't see the point on requiring a check if they player specifies that they're searching in the exact spot where the thing they're searching for is actually at. Stuff like that is the point where I actually agree with old school players that complain about overuse of skills to handle everything. Skill checks are for when there's doubt. But if you, as a player actually specify the exact spot where something happens to be at, there's no doubt that if dig around you'll stumble onto it eventually, if only by accident, unless there's pretty strong magic or something masking its presence.

That I agree. But there is also some matter of brevity.
With many rooms - if players do not take look at every specific element - abstracted roll (including aspects like - how much time they spend in room for instance) allow game to move faster.
And sure it's possible that if players declare they make throught search for 10 minutes it's basically auto-win.

In my current hack/clone (of the 5th edition, not 3rd), I have five abilities: strength, dexterity, perception, intellect, and charisma. Perception has search, stealth, and survival as related skills. It makes more sense to me having perception as an ability than having characters and monsters with passive Perception scores.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 14, 2023, 05:08:48 PM

Quote from: tenbones on February 14, 2023, 11:08:46 AM
It *really* underscored, like Shark, my realization that the constraints of 1e and 2e were *genius* in their design. Whether it was intentional or not - it was genius. But the problems of 3.x are manifold.

...
All these systems only point at the obvious: D&D fantasy is its own genre that doesn't require any of the mechanics used to express it to enjoy that genre. You could run D&D on any number of systems that would allow you to play faster, cleaner, with better fidelity than 3.x. Just ask any OSR fan. (And I'm saying this as a non-OSR player/GM).

Isn't this largely because 1E was built as rules to solve specific issues that happened at the table?  Then 2E mostly consolidated those same rules.  3E was trying to rebuild everything from the foundations but without the understanding of why things were built the way they were.  Chesterton's Fence all over again.

I moved away from generic systems because I found what people said about Hero System to be true of all generic systems:  You can play any genre you want in Hero, as long as you don't mind it playing out like all the other Hero games.  :D  My Fantasy Hero "Forgotten Realms" game generally ran better than my D&D 3E games, but that was because we wanted it to be more like Fantasy Hero than D&D in some respects.  The more I made that FR game like D&D, the less we liked it.  Whereas, we initially enjoyed the 3E game because it was more like D&D. 

I find it hilarious, because a stated aim of the 3E designers was to make the "Hero System version of D&D"--meaning customization. But what made Fantasy Hero fun was not the customization. That was actually a bit of a chore.  Rather, it was how smooth the system played once you were done with the work of customization.  Had they really thought hard about their goal, then 3E would have been even more complex to build characters, but not had all of those glitches in play.  Whether that hypothetical "played like D&D" might have been a sticking point.

I've been thinking about this post...

I'm not entirely in agreement, but I do understand what you're saying - I do agree that system expression IS a big deal.

Let me be a little more specific. When I'm talking about D&D Fantasy as its own genre, I'm talking about Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Gnomes etc. banding together to go dungeoncrawling, campaigning across a pseudo-European/world fantasy pastiche setting. Where some of the characters fall into "iconic" roles like "fighters" "rogues" etc.

I think less about the system being used to express those conceits. Just like I don't watch Vox Machina or any other anime - and try to ascertain what ability was used in that movie/anime etc. and pin it to the D&D mechanics that inspired it. They don't match. That's the problem, we make it up in our heads. But in actual play, it's rare that it matches up like that.

The key issue here is the mechanics itself get in the way of those expectations. Unless one thinks of their games purely by their mechanics, then this is the dividing line. I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to express a game genre via a set of mechanics you enjoy. My problem is when people only believe that the mechanics themselves are the game.

I'm approaching it from the angle of trying to get the game to be as 'free flowing' as possible while being true to the genre. The system itself I'm using definitely adds flavor to it - but I'm wanting it to be secondary to the game itself. It's the tool used to express the genre in play. I want as small as a footprint as possible while still being mechanically fun to use.

3.5 does not fit my requirements compared to the other systems I run. I'm not sold on one-system to rule them all, either. While I'm pretty vocal about Savage Worlds, I think it hits solidly in the middle of the bell-curve. It can handle very high-powered stuff, but I'll go with MSH for the top-end power-level for my gaming. And as you imply, some systems just do specific things very well. 3.x is in competition with a lot of other options that do what 3.x purports to do, but they do them much better.

Savage Worlds Pathfinder is *better* than Pathfinder native, as an example. It scales better, it's much leaner, the flexibility for modification is *vastly* easier. And it does D&D Fantasy without any loss of coherency.

I can't imagine why I'd use Pathfinder 1e/2e to play the same game or even genre.

Tenbones,

I think we are in the same ballpark, just slightly different goals.  Another way to express what I was getting at is:

- Fantasy Hero using Forgotten Realms early source material did "D&D as wannabee superheroes" pretty darn well.
- AD&D using the same source material did "D&D as scarred dungeon crawlers" pretty darn well.
- 3E run by a GM who knew how AD&D worked, in order to get away from wannabee superheroes to scarred dungeon crawlers wasn't too shabby, at least at first.  Especially when the group had been doing wannabee superheroes for some time.

But in the long run, 3E wasn't FH chocolate and AD&D peanut butter.  It was more like pineapple and bacon on pizza with ranch sauce.  Because superheroes doing dungeon crawls is a fun thing, but it wasn't exactly the fun thing we had in mind.  And then the acid reflux set in, because it turns out that while we like pineapple and bacon and ranch sauce, it's one of those tastes you've got to be in the right mood to enjoy.  Then it's not hard to find someone who focused on just doing pineapple pizza the best they could, without getting too cute about it, and you kind of lose interest in the more, um, "elaborate" version. :D

yep. We're on the same page.

The funny thing is that since we started before 3e ever landed, we had that similar experience of what AD&D was... which naturally applied to our means of engaging with 3e.

People that started in 3e (generally) only had 3e as their perspective, which we were blind to by our biases, and ran with it. 4e... 5e... and even now, the majority of players that came into the hobby at the 3.x stage and later (which is vast majority of the D&D playerbase now) is scratching their asses as we did when we realized that D&D as it's presented isn't how we originally engaged with it.

I actually don't think 3.x players even realize how busted up it gets at high-levels, or if they do, they assume it's just "the way it is", which goes into my gripe about "the system IS NOT the game."

It could very well be that's what propelled me out of D&D as a brand. I'm not going to fault people for being in that state of engagement (system as game) - I certainly dwelled there for far too long. I just realized the peak experiences I had in any campaign I ran, transcended the system. The realization for me was that the system was primary problem that was getting in the way of what I was wanting to do in my D&D games. My favorite supplements for 3.x weren't even made by WotC.

Case in point, the catalyst that got me down this road was a book that is generally reviled among 3.x purists - Swashbuckling Adventures (7th Sea 3e.) They condensed entire "archetypes" of play into 5-level prestige classes that were MASSIVELY frontloaded with Feats. And all the 3.x purists screeched about it being overpowered and not following the rules of 3.x blah blah. But they never asked themselves, if it made the game better by design. I can confirm - it did. And to a larger point - it underscored it further when I discovered Fantasycraft, where the power-curve was expanded in all directions, across a 14-level spread, instead of 20... with beefier options that felt much better for the player.

This got me looking at 1e and 2e, reading up on design choices, and what Gygax originally intended... and it was a revelation. It made me realize that why stop at 14 levels? Why not go for 10? And just pack it all into a mechanically dense package. Others have done the 6-lvl concept, but they're not trying to do the full range of what BECMI does in a 3.x form.

Maybe that's the synthesis I'm looking for? To play the full range of BECMI on a more robust set of rules. Ironically I've done this in 3.x... but it was too brutal on me. The types of campaign conceits I use pushed the 3.x chassis beyond its limits, the customization I had to do far exceeded any homebrew stuff I did in 1e/2e. And while I tout the capacity of Savage Worlds, I have yet to quite "get there"... but it's a player issue in this case. I have veteran players dragging along a lot of 5e noobs that are paralyzed most of the time by the depth of play we're demanding. The dot-to-dot Adventure Path mentality of my younger players is not sufficient to handle the requirements I place on my in-depth campaigns. I think if I were running 3.x it would be even worse, because they're groomed into thinking of the mechanics AS their PC's, vs. their PC's as characters defined by their skill/stat/Edge choices in SW.

Someday I need to break out Fantasycraft and put it to the test to see if I can achieve the same thing.

Quote from: tenbones on February 16, 2023, 01:12:48 PM
The funny thing is that since we started before 3e ever landed, we had that similar experience of what AD&D was... which naturally applied to our means of engaging with 3e.

Yep.  And just as central, we had earlier experiences of playing things that were very much not AD&D, which also informs the engagement.  It's two things at a base (and then more piled on top):

- Engaging with the game on its own terms, and trying to understand those terms.
- Running the game we want to run, possibly compromising a little because of system.

As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 02:07:34 PM
As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

Probably not.  RC is a consolidated, reorganized version of BECMI.  It drops a lot of the Immortals part, adds its minor twists, and several other changes that may or may not matter all that much.  I don't know the full list, because I haven't seen anything but Basic and Expert in years, and have never owned Immortals.  However, the central mechanics all work the same. 

ACKS is a more robust BECMI/RC, from one way of looking at things.  It takes many of the assumptions of those designs and runs with them to a lot of detail. 

Robust is in the eye of the beholder.  In my eyes, my game is a more robust version of some of the same things RC is doing, but that's because I didn't at all mind rewriting a new game that doesn't care a fig about compatibility.  And in fact, the more I work on my game, the less like RC it becomes.  Still, I'm trying to cover some of the same style of play that RC does. 

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 02:07:34 PM
As far as BECMI with more robust rules is concerned, does the Rules Cyclopedia measure up to that?

I don't believe so. One of the considerations about BECMI... and I was hesitant to use it even in my post above, but I knew Steven would understand why I used it, is the *assumption* one would ALWAYS get to the "I" in BECMI.

When I say I want to play in the full range of what BECMI offers is a system that offers that possibility with the least amount of interference. It doesn't mean each and every game I run is expected to get to that high level of play.

There is an inversion with mechanics-to-GM skill that is rarely discussed. New GM's and journeyman GM's need chunky mechanics to get them through one-shots, AP's etc. until they feel they have a handle on things to go off-roading. Many never go offroading, though they may be quite good at GMing and not need those chunky mechanics at all. BECMI are not chunky mechanics, imo. What they don't do, however, is give me what I want in such systems at the deeper end of the bell-curve. In fact the closer you get to the M and the I, it becomes a necessarily very different game both narratively and mechanically.

I *don't* have a problem with BECMI at all. I just have better options due to my own experience and facility with systems and mechanics which abstract the gameplay better.

As for the Rules Cyclopedia - I'm with Steven. It's a great (one of the best) self-contained systems that has a nice fat chunky bell-curve of play. But it falls apart towards the higher-end. Which I can actually excuse since the vast majority of play in d20 writ-large doesn't happen post 10th-level (of course your mileage may vary - my campaigns tended to hit about about 14+ before coming to their natural conclusions, but it would take years to get there.)

Edit: 3.x has always shined up until around 10th-lvl for me. That's when the cracks really started to emerge. It's pretty easy to old it together natively, but in my sandbox games which can range all over the place, the niche-protection, and forced elements of the game begin to require me to take some steps beyond RAW WotC/Paizo rules to patch it and keep it sailing.

Just with 3.X, epic level play has always struck me as an odd concept anyway, the abilities begin to look ridiculous as they scale up.

In either case, it's like they were trying to design a smooth transition from mortality to demi-immortality to divinity. I'd try skimming over the rules for Immortals once or twice but the rules cease being intuitive, and I find it unlikely that you could suspend disbelief after finishing level 36 and jumping into this entirely new game system of gods stated out like a biology textbook.

In any case, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to continue a given campaign well up to the 20's anyway, as you guys have mentioned anything beyond level 14 or even 10 just looks like page filler. It's printed right in the introductions that the purpose of OD&D's Supplement IV was to give player's perspective about what should be considered "god-like" in the framework anyway, but of course their word was taken as bond over the previous statement that you can achieve any number of levels you like. People do read, just not the parts you want them to focus on, most of the time.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 16, 2023, 09:19:20 PM
Just with 3.X, epic level play has always struck me as an odd concept anyway, the abilities begin to look ridiculous as they scale up.

In either case, it's like they were trying to design a smooth transition from mortality to demi-immortality to divinity. I'd try skimming over the rules for Immortals once or twice but the rules cease being intuitive, and I find it unlikely that you could suspend disbelief after finishing level 36 and jumping into this entirely new game system of gods stated out like a biology textbook.

In any case, I'm not sure I'd have the patience to continue a given campaign well up to the 20's anyway, as you guys have mentioned anything beyond level 14 or even 10 just looks like page filler. It's printed right in the introductions that the purpose of OD&D's Supplement IV was to give player's perspective about what should be considered "god-like" in the framework anyway, but of course their word was taken as bond over the previous statement that you can achieve any number of levels you like. People do read, just not the parts you want them to focus on, most of the time.

In theory, a game with a wide range like that should support two things:  The relatively rare case where you start low and then ramp up all the way to the end.  And also running multiple campaigns in the same setting, at different power levels.

And of course, remember that when these rules were released, there were a lot of people using whatever rules were at hand to play different things.  Even in my AD&D days, I never had characters go much past name level starting from level 1, but we did have a few short campaigns that started at name level or higher and went through a couple of levels before they ended. 

There's also an effect that I find positive when done well.  I'm certainly aiming for it with my own system.  That is, the intended scale of play might be from barely competent starting adventurer to full hero, say.  Still, I find it useful if the game starts a little earlier than that scale, and ends a little past it.  If nothing else, it frames the intended scale and provides some hints on how NPCs off it should look.  This is not unlike the Dying Earth, where Vance has his characters referring to these pinnacles of the magician profession long past, who reached a scope the current characters can only dream of. :D

I thought that if treated and ran the same as previous editions that 3e would fine if not an improvement on the account of unifying some mechanics and going for roll high instead situational variables determining if you needed a high or low roll. What killed it for me, and made me quit dnd before 4e ever came out (still haven't went back unless you count osric) was the influx of new players.

Suddenely the player base doubled because they shoved magic the gathering players into our "pod" if you will, some of which resented dnd detracting from their card game and whose sole purpose was to sabatoge play and convince everyone the game was hopelessly broken and we should play magic or call of duty instead. these were also largely weebshits with anime everything and so now i am hostile to weebs and anime on principle, like, actively hostile, like, you are black in a sundown town after dark hostile. I still feel its deserved and should become a guiding principle of both the armed forces and the cub scouts.

Yet their stance is impossible if you had come from previous editions, as you know to use what you like ignore or houserule what you don't like a normal nerd...so to end run around this they tried to establish as a sort of zeitgeist that you must interpret dnd rules like magic card rules (so you can get broken and glitchy outcomes like peasant railgun) so they could kill off the evil dnd detracting from their magic and pokemon and yugioh.

Whatever, you can have it, I'll just run game systems that such tards won't even try to start with and laugh at them as they whine about their just dnd problems.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 12:49:35 AM
I thought that if treated and ran the same as previous editions that 3e would fine if not an improvement on the account of unifying some mechanics and going for roll high instead situational variables determining if you needed a high or low roll. What killed it for me, and made me quit dnd before 4e ever came out (still haven't went back unless you count osric) was the influx of new players.

Suddenely the player base doubled because they shoved magic the gathering players into our "pod" if you will, some of which resented dnd detracting from their card game and whose sole purpose was to sabatoge play and convince everyone the game was hopelessly broken and we should play magic or call of duty instead. these were also largely weebshits with anime everything and so now i am hostile to weebs and anime on principle, like, actively hostile, like, you are black in a sundown town after dark hostile. I still feel its deserved and should become a guiding principle of both the armed forces and the cub scouts.

Yet their stance is impossible if you had come from previous editions, as you know to use what you like ignore or houserule what you don't like a normal nerd...so to end run around this they tried to establish as a sort of zeitgeist that you must interpret dnd rules like magic card rules (so you can get broken and glitchy outcomes like peasant railgun) so they could kill off the evil dnd detracting from their magic and pokemon and yugioh.

Whatever, you can have it, I'll just run game systems that such tards won't even try to start with and laugh at them as they whine about their just dnd problems.

...

Look, I detest a lot of 3.x players, for my own reasons, and the less I say about a lot of CCG players the less likely I am to accidentally end up on some terror watch list... but I've never once seen or heard of anyone intentionally destructively hate-playing the game as some sort of grand conspiracy to get it to stop taking players from Magic or Pokemon. Hint: It doesn't. Most D&D players I know either do or did play those games, too. Hell, I would say that D&D players are probably why Magic got a foothold. If anything I would venture D&D players had more to complain about - I do know people who stopped playing RPGs and just became card gamers. Not a lot, but a few. I don't know of a single example of the reverse. I know of plenty of people who stopped playing CCGs, but not because they had been "lured away" by CCGs, or whatever. Most of them got driven off by the game itself. I know I sure did.

The one type of quasi-intentional destructive play I have witnessed is veteran RPG players pissed off that all they could find was D&D groups, who would grudgingly agree to play, but then either play half-assedly, or try to force the game to be what they wanted (Trying to make their "paladin" into a "jedi" because nobody wanted to play Star Wars, trying to make their warrior into a Samurai because nobody wanted to play L5R, etc) and pissing both themselves and everyone else at the table off in the process. Even then, I don't think they were intentionally trying to ruin games, they were just ill-fitting for the games they were in and should have recognized that rather than become a toxic element.

But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?

Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

(But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?)
^the pricks i played with i suppose, lol.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

I never ran into anyone that did that stuff IRL, but you have.  I really would love to know how common that stuff really was, that forumite that spammed a bunch of rules crap.  All I'll ever have is anecdotes, and I'm genuinely curious.  How would such a player actually interact at the table?  Someone who reads a degenerate charop and then tries to instantiate it?

I was not opposed to playing something else, even magic (up to weatherlight, i find ice age optimal) or battletech or anything really, but there is a whole table of people that came to play dnd, not just me, and it really puts you on the spot to have to either deal with one player pulling this crap or relent and possibly piss off or ruin it for the other people who came to play dnd. Imagine getting into a game, maybe 4 sessions or so, and that guy gradually ramps up his injection into real life of whatever forum crap he is into, into the game and the dm relents and says well i guess we'll play something else. I'd be pissed at the dm for folding. Not to mention the whole schtick employed for the derail is ridiculous anyway and requires such mental gymnastics as to be exhausting to consider.

eta:
also i will admit i share a portion of blame for not being more restrictive in collecting players. an open table policy is unwise as a method to fill empty spots in an otherwise normal long running group of friends.

eta2:

" How would such a player actually interact at the table?"
forgot to answer this for you; took the form of standard rules lawyer bs but dependent upon swapping between letter of the rule and intent as it suits the player, to the point where you wind up arguing about what the rules don't say.  one minute the player is arguing for strict joules of force calculations derived from real world physics, the next citing werewolf lore or something with equal conceptual solidification as laws of the physical world, being whiney an angsty and snarky when none of this is treated as valid.

eta3

so yeah such creatures exist and i have encountered them; the question for me is were they always this way or are they just like this because of social media/online play/reddit etc?
i find it hard to believe that they seriously want the computer-logic/mtg type adjudication to be the standard for a game being broken or not because every rpg is broken then...it just feels it has to be malicious intentional spiteful and subversive. given that the game is broken and we should play something else is their entire lament, the stated desired thing and goal, yeah, my hackles be raised.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

(But CCG players playing D&D to try to subvert the RPG hobby? No. Who is going to invest potentially hundreds of hours into something like that?)
^the pricks i played with i suppose, lol.

I think the issue you state is real, but that the cause and effect is backwards.  There wasn't anything special about 3E that causes players to be especially bad.  There have always been players that are out to wreck the game.  What was different about 3E was that its design allowed a different kind of lever for the wreckers to use--a lever you maybe didn't catch onto right away because it was different. 

My first hand experience with players out to wreck the game is somewhat limited, because I tend to pick up on that and toss 'em at the first sign.  At least if they don't show some sign of wanting to get over it when balked.  However, from what I have seen, it's always the personality type that does the same thing in all walks of life, and that I do have a lot of experience with.  It's the kind of person who will think hard about how they can use whatever is being done to screw with people and/or assert their control.  Now, I can see MtG being a bad filter on that crowd, since that's a game that tries to codify not having any filter except what is in the rules.  There's a really good chance that some of the MtG crowd weren't really all that fond of those particular players you encountered, either.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

"This game is broken! See my character build of urban assassin/sea fisherman/horticultural expert feats on a wizard-barbarian-monk?! I can now instantly manifest an entire elephant into your stomach as I wield two fine dining room tables after inhaling 100kg of cocaine directly into my manbearpig lungs!!"

"Fine, you win, I guess we'll play 'Barbie's Day at the Beach' instead."

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on February 19, 2023, 08:36:24 AM
My first hand experience with players out to wreck the game is somewhat limited, because I tend to pick up on that and toss 'em at the first sign.  At least if they don't show some sign of wanting to get over it when balked.  However, from what I have seen, it's always the personality type that does the same thing in all walks of life, and that I do have a lot of experience with.  It's the kind of person who will think hard about how they can use whatever is being done to screw with people and/or assert their control.  Now, I can see MtG being a bad filter on that crowd, since that's a game that tries to codify not having any filter except what is in the rules.  There's a really good chance that some of the MtG crowd weren't really all that fond of those particular players you encountered, either.

If there was any kind of player that I would have tried to avoid, it was that guy. Long before all of the woke stuff hit. I guarantee you that this has nothing to do with the rules, they're only this way because they fundamentally misunderstand the point of either game's experience. They've brought such a fever pitch to their sense of superiority that you'd react to a few false positives.

Quote from: Slipshot762 on February 18, 2023, 11:16:18 PM
Heh, I do not require that you believe it, but what other explanation is there for those who insist you let them peasant railgun, you are not playing the rules if you dont, and if you do then see the game is broken we should play something else.

I never understood the peasant rail gun. The rules as written say that you can have all the NPCs form a line and bucket-brigade a javelin for miles in a single round due to the magic of free actions. The same rules as written say that the damage from a javelin is 1d6+STR, and it has absolutely nothing to do with how fast the javelin was travelling just prior to being thrown.

Now, there are some prestige classes which allowed some very broken stuff. I remember one where a prestige class allowed someone to throw arbitrary objects and do damage based on the weight of the missile, then coupled with a (feat? magic item?) which allowed one to double one's carrying capacity and which could be stacked, so that eventually the character could throw small mountains weighing tonnes and causing hundreds of dice of damage. But the peasant rail gun? That's amateur stuff.

https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/ (https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/)

Now I get it.

This shit is braindead.

Put 6 (medieval, not even Greco-Roman) peasants in a line and assume they won't awkwardly fumble it all the way up to their thrower, with alternating moments of grip at every moment the javelin is held by two peasants at the same time. The very last peasant still has to wind up (without poking the guy behind him which would cause a fumble), inhale and aim, exhale and throw, and then hopefully catch his balance without falling prone on his face--so a minor action (let's be charitable and call that 3 seconds) even before he gets his readied "take the javelin" free action. Even if they barely hold the javelin, carefully balancing it in the palm of each hand and praying to Almighty God in Heaven that a strong breeze doesn't blow it askew away from the gentle palms of the next peasant in line, there is simply no momentum to speak of (because that's not how momentum works, as if that needs to be said at all).

It'd be nice if they could form a line to give their strongest thrower a means to aim these javelins down against targets from a higher vantage point, which would give you the inertial damage you want by using gravity and distance to power the extra damage (as known from archers aiming up into the sky, which at least has been done in some movies they must have seen). Maybe the one guy is also the only good climber, and a barrel of javelins is too heavy to bring to a rooftop on short notice because he can't carry 30 javelins in one arm and climb up without dropping half of them, or it has to be from atop a single stone column with hand and footholds for a few peasants to climb part way up because there isn't enough space at the top of that column for the barrel of javelins and the thrower. Or maybe he can walk off the edge of a cliff first, so he can hang motionless in the air because he's looking down at his targets and not the ground below itself.

I'd ban these morons from tournaments and conventions, but first I'd make them try it in real life with just a softball, and ask them to throw harder than the third best American league pitcher. And then I'd ban them from M:tG events too, just to be safe.

I will easily and happily defend the peasant railgun.  I will also point out that if someone says that they don't like players that "build peasant railguns", they are definitely not referring to that in a literal fashion.  I would understand that as "this player uses rules that are well intentioned to argue for degenerate results", not that they are literally trying to break the physics engine in comical ways, and arguing with any DM who is playing by the rules and disallowing that (peasant railgun doesn't actually even work by the rules of 3.X D&D).

The peasant railgun is not a charop exercise.  It's a degenerate state that occurs whenever too many readied actions are conditional on each other, and is a flaw in any game that doesn't explicitly address this in its rules.  Every game dev (probably correctly) doesn't consider such situations to be worth elaborating on.

The specific case that peasant railgun works on- that readied actions invoke two delays, one where the readier waits for the trigger, and one where the readier executes the action- neither of which is accounted for in the physics of the system- allows you to generate a thought experiment where something impossible happens (in this case, the physical impossibility is simply that passing an item doesn't actually accelerate it to absurd speeds- a DM would assume that whatever is being passed would go through about six peasants, perhaps fifteen if they were really good at it, and be moving at a perfectly normal speed)- but that this edge case, and indeed any case where readied action A depends on readied action B (instead of a primary action)- requires DM intervention to be certain that too much time has not passed in the round.

There are several other critiques of the same sort- for instance, a dropped item falls some number of feet instantly in most systems, allowing you to place a device underneath that in turn drops another item, etc, and you can transmit information faster than light with this system, etc.  Peasant railgun sticks around as a good commentary.

Should games bother handling readied actions in a complex enough way to handle this?  Honestly, maybe they should.  Almost all games that allow readying an action, interrupts, or out of cycle turns generate strange results sometimes.  More mundane concerns involve, too much conditional and conversation in a six second space and issues with counterspells countering counterspells, none of which play out in a fully satisfactory method in any game without side based initiative or predeclared actions.

In any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.  In general, readied actions are gutted enough in 5e that only the spells or abilities that specifically allow you to use your reaction still create serious issues there, and generally such issues largely don't hit the OSR nearly as much.

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PMIn any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.

Why?

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PM
I will easily and happily defend the peasant railgun.  I will also point out that if someone says that they don't like players that "build peasant railguns", they are definitely not referring to that in a literal fashion.  I would understand that as "this player uses rules that are well intentioned to argue for degenerate results", not that they are literally trying to break the physics engine in comical ways, and arguing with any DM who is playing by the rules and disallowing that (peasant railgun doesn't actually even work by the rules of 3.X D&D).

The peasant railgun is not a charop exercise.  It's a degenerate state that occurs whenever too many readied actions are conditional on each other, and is a flaw in any game that doesn't explicitly address this in its rules.  Every game dev (probably correctly) doesn't consider such situations to be worth elaborating on.

The specific case that peasant railgun works on- that readied actions invoke two delays, one where the readier waits for the trigger, and one where the readier executes the action- neither of which is accounted for in the physics of the system- allows you to generate a thought experiment where something impossible happens (in this case, the physical impossibility is simply that passing an item doesn't actually accelerate it to absurd speeds- a DM would assume that whatever is being passed would go through about six peasants, perhaps fifteen if they were really good at it, and be moving at a perfectly normal speed)- but that this edge case, and indeed any case where readied action A depends on readied action B (instead of a primary action)- requires DM intervention to be certain that too much time has not passed in the round.

There are several other critiques of the same sort- for instance, a dropped item falls some number of feet instantly in most systems, allowing you to place a device underneath that in turn drops another item, etc, and you can transmit information faster than light with this system, etc.  Peasant railgun sticks around as a good commentary.

Should games bother handling readied actions in a complex enough way to handle this?  Honestly, maybe they should.  Almost all games that allow readying an action, interrupts, or out of cycle turns generate strange results sometimes.  More mundane concerns involve, too much conditional and conversation in a six second space and issues with counterspells countering counterspells, none of which play out in a fully satisfactory method in any game without side based initiative or predeclared actions.

In any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.  In general, readied actions are gutted enough in 5e that only the spells or abilities that specifically allow you to use your reaction still create serious issues there, and generally such issues largely don't hit the OSR nearly as much.

Now that is rather illuminating indeed.


Could this be resolved by having to pass a saving throw to complete the readied action?

Prior to doing your readied action, if you fail a reflex/fort/will save, then the result is an auto-fumble, i.e. crit-fail, and you might miss your next turn due to other circumstances, or just go to the bottom of the initiative order. Otherwise if you crit-pass, i.e. auto-succeed, choose: you can change your initiative order to before or after the target of your action, or reroll your initiative.

I think that this would be most practical if you took crits out of regular play.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 19, 2023, 08:53:28 PM
https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/ (https://tabletopjoab.com/the-legend-of-the-peasant-railgun-in-dd-5e/)

Now I get it.

This shit is braindead.

It is... mainly because those pursuing such things want it both ways... they want to abuse the physics resulting from the mechanics in one way (move object incredible distance in a single round), but then ignore the physics resulting from the mechanics in another (i.e. just because its moved that incredible distance in a single round doesn't mean it leaves the hands of the last peasant any faster than it normally would) in order to get a game breaking result.

Basically ALL the idiot things center around the same sort of selective readings... require Rules as Written for setup, but then demand results based on ignoring Rules as Written in favor of "common sense" for the results.

It comes up with certain players of WotC-era D&D enough that I devoted a paragraph of a sidebar on my "core rules" page (i.e. how to resolve an action, specific rules trump general rules for interpreting results, always round down unless told otherwise) to stating outright that "with all the potential interactions of rules elements there are bound to be times when a nonsensical result could happen. In these cases, the GM should rule in favor of what they believe makes the most sense for the situation."

In essence, I codified for all those rules lawyers out there that my system's Rules as Written are to interpret outcomes via "Rules as Intended (as interpreted by the GM)."

I didn't have to... common sense is a thing. I just enjoy the thought of any GM confronted by such loophole abusers just being able to point to the section on, off the top of my head, page 8 saying "your attempt at rules abuse splatters against the adamantine gates of common sense."

RAW, RAI, & RAF, meet: Rules as Convenience!

It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

Quote from: Chris24601 on February 20, 2023, 10:55:33 AM
Basically ALL the idiot things center around the same sort of selective readings... require Rules as Written for setup, but then demand results based on ignoring Rules as Written in favor of "common sense" for the results.

Well, not all of them. But the other ones can generally be handled by a judicious application of "Mitch McConnell-ing". "I say to my friends on the other side of the [screen]: You will regret this, and you may regret it a lot sooner than you think."

Things like "I can create water in people's lungs because the rules don't say I can't!" and "I can cast Create Light on someone's eyeballs!" suddenly become a lot less fun when they are applied equally.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 20, 2023, 09:27:48 AM

Quote from: Venka on February 19, 2023, 11:16:53 PMIn any event, 3.X was a system with enough conditional things to make this conversation worth having.

Why?

The 3.X ruleset walked away from predeclared actions that resolve mostly-simultaneously, crawling your way up the initiative to figure out what's going exactly.  Before 3.X, you could make the case that no one was ever frozen in space at a particular point in time, as miniatures tend to yield.  Like yes, at the end of the round, Bojak The Semicunning was right about to turn that corner, but you could make the case he was running and had momentum and maybe that matters for something, and maybe it doesn't.  In 3.X, that kind of edge case call was sorta pushed away. 

Instead we got a much more detailed way of handling things.  Events would still resolve in order, but you didn't have to predeclare them- if you acted at the end of the round, you no longer were limited by saying "I'll attack the enemy caster" and when it gets to your turn, the enemy caster had put up a shield against arrows and then become silenced, making him no longer a priority target.  Instead you got to act with full knowledge of events up until that point.  Further, someone could have set up a readied action contingent on your action- for instance, if the geography has a 10 foot wide path, with a wall on one side and a chasm on the other, an enemy could have readied an action to shove you into the chasm, should you try to move past him.  How much of an action should be able to be readied?  A shove, certainly, but why not a full attack? 

Also, what of the limits on readied actions?  Lets assume that every action has a speed associated with it, 1 for fast actions, 2 for your average standard action, such as attacking or drinking a potion, and 3 for certain actions that might be considered even longer.  Now everything inherits this single-use speed factor, and we'll say that for any readied action that triggers off another action, the total amount of speed factors can't be more than 5.  So in the peasant railgun case, now you have a rule that prevents the sixth peasant from passing it via readied actions.  Perhaps you could get there more elegantly; that's not the point.  You would definitely have some framework about timing that would give you some math to do that hardly ever matters, so it's not a great system.

Further, you can get to the peasant railgun without readied actions- each peasant can simply delay their turn such that, an the initiative of the slowest peasant, the entire thing executes in line.  Now all the crap I typed about timing and readied actions doesn't help.  Now we need something to fix simultaneity in the general initiative order.

This is a problem even in medium scale combats where the PCs have a few helpers and the bad guys have some minions, where the events that happen in a round, or any amount of time, all end up being too contingent on each other.  It breaks down utterly in large scale combat, but 3.X never pretends that it's about that.

So this is a conversation about scale of combat, simultaneity, and how long each atomic action takes.  Why would this not be worth having?  It's a problem common to all modern games and to some degree old school games (you can't tell me that if three PCs had set up some clever timing on a round, that it wouldn't be hard to adjudicate, especially if your NPCs were also doing something semiclever that round), and there's not much guidance on it as a general topic.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 11:14:40 AM
It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

No GM is going to allow you to abuse timing rules or initiative count to do something comical like breaking the sound barrier.  One who does is running an absurdist parody about rules systems, like it or not.
And while peasant railgun got discussed in 3.X circles, every game that offers repositioning in time or preparing an action with a trigger has this issue.  It's not about 3.X, it's a thought experiment, and a pretty good one at that.

Quote from: Bruwulf on February 20, 2023, 11:33:32 AM
Things like "I can create water in people's lungs because the rules don't say I can't!" and "I can cast Create Light on someone's eyeballs!" suddenly become a lot less fun when they are applied equally.

Now that stuff is just a player being creative and not thinking through the ramifications if you were to allow it.  When I was young and something like that would come up, I'd say "it doesn't work", and then I would figure out which new section of "rules about the world" exist that prevent that, because obviously something does.  As I've gotten older, I now simply tell the player, "you know that plan won't work" and let them do something else.  I don't want to discourage creativity, and crap like that is technically creative.  Often a player doesn't know that what they are coming up would be totally shitty if it was actually allowed.

It's worth pointing out that most games normally have rules that are kinda explicit to prevent that stuff these days.  Either the description will make it clear you can't target organs by telling you what you can target in a way that excludes creatures, or there will be some uber-rule somewhere player-visible that you can point them at that shuts it down, as a kindness to tables that have players at that point in their learning, and the DMs that must make rulings for them.

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2023, 11:47:44 AM

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 11:14:40 AM
It's great that you had that loophole, except for the loophole within the loophole of GMs who think the peasant rail gun is permissible in their own games.

No GM is going to allow you to abuse timing rules or initiative count to do something comical like breaking the sound barrier.  One who does is running an absurdist parody about rules systems, like it or not.
And while peasant railgun got discussed in 3.X circles, every game that offers repositioning in time or preparing an action with a trigger has this issue.  It's not about 3.X, it's a thought experiment, and a pretty good one at that.

I'm no longer focusing on the inertia of the javelin in this discussion, I understand that this thought experiment concerns the chain of reactions much better now. It seems like it's still a game breaking phenomenon to an important degree, and covers several other issues such as readied spells. I've also realized by now that my proposal to add saving throws to readied actions does adds risk and rewards when they're made in isolation but doesn't quite resolve the core problem.

I'm not saying it's never been a problem at any table, ever, but I've never seen it be a problem, nor heard of anyone who encountered it being a problem.

The system certainly had problems, but that sort of particular bizarre manifestations of the rules are more of a player issue - and a DM-needs-to-grow-a-spine issue - than a system issue.

A common timing issue in 5e, that bothers a lot of players, goes like this: 

Brutus Badcaster and Annie Apprentice are opposed by the heroes, of whom Chester is a wizard and Doug is a bard.

All four of these punks have Counterspell, because of course they do.

Brutus begins casting a high level, powerful spell that will wreck the party- say, Forcecage or Meteor Swarm.  Doug uses his reaction to cast Counterspell on the powerful spell.  Annie then targets Doug's Counterspell with her own Counterspell. Chester then targets Annie's Counterspell with his own Counterspell.  Brutus then casts Counterspell- I think he can target only Chester's Counterspell because he waited, but there is valid way where he counters something earlier in the chain.

If you're familiar with Magic: The Gathering, you know what happens- Brutus counters Chester, Annie counters Doug, and Brutus's main spell lands and Edgar and Frank can't get out of the Forcecage, and immediately go on /r/dndnext to bitch about caster/martial disparity.

This sequence of events is not some rare thing- it's rules as written, apparently rules as intended, and actually happens at real tables today, as 5e is so popular because of totally perfect interactions like this.

This kind of crap can happen in 3.X, but it was substantially rarer.

You may or may not like this interaction- it's certainly interesting, and it's high stakes (especially if Chester upcast his counterspell so that Brutus has to roll, for instance), and it plays out its own little minigame, and it's mostly fair- but it's also a little bit stupid with so much riding on these dumb counterspell spams, frequently houseruled (many tables rule you can't react to a reaction, which stops the entire chain, and others rule you can't counterspell whilst you are already in the middle of casting, which would prevent Brutus's final counterspell)... but I'd say it also runs into just a more general issue about timing. 

How long does it take to make the hand signal for counterspell?  Does it take a half second?  A whole second?  Isn't it strange that by some evaluations in the system, the Forcecage has already been cast, but by other evalutions in the system, Forcecage hasn't actually happened yet?  If there's some delay between finishing a spellcast and the manifestation, how long is it?  If we assume it's a second and a half- short enough to fit in a round easily- then each of these counterspells has to be able to start and finish casting in that same time too.  Even though the rules tell you what happens, and even though there's only four people, this kind of sucks from a verisimilitude standpoint, right?

Even cases where it's not fully degenerate still press on the simultaneity in a round.

The counterspell circle example was written in an article or blog several years ago, the peasant railgun is an iteration that I didn't recognize because of the colossal red-damage-herring.

Quote from: Venka on February 20, 2023, 02:04:39 PM
Brutus begins casting a high level, powerful spell that will wreck the party- say, Forcecage or Meteor Swarm.  Doug uses his reaction to cast Counterspell on the powerful spell.  Annie then targets Doug's Counterspell with her own Counterspell. Chester then targets Annie's Counterspell with his own Counterspell.  Brutus then casts Counterspell- I think he can target only Chester's Counterspell because he waited, but there is valid way where he counters something earlier in the chain.

I confess to never having used Counterspell much (if at all), and I guess — rules as written — you can actually Counterspell a Counterspell, although that strikes me as counterintuitive. No matter.

But I'm fairly sure that Brutus in the example above could not cast Counterspell as a reaction because he had already cast a spell (the initial one) in that round. Or does that rule only apply if you are casting a spell using a bonus action?

Quote from: Wtrmute on February 20, 2023, 02:53:04 PM
I confess to never having used Counterspell much (if at all), and I guess — rules as written — you can actually Counterspell a Counterspell, although that strikes me as counterintuitive. No matter.

It's at least a somewhat common houserule (based on discussions I've seen only, so who knows) that some tables prevent you from reacting to reactions in general, or counterspelling reactions more specifically, or even just blocking counterspell counterspelling counterspell as the most specific case.  It's not even unheard of to just ban counterspell, especially now that a lot of monsters have been printed with "spells that aren't spells" specifically to prevent counterspell from doing anything.  I guess a table like that, you gotta buff the abjurer's main ability a bit?  But yea, as written, you are able to do that. 

QuoteBut I'm fairly sure that Brutus in the example above could not cast Counterspell as a reaction because he had already cast a spell (the initial one) in that round. Or does that rule only apply if you are casting a spell using a bonus action?

It's the bonus action thing.  That rule is explicitly only under the section about casting spells as a bonus action, and therefore doesn't apply to reactions, therefore you can counterspell while casting or right after casting or whatever it actually means, who knows.

Several years ago, there was a conversation about this with all the medium-wigs on twitter, and at one point one of them said that the no-two-levelled-spells-with-a-bonus-action wasn't about game balance or something silly like that.  Basically throwing gasoline on the fire and leaving, as sorcerer players screamed wait so can I use my quickened spell to dualcast now???....

Anyway I just brought up the 5e thing to show how there are consistently timing based issues, and they are a problem in any of the games that execute turns fully sequentially.

I'm still stuck on the javelins, but I'm wondering if there's been a mix up about how magic works in the counterspell scenario.

Setting aside cantrips, I'm not sure that it makes sense to be able to "ready" a spell at all. Magic, especially of the Vancian type core to D&D, is not perfectly at a mage's beck and call. Although I've yet to read any of Vance's works, it seems like an element of another magic system has crept into the game this way.

Imagine doing all of the somatic and verbal components for a spell, and you're standing at the scene of the current battle waiting for the trigger: An adventuring party of six, plus maybe four henchmen, and an assortment of goblins. You're now filled with magical energy that wants to, has to be released, and perhaps standing up in full view of the enemy archers is a consequence of having to complete the somatic component of the spell.  You could be standing around maintaining your concentration for 3-5 crucial minutes (or more) that should otherwise turn you into a pincushion. Maybe you don't get hit, but maybe you wait long enough for the trigger to not quite happen just yet, and the spell fizzles without being cast at all. It's likely true across all editions that if you ready a spell, you can't move without fizzling your own spell as a price for taking a different action (which would be a great opportunity to add spell mishaps).

I think what's confusing about this is how AD&D 2E handled spellcasting. The Casting Time in every spell description for that edition is noted as an "optional ritual casting" rule contra AD&D where it's required. Every time a mage casts a spell in that system it's done near instantaneously by default, and if that's the sort of ruling they were going for, you'd have no time to counter a counterspell. For that matter, I don't think it would be possible to counter any spell unless you can match the spell level of the target spell, since it would require a number of rounds equal to the target spell and your opponent already has a head start. So countering spells at all in D&D needs to be a special ability.

Oh I didn't mean to imply there was something about the 3e rules themselves per se that invited or caused this; as I said, most of us coming from earlier editions are just wired different and our brains dismiss absurd rules-theory-craft stuff like the railgun as invalid on its face because the outcome doesn't "fit", if it feels like a glitch in a computer game it is the incorrect way. What I meant to convey was that the only time I encountered such was with players whose first dnd was 3e and who were primarily M:tG players before that.

You know how magic is, a colon or semi-colon and where exactly its printed makes a difference to rules outcomes, the strict computer logic order of operations supercedes anything making sense if envisioned in the form of a fantasy film or comic, which is fine for magic due to the abstract nature of being a wizard in a card game. Just seemed like these types could not get past card game or board game & really understand role playing game.

Arguments over "can't take a shit w/o the take a shit feat" devolve into "you can't take a shit at all son nowhere in the phb does it even say the word shit in such context"...

Which becomes "i can't starve i can eat my own poo, by RAW there is no save vs disease for eating poo" then becomes "son by RAW you can't pee OR poo, so yes shiteater you WILL starve"..

FIND ME POO ON THE EQUIP LIST FIND ME THE NUTRIONAL VALUE IN CON POINTS OF ASSORTED POO PILES

And when they do this after joining up and then pushing to play something else after only one session, after trying to convince you the game is just broken, I'm left with either brain-itch inducing confusion or i have assign it a form to dismiss, verdict, intentional sabotage. (verdict rendered for the sake of my sanity)

Me like point.

You say smart game stuff.

Me like games.

Me like talk games.

Me like smart game talk stuff.

Me glad here.

You teach much.

Me learn much.

Me happy.

You have good ancestors, not shit people.

Fair enough bud, you win!

You come from a long line of fuckwits who hates their real traditions and you take some real stock in that.

Guess I should just play the rules you want to set about unwarranted respect.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 07:26:41 PM
Me like point.

You say smart game stuff.

Me like games.

Me like talk games.

Me like smart game talk stuff.

Me glad here.

You teach much.

Me learn much.

Me happy.

You have good ancestors, not shit people.

oof. I hope you aren't aiming that at me; if so I was unaware I had done anything to draw it, my last post was just attempting to clarify that I don't think it's necessarily a product of the 3e rules so much as a product of the way some people insisted those rules be applied or interpreted. In truth it looks totally detached from anything upthread to my eye, but on the off chance you are addressing me I'll take it best I can. I didn't feel anything game stuff related I'd said was terribly smart as such, just what I've seen in practice. I like games and talking about them too, talking about them less so but still. Yeah, it's aight here every now and then, i've been worse places. Now shucks fren, teach is powerful, is every bad example a teacher? I'd say no. I'm glad to hear of your happiness, I applaud it, world needs more happiness (w/o throwing rupees into a fairy pool, dammit). As to my ancestors I wouldn't broad brush them anymore than I would the ones I've known in my time, some good some bad, most probably meh.

Quote from: ClusterFluster on February 20, 2023, 07:33:47 PM
Fair enough bud, you win!

You come from a long line of fuckwits who hates their real traditions and you take some real stock in that.

Guess I should just play the rules you want to set about unwarranted respect.

Only on the off-chance I'm your focus here I'll try and take this too:
You speak of win yet I'm unaware of any conflict or contest. I DO come from a long line of fuckwits, that is true, make no mistake, devils and black sheep and really bad eggs. But I don't get the last half of the comment regarding traditions and cannot address it w/o further understanding. I have no idea what you mean in regard to rules of unwarranted respect; I have very few rules, I'm actually a psuedo-anarchist at heart, as few rules as possible if you please.

In any case, if you were not aiming at me I apologize, if you were I've attempted to address what appears to be your concerns, if you should require anything further from me please do not hesitate to let your needs be known friend.

Fantastic