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...

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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 ) 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.

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"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).

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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.

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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

I always knew this.

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).