So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of the fall of osr gaming. I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d. So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.
The original OSR was founded by ex-third edition players who became disenchanted with that edition, switched to Castles & Crusades, had a falling out, and then created OSRIC and then later Swords & Wizardry.
Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of the fall of osr gaming. I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d. So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.
Other people in the community share positive views of 3e. It is still played quite a bit.
5e is a great game if one sticks with the core three books. The DMG (specifically DMG workshop chapter) is underrated. After the core books, and maybe Xanathar's if I am feeling saucy, the rest of the edition begins to wash together. Like overpainting a canvas.
D&D 3E / 3.5E / PF
The final realization that Ascending Armor Class made things easier. Why the hell was Descending Armor Class ever used to begin with?
Hit Point Bloat for Monsters and PCs jumped from 2E to 3E.
Some Great Books were produced for 3E. One could have collected a library full of printed resources for 3E.
So Many Rules. They tried to publish Rules for Everything. Who could possibly remember All of those rules? Back to the Library....
I'm from the 1e days personally and it is my favorite edition.
With that out of the way, my friends and I played plenty of 3/3.5/pf
I would say that overall the game is ok just requires players to really think about how their character is going to evolve. There are plenty of dead end choices that can make a player feel like their character is no longer useful.
There are a lot of not well thought out synergies in there for both the gm and the players. as read a half undead troll is like cr 4 and yet will dominate a party several levels higher.
The ever classy roguearian (rogue with 1 level of barbarian so he can use a great sword and rage) using just the basic book will swing way outside of his weight class until the mid levels.
It wasn't perfect but that era did revitalize the industryand gave us OSR eventually.
Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of the fall of osr gaming. I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d. So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.
I doubt my opinion will be particularly helpful, but I've honestly liked every version of D&D so far. Including 3e. I found the reduction down to the d20 mechanic for 3e to be a superb change.
Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative, but I've wondered what they thought about 3e, which is what I'd consider the afterbirth of the fall of osr gaming. I've seen a video by dungeoncraft, who's been playing since od&d, and he described 3e along the lines of being groundbreaking and revolutionary, which was pretty surprisingly positive given how drastically different it was from the traditional rules of ad&d. So I wanted to know if this sentiment is shared by anyone else in the community.
3e was a natural step after 2e Skills & Powers (and Kits from before that) and about a decade and a TSR bankruptcy since the last truly nee edition.
3e's biggest issue was it borrowed a bit of the "mastery vs. traps" mentality from WotC's other big property MtG (the basic idea is that you reward players mastering the system by including various trash/trap options that new players will think look good, but actually underperform while only masters will pick the good options) and an overly fiddly character/monster creation process and spent 4E and 5e trying to course correct to a level that would work for most people.
Personally I think 4E had the right level of "per level" complexity (one choice at each level up), but botched it by having about twice as many levels as was needed for most campaigns and so ended up with about twice the complexity most players would be comfortable with (and not having some good simple options until more than two years in didn't help either).
I would not expect anything like a community consensus on that question, but I can give my one data point. I cut me teeth with OD&D before moving on to a blend of OD&D and AD&D 1e. Then I left the hobby for many years and came back to find 3.5. I was appalled. The new game (3.5) was bloated with unnecessary complexity at every level. Yes, there were positive innovations there, but I could not appreciate them, as buried as they were in the dross. It seemed to me that one needed to be deeply dedicated to the game to have a grasp on it all. Worst of all, it seemed that power at the table had shifted away from the DM to players who had spent all their time mastering the system. At the one table I experienced, the DM was being browbeaten by smug players who could quote rules, and everyone else seemed ok with this. That was shocking to me and I walked away from D&D again until I finally noticed the OSR happening. Maybe my experience was unusual, but it colored all my views of 3.X. It was not until I tried 5e that I realized that "modern D&D" had indeed improved certain systems over what I had been using.
On one hand, 3E codified the d20 mechanic, developed skills and introduced feats, and could be fun to play.
If you played as one of the creator's pet classes, that is.
People joked about 'linear warrior, quadratic wizard', but 3E's action-economy system completely fucked that. It turned it into 'linear warrior, logarithmic wizard'. Rumor is that this was the brainchild of Monte Cook, who actually wanted archery nerfed harder because he thought it outgunned spellcasters.
(One wonders what kind of spellcasters Cook was playtesting.)
I don't know how everyone else played 3rd but my group enjoyed devils being devils again, were wowed by the OGL/D20 explosion, and liked the new energy that seemed to be in the revival. However...we played it as a sloppy table top tactical board game with a lot of optional bits to experiment with and role playing definitely gave way to hacky party builds, arguing about optional materials. and roll playing.
So for us it was a mixed bag. 5th felt like it was kind of hard to die normally. compared to 3.5
4 was more of a multiplayer board game than 3 and the monsters had nice cues for the DM to lean on about how they'd handle conditions but the DM had to start ignoring the AI bits because it made monsters you recognized predictable even if you weren't being told meta stuff like how many hit points the thing probably had left.
A decent but flawed edition. Tried to streamline AD&D, went a bit over the top with the caster supremacy and complex iterative attacks. Not impossible to fix. Ascending AC is a decent innovation, I like unified XP (makes things a lot simpler) and trying to unify all mechanics in a "d20, roll high" fashion works well enough that I have a hard time breaking away from it (and so did 4e and 5e). You could improve the implementation, but the ideas are fine.
BTW, I think 5e is also a decent but flawed edition, overall I like it more than 3e (although 3e does weapons better IMO). TBH I like the 5e PHB better than AD&D because it has more options but not much added complexity (not even Gygax played AD&FD as written).
I've also heard of OSR enthusiasts that like 4e, BTW. No, really. Gives them that wargaming vibe.
My own OSR clone mixes B/X(my favorite) with bits and pieces form 5e and 3e.
DnD 3.0 and PF are a couple of my favorites. They are fun to play, include skills (which I prefer in games), and demonstrated a wellspring of unique and wonderful settings for themselves. Their drawbacks are that it takes some time to create a character (or unique NPC) and there is a lot of crap to wade through to get to the Good Stuff with the remnants of the d20 Glut still out there.
I really liked 3e when it came out. Good layout, lots of player options, etc. As I played it for a while, though, I realized that it was too crunchy for me. I use to love crunchy, even spent 5 years co-writing and GMing a Shadowrun clone with my buddy based on the d12 that was trying to be hyper crunchy because we loved that stuff back then. I've swung the other way. Give me light or light-moderate rules now.
I also saw the rise of the power gamer with the people that I played 3e with. We called it min-maxxing. Still hate that to this day - but if it works for your group - great!
Jam the MF said, "The final realization that Ascending Armor Class made things easier."
Yes. Elegant.
"So Many Rules. They tried to publish Rules for Everything. Who could possibly remember All of those rules?"
I had this feeling as I started to play 3e that it was tough to remember everything. I recall being a kid and knowing all sorts of rules and stats for B/X and 1e. 3e made me feel like I was getting older and my memory wasn't as sharp - but also it really was so many rules and the concept that you need to have a rule to do everything and less reliance on the DM just making a call. . . . and I was getting old too.
3e fixed a lot of the problems with ADnD by adopting many of my house rules that I was already using to patch the previous edition. It streamlined the rules and helped to get rid of the patch work of sub systems bolted onto ADnD.
I am still torn on the Multiclassing rules but Prestige classes added a lot of flavour to the game.
Quote from: Vidgrip on August 20, 2021, 03:08:41 PM
I would not expect anything like a community consensus on that question, but I can give my one data point. I cut me teeth with OD&D before moving on to a blend of OD&D and AD&D 1e. Then I left the hobby for many years and came back to find 3.5. I was appalled. The new game (3.5) was bloated with unnecessary complexity at every level. Yes, there were positive innovations there, but I could not appreciate them, as buried as they were in the dross. It seemed to me that one needed to be deeply dedicated to the game to have a grasp on it all. Worst of all, it seemed that power at the table had shifted away from the DM to players who had spent all their time mastering the system. At the one table I experienced, the DM was being browbeaten by smug players who could quote rules, and everyone else seemed ok with this. That was shocking to me and I walked away from D&D again until I finally noticed the OSR happening. Maybe my experience was unusual, but it colored all my views of 3.X. It was not until I tried 5e that I realized that "modern D&D" had indeed improved certain systems over what I had been using.
Yes. 3E requires investment and dedication, in order to become awesome. It's not a casual game, at all. I like White Box style OD&D better.
I will say that I never played 3.x rules as written. I never used Challenge Ratings or the magic economy that wound up borking Fighters -- I controlled access to magic spells with an iron fist, which I'm told was not how the game was supposed to work -- and I reserved veto power over both feats and prestige classes. I also started my group at first level, which frustrated the heck out of my "build-a-tron" player, because he had his entire list of feats, skills and class changes to make the" ultimate Sorceror Arcane" planned out to level 15 or 20.
So when people started complaining online about how "broken" 3.x was, I was like, "You're the DM, why are you letting your players get away with that?"
I wasn't a fan. Apart from playing in a couple of games that friends were running I went and explored with Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Exalted, and Deadlands.
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 20, 2021, 03:05:33 PM
Personally I think 4E had the right level of "per level" complexity (one choice at each level up), but botched it by having about twice as many levels as was needed for most campaigns and so ended up with about twice the complexity most players would be comfortable with
I'm GMing 4e again currently (alternating with another GM) and this is exactly my feeling. She was planning on just 10 levels, but I think the game is good for 15. After that it gets too much.
As for 3e, if you half the XP awards and use 3.5 it's ok for about 8 levels. It really breaks hard later on, or if advancement is too fast, or if PCs get too little(!) magic.
Quote from: S'mon on August 20, 2021, 06:26:23 PM
As for 3e, if you half the XP awards and use 3.5 it's ok for about 8 levels. It really breaks hard later on, or if advancement is too fast, or if PCs get too little(!) magic.
It doesn't break after 8th level, or at least that's not quite the right word. It becomes a lot more of an art to run, and it requires players to be on the same page.
But in general, you can't go wrong with E6.
QuoteWorst of all, it seemed that power at the table had shifted away from the DM to players who had spent all their time mastering the system. At the one table I experienced, the DM was being browbeaten by smug players who could quote rules, and everyone else seemed ok with this
.
Which is... VERY GOOD. If you play system X - social obligation is to play system X, that's like you know social contract between people. D&D 3 and it's close kin are demanding game with high level of crunch, and well it's expected from DM to rule game according to rules (as with any other system). If DM is lousy, then sure players knowing their mojo gonna brownbeat him for doing bad job.
DM as god mentality is one of things... that's dying, and that' ok.
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 06:56:06 PM
Quote from: S'mon on August 20, 2021, 06:26:23 PM
As for 3e, if you half the XP awards and use 3.5 it's ok for about 8 levels. It really breaks hard later on, or if advancement is too fast, or if PCs get too little(!) magic.
It doesn't break after 8th level, or at least that's not quite the right word. It becomes a lot more of an art to run, and it requires players to be on the same page.
But in general, you can't go wrong with E6.
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
Without 3e there would not be an OSR as they used 3e's OGL as an excuse to pretty much steal games by "recreating" them. uh-huh. riiiiiight.
3e appeals to a certain type of player most. And I have seen alot of overlap between 3e and gurps players. 3e also seemed to cause every char-opper and min/maxer to crawl out from under every rock possible - and then tried to infest 4 and 5e. Hence there is a slight, but deserved, negative aspect to 3e.
Otherwise its playable. Gets the job done and gets one thing right 4 and even 5e fail at. It keeps enough of older D&D to still be very recognizable as D&D. Whereas 4e tries to be as far removed from D&D as one can get without being totally not D&D. But it is 4e that really pushed the OSR into the limelight as 4e and WOTC did their damndest to antagonize fans of older D&D.
The OSR seem split on liking and not liking 5e. For many it harkens back to TSR era D&D. And others read "feat" and go insane.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 06:56:06 PM
Quote from: S'mon on August 20, 2021, 06:26:23 PM
As for 3e, if you half the XP awards and use 3.5 it's ok for about 8 levels. It really breaks hard later on, or if advancement is too fast, or if PCs get too little(!) magic.
It doesn't break after 8th level, or at least that's not quite the right word. It becomes a lot more of an art to run, and it requires players to be on the same page.
But in general, you can't go wrong with E6.
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
I played in epic campaigns that got into the high 20s, and a couple one-shots or short games at even higher levels. The system at those levels requires a lot of babysitting. Most of the DM's tools for assessing danger or building appropriate encounters become completely worthless, so you need a DM who knows the system and can make good judgment calls, which requires a lot of experience. The types of characters who can work together is constrained, so you need players who are on the same page, and even then you have to periodically rebuild your characters to ensure nobody's too out of whack.
Quote from: Omega on August 20, 2021, 07:22:57 PM
3e appeals to a certain type of player most. And I have seen alot of overlap between 3e and gurps players. 3e also seemed to cause every char-opper and min/maxer to crawl out from under every rock possible - and then tried to infest 4 and 5e. Hence there is a slight, but deserved, negative aspect to 3e.
Char opping really took off with the Internet.
No one has seriously claimed that it invented min maxing though. Gary had plenty to say about that in the old ADnD days.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:57:38 PM
Quote from: Omega on August 20, 2021, 07:22:57 PM
3e appeals to a certain type of player most. And I have seen alot of overlap between 3e and gurps players. 3e also seemed to cause every char-opper and min/maxer to crawl out from under every rock possible - and then tried to infest 4 and 5e. Hence there is a slight, but deserved, negative aspect to 3e.
Char opping really took off with the Internet.
No one has seriously claimed that it invented min maxing though. Gary had plenty to say about that in the old ADnD days.
Third edition was also uniquely well suited to char ops. The whole build thing, plus all the sourcebooks and all the moving parts.
Which is also why third edition works best with a strong DM who can keep all the players at least in the same ballpark when it comes to capabilities. But those types of DMs also became rarer as the edition progressed, because char ops also led to a rules over rulings or player entitlement mentality.
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 08:57:42 PM
Third edition was also uniquely well suited to char ops. The whole build thing, plus all the sourcebooks and all the moving parts.
I lived through the 2e source book bloat era so I am not sure "all the 3e source books" argument is as effective as you imagine it is.
QuoteWhich is also why third edition works best with a strong DM who can keep all the players at least in the same ballpark when it comes to capabilities. But those types of DMs also became rarer as the edition progressed, because char ops also led to a rules over rulings or player entitlement mentality.
Once the DM makes a ruling then a good player can always site that as case law. So the real difference is that everyone knows the rules in the first case and the players finding out the rules later on in the second case.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 09:10:39 PM
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 08:57:42 PM
Third edition was also uniquely well suited to char ops. The whole build thing, plus all the sourcebooks and all the moving parts.
I lived through the 2e source book bloat era so I am not sure "all the 3e source books" argument is as effective as you imagine it is.
QuoteWhich is also why third edition works best with a strong DM who can keep all the players at least in the same ballpark when it comes to capabilities. But those types of DMs also became rarer as the edition progressed, because char ops also led to a rules over rulings or player entitlement mentality.
Once the DM makes a ruling then a good player can always site that as case law. So the real difference is that everyone knows the rules in the first case and the players finding out the rules later on in the second case.
That's not how you handle char ops. You handle char ops by saying no, or by telling a player to rework a character to be more in line with the other PCs, or by looking at their character sheet and going nuh-uh this is way too high. It's not about precedents, it's about ensuring everyone can have fun because there's nobody who can run roughshod over the rest of the party, and some of the PCs aren't completely ineffective.
Also, 2nd edition had more settings, and many of the rule weren't intended to work together. How many different castle building systems were there? At least 3? How many times did they try to revise the psionic system? 2e still had some of that classic D&D different subsystems for everything. Third edition was more holistic; all the parts were supposed to go together, in theory at least.
Not a huge OSR fan (nor critic, just not my thing).
3.5 is the edition I like the least, followed closely by 3.0. 3.0 at lower levels is playable (as is any version of D&D) but flawed in ways that become steadily more annoying for the GM the longer it is used. It requires similar prep work to play within the rules as GURPS or Fantasy Hero, but without their flexibility. If I'm going to not run it within the rules but wing it to cover up its flaws, there are several better systems for that, including most other versions of D&D.
I also absolutely despise "adventure paths"--which are hardly unique to 3E but the place where they really took off "the thing".
I can see how some people would find it a good mix--especially if they don't mind working around its design flaws--but for me it sits in such an uncanny valley between too many rules but too little payoff that I'll never run it again. To a lesser extent, 5E has the same problem, in that in its quest for wide appeal it is not quite sure what it wants to be. However, it is a simpler system with better underlying math, which makes it more adaptable.
3.X was an abomination, though not quite the nadir - THAT was 4e.
But as others have said, 3.x was the next step after 2E's 'Players Options' series - a series of books that I refuse to own, such is my disdain for the direction they took the game.
3.x was the age of the character 'build', when theorycrafting peaked, when the hideous idea that you planned your character in advance really came to the fore.
I prefer characters in my gain to be defined by their actions and their discoveries, not by hours spent swotting over rulebooks trying to find optimal combinations.
Simple character mechanics. Complex game world. THAT's the epitome of gaming for me.
Quote from: Alea Iacta Est on August 20, 2021, 01:05:42 PM
So I have a general idea of how the osr community feels about 5e, which is understandably negative
I don't think you can say anything stronger than "mixed" here - for example, I'm an OSR-leaning DM who started on Holmes right around 1980, and I'm quite happy with 5e. Starting from this sentence is going to colour the responses you get and likely leave you with a similarly unrepresentative view of opinions of 3e; your post would have been stronger without it.
I run a lot of OSR stuff with 5e D&D, works great. Cannot say that about 3e, in either direction. I do run some 3e stuff in 5e (currently running Necromancer's Aberrations from 2003) but it takes much more work. Not nearly as much work as trying to run 3e/PF in the original Klingon, though! I still have nightmares about Queen Ileosa's stat block in my PF Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign.
The beauty of 4e D&D is that it is NOT D&D, it plays nothing like D&D. As long as you treat it as a completely different sort of game, sort of Marvel Superheroes Tactical Fantasy: The RPG, it can be a brilliant play experience. Treating it like it's an edition of D&D is a gateway to a Universe of Pain.
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 09:15:23 PM
Also, 2nd edition had more settings, and many of the rule weren't intended to work together. How many different castle building systems were there? At least 3? How many times did they try to revise the psionic system?
I'm only aware of the one revision when 2nd edition put out the brown cover Psionics Handbook. Were there others?
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
I ran 3e to ca 18th level and PF to ca 14th level.
High level 3e, the spellcasters completely dominate. It's D&D Ars Magica, the Fighter PCs were just Grogs to the PC Wizards. I remember at one point ca level 15 all three players at the table had Wizard PCs, they were ambushed by demons. They were going to do the usual thing of teleport away & come back later pre-buffed, but I begged them "Please, just this once, stay and fight - you can beat them, you don't need to buff!". They beat the demons (hezrou & such) easily enough.
Later on, in the final battle of the campaign, I rem a Wizard-18 got off two Horrid Wiltings in the BBEG throne room and had killed off most of the bad guys before the Fighter-18* with the artifact spear & the artifact plate armor (so speed 20') could even get into melee.
*Played by ENW's Tallarn. This was in the good old days, before the Woke Times.
Compared to PF though, 3e was well balanced. The PF Summoner class is the most grotesque abomination I have ever seen in an RPG.
I have played in some amazing 3.0/3.5 games and I am told I ran a pretty decent game. It is not my favorite D&D ever. I much prefer a good retro-clone or an entirely different system to anything post 2e. I am not putting anyone down this is just my preference and opinion. It is worth exactly zero in real money. 5E started out decent I left it when the wokeness appeared again just my preference YMMV.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 21, 2021, 06:49:45 AM
I'm only aware of the one revision when 2nd edition put out the brown cover Psionics Handbook. Were there others?
They put a revised approach into
Player's Options: Skills and Powers and the Dark Sun psionics supplement
The Will and the Way. Same system in both, so only one revision attempt. But 2E in general catches a lot of flack for not being unified and not teaching people how to play AD&D correctly. :)
Quote from: Ratman_tf on August 21, 2021, 06:49:45 AM
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 09:15:23 PM
Also, 2nd edition had more settings, and many of the rule weren't intended to work together. How many different castle building systems were there? At least 3? How many times did they try to revise the psionic system?
I'm only aware of the one revision when 2nd edition put out the brown cover Psionics Handbook. Were there others?
The psionics in The Complete Psionics Handbook, Skills & Powers, and the Illithiad had significant differences.
Hey, what's my opinion on 3.0?
This edition falls into a time in my life when I was between gaming groups. So I didn't get much into 3.0 at the time it was released.
In hindsight, it's my least favorite edition. Other editions do D&D better, and 4th is more fun in it's own not-quite-D&D-way.
I don't hate it, I have played Pathfinder from time to time, which is often said to be D&D 3.5.
So it's kind of "Meh, I'll play it if people insist, whatever."
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:57:38 PM
Quote from: Omega on August 20, 2021, 07:22:57 PM
3e appeals to a certain type of player most. And I have seen alot of overlap between 3e and gurps players. 3e also seemed to cause every char-opper and min/maxer to crawl out from under every rock possible - and then tried to infest 4 and 5e. Hence there is a slight, but deserved, negative aspect to 3e.
Char opping really took off with the Internet.
No one has seriously claimed that it invented min maxing though. Gary had plenty to say about that in the old ADnD days.
True. But I did not say 3e invented char-opping. Just that it attracts them en-mass. (nor car-shopping either!)
Pretty much every version of D&D has something to recommend it. I'm personally not super interested in getting into newer games with 3E levels of crunch, but I'm familiar enough with 3E that playing it doesn't bother me. Having a GM that's willing to play it more loosely, and personally giving up on some intense char-op that is possible but unnecessary, helps.
Quote from: S'mon on August 21, 2021, 07:01:14 AM
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
I ran 3e to ca 18th level and PF to ca 14th level.
High level 3e, the spellcasters completely dominate. It's D&D Ars Magica, the Fighter PCs were just Grogs to the PC Wizards. I remember at one point ca level 15 all three players at the table had Wizard PCs, they were ambushed by demons. They were going to do the usual thing of teleport away & come back later pre-buffed, but I begged them "Please, just this once, stay and fight - you can beat them, you don't need to buff!". They beat the demons (hezrou & such) easily enough.
Later on, in the final battle of the campaign, I rem a Wizard-18 got off two Horrid Wiltings in the BBEG throne room and had killed off most of the bad guys before the Fighter-18* with the artifact spear & the artifact plate armor (so speed 20') could even get into melee.
*Played by ENW's Tallarn. This was in the good old days, before the Woke Times.
Compared to PF though, 3e was well balanced. The PF Summoner class is the most grotesque abomination I have ever seen in an RPG.
Yup. During our long-haul PF campaign (Rise of the Runelords) my sorcerer had to bounce back to the Thassilonian library we'd discovered. He was significantly higher level than the first time the party had been there, and thus the frost giants were horribly outmatched.
I got mildly irritated with the GM because after you've turned six or eight frost giants into burning cinders you'd think the rest would opt to either (a) negotiate or (b) run the fuck away.
Instead, it was 'Giant rolls for initiative, loses to me, gets incinerated.' Over and over.
Well, what makes 3.x "better" for some folks makes it "worse" for others. What I think can be said for 3.x is that it marked a sharp philosophical break with the original ideas of AD&D (and yes, before Shasarak comes in with his fanboying and yells "2e! 2e!", some of the changes did start to creep in during the awful splatbooks for 2e, but 3e codified the change in the base edition).
The first was related to the concept of the player character. In AD&D creating a character took about 5 minutes, most of which was spent on buying equipment. The primary features of the characters (personality, abilities, uniqueness, etc.) were derived from play. No one I knew developed a 15-page backstory for a character that might not live 10 minutes. Different characters of the same class were not differentiated mechanically by class feature; the differences were accumulated via adventuring (fighters got magic items, magic users got spells, etc.) and not always pre-planned. By 3e, characters became pre-planned, with the "build" becoming an important consideration. The expectation was that PCs were "entitled" to find certain amounts or kinds of magic, and that they would be differentiated by the class features they got from leveling. This is a big change to the flavor of the game. Some people really like the "game within a game" of character building. Some hate it.
Secondly, the role of the DM changed. Where before, if for no reason other than the organizational chaos and occasional incoherence of some of AD&D's rulebooks, the DM often had to make determinations on the fly (hence the "rulings, not rules"), 3e was designed with a much more constrained DM in mind. The idea that monsters and NPCs should be constructed the same way as PCs not only added a heavy workload to DMs, it also took away some of the flexibility that DMs had to adapt to player "optimizations" (while 3e didn't invent min-maxing, it certainly reduced the DM's ability to adjust to it, when played as written). The change in DM role also changed the flavor. DMs who were more freeform tend to dislike 3e, while the highly organized tend to love the certainty it provides.
Thirdly, there was a subtle change in the mechanics of combat. It was a progressive change across editions, but 3e really was designed around a more rules-heavy, formally tactical combat encounter. Looking at AD&D, almost all of the "tactics" of combat were either abstracted, or were generalized into "if the DM felt you did something that would qualify for X, you get Y bonus to hit." Your fighter rolled to hit, then rolled damage. That was the essence of combat. Most "tactics" took place outside of the formalized rules (look at backstabbing in AD&D, for example... when can you do it exactly? It all depends on adjudication). In 3e, however, the combat became much more formal, with rules for placement, movement, how many attacks you get based on how you moved (the "five-foot step" is an abomination, IMHO), attacks of opportunity, et al. The combat is much more concerned with a series of rules designed to script out the flow of battle, as opposed to the fluidity of the one minute combat rounds in AD&D. This appeals to the tactically-minded player, but the more strategic player might not enjoy getting down into the weeds.
The third edition can truly be said to be a major departure from some of the design philosophies of the first editions of the game. Some changes, like ascending AC and skill lists, are mostly positive. Many others, like "feats", are more controversial, based on your preferred gaming philosophy. Honestly, having played all of the editions for many years (with 4e being the exception... I only played it for about 6 months), 3.0/3.5/PF is my least favorite, as its philosophy is radically different from my preferred playstyle. I don't find 5e as bad, but it definitely is of the lineage of 3e,rather than 1e. My players who loved 3e still enjoy 5e, and my players who hated 3e still tolerate 5e, so it is a good compromise for us. But I'd never run 3e again, and I'd be unlikely to play it, either...
Quote from: Eirikrautha on August 22, 2021, 10:19:31 AM
Well, what makes 3.x "better" for some folks makes it "worse" for others. What I think can be said for 3.x is that it marked a sharp philosophical break with the original ideas of AD&D (and yes, before Shasarak comes in with his fanboying and yells "2e! 2e!", some of the changes did start to creep in during the awful splatbooks for 2e, but 3e codified the change in the base edition).
Thank you, my God, you ass holes take a long time to get the message through.
Creep in during 2e my hairy ass, what were you asleep for 10 years like some kind of autistic sleeping beauty?
Quote from: S'mon on August 21, 2021, 07:01:14 AM
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
I ran 3e to ca 18th level and PF to ca 14th level.
High level 3e, the spellcasters completely dominate. It's D&D Ars Magica, the Fighter PCs were just Grogs to the PC Wizards. I remember at one point ca level 15 all three players at the table had Wizard PCs, they were ambushed by demons. They were going to do the usual thing of teleport away & come back later pre-buffed, but I begged them "Please, just this once, stay and fight - you can beat them, you don't need to buff!". They beat the demons (hezrou & such) easily enough.
Later on, in the final battle of the campaign, I rem a Wizard-18 got off two Horrid Wiltings in the BBEG throne room and had killed off most of the bad guys before the Fighter-18* with the artifact spear & the artifact plate armor (so speed 20') could even get into melee.
*Played by ENW's Tallarn. This was in the good old days, before the Woke Times.
Compared to PF though, 3e was well balanced. The PF Summoner class is the most grotesque abomination I have ever seen in an RPG.
Thats great, S'mon. Love to hear about the successful high level campaigns.
My 3e campaign was the second longest game I ever run, at 4 1/2 years, and probably the one I spent the most time running as we played 3 hours a week pretty much every week. I gave out a reduced amount of XP and in that time my character got to between 10th and 12th level. I never noticed the wizard problem others mentions but I was fairly consistent about controlling the spells the party found. While it's true that various parts of the game didn't work, such as multi-classing between spellcasters and non-spellcasters, solutions to most problems could be found online. I also found that 3e players were much more accepting of house rules than players of other versions of D&D, even old school versions. Maybe it's because the game was so different people weren't really attached to specific mechanics.
The game could probably have been perfected if they stuck with the same basic rules and just cut down on the volume, but that never happened. The one part of the game that I appreciate more now is how monsters used the same rules for character creations as the PCs. I've taking this idea to heart with my own OD&D game and finally have a system where you can take any NPC or monster out of an adventure and use him as a regular Player Character with no conversion.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 22, 2021, 05:44:09 PM
Thats great, S'mon. Love to hear about the successful high level campaigns.
You might enjoy reading my PF Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign - starts at http://smonscurseofthecrimsonthrone.blogspot.com/2013/
The Summoner & Naglatha the uber-minmaxed Archer Ranger did tend to trivialise the later encounters; I was just telling my 5e group today (in a post-TPK drinking session) about the PF Summoner and his 3 summoned giant octopi with their 24 grapple rolls per round on my poor Gray Maidens. ;D
Quote from: jeff37923 on August 20, 2021, 04:55:51 PM
DnD 3.0 and PF are a couple of my favorites. They are fun to play, include skills (which I prefer in games), and demonstrated a wellspring of unique and wonderful settings for themselves. Their drawbacks are that it takes some time to create a character (or unique NPC) and there is a lot of crap to wade through to get to the Good Stuff with the remnants of the d20 Glut still out there.
I think DND 3.0 is a better game system than DND 3.5, although the differences between the two systems are subtle. 3.0 is closer to old school DND than 3.5. However, I've played a lot more 3.5 than 3.0.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
Quote from: Pat on August 20, 2021, 06:56:06 PM
Quote from: S'mon on August 20, 2021, 06:26:23 PM
As for 3e, if you half the XP awards and use 3.5 it's ok for about 8 levels. It really breaks hard later on, or if advancement is too fast, or if PCs get too little(!) magic.
It doesn't break after 8th level, or at least that's not quite the right word. It becomes a lot more of an art to run, and it requires players to be on the same page.
But in general, you can't go wrong with E6.
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
My group played in a high-level 3.5 campaign, where we reached level 19. We went through the entire "Shackled City" adventure path, and started at 1st-level, although we only made it to 19th-level....due to skipping one of the dungeons. I didn't notice the system breaking at all, but we were using characters that were only between Tier 2 and Tier 4....and many of these characters were based upon homebrew classes. We had no Wizards, Clerics, or core Druids in the party (Druid variants only), so we might have missed the problems of high-level play that other people experienced. We also had only a limited amount of multi-classing in our 3.x games.
The job of the high-level spellcasters (variant Druids) in our campaign was mostly healing the party, teleporting the party, and protecting the party from energy attacks....with limited use of offensive magic (and no summoning spells). We had a high-level Warmage. His job was blasting enemies with Fireballs, Orbs of Force, and whatnot. The Warmage is weaker than a Wizard, but requires much less pre-planning and is easier to use. We had a high-level Warforged Dungeoncrasher Fighter with limited regeneration. His job was triggering traps, tanking attacks, and smashing through unsuccessfully unlocked doors.
The real issue with DND 3.x is that it's detailed in places that are unnecessary. An example? Technically, it is possible to have two different 12th-level Rogues with identical ability scores, feats, and equipment.......with two different skill point totals. Why? Because one started off with a higher intelligence score, and the other did not. Other things, like skill synergies, bog up the system and need to go. Attacks of opportunity discourage your character from moving around, unless you've specifically maxxed your character out for movement. There's way too much system mastery and unnecessary rules clutter in DND 3.X.
Unfortunately, 5e went in the opposite direction and created "bounded mediocrity", where nothing you do matters or affects your environment in a meaningful way.....and does this while being horribly vague and boring. Oh, and woke now. 5e is now very Satanically woke.
The one major problem with high-level play in DND 3.x is that there's so much rules detail (too much), that it's easy to forget what actual abilities you have. They should have just made cards for every spell, skill, feat, magic item, and more.
I have an emotional attachment to descending armor class from AD&D, but ascending armor class is objectively easier to use for nearly every gamer I've met. That said, I still think DND 3.0 and 3.5 are great games. They're my games of choice now.
If I had my way, I'd make a hybrid game of 3e and 1e. Instead, 5e feels like it gave us some boring and woke hybrid of 2e and 4e.
Quote from: S'mon on August 21, 2021, 07:01:14 AM
Quote from: Shasarak on August 20, 2021, 07:22:42 PM
I was personally played in a high level 3e campaign which got up to level 16.
I didnt notice the system breaking.
I ran 3e to ca 18th level and PF to ca 14th level.
High level 3e, the spellcasters completely dominate. It's D&D Ars Magica, the Fighter PCs were just Grogs to the PC Wizards. I remember at one point ca level 15 all three players at the table had Wizard PCs, they were ambushed by demons. They were going to do the usual thing of teleport away & come back later pre-buffed, but I begged them "Please, just this once, stay and fight - you can beat them, you don't need to buff!". They beat the demons (hezrou & such) easily enough.
Later on, in the final battle of the campaign, I rem a Wizard-18 got off two Horrid Wiltings in the BBEG throne room and had killed off most of the bad guys before the Fighter-18* with the artifact spear & the artifact plate armor (so speed 20') could even get into melee.
*Played by ENW's Tallarn. This was in the good old days, before the Woke Times.
Compared to PF though, 3e was well balanced. The PF Summoner class is the most grotesque abomination I have ever seen in an RPG.
Our high-level 3.x campaigns never had high-level Wizards, so maybe we missed something vital.
Id day that as long as everyone is on the same page in a 3e/PF session then things are usually going to go alot better than if some are char-opping and some are just wanting to play and the rest are going with the flow.
The system works as long as no one is actively trying to break it or create "I win" buttons. The sessions I played in way back went fairly well and overall it felt like a D&D session.
Something worth noticing is that the difference between 3e, 4e and 5e is not quality, it is mostly philosophical.
For example: can you trip a gelatinous cube?
In 3e, you can't, regardless of the rules.
In 4e, you can, regardless or the wordings.
In 5e, the rules say you can't... but what if they didn't?
Same for miniatures (3e maybe, 4e yes, 5e no).
I wrote two comparisons between the three system; I'm not sure I could add TSR versions to these comparisons, because I couldn't find an exact quotes on how to deal with these issues (but I'd say TSR D&D is less dependent on minis than 3e and 4e, although supposedly Gygax himself didn't use minis, but Arneson did).
But I'd say 3e was a small break from TSR (especially skills & powers, etc.), while 4e is a big break, and 5e takes a few steps back.
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/02/tripping-oozes-in-d-3e-versus-4e-versus.html
https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/does-d-require-miniatures-3e-versus-4e.html
Quote from: Omega on August 22, 2021, 09:38:47 PM
Id day that as long as everyone is on the same page in a 3e/PF session then things are usually going to go alot better than if some are char-opping and some are just wanting to play and the rest are going with the flow.
The system works as long as no one is actively trying to break it or create "I win" buttons. The sessions I played in way back went fairly well and overall it felt like a D&D session.
Third edition worked fairly well, as long as people played the same way they did in earlier editions. The game didn't really break until people started looking at what the rules actually said, and then modified their playstyle to take advantage. That's where char ops rose to prominence. And third edition was very well suited to that kind of analysis, which is why one optimizer could ruin it for the whole group.
The problem with this conversation is that it's so long in the tooth having had 2+ (+ = all the 3e knockoffs) editions to be polluted by it, and several editions before it that everyone lionizes for various reasons, legitimate or not, that we tend to forget the expanse of time we covered in our experiences to land on our opinions.
My personal opinion, as someone that ran a god-awful amount of 3.x - from the start, through 3.5, into Pathfinder, into knockoffs, and who wrote quite a bit about it in Dragon, and a few products for it... I feel *really* comfortable in my opinion which is:
It was a beautiful disaster that lost its way because its mechanical DNA is designed to implode on contact with people that actually want to roleplay without mechanics that get in the way. And that's a LOT of gamers.
A lot of people don't get the comparison to Magic the Gathering - but I totally get it. Magic the Gathering, whether people understand it out not is supposed to be a story of two or more wizards fighting a mighty battle to destroy each other, and their cards and the mechanics that govern them are the implied narrative of the story. Abstract as it might seem. Most people just play it as a card game. The same is true of 3e, but the mechanics are more granular. And because 3e tries to emulate aspects of the editions of D&D that came before, the abstractions tend to not work well with the mechanics and vice versa.
These sacred cows - HP, AC (Ascending or Descdending - take your pick) Classes, Proficiencies/Skills, Vancian/Spellpoints, and "balance" (across all the subsystems) creates an endless mount of needless complexity for the *purpose* of playing a game where you pretend to be an Elf.
3.x showed us older players much of what we suspected: the paralysis of system bloat over good GM Adjudication. From the design side, the idea was that the system would help new GM's run things at a higher level with mechanical inputs. But the fact is its a big mechcanical mess if you run RAW beyond 13th level. Sure you can do it. I've done it many times, but most GM's that aren't particularly experienced will wither under the weight of numbers and mechanics you have to deal with... just to play a fantasy-superhero.
This complexity *is* directly what led to the OSR. Something a lot of people don't consider is that the relative simplicity of the OSR is led by GM's with a lot of experience (generally) They are people that have gone the distance. I'm pretty confident 3e, 4e, and 5e will not be editions that will be referenced backwards kindly in terms of design emulation. I'm sure there will be attempts, but I'd be pretty surprised to see any get real traction.
Ironically I personally detested 4e as a D&D RPG, but I think it could be trimmed down and made into a fairly snazzy tabletop skirmish game - like Talisman on roids.
3e? I look at it as a catalyst of the marketing power of the brand more than a game-design worth pursuing. And we all *wanted* it to be great. In the end... it brought us here - which for many of us is a *very* different place than where we started with 3e.
For example - I play D&D using an entirely different system. I have moved entirely away from D&D system mechanics, and I'd played deeply into 5e after having started in 1978. So I look at D&D as an ex with good style, if I'm being kind. And I currently date a different girl that has that same style, but a different way of effecting it.
So thanks 3e.
I like 3.0/3.5 a lot. It got me back into gaming after about a 10 year hiatus. I ran an Eberron game for two years and took the PCs from 1st to 21st level, and remains a favorite gaming memory.
I liked 3rd as it fixed some issues I had, mostly streamlining saves and some mechanics, while allowing better options for character customization. It did suffer from feat and class bloat, and I get why not everybody loves it, but it was just what I needed right then.
These days, I prefer Cypher since it's easier to run and easier to do different genres and settings. I just picked up DCC and like its simplicity so far, though the magic system is a bit overly convoluted.
Quote from: tenbones on August 22, 2021, 11:52:44 PM
Ironically I personally detested 4e as a D&D RPG, but I think it could be trimmed down and made into a fairly snazzy tabletop skirmish game - like Talisman on roids.
It's actually really good for a kind of fantasy MCU vibe - there is decent support for PC characterisation (as Big Damn Heroes) as well as tactical combat. You have these long drawn out action sequences, then quiet intermissions with the talky/social stuff. IME 4e Players spend more time on social relations, romance etc than in most (actual) D&D-type fantasy games, because they know their Captain America expy is fairly unlikely to die next session.
Quote from: S'mon on August 24, 2021, 09:25:12 AM
Quote from: tenbones on August 22, 2021, 11:52:44 PM
Ironically I personally detested 4e as a D&D RPG, but I think it could be trimmed down and made into a fairly snazzy tabletop skirmish game - like Talisman on roids.
It's actually really good for a kind of fantasy MCU vibe - there is decent support for PC characterisation (as Big Damn Heroes) as well as tactical combat. You have these long drawn out action sequences, then quiet intermissions with the talky/social stuff. IME 4e Players spend more time on social relations, romance etc than in most (actual) D&D-type fantasy games, because they know their Captain America expy is fairly unlikely to die next session.
This has been my experience as well. There have been entire sessions of 4E where dice haven't even been needed because the PCs are too busy with social interactions to actually head out on an adventure. The fact that those sections were free form and essentially rulings not rules meant all sorts of interesting things could happen.
And, yes, I think a big part of why things leaned that way was that they felt safe enough in their PC's ability to survive that forming attachments that extended beyond the immediate was worth the investment. You could begin a relationship (romantic or otherwise), go have an adventure and reasonably expect to pick it up again after the adventure was done.
It's honestly why PCs in 4E felt much more well-rounded than in prior editions of D&D. You weren't as worried about immediate survival and so could basically move up that whole "hierarchy of needs" chart into the emotional and intellectual levels.
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 24, 2021, 09:55:49 AM
This has been my experience as well. There have been entire sessions of 4E where dice haven't even been needed because the PCs are too busy with social interactions to actually head out on an adventure. The fact that those sections were free form and essentially rulings not rules meant all sorts of interesting things could happen.
And, yes, I think a big part of why things leaned that way was that they felt safe enough in their PC's ability to survive that forming attachments that extended beyond the immediate was worth the investment. You could begin a relationship (romantic or otherwise), go have an adventure and reasonably expect to pick it up again after the adventure was done.
It's honestly why PCs in 4E felt much more well-rounded than in prior editions of D&D. You weren't as worried about immediate survival and so could basically move up that whole "hierarchy of needs" chart into the emotional and intellectual levels.
Yup (sadly IME 3e with non-powegamer players is the reverse, with lots of sudden shocking perma-death even of high level PCs).
I'm certainly no fan of RPGnet and I hate their phrase "Mother May I", but there is something about the way a 4e PC can
just do stuff without any need for GM adjudication, that many players find very empowering. "I leap in front of her and take the Troll's blow" "I run up the Gargantuan Carrion Crawler's back, plunging my swords into its neck" - in 'real D&D' that would be "I attempt to..." "Roll... Athletics"; in 4e there is no GM adjudication, the PC is using a hardcoded power to get the result. This has a significant psychological effect on the player IME, they start to feel like superheroes, not hardscrabble adventurers in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam. This is so even when the 4e PC is objectively weaker than the eg 3e PC. And this then feeds into how they play the character out of combat; they start acting like Black Widow or Thor or Iron Man (if Iron Man couldn't fly, but still had a mean power suit). :D
Best thing that came from it was ascending armor class, but overall I did enjoy it. The game only got really stupid once you introduced power gaming into the mix. The biggest complaint I had was the disparity between a power gamer and non power gamer in the same party. Encounter the whole party struggles with only for the power gamer to use one spell and kill it ten times over again in one shot. That and a minor gripe about too many charts needing references, oh and lets not forget that magic items are assumed to be part of character progression. But neither of those things are too hard to work around.
As a gm i hated that so many monsters had feats, classes, and special rules not explained on the stat block. I had a rule where I would approve only a small number of books, everything else was case by case and a loose guideline to maximum number of multiclassing.
On the other hand, prestige classes were cool, the introduction of proper skills were good and saving throws that were easy enough to explain. Going a bit into pathfinder here but the idea of flat footed and touch ac were also a great idea when paired with concepts like firearms.
Quote from: S'mon on August 24, 2021, 10:32:49 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 24, 2021, 09:55:49 AM
This has been my experience as well. There have been entire sessions of 4E where dice haven't even been needed because the PCs are too busy with social interactions to actually head out on an adventure. The fact that those sections were free form and essentially rulings not rules meant all sorts of interesting things could happen.
And, yes, I think a big part of why things leaned that way was that they felt safe enough in their PC's ability to survive that forming attachments that extended beyond the immediate was worth the investment. You could begin a relationship (romantic or otherwise), go have an adventure and reasonably expect to pick it up again after the adventure was done.
It's honestly why PCs in 4E felt much more well-rounded than in prior editions of D&D. You weren't as worried about immediate survival and so could basically move up that whole "hierarchy of needs" chart into the emotional and intellectual levels.
Yup (sadly IME 3e with non-powegamer players is the reverse, with lots of sudden shocking perma-death even of high level PCs).
I'm certainly no fan of RPGnet and I hate their phrase "Mother May I", but there is something about the way a 4e PC can just do stuff without any need for GM adjudication, that many players find very empowering. "I leap in front of her and take the Troll's blow" "I run up the Gargantuan Carrion Crawler's back, plunging my swords into its neck" - in 'real D&D' that would be "I attempt to..." "Roll... Athletics"; in 4e there is no GM adjudication, the PC is using a hardcoded power to get the result. This has a significant psychological effect on the player IME, they start to feel like superheroes, not hardscrabble adventurers in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam. This is so even when the 4e PC is objectively weaker than the eg 3e PC. And this then feeds into how they play the character out of combat; they start acting like Black Widow or Thor or Iron Man (if Iron Man couldn't fly, but still had a mean power suit). :D
PC's just do stuff... and how. One of the things my own system (that started as a spiritual successor to 4E since no one at all seemed interested in actually supporting that niche*) focuses on with its backgrounds (which aren't 4E or even 5e backgrounds but rather everything non-combat about a class in prior editions) is providing special abilities for outside of combat (though some can also be used in combat) akin to those 4E provided inside of combat.
For example, one possible Aristocrat boon is "Cover the Gaff" which allows you to replace an ally's Persuade check** with your own. One of the Outlaw's is "Distracting Words" that lets you use your Deceit check in place of an ally's Stealth check (and if you'd flank the target when doing so, the ally has total cover for purposes of moving without breaking cover). The military background has boons like "Combat Engineering" which allows you to coordinate excavating trenches and making berms in rapid time and "Fortify Positions" to coordinate placing medium terrain and cover against ranged attacks.
Each background has 50+ boon options (25 basic, 25+ specific to the background), starts with two and picks up an additional one at 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15, so there's a great degree of tailoring possible and options that range from very simple (extra skills, skill bonuses) to complex (the aforementioned Engineering and Fortification boons can utterly reshape a battlefield if you have time to prepare and sufficient allies) in the same way the combat side has options ranging from "I hit it with my sword" to overlapping talents and class abilities that require tracking finite resources.
* It wasn't enough for WotC, but I think the niche is big enough that a "1000 true fans" approach is viable for a smaller publisher.
** Persuade is basically the Reaction roll for anything beyond basic haggling over price or a performance. Success means they take your words in the best possible way, but they won't do anything ridiculous... you could get a 35 on your check and the king will take your suggestion that they hand the crown over to you as a well-meaning joke (instead of throwing you into the dungeon for your impertinence), but would never hand the kingdom over to you.
Extreme rules bloat, Martial/caster disparity, Awful monster building rules
Pick Fantasy Craft or even Pathfinder 2 instead
The less I say about 3.5 the better. Vidgrip really nailed my opinion of 3e and 3.5e. I really despise the design philosophy that undergirded that whole era. The way the WotC applied the MtG "system mastery" school of game design really rubbed me the wrong way. It felt like the game designers were trying to dictate to the DM how their game will be run and dictating to the player how their character will be played instead of creating a toolkit and letting the players and the GM go wild. It also really makes me think that the rigidity and "house of cards" nature of 3.5 was not a bug, it was a feature. After all, we can't have a mere mortal like a DM going in and tampering with the work of the all-knowing Monte Cooke now can we?
My views on DnD 3rd edition are also likely shaped by my experiences. I first started to get into Tabletop RPG gaming in 1996. The TRPG scene seemed bright and vibrant to my young eyes anyway. There were all these cool worlds I couldn't wait to explore. Then I went to Korea for 3 years. In the days before ubiquitous broadband internet, you really were isolated living on an Army base over there. When I came back, it was like the K-T Extinction event had hit. All of the TRPG publishers I'd wanted to get back into were either gone or in hibernation and in their place was a flood of 3.5 OGL crap. 3.5 is NOT a universal RPG but the market forced publishers to act as if it were. What I found was increasingly, developers were using the 3.5 rules as a base and writing their worlds and lore around the pre-existing rules and baked in cosmology and magic rather than trying to change the rules to fit what they wanted to do because trying to go into 3.5 and change anything is so very annoying, but it's all there was. Don't like it? Tough tits. Have fun rooting through clearance bins and the games sections of used bookstores.
Holy crap, that was a rant and a half. My opinion on DnD 5e is mostly neutral. It manages to avoid so many of the pitfalls that annoyed me about 3rd edition. It's less rigid and modular in ways that most RPGs are. If you don't like a rule in 5e, it's a lot easier to go in and change it. Case in point: I despise Vancian casting. It think it's boring, needlessly onerous and sucks all of the fun out of playing a mage. 5e helpfully includes Spell Points rules right there in the DMG. It's still not my favorite RPG. The monsters can be a little too HP spongey for my tastes. The Advantage/Disadvantage system really feels like they prioritized simplicity over playability.
Now that I've discovered the OSR, I don't think I'll ever look back.
Quote from: S'mon on August 24, 2021, 10:32:49 AMI'm certainly no fan of RPGnet and I hate their phrase "Mother May I", but there is something about the way a 4e PC can just do stuff without any need for GM adjudication, that many players find very empowering. "I leap in front of her and take the Troll's blow" "I run up the Gargantuan Carrion Crawler's back, plunging my swords into its neck" - in 'real D&D' that would be "I attempt to..." "Roll... Athletics"; in 4e there is no GM adjudication, the PC is using a hardcoded power to get the result.
This would just move the "Mother May I" onto character generation. Putting more emphasis on rules limiting what PCs can do by only letting them do what's specifically laid out beforehand. I had this problem with FFG's Star Wars rules. Each new class book added new powers that only certain characters could get when those things were often something all characters could do before the book was released.
But I never had my players not trying new things IMC so this is a solution to a problem I don't have.
Quote from: hedgehobbit on August 24, 2021, 04:21:51 PM
This would just move the "Mother May I" onto character generation.
GMs normally say what sources are available before players make PCs, so no not really.
Not being able to do things you don't have a Feat for is much more a 3e thing I think. The 4e Powers are more about being able to auto-succeed (1/encounter or 1/day) at some cool trick, that otherwise would require a die roll, probably Athletics or Acrobatics vs monster Fortitude or Reflex defence, or maybe Bluff vs its Will defence. So there's the normal adjudication type system there (only much more streamlined than in 3e), but the (super) Powers let you not roll and just do it.
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 24, 2021, 11:29:54 AM
Quote from: S'mon on August 24, 2021, 10:32:49 AM
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 24, 2021, 09:55:49 AM
This has been my experience as well. There have been entire sessions of 4E where dice haven't even been needed because the PCs are too busy with social interactions to actually head out on an adventure. The fact that those sections were free form and essentially rulings not rules meant all sorts of interesting things could happen.
And, yes, I think a big part of why things leaned that way was that they felt safe enough in their PC's ability to survive that forming attachments that extended beyond the immediate was worth the investment. You could begin a relationship (romantic or otherwise), go have an adventure and reasonably expect to pick it up again after the adventure was done.
It's honestly why PCs in 4E felt much more well-rounded than in prior editions of D&D. You weren't as worried about immediate survival and so could basically move up that whole "hierarchy of needs" chart into the emotional and intellectual levels.
Yup (sadly IME 3e with non-powegamer players is the reverse, with lots of sudden shocking perma-death even of high level PCs).
I'm certainly no fan of RPGnet and I hate their phrase "Mother May I", but there is something about the way a 4e PC can just do stuff without any need for GM adjudication, that many players find very empowering. "I leap in front of her and take the Troll's blow" "I run up the Gargantuan Carrion Crawler's back, plunging my swords into its neck" - in 'real D&D' that would be "I attempt to..." "Roll... Athletics"; in 4e there is no GM adjudication, the PC is using a hardcoded power to get the result. This has a significant psychological effect on the player IME, they start to feel like superheroes, not hardscrabble adventurers in Fantasy Fucking Vietnam. This is so even when the 4e PC is objectively weaker than the eg 3e PC. And this then feeds into how they play the character out of combat; they start acting like Black Widow or Thor or Iron Man (if Iron Man couldn't fly, but still had a mean power suit). :D
PC's just do stuff... and how. One of the things my own system (that started as a spiritual successor to 4E since no one at all seemed interested in actually supporting that niche*) focuses on with its backgrounds (which aren't 4E or even 5e backgrounds but rather everything non-combat about a class in prior editions) is providing special abilities for outside of combat (though some can also be used in combat) akin to those 4E provided inside of combat.
I found in my experience the PCs only did stuff that was written down on their action cards.
Which usually involved about 5 minutes of looking through said action cards to see if they had anything applicable.
Quote from: Chris24601 on August 24, 2021, 09:55:49 AM
This has been my experience as well. There have been entire sessions of 4E where dice haven't even been needed because the PCs are too busy with social interactions to actually head out on an adventure.
I am overjoyed that you and your players have enjoyed this kind of game. I sincerely hope you continue to as well. However, I can't imagine a lower circle of RPG-hell for me than this. Thank God I have never had a gaming group that inclined that way! They want to roll some dice and kill some shit...
In general, I really did not enjoy 3e and I played a lot of D20 games before just tossing them aside completely.
Except for True20. I found that enjoyable and the best version of the D20 ruleset, and I'd happily play that again in the future if somebody sharp ran it.
Quote from: S'mon on August 24, 2021, 10:32:49 AMthere is something about the way a 4e PC can just do stuff without any need for GM adjudication, that many players find very empowering."
I like 4E, but PCs "just doing stuff," isn't exactly how I would characterize it. What a PC can do is pretty defined in 4E and if it's not on a powercard... Well, then it's down to how your group & GM runs the game.
Worse is that most of the stuff you can "just do" on a powercard has an attack roll with baseline 50% chance of failure.
3E was a multiplayer (more than two) skirmish wargame disguised as an rpg and 3.5 was similar.
4th was a less fuzzy skirmish wargame that homogenized the characters somewhat and baked hp recovery into the fighting and tried to set up more party synergy and told the GM's warband how to act so the GM didn't have to worry about anything, just follow the "ai" directions for bloodied or player has fire or whatever.
I also liked True 20 a lot as it was like 3rd with a lot of barnacles knocked off but I never did more than the player's manual and don't know what the splats were like. I also had a good experience with D20 Modern, and I also liked playing Castles and Crusades quite a bit though their support products didn't do that much for me.
I always saw 3e as more a game of 'Combat as War' as compared to 4e as more a game of 'Combat as Sport'
Quote from: Zelen on August 26, 2021, 10:24:01 PM
I like 4E, but PCs "just doing stuff," isn't exactly how I would characterize it. What a PC can do is pretty defined in 4E and if it's not on a powercard... Well, then it's down to how your group & GM runs the game.
Worse is that most of the stuff you can "just do" on a powercard has an attack roll with baseline 50% chance of failure.
I meant you can just do the feats on the powercards, which are like superhero signature moves. Certainly at high level they tend to include a lot of auto success (Effect) like the Ranger who could run up huge monsters. But even the 3rd level Brawler Fighter IMC last week could automatically swap places with the Wizard and take the hit herself, saving the wizard from being killed by the Troll.
Baseline hit success - typical 4e PC attack vs AC is Level+6 (though it's often better, my 4e Fighter-1 has +10 to-hit) vs monster AC Level+14, or 8+ to hit, 65%. Deduct 2 for attacks vs F/R/W.
My Fighter-1 is optimised to hit, +10 vs AC 15 gives an 80% chance to hit (roll 5+) and he has 1/Encounter Heroic Effort, +4 to hit after die roll, so effectively only misses on a natural 1.
Quote from: Shasarak on August 27, 2021, 12:02:17 AM
I always saw 3e as more a game of 'Combat as War' as compared to 4e as more a game of 'Combat as Sport'
3e you tend to win it in the character build, and then in the pre-fight spell buffing. 4e is very much CAS and emphasises team synergy, yup. Neither is very CAW, pre-3e D&D is much more CAW.
Quote from: S'mon on August 27, 2021, 03:06:23 AM
Quote from: Shasarak on August 27, 2021, 12:02:17 AM
I always saw 3e as more a game of 'Combat as War' as compared to 4e as more a game of 'Combat as Sport'
3e you tend to win it in the character build, and then in the pre-fight spell buffing. 4e is very much CAS and emphasises team synergy, yup. Neither is very CAW, pre-3e D&D is much more CAW.
Pre-3e the emphasis was on trying to by pass the fighting altogether. You got much more of your XPs from the treasure and less chance of insta death (interestingly not a zero chance of instanta death from your treasure)
Not saying this is the only difference or even critical, but one advantage that 3E has over 4E is that 3E comes after 2E while 4E comes after 3E. Which means that the background knowledge of how to play older D&D is more present in the audience for 3E than 4E, despite the fact that neither game does a very good job of communicating it.
This is most noticeable when getting into discussions with GMs and players that started with 3E and have never looked back at earlier editions at all. Their frame of reference for 4E and 5E is different than those who started earlier. This is true regardless of dislike or like of 3E, 4E, or 5E.