Why did 3.0 need a 3.5 update?

[hushblade]

I'm not really familiar with 3.0 rules, was it so dysfunctional that they really had to just say "screw this edition, we're making a 3.5"? What's the deal?

[Eldariel]

I'm not really familiar with 3.0 rules, was it so dysfunctional that they really had to just say "screw this edition, we're making a 3.5"? What's the deal?

There were a lot of problems they wanted to correct. Unfortunately they corrected all the wrong ones. Still, 3.5 is overall a bit more fair and simple; for instance, TWF is less awful than in 3.0, classes got some more class features and having to dip 2 levels to get all the relevant stuff is more common than 1-level dips from 3.0 and obviously 3.0 had the 3.0 Haste which gave you an extra action (obscenely OP for level 3 spell; also, out-of-this-world numerical benefits on top of that) along with stronger versions of a handful of other toned down spells.

Then crit stacking got removed (entirely unnecessary change, removes one route you could take for martial builds for no gain), ITWF and GTWF were introduced, Power Attack got significantly improved, DR got reworked (into materials, damage types and such from +X) & so on.


3.0 to 3.5 is really much like 3.5 to PF; they don't fix all the original issues but they do address some of the individual problems while also fixing some non-problems. It's kinda like a broad stroke that hits some problems, some non-problems and results in a slightly more polished result.

PF basically optimized class progressions to make single-classing viable, made Favored Class system remotely workable, made the Polymorph-line significantly more fair, fixed few individual spells, made Power Attack easier to use and more constant in power level, made Archers better, screwed combat maneuvers some, etc. It's a very comparable to what happened between 3.0 and 3.5, right down to the skill system consolidation.

[Urpriest]

It's a big pile of little things. Just to state a few that weren't in the above post:

Consistency in skill points. Used to be animals got a set number of feats and skills, unrelated to hit dice.

Restrictions on Druid Animal Companions, and the associated expansion of the Animal type to include Beasts: more consistency here, and a somewhat more balanced and understandable system.

Magic Immunity changed to be merely "Infinite Spell Resistance", since the old version was unusably broad.

Ranger becoming actually worthwhile sometimes beyond a one level dip.

And well, lots of other things. 3.0 wasn't like 4e, it didn't have a regular "patch" schedule. To do all these basic updates, a new "edition" was needed.

[eggs]

A lot of minor details improved - especially in terms of fiddliness.

And WotC got to sell all their 3.0 content again. That was probably a part of it.

[Malak'ai]

@Eldariel: Then crit stacking got removed (entirely unnecessary change, removes one route you could take for martial builds for no gain)

Can't agree with this more. I saw no point in not allowing a magical weapon ability (or class feature) and a feat that gave you the knowledge of how to use that weapon better so it was more more likely to crit stack. In games I run I always house rule it so they do. When I got asked by a player about it I explained it bacisally like I did just then. One is a weapon bonus, one is personal weapon knowledge, mutually exclusive, they stack.

[Roguenewb]

Don't forget the whole "combat facing" thing. At one point, IIRC, a horse facing sideways took more damage than one facing directly forward against a fireball.

[ryu]

Well more direct heat contact I suppose. That would almost kinda make sense. Not completely as the face is a more vital area, but it's not outright silly.

[sonofzeal]

Well more direct heat contact I suppose. That would almost kinda make sense. Not completely as the face is a more vital area, but it's not outright silly.
Not silly, but overly complicated.



IMO, 3.0 to 3.5 was a substantial enough change to warrant the reprint. DR changed, several skills changed, Psionics was completely scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up, several classes were substantially altered, Monsters-as-PCs was substantially altered, a whole bunch of spells were re-written, a number of fiddly bits like facing were removed, some feats were tweaked, monsters.... basically just about everything in the game got changed at least a little.

[motoko's ghost]

and the space each creature takes up was changed to a square and capped at 30ft on a side(except for 1 or 2 creatures) to simplify things for the DM

[Metahuman1]

Oh, and in 3.0, Bonuses on your arrows stacked with bonuses on your bow and, which made sense, since having a better bow AND having better arrows would logically improve your effectiveness as an archer then having a better bow OR better arrows but not both.


In 3.5, those bonuses overlap, meaning that a cleric with a few spells and a couple of feats is a better archer then any other class in the game, even the one's designed to be archers like the ranger and the Arcane archer PrC.

[Blisstake]

@Eldariel: Then crit stacking got removed (entirely unnecessary change, removes one route you could take for martial builds for no gain)

Can't agree with this more. I saw no point in not allowing a magical weapon ability (or class feature) and a feat that gave you the knowledge of how to use that weapon better so it was more more likely to crit stack. In games I run I always house rule it so they do. When I got asked by a player about it I explained it bacisally like I did just then. One is a weapon bonus, one is personal weapon knowledge, mutually exclusive, they stack.

In core, I suppose it would be acceptable, but I think they wanted to prevent the potential of having a crit range from 1-20 with enough stacking with using other sources. Personally, I feel that regardless of balance, criticals should feel special, and never more statistically likely than a regular attack.

[Eldariel]

In core, I suppose it would be acceptable, but I think they wanted to prevent the potential of having a crit range from 1-20 with enough stacking with using other sources. Personally, I feel that regardless of balance, criticals should feel special, and never more statistically likely than a regular attack.

If you truly focus on critting - that is, have a god on your side, have magically enhanced weapon and have honed your own skills to utter perfection - then I'd say it's ok to crit quite often. 9-20 was very reachable (anymore than that that required quite a bit of nonsense already) but it's still reasonable IMHO. I mean, not every martial type is like that.

Hell, constant critting isn't even all that optimal; crit immunity, base damage, etc. are still hugely important. Crit focus is fairly rare in the end; most characters would still focus on area control, damage multipliers and the like and crit as normal. I don't really see the specialness making that big a difference far as building for crit goes.

[Blisstake]

I don't really see the specialness making that big a difference far as building for crit goes.

It doesn't. My feelings over the matter have nothing to do with optimization or combat efficiency.

[Eldariel]

It doesn't. My feelings over the matter have nothing to do with optimization or combat efficiency.

I mean, I don't think having one build where crits are common and a dozen where they aren't removes much of their specialness.

[Dr.Epic]

From what I could tell, it was a lot of minor, trivial stuff that they thought need an improvement. Really, the rules are very similar.

[deuxhero]

Then crit stacking got removed (entirely unnecessary change, removes one route you could take for martial builds for no gain),

Vorpal weapons activated on any crit in 3.0.

It's redundant with the changes to vorpal, but there is a reason.

[Answerer]

Worth pointing out: 3.0 psionics were awful and nearly unusable. The Expanded Psionics Handbook is the second-best book WotC ever printed for 3.5 (were it not for the Soulknife, it would give even Tome of Battle a run for its money).

[sonofzeal]

From what I could tell, it was a lot of minor, trivial stuff that they thought need an improvement. Really, the rules are very similar.
It was, however, a significantly bigger change than the sum total of all errata released since then. I think that makes it worthy of a different sub-number, though it's obviously not different enough to be an entirely new edition.

[deuterio12]

Restrictions on Druid Animal Companions, and the associated expansion of the Animal type to include Beasts: more consistency here, and a somewhat more balanced and understandable system.

Balanced? That was BALANCED?

Suddenly the druid gets acess to basically twice the variety of creatures for animal companion when beasts (read:dinossaurs) become a viable choice.

But wait, you can then pick whatever you want whenever you want instead of actually having to search and bond with a specific animal companion. Also completely disposeable, whitout any penalty whatsoever for using them as cheap cannon fodder.

And then said animal companions get a bunch of bonus and advancment for free?

And that's not mentioning that both the druid's wildshape and spellcasting was greatly improved at the same time.

[Roguenewb]

3.5 was a step in the right direction, and Pathfinder is better still. It leaves a bit to be desired (GOOD LORD CLASS BALANCE!) But its better

[Malak'ai]

In core, I suppose it would be acceptable, but I think they wanted to prevent the potential of having a crit range from 1-20 with enough stacking with using other sources. Personally, I feel that regardless of balance, criticals should feel special, and never more statistically likely than a regular attack.

So a Barbarian using a great axe, who has trained for years to perfect his abilities with said greataxe should get no better bonus' than some plain-jane fighter who just happens to pick up a Keen greataxe.
Or a Ranger who can shoot the flea's off a dogs back can't pinpoint a weak spot to exploit any more than a Sorcerer who just happens to have a spell that makes it more likely he will get a lucky hit?

I don't think so.
Also, Keen wont stack with other spells that give the same effect, so even a combat focused Bard with a rapier will only get a crit range of 12-20 when using Improved Crit.

[Togo]

The rules mechanics beame a lot more consistent under the hood. Extrapolating to unusual circumstances is much easier in 3.5. If it had stayed as 3.0, I might not still be playing.

[Tvtyrant]

It doesn't. My feelings over the matter have nothing to do with optimization or combat efficiency.

Personally I feel that crits represent finesse in combat better even than sneak attack. A crit-fisher to me is someone who focuses on hitting veins, arteries and joints. So a really good crit-fisher is someone who has spent almost all of their effort becoming almost a battle-surgeon, with great advantage against opponents who it works on but things like oozes are just as detrimental to them as to a sneak attacker.

[holywhippet]

One interesting change was the bard spell list. Some spells remained, but otherwise they heavily changed what spells were available to them. Arguably for the better, I'm still not sure why 3.0 bards could cast plane shift.

[Hecuba]

Worth pointing out: 3.0 psionics were awful and nearly unusable.

I disagree. They were unusable with the core magic system, but the internal structure was actually quite inspired at points. The internal balance attention was actually quite good, even to the extent of the balance of the discipline lists against each other: they merely gave none of the attention necessary to balance it relative to the rest of the 3rd edition system.

If you're ever looking at a d20 Psionics only game, I heavily reccomend it as a starting point over 3.5 psionics (though you'll likely have to port in psionic monsters from 3.5 for variety's sake).

(I'll readily admit psionic combat modes were unnecessarily complex, but since just ignoring that section is a workable fix I'd don't consider it quite as pressing a problem as do some others).

[eggs]

I disagree. They were unusable with the core magic system, but the internal structure was actually quite inspired at points. The internal balance attention was actually quite good, even to the extent of the balance of the discipline lists against each other: they merely gave none of the attention necessary to balance it relative to the rest of the 3rd edition system.
*cough*PsionicCombat*cough*

[sonofzeal]

I disagree. They were unusable with the core magic system, but the internal structure was actually quite inspired at points. The internal balance attention was actually quite good, even to the extent of the balance of the discipline lists against each other: they merely gave none of the attention necessary to balance it relative to the rest of the 3rd edition system.

If you're ever looking at a d20 Psionics only game, I heavily reccomend it as a starting point over 3.5 psionics (though you'll likely have to port in psionic monsters from 3.5 for variety's sake).

(I'll readily admit psionic combat modes were unnecessarily complex, but since just ignoring that section is a workable fix I'd don't consider it quite as pressing a problem as do some others).
Ehehehehe... psionic combat... yeah.



Originally Posted by AntiDjinn on the WotC Boards

I have used this model before, but to really appreciate how this "class feature" worked you should see how it would apply if ported to mainstream D&D where they haven't been conditioned to accept inferior mechanics without question. Lets take the big sacred moo, a Cleric's undead turning ability:

DM: "Before we get started, Cleric, I just want you to know that I am instituting some changes in your turn undead class feature that will make your class more different and give it a unique divine mechanic."

Player: "OK. How does it work now?"

DM: "Well, for starters, when you attempt to turn undead you will now have to burn a spell."

Player: "A spell???? What level?"

DM: "Different levels. It depends on what turning mode you want to use. Sanctified Gesture takes a level 1, Divine Dance of Power takes a level 2, High Holly Homina Homina takes a level 3, and...."

Player: "Wait, I assume I will get a bonus on the roll based on the level of spell slot I sacrifice?"

DM: "Sometimes you will. Other times you will get a penalty based on the turning defense mode the opponent selects. Turning and turning defense modes will interact on a table. The table determines the actual DC of the roll, not the level of the spell slot burned. Choosing a given defense mode may actually mean you pay a spell to get a penalty on the save, but it will still be better than being defenseless."

Player: "The undead will get defense modes?"

DM: "Sure, so will you. Each round you will select a turning attack mode and a defense mode. In fact, you will need to select a defense mode against each undead opponent each and every round and each will cost you spell slots."

Player: "Wwwwwwhat????!!!!!! What if I am facing undead who do not cast spells, I assume they won't get to mount a defense?"

DM: "It doesn't matter if you face undead without casting ability because their turning and turning defense modes are free."

Player: "Wait a minute! This is stupid! One of my 3rd level spell slots could be spent on Searing Light which fries undead; why would I ever spend it on an attack mode that might help me on a turning attempt? And why would I ever take a turning defense mode, much less a separate one vs. each undead opponent? I would simply choose to ignore undead or cast spells against them or go at them with weapons. I would have to have brain damage to choose to turn with these rules!"

DM: "If you fail to mount a defense then each unblocked undead gets a special +8 bonus to hit you for having this wonderful class feature and choosing not to use it. They also get to drain your stats if they hit. This will apply also to anyone who adds a level of Cleric; multiclassing will be very flavorful."

Player: "But I am a spellcaster, I need to be able to cast spells. How can I do my job if my spell slots get sucked away every time we run into undead?"

DM: "Well, how can you do your job if you are dead or reduced to a mindless state? You need to use your spells this way or you may not live long enough to cast them anyway."

Player: Head down, silently weeping into his hands.

DM: "I should mention too that you will be able to make turn undead attempts vs. nonundead; if you succeed they will be stunned for a few rounds. Of course, everyone who does not have this feature will get a huge bonus on the save DC. The best part: If you blow a 5th level spell to use High Holy Hokey Pokey then everyone in a large area could be stunned for a long while and they don't get a bonus vs. this one mode -- that makes the entire system usable and balanced."

Player: "They should all be stunned if they ever see me willingly use these rules. This is preposterous! I need my spells to heal and buff and perform all the functions of a Cleric. How am I going to be of any use to the party if I hemorrhage spell slots every time we run into undead?"

DM: "That is the beauty of it: You get to choose whether to use your spell slots as they were intended or save your own hide by using them to turn. Come on and at least give it a chance. It will be a mechanic unique to your class so it must be a benefit. You don't want to be just another spellcaster do you? This will add so much flavor and.... Hey! Get him off of me!"

Player: "How ya like that fist flavor?"

Also, didn't each discipline use a different prime attribute, including one based off Con? I always got the impression that one was considered unfairly good for that reason alone.

[Hecuba]

Ehehehehe... psionic combat... yeah.

Yeah. The biggest issue with the psionic combat modes is that the way they are set up, there is no compelling reason for them not to be powers. Lots of complexity for very little payoff.


Also, didn't each discipline use a different prime attribute, including one based off Con? I always got the impression that one was considered unfairly good for that reason alone.

Correct. As a result, the psion was significantly closer to something like 6 classes than 1. Psychometabolism as a discipline means you had more HP, but powers from psychometabolism focused on things that would traditionally bring you into melee (DR, natural attacks, touch attacks, etc), so that wasn't horrible.

[Killer Angel]

I'm not really familiar with 3.0 rules, was it so dysfunctional that they really had to just say "screw this edition, we're making a 3.5"? What's the deal?

The long answers were already been given.

The short one is: to make more money. (call me cynical...)

[DigoDragon]

Some of the tables in the 3.5 book were made a bit easier to look at.

[Ashtagon]

I'm not really familiar with 3.0 rules, was it so dysfunctional that they really had to just say "screw this edition, we're making a 3.5"? What's the deal?

There were a number of basic problems with 3.0. The biggest of these was that sales were starting to drop off.

[Runestar]

IMO, 3.5 was a step in the right direction. Only issue however, is that the designers were still too conservative and didn't go far enough to address the key underlying issues. While not outright broken, it quickly became clear that they couldn't release more supplements without addressing the problems (which in turn allowed them to reprint revised versions of existing 3.0 material. :smallannoyed:

Some glaring problems.

1) 3.0 haste. You know something is wrong when every spellcaster either has it prepared, or a potion of haste included in its stat-block, and every encounter starts with it casting haste, followed by unloading 2-3 attacks each round. :smalleek:

2) Spell DCs - it was too easy in 3.0 to stack save DCs so high that it became nigh impossible to save against. Spell power was revised to boost caster lv instead in 3.5. However, magic was still for most part game-breaking, they merely shifted the focus from SoDs to battlefield-control.

3) Non-casters got more love. Rangers actually had class features that were both flavourful and useful, paladins got more uses of smite (but still too few), bards had more skills, power-attack made 2-HFing viable. Unfortunately, fighters only received intimidate as a class skill (I refuse to recognise greater weapon focus/spec as a buff) and monks still sucked.

In time, ToB would be released, which promised to make melee fun again by giving fighter/monk/paladin-wannabes viable combat options, but the book also proved to be fairly polarising, in that players either loved or hated it intensely. :smalltongue:

Ironically, druids became even more powerful, receiving a pet fighter as a class feature and natural spell as a core feat. That's why PHB2 is considered by many as "unofficial errata" for the core classes. :smallamused:

4) Spellcasting Monsters in 3.0 tend to be too fragile; they often had too few HD, and an artificially high cr due to SLA-glut. 3.5 attempted to remedy this by trimming down their laundry list of SLAs and giving them more HD and better physical stats overall, but it wasn't until MM5 that the designers finally cracked the code on how to design quality encounter-centric monsters. Sadly, by that time, they were all but ready to jump ship to 4e. :smallfrown:

Monsters were also better designed overall, with thought given to what abilities would be useful against players of a certain lv, rather than just giving it a random array of SLAs which often proved useless in battle.

5) MIC addresses the issue of magic items often being boring and uninspiring (most notably the big six). Later supplements like SpC and complete mage tried to seduce players away from overpowered battlefield control spells by introducing themetically cool direct damage and shapeshifting spells. Not sure how successful they were though.

So yeah, it took many years, but they almost finally cracked it. :smallbiggrin:

[Qwertystop]

What was 3.0 psionics like?

[sonofzeal]

What was 3.0 psionics like?
Read the spoiler'd text here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13450368&postcount=27).

[Qwertystop]

Read the spoiler'd text here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13450368&postcount=27).

I did. I mean the main psionics, not the "combat".

[Eldariel]

Every discipline had a stat associated to them, and you needed basically every ability score skyhigh to use higher level powers from all disciplines. The amount of bonus power points was determined by your specialization if you're Psion or none at all for Psychic Warrior. Either way, you had way too few power points. And then there was the garbled mess that was psionic combat and eughh.

[Urpriest]

Balanced? That was BALANCED?

Suddenly the druid gets acess to basically twice the variety of creatures for animal companion when beasts (read:dinossaurs) become a viable choice.

But wait, you can then pick whatever you want whenever you want instead of actually having to search and bond with a specific animal companion. Also completely disposeable, whitout any penalty whatsoever for using them as cheap cannon fodder.

And then said animal companions get a bunch of bonus and advancment for free?

And that's not mentioning that both the druid's wildshape and spellcasting was greatly improved at the same time.

The only dinosaurs that were viable choices were those explicitly added to the lists. While I agree it was silly that they then proceeded to add dinosaurs to the lists, they didn't have to do so. Having a pre-set list gives much greater freedom for the designers to add new animals without balancing every choice against the Druid. It would have allowed, for example, Fleshrakers to exist without them being animal companions. Unfortunately in practice almost all of the broken choices were made legal options anyway.

As for the free advancement, it's mostly a wash. You still want to upgrade your animal companion to something new when it becomes available anyway. It just smooths things in between, increasing consistency.

Druids were able to use animal companions as cannon fodder in 3.0, since given the HD scaling of animals they almost always had more than one of them. By contrast, a 3.5 Druid only has one animal companion. You might be thinking of 3.0's request that a Druid must honestly intend to treat the animal as a friend, or the requirement that an actual animal be found, but these aren't game mechanical restrictions. They would have different consequences from campaign to campaign, and would be an incredibly inconsistent balancing factor. 3.5 moved, fundamentally, towards consistency.

Wild Shape had its ups and downs. Remember, the ability to use animal-only buffs on oneself was lost, as was gaining the Con bonus to hp of the assumed form. Spellcasting improved in some dramatic ways (spontaneous SNA), but also simply from the increase in books that affected everyone.

The emphasis on Core Natural Spell is an exaggeration. 3.0 books were cheap due to being mostly softcover, and there weren't many of them. If you were a Druid, you had Masters of the Wild, and DMs at that time didn't have an irrational hatred of splatbooks.

[Hecuba]

What was 3.0 psionics like?

There were 2 base psionic classes: Psychic Warrior and Psion. For Psions, each discipline of powers was keyed off a different stat. Psions had to specialize in a discipline, but (provided that they had high enough stats for that discipline) could know/manifest powers from other disciplines as well. The element I particularly liked was the fact that the distribution of powers across disciplines was fairly balanced: it's a good proof of concept for the idea of balancing casting schools against each other. (On this note, I misspoke earlier: the con discipline is Phychokenisis, not Psychometabolism).

People often describe Psion as a fully MAD class as a result, but you could be perfectly functional with only pumping one manifesting stat significantly. Thus you could get a vast variety of very different characters form a single class.

The availability of power points was too low: the aimed balancing point seems to have been that the psion should have enough power points to manifest their high level powers as often as casters could cast high levels spells. This meant that if you did so, you no longer had power points left to equate to the caster's remaining lower level spells. At the same point, having less longevity than full casters isn't inherently bad unless you're playing with full casters as the expected balance point.

As has been mentioned, Psionic combat modes were broken. They presented unnecessarily high complexity in execution, but little complexity in the Metagame (as the structure more or less force a pure strategy response of psionic combat modes over powers whenever dealing with psionic enemies or mixed groups and the opposite when enemies were non-psionic). This is precisely the opposite of good game design practice (complexity should be focused on the metagame strategy). But outside defending against mind flayers, you could literally just drop this element and see no other change.

As I've said before, it stands much better on its merits as an independent d20 system than as an addon to 3rd edition D&D. There are still problems, but if there were magically two other books available to make a core system with it, I would take is as significantly better balanced than 3e or 3.5 core.

[JoeMac307]

In 3.5, those bonuses overlap, meaning that a cleric with a few spells and a couple of feats is a better archer then any other class in the game, even the one's designed to be archers like the ranger and the Arcane archer PrC.

Heh, I'm not much of a optimizer, so I never realized that. Out of curiousity, which spells and feats could a cleric use to become a better archer than any other class in the game?

[eggs]

The biggest difference between 3.0 psionics, 3.5 psionics and 3e casting are their scaling mechanics.

With spells, a character learns some every level, and as the character progresses, the spells they already know become both more powerful and cheaper (proportionally to the character's total daily resources) as the caster gains more higher-level spells.

In 3.5, psionics are balanced differently. A Psion has to spend additional resources to make its spells more powerful. That means powers can become more stronger or they can become cheaper (proportionally), but not both at the same time.

In 3.0, psionics didn't adapt the augmentation mentality. Powers had a set cost and a set effect. So a power that dealt 3d6 damage at level 3 would continue dealing 3d6 damage at level 20. It's definitely the easiest system, but I always found the increasing clutter of level-inappropriate abilities hugely distasteful.