What did 3.x do right?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

There's been much talk about the missteps of 3.5, Pathfinder, and other game systems. However, what D&D 3.5 did right I'd like to get opinions on.

My list includes:

1: Spiffy spell effects! For all the complaining about Wizards and casters being awesome, there's an upside to being awesome: Being awesome! Yes, you may outshine your compatriots, but having such power is actually pretty neat, if you can find a GM who'll let you play with such power! And if you get bored of dropping Flaming Cthulus on your foes (to use a Scribblenauts Unlimited example), you can always use less powerful abilities.

2: Tome of Battle! I love the concept (and mechanics) of melee being able to do something besides auto-attack, use some skills, and keep casters alive until they hit puberty their stride, which is spell level 4 or 5 for Wizards in my opinion. (Wizard spell level 3 stuff is good too, but spell level 4 is a major mark of progress for me, if I get to use it!)

I've since revamped Tome of Battle's maneuvers and stances and added a bunch. They are here (http://www.ruleofcool.com/smf/index.php?topic=721.0)!

3: Modularity and Room to Grow. 3.5 has enough flexibility to allow for a lot of things. If you're skilled at balancing things (which means you're a system expert), you can do a lot of interesting and balanced things. ("Balanced" in this case is up to your taste. And yes, I'm aware of the tier system for classes in D&D 3.5 (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=658.0).)

4: There's a handbook for that. The MinMaxBoards Handbook Section (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?board=28.0) has the collective wisdom of tens of people over hundreds of handbooks. These handbooks aren't absolute in their advice, but they help. A lot. Handbooks are my go-to place for new classes and subsystems (like Incarnum). And yes, I've contributed some handbooks there.

5: Community. In 2000, Wizards of the Coast started its D&D boards on wizards.com. This encouraged people to talk about the game, and eventually spawned other communities, like this one. As of 2013, our community is alive and well, especially considering 3.5 is 10 years old this year and 3.0 is 13 years old.

[Barsoom]

3.x changed the mindset from "it's the DM's game, the players are along for the ride" into a more player-friendly one.

[Mithril Leaf]

Open Licensing. Anyone can head over to the SRD and learn to play without having the DM loan out their only copy of the Player's Handbook to every newbie in his mostly new group.

This is a personal one, but I honestly love how rules heavy it is. You either can or cannot do something, and you don't have random opinions from the DM or other players affecting that. It's just you and the dice.

Homebrew Friendliness. You could claim this is something the 3.X community did right, but it's really hard to find another system with such a massive wealth of content made by players and DM who actually understand balance. It's one of the few systems that beats out Bethesda RPGs for user created content.

[sonofzeal]

I'm going to second "Modularity" as the #1 thing they got right. Class-based RPGs have certain advantages (it's a really satisfying mechanic), but at a severe cost of flexibility. By making class levels modular, though, they expanded the number of possibilities exponentially. There are literally billions of combinations to play even without extensive multiclassing - and I can't even name numbers large enough to describe the number of possible levelling orders using only base classes alone. And then you have ACFs, Racial Substitutions, PrCs, feats, races, choices within the class, and gear.

The point is, 3.x took a system that traded away flexibility for benefits elsewhere, and then found a way to make it more flexible than nearly all of the competition. That's rather stunning, when you get down to it.

Too bad that 4e, and even PF to a lesser extent, failed to realize that and moved away from that core brilliancy.

[Slipperychicken]

Attack bonus vs. AC is way easier to resolve than THAC0. You practically have to smack your head into a wall for a week just to make heads or tails of THAC0, and even then it's inconvenient and you need to compute 4 different numbers on every attack roll (attack bonus, THAC0, AC, d20 roll), while in 3.0 you only need 3 (Attack bonus, AC, d20).

Saves which make sense. Only 3 saves, and it's much more intuitive what they represent and when to use them.

Player-Friendly Crafting. Materials are measured in gold pieces, which can be considered either a gain or loss, depending on your playstyle. But it does undoubtedly make crafting more convenient.

Simpler grapple rules. Still annoying, and absolutely needs further simplification, but it beats rolling d% to decide which limb you struck with every round, comparing it to a table, then rolling again to decide your auto-knockout chance.

Unified core mechanic. Basically everything is "roll d20, add modifiers", making things easier to learn and use.

More reasonable spells/day at level 1. Yeah, you complain about spells per day at low levels (~3 cantrips +2-3ish 1st level spells), and then you see earlier Wizards got... one spell. One, and that's supposed to last all day, through 4 encounters. And they didn't get any special at-wills or anything either.

[avr]

On top of many of the other points noted above - 3e put out a really good campaign setting. I like Eberron a lot.

[shadow_archmagi]

3.x changed the mindset from "it's the DM's game, the players are along for the ride" into a more player-friendly one.

I'm curious as to what favors you think influenced this!

I suppose one might immediately speculate that it's because 3e is so rules heavy- There's much less "Mr. GM sir what kind of die roll makes sense for this? Should this be worth a big bonus?" and much more "Hey, so, uh, Table 25-9B says that it takes a 26 to make golden shoes, so I'm going to make some golden shoes with that gold we got earlier. Golden shoes give a +5 to my Blingtessence Quality."


Personally, I enjoy 3.5's many, many subsystems. Playing a tome of battle character is much different from playing a psion is much different than playing an incarnate. As someone who enjoys crunching numbers, having a variety of different arrangements of numbers to crunch helps keep the game fresh.

[Slipperychicken]

On top of many of the other points noted above - 3e put out a really good campaign setting. I like Eberron a lot.

I really enjoy the Warforged race. Also it seems to have expanded people's ideas about what's possible in D&D; including things like elemental-powered airships, playable robot characters, and dinosaur-riding Halflings.

[yougi]

I'll go with what others said:

1- The Multiclass system, including the sheer number of classes/prestige classes and their distinct feels.

2- The amount of customization we can put in our characters: somewhere around 3000^20 possibilities (that's a number my calculator won't process) for a 20 level build, and that's only class-wise, before taking feats into account. Especially when 1E/2E had 11 choices (to be fair, they did put archetypes in 2E's "completes").

3- The "rules-heavy" thing, but mainly because these rules all make sense: previous editions had few rules, and those few rules made no sense, had no continuity, there was no plan, except to make people roll lots of dice.

[dysprosium]

Uniform Experience Chart: 1E and 2E had XP charts for each different class. Thieves (rogues) had the easiest level ups while the Wizards had the hardest. 2,000,000 XP meant something different to each class.

Removing Racial Class Maximums: Sure your demi humans got to multiclass but their ability to gain levels stopped long before the campaigns were over (unless they had Thief which was always "U").

And I definitely give +1 to the multiclass system that 3.X created.

[ArcturusV]

Coming from Second Edition, I have to say it's merely the uniformity of the system. It sounds silly, it sounds obvious... but it was a new thing to 3rd edition.

In second edition? You'd get 2 or 3 books as part of a "Set", which all had new material, new rules, new systems, etc. And none of them worked with any other system in second edition. I don't mean things like... Incarnates only have support in Magic of Incarnum and no other book "Doesn't work with any"...

I mean things like the books Skills and Power, Combat and Tactics, and Tome of Magic would all introduce things like Point Buy character creation, alternate rules for combat and weapons... And then you'd have something like "The ______'s Handbook" series of books. And there was no mechanical basis between the two. You really couldn't use something like the Ravager Kit from Barbarian's Handbook in the same game that you're using Skills and Powers which didn't fit into games where you were using something like Drow of the Underdark.

I mean they all kinda worked with the base Player's Handbook, Monster's Manual, DMG. But every book or small set of books spun the rules in a different direction, new interpretation, and resulted in widely divergent things.

And that is a strength 3rd edition has. Things play nice with one another. Not everything is supported in every book, obviously. But the rules are all the same across various books. Which makes it a lot easier if you want to throw together things from widely different sources. I never have to have that discussion of "No, you can't use the Shadow Mage because we're using Handbooks instead."

[Callin]

Coming from Second Edition, I have to say it's merely the uniformity of the system. It sounds silly, it sounds obvious... but it was a new thing to 3rd edition.

In second edition? You'd get 2 or 3 books as part of a "Set", which all had new material, new rules, new systems, etc. And none of them worked with any other system in second edition. I don't mean things like... Incarnates only have support in Magic of Incarnum and no other book "Doesn't work with any"...

I mean things like the books Skills and Power, Combat and Tactics, and Tome of Magic would all introduce things like Point Buy character creation, alternate rules for combat and weapons... And then you'd have something like "The ______'s Handbook" series of books. And there was no mechanical basis between the two. You really couldn't use something like the Ravager Kit from Barbarian's Handbook in the same game that you're using Skills and Powers which didn't fit into games where you were using something like Drow of the Underdark.

I mean they all kinda worked with the base Player's Handbook, Monster's Manual, DMG. But every book or small set of books spun the rules in a different direction, new interpretation, and resulted in widely divergent things.

And that is a strength 3rd edition has. Things play nice with one another. Not everything is supported in every book, obviously. But the rules are all the same across various books. Which makes it a lot easier if you want to throw together things from widely different sources. I never have to have that discussion of "No, you can't use the Shadow Mage because we're using Handbooks instead."

I know what your saying. I got a ton of Second Ed stuff. And while I do like that 3.x does keep it all to one rule set I miss the older editions. LOL I must be crazy but I like THAC0, but I guess we will always love our firsts.

[John Campbell]

Attack bonus vs. AC is way easier to resolve than THAC0. You practically have to smack your head into a wall for a week just to make heads or tails of THAC0, and even then it's inconvenient and you need to compute 4 different numbers on every attack roll (attack bonus, THAC0, AC, d20 roll), while in 3.0 you only need 3 (Attack bonus, AC, d20).
THAC0 is exactly like BAB, except you subtract your d20 roll from it instead of adding your d20 roll to it.

In the band the systems are usually working in, I often find it faster and easier to subtract one two-digit number from a similarly-sized two-digit number than to add them together. (Quick, what's 14+17? Now, what's 14-17?) The only tricky bit is that you have to remember which has to be subtracted.

I can understand why people might not agree with me on which is easier, but it really irritates me that so many people feel the need to misrepresent THAC0 as being much more complicated than it actually is in order to justify their preference. Seriously, guys, I was using THAC0 when I was in third grade. It's not that hard.


Saves which make sense. Only 3 saves, and it's much more intuitive what they represent and when to use them.
I like the simplified saves, but don't like the good save/bad save dichotomy, where you basically never fail your good saves and basically never succeed on your bad ones, especially combined with the ease of targeting a specific save and that most classes have at least one bad save that a caster can target save-or-loses at. High level characters in AD&D had good saves across the board - which meant those high-level save-or-lose spells were potentially win buttons, but more often a waste of a spell slot - and high-level fighters had the best saves.

The one bit of 3.x that I find to be an unalloyed improvement is the elimination of class/race restrictions.

[navar100]

1) Freeing clerics from heal-bot mode while still being able to heal effectively when necessary.

2) Feat and skill customization allowing two characters of the same class to play differently.

3) Players have lots of options to choose from in developing their characters.

4) Humans don't suck.

5) Player choice in character development evolved to realization they don't have to just accept bully DMs and can vote with their feet if necessary. What the DM says still goes, but if he says enough stupid stuff the players go too.

[Amnestic]

I like the simplified saves, but don't like the good save/bad save dichotomy, where you basically never fail your good saves and basically never succeed on your bad ones, especially combined with the ease of targeting a specific save and that most classes have at least one bad save that a caster can target save-or-loses at. High level characters in AD&D had good saves across the board - which meant those high-level save-or-lose spells were potentially win buttons, but more often a waste of a spell slot - and high-level fighters had the best saves.


I wish they'd added a "Moderately Competent Saves" in between the two. If Bad caps at +6 and Good caps at +12, then why not have a Medium which caps at +9?

[ShriekingDrake]

2) Feat and skill customization allowing two characters of the same class to play differently.

This. I know we saw some of this in 2E but I have always found feats and skills to be flavorful. They make for a robust diversity of characters. While feats needed to be a bit more balanced and skills more reasonably organized, they were a great addition to the game.

[Person_Man]

The single most important thing, hands down, is the Open Game License

It allows the SRD to exist, which lets people to legally read through, reference, quote, and discuss mechanics online. This is a huge deal for brand new players who probably don't want to spend $40+ on books until they've played the game a couple of times. It also makes it much easier to have an online community of people (like this one!) who love the game.

It also allows dozens of third party spin offs and thousands (millions?) of armchair homebrew writers to legally make their preferred slightly different version of the game or various classes/Feats/spells/game worlds/etc. This makes people far more invested in the system and more likely to find some version that they like, which in turn makes them far more likely to buy one or more supplements.

[3WhiteFox3]

3.5 has several advantages over earlier editions.


Professionalism - the PHB is a fairly professional looking document and something that I'm not ashamed to buy.
The idea that balance (from a modern perspective) is something desirable; 2e had it's own internal balance, but it relied on DMs running the show and not having any real rules to govern behaivor.
Going with the above, the very idea that GMs should have some limits in power to make the game more fun for everyone was a big step in the right direction IMO. (I say this as both a GM and a player.)
The idea that you could actually have meaningful control over your character's power progression after choosing class, kit and race.
The idea that wealth should be tied to level and not just given out by GM whim.
The idea that encounters should have a difficulty guideline better than having the GM throw darts at a dartboard.


(note that some of the above ideas came into 2e towards the end of the ed, it wasn't until 3.0 that those concepts got stabilized into a single product.)
There's definitely more, but that's just at the top of my head.

[Chronos]

I'll add yet another vote for the multiclassing system. My test for a multiclassing system is this: Take a nice simple class like fighter. Now invent a new class, fighter-prime, that's identical to the fighter except for the name. Now compare a multiclassed fighter/fighter-prime to a straight fighter of the same XP total. In 3.x, they'll be nearly identical. Oh, the multiclass will have one more feat, and might have saves that are a bit different, but they'll both have the same HP, attack bonus, number of attacks, etc. In any other multiclassing system I've seen, though (particularly the two incompatible systems of 2nd edition), they'll be vastly different.

[Barsoom]

I'll add yet another vote for the multiclassing system. My test for a multiclassing system is this: Take a nice simple class like fighter. Now invent a new class, fighter-prime, that's identical to the fighter except for the name. Now compare a multiclassed fighter/fighter-prime to a straight fighter of the same XP total. In 3.x, they'll be nearly identical. Oh, the multiclass will have one more feat, and might have saves that are a bit different, but they'll both have the same HP, attack bonus, number of attacks, etc. In any other multiclassing system I've seen, though (particularly the two incompatible systems of 2nd edition), they'll be vastly different.

A multiclassed Wizard 10/Wizard-prime 10 will be very much different from Wizard 20 though.

[Emmerask]

Uniform Experience Chart: 1E and 2E had XP charts for each different class. Thieves (rogues) had the easiest level ups while the Wizards had the hardest. 2,000,000 XP meant something different to each class.

Funny enough I think that is actually a step backward rather then one forward (ie I think different xp charts are much much better):smalltongue:

Anyway stuff they did good...

-Character creation is really fun, you can spend hours with it but its still intuitive.

-OGL

thats about it for me ^^

[3WhiteFox3]

Funny enough I think that is actually a step backward rather then one forward (ie I think different xp charts are much much better):smalltongue:

I did at first until I saw things like how crazy the one bard who essentially got casting as a Wizard at like 1/3 the xp to level up. Sure, he was capped at lower level spells at level 20, but he was also there far quicker than the Wizard. Decent idea, but the execution could have been much better. It also was a entirely punitive way of balancing classes (instead of balancing classes first and then tweaking).

[Emmerask]

Well yes for older editions it wasn´t that awesome, however for 3.5 it could actually work extremely well (with separate xp charts for prestige classes too of course).

[Chronos]

A multiclassed Wizard 10/Wizard-prime 10 will be very much different from Wizard 20 though.
Sure, but that's a problem with the way that spellcasters work, not a problem with the multiclassing system.

And I don't have a problem with the differing XP tables per se, but using them makes the 3rd-edition multiclassing system impossible.

[WhatBigTeeth]

OGL can't be stressed enough.

The unified core mechanic wasn't something 3e did first or even did best, but it makes WotC D&D much easier to teach than the TSR editions.

And even though it's not something the publishers did directly, 3e is very popular, or at least widely known.

Taken together, those make 3e/PF a really easy system to grab just about any gaming group and use, without wasting the first few weeks of gaming in tutorial mode (which is typically the disincentive against rules-heavy games).

[Gavinfoxx]

A multiclassed Wizard 10/Wizard-prime 10 will be very much different from Wizard 20 though.

Yea, this. Your test doesn't seem very solid? What is it trying to test??

[Yora]

Standardizing the saving throws to Fortitude, Reflex, and Will was a great innovation by third edition. Other d20 games change pretty much anything, but I don't see any game ever using anything different than these three.

Feats were a great idea, though many feats themselves were done rather poorly.

[georgie_leech]

THAC0 is exactly like BAB, except you subtract your d20 roll from it instead of adding your d20 roll to it.

In the band the systems are usually working in, I often find it faster and easier to subtract one two-digit number from a similarly-sized two-digit number than to add them together. (Quick, what's 14+17? Now, what's 14-17?) The only tricky bit is that you have to remember which has to be subtracted.

I can understand why people might not agree with me on which is easier, but it really irritates me that so many people feel the need to misrepresent THAC0 as being much more complicated than it actually is in order to justify their preference. Seriously, guys, I was using THAC0 when I was in third grade. It's not that hard.




Personally, I always liked that THAC0 started at different levels as well as scaling differently. It always kind of bugged me that the Fighter spent years learning how to swing a sword but in terms of skill (bAB) was only marginally better than a wizqard at first level, despite the latter having spent his time reading books.

[Snails]

"Hey, so, uh, Table 25-9B says that it takes a 26 to make golden shoes, so I'm going to make some golden shoes with that gold we got earlier. Golden shoes give a +5 to my Blingtessence Quality."

Bingo.

What I love about 3e is that the Player has character resources with which I can make meaningful choices, while not being micromanaged by the DM or playing Mother May I. Whether this would be in the form of class choice or feat choice or gp expenditure is not necessarily important. 3e happens to encourage exploring all three.

I do agree with arguments that 3e tends to be too rules heavy. But having tasted a Good Thing, I am much more willing to live with too much of a Good Thing than zero of a Good Thing. (At least in this particular area, 4e seems to strike a better balance.)

[Mando Knight]

Sure, but that's a problem with the way that spellcasters work, not a problem with the multiclassing system.

Except it is an issue with the multiclassing system, since that is a subsystem designed to work with the main system. Try Monk 10/Monk' 10, a strictly not-spellcasting class. You'll have a lot of overlapping early abilities and few if any of the late-game ones, even if you state that Monk and Monk' levels get the usual stacking bonuses (AC, Unarmed Damage, etc.). Same goes with Rogue and Rogue', which cuts you down to two "Special Abilities" without giving you any advantages over Rogue 20.

[Gavinfoxx]

Thac0 isn't hard, it's counter-intuitive.

[IncoherentEssay]

Adding a few more chips to the [So much stuff to fiddle with], [SRD], [saves], [simple multiclassing] and [player empowerment] piles.

On multiclassing issue: If all non-casters had something similar to the Rogue Special Ability except that it references character level and other class-independent traits for it's prerequisites then even multiclassed characters could pick up level appropriate new tricks. Obviously these ability slots ought to be weighted towards the end of the class so that dipping is less advantageous than single classing. Similarly casters could get half-advancement from base casting classes so that multiclassing "autotheurges".

[Soranar]

What did 3.x do right

Like many before, versatility

The ability to customize your character in 3.5 is simply astounding

First there's your racial options
Then there's inherited templates
Then there's acquired templates

Now you have your class
and your prestige classes
and your substitution levels
and your alternate class features

You also have your feats and your skills

Finally you have access to social organizations (like those found in complete champion)
and stuff you get for worshiping an elder evil
or stuff you get for making a vow of poverty

And despite all of this, explaining a fairly complicated character to a newbie is pretty easy because most of your customization is translated in STATS and feats established in the player's handbook

honestly 3.5 is a very complete system

[Divayth Fyr]

Thac0 isn't hard, it's counter-intuitive.
Just like the armor class system which accompanied it.

-You found a +3 chainmail.
-What's the AC of a normal one?
-5.
-So this one has 8?
-No, 2.

[russdm]

I am going to have disagree with some of this. I don't think 3.5 actually did modularity right. Some classes are able to do completely unbalanced things, while other classes can barely do balanced things. Also, if you pick certain classes, you will start to fall behind and completely fall behind at being able to be of value to your party.

3.5 was right with having an Open Gaming License, being fairly easy to homebrew, and being more player-friendly. Also, Tome of Battle was done right. I don't see it having gotten anything else it tried to do right, or done properly. There are way too many to list, and this comes from both being a player and a DM.

As much as I try to, I just really can't let the problems with the system go since it interferes with my ability to have fun both as a player and DM. I shouldn't have to rely on a Gentleman's Agreement or homebrewing rules or even system rewrites to be able to have fun or enjoy playing.

[ArcturusV]

Though I will be of the dissenting opinion that I did like the variable XP tables. It was part of the Linear/Quadratic balance that made it work, rather than the mess 3rd is, where the "Quadratic" classes usually start out BETTER than the linear ones at first level. And just widen the gap from there as they level up.

Then again, that's what I came from. I was used to it, as were the people I played with and no one thought twice about it. The guy who was a 5th level wizard was pulling his weight even when he was in a party with a 7th level fighter, 8th level thief, and 6th level cleric. No one ever thought that was really weird.

Though in 3rd edition, yeah. If you said something like your class spanned 3 levels people would wonder what unholy mixture of Crafting/Rezzing would have lead to that and how the guy at the bottom must be really hurting to do anything at all in the context of the campaign other than hide and hope no one shanks him.

I just think it was one of the many keys to the balance between Magic and Mundane that got tossed aside without really thinking of the ramifications of it.

Though still, lots of decent upgrades in the game. Relaxing some of the Alignment Restrictions alone was pretty nice. I can actually play Neutral Rangers! GASPS!

Some of the silly class restrictions being dropped was nice (Druids and their "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!" Highlander thing...). Oh, and Stat Requirements (I never, in 2nd edition, saw anyone actually roll up a Paladin successfully without using the automatic "You will get a qualifying paladin" table in the Paladin's Handbook). Or things like Paladins being limited to only ever owning 10 magical items (Of defined slot use) and having to tithe away their loot regularly.

As much as I tell people that you can't really ignore the Fluff built into stuff in 3rd edition (Fluff defined the mechanics, after all), it was worse in older editions. Where for reasons of flavoring you got really restrictive rules like the fact that there could only ever be a single 15th level druid anywhere within existence in your campaign setting. Or that you lost all your shiny powers if you ever took a 16th level in druid.

[Occasional Sage]

Uniform Experience Chart: 1E and 2E had XP charts for each different class. Thieves (rogues) had the easiest level ups while the Wizards had the hardest. 2,000,000 XP meant something different to each class.


See, I find this to be one of the primary causes of the Tier issue. Sure it simplifies multi- and prestige-classing, but at (I feel) a terrible cost.

[AuraTwilight]

See, I find this to be one of the primary causes of the Tier issue. Sure it simplifies multi- and prestige-classing, but at (I feel) a terrible cost.

Yeaa....that's not really what the Tier issue is about. Slowing down progression doesn't change the fact that the gains of progression are so monumentally uneven. You can speed up a Fighter and slow down a Wizard all you want, but the Fighter will never match a Wizard's potential.

[ArcturusV]

Note that except for the lowest tiers, "Raw Power" isn't what defines Tiers either. Flexibility does.

But yeah, it doesn't solve the issue. It does help the issue though. Wizards (And other casters) won't dominate from level 1 onwards. Being instead magic bullets that you save for difficult situations at least if you couple this with older edition's "you get ONE spell at level 1, not 8".

[Emmerask]

Yeaa....that's not really what the Tier issue is about. Slowing down progression doesn't change the fact that the gains of progression are so monumentally uneven. You can speed up a Fighter and slow down a Wizard all you want, but the Fighter will never match a Wizard's potential.

But potential is really not important during play, the monster currently killing you does not really care that you could potentially one shot it in 6 more levels and the current problem your pc is facing does also not care that next level you would have a spell to solve the issue ^^

And potential is only important if it can be realized during the game lets say my Fighter needs 1 xp / level up while my wizard will need 10^(10^100) xp from level 1 to 2.
Sure the theoretical potential of the wizard is still the same, the practical potential however is that you can´t even write down the number during your lifetime (and that there is more then likely not enough matter in the universe to write that number down) :smallbiggrin:


Note that except for the lowest tiers, "Raw Power" isn't what defines Tiers either. Flexibility does.

But yeah, it doesn't solve the issue. It does help the issue though. Wizards (And other casters) won't dominate from level 1 onwards. Being instead magic bullets that you save for difficult situations at least if you couple this with older edition's "you get ONE spell at level 1, not 8".

Yep pretty much.

[Jon_Dahl]

1) Freeing clerics from heal-bot mode while still being able to heal effectively when necessary.

I don't see this happening in 3.x.
2e had speciality priests and Player's Option books, which made it possible to have clerics without any sort of healing capabilities. In 3.x in hard to avoid healing, and then you might end up as a heal-bot, no matter what your build is.

The only certain way not to be a heal-bot is not to have healing spells. 2e had this, 3.x doesn't.

I would really like to have a cleric that was unable to heal at all...

[SaintRidley]

Throwing my hat in for customization and modularity.

Lords of Madness, in its entirety, was a beautiful thing. Ditto the first Fiendish Codex.

Personally, I'm glad it preserved Vancian casting. I've always liked it, I always will, and I've never understood the dislike for it.

Also, getting Psionics right was good.





2- The amount of customization we can put in our characters: somewhere around 3000^20 possibilities (that's a number my calculator won't process) for a 20 level build, and that's only class-wise, before taking feats into account.

Calculated it out. 3.486784401 x 10^69. In other words, 3.48674401 duovigintillion (undecilliard, if you're using Continental long-form, really fracking lots if you're using regular human speech).

[sonofzeal]

I don't see this happening in 3.x.
2e had speciality priests and Player's Option books, which made it possible to have clerics without any sort of healing capabilities. In 3.x in hard to avoid healing, and then you might end up as a heal-bot, no matter what your build is.

The only certain way not to be a heal-bot is not to have healing spells. 2e had this, 3.x doesn't.

I would really like to have a cleric that was unable to heal at all...
Avoiding being a healbot doesn't mean not having any healing. All it requires is two things:

1) A dedicated healer is unnecessary (Wands of Lesser Vigor, check!)

2) "Healbot" classes can pull their weight without using healing (Divine Power, check!)

What you're describing is a social problem within your group, not a problem with the system.

[TuggyNE]

Calculated it out. 3.486784401 x 10^69. In other words, 3.48674401 duovigintillion (undecilliard, if you're using Continental long-form, really fracking lots if you're using regular human speech).

In other words, within a few orders of magnitude of the estimated number of atoms in the universe, if memory serves.

[Chronos]

It might not be obvious at first glance, but letting clerics cast cure spells spontaneously actually made them less pigeonholed as healbots, not more. Second edition clerics had most of the same spell options as third edition clerics, but most of them never ended up getting used, since the need (or at least, potential need) for healing ended up meaning that you needed to spend about half of your spell slots preparing healing spells. Some other spell might have been just the thing for the situation you found yourself in, but you didn't have room to prepare it. In third edition, however, a cleric, even one who's planning on healing, need never prepare a single healing spell: You can spend all of your spell slots on those situationally-useful spells, use whichever ones the situation ends up calling for, and then spend the rest of the slots on whatever healing you happen to need.

[Slipperychicken]

Personally, I'm glad it preserved Vancian casting. I've always liked it, I always will, and I've never understood the dislike for it.


Time-consuming to prepare, disappointing if something unexpected happens, almost impossible with a disorganized GM, penalizes inexperienced players.


I liked what I saw in the last 5e playtest I read: Wizard prepares a "spell list" (doesn't have to prepare multiples of the same spell), then casts them spontaneously like a 3.x Sorcerer. It makes things a lot easier to use, especially for casual gamers.

Of course, there should be a variant rule for the people who want Vancian.

[navar100]

I don't see this happening in 3.x.
2e had speciality priests and Player's Option books, which made it possible to have clerics without any sort of healing capabilities. In 3.x in hard to avoid healing, and then you might end up as a heal-bot, no matter what your build is.

The only certain way not to be a heal-bot is not to have healing spells. 2e had this, 3.x doesn't.

I would really like to have a cleric that was unable to heal at all...

No one forces you to cast any spell.

Healing is important. Pre-3E, healingw as not easy to come by. All you had were potions and whatever number of Cure Light Wounds the cleric could prepare. Cure Serious Wounds was a 4th level spell. It took Player's Options to provide a healing spell in between. Spells dedicated to healing meant the cleric was not casting other spells. Those spell slots were fixed. Once used, no more healing.

What did 3E give us?

Spontaneous healing. Now the cleric can always have a healing spell, of any level, should he need one without dedicating himself to it. Healing is still important, but the cleric no longer has to prepare for it. He only casts healing spells when necessary and doesn't run out. In addition, wands of Cure Wounds. The cleric doesn't even need to use spell slots to heal. Other classes can use those wands as well or someone uses Use Magic Device. The cleric doesn't have to be the one who does the healing in the first place. The cleric is free to do as he pleases, and the party's healing capability does not suffer for it. The cleric is no longer a "heal-bot" because he has an easier time of it when doing the healing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but that's how it works out.

[AuraTwilight]

But potential is really not important during play, the monster currently killing you does not really care that you could potentially one shot it in 6 more levels and the current problem your pc is facing does also not care that next level you would have a spell to solve the issue ^^

You realize this is literally the exact same reasoning that lead to the wizard/fighter problem we have now, right? "Well wizards are weak in the beginning but then blow everyone out of the water, later. That's balanced!"

No. All you're proposing is making the gap of time bigger, and that doesn't change anything for games that start above level 1, or the games where stuff like Thought Bottle and whatnot are legal, or games where the GM levels people up based on story events instead of using XP. You're missing the real issue here in that at all levels the two classes aren't balanced at all; whether or not the wizard is in god-mode THIS LEVEL isn't the problem.


And potential is only important if it can be realized during the game lets say my Fighter needs 1 xp / level up while my wizard will need 10^(10^100) xp from level 1 to 2.
Sure the theoretical potential of the wizard is still the same, the practical potential however is that you can´t even write down the number during your lifetime (and that there is more then likely not enough matter in the universe to write that number down)

So your solution to fixing game balance where one class is good and the other is bad is....to make one class good and the other bad.

The speed of growth isn't the issue here. The issue is that the wizard is so powerful that even at level one it can accidentally TRIVIALIZE a fight before the Fighter can do anything. Even level one spells have Save or Suck effects.

[Svata]

I wish they'd added a "Moderately Competent Saves" in between the two. If Bad caps at +6 and Good caps at +12, then why not have a Medium which caps at +9?

Thieve's world had those, if I remember correctly but its been awhile since I played it, so I may be wrong.

Just looked in my thieve's world player's guide, and I was right.

[russdm]

I would have to disagree on Modularity and customizition. The most customable classes in the game are spellcasters. The other classes end up being pigeonholed, or have to multiclass or take prestige classes. What gets added into every splatbook that got released or nearly so? Options for Spellcasters. Only a tiny number of the splatbooks don't have any options for spellcasters to grab. As for that fighter you are making, well, you could have had your character dedicate his life to wielding a nice weapon and be useless or he could have studied magic and shaken the foundations of the world. Seriously, that is totally not cool.

As for modularity, sadly everything your awesome character can do, is done considerably better by a spellcaster. Yes, your damage dealing fighter is impressive, but the cleric is better at that and so is the squishy wizard. Plus you get another effect always in play: The magic christmas tree effect.

The magic christmas tree is especially jarring because it translates the whole game into the following caveat: It doesn't matter anymore how skilled you are, but how amazing the weapon you have is. Your choice in weapon focus ends up meaning nothing and all the time you spent increasing your abilities to use that weapon means you can do jack squat when not employing it. Congratulations for being Mr. Wimpy, Mr fighter man, now sit down so those of us mages can deal with this problem.

The 3rd Edition shows mainly that the designers must have just ported things over from 2nd Edition without realizing why things worked. Nor did they apparently spend time figuring out if everything worked. So we end up with the Tier System from 1st level and i get to wonder as a player, why i invested in playing a fighter when i could have been a wizard and still be having fun at higher levels.

[CowardlyPaladin]

Flexibility, in designing worlds, in designing character concepts, and in game styles. Honestly, if it was balanced better and had the 2E sense of storytelling we could have the best game in the world. Oh NPC classes and giving monsters class levels. Thank god

[Slipperychicken]

In other words, within a few orders of magnitude of the estimated number of atoms in the universe, if memory serves.

It's been guessed around 10^80.

The number of possible level 20 builds is still baffling though, even before skillpoints, spell selection, and equipment.

[TheIronGolem]

Nothing that hasn't been mentioned already, but:

1. Customization. I can make a build to support whatever character concept I can think of just by putting class levels and feats together like Legos. I can multiclass to exactly the degree I want to, and at any time I want to, without the system telling me that I must be This Class and That Class in exactly equal proportions. I can - gasp! - give my wizard a sword. It allows me to organically adjust my build plan if I find my character's concept evolving in unexpected ways during roleplay. This, right here, is what kept me from moving on to 4E, despite the things that 4E does right that 3.x does wrong.

2. Consistency. Big numbers are good, little numbers are bad. My wife likes to roleplay but has a lousy grasp on systems, and she found it frustrating in 2E games when she got excited because she rolled a natural 20 on a saving throw only to be told that's really bad and she just got cooked by the dragon, when two minutes prior we were cheering someone else's natural 20 on an attack roll. 3E is way easier for someone like her, and the last thing this hobby needs is more entry barriers.

3. Balance. With a dozen-plus years of hindsight, it's easy to see that 3.x has lots of balance issues. But its efforts at balance, however far they fell short, are largely to thank for the fact that we generally recognize that balance is something to strive for. Like Blackwing trying to toss Xykon's phylactery into the Snarl, the fact that it did not succeed does not diminish the significance of the effort. And even the failure was far from complete; if you think Caster Supremacy is a problem in 3.x (though it is), go back through 1E and 2E sometime. Yeesh.

[Trunamer]

Personally, I always liked that THAC0 started at different levels as well as scaling differently. It always kind of bugged me that the Fighter spent years learning how to swing a sword but in terms of skill (bAB) was only marginally better than a wizqard at first level, despite the latter having spent his time reading books.
Wait, which pre-3e PHB are you reading from? I've got my 2e AD&D PHB open, and yes, as I remember everyone starts at 20 thac0.

[Scow2]

3.0 empowered the player by having lots of rules, and guidelines to help GMs adjudicate rules not covered in the book. It also had the nice, flexible Alter Self spell that... got replaced by a horrifically broken, inflexible PoS spell.

The revision broke the edition.

[georgie_leech]

Wait, which pre-3e PHB are you reading from? I've got my 2e AD&D PHB open, and yes, as I remember everyone starts at 20 thac0.
And suddenly I remember that I'm actually remembering an old DM's habit of getting us to write the strength bonus directly into our THAC0's for ease of use. My bad :smallredface:

[navar100]

Nothing that hasn't been mentioned already, but:

2. Consistency. Big numbers are good, little numbers are bad. My wife likes to roleplay but has a lousy grasp on systems, and she found it frustrating in 2E games when she got excited because she rolled a natural 20 on a saving throw only to be told that's really bad and she just got cooked by the dragon, when two minutes prior we were cheering someone else's natural 20 on an attack roll. 3E is way easier for someone like her, and the last thing this hobby needs is more entry barriers.


:smallconfused:

In 2E rolling a 20 on a saving throw was a good thing. Saving throw targets got lower as you gained levels, and you wanted to roll above that number. A 20 was bad for using a non-weapon proficiency since you need to roll your ability score or under, and it was also bad for Psions when using a power because a nasty thing would happen to them including the possibility of death.

[Chronos]

True story: My d20 is statistically biased against 20s. Yes, I've rolled and recorded hundreds of rolls to verify this. And the one time it ever rolled a natural 20 in an actual game situation (i.e., not just in those statistical trials), it was for a 2e nonweapon proficiency check.

[Oko and Qailee]

The speed of growth isn't the issue here. The issue is that the wizard is so powerful that even at level one it can accidentally TRIVIALIZE a fight before the Fighter can do anything. Even level one spells have Save or Suck effects.

Yes but with that exp difference the Fighter is lvl 20 by the time the Wizard is still... level one.


Ok, now throw a CR10 monster. I promise you the lvl 1 wizards has no answer and the level 20 fight probably does. At this rate by the time the campaign ends the wizard MIGHT BE level 2.

If exp were different for different classes then that would be factored in as part of the tier list (Jaronk even mentioned before that early-mid levels are weighted a bit heavier than late ones if I'm not mistaken) because what matters is what is your power/flexibility of the duration of the campaign because people play campaigns.

If you were a level 1 wizard the entire campaign, you would think your class sucks because it has some stupid 10^10^100 exp/lvl gain

[Sith_Happens]

True story: My d20 is statistically biased against 20s. Yes, I've rolled and recorded hundreds of rolls to verify this. And the one time it ever rolled a natural 20 in an actual game situation (i.e., not just in those statistical trials), it was for a 2e nonweapon proficiency check.

Get a new one?:smallconfused:

[Der_DWSage]

Yes but with that exp difference the Fighter is lvl 20 by the time the Wizard is still... level one.


Ok, now throw a CR10 monster. I promise you the lvl 1 wizards has no answer and the level 20 fight probably does. At this rate by the time the campaign ends the wizard MIGHT BE level 2.

If exp were different for different classes then that would be factored in as part of the tier list (Jaronk even mentioned before that early-mid levels are weighted a bit heavier than late ones if I'm not mistaken) because what matters is what is your power/flexibility of the duration of the campaign because people play campaigns.

If you were a level 1 wizard the entire campaign, you would think your class sucks because it has some stupid 10^10^100 exp/lvl gain

Well. If he were to operate on the 15 minute adventuring day (Much more reasonable as a level 1 wizard.) then he'd actually still have a few options. Especially if he still has the cash of a level 20 fighter. (Color Spray, Grease, Silent Image, etc.) Whereas if it were, say, a Ghost, and the Fighter had no Ghosttouch weapons? He's just as boned as that level 1 Wizard. Or heck, a Level 3 wizard flying on top of a pet hippogriff.

But the majority of your point is understood, yeah. And you're hoping against hope that the DM will let you someday have level 2 spells, which are 'totally awesome.'