D&D 3.5 - Biggest Flaws

[Mordenkainen]

Like many other roleplaying games, the third edition of D&D, throughout its various states of revision, has had its flaws. From the numerous loopholes and exploits that first popped up around the new edition to the "power creep" that became present in later sourcebooks, it was certainly not a perfect system.

But what were the biggest flaws? What were the weaknesses in the rules that so easily broke games?

The most obvious to me is the lack of utility in many of the melee classes. The fact that all of the fighter's abilities were solely for in-combat, while the wizard, cleric, and druid could use both combat spells to terrible effect (I assume you've seen the builds? Or the tiers?) and non-combat spells to solve otherwise impossible problems (e.g., "Get across the chasm," "Get into the prison unseen," "Find the magic staff of the Black Necromancer,") always irked me. This devastating flaw in the core rules effectively broke the entire system for me (or at least until ToB leveled the combat playing field, though that didn't fix my main issue with the system.)

Those are my thoughts, but I enjoy discussion. What are your two cents?

[Gigas Breaker]

It needs more Tome of Battle. MORE.

[Darth Stabber]

The tiers are pain, but can actually be channeled to good effect, if you get the whole party close in terms of tiers. Right now I am GMing for a "caster party" of a psion, dreadnecromancer, druid, sorcerer, and assassin, and they work pretty well, but the fights tend to drag on a bit, they will achieve "victory as a forgone conclusion" quickly, but it usually take several turns to actually "seal the deal", especially against things immune to sneak attack. That's the problem with 3 battlefield controllers, a debuffer, and a sneak attacker. Most damage is done by minions (undead and a megaraptor animal companion), but damage is not what wins the fights any way.

[Waker]

Well, my biggest complaint about 3.5 is the vast power differences between the classes. Specifically between mundanes and casters, but the imbalances between magic schools is something of a bother too. I do find the various arguments with people accepting impossible things "because magic", but then blanch when a mundane tries to do something impressive to be grimace-inducing as well.
Then you have the glitchy mechanics behind certain abilities. Grappling is overly complicated, Turn Undead is annoying or just outright weird stuff like drown-healing. Or how about how annoying and intrusive the majority of the feat trees are? Or feat taxes, like how Dodge is a requirement for everything despite being an absolutely irredeemable feat.
Lastly you've got the trap options. Things that look cool, but are so underpowered or otherwise ineffective. Two-Weapon Fighting and Archery are definitely up there, as well as In-Combat Healing or Direct Damage spells.

[NeoPhoenix0]

In my opinion the biggest general flaw is either the large number of spells per day or vastly overpowered spells. I think this could be aliviated without taking away powerful spells by having dome sort of mana system instead of vancien magic. Casting powerful spells would come at the cost of a huge portion of you mana while cantrips would cost like one point. But that is speculation and would require a whole new system that many people wouldn't like.

Also the large number of prestige classes and feats combined with poor editing and playtesting led to a lot of overpowerd prestige classes and feats.

Edit: another solution to the spells problem I like is the shadowcaster. Although it could probably use a few more mysteries per day at lower levels. Also it would require lower the poer of a lot of spells.

[Werephilosopher]

It needs more Tome of Battle. MORE.

This. As everyone always says, "regular" warriors just can't stand up to casters. ToB really helps in catching up, though.

One idea I have, and might implement in some of the games I run, is getting rid of high-level spells- 9th levels at least. In the time it takes a 20th-level Fighter to hit an enemy eight times with his sword, a 20th-level Wizard can kill twenty enemies and then trap the soul of one of them in a gem. I realize few people play base classes straight to level 20, but this is just an example of the imbalance.

Another flaw with 3rd Ed is the lack of incentive to progress to level 20 in one class. Getting a free feat every couple of levels doesn't make anyone look and say "Oooh, what a cool class!" There needs to be better rewards for sticking to one class, and better capstones.

[Saintheart]

Another flaw with 3rd Ed is the lack of incentive to progress to level 20 in one class. Getting a free feat every couple of levels doesn't make anyone look and say "Oooh, what a cool class!" There needs to be better rewards for sticking to one class, and better capstones.

If you're a caster, there is a solid reward for sticking to one class. It's called Caster Levels. Losing caster levels as a tradeoff for PrCs is one of the few balance elements in D&D that I think actually works to some extent.

[Zanos]

In my opinion the biggest general flaw is either the large number of spells per day or vastly overpowered spells. I think this could be aliviated without taking away powerful spells by having dome sort of mana system instead of vancien magic. Casting powerful spells would come at the cost of a huge portion of you mana while cantrips would cost like one point. But that is speculation and would require a whole new system that many people wouldn't like.

Also the large number of prestige classes and feats combined with poor editing and playtesting led to a lot of overpowerd prestige classes and feats.

Edit: another solution to the spells problem I like is the shadowcaster. Although it could probably use a few more mysteries per day at lower levels. Also it would require lower the poer of a lot of spells.

There is a Spell Point (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm) variant you could give a try. I have heard it has major issues, such as the necessary points for a cast only scaling for damage, so it makes battlefield control/buffing an even better option than it already was, but it is there if you want to tweak it.

[Werephilosopher]

If you're a caster, there is a solid reward for sticking to one class. It's called Caster Levels. Losing caster levels as a tradeoff for PrCs is one of the few balance elements in D&D that I think actually works to some extent.

In some cases yes. But there are PRCs that improve casting at every level while still being powerful in and of themselves- Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil comes to mind, for instance. There are also front-loaded PRCs that improve casting at first level, such as Mindbender. While I agree with you that trading caster levels for multiclassing helps balance things out, it's all too easy to multiclass without losing any casting progression.

[Psyren]

Just how lazy they were with errata and fixes. So much could be cleared up and made much more playable if they were better about this.

[Saintheart]

In some cases yes. But there are PRCs that improve casting at every level while still being powerful in and of themselves- Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil comes to mind, for instance. There are also front-loaded PRCs that improve casting at first level, such as Mindbender. While I agree with you that trading caster levels for multiclassing helps balance things out, it's all too easy to multiclass without losing any casting progression.

Hell, I agree with you entirely. Runecaster is one of those PrCs too: full casting levels as cleric while breaking the action economy more frequently and in even more creative ways than a DMM Persist cleric can dream of.

[Humble Master]

The big points seem to have been covered. Martial classes being horrendously underpowered, the ability for casters to screw the entire world over and of course there being only one Tome of Battle.

[BowStreetRunner]

One thing I always thought was handled absolutely terribly was the support for customer prestige classes. :smallannoyed: Page 176 of the DMG first introduced the concept of prestige classes with a three paragraph description that ended by telling the DM that "the best prestige classes for your campaign are the ones you tailor make yourself."

After that bold statement, the game designers proceeded to include new prestige classes with many of the supplements, but never offered any sort of a concrete system to help the DM figure out how to make his own. :smallconfused: I always liked Paizo's system for creating new races (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races), and think that Wizards should have offered something along these lines to help DMs create custom prestige classes.

[GreenETC]

Just how lazy they were with errata and fixes. So much could be cleared up and made much more playable if they were better about this.
Hands down this. Nothing is more annoying than something like ToB's errata, or the wording on some feats/abilities which lead to awful problems, not just for balance, but for sheer understand-ability.

[Curmudgeon]

Too much magic.
Game authors who couldn't be bothered to read the core rules.
Many classes (the non-casters) run empty in both power and flexibility at higher levels. Even though all the base classes are spec'd for 20 levels, most games are designed to end well before level 20; consequently, the designers gave minimal attention to the higher-level abilities. When casters are getting more powerful spells, why isn't everyone else getting more powerful abilities?
Most feats are garbage.
Over-reliance on single monsters rather than groups of enemies.

[Felhammer]

Off the top of my head...

1. Magic was too powerful
2. Magic was too versatile
3. Mundane Classes and Magic-lite classes were too weak
4. Most feats were not worth the ink used to write them
5. Many prestige classes were too specific in flavor
6. Most prestige classes were worthless
7. Rules bloat
8. Over-reliance on magic items as a catch-all fix for inherent game imbalances
9. Magic Item costs
10. Cherry picking

[NeoPhoenix0]

There is a Spell Point (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/spellPoints.htm) variant you could give a try. I have heard it has major issues, such as the necessary points for a cast only scaling for damage, so it makes battlefield control/buffing an even better option than it already was, but it is there if you want to tweak it.

The spell point system breaks down very quickly. It might work better if the higher level spells were double or even triple the cost. In the end it makes wizards even more powerful and makes sorcerers much weaker. Makes me wonder if that guy who hated sorcerers designed that variant. If I redesigned the system there would only be one main arcane caster instead of two and it wouldn't be recognizable. Not gonna do it though.

[TrollCapAmerica]

Well its still the best version of the game and the best fantasy RPG on the market but its always good to analyze how it could be improved

First the designers forgot D&D is a game of epic adventure and heroic challenges.The real reasons martial classes lag behind is that its difficult to contribute in situations where you dont have something to trip or charge in a straight line for X1000 damage.The tier lists give great examples of how Joe McFighter cant do anything when he doesnt have something to hit due to linear one-dimensional abilities and lack of skills

There are alot of things put in the game that also just dont matter and will never be used outside of novelty value.I lost count of the number of useless feats produced in splatbooks and even in CORE theres only a handful of really useful ones

Finally the big reason nerfing caster wont improve balance is because monsters wont change at all.A reason In old D&D fighters could often win battles of attrition based on higher HP THAC0 and usually having higher damage/attack# compared to everyone else while being a threat to almost any monster.By 3rd ed monsters HP had tripled they tended to have much more useful abilities [tell me you ever bothered with Graz'zits affect normal fires ability] and the game didnt bog down into melee attrition thanks to greater rules for mobility reach etc.Take down casters and a Type IV demon still has reverse gravity confusion teleport and chaos hammer at will.What they would need is to improve the versatility of the martial classes ala tome of battle without making it a mess like 4E

[Irk]

The whole idea surrounding 3.5 was that it was not only compatible with 3.0, but wizards also allowed third parties to publish new sourcebooks (such as the book of erotic fantasy). By creating this vast community that could essentially make homebrew into official rules, WoTC opened up 3.5 to massive deficiencies regarding balance.

[TrollCapAmerica]

The whole idea surrounding 3.5 was that it was not only compatible with 3.0, but wizards also allowed third parties to publish new sourcebooks (such as the book of erotic fantasy). By creating this vast community that could essentially make homebrew into official rules, WoTC opened up 3.5 to massive deficiencies regarding balance.

and yet Gate still exists in the PHB

[Squirrel_Dude]

Overly strong options within a class, or few reasons to stay in a class for long periods of time.

E.G.
Overly strong options within a class:
Wizards: Conjuration School for everything
Cleric: DMM
Barbarian/Fighter: Ubercharger

E.G.
Few reasons to stay in a class for long periods of time
Sorcerer: 0 class features
Monk: Mostly because the class is only worth dipping into


I would also say that the game's biggest flaws almost completely derive from it's greatest strengths. Freedom of choice meant that any concept could be created, and publishers allowed content that was subpar, but flavorful for a concept get out. It also meant that the there were tons of unintended synergies within the system that only reveal themselves after years of play.

[J-H]

(swordsaged, at least partially)
Not listed: Too much HP, not enough DPS. This hurt the ability of anyone focused on damage-dealing to contribute to high-level combat... ie, it harmed fighters, monks, rogues, and blaster wizards.

In 2E, you gained HD/level (+bonus CON hp, with melee classes getting more of a CON bonus) through level 9 or level 10. After that, you got 3hp/level if you were a fighter, 2 for support classes (cleric/rogue), and 1 if you were a wizard.

An 18 CON fighter who maxed his HP rolls, at level 20, would have something like 170hp. In 3rd Edition, he'd have 280hp before gear.

An 18 CON wizard who maxed his HP rolls, at level 20, would have something like 70 HP. In 3rd Edition, he'd have 160HP

Gear-based HP boosts would be flat amounts, not scaling with level. Weapon damage and spell damage did not (in general) increase proportionately with the HP bloat.

That level 20 fighter could hit for, say, 25 damage per hit average (1d12 weapon + 8 strength + 5 magic + 1d6 flaming or whatever). 2 hits and a miss knock off about 3/4 of the wizard's HP in 2nd Edition. In 3rd edition, he's only done about 1/3 of the wizard's HP in damage. Similarly, a 10d6 fireball (average damage = 35) in 2nd Edition would knock half the wizard's HP out - a serious threat if he fails his saving throw. In 3rd edition, the wizard laughs at 35HP damage and responds with a "save or suck/die" spell.

The other big one was the skill point system screwing over anyone who didn't have high INT or a high-skill class.

[Felhammer]

Well its still the best version of the game and the best fantasy RPG on the market but its always good to analyze how it could be improved
Around these parts, 3.5 is probably the most popular. In the real world, most people moved on to other pastures (be it 4E, PF or something else entirely).





There are alot of things put in the game that also just dont matter and will never be used outside of novelty value.I lost count of the number of useless feats produced in splatbooks and even in CORE theres only a handful of really useful ones

90% of the core rule book feats were pretty bad and WotC had the gall to re-print a fair majority of them into 2 editions of 3.x, all three Star Wars games AND d20 Modern! Yuck!



Finally the big reason nerfing caster wont improve balance is because monsters wont change at all.A reason In old D&D fighters could often win battles of attrition based on higher HP THAC0 and usually having higher damage/attack# compared to everyone else while being a threat to almost any monster.By 3rd ed monsters HP had tripled they tended to have much more useful abilities [tell me you ever bothered with Graz'zits affect normal fires ability] and the game didnt bog down into melee attrition thanks to greater rules for mobility reach etc.Take down casters and a Type IV demon still has reverse gravity confusion teleport and chaos hammer at will.What they would need is to improve the versatility of the martial classes ala tome of battle without making it a mess like 4E

If you are nerfing Casters, then why can't you also nerf Monsters?

To fix 3.5, you need to gut useless feats/spells/class abilities/magic items from the game while simultaneously nerfing casters and monsters while buffing mundane and magic-lite classes while at the same time maintaining the air of differences both mechanically and flavor-fully between all of the classes while at the same time completely re-jiggering Magic Items and PrC's.

[LordBlades]

Probably 99% of 3.5 flaws can be traced down to one thing: the designers' playtesting mentality.

they never approached it along the lines of 'here's a wizard; here's the spell list; what's the most effective strategy?' but rather 'we want wizards to blast; loads up whole spell list with fireball, empowered fireball and maximized fireball; blaster wizard works as intended'

[TrollCapAmerica]

Probably 99% of 3.5 flaws can be traced down to one thing: the designers' playtesting mentality.

they never approached it along the lines of 'here's a wizard; here's the spell list; what's the most effective strategy?' but rather 'we want wizards to blast; loads up whole spell list with fireball, empowered fireball and maximized fireball; blaster wizard works as intended'

The worst part is even that doesnt work as intended.A blaster wizard is so subpar its not even funny.Unless all you do is take on hordes of orcs in 20 foot circles

It makes me wonder if Lorraine Williams was still in charge and banned playtesting

[navar100]

Here we go again.
:smallsigh:

[LordBlades]

The worst part is even that doesnt work as intended.A blaster wizard is so subpar its not even funny.Unless all you do is take on hordes of orcs in 20 foot circles

It makes me wonder if Lorraine Williams was still in charge and banned playtesting

It works as intended as in it functions properly in a party with a fighter, rogue and healbot cleric. That's the power level they were aiming for

[The Viscount]

One for me, aside from the very valid ones that haven't been mentioned, is the early fear of at-will or frequent uses of abilities. As we've seen, well-designed classes that can do things at will, such as the initiators, binder, and to a lesser degree warlock, can all function rather well. However, the reluctance to give these sorts of things in earlier-made classes means that in many parties this is wasted, and adventuring days only last until the most limited character runs out.

While many mention ToB as a good fix, I found that it could have stood to be less conservative. While initators are useful in more situations, they are still rather heavily combat focused, and most maneuvers are still focused on full-on combat, though stances have a bit of a wider distribution. For example, at 9nth level there are strikes to do things like deal 100 damage or a Save or Die. As for those who fear the power of infinite Save or Die effects, binder gets one at level 7, 5 with improved binding.

[TrollCapAmerica]

One for me, aside from the very valid ones that haven't been mentioned, is the early fear of at-will or frequent uses of abilities. As we've seen, well-designed classes that can do things at will, such as the initiators, binder, and to a lesser degree warlock, can all function rather well. However, the reluctance to give these sorts of things in earlier-made classes means that in many parties this is wasted, and adventuring days only last until the most limited character runs out.

While many mention ToB as a good fix, I found that it could have stood to be less conservative. While initators are useful in more situations, they are still rather heavily combat focused, and most maneuvers are still focused on full-on combat, though stances have a bit of a wider distribution. For example, at 9nth level there are strikes to do things like deal 100 damage or a Save or Die. As for those who fear the power of infinite Save or Die effects, binder gets one at level 7, 5 with improved binding.

Good stuff and a couple snippits I wanted to bring up

1] I think at will abilities were taboo because of memories of old editions.I cant count the number of books I bought for 2nd ed that seemed scared to death to let anything work more than 1-3 times a day.I still remember the Mighty Servant of Luek-o being able to fire beams doing 2d6 damage a couple times a day as if that was better than spamming darts

2] Yeah TOB is neat but stuck being very combat heavy which isnt really the martial classes biggest problem

3] Funny part about those 100 damage abilities is that by 17th level+ that 100 damage isnt even that big a deal and the save isnt that hard for most things to make

[ZamielVanWeber]

Just how lazy they were with errata and fixes. So much could be cleared up and made much more playable if they were better about this.

This. Right here. Sometimes their errata needed errata. It was bad.

[erikun]

There are... many problems with 3e. So many, many problems. It's not going to be easy to prioritize them, but just to start:

Melee is too boring. Standard melee combatants tends to have three possibilities. They either stand still and full attack, they use their one combat maneuver they've been build to use, or the pounce and full attack. Tome of Battle helps to make things interesting, but that's limited to ToB classes and limited to using the ToB maneuver system. It would be far better if the existing system of combat actions were more useful to a character.

Magic is too powerful. Your average melee attack deals 1d8+15 damage. Your average spell completely eliminates an opponent with a failed save. Better spells eliminate more opponents, don't require saves, or both.

Magic is too versatile. Blame it on the Spell Compendium producing magic for every possible scenario. Blame it on magic doing things easier than mundane actions. Blame it on Shapechange, summoning, and other remarkably broad spells. The result is that your average wizard or sorcerer can do anything, almost literally, and can do it far better than another character attempting the same through non-magical means. Speaking of which...

Skills are too restrictive. This is part a problem with skill points being in such short supply that most classes are only good at one or two skills. Part of the problem is that skills are so narrowly defined that a character can be remarkably good at one thing (Disable Device) but completely incapable of something very similar but as a different skill (Open Lock). Part of this is that skill ranks encompass so much of the bonus involved in a skill. Even at first level, skill ranks give a +4 bonus, the equilivant of an ability score of 18. By 20th level, the difference between a character failing and succeeding at a skill task is pretty much unrelated to their class, race, ability scores, or anything else. It pretty much all depends on if they've maxed out their skill ranks or not.

Magic is too cheap. Your average wizard can scribe scrolls and craft wands for as many backup spells as they'd like. XP expense was intended to be a drawback for spellcasters, putting them behind others in levels, but the XP costs are so cheap and the design of the CR system make it so that this cost is hardly a drawback at all. In addition to this, spellcasters (especially with high casting stats) just have a large number of spell slots to work with. By around 5th or 6th level, they'll generally have enough 1st- and 2nd-level spell slots to last through all but the longest days.

Multiclassing does not work. Fighter 10/Wizard 10 is terrible. Sorcerer 10/Favored Soul 10 is even worse, despite both using the same spellcasting stats. Melee classes are encouraged to cherry-pick from as many different classes as possible, as most base melee classes have little to offer. Spellcasting classes are encouraged on only take prestige classes which have 10/10 spellcasting progression. Gish and dual-progression PrC classes are almost necessary to make such concepts work, and frequently generate sub-par characters anyways without optimization.

The numbers are all wrong. A single +6 CON item can give your average wizard the HP equilivant to your average fighter. Constitution scores in general mean any large creatures have hundreds to thousands of HP. The way AC scales, it doesn't prevent a character from being hit but prevents them from being Power Attacked when the hits land. Saves from anything with a focused casting score become so high that saving successfully rarely happens. The CR system and recommendations is just usual from almost any angle.

D&D3e encourages solo characters. I'm not really sure quite what it is in the system that does so. Perhaps it is because a good spellcaster can more or less work fine by themselves past a certain level. Perhaps it is the focus on character builds and options. Perhaps it is just the influence of the internet, and talk about all the awesome characters they've seen. However, I've found that most people bringing a character to a D&D session do so completely independent of other characters that might be there. Maybe it's just a personal bias on my part, but I haven't noticed this to the same extent with AD&D characters, or characters from other systems.

[Yondu]

There are... many problems with 3e. So many, many problems. It's not going to be easy to prioritize them, but just to start:

Melee is too boring. Standard melee combatants tends to have three possibilities. They either stand still and full attack, they use their one combat maneuver they've been build to use, or the pounce and full attack. Tome of Battle helps to make things interesting, but that's limited to ToB classes and limited to using the ToB maneuver system. It would be far better if the existing system of combat actions were more useful to a character.

Magic is too powerful. Your average melee attack deals 1d8+15 damage. Your average spell completely eliminates an opponent with a failed save. Better spells eliminate more opponents, don't require saves, or both.

Magic is too versatile. Blame it on the Spell Compendium producing magic for every possible scenario. Blame it on magic doing things easier than mundane actions. Blame it on Shapechange, summoning, and other remarkably broad spells. The result is that your average wizard or sorcerer can do anything, almost literally, and can do it far better than another character attempting the same through non-magical means. Speaking of which...

Skills are too restrictive. This is part a problem with skill points being in such short supply that most classes are only good at one or two skills. Part of the problem is that skills are so narrowly defined that a character can be remarkably good at one thing (Disable Device) but completely incapable of something very similar but as a different skill (Open Lock). Part of this is that skill ranks encompass so much of the bonus involved in a skill. Even at first level, skill ranks give a +4 bonus, the equilivant of an ability score of 18. By 20th level, the difference between a character failing and succeeding at a skill task is pretty much unrelated to their class, race, ability scores, or anything else. It pretty much all depends on if they've maxed out their skill ranks or not.

Magic is too cheap. Your average wizard can scribe scrolls and craft wands for as many backup spells as they'd like. XP expense was intended to be a drawback for spellcasters, putting them behind others in levels, but the XP costs are so cheap and the design of the CR system make it so that this cost is hardly a drawback at all. In addition to this, spellcasters (especially with high casting stats) just have a large number of spell slots to work with. By around 5th or 6th level, they'll generally have enough 1st- and 2nd-level spell slots to last through all but the longest days.

Multiclassing does not work. Fighter 10/Wizard 10 is terrible. Sorcerer 10/Favored Soul 10 is even worse, despite both using the same spellcasting stats. Melee classes are encouraged to cherry-pick from as many different classes as possible, as most base melee classes have little to offer. Spellcasting classes are encouraged on only take prestige classes which have 10/10 spellcasting progression. Gish and dual-progression PrC classes are almost necessary to make such concepts work, and frequently generate sub-par characters anyways without optimization.

The numbers are all wrong. A single +6 CON item can give your average wizard the HP equilivant to your average fighter. Constitution scores in general mean any large creatures have hundreds to thousands of HP. The way AC scales, it doesn't prevent a character from being hit but prevents them from being Power Attacked when the hits land. Saves from anything with a focused casting score become so high that saving successfully rarely happens. The CR system and recommendations is just usual from almost any angle.

D&D3e encourages solo characters. I'm not really sure quite what it is in the system that does so. Perhaps it is because a good spellcaster can more or less work fine by themselves past a certain level. Perhaps it is the focus on character builds and options. Perhaps it is just the influence of the internet, and talk about all the awesome characters they've seen. However, I've found that most people bringing a character to a D&D session do so completely independent of other characters that might be there. Maybe it's just a personal bias on my part, but I haven't noticed this to the same extent with AD&D characters, or characters from other systems.

I totally agree with your statements on 3.5, I've played a lot of AD&D games and I've never seen some much prevalence of Magic-Users in a game, a AD&D spellcaster has to use his spells wisely, a thing I do not see in 3.5.
The melee characters suffers a lot of the iterative attacks, since it is move or strike. They are so much underpowered compared to MU, that, now a fighter is more a charge that a actor in the group.
Concerning solo characters, I unfortunatelly agree with you, in AD&D, you need to be a group with differents capacities in order to succeed ... in 3.5, OK let the mage do the job and look.....
On HP, that's what strike me first on 3.5, Mages have a lot of HP, my ho my, a mage with on hundred HP....
What I will add is the magic items, when you look a build or class, you see " you make a brilliant energy keen flaming + 1 sword and you replace this feat"... Even if I've played in heavy magic games, I've never created a item for myself with specific functions, it was so costy or so difficult to find somebody to make it...I was so happy to find a sword of sharpness or a sun sword or a Hoy Avenger for my Paladin....not speaking of an item which raised my attributes, Yeah a Girdle of Giant Strength for my Fighter....
Too much boring to have whatever item you want like you want...

[Andion Isurand]

Generally speaking, I prefeer to take the 3.5 ruleset and adopt feats and other features from Pathfinder for the non-casters to use. I find it helps a little bit to give the mundanes more features to work with.

[Jon_Dahl]

Too much magic.
Game authors who couldn't be bothered to read the core rules.
Many classes (the non-casters) run empty in both power and flexibility at higher levels. Even though all the base classes are spec'd for 20 levels, most games are designed to end well before level 20; consequently, the designers gave minimal attention to the higher-level abilities. When casters are getting more powerful spells, why isn't everyone else getting more powerful abilities?
Most feats are garbage.
Over-reliance on single monsters rather than groups of enemies.


I agree.

I would to also add that some classes are inherently awful. Especially monks are abysmal. Not because they are so weak, but it's hard to create group of monks that are not clone warriors in every possible way, unless you use some splatbooks. And even after that, it's still clone wars...

I'm not so concerned about game balance, but boring classes is something I cannot forgive.

[peacenlove]

1. Arcane / Divine Magic
1a. Casters that know (or have the capability of easily obtaining) their whole spell list.
1b. Disparity of core casters vs splatbook ones in support. (69 mysteries vs 3000+ arcane spells)
1c. Arcane/Divine magic replaces mundane roles from day one of 3.5 edition. Planar binding / ally is an offender but more can be found with a brief search
2. Lack of updates to the rules in an online freely accessible site. SRD is older than the Rules compendium. I hear that there is a "premium" PHB with the latest errata ...
3. No 3rd party material / restrictive game license. There are tons of homebrew here and there that I would like to buy and pay for in a soft cover format, that would support the author of making more of it, especially for non-core material. Instead we have products like Rogue Handbook #1000, totally not the core rogue and City building: how to build and bring to life urban trash cans.
4. Monster rules that beak down at the slightest tweak. Fear that orbs scale too quickly? Try putting monsters that advance 4 hd + con + a class HD for elite ability scores per cr with their constitution modifier and see the HP pile up. Want unbreakable saves / AC? nymph paladin. etc etc.
4a. Level 1-3 lethality being too great, lvl 13 + too little
5. DnD is actually 4 different games. Level 1-5, 6-11, 12-20 and epic. The game doesn't warn you enough about the differences of each one.

[Rogue Shadows]

The skill system needed a complete overhaul.

[Morty]

It's hard to pinpoint the biggest flaws in D&D 3.5, because there's just so many things that don't work, and spread across the entire system. Still, I'd like to throw in two more:


The system focuses on telling you what you can't do. D&D 3.5 is full of things you can't do or will do badly unless you spend a good part of your feats, skill points and magic items on it and probably use some splatbooks and multi-class. You want to fight with two weapons? Better sink half of your feats into it. Want to fight using dexterity rather than strength? You need to spend a feat and restrict yourself to a narrow selection of weapons... and forget about Power Attack with most of them, so better find another source of damage. Want to use a combat manoeuvre? Better spend all your feats so you can actually affect enemies with it. Of course, it largely doesn't apply to magic. Which leads me to the next point...

Magic and non-magic are two different games. And the interaction between them is all too often a one-way street. There's a lot of magic effects that you simply can't meaningfully interact with without magic. For instance, a non-spellcaster who encounters a wall of force can't do anything about it without a Rod of Cancellation. They need to go around it, provided it's at all possible.


I think that my first point is the reason Tome of Battle is so popular - because it lets non-magical characters do a variety of different things without requiring heavy, focused investment. And it makes some combat styles, that are otherwise a waste of time, a lot more playable.

[Norin]

- The skillmonkey role/skill system annoys me alot.

Sure, with the right build/focus i can do my skillmonkey stuff pretty effectively. But every time i do it, the groups wizard or cleric just smirks and and tells me how they could have fixed it without me in half the time. Being a mundane skill focused char just lets you feel a bit redundant at times really.

- Mundane (none tob) melee/ranged combat.

"I charge it."
"I hit it... i hit it again."
"I rage and hit it a bit harder......"
"I hit it x times with my arrows..."
"I move and hit with one attack that deals xd6 damage..."
*snoooore*

It's just too boring after a few sessions. I can't bring myself to play such a char any more.

[Person_Man]

The lack of any clearly stated organizing principles.

What are the target success/failure rates for various actions at various levels of experience and optimization? How much should a class gain when it goes up a level? How powerful should a Feat be? And so on.

[OzymandiasX]

Most of the biggest complaints are easily fixed: E6

The 6-8 level range really is the sweet spot for game balance between magic-vs-mundane, melee-vs-ranged, skills-vs-combat...

With a maximum of 3rd level spells, casters have most of their versatility but are hardly overpowered yet.
Combat moves quickly, as nobody is rolling 50+ dice each combat turn. (Dual wielding sneak attackers, wonky higher level AoE spells that require separate attacks or grapples for all in the effect, etc)
With a few notable exceptions (that can be houseruled out) 6 levels doesn't get to most of the broken combos.
It is enough levels that there is a significant difference between classes/specs, but not enough that the class tiers show up yet.
It avoids the ridiculousness of high hitpoint characters (where jumping off a mountain can be the safest way down, etc)

[Deepbluediver]

But what were the biggest flaws? What were the weaknesses in the rules that so easily broke games?

Most of the things that are functional but imbalanced have already been mentioned, but in case you are unaware of it, this is the index thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=267985) for things in the game that don't work at all, or are legitimately broken.

They've got some good stuff there, particularly if you are into homebrewing fixes.

[shadow_archmagi]

Magic and non-magic are two different games. And the interaction between them is all too often a one-way street. There's a lot of magic effects that you simply can't meaningfully interact with without magic. For instance, a non-spellcaster who encounters a wall of force can't do anything about it without a Rod of Cancellation. They need to go around it, provided it's at all possible.



This is an interesting point and I'm glad I clicked on the thread.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I forgot to mention: too much good stuff (and a lot of it benefit casters, particularly arcane). When it comes to PrCs, Arcane has more, better, one in terms of raw power then anyone else.

[Kurald Galain]

But what were the biggest flaws? What were the weaknesses in the rules that so easily broke games?
The main weakness of 3E is its ability to produce endless repetitive discussion on message boards :smallamused:

[ahenobarbi]

How things scale. Most characteristics (spells/day, HP, rage/day, ...) start way to low and end up way to high.

x/day abilities. Because if it's to strong to be 1/encounter it's probably to strong to be available at all.

[brutticusforce]

Off the top of my head...

1. Magic was too powerful
2. Magic was too versatile
3. Mundane Classes and Magic-lite classes were too weak
4. Most feats were not worth the ink used to write them
5. Many prestige classes were too specific in flavor
6. Most prestige classes were worthless
7. Rules bloat
8. Over-reliance on magic items as a catch-all fix for inherent game imbalances
9. Magic Item costs
10. Cherry picking

SO MUCH THIS.

Also you forgot skill points being really wonkily implemented. Theres too much variance between how many points each character gets. Its impossible to make a DC that a fighter can still hit that a bard cant hit on a 2. PF and 4e both really dropped the ball when attempting to come up for solutions on this one


The spell point system breaks down very quickly. It might work better if the higher level spells were double or even triple the cost. In the end it makes wizards even more powerful and makes sorcerers much weaker. Makes me wonder if that guy who hated sorcerers designed that variant. If I redesigned the system there would only be one main arcane caster instead of two and it wouldn't be recognizable. Not gonna do it though.

So try doubling or tripling the cost. Or, even better, cut the number of points a wizard gets. knock it down to 200 at level 20 (10 every level) and see what happens?

[Squirrel_Dude]

3. No 3rd party material / restrictive game license. There are tons of homebrew here and there that I would like to buy and pay for in a soft cover format, that would support the author of making more of it, especially for non-core material. Instead we have products like Rogue Handbook #1000, totally not the core rogue and City building: how to build and bring to life urban trash cans. I'm going to disagree about this, and actually call it flat out false. The Open Game License is one of the greatest triumphs of D&D third edition. The amount of games that used D&D's d20 system is amazing, and the amount of material published for D&D stands tall as well.

[Shining Wrath]

The single biggest problem with 3.5?

There. Is. Too. Much. To. Know.

The difference between the character built by someone with access to 5 splatbooks and someone working just from the PHB is too great.

It's one thing to have a variety of classes and races, like 4e. It's quite another when there are feats that dramatically change a class that only those who buy splatbooks know about.

Or classes from splatbooks that pretty much supplant PHB classes (e.g., ToB).

Edit to add:


The lack of any clearly stated organizing principles.

What are the target success/failure rates for various actions at various levels of experience and optimization? How much should a class gain when it goes up a level? How powerful should a Feat be? And so on.

I have considered writing a thread about Featonomics. *Most* feats can be purchased for the equivalent of about a +1 to a weapon or armor, or about 5,000 GP for other MIC slots. For example, Improved Initiative (a solid feat but not the best) is about the same as the +1 boost "Warning", or the 6k item "Ring of Anticipation". The OMGWTFBBQ good feats, like Power Attack and Natural Spell, can't be bought from the MIC.

And then there's the near-worthless feats, like "Acrobatic", which can be purchased for less than 1,000 GP.

[BowStreetRunner]

When it comes to the issue of balance in a role-playing game, it's all right for some classes to shine in one set of circumstances (fighters in battle, rogues dealing with traps, etc.) and be a little less spectacular in others. However, no one wants to be stuck sitting on their thumbs through an entire encounter.

The real advantage of primary casters was the incredible diversity of options available to them. Mundane combat types had almost nothing to do outside of combat, without having to give up combat power to achieve it (like taking a social feat instead of a combat feat). Primary casters could have spells for every type of occasion, and just switch out which they used depending on the environment. Skillful characters were not much better off than combat types, as once again the decision to excel at one skill came at the expense of another.

EDIT: Or look at it this way. A 20th level generalist Wizard has a total of 6 static class features (familiar, scribe scroll, 4 bonus feats) and 40 variable class features (spells) that can each be used one time per day. Each day he can reset his selection of variable class features, even taking the same single-use feature more than once. He also has the option to leave some of these unfilled in order to fill them later in the day.

In contrast, a 20th level fighter has a total of 11 static class features (bonus feats).

[Morty]

This is an interesting point and I'm glad I clicked on the thread.

It's a conclusion I reached when I was participating in a 'how to fix the fighter' discussion that was actually productive, unlike most of them. It's hard to make the fighter worthwhile in 3.5, because the system is fundamentally rigged against him, by introducing things he can't meaningfully interact with. However...


The lack of any clearly stated organizing principles.

What are the target success/failure rates for various actions at various levels of experience and optimization? How much should a class gain when it goes up a level? How powerful should a Feat be? And so on.

This is the most concise answer to this thread, I think. The designers of D&D 3rd edition really didn't know what they were doing or what they were trying to accomplish, or each of them thought it was something else. And it shows.

[Tvtyrant]

Most of the biggest complaints are easily fixed: E6

The 6-8 level range really is the sweet spot for game balance between magic-vs-mundane, melee-vs-ranged, skills-vs-combat...

With a maximum of 3rd level spells, casters have most of their versatility but are hardly overpowered yet.
Combat moves quickly, as nobody is rolling 50+ dice each combat turn. (Dual wielding sneak attackers, wonky higher level AoE spells that require separate attacks or grapples for all in the effect, etc)
With a few notable exceptions (that can be houseruled out) 6 levels doesn't get to most of the broken combos.
It is enough levels that there is a significant difference between classes/specs, but not enough that the class tiers show up yet.
It avoids the ridiculousness of high hitpoint characters (where jumping off a mountain can be the safest way down, etc)


I like E6 as well. So much so that I doubt I will ever run a none-E6 D&D campaign. However E6 has its own problems. You level really quickly until level 6 and then your characters abruptly stop advancing as rapidly, there is a massive disparity between the later melee classes and the earlier ones, and it makes the inclusion of some iconic creatures into a survival horror game.

The first problem I think could be fixed by having a feat only level between each normal level, which would slow down the progression and make the feat chains more normal feeling. The second is a problem my own group ran into, but I am inclined to push people away from the PHB and towards later classes anyways (The Duskblade wanted to play a Monk and was irritated I didn't let him play one...) The last one I just taught my players to listen carefully to flavor text and run when things go south.

[NeoPhoenix0]

I'm going to disagree about this, and actually call it flat out false. The Open Game License is one of the greatest triumphs of D&D third edition. The amount of games that used D&D's d20 system is amazing, and the amount of material published for D&D stands tall as well.

I was going to say something about how the OGL isn't really neccasary but that might count as legal advice so I won't. I will say that the one thing the OGL does do is tie games together under a recognizable system so people feel more comfortable buying something they recognize as familiar.

[Kansaschaser]

Most of the biggest complaints are easily fixed: E6

The 6-8 level range really is the sweet spot for game balance between magic-vs-mundane, melee-vs-ranged, skills-vs-combat...

With a maximum of 3rd level spells, casters have most of their versatility but are hardly overpowered yet.
Combat moves quickly, as nobody is rolling 50+ dice each combat turn. (Dual wielding sneak attackers, wonky higher level AoE spells that require separate attacks or grapples for all in the effect, etc)
With a few notable exceptions (that can be houseruled out) 6 levels doesn't get to most of the broken combos.
It is enough levels that there is a significant difference between classes/specs, but not enough that the class tiers show up yet.
It avoids the ridiculousness of high hitpoint characters (where jumping off a mountain can be the safest way down, etc)


*shudder* Even thinking about restricting the game to E6 makes my teeth hurt. Restricting the game to E6 because of the game flaws is like amputating all of a persons limbs because they have foot cancer.

[Person_Man]

This is the most concise answer to this thread, I think. The designers of D&D 3rd edition really didn't know what they were doing or what they were trying to accomplish, or each of them thought it was something else. And it shows.

Yeah, there's just a fundamental difference between designing a simple tabletop game and and massively complex system with multiple subsystems and hundreds of supplements.

When you write a simple tabletop game, you can just make what feels right, test it a bunch of times, tweak it until it works, publish it, and then maybe publish a few supplements after the fact to add variations. D&D started out this way - it was a simple hidden map game. You explored dungeons, there were some fairly basic rules for exploration and combat (which was avoided when possible), you got xp based on the gp value of the treasure you got, won or escaped or died, the end. In time they added supplemental rules for outdoors and different monsters and a few more classes and whatnot, but it was a fundamentally simple and knowable set of game mechanics.

But when you write a massively complex system with many subsystems and hundreds of supplements, you basically need to start by inventing an internal set of physics that make sense, and then never publish anything that breaks those physics. And that's pretty much impossible if you start out with an "exception based" outlook on game design, where every new bit of crunch provides an exception to the preexisting rules.

[Squirrel_Dude]

On a more random tangent, there are a couple annoying parts of D&D's morality and alignment that are totally flawed. They're the things that make alignment such a pain because they're not even addressed in any satisfying matter in the core rules.

Book of exalted deeds and vile darkness somewhat address this issue, but there has always been one that has caused endless alignment discussions.

1. Why are undead evil? What is it about raising a skeleton/zombie, or being a vampire/lich that's evil? Why are Ghouls, of all undead, evil?

There are other issues like the Paladin code, the nature of theft as evil or good, and other small things that just aren't very well addressed, and cause problems.

[DR27]

The difference between the character built by someone with access to 5 splatbooks and someone working just from the PHB is too great.

It's one thing to have a variety of classes and races, like 4e. It's quite another when there are feats that dramatically change a class that only those who buy splatbooks know about.

Or classes from splatbooks that pretty much supplant PHB classes (e.g., ToB).Yeah, I guess you are kind of right, 3.5 was published in a way to encourage more buying, therefore creating a barrier to entry. There's not an appreciable difference for core casters though - they are just as powerful in comparison to mundanes with material restricted to core handbooks as with splatbook access. (sure, they might get more powerful, but all they need is in core) It really holds true though for mundanes however - they gain great amounts of versatility from supplements. But I don't really think of it as a failure/flaw, because I don't think of 3.5 as a single set of books that were dropped all at once intended to work perfectly together.

I don't like to look at it in terms of "3.5 requires too much system mastery." Instead, I like to think of 3.5 as an evolution. As a rule of thumb, the later in 3.5 a supplement was published, the fewer game-breaking things it contained. Warlock, Duskblade/Hexblade, Warmage, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, etc? They brought the power level of arcane casters down to more tolerable levels. ToB, Dungeoncrasher, etc? Brought the power of melee classes up to more tolerable levels. Skill-monkeys were probably already close to a happy medium. Not much of an attempt was made to address divine caster power issues though.

Would I rather that 3.5 had all been published at once, condensed into fewer books so there was less of a barrier to entry? Yes, of course I would. Am I sorry that the writers tried to fix their initial mistakes? Not at all. I guess in the end, I somewhat disagree with the sentiment that supplements were a system flaw. If anything, splatbooks enhanced the system. That's not to say that they weren't a way to get more money from customers while creating a significant barrier to entry. In modern internet times, you can semi-illegally look at them anyways, so the money thing isn't too much of an issue, ethics/laziness are all that stop someone from having access to a book now.

I just wrote a whole lot without much of a conclusion either way, but I don't know that you can really make much of one anyways considering that 3.5 is complete, and the topic has already been discussed to death. Make the choices that fit your game the best, but also know that a large collection of people have already identified some major issues. Maybe take a look at those before tinkering too much yourself. 3.5 has lots of flaws, but we still talk about it a lot. 4e doesn't have that, and previous editions don't either. It must do something right.

[NeoPhoenix0]

On a more random tangent, there are a couple annoying parts of D&D's morality and alignment that are totally flawed. They're the things that make alignment such a pain because they're not even addressed in any satisfying matter in the core rules.

Book of exalted deeds and vile darkness somewhat address this issue, but there has always been one that has caused endless alignment discussions.

1. Why are undead evil? What is it about raising a skeleton/zombie, or being a vampire/lich that's evil? Why are Ghouls, of all undead, evil?

There are other issues like the Paladin code, the nature of theft as evil or good, and other small things that just aren't very well addressed, and cause problems.

Controlled vampires are chaotic evil because their master is evil and they don't control their own actions for the most part. Free vampires generally kill people and raise spawn, however WotC never required vampires to feed so it should be possible to be a good vampire. I believe either eberron or forgotten realms has a few good vampires and liches.

[Karnith]

The lack of any clearly stated organizing principles.

What are the target success/failure rates for various actions at various levels of experience and optimization? How much should a class gain when it goes up a level? How powerful should a Feat be? And so on.
This is pretty much spot-on. It's noticeable that WotC got better at deciding on a balance point late in 3.5, but 3.0 and early 3.5 design was all over the place.

Free vampires generally kill people and raise spawn, however WotC never required vampires to feed so it should be possible to be a good vampire.
Actually, per Libris Mortis vampires are diet-dependent on blood, and have an inescapable craving for it. There are still good vampires (Jander Sunstar in the Forgotten Realms comes to mind, though I think he left for Ravenloft a while ago), but it's pretty hard.

[NeoPhoenix0]

One thing that never made sense to me was that animating undead is often considered evil but forcing an elemental against his will into a golem is perfectly acceptable behavior.