Why is 3.X still so popular?

[Cluedrew]

OK, to be clear I've played some of the D&D 3.X games (3.0, 3.5 & Pathfinder) and I have enjoyed them. But it has, if my quick search is correct, been 15 years since it came out. That seems like more than enough time for people to improve on it, even if you don't agree that the later versions of D&D are those improvements.

So why is 3.X still so popular? The easy answer is momentum, that the player base and amount of content is such that it outweighs any other reason to move to another game. A more interesting answer is that D&D 3.X did something right (for all the mistakes it may have made) that other games have missed. But I'm not sure what that would.

I ask this sort of as an outsider, because despite having played and enjoyed the game (my last attempt to start an ongoing campaign was 3.5 for that matter) I don't prefer it to a number of other systems. But here I think I can find its supporters. So preach to me, what is it all about?

[noob]

It is about funny bugs?
Or is it about some settings made for it?

[Snowbluff]

The proper term is The d20 System.

1) 3.5 is far more expansive than most systems have had the money to compete with. You have tons of variety between subsystems and silly options.

2) PF is now far more popular than most systems have had the money to compete with. Paizo also puts out a lot of campaigns and stuff, which people seem to like.

3) Most systems suck anyway, and rely on increasingly esoteric and generally pain in the ass operations (have you ever played that DC heroes one? I needed a table for everything) to differentiate themselves. Ironically, with how dysfunctional d20 it's actually much easier to work new things into it compared to other systems of similiar power and complexity.

4) Great third party support, see above 3. Not to mention free d20 systems like Legend.

[Blackhawk748]

OK, to be clear I've played some of the D&D 3.X games (3.0, 3.5 & Pathfinder) and I have enjoyed them. But it has, if my quick search is correct, been 15 years since it came out. That seems like more than enough time for people to improve on it, even if you don't agree that the later versions of D&D are those improvements.

So why is 3.X still so popular? The easy answer is momentum, that the player base and amount of content is such that it outweighs any other reason to move to another game. A more interesting answer is that D&D 3.X did something right (for all the mistakes it may have made) that other games have missed. But I'm not sure what that would.

I ask this sort of as an outsider, because despite having played and enjoyed the game (my last attempt to start an ongoing campaign was 3.5 for that matter) I don't prefer it to a number of other systems. But here I think I can find its supporters. So preach to me, what is it all about?

Obviously it is the superior system!

Kidding aside i thinks its because of the crazy amount of support 3.X has. If you take into account all the setting material, i think DnD 3.X has the most books of any TTRPG. Now bring in books from Sword and Sorcery, Legends and Lairs and the host of other 3.X clones and that pile just keeps getting bigger. The amount of options one has is mind boggling.

[Aetol]

I guess it's because its direct successor, 4E, was badly received, while 5E is still relatively new on the scene.

[sktarq]

It has been well shaken out, there are so many optional bits made for is highly flexible, replacing the whole support enviroment is actually a major thing (sunk cost issues and the like) and when the group responsible (Wizards of the Coast) does not meet expectations (the many people who didn't like 4e) it will taake a big thing to get any significant part of that group to make a unified change (as a social game it has a very high critical mass to become appealing) and yet that is what Pathfinder has done.

Also RPG's are not like cars or computer games, they don't wear out and there is no reason that and old one is "worse" than a new one. It is not as though 5e uses any core different technology than 1e. The only unit of measure that really matters is the amount of total fun had by the people involved and that is not something intrinsically improved on by new editions. That's why people were still playing 2e during the era when 3.5e was new and dominant.

So as long as you can find people who want to play there is no incentive to move from (and actually a money and time disincentive) an edition you like. Doesn't matter if that game is GURPS, D&D, World of Darkness, or whatever.

[Darth Ultron]

For me, and a lot of gamers I know, 3X is the last traditional D&D game. It is the closest to 1E/2E. 4E really went the wrong direction with all the video game and new ways of thinking crap. And 5E is just boring and too full of the new way of thinking.

3X does not have the video game/new wave stuff as rules. So sure a lot of people play the game with that mind set, they do so by house rules, but it is not forced on everyone by the rules.

4E/5E are great for the casual gamers. You want to sit in someones basement for a couple hours and fight monsters? They are the games for you. 3X is much better made for long campaign lasting years.

3X is the only one that feels like D&D.

[Ruethgar]

I personally prefer 3.x for a few reasons.

It was my first experience with RPGs and the one which I have the most fond memories of(including playing a scenario with Gygax once).

It has a gargantuan wealth of content such that you can make most any character concept come to life and play as almost anything you can imagine.

The support for the system is amazing, even though WotC will no longer even speak of it, there are many forms such as this one where you can find all the support you need.

I also like the stories that have spawned from the game, this isn't 3.x specific but the D&D universes have spawned a wealth of literature that I thoroughly enjoy and love to expand upon with my own characters' exploits.

This harkens back to the any character concept, but 3.x also allows you to create your own world with staggering ease as a player which I always enjoy being able to do.

[Starbuck_II]

It is the only edition with Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and Psionics at same time.

Tome of Magic brought forth the Binder (Pathfinder recreated the Occultist, a Binder Lite) and Truenamer (yes, the mechanics are complained that later they don't work, but they are fine at beginning)

Tome of Battle brought forth Martial arts (which every Knight used in real life, the art of fighting martially, not just the unarmed kind). The classes are unique and unrepresented in Pathfinder (Seriously, Crusader is not clone not in Pathfinder; though Warblade and Swordsage are possible to emulate).

And Expanded Psionic and Complete Psionic classes are awesome. The first balanced Player's handbook (Core Handbook is never balanced).

[Vhaidara]

For me, it's familiarity and range of power. The ceiling in 3.5 is extremely high, and the floor is extremely low. And I have enough system mastery to play pretty much wherever I want between the two (I enjoy the middle, as a note). In more tightly controlled systems, you don't get that range, where one game could be commoners struggling to survive against raiding goblins, while another is literally ousting gods from their homes, and they both use the same system, the same rules, just with different player expectations.

I personally feel that the Tier system for classes, when the classes are played to their tier, gives 4 pretty decent pictures
Tiers 1-2: We are Gods
Tiers 3-4: We are Heroes
Tiers 5-6: We are Warriors
Tier Dysfunction: I am Truenamer


Tome of Magic brought forth the Binder (Pathfinder recreated the Occultist, a Binder Lite) and Truenamer (yes, the mechanics are complained that later they don't work, but they are fine at beginning)

And shadowcaster. Everyone forgets shadowcaster...


Tome of Battle brought forth Martial arts (which every Knight used in real life, the art of fighting martially, not just the unarmed kind). The classes are unique and unrepresented in Pathfinder (Seriously, Crusader is not clone not in Pathfinder; though Warblade and Swordsage are possible to emulate).

Um...Warder, Warlord, Mystic, Knight Disciple Paladin, Warpath Follower Inquisitor/Warpriest and Zealot can all be used to emulate Crusader

[Spore]

I guess it's because its direct successor, 4E, was badly received, while 5E is still relatively new on the scene.

That's basically what it is. One player in my group routinely says that 5e is very very good but we are just so used to 3.5/PF (and we currently have a post apocalyptic game going) that we simply ignore 5e.

[Pluto!]

OGL.

It was a considerable part of what made WotC's initial marketing campaign a huge success and it put WotC in the position where their new editions have to compete with that success.

Add to that the inertia of switching systems and the fact that there's not really any need or desire for many players to update their games (forum-going optimizers probably being the biggest exceptions), and WotC kind of painted themselves into a corner by building and then trying to shift away from d20 and its OGL.

[nijineko]

OK, to be clear I've played some of the D&D 3.X games (3.0, 3.5 & Pathfinder) and I have enjoyed them. But it has, if my quick search is correct, been 15 years since it came out. That seems like more than enough time for people to improve on it, even if you don't agree that the later versions of D&D are those improvements.

So why is 3.X still so popular? The easy answer is momentum, that the player base and amount of content is such that it outweighs any other reason to move to another game. A more interesting answer is that D&D 3.X did something right (for all the mistakes it may have made) that other games have missed. But I'm not sure what that would.

I ask this sort of as an outsider, because despite having played and enjoyed the game (my last attempt to start an ongoing campaign was 3.5 for that matter) I don't prefer it to a number of other systems. But here I think I can find its supporters. So preach to me, what is it all about?

Options.

Despite all the potential for rules clashes and wacky interpretations, they dumped a lot of creative talent into 3.x, came up with lots of cool ideas, and the rules interactions inspired even more ideas. so you have this effect of creativity still bounded by various frameworks already in place.

The only systems more flexible than 3.x are rules lite systems where the unbounded or undefined nature of the rule systems can actually inhibit creativity, and massive point buy systems like GURPS or Champions.

I feel that true creativity is similar to liquid. it takes on the shape of what you pour it into. if you don't have enough bounds (or rules) to start with, it just sits there in a formless puddle of half baked concepts. sketch out some rules, and your system becomes more like a pipe, channeling and empowering your creativity. 3.x is pretty much a fire hose, largely in part because of the OGL and d20 aspects.

so despite all the clunkiness, all the lingering bits of previous edition history still influencing the rule set, despite all the lousy grammar and easily abusable wordings, it is a flexible and powerful system which still has some creative juice in it.



just as a personal example, i once wanted to play a character who's class abilities were all shapeshifting related. well, 3.x doesn't have a "shapeshifting" class, but mixing and mashing together various races, classes, ACFs, and prestige yielded a pretty much pure shapeshifter. (and without going druid or wild shaping ranger, either.)

[LTwerewolf]

That's basically what it is. One player in my group routinely says that 5e is very very good but we are just so used to 3.5/PF (and we currently have a post apocalyptic game going) that we simply ignore 5e.

I found 5e to be incredibly limiting. There is so little customization in the classes that every fighter feels like the same fighter, every sorcerer pretty much feels like the same sorcerer. It's like they're playing e6 without proper feat supports.

[Cirrylius]

I assumed it was a combination of material volume and the fact that Pathfinder is somewhat more tightly balanced, taking out some of the fun of "me vs. the rules" optimization.

[LudicSavant]

OK, to be clear I've played some of the D&D 3.X games (3.0, 3.5 & Pathfinder) and I have enjoyed them. But it has, if my quick search is correct, been 15 years since it came out. That seems like more than enough time for people to improve on it, even if you don't agree that the later versions of D&D are those improvements.

So why is 3.X still so popular? The easy answer is momentum, that the player base and amount of content is such that it outweighs any other reason to move to another game. A more interesting answer is that D&D 3.X did something right (for all the mistakes it may have made) that other games have missed. But I'm not sure what that would.

I ask this sort of as an outsider, because despite having played and enjoyed the game (my last attempt to start an ongoing campaign was 3.5 for that matter) I don't prefer it to a number of other systems. But here I think I can find its supporters. So preach to me, what is it all about?

A general lack of competition with marketing power. Where there is competition, 3.5e fulfills many aesthetics of play better than its most visible competitors (even if it may be worse at some others). For instance, in 3.5e you can animate an undead army of tyrannosauruses. In 5e you can animate an army of more or less identical humanoid skeletons and wonder how all the wizards that did it made their more interesting undead armies.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Compared to other D&D editions, or all other RPGs?

Compared to other D&D editions...it's the best one, that's why! :smallsmile:
Seriously, though. It is, that's why we prefer it, that's what it boils down to... It offers a lot of flexibility while still having unifying mechanics and predefined "kits" in the form of classes to keep it from being overwhelming to a new person but also packed with tons of variants and options for veterans to master the system. It also has a fairly stark evolution in power level of the party, generally broken into four quarters. Early levels the characters have regular human limits for the most part, then they gradually surpass that to varying levels such as "wuxia", superhuman / comic book hero, and eventually reaching nearly godhood in power. You can develop a character through all of this, and if you don't want to, you can always just pick a level range and/or play E6 / E8 / whatever (a game where 6th, 8th, or whatever is the maximum level anyone can achieve, and from there you get more feats and items instead of class levels) to hard lock yourself into the style of play you prefer.

Compared to all other RPGs? I have no idea. Maybe some are better. Having the D&D branding definitely helped a lot, plenty of people simply have no interest to explore other games, which is unfair...but unfortunately true. Hell, it's true of me to a large extent, too. I have tried various White Wolf systems like Changeling and...whichever one lets you make a super hero. And I just plain don't like the core mechanic of the d10's and soak dice, and such. Changeling in particular seemed to rely a lot on "Mother, May I?" gameplay where you beg the DM for bonuses by roleplaying your actions real good. It was entertaining as a one shot, but would have annoyed me in a long term game. That's part of the reason I love 3E the most of the D&D editions... More stuff is spelled out and defined, and the player has more control over whether they're good at something or not, and (especially with social skills) player ability has only a minor impact on character ability.

[LudicSavant]

Some points that might account for 3.5e's appeal to some audiences over other systems with marketing power behind them...

- 3.5e has more "creative use" abilities than 4e or 5e, and more abilities with unique functions. For instance, compare Animate Dead in 3.5e and Animate Dead in 5e. In 5e, Animate Dead can only create indentical boring skeletons out of humans and forehead aliens. In 3.5e, Animate Dead works in a way more in line with the fluff, and just about anything with a skeletal system can be made into a skeleton. So you get to ride around your undead tyrannosauruses.

- 3.5e has parity between PCs and NPCs (that is, they're built with the same rules), with all of the positive implications that go along with that. 4e and 5e largely abandoned this for no really good reason, and it brings with it all the limitations you'd expect it to bring.

- Expanding on the previous point, 3.5e's mechanics are generally associated (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17231/roleplaying-games/dissociated-mechanics-a-brief-primer). (Which isn't to say that all of them are, there are some bothersome exceptions).

- In 3.5e, the player generally knows what they're capable of and exactly what a +X to Y skill means in terms of what kind of feats they can accomplish in character. Contrast skill systems like 5e, where there is much more DM fiat and players are less able to have rational expectations or decide their own capabilities.

- 3.5e has a much greater range of levels than 5e. Sure, they both go from 1-20, but a level 16 3.5e character is basically in a different *genre* of power level than a level 16 5e character. 3.5e scales up from Conan that Barbarian to The Avengers or One Piece power levels. Compare the Balor in 5e with the Balor in 3.5e; they're completely different beasts fulfilling fundamentally different roles and capable of fundamentally different kinds of feats.

- 3.5e has more content overall than 4e or 5e. Even after you cut out the massive glut of useless filler trap options or obviously broken nonsense. You can, quite simply, do more things with 3.5e than in 4e or 5e. You can build more character concepts and realize more diverse campaign concepts without cutting as many corners.

- 3.5e has an extensive tactical combat system. Some RPGs don't really offer much in the way of tactical play (often advertising that they're focusing more on storytelling aspects).

[unseenmage]

Familiarity and options as has already been mentioned.

I want a rich juicy steak? D20srd is that steak.
I want something more foreign to me or less rules intensive (options wise anyway)? That's where everything else sits.

[Eldan]

I'd say "momentum", for me, yeah. I have folders and folders full of campaign settings, homebrew rules, house rules, rewrites lying around and no reason to give it all up.

[Honest Tiefling]

It's the edition I know, and the ones others that I play with know of. We've gotten used to making it into the RP vehicle we want, with combat that can be group oriented without being too fatal. A lot of people I play with want to try out new character ideas with it. So in essence, we're familiar with it, and have more ideas for it.

Some other RP systems come with weird quirks, such as Humanity for vampire that just never gelled with me. I also don't think it helped that I think some people fell asleep during character creation for GURPS.

[Curmudgeon]

Options. And options. And still more options.

D&D 3.x is bigger than any other RPG. Even if most of it isn't to your liking, there's still a huge amount of material you can use.

[Pluto!]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?

I can't think of a time when I've said "I wasn't into that game until I heard it had 20+ splatbooks!"

[Amphetryon]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?

I can't think of a time when I've said "I wasn't into that game until I heard it had 20+ splatbooks!"

That seems a deliberately different question than the one the OP asked, which is "why is 3.X still so popular?" The question of generating initial interest is clearly a different one from the question of holding interest.

[Vhaidara]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?

I can't think of a time when I've said "I wasn't into that game until I heard it had 20+ splatbooks!"

At this point, most people get things by way of completely illegal PDFs or certain sites that won't be named.

Or, you know, they play Pathfinder, where everything published by Paizo is on here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/) within like three weeks, 100% legal. Third party stuff takes longer, but it pretty much all ends up there eventually.

[Pex]

Because the vocal minority in this forum who bash the game are just that, a vocal minority. They may seethe and gripe or worship at the altar of the Tier System, but those who continue playing 3E and Pathfinder do not have issues with the game. If there is something in particular they aren't liking they don't resent it. They either just deal with it or house rule the issue away for their particular game.

Less cynical view:

Versatility of options. Fun game mechanics. Lots of cool things to do. Pathfinder specifically: all rules, classes, spells, feats, etc. are free. Only have to pay for modules and extras if you really, really want them. Power level range. Game runs the gamut of simplicity to complexity, low power to high power.

[Amphetryon]

Because the vocal minority in this forum who bash the game are just that, a vocal minority. They may seethe and gripe or worship at the altar of the Tier System, but those who continue playing 3E and Pathfinder do not have issues with the game. If there is something in particular they aren't liking they don't resent it. They either just deal with it or house rule the issue away for their particular game.

Less cynical view:

Versatility of options. Fun game mechanics. Lots of cool things to do. Pathfinder specifically: all rules, classes, spells, feats, etc. are free. Only have to pay for modules and extras if you really, really want them. Power level range. Game runs the gamut of simplicity to complexity, low power to high power.

Why in the world is the Tier System being brought up as some sort of denigration of 3.X or those who note it?

[ZamielVanWeber]

One thing I line about 3.5 is that I have enough experience with it to fill in design gaps. Someone wanted a warlock/psionic PRC so we were able to make one that was balanced and had enough class options to make someone happy. Experience let's my friends and I expand content as we see fit. I could not do that comfortably with 4e or 5e.

[thorr-kan]

Grognards.

3.X has been around long enough that it has its own grognards, now.

:smallcool:

[daremetoidareyo]

1.) Buggy Code. D&D attracts a lot of smart, young people. It also attracts people who escape into fantasy as a means of stress control. This means that power can be expressed in intelligent choices, not in how wealthy or how physically fit or how confident with the other gender you are. Which means that rule bugs are crazy fun. With all of the support the game gets, there is always a new bug to be discovered. But this brings me to the next point.

2.) Bad gaming balance. It's a feature, not a flaw. Why else do they allow you to run a Gully dwarf? Caster supremacy is the thorn in the paw of every forum about dnd 3.5. But, we still keep on trucking through it, why? The imbalance is crazy fun, that's why. Without real world mechanics hanging like a millstone around magic's neck, we are routinely introduced to the unexpected. Mundanes need to rely on buggy code to even have a chance to compete, and guess what? That is fun too. Some people love being a mundane. It scratches some proletariat everyman itch, and who cares if the caster is better, his actual skill in anything is illegitimate in comparison to the one who trains to be the best. Magic, however, allows you to shrink things and toss them, change your feats around, and even summon a devil and send him to hunt your assassin for you. That is fun too.

3.)Pathfinder. Grabbed the reigns when wizards decided to milk their cash cow with 4th and now 5th. DSP cleaned up psionics. Now spheres of power cleaned up the narrative inefficiency of vancian casting. Third party support of the OGL keep people entrenched in this system. 5th edition, although reported to be good, is more likely to grow by getting people who are new to D&D in general, rather than forcing conversion of old hands. If Wizards had converted planescape, I imagine that all of the hold-out AD&D 2nd edition would have jumped ship too. Thac0 was a mess. nonweapon proficiencies were terrible.

4.) Hope. I honestly think that some of us are holding out hope that Wizards will see that 3.5 is still the mostly widely used, and rather than cede the ENTIRE customer base to pathfinder + online piracy, actually try to market to us again. You know, how at the end of a concert, how you keep clapping for the encore, and you just hope that the band comes back out and tears the roof off? That is what we want.

It would cost them nearly nothing to buy up the dndtools sql database, Finally add human paragon to it (HOW DID THEY MISS THAT!), and put out an expensive annual compendium that introduces new feats and subsystems (and a diplomacy re-write). Then, any material that is older than 2 years is added to the free searchable database (by keywords and whatnot).
By keeping new publications offline, any use of the new material requires a physical purchase, which they can inflate the costs of. Heck, a second dragon compendium is already basically written,a all wizards has to do is compile it, edit, and sell it. I am willing to wager that the majority who convert from 3rd to 5th edition fall within the 18-25 demographic. This low cost approach would directly compete with paizo more than it would hurt it's own bottom line. I'm sure they can do a focus group, unpaid on this question and get the answer.

And here is why this hope has merit: 3rd party simply can't do what 1st party can, and we are hoping that wizards stops using that power as inefficient leverage to force us to learn an entire new system like 4th or 5th, and instead cadre directly to us like they used to. So we keep clapping.

Actually, perhaps we should compose a nice letter and put it on petitions.com or some such and bring up all of these points. I've got to finish an Iron chef later, but I'll compose a rough draft and post it here for editing. Audience: Wizards of the Coast; Goal: more 3.5 support.

[Vhaidara]

I generally agree with everything you said, except this


Paizo cleaned up psionics.

Paizo had NOTHING to do with PF psionics. That was Dreamscarred Press. Paizo's "psychic magic" is just reskinned vancian casting. Now please apologize for insulting those wonderful people for calling them Paizo.

[druid91]

For me, and a lot of gamers I know, 3X is the last traditional D&D game. It is the closest to 1E/2E. 4E really went the wrong direction with all the video game and new ways of thinking crap. And 5E is just boring and too full of the new way of thinking.

3X does not have the video game/new wave stuff as rules. So sure a lot of people play the game with that mind set, they do so by house rules, but it is not forced on everyone by the rules.

4E/5E are great for the casual gamers. You want to sit in someones basement for a couple hours and fight monsters? They are the games for you. 3X is much better made for long campaign lasting years.

3X is the only one that feels like D&D.

I'm gonna call bull here. 5e is basically 3.5 - the ridiculous level of rules bloat.

[daremetoidareyo]

I generally agree with everything you said, except this
Paizo had NOTHING to do with PF psionics. That was Dreamscarred Press. Paizo's "psychic magic" is just reskinned vancian casting. Now please apologize for insulting those wonderful people for calling them Paizo.

"The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."
-Darth Vader

That said...
My bad.
Things happen when you don't own sourcebooks and play in one offs.

[StreamOfTheSky]

I'm gonna call bull here. 5e is basically 3.5 - the ridiculous level of rules bloat.

Every time i look at 5E, it seems like a frankenstein mixture of the "old school" D&D where characters were more simplistic and less customizable, and 4E where mechanics are dissasociated for everything and the only concern is balance and almost never trying to model things in a logical, comprehensible way.

It seems even less like 3E than 4E was.

EDIT: Also, this was excellent.


Some points that might account for 3.5e's appeal to some audiences over other systems with marketing power behind them...
*snip*

[Curmudgeon]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?
What does that have to do with the question? Shelves bowing under the weight of D&D books is, for me, why 3.X is still so popular; I can pick some book at random and find something that interests me now, though it didn't really register when I bought the book more than a decade ago.

[martixy]

It provides something wholly unique.
And it appeals uncannily to that certain type of person(of which this forum is comprised almost exclusively) that thrives on complexity and picking apart the inner workings of things. Nerds.


~snip~

2. Yes. Feature. Totally.
4. Hope is lost. WotC is a corporation. This will never happen.

Of the unnameable's database: That would mean them acknowledging it and it will also never ever happen.

[Piedmon_Sama]

3.x/Pathfinder remains the most modular, detailed and customizable version of D&D that exists. How the system works is very clear, allowing GMs to get "under the hood" and tweak everything from combat rules to creating new monsters. Due to the fairly high level of complexity it's possible to create many minor tweaks (who, for example, hasn't tweaked the Dodge feat or allowed a level 1 rogue to take Weapon Finesse?) without unbalancing the system. While 5e gives you a nice range of archetypes, it's still 3.5/Pathfinder that allows you to create characters specifically tailored to your vision. Swappable class abilities, paragon levels, flaws, prestige classes, all these things mean that within a single class you can explore a huge variety of characters.

[GPuzzle]

As a guy that mainly plays 4E, this is my vision on why 3.X became so damn popular.

The new edition brought forth many people to D&D, and it was a resurgence in D&D in general. Unlike TSR, WotC was somewhat inclusive of the community rather than shunning it completely. Combine that with a massive overflux of new players, and suddenly you have this massive fanbase. The main concept (d20 system) was simple, and people liked it. It also had free 3rd party, and suddenly everyone was releasing their scenario or expansion to 3.X. It was a massive, massive thing.

4E was awfully recieved due to several reasons - it being seen as videogamey when it was actually more card-game based and the relationship between videogames and 4E is borderline the same as videogames and say 3.X but I digress. This led to many, many, many people sticking with 3.X, and others that were joining would most likely play things like 3.X or PF.

5E came out trying to unite both, but it seems to piss people off more than anything. 3.X veterans feel the game lacks the same depth as 5E. The game is too bloated with rules to be rules-light and too light on rules to be rules-heavy. 4E players really like tactical combat and feeling powerful against a screwed up world - 4E doesn't work so much on LotR levels of power but rather TTGL levels of power - and both ways. The end-game villains aren't evil liches or evil overlords - they're more literal gods or eldritch abominations to the power of Cthulhu. 5E doesn't really work on that level and it makes players feel less powerful or with less agency - or at least that was what I felt when I played a small campaign on it.

Personally, it's a mix of a very, very loyal fanbase that shuns the directly next edition for attempting a different take on D&D and doesn't really like the one that tried to get close to it because of a lack of options compared to the edition people are used to.

[daremetoidareyo]

It provides something wholly unique.
And it appeals uncannily to that certain type of person(of which this forum is comprised almost exclusively) that thrives on complexity and picking apart the inner workings of things. Nerds.



2. Yes. Feature. Totally.
4. Hope is lost. WotC is a corporation. This will never happen.

Of the unnameable's database: That would mean them acknowledging it and it will also never ever happen.

Corporations chase dollars. A series of focus groups that target's 3.5 and 5th edition players would allow them to make a simple up down decision on whether or not they can obtain money from the holdouts without affecting the prospects of 5e. As a corporation, they have a fiduciary duty to chase the bottom line. Demonstrate that they are failing to do so is a compelling reason to make them switch tactics.

The unnamable database as a concept is being expertly deployed by the pfsrd. Gamers want access to the info, preferably for free. People generally want their consumer goods to be easy to obtain and use: arbitrary barriers is what makes rogues of us. I mean, that is the entirety of the netflix vs. torrents model. Imagine the ad-revenue of a 3.5database. Especially one that allows you to search for certain terms within the text of feats, class descriptions, pre-requisites. Considering that they are paired with Hasbro, and I am willing to bet that most 3.5 grognards are 25+, there is a cartload of ads for toys for kids aiming at parents that can be freely hosted on such a thing.

[Grinner]

If I may throw my two coppers in, I'd say it's probably a result of several factors, all of which have already been mentioned.


Investment: I think a fair number of people here have already bought into D&D 3.5 extensively, and there's been little reason for them to change. They've invested into the game heavily, and the investment they've already made can't really be repurposed easily...
Familiarity: ...Moreover, they're content with what they've got, and nothing has been sufficiently compelling to draw them away.
Accessibility: Besides the game's raw inertia, D&D 3.5 is fairly easy to grasp. It isn't necessarily well-designed nor is it as flexible as other systems. Compared to games like Mutants & Masterminds, GURPS, or the HERO System, it's positively straitjacketed. However, it provides the means to relatively quickly and easily fit character-building modules (race, class, feats, etc) together, and there are tons of variations on that basic theme to explore.

[Darth Ultron]

I'm gonna call bull here. 5e is basically 3.5 - the ridiculous level of rules bloat.

Sure, 5E is basically 3.5E with 4E and the ''new modern way of thinking'' ideas thrown in to make a modern fair game for casual gamers to play in-between video games.

[Kurald Galain]

I ask this sort of as an outsider, because despite having played and enjoyed the game (my last attempt to start an ongoing campaign was 3.5 for that matter) I don't prefer it to a number of other systems. But here I think I can find its supporters. So preach to me, what is it all about?

Clearly, it's because everybody's favorite webcomic is based on the 3.5 ruleset.

[Eldan]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?

I can't think of a time when I've said "I wasn't into that game until I heard it had 20+ splatbooks!"

Not necessarily. I don't think I'd ever have the time to read that many splatbooks. However, for 3.5, I have read them already, so those options are around.

[Pluto!]

What does that have to do with the question? Shelves bowing under the weight of D&D books is, for me, why 3.X is still so popular; I can pick some book at random and find something that interests me now, though it didn't really register when I bought the book more than a decade ago.

A lot of the responses address elements of the game which aren't apparent from the outside - character customization, optimization elements, relative structure or lack thereof.

Those are elements which are only visible to folks who are already indoctrinated, who have already sunk uncountable hours into sifting through books or fiddling around with monster stats. They're only visible after being hooked into d20 by some other element, which does a poor job explaining what the element is which hooks players in the first place.

What is apparent from the outside are things like existing playgroups (going back to the OP's easy answer) or the big heaps of books, but I don't think there's a clear distinction in subject matter from one pile of AD&D books mostly about monsters, knights and wizards to the d20 or 4e piles of books, again mostly about monsters, knights and wizards. I feel a little skeptical that the relative sizes of those piles have a meaningful pull on folks who aren't already initiated.

[Vhaidara]

Here's the thing: You only need 1 person with system mastery. When I started my friends into Pathfinder, I was tasked with helping to build
A mad scientist dual wielding weapon claws (as in claws attached to your hands, not natural weapons), who pulls random tech gizmos out of literal hammerspace
A werewolf spellsword using a greatsword
A Sasuke clone who wielded kukris via telekinesis
And the classic, Mr. "I'm going to kill it with fire while my pet dragon eats it with fire"

Took me about an hour each to produce functional level 1 gestalt builds for each of them. For the interested
Human Vivisectionist Alchemist//Armorist (Spheres of Power)
Skinwalker Shifter//Mageknight (both Spheres of Power)
Sylph (player picked the race) Symbiat (Spheres of Power)//Harbinger (Path of War: Expanded)
Ifrit Incanter//Elementalist (Spheres of Power)

So because of the breadth of material, and the single person who knew what to look for, they were all able to create their concepts. Now I've got 3 of the four making their own alts, only coming to me if they want a minor houserule approved (usually stat/feat consolidation). And the only reason the fourth isn't is because he is 100% content to continue killing everything with copious amounts of fire.

[Telok]

Money.

Between the $300+ in books and the internet we don't need to spend any money on gaming to play 3.5 or PF. 4e required a couple hundred dollars of books and a recurring subscription cost. 5e wants another couple hundred of books and adventures already.

Sure $300+ sounds like a lot, but it's been spread out over seven people and eight or nine years with some of the purchases being used copies. 4e wanted that much in the first year and 5e is looking like it wants that in the first two years. Sure I could pick up all the 4e stuff used now but it's without errata and the subscription that makes the thousands of abilities searchable. Once you get over about 200 things spread across four or five books a searchable electronic version almost becomes a must-have. Plus we've already played 4th & 5th and weren't impressed enough to invest in them as a group, that means any investment is going to be on an individual level.

[Elderand]

Sunk cost and aversion to trying new things or learn new systems mostly, and a hefty dose of peer pressure.

[LudicSavant]

Also, this was excellent.

Thanks :)


Sunk cost and aversion to trying new things or learn new systems mostly, and a hefty dose of peer pressure.

While these are certainly factors, I think it's selling 3.5e short to say that's all there is to it. After all, people didn't stick with 1e, 2e, or 3.0 in any way remotely resembling the lasting traction 3.5e has shown.

[druid91]

Every time i look at 5E, it seems like a frankenstein mixture of the "old school" D&D where characters were more simplistic and less customizable, and 4E where mechanics are dissasociated for everything and the only concern is balance and almost never trying to model things in a logical, comprehensible way.

It seems even less like 3E than 4E was.

Then you haven't looked at it very hard. Because....

A.) If the only concern was balance they failed hard.

B.) Almost NONE of the mechanics are dissasociated. I mean the only one that pops up off the top of my head is spending hit-dice. But that's just 'hey, I took a breather and am no longer tired.' Care to elaborate on what you mean?

[Clistenes]

My answer in short: 3.5 allows you to do anything and everything.

The combination of great flexibility and great support allows you to create any kind of character, effect, item or whatever you can find in any work or fantasy or that you can imagine. A paladin who single-shots dragons with Wisdom-empowered arrows? You can do it. A wizard who uses his own skin as spellbook? You can do it. A barbarian empowered by ancestors-granted magical tattoos? You can do it. A half-djinn who uses sexy dances to focus her powers? You can do it.

The downside is that it gets bloated and clunky. At medium levels there is already so much magic that it looks more like a space opera than medieval fantasy, and at high levels you have to wonder why those people are still living in sword and sorcery kingdoms instead of intergalactic space stations... However, the point is, if you want to create an archmage who owns his own Death Star, you can do it.

A lot of the magic excess, of the power creep and of the rules bloating can be avoided by enforcing a few reasonable rules, mostly dealing with power loops and magic marts, and forcing players to justify their adquisition of Prestige Classes.


Every time i look at 5E, it seems like a frankenstein mixture of the "old school" D&D where characters were more simplistic and less customizable, and 4E where mechanics are dissasociated for everything and the only concern is balance and almost never trying to model things in a logical, comprehensible way.

It seems even less like 3E than 4E was.

EDIT: Also, this was excellent.

5th edition does wonders in keeping the game simple and preserving the medieval sword and sorcery fantasy feel. The lack of customization is its greatest weak point.

They should have made the adquisition of feats and bonus ability points dependant on HD, not class, and have made both independent from each other (you should not have to choose between feats and bonus ability points). Also, characters should receive more feats. That alone would have allowed a greater range of characters.

I also would like it more if all characters could make a roll to use any spell scroll, and if epic multiclassed charactes could complete all the 20 levels of each class.

EDIT: Another problem with 5th edition is, you can't re-create the worlds of fantasy spinned by the previous edition using 5th edition's rules alone. You can't create Duke Rowan Darkwood [CG male human, ranger 12/cleric 14 (Heimdall), you can't create a Mythal, you can't create an Eberronian Lightning Rail or a Spelljammer ship, unless you homebrew everything.

[druid91]

My answer in short: 3.5 allows you to do anything and everything.

The combination of great flexibility and great support allows you to create any kind of character, effect, item or whatever you can find in any work or fantasy or that you can imagine. A paladin who single-shots dragons with Wisdom-empowered arrows? You can do it. A wizard who uses his own skin as spellbook? You can do it. A barbarian empowered by ancestors-granted magical tattoos? You can do it. A half-djinn who uses sexy dances to focus her powers? You can do it.

The downside is that it gets bloated and clunky. At medium levels there is already so much magic that it looks more like a space opera than medieval fantasy, and at high levels you have to wonder why those people are still living in sword and sorcery kingdoms instead of intergalactic space stations... However, the point is, if you want to create an archmage who owns his own Death Star, you can do it.

A lot of the magic excess, of the power creep and of the rules bloating can be avoided by enforcing a few reasonable rules, mostly dealing with power loops and magic marts, and forcing players to justify their adquisition of Prestige Classes.

Except 5e explicitly lets you do this as well. There are quite litterally rules in the DMG for making up classes wholecloth. Same with monsters, races, subclasses, spells, and magic items. It costs what... something like $90 bucks for the core set and that core set let's you use any concept you could do in 3.5 with a modicum of effort and significantly less digging through rulebooks for days.

[Cirrylius]

It costs what... something like $90 bucks for the core set and that core set let's you use any concept you could do in 3.5 with a modicum of effort and significantly less digging through rulebooks for days.
Unfortunately, none of us are designers, and the class-emulation of the system have historically done so well in that regard, so those rules DIY rules have never gotten much play, so we don't trust those rules, so we don't use those rules. The circle spins down.

[Clistenes]

Except 5e explicitly lets you do this as well. There are quite litterally rules in the DMG for making up classes wholecloth. Same with monsters, races, subclasses, spells, and magic items. It costs what... something like $90 bucks for the core set and that core set let's you use any concept you could do in 3.5 with a modicum of effort and significantly less digging through rulebooks for days.

You would have to homebrew everything, basically creating more content by yourself than you are given. Why not just creating your own system from the scratch?

Don't get me wrong, 5th edition is probably the best system for playing traditional sword and sorcery adventures. However, if you want to go crazy with weird crap, 3.5 is the way.

[Grinner]

While these are certainly factors, I think it's selling 3.5e short to say that's all there is to it. After all, people didn't stick with 1e, 2e, or 3.0 in any way remotely resembling the lasting traction 3.5e has shown.

That's not exactly an even comparison, though. The telecommunicative infrastructure (i.e. the Internet) which I imagine has helped perpetuate 3.5e wasn't really in place until the latter days of 2e, and 3e was cut short only a couple years after its inception. Plus, the existence of so many retroclones indicates that there's at least some remaining interest in pre-3e D&D.

[Solaris]

Leaving aside the fact that I like how they did the system (yes, even the huge variation in power levels)...


Money.

Between the $300+ in books and the internet we don't need to spend any money on gaming to play 3.5 or PF. 4e required a couple hundred dollars of books and a recurring subscription cost. 5e wants another couple hundred of books and adventures already.

Sure $300+ sounds like a lot, but it's been spread out over seven people and eight or nine years with some of the purchases being used copies. 4e wanted that much in the first year and 5e is looking like it wants that in the first two years. Sure I could pick up all the 4e stuff used now but it's without errata and the subscription that makes the thousands of abilities searchable. Once you get over about 200 things spread across four or five books a searchable electronic version almost becomes a must-have. Plus we've already played 4th & 5th and weren't impressed enough to invest in them as a group, that means any investment is going to be on an individual level.

So very much this.
I liked a lot of what I saw when 5E was first coming out... but the fact that I've already spent a buttload of money on d20 system books makes me very loath to jump ship.


Except 5e explicitly lets you do this as well. There are quite litterally rules in the DMG for making up classes wholecloth. Same with monsters, races, subclasses, spells, and magic items. It costs what... something like $90 bucks for the core set and that core set let's you use any concept you could do in 3.5 with a modicum of effort and significantly less digging through rulebooks for days.

But I've already spent the money on 3.5E, and "It lets you do what you could already do in the game you already own" isn't a good incentive for me to be dropping half of my monthly grocery bill on game books.
After all, 3.5E also has rules for homebrewing all the same stuff... and fifteen years of homebrewed material on the interwebs.

[druid91]

You would have to homebrew everything, basically creating more content by yourself than you are given. Why not just creating your own system from the scratch?

Don't get me wrong, 5th edition is probably the best system for playing traditional sword and sorcery adventures. However, if you want to go crazy with weird crap, 3.5 is the way.

> Playing 5e but want a thing from 3.5.
> Grab 3.5 book.
> Look at key features and convert, with the return of prestige classes via UA this is even easier.
> ???
> Profit.


But I've already spent the money on 3.5E, and "It lets you do what you could already do in the game you already own" isn't a good incentive for me to be dropping half of my monthly grocery bill on game books.
After all, 3.5E also has rules for homebrewing all the same stuff... and fifteen years of homebrewed material on the interwebs.

That's fair. And an ok reasoning. I was more arguing against the "5e is cool, but it doesn't have all the options 3.5 has." Sure it does. You just have to do a few minutes of work to convert them.

(And by a few minutes to convert I mean for whatever class/spell/race/whatever it is you want at that particular moment. Not the whole pile of books.)

[Solaris]

That's fair. And an ok reasoning. I was more arguing against the "5e is cool, but it doesn't have all the options 3.5 has." Sure it does. You just have to do a few minutes of work to convert them.

(And by a few minutes to convert I mean for whatever class/spell/race/whatever it is you want at that particular moment. Not the whole pile of books.)

Ahh, I see now. That makes more sense.

Tangentially, how good is the backwards compatibility between 5E and 3.X?

[Clistenes]

> Playing 5e but want a thing from 3.5.
> Grab 3.5 book.
> Look at key features and convert, with the return of prestige classes via UA this is even easier.
> ???
> Profit.



That's fair. And an ok reasoning. I was more arguing against the "5e is cool, but it doesn't have all the options 3.5 has." Sure it does. You just have to do a few minutes of work to convert them.

(And by a few minutes to convert I mean for whatever class/spell/race/whatever it is you want at that particular moment. Not the whole pile of books.)

At that point we are all playing our own homebrewed games. Which is great, but not for everybody.

And people who like to homebrew and who want to use a lot of options have probably already made their own fixes to 3.5 and Pathfinder. Why should those people leave the homebrew they have already worked in for years and start a new one?

EDIT: Just think about Psionics, for example. A player says "but I want to play a Psionist!" and 5th edition answers "You can do it! We give you permission to create your own Psionic rules!"...at which point the player has to say "What am I supposed to pay you for...?".


Ahh, I see now. That makes more sense.

Tangentially, how good is the backwards compatibility between 5E and 3.X?

There is not compatibility. You can convert stuff, the same way you can convert it from 2nd edition to 3rd edition, but you can't grab 3.5 stuff and use it in a 5th edition game the same way you can do in a Pathfinder game.

[Kurald Galain]

Except 5e explicitly lets you do this as well.

Not exactly.

Numerous character concepts, 3E subsystems, and even certain genres of fantasy clash with bounded accuracy. Simply put, by definition BA puts strict limits on what you can do within the 5E system. Not everybody likes BA, and not everybody likes those limits.

[sktarq]

...

What is apparent from the outside are things like existing playgroups (going back to the OP's easy answer) or the big heaps of books,.... I feel a little skeptical that the relative sizes of those piles have a meaningful pull on folks who aren't already initiated.
And if the books got people too pick one edition over another you'd be right, but people rarely join the hobby totally cold. Other players sell new people on the edition they prefer to play - many people hear stories of the adventures of various friends and the variey of stories all found in 3.5 D&D/d20 makes that seem appealing. Also if you are new and people are hosting a 3.5 game that's what you are likely to learn and then only switch to 4e if either availibilty or persuasion (via learning about it while familiarizing with new rules) if you have a reason to.

Also as a system more people are familiar with it and comfortable with it or its close relations so it is a lingua fanca and thus just easier logistically to set up games. More 4e players are comfortable with 3.5e than visa versa (especially when for several years after it first came out) and thus the occasional player who remembered the occasional 3.5 game could come and the guy who wanted to play a shadowcaster could-so guess what the two newbies learned? The momentum and variety drive people who are familiar to keep playing, to keep having fun, and thus keep drawing new blood.

EDIT: another point I should bring up-there was a push back when 3.0 came out. Not as loud but then platforms from which people challenged 4e were far less developed. I had no problem finding people who were not fussed over 3.0 in the 2000-2002 period. 3.5 brought many of those people into the fold and 2e started to become more of throwback thrill, nostalgia, type event. If the echo chamber and flame wars were as culturally dominant then as they were at the birth of 4e who knows if the divisions would have been worse.

[kalasulmar]

That seems a deliberately different question than the one the OP asked, which is "why is 3.X still so popular?" The question of generating initial interest is clearly a different one from the question of holding interest.

Exactly. I didn't get into 3.x because of the amount of content available, but the content available has kept me with the system. Plus, Pathfinder is free. Literally free. I converted an existing campaign from 3.5 FR to Pathfinder in one weekend. Every PC, every major NPC. And I spent $0 to do it.

[SangoProduction]

3X does not have the video game/new wave stuff as rules. So sure a lot of people play the game with that mind set, they do so by house rules, but it is not forced on everyone by the rules.

4E/5E are great for the casual gamers. You want to sit in someones basement for a couple hours and fight monsters? They are the games for you. 3X is much better made for long campaign lasting years.

3X is the only one that feels like D&D.

Do you have any argument for that? Even in 3E, you have crowd control (in fact, it's seen as the best use of spells, aside from save or die...or the no save *and* die ones), you still have tanks (though they are rather useless...because everything is better through magic), you even have "taunts" through first party feats (not even 4e has these), you still have dps (again, still better to do save or die, but dps is fine), you still have abilities with "cool downs" on them (some more explicit like breath weapons, others more like spells).
In 4e, and 5e, people can roleplay the exact same way, except without the extreme feeling of being inadequate...well, kinda in 5e. Sure, Wizards are still overpowered in every edition, but it's Wizards of the Coast's name sake. What did you expect?

The likely reason 3E is so popular is...because it was so popular for so long. It could afford first party support, and fans then also support it. It's also the stereotypical table top game. And those who play TTGs likely were introduced through....you guessed it, 3E. Popularity just breeds greater and greater popularity. And thus breeds money. Which leads to support for the format, which makes it more popular.

[Milo v3]

My group plays Pathfinder because we haven't found another game system that can match the over the top but balanced-ish nature of our settings and games, and that isn't a chore to play. Simple as that.

We do like the easy way it is to communicate with first and third party developers though.

[Honest Tiefling]

Through now that I think about it, Paizo did earn some credit with me in that they seem to feature more gay NPCs then WOTC ever did. Also, the team that canonical tackles the horror adventure is all female, just to give the middle finger to the damsel in distress bit.

[Yahzi]

OGL.
I believe this is the correct answer.

[Darth Ultron]

Do you have any argument for that?

Sure. After all, everything you mentioned is all the new wave sort of thing. Fairness. Balance. Blandness. Whitewashing. Making every single gamer in the world as happy as a clam. All the things that creeped into the game styles and philosophy in 3X, but did not over take all the rules. Though 3X was the start of the ''perfect fun'' type rules...that 4E and 5E go overboard with.

[SangoProduction]

Sure. After all, everything you mentioned is all the new wave sort of thing. Fairness. Balance. Blandness. Whitewashing. Making every single gamer in the world as happy as a clam. All the things that creeped into the game styles and philosophy in 3X, but did not over take all the rules. Though 3X was the start of the ''perfect fun'' type rules...that 4E and 5E go overboard with.

If you are arguing that 4e is "balanced" you are incorrect. 5e, well...went back to the 3e way of having spells be better than swords in every way, so also not balanced (though at least they took a tip from Paizo and gave the martial classes something cool by default). Whitewashing...not sure how "deliberately attempt to conceal unpleasant facts about (a person or organization)." is relevant here...
And fairness. I give you that...depending on what you mean. If: "Everyone gets to do more than just 'I swing my sword until it dies' " then yeah.

[Solaris]

Through now that I think about it, Paizo did earn some credit with me in that they seem to feature more gay NPCs then WOTC ever did. Also, the team that canonical tackles the horror adventure is all female, just to give the middle finger to the damsel in distress bit.

To be fair to WotC, I don't think they ever really put much thought at all to the personalities, much less the sexual orientations of their NPCs.

[Cluedrew]

First off, thank you everybody that has replied. And there have been a lot of you already with many good answers.

Also, before things devolve I would like to point out that this thread is literally just about the "pros" of 3.X. I understand the "cons" exist, in fact I generally feel I have a better grasp of them which is why I started this thread an not one about the "cons". So please don't get too caught up in arguing the details.

[tiercel]

3.X is Windows XP.

It's not that there aren't things wrong with it, or people don't like to complain, but... it works. It was/is around long enough to understand and master its foibles, tweak and customize it, and make it do what you want with it.

And, it's not Windows Vista.

-----

I'll echo what others have said: I like customization. I like that you can reasonably have an all-bard party, that with the right customization options and PrCs, one wizard (or cleric or rogue or... ) build can operate, mechanically, much differently than another build starting from the same class (beyond merely refluffing RP aspects).

I like that bad guys are just as, or even more, customizable through PC classes, monster advancement, feats, items.... that every challenge is easy to make unique.

I like that accruing loot is meaningful and that "gearing up" your character is one more customization minigame. (It was one of the first things that got to me about 5e; magic items are useful toys, but you don't need gold. At all. Finding treasure is almost an RP thing!)

If I want only a limited set of premade customizations for my characters, there are all manner of computer/console games I can hack/blast through. 3.X gives me far more options straight out of a panoply of books, never mind existing 3rd party and homebrew support, much less what I and a group can homebrew ourselves.

I feel more invested in a character whose crunch is built specifically to the fluff I have in mind, whether he's a PC or NPC/BBEG.

[Curmudgeon]

3.X is Windows XP.

It's not that there aren't things wrong with it, or people don't like to complain, but... it works. It was/is around long enough to understand and master its foibles, tweak and customize it, and make it do what you want with it.

And, it's not Windows Vista.
This is a pretty close comparison, with 4e = Vista. Only not quite. Microsoft isn't removing XP issue and answer posts from its knowledge base (just tagging them with "not supported"), whereas a week from now the Wizards community forum content will be deleted. :smallfurious:

[GPuzzle]

This is a pretty close comparison, with 4e = Vista. Only not quite. Microsoft isn't removing XP issue and answer posts from its knowledge base (just tagging them with "not supported"), whereas a week from now the Wizards community forum content will be deleted. :smallfurious:

They're doing the same with us over at 4e, and the folks at 5e too.

We're all getting screwed here.

[Scorponok]

I started in 3.5, played official WotC modules for 4e and now play 5e in two weekly groups. I still think 3.5 was more fun. For me, it comes down to being able to customize every minute detail of a character. Sure, you can do some customization on 5e, but it feels like someone is holding your hand through it. There really isn't a way to screw up a character horribly in 5th ed, but someone who doesn't know what they are doing can seriously gimp a 3.5 character.

The vast amount of material (and I'm just talking the official stuff here) means there is much more potential to learn something or to have another player show you a spell, or build, or sub system that you've never yet heard of that breathes new life into the game for yourself.

Finally, with 5e, with all the fancy new art, books, and marketing drive of Wizards behind it, I don't feel like I'm having any more fun than I did with 3.5 and a lot of times I feel like the options are more restrictive.

Yes, there is a lot wrong with 3.5, but that's kind of part of its goofy charm, IMO.

I will say this, 5e is much more DM friendly than 3.5.

[Tvtyrant]

Probably because D20 systems have lots of moving pieces, which makes customization a priority.

[Kurald Galain]

3.X is Windows XP.

It's not that there aren't things wrong with it, or people don't like to complain, but... it works. It was/is around long enough to understand and master its foibles, tweak and customize it, and make it do what you want with it.

And, it's not Windows Vista.

That's a good comparison.

[Florian]

Where I'm from, D&D is not the top-selling RPG and sales are behind local products.
In contrast, 3.5 and PF exemplify a certain play style and content and both are the go-to RPG for those.

In addition, non-localized books (read: english) are not really popular with non-hardcore gamers. Most of 3.5 and all of PF got translations, but 4E only had the PHB localized and 5E will not be translated at all, limiting the player-base.

[molten_dragon]

For myself it's because it strikes just the right balance of simplicity and complexity to make it fun.

Earlier versions of D&D were too complex. The rules were more complicated, and in many cases didn't make a lot of sense.

Later versions of D&D were too simple. Not enough room for variety among characters. 4e was particularly guilty of this, making every character work the same way mechanically.

But 3.5 is the butter zone. I feel like there's an infinite variety of options and I never run out of fun character ideas to play, but at the same time the rules are simple enough that it doesn't bog the game down too much.

[Knaight]

I'm going to break with group consensus a bit here, and list a few other reasons. The big ones:

1) Brand recognition.
D&D is a known brand, with a name more recognizable than that of the hobby it represents. It's also just bigger than anything else right now, which means that for those not in the hobby it is most easily chanced upon, whether that's due to seeing it in nerd shops, media representations, or just being introduced to it by a friend. It thus represents the most likely starting point for anyone entering the hobby. Once it's there as a starting point, all it has to do is be good enough to not drive people away. Even if it does drive people away, if it drives them out of the hobby entirely instead of to other RPGs, it still maintains the largest size.

That isn't particularly difficult. Despite what places like this forum indicate, the vast majority of RPG players aren't heavily into the mechanics, don't necessarily do all that much number crunching, don't necessarily even know what game they are playing, and most likely aren't aware of the non-D&D alternatives. We're in a bubble of very invested people here, and outside of it brand recognition alone is a huge edge. Even within it, there's the matter of people becoming acclimated to their first game, and it getting an advantage there.

Between the D&D editions, it's a bit more complex. Part of the reason 3.x is so successful is that a lot of people using prior editions switched over, but it also gained a ton of new players. Part of this was the increased social acceptability of traditionally "nerdy" hobbies, part of it was the free publicity of that ridiculous moral panic that was just dying down when 3.x came out, part of it was the lack of competition from things like MMOs, which would later get really big. 3.x was well situated to take in a burst of new players, and then they stuck with it.

2) Network effects.
Even if you know a bunch of systems, the one you'll get the most mileage out of is generally the one you can actually get to play the most, and other people already knowing it makes things that much easier. This is particularly true of other rules heavy systems, where the barrier to entry is pretty high. If gaming groups aren't static and have some amount of turnover, the network effects get huge. Sure, someone may be better served by GURPS than D&D, but when that means having to introduce GURPS to new people all the time and get them to learn it, suddenly that seems less appealing. Picking up on GURPS takes a while.

3) Basic functionality.
Parts 1 and 2 explain why D&D in general and 3.x in particular got more players and tend not to lose them, but it's worth noting that the system is basically functional. Sure, it's not hard to find a different system for just about everyone that they would prefer (there's a lot of them after all), particularly if it's less a replacement system and more a supplement, but there's a lot of hassle there. 3.x might have a number of problems and a fairly narrow scope, but it's not so bad that people will jump ship given the slightest opportunity.

4) Familiarity
By the time the 2000's were in full swing, a lot of the D&D mechanics were pretty familiar, particularly for videogame players (which is a pretty large contingent of D&D players). This is mostly because a lot of earlier video games borrowed extremely heavily from D&D, but when it comes to the new players getting introduced, that doesn't particularly matter. They know what a hit point is, and probably don't care about the contentious side of what exactly they represent. The attributes all have a pretty familiar ring to them. D&D is heavily influenced by a lot of recognizable works, so people are already going to be familiar with a lot of the milieu. A lot of games don't share this advantage. For instance, classes, levels, HP, and a number of other mechanical things are so ingrained in video games that most of the rest of the industry (which rarely uses all three) will look less familiar. A lot of games are built around specific settings that require specific knowledge; while your standard potential RPG player might be expected to know about dwarves and elves, swords and sorcery, castles and dungeons, expecting them to know the historical and mythical background behind something like Qin: The Warring States is less reasonable.

Still, I'd contend that if another game had the competitive advantage of currently being the biggest and being what the video game industry blatantly stole from in the 1980's and 1990's, it would probably stay bigger and 3.x would be comparatively niche, provided it also had the same basic standards of design and a reasonable amount of existing nerd cultural knowledge. Had it not been for historical happenstance, this hobby could be dominated by a classless dice pool space opera game instead. A lot of why D&D 3.x is the biggest really does come down to what Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson happened to be interested in.

[GPuzzle]

Later versions of D&D were too simple. Not enough room for variety among characters. 4e was particularly guilty of this, making every character work the same way mechanically.

Same basic framework =/= same way mechanically. I could say the same about 3.5, the hit dice/BAB/save system. Would it be true? Of course not.

Yeah, some classes are in certain roles - Clerics, Bards and Artificers are Leaders, Fighters and Paladins are Defenders, Barbarian, Rangers and Rogues are Strikers, Druids and Wizards are Controllers.

The differences are obvious if you have a look at them. The Bard's first few powers work on moving your allies or enemies around. The Arti's first few involve tagging your enemy with a big "hit me" sign. The Cleric's first few, on the other hand, give out healing.

The Fighter locks down a close enemy hard, making it either face the meatwall or suffer attempting to run away. The Paladin, however, is applying a lighter lockdown, but is applying it over the entire battlefield.

The Barbarian is charging, getting in the face of enemies with mighty swings, compared to the Ranger that moves a bit around, delivers swing after swing after swing - and the Rogue, that is jumping from target to target either hitting them hard or forcing them into a bad situation with things like dazing and such.

If you've never seen 4e in play, or at least with experienced folks, you'll think that the classes play similarly. They don't even come close to playing similar.

[elonin]

Do the number of options actually affect people's interest to buy into a game?

I can't think of a time when I've said "I wasn't into that game until I heard it had 20+ splatbooks!"

Splat books give more options is all.

For me being able to customize skills is part of what is better about 3.5. I'm guessing many groups that play 3.5 or PF have options to grab material from both systems.

3.5 might have different rules systems but it doesn't come close to 2e.

[Fizban]

But it has, if my quick search is correct, been 15 years since it came out. That seems like more than enough time for people to improve on it, even if you don't agree that the later versions of D&D are those improvements.
And indeed we have improved upon it. By sticking with the same edition you can figure out what's wrong and fix it, but if you keep jumping to new editions you're just gonna keep running into new problems. 3.x has a long list of known bugs with many possible solutions to choose from and hundreds of homebrew additions such that you can make the game into whatever you want. The people that are really sticking with 3.5 aren't just playing with a PHB and a DMG like you'd get with a new edition: they're playing with all the books and all the rules and all the freedom. It's pretty much all there on the first page. The OGL and internet made 3.x huge, so much that WotC wishes they could burn it all down because they can't compete with a system that has so much community support and improvement. 5e is decent-ish, but it's still so stripped down and controlled that it will never be possible to match the awesome creativity you can fulfill in 3.5, ever.

If you like building things out of published blocks, google up some builds like King of Smack/President of Smack, King of Pong, Hulking Hurler, Save Game Trick, Dream of Metal, and those are just the ones with catchy titles that pop into my head. Want some homebrew systems? On this very board you can have Tome of the Holy Grail, Tome of Radiance, Tome of Ritual Magic, the Mythos system, Grammarie, and that's some of my personal favorites before counting the slews and slews of base and prestige classes ranging from variants and fixes, to dual-classing all the things, to one-class genres like the Magitech Templar. I don't even hang out on Minmaxboards or Enworld but I get the impression people do even more stuff over there, and I don't even need to Pathfinder because everyone else does. Look up even one of those classes and you'll see something that is flat impossible to replicate within 5e, the system does not want them to exist.

Regarding system mastery, Keledrath took the words out of my mouth. I haven't done quite as interesting of builds myself, but that's the exact same offer I've made and fulfilled for players before. The only problem is when they refuse to jump on the wagon and start learning stuff to build for themselves-but that just means 3.5 wasn't the right system for them in the first place, better luck next time.

Oh, regarding the "new wave/everyone must be happy" topic: I'm fully on board with happy, but the thing is you can't hardcode that into the system. That's a behavior, playstyle, a social thing that even the 5e books still aren't teaching properly. The players and the DM are all equal and should work together to have the maximum amount of fun, and any group can do that in any game. And finding that balance is easier the more freedom you have to easily adjust the game-without having to re-write everything yourself.

[StreamOfTheSky]

That's a good comparison.

I think Windows 7 = 3E and Windows 8 = 4E is the better comparison. Windows 7 is the solid, well-designed yet clunky (in terms of resources used and boot up time) OS that everyone loved. Win8 was the OS that tried to be radically different and turned off almost the entire fanbase with its garish "stream-lined" new looks despite accomplishing its goal of being much easier to run.

And then Windows 10 came along to try and appease everyone to some extent. Jury's still out on if it has.

[Hecuba]

I can think of several potential explanations:


Timing
The explosion of the internet as a not just accessible, but ubiquitous, medium provided a unifying effect for the RPG community (as it did for many other hobbyist communities). By a simple matter of timing, 3.5 benefited immensely from this. If you got your introduction to D&D online, you almost certainly got it from 3.5: this means that, for a vast number of gamers, 3.5 defines what D&D is.

There is also a benefit of timing as it relates to other editions. 2nd edition AD&D was so old that people eager to adopt 3rd quickly, and 4th was so different that people were reluctant to adopt it at all.

Mechanical Extensibility
The d20 system is easy to understand and mechanically flexible. This makes it easy to tinker. Sometimes, you don't even realize you're seeing it.

For example: when someone takes a bunch of different class dips to build a character around a specific idea, they are doing something that would have effectively required home-brewing a class in 2nd Edition.
Actual home-brew is also more accessible: the well defined skill systems and uniform XP to level remove significant complexity from the process.

Additionally, the number of items in the toolkit is vastly expanded by the OGL/SRD. While Pathfinder is the biggest example, there is a plethora of 3rd party d20 content that you can mix and match.

The net effect of this is that, while there may be a better system for a specific type of game, you can take the D20 system and do well enough for almost any kind of game if you want to.
By way of example, I played a long running X-Men campaign using primarily 3e Psionics. M&M may have been a better choice, but 3e Psionics worked just fine.



I think Windows 7 = 3E and Windows 8 = 4E is the better comparison. Windows 7 is the solid, well-designed yet clunky (in terms of resources used and boot up time) OS that everyone loved. Win8 was the OS that tried to be radically different and turned off almost the entire fanbase with its garish "stream-lined" new looks despite accomplishing its goal of being much easier to run.

And then Windows 10 came along to try and appease everyone to some extent. Jury's still out on if it has.


Actually, if we say 3.5 in particular was Win 7, that metaphor extends fairly well:

AD&D 1st Edition: Windows 95 - first version seeing significant public visability
AD&D 2nd: Windows XP - Functional and widely used for a long period. Somewhat limited by modern standards.
D&D 3E: Vista - Major update with solid mechnical underpinnings but significant usability and adoption problems.
D&D 3.5: Windows 7 - Update fixing problems of previous version that led to widespread adoption,
D&D 4th: Windows 8 - Vastly departure of design choices from prior version causes many not to adopt.
D&D 4th Essentials: Windows 8.1 - Update to improve adoption of prior version, but does not address many of the issues that caused the adoption lag.
D&D 5th: Windows 10 - Attempt to revert design changes from prior major edition while retaining technical updates. Results not yet clear.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

3.X is Windows XP.

It's not that there aren't things wrong with it, or people don't like to complain, but... it works. It was/is around long enough to understand and master its foibles, tweak and customize it, and make it do what you want with it.

And, it's not Windows Vista.That's a good comparison.

Indeed it is; in fact, you've said so before. :smallwink:


Same basic framework =/= same way mechanically. I could say the same about 3.5, the hit dice/BAB/save system. Would it be true? Of course not.

[...]

If you've never seen 4e in play, or at least with experienced folks, you'll think that the classes play similarly. They don't even come close to playing similar.

The fact that different classes play differently doesn't negate the fact that they do work on the same basic mechanical framework, which can feel repetitive and limiting after 3e's breadth. Yes, some leaders heal more while others buff more, martial classes are more or less mobile, defenders have different degrees of lockdown and area of control, and so forth, and those variations certainly make a difference in playstyle, no one's denying that (or has been since 2008, anyway).

Consider, however, that the same holds for the 3e cleric: it can be built as a healer, a buffer, a debuffer, a tank, a utility guy, a minionmancer, and in a pinch a blaster, just by making different domain choices, and no two would feel exactly alike. You could even make an entire party of nothing but clerics to replace the rest of the classic four without too much optimization effort: a Strength/War DMM:Persist cleric in place of a tanky fighter, a Trickery/Kobold cleric in place of a skillmonkey rogue, a Healing/Protection cloistered cleric as the cleric-est cleric that ever did cleric, and let's say a Fire/Sun divine magician in place of a pyromaniac evoker.

It would be a very powerful and effective party...and yet, you see very few if any all-cleric parties in the wild. Why? Because at the end of the day, they're all using the same resource mechanic and drawing from very similar lists of powers. It can get boring to play nothing but buff-up-and-smack-things CoDzillas after a while, juggling Vancian slots and turn attempts every time, when you have the option to instead play an always-on fighter, a per-encounter-refresh ToB class, a by-round-allocation incarnate or totemist, a swift-buffs archer ranger (either sniper or volley), a no-buffs Swift Hunter scout/ranger, a positioning-focused sneak-attack-cuisinart rogue (either melee or range), or many other more exotic or complex melee characters (like a Snowflake Wardance bardsader) with different resource management, pacing, and option choices than said CoDzilla.

This mechanical sameness underlying 4e classes is the reason that 4e psionics and Essentials were so divisive. When they came out, a big chunk of the fanbase was saying "Yes! Finally, I can use something besides AEDU!" while another big chunk of the fanbase was saying "No! Why did you make incompatible classes for no reason!"...and the first group couldn't see why the second group cared about framework symmetry among classes more than each class's individual playstyle while the second group couldn't see why the first group didn't like AEDU for everything. Pretty much every time this comes up, the 3e fans and 4e fans talk past each other because of their differing likes and expectations; neither side is inherently better, but for those coming from 3e the AEDU thing is a valid sticking point.

[Wonton]

This is a pretty close comparison, with 4e = Vista. Only not quite. Microsoft isn't removing XP issue and answer posts from its knowledge base (just tagging them with "not supported"), whereas a week from now the Wizards community forum content will be deleted. :smallfurious:

Oh man, really? RIP. That's where I got my first taste of talking with strangers online about roleplaying games, circa 2004. I still remember, my first thread was "Fireball vs Lightning Bolt" because I wanted to know which one was better. :smallredface:

[Merlin the Tuna]

I think the whole thread is coming in from a weird premise that 3.5E is still popular. It hemorrhaged players to the combination of PF and 4E, 5E is proving to be extremely popular (GenCon attendance has not skyrocketed over the last 5 years due to excitement about D&D 3.5E, yall), and the indie market is booming like never before. I haven't heard anything in-person about 3.5E in years (aside from the occasional "Holy crap I'm glad we're not playing 3.5E anymore"), it doesn't seem to have a huge forum presence outside of the playground, and even here, it's not king of the tags on the left sidebar. I don't doubt that there's still a sizeable player base, but this whole discussion seems like it's happening in a bubble.

[Wonton]

D&D is heavily influenced by a lot of recognizable works, so people are already going to be familiar with a lot of the milieu.

;while your standard potential RPG player might be expected to know about dwarves and elves, swords and sorcery, castles and dungeons

You know, reading this gave me a crazy hypothesis:

3.0 came out in 2000, and was updated to 3.5 in 2003. The Lord of the Rings movies came out in 2001, 2002, and 2003, and were insanely popular - Return of the King won, what, 11 of the 16 oscars that year? I honestly think fantasy becoming more "mainstream" helped that edition quite a bit.

[Solaris]

I think the whole thread is coming in from a weird premise that 3.5E is still popular. It hemorrhaged players to the combination of PF and 4E, 5E is proving to be extremely popular (GenCon attendance has not skyrocketed over the last 5 years due to excitement about D&D 3.5E, yall), and the indie market is booming like never before. I haven't heard anything in-person about 3.5E in years (aside from the occasional "Holy crap I'm glad we're not playing 3.5E anymore"), it doesn't seem to have a huge forum presence outside of the playground, and even here, it's not king of the tags on the left sidebar. I don't doubt that there's still a sizeable player base, but this whole discussion seems like it's happening in a bubble.

And yet most of the groups I've played with and a lot of those that play in my area, play 3.5E. Many of the forums I've been on have at least a healthy 3.X presence, even if it's not what it used to be.
The existence of other games and other edition's players (and PF is part of 3.X) doesn't discount the fact that there are still a lot of 3.X players out there.

[SangoProduction]

To say 4E has everything be the same thing mechanically is to say that a class that teleports is the same as one that rages or one that breathes fire, "mechanically".
....This is true in 3E where all those abilities are stacked on to a 1 or 2 classes, and thus, you could have a full party of those tier 1 characters, but just try it with a full party of rouges against a DM that doesn't adjust for party imbalances.
Everyone gets the same *number* of powers, in 4E but definitely not the same powers by any stretch.

The the options you have for a character at level 1? 3E: pick a class, pick feat(s), pick skills, and if you are lucky, pick manuevers/spells. Pick class (and potential hybrid class), class trait(s), skills, feats, and a combination of powers.

The combination of powers to pick pales in comparison to the ~7 choices of spells from 42 core spells at level 1, but most powers of the same level are generally of viable competition in 4E, whereas you have meteroswarm classed with 9th level spells in 3E, meaning that you actually don't have near as many "viable" core choices as the horribly bloated spell lists would imply.

Also, 4E doesn't hang the fighters out to dry as only every suitable for a 2 level dip, if that.

[Merlin the Tuna]

And yet most of the groups I've played with and a lot of those that play in my area, play 3.5E. Many of the forums I've been on have at least a healthy 3.X presence, even if it's not what it used to be.
The existence of other games and other edition's players (and PF is part of 3.X) doesn't discount the fact that there are still a lot of 3.X players out there.Oh, for sure there are plenty of 3.5E players still out there, but it's still a fairly recent edition. That base will gradually fade (but likely never disappear) just like the 2E/OD&D/etc. crowd. If it holds out for a long time, that's an interesting topic to delve into, but I don't think that it's been long enough to really dive into that.

But if you're going to include PF (which I'd argue that you shouldn't, given how much of 3E it's changed or simply overwritten) I'm not sure it's even an interesting question. 3.5E is a "dead" edition, PF is an industry giant's current core product with tons of book & social support. Why is that popular? Because a company with a fair amount of goodwill and a whole bunch of money took advantage of a great market opportunity a few years back and never let go. Not exactly rocket surgery.

[sktarq]

Actually, if we say 3.5 in particular was Win 7, that metaphor extends fairly well:

AD&D 1st Edition: Windows 95 - first version seeing significant public visability
AD&D 2nd: Windows XP - Functional and widely used for a long period. Somewhat limited by modern standards.
D&D 3E: Vista - Major update with solid mechnical underpinnings but significant usability and adoption problems.
D&D 3.5: Windows 7 - Update fixing problems of previous version that led to widespread adoption,
D&D 4th: Windows 8 - Vastly departure of design choices from prior version causes many not to adopt.
D&D 4th Essentials: Windows 8.1 - Update to improve adoption of prior version, but does not address many of the issues that caused the adoption lag.
D&D 5th: Windows 10 - Attempt to revert design changes from prior major edition while retaining technical updates. Results not yet clear.


This is brilliant-thanx

[Necroticplague]

At least from my understanding, because it's so open to experimentation. It's a large system with a lot of little levers and switches to pull, some of which can have unpredictable results (obscure feat nobody takes meant for stabbing people with a javelin+aptitude=free power attack!). 4e is actually fairly similar in nature, but because it's better put together and covers up a lot of the gears, sometimes it doesn't look like as complicated a machine, but it still has fairly interesting interactions if you look (Spiked Chain Mastery letting a one pile on light blade and flail support).

[LudicSavant]

Windows
[/LIST]

For me, the problem with Windows 8+ is that they seem to think I want touch tablet features on my desktop. They were adding features to appeal to an audience that had very different needs to me, and occasionally curtailing features that did matter to me.

One other thing I'd add to my previous list of why 3.5e worked over 4e or 5e: In the 3.5e era WotC seemed to have a lot more good will than it does now. In later editions we saw sabotage of their own forum communities (the biggest blow probably being Gleemax), exile of their own staff and talent, locking of previously free content behind paywalls and subscription plans, exciting vaporware (like those various online initiatives that just disappeared), and last but certainly not least, removal of the open gaming license.

[Solaris]

Oh, for sure there are plenty of 3.5E players still out there, but it's still a fairly recent edition. That base will gradually fade (but likely never disappear) just like the 2E/OD&D/etc. crowd. If it holds out for a long time, that's an interesting topic to delve into, but I don't think that it's been long enough to really dive into that.

Yeah, I'd be more interested in examining this sort of thing in about ten-fifteen years when the generation that grew up playing 3.X is closer to their 40s than their 20s. As it is, the only thing remarkable is 3.E's staying power when Pathfinder was marketed as a replacement.


But if you're going to include PF (which I'd argue that you shouldn't, given how much of 3E it's changed or simply ovewritten) I'm not sure it's even an interesting question. 3.5E is a "dead" edition, PF is an industry giant's current core product with tons of book & social support. Why is that popular? Because a company with a fair amount of goodwill and a whole bunch of money took advantage of a great market opportunity a few years back and never let go. Not exactly rocket surgery.

I'd say it counts, considering the differences are less than those between AD&D and 3.5E, and less than those between 3.5E and 4E or 5E. They operate with the same mechanics, and conversion required is absolutely minimal. Pathfinder essentially amounts to a series of published house-rules, not a new game in and of itself. I mean, it was marketed as a replacement for and continuation of D&D 3.X.

[SangoProduction]

One other thing I'd add to my previous list of why 3.5e worked over 4e or 5e: In the 3.5e era WotC seemed to have a lot more good will than it does now. In later editions we saw sabotage of their own forum communities (the biggest blow probably being Gleemax), exile of their own staff and talent, locking of previously free content behind paywalls and subscription plans, exciting vaporware (like those various online initiatives that just disappeared), and last but certainly not least, removal of the open gaming license.

Now that, I most certainly agree with. They should never have removed the open gaming license.

[Curmudgeon]

I'd say it counts, considering the differences are less than those between AD&D and 3.5E, and less than those between 3.5E and 4E or 5E. They operate with the same mechanics ...
What about CMB and CMD? That's a new mechanic, largely foreign in concept to D&D 3.5. Pathfinder basically took the 3.5 grappling rules and splattered them over other special attacks (CMB). CMD is something entirely new.

[Honest Tiefling]

To be fair to WotC, I don't think they ever really put much thought at all to the personalities, much less the sexual orientations of their NPCs.

Sure thing. However, Paizo is still going to earn loyalty over this, because at least they showed they put some thought into things, as opposed to not showing it at all.

[Necroticplague]

What about CMB and CMD? That's a new mechanic, largely foreign in concept to D&D 3.5. Pathfinder basically took the 3.5 grappling rules and splattered them over other special attacks (CMB). CMD is something entirely new.

It's not that foreign. It's just turning the STR+size that most combat maneuvers already use into a scaling value, and making it an attack against a static defence, instead of an opposed roll. CMD is to combat maneuvers what 4e's defences are to 3.5's saves (I know, not a perfect analogy, given that you never roll to detemine the save DC, but you get the gist).

[ZamielVanWeber]

Yeah, I'd be more interested in examining this sort of thing in about ten-fifteen years when the generation that grew up playing 3.X is closer to their 40s than their 20s. As it is, the only thing remarkable is 3.E's staying power when Pathfinder was marketed as a replacement.

Paizo started off by making some less than stellar decisions. They have gotten better but in the process have become a different game with a remarkably similar rules set. I don't play Pathfinder because it is bad but because it is not the kind of game I look for mechanicaly.

[Knaight]

I think the whole thread is coming in from a weird premise that 3.5E is still popular. It hemorrhaged players to the combination of PF and 4E, 5E is proving to be extremely popular (GenCon attendance has not skyrocketed over the last 5 years due to excitement about D&D 3.5E, yall), and the indie market is booming like never before. I haven't heard anything in-person about 3.5E in years (aside from the occasional "Holy crap I'm glad we're not playing 3.5E anymore"), it doesn't seem to have a huge forum presence outside of the playground, and even here, it's not king of the tags on the left sidebar. I don't doubt that there's still a sizeable player base, but this whole discussion seems like it's happening in a bubble.

The 3.x category includes Pathfinder, 3.5, and 3.0, plus to a limited extent a few other D20 things. It's still pretty big, and while you're right about the booming indie market, it's worth observing that outside of places like here with lots and lots of people deeply invested in the hobby, the indie market is still pretty well known. Heck, on this forum it's a side note, other than the OSR movement.

[sktarq]

also some of the sillier D&D rules had gone by 3.X
-you know like Thac0 and Alignment Languages.

[Velaryon]

3.x/Pathfinder remains the most modular, detailed and customizable version of D&D that exists. How the system works is very clear, allowing GMs to get "under the hood" and tweak everything from combat rules to creating new monsters. Due to the fairly high level of complexity it's possible to create many minor tweaks (who, for example, hasn't tweaked the Dodge feat or allowed a level 1 rogue to take Weapon Finesse?) without unbalancing the system. While 5e gives you a nice range of archetypes, it's still 3.5/Pathfinder that allows you to create characters specifically tailored to your vision. Swappable class abilities, paragon levels, flaws, prestige classes, all these things mean that within a single class you can explore a huge variety of characters.

Or to put it all in Star Wars terms, 3.5 D&D is the Millennium Falcon. It's old and battered and parts of it break down a lot, but those who've flown with it for awhile know where the leaks are and how to patch them while tweaking the machine just right to get the best performance out of it.

[Milo v3]

I simply haven't seen another game that does what 3.P allows me to do. If there was another that wasn't semi-freeform or freeform I'd jump to it in a flash.

[Bonzai]

For me it came down to a loss of Faith in WotC. Fist a little background...

Back in the day, I was a solid Dragon Lance fan. I loved the setting, the books, and had a great time with the D&D books. However people complained that it was all about the Heroes of the Lance and that there was no room for PCs. This was utter crap, as the setting provided ample options. Then one day some one had the bright idea to nuke the setting. They figured a fresh start was just what they needed to attract new players and interest. It didn't go over so well, and its popularity waned. They didn't factor on losing existing client base who actually liked the setting as it was.

With my beloved Krynn imploded, I began searching for a new setting. I found Faerun and fell in love. Great depth and variety, with fun an interesting characters. Fast forward several years. People complained that the setting was over developed, and there was no place to develop anything, and too many high Lvl NPCs for there to be any point to there being PCs.

So what happens? New developers come and take control of one of the most successful campaign settings ever, and decide that they can do things better. So they nuked the setting. They ripped out one section of the continent and threw in a kingdom of dragon men, cause they are cool right? Then threw in Mordor and the Lich King because it worked for LotRs and WoW. Then they fast forwarded and invalidated decades worth of fluff.

That was enough for me. I had spent enough money on FR fluff books. From then on I decided to go strictly home-brew for my setting. I don't miss d rules updates if the fluff is still valid. WotC wouldn't get any of my money for fluff books anymore, or novels for that matter. Still I had an open mind about 4th, and was willing to look at it. I I liked it then my setting would be 4th edition.

So I read the book, and didn't care for it at all. I didn't like the way it homogenized the classes and ritualized magic. So I passed and am glad I did. That way I missed 4.5, Super, ultra, and hyper fighting addition. Now 5th is out and I couldn't be bothered.

I have my 3.5 books, I home brew my setting, and my group is enjoying themselves. Who needs WotC any more, and why shell out more money with what WotC has been putting out.

[Cluedrew]

I think the whole thread is coming in from a weird premise that 3.5E is still popular.Perhaps I should have said as popular as it is. In the grand scheme of things role-playing as a whole is probably not that popular compared to say... Call of Duty. But those people are beyond. For that matter I actually see more Apocalypse World Hacks than D&D in my area. Mind you I still do see D&D/PathFinder and the majority of it is the 3.X stuff.

So even if it really isn't that popular, it is much more popular than you think it would be from the circumstances.

Also, there is a reason I put this question right in the middle of the densest population of 3.X folk I could find. The reason is actually I was looking for what people liked about the system.

[Starbuck_II]

For me, the problem with Windows 8+ is that they seem to think I want touch tablet features on my desktop. They were adding features to appeal to an audience that had very different needs to me, and occasionally curtailing features that did matter to me.

One other thing I'd add to my previous list of why 3.5e worked over 4e or 5e: In the 3.5e era WotC seemed to have a lot more good will than it does now. In later editions we saw sabotage of their own forum communities (the biggest blow probably being Gleemax), exile of their own staff and talent, locking of previously free content behind paywalls and subscription plans, exciting vaporware (like those various online initiatives that just disappeared), and last but certainly not least, removal of the open gaming license.

They also blew up their own forums. Nuking from orbit was the only way to be sure 3.5 was irrigated there I guess.

[LudicSavant]

They also blew up their own forums. Nuking from orbit was the only way to be sure 3.5 was irrigated there I guess.

Yeah. If anything 3.5e seems to have thrived despite attempts to bury it and mass destruction of its content.

[Debihuman]

3.x is popular because it's a system that many of us grew up with in its earlier incarnations. D&D, AD&D, 1st Ed, 2nd Ed, 3.0 and 3.5 are all built on the bones of its predecessor (Basic D&D). You can actually see the evolution of the game. The OGL put it in the hands of the DMs and players and the 3rd Party Publishers who took it and RAN. I have a mountain of information at my fingertips from dozens of companies whose products run the gamut from totally closed content to entire open content. It's got good stuff and bad. Even at its WORST, a good DM can fix it. The holes are relatively easy to plug. Pathfinder is built from those concepts and has tweaked them, but honestly it's just basically more of the same with better writing and editing.

4th Edition ripped that momentum and handed out a new way of playing that did not fit the earlier model. Furthermore it was asking for an investment in material we had bought (some of us rebuying for every edition). Many players balked at that. Because Forgotten Realms exploded with 2nd and 3rd edition, it was just far easier to convert than to rebuy. Also, Pathfinder had a wonderful marketing plan "3.5 doesn't survive, it thrives" and Pathfinder was born from that.

5e feels like a ploy to get back to a simplified version of 3.5 but I'm not looking for a simple version. I LIKE the complexity and detail of 3.5 and Pathfinder and whatever open gaming content there is. And there is a gobsmacking heap of it. Between the magazines, the books, the pdfs, the homebrew, and the conversions I've got enough material in 3.5/Pathfinder to last a lifetime. Thank you OGL.

Also WotC has peeved me once again as they are shutting down their forums. That's a wealth of information that's disappearing. It makes me both angry and sad. I can't even say that I didn't see it coming. I had spent years copying things I wanted just in case. Sure enough, wham! I had already come here years earlier because it was more active than there. This site is far more user friendly as well. So my feelings toward WotC are less than genial at the moment.

Debby

[Snowbluff]

Yeah, how about that WotC? We make their gaming system into the greatest ever, and they try and bury our efforts. If I wasn't busy telling Paizo I hate them, and I didn't like Magic the Gathering, I'd be shoving WotC off the Cliffs of Insanity.

[Tvtyrant]

Honestly one thing I liked about 3.5 is that there was an assumption that the rules did not have to be the same between classes. Psions, Wizards, Beguilers, Shadowcasters, Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Warlocks, etc. You could easily convert a 4E or 5E class to 3.5 without losing anything, the opposite is not true.

[SangoProduction]

Honestly one thing I liked about 3.5 is that there was an assumption that the rules did not have to be the same between classes. Psions, Wizards, Beguilers, Shadowcasters, Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Warlocks, etc. You could easily convert a 4E or 5E class to 3.5 without losing anything, the opposite is not true.

For 5E, yeah. Of course you'd lose something if you converted to it - its designed with a ceiling.
4E, however, unless you are talking about the tier 1 classes, loses nothing when converting to it (indeed you have to add quite a ton to make most classes competitive when converting).
Converting back to 3E is relatively simple, though you should reduce the powers of the races just a bit, because 4E humans are clearly better than 3E ones....and 3E humans tend to be better than every other race in 3E. But the classes are right around tier 3 to low 2.

Hmm...but I am now interested in making the Incarnum classes for 4E. Considering the nature of the incarnum powers it should be a fairly simple to create....and then I realize I need to create 12 powers for level 1 alone. So much work. But I'll do it when I get time.

[Manyasone]

It is the only edition with Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and Psionics at same time.

Tome of Magic brought forth the Binder (Pathfinder recreated the Occultist, a Binder Lite) and Truenamer (yes, the mechanics are complained that later they don't work, but they are fine at beginning)

Tome of Battle brought forth Martial arts (which every Knight used in real life, the art of fighting martially, not just the unarmed kind). The classes are unique and unrepresented in Pathfinder (Seriously, Crusader is not clone not in Pathfinder; though Warblade and Swordsage are possible to emulate).

And Expanded Psionic and Complete Psionic classes are awesome. The first balanced Player's handbook (Core Handbook is never balanced).

If I may add that Dreamscarred's Path of War and Ultimate Psionics is marvellous Pathfinder material and Radiant House has Pact magic Unbound, which has better occultism involving Binder concepts than Paizo's Occult Mysteries

[Milo v3]

Radiant House has Pact magic Unbound, which has better occultism involving Binder concepts than Paizo's Occult Adventures
Eh, YMMV. I never liked Pact Magic's Occultist, too much inbuilt flavour in the mechanics makes reflavouring them all too annoying.

[Eldan]

Another thing to mention: I haven't actually had an IRL roleplaying group for a few years, now. I just can't find anyone even remotely interested over here. So, at this point, I'm entirely here for the homebrew and tinkering.

[Florian]

Another thing to mention: I haven't actually had an IRL roleplaying group for a few years, now. I just can't find anyone even remotely interested over here. So, at this point, I'm entirely here for the homebrew and tinkering.

Hm. No group for roleplaying in general or specifically for D&D 3.5? Not even for *shudder* DSA?

[Eldan]

Nope, seems a bit dead around here. Or i just know the wrong people.

[OttoVonBigby]

Are the Wizards forums, or key parts thereof, being archived by any enterprising community members, and if so... anybody have links?

On topic:
My time on this forum has illustrated to me one answer to the OP's question. As others have mentioned, being highly moddable definitely is part of it, but I think in particular that the root rule system is just solid enough, just consistent enough, and just simple enough to accommodate the homebrewing efforts of both the "rules-light-ish" 3.Pers and the "nightmarishly complicated mathematical shenanigans" 3.Pers. In that way (and forgive a possibly unpopular metaphor), it's a bit like a video game with straightforwardly moddable code, making it possible both to fix most of the developers' bugs and to expand the experience effectively infinitely.

[Heliomance]

I don't like the d20 system. I really don't. I hate the completely flat and wildly swingy variance, I dislike the absolute necessity of really boring magic items, I don't like the level of granularity that manages to be simultaneously far too fine and not fine enough, in varying areas. If I'm going to go to the effort of learning a new RPG system, it's sure as hell not going to be a d20 system. Not Pathfinder, not 4e, not 5e.

But.

D&D 3.5 is where I started roleplaying. It's the first RPG I ever learnt. I learnt the rules before I developed my opinions on the problems of the d20 system. I found this forum and learned to optimise. And now I can make 3.5 dance to my tune. I know how to make the rules, the buggy, murky mess of rules, jump through hoops for me. I can work out how to make nearly anything that it's possible to make. I know the loopholes, I know the obscure bits and pieces that can get you an unusual ability. It's a mess, but it's a mess I understand. I can do more with 3.5 than I can with any other system, because I know it better than any other system. I come up with a character concept, and my first thought is "how would I make this in D&D?"

I enjoy the challenge and puzzle of making the rules do what I want. But because my enjoyment of D&D depends on my system mastery - mastery that is a lot of effort to gain - I probably wouldn't jump ship even if I found a non-d20 system that offered the same balance of wide open options and rules just restrictive enough to provide a framework to play in, because I can't be bothered to learn it well enough to take advantage of that. These days I'm far more likely to pick up more structured games with narrower fluff - Exalted, Scion, the various WoD subsystems, Shadowrun, they're all things I'm interested in, because the framework is tighter and there's more guidance as to the type of character to create. Sure, you can't make just anything that springs into your head, but that just means it's easier to choose something, and be guided by the system.

[Florian]

Nope, seems a bit dead around here. Or i just know the wrong people.

Well, according to local publishers like Ulises or Uhrwerk, gaming groups in D/A/CH tend to be more insular and shun contact with the greater gaming comunity as a whole. I know from experience how annoyingly hard it can be to get in touch with fellow gamers.

[Vhaidara]

You might also want to check out Pathfinder Society. I'm pretty sure I heard one of the Venture Captains (the organizers) mention that one of the locals around here actually spent a while going back and forth between the US and Switzerland for business, and alternated which table he played at, but was still able to keep playing.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

As others have mentioned, being highly moddable definitely is part of it, but I think in particular that the root rule system is just solid enough, just consistent enough, and just simple enough to accommodate the homebrewing efforts of both the "rules-light-ish" 3.Pers and the "nightmarishly complicated mathematical shenanigans" 3.Pers.

This is very true. One of the common responses to "I like the crunchiness, homebrew-friendliness, and modularity of 3e" is "But GURPS does crunchiness, homebrew, and modularity better!", which is true, but in my experience GURPS is far too intimidating to newbies without lots of DM handholding and it requires a lot more GM input as to what's allowed and what's available for a given game, whereas I've handed 3e PHBs to new players with a simple "We're using everything in the PHB and Completes, read through the classes and see what you like and we'll go from there" and people have picked it up pretty quickly. Likewise, one of the common responses to "I like the simple-core-mechanic-with-optional-addons structure of 3e and its wide variety of noncombat stuff" is "But rules-light games like Fate do optional subsystems and noncombat interaction better!", which is true, but in my experience Fate and its ilk are hard to get rules-heavy players to play for ongoing games (as opposed to one-shots or occasional adventures), as the focus on very few mechanics with vague user-defined inputs and outputs doesn't give them enough mechanical widgets to play with.

So 3e manages to be the best "second-best at everything" game for most players: a detailed core for the GURPS types who prefer lots of crunch but with open-ended magic and some plot-altering subsystems for the Fate types who prefer character-driven games, a rich implied setting and two meta-settings (Planescape and Spelljammer) for the WoD types who love metaplots and famous NPCs but with the ability to handle plenty of genres for the Savage Worlds types who like to run lots of different settings with the same system, lots of rigid classes for the RIFTS types who prefer very defined archetypes but with free enough multiclassing for the Shadowrun types who prefer a few general archetypes with flexible components, gritty low-level play for the Warhammer types who enjoy being one slip-up away from death but with world-shaking high-level play for the Exalted types who like to have a big impact on the setting, and so forth.

Kind of like how 5e was supposed to be "everyone's second-favorite D&D" to unite the playerbase and let everyone craft exactly the game they want to play, except that 3e actually works at doing that instead of just saying it does. :smallwink:

[Kurald Galain]

So 3e manages to be the best "second-best at everything" game for most players:

I think this is key. 3E is not so much the game that everybody likes, but it's the game that nobody hates.

[Knaight]

Are the Wizards forums, or key parts thereof, being archived by any enterprising community members, and if so... anybody have links?

On topic:
My time on this forum has illustrated to me one answer to the OP's question. As others have mentioned, being highly moddable definitely is part of it, but I think in particular that the root rule system is just solid enough, just consistent enough, and just simple enough to accommodate the homebrewing efforts of both the "rules-light-ish" 3.Pers and the "nightmarishly complicated mathematical shenanigans" 3.Pers. In that way (and forgive a possibly unpopular metaphor), it's a bit like a video game with straightforwardly moddable code, making it possible both to fix most of the developers' bugs and to expand the experience effectively infinitely.
There are a few archive projects in a few different locations. Hopefully WotC gave enough warning to glean the bulk of the useful material, though the notice was on the shorter side.


I think this is key. 3E is not so much the game that everybody likes, but it's the game that nobody hates.
I'd agree with this in spirit, though there absolutely are plenty of detractors that really, really dislike the game. Still, it's generally functional and extremely well established.

[Solaris]

I'd agree with this in spirit, though there absolutely are plenty of detractors that really, really dislike the game. Still, it's generally functional and extremely well established.

Same, but I take the detractors with the grain of salt that you'll find someone to hate anything on the internet.

[Amphetryon]

If 3.X's popularity is being gauged by the traffic on this site, remember that this is one of the few remaining bastions for discussion of it, so the echo chamber effect may be factoring in. I say this as a staunch 3.X supporter.

[Solaris]

If 3.X's popularity is being gauged by the traffic on this site, remember that this is one of the few remaining bastions for discussion of it, so the echo chamber effect may be factoring in. I say this as a staunch 3.X supporter.

I gauge it by the hits I get from search engines, filtered for the last year's results.
"Pathfinder RPG" and "Pathfinder Roleplaying Game" blows pretty much everything out of the water with a couple orders of magnitude more hits, and as a d20 system game it's under the umbrella of 3.X.

[LudicSavant]

The Orr Group Industry Report says that nearly 50% of the player base and games created are either Pathfinder or 3.5e (with 3.5e leading over Pathfinder slightly in player count but falling behind it slightly in number of games being run). Only about 12% for 5e. Only about 30% of games were something other than Pathfinder/D&D.

[Amphetryon]

The Orr Group Industry Report says that nearly 50% of the player base and games created are either Pathfinder or 3.5e (with 3.5e leading over Pathfinder slightly in player count but falling behind it slightly in number of games being run). Only about 12% for 5e. Only about 30% of games were something other than Pathfinder/D&D.

Among those polled and expressing an opinion. . .

or. . .

Among known games and groups. . .

or. . .?

[LudicSavant]

Among those polled and expressing an opinion. . .

or. . .

Among known games and groups. . .

or. . .?

From data mining of their online pen and paper roleplaying site.

Some 25,000 games and over 15,000 players were sampled.

Edit: Apparently more recent reports from the Orr Group (2015 instead of 2014) show that 5e is increasing in popularity amongst their sample group (and also increased the sample size to almost 40,000 games and over 30,000 players).

World of Darkness coming in with only 2%. Star Wars RPGs (all of them) at almost 3% and Warhammer RPGs (all of them ) at almost 4%. D&D 4e at 4.5%. 3.PF and 5e together hogging almost 62%.

[Amphetryon]

From data mining of their online pen and paper roleplaying site.

Some 25,000 games and over 15,000 players were sampled.

Edit: Apparently more recent reports from the Orr Group (2015 instead of 2014) show that 5e is increasing in popularity amongst their sample group (and also increased the sample size to almost 40,000 games and over 30,000 players).

World of Darkness coming in with only 2%. Star Wars RPGs (all of them) at almost 3% and Warhammer RPGs (all of them ) at almost 4%. D&D 4e at 4.5%. 3.PF and 5e together hogging almost 62%.

Highlighted the first, most obvious, source of potential bias; it's a site I know I've never visited, and wonder what percentage of RPGers as a whole happen to visit it, and how that percentage - if it's available - was derived.

[Vhaidara]

Also, sampling a given population isn't a bias, it's a context. Important difference.

But the population can be biased. You're not getting a very accurate reading of the distribution of political parties if you sample, say, a Republican caucus. Likewise, if you sampled this subforum, you'd get a very misleading result about DnD.

[LudicSavant]

But the population can be biased.

Obviously. Which is why context is important. That goes for absolutely any report, ever.

[Kurald Galain]

If 3.X's popularity is being gauged by the traffic on this site, remember that this is one of the few remaining bastions for discussion of it
How about Enworld, or Rpg.net, or Warhorn, or Myth-Weavers, or the D&D Wiki, or the entire Paizo site? And then there's many RPG players that don't post on forums about it.


The Orr Group Industry Report says that nearly 50% of the player base and games created are either Pathfinder or 3.5e (with 3.5e leading over Pathfinder slightly in player count but falling behind it slightly in number of games being run). Only about 12% for 5e. Only about 30% of games were something other than Pathfinder/D&D.
Warhorn reports that 85% of Organized Play games are Pathfinder, 12% are 5E, and 1% are 4E.
Myth-weavers reports 410 ongoing PF games, 290 games in 3.5, 170 games in 5E, and 19 games in 4E.

[LudicSavant]

How about Enworld, or Rpg.net, or Warhorn, or Myth-Weavers, or the D&D Wiki, or the entire Paizo site? And then there's many RPG players that don't post on forums about it.


Warhorn reports that 85% of Organized Play games are Pathfinder, 12% are 5E, and 1% are 4E.
Myth-weavers reports 410 ongoing PF games, 290 games in 3.5, 170 games in 5E, and 19 games in 4E.

Yeah, there are a lot of sites we can poll from.

Also, I found some more market research studies for RPGs. Here's one: http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/gaming/WotCMarketResearchSummary.html

But that's from ALL THE WAY BACK IN 2000. Blah.

Edit: So far I can't seem to find anything superior to just finding all the online roleplaying site reports, and I haven't found any of those that don't report D&D dominance. Not saying they're not out there, but if they aren't I can't find them in the brief time I've spent looking.

[Gabrosin]

It's been said a number of times earlier in this thread, but I'm gonna go with system investiture. When you learn a game as complex as 3.5, your desire to learn something new is often reduced. This is especially true for people who learned 3.5 in their teens and twenties and now have busy adult lives. Grabbing a new set of books and diving in is tough enough... finding a bunch of friends willing to take the plunge with you is even harder. And what's the payoff? The thrill of doing something new and different? D&D is so vast that even diehard regular players will not get to experience all of it in their lifetimes. You can always do something new. Each DM can produce a new and interesting set of rules by adding homebrew, dropping books, switching campaign worlds, adjusting the starting level, and so on.

Put simply, the expected value of the new game, relative to the old one, isn't high enough to justify the work.

[Telok]

For hilarity: My pnp rpg survey via usenet.

3.P is about twice as popular as AD&D which is twice as popular as everything else combined.

Analysis performed using the Subjective Perspective Algorithm on the data set Memory Of Searches For RPGs On Usenet.

[Knaight]

Same, but I take the detractors with the grain of salt that you'll find someone to hate anything on the internet.

I don't have to use the internet to find them, it's not hard. Generally most of the complaints have to do with the game just being too heavy, and 900+ pages of core rules being completely excessive - points I largely agree with, as it happens.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't have to use the internet to find them, it's not hard. Generally most of the complaints have to do with the game just being too heavy, and 900+ pages of core rules being completely excessive - points I largely agree with, as it happens.

Sure, but bear in mind that 3E is a game that lots of people complain about but keep playing anyway. That's part of being the "game that nobody hates". There are other games, the boardgame "Diplomacy" comes to mind, that lots of people complain about and vow never to touch again in their life.

(not saying that Diplo is a bad game, far from it; it just provokes a strong reaction in people, and the reaction 'never again' is not uncommon)
(if you want to be nitpicky, replace "nobody" by "only a statistically insignificant vocal minority")

[Beheld]

How about Enworld, or Rpg.net, or Warhorn, or Myth-Weavers, or the D&D Wiki, or the entire Paizo site? And then there's many RPG players that don't post on forums about it.

Or The Gaming Den :amused:

[ericgrau]

Flexibility. And while flexibility opens up the potential for more unexpected problems, it is at least better thought out and tested than most other rpg systems.

[Knaight]

Sure, but bear in mind that 3E is a game that lots of people complain about but keep playing anyway. That's part of being the "game that nobody hates". There are other games, the boardgame "Diplomacy" comes to mind, that lots of people complain about and vow never to touch again in their life.

Among the subset that stick with RPGs in general, sure. The people who try 3e, then abandon the entire hobby are far from statistically insignificant.

[Amphetryon]

How about Enworld, or Rpg.net, or Warhorn, or Myth-Weavers, or the D&D Wiki, or the entire Paizo site? And then there's many RPG players that don't post on forums about it.

Are you asking because you missed the "one of" qualifier in my comment, or because you're somehow disputing that qualifier, or. . . .?

[Kurald Galain]

Among the subset that stick with RPGs in general, sure. The people who try 3e, then abandon the entire hobby are far from statistically insignificant.

Please cite your evidence for that?

[Elder_Basilisk]

Why I stick with 3.x/Pathfinder?

It's the game I've tried that I enjoy the most and where the design goals match up best with what I want to play.

3.x and Pathfinder try to let the rules model the game world. If NPCs can do it, you can (theoretically do it). If you can do it, NPCs can do it. 4e abandoned that goal in favor of "NPCs can do whatever the plot wants them to do; you can do whatever the plot allows you to do." GURPS may or may not do that better--I've never tried GURPs, but most other systems people talk about these days are more rules lite which gets back to the 4e model of NPCs play by their own rules and you play "Mother, May I?" with the DM.

And in the D20/GURPS discussion, having a large player base is a huge advantage. I can find a 3.x or pathfinder group relatively easily. I've never seen a flier for a GURPS group on the gamestore bulletin board or heard of an organized play GURPS group.

3.x also offers a nice balance of flexibility in character creation and game balance. Yes, there are game balance problems and it is possible to make a character who is terrible. But it's a lot harder than it is in pure point buy systems and the hyperspecialization allowed by systems that allow flaws, generates a wider range of character abilities. And I can also make a whole bunch of mechanically different but still viable fighters or wizards. It's not as though every meaningful choice you make is selected at character creation.

The mechanics of 3.x manage to be broad enough to be powerful without relying on a morass of tables (Rolemaster) which can slow the game down to a crawl.

The mechanics of 3.x are also not as tied to a setting as Warhammer, White Wolf games, etc. Sure, the mechanics are tied to settings. If you want to roleplay in a more historical setting, you might need to invest in a copy of Testament or something and use some alternate rules. And D&D magic is going to shape every game you play with the system unless you go for some serious houserules to get rid of it. But there's more flexibility than you get with Warhammer (for example). There it's grimdark known world or bust. D20 can do grimdark if you want (Midnight, etc), high fantasy, or low fantasy (E6). If steampunk is your thing, you can try Ebberon. If you're into Call of Cthulu, there's D20 modern/Call of Cthulu. (I played it once and the system worked, though I'm not really into the whole mood of insanity and despair thing). A part of this is the depth of support that the system has, but part of it is the flexibility of the rules themselves. They are broad enough that they can be repurposed for other settings and genres with varying degrees of success.

[Florian]

Well, let me state a very unpopular point of view:

Begining with 3.0, we saw a very pecular form of Player Empowerment, insofar as that ruleset gave players, not the gm, handling over certain aspects of the game. We, as players, suddenly knew what we were emtitled to.
With the advent of 3.5, this even got more pronounced. Basic excesseses got curp-stomped,but the thinking mans solutions got even more weight and the disparity between classes grew, especially in theoriecraft.

Based on personal experience, I'd say nobody gives a damn as they like to experince a story an thats it.

[Pex]

Well, let me state a very unpopular point of view:

Begining with 3.0, we saw a very pecular form of Player Empowerment, insofar as that ruleset gave players, not the gm, handling over certain aspects of the game. We, as players, suddenly knew what we were emtitled to.
With the advent of 3.5, this even got more pronounced. Basic excesseses got curp-stomped,but the thinking mans solutions got even more weight and the disparity between classes grew, especially in theoriecraft.

Based on personal experience, I'd say nobody gives a damn as they like to experince a story an thats it.

So are you saying it's a good thing or bad thing that players get a voice on how they can have fun, that the DM is no longer Master Lord Boss Of Everyone, and that while it's the DM's campaign it's everyone's game.

Three guesses on my view of the matter and the first two don't count. :smallcool:

[Snowbluff]

Well, it's a double edged sword, where some players can screw stuff up for others with the rules and character bring, but on the other hand if they have a gentleman's agreement, the games gain flexibility and allow more people to input their own creativity. :3

[Flickerdart]

The new angle on the rules changes the dynamic towards "group of friends having fun as equals" and away from "conglomeration of nerds gathered before King DM." Needless to say, this helps a lot with adoption of the system, especially by new DMs (since player experience counts for more).

[Togo]

It's also much easier to get invested in the rules if you can build a character entirely out of rules you like and understand. 3.x has a metagame, in which people design and build characters. Building characters is fun as a mechanical exercise. For a target group that includes wargamers and people who like system, this is an important consideration.

I wanted to like 4e, I was a volunteer DM in some of the marketing events where the designers came to London and helped to introduce the game. I know lots of people who do like it. But it wasn't the game I wanted to play.

I think the basic problem is that on the internet all the complaints were about bad balance and overly complicated rules. So they made a game that was more streamlined and simpler to play. Unfortunately, that wasn't what people really wanted.

Roll back to 1st edition AD&D for a moment. That was amazingly badly balanced. It was extremely badly written. It had almost endless rules supplements (used to sell the house magazines as well as additional hardbacks). It was extremely flexible. Every class had a different set of rules mechanics. People bought it in droves.

2nd edition was a very similar game. Every class still had it's own rules mechanics, and it was still poorly balanced. More setting-specific information, more rules-for-the-sake-of-selling-extra-books, many many more monsters.

3.X edition took a risk in changing much of the core engine and making it more modular. With a bit of work you could mix and max 20 different rules systems for 20 different powers from 20 different books, all in the same character! Still badly balanced, still an endless labyrinth of optional and supplemental rules. Roaring success. Some people still prefer the previous editions, but the bulk of the players switched over.

4th edition put an end to the multiple rules sets for different characters. It was more balanced, more fair, and much less popular.

The conclusion is obvious, to me. Balance is bad. Simple streamlined rules are bad. It sounds counterintuitive, but people want complicated, poorly balanced rules. They want their mechanics to have some grit in them, some traction. It's part of what got them into the game in the first place.

If that's not what they want, there are many many games that do 'streamlined and simple' far better than a D&D game ever will.

To me this makes perfect sense. Wargamers are far less shy than roleplayers when it comes to saying that what they want is a seperate mechanic for everything. You could give your military Yak regiments (from the Burmese civil war game) the same rules as militia, and the game would work fine. But you don't, because it's more fun if they work differently. It's more fun if the experience of playing the game makes them feel different.

5e I'll reserve judgement on. Most people I know seem to like it, and it may do well. But with so many people invested, mentally, financially, and emotionally, in 3.X, it's going to be a while before we can tell.

[Flickerdart]

The conclusion is obvious, to me. Balance is bad.
Balance is unimportant but I would never go as far as to say it's bad. I would say that the "everything must be balanced" crowd is within an order of magnitude of the "wizards must always be the best" crowd. Most people just want to play the game and put together weird wonderful characters and they couldn't possibly care less if the numbers that come out at the end are clustered well.

[Snowbluff]

Balance is unimportant but I would never go as far as to say it's bad. I would say that the "everything must be balanced" crowd is within an order of magnitude of the "wizards must always be the best" crowd. Most people just want to play the game and put together weird wonderful characters and they couldn't possibly care less if the numbers that come out at the end are clustered well.

Yeah, I agree with this. 4e had this problem with constantly updating all of the neat little tricks away. The game is great if you ignore ever balance changed released. :s

Also, Snowbluff Axiom. :P

[squiggit]

The conclusion is obvious, to me. Balance is bad.
It always sort of bugged me when someone takes a system that changed dozens of mechanics and conventions and then pick one of those particular things and declare it the reason it failed.

Saying balance is bad seems in the same ballpark as arguing that 4e failed because it made 5 foot steps a move action or because none of the races have ability score penalties. Maybe even more nonsensical than those thoughts given that 4e isn't even that well balanced in the first place (in many ways worse than 3.5, for that matter).

I mean you could just as easily argue the opposite and assert that Pathfinder's success is because it's more balanced than 3.5. It'd be an easier argument to make too, given that Pathfinder is quantifiably more balanced than 3.5 and the two are nearly identical in fundamental mechanics.

In reality I think Flickerdart has it right. Balance just isn't super important. Or rather, balance is only a concern if those balance problems are easily exploitable and readily apparent and 3.x's don't tend to be that way.

[LudicSavant]

The reasons I like 3.5 over 4e and 5e have absolutely nothing to do with balance issues (see the list of advantages I gave previously). I definitely rate 3.5e's balance issues as a negative in my book. However, I feel it has a number of pros which allow me to forgive it that flaw.

That, and I don't actually feel like later editions did a much better job on balance. 4e had all kinds of exploits straight from day 1. Skill challenges were just horrid. Many of the rules were poorly conceived and dissociative. 5e is occasionally so lazy it just says "let the DM make up how it works" which is of course going to result in imbalance. Even streamlining is questionable in many areas if you're comparing a similar volume of rules together (e.g. you shouldn't be comparing 5e's PHB to 3.5e's entire library of supplements). Simple things like "NPCs and PCs don't follow the same rules" actually add a whole lot of new issues.

One thing I'm seeing in a few of these arguments is a false dilemma: That better balance means less interesting tricks. You can totally have interesting tricks and good balance. Those things aren't mutually exclusive. As an example, ToB replacing core beatsticks is generally regarded in optimization communities (e.g. people with high system mastery) as improving the balance of the game. ToB fans will also generally tell you that they feel that ToB gives them access to more interesting tricks than core beatsticks.

If your problem is with a lack of interesting tricks, say your problem is with a lack of interesting tricks, not with balance.

The problem isn't that Animate Dead got more balanced in 5e vs 3.5e. It's that Animate Dead no longer allows us to ride zombie tyrannosauruses. It's totally possible to balance zombie tyrannosauruses.

Or, to put it another way: All other things being equal, better balance is good. Not all other things are equal when you decide to say that Animate Dead can only animate identical humanoid skeletons and that PCs can't be the wizard who made all those more interesting undead in the monster manuals.

[nijineko]

you know what, the statement is actually right - balance IS bad.

let me clarify.

we're not talking overarching moral and ethical realities here.

we're not talking about good rule design, poor rule design, or even rules making sense here.

what we're talking about is this fallacy of artificially balancing everything to some lowest common stupid. the concept itself of game balance (as currently practiced by most game designers) is flawed... in other words, BAD.

ergo, that kind of balance is actually bad - the way it's being enforced in the rules.

the vast majority of people don't want to play a game where everything is carefully balanced with each other. i think the reason is simple. awesome action movies aren't balanced. awesome works of fantasy and sci-fi aren't balanced. awesome works of music aren't balanced either. all the great stuff in life is unbalanced. the pinnacle of awesome and cool. it's awesome and cool BECAUSE it's not the 99%.

so-called balanced stories are boring. so are so-called balanced games. that's why as lousy as the rules are written, as many mistakes as there are, it's still an awesome, fun, and enjoyable game.



plus, the in-jokes are amusing.

[Flickerdart]

so-called balanced stories are boring. so are so-called balanced games.
There's this game you may have heard of called chess...

[Milo v3]

There's this game you may have heard of called chess...

Have you heard of the First-Move Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess)?

[atemu1234]

There's this game you may have heard of called chess...

Cheeky, but let me expand (flicky, I agree with you, so don't be confused):

Balance is expected in a game. It is not in a story. Balance in a story is boring. But in D&D, which is as much a game as a story, and vice versa, balance is impossible. There will always be a better option, at least to a reasonable level. The best we can hope for is to try and balance between each other when we play together. Both in game mechanics and in roleplaying.

[Flickerdart]

Have you heard of the First-Move Advantage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-move_advantage_in_chess)?
Of course - but since who plays black and who plays white is determined randomly, it's not a factor of imbalance.

[Snowbluff]

You know what game is balanced? The Snowbluff game. It's balanced for all of the players who are not Snowbluff. :smallsmile:

[Milo v3]

Of course - but since who plays black and who plays white is determined randomly, it's not a factor of imbalance.

It's not determined randomly any more than deciding your build is...

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, I agree with this. 4e had this problem with constantly updating all of the neat little tricks away. The game is great if you ignore ever balance changed released. :s

Also, Snowbluff Axiom. :P

Your full of it.

even your Axiom cannot please everyone, for it does not please the people who want balance. therefore its not actually true, and therefore it proves itself false. Your Axiom is not an Axiom at all, but a paradox. I can never be happy with an imbalanced system. Ever.

[gooddragon1]

It's like windows XP. It worked. It still does, even after they don't release stuff for it anymore and have stopped supporting it.

[Milo v3]

I can never be happy with an imbalanced system. Ever.

Sincere question, what systems do you play? I have not seen any systems that weren't either imbalanced or rules-light to the extent they were effectively freeform.

[Snowbluff]

Your Axiom is not an Axiom at all, but a paradox.

Actually, there is a solution, but I don't want to tell you because it sounding like a paradox makes me sounds more mysterious. I think you'll figure it out yourself. :smallcool:

[Lord Raziere]

Sincere question, what systems do you play? I have not seen any systems that weren't either imbalanced or rules-light to the extent they were effectively freeform.

oh so if its too rules light, it doesn't count therefore its freeform then? I see what you did there, nice way of preemptively invalidating anything I could possibly say under your definition, thats not going to give us any useful discussion here.

[Flickerdart]

It's not determined randomly any more than deciding your build is...
Every chess game I have ever played started by randomly determining the player that can choose white or black. I cannot speak for your experience.

Regardless, even if the color was never determined randomly, the very page you link rates White's advantage as 2-6% among experts. That's more than enough to have a balanced game, and can not be compared to the imbalance between player characters in non-4th edition D&D.

[Milo v3]

oh so if its too rules light, it doesn't count therefore its freeform then? I see what you did there, nice way of preemptively invalidating anything I could possibly say under your definition, thats not going to give us any useful discussion here.
I think you misunderstand my intention behind saying "imbalanced or rules-light to the extent they were effectively freeform." It is not to invalidate anything you could possibly say, I honestly was hoping for you to suggest a system that isn't freeform that is close enough to balanced for your tastes. I acknowledge the fact that games that are effectively freeform are balanced, because everyone is equal it in it from a lack of rules. But since it is only from a lack of rules, rather than actually having balanced mechanics, it was to remove answers that are obvious and go nowhere in the discussion.

edit:
Every chess game I have ever played started by randomly determining the player that can choose white or black. I cannot speak for your experience.
Interesting, I've never seen that done.


Regardless, even if the color was never determined randomly, the very page you link rates White's advantage as 2-6% among experts. That's more than enough to have a balanced game, and can not be compared to the imbalance between player characters in non-4th edition D&D.
Whether or not it is enough to have a balanced game in highly subjective. Objectively it is not balanced if the mathematics show White consistently wins slightly more often than Black. Even if it is determined randomly, that is giving one player a slight advantage over the other player.

[Flickerdart]

Whether or not it is enough to have a balanced game in highly subjective. Objectively it is not balanced if the mathematics show White consistently wins slightly more often than Black. Even if it is determined randomly, that is giving one player a slight advantage over the other player.
Careful - if you split those hairs any more, you'll start a fission reaction.

[Lord Raziere]

I think you misunderstand my intention behind saying "imbalanced or rules-light to the extent they were effectively freeform." It is not to invalidate anything you could possibly say, I honestly was hoping for you to suggest a system that isn't freeform that is close enough to balanced for your tastes. I acknowledge the fact that games that are effectively freeform are balanced, because everyone is equal it in it from a lack of rules. But since it is only from a lack of rules, rather than actually having balanced mechanics, it was to remove answers that are obvious and go nowhere in the discussion.


Fate. when you really understand it, the system is more than just the core part everyone thinks of it as. Its what you do with it, and build from it. the intention is not to make everything work under the same rules, but to figure out how to modify the rules to better represent the things you want to play.

[Kurald Galain]

I can never be happy with an imbalanced system. Ever.

Good for you. But that makes you a vocal minority. If you look at what the popular RPGs were of the past years, and look at what the balanced RPGs were of the past years, well turns out there isn't any overlap.

Balance doesn't sell TTRPGs.

[stanprollyright]

I can never be happy with an imbalanced system. Ever.

You're implying that there is such a thing as a perfectly balanced system, which of course there is not. Balance is a subjective concept in this kind of game.

[Fizban]

5e I'll reserve judgement on. Most people I know seem to like it, and it may do well. But with so many people invested, mentally, financially, and emotionally, in 3.X, it's going to be a while before we can tell.
Ambivalently? Not really sadly anyway, I have passed my judgement. The big mechanical reason that 3.5 is so flexible is the multiple parallel advancement paths: class level, prestige class level, skills, feats, ability scores, and magic items, all before taking into account the systems behind the classes that offer even more parallel advancement: bonus feats, spell choices, class ability menus which reference elements from anywhere else or include whole new tracks, prestige classes that combine the advancement tracks of multiple classes while adding their own, more magic items, intra-party cooperation, extra-party cooperation, etc. 5e has blocked most of that off: skills are chosen once and can't be spread around, abilities scores and feats draw from the same pool of points-which is tied to class level rather than character level. They could still bring back prestige classes, but the only parallel advancement I expect they'd include would be on spellcasting. I could reverse my judgement if I'm proven wrong, but I'm pretty sure there's no way the base setup of the classes will allow the same flexibility ever again.


I mean you could just as easily argue the opposite and assert that Pathfinder's success is because it's more balanced than 3.5. It'd be an easier argument to make too, given that Pathfinder is quantifiably more balanced than 3.5 and the two are nearly identical in fundamental mechanics.
I'd say it's fairly obvious the success of Pathfinder is simply that WotC stopped writing 3.5. Does anyone really think they would have taken off so hard otherwise? Pathfinder's balance fixes amount to a series of house rules, several of which I disagree with, but the fact that they're still making material means they auto-win vs. WotC for the 3.x crowd.

[stanprollyright]

3.5 was a cultural perfect storm. Right place, right time, right game. Internet access hit critical mass, nerd culture became mainstream, and WotC milked their product for all it was worth and published a bajillion supplements. 4E never stood a chance. What keeps people from moving on is familiarity, popularity, and sheer amount of supplementary material. The game isn't perfect, but it's good enough that learning another system isn't all that appealing after achieving system mastery. I, for one, have always been bothered that accuracy and health naturally scale with level, while damage and AC do not. This makes for an over-reliance on equipment that I find distasteful. But it's still the only system where I can make any character from any fantasy I can think of, while still having enough structure to hand a newbie a 1st level character sheet without confusing the **** out of them.

[Amphetryon]

Fate. when you really understand it, the system is more than just the core part everyone thinks of it as. Its what you do with it, and build from it. the intention is not to make everything work under the same rules, but to figure out how to modify the rules to better represent the things you want to play.
So, everyone whose understanding of it differs from yours doesn't "really understand it" and it's perfectly balanced because its rules are there to be modified rather than played as written.

If you say so.

[Kurald Galain]

I'd say it's fairly obvious the success of Pathfinder is simply that WotC stopped writing 3.5. Does anyone really think they would have taken off so hard otherwise? Pathfinder's balance fixes amount to a series of house rules, several of which I disagree with, but the fact that they're still making material means they auto-win vs. WotC for the 3.x crowd.

Not just that. It's also their quality adventure paths, focus on public play, and responsive development team. But yes, WOTC created a gap and Paizo stepped in.

[Togo]

It always sort of bugged me when someone takes a system that changed dozens of mechanics and conventions and then pick one of those particular things and declare it the reason it failed.

Ah, not my intention. If nothing else, too many people genuinely like and enjoy 4e - I wouldn't call that a failure. The question being asked is why 3.5e wasn't replaced by 4e, and I believe the answer is that, for a particular gaming need, balance is bad. Not just unimportant as Flickerdart said, but actively counterproductive.

4E is a good game and fills a gap in the market. It just isn't the same gap.


I mean you could just as easily argue the opposite and assert that Pathfinder's success is because it's more balanced than 3.5. It'd be an easier argument to make too, given that Pathfinder is quantifiably more balanced than 3.5 and the two are nearly identical in fundamental mechanics.

Possibly, but Pathfinder hasn't replaced 3.X either. It's very successful, and I was expecting it to replace 3.X, being both well written and actively supported, but it hasn't.

[atemu1234]

Possibly, but Pathfinder hasn't replaced 3.X either. It's very successful, and I was expecting it to replace 3.X, being both well written and actively supported, but it hasn't.

Of course it hasn't replaced it. It will never replace it - no system ever fully replaces another, especially in this game. I've seen AD&D groups discussing rules made decades ago, regardless of new systems coming out. People don't replace their former systems with new ones, that's not how the gaming market works.

What Pathfinder has done is provided a lot of material which is easily turned into 3.5 content, and a system that's still developing new materials.

My biggest problem with wantonly complaining about 4e is the simple fact that the people playing 4e are proof the game is still alright - because the true measure of a game is if people have fun, and continue having fun, while playing it.

[Wonton]

Also, Snowbluff Axiom. :P

I like this axiom. It kinda falls into the same category as the "easy to learn, difficult to master" adage many video game designers use - you want a system to be attractive both to new players who just want to say "i dunno i just want to hit stuff with a sword" and very experienced players who are not satisfied unless they have 10 different actions they can take each turn. I feel like 3.x accomplished both of these very well - a Half-Orc Barbarian is one of the simplest and most effective characters early on, but at the same time we all know the power of a well-played primary caster.

[Kurald Galain]

My biggest problem with wantonly complaining about 4e is the simple fact that the people playing 4e are proof the game is still alright - because the true measure of a game is if people have fun, and continue having fun, while playing it.

Ah, but for a game designer, the interesting question is "WHY".

Indeed, the premise of this thread is basically "how is it possible that people play anything but the most recent version", and we're answering that. If one edition has over ten times as many players as another edition (by sales count, and yes those are realistic figures) then this is also something game designers will want an answer to.

[Snowbluff]

4E is a good game and fills a gap in the market. It just isn't the same gap.






My biggest problem with wantonly complaining about 4e is the simple fact that the people playing 4e are proof the game is still alright - because the true measure of a game is if people have fun, and continue having fun, while playing it.
4e is entirely underrated, which is easy to say when you expect the end of the world from what you hear about it online. Like, it had a horrible reception, and it never recovered from it, and after that they kept removing the fun with their errata. That's why 4e did poorly.

Why it's good? Snowbluff Axiom when you ignore the errata, and then people are like 80% of a TTRPG anyway. One of the best games I've played in person was a 4e game.


I like this axiom. It kinda falls into the same category as the "easy to learn, difficult to master" adage many video game designers use - you want a system to be attractive both to new players who just want to say "i dunno i just want to hit stuff with a sword" and very experienced players who are not satisfied unless they have 10 different actions they can take each turn. I feel like 3.x accomplished both of these very well - a Half-Orc Barbarian is one of the simplest and most effective characters early on, but at the same time we all know the power of a well-played primary caster.

This guy gets it.

[atemu1234]

4e is entirely underrated, which is easy to say when you expect the end of the world from what you hear about it online. Like, it had a horrible reception, and it never recovered from it, and after that they kept removing the fun with their errata. That's why 4e did poorly.

I must admit I only played a couple sessions of it, and it wasn't to my taste, and I'm quite vocal to my friends about why I don't like it. But if you enjoy it, hey, it's your time and money.

My favourite line about it was when one of my players (who is new to 3.5 and mostly played 4e) was talking about introducing someone to Tabletop RPG with 4e, and my response was, as is quoted quite often by my playgroup, "Introducing someone to D&D with Fourth Edition is like taking someone's virginity and giving them an STI."

[Forrestfire]

I would have thought that it'd be "introducing someone to ttrpgs with 3.x," really. I mean, it's an awful mess (for all its fun parts), it's easy to catch if you're not careful, and once you have it, it never goes away. :smallwink::smalltongue:

[atemu1234]

I would have thought that it'd be "introducing someone to ttrpgs with 3.x," really. I mean, it's an awful mess (for all its fun parts), it's easy to catch if you're not careful, and once you have it, it never goes away. :smallwink::smalltongue:

But if you catch it, it's painful, and you walk away not wanting to do it again? That's 4e.

[squiggit]

Fate. when you really understand it, the system is more than just the core part everyone thinks of it as. Its what you do with it, and build from it. the intention is not to make everything work under the same rules, but to figure out how to modify the rules to better represent the things you want to play.
Personally I found FATE boringly simplistic and that last comment reads more as a negative to me than a positive. Flexibility is good, but a system where most things require the group to figure out what should happen isn't that much more of a system. At that point you could ditch the dice (and therefore Fate's painful swinginess and fate point metagame) and just roleplay with people.

But it's the only system my current GM likes to play so we've been running it.



Ah, not my intention. If nothing else, too many people genuinely like and enjoy 4e - I wouldn't call that a failure. The question being asked is why 3.5e wasn't replaced by 4e, and I believe the answer is that, for a particular gaming need, balance is bad. Not just unimportant as Flickerdart said, but actively counterproductive.
Alright. I understand that. I still disagree though. Focusing too overtly on balance can be destructive by potentially leading to homogeny or dull classes that have lost a lot of their charm by having their coolest features stripped away. Ultimately though I think 4e is too different for the comparison to hold.

If I had to pick anything I'd say it's because 4e's design might be a bit too clinical and wholly focused on combat encounters to the point where they even tried, at first, to turn social and environmental encounters into pseudo-combats with skill challenges. There are only a handful of functional abilities and effects that work outside of combat. Everything is broken up into tidy little encounters that are segmented away from the rest of the game.

Overall it tends to feel a lot more like a tactical wargame than traditional D&D. Which isn't a bad thing per se, but I think a more likely cause of its inability to captivate 3.5 fans.

Also, like I said, the premise isn't even a very good one. 4e's balance is atrocious. Really the only leg up it has over 3.5 is that the core classes are all reasonably well balanced (but even then, clerics aren't impressive and rogues and warlocks fit awkwardly into the game's role design). Out of core is a mess though.

[Forrestfire]

But if you catch it, it's painful, and you walk away not wanting to do it again? That's 4e.

Dunno what you're talking about. 4e is an incredibly well-done skirmish game. The combat system is functional and fun, and while there isn't much for out of combat stuff, it knew when to step away and turn to freeform (unlike 3.5, which tried its hand at simulationism and failed horribly). One of the best campaigns I've played in was 4e, and I've found it a lot more fun from the DM side than any other edition. To many people, it doesn't "feel" like D&D because of its changes, but honestly, I think it does "D&D" (dungeon-crawling combat-focused games) a lot better than any other edition.

At the same time, it's not my favorite game. I don't enjoy its character-building minigame enough. That spot remains held by 3.5, entirely because of said character-building minigame. However, 3.5 is like a pile of broken glass—it's probably best swept into the trash and never thought of again, but if you know what you're doing, it can be made into an incredibly pretty mosaic table or something. If you don't know what you're doing, then you'll just end up with a bunch of lacerations on your hands and I'm not sure where this simile was meant to go. I would never use 3.5 as an introduction to ttrpgs for someone. I would and have used 4e (with premades) to introduce people, because its combat system is both intuitive and much simpler than 3.x. Currently I'd probably just use 5e for that, though, because it's very streamlined and while I disagree with some major design decisions they took, it's a decent game.

[Zombulian]

I found 5e to be incredibly limiting. There is so little customization in the classes that every fighter feels like the same fighter, every sorcerer pretty much feels like the same sorcerer. It's like they're playing e6 without proper feat supports.

This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

[Tvtyrant]

This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

I think there is a lot of input customization, the issue is output is mostly the same. A Warlock/Sorcerer abusing short rests gets extra mid level spells, but they are the same spells you just traded some high level ones for a lot more mid level ones. A Barbarian Archer gets really high AC compared to other archers but is still shooting the same arrows.

[Zombulian]

I think there is a lot of input customization, the issue is output is mostly the same. A Warlock/Sorcerer abusing short rests gets extra mid level spells, but they are the same spells you just traded some high level ones for a lot more mid level ones. A Barbarian Archer gets really high AC compared to other archers but is still shooting the same arrows.

Well that's sort of my point. In 3.5 if you have a party of people who know what they're doing, you could have a whole party of, say, Sorcerers, and each person could feel equally unique in their output and role in the game.

[Snowbluff]

At the same time, it's not my favorite game. I don't enjoy its character-building minigame enough.

Really? 4e has a lot of material to work with. Multiclassing feats, Hybrids, tons of classes, backgrounds with strong character benefits, a ton of power, everyone prestiges...

[Zombulian]

Really? 4e has a lot of material to work with. Multiclassing feats, Hybrids, tons of classes, backgrounds with strong character benefits, a ton of power, everyone prestiges...

Why don't you just marry it then ;_;

[Flickerdart]

Really? 4e has a lot of material to work with. Multiclassing feats, Hybrids, tons of classes, backgrounds with strong character benefits, a ton of power, everyone prestiges...
Form what I saw of 4e, it tended to have options with prerequisites like "elf fighter" and benefits like "+2 to damage" more often than not. Part of 3.5's fun is being able to game loose entry requirements for weird and edge-case abilities you can capitalize on.

[Snowbluff]

Why don't you just marry it then ;_;
I'm sorry, d20 is still the best. *pats head*

Form what I saw of 4e, it tended to have options with prerequisites like "elf fighter" and benefits like "+2 to damage" more often than not. Part of 3.5's fun is being able to game loose entry requirements for weird and edge-case abilities you can capitalize on.

Early on, yes definitely, but it class restrictions matter little when you can count as 3 classes at once. Even the flat modifier stuff got improved, like Expertise feats. Early on it was just a scaling attack bonus for a single weapon group, but the later ones had combine groups that got the bonus, and benefits like "Don't provoke a reaction when casting from your holy symbol."

Racial options were really good too. There were whole builds centered around spewing fire everywhere as a Dragonborn, adding multiple debuffs and damage types to get around immunities. It was sick.

[LudicSavant]

This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

Don't worry. I see it too.

[Tvtyrant]

Well that's sort of my point. In 3.5 if you have a party of people who know what they're doing, you could have a whole party of, say, Sorcerers, and each person could feel equally unique in their output and role in the game.

I was agreeing with you :smallwink:

[Knaight]

Personally I found FATE boringly simplistic and that last comment reads more as a negative to me than a positive. Flexibility is good, but a system where most things require the group to figure out what should happen isn't that much more of a system. At that point you could ditch the dice (and therefore Fate's painful swinginess and fate point metagame) and just roleplay with people.

I'm no FATE fan, but you're dramatically understating the amount of system support that is there and overstating the swinginess, particularly in comparison to the completely uniform d20 distribution.

[Wonton]

This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

Nah, same here. For the average player, there is such a thing as too much customization (playing 3.5 with EVERY book allowed) and there is such a thing as too little (5e when I last read over the rules). In Pathfinder, for example, just reading the APG gives you 6 extra classes and dozens of interesting archetypes to work with. In fact, you could play just CRB + APG for years and have many, many varied, interesting games that would never need to fall back on "I'm a sneaky rogue with 2 daggers", "I'm a charger Barbarian with a 2H weapon", "I'm a wizard with Color Spray and the same other 3 spells everyone takes".

THAT, in my opinion, is one of the biggest successes of Pathfinder - a large number of effective, interesting, varied options presented in just a few books (CRB + APG + UM + UC is all you need for most of it, really). The hundreds of Prestige Class options in 3.5 certainly gave you a greater variety of options *down the road*, but they were scattered across dozens of books, most PrCs only became available at level 5-7, and for the early levels (which is where 80% of campaigns are spent, as far as I'm concerned) you were just playing the same old base class, only changing up a few feats here and there. Keeping the early levels interesting is VERY important for both new players (since everyone's first character starts at level 1) and experienced players (since starting a fresh game should feel exciting, not repetitive), and most archetypes give you a feel for that right from level 1.

Basically, 3.5 was a metric ****ton of oranges spread across a hundred books, and Pathfinder took that and pressed it into a delicious juice that only fills about 4 books.

[squiggit]

I'm no FATE fan, but you're dramatically understating the amount of system support that is there and overstating the swinginess, particularly in comparison to the completely uniform d20 distribution.

Yeah. I'm not a fan of how much variability is in the d20, but while FATE has a more consistent dice system, it runs into some serious issues by having so many opposed tests and tying success and degree of success to the same roll. I've seen a lot of contests draw two or three times before someone rolls a 4 and the other person rolls a -3 and the entire thing just goes out the window.

At least d20 tends to not reward overflow and doesn't have a lot of opposed tests. The stuff that does tends to be some of the weaker sections of D&D coincidentally.


This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

Nope, not really. There's some options for some classes. Spellcasters get the most options, some of the martials get to choose what weapons they want to build around.. but feats are few and far between (and a variant rule to begin with) and a lot of classes are really locked into a certain style based on their choice of class and subclass.

I've always felt kind of awkward making characters in 5e because you're done so damn fast. Probably why I try to play variant human whenever I do play fifth.

[Knaight]

Yeah. I'm not a fan of how much variability is in the d20, but while FATE has a more consistent dice system, it runs into some serious issues by having so many opposed tests and tying success and degree of success to the same roll. I've seen a lot of contests draw two or three times before someone rolls a 4 and the other person rolls a -3 and the entire thing just goes out the window.
The odds of this are slim, to say the least. A 4 is 1/81, a -3 4/81, and even the sum of all the different 7 or higher differences gets a measly (1/81)^2+2*(2/81)^2. That's 30% as likely as getting a 1 and 20 on an opposed d20.

I do think FATE overdoes it with opposed tests (particularly given that they stole the dice system from Fudge, which uses static difficulties much more heavily), but the variability just isn't there. Even a +1 difference in opposed skill counts for a fair amount.

[Zombulian]

I'm sorry, d20 is still the best. *pats head*


And don't you forget it! :smallbiggrin:


Don't worry. I see it too.


I was agreeing with you :smallwink:


Nah, same here.

Basically, 3.5 was a metric ****ton of oranges spread across a hundred books, and Pathfinder took that and pressed it into a delicious juice that only fills about 4 books.

I like that analogy.


I've always felt kind of awkward making characters in 5e because you're done so damn fast. Probably why I try to play variant human whenever I do play fifth.

Me too! No character should be conceived and entirely on paper in the span of an hour :smallmad: But I suppose that's the grognard in me. I liked Forresfire's reference to character creation as a mini-game. Because it totally is.

I should mention that when I said "No one else sees" I really should have said "None of my friends back home see". Only a few were actually substantially literate in 3.5, so the ease of creation was pretty much enough to win them over.

[Forum Explorer]

I started in 3.5, played official WotC modules for 4e and now play 5e in two weekly groups. I still think 3.5 was more fun. For me, it comes down to being able to customize every minute detail of a character. Sure, you can do some customization on 5e, but it feels like someone is holding your hand through it. There really isn't a way to screw up a character horribly in 5th ed, but someone who doesn't know what they are doing can seriously gimp a 3.5 character.


Wow, I think that's the first time I've ever heard someone list the 'accidentally made a useless character' as a positive trait of 3.P


This is exactly my problem with 5e that no one else seems to see. It's probably due to my low level of literacy with the system though.

I hope.

It's more of where you are coming from then anything. 3.P does have a lot more customization, and I mean a lot. 5e is simpler, and that necessitates less options/less granularity. That and there is only one book for players. The game does have enough complexity for 4 sorcerers to rock out, each with a different role, but the difference is no where nearly as pronounced as it is in 3.P


Anyways my opinon on why 3.P has stayed popular.

It's a combination of reasons:

1. You can simply do so much with it. There are rules to create almost anything, and homebrew to cover whatever is missed.

2. It's been out for a long time now. Most fans of it have invested a lot of time and money into it, and have achieved a high level of mastery.

3. Those who have mastered it can do almost anything with the system, likely enjoy the high level of calculations, aren't afraid of the effort to make it work, and have likely come up with (or found) patches for it's various problems.

Which leads to a situation where someone who knows 3.P well enough to have memorized most 'fiddly bits', and can make a character easily, isn't really offered a whole lot by new editions. What do they care for balance when they've come up with solutions for 3.P's balance issues? What options in 5e or 4e can't be replicated in 3.P? What does a more streamlined system offer when they can create a complex 3.P character in an hour?


I personally never reached that point. My 3.P games were plagued by imbalance from day 1. Character creation was a chore taking multiple days, I was constantly looking up rules, and DMing was a flat out nightmare. So I moved on cheerfully when 5e came out because it 'fixed' all the problems I had with 3.P but was recognizable enough that what mastery of 3.P I had easily transferred over.

[Zombulian]

It's more of where you are coming from then anything. 3.P does have a lot more customization, and I mean a lot. 5e is simpler, and that necessitates less options/less granularity. That and there is only one book for players. The game does have enough complexity for 4 sorcerers to rock out, each with a different role, but the difference is no where nearly as pronounced as it is in 3.P


Anyways my opinon on why 3.P has stayed popular.

It's a combination of reasons:

1. You can simply do so much with it. There are rules to create almost anything, and homebrew to cover whatever is missed.

2. It's been out for a long time now. Most fans of it have invested a lot of time and money into it, and have achieved a high level of mastery.

3. Those who have mastered it can do almost anything with the system, likely enjoy the high level of calculations, aren't afraid of the effort to make it work, and have likely come up with (or found) patches for it's various problems.

Which leads to a situation where someone who knows 3.P well enough to have memorized most 'fiddly bits', and can make a character easily, isn't really offered a whole lot by new editions. What do they care for balance when they've come up with solutions for 3.P's balance issues? What options in 5e or 4e can't be replicated in 3.P? What does a more streamlined system offer when they can create a complex 3.P character in an hour?


I personally never reached that point. My 3.P games were plagued by imbalance from day 1. Character creation was a chore taking multiple days, I was constantly looking up rules, and DMing was a flat out nightmare. So I moved on cheerfully when 5e came out because it 'fixed' all the problems I had with 3.P but was recognizable enough that what mastery of 3.P I had easily transferred over.

Solid points. I definitely wouldn't argue that 3.P is even better than 5e, I just prefer it for the reasons that you've stated :smalltongue: Playing a ttrpg in my mind means that you're playing a character, not a class. Picking a class and just running with it feels too video-gamey to me, if I wanted that, I'd play WoW or something.

[ZamielVanWeber]

Solid points. I definitely wouldn't argue that 3.P is even better than 5e, I just prefer it for the reasons that you've stated :smalltongue: Playing a ttrpg in my mind means that you're playing a character, not a class. Picking a class and just running with it feels too video-gamey to me, if I wanted that, I'd play WoW or something.

I find fluff can easily flow from classes. Some are more fluffy natively than others, but sometimes I want a specific mechanic and design flavor to match, something that has lead to some fairly unusual characters.

[squiggit]

Can't really agree with screwing up a character being a good thing, but slapping together a completed character in 5e within ten minutes without any real system mastery irks me (it was probably only 3 or 4 minutes if you just count the time I was making the character and not mulling over which class to play). It's a good way to get started quickly, but I feel like it makes it a lot harder to define yourself as a character when all you get is class, race, background and A gear or B gear. Even at higher levels it doesn't get much better for non-spellcasters/pseudospellcasters, when you're only tacking on a subclass and a couple ASIs.

The thing that really bugs me though is how much it just applies to martials. Spellcasters are still pretty flexible and I can do a lot with a druid or sorcerer... but if I'm something like a rogue... I get a subclass at 2 and maybe at level 12 get a floating ASI or feat (if using feats), but before that it's pretty homogenous.


What options in 5e or 4e can't be replicated in 3.P?
I will say that I really like the way 4e handles martial spellcasters. I mean, the power system is fundamentally the same for everyone (except psionicsish), but it does psychic and mystical warriors really, really well. But I'm also biased in that regard because I've never been a big fan of the "fighter who can bring his own buffs" flavor of gish.

5e does a good job of handling low magic and low powered campaigns for a longer period of time than 3.5 without houserules.

Still prefer 3.P to both of them, but I'd say those are their strongest points.


The odds of this are slim, to say the least. A 4 is 1/81, a -3 4/81, and even the sum of all the different 7 or higher differences gets a measly (1/81)^2+2*(2/81)^2. That's 30% as likely as getting a 1 and 20 on an opposed d20.

I do think FATE overdoes it with opposed tests (particularly given that they stole the dice system from Fudge, which uses static difficulties much more heavily), but the variability just isn't there. Even a +1 difference in opposed skill counts for a fair amount.

Oh they're certainly rare, no disagreement there, but I've had more than a few encounters in FATE have the tension sucked out of them when someone in a Fight contest suddenly inflicts 8 stress because of skewed rolls. And that's always a bummer. Same reason I don't like SoD in d20 though.

And while you're right that the skewed d20 rolls are more likely, most checks in D&D have binary success/failure. Which mitigates that a bit. Opposed rolls combined with efficacy based on the result of that roll is when I think it gets really iffy.


Playing a ttrpg in my mind means that you're playing a character, not a class. Picking a class and just running with it feels too video-gamey to me, if I wanted that, I'd play WoW or something.

I've done both. I've had character concepts that I pick classes to express, but I've also found myself really enamored with certain classes from either a fluff or mechanics perspective and built a character from the ground up around that foundation instead (archivist, warlock, 4e's Avenger, DSP's Harbinger, Paizo's Mesmerist, etc.)


I think it can work pretty well either way.

[Wonton]

Solid points. I definitely wouldn't argue that 3.P is even better than 5e, I just prefer it for the reasons that you've stated :smalltongue: Playing a ttrpg in my mind means that you're playing a character, not a class. Picking a class and just running with it feels too video-gamey to me, if I wanted that, I'd play WoW or something.

Agreed, which is where I have to laud PF's archetype system again. Just using the APG, I can play 10 different kinds of Monk, 12 different kinds of Fighter, and 15 different kinds of Druid. That's before we get into Feats. And most of them have alternate abilities at level 1 or 2, meaning you can take your cool concept like Monk of the Four Winds or Eagle Totem Druid and start playing it right away, instead of saying "this character will be really cool at level 11 guys".

[Zombulian]

I find fluff can easily flow from classes. Some are more fluffy natively than others, but sometimes I want a specific mechanic and design flavor to match, something that has lead to some fairly unusual characters.


I've done both. I've had character concepts that I pick classes to express, but I've also found myself really enamored with certain classes from either a fluff or mechanics perspective and built a character from the ground up around that foundation instead (archivist, warlock, 4e's Avenger, DSP's Harbinger, Paizo's Mesmerist, etc.)


I think it can work pretty well either way.

This is more what I was getting at I suppose. I'm not entirely opposed to "those fascist restrictive classes with their built-in fluff!". Heck, sometimes I play a Wu Jen because I don't just want to play an oriental flavored Wizard... I want to play a Wu Jen. But I think what I like is that you at least have the choice. No bashes against video games or WoW or anything either. I play WoW.


Agreed, which is where I have to laud PF's archetype system again. Just using the APG, I can play 10 different kinds of Monk, 12 different kinds of Fighter, and 15 different kinds of Druid. That's before we get into Feats. And most of them have alternate abilities at level 1 or 2, meaning you can take your cool concept like Monk of the Four Winds or Eagle Totem Druid and start playing it right away, instead of saying "this character will be really cool at level 11 guys".

True, the early-game has always been my least favorite part of 3.5. I remember many a time I've had a character concept in my head but my friends want to start in the 1-3 range... which really is so dissatisfactory if you want to feel at all special or unique.

[Forum Explorer]

Solid points. I definitely wouldn't argue that 3.P is even better than 5e, I just prefer it for the reasons that you've stated :smalltongue: Playing a ttrpg in my mind means that you're playing a character, not a class. Picking a class and just running with it feels too video-gamey to me, if I wanted that, I'd play WoW or something.

Honestly I'm the same way, but I feel that 3.P stifles and kills my creativity because of how hard coded everything is, and because by the time I'm finished with all the mechanical bits I'm pretty burned out on that character.

5e I make a character in ten minutes and then settle down for some deep thinking on which background I want for my backstory and as a result I put a lot more time into who my character is, rather then just what the character is.

Also the background system is amazing for some quick inspiration on fleshing out my character. Sometimes I'll roll the random results to give me a skeleton and flesh out on how my character is with those random results.

So basically, when I played 3.P I felt like I was playing a collection of class(es), feats and features rather then a character. My collection of things was unique, but that's all they were. My 5e Sorcerer may not be that different mechanically then the other Sorcerer, but mine is a gnome who was drafted to fight on a military sailship. He never saw combat in that war, but was offered a permanent position afterwards on the ship. So he spent many a year working as a sailor/guard but after a particularly bad storm, he decided that he wanted more out of life then a death at sea, and decided to join an adventuring party and find out was land has to offer.

[stanprollyright]

This is more what I was getting at I suppose. I'm not entirely opposed to "those fascist restrictive classes with their built-in fluff!". Heck, sometimes I play a Wu Jen because I don't just want to play an oriental flavored Wizard... I want to play a Wu Jen. But I think what I like is that you at least have the choice. No bashes against video games or WoW or anything either. I play WoW.



True, the early-game has always been my least favorite part of 3.5. I remember many a time I've had a character concept in my head but my friends want to start in the 1-3 range... which really is so dissatisfactory if you want to feel at all special or unique.

I have the same feeling, but it makes it easy to pick up that way. The learning curve is built in to the level system.

[Zombulian]

I have the same feeling, but it makes it easy to pick up that way. The learning curve is built in to the level system.

That's actually an interesting way to think about it. You start out as a level 1 character of "blah" class. Of course you're not unique, you're just some dude with a little bit of training/background.

The issue is with years of play it gets quite tedious. Although no one said you have to play from level one every time...

[Kurald Galain]

Although no one said you have to play from level one every time...

Some people do say. For example, if you're into Organized Play then it's mandatory to start new characters at level 1, and for home campaigns it's not uncommon (although by no means universal) to start there as well.

From that point of view, archetypes are a better design than prestige classes or paragon paths, because you get to make your character distinct straight from the first level.

[Wonton]

Some people do say. For example, if you're into Organized Play then it's mandatory to start new characters at level 1, and for home campaigns it's not uncommon (although by no means universal) to start there as well.

From that point of view, archetypes are a better design than prestige classes or paragon paths, because you get to make your character distinct straight from the first level.

Yeah, I would argue that something like 80% of play happens in the first 3 levels. Maybe it's just my luck, but the sheer number of campaigns that are abandoned, aborted, or peter out around level 2-3 is incredible. Many, many, many more characters have been played at level 1 than at level 10. So, yes, I am 100% in agreement that archetypes > PrCs and paragon paths.

[Milo v3]

5e I make a character in ten minutes and then settle down for some deep thinking on which background I want for my backstory and as a result I put a lot more time into who my character is, rather then just what the character is.
Weirdly I feel the opposite, when I made characters in 5e they always felt like they couldn't ... do anything. So I didn't feel justified given them any special fluff. I mean, there was nothing they could do that a generic grunt couldn't do or when I made a rogue or cleric I had to pretend some of my class features didn't exist because there is no way to swap them out despite it not making sense for my character.

With 3.P I could look at the mechanics and see hundreds of possibilities and create immensely detailed backstories... but 5e, just lacks any spark to inspire me.

[Togo]

Honestly I'm the same way, but I feel that 3.P stifles and kills my creativity because of how hard coded everything is, and because by the time I'm finished with all the mechanical bits I'm pretty burned out on that character.

5e I make a character in ten minutes and then settle down for some deep thinking on which background I want for my backstory and as a result I put a lot more time into who my character is, rather then just what the character is.

Interesting, I have the opposite problem. A lot of what I play is freeform or rules-lite gaming. I'm asked to create an interesting character with no real mechanical guidelines about twice a month. It gets dull. 3.X actually gives me something to work with, and I find I get more interesting and creative characters as a result.

I'f I'm going to play a mechanics heavy-system, I want one with lots of variety in mechanics. If I'm not, I don't play with few rules or no rules at all. I don't have a need for a mechancis-heavy simple and quick system.

I've encountered an interesting split, between those who come up with a concept first, and then try and make the mechanics fit, and those who come up with the mechanics first, and then build a concept around that. Could that be related?

[Heliomance]

I've encountered an interesting split, between those who come up with a concept first, and then try and make the mechanics fit, and those who come up with the mechanics first, and then build a concept around that. Could that be related?

I do both, actually. Sometimes I come up with a concept and try to figure out how to wrestle it into working mechanically, and sometimes I see an interesting mechanic that I want to play with. It varies.

[Clistenes]

Honestly I'm the same way, but I feel that 3.P stifles and kills my creativity because of how hard coded everything is, and because by the time I'm finished with all the mechanical bits I'm pretty burned out on that character.

5e I make a character in ten minutes and then settle down for some deep thinking on which background I want for my backstory and as a result I put a lot more time into who my character is, rather then just what the character is.

Also the background system is amazing for some quick inspiration on fleshing out my character. Sometimes I'll roll the random results to give me a skeleton and flesh out on how my character is with those random results.

So basically, when I played 3.P I felt like I was playing a collection of class(es), feats and features rather then a character. My collection of things was unique, but that's all they were. My 5e Sorcerer may not be that different mechanically then the other Sorcerer, but mine is a gnome who was drafted to fight on a military sailship. He never saw combat in that war, but was offered a permanent psition afterwards on the ship. So he spent many a year working as a sailor/guard but after a particularly bad storm, he decided that he wanted more out of life then a death at sea, and decided to join an adventuring party and find out was land has to offer.

If you want rules to express your character's background and personality, 3.5 has a hundred ways to express the personality and background of your character from level one: Skill Focus (Profession) feats, regional feats, Pathfinder's backgrounds/half-feats, flaws/anti-feats, Unearthed Arcana's and DMG II's backgrounds and personality traits, the Book of Broken Dream's personality disorders...etc.

If you don't, you don't need to use those at all, and you can just roleplay your character's background and personality.

[jok]

I guess without a certain internet page 3.5 would be very difficult to get into.

[Forum Explorer]

If you want rules to express your character's background and personality, 3.5 has a hundred ways to express the personality and background of your character from level one: Skill Focus (Profession) feats, regional feats, Pathfinder's backgrounds/half-feats, flaws/anti-feats, Unearthed Arcana's and DMG II's backgrounds and personality traits, the Book of Broken Dream's personality disorders...etc.

If you don't, you don't need to use those at all, and you can just roleplay your character's background and personality.

See all those hundreds of ways just means that by the time I'm finished going through them, selecting the ones I want, and the other level 1 stuff means that I'm burnt out and want to do nothing else for my character's backstory.

And the problem only gets worse with higher levels, gestalt, various level adjustments and so on and so forth.

Basically I have limited attention to split between the mechanical stuff and roleplaying. The more mechanical stuff to deal with, the less I roleplay.

[Zombulian]

See all those hundreds of ways just means that by the time I'm finished going through them, selecting the ones I want, and the other level 1 stuff means that I'm burnt out and want to do nothing else for my character's backstory.

And the problem only gets worse with higher levels, gestalt, various level adjustments and so on and so forth.

Basically I have limited attention to split between the mechanical stuff and roleplaying. The more mechanical stuff to deal with, the less I roleplay.

I can understand that. The difference for me is that I will research character concepts, flip through splatbooks, and read handbooks for fun. So when I'm in either situation - starting from concept or starting from crunch - I can pretty deftly set up a character.
You already mapped this out though in a previous post. So I'll just leave it at the fact that we have our differences. And that's okay :smallwink:

[Clistenes]

See all those hundreds of ways just means that by the time I'm finished going through them, selecting the ones I want, and the other level 1 stuff means that I'm burnt out and want to do nothing else for my character's backstory.

And the problem only gets worse with higher levels, gestalt, various level adjustments and so on and so forth.

Basically I have limited attention to split between the mechanical stuff and roleplaying. The more mechanical stuff to deal with, the less I roleplay.

Yes, but as I said, you don't have to use all that. It's your choice. You can do it both ways, so you can hardly hold that against 3.5. It's an option you are given, not an imposition.

[KingSmitty]

Yes, but as I said, you don't have to use all that. It's your choice. You can do it both ways, so you can hardly hold that against 3.5. It's an option you are given, not an imposition.

exactly this. You have soooooo many options with 3.5, they aren't requirements though.

[Forum Explorer]

I can understand that. The difference for me is that I will research character concepts, flip through splatbooks, and read handbooks for fun. So when I'm in either situation - starting from concept or starting from crunch - I can pretty deftly set up a character.
You already mapped this out though in a previous post. So I'll just leave it at the fact that we have our differences. And that's okay :smallwink:

Pretty much.


Yes, but as I said, you don't have to use all that. It's your choice. You can do it both ways, so you can hardly hold that against 3.5. It's an option you are given, not an imposition.

I can't not look at options available in character creation. I may not use all of those options, but I'm certainly going to think about them every single time.

[Milo v3]

I can't not look at options available in character creation.
Sure you can. I mean, you don't look through every splatbook when you do your feats do you? :smalleek:

[Clistenes]

I can't not look at options available in character creation. I may not use all of those options, but I'm certainly going to think about them every single time.

Why? If you don't like them, you can ignore them. They don't change your character's power, since most of them both take something and give something. You can just make a rule for yourself that you won't use any variant rules for backgrounds and personality traits. It's a choice, just like choosing to play 5th edition.

[Wonton]

I've encountered an interesting split, between those who come up with a concept first, and then try and make the mechanics fit, and those who come up with the mechanics first, and then build a concept around that. Could that be related?

That is an interesting distinction, though it probably doesn't only depend on the player, but on the type of campaign you're playing. If you're playing a well-known Adventure Path, and you can read a 20-page players' guide, learn everything about the setting and background, and then it's easy to start with a cool concept. But often, you don't have much to go on, so all you can do is say "I feel like playing a Druid", and build your backstory after you've built the character.

[Knaight]

Why? If you don't like them, you can ignore them. They don't change your character's power, since most of them both take something and give something. You can just make a rule for yourself that you won't use any variant rules for backgrounds and personality traits. It's a choice, just like choosing to play 5th edition.

You have to look through some of the character options still. Every so often you need to pick a feat, so you go through at least part of the feat list. If you're playing a caster every so often you need to pick a spell, so you go through at least part of the spell list. Those are relevant to expressing the character, and that takes time. Whether it takes too much is debatable, but the length of the list is relevant. To use a non D&D example, the extent to which GURPS insists on modeling every little thing with its own skill is a deterrent to playing it, even if most of the list won't be in effect at any given time.

[Forum Explorer]

Sure you can. I mean, you don't look through every splatbook when you do your feats do you? :smalleek:

Pretty much, unless I know exactly what feat I want. Though even then I tended to look around a little bit for a slightly better feat, or maybe one that suited what I wanted to do better. The worst was when my concept depended on some sort of feat chain, which means I'd have to look over every feat in the chain and then compare it with other builds that might not take as many feats, but do something slightly different.

Though it's not as bad as every splatbook. I don't have all of them, and usually a bunch were banned (or rather, only a few were permitted).


Why? If you don't like them, you can ignore them. They don't change your character's power, since most of them both take something and give something. You can just make a rule for yourself that you won't use any variant rules for backgrounds and personality traits. It's a choice, just like choosing to play 5th edition.

I don't have the problem with the options themselves, just the sheer number of options. I could have just limited myself to only core, just like I could've played the same character every time. I didn't for pretty much the same reason, I got bored. And once I got the splatbooks, I bloody well was going to use the things.

[stanprollyright]

That's actually an interesting way to think about it. You start out as a level 1 character of "blah" class. Of course you're not unique, you're just some dude with a little bit of training/background.

The issue is with years of play it gets quite tedious. Although no one said you have to play from level one every time...

As an experienced player I hate starting at level 1 in 3.5. As others mentioned, that's where Pathfinder picks up the slack with archetypes and other built-in options, like sorcerer bloodlines and rogue talents and rage powers, etc. However, 3.5 does have approximately 40 base classes with varied mechanics, hundreds of races, and a nearly infinite number of feats...

[Milo v3]

Pretty much, unless I know exactly what feat I want. Though even then I tended to look around a little bit for a slightly better feat, or maybe one that suited what I wanted to do better. The worst was when my concept depended on some sort of feat chain, which means I'd have to look over every feat in the chain and then compare it with other builds that might not take as many feats, but do something slightly different.

Though it's not as bad as every splatbook. I don't have all of them, and usually a bunch were banned (or rather, only a few were permitted).
*Shrug* Then it's your fault IMO. If you choose to dumpster dive, then it's your fault that you dumpster dive.

[Vhaidara]

As an experienced player I hate starting at level 1 in 3.5. As others mentioned, that's where Pathfinder picks up the slack with archetypes and other built-in options, like sorcerer bloodlines and rogue talents and rage powers, etc. However, 3.5 does have approximately 40 base classes with varied mechanics, hundreds of races, and a nearly infinite number of feats...

As a point of order, Pathfinder first party is currently at 34 base classes, not counting Alternate classes (Ninja, Samurai, Antipaladin) or Unchained classes (UnBarb, UnMonk, UnRogue, UnSummoner) as separate. Just adding on Dreamscarred Press for Psionics, Tome of Battle, and Incarnum adds another 19 (10 psionic, 6 initiator, 3 akashic), with 2 more on the way for Tzocatl (Truenaming). Spheres of Power adds in another 9. And the mechanics are far more varied than 3.5 had for most of their classes.

The only count I could find for PF feats put them at currently having 2000+ (which I can very easily believe), while the site that shall not be named shows 3.5 having 3466. However, this includes multiple reprints (for example, Ability Focus is listed 6 times, once for each Monster Manual and once for Savage Species)

Races...I think you exaggerate. Unless you consider everything with a listed LA or ECL to be a "race", even if said numbers render them unplayable (like, say, LA +10 on something?). And if you are counting that, then PF has rules for playing any creature with a CR that function about as well as LA (ie, badly)

Again, STSNBN lists 145 races. But looking over it, we again run into repeats (3 instances for Drow), and we run into a lot of subraces (Dwarves: Gold Dwarf, Arctic Dwarf, Dream Dwarf, Badlands Dwarf, Fireblood Dwarf, Gray Dwarf, Shield Dwarf, Hill Dwarf, Urdinnir Dwarf, and Wild Dwarf), which PF handles via alternative racial traits instead of making new races.

I count 37 just under the PF Core, Featured, and Uncommon Races. Again, factor in DSP alone and you add 4 akashic races and 10 psionic races. So that's 51 moderately customizable races.

[stanprollyright]

Obviously I was exaggerating. And I'm glad that Pathfinder is catching up on sheer number of options. Technically more, because archetypes essentially give you exponentially more classes to choose from.

[Vhaidara]

Obviously I was exaggerating. And I'm glad that Pathfinder is catching up on sheer number of options. Technically more, because archetypes essentially give you exponentially more classes to choose from.

My point was actually more that I feel within a year or two PF will have fully passed 3.5 with regards to everything but Prestige classes. And the main reason they won't be passing there is that PF has mostly abandoned PrC as a thing outside of theurge/gish. Though DSP still makes good ones.

[stanprollyright]

My point was actually more that I feel within a year or two PF will have fully passed 3.5 with regards to everything but Prestige classes. And the main reason they won't be passing there is that PF has mostly abandoned PrC as a thing outside of theurge/gish. Though DSP still makes good ones.

I agree and it makes me happy that this is so. However, lack of good PrCs does make the character-building minigame less exciting.

My original comment was more in response to the idea that 3.5 didn't have enough options at level 1.

[Snowbluff]

My point was actually more that I feel within a year or two PF will have fully passed 3.5 with regards to everything but Prestige classes. And the main reason they won't be passing there is that PF has mostly abandoned PrC as a thing outside of theurge/gish. Though DSP still makes good ones.

Nope, never going to happen at this rate. Last 2 (or three) major releases were a huge bummer.

ACG in particular. That one really had my hopes up. Third party stuff is good, though.

[stanprollyright]

Hey! I like the ACG! Some of my favorite classes are the hybrids from that book.

[Snowbluff]

Hey! I like the ACG! Some of my favorite classes are the hybrids from that book.

What, like the rogue with spells vivisectionist but worse investigator or Full Arcane Caster #4 Lord of Redundancy Arcanist or Druid but worse Ranger again they really couldn't come up with something unique? Hunter. :smalltongue:

But seriously though I am interested. I want that book redeemed so I can glue back together my shattered hopes and dreams. :smallfrown:

[stanprollyright]

The Skald is my new favorite, and it's the only one I've actually tried so far. I love it. The Investigator looks fun too, kind of a spiritual successor to the Factotum. Brawler looks like it is superior to the Monk in every way, so if I ever go for a guy that punches stuff. The others look a little blah, tbh. The Swashbuckler looks like it's better than the 3.5 incarnation, which isn't saying much, but at least that type of character is (somewhat) viable now.

[Vhaidara]

Bloodrager, investigator, and brawler are all good classes from play experience.

Hunter, shaman, swashbuckler I've heard good things.

[Milo v3]

Shaman is too powerful, warpriest should have full BAB, and swashbuckler is too vulnerable and limited. Aside from that ACG was pretty good. Hunter, bloodrager, investigator, and slayer are especially good. I really love Hunter being a balanced version of the druid.

[Jay R]

While it took place over decades, when TSR stopped supporting original D&D, BECMI, 1e, and 2E, they slowly withered away. A lot of us kept playing them for a long time. In fact, I'm still in a 1E game, and still running a 2E game. But there's no support, and therefore no growth. TSR had the complete ability to shut it down.

But the Open Game License means that Wizards can't ever take the support for this game away. That means that new games don't get to simply supplant it. They have to compete with it.

[Snowbluff]

The Skald is my new favorite, and it's the only one I've actually tried so far. I love it. The Investigator looks fun too, kind of a spiritual successor to the Factotum. Brawler looks like it is superior to the Monk in every way, so if I ever go for a guy that punches stuff. The others look a little blah, tbh. The Swashbuckler looks like it's better than the 3.5 incarnation, which isn't saying much, but at least that type of character is (somewhat) viable now.
First of all, "Swashbuckler" is an archetype (as in character type, not Alternate Class Feature) that doesn't require a class. That's like saying we needed the thug ACF to play a thug in 3.5. You could play a "Swashbuckler" a bunch of ways in PF and 3.5 without touching Swashbuckler of either edition. Really, rogue does such a nice job with the idea already.

Bloodrager, investigator, and brawler are all good classes from play experience.

Hunter, shaman, swashbuckler I've heard good things.
Not that I have anything against the class itself, Investigator is indicative of them treading old groun (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/alchemist/archetypes/paizo---alchemist-archetypes/vivisectionist)d. It's doubly so, since skill points can be modified by archetypes (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo---fighter-archetypes/lore-warden). The term "Hybrid class" comes off much more like unsupported propaganda rather them expanding the system in a meaningful way. It's design space that seems promising, but PF has already covered it with what archetypes are capable of. :s

Also, who told you good things about the Swashbuckler? I understood that class was relatively unpopular, unlike Bloodrager and Skald (which are the two people seem the most excited about).

[Vhaidara]

Snowbluff, I've played investigator. And I've played vivisectionist. I prefer investigator.

Swashbuckler requires enough things not native to the system to deserve its own class. Like functional dex based combat (remember, were discussing first party here). Or counterattacking.

And I played alongside one for a while. The inspired blade archetype is a fantastic dip for low level investigators as well.

[Snowbluff]

Snowbluff, I've played investigator. And I've played vivisectionist. I prefer investigator.
Legit, if you enjoy, whatevs.


Swashbuckler requires enough things not native to the system to deserve its own class. Like functional dex based combat (remember, were discussing first party here). Or counterattacking.
Well, does it? I've played next to a monk who used styles to get the point across. He did quite well, and he could counterattack as an AoO and as an immediate action.

[Vhaidara]

Could your monk a rapier and quote princess Bride? Doubtful.

[Tvtyrant]

How many actually new, none retread classes has Pathfinder made? 3.5 made a new subsystem with almost every book, pathfinder gave us the Summoner, Words of Power(ditched) and spheres of power.

[Snowbluff]

I think Summoner and Alchemist, I think...

Is there like a binder thing in the new book?


Could your monk a rapier and quote princess Bride? Doubtful.

Not with a monk, especially the part about Princess Bride.
https://media.giphy.com/media/iRlPoInia4tzi/giphy.gif
Oh crap! He was evil, too... I don't even know if that was because he was a monk or just a jerk.

Crane Style (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/combat-feats/crane-riposte-combat) let's you counterattack, but I don't think that's the one he was using.

[Heliomance]

How many actually new, none retread classes has Pathfinder made? 3.5 made a new subsystem with almost every book, pathfinder gave us the Summoner, Words of Power(ditched) and spheres of power.

Uh... 3.5 made new subsystems with the XPH (though psionics was already in 3.0), Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic, and Magic of Incarnum. That's... about it, actually. I guess you could maybe count the Warlock, Artificer, and Marshal.

That's a far cry from "almost every book".

[Vhaidara]

Subsystem ports are more the realm of third partparty.
Radiance House did the Binder (Occultist, has over a hundred spirits post grimoire of lost souls)
Dreamscarred has Psionics, initiating, incarnum, and truespeak (and is now getting toys via Arcforge and Steelforge)
And I'm blanking on the company that did shadowvasting, which is bad because I backed their next book.

Spheres is completely original and much better designed than vancian casting.


One general statement I'll make about paizo: they know how to make 3/4 bab 2/3 casters. Alchemist, investigator, warpriest, Magus, hunter, occultist, spiritualist, mesmerist, and inquisitor are all FANTASTIC. Summoner would be if it weren't actually a disguised full caster.

[Snowbluff]

Summoner would be if it weren't actually a disguised full caster.

I don't even know why it gets 3/4 BAB. Has anyone tried building a summoner that fights for itself without synthesist? It doesn't really lend itself to fighting, and doesn't really have any class features that boost damage.

[Vhaidara]

I have. You run tag team with the eidolon. Grab teamwork feats and the like.

[Snowbluff]

I have. You run tag team with the eidolon. Grab teamwork feats and the like.

Oh, I guess that's one way to do it. I've considered doing a mounted build and/or butterfly sting. Carry a lance (or a kukri) and ride around on a scythe weilding eidolon.

[Gnorman]

One general statement I'll make about paizo: they know how to make 3/4 bab 2/3 casters. Alchemist, investigator, warpriest, Magus, hunter, occultist, spiritualist, mesmerist, and inquisitor are all FANTASTIC. Summoner would be if it weren't actually a disguised full caster.

I'd argue that this isn't something to be praised so much as a crutch that they rely on. Designing hybrid classes is easier, because you have spells to fall back on if the class doesn't live up to its promise. It's much harder to design a completely mundane class that can stay competitive, or to design a caster class that doesn't immediately dominate the competition.

Concept-wise, sure, they hit a lot of sweet spots. They do know their wheelhouse, I'll give them that.