Shortcomings of 3.5

[Scorponok]

Hello Giants,

On the "DM's and GM's" Facebook group I recently joined, there was discussion on a player disliking the fact that AC was a hard number, and not a skill. And another complaint (from the same poster) about how he didn't like that arcane and divine magic was separate. People then talked about other systems and how they were better than 3.5.

I don't have time to explore a whole host of other systems, but I was wondering, in your opinion, what you feel are the greatest shortcomings of the 3.5 system? I've played a bit of Pathfinder, so maybe the whole 3x system should be included in this discussion. Are there things about 3x that cannot be done as is?

As an example, one of my players once mentioned something like soccer would not be able to be done using the 3.5 RAW.

[LordOfCain]

Greatest Flaws of 3.5: Pun Pun & Spellcaster Supremacy

[darksolitaire]

As an example, one of my players once mentioned something like soccer would not be able to be done using the 3.5 RAW.

Sure it can. And in many ways to boot. Simplistic: opposing captains rolls Profession: Football player checks against each other, successful checks means they score a goal. Both sides receive modifiers for their check from different factors, as judged by DM.

And more complicated: Players from both teams roll Profession: Football player checks against each other to settle situations. You can even use combat with disarm actions and movement.

[martixy]

Game design is an exercise in compromise.

Remember that.

Other than that, there's a lot of shortcomings, most of which are easily fixable, some not so much.
AC doesn't keep up with attack bonuses.
The caster supremacy is exacerbated by the great amount of feat taxes for martials.

One thing PF does fix over 3.5 is the skill system.

Besides, there are things that some people consider shortcomings, but are not universal, like:
Rocket tag gameplay
Christmas tree effect
XP (this one is me)

[Venger]

Hello Giants,

On the "DM's and GM's" Facebook group I recently joined, there was discussion on a player disliking the fact that AC was a hard number, and not a skill. And another complaint (from the same poster) about how he didn't like that arcane and divine magic was separate. People then talked about other systems and how they were better than 3.5.

I don't have time to explore a whole host of other systems, but I was wondering, in your opinion, what you feel are the greatest shortcomings of the 3.5 system? I've played a bit of Pathfinder, so maybe the whole 3x system should be included in this discussion. Are there things about 3x that cannot be done as is?

As an example, one of my players once mentioned something like soccer would not be able to be done using the 3.5 RAW.

Any system has its strengths and weaknesses. I can't imagine an important defensive feature like AC being variable being viewed as a positive, but there are different games for different people.

What kind of game are you looking for?

if I had to pick a single aspect of 3.5 that's definitely its biggest weakness, it would be the huge amount of willfully designed trap options. it's way too easy for a new player to screw themselves over by taking some of the 99% of feats that are worthless, for example.

3.5 is a very complete system. one of the selling points I mention when I talk about it to people new to it is that you can replicate pretty much any concept or character you'd like to play, which is definitely attractive.

top of my head, one popular playstyle from mmos that isn't easy to play well in 3.5 is "tank," someone who draws aggro from enemies and sponges up hp damage. people seeking out this kind of character will try to buff ac, play knight, etc, but that goes back to the root problem of having trap options in the game.

[ComaVision]

I agree with Venger; too many garbage options that trip up newer players.

EDIT: That being said, I'd rather have a bloated system with some bad options than a system without a huge breadth of options.

[ExLibrisMortis]

if I had to pick a single aspect of 3.5 that's definitely its biggest weakness, it would be the huge amount of willfully designed trap options. it's way too easy for a new player to screw themselves over by taking some of the 99% of feats that are worthless, for example.
This. There will always be stronger and weaker abilities, but the PHB has so many crud skill-boosting feats, that's just bad. It's very hard to convince new players to look for alternatives, because it's so daunting (and frankly, boring) to dig through that many books, and reading a proper handbook quickly becomes too serious. There are some ways around this (I tend to recommend Shape Soulmeld to my group, as a one-stop fix-all feat) but they don't solve the problem.

[Darrin]

I don't have time to explore a whole host of other systems, but I was wondering, in your opinion, what you feel are the greatest shortcomings of the 3.5 system? I've played a bit of Pathfinder, so maybe the whole 3x system should be included in this discussion. Are there things about 3x that cannot be done as is?


In no particular order:

1. Steep learning curve. The sheer number of feats, prestige classes, ACFs, and various quirky little options is staggering (Fort save DC 11). The versatility and flexibility this offers is one of 3.5's best features, but it's also one of its worst enemies, as it can obviously be intimidating trying to navigate all that book-diving.

2. Optimization disparity. Casual players trying to play something "out of the box" will quickly get frustrated and feel left behind sitting next to someone with even a very limited grasp of character optimization.

3. Enforcement of a miniature wargame mentality. This stifles player creativity when they want to do something cool or interesting, but are then shot down because that requires another 2.5 squares of movement, or they don't have a feat written in some obscure sourcebook, or the existing rules say you have to have X ranks in shnorpklawping and even if you did the rules say it will fail 95% of the time.

4. Character development and narrative structures are not really supported by the rules. It's somewhat puzzling that for decades D&D has attempted to evoke "epic fantasy", but after a half-dozen editions or so, it's still not really capable of modeling even the most basic Joseph-Campbell-ish Hero's Journey. And yes, I know you *CAN* do this within the existing rules (Stormwind Fallacy), but many of the rules and the assumptions they are based on will fight you every step of the way.

5. Christmas Tree Problem. At mid to higher levels, the number of magic items you need to just stay somewhat competent at your job is troubling. On top of that, since the utility of a magic item can be somewhat quantifiably determined (*guilty cough*), every character tends to optimize toward the highest-utility items, and thus every higher-level character starts to look the same because they have the same equipment.



As an example, one of my players once mentioned something like soccer would not be able to be done using the 3.5 RAW.

Why would you... I don't even... hrrm.

Actually... if you're looking to waste several hours with nothing to show for it, either one would... yeah, ok, I'll just show myself out.

[Venger]

I agree with Venger; too many garbage options that trip up newer players.

EDIT: That being said, I'd rather have a bloated system with some bad options than a system without a huge breadth of options.

Thanks. Yeah, I wasn't saying "all options need to be on par with the most powerful options in the game." Like most people who've been playing 3.5 for a few years, I usually hover around t3 or 4 in actual play. I've got no problem playing a warblade or taking a fun and admittedly less than optimal prc like blade of orien. my complaint is more directed at feats like cornered rat, dirty fighting, grenadier, or the aforementioned +2 to some skills feats that greatly outnumber feats that actually do anything. I don't think there's an excuse for writing so many feats (and other options of course, I just use feats as a kind of shorthand) that no one would ever actually want to take.


This. There will always be stronger and weaker abilities, but the PHB has so many crud skill-boosting feats, that's just bad. It's very hard to convince new players to look for alternatives, because it's so daunting (and frankly, boring) to dig through that many books, and reading a proper handbook quickly becomes too serious. There are some ways around this (I tend to recommend Shape Soulmeld to my group, as a one-stop fix-all feat) but they don't solve the problem.

it's easy to forget since reading 3.5 rulebooks all day is what we like to do for fun, but no one wants a homework assignment when they're first being introduced to an rpg. there isn't a great way around this, and when you're doing a pickup rpg night, it's at best inadvisable to say 'hey guys let's roll up 3.5 characters.


In no particular order:

1. Steep learning curve. The sheer number of feats, prestige classes, ACFs, and various quirky little options is staggering (Fort save DC 11). The versatility and flexibility this offers is one of 3.5's best features, but it's also one of its worst enemies, as it can obviously be intimidating trying to navigate all that book-diving.

2. Optimization disparity. Casual players trying to play something "out of the box" will quickly get frustrated and feel left behind sitting next to someone with even a very limited grasp of character optimization.

3. Enforcement of a miniature wargame mentality. This stifles player creativity when they want to do something cool or interesting, but are then shot down because that requires another 2.5 squares of movement, or they don't have a feat written in some obscure sourcebook, or the existing rules say you have to have X ranks in shnorpklawping and even if you did the rules say it will fail 95% of the time.

4. Character development and narrative structures are not really supported by the rules. It's somewhat puzzling that for decades D&D has attempted to evoke "epic fantasy", but after a half-dozen editions or so, it's still not really capable of modeling even the most basic Joseph-Campbell-ish Hero's Journey. And yes, I know you *CAN* do this within the existing rules (Stormwind Fallacy), but many of the rules and the assumptions they are based on will fight you every step of the way.

5. Christmas Tree Problem. At mid to higher levels, the number of magic items you need to just stay somewhat competent at your job is troubling. On top of that, since the utility of a magic item can be somewhat quantifiably determined (*guilty cough*), every character tends to optimize toward the highest-utility items, and thus every higher-level character starts to look the same because they have the same equipment.



Why would you... I don't even... hrrm.

Actually... if you're looking to waste several hours with nothing to show for it, either one would... yeah, ok, I'll just show myself out.
very well said. the classic example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFuMpYTyRjw) of tier disparity rears its head even when there isn't a gap in player experience. even two equally new players, one playing wizard and one playing fighter are going to have a lot of the same problems. arguably, it'll be worse, since the wizard player won't necessarily know instinctively that it's more effective (along with being better ettiquite) to focus on bfc and buffing party members than it is to hurl fireballs at enemies yourself all day (something the printed books are absolutely terrible at communicating)

point 3 happens a lot with people new to the system, and it is annoying there isn't a way around it. we've all been in a scenario like this (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235) and despite the options for tactics within the parameters of the system, it really doesn't support lateral thinking when it comes to mundane combat. the closest thing you get is higher ground bonus, and even then it's not much of a difference.

it doesn't help that the dmg just tells you to figure it out yourself when awarding noncombat xp. that's not exactly helpful.

that's actually not the stormwind fallacy (being competent mechanically means you are a bad roleplayer and vica versa) saying that an aspect of the system is not broken because it can be changed is the oberoni fallacy.

soccer actually is easily replicable in 3.5 outside of the profession rules.

I remember a thread where someone had a kind of danger room type exercise pushing enemies off a floating disc in space with the bull rush rules, monsters that could only be killed by being tripped, etc, to teach players the different combat maneuvers. I'm sure with some modification of the bull rush/overrun/etc rules to determine how far you pushed the ball, you could sim a game of soccer if you really wanted to.

[Eldariel]

The biggest flaws in 3.5 off the top of my head:

- Boring class design: Most classes get nothing of significance as you gain levels. This means PRCing or starting new classes are almost always superior options to just continuing the class. For what it's worth, PF does a decent job of alleviating the issue by granting most classes some reasonable abilities as they go up.

- Combat basics: Things like full attacks, standard action spells, inability to cover terrain out of turn, 5' steps, etc. serve to create a huge chasm between different kinds of standard actions and particularly the efficiency of mobile warriors vs. immobile warriors. Not to mention, far as verisimilitude goes the system sucks; no checks required to walk past the greatest of warriors, anyone without reach can just be stepped away from for safe casting/bows, etc. There are huge inter-system inconsistencies: normal level 1 warrior is just as good at moving and attacking vs. attacking but at level 6 he gets significantly better at just attacking while gaining no significant improvements to his mobile combat skills.

- Assumed level equivalency and the lack there-of: The various class leveling rates are just off the kilter. To keep up with stuff, warriors should be getting things like temporary immortality, ability to just tell magic to shut up and sit down, walking through mountain walls, sensing vibrations in the air, and so on in the teens. Instead, Fighters get +2 to damage, Barbarians get +2 Str and Con, and so on. Casters meanwhile are learning to teleport, farsee, bind fiends to their service, set spell contingencies, raise the dead, etc. Multiclassing is likewise terrible without PRCs; a caster 5/warrior 5 is closer to a level 5 than a level 10 character in terms of class-derived power (item-derived power is of course another matter). This has profound effects on system balance, not to mention on expected encounter creation with CR. Admittedly an experienced DM can certainly just eschew CR but for newer ones, lacking a solid guideline to judge party power can be quite problematic and lead to many of the things people complain about in games reaching teens.

- Lack of proper errata: Some stuff is just terribly written. A lot of it comes down to DM judgment on how it works. Some combinations are absolutely broken to the point that the game doesn't function if they're allowed. Some class abilities are just broken as written or combo with stuff from the same book (Cancer Mage is an easy example). Some spells are broken in senseless ways (why do Planar Bindings come with built-in obeyance clauses again? Enchantment-spells exist for that very reason!). This is from the same company that has a similarly complex game with tens of thousands of moving parts in Magic: the Gathering and that game has 100% system proof rules (though plenty of comboes). Then there's the travesty that is ToB errata, among other things.


PF fixes some things, addresses some, loses a lot of content and causes some other problems, while still leaving some intact (I can't believe "Full attack" is still a thing in that system - it's such an obviously dysfunctional mechanic you'd think it'd be the first thing they cast out). Overall, I'd say it's certainly an improvement though.

[Inevitability]

The inferiority of certain character concepts to others.

I'm not talking about 'casters versus martials' here, amongst those groups there's plenty of discrepancy too.

For example, if I want to play a grappler, or a sword-and-board character, what I create is going to be inferior to a two-handed-weapon-user 95% of the time. Similarly, archery is almost always a bad idea for requiring two main stats and increasingly expensive equipment.

[Darrin]

PF fixes some things, addresses some, loses a lot of content and causes some other problems, while still leaving some intact (I can't believe "Full attack" is still a thing in that system - it's such an obviously dysfunctional mechanic you'd think it'd be the first thing they cast out). Overall, I'd say it's certainly an improvement though.

If you could forgive me for not being familiar with this before, how would you fix the "full attack"?

I would guess, allow iteratives on a standard action? Assuming you're standing next to your target, what would you do with your remaining move action? Perhaps allow a move action to be traded in for a single melee attack?

[The Viscount]

top of my head, one popular playstyle from mmos that isn't easy to play well in 3.5 is "tank," someone who draws aggro from enemies and sponges up hp damage. people seeking out this kind of character will try to buff ac, play knight, etc, but that goes back to the root problem of having trap options in the game.

Tank in 3.5 also has the major shortcoming that "drawing aggro" practically doesn't exist in the system, because all enemies have actual intelligence of the DM behind them. The closest we have is Knight possibly making some enemies attack him, and Crusader strongly encouraging or making it more attractive to be attacked.

I'm going to go with the necessity of core magic users. As 3.5 went on they introduced a lot of alternate base classes and several of them are quite good. If you throw together a party of a Binder, and Incarnum user, an Initiator, and a Warlock, you're going to have a fun party where everyone contributes and you have tools to solve most problems. That is, until you run smack up against certain monsters. Even in later books there are still plenty of monsters or encounters that rely on or outright require that you have a wizard or cleric (or equivalent) in your party. Broadly, things like long range teleport/fast travel, restoration of the dead don't exist outside of regular casters. More specifically, many monsters have effects that require you counter them with specific spells, like remove blindness/deafness, Remove Curse, Break Enchantment. If you don't have these, you can't help the person until you get into town and spend money on a scroll or hiring a caster.

[Eldariel]

If you could forgive me for not being familiar with this before, how would you fix the "full attack"?

I would guess, allow iteratives on a standard action? Assuming you're standing next to your target, what would you do with your remaining move action? Perhaps allow a move action to be traded in for a single melee attack?

There's any number of possible fixes but the whole mechanic is so deeply ingrained in the system that it's a part of the design and thus changing it gets tricky. Particularly if you want to avoid rocket launcher tag; higher up, full attacks can drop level-appropriate encounters in a single go with minimal optimization. That said, I just suck that up and play with it in mind and give everyone a full attack on standard action. Particularly TWF-types benefit greatly and Pounce is no longer a requirement (though it still grants Rakes so it's not useless). The biggest question is "what to do with Charge": I allow full attack at the end but apply the various multipliers only to the first primary attack.

Of course, the other option would be doing away with the whole concept of iteratives and instead giving increased damage/multipliers (not without its repercussions, particularly v.s. multiple weak opponents) or rolling the whole leveling of martial combat into some of the subsequent martial systems such as martial maneuvers, which achieve the same goal (though some of them use full attack and would thus need to be redesigned, but ultimately probably the most gratifying option making high level martials clearly different from all other sorts of martial creatures). Natural attacks are the other matter; it's a huge buff if they get all of 'em in one turn but otherwise you'd have to keep full attack action just for them which would do nothing to alleviate the issues.

[Erit]

There's any number of possible fixes but the whole mechanic is so deeply ingrained in the system that it's a part of the design and thus changing it gets tricky. Particularly if you want to avoid rocket launcher tag; higher up, full attacks can drop level-appropriate encounters in a single go with minimal optimization. That said, I just suck that up and play with it in mind and give everyone a full attack on standard action. Particularly TWF-types benefit greatly and Pounce is no longer a requirement (though it still grants Rakes so it's not useless). The biggest question is "what to do with Charge": I allow full attack at the end but apply the various multipliers only to the first primary attack.

Of course, the other option would be doing away with the whole concept of iteratives and instead giving increased damage/multipliers (not without its repercussions, particularly v.s. multiple weak opponents) or rolling the whole leveling of martial combat into some of the subsequent martial systems such as martial maneuvers, which achieve the same goal (though some of them use full attack and would thus need to be redesigned, but ultimately probably the most gratifying option making high level martials clearly different from all other sorts of martial creatures). Natural attacks are the other matter; it's a huge buff if they get all of 'em in one turn but otherwise you'd have to keep full attack action just for them which would do nothing to alleviate the issues.

The Vital Strike chain from Pathfinder, in my opinion, goes about full attacks in a pretty reasonable way. You could full-attack, or as a standard action make one attack which, if it hits, deals more of your weapon's base damage dice. So with Vital Strike One and a Longsword you deal 2d8+modifiers, or 4d6+modifiers with a greatsword, and Improved Vital Strike gives you another set of dice when you'd get a third iterative, Greater for your fourth. It works out rather nicely, since you can get some of the benefit from an FRA with a single attack action, but you don't get to apply things like sneak attacks or enhancement/ability bonuses more than once.

[Eldariel]

The Vital Strike chain from Pathfinder, in my opinion, goes about full attacks in a pretty reasonable way. You could full-attack, or as a standard action make one attack which, if it hits, deals more of your weapon's base damage dice. So with Vital Strike One and a Longsword you deal 2d8+modifiers, or 4d6+modifiers with a greatsword, and Improved Vital Strike gives you another set of dice when you'd get a third iterative, Greater for your fourth. It works out rather nicely, since you can get some of the benefit from an FRA with a single attack action, but you don't get to apply things like sneak attacks or enhancement/ability bonuses more than once.

It would be nice if it wasn't so ridiculously outclassed by full attacks. First, it costs multiple feats to pick up; feats I posit that are better spent elsewhere. Second, your base damage is a minor part of damage all be told on most characters; not to even mention Haste is eminently accessible in Boots of Speed by the teens and makes full attack even better. Vital Strike right now is basically a tool for size-stacking natural attackers (who don't get iteratives anyways) to be even better and that's about it, while a warrior gets a maximum of 2d6 out of it when they're looking at 30 Strength, Weapon Bonuses, Elements, Class-bonuses and so on all of which that isn't multiplied.

Spirited Charge is a closer approximation of a reasonable replacement but of course, it's available from level 1 for some reason meaning it doesn't actually get any better with iteratives but it completely trumps all other options at level 1, and continues to trump full attack all the way up to the 3rd iterative + Haste when it's pretty even against most things (though full attack is better vs. low AC things).

[Extra Anchovies]

If you could forgive me for not being familiar with this before, how would you fix the "full attack"?

I would guess, allow iteratives on a standard action? Assuming you're standing next to your target, what would you do with your remaining move action? Perhaps allow a move action to be traded in for a single melee attack?

The fix is to introduce standard-action options for martial characters which are competitive next to full attacks. Make a bunch of different types of special attacks which add ability damage, save-or-[condition], plain old extra damage, or other weird/unique effects. To prevent it from devolving to "here's the best special attack at each level, just spam these every round", require some sort of action to refocus or set-up an attack before it can be used a second time. While we're at it, casters get swift- and immediate-action stuff (Swift Fly, Wings of Cover, quickened spells), so add some things like that for martial characters too.

So yeah. Making combat more than "5-foot step, full attack, repeat" means adding a Tome of Battle-like system to give fighty types an assortment of viable action uses akin to the variety that casters get to enjoy.

[Venger]

The fix is to introduce standard-action options for martial characters which are competitive next to full attacks. Make a bunch of different types of special attacks which add ability damage, save-or-[condition], plain old extra damage, or other weird/unique effects. To prevent it from devolving to "here's the best special attack at each level, just spam these every round", require some sort of action to refocus or set-up an attack before it can be used a second time. While we're at it, casters get swift- and immediate-action stuff (Swift Fly, Wings of Cover, quickened spells), so add some things like that for martial characters too.

So yeah. Making combat more than "5-foot step, full attack, repeat" means adding a Tome of Battle-like system to give fighty types an assortment of viable action uses akin to the variety that casters get to enjoy.

As ever with this, it's important to clearly demarcate what's a martial and what isn't, or wizards who polymorph into monsters will also be able to enjoy this benefit.

[Afgncaap5]

For me, it's the fact that the game hardcodes so many things that should be magical or miraculous that many players and DMs forget that they can handwave other wondrous things. I've ranted before about the fact that the Brew Potion feat doesn't actually allow for the creation of most classic fairy tale potions, for instance.

[Efrate]

Action Economy disparity, traps, and feat taxes and reqs.

This is a wider concept than full attacks, IMO. ToB helped a lot, but the fact that most enemies that are non-casters as well as most martials/mundane cannot compete with a caster because they have less options to deal with the potential number of actions a caster has.

You get a swift, a move, a standard, and some amount of free, or full round. And a 5 foot step. You also burn your future swifts to get immediates. As a caster, you can use most of these for a variety of different effect, and thats not counting stuff like Haste, minionmancy, etc.

Pre-ToB Martials/mundanes have Move, Attack, Full Attack. And they need full attack to stay relevant. Which means you give up move, or go pounce. You still have next to nothing to do with swift or immediates. Your move is drawing your weapon unless you have a way to do it faster, which is a feat tax, or some WBL just to do what you can do kind of okay. And then you are in full attack range of that big nasty thingie. Meanwhile, wizard just cast an encounter ending spell; or use a quickened spell, a normal spell, get a wand out, take a 5 foot step so nothing can reach them, and still have an immediate to celerity/wings of cover out of a situation if something happens.

Post ToB Martials actually can use a similar amount of actions to a caster, and while they will not be as good, its at least good enough that they feel like they can compete.

Feat tax, you know, martials lifeline - which casters more or less do not need when you get 2 or so special abilities a level with spells - are insane. Two weapon fighting chain. Weapon mastery chain. Whirlwind chain. All tactical options generally requiring combat expertise which has that pesky 13 int requirement. Having to take dodge for things.

I don't mind having to take say great fortitude for a PrC entry. It sucks, but I can understand it, but again this is something that on a martial is really rough, as opposed to a caster. I'm getting abilities better than my normal class levels by paying that Great Fortitude tax, so ok I get it. This does tend to pigeonhole martials really rough in many cases, and make a lot of PrCs almost useless because if you need 3 junk feats to get in, it has to be amazing to justify it because you cannot do anything else for a long time since all your feats are taken by it. Hope yer human.

Trap options, mostly related to feat tax, or just the ton of downright useless feats that are either needed for something else. Tanking isn't viable versus intelligent enemies. Hmm I cannot hit this dwarf in massive armor, but he hits me for 2 damage with this axe. Ok I'll just move onto hit something that is actually doing something. 2 weapon being inferior in almost every case to 2 handed. Sword and board being even worse. List goes on. Oh also Monk, and Samurai.

[Mordaedil]

For me, it's the fact that the game hardcodes so many things that should be magical or miraculous that many players and DMs forget that they can handwave other wondrous things. I've ranted before about the fact that the Brew Potion feat doesn't actually allow for the creation of most classic fairy tale potions, for instance.

Indeed, that is handled by Craft Wondrous Item of all things.

D&D 3.5 is a system that rewards high system mastery and thus is a deeply flawed system and the only real reason to really play it is because you have some sort of nostalgia for it.

[ryu]

Indeed, that is handled by Craft Wondrous Item of all things.

D&D 3.5 is a system that rewards high system mastery and thus is a deeply flawed system and the only real reason to really play it is because you have some sort of nostalgia for it.

Are you kidding? Rewarding system mastery is one of the core selling points of most games that exist upon this earth. Getting increasingly competent and recognizing such a basic thing. Chess is almost ENTIRELY based upon this principle. Now I'll grant you 3.5 isn't easy to learn. Hard to master is not and will never be a flaw though.

[Mordaedil]

Are you kidding? Rewarding system mastery is one of the core selling points of most games that exist upon this earth. Getting increasingly competent and recognizing such a basic thing. Chess is almost ENTIRELY based upon this principle. Now I'll grant you 3.5 isn't easy to learn. Hard to master is not and will never be a flaw though.

It is a pretty huge flaw for a party game if 90% of the options are outright bad. Chess isn't even comparable in that regard, because while it has a really deep strategic layer, the unit selection is always the same and you cannot, even as a new player, make the mistake of picking the wrong team and be screwed from the outset.

Trap choices like picking the fighter, and taking feats that give skill bonuses or toughness are legit poor design decisions inherent in third edition, because Monte Cook really likes to reward system mastery and punish new players who don't know what they are doing. These feats could have done more than they do to be at least marginally useful or had a warning that these feats are normally reserved for dungeon masters to design NPC's that are weaker than player characters, instead of just putting them out there with no benefit to the players who pick them.

Of course, my whole point would be invalid if there were more prestige classes that actually required you take these feats. Which was a missed opportunity IMO.

There are other parts of D&D where the system mastery is fairly admirable and works really well. It's just that those things are casters.

And are a thing that 4th edition stripped out entirely and why I have no fondness for that game.

[eggynack]

It is a pretty huge flaw for a party game if 90% of the options are outright bad. Chess isn't even comparable in that regard, because while it has a really deep strategic layer, the unit selection is always the same and you cannot, even as a new player, make the mistake of picking the wrong team and be screwed from the outset.
Sure, you can't make especially bad pre-game decisions in chess (I've gotta figure that, at the ability level we're talking about, the first mover advantage is reduced by a lot compared to high level players, and that you get more percentage out of playing to your preferences), but I've seen too many new players open with h4 or something similarly terrible to think that chess doesn't allow for immediate decisions that lead to a big disadvantage. Hell, I think I've won with the 2-3 move checkmate about six times, and the scholar's mate too many times to count. And that's leaving aside some more moderate skill errors that take place a bit later, like leaving a piece hanging or allowing for an easily prevented checkmate. Chess is a game where a new player can get screwed incredibly quickly on the basis of apparently reasonable choices (like favoring a more conservative opening to keep your position "safe", in the case of h4), in ways that would be difficult for even a good player to correct sometimes. A weak player will do more than get beaten by a relatively strong player. They'll be annihilated utterly.

[Mordaedil]

And I once as a completely newbie to the chess club beat the chess club self-proclaimed master with the 2-3 checkmate, albeit that guy was a complete idiot with an overinflated ego who believed himself to be a master at something. He ended up repeating the same year three times. (but he was legit better than the others at chess normally, me included)

He was beat only because he didn't see it coming. In the same way, someone new to 3.5 edition could end up making a perfectly good fighter and avoid the bad feats, but it wouldn't necessarily be because he thought they were bad, just that they didn't seem as interesting to his skillset at first read.

The analogy between chess and D&D is a bit tiresome as one contains chance and the other is more pure skill, the outcome being loss is almost more a cause of lapse in judgement rather than something arbitrary. System mastery in D&D is nearly all about eliminating that chance or at least heavily reduce it, for a "sure thing".

While this activity is highly addictive and I personally really love it (which is why I am sticking with 3rd edition) I recognize just how unwelcoming such can be to new people and I hesitate to recommend it because of that. Unless I know they also have a penchant for system mastery games, in which case I casually introduce them first through Neverwinter Nights.

And then I install the PRC pack.

[Scorponok]

I dunno, I hear all this discussion regarding caster vs. melee and think most of it applies to maybe level 5 and above. When I start games, I start them at level 1 and most of the new people have a blast with it, even if they pick Fighter.

[Eldariel]

I dunno, I hear all this discussion regarding caster vs. melee and think most of it applies to maybe level 5 and above. When I start games, I start them at level 1 and most of the new people have a blast with it, even if they pick Fighter.

Much of the richness of the system is lost if you stick to 1-5 though. All those interesting builds involving various PRCs and classes, feats and so on, all those ideas for realizing various character concepts, none of that is actually operational in the 1-5 range. Like, multiclass Gishes only have one or the other; you have to play something like Duskblade to properly Gish on the low levels, which is fine but you can only do one kind of a Gish with Duskblade. Not to mention, the ridiculous level 1 lethality where CR½ enemies (e.g. Orc Warrior 1) might just oneshot the Barbarian and it's not even extremely unlikely (all it takes is an unlucky crit). So while players certainly might have a blast, there are things that might just spoil the experience. And it's not the whole experience.

I personally generally start people up on 3; you have some basic competence in what you do and you're unlikely to die to one bad roll and you have some tools to deal with it but it's still fundamentally "A bunch of nobodies going out on an adventure in the world hoping to raise above their destiny". But the thing is, there's a lot of awesome stuff in the higher levels that you'll never get to play with if you don't play on those levels but those levels have serious balance issues even for the most basic gameplay.

[Afgncaap5]

I dunno, I hear all this discussion regarding caster vs. melee and think most of it applies to maybe level 5 and above. When I start games, I start them at level 1 and most of the new people have a blast with it, even if they pick Fighter.

Honestly, most of my games are only levels 1-7 nowadays. During these levels, I feel like almost any option players pick can potentially be lots of fun if a DM is willing to work with players. So... yeah, not many complaints early on.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I dunno, I hear all this discussion regarding caster vs. melee and think most of it applies to maybe level 5 and above. When I start games, I start them at level 1 and most of the new people have a blast with it, even if they pick Fighter.
Absolutely. At lower levels, different things matter. For example, druid animal companions and ToB maneuvers. However, the imbalance is roughly of the same magnitude, I would say: (practically) no fighter can beat a crusader or druid, at level 1 or beyond, and warblades and swordsages are stronger than their PHB equivalents, with only Whirling Frenzy pouncebarbarians really competing (being a CC/UA class, more than a PHB one).

[eggynack]

And I once as a completely newbie to the chess club beat the chess club self-proclaimed master with the 2-3 checkmate, albeit that guy was a complete idiot with an overinflated ego who believed himself to be a master at something. He ended up repeating the same year three times. (but he was legit better than the others at chess normally, me included)

He was beat only because he didn't see it coming. In the same way, someone new to 3.5 edition could end up making a perfectly good fighter and avoid the bad feats, but it wouldn't necessarily be because he thought they were bad, just that they didn't seem as interesting to his skillset at first read.
The fool's mate isn't really a "didn't see it coming" sort of thing. It takes a really weird and specific set of opening moves on the part of the loser. But, yeah, that mostly just indicates that you can have a game with a ceiling high enough that even really experienced players can fall into traps, and the game can still be great.

The analogy between chess and D&D is a bit tiresome as one contains chance and the other is more pure skill, the outcome being loss is almost more a cause of lapse in judgement rather than something arbitrary. System mastery in D&D is nearly all about eliminating that chance or at least heavily reduce it, for a "sure thing".
The analogy here is a bit closer than that. Yes, in a direct game comparison, the skill versus luck aspect is important, but this analogy focuses on trap options, and the character building mini-game has little if any randomness to it, depending on initial character generation rules (with I think starting gold and ability score allocation as the only meaningful sources of luck).

The real difference between chess and the D&D character building subgame, and what I consider a meaningful problem with the system, is that it's not entirely clear that the latter is actually a game that's occurring. When a new player loses at chess, they can see their loss as the direct consequence of choices that they made with the full knowledge that a wrong choice could lead to loss (or at least a worse position). The player may not know exactly where they went wrong, but they can be confident in the general claim that it was some subset of these discrete moves they made.

With 3.5 though, the "game" is more hidden. You say, "I want to build a fighter," and then, after several hours, your character fails to contribute in some manner and/or dies, and it's incredibly difficult for someone without system knowledge to draw a straight causal line between those six words at the beginning of the game and their poor showing. Or, more accurately, it's not clear that that was a choice where there could be a mistake. Moreover, the period where these really influential decisions take place is relatively short. Character building can take awhile, but it's generally a small fraction of campaign length. Chess, in a sense, is more forgiving. The opening and mid-game take up a lot of time relative to the end-game, which is generally defined as the period where the game is essentially won, which means you have a lot of decision points before things end. Some casters do have access to continuous decisions of this sort, but a lot of characters are going to get locked in really fast.

[ryu]

Absolutely. At lower levels, different things matter. For example, druid animal companions and ToB maneuvers. However, the imbalance is roughly of the same magnitude, I would say: (practically) no fighter can beat a crusader or druid, at level 1 or beyond, and warblades and swordsages are stronger than their PHB equivalents, with only Whirling Frenzy pouncebarbarians really competing (being a CC/UA class, more than a PHB one).

And even if we're limiting life to the 1-5 range a wizard can still build to be plenty dominant. Focused specialist conjurer with abrupt jaunt, hummingbird familiar, plenty of crowd control, and fiery burst is brutally effective in the early game.

[Arbane]

point 3 happens a lot with people new to the system, and it is annoying there isn't a way around it. we've all been in a scenario like this (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1235) and despite the options for tactics within the parameters of the system, it really doesn't support lateral thinking when it comes to mundane combat. the closest thing you get is higher ground bonus, and even then it's not much of a difference.


This is kind of a big one - the system seems to be designed to actively punish any player who tries to get creative in a fight instead of using their One Feat Chain every turn or swording the enemy in the hitpoints.

Fighter Suckitude is a problem on multiple levels - aside from Caster Supremacy and 3.5's phobia of letting Fighters got hold of any (EX) abilities beyond "Survive enough damage to kill a Tyrannosaur", they have terrible skill points, meaning they're going to be bad at non-magical things that AREN'T fighting, too.

[Venger]

And even if we're limiting life to the 1-5 range a wizard can still build to be plenty dominant. Focused specialist conjurer with abrupt jaunt, hummingbird familiar, plenty of crowd control, and fiery burst is brutally effective in the early game.

Your points both here and earlier are all completely valid, but hummingbird familiar isn't core. it's from dragon magazine.

This is kind of a big one - the system seems to be designed to actively punish any player who tries to get creative in a fight instead of using their One Feat Chain every turn or swording the enemy in the hitpoints.

a lot of this is attributable to the combat map. not to say it's all bad, it's helpful to codify things into quantifiable distances, but in 2e and back, you could just say you swing from the chandelier or interpose yourself to protect your wizard or whatever and do it. this is part of the downside of infinite customization. when there's an option for every obscure thing, now if you don't have it, you can't do that thing, or it'd be unfair to people who actually invested resources into it.

a perfect example of this is the whip climber skill trick. it lets you... wrap your whip around something and climb it. but it costs skill points and has reqs.

before csco came out, if you were in any kind of scenario where this came up and wanted to do it, I can't imagine your dm really caring. now, there's kind of an awkard question. does he let you do it anyway even if you don't have the skill trick? or does he say "no I need you to invest resources into this thing you used to be able to do, but now can't" the fact that it has to be asked is indicative of poor design.

[ryu]

And who precisely cares about whether something is core or not anymore? The people playing either have the books, have friends in the group who have the books, or have versions of the books they've... acquired. Besides that the hummingbird, while more powerful than the benefits of some entire classes, is still only about a third of the good things you get and at level one at that. Not to mention that if you limit everyone to core the non-casters suffer much more or simply don't exist depending on class.

[Cosi]

When you really dig down to the bottom, balance issues in 3e come down to two things:

1. HP scales (quadratically, broadly speaking) faster than damage (linear, again speaking broadly), making damage a poor choice in combat, but many classes have no ability to contribute in combat in any way other than "dealing damage".
2. There's a list of utility abilities (the spell list), and around two thirds of classes don't have access to it.

There's some flexibility on those points, and the classes that bend them are powerful compared to similar classes. Rogues, Mailmen, and Uberchargers have quadratic damage scaling, and are unsurprisingly better at contributing to combat than other DPS classes. People with UMD have backdoor access to spells, and are more effective as a result. And classes that bend in the other direction are correspondingly weaker (i.e. Warmages don't get utility spells, and are weaker than most casters as a result).

But the balance problems aren't really that big of a deal from a playability standpoint, IMHO. You can make a character that does whatever you want at whatever power level you happen to be playing at, so I don't rate the fact that you can't literally write "Fighter" on the character sheet of your frontline bruiser and do well as terribly important. The related problem that a majority of game content isn't worth using is a serious issue, but that's different from the balance issues most people complain about.

The real problem with 3e is the massive level of complexity involved. The same volume of content that makes it appealing makes it incredibly difficult to get into the game, and the level of complexity involved in creating and playing high powered characters makes certain kinds of stories harder to tell than they should be. For example, doing anything on a scale larger than the personal will generally require substantial optimization, fudging the rules, or both.


As ever with this, it's important to clearly demarcate what's a martial and what isn't, or wizards who polymorph into monsters will also be able to enjoy this benefit.

Just make them class features. If you make them something else, but try to restrict them, one of two things happens. One, you successfully limit it to just the classes you want to help and they're functionally class features. Two, you don't and you just powered up Swiftblades or Cleric Archers or VoP Druids or whatever. Neither solution has any advantage over making them class features, so you should just make them class features.

[Venger]

And who precisely cares about whether something is core or not anymore? The people playing either have the books, have friends in the group who have the books, or have versions of the books they've... acquired. Besides that the hummingbird, while more powerful than the benefits of some entire classes, is still only about a third of the good things you get and at level one at that. Not to mention that if you limit everyone to core the non-casters suffer much more or simply don't exist depending on class.

I... thought for the life of me it said "core 1-5 wizard." no idea where that came from. I never assume core only. never mind.

[ryu]

I... thought for the life of me it said "core 1-5 wizard." no idea where that came from. I never assume core only. never mind.

No problem. Everybody reading goofs sometimes.

[Venger]

Just make them class features. If you make them something else, but try to restrict them, one of two things happens. One, you successfully limit it to just the classes you want to help and they're functionally class features. Two, you don't and you just powered up Swiftblades or Cleric Archers or VoP Druids or whatever. Neither solution has any advantage over making them class features, so you should just make them class features.
Ok. I understand what you're saying and am inclined to agree, but if they're class features, do you just disallow casters from taking a dip in a martial class, like gishes commonly do?

[Cosi]

Ok. I understand what you're saying and am inclined to agree, but if they're class features, do you just disallow casters from taking a dip in a martial class, like gishes commonly do?

First, the way classes work in 3e generally makes multiclassing a bad idea, even between nominally balanced classes. If the Wizard really wants to take some Fighter levels at stab people, that's probably worse than straight Wizard, even if the two classes are otherwise balanced.

Second, if the classes are balanced, why does it matter how you put them together? I don't think the game loses anything from having Wizards, Swiftblades, and Fighters instead of just Wizards and Fighters.

[Kaje]

Ok. I understand what you're saying and am inclined to agree, but if they're class features, do you just disallow casters from taking a dip in a martial class, like gishes commonly do?

Of course not. They're talking about doing something functionaly the same as Tome of Battle. Those casters can multiclass but they'll still just be getting early level martial abilities.

[Venger]

First, the way classes work in 3e generally makes multiclassing a bad idea, even between nominally balanced classes. If the Wizard really wants to take some Fighter levels at stab people, that's probably worse than straight Wizard, even if the two classes are otherwise balanced.

Second, if the classes are balanced, why does it matter how you put them together? I don't think the game loses anything from having Wizards, Swiftblades, and Fighters instead of just Wizards and Fighters.

While it is a bad idea specifically to lose caster levels, being able to full attack on a standard for a gish may be worth it in certain cases.

letting mundanes full attack sometimes certainly helps, but it's not on par with spells.

I agree, more variety is always good. I like swiftblade a lot.

[Soranar]

From a DM's point of view (who had to introduce several players to the game)

The complexity of the game is definitely an issue but it's also it's best feature. The reason these forums still have people contributing to them is proof of that.

The various handbooks that were written for most classes are a godsend when you need to introduce a new player to a class. Yes it feels like homework but this is the kind of game that deserves homework.

The same goes for the Tier system for classes which helps newbie players pick a class immensely

The CR ratings of many creatures is just terrible most of the time
Same goes for the LA rating of many races (I've waived many LA +1 to even +4 from many races/templates though I usually maintain racial HD )
In a similar note some books deserve a severe errata if not outright banning and having a list of houserules almost becomes mandatory

Just look at the stats of an anthropomorphic Baleen Whale to see what I'm talking about (no LA, just racial HD)

Too many rules are too obscure to find easily if they exist at all (what are class skills for a magical beast/paladin mount with HD for example?)

[rrwoods]

Having recently started the whole DMing thing:

The abysmal editing of some monster stat blocks. The most recent example: I'm putting together an encounter with some Dragonkin (Monsters of Faerun). Their Skills line has three maxed skills, on a creature with a +0 intelligence modifier. WTH? What creature type gets an odd number of skill points? The answer is "oops, they should only have two skills maxed".

EDIT: forgot to mention; this 7 HD creature only has two feats.

[Silva Stormrage]

Having recently started the whole DMing thing:

The abysmal editing of some monster stat blocks. The most recent example: I'm putting together an encounter with some Dragonkin (Monsters of Faerun). Their Skills line has three maxed skills, on a creature with a +0 intelligence modifier. WTH? What creature type gets an odd number of skill points? The answer is "oops, they should only have two skills maxed".

Ya whenever a monster has one of those kinds of errors I just rule it was WoTC "Forgetting" to put in an appropriate bonus or penalty. They are just abysmal at editing for monsters and sample prestige classes really.

For flaws with 3.5, most people have touched on the complexity and I would say having so many trap options and the steep barrier to entry is probably it's biggest flaws.

One thing that I would rate as a flaw is on the DM's side. Base monsters range from hilarious overpowered and likely to murder your entire party (Ephermal Swarms, Drowned, Alips) if you send them at the correct levels and others which are hilariously over CR'ed. It makes just picking a random CR appropriate monster a very poor decision and new DM's have trouble picking out in advance which monsters are a good threat for a given party.

[rrwoods]

Ya whenever a monster has one of those kinds of errors I just rule it was WoTC "Forgetting" to put in an appropriate bonus or penalty. They are just abysmal at editing for monsters and sample prestige classes really.

For flaws with 3.5, most people have touched on the complexity and I would say having so many trap options and the steep barrier to entry is probably it's biggest flaws.

One thing that I would rate as a flaw is on the DM's side. Base monsters range from hilarious overpowered and likely to murder your entire party (Ephermal Swarms, Drowned, Alips) if you send them at the correct levels and others which are hilariously over CR'ed. It makes just picking a random CR appropriate monster a very poor decision and new DM's have trouble picking out in advance which monsters are a good threat for a given party.

Yeah... I was looking for underdark monsters appropriate for a 3rd level party. Oh look a gas spore is CR 3! What does this do? Oh... OH.

(If it hits you, or it dies within ten feet of you, you take Con damage every hour. Also you turn into more Gas Spores if you die this way.)

[Vaz]

I agree with Venger; too many garbage options that trip up newer players.

EDIT: That being said, I'd rather have a bloated system with some bad options than a system without a huge breadth of options.

One of my complaints with the 5Ed is that coming from 3.5 with it's huge variety of stuff is that I've gone from 70+ books (including Faerun, Eberron, Rokugan, to list the books I personally have), is to go to basically 5 books plus a couple of PDF's.)

However, that doesn't stop it being a fun game. Of all of those books that I have, I'd say only 20-40% of those things were anything near useable options, and only 5% were anything vaguely approaching "power" options that would rival the core. This is to be expected in a way (what splat book can do, it almost always went to core also, but then further splatbooks rarely improved what other splatbooks provided), but for each individual power option, that was followed by 20-30 others which didn't do much. And each power option, particularly in reference in core classes, became exponentially more powerful. From a monetary point of view WoTC didn't really want to add a splat book for a splat book (etc, etc).

What 5E has is only a few classes, with each class self contained, and each class having 2-4 options able to change stuff as an in built ACF, with each class able to do what otherwise took a prestige class to do.

It's different, and I like it, but still love 3.5 for its access to material (and for popping my D&D cherry).

[GreyMatter]

Having recently started the whole DMing thing:

The abysmal editing of some monster stat blocks. The most recent example: I'm putting together an encounter with some Dragonkin (Monsters of Faerun). Their Skills line has three maxed skills, on a creature with a +0 intelligence modifier. WTH? What creature type gets an odd number of skill points? The answer is "oops, they should only have two skills maxed".

EDIT: forgot to mention; this 7 HD creature only has two feats.

Monsters of Faerûn has numerous errors in the stat blocks because it is a 3.0 book. I don't have enough posts under my name to post the link but if you Google something like "Player's Guide to Faerûn web enhancement" you should be able to follow the link to either the 3.0/3.5 errata archives or the Player's Guide web enhancement.

They combined all of the books (Monsters of Faerûn, City of the Spider Queen, Silver Marches, Magic of Faerûn, Faiths and Pantheons) into a single booklet download that will have all of the corrected/updated stats for the monsters.

[warmachine]

Shortcomings of 3.X.

Magic domination - especially at higher levels, spellcasters have the most powerful abilities and steal the limelight.
Publisher's refusal to errata for balance - Assay Resistance, Divine Metamagic and Nightsticks, Druid, the list goes on. Despite deliberately avoiding broken options, I once accidentally created an overpowered Sorcerer because I didn't check the maths.
Save or die, or Save or suck - combat is supposed to be dangerous but fail one save and you're no longer playing the game.
Cross class skills - I decide skills based on the character's back story. I fail to see why a nobleman Fighter can't have full ranks in Knowledge: Nobility.

[Telonius]

The biggest shortcoming of 3.5, IMO, is something that I've seen houseruled away so often that I forget it's a problem sometimes: despite the wide variety of options, the game tries to shoehorn certain characters into specific roles by discouraging multiclassing. Multiclass XP penalties, if they were actually widely followed, would make a bad situation much worse. It's probably the number 1 most common houserule to throw them out, so I think that says something.

[The Viscount]

Having recently started the whole DMing thing:

The abysmal editing of some monster stat blocks. The most recent example: I'm putting together an encounter with some Dragonkin (Monsters of Faerun). Their Skills line has three maxed skills, on a creature with a +0 intelligence modifier. WTH? What creature type gets an odd number of skill points? The answer is "oops, they should only have two skills maxed".

EDIT: forgot to mention; this 7 HD creature only has two feats.


Monsters of Faerûn has numerous errors in the stat blocks because it is a 3.0 book. I don't have enough posts under my name to post the link but if you Google something like "Player's Guide to Faerûn web enhancement" you should be able to follow the link to either the 3.0/3.5 errata archives or the Player's Guide web enhancement.

They combined all of the books (Monsters of Faerûn, City of the Spider Queen, Silver Marches, Magic of Faerûn, Faiths and Pantheons) into a single booklet download that will have all of the corrected/updated stats for the monsters.

Ok while WotC make errors in their books all over the place and almost every book with stats has to be fixed with errata, this one time I actually have to defend them. In 3.0, Monsters received different skills calculation systems and different number feats depending on their type. This is why you occasionally see things like Myconids having "skills and feats as if fey." This is one of the biggest changes they made for 3.5, and one for the best. There is indeed an update for this book, so you can see what it should have in 3.5 rules.


The biggest shortcoming of 3.5, IMO, is something that I've seen houseruled away so often that I forget it's a problem sometimes: despite the wide variety of options, the game tries to shoehorn certain characters into specific roles by discouraging multiclassing. Multiclass XP penalties, if they were actually widely followed, would make a bad situation much worse. It's probably the number 1 most common houserule to throw them out, so I think that says something.
This one and its partner in crime, death from massive damage, are two rules I don't think I've ever seen a DM enforce in actual play. On the subject of HP scaling faster than damage, one might argue that the death from massive damage is a check on this, but it's a horrible check that no-one should use.

[Mordaedil]

It would be very awkward if every maximized fireball automatically triggered everyone to save vs. death.

[stanprollyright]

Now, just to point out: D&D 3/3.5 is, by any objective metric, the greatest game of its kind. That people are here analyzing its shortcomings decades later is a testament to how good a system it is.

But nothing's perfect. Everything can always be improved.

So here are some general nitpicks:
Stat Scaling: Excepting magic items, Accuracy scales, but AC doesn't. HP scales, but weapon damage doesn't, except at the expense of accuracy. Spell damage roughly scales with HP, saving throws scale, but spell DCs don't. It all kinda-sorta works out via the law of averages, but it leads to some strange situations in-game and makes feats and character options have wonky relative values.

Learning curve: I like that it's a complicated game that rewards cleverness and system mastery, but it's also really hard to get your friends to play when it involves a couple hours of bookwork to start. At the same time, I didn't like the simpler, more streamlines versions of D&D that came after, so there may be no good compromise between the complexity and simplicity that I want simultaneously.

Class balance: I don't have a problem with imbalance as much as most people, but it can get kind of extreme. Again, this comes from it being a really complicated game with a ton of varied options. At the very least, Linear Warriors/Quadratic Mages it is somewhat unavoidable in this genre, especially when (from a designer's perspective) you're trying to be as generic and all-inclusive as possible with your magical options. Other games have done a better job of balancing, though, including Pathfinder.

Style jumps: I have never played a single character from 1-20. In fact, I rarely play much past 10. Some people like epic level games. It's actually really great that you can include several different genres of fantasy (in order: gritty, heroic, wuxia, superheroes, gods&legends). The transitions between them can be jarring, and it's not something they really warn you about or give you control over, other than arbitrarily messing with XP/levels. It makes for a bunch of verisimilitude issues between the beginning and end of a campaign. This is also part of the class balance issue, because some classes are more suited for play at certain levels, which is annoying when you want to play certain types of characters but you generally start at level 1.

Abusability and over-abundance of options: Obviously, more options is not a bad thing. However, the quality of the options gets very uneven the further away you get from Core. Most of it is trash or ridiculously situational, but there are also some poorly-worded abusable abilities and unintentional synergies between abilities in different settings and such that was never intended. Again, these options are better than "no options." It does lead to some of the aforementioned class balance issues on its own, as some are supported better than others. If every splatbook could have been as good as ToB...

Item Reliance: Pretty self-explanatory. I understand that cool loot is one of the prime motivators in games, and that said cool loot need actually be decently powerful to be, in fact, cool. Therefore you must take loot into account when plotting the power level of your encounters. But now that your encounters are balanced for looted characters, they can no longer keep up without loot. This goes along with the stat-scaling issue as well as the class balance issue, because certain stats (*cough*AC*cough) are entirely loot-based while others scale without it; likewise certain classes are much more loot-dependent than others. I wish they had included a lootless progression where the Fighter or whomever could add an enhancement bonus to whatever armor or weapon he fancies, and at higher levels gets to choose from certain special abilities and whatnot. Pathfinder has something like it, and there might be a thing like that in the UA, I'm not sure.

Combat styles that got dumped on: TWF :smallfrown: rapier duelist :smallmad: monk :smallfurious: archer :smallsigh: two-handed :smallcool:

[Mordaedil]

And then there are the things that third edition did better than second edition (albeit this is a VERY subjective point, and AD&D did certain things better even among the things I listed)

Armor Class, Attack bonuses and Saving Throws: Seriously, these things were a mechanical mess in 2nd edition. If you ever lost your books you'd have a very hard time referencing how decent you were at anything on leveling up, particularly saving throws. Third edition took these mechanics inhereted from naval combat and made them into an easier and more straightforward method for an epic dungeon delving experience. As for what they did badly with this, it'd probably have to do with scaling and being balanced with them. Padded armor and full plate give more AC points than any of the other armors, attack bonuses mean at some point a wizard is a match for a lower-level warrior, which is just bizarre. I mean, they do need to land those touch attacks, but I don't think this was the most elegant solution. Reducing saving throws to only three is probably the simplest D&D has ever been.

Skills: No longer the domain of just the thief and bard, everybody now has access to skills. Which used to be proficiencies in 2nd edition. Now, the rank system is not the most elegant solution and it is really silly that certain class abilities relies on the PC's having to max certain skills to be relatively effective at their main job, like hide, move silently, concentration and spellcraft. Yet they missed the very obvious solution to make Base Attack Bonus a skill.

Spellcasting: Hooray, wizards no longer start with only 1 first level spell. Boo, the wizards start with more than 1 first level spell. And yet wizards are for some reason masters of crossbows in order to survive their early levels before they become demigods and abandon all mundane means. 2nd edition at least made you work a little bit for that power.

[Cosi]

The CR ratings of many creatures is just terrible most of the time

No, it's not. If CR was super bad in general, people would mention monsters other than Allips and Giant Crabs when talking about how it is super bad. The reason people thing CR is terrible is because it's much easier to remember the small percentage of bad monsters (Shadows, Clockwork Horrors) than the large percentage of good monsters (most other things).


Magic domination - especially at higher levels, spellcasters have the most powerful abilities and steal the limelight.

I object to this phrasing of the problem. There are certainly things that need to be toned down (gate, ice assassin), but if you were balancing 3e you would move martials way farther than you moved casters.


Save or die, or Save or suck - combat is supposed to be dangerous but fail one save and you're no longer playing the game.

The specific implementation of save or dies is less interactive than ideal, but if you don't have some way of ending combat quickly, you end up with combats where people continue grinding way after the conclusion is already foregone. Right now I lean towards having some threshold to make the save or die effect actually end combat. Like "bloodied" or a status condition.


This one and its partner in crime, death from massive damage, are two rules I don't think I've ever seen a DM enforce in actual play. On the subject of HP scaling faster than damage, one might argue that the death from massive damage is a check on this, but it's a horrible check that no-one should use.

I kind of like death from massive damage. It gives people who fight with swords or fireball something to compete with save or dies. On the other hand, if you're forcing saves versus massive damage consistently, you're probably killing things whether or not the rule is being enforced.

[Venger]

No, it's not. If CR was super bad in general, people would mention monsters other than Allips and Giant Crabs when talking about how it is super bad. The reason people thing CR is terrible is because it's much easier to remember the small percentage of bad monsters (Shadows, Clockwork Horrors) than the large percentage of good monsters (most other things).



I object to this phrasing of the problem. There are certainly things that need to be toned down (gate, ice assassin), but if you were balancing 3e you would move martials way farther than you moved casters.



The specific implementation of save or dies is less interactive than ideal, but if you don't have some way of ending combat quickly, you end up with combats where people continue grinding way after the conclusion is already foregone. Right now I lean towards having some threshold to make the save or die effect actually end combat. Like "bloodied" or a status condition.



I kind of like death from massive damage. It gives people who fight with swords or fireball something to compete with save or dies. On the other hand, if you're forcing saves versus massive damage consistently, you're probably killing things whether or not the rule is being enforced.

That's because it's a simpler way to illustrate the example by pointing out under cred monsters, but there are plenty of over cred ones too, like famine spirit or hulking corpse. this presents a problem too (unfun combat) albeit a far less pressing one since they're unlikely to wipe your party.

right, it's a better idea to juice martials than nerf casters, but a discrepancy still exists is the point.

it's less about you being able to end combat quickly and you being effectively told to stop playing the game when you're on the receiving end of a SOD

(one of) the main problems with massive damage is the discrepancy between how much if affects PCs vs monsters, like the unfathomably popular fumble rules some people use. monsters are only around for one combat, so they might roll it once if at all. pcs are going to be rolling vs massive damage essentially every fight after a certain level, which just exacerbates the rocket tag problem of mid-high level play.

the problem with massive damage isn't inflicting it, it's receiving it.

[Eldariel]

No, it's not. If CR was super bad in general, people would mention monsters other than Allips and Giant Crabs when talking about how it is super bad. The reason people thing CR is terrible is because it's much easier to remember the small percentage of bad monsters (Shadows, Clockwork Horrors) than the large percentage of good monsters (most other things).

Or perhaps people would just rather bring out the most egregious/clear examples? Just because it's not the worst doesn't mean it's bad. Plus, CR fails as a baseline in a system where character power by level is as over the place as in 3.5; it never had a chance of being anything but a dartboard to begin with.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The biggest drawback of 3.5 is that it's an expert-level game that, for a long time, was the "default" starting RPG. Its main flaws (complexity and imbalance) are most apparent at low levels of mechanical knowledge; its main virtue (depth of options) doesn't really show up until you've invested a lot of time in learning about things in splatbooks.

[Psyren]

It would be nice if it wasn't so ridiculously outclassed by full attacks. First, it costs multiple feats to pick up; feats I posit that are better spent elsewhere. Second, your base damage is a minor part of damage all be told on most characters; not to even mention Haste is eminently accessible in Boots of Speed by the teens and makes full attack even better. Vital Strike right now is basically a tool for size-stacking natural attackers (who don't get iteratives anyways) to be even better and that's about it, while a warrior gets a maximum of 2d6 out of it when they're looking at 30 Strength, Weapon Bonuses, Elements, Class-bonuses and so on all of which that isn't multiplied.

Agreed - I would fix Vital Strike by (a) making it one feat that scales with your BAB, (b) making it work with Spring Attack, and (c) letting you add an extra 50% Str to the hit since you're swinging for the fences (so 150% to normal attacks and light weapons, 200% to double-handed swings.) This would give it a bit more punch while still being well behind a full attack I think.

[Telok]

My personal opinions of the shortcomings of 3.5 are as follows,

1: Scaling. The game does not scale well with increasing levels and does not scale well with increasing scope. Example, fighters scale up too slowly/weakly while T1 & T2 casters scale too quickly. Likewise you can't really effectively scale up from the "squad of 4-6 heroes" to "command an army/run a kingdom" with the printed rules.

2: Multiclassing & PrCs. Generally multiclassing is trash due to the scaling issues , fighter 5/ranger 5/barbarian 5 is OK in low to mid-op but rogue 5/monk 5/ninja 5 is really bad everywhere and of course fighter 7/wizard 8. Then the PrCs are generally either too much or too little. Like Eldrich Knight and Arcane Archer versus Incantrix and Rainbow Warsnake.

3: Bad options. There are a few too many and enough are non-obvious to make things difficult at times, especially for newer players. Mainly this is feats, especially feat chains. One bad option I particularly dislike is the option to try to be a jack-of-all-trades, specialization is a sort of multiplier to the scaling issues and the fast scale up classes benefit more from it while the slow scale up classes require it to stay relevant. Trying to spread out beyond a single specialization actively slows down scaling or completely cripples it.

4: Magic item dependency. Characters need particular things to stay relevant in AC, saves, skills, and overall abilities but are constrained by WBL and item slots. Characters who need more things to stay relevant benefit just as much as characters who don't need stuff and are limited to the same pool and level of resources (eg. party loot is generally evenly split so everyone is 'equal'). So a melee type needs an ever increasing magic weapon (or two) which can easily eat up 50%+ of his wealth while a caster can ignore magic weaponry and buy more spell slots and metamagic or extra defences.

[stanprollyright]

Likewise you can't really effectively scale up from the "squad of 4-6 heroes" to "command an army/run a kingdom" with the printed rules.

Definitely. I forgot to add this particular gripe, but it does bug me. There should be more than just Leadership and some half-assed mass combat rules. Especially for high level martial characters.

Kind of related: Y U NO RP XP? I mean, every NPC has a CR, and every NPC has a Will save and a Spot Check and a Sense Motive and a Diplomacy check, so it shouldn't be too hard to judge RP encounters based on the difficulty of the rolls you're going to make. And it should be explicitly stated that whenever you directly bypass a combat encounter via stealth or RP you should get the XP for it as well.

[Malovec]

I think the profession skill as a whole was really a let down.

[Psyren]

My personal opinions of the shortcomings of 3.5 are as follows,

1: Scaling. The game does not scale well with increasing levels and does not scale well with increasing scope. Example, fighters scale up too slowly/weakly while T1 & T2 casters scale too quickly. Likewise you can't really effectively scale up from the "squad of 4-6 heroes" to "command an army/run a kingdom" with the printed rules.

2: Multiclassing & PrCs. Generally multiclassing is trash due to the scaling issues , fighter 5/ranger 5/barbarian 5 is OK in low to mid-op but rogue 5/monk 5/ninja 5 is really bad everywhere and of course fighter 7/wizard 8. Then the PrCs are generally either too much or too little. Like Eldrich Knight and Arcane Archer versus Incantrix and Rainbow Warsnake.

3: Bad options. There are a few too many and enough are non-obvious to make things difficult at times, especially for newer players. Mainly this is feats, especially feat chains. One bad option I particularly dislike is the option to try to be a jack-of-all-trades, specialization is a sort of multiplier to the scaling issues and the fast scale up classes benefit more from it while the slow scale up classes require it to stay relevant. Trying to spread out beyond a single specialization actively slows down scaling or completely cripples it.

4: Magic item dependency. Characters need particular things to stay relevant in AC, saves, skills, and overall abilities but are constrained by WBL and item slots. Characters who need more things to stay relevant benefit just as much as characters who don't need stuff and are limited to the same pool and level of resources (eg. party loot is generally evenly split so everyone is 'equal'). So a melee type needs an ever increasing magic weapon (or two) which can easily eat up 50%+ of his wealth while a caster can ignore magic weaponry and buy more spell slots and metamagic or extra defences.

If all of these are truly downsides, the best solution is probably switching to 5e, which pretty much solves all 4.

[Echch]

If all of these are truly downsides, the best solution is probably switching to 5e, which pretty much solves all 4.

I'm pretty sure 4e solves them too.

[exelsisxax]

If all of these are truly downsides, the best solution is probably switching to 5e, which pretty much solves all 4.

By eliminating meaningful build choices and mechanical differentiation? Not a great trade in my opinion.

[Telok]

If all of these are truly downsides, the best solution is probably switching to 5e, which pretty much solves all 4.

Tried it. The skill system is unformed, the d20 is more important than the character's abilities and skills, and the only reason there are fewer bad options is because there are fewer options. Multiclassing is still borked because of how they tied the required ASIs to class level instead of character level. Scaling is nearly non-existent except in spells, hit points, and damage, but those are just as bad as 3.x. There's zero support for anything but squad level combat, although that's probably mostly because they aren't printing hardly anything.

Oh, and your saves get worse as you level up.

So... tried it. And 4e, that got boring fast.

[stanprollyright]

I think the profession skill as a whole was really a let down.

There's no "Profession (Murderhobo)" for some reason.

[InvisibleBison]

There's no "Profession (Murderhobo)" for some reason.

The whole point of the Profession skill is to abstract away the details of working at a job and replace them with a skill roll. If there was a Profession (murderhobo) skill, it would replace the entire rest of the game, which somewhat defeats the point of having a game in the first place.

[stanprollyright]

The whole point of the Profession skill is to abstract away the details of working at a job and replace them with a skill roll. If there was a Profession (murderhobo) skill, it would replace the entire rest of the game, which somewhat defeats the point of having a game in the first place.

You got the joke! Good job!

[ryu]

I'm pretty sure 4e solves them too.

If I wanted to play a bare-bones board-game with a fantasy feel I'd whip out munchkin. The rules are more fleshed out and I may even get to laugh once or twice.

[Vaz]

You got the joke! Good job!

Aren't jokes meant to be funny?

[stanprollyright]

Aren't jokes meant to be funny?

Oooh, shots fired. :smalltongue:

[Deophaun]

As an example, one of my players once mentioned something like soccer would not be able to be done using the 3.5 RAW.
Soccer can be done using 3.5 RAW.

The real trick is in doing 3.5 using soccer RAW.

[ryu]

Soccer can be done using 3.5 RAW.

The real trick is in doing 3.5 using soccer RAW.

Masterwork ball with a heavily weighted core, permanency shrink item, with a free action toggle AMF.

''unarmed'' swordsage... Unless you can get the ball to count as a weapon with decent damage I guess. Bam.

[HunterOfJello]

Each skill is an entire subsystem of the game. Some of them are massively too large and overly complex as well.

The system focuses on mechanics so often that it's hard for players to think outside of mechanics.


Battles get ridiculously slow.

[Inevitability]

If I wanted to play a bare-bones board-game with a fantasy feel I'd whip out munchkin. The rules are more fleshed out and I may even get to laugh once or twice.

Edition wars! We've got incoming edition wars! Abandon thread! Into the bomb shelters!

[Cosi]

right, it's a better idea to juice martials than nerf casters, but a discrepancy still exists is the point.

Sure. That's why I objected to the phrasing of the problem, not the existence of the problem. Saying the problem is "casters OP" causes you to make terrible games like 5e, 4e, or PF. So you should not do that.


it's less about you being able to end combat quickly and you being effectively told to stop playing the game when you're on the receiving end of a SOD

How is that different from dying in any other way from any other cause?


(one of) the main problems with massive damage is the discrepancy between how much if affects PCs vs monsters, like the unfathomably popular fumble rules some people use. monsters are only around for one combat, so they might roll it once if at all. pcs are going to be rolling vs massive damage essentially every fight after a certain level, which just exacerbates the rocket tag problem of mid-high level play.

Again, that's just iterated probability. Why is massive damage specifically a problem?


Or perhaps people would just rather bring out the most egregious/clear examples? Just because it's not the worst doesn't mean it's bad.

Open a random MM to a random page. Is that monster overpowered? Try that a few more times.


Plus, CR fails as a baseline in a system where character power by level is as over the place as in 3.5; it never had a chance of being anything but a dartboard to begin with.

If PCs are off schedule, but CR is predictable, you can just use offsets.


Agreed - I would fix Vital Strike by (a) making it one feat that scales with your BAB, (b) making it work with Spring Attack, and (c) letting you add an extra 50% Str to the hit since you're swinging for the fences (so 150% to normal attacks and light weapons, 200% to double-handed swings.) This would give it a bit more punch while still being well behind a full attack I think.

If the problem is that martials are underpowered, why would you give them an option that they have to pay for that is worse than an option they already have?


If all of these are truly downsides, the best solution is probably switching to 5e, which pretty much solves all 4.

5e has the design mandate of "no scaling". How could that possible solve "scaling"?

[WarKitty]

Again, that's just iterated probability. Why is massive damage specifically a problem?


I'd say that the problem with massive damage is that it effectively nullifies a big part of the game for certain classes. If your job is to have lots of hit points so you can tank and soak a lot of damage, being forced to constantly roll massive damage saves really adds an unnecessary risk to performing your role, that at higher levels you'll be taking every time you take a hit.

[atomicwaffle]

1. Grappling, Unarmed Damage, and Nonlethal Damage

I don't think i've met a 3.5 DM that doesn't houserule one or all of these in some way.

2. DCs on traps and unfair CRs

I generally don't use traps, or if i do i make up the DCs to detect or disable them.

Thing is, 3.5 is easily houseruleable. Something you don't like? Change it. So all its potential weaknesses are its greatest strengths.

[WarKitty]

[B]Thing is, 3.5 is easily houseruleable. Something you don't like? Change it. So all its potential weaknesses are its greatest strengths.

I think a lot of that goes back to system mastery issues. Speaking as a DM, it's hard to put in houserules to fix everything that work well. You have to really know what you're doing. So it's not a system that's very friendly to people just picking it up and running a game without anyone with prior knowledge.

[Mordaedil]

Kind of related: Y U NO RP XP? I mean, every NPC has a CR, and every NPC has a Will save and a Spot Check and a Sense Motive and a Diplomacy check, so it shouldn't be too hard to judge RP encounters based on the difficulty of the rolls you're going to make. And it should be explicitly stated that whenever you directly bypass a combat encounter via stealth or RP you should get the XP for it as well.

Page 40 of the DMG mentions RP XP. And page 41 explains why it doesn't list anything special.

It even mentions that making a joke that makes everyone around the table laugh should be rewarded with experience, because it enhances the game. Anything that enhances the game ought to be rewarded it says.

[Bohandas]

Problems I've noticed

*The several aspects of the game, including the use of 5-foot squares, and the way area spells are handled create issues with combat involving non-medium sized creatures. An example of the latter is that a creature can be deafened by a sound burst spell that only hit part of it's tail.

*The way skills are handled means that it matters what order a multiclass character takes their class levels in. A fighter 1/rogue 1 who started as a fighter will have a very different skill set than one whose first level was as a rogue

*The combat abilities of little creatures are all screwed up due to the way HP and attacks are handled

*Monsters get skill points for hit dice that clearly only represent sheer physical size rather than any kind of experience. Skill points are in general too strongly tied to HD.

*The thought process behind the lack of constitution scores for undead and constructs and of strength scores for incorporeal creatures is poorly supported. As is the reasoning behind all creatures having a charisma score.

*XP costs for crafting items create an absurd situation where magic item crafters get worse at their craft the more they practice it.

*The gods' fluff and their stats in Deities and Demigods don't match up at all.

*Monster abilities (and many other things besides) are handled in an excessively formulaic way. Save DCs for Breath weapons for example are only dependent on the monster's HD and constitution score, with no consideration for the actual nature of the monster.

*Most spells meeting the conditions for the [charm] subschool of enchantment are inexplicably classed as [compulsion]s instead. Many of these do not meet the definition of the [compulsion] subschool.

*The game is chock full of rounding errors unless you use the fractional bonus rules from Unearthed Arcana

*The excessive time required to regain spells creates an absurd fifteen minute adventuring day that taxes versimilitude

[stanprollyright]

Page 40 of the DMG mentions RP XP. And page 41 explains why it doesn't list anything special.

It even mentions that making a joke that makes everyone around the table laugh should be rewarded with experience, because it enhances the game. Anything that enhances the game ought to be rewarded it says.

You mean the part where they admit they didn't come up with anything? The part where it says, "XP awards for roleplaying are purely ad hoc. That is, no system exists for assigning Challenge Rating to bits of roleplaying."

[ExLibrisMortis]

Monster abilities (and many other things besides) are handled in an excessively formulaic way. Save DCs for Breath weapons for example are only dependent on the monster's HD and constitution score, with no consideration for the actual nature of the monster.
I don't think this is a problem with 'excessively formulaic' abilities. Several monsters have a racial bonus to poison DCs, to reflect their unusual virulence. That is a perfectly good way of handling the 'actual nature of the monster', even if you feel it's underused.

[Cosi]

I think a lot of that goes back to system mastery issues. Speaking as a DM, it's hard to put in houserules to fix everything that work well. You have to really know what you're doing. So it's not a system that's very friendly to people just picking it up and running a game without anyone with prior knowledge.

It's not that hard to fix balance if you know what it's possible to achieve.

If you want a low powered fantasy game, just play E6. The dumpster fire classes (Fighter, Monk, Truenamer) are still pretty weak, but balance is actually quite good. Obviously, you miss out on a lot of content, but if you want a low powered fantasy game it beats the hell out of 4e and 5e.

If you want a higher powered game, just force everyone to gestalt with Sorcerer. Sorcerer/Fighter is worse than Sorcerer/Wizard, but it's much closer than Fighter is to Wizard.

If you're opposed to giving characters abilities, give weak characters DM pity items. Fighters suck, but if you give them their secret "Magic Sword" class feature they perform pretty well.

Or you could just force everyone to play characters that are functional.


*The several aspects of the game, including the use of 5-foot squares, and the way area spells are handled create issues with combat involving non-medium sized creatures. An example of the latter is that a creature can be deafened by a sound burst spell that only hit part of it's tail.

That's just something that happens when you abstract things. Is it really better to have to track which part of their space each creature's head (and hands and tail and feet and torso) is in?


*Monsters get skill points for hit dice that clearly only represent sheer physical size rather than any kind of experience. Skill points are in general too strongly tied to HD.

You've identified a real problem (monster HD scaling puts some things out of whack), but I think weakening the way HD scales skill points or BAB or whatever is a bad solution. Just force HD to CR and give monsters bigger piles of stats.


*Monster abilities (and many other things besides) are handled in an excessively formulaic way. Save DCs for Breath weapons for example are only dependent on the monster's HD and constitution score, with no consideration for the actual nature of the monster.

I don't know what you want here, and I can't imagine it's worth sacrificing rules consistency to achieve.


*The excessive time required to regain spells creates an absurd fifteen minute adventuring day that taxes versimilitude

Yes, but if you change that you have to change how some spells (i.e. planar binding) work, because spamming spells that create long term assets presents balance problems.

[WarKitty]

It's not that hard to fix balance if you know what it's possible to achieve.

If you want a low powered fantasy game, just play E6. The dumpster fire classes (Fighter, Monk, Truenamer) are still pretty weak, but balance is actually quite good. Obviously, you miss out on a lot of content, but if you want a low powered fantasy game it beats the hell out of 4e and 5e.

If you want a higher powered game, just force everyone to gestalt with Sorcerer. Sorcerer/Fighter is worse than Sorcerer/Wizard, but it's much closer than Fighter is to Wizard.

If you're opposed to giving characters abilities, give weak characters DM pity items. Fighters suck, but if you give them their secret "Magic Sword" class feature they perform pretty well.

Or you could just force everyone to play characters that are functional.

When I first started D&D, none of us had heard of a thing called "E6." None of us knew about the tier system for classes or the power differential between melee and magic. Our fighter took spring attack because she thought it was a really good feat. We barely knew what gestalt was or how it worked. And we ended up with a lot of balance problems that none of us had known would come up. We wanted a cool fantasy game that we could play with our friends.

And that's an issue.

[Jon_Dahl]

I think almost all the problems can be solved with houseruling. Fighters have been doing pretty well in my games because I show discrete favoritisism towards fighters. It's not about numbers or the rules, but about the story in whole.

What really makes me sad are the magical items.

Longsword +1. Who gives a damn? Nothing is more underwhelming than +1 magical items. Magical items are made so trivial and generic that there is no sense of wonder in them. Due to the pricing factors and WBL, I find the inherent triviality of magical items difficult to solve without making things complicated for myself.

[ryu]

I think almost all the problems can be solved with houseruling. Fighters have been doing pretty well in my games because I show discrete favoritisism towards fighters. It's not about numbers or the rules, but about the story in whole.

What really makes me sad are the magical items.

Longsword +1. Who gives a damn? Nothing is more underwhelming than +1 magical items. Magical items are made so trivial and generic that there is no sense of wonder in them. Due to the pricing factors and WBL, I find the inherent triviality of magical items difficult to solve without making things complicated for myself.

Simple. Most magic items are either some spell storage device or another, or an ongoing spell effect or derivative of same. Pretty much every magic item that exists? Commodities you can buy in stores or make yourself with simple step buy step rules. The more expensive stuff is still expensive obviously, but it can be bought for money. The problem solving stuff assumed in the books exists fully to the extent implied. The stuff you want to wow people with? Wondrous items with unique effects, and artifacts with unique or rule breakingly strong effects the likes of which can change the dynamic of an encounter even at high levels.

Make them rare too. THESE are the things you're willing to fight dragons, liches, and all manner of other horrific things for, and they don't even have to show up one in five times to be worth it. Simply owning one with the knowledge of the public will see your name whispered by the populace, and your life endangered by powerful would-be assassins. Bam. Done.

[Extra Anchovies]

I think almost all the problems can be solved with houseruling.

After a certain point, though, you're just playing a different game.


What really makes me sad are the magical items.

Longsword +1. Who gives a damn? Nothing is more underwhelming than +1 magical items. Magical items are made so trivial and generic that there is no sense of wonder in them. Due to the pricing factors and WBL, I find the inherent triviality of magical items difficult to solve without making things complicated for myself.

Gods, yes, this. In the early days, everyone wanted to play Aragorn, or King Arthur, or whoever, so they all got magic swords as loot, so the later editions were made with everyone having magic swords assumed as the norm, so magic swords are both dull and necessary. My favorite solution is to apply the Automatic Bonus Progression (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression), give each character one Wonder or two Prize Scaling Magic Items (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/scaling-magic-items), and reduce all treasure values to 20% printed value. A hoard of thousands of gold pieces is legitimately impressive, a high-level character can take on demons with table legs if necessary, and everyone has a custom magic item with its own name and history.

[Scorponok]

The biggest drawback of 3.5 is that it's an expert-level game that, for a long time, was the "default" starting RPG. Its main flaws (complexity and imbalance) are most apparent at low levels of mechanical knowledge; its main virtue (depth of options) doesn't really show up until you've invested a lot of time in learning about things in splatbooks.

I think this problem is greatly reduced if you can divide players into tiers, like sports rec league. The ones with tons of experience don't play with the newbies. Kinda like how there's a beginners hockey league vs. former collegiate beer league. :D

[WarKitty]

I think this problem is greatly reduced if you can divide players into tiers, like sports rec league. The ones with tons of experience don't play with the newbies. Kinda like how there's a beginners hockey league vs. former collegiate beer league. :D

Part of the trouble is even if you do this, at lower levels of experience you can end up with a lot of imbalance from players picking options that they don't know will unbalance the game.

[ExLibrisMortis]

I think this problem is greatly reduced if you can divide players into tiers, like sports rec league. The ones with tons of experience don't play with the newbies. Kinda like how there's a beginners hockey league vs. former collegiate beer league. :D
Problem is there aren't really trainers or coaches in D&D, so it's hard for op-fu to disseminate posthaste to locales of low-oppressure.

[ryu]

Problem is there aren't really trainers or coaches in D&D, so it's hard for op-fu to disseminate posthaste to locales of low-oppressure.

There may not be trainers, but there ARE resources. Anyone with an internet connection who wants to improve at D&D can look up any number of guides for various strategies, ask on forums such as this for an efficient series of steps to achieve what they want, and even broad categorical lists of what options are powerful and which aren't. If the subject desires to improve at the game and is willing to put any effort into it it's entirely doable. It will take time of course. It took me literal years to get where I am, but it wouldn't be a satisfying road to mastery if it was fast.

[Extra Anchovies]

That's all well and good, but sometimes you just want to sit down at a table and have fun killing monsters and finding treasure with your friends. The amount of system knowledge required to just play the game in the first place can be pretty daunting, let alone the amount you need to start making most of the classes functional. That's why I've largely switched to 5th for in-person play; I'm usually the biggest rules-nerd in the group by a fair margin, and there's been more than a few occasions where a new player's run into the brick wall that is 3.5's design flaws or limitations and gotten discouraged.

[ryu]

That's all well and good, but sometimes you just want to sit down at a table and have fun killing monsters and finding treasure with your friends. The amount of system knowledge required to just play the game in the first place can be pretty daunting, let alone the amount you need to start making most of the classes functional. That's why I've largely switched to 5th for in-person play; I'm usually the biggest rules-nerd in the group by a fair margin, and there's been more than a few occasions where a new player's run into the brick wall that is 3.5's design flaws or limitations and gotten discouraged.

Pick any martial initiator. Select your maneuvers known randomly and your maneuver by turn also randomly. You'll contribute competently in any group that isn't highly optimized. If you want to start getting better you can start by think about what maneuver is best THIS turn.

[Mordaedil]

You mean the part where they admit they didn't come up with anything? The part where it says, "XP awards for roleplaying are purely ad hoc. That is, no system exists for assigning Challenge Rating to bits of roleplaying."

Right. What's the problem with that? Roleplaying rewards isn't exactly predictable to reward.

[Echch]

Pick any martial initiator. Select your maneuvers known randomly and your maneuver by turn also randomly. You'll contribute competently in any group that isn't highly optimized. If you want to start getting better you can start by think about what maneuver is best THIS turn.

Alternatively, Crusader.

[Karl Aegis]

I don't see the point of most of what is included in the various bestiaries. Most of the stuff I can hardly see being used in a game at all. Sure, a displacer beast skeleton or a grick zombie might sound cool, but they don't really add anything to a plot. Lords of Madness did do some justice to Grell in particular that made me feel like they could have a place in a story, but 90% of what is out there is a giant space flea from nowhere. Some things don't even have defenses versus basic spells, particularly the Purple Worm, which don't really offer a challenge to low-mid level parties with content available from after the bestiary was released. And how many variants of "Big worm with more hit dice" do we even need?

And Undead. Most undead are described as outsiders with no Outer Plane to come from. Ghouls could be weirdos from the demi-plane of cannibals, but since the demi-plane of cannibals (or planar layer if you wanted it to be) wasn't in the game when ghouls were released, they were undead and given undead traits.

And class abilities that specifically interact with undead are gross. I wish undead were all outsiders instead so they could be banished to another plane instead of popping up wherever people are and magically don't kill everyone. They have over thirty hit dice, why are first level commoners even in this place?

[Extra Anchovies]

And how many variants of "Big worm with more hit dice" do we even need?

But this big worm spits acid! And this big worm is made of Jell-o! And this big worm cooks a mean omelette!

Yeah, 3.5 was definitely in need of better monster creation rules. A big list of possible monster abilities, a list of recommended choices for each creature type, and a means of allocating them (either point-based or one per X hit dice) would've covered most of the weird, barely-justified monsters.

Pathfinder Unchained's simple monster creation (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/monsters/index.html) is a pretty good place to start, and the regular (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/summoner/eidolons) and unchained (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/unchained-classes/summoner-unchained/eidolons-unchained) Eidolon systems are decent point-based systems.

That being said, the last few monster manuals got better in that regard. Rather than just "here's a big pile of random monsters", they started devoting more space to ecology, society, sample encounters, setting adaptation, and player-character use. The ten-page Dragons of the Great Game entry (MM5) adds a way to make individual dragons more unique, and the machinations of dragons competing in the Xorvintaal could easily form the basis for an entire campaign. The 22-page Mind Flayers of Thoon takes a classic monster and gives it a totally different spin, along with pretty much a full adventure path's worth of monsters.

Not all of the simpler entries are pointless; some, like the Skiurid, are creative in ways that a monster-building system couldn't encompass. But there's a lot of monsters which don't have any reason to exist; most demons and devils are random piles of vaguely-related SLAs and abilities, and the Spawn of Tiamat entry in MM4 is eighteen pages of garbage, most of which isn't any more interesting than taking something from MM1 and slapping Half-Dragon on it.

[Velaryon]

Most of my biggest issues have been covered by earlier posts, so I won't bother repeating my problems with class imbalance, the massive number of terrible options, item dependency, etc. But I've got a few more issues that I haven't seen discussed as much that I'd like to add.

1. The rules for playing monstrous characters are atrocious. It's like the game designers put them in there begrudgingly. "Fine, we'll let you have rules for a minotaur PC but we're going to make them suck so bad nobody will ever want to use them." I'm not saying I think this was a deliberate choice (though it won't take a lot of effort to convince me if someone makes that argument), but it's clear that little to no effort was made to actually make the monstrous PC rules useable and balanced with normal options.

In the vast majority of cases, the ECL rules are absurd and penalize monstrous characters far more than is warranted. Level adjustment tends to be prohibitively high, and monstrous hit dice rarely grant benefits equivalent to taking a level in a normal class. And no matter how magical the actual beings may be, there are no rules to link monstrous HD with spellcasting advancement (for example, dragon or fiend HD counting towards the level of spells you have access to as a caster).

As a result, relatively few monsters are viable as PC races without houseruling, and those that are usable are almost exclusively only as martial or maybe skillmonkey characters. There may be exceptions, but I'm not aware of them.


2. Lack of support for splatbook options. If a class is introduced in a splatbook, it gets almost no support from future releases. This is largely a limitation of print-based distribution: if your new Splatbook D contains a lot of new options for classes introduced in Splatbooks A, B, and C, then people who don't own those books will derive little benefit from Splatbook D and therefore probably won't be interested in buying it. Makes sense. But the unfortunate side-effect of that is that most classes introduced in non-core books saw few new options from future splatbooks. All those new spells introduced in different books add to the core classes' spell lists, but usually not to the warmage, favored soul, or hexblade. And the problem just gets worse the later in 3.5 a book came out. The poor duskblade gets nothing AFAIK from any other book. The same goes for the vast majority of prestige classes.

Feats at least would sometimes get reprinted, which allowed for a new feat requiring that one as a prerequisite. But that's generally the exception rather than the rule.

[ComaVision]

The amount of system knowledge required to just play the game in the first place can be pretty daunting, let alone the amount you need to start making most of the classes functional.

I really disagree with this, you only really need one person (preferably the DM) that knows the rules well.

I had a friend in town last week and we got talking about how he used to play D&D with me when he lived here. I offered to do a one-off before he left, and we ended up having two guys with very limited experience ("What's the difference between the mental stats again?") and one guy with zero prior experience. I helped them make their characters and we played a small dungeon, no problem. The guy with no prior experience actually did the best out of them, too.

Sure, this is totally anecdotal, but it's not an isolated incident. Of the dozen+ people that I've introduced to 3.5e, none with prior TTRPG experience, I've always just helped them make a character one-on-one and let them play. My explanation of the game isn't much more than, "You can do whatever you want, most actions' success are determined by the d20, and here are what the attributes mean