"Sales pitch" for 3.5? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

redking

2023-02-04, 02:03 AM

3.5e is a highly strategic and customizable version of Dungeons & Dragons that offers players a deeper and more nuanced character building experience. Unlike 5e, which focuses on simplicity and accessibility, 3.5e places a greater emphasis on player choice and decision-making.

One of the defining features of 3.5e is its extensive list of class options. In 3.5e, players can choose from a wide range of classes, each with its own unique skills, abilities, and strengths. This allows for greater customization and differentiation among characters, enabling players to build characters that truly reflect their individual playstyle and personality.

In addition to the wealth of class options, 3.5e also offers a vast array of race options. From traditional fantasy races like elves and dwarves, to more exotic options like tieflings and aasimar, players have the freedom to choose a race that aligns with their character concept and playstyle. This variety of race options allows for even greater customization and personalization of characters.

The spellcasting system in 3.5e is also much more extensive than in 5e. With hundreds of spells to choose from, spellcasters have the ability to create truly unique and powerful characters. The system is also highly adaptable, allowing players to modify and customize spells to fit their specific playstyle and character concept.

One of the defining features of 3.5e is its skills system. In 3.5e, each character has a set of skills that represent their non-combat abilities, such as their ability to climb, swim, or bluff. These skills are crucial for success in many non-combat situations and can greatly impact a character's effectiveness in the game. In 5e, skills are simplified and streamlined, with a smaller selection of options and less opportunity for customization. In contrast, 3.5e offers a more complex and nuanced skills system that allows players to tailor their characters to their preferred playstyle and role.

Another key feature of 3.5e is its combat system. The combat system in 3.5e is more complex and detailed than in 5e, allowing for greater strategic decision-making and customization. Players have more options for maneuvering, positioning, and attacking, leading to a more dynamic and tactical combat experience.

Overall, 3.5e offers a more strategic and customizable gaming experience for those who enjoy the challenge of character building and the thrill of deep, tactical gameplay. While 5e is focused on simplicity and accessibility, 3.5e provides a wealth of options and depth for those who want to dive deep into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. If you're a fan of complex character building, intricate spellcasting systems, and deep tactical combat, 3.5e is the perfect edition for you.

I asked an AI for the pitch, and this is what it gave me.

Zanos

2023-02-04, 02:04 AM

You'll have to explain to them how prepared casting works in 3e. In particular, that you can only cast a spell multiple times if you prepare it multiple times. That's pretty counterintuitive. … Or you could housrule casting to work like it does in 5e. That's actually what my current Pathfinder 1e group does. And that's basically 3e, take 3.
I don't think prepared casting is all that confusing; it's like a revolver. If you load one glitterdust, two invisibility, and three magic missiles. That's how many times you can do each of those things.

I think pathfinder Arcanists basically cast like 5e casters?

Metastachydium

2023-02-04, 07:07 AM

Explain to them that almost all 3e feats are much, much worse than 5e feats. They'll have to temper their expectations, or comb through countless books to find the few good ones. Or read a guide on their class. That last one is probably best.

Well, true, but 3.5 also has many, many more feats than 5e and characters get more of them (without the cost of losing ASIs).

I don't think prepared casting is all that confusing; it's like a revolver. If you load one glitterdust, two invisibility, and three magic missiles. That's how many times you can do each of those things.

Also, magic in 3.5 doesn't begin and end at prepared casting. Spells known spontaneous, fixed list spontaneous, the thing that Sha'irs do, spells retrieved spontaneous, at-will (invokers), "mana"-based (available for casters by way of the spell point systemUA), per encounter (initiators), auras… Sky's the limit, really. (Plus everyone gets metamagic.)

Notafish

2023-02-04, 01:21 PM

I'm also coming into 3.5 from 5e. There are some things that I really like about the system, some things that have been a rewarding learning curve, and some things that I just get annoyed by.

Like others have said, the skills customizability is a big appeal. The skill system lets everyone be an expert in their chosen field.

The relationship between attributes and gameplay is also very nice - all the stats matter, even Strength and (especially) Intelligence!

The additional tactical crunch is also appreciated. Touch AC and +2/-2 bonuses can be a little tricky to track, but it means that playing on a battlegrid is more than an aesthetic choice. Flanking rules are important and useful, rather than an optional rule that trivializes combat. The monsters also feel less abstracted - they aren't just AC, HP, and action options; they have specific vulnerabilities, defenses, and typologies. Similarly, the magic systems feel more realized. Compared to 5e, low-level 3.5 is less of a power fantasy and more like participating in a living fantasy world (I can't speak to the higher levels).

I have a much harder time with the rules-as-written set DCs for certain skills, especially those that deal with things that can be accomplished in the real world like Climb and Tumble. Features like tracking and trapfinding that bar all but a few select classes from full use of skills is also something that I just don't understand. My DM also loves having us make frivolous rolls (rolls with little consequence for success or failure), which I think 5e does a better job of discouraging.
The feat trees are also an acquired taste - I wish that the various martial feat lines just unlocked as your BAB increased rather than requiring the sacrifice of an entire slot for something like Dodge and hoping that the campaign lasts long enough for you to play an agile Spring Attacking rogue.
Finally, I don't like wealth-by-level, and if my group sticks with 3.p that we can find some houserules for gaining appropriate magic item effects without a magic mart, lucky loot rolls, or extensive bookkeeping.
Though I butt up hard against some of the above, I think these are all issues that can be addressed without abandoning the system, and the positives outweigh the negatives.

Maat Mons

2023-02-04, 01:35 PM

For DMs who keep asking for frivolous rolls, a good strategy is “taking 10.” Any time you’re not rushed or threatened, you can choose to treat yourself as having rolled a 10 on the d20 instead of actually rolling. It’s a rule.

DM: “Make a Use Rope check to see if you tie a firm knot.”
Player: “I take 10.”
DM: “But the DC to tie a firm knot is 10.”
Player: “Yes.”
DM: “But if you always take 10, you’ll never risk failing to tie a firm knot, except maybe in the heat of combat, even if you don’t have ranks in the skill.”
Player: “Yes.”

Metastachydium

2023-02-04, 01:53 PM

The feat trees are also an acquired taste - I wish that the various martial feat lines just unlocked as your BAB increased rather than requiring the sacrifice of an entire slot for something like Dodge and hoping that the campaign lasts long enough for you to play an agile Spring Attacking rogue.

(Hard to argue, but early Spring Attack, specifically, on a Rogue chassis is doable with Martial Rogue, the right race or flaws.)

Features like tracking and trapfinding that bar all but a few select classes from full use of skills is also something that I just don't understand.

(Technically, tracking is available for anyone; all you need is a feat and a good Survival modifier. As for trapfinding, I hear you, but this being 3.5, those select few classes are more numerous than one'd think: Rogue, Scout, Ninja, Spellthief, MountebankDComp, Beguiler, Factotum, Savant, Psychic Rogue, the absolutely delicious Trapkiller BarbarianDun (it's trapfinding, except instead of Search and Disable Device it uses Survival and attack rolls), Trap Expert RangerDun, True Thief LurkWeb and Cleric (because of course) with the right spells are just the base class options I can think of; there's also anything with Stonecunning (terms and conditions apply), PrCs (Chameleon, HoardstealerDrac, Nightsong InfiltratorCAdv, Stonedeath AssassinRoS, Temple RaiderCD, Silver Key…) and stuff.)

Malphegor

2023-02-04, 03:01 PM

You can buy magic items in this version. For gold. Most things have prices.

Zanos

2023-02-04, 05:19 PM

Also, magic in 3.5 doesn't begin and end at prepared casting. Spells known spontaneous, fixed list spontaneous, the thing that Sha'irs do, spells retrieved spontaneous, at-will (invokers), "mana"-based (available for casters by way of the spell point systemUA), per encounter (initiators), auras… Sky's the limit, really. (Plus everyone gets metamagic.)
I wouldn't hit a poor newbie with all of that at once, but yeah, if you find prepared casting alien, you can always be a Psion, which just uses a I Can't Believe It's Not MP system.

For DMs who keep asking for frivolous rolls, a good strategy is “taking 10.” Any time you’re not rushed or threatened, you can choose to treat yourself as having rolled a 10 on the d20 instead of actually rolling. It’s a rule.

DM: “Make a Use Rope check to see if you tie a firm knot.”
Player: “I take 10.”
DM: “But the DC to tie a firm knot is 10.”
Player: “Yes.”
DM: “But if you always take 10, you’ll never risk failing to tie a firm knot, except maybe in the heat of combat, even if you don’t have ranks in the skill.”
Player: “Yes.”
It really is goofy to play 5e and the lack of any DC guidelines results in the DM just spitballing DCs that have some failure chance for tasks that make no sense to fail.

thethird

2023-02-04, 05:29 PM

I think pathfinder Arcanists basically cast like 5e casters?

Spirit shaman did it earlier in 3.5. it also made people get really confused as to where to tier it due to it's casting being "weird" (at the time).

Powerdork

2023-02-04, 08:46 PM

Some of the most creative class design I've seen in a d20 system has been for 3.5 exactly, with magic systems that kick ass and fighting styles that can play around it.
The structure of the game is such that those can also be dived into alongside another course of development, making for fun blends of magical nonsense that can sometimes ruin goblins and stuff. If you like having crackling arcs of lightning around your fist as you leap over a bugbear and pummel it in the back, 3.5 gives you warrior stats for it instead of mage stats, to an extent.
You'll find or mail-order all sorts of zany magic items that give you options on what to do no matter where you fall on the sword-staff spectrum, and can try for all sorts of choice classes to pick up that build on what you do, even if you and your DM don't work together to homebrew something custom that gives you a good place in the setting and exactly the kind of things you want to get.

Saving throws are cut down into three kinds (Constitution-based Fortitude, Dexterity-based Reflex, and Wisdom-based Will), making it less of a coin flip of whether your class provides basic defense against a monster's special attack.

The best setting (Eberron)'s play materials were more-or-less all made for 3.5e, meaning no conversion is necessary. (Eberron owns.)

PoeticallyPsyco

2023-02-04, 09:15 PM

3.5 has an awesome variety of subsystems. Tired of choosing between being spellcasting and swinging a sword? How about a Crusader, giving you a random handful of your known powers at the start of the fight and then more as you wade into combat with your sword? How about a Totemist, channeling the souls of magical animals and choosing which of your powers is strongest each turn? How about a Warlock, for flavorful at-will abilities? How about a Dragon Fire Adept, modifying your breath weapon on the fly to suit your foes? And those are just base classes; there are countless prestige classes that you can multiclass into later in the game.

The skill system is well fleshed out, with DCs and modifiers for most things you can think of if you hate winging the DCs. Want to know how to go about building a ship, or navigating a forest, or climbing a mineshaft? Skill system has you covered. When not under pressure, you can Take 10 for an instant automatic roll of 10, or Take 20 for a slow 19 failures and one automatic roll of 20, if you don't want to waste time praying for RNJesus to bless you with a high roll.

Bayar

2023-02-05, 04:43 PM

(Hard to argue, but early Spring Attack, specifically, on a Rogue chassis is doable with Martial Rogue, the right race or flaws.)

(Technically, tracking is available for anyone; all you need is a feat and a good Survival modifier. As for trapfinding, I hear you, but this being 3.5, those select few classes are more numerous than one'd think: Rogue, Scout, Ninja, Spellthief, MountebankDComp, Beguiler, Factotum, Savant, Psychic Rogue, the absolutely delicious Trapkiller BarbarianDun (it's trapfinding, except instead of Search and Disable Device it uses Survival and attack rolls), Trap Expert RangerDun, True Thief LurkWeb and Cleric (because of course) with the right spells are just the base class options I can think of; there's also anything with Stonecunning (terms and conditions apply), PrCs (Chameleon, HoardstealerDrac, Nightsong InfiltratorCAdv, Stonedeath AssassinRoS, Temple RaiderCD, Silver Key…) and stuff.)

And Artificer. The class you need to study 3.5 at bachelor degree to play optimally.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-05, 11:28 PM

It really is goofy to play 5e and the lack of any DC guidelines results in the DM just spitballing DCs that have some failure chance for tasks that make no sense to fail.

I'd call this a good selling point for 3E/PF: even at first level, in your area of expertise you cannot fail your check for basic tasks. At high level, in your area of expertise you always make your check for superhuman tasks too.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-05, 11:28 PM

For DMs who keep asking for frivolous rolls, a good strategy is “taking 10.” Any time you’re not rushed or threatened, you can choose to treat yourself as having rolled a 10 on the d20 instead of actually rolling. It’s a rule.

Really "take 10" is the equivalent to 5e's "most thing shouldn't require a roll", just with the explicit numbers for things so that what doesn't require a roll can be determined objectively rather than depending on DM preference. You can even "take 1" most of the time, which will be sufficient for a character who is an expert in some skill to succeed at pretty much any normal task.

Features like tracking and trapfinding that bar all but a few select classes from full use of skills is also something that I just don't understand.

This is just a role protection thing. Trapfinding isn't really so much an extension of the Search and Disable Device skills as it is a reason to have a Rogue that happens to use those skills (in the same way that access to restoration and raise dead is a reason you'd want a Cleric). I don't think it is a bad idea in principle, but the number of classes with access to these abilities is too low, and it doesn't help that most of them fall into a single mechanical niche otherwise.

The feat trees are also an acquired taste - I wish that the various martial feat lines just unlocked as your BAB increased rather than requiring the sacrifice of an entire slot for something like Dodge and hoping that the campaign lasts long enough for you to play an agile Spring Attacking rogue.

This is a set of houserules (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)/Warriors_with_Style) that addresses that exact concern. I would recommend being cautious with it as a new-to-3e group, as it's explicitly intended for a balance point where people are playing full casters at a reasonable level of optimization, but a compromise like letting martials pick the one or two of these that fits their concept well does a good job of evening things out.

I wouldn't hit a poor newbie with all of that at once, but yeah, if you find prepared casting alien, you can always be a Psion, which just uses a I Can't Believe It's Not MP system.

The thing that works best with new players is having someone experienced talk over what they're interested in and point them towards a resource management system that does what they want. Learning how Soulmelds or Binding or Psionics or any other specific subsystem works isn't really any more work than learning how Vancian Casting works, but learning all of them well enough to make a decision can be rough.

ahyangyi

2023-02-06, 07:27 AM

A few selling points I can think of for 3.5/pf1e:

1. The rules are more of a "physical laws of a magical world" than "rules designed for fun combat gameplay".
2. As a result of 1, the monsters are built in the same way as the player character.
3. As a result of 1 and 2, the strengths and weaknesses of monsters are very pronounced.
4. Perhaps as a result of 1, the rules are broken, broken in many ways, and broken beyond repair.
5. Hence, we can invoke Snowbluff Axion with 4.

Eldan

2023-02-06, 08:09 AM

"Have you played 5e and feel like there is a lack of depth? Are you feeling like you would like your character to come online before hitting level 5? Do you find it silly that skills, abilities, saves, ac, to hit bonus, and nigh everything else is heavily bound, and numbers other than HP don't really increase? WELL DO I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU!"

Also, at least for me "do you wish that instead of one book per setting, there were instead 20 books describing that setting"? Though, that is even more so a selling point for AD&D, unless you're really into Eberron.

Quertus

2023-02-06, 02:35 PM

“Do you want more? More customization options in the form of more classes, skills, feats, spells? More variety of gameplay in the form of more diverse subsystems and greater range of power? More control in buying magic items and setting the balance range for the group? More skilled characters, able to actually succeed at tasks, thanks to things like unbounded accuracy and the “take 10” and “take 20” mechanics? More diversity not just in terms of build choices, but build complexity, from Lion Totem Barbarian Dungeon Crusher Leap Attack shock trooper to simply writing “Cleric” on your character sheet? More modules, source books, and other such content?”

“Do you want less? Less chance that your mighty character that you’ve invested months or years of your time into will be killed by a random goblin? Less chance that your GM’s concept of how hard it is to climb a tree or perform some simple task will ruin the game? Less “bleeding edge” unskilled GMs thanks to a system with 2+ decades under its belt?”

“With great power comes great responsibility, but if you want more rope, look no further than 3.5.” (Or, if you want even more fun, and more obfuscated language, look even further back in time to 2e.)

A totally unbiased description of 3e, brought to you by the Quertus Continuum.

Zanos

2023-02-06, 05:09 PM

“Do you want less? Less chance that your mighty character that you’ve invested months or years of your time into will be killed by a random goblin? Less chance that your GM’s concept of how hard it is to climb a tree or perform some simple task will ruin the game? Less “bleeding edge” unskilled GMs thanks to a system with 2+ decades under its belt?”
Mostly agreed with your posts, but I don't know that these assessments are accurate. 3.5 DMs are an esoteric lot these days, and finding a decent game is hard. If you don't already have a group I think you'd find some trouble getting a stable, quality game. My group for 2 years just broke up due to IRL stuff and I've had some pain finding anyone to play 3.5 with where I'd actually have fun. Speaking of which, if someone reading this needs a Wizard player...

And with regards to dying, while high level characters in 3.5 are basically immune to low level threats, 5e characters are basically immortal from level 1 unless something wipes the entire party. Bonus action healing and the lack of negative HP means that being downed isn't even a serious impediment to your combat performance, and the death saves system grantees that you will basically never die to a stray crit; the only way to die instantly in 5e is to take a single hit that deals damage in excess of double your maximum health.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-06, 09:24 PM

Mostly agreed with your posts, but I don't know that these assessments are accurate. 3.5 DMs are an esoteric lot these days, and finding a decent game is hard.

I think there's definitely something to be said for there being different pitches for "your group should switch to 3e" and "you should learn 3e and find a group that plays it". They're different things, and have different advantages and issues. You're spot-on that finding a 3.5 group can be gnarly, because it's been out of print for over a decade at this point and the people who have been playing continuously tend to have accumulated some idiosyncrasies.

GeoffWatson

2023-02-07, 12:27 AM

Do you hate balance?
Do you wish casters were more powerful?
Do you want thousands of feats, spells, powers, races, and prestige classes that have millions of unbalanced combinations?
Do you want unlimited power through unbalanced magic item rules?
Do you want to be able to make characters that can kill any monster in the MM in one round?
Do you want to be able to make characters that can cast unlimited wishes?

If so, then 3e is for you!!!!!!

Zanos

2023-02-07, 12:43 AM

Eldan

2023-02-07, 04:36 AM

Beni-Kujaku

2023-02-07, 08:03 AM

May I direct you to the quote in my sig? 3.5 is the system to do anything. And I mean that quite literally. You can make absolutely horrid characters, breaking campaigns and party cohesion by sheer power. You can make immensely useless characters with no action to speak of that will make you feel bad during the whole campaign. But you should make a character that is balanced with the rest of the party. And that, too, is possible. New players can make decent sorcerers, wizards or initiators. Experimented players could make overpowered sorcerers wizards or initiators, but they know people would like the game more if they made decent fighters, binders or incarnates. Or, hell, decent sorcerers, wizards and initiators, but with a fun gimmick that a new player couldn't have made to work. This is the power of 3.5 (and PF1).

In a game where optimizing is fun, where seeing a character do what you intend for them to do is fulfilling and with such a difference between a character built optimally and a casual one, class imbalance isn't a problem. It's an unintended fix. It gives the power to the player, and away from the book. Each party has its own power level, but more importantly each character feels unique.

Mordante

2023-02-07, 09:45 AM

You can craft your own magic items in 3.5.

But no one ever does that.

Mordante

2023-02-07, 09:46 AM

I'd also start at level 3 at most. Higher than that, new players can have trouble getting a grip on their character mechanics.

I'd always recommend starting at level 1 regardless of the game.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-07, 10:32 AM

If poor balance is all 5e players need, they don't even need to switch editions. :smalltongue:

If you pop over to the 5e forum, you will see people having the exact same discussions about how caster/martial balance falls apart at high levels and casters have too many options people have about 3e. May as well play the version where there's some actual variety.

I also never really agreed with the idea that it's combinations of stuff that are game-breaking. With a few exceptions of stuff that stacks too well (metamagic reduction, ubercharging), the broken stuff in 3e is just stuff that is broken. There's no combo that makes shapechange a problem, it's just that if you use shapechange to do the thing that it does that thing is broken. The reasonable criticism of all the options that exist in 3e is that most of them aren't really worth much in the final accounting, not that they combine to form some horrible voltron.

I'd always recommend starting at level 1 regardless of the game.

I think there is a case for starting at 3rd or 4th level. It increases the complexity, but 1st level characters in 3e are really vulnerable to bad RNG. There's absolutely an increase in complexity, particularly for casters, but the fact that no one is going to randomly die because an Orc rolled a crit is an advantage.

Telonius

2023-02-07, 10:35 AM

But no one ever does that.

That's really going to vary by table and campaign. It's an option that does require downtime (and because of that, DM buy-in), so it's something that isn't going to be a thing everywhere or under every circumstance. Personally I don't think I've ever been in an adventure (that wasn't a one-shot) where somebody wasn't crafting some sort of magic items. But I also tend to play in long-running 1-20 campaigns.

ahyangyi

2023-02-07, 10:50 AM

But no one ever does that.

That's a weird opinion. Surely not every table wants to be able to craft very unique homebrew stuff, but crafting with the many weapon and armor qualities and crafting wands with standard rules are very commonplace.

I'd always recommend starting at level 1 regardless of the game.

To be honest I'm a little annoyed at roleplaying a Swords Bard in 5e. She plays an instrument at level 1 and level 2, then at level 3 she suddenly switches to knife juggling. Note that this is mechanical, not fluff: she simply cannot use scimitars at all, and cannot cast spells with her scimitar at level 1 and 2. That makes the character background very annoying to write.

For 3e/pf, there's the annoyance that the gish characters can't get Power Attack yet due to the "BAB +1" prerequisite, which I tend to handwave.

Quertus

2023-02-07, 11:51 AM

But no one ever does that.

That's a weird opinion. Surely not every table wants to be able to craft very unique homebrew stuff, but crafting with the many weapon and armor qualities and crafting wands with standard rules are very commonplace.

Hmmm… it’s kinda obviously better to be a 10th level character with 100,000 gp worth of items than one with 50,000 (or to just not level for a while, and have 200,000+ in items), yet I’ve personally not seen it - almost nobody actually goes the crafting route. I could count on a single hand the number of characters I remember crafting in 3e, and, if my senility acts up, I might still have the fingers free to Thanos snap. Granted, in games I’m running, the PCs are hindered by the fact that they can’t change their XP total (because I’m too lazy to calculate XP for characters of different levels), so they have to purchase XP components, use Dark Craft XP, etc.

Contrast that to 2e, where a great many of the characters who advanced far enough to be able to craft did so, creating memorable items in the process.

For 3e/pf, there's the annoyance that the gish characters can't get Power Attack yet due to the "BAB +1" prerequisite, which I tend to handwave.

… but… you’re capped to a maximum delta of your BAB, so… Power Attack for 0? :smallconfused:

Telonius

2023-02-07, 12:31 PM

The real culprit for that sort of offense (at least for me) is Weapon Finesse. A Feat that's an obvious pick for a Rogue, that lots of Rogues end up taking, that would help them function in combat; but that they can't take until Level 3. (Doesn't help that Rogues are feat-starved to begin with; between Finesse, Craven, and the TWF tree, they need a lot of feat investment just to do their shtick).

Amidus Drexel

2023-02-07, 03:17 PM

I've mostly played and run 5e, and I want to try 3.5 more. Is there a "5e player's guide to 3.5" floating around? I'm looking for something to introduce a 5e table to 3.5, so they know what to expect, what's different, and so on.

I myself am decently familiar with the system, but haven't played in it much. Most of my table have never touched it.

Here's my sales pitch:

3.5 is a giant basket of mechanically unique options for building characters. If you want a game with depth during play and in character building, 3.5 is the system for you. It's possible to build very simple-to-play characters, and very complex-to-play characters, and those characters can both meaningfully contribute to the same party - meaning that someone who wants that extra complexity can have it, but someone who doesn't isn't forced to. If you have a character concept in mind, it's pretty likely that 3.5 supports it out of the box, or with minimal tweaking.

3.5 supports a wide variety of power levels, and has a (mostly) smooth gradient between them. As you move from low levels to mid levels, your build fleshes out a bit and you start to succeed in your area of expertise most of the time. As you advance through the mid levels, you gradually get more power and your strategy for tackling different situations change as new options open up to you. When you reach high levels, you're effectively playing demigods taking on problems out in the wider universe. If you like a "zero to hero" game, this is it.

-----
As for on-boarding folks familiar with 5e - many ideas translate pretty well (the base d20 system is still there, after all).

Some thoughts on how to onboard new people:
- 5e's archetype/subclass system roughly translates to prestige classes in 3.5, but prestige classes require chasing some prerequisites to enter. If your players have particular archetypes in mind, you might want to help guide them towards an appropriate prestige class early enough for them to meet prereqs (or allow rebuilds).
- Wealth and treasure can be a big part of a character build at high levels, and even at mid levels it makes a big difference. 3.5 assumes that you're regularly looting dungeons for cash, and that you spend most of that money on upgrading your gear. Some classes will fall off pretty hard around level 8 or so without any magic gear.
- Players that enjoy build-time complexity should gravitate towards martial characters, where multiclassing and cherry-picking strong synergies in feats/class features/etc. comes with a serious boost in effectiveness. Players that enjoy in-game complexity should pursue prepared casters. Players that dislike build-time complexity can easily get away with making a single-classed cleric or rogue and be effective for a long time. Players that dislike in-game complexity might want to lean towards a sorcerer or a fighter.
- Some skills are more useful than others, and 3.5 asks you to commit pretty hard to certain kinds of skills if you want to win opposed rolls with any frequency.

But no one ever does that.

The previous 3.5 game I ran had quite a bit of item-crafting. 2 of the party's spellcasters were in on it, one as a side-gig and one as a dedicated crafter - and that was a game without a huge amount of downtime. If those players had more downtime they would've crafted everything they could.

I'd always recommend starting at level 1 regardless of the game.

There's a pretty good argument to start 3.5 at level 3 or so (at minimum) if you want to avoid the highly lethal early-game combat. Level 3 is also around when the various classes start to really differentiate from each other, as you start the transition from low-level play to early mid-level play.

pabelfly

2023-02-07, 03:52 PM

So I've introduced a few new players to the game at multiple levels into a more experienced group as DM. These players typically had little to no experience with other tabletop games, even 5e. Here's my personal opinions, take them with a grain of salt.

If the character level is too high, even simple characters like Barbarian 1/Fighter X become difficult to get a grip on. (I use Barbarian/Fighter to start with because it's simple mechanically and will contribute extremely well in combat). Highest level I tried was level 6, because that was the current level we were playing at, not a great idea. You're teaching the player a bunch of rules like movement, attack rolls, different types of AC, skill checks, and so forth, but then you shove a whole bunch of extra rules from the character on top of that. If you start out at low level, you have few abilities, and the player has several sessions to become familiar with them before they expand their list of skills and abilities.

However, if the character level is at level 1, you have very swingy combat, which can give the completely wrong impression to a new player of the general style of game that 3.5 is. And if a player has some attachment to a character concept, telling them the character is dead and you'll need to come up with something else can be off-putting.

Lastly, more experienced players typically want at least a few levels and some money to play with when building a character. Level 1 character building can be boring for more experienced players, especially if they want to play a build concept that take a few levels to get online.

The good middle spot I've found for all of this is level 3.

ahyangyi

2023-02-07, 04:46 PM

… but… you’re capped to a maximum delta of your BAB, so… Power Attack for 0? :smallconfused:

Ah, Pathfinderism leaked in.

ericgrau

2023-02-07, 11:16 PM

5e is an iPhone, 3.5e is Linux. Who wants to recompile your character's kernel?

But seriously there are miles more options in 3.5e, for better or for worse. If 5e has gotten boring and repetitive, 3.5e would be a great way to dig much deeper. I'd start the players with PHB and maybe another book or two, and a low level. Then as you get used to it you can try more. As a DM watch out for the really broken tricks, but usually power creep is relative and depends on preference. And the really broken stuff is usually obvious even on the surface, if not questionably legal as well.

TotallyNotEvil

2023-02-07, 11:42 PM

Ah, Pathfinderism leaked in.

Of course, we can't forget to mention the nicest thing about 3.5: it led to PF 1e :smallwink:

animorte

2023-02-08, 12:50 AM

But no one ever does that.
You have been given several responses to this. I'll take it in another direction entirely... Ever does what? Make magic items? How does one even do that? What even are magic items? :smalltongue: (It's funnier to me considering that I actually played about a year after first starting without ever seeing a magic item outside of a masterwork weapon.)

I have pitched D&D (sometimes 3.5e, more specifically) to being able to do literally anything. In fact, I told my nephew (who likes Jurassic park, Pokemon, and How to train your dragon) that we could create him a character that collects and battles different creatures, most of which are dinosaurs or dragons, all that he can befriend, improve with, and cast into battle endlessly.

That's a habit of mine. I'll figure out what my friends favorite characters are then teach them how they can play that character fairly accurately through this game.

ahyangyi

2023-02-08, 01:44 AM

RexDart

2023-02-08, 08:31 AM

I don't think prepared casting is all that confusing; it's like a revolver. If you load one glitterdust, two invisibility, and three magic missiles. That's how many times you can do each of those things.

I think it is confusing... without this analogy, which makes total sense. Thanks!

The Vancian stuff about memorizing and forgetting (which apparently has never been all that true to what Vance described in the first place) has always been counter-intuitive and weird, but "choose a load-out" is much easier to grasp.

Ignimortis

2023-02-08, 09:07 AM

Of course, we can't forget to mention the nicest thing about 3.5: it led to PF 1e :smallwink:

You mean the version of 3.5 without all the fun and mechanically unique classes? The version of 3.5 whose only major contribution to the 3.PF smorgasbord was more cohesive 2/3 casters (mostly gishes)?

I acknowledge the (mostly small) fixes and tuneups PF1 made to the 3.5 engine, but it also ditched a lot of what I'd consider the best stuff ever printed for D&D in general.

pabelfly

2023-02-08, 09:22 AM

You mean the version of 3.5 without all the fun and mechanically unique classes? The version of 3.5 whose only major contribution to the 3.PF smorgasbord was more cohesive 2/3 casters (mostly gishes)?

I acknowledge the (mostly small) fixes and tuneups PF1 made to the 3.5 engine, but it also ditched a lot of what I'd consider the best stuff ever printed for D&D in general.

It's not difficult to port over 3.5 stuff to Pathfinder, if you have particular classes you enjoy.

From my time playing Pathfinder, it was a lot simpler to build a character, and harder to find bad class options (ie, lower than T4), but there's something special about finding a weird or bad class option in 3.5 and somehow finding the right tools and adding just enough cheese to make it work that Pathfinder never quite captured for me.

Ignimortis

2023-02-08, 09:53 AM

It's not difficult to port over 3.5 stuff to Pathfinder, if you have particular classes you enjoy.

From my time playing Pathfinder, it was a lot simpler to build a character, and harder to find bad class options (ie, lower than T4), but there's something special about finding a weird or bad class option in 3.5 and somehow finding the right tools and adding just enough cheese to make it work that Pathfinder never quite captured for me.

It's the typical issue with porting stuff - it's basically 3PP content or homebrew at this point, and not all GMs like that sort of thing. DSP brought in amazing 3PP content based on some of the better 3.5 designs, but it isn't first-party, so it gets some derision and stink-eye from GMs - even some of those who do allow it eventually.

As for the ease of building characters, I never really noticed a large difference myself. Still 3.5 at the core, so the same principles apply.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-08, 10:54 AM

5e's archetype/subclass system roughly translates to prestige classes in 3.5, but prestige classes require chasing some prerequisites to enter. If your players have particular archetypes in mind, you might want to help guide them towards an appropriate prestige class early enough for them to meet prereqs (or allow rebuilds).

Honestly, waving non-core PrC prereqs is a good change for 3e, and you should just do that. There's no reason to make players, particularly new players, plan out the feats or skills they need to get into a PrC. It's fine if all you need to do to become a Mage of the Arcane Order is be a 5th level arcane caster.

It's also worth pointing out that archetypes aren't exactly analogous to PrCs. If you're trying to translate over your Eldritch Knight to 3e, you're probably better off just playing a Duskblade or (in PF) a Magus than a Wizard/Fighter/Eldritch Knight.

- Players that enjoy build-time complexity should gravitate towards martial characters, where multiclassing and cherry-picking strong synergies in feats/class features/etc. comes with a serious boost in effectiveness. Players that enjoy in-game complexity should pursue prepared casters. Players that dislike build-time complexity can easily get away with making a single-classed cleric or rogue and be effective for a long time. Players that dislike in-game complexity might want to lean towards a sorcerer or a fighter.

I think in general you don't really need to worry about providing new players with high build-complexity options. Indeed, your issue is probably going to be to find options that aren't complex, especially if your goal is to have them build their own characters for a campaign that is at any meaningful level of optimization. IMO the best classes for new players are the ToB martials or fixed-list casters, which are very forgiving to build while playing at a high level of efficiency. I would tend not to recommend Sorcerer or Fighter in those circumstances, because while they are simple to play they can be quite difficult to build well, which is not a combination I think has a broad appeal.

However, if the character level is at level 1, you have very swingy combat, which can give the completely wrong impression to a new player of the general style of game that 3.5 is. And if a player has some attachment to a character concept, telling them the character is dead and you'll need to come up with something else can be off-putting.

Lastly, more experienced players typically want at least a few levels and some money to play with when building a character. Level 1 character building can be boring for more experienced players, especially if they want to play a build concept that take a few levels to get online.

The good middle spot I've found for all of this is level 3.

For what it's worth, I do think this is an area where 5e is genuinely better than 3e. 1st level not being highly lethal, but still having reduced complexity, makes it a good way to introduce new players and give them some time to play with a class's basic kit before picking an archetype at 3rd level.

5e is an iPhone, 3.5e is Linux. Who wants to recompile your character's kernel?

This is actually a really good analogy, because you can install Linux in a way that is actually pretty trivial. The only part that's really annoying is that modern Windows doesn't like to let you get into the BIOS, which you need to do to change the OS. But the install is plug-and-play if you're doing Mint or Ubuntu or any other distribution people actually use. It's just that you can, once Linux has been installed, do things you cannot do on any other OS.

As for the ease of building characters, I never really noticed a large difference myself. Still 3.5 at the core, so the same principles apply.

PF turns up the amount of fiddly bits to a very large degree. Something like the Barbarian -- which in 3.5 is one of the simplest classes in the game -- has a bunch of Rage Powers and Archetypes to choose from. I think in some ways the "you can't get into it without getting a degree" criticism is more applicable for PF than 3.5.

Amidus Drexel

2023-02-08, 11:28 AM

I acknowledge the (mostly small) fixes and tuneups PF1 made to the 3.5 engine, but it also ditched a lot of what I'd consider the best stuff ever printed for D&D in general.

I don't necessarily disagree with you here, but I'd like to point out that PF's various patches to 3.5 were the selling point (along with rough compatibility) for a lot of people.

Honestly, waving non-core PrC prereqs is a good change for 3e, and you should just do that. There's no reason to make players, particularly new players, plan out the feats or skills they need to get into a PrC. It's fine if all you need to do to become a Mage of the Arcane Order is be a 5th level arcane caster.

I don't really have an issue with prereqs, but I also wouldn't have an issue bending or discarding them if one of my players wanted them either. This is a good recommendation.

I think in general you don't really need to worry about providing new players with high build-complexity options. Indeed, your issue is probably going to be to find options that aren't complex, especially if your goal is to have them build their own characters for a campaign that is at any meaningful level of optimization. IMO the best classes for new players are the ToB martials or fixed-list casters, which are very forgiving to build while playing at a high level of efficiency. I would tend not to recommend Sorcerer or Fighter in those circumstances, because while they are simple to play they can be quite difficult to build well, which is not a combination I think has a broad appeal.

I think we should make a distinction between "players new to TTRPGs" and "players new to 3.5, but familiar with modern D&D".

Players new to TTRPGs are going to struggle with ToB martials - even though the power floor is high, there's a lot to remember in-game and it's hard to build those characters at higher than level 1 without a lot of planning (particularly with maneuver prereqs and swapping). Those players probably should be playing classes where you can just plug and play. Fixed-list casters are decent for that on average, though the players are going to have to be willing to look up what spells do constantly for the first few sessions (and at every level where they learn new spells).

I'm not concerned about new players building their PCs all alone - I basically expect to help my players at chargen whenever I introduce a new system to play. Even a small amount of DM involvement will get a single-classed fighter or sorcerer to be reasonably effective without requiring new-to-TTRPG players to deal with additional in-game complexity.

Players familiar with modern D&D (but not 3.5) absolutely can handle that complexity, but they can also handle other kinds of build-time/game-time complexity too, if they want. Hence my suggestions.

For what it's worth, I do think this is an area where 5e is genuinely better than 3e. 1st level not being highly lethal, but still having reduced complexity, makes it a good way to introduce new players and give them some time to play with a class's basic kit before picking an archetype at 3rd level.

Agreed. 5e starts PCs on a slightly higher power level (though not by much), and it scales slower.

ericgrau

2023-02-08, 12:14 PM

Most Linux distributions do not ask the user to recompile the kernel. I happen to be using one that does (Gentoo Linux), but then I'm the oddball...

And that's why this guy plays 3.5e :P. J/k.

Snowbluff

2023-02-08, 01:59 PM

It's the typical issue with porting stuff - it's basically 3PP content or homebrew at this point, and not all GMs like that sort of thing. DSP brought in amazing 3PP content based on some of the better 3.5 designs, but it isn't first-party, so it gets some derision and stink-eye from GMs - even some of those who do allow it eventually.

As for the ease of building characters, I never really noticed a large difference myself. Still 3.5 at the core, so the same principles apply.

I will say that PF1 does some stuff I like (favored class bonuses are cool), however it completely lacks most of the content that makes 3.5 unique and interesting outside of core. Feats kinda suck in PF1, at least compared to 3.5. The ones that were ported over from core were nerfed in some inexplicable ways. Feat chains are longer to make sure you're not having too much fun with having more feats.

Saying we can port the good stuff into PF1 is like saying Skyrim is good because it's moddable. True, if you like that sort of thing, but that's not necessarily a credit to the design if you found the base game insufficient. The people I know who originate their play in PF1 rather than 3.5 universally use Spheres and Path of War to give it some of the extra variety that is simply missing, and even then you're still out the Tome of Magic Classes and a lot of hter material.

I do run the occasional 3.5 one shot to showcase the system to other people from other systems, mostly just to give them a sample of what it was like. To broaden their horizons, and applying some of the building ideas with 5e lead to my 5e players mashing together newer martial builds that they found more interesting (my 5e game currently has no full casters). As others have stated, I think the customization is the biggest deal and the players have enjoyed it to that extent. To Amidus's point, I don't think it's as unapproachable as one may think, so I would be able to point to handbooks or to help with my direct intervention.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-08, 02:03 PM

Feats kinda suck in PF1, at least compared to 3.5.
Remind me again, which is the system that has a feat that lets you use Turn Undead on hippopotami? :smallamused: Yep, that's 3.5.

Feats in 3.5 aren't better. The top ten feats are better, because that's all charop ever talks about; but overall 3.5 has easily hundreds of feats that are utterly forgettable and rarely if ever used.

pabelfly

2023-02-08, 02:25 PM

As for the ease of building characters, I never really noticed a large difference myself. Still 3.5 at the core, so the same principles apply.

The skills are a heck of a lot easier - no half-points, and if a skill was once a class skill for you, it always will be, but that wasn't what I was thinking of.

I was thinking more along the lines of how characters get built to match a concept. PF1 encourages straight builds, perhaps choosing an archetype that suits the style of play you want with that class, while 3.5 encourages prestige classes and multiclass builds. Not that you can't do multiclass builds in PF or straight builds in 3.5, but that's been my general observation with the two systems.

Remind me again, which is the system that has a feat that lets you use Turn Undead on hippopotami? :smallamused: Yep, that's 3.5.

Feats in 3.5 aren't better. The top ten feats are better, because that's all charop ever talks about; but overall 3.5 has easily hundreds of feats that are utterly forgettable and rarely if ever used.

See this thread for a lot of other feats that you can take to make your character worse than what it was before you took the feat: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?649141-Feats-amp-Abilities-That-Actively-Make-You-Worse

Snowbluff

2023-02-08, 02:25 PM

Remind me again, which is the system that has a feat that lets you use Turn Undead on hippopotami? :smallamused: Yep, that's 3.5.

Feats in 3.5 aren't better. The top ten feats are better, because that's all charop ever talks about; but overall 3.5 has easily hundreds of feats that are utterly forgettable and rarely if ever used.

Yes. I'll say wholeheartedly that a lot of 3.5 feats. Emphatically so. I wouldn't say that it's a top 10 list that is better, however. There are simply more feats worth mentioning. Pathfinder has the same issue of a lot of feats being awful, and they went out of their way to make some old feats worse as well. Sure, turning hippopotami is a more niche feat related to turn undead, but there's at least a dozen in the category of divine/domain/turning adjacent feats in 3.5 that I would consider taking before a Pathfinder One... uh... one.

PF1 is like a pot that calls the kettle black, but itself can't hold water.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-08, 02:32 PM

Yes. I'll say wholeheartedly that a lot of 3.5 feats. Emphatically so. I wouldn't say that it's a top 10 list that is better, however. There are simply more feats worth mentioning. Sure, turning hippopotami is a more niche feat related to turn undead, but there's at least a dozen in the category of divine/domain/turning adjacent feats in 3.5 that I would consider taking before a Pathfinder One... uh... one.

As an outside observer who could be an audience for this pitch, "it has more crap to wade through to find the pearls, but it has more pearls" isn't exactly a good thing.

I'd much rather have 10[1] options, all of which work well or at least are ok for someone and the target audience is obvious rather than 100 options, of which 12 work well (or at least are ok for someone and the target audience is obvious) and 88 of which are some varying degree of crap, outright brokenness, traps, or otherwise just badly written.

Heck, I'd rather have 10 options that all work well over 100 options that work well where 50 of them work well. The introduction of even a single trap or crap option poisons the batch tremendously, along the "one bad apple" principle. A developer intentionally (or by reckless disregard) printing something bad is a significant flaw. And 3e is full of such things just due to the sheer volume of splats splatted out without concern or editing.

[1] numbers not designed to be reflective of either 3e or PF1, just designed to show relative valuations here. All numbers are subjective and should be taken as such.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-08, 02:34 PM

Snowbluff

2023-02-08, 02:43 PM

Heck, I'd rather have 10 options that all work well over 100 options that work well where 50 of them work well. The introduction of even a single trap or crap option poisons the batch tremendously, along the "one bad apple" principle. A developer intentionally (or by reckless disregard) printing something bad is a significant flaw. And 3e is full of such things just due to the sheer volume of splats splatted out without concern or editing.

[1] numbers not designed to be reflective of either 3e or PF1, just designed to show relative valuations here. All numbers are subjective and should be taken as such.

The same is true, if not more so of PF1. It's a lot of the same people who were writing a lot of the terrible feats in 3.5(these are the dragmag writers), and the power budget per feat is much smaller by design(with styles and improved x feats and the like being split as a result), with that the number of crap options is higher, the total feat volume is just as large, and the editing is just as laughable. If you hate 3.5's feats, there's a derivative system that went out of its way to be worse at that by design.

Note I never said there was more feats in 3.5 in my statement. I don't think that's necessarily the case like it was when PF1 was in its infancy. I said "there are more feats worth mentioning." I didn't say there was more turn undead based feats, I said there were more "that I would consider taking before a [PF1 one]."

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-08, 02:50 PM

The same is true, if not more so of PF1. It's a lot of the same people who were writing a lot of the terrible feats in 3.5(these are the dragmag writers), and the power budget per feat is much smaller by design(with styles and improved x feats and the like being split as a result), with that the number of crap options is higher, the total feat volume is just as large, and the editing is just as laughable. If you hate 3.5's feats, there's a derivative system that went out of its way to be worse at that by design.

Note I never said there was more feats in 3.5 in my statement. I don't think that's necessarily the case like it was when PF1 was in its infancy. I said "there are more feats worth mentioning." I didn't say there was more turn undead based feats, I said there were more "that I would consider taking before a [PF1 one]."

I don't disagree that PF1 has this problem in spades as well, and this whole issue is one significant reason why neither 3.5 or PF1 are on my list of possibilities.

But from where I stand, both of you are fighting over which one has more pearls when both involve wading through a veritable mountain of utter crap to find those pearls. And that such a profusion of crap is, if not directly intentional[1], at least a necessary side effect of the business model. "He does it too" (or even "he does it worse") doesn't constitute an inviting answer when there are other systems that try to avoid it.

[1] and I'm not sure that it isn't intentional, given the sentiments expressed by developers about system mastery and separating those that know from those that don't. To me, that's abhorrent in a developer.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-08, 02:54 PM

But from where I stand, both of you are fighting over which one has more pearls when both involve wading through a veritable mountain of utter crap to find those pearls.
Actually, I'm agreeing with you that this is a weak point of both games (and for that matter, of 4E and PF2); whereas SB is arguing that this is specifically not a problem of 3E. Somehow.

I'm not sure that it isn't intentional, given the sentiments expressed by developers about system mastery and separating those that know from those that don't. To me, that's abhorrent in a developer.
I know what developer quote you're talking about, and I hope for that developer's sake that it was a hastily-conceived "cover his own ass" type of statement. Because I agree with you that it would be abhorrent in a developer otherwise.

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-08, 03:01 PM

I know what developer quote you're talking about, and I hope for that developer's sake that it was a hastily-conceived "cover his own ass" type of statement. Because I agree with you that it would be abhorrent in a developer otherwise.

If it was a CYOA statement, it's one that I've heard echoed with approval from multiple proponents of both 3e and PF1e. Which doesn't say good things about him or the general community of people who are still active advocates for the game.

The fact that he'd think that that was an effective CYOA statement means he believed (in this hypothetical) that the community would buy it. Which is flattering to neither.

Snowbluff

2023-02-08, 03:02 PM

I don't disagree that PF1 has this problem in spades as well, and this whole issue is one significant reason why neither 3.5 or PF1 are on my list of possibilities.

But from where I stand, both of you are fighting over which one has more pearls when both involve wading through a veritable mountain of utter crap to find those pearls. And that such a profusion of crap is, if not directly intentional[1], at least a necessary side effect of the business model. "He does it too" (or even "he does it worse") doesn't constitute an inviting answer when there are other systems that try to avoid it.

[1] and I'm not sure that it isn't intentional, given the sentiments expressed by developers about system mastery and separating those that know from those that don't. To me, that's abhorrent in a developer.

Ah okay. I see what you mean now. I was comparing 3.5 and PF1, not these to 5e.

Yeah if I had to give advice on how to handle that, I would point to specific books instead. I would make it clear that if I was pitching 3.5, I would say that later feat categories are better designed, and which books are better than others. As you say, what's intentional can be hard to sus out, but I wouldn't say I would like 3.5 if it weren't for ToB, ToM, Incarnum, and I find the design more consistently good (or at least interesting) outside of one article of note. I think their may have been a philosophical change at one point to grow the game conceptually that I think PF1 and 5e ended up missing out on (for better or for worse).

PhoenixPhyre

2023-02-08, 03:09 PM

Ah okay. I see what you mean now. I was comparing 3.5 and PF1, not these to 5e.

Yeah if I had to give advice on how to handle that, I would point to specific books instead. I would make it clear that if I was pitching 3.5, I would say that later feat categories are better designed, and which books are better than others. As you say, what's intentional can be hard to sus out, but I wouldn't say I would like 3.5 if it weren't for ToB, ToM, Incarnum, and I find the design more consistently good (or at least interesting) outside of one article of note. I think their may have been a philosophical change at one point to grow the game conceptually that I think PF1 and 5e ended up missing out on (for better or for worse).

On the matter of ToB, ToM, and Incarnum...I don't know ToM so I won't comment. ToB seems like a duct tape patch job on the hole in the side of the aquarium. I mean...it works. But I wouldn't call it interesting. It's basically "ok, since spell-casting is the only thing that matters...we'll make martials into pseudo-spell-casters. But not say that's what we're doing." Sure, different recovery and all that. But 9 levels of "spells" that you learn every second level and which have a caster level, come in schools, have to be prepared/learned individually...that has all the hallmarks of spell-casting. Don't get me wrong. It's a mechanically-fine patch. But it's a patch made necessary to work around the fundamentally-broken core system.

Incarnum is the epitome of what I dislike about 3e. The fluff? That's fine. The crunch? Boat-loads of small, fiddly numbers. Most of which don't really add up right unless you're abusing things or dipping in to force loopholes in other (also broken) things. This is basically the reverse of ToB for me--the fluff is interesting, but the mechanics suck. Where ToB has boring fluff but the mechanics are actually workable (if totally derivative).

RandomPeasant

2023-02-08, 09:14 PM

I don't necessarily disagree with you here, but I'd like to point out that PF's various patches to 3.5 were the selling point (along with rough compatibility) for a lot of people.

Honestly the patches are an anti-selling point for me. PF makes a bunch of fiddly changes to 3.5 (for instance: the Sorcerer's hit die goes from d4 to d6). But it doesn't really change the fundamental problems with the system, so I'm left with having to learn a bunch of awkward conversions to use stuff that could just be 3.5-compatible.

Players new to TTRPGs are going to struggle with ToB martials - even though the power floor is high, there's a lot to remember in-game and it's hard to build those characters at higher than level 1 without a lot of planning (particularly with maneuver prereqs and swapping).

I'll be honest with you, I don't think there's any class in any game that a completely new-to-TTRPGs player could build at even mid levels without significant help. It's just not an important design goal, because if you are starting off a new player you are either A) going to be starting them off in a new campaign that can just jolly well start them at 1st level or B) going to be introducing them to an existing group that can help them with any rough edges. I won't claim that complexity matters zero in those cases, but I don't think a ToB martial is much worse than a traditional one.

Fixed-list casters are decent for that on average, though the players are going to have to be willing to look up what spells do constantly for the first few sessions (and at every level where they learn new spells).

A good cheatsheet helps a lot with this. Which, admittedly, you can call a flaw of 3e for not providing in a first-party way.

fighter or sorcerer

I can give you Fighter, but if someone is capable of playing a Sorcerer, I don't really think a ToB class is particularly more complex. Particularly not a Swordsage.

I'd much rather have 10[1] options, all of which work well or at least are ok for someone and the target audience is obvious rather than 100 options, of which 12 work well (or at least are ok for someone and the target audience is obvious) and 88 of which are some varying degree of crap, outright brokenness, traps, or otherwise just badly written.

There's this weird thing that happens when people compare 3.5 to other editions where, compared to internal debates about 3.5, the figure and the ground become inverted. It is not, in fact, that there are 12 good options and 88 bad options. It's that there are 95 fine options and 5 character-defining options. And if you talk about those character-defining options to other people who play 3e, they will often tell you you're a cheesey little **** for using them. Seriously, people on this forum now complain that DMM: Persistent isn't as-intended. Imagine how it was to argue about this back when 3e was current.

From the perspective of most people who play 3e, and certainly most people who are new to 3e, the way feats work is that you can just pick one and it's mostly whatever. The difference between your Beguiler getting Educated or Track, both of which are kind of mediocre, is not very big. The difference between your Beguiler getting Educated and Toughness, which is pretty crap, is also not very big. The difference between your Beguiler getting Educated and Arcane Disciple, which is pretty nice, is also not very big. It's not until you're talking about Educated v Ancestral Relic (Runestaff) that you get a big difference. If take a Beguiler, put your high stat in INT, and make every other build choice randomly, you will get a character that is playable in the overwhelming majority of games and an MVP in many of them. Most feats are just minor fluff options that you can take to make your character do a specific thing. They really don't matter. It's just that some of them are Song of the White Raven, and are the equivalent of a 5e archetype.

And things extend with only minor increases in required system mastery pretty smoothly from the Beguiler. It's true that, as a Sorcerer, you do need to make sure you take some spells that do things in combat. But honestly I've never seen anyone produce a Sorcerer without any spells that do things in combat, so I can't really credit that as a failure case. A Warblade or Spirit Shaman or Warlock or Cleric is similar. It honestly doesn't matter if your domains are Luck and Spell (very good) or two nouns you thought were neat, you're still a Cleric. You do eventually get down to classes like the Fighter or the Rogue that require attention to perform, but even those are really quite workable in the average game, where even being slightly underpowered isn't all that noticeable because most of your fights are "4v1 wail on a monster the DM isn't playing very well". It's not until you get to the real no-hopers like the Monk and the Truenamer that the average player will start to see levels of imbalance they can't ignore.

It is true that if you want to play 3e in the way many people on the forum discuss 3e, that will take a good deal of system mastery. But, as I said at the beginning, most people don't actually play it that way, and when we have this argument among ourselves the struggle is to convince people that the high-OP version of 3e is legitimate, not that the low-OP version exists at all. And while that high-OP gameplay involves certain complexities, they can often be soften for new players, and they allow you to tell stories and play characters 5e simply cannot replicate. That is why 3e is the superior system.

Very true. This has the important difference that usually if you have a particular concept in mind, in PF you just pick an archetype and you're all set at level one; whereas in 3.5 you have to slowly build up to the prerequisites of a particular combination of prestige classes, and by the time you're level 12 or 15 or so your character will finally come online and do what it's supposed to. The upside of that: it's much more fun in forum debate. The downside: actual gameplay only rarely gets that high.

I think this is very much overstated. The stuff you can't do until 15th level is stuff that is high level, not the sort of thing PF archetypes handle out of the box. In my experience, when you dig down into them, claims like this resolve to very idiosyncratic standards like "I want to be able to play a Gish that specifically takes a sword action and a separate spell action in the same round" not "I want to play a Gish that fights with both sword and spell at reasonable levels of effectiveness".

It's basically "ok, since spell-casting is the only thing that matters...we'll make martials into pseudo-spell-casters. But not say that's what we're doing." Sure, different recovery and all that. But 9 levels of "spells" that you learn every second level and which have a caster level, come in schools, have to be prepared/learned individually...that has all the hallmarks of spell-casting.

I will give you credit for at least articulating the similarities you see. Most people just go "they're casters with swords!" like that's self-evident. But most of these similarities are just absurdly overbroad, or things that are objectively good design.

Yes, maneuvers come in nine levels like spells do and you get them at the same character levels. That's good. Having everyone upgrade their abilities at the same time makes balance much easier to achieve. The fact that the Binder gets collections of abilities she can combine and change from day to day is good and adds a great deal to the game. The fact that the Binder arbitrarily has eight levels of Vestiges instead of nine and gets a feat that lets her (sorta mostly) jump up two levels is bad and adds almost nothing.

Yes, maneuvers come in schools. Again, that's good. It's good for flavor, because people like to be able to say their character is a "master of the Frenzied Weevil Style" or a "Noctomantic Adept" or a "Steam-spec'd Gadgeteer". That adds character definition, and creates recognizable concepts. These are good things. It's good mechanically, because it (assuming you manage to make your schools coherent, which 3e is admittedly not great at) provides guiderails to allow players to build mechanically coherent characters. If the Stone Dragon discipline gives you the abilities you want to build a low-mobility tank, all you need to tell a player who wants a low-mobility tank is "take a bunch of Stone Dragon stuff", not "take these specific maneuvers which I have derived for you from the full list of maneuvers by a process you will not be able to replicate without reading the entire book and understanding how all the options fit together". Schools are specifically a counter to your concerns about needing to "wade through crap".

Yes, maneuvers scale based off your level. What exactly do you imagine as an alternative here? Abilities that don't scale at all? How does that fit into a system where character are expected to scale? Abilities that scale based off something else? That's either level scaling with extra steps, or breaks the second someone figures out how to juice whatever you're scaling off, or breaks in the other direction when they forget to invest, or more than one. Seriously, we had the Truenamer try to avoid direct level scaling. It was awful. The game is supposed to scale with level, classes should just do that and not try to be clever.

Yes, you select maneuvers individually. But again, what do you imagine the alternative to be? The available buckets for "things you select" are "one at a time", "in a bundle", and "you don't select anything". That gives us three types of classes, and makes even 5e's limited selection of options quadruply redundant. And once you get past "it's a thing you select", there's really not a lot of similarity to casters. ToB classes have a limited selection of maneuvers known, and prepare a limited number of them each day. And they have a second pool of stances known. That's not really similar to any published caster. They also don't have any notion of levels or slots in their preparation. You've either prepared elder mountain hammer or you haven't, there's no notion of preparing it twice. And there's similarly no requirement that you prepare it in a "5th level maneuver slot". Both of those are quite essential to how casters work.

And you dismiss "different recovery" as if that were not a fundamental aspect of how the class works. The Warblade regains their abilities by taking around off from using their abilities. That is an extremely different play pattern from the Wizard, who simply uses their abilities until they run out and thereafter requires significant downtime to recover them. It is, I would venture to say, more different from the Wizard than any two classes in the 5e PHB are from each other.

Beyond even that, the fact that ToB martials are competent martials adds another layer of difference from casters. A Wizard has very little they can do of any relevance in combat beyond "cast a spell". Maybe they grabbed a Reserve Feat that lets them plink for a couple d6s. But a Warblade or a Crusader is a combatant about as powerful at a base level as a Fighter or Barbarian. They can just rely on their basic attack routine for damage, which creates interesting dynamics in how they choose abilities. Do you focus on Strikes, making you more mobile? Do you focus on Boosts and Counters, playing like a traditional martial with slightly better damage and tough defenses? Do you mix it up, getting flexibility to adapt to different tactical circumstances? Those are real choices that emerge directly from how the mechanics of the class interact with the mechanics of the rest of the system.

Incarnum is the epitome of what I dislike about 3e.

I will give you that Incarnum is bad. It is fiddly in deeply annoying ways, it layers three different resource management setups on top of each other, and it doesn't really do much. But I have to point out: wasn't this what you were asking for? Soulmelds don't scale off of a caster level-equivalent, they scale off of their own idiosyncratic thing. You don't learn Soulmelds individually, you know all of them and choose which ones to invest in. There's not nine levels of Soulmeld. Indeed, there's not any levels of Soulmeld at all. So what is a way of adding a new type of class you'd actually approve of?

Crake

2023-02-08, 11:00 PM

If it was a CYOA statement, it's one that I've heard echoed with approval from multiple proponents of both 3e and PF1e. Which doesn't say good things about him or the general community of people who are still active advocates for the game.

The argument has merit if you view dnd as a competitive hobby, where system mastery should award greater power, and players should feel good about learning the game and improving at it.

And while dnd’s roots are in fact in competitive miniature wargaming, i think the vast majority of players do not play the game that way, and as such, it becomes rather poor design, as player power being tied to system mastery means that players need to focus more thought and effort on the system, which in theory could be instead spent on the game.

Amidus Drexel

2023-02-08, 11:14 PM

Honestly the patches are an anti-selling point for me. PF makes a bunch of fiddly changes to 3.5 (for instance: the Sorcerer's hit die goes from d4 to d6). But it doesn't really change the fundamental problems with the system, so I'm left with having to learn a bunch of awkward conversions to use stuff that could just be 3.5-compatible.

Yeah, I basically agree with you here. I like (in principle) the condensing of the skill system and extra HP and skill points for (some) classes. The exact changes I'm not a huge fan of, which is why I never switched to PF - but when it came out those were pretty much the only selling points from my understanding.

I'll be honest with you, I don't think there's any class in any game that a completely new-to-TTRPGs player could build at even mid levels without significant help. It's just not an important design goal, because if you are starting off a new player you are either A) going to be starting them off in a new campaign that can just jolly well start them at 1st level or B) going to be introducing them to an existing group that can help them with any rough edges. I won't claim that complexity matters zero in those cases, but I don't think a ToB martial is much worse than a traditional one.

I can give you Fighter, but if someone is capable of playing a Sorcerer, I don't really think a ToB class is particularly more complex. Particularly not a Swordsage.

RE: ToB complexity for "new to TTRPG" players - Crusaders require quite a bit of bookkeeping even at level 1, between their delayed damage pool and weird maneuver granting mechanism. At low levels, I think I'd put swordsages closer to prepared casters in in-game complexity. Level 2 gives you a second stance, and you're "preparing" a subset of a large number of (effectively) 1/encounter special moves that you can swap out. I'd actually say warblade is the easiest to use for a new player - you don't usually have to worry about toggling stances for several levels, and at 1st level you have all of your known maneuvers readied. I'll grant you that a 1st-level warblade isn't much more complicated than a 1st-level sorcerer.

That said - a sorcerer knows a very small number of spells and can use them pretty frequently at low levels, so the player is probably going to be doing the same one or two game actions most of the time (magic missile, or crossbow attack?) - ditto for the fighter. The ToB character is going to be doing something different basically every round of combat.

For the context of this thread, though (where the players in question are all 5e veterans) - ToB is probably just fine for complexity, even crusader. Things only (maybe) get too tricky at build time if the party is starting in the mid levels or higher.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-08, 11:38 PM

And while dnd’s roots are in fact in competitive miniature wargaming, i think the vast majority of players do not play the game that way, and as such, it becomes rather poor design, as player power being tied to system mastery means that players need to focus more thought and effort on the system, which in theory could be instead spent on the game.

Imbalance sort of pulls in both directions here. On the one hand, it's true that you can go in and grind out a bunch of small edges by finding this or that hidden option and powering up in an incremental way. On the other hand, you can also just switch from playing a Rogue to a Beguiler and become more powerful while getting a character that requires less system mastery to play effectively. The result of this is that, while there are plenty of options that are objectively weaker than other options, it is very easy to end up with a character that has whatever option it is that you find compelling, but an overall power level appropriate to the game in which you find yourself.

Yeah, I basically agree with you here. I like (in principle) the condensing of the skill system and extra HP and skill points for (some) classes. The exact changes I'm not a huge fan of, which is why I never switched to PF - but when it came out those were pretty much the only selling points from my understanding.

I always viewed it as the primary selling point being "we will give you more content" with most of the changes being a distraction thrown up to cover for what they needed to do to turn the SRD into something they could use as their own product. That is, perhaps, a cynical view, but in my view their approach to the playtesting process engendered a certain cynicism.

RE: ToB complexity for "new to TTRPG" players - Crusaders require quite a bit of bookkeeping even at level 1, between their delayed damage pool and weird maneuver granting mechanism.

I will give you that the delayed damage stuff is weird, but I think the maneuvers are pretty easy to handle if you give the player some physical aids. It's really just a deck of cards you draw a hand from, and while that's still somewhat complicated for a complete gaming novice, it's pretty easy to explain to someone who's played MTG or even poker.

That said - a sorcerer knows a very small number of spells and can use them pretty frequently at low levels, so the player is probably going to be doing the same one or two game actions most of the time (magic missile, or crossbow attack?) - ditto for the fighter. The ToB character is going to be doing something different basically every round of combat.

Again, I'll give you the Fighter, but I just don't think your Sorcerer/Warblade comparison is accurate. At 1st level, a Sorcerer knows two spells (I am ignoring the 0th level ones because those really don't matter) and a Warblade has three readied maneuvers. At 3rd level, the Sorcerer has gained a third spell known, and the Warblade still only readies three maneuvers. From there comparisons start to get complicated, because the difference in how the classes interact with spell/maneuver levels makes it difficult to assess exactly how "total options" and "relevant options" line up.

I also think it's worth point out that spellcasting has complexity all its own. If you're playing a Sorcerer, you have to worry about conserving your daily spell slots, which is not easy to do, and can lead to plenty of feel-bad moments when you over or under spend. The Warblade, on the other hand, can simply use whatever option seems most compelling every round, with at most tactical resource management considerations. That can be a big advantage for a new player!

Crake

2023-02-09, 12:54 AM

Imbalance sort of pulls in both directions here. On the one hand, it's true that you can go in and grind out a bunch of small edges by finding this or that hidden option and powering up in an incremental way. On the other hand, you can also just switch from playing a Rogue to a Beguiler and become more powerful while getting a character that requires less system mastery to play effectively. The result of this is that, while there are plenty of options that are objectively weaker than other options, it is very easy to end up with a character that has whatever option it is that you find compelling, but an overall power level appropriate to the game in which you find yourself.l

Right, but you need system mastery in the first place to know the difference between the two.

Ignimortis

2023-02-09, 02:25 AM

As you say, what's intentional can be hard to sus out, but I wouldn't say I would like 3.5 if it weren't for ToB, ToM, Incarnum, and I find the design more consistently good (or at least interesting) outside of one article of note. I think their may have been a philosophical change at one point to grow the game conceptually that I think PF1 and 5e ended up missing out on (for better or for worse).
Exactly. It's a direction that frankly went unexplored. 4e was not really big on mechanical diversity, and I do not agree with it being "martial adept edition" as it is often called, as it lacks the most crucial part of MAs - recovery mechanics and access to somewhat wide lists of different schools. The other successors, i.e. PF1, PF2 and 5e, are rehashes of the 3e PHB in most senses).

I think we should make a distinction between "players new to TTRPGs" and "players new to 3.5, but familiar with modern D&D".

Players new to TTRPGs are going to struggle with ToB martials - even though the power floor is high, there's a lot to remember in-game and it's hard to build those characters at higher than level 1 without a lot of planning (particularly with maneuver prereqs and swapping). Those players probably should be playing classes where you can just plug and play. Fixed-list casters are decent for that on average, though the players are going to have to be willing to look up what spells do constantly for the first few sessions (and at every level where they learn new spells).
My personal experience is that newcomers take to ToB classes pretty decently. I've GMed 3.5 for several and they got the hang both Warblade and Swordsage pretty quickly, whereas anyone with access to spellcasting struggled for a while.

I will give you credit for at least articulating the similarities you see. Most people just go "they're casters with swords!" like that's self-evident. But most of these similarities are just absurdly overbroad, or things that are objectively good design.

*snip on how maneuvers are well-made*
Superb explanation. I would like to add that if maneuvers were just presented differently, and not with a spell card format (which is, again, a good format - everything you need to know is neatly organized in rows), then general perception would also be different.

I'd like to point out something pertaining to the "MAs aren't casters with swords" part - they're not casters with swords. They're martials with spells, or, more precisely, with abilities that break action economy in similar ways to spells. Maneuvers are awesome in part because they are like spells in the most important part - they are outright better than your default action use. If you have a full-round maneuver, chances are, it's better than a full attack. If you have a standard action maneuver, chances are, it is at least a single attack with a greater effect. Maneuvers also utilize swifts and immediates, which martials had scarce use for previously - but which spellcasters could utilize from day 1.

I will give you that Incarnum is bad. It is fiddly in deeply annoying ways, it layers three different resource management setups on top of each other, and it doesn't really do much. But I have to point out: wasn't this what you were asking for? Soulmelds don't scale off of a caster level-equivalent, they scale off of their own idiosyncratic thing. You don't learn Soulmelds individually, you know all of them and choose which ones to invest in. There's not nine levels of Soulmeld. Indeed, there's not any levels of Soulmeld at all. So what is a way of adding a new type of class you'd actually approve of?
There are kind of levels of soulmeld - their chakra binds are unlocked at similar levels (heart is very late or never for soulborn, who is a kind of 2/3 incarnum user, whereas crown, feet and hands are invariably first, etc.).

Agree on it being fiddly, though.

Zanos

2023-02-09, 02:35 AM

The argument has merit if you view dnd as a competitive hobby, where system mastery should award greater power, and players should feel good about learning the game and improving at it.

And while dnd’s roots are in fact in competitive miniature wargaming, i think the vast majority of players do not play the game that way, and as such, it becomes rather poor design, as player power being tied to system mastery means that players need to focus more thought and effort on the system, which in theory could be instead spent on the game.
If you want a shared storytelling platform that's fine, but if you want to axe "system mastery results in better play" from D&D, you basically aren't playing a game anymore. Or at least, you're playing one that only small children would find to be particularly interesting. I think you can make an argument that I would agree with that the degree to which system mastery is rewarded is inappropriate in 3.5, because characters built by players at opposite ends of the spectrum can't really co-exist unless one deliberately plays down. However, even if there were no classes, feats, skills, spells, weapons, or armor, you're still going to have tactical proficiency in when and where it's effective to move to activate bonuses like flanking or just to take up space that your enemies could use. But to completely remove player proficiency as an element of the equation is to remove the Game from the Role Playing Game.

I'm not sure if Ivory Tower was intentional or not across the development team, and I agree that deliberately introducing trap options is bad if it is true, but almost every RPG ever written is going to have a difference in performance between veterans and newbies. That's just a consequence of it being a game. Ideally a well constructed game wouldn try to help players get better rather than trick them into being bad. I'm not sure if you specifically are part of this but there's growing sentiment, particularly in the 5e community, that is just not interested in tactical combat at all. And frankly, those people should probably be playing FATE or FFG, which actually have systems for aiding narrative construction instead of hefty tomes of combat resolution rules.

Eldan

2023-02-09, 08:03 AM

On the matter of ToB, ToM, and Incarnum...I don't know ToM so I won't comment. ToB seems like a duct tape patch job on the hole in the side of the aquarium. I mean...it works. But I wouldn't call it interesting. It's basically "ok, since spell-casting is the only thing that matters...we'll make martials into pseudo-spell-casters. But not say that's what we're doing." Sure, different recovery and all that. But 9 levels of "spells" that you learn every second level and which have a caster level, come in schools, have to be prepared/learned individually...that has all the hallmarks of spell-casting. Don't get me wrong. It's a mechanically-fine patch. But it's a patch made necessary to work around the fundamentally-broken core system.

Incarnum is the epitome of what I dislike about 3e. The fluff? That's fine. The crunch? Boat-loads of small, fiddly numbers. Most of which don't really add up right unless you're abusing things or dipping in to force loopholes in other (also broken) things. This is basically the reverse of ToB for me--the fluff is interesting, but the mechanics suck. Where ToB has boring fluff but the mechanics are actually workable (if totally derivative).

I will defend the Binder section as the best book in third edition. The system is utterly awesome.
You make pacts with a list of eldritch entities, that give you specific power sets. It includes a page or so of fluff on each of the entities, how you summon them, what their avatar looks like and how they influence your mind if they win the pact negotiations.

Personally, I wish someone made an entire RPG based on just that.

Crake

2023-02-09, 08:24 AM

If you want a shared storytelling platform that's fine, but if you want to axe "system mastery results in better play" from D&D, you basically aren't playing a game anymore. Or at least, you're playing one that only small children would find to be particularly interesting. I think you can make an argument that I would agree with that the degree to which system mastery is rewarded is inappropriate in 3.5, because characters built by players at opposite ends of the spectrum can't really co-exist unless one deliberately plays down. However, even if there were no classes, feats, skills, spells, weapons, or armor, you're still going to have tactical proficiency in when and where it's effective to move to activate bonuses like flanking or just to take up space that your enemies could use. But to completely remove player proficiency as an element of the equation is to remove the Game from the Role Playing Game.

I'm not sure if Ivory Tower was intentional or not across the development team, and I agree that deliberately introducing trap options is bad if it is true, but almost every RPG ever written is going to have a difference in performance between veterans and newbies. That's just a consequence of it being a game. Ideally a well constructed game wouldn try to help players get better rather than trick them into being bad. I'm not sure if you specifically are part of this but there's growing sentiment, particularly in the 5e community, that is just not interested in tactical combat at all. And frankly, those people should probably be playing FATE or FFG, which actually have systems for aiding narrative construction instead of hefty tomes of combat resolution rules.

Tactical mastery isnt at all the same as system mastery though. Being tactical minded and socially conscious (for social encounters) is something that transcends systems. Its when, to be tactical in a game, you need to know all the fiddly details, and ins and outs of the combat system that it becomes a problem in my mind. Youve essentially conflated general player proficiency with system mastery, when they arent the same thing.

On a side note, I personally quite love FATE, and think, if you care more about narrative in your ttrpg, its by far the better system.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-09, 11:10 AM

Right, but you need system mastery in the first place to know the difference between the two.

At that point any system more complicated than rock-paper-scissors requires system mastery to understand. The fact that there are simpler options that are more powerful than complex ones is absolutely different from the paradigm you were describing.

4e was not really big on mechanical diversity, and I do not agree with it being "martial adept edition", as it lacks the most crucial part of MAs - recovery mechanics and access to somewhat wide lists of different schools.

Honestly the closest 4e comes to ToB is the idea that non-casters can have powers at all, and some of the power naming.

There are kind of levels of soulmeld - their chakra binds are unlocked at similar levels (heart is very late or never for soulborn, who is a kind of 2/3 incarnum user, whereas crown, feet and hands are invariably first, etc.).

There are kind of levels, and there's kind of level scaling (in that your essentia cap goes up with levels), but it's about as far as I think you can get from being a Wizard while maintaining even notional compatibility with a system that has the Wizard in it. The new "levels" don't come with new powers, only modifications of existing ones. You can't (with some very minor exceptions) have two "spells" of the same "level" at the same time. I'm open to the idea that there's something I'm missing here that Phoenix wants, but I really don't see how to do expansion material that doesn't hit at least one of his complaints.

Bayar

2023-02-09, 11:56 AM

But no one ever does that.

Maybe at your gaming table. Experiences might vary. If at your table you can talk to the DM and tell him what items you want to find before adventuring or you have a magic mart system to buy whatever you want or simply go on adventures to find items you'd like your character to find, that's cool.

I've played two different characters in the same campaign that used all four options. The first one was an artificer that had some scrolls pre-crafted for different situations and mostly spent time crafting items for the party during downtime. Got to level 7 with only crafting a scroll of reincarnation for emergencies mostly, the rest making items for my party in exchange for the cost of crafting. And talked to the DM about how to find dragonshards for future since I wanted Bind Elemental: either hope to find someone that came from Eberron on a spelljammer that had some for sale or go to an elemental plane and find some Elementum™ to turn into synthetic dragonshards.

The other character was a warforged marshall, the party didn't really have a dedicated caster let alone crafter. Had some ranks in Armorsmithing for repairs while the rest of the party rested. Sold items that we couldn't use to merchants in the capitol and had to go on an adventure to locate a portable hole.

From the same adventure, there were incarnum users or psions that wanted items specifically for their class, so the DM offered either adventure hooks for more valuable items or merchants for cheaper ones.

Quertus

2023-02-09, 11:59 AM

I was thinking more along the lines of how characters get built to match a concept. PF1 encourages straight builds, perhaps choosing an archetype that suits the style of play you want with that class, while 3.5 encourages prestige classes and multiclass builds. Not that you can't do multiclass builds in PF or straight builds in 3.5, but that's been my general observation with the two systems.

The complexity of the build is not really related to the extent to which it is being built to match a “concept”. To the extent to which they are related, “low complexity” decidedly does not correlate to “high conceptual fidelity”.

ToB seems like a duct tape patch job on the hole in the side of the aquarium. I mean...it works. But I wouldn't call it interesting.

It's a mechanically-fine patch.

The fluff? The crunch?

If I understand correctly, you think ToB has perfectly fine crunch, but uninteresting fluff? Maybe I’m biased, but “holy warrior for a religion”, but not bound to one Alignment or to a potentially out-of-character-for-the-religion moral code like the Paladin, sounds interesting to my ears.

I’ll admit, 2e Faiths and Avatars, where each Religion got their own specialty priests, had better fluff and crunch. But usually people complain that ToB is too flavorful, rather than not flavorful enough.

Tactical mastery isnt at all the same as system mastery though. Being tactical minded and socially conscious (for social encounters) is something that transcends systems. Its when, to be tactical in a game, you need to know all the fiddly details, and ins and outs of the combat system that it becomes a problem in my mind. Youve essentially conflated general player proficiency with system mastery, when they arent the same thing.

On a side note, I personally quite love FATE, and think, if you care more about narrative in your ttrpg, its by far the better system.

Eh, I mean, you need to know that this system cares about flanking, or about relative numbers in the melee, or that the “Aid Another” action exists, or whatever. For example, Brigantine gives one reaction attack for each attacker, whereas HoMM gives one reaction attack per turn; these differences mean that there is some system mastery involved in planning your attack sequence optimally between systems.

So I guess… multiple factors, including both player skill and system mastery, are involved in making most of these decisions.

Crake

2023-02-09, 06:38 PM

Eh, I mean, you need to know that this system cares about flanking, or about relative numbers in the melee, or that the “Aid Another” action exists, or whatever. For example, Brigantine gives one reaction attack for each attacker, whereas HoMM gives one reaction attack per turn; these differences mean that there is some system mastery involved in planning your attack sequence optimally between systems.

So I guess… multiple factors, including both player skill and system mastery, are involved in making most of these decisions.

Correct, but my point was that even a game that DIDNT have all the fiddly bits that dnd has, would still have room for player proficiency in the form of tactical and social mastery, and that player proficiency need not be tied to system mastery alone.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-10, 08:52 AM

Honestly the patches are an anti-selling point for me. PF makes a bunch of fiddly changes to 3.5 (for instance: the Sorcerer's hit die goes from d4 to d6). But it doesn't really change the fundamental problems with the system
The catch is that casual players have a very different view from hardcore forum users on what the fundamental problems are. If you feel that in 3E you need to plan five levels ahead to hit the right prereqs for a combination of prestige classes, then PF fixes this problem just fine. If you feel that certain low-level spells are problematic (as opposed to 9th-level spell shenanigans, because people only very rarely play that high) then PF fixes that just fine, too. If you find half-rank cross-class skills annoying, then PF also fixes that.

but when it came out those were pretty much the only selling points from my understanding.
When it came out, its major selling point was that they would publish ALL the rules for free on the internet (as opposed to 4E), and continue to allow third-party material (bear in mind that 4E's licensing terms included "you may never sell 3E material again" and "if WOTC asks, you must destroy all your books"), and continue printing and expanding the highly-popular series of adventure paths. Because not all GMs have the time and/or skill to build their own world.

I'll agree that the first two points aren't much of a sales pitch now, ten years later, but the third one very much is. Don't underestimate how much of a "killer app" quality adventures are.

most of the changes being a distraction thrown up to cover for what they needed to do to turn the SRD into something they could use
I'll chalk this up (again) to "designers gonna design". Let's be honest here, if you would have put any random three GITP forum users in charge of the new edition, they would also make little changes based on what they heard from their friends. There's nothing amazing about that but there's nothing wrong with it either.

If you want a shared storytelling platform that's fine, but if you want to axe "system mastery results in better play" from D&D, you basically aren't playing a game anymore.
Then you're playing PF2, specifically. :smallcool: RPG designers haven't quite figured out how to make a game where tactical mastery makes a big difference but charbuilding mastery does not (depending on edition it's been both, only the latter, or neither).

Xervous

2023-02-10, 12:07 PM

Then you're playing PF2, specifically. :smallcool: RPG designers haven't quite figured out how to make a game where tactical mastery makes a big difference but charbuilding mastery does not (depending on edition it's been both, only the latter, or neither).

I’m just waiting for the Gloomhaven card styled RPG. Hidden information and action budgeting. Refresh your used cards on a short rest. Refresh your burned cards on a long rest. Every scene demands cards from everyone.

You could give everyone all the same character deck but that’s not going to equip people with good gambling sense and attentiveness to the pacing.

Bayar

2023-02-10, 01:28 PM

I’m just waiting for the Gloomhaven card styled RPG. Hidden information and action budgeting. Refresh your used cards on a short rest. Refresh your burned cards on a long rest. Every scene demands cards from everyone.

You could give everyone all the same character deck but that’s not going to equip people with good gambling sense and attentiveness to the pacing.

That sounds like playing a ToB and Incarnum campaign to me.

Ignimortis

2023-02-10, 02:43 PM

That sounds like playing a ToB and Incarnum campaign to me.

Nah, not really. The huge point of ToB is getting to use your thing far more than a couple times per "short rest", and a huge point of Incarnum is getting a lot of swappable utility that you can change every long rest but also never run out of during the day. In short, both are incredibly good for games where resource management/rests are actually not much of a meaningful thing at all, and it's more about managing action economy instead.

Zanos

2023-02-10, 02:49 PM

Correct, but my point was that even a game that DIDNT have all the fiddly bits that dnd has, would still have room for player proficiency in the form of tactical and social mastery, and that player proficiency need not be tied to system mastery alone.
To some degree these concepts are inseparable. While looking at a game as a game is a skill that can be developed, you can't know whether or not certain tactical options are worth doing without understanding the math behind them. If flanking gives you a +2 bonus, is it worth doing? Well, that depends. Is it a 1d10 or 1d20 system? Do you crit if you beat their defenses by more than five? Are you putting yourself in a position where someone can get +2 vs you, and therefore potentially instantly down you with a crit? Is your defense so high that these enemies likely can't harm you even with a +2 bonus?

Systems like Mekton, where an attack is 1d10+modifiers against a defense roll where beating their defense by more than five automatically destroys a component of their mech, getting a +2 bonus is nuts. In 3.5, where a +2 bonus just makes you slightly more likely to hit, it's not nearly as valuable. So even though both systems feature a bonus to your attacks when an enemy is flanked, whether or not it's worth spending movement to set yourself up for that bonus depends greatly on the underlying math.

Then you're playing PF2, specifically. :smallcool: RPG designers haven't quite figured out how to make a game where tactical mastery makes a big difference but charbuilding mastery does not (depending on edition it's been both, only the latter, or neither).
For 3.PF->PF2e players it's certainly less complex, but for 5e players that hasn't been my experience at all. While 2e basically assumes maximum primary stat as a baseline, and builds monster defenses around that, those players often don't think about how to create a character that can effectively use all three of their actions and reaction. People who have system mastery in PF2e spec into intimidate, athletics assurance, and some other stuff to insure effective use of all of their actions, and cast spells like heightened fear instead of fireball with their third level slots at higher levels. And everyone is wearing dreadful armor. Look, fear is just really good, okay?

I'm not sure what an RPG where charbuilding doesn't matter would look like. I can't imagine it's particularly compelling.

Ignimortis

2023-02-10, 04:23 PM

For 3.PF->PF2e players it's certainly less complex, but for 5e players that hasn't been my experience at all. While 2e basically assumes maximum primary stat as a baseline, and builds monster defends around that, those players often don't think about how to create a character that can effectively use all three of their actions and reaction. People who have system mastery in PF2e spec into intimidate, athletics assurance, and some other stuff to insure effective use of all of their actions, and cast spells like heightened fear instead of fireball with their third level slots at higher levels. And everyone is wearing dreadful armor. Look, fear is just really good, okay?

I'm not sure what an RPG where charbuilding doesn't matter would look like. I can't imagine it's particularly compelling.

Then they're reading Assurance wrong. Assurance is terrible, it's generally equivalent to rolling a 4 or 5 on your dice, and it gets actively worse as you level. It is not even remotely as good as taking 10 would be, and is pretty much not worth a skill feat slot unless you have some very specific DC to beat and do not want to roll a 1.

10+proficiency bonus means you do not include your stat bonus (+4 for best stat even at level 1, +3 for others, and the gap keeps growing) or item bonuses (factored into monster math also after about level 5, from +1 to +3). I am currently rolling +23 to Intimidate a target at level 11 (maxed out, as far as I can tell, maybe could get another +1 from improving my Demon Mask to a greater one). A level 11 creature, on average, has +24 to their good save and +18 to their bad save. Therefore, their Will DC (which is what Intimidate competes against) is anywhere from 34 to 28. Assurance, if I used it, would give me an assured result of 27, i.e. a guaranteed failure against an enemy that is my level and isn't otherwise debuffed. Using Intimidate against enemies lower than your level is generally a poor usage of your action, unless you can spook multiple at the same time and then take advantage of it before Frightened fades next turn.

Athletics assurance is even worse, since it competes against Fortitude DC, which is widely recognized to be the most bloated save for the bestiary (which already boasts unpleasantly high saves consistently unachievable by same-level PCs).

For an example that one'd think would make Assurance meaningful, PF2 has Medicine with static DCs. But the usual Medicine DC you take at level 11 to heal someone's HP is 30. By the time your Assurance gives you a result of 30 (proficiency bonus of 20), you are one level away (14 vs 15) from the point where the game expects you to switch to a DC of 40 to restore much more HP. So it's also trash for the vast majority of your levels against a static DC. And at earlier levels, well...Trained only lasts for the first level (DC15 = needs level 3 for Assurance to work), and Expert rolls against DC20 from levels 2 to 6 (Assurance thus only functions at 6), as at 7 you pick up Master and can use DC30 (and healing for 2d8+10 no longer quite cuts it, either).

If I were to make a sales pitch for 3.5 compared to PF2, I'd start with something along the lines of "yes, the system is rather bloated and unbalanced, but at least you can make a character who is actually good at things by themselves". PF2 detests PCs being good at things, because it aims for them being mediocre and only working properly when in a competently composed party and fully up to date on the level treadmill.

One of my friends explained it as something intended ludonarratively as well, as "PF2 isn't actually a heroic fantasy game, it's basically a game for use with Pathfinder Society, about Golarion's fantasy mercenaries who aren't heroes or anything, they're people on a job that you can get training for". Take it as you would. I myself think that shadowrunners are also mercs, but they get to be great at their things and therefore fun to play.

Zanos

2023-02-10, 04:58 PM

Then they're reading Assurance wrong. Assurance is terrible, it's generally equivalent to rolling a 4 or 5 on your dice, and it gets actively worse as you level. It is not even remotely as good as taking 10 would be, and is pretty much not worth a skill feat slot unless you have some very specific DC to beat and do not want to roll a 1.
To clarify, I meant Assurance(Athletics) or Intimidate, not Assurance(Intimidate). Assurance removes penalties as well, including MAP. PF2e encounter design includes a lot of low level minions. So you can assurance athletics to trip something lower level than you with your last action and often succeed. You don't take Assurance intimidate, since there's no MAP. This is one form of counterintuitive CharOp, you don't want to ever take Assurance on something you want to specialize in to the degree you can succeed at reliably, because it is completely worthless for someone with a large relevant ability scores and gear.

10+proficiency bonus means you do not include your stat bonus (+4 for best stat even at level 1, +3 for others, and the gap keeps growing) or item bonuses (factored into monster math also after about level 5, from +1 to +3). I am currently rolling +23 to Intimidate a target at level 11 (maxed out, as far as I can tell, maybe could get another +1 from improving my Demon Mask to a greater one). A level 11 creature, on average, has +24 to their good save and +18 to their bad save. Therefore, their Will DC (which is what Intimidate competes against) is anywhere from 34 to 28. Assurance, if I used it, would give me an assured result of 27, i.e. a guaranteed failure against an enemy that is my level and isn't otherwise debuffed. Using Intimidate against enemies lower than your level is generally a poor usage of your action, unless you can spook multiple at the same time and then take advantage of it before Frightened fades next turn.
Intimidate skill feats are powerful force multipliers, especially considering skill feats generally do not have combat applications. Fear also stacks with itself, meaning that a party that has a fear caster and 2 or more people with Battlecry/Intimidating Glare are dropping huge penalties on all of their enemies rolls. Scare to Death is more powerful than some spells and has no usage restrictions other than once per target. Dreadful armor has to be rolled against with the penalty for fear and will require multiple rolls if it's stacked up.

PF2e is a party game, so the fact that you personally aren't going to take advantage of the fear you inflict immediately is immaterial. You are reducing all of their defenses and their offenses for your team. If only one person is dropping a single intimidate per round it's kind of whatever, but if the fight opens with two(free action) battlecries, a fear spell, and then regular demoralizes sprinking in, and everyone is rolling multiple will saves to reduce their fear instead of it automatically going away, well, you have a pretty easy encounter. Most skills in pf2e are so bad that spending your skill increases and feats on intimidate doesn't really cost anything, either.

Athletics assurance is even worse, since it competes against Fortitude DC, which is widely recognized to be the most bloated save for the bestiary (which already boasts unpleasantly high saves consistently unachievable by same-level PCs).
Again, the idea here is to avoid MAP on your last action. Athletics can be rolled against Fortitude or Reflex for grapple or trip. You can also typically bump skills faster than attack proficiency. Our fighter has expert athletics at level 2 and can automatically trip anything with a reflex defense of 16 or less or grapple something with a fortitude defense of 16 or less. This won't help against boss defenses unless their defenses are atrocious, but is very effective against many other enemies.

There's other CharOp too that's less obvious, mostly with spell selection. Magic Weapon and Animate Dead are now some of the most powerful first level spells in the game with their ability to drastically increase martial damage and summon a flanker with DR. And then there's the huge pile of crap that is most other first level spells that will have people thinking casters are worthless.

If I were to make a sales pitch for 3.5 compared to PF2, I'd start with something along the lines of "yes, the system is rather bloated and unbalanced, but at least you can make a character who is actually good at things by themselves". PF2 detests PCs being good at things, because it aims for them being mediocre and only working properly when in a competently composed party and fully up to date on the level treadmill.

One of my friends explained it as something intended ludonarratively as well, as "PF2 isn't actually a heroic fantasy game, it's basically a game for use with Pathfinder Society, about Golarion's fantasy mercenaries who aren't heroes or anything, they're people on a job". Take it as you would.
I don't disagree. PF2e basically requires you to constantly invest character resources to be as good at things at your current level as you were at level 1. The worst offender is probably the intelligence change, where a high intelligence character can be trained at many skills at level 1 but does not receive additional increases, so all of those skills fall off the level treadmill and become useless. I guess it does it better than 5e because there is no bounded accuracy, but the system math is pretty tightly corralled so you can never excel even if you focus, and anything you don't focus on will become useless. No character is an island in PF2e also, which I actually don't mind in the context of playing a game with folks you already know, but trying to put together a group of strangers is going to be a problem.

AsuraKyoko

2023-02-10, 05:28 PM

I don't disagree. PF2e basically requires you to constantly invest character resources to be as good at things at your current level as you were at level 1. The worst offender is probably the intelligence change, where a high intelligence character can be trained at many skills at level 1 but does not receive additional increases, so all of those skills fall off the level treadmill and become useless. I guess it does it better than 5e because there is no bounded accuracy, but the system math is pretty tightly corralled so you can never excel even if you focus, and anything you don't focus on will become useless. No character is an island in PF2e also, which I actually don't mind in the context of playing a game with folks you already know, but trying to put together a group of strangers is going to be a problem.

This is one of the biggest gripes I have about PF2. Because the math is so tightly calculated, it's really hard for investing in something to actually feel like you're getting anything out of it. It's the Red Queen Hypothesis: you're running as fast as you can just to keep up. Combine that with the fact that the math is based around an approximately 50% success rate (due to the critical system basically mandating it), and it always feels like a struggle to hit.

Unfortunately, there isn't really a good, easy way of fixing the critical system, since so much of the system is built around it, especially spells. I think that the easiest to implement would be to make criticals be based on the natural die roll, with various classes/features modifying the threshold in various ways.

Actually, I think that that could be an interesting way of doing it. Rather than the DC+/-10 result for crits, instead make it so that degree of success modifying effect of 1s and 20s are instead based on proficiency. Maybe at Expert proficiency in weapons, you get +1 degree of success on a 19-20, at Master it becomes 18-20, and at Legendary it becomes 17-20. Maybe as your spellcasting proficiency increases, the threshold for enemies to critically fail increases. if you're Expert in spellcasting, an enemy gets -1 degree of success on a 1-2, and so on. perhaps Save proficiency improves your chances of critical successes, too, and as proficiency rises criticals of either variety become more likely in general.

There's probably some significant problems with this, but I think it would be worth experimenting with.

RandomPeasant

2023-02-10, 07:56 PM

If I understand correctly, you think ToB has perfectly fine crunch, but uninteresting fluff?

ToB has pretty generic fluff, in that "guy with a special combat style" is not a particularly unique or innovative concept, but at the same time "guy with a special combat style" shows up a lot because it's rad. That's totally a thing that should be in your game, and ToB does a decent job of implementing it (though I think there is a fair criticism to be made about the schools not being as distinct as they should be).

Maybe I’m biased, but “holy warrior for a religion”, but not bound to one Alignment or to a potentially out-of-character-for-the-religion moral code like the Paladin, sounds interesting to my ears.

That's fair on one level, but on another level it's really just a reflection of the fact that it's dumb that the Paladin is so narrowly tailored. Lawful Good does not have a monopoly on holy warriors, even ones who have broadly defensive abilities.

The catch is that casual players have a very different view from hardcore forum users on what the fundamental problems are.

Casual players have a less articulated view of the problems. The fundamental view is still basically the same, which is that martials are kinda crap, and PF did not really address that. To the degree that it does, it does so by taking away one of the things casual players tend to really like about martials: they're not ****-simple anymore. A PF Barbarian is not as complicated as a PF Wizard, but it's way more complicated than a 3e one.

(as opposed to 9th-level spell shenanigans, because people only very rarely play that high)

Yes. Because of the shenanigans. I keep making this point, but the brokenness of a system manifests as the negative space of parts of that system people do not use, not a bunch of games where insane cheese is allowed to run roughshod over everything. Using planar binding at even a modest level of optimization results in a game that is horribly imbalanced. What this means in practice is that your table won't let you use planar binding at all. That doesn't mean most tables are fine with RAW planar binding, or that most people don't want to command demons!

I'll chalk this up (again) to "designers gonna design". Let's be honest here, if you would have put any random three GITP forum users in charge of the new edition, they would also make little changes based on what they heard from their friends. There's nothing amazing about that but there's nothing wrong with it either.

I would argue that it is absolutely wrong to make little changes you think are neat when your primary selling point is compatibility. Yes, people have impulses they need to control. Yes, random amateurs have those impulses too. Why on earth that is a defense of paid professionals not reigning in their impulses is incomprehensible to me. If your goal is to be able to port people over directly from another system, every change you make relative to that system has to be either very well-justified (I think many of the skill changes fit here) or something that people were mind-caulking anyway (switching to PF is the perfect opportunity to clean up nonsense like drown healing). But mucking about with what Improved Trip does is inexcusable.

In short, both are incredibly good for games where resource management/rests are actually not much of a meaningful thing at all, and it's more about managing action economy instead.

I don't think that's really right. Both ToB and Incarnum actually involve a lot of resource management. Every round, your Incarnate has to consider whether and how they want to move their essentia around. A Warblade is faced with the choice of using or refreshing their abilities, meaning they have to make decisions like "do I use a Strike now and try to finish the bad guy, or do I recover maneuvers so I have my Counter ready in case he lives and drops a SoL on me" every round. A Crusader's available resources change randomly, forcing them to be able to adapt to the particulars of whatever tactical situation they find themselves in. I would argue that resource management is much more present for these characters than it is for a Wizard, who only ever has to care about managing their resources to the degree that the DM has put some kind of ticking clock on the adventure (and even then, the Fighter's HP runs out before the Wizard's spell slots at a lot of tables).

I'm not sure what an RPG where charbuilding doesn't matter would look like. I can't imagine it's particularly compelling.

I think there are valid criticisms of how 3e handles complexity to make. The game suffers from not having any kind of indicator as to which classes are complex and which are simple. It's genuinely dumb that there are a bunch of things that take a lot of knowledge to build but are very simple to play, because that's not really something very many people want. But the reality is that there are some people who really do want lots of fiddly options for their character, and that when you have lots of fiddly options, some of them are going to be better in a particular circumstance. That's not even bad, really. If you can devise an option that is equally good in a party of characters who are specialized for long and grindy encounters as ones who are specialized for quick ambushes, you probably haven't designed a very interesting option. The issue is an absence of simple options, and the amount of power difference that exists (which, honestly, can most be attributed to the big, obvious, choices, not all the little fiddly ones).

Ignimortis

2023-02-11, 01:27 AM

To clarify, I meant Assurance(Athletics) or Intimidate, not Assurance(Intimidate). Assurance removes penalties as well, including MAP. PF2e encounter design includes a lot of low level minions. So you can assurance athletics to trip something lower level than you with your last action and often succeed. You don't take Assurance intimidate, since there's no MAP. This is one form of counterintuitive CharOp, you don't want to ever take Assurance on something you want to specialize in to the degree you can succeed at reliably, because it is completely worthless for someone with a large relevant ability scores and gear.
The thing with including lower-level enemies in PF2 is that a lot of GMs dislike running fights with cannon fodder, and some dislike running fights that aren't challenging, at all. The last time I've seen a fight with multiple enemies that weren't at least our level-1 was back at level 7, I think.

This stems from the fact that running lower-level enemies is often rather unrewarding, especially in a system that scales as hard as PF2. If I face a level 8 enemy right now, there are high chances that I can crit them to death in a turn or two without assistance and without setup, and they, in turn, will be hard-pressed to land a decent hit on me - they hit on a 13 or more before I put my defenses up or get buffed. But piloting that enemy still requires the GM to pull up another statblock, take their turn and spend their actions decently - all while knowing that it's unlikely to do much.

Intimidate skill feats are powerful force multipliers, especially considering skill feats generally do not have combat applications. Fear also stacks with itself, meaning that a party that has a fear caster and 2 or more people with Battlecry/Intimidating Glare are dropping huge penalties on all of their enemies rolls. Scare to Death is more powerful than some spells and has no usage restrictions other than once per target. Dreadful armor has to be rolled against with the penalty for fear and will require multiple rolls if it's stacked up.
No, it doesn't (unless you mean that you can have several independent Frightened conditions that don't actually improve each other on the same target). Frightened 1 does not combine from multiple sources to become Frightened 2, and since Frightened penalties are status-typed, two Frightened 1s do not stack between themselves, either. And since it decreases automatically each turn, the best actual usage of Frightened tends to be keeping it up for several turns by taking turns in using your fear sources.

Now, Dreadful is pretty good, and it might change the interaction to "just dump all of your fear effects onto targets, then they'll have to roll many will saves and maybe retain some of those Frighteneds". But it still doesn't make Frightened truly stack, so the best you're likely to get is a -2 if your Fear source is on-level and thus the target has a somewhat decent chance of failing the save. Intimidate tends to crit only on very high rolls, maybe 19+.

No character is an island in PF2e also, which I actually don't mind in the context of playing a game with folks you already know, but trying to put together a group of strangers is going to be a problem.
It is also a problem when playing with people you already know, if they aren't really of the type who plan out party compositions with necessary niches, and instead roll whatever they feel like playing for the next year or two. The game makes no accommodations for a party that doesn't have a dedicated healer, buffer, and/or melee damage specialist. Missing one of the three is a major hit to performance, and missing two means your party is pretty much non-functional for expected gameplay. Missing all three is unlikely, but I figure such a party would have a hard time dealing even with a Medium encounter.

One of the issues with PF2 is that it tries to advertise itself as a game for people who played, say, PF1 and/or D&D 5e, but severely punishes a lot of things that those games either embraced or at least let slide with sufficient system mastery. You can run just fine with a theoretically subpar party in PF1 or 5e, as long as the players themselves are decent with their tactics and/or charbuilding. I've played PF1 without healers or frontline characters, I've played 5e without buffers and healers, etc. Default 5e, frankly, works even with a party whose approach to tactics is "let's all rush this guy and Action Surge/Smite/what have you", as long as the GM doesn't crank the encounters to multiples of Deadly.

I don't think that's really right. Both ToB and Incarnum actually involve a lot of resource management. Every round, your Incarnate has to consider whether and how they want to move their essentia around. A Warblade is faced with the choice of using or refreshing their abilities, meaning they have to make decisions like "do I use a Strike now and try to finish the bad guy, or do I recover maneuvers so I have my Counter ready in case he lives and drops a SoL on me" every round. A Crusader's available resources change randomly, forcing them to be able to adapt to the particulars of whatever tactical situation they find themselves in. I would argue that resource management is much more present for these characters than it is for a Wizard, who only ever has to care about managing their resources to the degree that the DM has put some kind of ticking clock on the adventure (and even then, the Fighter's HP runs out before the Wizard's spell slots at a lot of tables).
Hmm, well, yes. I suppose it's more about short-term resource management - once you're done with the fight, you know you'll get everything back 99% of the time, whereas the "classic" design is reliant upon long-term management of spell slots and possibly HP if you don't have ways to heal forever out of combat.

A large part of what makes later 3.5 exciting for me is that I can approach each combat in a vacuum while still having to manage stuff within those combats - HP is topped up by cheap wands, and maneuvers/binder effects/warlock invocations/incarnum binds are either at-will or completely recover between fights if given the slightest breather (a couple rounds is enough), but during combat, resources and actions are important, and you won't be healing with CLW during a fight.

ahyangyi

2023-02-11, 01:30 AM

The same is true, if not more so of PF1. It's a lot of the same people who were writing a lot of the terrible feats in 3.5(these are the dragmag writers), and the power budget per feat is much smaller by design(with styles and improved x feats and the like being split as a result), with that the number of crap options is higher, the total feat volume is just as large, and the editing is just as laughable. If you hate 3.5's feats, there's a derivative system that went out of its way to be worse at that by design.

Note I never said there was more feats in 3.5 in my statement. I don't think that's necessarily the case like it was when PF1 was in its infancy. I said "there are more feats worth mentioning." I didn't say there was more turn undead based feats, I said there were more "that I would consider taking before a [PF1 one]."

I think this is something 5E did right: a feat in place of ASI seems to give the designers a balancing starting point. If you write weird **** it's pretty obvious everybody would pick ASI over that feat.

In 3e/pf, it was never clear to me how powerful a feat is supposed to be. When the core handbook contains both Toughness and Power Attack, of course you get lots of terrible feats by dragmag writers. Some of them might think a feat as powerful as Toughness is a good thing.

--------------

Also wanted to say something about the system mastery thing; but the dragmag reference is useful here as well.

Game designers thinking "they should encourage system mastery" is a terrible idea, when they also hire people without system mastery to write stuff. One doesn't magically gain system mastery when they become a game designer.

Kurald Galain

2023-02-11, 03:03 AM

Then they're reading Assurance wrong. Assurance is terrible, it's generally equivalent to rolling a 4 or 5 on your dice, and it gets actively worse as you level.
Yes it is rather terrible, but it's not like the other skill feats are any better.

PF2e is a party game, so the fact that you personally aren't going to take advantage of the fear you inflict immediately is immaterial.
But that's not something special about PF2; that applies to literally every game that has debuff abilities.

No character is an island in PF2e also,
I'd call this a specific weakness of PF2. In other RPGs you can pretty much play any class you want, and the system can deal with that. If the party has a non-standard combination of classes, then 4E or 5E or PF1 are totally fine with that whereas PF2 falls apart very quickly.

Casual players have a less articulated view of the problems.
Not at all. Forum users usually focus on level 20 and on 9th-level spell shenanigans (like you're doing in the rest of your post), and casual players usually focus on low-to-mid level because that's what they actually play.

Yes. Because of the shenanigans. I keep making this point
People don't often play high level because almost all campaigns start at (very) low level, and it takes a looong time with a dedicated group to reach high level. Groups fall apart, people move, GMs get fatigued, campaigns usually end far below level 20. That is why the general focus on level 20 is certainly fun in theory, but rarely relevant to gameplay. And that's also why the most common criticism here ("PF didn't fix 9th-level spells") is rarely relevant to gameplay either.

And there you go, that's a very clear example of how casual players have a different view than hardcore forum users.

Gnaeus

2023-02-11, 07:45 AM

But no one ever does that.

My group regards it as pretty much an obligation for anyone who has caster levels to take at least 1 item creation feat they will use for the party. Like if you are a team player, unless the DM/campaign functionally prevents it (like 0 wbl or downtime) it isn't "are you crafting" it is "which crafting feat are you taking" or "I need to/can't take wondrous items because I need to/can't take this key feat at 3, so I'll get a level 6 one instead"

bekeleven

2023-02-11, 08:50 PM

ahyangyi

2023-02-12, 05:18 AM

I know the conversation has moved on a bit, but from what I recall, Monte Cook's "Ivory Tower Game Design" essay defined the term as referring to presenting the rules without guides. He pointed out that feats like toughness were traps except in weirdly specific situation (level 1 elf wizard), but that those traps could be disarmed with care. Just a note in the book saying "Fighters don't want this. High level characters don't want this. 3 HP isn't a lot for most characters." The niche for toughness is pretty vanishing; you'd probably need to be playing a level 1 oneshot, or (eventually) be in a spot where you were using PHB2 retraining rules later.

Since this thread is about a sales pitch for 3.5, I've personally started several in-game playgroups (forever DM here, of course). I have never once said "Here's the handbook, let me know when you make a character." Every single time, I've worked with people on how best to realize their character concept in an interesting but competent way. To date, nobody in my campaigns has taken toughness.

So my sales pitch involves toppling the ivory tower completely. I am the guide. If someone said "I'm going into a monastery with four strangers for a year where we'll have no communication with the outside world, what should I bring to keep us occupied," I wouldn't pat their back and send them along with 100 hardback 3.5 tomes. I'd probably hand them fate or dungeon world or something.

I would also argue that the 3.5 designers themselves probably didn't have any clue at the time they wrote their books. As evidenced in their suggestion (in DMG I seem to remember) for DM preparing custom races, "strength is the most valuable stat, mental stats matter much less".

And they provided examples: a race with Strength bonus and Charisma penalty would be too strong as to be disruptive, and a race with a Charisma bonus and a Strength penalty would be weak and nobody would like it.

Yes, this is the kind of guides they produced when they actually tried... as if the idea that the Sorcerer might be able to get away with little strength and be more useful than the fighter never occurred to them.

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I'd imagine they would also write “Toughness is a good pick for your squishy casters as it nicely fixes one of your biggest defensive worries; Improved Initiative is less useful because your wizard, being unarmored, should usually have enough dexterity to win that initiative battle, you might want to divert your investment to something more useful”.

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This is not to say I don't support the idea. I wholeheartedly support that, and I like it when bad design becomes obvious instead of getting blurred by excuses like “we want to reward system mastery”.