You opnion on: Problematic and slow mechanics of 3.5

[Jonjonjon4]

Hello folks

Lately I have been thinking about how would a remastered dnd 3.5 would be like.

While I have already tought about many chages to make it easier to play, I would like to know what are the most difficult and problematic machanics of dnd 3.5 in your opnion.

Thanks :)

[Condé]

Honestly, the main problem of the game from a modern design perspective is... The abundance of modifiers and all the cumulatives debuffs and conditions you have to know. Flanking is +4. Boeing shaken is -x, diseases are différent, poisoned too, you can have ability damage, ability drain, etc etc...

It makes playing the a bit of a chore sometimes and it is hard top keep track of everything at every time. How many times, dm or players, have you forgotten a +2 or a -1 for this turn? A lot of times.
And that is, in m'y opinion, what makes the game difficult to play for modern audience.

That and the fact that you need MONTHS before being able to gather and know every classes and prc from every books... And that these books are kinda hard top fond to begin with... But that is another story.

[pabelfly]

Hello folks

Lately I have been thinking about how would a remastered dnd 3.5 would be like.

There are plenty of remastered and upgraded versions of DnD 3.5 about. The most prominent are Pathfinder and 5e, but I've also seen a bunch of system rewrites like Savage Worlds and NicheD20, and whole bunch more I've forgotten the names of. Never mind the copious amounts of homebrew that people have.

[Kurald Galain]

I would like to know what are the most difficult and problematic machanics of dnd 3.5 in your opnion.
The Dodge feat.

Combat maneuvers all working differently from one another and requiring multiple rolls to resolve.

Shapeshift effects that add to your current stats and abilities.

[Saintheart]

inb4 'casters scale quadratically, martials scale linearly.'

[Quertus]

Most of my tables have a strong Efficiency drive. To that end, there are rules like, "if you can't Persist it, don't use buffs to give someone a temporary +X they need to fiddle with" and "you can't spend XP - use XP Components instead, so that the GM only needs to calculate XP for the party once".

Things like that.

So, if you wanted to force 3e to be more efficient, you'd remove all the fiddly little bonuses and penalties, making the math just work be very static and easy to do.

However, that would make the game less appealing for those who want all the fiddly little numbers.

So, IMO, 3e is perfect just the way it is. It's the most balanced, most perfect, most perfectly boring system ever made, that plays fast if you're smart enough to make it play fast, that plays balanced if you're smart enough to build characters that are balanced, etc.

It's the industrial drill from "In the Beginning was the Command Line", not the piddly little commercial model. It's for advanced users only (or, rather, casual users beware, you might get your arm ripped off if you're not careful).

Perfect, for what it is.

[Crake]

I think the main issue 3.5 has is an issue that any old game eventually has in the internet age: as time has gone on, it’s essentially become a “solved” system. Lot of meta expectations, nothing to shake it up, and its been optimized into the ground.

The best way to play 3.5, in my opinion, is to throw all that to the wind, use the system as a chassis, and make your own content for the game. Enjoy experimenting and experiencing new things, break the meta, make players thing and engage with your world, not the books that are old enough to drink.

[noce]

It is possible to build melee characters that require endless minutes to complete a round.
Take for example something so simple as a single classed Monk tripper with Touch of Golden Ice:

Touch attack to initiate a trip
If successful, Strength check to trip
If successful, melee attack to hit
If crit, roll confirmation
If hit, roll damage
If hit, and you declared to use Stunning Fist, roll enemy save
If hit, and enemy is evil, roll enemy save for Touch of Golden Ice


And this can be repeated up to 7 times just with Haste and Snap Kick.
And every time you have to take into account everchanging bonuses and penalties:

Surprised
Flanked
Prone
Stunned
Ravaged by Touch of Golden Ice
Your power attack
Buffs and debuffs from enemies and allies, both on you and on the enemy


All this just takes too long against an enemy that only fails on 1s, or that takes just 3 damage per hit because the monk can't overcome damage reduction.
It's frustrating for the other party members to the point that in our group we typically avoid TWF, natural weapons and flurry characters just for how much time it takes to complete your turn.

[MinimanMidget]

The slowest and most painful thing? Finding a game.

[Silly Name]

- Needlessly byzantine mechanics: Turn Undead is the worst offender here, but a lot of combat actions also take multiple opposed rolls to resolve for no good reason. You'd likely want to both streamline and consolidate most effects for the sake of linearity of play: e.g, Turn Undead likely works better as a WIS Save against the Turner's DC of 10 + 1/2 level + Cha mod; grappling should work similarly to shoving and disarming and so on, so that there's a clear framework that can be relied on.

- Excess of conditions and overlapping terminologies. Stunned, dazed, dazzled, frightened, shaken, panicked... This is a mess. Take an axe to the list and cut the redundancies.

- The skill system: while I often argue in favour of it, it's definitely a bit messy, and you'd want to solve the issue of high level play effectively making it pointless to roll for skills you haven't trained. I'm not actually sure of how to "fix" it (apart from the very obvious point of giving more skills points to everyone who gets only 2 points per level, except for INT-based classes), as the foundation is quite solid.

- As a balancing point, you really want to boost the usual suspects (Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian, Monk) and give them more out-of-combat utility as well, and probably want to take a good look at the spell lists of most full casters and try to nix some of the most egregious cheeses.

- Likewise, you'd want to completely redo the Feat list so that we are rid of trap feats, and improve on mechanically poor feats like Dodge.

[Amidus Drexel]

Hello folks

Lately I have been thinking about how would a remastered dnd 3.5 would be like.

While I have already tought about many chages to make it easier to play, I would like to know what are the most difficult and problematic machanics of dnd 3.5 in your opnion.

Thanks :)

These days, 3.5 is mostly played by diehard fans like myself, most of whom played the system in its prime and liked it well enough to not switch away when other systems presented new ideas. :smalltongue:

If I was going to re-work 3.5, though, I'd narrow the skill system slightly and give most classes extra skill points. Skills are cool, and most classes don't get to do much with them. There's also a fantastic amount of dysfunctional rules and copy-editing mistakes that I'd correct.

That said, if I was going to make a lot of changes to 3.5, why not play one of the many systems other people already have made that did that? Newer editions of D&D were largely trying to do that (even 5th edition, I'd argue). Pathfinder 1e started as a pile of 3.5 houserules. Making a system is a lot of work.


So, if you wanted to force 3e to be more efficient, you'd remove all the fiddly little bonuses and penalties, making the math just work be very static and easy to do.

However, that would make the game less appealing for those who want all the fiddly little numbers.

I mean, I'd argue that most of the math is just fine, but I am one of those people who likes the fiddly little numbers. Gimme my +1 for high ground, my +2 for flanking, and my -2 for sickened. Let someone get really debuffed. Like, can't-carry-their-armor debuffed. Let someone get really buffed. Like, 8 attacks per round with on-hit damage and status effects buffed. Both extremes are fun.

[pabelfly]

I'd make the following changes to the 3e skill system:

- If a skill was once a class skill, it's always a class skill regardless of multiclassing. Currently, multiclassing and skill point allocation is quite messy at best and could be simplified without issue, IMO.
- Skill points should be at least 4 + INT per class. Many 2 + INT skill classes feel like they can't do much out of combat without investing fairly hard in INT, especially if one of their skills is a class or build skill tax, like Concentration on a caster.
- I'd make skill points based on INT retroactive. For example, if you had 10 INT and managed to raise it to 12 INT, you get your level worth of skill points, and an extra +3 for level 1. Innate stats only.
- I would try to give all classes the following

at least two of bluff/sense motive/diplomacy/intimidate, so players have some reason to roleplay with NPC characters and can do it well.
Spot, Listen and Search

I feel those are the most major skill areas a player would want to invest in so they can participate in non-combat situations.

[Quertus]

It is possible to build melee characters that require endless minutes to complete a round.
Take for example something so simple as a single classed Monk tripper with Touch of Golden Ice:

Touch attack to initiate a trip
If successful, Strength check to trip
If successful, melee attack to hit
If crit, roll confirmation
If hit, roll damage
If hit, and you declared to use Stunning Fist, roll enemy save
If hit, and enemy is evil, roll enemy save for Touch of Golden Ice


And this can be repeated up to 7 times just with Haste and Snap Kick.
And every time you have to take into account everchanging bonuses and penalties:

Surprised
Flanked
Prone
Stunned
Ravaged by Touch of Golden Ice
Your power attack
Buffs and debuffs from enemies and allies, both on you and on the enemy


All this just takes too long against an enemy that only fails on 1s, or that takes just 3 damage per hit because the monk can't overcome damage reduction.
It's frustrating for the other party members to the point that in our group we typically avoid TWF, natural weapons and flurry characters just for how much time it takes to complete your turn.

Going back to the 2e days of "all attacks made at full attack bonus" would certainly help keep the numbers easy. It's probably my favorite 3e "mod". I don't share your experiences of "opponent only fails on a 1" making turns take longer, though - it's just 7 rolls, with a "they failed on the 4th one" or "they didn't fail at all" to inform the math. Just roll 7 d20s, count how many hit, add up damage (after DR as appropriate). It's not exactly blazingly fast, but it needn't carry the sloth of roll... math... hit... roll... math... damage... roll... save, either.


- Needlessly byzantine mechanics: Turn Undead is the worst offender here, but a lot of combat actions also take multiple opposed rolls to resolve for no good reason. You'd likely want to both streamline and consolidate most effects for the sake of linearity of play: e.g, Turn Undead likely works better as a WIS Save against the Turner's DC of 10 + 1/2 level + Cha mod; grappling should work similarly to shoving and disarming and so on, so that there's a clear framework that can be relied on.

I'm not so sure about this. Uniform mechanics may make the game quicker to learn, but I don't think that they help out in play - in fact, poorly-simulated, unbalanced, and boring uniformity IME make the game more prone to lengthy arguments about how this should really be handled "for realism", in part because those arguments are much more exciting and interesting than the samey system. Even modern teaching understands that changing things up is good for keeping the interest of the group; variant mechanics can help in that regard.

So, ultimately, I'd really need to see a well-formed argument for why consolidated mechanics make things faster for someone who actually knows the mechanics before I agreed that this was actually beneficial to the speed of the game. I can fail a d% 2e Thief Skills check just as fast as I can fail a d20 attack roll - I'm not seeing any advantage in changing that.


- Excess of conditions and overlapping terminologies. Stunned, dazed, dazzled, frightened, shaken, panicked... This is a mess. Take an axe to the list and cut the redundancies.

I mean, I guess you could have "gains Optical Disadvantage" and "Immune to Optical effects" instead of Dazzled and Blind Sight?


- The skill system: while I often argue in favour of it, it's definitely a bit messy, and you'd want to solve the issue of high level play effectively making it pointless to roll for skills you haven't trained. I'm not actually sure of how to "fix" it (apart from the very obvious point of giving more skills points to everyone who gets only 2 points per level, except for INT-based classes), as the foundation is quite solid.

Maybe you should start with removing it being pointless to roll for skills you haven't trained in at high levels? Like, if that tree was DC 12 to climb when you were 1st level, it should still be DC 12 to climb when you're Epic. Just sayin'.

[Mordante]

I would change armor and to hit mechanics. Having a lot of armor should not make you harder to hit. It should make you harder to damage. Armor should function as damage reduction even for most magical attacks.

[Telonius]

Most problematic mechanically? Grapple.

Hardest to wrap your brain around, and most confusion-inducing (at least by my table's experience)? Sniping rules, and how they interact with Sneak Attacks.

Things that just get under my skin (to the point that I houserule fixes for them when I'm DM)? Completely useless levels (ie Rogue 20), Paladin Oath (forcing their views on other members of the party), Weapon Finesse requiring +1 BAB, Multiclass XP penalties/the whole "Favored Class" thing.

Agreed that the multitude of bonuses seriously slows things down. You can do things to help with this, like having notecards up to remind people of the bonuses, but not everybody adds things that quickly. High-level combat - with multiple iterative attacks, spells and items that break action economy giving people even more actions per turn, multiple Summoned monsters - has an effect too. That's kind of unavoidable in the case of summons. If you're going to have summoning magic at all, it's going to slow things down.

As DM: XP. I use milestone leveling. For crafting and spell components, 1XP=5GP.

[RexDart]

I've always thought the concept of Class Skills limits characters way too much, not to mention that the Class Skill lists themselves are often too restricted or nonsensical. Most characters have way too few skill points to begin with, so a "cross-class" skill is a pretty onerous tax (except for wizards, who as usual get to do whatever they want....)

Just let any character take any skill they want, and give them more skill points while you're at it. (The apparently somewhat-common house rule of "4 skill pts/level minimum" seems reasonable to me.)

In general, I think an "Ultimate Third Edition" (3.75?) should consolidate and simplify. For example, gather all the various feats together, then get rid of, revise, or combine the many, many useless ones. Similar things for the plethora of classes and prestige classes.

[pabelfly]

I've always thought the concept of Class Skills limits characters way too much, not to mention that the Class Skill lists themselves are often too restricted or nonsensical. Most characters have way too few skill points to begin with, so a "cross-class" skill is a pretty onerous tax (except for wizards, who as usual get to do whatever they want.....

I'm fine with that myself. I think skill lists represent the associated abilities of a class, it makes sense that the wizard probably knows knowledge: Arcana while the Fighter probably doesn't, and you can take feats, etc to expand your skill list.

[Kurald Galain]

the Class Skill lists themselves are often too restricted or nonsensical.
Aside from fighters, which class skill lists actually are too restricted or nonsensical?


Most characters have way too few skill points to begin with
That's mainly the fighter, cleric, paladin, and sorcerer, isn't it? Is that really "most characters"? Most classes seem to have a decent amount of skill points.

I mean, clearly the 3.5 skill system could use some improvement (both PF and 5E do a better job at it), but hyperbole doesn't really help with finding solutions.

[InvisibleBison]

- Excess of conditions and overlapping terminologies. Stunned, dazed, dazzled, frightened, shaken, panicked... This is a mess. Take an axe to the list and cut the redundancies.

While I agree the terminology could do with clarification, I think the basic idea of status conditions having multiple tiers is a good one, especially if you generalize the way in which fear conditions stack with each other. Multiple characters being able to coordinate their efforts to produce an effect greater than what any of them could do individually is pretty cool.


I would change armor and to hit mechanics. Having a lot of armor should not make you harder to hit. It should make you harder to damage. Armor should function as damage reduction even for most magical attacks.

I don't you need to change any mechanics to make armor work like this. The only reason an attack that misses you by less than your armor bonus doesn't bounce off your armor is because your DM chooses not to narrate it as doing that.


One thing that I would change in a 3.5 update is prestige class prerequisites. Specifically, I'd get rid of almost all if not all of the mechanical prerequisites, and replace them with narrative and ECL prerequisites. I think the fact that you have to plan out your build from level 1 in order to enter most prestige classes is a serious hamper to interesting roleplay. Being able to dip into a PrC for narrative reasons, or to shore up an unexpected weakness or gain some ability you didn't think you'd need, strike me as something the system should allow. The only mechanical prerequisites I'd consider keeping is those that are built on by the class, eg spellcasting for a casting class or Power Attack for Frenzied Berzerker, which has abilities that make Power Attack stronger. But even then I might just say that if you don't have the prerequisite ability you can't benefit from the PrC ability that builds off of it.

[Paragon]

Favored Class/Multiclassing XP penalties is bs when you created such a rich system.
Weapon Finesse needing Bab +1 is ridiculous indeed
"Empty" levels in classes means you probably won't use it and that's sad but homebrew can fix it pretty easily

Skill side, I just had to throw away a build for the current Iron Chef Comp because of stupid 2+Int, "only-a-skill-when-you-pick-that-particular-sub-level" rule and it sucks. Something needs to be done but it's so systemic I'm afraid to touch it and have Wizard become tier -1 :smallbiggrin:

As far as combat maneuvers go :
Grapple needs to be simpler : A touch attack & a Str check should do it.
Overrun needs to exist and actually do smtg
Sundering be less of a niche
Trip is great as is imo.


- XP as a resource is interesting and opens up many possibilities as well as plot points.
- Paladins' (or others') Code of Conducts are a good way to have everyone behave differently than they would IRL and that's a good side of Roleplaying I feel. Obviously, players have to be up for it.
- I also like the many options you can stock up and the different bonuses/penalties ; there is nothing more fun than having that one little +2 save everyone on a boss AoE.

[Metastachydium]

That's mainly the fighter, cleric, paladin, and sorcerer, isn't it? Is that really "most characters"? Most classes seem to have a decent amount of skill points.

Well, Psychic Warrior, Warlock, Divine Mind, Ardent, Hexblade, Samurai, Dread Necromancer, Incarnate, Soulborn, Favored Soul, Warmage, Sohei, Dragon Shaman, Knight, Binder and Shadowcaster might want to have a word with you.


I mean, clearly the 3.5 skill system could use some improvement (both PF and 5E do a better job at it), but hyperbole doesn't really help with finding solutions.

I was with you on this until you mentioned 5e. I mean, 5e? Really? Where you can have a +6 on, like, four of your poorly defined ability checks beyond your less than stellar ability modifier at level 20 unless you happen to belong to one of, like, two classes? Where taking 10 is a high level privilege for a select few? What exactly does that improve on?

[calam]

I don't like full attacking as a mechanic. It ends up slowing down the fight by discouraging movement and discouraged other martial options because its hard to p
Balance against having 1-3 more attacks per round with one weapon

[gijoemike]

Well, Psychic Warrior, Warlock, Divine Mind, Ardent, Hexblade, Samurai, Dread Necromancer, Incarnate, Soulborn, Favored Soul, Warmage, Sohei, Dragon Shaman, Knight, Binder and Shadowcaster might want to have a word with you.



I was with you on this until you mentioned 5e. I mean, 5e? Really? Where you can have a +6 on, like, four of your poorly defined ability checks beyond your less than stellar ability modifier at level 20 unless you happen to belong to one of, like, two classes? Where taking 10 is a high level privilege for a select few? What exactly does that improve on?

5e does a very good job of streamlining the whole skills system. The list in 3.5 is far to long and broken out in dozens of sub skills. And 5th ed prevents the die roll from not mattering. In 3.5 there comes a point in which a character just does it. The can never fail in many situations. With the capped numbers and modifiers there is always a slight chance of failure or a chance for the PC to win.

Now 5th is not perfect by any means necessary. I think it is silly you cannot dabble in a skill. The PC is either a highly trained bad mama jamma or clueless dolt. I would have liked if all PCs got to pick a skill at level 7 as a dabble skill at Prof bonus -2.

[Darg]

I would change armor and to hit mechanics. Having a lot of armor should not make you harder to hit. It should make you harder to damage. Armor should function as damage reduction even for most magical attacks.

Unearthed Arcana has optional rules that gives armor innate damage reduction. (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm) It's basically a staple for me.

~~~~~~~

One inconvenience that doesn't make sense is the automatic retaliation on maneuvers like trip/grapple. Enemies already get AoOs if you don't have the improved feats. So I like to ignore the automatic retaliation which speeds up play and makes players more willing to use actions to attempt them regardless of specialization. A win win in my book.

~~~~~~~

Skill points are easily modified. Classes are punished twice: the number of skill points and class skills. The easiest and best way to give suffering classes extra attention and diversity is to simply boost skill points as that alone won't allow them to overstep skill based classes. I give 8 skill points to pure mundane classes, 6 to partial caster types (warlock and martial/skill type alternative magic system classes) + druid/skill based casters, 4 to spontaneous casters and alternative casting system classes, 2 to full casters.

~~~~~~~

The multiclass penalty is simply overblown. At any one time you are always less than 80% of a level behind and when you are behind you gain an extra 12.5 to 35% more xp per encounter. Which means for most of the game you aren't playing with a penalty at all.

[icefractal]

The multiclass penalty is simply overblown. At any one time you are always less than 80% of a level behind and when you are behind you gain an extra 12.5 to 35% more xp per encounter. Which means for most of the game you aren't playing with a penalty at all. It's not that severe, but it's also counterproductive to the extent it does exist.

Rogue 3/Cleric 9 (former gang member who got into religion hard) gets penalized every level they take, unless they ignore the concept and take more Rogue levels.

Fighter 2/Rogue 1/Scout 1/Barbarian 1/Ranger 2/Swordsage 2/Warblade 2/Incarnate 1 is just fine though, no multiclass penalty there.

And I'm not even against builds like the latter, they make sense for some concepts. But saying that #1 is in need of a downside when #2 isn't is just silly.

[Metastachydium]

5e does a very good job of streamlining the whole skills system. The list in 3.5 is far to long and broken out in dozens of sub skills. And 5th ed prevents the die roll from not mattering. In 3.5 there comes a point in which a character just does it. The can never fail in many situations. With the capped numbers and modifiers there is always a slight chance of failure or a chance for the PC to win.

Now 5th is not perfect by any means necessary. I think it is silly you cannot dabble in a skill. The PC is either a highly trained bad mama jamma or clueless dolt. I would have liked if all PCs got to pick a skill at level 7 as a dabble skill at Prof bonus -2.

So, too many classes in 3.5 have too few class skills and skill points; therefore leaving everyone with much fewer "class skills" which scale at an embarrassing rate except for a select few classes that get shafted all the same, but somewhat less is "a very good job"? Also, I don't think "even middling level characters can be really good at a couple of things they specialize in" is worse in any way that I can think of than "even at the highest levels, characters play like bumbling idiots unable to reliably make checks".

[InvisibleBison]

The list in 3.5 is far to long and broken out in dozens of sub skills.

Whether 3.5 has too many skills or 3.5 characters don't get enough skill points is mostly just a matter of opinion. And while I can appreciate the simplicity of 5e's consolidated skills, I also appreciate the precision and granularity of 3.5's more expansive list. In both cases, I don't think you can fairly say that one is better than the other, only that one is more to your preference than the other.



And 5th ed prevents the die roll from not mattering. In 3.5 there comes a point in which a character just does it. The can never fail in many situations. With the capped numbers and modifiers there is always a slight chance of failure or a chance for the PC to win.

I would argue that the die roll not mattering in certain circumstances is a good thing. A skilled character should be able to reliably succeed at easy tasks, with the upper limit of "easy" increasing for higher-level characters.

[icefractal]

I would argue that the die roll not mattering in certain circumstances is a good thing. A skilled character should be able to reliably succeed at easy tasks, with the upper limit of "easy" increasing for higher-level characters.Agreed. If someone is, say, the greatest wilderness tracker in the empire, there shouldn't even be a 5% chance that "some rando with no particular skill in that area" does better when it comes up.

As far as skill consolidation, I like the PF1 list. 4e condenses a bit much for my taste, but is ok too.

[Segev]

This one is more of a seismic shift than it might seem, but one thing I find hard to go back to in 3.PF (despite loving the system) is the fact that movement happens entirely before or after actions; it takes a feat to move-attack-move. In 5e, the removal of movement as an "action type," but just as this thing you do at any point during your turn, as long as you have movement distance left? That's a much smoother way to handle it, in my opinion. Teaching new players 3.PF's movement rules is always a sticking point; they always want to move-act-move, and take a while to remember the rule. The only time I've seen anybody struggle with remembering movement isn't a "phase" of the turn to be done before or after acting in 5e is if they were experienced 3.PF players, and came in with that assumption in place. New players instinctively "got" the movement rules for 5e, at least wrt acting and moving, and even veteran 3.PF players tend to adapt more quickly to 5e's rules than newbies do to 3.PF's. And, like I said, I tend to find it hard to go back to planning my turns the 3.PF way.

[Darg]

This one is more of a seismic shift than it might seem, but one thing I find hard to go back to in 3.PF (despite loving the system) is the fact that movement happens entirely before or after actions; it takes a feat to move-attack-move. In 5e, the removal of movement as an "action type," but just as this thing you do at any point during your turn, as long as you have movement distance left? That's a much smoother way to handle it, in my opinion. Teaching new players 3.PF's movement rules is always a sticking point; they always want to move-act-move, and take a while to remember the rule. The only time I've seen anybody struggle with remembering movement isn't a "phase" of the turn to be done before or after acting in 5e is if they were experienced 3.PF players, and came in with that assumption in place. New players instinctively "got" the movement rules for 5e, at least wrt acting and moving, and even veteran 3.PF players tend to adapt more quickly to 5e's rules than newbies do to 3.PF's. And, like I said, I tend to find it hard to go back to planning my turns the 3.PF way.

In 3e an attack roll signifies several attempts to strike which takes some of the time of a 6 second round. Moving 30 ft takes a not insignificant portion of that time, stopping and starting movement also eats up time. Basically it's meant to be a "feat" to be able to do these things faster and coordinated enough to not trip over your own feet. That said, I can't say combat isn't mechanically smoother being able to move before and after the attack. I haven't played 5e other than the BG3 beta, but in 3e movement is a huge benefit. It can grant you cover, negate full attacks, escape encirclement/flanking, and easily set up hit and run sneak attacks.

[Biggus]

It's not that severe, but it's also counterproductive to the extent it does exist.

Rogue 3/Cleric 9 (former gang member who got into religion hard) gets penalized every level they take, unless they ignore the concept and take more Rogue levels.

Fighter 2/Rogue 1/Scout 1/Barbarian 1/Ranger 2/Swordsage 2/Warblade 2/Incarnate 1 is just fine though, no multiclass penalty there.

And I'm not even against builds like the latter, they make sense for some concepts. But saying that #1 is in need of a downside when #2 isn't is just silly.

There's also the fact that if you have multiple unfavored classes at different levels, the XP penalty stacks, so it can potentially be 40%, 60% or more.

[rel]

The basic mechanics were balanced (actually fairly well) around a party of 4 PC's built with the PHB only playing at level 1 and maybe 2, fighting the more mundane monsters from MM1 and challenges from the DMG.

If the wizard gets surrounded, they might actually fail to cast in combat. But they could also succeed. If the fighter spots an enemy standing next to a well, they can run up and try to bull rush them, even without the feat. It might work, maybe even better than just swinging. The rogue could plausibly wriggle free from the guard grappling them, or draw a dagger and fight back. 1D4 damage might mean something when the guard in question is a level 1 warrior with only 5 hit points.
When the bandit jumps out from ambush and levels a crossbow, the PC's pay attention, because the single attack the bandit just readied is going to include a sneak attack and hurt when it lands.

The problem with all these mechanics is that once the game reaches level 3 (or level 1 with a suitable level of optimisation) they start working against the players. what were once useful situational bonuses like flanking that rewarded clever play become swathes of individually insignificant bonuses that must be stacked and tracked to remain effective.
Systems that previously allowed anyone to try in a pinch while rewarding investment like grappling become all or nothing effects that require significant investment to work at all while retaining all the complicated minutiae that is no longer relevant.

Basically, the core mechanics were built for a very small slice of the entire game (level 1) and outside of this space aren't really fit for purpose.

[Kurald Galain]

Teaching new players 3.PF's movement rules is always a sticking point; they always want to move-act-move, and take a while to remember the rule. The only time I've seen anybody struggle with remembering movement isn't a "phase" of the turn to be done before or after acting in 5e is if they were experienced 3.PF players
Interestingly, my experience is entirely the opposite: nobody that I've introduced to 3E or 4E or PF has had any trouble remembering that you have a move action and a standard action, and the only players that insist on wanting to move-act-move are the ones that played 5E first.

[Telonius]

Sundering be less of a niche

"You can repair broken magical swords without building the whole thing from scratch again" would go a long way to fixing that problem. A tactic that destroys a big chunk of your reward is a tactic that's only going to be used in the worst emergencies.

[Khedrac]

There's also the fact that if you have multiple unfavored classes at different levels, the XP penalty stacks, so it can potentially be 40%, 60% or more.

Yes - that rule was so problematic for Living Greyhawk that they had to put in a cap to the XP penalty to stop players abusing it...

In LG you usually gained wealth slower than WBL so having an xp penalty that slowed down levelling was an advantage - characters were richer and usually more powerful than other characters of the same level which was a definite advantage (and meant you could overpower the adventure more easily).

For me, I second the suggestion that the most problematic and cumbersome rules were the Grapple rules, closely followed by Bullrush, Overrun, Disarm, Sunday and Trip. Unless one had a specialist in the party they almost always need to be checked whenever it comes up in play which really slows things down. Also, how come a Squid (10 limbs) gets just one attack when grappling when a fighter 6 with a single dagger gets 2?

[RexDart]

For me, I second the suggestion that the most problematic and cumbersome rules were the Grapple rules, closely followed by Bullrush, Overrun, Disarm, Sunday and Trip. Unless one had a specialist in the party they almost always need to be checked whenever it comes up in play which really slows things down. Also, how come a Squid (10 limbs) gets just one attack when grappling when a fighter 6 with a single dagger gets 2?

The other big problem I'd like to address somehow is that only a specialist will ever want to attempt any of these maneuvers. They're a fairly big part of heroic fiction, but Conan saying "By Crom, nothing I do can harm this damned sorcerer! But if I took away his staff?" That basically doesn't happen in 3.5 unless Conan happens to have taken multiple feats in Disarm or Sunder.

[TotallyNotEvil]

I think there is a lot of good to be taken from 5e: a condensed skill list (Which PF also does), multiple attacks having the same attack bonuses, full attack just not being a thing anymore, free-er ability to spend your movement speed as you like.

These things makes the game flow better.

PF also has a nice point in CMB/CMD, even if it doesn't quite scale like it should.

[Kurald Galain]

The other big problem I'd like to address somehow is that only a specialist will ever want to attempt any of these maneuvers.
The catch is that this is largely false. At levels that people commonly play at (as opposed to level 20), against many opponents (as opposed to all of them), any decently-built martial has a good chance of connecting with any maneuver of his choice.

That is, if you treat maneuvers as one tactic in your toolbox, instead of as something you want to spam against every opponent ever, then they work just fine. And if you do want to spam one, well, you can afford to specialize; that's how the system works.

Like, disarm or sunder that enemy wizard? In 3.5 that's an opposed attack roll (and wizards suck at that), and in PF it's a roll against their CMD (and wizards suck at that even worse). In both cases the wizard will most likely be unable to OA (because he's unarmed) or simply miss with it (because, again, wizards suck at attack rolls).

I know it's forum dogma that it's impossible to disarm without taking several feats first, but if you do the math then it actually works pretty well :smallamused:

[Morphic tide]

Structurally, 3.5 messes up with having too many tracks of modifiers and too many tracks of mechanics. Fiddly bonuses are fine, that's what we're here for a decade and a half after the last sourcebook, but every "pillar" operating differently and often having major differences inside itself causes a lot of gameplay issues from almost anything touching a different thing breaking the math. The most well-known of this is skill checks as a save DC, because they're the most common by a large margin. But this is also seen in how what PF1e refers to as Combat Maneuvers just stop working a huge portion of the time for anyone not extensively focused on them past level 6 or so, as the way player-math and monster-math works is too divergent to be using raw Strength and Dexterity checks.

So for me, the first priority would be refactoring the numbers so that the "ranges" are unified, and properly use the relatively-even factors like final attack bonus instead of divergent ones like underlying Strength score. Attached to this would be the purging of untyped bonuses and reducing the variety of them so that the "swing" by optimization level goes down, to inform an "expected" bonus chart and other "This Is How The Game Works" documentation.

For gameplay slowness, make it so the person using the action makes the roll every time, and use the unified ranges to convert riders into offsets instead of separate rolls. Same goes for turning opposed rolls into static target numbers. So instead of a Trip rolling 2d20 and comparing two different bonus sources it's rolling 1d20 and checking against a precalculated value, and a Fireball that hits a dozen Goblins is a single roll. Yes, this removes the variance of unexpected survivors within a mass of corpses, but that is a huge source of slowdown whenever a caster gets to AoE, which is their job.

There's a huge variety of fiddly fixes to specific things, but with clear explanations of how the game math operates and a much narrower band of it the bulk of them become much easier to homebrew around.

[D+1]

Top of my list of mechanical issues with 3E is ANY replacement of roleplaying interactions with the DM with dice rolls - intimidation, diplomacy, that kind of thing. Next is crazy amounts of accumulating bonuses or adjustments. Third in line is the spiraling power of magic. That one is NOT endemic to 3E, it's been a problem with D&D since always, but still makes it something to be dealt with IMO. Those last two are listed separate but they both kind of fall under the overall problem of SCALING. The natural progression of editions of D&D is to range from something close to gritty reality on up to SUPERHEROES as PC's gain levels. Ultimately it has NEVER handled that scaling well in ANY edition - IMO. It needs to be more selective and limited in the range of PC power for any given campaign setting, and the overwhelmingly preferred range of levels for playing has always dropped off dramatically at about 7th level - and therefore a BETTER version of D&D would and should restrict itself close to that level range. E6 (or E8 if you just CANNOT live without 4th level spells) fixes a huge amount of issues.

Setting DESIGN was made into a stinking sinkhole with 3E. The game is a kitchen sink SO FILLED with dirty dishes with caked on, moldy food that nothing in it could possible look really appetizing. WASH those dishes and clean the sink. DM's (or ANY setting designer) should just not permit any race, class, skill, feat, or general CRAP from anyoldwhere to be an integral part of EVERY setting. Choice for players is a good thing and they THINK they want infinite choice - but so much of the choices are just TRASH and rarely make sense as ALL being available in EVERY game. Want a selection of races? Fine. Pick TEN races maximum. Want more than the standard selection of classes? Also fine. But pick FIFTEEN at most as the pool from which player characters will comprise that game setting. Build a setting around those possible races and classes and STICK TO IT. The more you throw in there, the dirtier and less attractive that setting is as just an utterly unfocused and garbage-filled sink. I have found that HAVING is not so pleasing a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but for D&D player choice it is VERY often true.

Hey, DM's get to do what they want with the game on their own, right? But if YOU are taking on the mantle of GAME DESIGNER and are intending to clean up what you acknowledge is a gummed up system, then CREATE a setting that works with the RULES and OPTIONS that best suit that setting. If someone wants a dozen more races and 30 more classes then let THEM bloat their own game. Your task is to FOCUS the game you're creating to create more interest, not to blur it and paralyze players with choices they really neither want nor need (but keep being duped into thinking that they want/need them because that sells infinite amounts of game-bloating crap to them).

Give DM's more encouragement, power, and authority to TAKE BACK CONTROL of the game - and game SETTING - which 3E simply handed over to players on a platter with increasingly less regard for the spreading consequences.

I still say E6 is the best place to start for curing what ails 3E.

[Darg]

"You can repair broken magical swords without building the whole thing from scratch again" would go a long way to fixing that problem. A tactic that destroys a big chunk of your reward is a tactic that's only going to be used in the worst emergencies.

The rule only says that Make Whole can't repair a completely broken item not that you can't repair it normally. So sunder is an actually usable tactic, though I guess a lot of people don't know that.

[Metastachydium]

Top of my list of mechanical issues with 3E is ANY replacement of roleplaying interactions with the DM with dice rolls - intimidation, diplomacy, that kind of thing.

Those are there to make social interactions dependent on the character's skill rather than the player's. Diplomacy is broken for unrelated reasons, but there's a reason why the skill itself exists.


Setting DESIGN was made into a stinking sinkhole with 3E. The game is a kitchen sink SO FILLED with dirty dishes with caked on, moldy food that nothing in it could possible look really appetizing. WASH those dishes and clean the sink.

There's truth to that,


DM's (or ANY setting designer) should just not permit any race, class, skill, feat, or general CRAP from anyoldwhere to be an integral part of EVERY setting. Choice for players is a good thing and they THINK they want infinite choice - but so much of the choices are just TRASH and rarely make sense as ALL being available in EVERY game. Want a selection of races? Fine. Pick TEN races maximum. Want more than the standard selection of classes? Also fine. But pick FIFTEEN at most as the pool from which player characters will comprise that game setting. Build a setting around those possible races and classes and STICK TO IT. The more you throw in there, the dirtier and less attractive that setting is as just an utterly unfocused and garbage-filled sink. I have found that HAVING is not so pleasing a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but for D&D player choice it is VERY often true.

Hey, DM's get to do what they want with the game on their own, right? But if YOU are taking on the mantle of GAME DESIGNER and are intending to clean up what you acknowledge is a gummed up system, then CREATE a setting that works with the RULES and OPTIONS that best suit that setting. If someone wants a dozen more races and 30 more classes then let THEM bloat their own game. Your task is to FOCUS the game you're creating to create more interest, not to blur it and paralyze players with choices they really neither want nor need (but keep being duped into thinking that they want/need them because that sells infinite amounts of game-bloating crap to them).

Give DM's more encouragement, power, and authority to TAKE BACK CONTROL of the game - and game SETTING - which 3E simply handed over to players on a platter with increasingly less regard for the spreading consequences.

but with this, I couldn't agree less. One of the great appeals of 3.5 is just how rich it is in options. I've only ever played a core race, like, twice myself and one of those was a deep halfling. DMs can and indeed, probably should put some restrictions on sources available, and in my experience, most do. And that is fine. But having a broad array of options even after that is not a bug; it's a feature.

My issue with the published settings is, rather, that they don't make much sense. The options exist, but the designers don't bother to do much anything with them, and instead pretend that everything beyond Core (the most BORING and yet most BROKEN, overall, subset of material in the game) is kind of just some dressing inorganically floating about at the edges of the dishwater. A fantasy world having dozens of sapient beings is not the issue; nor is having lands with vastly different cultures that justify, say, vastly different styles of fighting or traditions of magic. The issue is, those that develop these settings are painfully lazy and repeat the same tired, old, stupid patterns over and over: humans are somehow stupidly numerous compared to everyone else; humans are also the only ones who get to do politics on the basis of anything other than genetic proximity, and as such have more than one culture, language and the like; the rest get stupid, nonsensical monocultures (racial languages are probably the single dumbest thing in the game lorewise, sorry).

[Telonius]

The rule only says that Make Whole can't repair a completely broken item not that you can't repair it normally. So sunder is an actually usable tactic, though I guess a lot of people don't know that.

Here's (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#damagedObjects) the problem with it:


Damaged Objects
A damaged object remains fully functional until the item’s hit points are reduced to 0, at which point it is destroyed.

Damaged (but not destroyed) objects can be repaired with the Craft skill.

So Sunder doesn't do anything mechanically, until it actually destroys the object (magical or not). If the object reaches zero hit points, it's destroyed, and you can't fix it with the Craft skill. At that point, Make Whole can't repair it either. So you're stuck with a broken sword that can't be fixed by mundane or magical means, short of something like Wish's "Undo Misfortune."

My guess is they were thinking of the reforging of Narsil into Anduril, and that it ought to be a big deal to redo a magic sword if it's been completely messed up. But doing it that way is kind of silly if magical swords are common in the setting, not super-rare like in Lord of the Rings.

[Jonjonjon4]

Hey folks, I adressed some of the things said in this post in my next post, if you want to check some of my ideas for a rework on 3.5

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?654937-DnD-3-5-rework-Pt-2-(continuation-to-quot-Problematic-and-slow-mechanics-of-3-5-quot-)

[Kurald Galain]

So Sunder doesn't do anything mechanically, until it actually destroys the object (magical or not).
A simple fix is to add a 'broken' condition that imposes penalties on items that are below half their hit points.

Alternatively, instead of trying to break an enemy's weapon or armor, aim for his spell component pouch.

[Darg]

Here's (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/exploration.htm#damagedObjects) the problem with it:



So Sunder doesn't do anything mechanically, until it actually destroys the object (magical or not). If the object reaches zero hit points, it's destroyed, and you can't fix it with the Craft skill. At that point, Make Whole can't repair it either. So you're stuck with a broken sword that can't be fixed by mundane or magical means, short of something like Wish's "Undo Misfortune."

My guess is they were thinking of the reforging of Narsil into Anduril, and that it ought to be a big deal to redo a magic sword if it's been completely messed up. But doing it that way is kind of silly if magical swords are common in the setting, not super-rare like in Lord of the Rings.

Craft Magical Arms and Armor disagrees with that. It was just pointed out to me that it allows the feat holder to repair broken magical weapons, shields, and armor.

[Quertus]

Alternatively, instead of trying to break an enemy's weapon or armor, aim for his spell component pouch.

How many monsters have spell component pouches? IME, it's a lot fewer than have weapons and armor.

That said, I don't thing I've ever had a GM tell me that I looted a Spell Component Pouch off a Dragon... :smallconfused:

[Kurald Galain]

How many monsters have spell component pouches?

Sunder becomes a lot better in any campaign primarily focused on cities and humanoids living in cities, or any campaign where you frequently fight humanoid cultists instead of only the big monsters they summon. That shouldn't be so rare; most campaigns I know of are full of mid-to-high-level humanoid NPCs.

[Crake]

Sunder becomes a lot better in any campaign primarily focused on cities and humanoids living in cities, or any campaign where you frequently fight humanoid cultists instead of only the big monsters they summon. That shouldn't be so rare; most campaigns I know of are full of mid-to-high-level humanoid NPCs.

I think a lot of people overestimate how many spells actually use material components to the point where a component pouch being sundered is not really that big of a deal.

[SillySymphonies]

Craft Magical Arms and Armor disagrees with that. It was just pointed out to me that it allows the feat holder to repair broken magical weapons, shields, and armor.
FWIW, Craft Wondrous Item and Forge Ring have similar clauses: "You can also mend a broken [wondrous item / ring] if it is one that you could make." :smallbiggrin:

[Telonius]

Yeah, I'd seen that (re: item creation feats) in the other thread - had completely forgotten about that clause. It's still costly though; if you're planning on selling it, you'd only be able to get about a quarter of the list price (without crafting optimization), and would be out the time/XP it takes to repair it. So not really "impossible," just a very costly tactic; that gets costlier the more the item is worth to begin with.

[Darg]

Or the DM compensates to keep WBL relatively where it should be in the first place. You can have a lot more interesting combats when you can't loot everything an enemy has used because the amount of gold entering the hands of players can easily get out of hand.

[Crake]

Or the DM compensates to keep WBL relatively where it should be in the first place. You can have a lot more interesting combats when you can't loot everything an enemy has used because the amount of gold entering the hands of players can easily get out of hand.

Or just play with Pathfinder's automatic bonus progression and ignore the majority of WBL, and only save magic items for rare and special campaign moments.

[False God]

Or just ignore WBL entirely.

My problematic hot take: anything that costs XP. Nothing should cost XP. XP is a meta currency that only exists to measure player progress, it is not an in-world thing (unless ya know, you're running one of those isekai worlds where the game mechanics are real, but that should be an optional, alternative way to play). Every material cost should cost something that is real and tangible within the game world. I don't care if it's 254 sticks, 3 rocks and a handful of dragon teeth to make a magical longsword like we're in some darn AAA shooter, but it shouldn't be XP.

[Crake]

Or just ignore WBL entirely.

My problematic hot take: anything that costs XP. Nothing should cost XP. XP is a meta currency that only exists to measure player progress, it is not an in-world thing (unless ya know, you're running one of those isekai worlds where the game mechanics are real, but that should be an optional, alternative way to play). Every material cost should cost something that is real and tangible within the game world. I don't care if it's 254 sticks, 3 rocks and a handful of dragon teeth to make a magical longsword like we're in some darn AAA shooter, but it shouldn't be XP.

I personally actually run xp as tangible in game, but not as a “game mechanic”, but more akin to something like anima from world of warcraft, a sort of spiritual growth that comes from experiences, and something that can be drained by creatures like succubi or wights. And likewise, it can be spent, or even stored and sold if you wish. During the golden age of magic in my setting, there were entire megacities that were basically just xp farms for the oligarchies, the people lived in a utopia, with everything provided for them, and the currency for premium things was xp, which trickled its way up to the people at the top.

Isekai isnt the only valid explanation.

[RandomPeasant]

I think a lot of people overestimate how many spells actually use material components to the point where a component pouch being sundered is not really that big of a deal.

Also if "sunder the pouch" ever becomes a viable tactic, you can just carry several of them or take Eschew Materials. The reason people don't do it is not that no one's thought of it, it's that in the equilibrium of everyone doing it the game only changes in very modest ways that mostly make it dumber because now everyone is walking around with like eight bags of magic crap.


Or just play with Pathfinder's automatic bonus progression and ignore the majority of WBL, and only save magic items for rare and special campaign moments.

WBL causes a great many problems and prevents very few. It is much better for the game if you just do something that causes people's numbers to be correct, make magic items rare and special, and make gold into a resource that people can spend on random peripheral stuff they think is neat without feeling they've wasted it.


Top of my list of mechanical issues with 3E is ANY replacement of roleplaying interactions with the DM with dice rolls - intimidation, diplomacy, that kind of thing.

Those things exist for a very good reason: they allow you to roleplay a character who is much more persuasive than yourself. Just as we do not require that people demonstrate a deep knowledge of weightlifting to make STR checks, replacing social skills with pure roleplay locks out certain character archetypes.


Setting DESIGN was made into a stinking sinkhole with 3E. The game is a kitchen sink SO FILLED with dirty dishes with caked on, moldy food that nothing in it could possible look really appetizing.

This is just D&D. It's the core thing that D&D is. We can argue about the merits of power scaling (specifically: you are wrong, power scaling is rad, the numbers break down because designers are lazy and don't do math), but if the thing you want is a specific and focused setting with a limited number of things in it, the thing you want is not D&D. 3e, particularly the mainline books, is if anything much more limited about the kinds of weird nonsense it puts in the game than AD&D was.


Pick TEN races maximum.

You're just picking a round number. There's no actual basis here. No one is actually going to write up ten cultures anymore than they are going to write up a hundred. At least not in any useful level of detail. So what we do, the sensible thing to do, is the game gives you some basic starting information and then you can expand on (or contradict) that as fits the needs of your setting. Perhaps there is someone out there who regularly worldbuilds in such exacting detail that the addition of Forestkith Goblins destroys the fabric of their setting, but I have yet to encounter such a person.


Give DM's more encouragement, power, and authority to TAKE BACK CONTROL of the game - and game SETTING - which 3E simply handed over to players on a platter with increasingly less regard for the spreading consequences.

What I frequently find is that DMs have too little control over the game and are not able to adequately make their preferences felt. That is a real and serious complaint that reflects the reality of the game as I have played it.

[Crake]

WBL causes a great many problems and prevents very few. It is much better for the game if you just do something that causes people's numbers to be correct, make magic items rare and special, and make gold into a resource that people can spend on random peripheral stuff they think is neat without feeling they've wasted it.

Yeah, that's basically what automatic bonus progression does. Gives you the big six baked into character progression, you get to make decisions about where you want particular things to go, for example you can enhance armor and a shield to a lesser degree, or you can enhance just armor to a greater degree, same goes for weapons, you can pick where your enhancement bonus goes, and late on you can pick from various legendary bonuses, which include bringing all your enhancement bonuses to +6, or gaining inherent bonuses, etc.

That all just gets baked into standard level progression, and that way you can put gold toward non-combat progression, like building a keep, or growing an organization.

[False God]

I personally actually run xp as tangible in game, but not as a “game mechanic”, but more akin to something like anima from world of warcraft, a sort of spiritual growth that comes from experiences, and something that can be drained by creatures like succubi or wights. And likewise, it can be spent, or even stored and sold if you wish. During the golden age of magic in my setting, there were entire megacities that were basically just xp farms for the oligarchies, the people lived in a utopia, with everything provided for them, and the currency for premium things was xp, which trickled its way up to the people at the top.

Isekai isnt the only valid explanation.

Hmm, I hadn't considered it as a form of soul energy. Though I'd still prefer some delineation between players spending the meta-currency that is "XP" and PCs/NPCs in the game-world spending their "soul energy and life experiences".