[3.5]Style Question - Broken or Not?

[arguskos]

So, here's a funky question for you all: does anyone here actually play 3.5 with no changes?

For all we yell and moan about how broken 3.5 is, does anyone who's playing unmodified 3.5 actually SEE those broken things? Is it really as bad as we've all been led to believe?

I personally wouldn't know. It's been a LOOOOONG while since we played unmodified D&D in my groups, and I don't remember how it's supposed to be now. I think we've all gotten so wrapped up in the balancing problems of the game, that we've missed the whole damn point, myself included. Not everything needs to be balanced, no? Perhaps, if we all gave it a gentleman's chance, 3.5 wouldn't be so bad. However, I'm wondering if I can get some testimony either way.

[Foryn Gilnith]

If you give it a gentleman's chance, ya. If your group can compensate for 3.5, ya. The point isn't that base 3.5 can't work (I'm running a fairly successful base 3.5 campaign with various power levels), the point is that doing do is difficult and requires a fair amount of group effort.

[RagnaroksChosen]

So, here's a funky question for you all: does anyone here actually play 3.5 with no changes?

For all we yell and moan about how broken 3.5 is, does anyone who's playing unmodified 3.5 actually SEE those broken things? Is it really as bad as we've all been led to believe?

I personally wouldn't know. It's been a LOOOOONG while since we played unmodified D&D in my groups, and I don't remember how it's supposed to be now. I think we've all gotten so wrapped up in the balancing problems of the game, that we've missed the whole damn point, myself included. Not everything needs to be balanced, no? Perhaps, if we all gave it a gentleman's chance, 3.5 wouldn't be so bad. However, I'm wondering if I can get some testimony either way.

well my group uses a mix and mash of 3.5/3.0... though my groups more about story... a well built barbarian or wizard(played well) seems un balanced and sometimes we can see it. though ususaly it happens once or twice before i catch on and make adjustments to the game so that every one feels like they are contributing.

[arguskos]

If you give it a gentleman's chance, ya. If your group can compensate for 3.5, ya. The point isn't that base 3.5 can't work (I'm running a fairly successful base 3.5 campaign with various power levels), the point is that doing do is difficult and requires a fair amount of group effort.

But any group willing to put effort into some roleplaying and working together, which I've heard MANY people have, should be able to make that happen, no?

It's no harder then making a normal group work. It just requires a touch more attention to rules.

[infinitypanda]

My group only had trouble in 3.5 when one player was optimized and the rest weren't. We had an unoptimized rogue, and unoptimized ranger, and an ubercharger. It went well. That was a lie, actually.

[imperialspectre]

Doc Roc and I were actually talking about this earlier today. It's absolutely possible to play unmodified 3.5 without any real problems, provided that the party is mostly made up of characters of similar strength and any outliers are compensated for by the rest of the group. For example, a party of a Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, and Barbarian is perfectly capable of functioning, provided that a) all their enemies have only two legs, only two arms, no wings, and no spells, and b) the Rogue makes adequate use of UMD.

It's also possible to make a party with a Polymorph-abusing Wizard, a DMM Cleric, a Beguiler, and a Fighter, provided that the first 3 are helping the Fighter along. More than two PCs with gimped classes, though, and they're too much of a drain on party resources for the game to function.

Really, the only thing that categorically doesn't work is playing a game in as-written Core (that's the Big Three, not everything else in the SRD). There are too many holes left uncovered in everyone who's not a caster, and the casters' best options are almost all good only for the casters and WTF-broken to boot. There are too many good party buffs missing, and the ones that are there can't be persisted or otherwise kept going as efficiently, so it's often better for the Wizard to polymorph the already-good Cleric than it is for the Wizard to polymorph the otherwise-gimped Fighter.

[Yukitsu]

My group is having a decent amount of fun, partly because the optimizers are paladins and the weaker players are the wizards. Standard is great for allowing really borked up builds for example we have:

Tank: Paladin with 9nth level divine spells.
Skill monkey: Paladin, monk
Damage dealer: Wizard 1, wizard 2.

[Rhiannon87]

My group plays unmodified 3.5. We're not optimizers, we focus primarily on roleplay and story over mechanics, so maybe that's it... our group consists of a trio of rogues (with different areas of specialization), a fighter/rogue/psion, a fighter, a wizard, a cleric, and a bard. We manage quite well.

[Dusk Eclipse]

I have been playing D&D for 4 years now, and we have not modified anything we have played fairly succesful campaing even on a party with a wizard an arcane archer and a rogue/shadow dancer, and thats because the DM puts challenge that goes againts every strong point of the party

[rezplz]

My irl 3.5 group (which sadly had to break off when everyone went back to school) played 3.5 with no house rules at all. We were all casual players though, with the wizards usually being blaster wizards more than anything else.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Any houserules I use when I run my games are purely stylistic, to make the game feel more like 1e/2e (cleric spheres instead of base list + domains, for instance) or to adapt to a particular setting--and I don't have a "standard set" either, houserules are made on a game-by-game basis. My philosophy is that nothing is unbalanced in a vacuum, so as long as the party as a whole is at a given power level (i.e. all full casters, all non-casters, full casters buffing non-casters, etc.) I can challenge them just fine.

[ghashxx]

A lot of earlier posts have mentioned the fixes. That either all the party is the same power level or the powerful ones RP to support the weaker classes. It is definitely frustrating when as a fighter you find yourself constantly outclassed by any and all spellcasters like when the wizard all of a sudden becomes a war forged titan, or the druid casts bite of the wear tiger. Yet despite all this I went from AD&D which I loved so much, and have always had fun with 3.5 whether with or without home rules, or playing a rogue, sorcerer, druid, fighter, or whatever.

[Iuliano05]

We don't change anything in our 3.5 games, except no punpun's. The thing is we all know the DM will always win if he wants too. What you guys are rocking my encounter, here is 5 more of those guys to make it hard. Both of them know how to adjust on the fly to make it harder or easier. We all know how to min/max but we do it with style. leaving out a few things because and add in some flavor to our combat. And the players don't usually get pissed when they aren't owning. We know that a situation will come up when we can rock something easily every once in a while and we get excited when the rogue can sneak in back stab everything and then let the rest of the party walk into a cleared room, or some other such thing.

[Gametime]

In my experience, the lower tier classes stand out more than the higher tier ones. It's easy for a player to miss which spells are actually powerful, or to notice and deliberately not use them in such a way as to trivialize encounters. It's much harder to make the weak classes look good even next to other relatively subpar classes. (I'm looking at you, monk.)

[rooster]

We play it straight out of the can.

We definitely see balance issues. In our group right now, the barbarian and battle sorcerer are undoubtedly more powerful than the psychic warrior, twf ranger or elf cloistered cleric (we have a bard too, but he doesn't really compete with anyone).

The thing is, balance doesn't matter. At all. So the barbarian and sorcerer dominate in combat and the bard is the one who gets things done outside combat. It doesn't matter. The game is still fun. Even though the cleric doesn't have much as far as combat abilities go [really], he has fun finding ways to contribute: tangling the baddies in tapestries, working with the ranger to lock a pair of mooks in a closet, etc.

Roleplay can be just as fun with a commoner as it can with CoDzilla. And honestly, I find combat and tactical elements more fun when I'm on the weak end of a group power imbalance: each battle is a new puzzle to solve, much more distinct than just a new face to run a charge or fog/summon/summon routine against.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The thing is, balance doesn't matter. At all. So the barbarian and sorcerer dominate in combat and the bard is the one who gets things done outside combat. It doesn't matter. The game is still fun.

[...]

And honestly, I find combat and tactical elements more fun when I'm on the weak end of a group power imbalance: each battle is a new puzzle to solve, much more distinct than just a new face to run a charge or fog/summon/summon routine against.

Definitely agreed. I should have clarified in my last post that I don't enforce a "balanced" party, but rather than I have a much broader view of what constitutes a balanced party than many players I know.

[Dracomorph]

I once ran a campaign centered around an unmodified soulknife. He was never outshone in melee, either. And poorly optimized, to boot. The other party members were a cleric and a monk/drunken master who beat people with his keg, both DMPCs.

It wasn't that hard, either. I made a token effort to balance encounters, and played the rest on the fly. Somehow it worked out beautifully.

Ah, good times.

[Kaiyanwang]

OP, believe it or not, my group, and a lot of people in my zone, play 3.5 (with 3.0 material too) with pretty much no change, and we have a lot of fun too.

My group uses almost any wotc and dragon magazine source, choosing everything case-by-case.

And we play with fighters and wizzies in the same party.

I consider 3.5 an huge toolbox and it's my edition of election. I really have a blast with it. I see the problems of the system, and me and my players see some loophole, but we ignore it or use the system complexity to overcome them.

Moreover, my gamestyle(s) - plural because I played several kind of campaign drammatically different does not make casters so OP. I take care of power imbalances, fix with small limitation and equip, follow the story and everything it's OK.

Long life to 3.5!

[Jastermereel]

I'd say we play it 90-95% straight.

When we first started playing around 5 years ago we streamlined it, partially by accident and partially on purpose, and slowly added various rules back in as we realized we were missing them. We've switched DMs a few times and minor rules have varied over time. For example, when we first started, rolling a critical hit had no confirmation process, and critical misses had DM choice (or semi-random) fumbles ranging from the merciful weapon dropping to the dangerous ally-targeting. Now, we try to remember to confirm the hits and don't tend to have catastrophic fumbles on rolls of a 1 unless it makes sense.

We don't have any real power-builders (well, none that bring their A-game builds to the table) so the class balance doesn't really become a problem as much. The wizards still seemed overpowered, but that was partially due to the DMs not fully compensating for that issue with foe-choice.

Does anyone really play with the cheap spell components? That is, does your wizard have to have a bit of spider web handy to cast Web or a piece of cured leather for Mage Armor?

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Does anyone really play with the cheap spell components? That is, does your wizard have to have a bit of spider web handy to cast Web or a piece of cured leather for Mage Armor?

Well, technically in 3e it's not "a bit of spider web" or "a piece of leather" but rather just "a spell component pouch which holds any and every inexpensive component you could possibly want"--in that scenario, it's not really that big a deal. I had one 2e DM, however, who made the wizards look for and track components, even though material components were an entirely optional rule; after that, I've never enforced material components in any version of D&D.

[arguskos]

Hmm. This is what I expected.

So, it's a fair statement to say that the game, unbalanced and wonky as it is, is still fun and fair to play? That's what I was expecting and hoping to hear.

[Oslecamo]

Heck, I'm currently DMing a campaign on these very forums where the only house rule is on diplomacy. I've got a DMM cleric with leadership, an optimized psion who keeps chruning out super constructs and a quite optimized batman wizard, togheter with a barbarian and a dragon incarnate(ok, custom class, but weaker than a fullcaster) and I can still make them sweat whitout TPKs thanks to me carefully optimizing the ecounters in return.

[Saph]

I make a point of running 3.5 with as few houserules as possible. I find it makes for a much better game in the long run.

I find that houserules designed to fix 'broken' things generally hurt more than they help. I prefer 'result' rules - you tell the players what result you want, and leave it up to them to figure out how to do it. My two general rules for players are:

1. Don't be a jerk.
2. It's your responsibility to get on with the rest of the party.

In practice, those two cover just about everything, and it's way more efficient than trying to make a list of 1,001 line-by-line changes.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

So, it's a fair statement to say that the game, unbalanced and wonky as it is, is still fun and fair to play?

Indeed it is. Balance, I find, is vastly overrated in a game where player ingenuity trumps mechanics more often than not--give three people precisely the same character build to play, and given a single scenario they'll probably come up with six different ways to beat it. In a vacuum or in an arena-type match, the classes are extremely unbalanced and items are abusable, but in an actual game I can challenge basically any group just fine.

[Gamerlord]

I play 100% unmodded. Except for the rather silly house rule I made that makes anything with a INT lower then 8 speak like the hulk, and I have the right to railroad that character into doing something stupid, but that doesn't really count,

[ghashxx]

When it does come to modding the game we generally do things with limiting a couple of feats and spells out of non-core books. So tactical feats are sometimes given the questionable eye, and stuff from spell compendium is every once in awhile laughed at, while the crystals for armor and weapons from the MIC just makes the DM really laugh whenever they're brought up. Other than that I've always wanted to completely overhaul intimidate. How to do this is a question for another thread.

[FMArthur]

The modifications I make are only made to the upper limits of power; none of the superpowered PrCs, Polymorph (and related) forms are restricted, same with the Planar Binding line (and related), and not much more. My players are significantly less powergamey than I, so it was really a waste of time to even outline this much.

[Wings of Peace]

I haven't found myself making any modifications really. The only houserule that is currently enforced is "If you're a **** the world will also be a ****." Very vague and open ended but it works well enough for the players. Especially since we've all been gaming together long enough to know the general amount of power needed for the sessions and anything up for debate I work with them on to make keep their character's true to their ideas without devastating the local kingdom and all nearby continents.

[Kaiyanwang]

My players are significantly less powergamey than I, so it was really a waste of time to even outline this much.

This happens to me too. Sometimes as a DM I say:

"Ok guys you are enough high level for this combo see... take this and that"
"no thanks is powergamey"
"but.. the Dm allows it"
"no thanks."

[sonofzeal]

So, here's a funky question for you all: does anyone here actually play 3.5 with no changes?

For all we yell and moan about how broken 3.5 is, does anyone who's playing unmodified 3.5 actually SEE those broken things? Is it really as bad as we've all been led to believe?

I personally wouldn't know. It's been a LOOOOONG while since we played unmodified D&D in my groups, and I don't remember how it's supposed to be now. I think we've all gotten so wrapped up in the balancing problems of the game, that we've missed the whole damn point, myself included. Not everything needs to be balanced, no? Perhaps, if we all gave it a gentleman's chance, 3.5 wouldn't be so bad. However, I'm wondering if I can get some testimony either way.

Yes, more or less. Whoever is currently DMing will occasionally disallow certain content (I try to avoid Complete Champion whenever possible), but we play the game itself pretty straight. Oh, but dwarven Holy Water is ale.

Anyway, it works pretty well if you aren't aiming to break the game and the better optimizers restrain themselves.