What was so wrong with 3.0?

[DementedFellow]

Admittedly, I am a late comer to the whole D&D thing. When I first started playing my friends were complaining about whole 3.5 switch.

I don't profess to know about game balance, but what was wrong with the system that made in such need of a giant overhaul?

Also why are some DMs loathe to use any 3.0 books even though 3.5 is supposed to be backwards compatible?

[GreyMantle]

There wasn't anything terribly wrong with 3.0 that 3.5 actually fixed. Most of the problems that 3.0 had were totally transfered to 3.5. A lot of what people like to point out as being sooperdoopertehbrokorz (the example that immediately springs to mind is shapechange was totally put in for 3.5.

DMs are loathe to use 3.0 books for the same reason that a lot of people switched over to 4th when it came out: people want to play with what is "official" and "current." Either way it's more or less irrelevant by now, but if you can play with Sword & Fist instead of Complete Warrior you should totally do that.

[Noodles2375]

Lots of things.

Specifically, the haste spell comes to mind. In 3.0 it granted an additional partial action (the precursor to the standard action). This wasn't so bad when it was used on people who hit things with swords. When it was used on spellcasters it gave them a free quickened spell every turn.

[Ozymandias9]

Admittedly, I am a late comer to the whole D&D thing. When I first started playing my friends were complaining about whole 3.5 switch.

I don't profess to know about game balance, but what was wrong with the system that made in such need of a giant overhaul?

Also why are some DMs loathe to use any 3.0 books even though 3.5 is supposed to be backwards compatible?

I've never found much wrong with it: there were glaring issues that 3.5 fixed, but it introduced new ones as well. In fairness, I'll admit that some on the issues were a bit more readily noticeable at low optimization (for example, you get all of the bardic music class features at Bard 1 if you can keep the skill up).

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There is, however, a distinctly different editorial tone that is a far more important change (if a less immediately evident one). 3e was tailored primarily to recapture the concepts of 2e play in a more user friendly system. PRCs were introduced with attention primarily to theme and with balance as an afterthought. Home-brew was heavily encouraged. The core system was ready to play, but the expanded system, such as it was, was built with the assumption that (for the market as a whole) that emergent play would be developed primarily at a gaming group level and spread out.

They got a much bigger market than they expected. Organized public play became far more common. And the internet changed emergent play drastically. While the mechanical system wasn't changed heavily to reflect this (that's what 4e was), the editorial trends were: home-brew was de-emphasized (though not discouraged, per say) and large amounts of content were released that (while still thematically sound) existed primarily to formally deal with things that would have probably been left to house-rules in 3.0.

TL;DR? 3.5 is 3.0 refocused to deal with the fact that they got a much larger, much more interconnected market than they imagined.

[jmbrown]

Don't mind me, my critical threat range is only 5-20 and vorpal weapons kill on a crit.

Haste? Awesome spell. 3rd level and it lets you take a whole new standard action. Wow!

Ranger and Paladin existed purely for a one level dip. Wanted to get two free feats? Go with ranger. There wasn't a single sorcerer or bard in the world who didn't begin life as a paladin and ended up as a dragon disciple.

There's lots of other seemingly minor stuff. A bunch of really dumb skills like innuendo... as if I need a skill to wink my eye and motion casually in character. They cut down on the skill and feat bloat (no more ambidexterity and the like) and made it so people can't dip into a class for one level to become uber awesome.

[awesomessake]

When i was introduced to dnd, it was through 3.5. I've been trying to build my collection of dnd books, and the only corebook i have that's 3.5 is the DMG. My other core books are 3.0, and i can tell you this; i didn't like the rules presented in the 3.0 MM or PG. In defense of the PG though, most of the issues presented could have been fixed with houserules. But all in all, i prefer 3.5.

[FMArthur]

Also, Savage Species. All of it.

[Killer Angel]

Some things were easy to fix or improve (see the Haste spell, or the DR system), while a lot of other things remained unchanged and broken.

I could say that the changes were good, but too much limited to justify the whole passage.

[Kurald Galain]

I don't profess to know about game balance, but what was wrong with the system that made in such need of a giant overhaul?

It wasn't a giant overhaul.

There were a number of details that needed improving, most of which would be unlikely to cause problems in actual gameplay. The haste spell is an exception which did come up a lot. But e.g. that players use paladin for a one-level dip was obviously not designer intent, but also not problematic at the game table.

Overall they are good changes (although yes, they missed some things and introduced some new problems), but not that big a deal.

[Zephyros]

Some things got better anyway.. Like those "Is my +2 Chopah magic enough?" "Nah, you need a 5% more magic Chopah to chop this..." Also if I remember correctly Druids had a whole zoo with them. Many subtle changes happened during the transition (many of them undeserved)

[Greenish]

There wasn't anything terribly wrong with 3.0 that 3.5 actually fixed.

Psionics.

[Zephyros]

Psionics.

That's probably something most of us have locked away in the murky deeps our minds.

[jmbrown]

Personally, I liked the variable ability score spells such as bear's strength, etc. It ensured that characters with odd numbered scores would get something out of it but you weren't guaranteed to get the max. It sucked for fighters (like everything else in 3E) but it ensured characters couldn't cheese out their casting abilities as readily.

[Runestar]

1) Haste

2) Spell save DCs potentially outstripping saves, due to the multitude of ways it could be boosted.

3) Monsters having too many SLAs.

This was reasonable from a fluff POV, because it made sense that a demon lord would have mastered petty magics such as hurling magic missiles. But from a crunch POV, it was a waste of space and unnecessarily cluttered the statblock as it was unlikely to ever use it in combat, and tend to artificially inflate their crs.

The end result was that outsiders and monsters with tons of SLAs tend to be much weaker than their cr would otherwise indicate.

4) Quite a number of base classes were revised, but they still proved quite weak. Conversely, spellcasters retained most of their power (or in the case of the druid, actually got strengthened).

5) Dr was for most part pointless, as any wizard with greater magic weapon would pretty much render it moot.

[JoshuaZ]

Another thing that got a lot of fixing was the psionics system. 3.0 psionics was heavily broken (not as bad as 2e psionics but getting in that direction). The 3.5 psionics solved most of the major issues (although it did introduce a small number of new ones such as introducing the soulkinfe as a class rather than a PrC.)

[Lhurgyof]

They were probably mad because they had bought a lot of 3.0 books and then oops, they're unable to be used all of a sudden. My friend got mad because he spent a lot of cash on 3.0 and then they came out with 3.5 really soon.

Psionics.

I liked how Psionics could run off of different stats and had the attack/defense modes. It fit VERY well for Dark Sun, although there were a few REALLY dumb powers. (The one that has you burn x power points to increase your stat MODIFIER by x? Imagine blowing 100 pp into your con mod and then dissolutioning?)

[Peregrine]

The cynic's response is "they could make more money this way".

The kinder response has to do with several of the issues already pointed out, as well as a number of other inconsistent and ill-thought out things they wanted to fix. Little niggling things like Perform (each rank gets you a different category), and daft skills like Intuit Direction.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

[Flickerdart]

They fixed the Ranger, whose Favored Enemy scaled in a stupid manner...every Ranger would take Dragons as their first Favored Enemy so that when they actually faced dragons, it would have increased to a significant number.

[Kurald Galain]

There wasn't a single sorcerer or bard in the world who didn't begin life as a paladin and ended up as a dragon disciple.

I don't know anybody who did that.

every Ranger would take Dragons as their first Favored Enemy so that when they actually faced dragons, it would have increased to a significant number.

I don't know anybody who did that, either.

[Amphetryon]

Skill Focus: Spot was exactly 1/2 as good as Alertness, as both gave +2 to Spot (all Skill Foci gave +2 to the associated Skill), while Alertness added a 'free' +2 to Listen as well. No Skills besides Spot and Listen had a +2/+2 Feat associated with them.

Survival was called Wilderness Lore. The cosmetic change there made it so that a Ranger's main Skills-shtick didn't sound like the ability to sit around the campfire and spin yarns about how Old Ben and Grizzly Adams used to haunt these here parts back in the day.

[herrhauptmann]

They fixed the Ranger, whose Favored Enemy scaled in a stupid manner...every Ranger would take Dragons as their first Favored Enemy so that when they actually faced dragons, it would have increased to a significant number.

I usually saw giants at 1st, and dragons next. Giants run the gamut of CRs, but they're more common at lower levels than dragons.

Personally glad that they lumped ambidexterity into 2 weapon fighting. Unless you were a ranger, the only way to do TWF at low levels was human fighter no actually, the only way to do TWF was ranger, if you wanted to actually use your feats for something else.

[Trundlebug]

Lot of it has been mentioned already.

Haste, ambidex, psi attack/defense modes, the different stats for psionics (I liked that), Mental Leap deserves to be mentioned aside from psionics, Savage Species, Bow of True Strike and flurrying dex monks using that shocking ring from Fighter's Handbook?

Dr was really inconvenient. The individual +'s could mess with building encounters for more roleplay or clever indirect parties. Not huge, just inconvenient.

Now I get them blurred, was it 2nd or 3rd that had Dimension Door as a ziggy door? Because that was problematic. Fun though.

[Ernir]

3.0 Animal Growth.

[valadil]

TBH I don't remember 3.0 all that well even though I played it since launch. While my group begrudged buying new books, we agreed with every single change made.

As far as using older materials goes, I say go for it but look for a new version. There's probably some broken stuff, but most of it will be fine.

[Shenanigans]

I agree with the general tenor of the responses. There wasn't anything glaringly wrong with 3.0, and it is still a very viable system by itself, but 3.5 evened out a lot of things. Haste, 1-level class dips, DR, Ambidexterity, proliferation of rarely-used skills, spell DC's (all of which have already been mentioned, and my favorite change, the stacking of effects that improved critical range (we had a cleric in our 3.0 party who used a falchion and criticaled about half the time.)

That said, I always thought 3.5 could have benefited from another similar revision, which is what happened in Pathfinder pretty much, and was done best, in my personal opinion, with Star Wars Saga Edition.

[Doug Lampert]

Haste? Awesome spell. 3rd level and it lets you take a whole new standard action. Wow!

The conversion guide is still available, it goes through what the changes were.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20030718a

Lots of classes got spread out benefits and some nice minor buffs. The problem is that then they added stuff like pretty well forcing the Druid to take his animal companion as a super fighter AND adding Natural Spell!

Haste, Harm, and Heal were the big three spell changes. 3.0 Heal (vs undead) and Harm (vs. everyone else) had no save, and just reduced appropriate targets to 1d4 HP (start with 100,000,000 HP, doesn't matter, you now have 1d4, make a fort save to avoid death by massive damage). If you couldn't finish off the foe with the extra standard action from haste and with an attack that does 14+ damage even on a made save you weren't even trying. Who says HP damage isn't effective?

[Ruinix]

Harm. for livings, heal for undeads. deal your all HP bar - 1D4.

psionics. they where so bad that even very years later some DMs still bann from 3.5 just for the bad memories.

stakeable SR.

base class worth just for 1 dip level.

haste spell.

[Telonius]

They mucked around with the Monk stats a bit, but I don't think I'd call what resulted as "fixed."

[Curmudgeon]

Weapon sizes were handled more realistically in 3.0, but that turned out to be a bad thing in terms of game play. You see, it's not so much the size of the weapon as it is the size of the grip that determines if you can handle it properly. So 3.5's simple "Is it made for my size?" check is an improvement.

[dsmiles]

made it so people can't dip into a class for one level to become uber awesome.

But, yet, they still do...