Yin and Yang Version 3.5

[Capfalcon]

Ok, I saw this thread in the RPG.net forum, (I believe...) and I thought it was a pretty cool idea.

Anyway, the basic idea is that if you are a fan of 3.5, you post five things you don't like about 3.5. If you don't like 3.5, then you post five things you do like about 3.5.

Now, while all of the following are going to be opinions, I would appreciate it if people specific examples. Saying "It changed too much from 2nd." is nice and all, but doesn't really say anything. Saying "I liked THACO, and wish they had left it alone" is a better example.

In advance, please don't try to be clever and post things along the lines of "Those people who were too dumb to count backwards now have their own game" or other such nonsense. It isn't clever, and it goes against the whole point of this exercise. If you don't have anything nice/not nice (depending on your feelings towards 3.5) to say, just don't say anything at all.

I thank you in advance for the maturity and self-control required to do so.

Anyway, I like 3.5, so here's some of the things I don't care for.

1. Non-casters have rather few options.

To be honest, it reminds me of the early Final Fantasy games. You have Attack, Item, Defend, Run, and the nifty trick that each character gets. Yeah, technically, anyone can try to trip, bull rush, etc, but, if you don't have the feat, you kinda suck at it.

2. Rogues, Trapfinding, and Disable Device.

These all kinda fall under the same tree, I guess. Do you want to be able to find a trap? You need a level in Rogue. Period. Hell, there isn't even a feat that lets you pick it up. I find the idea of a ranger being unable to notice a well made pitfall trap to be... odd, to say the least.

In addition, a wizard couldn't study the magic trap and try to mess with the wards or whatever. That is disable device's thing. You could just use Dispel Magic to try to get rid of it, but it's probably going to be simpler just to Summon Monster I and set it off.

3. Only the divine know the mysteries of first aid.

You either need a Cleric/Druid in the party, a hell of a lot of healing potions and wands, or you need to be prepared to set up a damn near permanent residence in a dungeon to sleep off your wounds.

4. Magic Item Audit

Gear is very, very important. Having gear above or below the expected level throws the game balance off. So, as a result, the players or the DM have to play Tax collector every now and then to make sure you have the right amount of gear.

5. Feats STILL put me to sleep.

As I said on the 4E Yin and Yang, I think that most of the feats in the PHB are incredibly boring. And Toughness. Just... Toughness.

So, what do you think?

P.S. Copy and Paste, FTW!

[Morty]

Hm. I like 3.5, but there's certainly some stuff about it that I don't like. Here we go:
1) Noncasters have got few options. Duh. It's been repeated so many times I don't think I need to go into detail.
2) Practical magic. Magic can be used for mundane purposes far too easily, which leads to parodies like Eberron being logical extension of the rules and ever-present question: why don't they do X with magic?
3) Christmas Tree effect. Also preety self-explainatory, I think.
4) Cannon Fodder. Whole races such as orcs and goblins exist for the sole purpose of being grinded for XP by low-level adventurers.
5) Alignment system. It's not bad as alignment systems go, but the very existence of a system governing moralty is preposterous.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Well, I find 3e<4e, so let's see what nice things I have to say:

1) Feats & Combat Options
Oh, these were very nice. Feats let your character be more heroic by doing cool stuff in combat (improved feint, spring attack, etc.) and giving you a bit more customization than you'd get in 2e. Plus, rules for disarming and bull rushing were a nice addition, as were grappling rules.

2) Skills
NWPs were terrible. It was never clear what they really did, and most of them had little bearing to the sort of stuff you actually wanted to do (like, climb walls). Having a set of skills which your adventurer would use, and allowing you to improve them over time added some non-combat depth to the game.

3) Improvable Ability Scores
It was always annoying that your character couldn't "buff up" in 2e. Wishes were basically the only way you could improve any of your abilities... and since Ability Checks were basically how you did things out of combat, this became a little flat. Being able to improve things just by leveling added another dimension to leveling, and dealt with the old "why can't I get buffer by working out" issues.

4) AoOs
While I shed a tear for moving to grid-based combats, for a hackfest like D&D it's nice to make moving about the battlefield a little more hazardous.

5) Multiclassing
Multiclassing in 2e was ludicrous. Either it was the clearly right thing to do (always be a Fighter/Mage instead of just a Mage if you can) but it was tied up by racial choices. Lame. Now you could make some nice blends of classes, like the Fighter-Rogue, which captured missing archetypes (e.g. swashbucklers) that are fun to play.

[Ifni]

I'm a fan of 3.5. Five things I don't like about it, in no particular order:

(1) The fact that "you die at -10" doesn't scale by level at all. At L1, it's a nice reassuring buffer: at L15, you have to be rather lucky to end up in the zero to -10 range, rather than going straight from "fighting" to "dead" in one blow. There are spells that try to patch this problem by (temporarily) stopping death-by-HP-loss entirely, but that creates a new set of issues. I feel similarly about the nonscaling Massive Damage rule (yes, you can one-shot a 1000HP dragon if you deal 51 damage to it with a single attack...)

(2) Swarms that are immune to weapon damage, and Antimagic Fields. I don't like encounters that invalidate pretty much all the options of several Core classes. (I strongly support the magic items, feats and ACFs in later books that allow rogues to sneak-attack normally sneak-immune foes.)

(3) The superiority of "high Strength + two-handed weapon + Power Attack" over all other fighting styles (unless, maybe, you use Tome of Battle). It's not a small gap, either.

(4) Newbie traps - options that look cool, but are actually ineffective (e.g. recommending spring attack for monks, when flurry of blows - which requires a full attack - is meant to help compensate for their lower BAB progression). Retraining/rebuilding helps here, but only if the player actually figures out what's wrong and how to fix it. I'm pretty sure this is about half the problem with perceived fighter/caster imbalance: it's a lot easier to build a really ineffective single-class fighter than a really ineffective single-class cleric.

(5) If you roll a nat 1 on a saving throw, it can fry your items - and worn items usually have very few HP. Similarly, I've never seen the rules for sundering worn items used in-game, because they're widely agreed (among people I play with) to be silly-broken. I like my magic items, and having them randomly fried or smashed isn't much fun.

[Matthew]

I don't like it as much as AD&D, but I am going to go with "like", even though I am actually more neutral towards it.

1) Everybody Has a Class Terrible idea. Just terrible. Undermined some of the most important things about the class system in AD&D, and why you don't apply it to every character in the game.

2) Lack of Simultaneous Resolution Whilst AD&D supported the idea of "I move, you move" [i.e. it was possible to play like that] simultaneous movement was also supported.

3) Skill System The D20 skill system is bad, and for many reasons. The AD&D Proficiency System was not "good", but it was better (though that is a long discussion).

4) Multi Classing This is really related to the first point. It just misunderstands the role of Multi Classing in AD&D [i.e. ignores it, until they start creating mixed classes] and supports the class for everyone idea.

5) Magic Magic is powerful in AD&D, but there are limits. Many of these limits were inadvisedly removed in D20. From spell learning, to spell recovery, to spell casting, to spell interruption, to saving throws, it was just one big **** up.

______________________________________

Maybe I will do a like version as well...

1) Organisation The rulebook layout was much, much better than any version of AD&D.

2) Saving Throws Whilst I thought the implemenation was poor, the reduction to three types was actually quite neat.

3) Six second Round Thank god.

4) Two Weapon Fighting A mixed blessing, but it pointed the way.

5) OGL/OGC Yay!

[EvilElitest]

1) The lack of balance and WOTC's inablity to catch on

2) The lack of organization in splat books. I don't mind the amount, but i wish they were more in synch

3) Monsters in need of more detail

4) Societies that didn't make sense because of so much magic

5) Misunderstandings of the alignement system. Not the systems itself, just the way WoTc too so long to explain it properly

i liked most of 3E things, just not the way they did it
from
EE
Edit
Mathew, what is wrong with the class system. It was a very good way to get world consistency going and NPC classes were very good in implementation. It just was horribly executed but hey, its WotC. Is that what your complaining about, the execution?

[Tengu_temp]

I don't like DND 3.5, so the things I like about it are:

1. Psionics. A nice system, much better than Vancian casting.
2. Tome of Battle. It increases the fun factor of this game by 100%. If not more.
3. It's fun to look at real life and media through the prism of DND 3.5 at times - look at the Unstat Me thread for a prime example.
4. Eberron is an interesting setting.
5. Without this game, we'd never have Mutants and Masterminds.

[Matthew]

Mathew, what is wrong with the class system. It was a very good way to get world consistency going and NPC classes were very good in implementation. It just was horribly executed but hey, its WotC. Is that what your complaining about, the execution?

Dunno whether we're supposed to discuss our thoughts in this thread, but I guess I could explain myself a bit better. Basically, a class is a guideline. You don't need a class to create a blacksmith, or a soldier, or any NPC really. Their primary use is for creating player characters and advancing them by level [i.e. creating a power scale and reward system]. It's a game artifact rather than a world building methodology.

You can read more of my yabberings on the subject here, though my input doesn't begin until page 2 of that thread.

[Starsinger]

Dunno whether we're supposed to discuss our thoughts in this thread, but I guess I could explain myself a bit better. Basically, a class is a guideline. You don't need a class to create a blacksmith, or a soldier, or any NPC really. Their primary use is for creating player characters and advancing them by level [i.e. creating a power scale and reward system]. It's a game artifact rather than a world building methodology.

Matthew hit a nail on the head with this one.

[EvilElitest]

Dunno whether we're supposed to discuss our thoughts in this thread, but I guess I could explain myself a bit better. Basically, a class is a guideline. You don't need a class to create a blacksmith, or a soldier, or any NPC really. Their primary use is for creating player characters and advancing them by level [i.e. creating a power scale and reward system]. It's a game artifact rather than a world building methodology.

You can read more of my yabberings on the subject here, though my input doesn't begin until page 2 of that thread.

again i don't know if we are discussing stuff (and OP, let us know if we should stop) but i disagree. A character with a class, be he NPC or PC uses his lass as a device to effect the world around him. One's powers come from their class and their abilities are determined by their class. If a non magic class like thief or fighter have their abilities given by their class, it makes sense for people like black smiths and farmers to have that as well. Now logically, the PCs aren't going to often be Black smith's or farmers, but 3E doesn't make them core classes, it makes them NPC classes. they aren't intented for the normal use, but if you want to use them (IE, NPc comparads, lesser monsters ect) it makes more sense by having Human commoner level X rather than just Human or goblin
from
EE

[Matthew]

again i don't know if we are discussing stuff (and OP, let us know if we should stop) but i disagree. A character with a class, be he NPC or PC uses his lass as a device to effect the world around him. One's powers come from their class and their abilities are determined by their class. If a non magic class like thief or fighter have their abilities given by their class, it makes sense for people like black smiths and farmers to have that as well. Now logically, the PCs aren't going to often be Black smith's or farmers, but 3E doesn't make them core classes, it makes them NPC classes. they aren't intented for the normal use, but if you want to use them (IE, NPc comparads, lesser monsters ect) it makes more sense by having Human commoner level X rather than just Human or goblin
from
EE

Well, let's start a new thread to discuss it.

[EvilElitest]

Well, let's start a new thread to discuss it.

fair enough
from
EE

[arguskos]

So, to drag this thread back on topic somewhat...

I like 3.5, so here's my short list of complaints:

1. Magic being ridiculously broken. I like Vancian casting, I really do, but there's no excuse for the idiocy of WoTC in failing to recognize the balance issues the spells tended to cause. It can be fixed with houseruling (as anything can be), but out of the box, it was stupid.

2. The skill system. This is merely personal preference, and honestly, it's not THAT bad, just annoying.

3. Druids being insane, and lack of even rudimentary balance in the system. I don't like excessive balance (like 4e's "balance above all" mantra), but I do like it when some thought goes into the game about how to keep certain characters from just totally outshining the others. Natural Spell is an excellent example of something that is just freaking STUPID and should never have gotten out of testing.

4. Supplements being wildly disorganized and all over the place. Really, I wish they'd have just picked a format that worked, and stuck to it. It wasn't until MM3 that we got a nice, clean monster format, and MM4 till we got a good stat block format. >_<

5. Too many ineffective options. I love the awesomeness of having tons of options for any character, but too many of them weren't really that great (which sorta sucks). I know that this is an issue with any system that gives hundreds of options, but it still bothers me.

-argus

[Vortling]

I would say I like 3.5. The things that I dislike:

1) Overkill spell lists. There's a spell for everything and generally they're not restricted by class so you've got wizards and sorcerers or clerics and druids picking up almost anything. A little paring down would be very nice.

2) Christmas Tree Effect. I hate tracking all the items and wealth, both as a player and DM.

3) Lack of Cohesiveness with splatbooks. Each book tries to do something different, sometimes in the exact same way. There also tends to be overlap. There's a feat in Comp. Adventurer and a skill trick in Comp. Scoundrel that do nearly the same thing.

4) Alignment system. It really shouldn't have been tied to in game effects. That way it could have been ignored completely.

5) Paladin's Code. Seriously, who thought this was a good idea? The paladin doesn't even get that much awesome for having to follow the restrictions.

[Shosuro Ishii]

I like 3.5 (as opposed to 4e) so here are my primary complaints

1) Monks- I like the concept of monks, I really do. I know they don't fit theme and are terrible, but I like the concept of the Kung Fu badass and it's a pity that they suck so bad.

2) Increadibly limited skill points- Basically if you wanted to play a skill monkey, you had to play a rogue or a bard. Rangers skill list wasn't large enough and no one else gets enough skills points. It's worst for sorcerors, who not only get almost no skill points, but have to spend points in concentration, and as a charisma based class, have no access to charisma based skills.

3) Sudden Death syndrome- While I dislike 4ed making it's players basically invincible if they are smart (or don't have a sadistic GM), 3.5 randomly kills players far too easily. At low levels, even meat sheilds can be insta-gibbed bya well timed crit.

4) Created a bad name for casters- I don't like 4ed wizards, but I place blame squarely on the shoulders of 3.5 casters and there being able to end games by themselves (on the internet at least). Now, thanks to 3.5 I'll never be able to enjoy an RPGA event again..../sob.

5) Isn't the Legend of the Five Rings or Deadlands RPG- No explination needed. But honestly, that counts as a problem with just about every RPG system.

[sonofzeal]

I definitelly like 3.5. What I dislike....

1) Vancian Spellcasting. I didn't like it in FF1, and I don't like it in D&D. Nevermind the implausibility of spontaniously forgetting spells, I dislike the inflexibility of it, and the amount of bookkeeping it entails.

2) Fighter suckitude. Did it never occure to them that a few feats don't balance out for the complete lack of class powers, and that martial types in general just can't keep up with the exponentially scaling powers of spellcasters?

3) Ranged suckitude. Does WotC just hate archers for some reason? Ranged weapons have decent support in Core, and there's some good throwing-based PrCs out there, but archers get a whole lot of nothing. There's a grand total of something like three archery PrCs that I know of, two of them are legendarily nerfed (Arcane Archer and OotBI), and the other is specialized in the sort of ultra-long-distance fighting that rarely comes up. Meanwhile, sword-and-board types are swimming in options.

4) Monk suckitude. Why oh why are they not full-BAB? And why did they decide to nerf such a potentially cool class so horribly?

5) Druid complexity. It seems like every new player I introduce to the game immediately wants to play a Druid first, and I have to break it to them that, of all the PHB classes, Druids are by far the most complicated and hardest to play. You have to handle not only your normal stats, but also your animal companion's, all your spells, and half a dozen potential Wildshape forms (with all the headache that comes from figuring out what changes, what stays the same, what affects what other stat in weird ways, etc).

[Prometheus]

I like 3.5 so here's what I don't like about it:
1) Fungible Magic Items: Random magic items are nearly always sold and exchanged for something else. It is rare that players are forced to improvise or make things interesting. 4e has a good call when in dramatically lowers the selling price of items but increases the finding. It is a little like an RPG still, but who cares.
2) Homogeneous Melee Fighting: I too find the lack of options a little boring but more importantly I find that the weapons are all too similar in mechanics. I don't know what 4e does in this area, but I hear it makes weapon of choice a little more strategic
3) Lack Magic Specialization: Magic-users are by far to versatile. 4e attempts to correct this with predefined roles, but I think a more thematic approach might be more preferable. Spell lists should be cut at least in half, more if you can replace the lost spells with thematically appropriate spells and abilities
4) Balance: It would be nice if things didn't have to be modded for balance. Suggestion #2 and #3, among other things, would probably help.
5) Monsters: There never is enough monster for me. I buy every monster book that comes out and still end up homebrewing some to fit my needs. Why do the later MMs assume that I need more high-powered monsters? Why do they make duplicates of monsters we already have? Why do they insist on giving a shout-out to every minor plane?

[hotel_papa]

I love 3.5. I've been playing since 2nd Ed AD&D, and "did my part" buying the three 4E core books to keep my beloved hobby going. Never got into 4E, though. Just bugs me.

Here's my list:

1. Total lack of support for Epic level play:
Everyone knows what I'm talking about. From a poorly put together Epic level handbook to the "I win" button that is epic spellcasting, I don't bother planning a campaign past level 21.

2. Wealth by level rules:
Hard to keep track of, hard (for me, at least) to enforce. It's taken me five years to get the balance down between too much and too little.

3. Diplomancy, as written:
Half-Elf Marshal 2, Cha 18, Diplomacy of +21 without items, spells or auras. Enough said.

4. Any weapon that uses 2d4 as damage.
Yeah, it's a little idiosyncratic, but it bugs the living crap out of me.

5. The power level of a class is directly proportionate to the publishing date
Case in point, Hexblade vs. Dread Necromancer vs. Duskblade

6. (Yay! Bonus!) Greyhawk.
Do you have a cool, powerful, well thought-out character? Does he/she have a compellingly written background and organic character development? Is he/she King/Queen Badass? Well, good for you. Meet Mordankainan, Rolibar, Bigby, Ottiluke, Tenser and Melf (et cetera ad nauseum) They are so hardcore that they have spells and feats named after them. You will never measure up to their greatness, despite this game being a fantasy epic where you are the main characters. Have fun. Don't piss them off.

[Grynning]

I like 3.x edition. I know I posted in the other thread that I like 4th too...I like them both equally. Pick your brains up off the floor and wash them off now.

Dislikes about 3rd. ed:

1) Over-dependence on magic items/Christmas Tree effect - Any character over 4th level or so who wasn't visible from space due to the magic items they carried was going to die in a level appropriate encounter. Consider that the Vow of Poverty feat gives you ridiculous amounts of scaling bonuses, and optimizers still find it inferior compared to WBL. To me this runs completely counter to a lot of heroic fantasy, where the heroes are often without any special equipment (Conan), or have perhaps one or two powerful magic items (Lord of the Rings).

2) Useless character classes/PrC's - A lot of people have already mentioned the monk, but let's not forget all the other awful classes that got printed (Samurai, unfixed Hexblade, a slew of bad PrC's) etc. They just took up space in books and never got used, or if they did someone usually regretted it.

3) Caster pwnage - I actually found the 3.5 feat system a really good way to simulate a lot of martial arts, and for lower-powered games that don't include spellcasters, it works really well (in other words, I didn't think fighter was an option-less class like many seem to). However, the fact that a spell caster could handle pretty much any situation on their own, and the fact that higher level monsters were almost always more mobile and had reach on the fighters made them useless compared to the casters.

4) Pun-Pun, Uber-chargers, Hulking Hurlers, etc. - Think about things before you print them guys...expect people will own more than core and this one source book you're working on.

5) Slow combat. This is the area that 4th ed. improved the most on, and while 3rd ed's combat could be very realistic and tactical, it did take a really long time to resolve a lot of stuff because of so much page flipping through the PHB.

[Starsinger]

5. The power level of a class is directly proportionate to the publishing date
Case in point, Hexblade vs. Dread Necromancer vs. Duskblade

Counter point for the sake of funsies, Wizard vs. Wu Jen vs. Truenamer.

[Capfalcon]

I appreciate the thread fork. To clarify, I don't have a problem with people asking about other people's list, but if it's going to be more than 3 or 4 posts, I'd apprecate it if you take it to PM's or a new thread.

[Capfalcon]

Counter point for the sake of funsies, Wizard vs. Wu Jen vs. Truenamer.

Or more accurately, Wizard/Cleric/Druid vs. (Almost) Everything else. :)

[Saph]

I love me my 3.5 game, so here's my list of things I wish they'd changed.

1. Small stacking bonuses: +1, +2, -3, +4, aargh! In high-level combat, you could go crazy keeping track of them all.

2. Half-elf lameness: They're such a nice race fluff-wise. Did they really have to be so weak in comparison to their parents?

3. Infinite combo loopholes: I really wish Wizards would just errata them so that we wouldn't have to listen to people on message boards go on about them over and over again.

4. Casters at low levels: I have 3 spells per day. Yippee skip.

5. Playing at level 1: One hit will drop you to negatives. One critical hit will kill you. Getting healing is a nightmare. Worst of all, every old-school DM always insists at starting their game here.

- Saph

[hotel_papa]

Counter point for the sake of funsies, Wizard vs. Wu Jen vs. Truenamer.

I would concede at this point, but I like a lot of the Wu Jen only spells, and I have a medical condition / defense mechinism that doesn't allow me to understand that last word you wrote.

(Seriously, how do you take one of the coolest reoccuring magic themes in fantasy and bastardize it into the only class that actually gets weaker as it levels up?)

HP

[Deepblue706]

Five things I don't like about 3.5:

1) The regular balance issues (Wizards, Druids, Diplomacy, etc).

2) Vancian casting.

3) Being heavily reliant upon magical items.

4) A lot of mundane equipment is pointless to ever purchase (Flails? More like Fails!, etc).

5) The Campaign Setting and Supplement books are pretty terrible. Certainly seemed like they went Quantity over Quality.

[BobVosh]

I like 3.5

Therefore Reasons I dont:
1. The D20. Way too random at low levels, almost pointless at high levels.
2. Epic level. There isn't even really a 3.5 book for this. They need an epic handbook without the "spellcasting or die."
3. Pointless/Godly PrCs. Some PrCs are "why would anyone sane every want to play this. I have to collect some rare substance, eat it, lose spell casting and as a reward I turn green." "I just took a level in awesome. I get to do a full attack while moving and double my attacks."
4. Lack of good campaign worlds. Greyhawk has no support, is fairly boring as because of this. Forgotten realms is older than dirt and everything to do has been done before you. Twice. Eberron is silly. Best way to describe it really. No other setting has support.
5. Elves. I just hate them. You know why.

[Gorbash]

Eberron is silly

Have you actually played in Eberron...?

[BobVosh]

Have you actually played in Eberron...?

In terms of pointless magics, banks, races (I really don't like warforged / shifters), and other small things like that it is goofy. I do like some things but overall I don't like Eberron as it just strikes me as over the top in too many ways. Or "silly." Espically the far east stuff.

[Gorbash]

It's not pointless, it's actually the only world that actually uses magic in other ways other than cataclismic destruction, and as such makes a lot more sense than Greyhawk and Faerun.

I really don't like warforged / shifters

Living robots and offspring of werewolves...? How...?

[Starsinger]

Living robots and offspring of werewolves...? How...?

Well.. I asked Google... http://www.elfwood.com/art/r/o/rouse/werewolf.jpg.html