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After playing a one off game with the friend I haven't seen for years and he hasn't played D&D since 2002 using my 3.5e books he said afterwards that he thought 3e was better. He gave various reasons that made lots of sense.
What do others think? Was 3.5e that needed? I would have to re-buy 3e to reread and compare directly with 3.5e. At the time I brought 3.5e because it was new and WotC told me it was better. Now I'm interested to know if I wasn't just "marketed" too.
Look forward to peoples comment regarding this,
S.
Could you ask you friend to list his reasons.
I perfer 3.5. Classes were improved a lot over 3.5. Although 3.0 had stronger spells never updated.
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Well without listing some of those various reasons you leave something out of your question. Like, I would as a player love 3rd edition haste back, but that's because it was overpowered and silly compared to the toned down 3.5 version.
Honestly we never did tons of just 3rd edition. I switched to 3.5 because I was mostly playing in Living Greyhawk at the time and that's how the campaign was moving along. Is it "better?" Well that's subjective in the end. I wouldn't want to go back to 3rd edition, or 3.5 for that matter from Pathfinder. I would go back to AD&D 1st or 2nd edition though.
From a DM perspective, the 3.5 revisions to how monsters were put together made them a lot easier to manage and customize in my opinion. So, just from that standpoint, 3.5 wins.
I can't remember most of what Brian said but Monte says...
Bits I agree with and bits I don't
Mixed bag,
S.
Revision or New Edition?
3.5 is aptly named. It is neither a revision nor an actual new edition, but something in between. "3.5" implies something that's not quite 3 and not quite 4, and that's accurate. This is not meant to be a compliment, however.You see, while some of the changes are merely revisions, many are also completely different rules. Despite what Wizards has said, there are conversion issues between 3.0 and 3.5 (your gnome illusionist with Spell Focus and boots of haste is going to be a fairly different character in 3.5). Many of the changes, some of them even good ones, are ones I would never have allowed in a "revision," but only in a new edition.
Interesting, I wonder how PF would be viewed.
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Some monsters get a major change that they deeply needed, like demons, I dont think that a new edition was needed for this but that was what we got. Yes it was a improvement but at expense.
I knew that Monte article, interesting the part when he says 3.5 was planned from the begining
The idea, they assured us, was to make a revised edition that was nothing but a cleanup of any errata that might have been found after the book's release, a clarification of issues that seemed to confuse large numbers of players, and, most likely, all new art. It was slated to come out in 2004 or 2005, to give a boost to sales at a point where -- judging historically from the sales trends of previous editions -- they probably would be slumping a bit.
I suspected that then, and this confirms that. As 3.5 was well done I dont complain too much, but for me it appeared too early.
As 3.5 was well done I dont complain too much, but for me it appeared too early.
For myself, I found it happened at exactly the right time. My group had just started playing 3e, we had maybe 2 PHB, 1 DMG, 1 MM, in a group of 6 players. Then 3.5 came out, and everyone started purchasing it. If had come out a year or two later, we might have gone full fledged into 3e and then been really frustrated when it switched over.
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I liked the changes to the Monk, Ranger and Druid in 3.5 (the new flexibility for the Monk and Ranger, as well as replacing the awkward Animal Friendship petting zoo / entourage with one specific Animal Companion). Scorching Ray was a great new spell, for the 2nd level of spells, which had always been a bit lackluster for offensive spells.
I disliked the Damage Reduction changes that required a Fighter to carry a golf-bag of different weapons, to overcome various DR types, rather than just one really good weapon (and found it particularly galling when a developer stated that the reason for that change was explicitly to address 'golf-bag syndrome,' which it pretty much 'addressed' by mandating it...). I disliked that mindless creatures could now have a moral alignment, and, despite being explicitly unable to choose, could apparently choose to do evil, undoing 3 previous editions worth of internal consistency on that point, that a mindless thing, like a pointed stick, pair of scissors or ball of yarn, couldn't choose to be malevolent or benign.
The Bard as the Gnome's Favored Class was about as 'meh' as the Illusionist had been. It's easy to see a Fighter as a Dwarf 'iconic' or the Rogue as the Halfling 'iconic,' but nothing they picked seemed to really nail the Gnome, since they'd never really devoted much effort to giving the Gnome enough of a definition / development to make *anything* 'iconic' for that race... Pretty much a wash for me on that one, as the Bard Gnome was no more or less 'traction-y' than the Illusionist Gnome had been. (Golarion's association of Gnomes with Fey pretty much blows away anything 3.5 previous editions of D&D did with them, IMO.)
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I appreciate most of the changes brought on by 3.5, such as those for the ranger class (even if I'm still quite fond of the Ambidexterity feat) and a bunch of problematic spells which allowed some uber-powerful loopholes.
However, I still keep in my games the more detailed rules for cover seen in 3.0, and some older version of spells such as Bull's Strenght or other effects that allow for modifiers with a finer detail: I never really came to terms with the flat +2 bonus in each and every occasion, or the streamlined revision applied to Enlarge Person. The changes in their relative duration also IMO took away a large part of their tactical usefulness.
Also, the aforementioned changes to DR... grumble grumble.
I prefer 3.5 to 3.0, for a variety of reasons (I actually prefer the 3.5 DR rules, unlike many). A lot of things that were unbalanced in 3.0 were fixed (or at least patched up a bit) in 3.5, and monster creation worked better.
From a layout point-of-view, 3.5 statblocks were tons better than 3.0 statblocks (you know, those walls of text that were impossible to read).
3.0 did have some things that I liked.. first among them the fact that it wasn't AD&D ;)
I'm one of the folks that liked the spells in 3.0 but like most of the changes in 3.5.
like Mr. Cook said in his review the caster level requirements for magic item creation were a mistake and the damage reducion change was just silly. I liked it better the old way when the level of the weapon was important not the material. If adamantite is so rare and mithral darned near sacred why are they so readliy available?
Casters generally took a hit in the 3.0 -> 3.5 switch, which probably was a good thing.
The main thing being that haste didn't let you crank out two spells per round, including the round you cast haste. Some spells changed schools or save types in ways that generally made them weaker, and spell focus / greater spell focus were dropped from +2 DC to +1 DC.
A friend of mine played a wizard with greater spell focus transmutation; once haste came out he was throwing blindness twice per round (if necessary) at your typical brutish monsters or enemies as a DC 22 Will. Nothing you encounter at level 5 or 6 is really making that save, and then it's blind forever and almost useless in combat. Pretty much everything about that combo fell apart in 3.5.
I can see why that would be annoying Dire but from a players point of view they went obverboard in nerfing the spells.
Plus unless you have a rune staff of some sort you as a party have NO way to protect against level or energy drainging undead, no other class but cleric can help against those very powerfull monsters and can result in a Total Partyy Kill. At least in 3rd wizards had some negative energy spells to halt or rebuke the undead.
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I can see why that would be annoying Dire but from a players point of view they went obverboard in nerfing the spells.
Plus unless you have a rune staff of some sort you as a party have NO way to protect against level or energy drainging undead, no other class but cleric can help against those very powerfull monsters and can result in a Total Partyy Kill. At least in 3rd wizards had some negative energy spells to halt or rebuke the undead.
That's one of the reasons you're supposed to include a cleric in your group.
Overall I remember being glad to switch from 3.0 to 3.5. (But am even more glad to have switched from 3.5 to Pathfinder :) )
It's been awhile but I remember I liked 3.5's skills better -- remember when Know Direction was a skill? Innuendo was separated out from Bluff? As much as Pathfinder made much needed consolidations to 3.5 skills, 3.5 was a step up from 3.0.
IIRC, bards couldn't wear armor and had fewer skill points in 3.0. Definitely preferred 3.5 there.
Half-elves sucked in 3.0. They didn't even get the diplomacy bonus, as small as that was.
I was glad they got rid of the way they did weapon sizes -- at the time it was confusing to me to track that a longsword was a two handed weapon in a halfling's hands. I think I could work with a system like that now but at the time I was glad they brought in just different weapon sizes for everyone in 3.5.
I also recall the 3.5 DMG was much better designed than the 3.0 one.
OTOH Monks had d10 hit points and a knockback ability that could make them scary broken IIRC. I miss monks with full bab and d10 hd, and would sacrifice some of their cool abilities in Pathfinder to get that back.
As for the damage reduction... I remember at the time liking the simplicity 3.5 brought, but I also agree that it encouraged the "Golf bag o' special metal weapons" mentality.
from a players point of view they went obverboard in nerfing the spells.
I disagree -- the casters are still by far the toughest characters in 3.5. They didn't go far enough.
I disagree -- the casters are still by far the toughest characters in 3.5. They didn't go far enough.from a players point of view they went obverboard in nerfing the spells.
I think they did go overboard in nerfing down some spell durations. Too much combat focus rather than utility in balancing the spells - a preview of the philosophy going into 4e in retrospect. But even more, they went overboard in simply changing details of lots of spells. Lots and lots of spells.
I think Monte has some very good points about 3.5's weaknesses in redesign. But, overall, I do prefer 3.5. The good changes outweighed the bad ones by far. I even prefer the layout of the DMG. The 3.0 version's organization left a lot to be desired.
Just some random rambling.
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Bows and arrows were nuts in 3e. We had a high level ranger with the appropriate feats, with Order of the Bow initiate and the Deepwood sniper. Did not provoke attacks of opportunity in melee range, with Haste up had an insane number of attacks, the crit range (16-20) and damage (higher dice and something like x4 or x5 on damage) were quite a bit, but the thing that really did it in was the +5 bonus (easily obtained from the resident wizard with greater magic weapon) on BOTH the bow and the arrows just kind of made it pointless to have most any other characters.
If memory serves me right, with Haste, he had I believe more than 12 attacks with a crit range of 16-20 with +10 to attack and damage on a strength-enhanced bow, "short" range was doubled, his dice was at least a d10 and possibly more... Basically he had a 1 in 4 chance of a crit with 12 attacks and he seldom missed with a magic +10 bonus (on top of everything else). Assuming nothing more than "average" rolls and assuming the above is correct (it's been a while) and assuming nothing more than Haste and a +3 Strength bow and a couple castings of Greater Magic Weapon, he was averaging around 388 points a round. I'm pretty sure that I am missing a few things because I'm pretty sure he was doing far more than 500 points a round (add on Flaming Burst, Prayer, Enlarge him, etc.).
Long way to say that as a DM, I was VERY glad for 3.5. The main problem(s) with the above were just Haste and the stacking of magic bows and arrows. (And maybe a couple of prestige classes that were super munchkin together.) I liked 3e a lot, but there were some serious issues (IMO) that needed much more than a simple "errata".
3.5 was enough of a improvement for me simply due to the spell nerfs.
Nerfs almost always get a huge thumbs-up from me (while I'm not keen on Pathfinder, I do love what the direction they moved re: the spells).
See As A Dm i founfd 3.5 much more frustrating. As for the bow Essentially having no reason for an arrow to ever be more than +1 with effects on it and a high plus bow was not seen to me as an advantage. A +5 bow with +1 arows of frost, fire, acid, and shock doesn't seem like an improvment to me.
That might be because you're not considering the interplay of Greater Magic Weapon with 3.0's version.
TO me the problem with most DMs with super chaacters like that is they don't say no, and they don't treat classes as anthing more than skill packages. I allow deepwood sniper and I allow order of the bow initiates but I would not allow BOTH on the same character, and I would require actual game time for the character to find someone to train him, training, etc.
IMHO, the balance of a game system shouldn't completely hinge on the DM needing to be the bad guy and say no to things that, by the rules, are permissible. It sets up a slipperly slope.
+1 to preferring 3.5 (to 3.0).
As a player, I was sad to see Haste and the hours/level buffs go, of course! :)
But I was grateful for the class re-designs, particularly the Ranger.
Monster advancement is a lot easier in 3.5.
I'm one of those who was happy to see the DR rules for 3.5. Just adding an extra plus to one's sword so that one can do full damage to a particular monster did not feel very flavourful to me (and I'm keeping 3.5's DR rules in my PF games). The fact that this change in DR was accompanied by a reduction in the DR of monsters was also a help. For example, the iron golem's infamous DR 50/+3 was changed to 15/adamantine.
I greatly prefer 3.5 to 3e. I loved 3e, but I was pretty much on board with all the changes. At the time of the switch, I hadn't played a wizard yet, so I had little experience with the broken buff spells that got nerfed. My first 3e character was a ranger, so needless to say wen 3.5 came out I was a happy camper!
I too prefer 3.5's DR rules. I play a DM a lot of Ravenloft games, where magic items are rare and creatures have really odd DR vulnerabilities, which I think add a lot more detail to "monster hunting." In 3e, all it took was a +1 weapon to completely bypass any of a strange monster's allergen, and that made me as a DM make magic weapons even more rare. When 3.5 came out, I could relax the magic items a little bit and not worry too much about DR.
...why did we need survival? I mean was wilderness lore such a terrible name that you had to change its name?
My guess is that since Knowledge (Nature) and Wilderness Lore are basically synonyms, they decided to change it to avoid any confusion.
The balance of the game is ALWAYS determined by the DM, ALWAYS, it is the nature of the beast, a bad decision with regards to allowing a spell, or a particular weapon all can make serious problems in a game. looking out for unbalancign things is a major portion of the DM'S job.
In good (well-balanced) game system, the amount of time the DM has to waste on doing that is minimal, leaving them free to put their time and energy into things that make the game more fun instead of playing backseat game designer.