D&D 3E/3.5 The 4E We Didnt Get.

I think PF made classes more interesting. You could actually play a dragon sorcerer for instance instead of having to multiclass into a prestige class to make you a dragon sorcerer. They also had archetypes that altered the fighter class which made it more interesting. Still might not have caught up with the fighter/wizard imbalance, but I found that most players (of 3e and PF) didn't care about that anyway.

cbwjm said:

I think PF made classes more interesting. You could actually play a dragon sorcerer for instance instead of having to multiclass into a prestige class to make you a dragon sorcerer. They also had archetypes that altered the fighter class which made it more interesting. Still might not have caught up with the fighter/wizard imbalance, but I found that most players (of 3e and PF) didn't care about that anyway.

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Balance wasn't the ig problem imho. I can houserule that.

Complexity though....

BigZebra said:

IMO of all the things "wrong" with 3.5, PF1 fixed like none of those. Sure the condensed skill list is fine, but that really wasn't a problem with 3.5. Nobody felt the game was broken because there was both a Listen and Spot skill.

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Yeah, Pathfinder's more of a tune-up than a new model – at least when comparing core to core. The differences are felt more when comparing the whole product lines, but with just the core books the differences are kind of small. And some of the changes are IMO negative, such as changing bardic performance from X uses per day to Y rounds per day which is a huge nerf, particularly to things like Inspire Competence.

Both also suffer from ability chains, but Pathfinder more so: you get to make a lot of choices when advancing, but in many cases you "need" to take a specific ability to build on an earlier ability. Feat chains are the main culprit, but you also have things like barbarian rage powers where you get a pick every two levels, which seems like a lot of choice. But if you take one of the totem powers, you kind of need to take the other two totem powers in the same chain at level 6 and 10 as well. I'd rather see fewer choices but having them inherently scale.

For me I always want one thing from games - clarity about the purpose and play style. D&D has a big problem with this because of its name and history. For a lot of people it's synonymous with RPGs and the fandom has very strong feelings about specific rules.

While personally I wish WotC would move towards a simpler more exploration based game with a flatter power curve (say a clarification of OD&D), that enabled the kind of play I personally enjoy - that's obviously something that was already long gone by the time 3.5E came around, heck I'd argue it was doomed the moment tournament play and AD&D were hatched. So given that limitation I think what would have made a better 4E was an acknowledgement that the game was a hero builder and tactical combat game. Put that on the label - even call it "Dungeons & Dragons Tactics" or "Dungeons & Dragons - Epic Heroes".

Focus in on tactics and powers, strip down the non-combat rules to make exploration, social interaction and everything that isn't feats based grid combat simple but with an impact on the set-piece encounters that would be the heart of the game. Obviously this would be impossible for WotC ... even 5E which had a lot more leeway to change things is loaded down with vestigial mechanics (e.g. Did you know there were moral rules in the 5E DMG? Have you ever seen them cited in an official product)? Trying to make something radically different would be a disaster for WotC ... begging for even more of a rejection then 3.5E/4E received (what with the birth of the OSR and all that).

Gus L said:

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Obviously this would be impossible for WotC ... even 5E which had a lot more leeway to change things is loaded down with vestigial mechanics (e.g. Did you know there were moral rules in the 5E DMG? Have you ever seen them cited in an official product)? Trying to make something radically different would be a disaster for WotC ... begging for even more of a rejection then 3.5E/4E received (what with the birth of the OSR and all that).

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They can't get the market share they want and maybe need targeting any particular audience. They've also decided it's easier to get new younger players than cater to the desires of older players. I'm just happy we have an OGL and there are so many alternatives. It doesn't bother me that 5e just isn't what I want. I buy something else and I can which is great.

Orius said:

I suspect fixing 3.0 would take less work than updating AD&D. I'm doing a little work on that now, but I'm only at the start and I haven't playtested anything. Right now it's comparing how 3e does things compared to earlier editions and trying to find a match in the 3e rules for stuff that was dropped (and often it was 2e that dropped things rather than 3e I'm finding.)

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The place I'd start fixing 3.0 is by reverting to 2e saving throws. Or failing that adding half of everyone's level to saving throws and giving the fighter three good saves and the rogue and barbarian two. Damage and buff spells should be SOP, save or sucks hail maries

Can't say I'm keen on 13A but that might be the DM when I played it (no, the Gold Dragon isn't a bath plug - and having icons drop in multiple times a session in person to let the DM thesp badly gets tedious fast).

But I find none of the martials either simple or engaging (the fighter in particular is a mess) and the casters not that great. It's a game that enables the right DM to carry it

And no love for the Bo9S as a springboard?

Emerikol said:

They can't get the market share they want and maybe need targeting any particular audience.

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I agree with this but I suspect the issue goes a bit deeper. 5E obviously retains many elements that aren't part of the dominant 5E playstyle these days. Instead they are dragged along from older editions like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe. They don't help the game as it is played, but there they sit in the rules - bloating them. I suspect though that were they removed a part of the older fanbase would be livid.
D&D has to have saving throws, it has to have AC and HP, Vancian casting and all the standard classes - but it also has to have morale and torches and such even if those don't actually come up in modern play.

Emerikol said:

They've also decided it's easier to get new younger players than cater to the desires of older players.

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This I'm less sure about - remember 5E was designed seeking input from various consultants and tried very hard to get the OSR and some other game communities on board. In development it was billed as a return to less combat and build focused play. I think it just didn't play out that way... The new "OC" play style seems largely derived from streamed play and a development of post 80's "trad" design with it's heavy storyline and character focus hybridized with grid combat. It may not be what this older player likes, but to the degree that it's a rejection of older styles it strikes me as the organic development of the system ... WotC is just trying to ride the tiger.

Plenty of olds seem to like it, just as there are a lot of younger folk wanting to get into older styles. The jump to "an OSR" (that phrasing hurts me psychically btw) seems like something I see a lot of young 5E players wanting to make after learning the game.

Emerikol said:

It doesn't bother me that 5e just isn't what I want.

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Agreed - I game it a try for a year even. Ran a fun little campaign, and decided it wasn't what I like, but it's still an RPG and I know it's exactly what others seem to like.

Gus L said:

I agree with this but I suspect the issue goes a bit deeper. 5E obviously retains many elements that aren't part of the dominant 5E playstyle these days. Instead they are dragged along from older editions like toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe. They don't help the game as it is played, but there they sit in the rules - bloating them. I suspect though that were they removed a part of the older fanbase would be livid.
D&D has to have saving throws, it has to have AC and HP, Vancian casting and all the standard classes - but it also has to have morale and torches and such even if those don't actually come up in modern play.

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It's kind of hard to say especially with 5e's boom that anything not D&D is the dominant playstyle. But sure there are people attached to some parts of D&D in name only like AC, HP, and such.

Gus L said:

This I'm less sure about - remember 5E was designed seeking input from various consultants and tried very hard to get the OSR and some other game communities on board. In development it was billed as a return to less combat and build focused play. I think it just didn't play out that way... The new "OC" play style seems largely derived from streamed play and a development of post 80's "trad" design with it's heavy storyline and character focus hybridized with grid combat. It may not be what this older player likes, but to the degree that it's a rejection of older styles it strikes me as the organic development of the system ... WotC is just trying to ride the tiger.

Plenty of olds seem to like it, just as there are a lot of younger folk wanting to get into older styles. The jump to "an OSR" (that phrasing hurts me psychically btw) seems like something I see a lot of young 5E players wanting to make after learning the game.

Agreed - I game it a try for a year even. Ran a fun little campaign, and decided it wasn't what I like, but it's still an RPG and I know it's exactly what others seem to like.

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I didn't see it and I was right there at Gencon when Mike Mearls either lied to my face or didn't know what I was talking about when I raised some issues that I think are relevant to old schoolers. I like Mike Mearls so I give him the benefit of the doubt on that too though it took me a bit to get there. After raising issue X, (and I don't want to debate X so I'm calling it X), they put X front and center in the game and made it pretty hard to remove easily. I think a good number of OSR people play OSR for X reason alone.

I was doing my own rewrite of 3E a while ago, but got busy after my son was born. There were some major departures from 3E though, including:

Only 4 classes total. Warrior, Devoted, Rogue, Adept. Warriors had combat abilities, devoted got powers with a pool of points to use them, rogues got tricks and skill masteries, adepts got spells.

There were class feats to turn classes into the more specialized classes like Warrior into Barbarian, or Devoted into Cleric, and other class feats just improved the abilities the base class had. Subclass feats could give powers to non-devoted class, or spells to non-adept classes. Class feats were gained at certain levels, while Adventuring feats were gained at other levels.

Adventuring feats were more generic than class feats that anyone could choose with a few exceptions, or racial feats that enhanced abilities you start with, like elf stealth, or added new abilities at higher levels, like dwarf stone-shaping. I initially wanted a replacement for the word feat, but never came up with something better.

No skill points, and no skill list. Each class had a single skill named for the class that automatically improved with level. The class skill is given a short list of general activities it applies to, with subclasses adding more activities to the list. Rogues may be able to create disguises, while the Thief subclass may add forging documents to the list, for example. In addition to your class skill, non-humans also had a racial skill with its own set of activities it applied to. The dwarf skill would cover their noticing unusual stonework, for example. There were also background skills, with humans getting more of them because of the lack of racial skill. They were described by the player (no set list), but were more specialized than the other types of skills, so a character may have been a blacksmith or chef before adventuring, so would get skills for those activities.

Magic equipment were never vanilla +x items. Each had a number of properties and/or powers. Properties applied all the time, while powers had to be activated. The higher the + bonus, the more properties and powers the item would have. 3E mostly already had this, but I restructured it to my liking.

Never got around to changing spells or monsters.