Had a great game of 3.5 last night

Sure it's fun doesn't make it good.
Getting raped by burly black men with friends can be fun, doesn't mean it's good for your mental health.

Dude I don't lurk DnD threads at all. I just saw this amd thought it would be fun to editionpost like the good ol days.

The point of this thread is clearly to start an argument and it's funny because the only thing 3.5ers have in their wheelhouse is "dude I'm having fun so like fuck off".

The core of edition fighting isn't what is more fun for the players but which is better as a system. I enjoy those wargames with the little square pieces that take 8 hours to play and I find 3.5 to be dense for the sake of density. The worst part is that this density adds nothing mechanically or thematically other than to bog the game down.

Being good makes it good.
Sorry you were raped by black men and somehow you mentally connected that with a great game, to the point where you need to shitpost all the time about it. You probably should go to a pschyiatrist.

>Your mind on 3.5
I'm sorry senpai. It's to late for you, you're the meth addict of the RPG world now.

The same thing can be said about OP.

No, it's funny, because there's really no need to defend the game. Everyone already knows that its great.

What's funny is that morons like you get triggered at the mere mention of the game, because you see it as some "GREAT ENEMY" that must be defeated, like you're doing a service by shitposting at every available opportunity, and that somehow your shitposting will one day make the games you play good.

>triggered
That's like the 8th time you said that. This is a new level of shitposting. If we were playing 3.5 right now we would have to consult 12 tables and a splat book to figure out just how high level this shit posting is.

What word would you prefer to describe people who get ridiculously upset whenever they see something that they've decided to build up in themselves as the equivalent of a personal Satan?

You're triggered. You fly into a fury when ever you see two numbers and a bit of punctuation. You think that your shitposting somehow does anything except make you look like a bitter contrarian, a bitter contrarian who thinks that the gaming world is a zero-sum game and that one game's popularity is the source of all of your personal problems.

>Everyone already knows that its great.

By that same token, League of Legends is great, despite being an unbalanced piece of shit with an awful, toxic fanbase.

Popularity =/= quality.

No, by the same token, [thing that you like that is also popular] is great.
There IS something that you like that is also popular, right? You're not just a bitter contrarian in every aspect of your life, right?

>There IS something that you like that is also popular, right?
>Popularity =/= quality.
user Popularity and quality are not inherently connected to each other.

>It's an 'insist 3.5 is totally fine and has no problems' episode

The biggest problem with 3.5 is it's popularity

It's too popular, too endemic, too common. And the mindset that comes with it is the same, it's unavoidable.

There's nothing wrong with liking 3.5, there's nothing wrong with playing 3.5. There is something wrong with not being able to recognise it's enormous glaring flaws, or ignoring all other games in favour of it.

Fortunately, this mindset appears to be dying off. 5e is growing in popularity and is similar enough to 3.5 to avoid getting lambasted by them, but is lacking in 3.5's most glaring flaws. So hopefully, we will see ithe mindset disappear soon.

So OP, good for you,enjoy your RPGs with your friends. There is nothing wrong with enjoying it.

Just don't be a fool and pretend it's an excellent system or anything

But it is an excellent system. While it does have some issues, those hardly outweigh all the positive aspects of the game.

To try and force this meme of "it's not great" is basically ignoring all the parts that made it so much fun to play, and while I can agree that the game has evolved and that 5e is the superior system, to pretend that 3.5 isn't a better system than the overwhelming majority that you can find on the market is simply failing to understand what makes a system great.

Well I guess it all depends on your definition of "excellent"

It is a good system, but I can not think of a single campaign that I would rather run in 3.5 than another system, and that is why I do not consider an "excellent" system

You're trying way too hard, OP. Everybody can see that, that's why nobody is getting baited.

Try again tomorrow.

So what makes it so great, then? What aspect of it have you discovered that apparently a decade's worth of play, research, and deconstruction by hundreds of people have somehow missed?

Except 3.5 isn't even as good as 2e. Changing THAC0 to BAB was arguably the only real positive change?

>4452 Games
>16512 Players
You must really, really suck at analytics.

>Pathfinder averages around 2 players per game

That's just depressing

>While it does have some flaws

Kill your self you shit lord pathfinder has flaws 3.5 is perfect

I love 3.5, but I don't delude myself into thinking it is perfect. I'm talking Wizards of the Coast 3.5, not Pathfinder. I see it through the lens of nostalgia because I enjoyed playing it so much in college. That being said, try grappling something without a CMB or CMD to make it clear what the outcome is. Try having your fighter get into a solo boss fight against a wizard. Try duking it out with minions who all deal vile damage in the setting where cleric and pallys are rare. Try doing opposed caster level checks or cleric turning without needing to look up what happens. Heck, try surviving a turn against an Iaijutsu Master- because the DM treats that like Frank's RedHot, and puts that shit on everything. The game was good, but by no stretch of the imagination perfect.

...

I honestly think that 3rd edition Oriental Adventures is one of the best incarnations of the Legend of the Five Rings.

I've always thought Rokugan was a great setting, but the l5r system itself was just not built for the extremely combat heavy games I tend to play.

I think you've missed the point of Rokugan as a setting

You're right in the sense that the politics bores me.

Crab Clan best clan.

Yeah, I don't think you should be using the setting at all

Try a different setting for psuedo-Japanese stuff.

Please, tell me more about how exciting your games are. You probably play as Crane courtiers and compose tanka all day while sipping persimmon flavored tea and lamenting the loss of both Yasuki wars.

No, I typically prefer mantis and the yasuki family

Mercantile in a world where money is not supposed to be valued, but totally is.

Exploring the contradictions of the society and weaving your way through the social rules when everyone already wants to kill you, and but needs a justifiable excuse to make it happen

A good group can have fun with any system.

This doesn't mean the system is good.

This also doesn't mean it matters that the system is bad, if you're managing to have fun anyway.

I know that 3.5/PF is unbalanced, but I still feel like it has a lot of advantages that many people overlook.

It has a bunch of great settings to choose from. You could play another generic fantasy game, but it won't have the same cosmology or the same unique monsters. It has optional rules for everything from city building to naval combat, something that an average hack and slash would overlook. The interactions between many of the rules are especially fun. All of the rules are free and easily referencable from an online database, something that other game publishers are just too stingy to allow. This comes with people actually being allowed to make and sell third party content.

It's not as if other popular systems like WoD and Shadowrun don't have their fair share of broken shit.

No, a system can be bad while still having fun with it. That just means you're having fun in spite if the system rather than because of it. You would likely be having just as much fun with anything else, if not more.

This.

Yawn.

If you want D&D cosmology and settings, every other edition also exists.

If you want generic fantasy hack and slash, why do you care about city building and naval combat rules? You don't need rules for everything, and the ones 3.5 has for everything aren't even very good

You are not wrong

But the terrible balance is not actually the main reason why people hate 3.5

Yeah, but I don't want a generic hack and slash, I want a comprehensive system that has options for things like that, unlike 4e and 5e which avoid it entirely.

For years I've been told to stop playing DnD but I'm yet to be pointed towards an alternative.

>stop playing DnD
>okay, what system would you suggest
>try this game about vampires in the modern day or this game about space marines or this game about anime maids or this generalist system which is just freeform with d6s
>no no you don't understand I want to play in a kitchen-sink fantasy setting, clearly since DnD is so bad but there is enormous demand for it someone somewhere could've made a game which fixes 3.PF's supposed flaws while maintaining the flavor?
>...BUTTHURT 3.5ABOO!

GURPs

Literally any other edition of DnD

The main reason people hate 3.5 is because people have fun with it despite being told they're not allowed to.

>I want rules for absolutely everything
>God forbid I have to think
>Or worse, make something up

More rules doesn't make a system good.

>It has a bunch of great settings to choose from

Beyond Eberron though, most of the settings predate 3.5. There's 3rd-party settings to pick from, sure, but how many of them are unique to 3.5 and not transported from other systems during the d20 boom? And of the uniquely 3.X settings, how many of them are 1) still around, and 2) still lauded as good?

None of the settings barring perhaps Planescape require using D&D rules to play, either. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from using a different ruleset to play in those settings.

>It's not as if other popular systems like WoD and Shadowrun don't have their fair share of broken shit.

I'm guessing you don't mean to do this, but just because other systems have broken rules doesn't excuse 3.5 from having a broken ruleset.

That doesn't contradict anything I said.

Then you are ignoring the system in the first place if you are just making up rules for it. Why not just make a homebrew system at that point? Face it, 5E doesn't have nearly as much content at previous editions, and I don't just mean different variations of magic missile.

There is a subset of players who have something wrong with them that try to shoehorn EVERYTHING into 3.5's system which is barely good for what its designed for. Or who simply refuse to play anything else.

That is how you get idiots suggesting Pathfinder for a Metal Gear Solid style tactical operating game.

And how many rules do you need for building a city or doing naval combat? Is of worth having to use the rest of the system just so you can have a page on how much it costs to construct a fortress?

I've been getting into 5e but Veeky Forums barely tolerates it as well.

GURPS is too generalist for my tastes.

Games
Players
>You must really, really suck at analytics
~3.7 players per game doesn't seem unreasonable. What is your point?

I like 3.pf, and one system alternative if you want to call it that is Microlite20,
A little simpler system for people to learn, 17 pages long, works on the SRD/PSRD, and it's free.
pretty sweet little thing.
going to be running it soon for some friends.

>Then you are ignoring the system in the first place if you are just making up rules for it. Why not just make a homebrew system at that point?

This is really funny coming from a 3.5 player, when most people playing are ignoring half the tables and rules in the game and house ruling anyway

>But the terrible balance is not actually the main reason why people hate 3.5

It's absolutely the case with me. I played a lot--a LOT--of 3.5, ranging from level 1 scrub-tier to reality-altering 20+ campaigns, and I had enough experience with the system to know just how imbalanced and broken it is.

It's dense and complicated just for the reason of being dense and complicated, and the wildly differing power levels between classes--hell, between CASTER classes too--is blatant once you look at it with a critical eye. The whole thing is busted, right from the core, and I realized that I could be having more enjoyment out of other systems without having to wrangle 3.5's weirdly obtuse bullshit to make it work.

That, and running games is a chore. I do enough homework as it is, I don't want to be doing it as prep-work for an ostensibly enjoyable past-time.

>I want a comprehensive system that has options for things like that

Why?

>GURPS

This meme needs to die. GURPS is ironically the exact opposite of what it tries to be.

It's a game that pretends it can do anything, and ends up just doing everything poorly.

Missing the point.

More options=more personalization available to the world builder and his players.

3.PF is a more easily understood (i.e. less math heavy and less "GM allows this or not") GURPS now. That's what it has always been aimed for, all the way since AD&D, where there were rules in the DMG for science fiction and class building.

It's always been meant to have everything shoehorned into it.

Most of that content was taking focus away from the players. Once you get into city building and army management, why do the players need characters? D&D was never meant to be a game of SimCity.

Also, the first part of your post is just blatantly false.

Yes, and no

It's because people refuse other options

The OGL does high-magic psuedo-medieval fantasy with vancian magic systems very well, but nothing else. Star Wars d20 is shit, Oriental Adventures was the worst official 3.5 product and that's saying something, d20 modern is an abomination that should never have existed.

I do enjoy 3.5 from time to time, I only started to hate it when a friend of mine asked me to join his high lethality game about hunting vampires in modern day chicago, and was using 3.5 to run it when Hunter: The Vigil was RIGHT THERE

>It's a game that pretends it can do anything, and ends up just doing everything poorly.

But enough about D&D.

It's what got me to stop playing. Being a Finesse Fighter alongside a monk in a party that had a Druid.

Guess who the best CC fighter in the party was?

What if the players are actually important individuals, who are able to buy their own boat or have risen to important positions in the kingdom? Whereas in 5e, you will have to stick with murderhoboing. Of course it won't be the focus of the campaign, but having rules for that allows for a much greater degree of customization than other games (Except GURPS, I will concede that it is legitimately superior to all versions of D&D other than the ugly artwork).

But it doesn't actually do those things well. It doesn't matter if you have rules for everything if the rules are overcomplicated shit.

You're thinking d20, not D&D.
And, yes, d20 can hypothetically do everything well. The core of its mechanics revolve around one of the simplest and easiest to use resolution methods, making it readily adaptable to just about any genre or style of game.

As a DM I find that most of 3.5 and Pathfinder's optional rules are bored to the point of uselessness.

Strongholds, businesses, mass warfare, country building, ritual sacrifice, etc range from barely working to being such a hassle wit a payout so low no PC will ever willingly use them

Like 3.5 has some nice books like Lords of Madness, Elder Evils, Magic of Incarnum, Weeaboo Fightan Magic, and the binder parts of Tome of Magic, but pulling out 3.5s shitty optional rules is only hurting any argument you'd present.

>What if the players are actually important individuals, who are able to buy their own boat or have risen to important positions in the kingdom?

>Whereas in 5e,

"Hey GM, how much is a boat?"
"I'll say 5000 gold. That seems fair."

Yeah, you really needed a page for boat costs, didn't you?

>It's because people refuse other options
>You can't possibly have fun, you should play anything else, even if you are having fun because your fun is badwrongfun.
This is always your argument.

Every.
Single.
Time.

>unbalanced piece of shit
That's intentional, though. Constantly "fixing" the balance issues only to have new things pop up is how the company artificially ensures continuing player interest.

If you're having fun, then keep having fun. Just stop pretending that the system is good, because it isn't.

>What if the players are actually important individuals, who are able to buy their own boat or have risen to important positions in the kingdom?
Play a system that is good at handling that. D&D is absolutely horrible for large-scale political and economical stuff.

I don't have the picture with the car analogy but it summarises my argument perfectly:

When you go on a road trip, and all you've got is a rusty, beat up old banger of a car with no AC and an engine that makes funny noises when you brake, you can still have fun if you've got good friends, good food and good times.

Doesn't mean the car is good.

>everything poorly

It is one of the best games around for several genres, stop this bullshit.

But it is good. It's got a lot of great options to choose from with fantastic flavor and interesting mechanics, and your decisions actually have weight and value. There's so many different ways you can build a character, and so many ways to interact with the world in exciting and dramatic ways, that it's no wonder that even to this day there are games that can't help but copy it in one way or another.

In fact, it's better than good, it's great. There are so many great books and exciting adventures, that the only game that can really compete with it is its predecessor. And, luckily, it's semi-compatible with it's predecessor, making it easy to convert the wealth of fantastic material over.

Add that to what was the largest homebrew community in roleplaying game history, and you've got a system that is really a gem of the RPG world.

But how many people actually want to play accountants struggling to meet their paperwork deadlines?

Which genres?

I want to try GURPS, but have no idea where to start with it, it's so huge

In the game or in IRL?
because GUROS is both.

>GURPS can do both.
I messed that up.

No it isn't. The classes are unbalanced, and trap options abound, so most character concepts that might sound neat are actually trash. The mechanics aren't interesting. They're all tedious bullshit for things that don't need that much detail, and tries to mix realism and abstraction in the worst ways.

Literally the only thing it has going for it is have booms and books full of rules, but 99% of that is crap anyway.

Seriously, have you heard of the idea of quality over quantity? It doesn't matter if you have 100 character options instead of 20 if only 7 of the 100 are viable.

I'd almost think you were trolling if there weren't 3.P fans brainwashed and brain damaged enough to actually believe this.

Very funny.

Well its great at anything involving combat whether hand to hand or tactical operating. Great for espionage, cyberpunk and near future sci-fi stuff too.

For starting though just use GURPS Lite.

You don't need rules to do any of that, though. Set a price, players buy it, bam they have a boat. Tracking every little minutiae and requiring some sort of sub-system to purchase and maintain a boat is silly.

Unless you require explicit rules to do anything in a system, in which case it's not the system at fault for that--it's you.

Even 2e tried to shoe-horn a bunch of stuff that simply didn't work within the framework of the mechanics. As much as I like Spelljammer, the actual rules for ships were awful.

While d20 can hypothetically do anything, in practice that's not the case unless you're willing to radically alter the mechanics. M&M had to rework the system basically from the ground up in order to do a superhero game, just to present one (rather popular) example.

I see your point. But doing that in a video game is one thing; doing it with a tabletop RPG is quite another.

None of those are solely a 3.5 thing.

Choose a genre.

Read the book about that genre.

that will tell you everythign you need to know about how to run that genre. Ignore the rules at first, just read the rest of the book.

THEN get the core book and start the winnowing process that is deciding how you want the game to go.

Why do people keep defending a system that deliberately includes options designed to catch out new players?

Making experienced players feel smart is not an excuse for actively hostile game design.

Don't bother. They are brain damaged to the point of being unable to accept that 3.PF can be anything other than that game they hate.

So you started a thread with the goal of irritating some unknown person? Suite life user.

Not neccesarily for the cost, but for naval combat if it ever comes to that. You would of course want a system for using a boat if it came to the point where you were attacked at high seas by pirates or a sea monster of some sort.

This sounds more like advertising than opinion.

Then you are ignoring the system in the first place if you are just making up rules for it. Why not just make a homebrew system at that point?

It's a game that pretends it can do anything, and ends up just doing everything poorly

>They are brain damaged to the point of being unable to accept that 3.PF can be anything other than that game they hate.

Where were you when 3.Pfags started using anti-3.P arguments to support their points?

I wonder what sort of fuckbad system you play to be so anally devastated. Using "furries" as pejorative pretty much excludes Exalted and 4E... I guess "streamlined" points at you being a 5tard.

>None of those are solely a 3.5 thing.

That's kind of like saying "Going fast isn't solely a Venom GT thing" or "Being tall isn't solely an Everest thing".

And you know what I'd do then? I'd just continue playing the game, because its not ad difficult as you're making it.

I ran a 4e game where the party traveled by ship multiple times, attacked each one, including by sea serpents that attacked the boat. I never ran into an issue with not having dedicated naval combat rules.

>It ends up doing everything poorly
Every single GURPS book has more research put into it than WotC could ever bother with. I would like to see how monks in D&D are somehow better to play than GURPS Martial Arts with the different stances and maneuvers. 5e babies are just as delusional as 3.5 fanboys.

>he only thing 3.5ers have in their wheelhouse is "dude I'm having fun so like fuck off".

Also, being the best fantasy system out there except for Pathfinder, which is basically the same shit.

Do you have a single fact to back that up?

>Every single GURPS book has more research put into it than WotC could ever bother with.

>delusional