So I don't want to oversell it, but I think I figured out where everything went wrong with D&D

So I don't want to oversell it, but I think I figured out where everything went wrong with D&D.

I think we can all agree that 3.5 is garbage. But WHY is it garbage? The list of technical problems has been exhaustively documented, and they're all true, but previous editions weren't perfect either. So why did they work so much better than 3e?

I propose that it comes down to a subtle shift in gameplay philosophy, specifically what the expected role of the player character was.

In OD&D it's well known that characters gained experience by collecting gold. What's less well known is why. The expectation was that the characters were collecting gold to become lords (e.g. Conan), and that this whole "delving into dungeons and killing ugly smelly things" was just a phase. The Rules 'Cyclopedia had extensive rules for high level PCs, and how they might design and run their strongholds.

Even after gold=exp was ditched, this fundamental philosophy stayed: heroes were never expected to just stay wandering adventurers. They were expected to set down roots and invest the money they stole into a community. You can really see this with how hit points work. By the time you're 10th level or so, nothing can seriously threaten you regardless of class.

3e tossed all that out the window in favor of encouraging player selfishness. It kept the trappings of the game while throwing out the fundamental philosophy in favor of "muh player empowerment", and D&D has been shit ever since
Thoughts?

Other urls found in this thread:

d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/adept.htm
youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

>I think we can all agree
eeeehhh probably not. But, to work with your idea, its more that individual player power level accomplishment rather than household building accomplishment started becoming the focus around 2nd edition. Being a confluence of a shift in fantasy literature and adventure module design away from material aquisition in the more pulpy od&d and appendix N material. 3rd and 3.5 just made it more mechanically streamlined towards character building and demonstrating those builds on a tactical grid.

Not sure if it counts as going wrong. Defs a different play style that I'm not as interested in though. Dungeons and Dragons adventuring has had selfish power fantasy as a big part of its core, they're just expressed differently and are representative of different demographics over time.

Would have to agree somewhat.

Now, I've not played a campaign following good=xp but I've listened to one where they did, and it's a much more organic experience. Characters are not just...the game is not simply about rolling your damage die at that point. I personally, don't enjoy needing to fight more monsters in order to unlock a much needed ability. That's all leveling up feels like, getting the ability or spell that will make me useful. Which sort of feels empty in a way.

>I think we can all agree that 3.5 is garbage.
No, we can't. It's by far the best edition.

Are you from Bizzaro world?

The only flaws of 3.5 were spells and wizards having too many of them per day. Highest base attack should have been 3/4. Feats should have been standalones except for the trees that made sense. Feats should have been one per 4 levels. Fewer feats but they do more. ASIs should have been +1 to two to encourage MAD and ability enhancers should have been deleted. 5e fixed nothing it just stripped out the best part of the game. Power attack (Gwm) is still a prerequisite for being effective in 5e, hp and damage scale retardedly and ranger is a crap class.

>Need rules for wearing a hat properly
>Need rules for farting in public
>Need rules for fighting half a horse
>Need rules for bartering
>Need rules for inhaling and maybe exhaling
>Need rules for walking and masturbating at the same time
>No monster creation rules though, fuck you

2e is GOAT edition

Which is why 3.5 is a perfectly fine system if you play with a good DM and good players who don't go out of their way to fuck around and abuse shit and actually roleplay their characters without needing some rules based incentive to do so.

This is why i used to like 3.5 cause I played with my dad when I went to visit him. They didnt play overpowered characters or do dumb shit. Then I ran 3.5 with actual 3.5 players and the ran pathfinder for them and they made overpowered shit to the point where I slammed them with glass cannon encounters hoping to wipe them out one by one. Oh and thet weren't even playing wizards or codzilla. Fuck 3aboos definitions of power, utility is cool, fighters being boring is the problem not underpowered.

Are you? Aside from 5e it's the most played edition these days not even counting pathfinder.

>percentile shit
>arbitrary rules
>endless tables for core rules shit
>no core mechanic
>no customization
>thac0
At least it wasnt pussified vidya shit like 4e and 5e were but 2e was just as bad as 3.5 if not worse.

>By the time you're 10th level or so, nothing can seriously threaten you regardless of class.
In OD&D? I remember it different
In 3.5? I also remember it different

Except it didn't, see Monk and Druid. Monk needs a lot of help to actually perform ok and a druid comes with a Monk but better pet that even by accident can shit in other martials too. Intentions are fine, but players also must know about how the system works and purposely avoid traps and OP stuff.

Popularity does not equal quality. Otherwise Avatar and Titanic are the greatest movies ever made.

Avatar IS the greatest movie of all times

Conan wasn't collecting gold to become a lord. He was just wandering around the Hyborian world, and was quite happy to spend every last copper he had.

Him becoming King of Aquilonia had nothing to do with his wealth at the time, and he only became King at all because he thought it would be fun.

Because 3.X wanted to fix what it saw as problems in AD&D and previous editions. There was alot of ad hoc ruling required for things that weren't spelled out in the earlier core rulebooks.

The INTENTION was to cover all the things you ever thought of having to do and then had to ask your GM about (ie "Hey, can I grab the evil mage and hold him to keep him from casting?") in a unified system that applied more evenly across all classes. Skill checks, grapple rules, two weapon fighting rules, etc always felt like they were supposed to help the GM by taking tha Ad Hoc pressure off of him.

Now when a player says "Hey, I wanna leap off of the balcony and smack that giant crystal with my warhammer to stop the ritual", he knows it's a quick skill check for the jump,and a sunder rollagainst a known value for hitting the crystal.

Sure, in practice it was never as clean as that, but I can understand and appreciate the intent.

>Except it didn't, see Monk and Druid. Monk needs a lot of help to actually perform ok and a druid comes with a Monk but better pet that even by accident can shit in other martials too.

Literally only power gamers give a fuck about any of this shit in all the games of 3.5/pf I've played and ran everyone else is there to have fun , roleplay and roll dice.

>I'm useless and can't bring anything to the table, but if I bother about this I'm a powergamer
Truly caster mentality, only you can do cool stuff and if the rest want to do cool stuff they're powergamers

You know what really activates my almonds? WotC listened to a vocal minority that complained about 3.5e balance and fixed a lot of it in 4e. This fractured their player-base (and possible revenue) in half, a move so bad that they reverted as hard as possible in 5e in order to woo their lost audience.

I really wonder what lesson WotC has learned from this. I fear that 6e (due in 4 or 5 years) will contain only slow, incremental improvement because WotC will be afraid to take another risk like 4e.

Again only people who sit around theory crafting on forums and never actually playing the game or players who treat D&D like a complete tactical miniature combat game ever a shit about this. Casual players do not give a shit, I've never once heard a player who doesn't fit into the forum shitposter or power gamers category ever complain about any of this stuff and I've been dming for 11 years now over multiple editions of the game.

Monks aren't 'useless' in 3.5 they run around punching stuff to death adequately enough which is good enough for most casual players.

Likewise it's a self fulfilling prophecy, obviously the min-maxing druid player is going to perform better than the regular monk. But if both players don't go out of their way to break the game and the DM actually knows what he's doing then there's rarely any issue anyone actually cares about in real play. If both players do go out of their way to break the game then sure the druid player will probably be more successful but then you're just playing towards the lowest common power gaming denominator and everything then obviously turns to shit.

Why do you want balance? balance is bad, you think you want balance but that's a limit to actually have fun and roleplaying. Balance never did any good to any game, this isn't a competition you know, this a cooperative game, you aren't alone, if you can't do stuff your friends will help you.

Modifiers take an entire 20 level run to max out. Problem is, there are so many modifiers, maximums can vary to where you could still add another 30 or 40 but you already complete DCs 100% of the time no matter what, and another might not even have a 20% chance to hit a CR20 monster. This combined with the d20 means that the game goes from swingy as fuck to not swingy at all IF you make the right decisions. 5e alleviated this with its bounded accuracy though.

The other problem is too much low quality content, not enough good content, and zero guidelines on balance and power levels. Part of fixing the game's most glaring problems involves banning the core classes and spells for god's sake.

And as said, the system dumbed down any form of roleplaying by making far too many rules, and the system lost all forms of modularity in the process. The core of the problem is the scaling however. The game scales horribly until Lv7-8, then it's good, and then it tapers off rapidly.

That listening to a vocal minority of forum whingers/theory crafter's/power gamers who don't actually play your game and marketing an entire edition to them that is unrecognisable, removes swathes of things playersal actually enjoyed and is entirely incompatible with previous editions is a bad idea?

You misspelled Die Hard.

>balance is bad
This might be the most autistic thing I've read on this board today, and I was in the Realistic Space Ships thread.

I'm telling you my case, I'm perma GM, my little bro wanted to play a strong independent warrior who needs no equipment, after reading monk he wanted to play one. Rolled, went with dextery because he likes the fast Bruce Lee imagery and picked two weapon fighting because he liked to "sting" many times his enemies.

On the other side was this girl who also was new to the game, she went druid and picked a wolf, then a velocirraptor (because they fought a couple of them and she rolled well and found an egg).

My brother didn't even lay a hit on enemies in 20 sessions, he did nothing, he spent half the sessions unconscious becuase his defense was also garbage, I had to threw tons of magic items at him so he could keep up and do something of value. He didn't want them because he wanted to be strong independent warrior who needs no equipment. Meanwhile the Druid girl was having a blast, being good in alsmost every field.

Neither of them had any idea of the game, they picked their options entirely based on the flavour of their characters.

It was probably my fault for not saying no to them. But the fact is that even if you aren't trying you can fuck up shit bad because the game is not balanced.

>Inb4 ToB
This game was before ToB released or even before internet was well spread so we were playing with the books we had at hand

What's the source of that webm?

>lists a bunch of things that 5e fixes
>"5e fixed nothing"
???

>Highest base attack should have been 3/4
It's funny, my group's highest BaB in PF right now is 3/4, they can't hit shit. I had to introduce a 5th party member to buff them on top of the buffer bard they already have.

Record of Lodoss War, an old anime about some guy's campaign. No, really.

No way a velociraptor is better than a monk, you're just memeing.

Size/Type: Medium Animal
Hit Dice: 4d8+16 (34 hp)
Initiative: +2
Speed: 60 ft. (12 squares)
Armor Class: 17 (+2 Dex, +5 natural), touch 12, flat-footed 15
Base Attack/Grapple: +3/+7
Attack: Talons +7 melee (1d8+4)
Full Attack: Talons +7 melee (1d8+4) and 2 foreclaws +2 melee (1d3+2) and bite +2 melee (2d4+2)
Space/Reach: 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Pounce
Special Qualities: Low-light vision, scent
Saves: Fort +8, Ref +6, Will +2
Abilities: Str 19, Dex 15, Con 19, Int 2, Wis 12, Cha 10
Skills: Hide +12, Jump +26, Listen +10, Spot +10, Survival +10
Feats: Run, Track
Environment: Warm forests
Organization: Solitary, pair, or pack (3-6)
Challenge Rating: 3
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always neutral
Advancement: 5-8 HD (Medium)
Level Adjustment: —

This is a 4th level animal companion.

Maybe, but a velociraptor tied to a druid definitely is better than a monk.

Been playing and DMing 3.5 for a long ass time now. I don't get why it gets shit on so much, yeah some of the rules in certain situations can get convulsed but as a DM it's my job to stream line it and not bog down the game.

Only thing I've changed minus a few pre-req feats was wizards and sorcerers use bard spell progression.

Dances with Wolves was better

>wizards use bard spell progression.
Ok, might fix some stuff
>and sorcerers
Why? you get that now bards are infinitely better than sorcerers, right?

Also what happens with Clerics and Druids, you know what CoDzilla is?

Is that how foreigners spell chitty chitty bang bang?

>my little bro wanted to play a strong independent warrior who needs no equipment
>He didn't want them because he wanted to be strong independent warrior who needs no equipment

Does he also want to play soccer but using only his knees? Your fault for not explaining the system to him, idiot.

No. Shut the fuck up, it's trivial to stumble your way into something that can't even do what it's supposed to while some jackoff with a Druid can break the game because bears are cool.

Because you like ad hominems so much:
>I can't read
I was giving him way more than what a character of his level would be allowed to have, like way more. If I went by what the system allows (and he accepted it) he'd be still shit compared to the raptor.

I can agree that XP from kills is the worst way to track progress, so I never use it. I think from now inn I'm not even using milestones and just using the session progression from the 5e DMG.

Sorry I failed to mention both druid and cleric, they follow the same spell progression as bards as well.

I've had both bards and sorcerers in a group, they fill different niches so they never stepped on each other's toes.

I'd rather say it's more due to taking a not terribly well crafted system that had to incorporate a bunch of old sacred cows and then burying that under a pile of bloat as new feats, spells, classes, items and so on were poured in to sell more splatbooks.

how the fuck does she swing that axe?

Ok, from my point of view and only knowing what you mentioned. Comparing both bard and sorcerer and assuming sorcerer is now bard progression caster.

Bard:
Better saves (Refl and Will)
Better BaB
Better HP
Better proficiencies (including light armors)
6+Int
Better skill selection
Class features
Better spell selecion or spell list however you want to call it

Sorcerer:
Familiar

I don't see why you even need the sorcerer, or why someone would pic sorcerer when they can pic a bard and fill whatever concept they might want for their "sorcerer" while not being worse

>Sorcerer has bard progression
That's called an Adept, no, no joking:

d20srd.org/srd/npcClasses/adept.htm

I am gonna need some sauce on those meatballs, so I can ROO.

>In OD&D it's well known that characters gained experience by collecting gold. What's less well known is why. The expectation was that the characters were collecting gold to become lords (e.g. Conan), and that this whole "delving into dungeons and killing ugly smelly things" was just a phase. The Rules 'Cyclopedia had extensive rules for high level PCs, and how they might design and run their strongholds.


mmmmmmyeah I'm not so sure.

Traditionally lordship has been the benny that fighter-types get as they reach high levels, but I it's transparently a patch to make up for not getting anything as exciting as high-level spells and it's never been reflective of or well integrated with the core D&D experience.

In OD&D navigating dungeons and slaying monsters was the core gameplay and high level expansions have always been optional extras that I doubt most people's home games ever reached.

3e had problems because the designers didn't understand the system they'd created - they couldn't make optimal characters so they didn't see the balance issues. From my experience though it worked as well if not better on the tabletop as any earlier version of D&D, they just all shared the same problem of being really boring to play if you're not a spellcaster.

>it's transparently a patch to make up for not getting anything as exciting as high-level spells and it's never been reflective of or well integrated with the core D&D experience
It was intended as a cap, actually. At that point, you were supposed to retire your character and start a new one.

youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY

Needless complication and retarded list of optional abilities that were never meant to work together being used together

>4e
>Vidya
>Not WotC trying to blend it with MtG
Nigga what?

Unpopular opinion, maybe.
I spent all saturday playing Castle Ravenloft and roleplaying around the board game, just adding dramatic narrative to whatever the box was spitting at us.
And I hadn't had that much fun with anything D&D related in over a decade.

We're at a point where RPGs have way much more rules than they have game. Sure it's teoretically all up to your DM and playgroup, but we all know it's never that simple.

>The only flaws of 3.5 were spells and wizards having too many of them per day.
Also:
Racial lv limits removed.
Weapon restrictions greatly decreased.
Allingment restrictions glossed over.
Magic item creation rules made to allow easy and practically free creation.
And like op said, removing the drive to gain a keep. That allowed far too much Monty haul shenanigans.

>no customization
2ed had more customization.

Just off of weapon/non weapon profs.

5e did not fix ASIs because you can just jack them up +2 at a time because "muh instant gratification." Feats are instead of ASIs and most of them are shit. And as I said HP and damage still scale retardedly in 5e, as well as Power Attack being such a prerequisite for being an effective fighter that it might as well be an option for all martial classes. Also ranger still sucks shit. In fact, ranger is MORE shit in 5e than in 3.5.

That's because monster ACs are ridiculously high to compensate. Monsters in 3.PF have huge-ass natural ACs, it's fuck-tarded, but that's because attack bonuses go up insanely fast. Whereas 5e proficiency is the other extreme. 4e was a nice middleground in some ways.

>Racial lv limits removed.
Those were gay.
>Weapon restrictions greatly decreased.
I mean, I guess so. You were effectively restricted to certain kinds of weapons in most cases anyway.
>Allingment restrictions glossed over.
Because except for paladin, alignment is a fucking gay concept. It's not real roleplaying, it's roleplaying some strange caricature of a child's show hero.
>Magic item creation rules made to allow easy and practically free creation.
Probably true.

>Sure, in practice it was never as clean as that, but I can understand and appreciate the intent.

It's easy to talk about and describe. But when you write it up as a rule...shit gets abused sometimes.

>Those were gay.
Those were needed. Without them, you get a lv20 1/2 drow 1/2 shadow dragon dread pirate/ paladin.
>It's not real roleplaying, it's roleplaying some strange caricature of a child's show hero
It's "keeping classes in their own lane".

>You were effectively restricted to certain kinds of weapons in most cases anyway.
Fighters started with 4 weapons he could use with no negs.
Longsword wasn't a short sword.
I think a wizard had 1, and a second at lv 10.
Staff, or dagger.

Plus, the multiclass rules helped in 2ed, instead of encourging cluster fucks of a concept.

>liking 4e
>hating the others
sometimes I wonder of Veeky Forums is the weird bizarro version of real life, that loves the prequels and hated the original, and probably like highlander 2

Maybe stop autisticly treating tabletop rpgs like a video game?

>hurr D&D sucks!

D&D is just a system where you take a d20, add relevant modifiers, and check it against a target value.
If you don't like something, just change it. There's no system out there which you will like 100%.
That's what I do, and my group has been enjoying it and other d20 derivatives for years.
Pretty much all the complaints I've seen are massively overblown anyway.

>Pretty much all the complaints I've seen are massively overblown anyway.
Excuse me?
The DM allowing the enhanced Zigllo class feature at lv 5, instead of lv 6 is a fucking joke to you???!!!
I hate you and I hope you get anal cancer.

>That's what I do, and my group has been enjoying it
Well you're doing it wrong!
Stop that immediately. I'm turning this thread in to the proper authorities, and I assure you, I'll be talking about people like you on my next youtube rant!
I...I...I... can't even right now.

>Those were needed. Without them, you get a lv20 1/2 drow 1/2 shadow dragon dread pirate/ paladin.
Well, I suppose that's not technically a problem as long as drow, half-shadow-dragons, dread pirates, and paladins are all reasonably balanced options across the levels. Some DMs might want to restrict some of these things in their games for thematic reasons, of course.

The Gold = XP method wasn't entirely for an endgame of being a Lord.

The gold was also an abstraction for accomplishment. You were succeeding at challenges, and the amount of gold you earned was supposed to be in proportion to the challenge. Whether you slew monsters for it, or found some other way to acquire it, you were surmounting challenges.

Also the Gold = XP abstraction made combat only one method to acquiring XP, and sometimes it was the worst method. If getting a monster's treasure earned you XP - and whether the monster died or not had nothing to do with it - players would naturally start to think of more clever ways to get it that didn't put them in danger.

I remember when Veeky Forums hated 4e. We've only begun to acknowledge its strengths once 5e came out, so in a way we still hold a begrudging acceptance for the originals and an insane beyond all reason hatred for everything else.

>I think we can all agree that 3.5 is garbage. But WHY is it garbage?

Because I'm a snobby nerd fuck who wants to play something that tickles my autism just right.

And so are you.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

>when you write it up as a rule...shit gets abused sometimes
All games get gamed. The DM is there to stop that shit...or encourage it and lol together with the PCs about the Rule of Cool I guess, depends on how old you are.

>I think we can all agree that 3.5 is garbage
3.5 is peak D&D. I say IS because I still play it. I've got a bunch of players who grew up on 5.0 but they're starting to see what's so cool about 3.5e and it's not different enough to 5e that they really notice much anyway.

You're idea about OD&D becoming about settled lords defending their territory from quest threats is reasonably sound, 3.5e is more about continuing to quest and overcome greater and greater threats but it can work the other way just fine too.

>Balance never did any good to any game, this isn't a competition you know, this a cooperative game, you aren't alone, if you can't do stuff your friends will help you.
This is the literal truth but makes an important assumption...the party is all friends and working together. In a pure PvE game, user speaks the literal truth. In any PvP party, it's different.

I never play PvP D&D though, it sucks ass.

Variety, including in power levels, is good, IMO. I'm happy for a PC to be a level higher or something even, make them the natural leader if you like. The Fellowship had their Aragorn, no reason not to have a more senior party member too.

>a strong independent warrior who needs no equipment, after reading monk he wanted to play one
You forgot to tell him to take Vow of Poverty.
The real problem in 3.5e isn't power or dps or even utility. It's spotlight. Knowledge and social characters up heaps of DM time and the others just sit around waiting for the roleplaying to end so that they can do something too.

It's why I never use CHR as a dump stat and my fighters are always autisticly expert in some knowledge skill. Gives me something to do during the investigation phase of the quest.

>Like deer hunting with an AK.

This is great

>balance is bad
>This might be the most autistic thing I've read on this board today, and I was in the Realistic Space Ships thread.


No. Balance, like so many other things. Is an ill defined buzzword without any meaning. There wasn't a lack of "subjective X" VS "subjective Z" in any way. The game produced by a mass amount of different authors of various talents and this lead to a major discrepancy in quality. Eventually leading to more poor content than good content. Quality control went to shit.

Haven't thought of that show in long time. It has a few dry spots it but it's definitely worth a watch if you can find it.

The same way she swings dick

>But WHY is it garbage?

Because there is a higher then normal degree of AWARNESS of its technical problems and thus there is more effort by players to make use of those problems. Because of this there is a high degree of resentment against trying to fix the issue that will come up at the table via house rules.

Dude, are you me? My first game of 3.5 was almost the same thing. I rolled up a Finesse fighter because it sounded cool, and another player was a Druid with a Wolf that later got swapped for a Velociraptor.

Granted, I didn't have the same stigma against magic items, but the DM also didn't throw me much of a bone in that regard. Not like it matters much, since the wolf outpaced me in utility at lower levels even if my HP and AC were a bit better, while the Raptor was more mobile and did more damage.

I really don't understand how somebody can look at the comparison and say it's fine if you just give the martial magic items, because they always ignore that the Druid exists during all of this. If the Druid gets 90% of my character as a class feature while still shooting things and throwing out entangles and cure spells, where's my lacky who will double my damage output and health for the day without putting out the rest of the party?

That's what people don't get about balance in a team based game. If one person's character roll is to do everything and solve problems with a clap of their hands, that's going to really shit on the guy whose character role is 'able to clap hands'.

Never played 3 or 3.5 but I've played Pathfinder and I hear it's the same thing.

As much as I enjoy the 5e game in runnin right now, I don't think any edition will ever be as much fun as 1e AD&D

>If one person's character roll is to do everything and solve problems with a clap of their hands, that's going to really shit on the guy whose character role is 'able to clap hands'.
Perfect

>You forgot to tell him to take Vow of Poverty.
You forgot to read he mentioned that this was before ToB and other manuals existed, and before internet was well spreaded. Is more than possible he haden't BoED at hand or didn't even exist yet

>There was alot of ad hoc ruling required for things that weren't spelled out in the earlier core rulebooks.

Figuring that shit out for your table was half the fun.

>Need rules for fighting half a horse
Well... yeah.

3.5 has too many rules. 90% of them are completely unnecessary. There are 32 rules JUST for grappling. Fuck that shit.
Also, your game is in serious trouble when a druid's pet bear can deal more damage and take more hits than a fighter while still doing magic shit.
Why would you make a fucking game in which several character classes are fucking useless?