The problem with 3.5e

I've solved the problem with [game system]. Hear me out. Listening?

I have personal problems with it, which, while some are valid, you might be willing to overlook those because they may not personally bother you at all.

Boom. Never play [game system] again.

Zero playtest and devs literally don't knowing shit about their own system might be the best explanation to why the game has so many problems.

Odd, I thought that there were playtests, but only at low PC levels.

There were """playtests""" but the clerics only picked healing spells and the wizard only picked blastings pells. They ignored the buff/debuff ones. They also didn't playtested much, pretty sure they played a couple of times on levels below 6th and they said "yeah, it's perfect".

Anyway, this is if you believe the actual stories, there aren't facts about this, only rumors.

I remember those. Didn't they also have a Druid running around only using a Scimitar?

I actualy think it's better than 5e

It has much more content, and even though it's unbalanced it works and can be used for a fun night.

The fans have also thought of good variants like e6 which vastly improve it.

And lotr is really good, what are you smoking?

It's better than 90% of the crap out there nowadays, and you probably can't like it because you have to disagree with everyone to feel special

I wish I could get my players to do e6. I start to hate just about any edition of DnD starting around level six, but no one I play with agrees so I just tend to keep my mouth shut. No reason to ruin the game for them for my sake. But still, it's something I'd like to try, since DnD is too overpowered for a couple of game ideas I have and my players won't try any other systems.

>It's called stockholm syndrome, they hate 3.PF but they can't stop playing it so as an excuse they make these threads
The thing is I have this but I don't start threads to whine about the system because there's no point. The anti-3.PF trolls are so ass-hurt by a system that, apparently, "ruined a generation of roleplayers", that they have to spam the board constantly. Meanwhile I play a campaign of 3.5 every week, GM a Pathfinder campaign and a 5e campaign as well. And I enjoy all three of them thoroughly.

Meanwhile, 3.pf trolls are desperately trying to get into a game on roll20 and considering taking DarkGM722's offer of 20 bucks per session to his Patreon just so they can get into a real game.

>I actualy think it's better than 5e
Narrowly. The lore, art, and style of 3.5 is infinitely superior to the bland cuck fantasy of 5e. Don't get me wrong the interior design of 5e is beautiful, but the feel the game gives in its art is just so boring. 3.5 had character. The hundreds of prestige classes were kinda retarded but they fed so much lore and content that it seemed like you had infinite options to choose from. Only a few were "good" but that didn't really matter to me when I was younger. Epic6 is loads of fun. I'm in a high level 3.5 campaign right now, we got to level 17 from level 4 start, still playing. Oh and I'm playing a fighter/ranger with no spells and enjoying the fuck out of it. Stay butthurt, 4rry/5fag/other system trolls.

My 2 cents
When I started this system I liked it, it was probably my first approach to rpgs and it sounded cool
Through the years I grew up dissapointed with it because how many flaws it had plus the average fanbase being horrible, specially DMs who liked to shit on martials which forced me to play casters (yaeh, the "magic rules martials drool" people actually exist)
I stopped playing it, and any other system, for like 7 years
But a few years ago I gave it a go with a new group, I was game starved at that moment and I said fuck it, turned out the group I'm in right now is awesome, know the problems, propose solutions, allow variety and aren't dicks. GMs are awesome too and don't mind throwing bones to those in need

I know that a good group can even make FATAL go well and that doesn't mean FATAL is a flawless game, but in my case I'm having enough fun to dismiss the flaws of the game

This. Recently started playing 3.5e, and as opposed to 5e, it actually feels compelling and interesting. Is it perfect? No. But it's a lot more engaging and inspiring than 5e. 5e is just meh.

So much of this. The butthurt from the wannabe hipsters is palpable.

I got it! You are suffering from brain damage and you are asking for help!

I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid.

>2001 Space Odyssey
>Not good at all

Can see you have shit taste already. 3.5 is great because of how much content is in it. You can make almost anything and have mechanics backing up your idea.

That's also it's weakness, to much damn content.

I'd prefer have to much shit and worry about how it could potentially break a game rather than the opposite. At least in the former you can talk to the DM and reel your over powered ass back to the groups level.

>LotR, 2001, and NGE aren't good
go and stay go

>That's also it's weakness, to much damn content.
It's weakness is wizards having too many spells, a bunch of broken spells, the game having a bunch of retard rules that punish martials (like full attack as a full round action. Absolutely destroys two weapon fighting as a viable option). Bring in 5e's action economy (move and one action then a minor action), as well as its damage-type / resistance rules to take the edge off of damage reduction raping martials at higher levels, and bring the math back to the realms of sanity (but please god not the fucktarded proficiency system), and wrap saves and attacks into a single number, and you'd fix the game a lot.

But here's thing, even with all of its flaws, 3.5 fights with 5e for playerbase size. If it was fixed up a bit, it would absolutely blow 5e out of the fucking water.

Which is why you do e6 or limit wizards and push psychics and the tome of battle.

I've actually found that my favorite class to play is the factotum.

>MY OPINIONS GOOD
>EVERYONE ELSE'S OPINIONS BAD
>SO THIS GAME IS BAD BECAUSE I SAY SO

Eh, fuck off.

>OP is a dribbling imbecile
geewiz

Doesn't that class require like 6 books, open at all times, to play?

Not really, it's stupid good with a bunch of books

>All those triggered pathfaggots

What else could you want?

Gee, I wish an edition existed that did all that.

AD&D?

Didn't know there was another mutants and masterminds fan

>here's how I'll explain why D&D is shit
>first, I'll say that everything is shit
>then

AD&D doesn't have minor actions.

Which edition would you say is the most balanced? I hear bad things about 4 and 5, but are they really worse than 3.5? 3.5 was a gigantic clusterfuck.

Mutants and masterminds is basically the best thing to come from the d20 system, so if you have to d20 do mutants and masterminds.

If you have to ask my opinion 3.5, it's not balanced but it has such a wealth of material for it to be really fun.

Just make sure you use one of the community patches, such as e6

Without a patch, just play 5e but warning it's boring as snot after 10 games

e6 may be an improvement, but a druid is still going to absurd compared to a fighter and save or dies are still stupid strong.

3.x is far and away the least balance of the three you have mentioned. People complain about 4e and 5e for totally different reasons.

See this is why I either ban fullcasters, and go full psionics, or just weaken them.

And no fighters, you are playing a ToB class no matter what.

>People complain about 4e and 5e for totally different reasons.
Namely? I heard that 4 is basically a wargame, I've been reading the quickstart to 5 but I don't see anything outrageous except the "Inspiration" thing which I can't figure out

I like 5 so I'm probably not the best person to ask but I imagine it has something to do with decreased customization options from 3.x (of course half of those options were shit and some were very broken, but to each their own).

2ed.

This is beyond dispute.

Don't like 5e

Yea it's boring, and doesn't really have the flavor of fun that 3.5 had.

Even the stupid stuff was there to add flavor.

The new game seems too calculated and bland to really be fun, and it lacks the customization and eagerness of 3.5e

And as said, 5e gets bland after 10 games, whereas I'm still learning about 3.5 to this day

>beyond dispute
The Complete Book of Elves

And?

If you think that book and its content are balanced you're wearing some serious nostalgia blinders.

Best balanced edition is probably 4e pre-essentials.

It's like TF2 vs overwatch

TF2
>badly balanced
>developers don't care for it
>oodles of flavor
>awards system mastery
>bit dated but tons of fun

Overwatch
>well balanced(in comparison)
>developers care
>generic flavor
>new players have an easy time with it
>new and gets boring after a while

Explain the unbalanced part.

With the racial limits in place, the elves book adds some elvish flavor, a couple decent arrow tricks, and that's pretty much it.
Not really unbalanced or shattering to a game.

Oh and
TF2
>tons of custom content(hats, weapons, and maps)
Overwatch
>skins and voice-lines I guess

>you're wearing some serious nostalgia blinders.
And you could be right on that. I'll glance back through it.

Oddly, I still have that book. Been a long time since I looked at it to be honest.

What has DnD 3rd+ ever influenced beyond Pathfinder, and why would that deserve praise?

Mutants and Masterminds

3.x, PF, 4e and 5e

Was one of the first to use the d20 system

Order of the stick?

So one separate game, one clone, two wildly different editions of the same game, and one webcomic.

Well if you count influencing game design for a while, and countless webseries then the number is higher

Still pretty mediocre for an edition of arguably the most famous tabletop rpg in the world.

In terms of influence it's largely comparable to many of its far less famous peers. It's like praising royalty for graduating from high school.

What the heck did rifts or shadow run or wod influence?

TTRPGS are a niche thing, and as such typically don't influence anything past the niche

>What the heck did wod influence
Twilight?

>LotR gets praised as one of the best (fantasy) novels of all time, but it's not really all that good. If anything, it only deserves praise for its influence.
>2001: A Space Odyssey gets praised as one of the best (Sci-Fi) movies of all time, but it's not really all that good. If anything, it only deserves praise for its influence.
>Neon Genesis Evangelion gets praised as one of the best (mecha) anime of all time, but it's not really all that good. If anything, it only deserves praise for its influence.

Jesus, what terrible opinions. I've never seen a plebeian pleb this hard.

Anyway, 3.5 is bad because it's an atrociously balanced, overcomplicated mess that manages to actually get less out of more. That's the meat of the issue and all that needs to be said.

Reducing trap choices is never a bad thing. Unless you're from /d/.

>And as said, 5e gets bland after 10 games
What's with this motif? What makes it suck?

>D&D 3.5 gets praised as one of the best (tabletop) games of all time
that makes no sense. who says such a thing?

>3.5 is unbalanced, you should play GURPS
>Build earth-shattering Mage with 50 points
>N-No, you don't understand, you should play White Wolf
>I'm literally warping reality by the fourth session
Do I have to even mention Exalted?

D&D as it is class and option based, is really dependent on having a bunch of crap out there.

It's built like a video game, where expansions add classes and stuff.

So the more options, the less boring the game is.

It's not like gurps where 2 books can do anything. It's built on an expansion system m

Gurps really doesn't believe in balance, as the game is built on GM support.

So your argument is invalid

It's really not. "I don't believe in balance" is not a helpful or useful answer to "this game isn't well-balanced."

I could kill your 50 point earth mage with 10 points

Gurps really doesn't have balance m

T f u
f
u

Actually if you knew GURPS you couldn't, the "50 point" is a well-known "build" in the community, It literally only uses RAW to build a character that can end the entire universe in a single turn.

How about this: GURPS doesn't make a claim of everything being perfectly balanced, only that it provides options that can be balanced if the GM is paying attention. It's more focused on creating a good game and asks you to do more work in order to get such a thing.

3.5 is an inherently broken game, the LEAST problem being that half of the classes are worthless and a third of them are game-breakingly powerful. It's a game that makes the claim "These things are balanced against each other and all of your options are valuable in the right circumstances", and yet it's as badly balanced as said 50 point earth-breaking wizard.

While you can make the argument that a 100 point character in Gurps should be balanced against 100 point characters, GURPS also leaves that up to the players and the GM to a much higher degree than D&D does. There's no un-fucking Fighters using the rules in D&D, they're just shitty, but if you're not doing well with your fightan' guy in GURPS you are flushed with in-game options to optimize and fix said problems.

I do know gurps.

I would get a no roll, no dodge no DR inmate attack, and then just kill him.

Not really, rather it's a cake
that had custard added, custard goes with cake
that had jam added, jam goes with custard
that had crackers added, crackers goes with jam
that had cheese added, cheese goes with crackers
that had mustard added, mustard goes with cheese
that had bologna added, bologna goes with mustard
that had liver pate added, live pate goes with bologna...

The entirety of 5E is less interesting and involving than a single class in 3.5 could be, and no, I'm not talking about full casters.

>LOTR and 2001 aren't good
I can't possibly imagine what it would be like to live, being retarded as you are. You have my sympathy.

I can understand defending LotR, but honestly I can't see anything good about 2001 other than its influence.

It's not a sci-fi film, and if that was your expectation, you're bound to be disappointed.

Wasn't third edition playtested?

By total retards.

Odd, I remember it being something to the tune of 500 people.

> It's a game that makes the claim "These things are balanced against each other and all of your options are valuable in the right circumstances", and yet it's as badly balanced as said 50 point earth-breaking wizard.

>this game claims something that it doesn't claim and I'm irrationally upset

I'm gonna go ahead and do the same, and say that GURPS makes the claim that it's balanced, when it's anything but and requires intense effort on the GMs part to make a game work.

I mean, 3.5 actually has ample advice and tells the DM to be careful about what he allows into the game and to make decisions about what options he will allow or not allow depending on what kind of game he wants to run, but since you're willing to ignore that, I'm going to go ahead and also add that GURPS promised that it could run any kind of game well but it can barely run a few genres and none without heavy GM modification.

play CoC, faggot

The thing is that d&d is built like a video game.

The classes are built to improve at the same rate and be able to beat each other.

Gurps is built so that equal numbers of points aren't necessarily able to beat each other. A hundred point scientist can be beaten by some mook with a sling built on 10 points.

Gurps never claims to be balanced, and is a rules-heavy genetic system which always take lots of GM input.

3.5 is built to work with a balance, and it doesn't. It doesn't really claim to require a bunch of GM input but does.

Gurps knows what it is, 3.5 doesn't

>There's no un-fucking Fighters using the rules in D&D, they're just shitty,
I'm sorry you have a shit dm.

He didn't say it was a few people. Just that the people were retards.

The playtesters, as a a whole. tested the system based on the "proper" way to play. Blasster wizards instead of Save-or-die spells (as SoD spells weren't as effective in older editions, while damage spells were more effective). Clerics were healers, as opposed to the self-buffing warriors that became typical.

Instead of looking at the system on its own, ignoring the previous editions, they only tested it based on how things had always been. I'm sure there were a few who properly tested the material, but they were ignored as playing things "wrong".

>Gurps never claims to be balanced

Then why have point costs

They measure potential. Characters with the same point cost have the same potential, but their actual capabilities vary.

Vamp porn novels have been a thing for a while. Shit, I think the one I read from the public library was there 15-20 years ago and it was old enought the pages were turning orange.

Those are some clumsy cartwheels. If you're going to do mental gymnastics, at least put a little effort into it.

>tested the system based on the "proper" way to play.

They didn't make up 1500 convoluted rules for when a mage wants to play like a fighter?

Those stupid fucks!!

>Tries to use (x) in a way (x) isn't made for
>The makers of (x) are stupid

People like that, are why prepH has a warning label to not ingest.

D&d needs a simple disclaimer to solve most of the "balance" issues. Something easy to grasp.

>"This game isn't intended or made to play in a retarded fashion."

Are you retarded?

>Instead of looking at the system on its own, ignoring the previous editions, they only tested it based on how things had always been.
They didn't realize that the new gen of ttgamers, would play like fucking idiots.

Honestly, they should have.

It's not a measure of combat potential, it's a measure of power

Power can be anything from intelligence to a patreon, to an ally, etc.

A higher point character isn't necessarily better at fighter, just more powerful than the common man.

They won't understand that concept.

I should really have said resources.

A person with a higher point total has more resources than one without.

That can be in the form of wealth, friends, intelligence, combat experience, bombs, etc but the point total just lets you have more resources

The guys going HURR DURR and throwing fireballs against enemies that save more often and with twice to thrice the health they had in AD&D are the retards playing the game wrong, not the guys who figured out that Glitterdust fucks encounters in the ass.

>play a game in a fashion it wasn't intended for
>game fails to measure up to an arbitrary definition of balance now
>Game is retarded
>Anything explaining game is retarded
>Anyone disagreeing is retarded

Hmm.