Why the fuck do you fa/tg/uys hate 3.5/P.5 so much?

They don't want to admit 3.pf is more popular than their system will ever be.

>Truth is: the vast majority of Veeky Forums likes 3.5, there's just not much to talk about anymore, for one because there is no new content, and secondly because much discussion is now directed towards 5e and PF

I'd be very interested in seeing you produce some numbers basis behind that one.

Most people write 3.pf. I don’t even know what the fuck P.5 is supposed to be.

Also, loads of people like these games but they are awful games that encourages system mastery and people like awful games that encourage system mastery. Especially when there is a collection aspect to it.

make a storytime thread and see how many are in some kind of 3.X
then go through the historic stories and see how many are 3.X

>This is what 3aboos ACTUALLY BELIEVE

Thank you for this demonstration of a typical category 3 post.

>make a storytime thread and see how many are in some kind of 3.X

I remember all the 'This game sucked' stories too that were of 3.5 games.

unsurprising, as the majority of games would have been in 3.5 and they still make up a sizeable portion of all games.
That's my point. If they hated 3.5 they wouldn't have been playing it in the first place to encounter the shit DMs or That Guys.

>If they hated 3.5 they wouldn't have been playing it in the first place to encounter the shit DMs or That Guys.

...not really? D&D for the longest time had a borderline monopoly on fantasy RPGs. It's a matter of 'Well, I'll play what others are' rather than being evidence of them liking the game itself.

>3.P
>3.X
>P.5
>P.75
Ive seen all of these for Pathfinder. I think when people use these there are using pathfinder with a splash of d&d 3.5 rules or vice versa.

>The things I have to tell myself to sleep at night

Basically people who likely never even played 3.5/PF , and certainly if they did didn't understand how it was meant to be used as a system, complaining about problems in the game that didn't exist to anybody actually playing it. But could be 'mathematically' proven in white box , min-max, power gaming, imaginary scenarios that never occurred in actual play.

This meme then went virulent and everyone jumped on the bandwagon as simple folk tend to do to shill whatever system they thought was best.

Hint, if you go out of your way to purposefully break something you can't complain when it's broken. For example - Buying a shiny new Samsung TV, throwing a brick through it, then complaining its a shit TV because it has a massive hole in the middle.

Correct, but I think you're missing one last group, and that's the people who have played D&D 3.5 for so long, but can't convince their group to play something different once in a while, that they attribute the other players/GMs fault of not being willing to switch systems to the system they are playing. Although you could maybe put these people under faction 2, but I believe they deserve their own category

bad game

I don't hate 3.5. I spent a lot of time with it, played, ran, wrote stuff for, moderated forums, went to cons. I sucked it to the marrow. Then at some point I realized that I did not have fun anymore. The game and the community had become fossilized on some specific ways of play, and that I couldn't do with it the things I wanted to. So I moved on to other games.
What I do hate tho is the diehard 3.x fans. The fundies who have only tried one game in their life and cannot conceive any other game. An indie designer said that D&D gives brain damage. It's extreme but you see everyday people acting the part.

Uh oh, it looks like you've responded to the troll with an actual thought out argument! That's great, champ, but sadly it means the troll will avoid your post like the plague because it's not something they can use for more rage. A for effort, but unfortunately this post gets an F because you fed the troll!

Please report to the 'special ed' class from now on, Timmy.

True enough.
I just notice due to your concise description that this behavior is very much analogous to what people describe the friend zone to be as well. I wonder whether theres some codified description for this 'I believe you owe me for interacting with you'-way of thinking.

This is pretty much spot on.

Well said, but I'd also add the 5e fanboys who are drinking that edition's koolaid.

If all the people who post 3.X things on Veeky Forums are just peer pressured into the system, why aren't and weren't the threads about alternatives (such as WHFRPG or Runequest, both of which were very healthy even during 3.X times) much more populated?

So literally everyone who has anything bad to say about 3.5 is a troll?

It's the outright worst version of D&D, the only game that utterly fails at its own design goals. It's also, annoyingly, the most consistently popular, having gained traction with the early internet and exploded in a way that had never been seen before and couldn't be replicated afterwards.

It's badly thought out, badly designed, imbalanced as hell, is built with some astonishingly bad ideas in mind (Ivory Tower) and has a generation of fans who will insist it's perfect and the only 'real' way to play RPG's.

None of this means you can't have fun with 3.PF. I've enjoyed a good few games of it. But having done so, I can confidently say that the system is garbage.

>If all the people who post 3.X things on Veeky Forums are just peer pressured into the system, why aren't and weren't the threads about alternatives (such as WHFRPG or Runequest, both of which were very healthy even during 3.X times) much more populated?

They're definitely more populated than 3.5 ones these days. Heck, I've seen more 4e threads than 3.5 threads.

Sounds like someone is a butthurt fan of 2nd edition...

Name a better system for D&D style games.

Every single other edition of the game

5e seems to be for new players and people who what 3.5 lite because they didn't like the bloat or structure. Most of them don't have a burning hate for 3.5 like 4e. A rules heavy game just doesn't apeal to them.

Honestly I've yet to see anyone hating on 3.5 in 5e threads. Every time I've seen 3.X things mentioned it was positive and either hoping for abilities to be implemented in 5e or home-brewing that themselves. While I don't want to deny their existence completely, I really do not think there are many 5e fans shitting on 3.5 due to system rivalry or trolling or whatever.

Pretty much any other edition of D&D?

The game is horribly unbalanced just in the core rulebook

I hate 3.5 because 2e was the best gaming system known toi man. Also I had finally completed my collection of the books I wanted from 2e when they bought out 3.5.

I REEEEED hard when that happened and vowed never to touch 3.5.

Goddamn I din't realise till I started writing how angry I still am about this. I literally spent all the money I had earned working a shitty job in a restaurant kitchen on those 2e books. I'm gonna have to go and get them out and look at them.

Fucking mint quality, never been played with. Fuck you WOTC fuck you!

That's the angle the D&D defence force wants to push. That it's impossible to criticise their precious game without being easily dismissed in one way or another. It seems weirdly obsessive.

I wouldn't even call it the D&D Defence force. 99% of that post was assaulting OTHER D&D Editions.

In what way is it unbalanced?

>doesn't name one
a m a z i n g

Let's start off with a very simple one: Offence vs defence imbalance. BAB scales vastly, vastly faster than your AC does so trying to get AC as a functional defence becomes less and less possible as you move along the game. As a result, weapons other than 2 handed weapons are rather pointless as you have no reason to want a shield.

AD&D
4e
5e

All are better than 3.5 and I don't even LIKE all of those editions.,

B/X, 2e, 4e, 5e

Are you really stupid enough to need the editions listed for you?

Jeez, get a load of this idiot that actually follows the rules of a tabletop game while they play.

>As a result, weapons other than 2 handed weapons are rather pointless as you have no reason to want a shield
Or rather, a regular shield is obsolete at midlevels as getting dancing and/or a shield spell is trivial.

Define better, then argue why these are supposedly better.

Even then, a floating shield can't keep up with BAB powering ahead so trying to actually have a good defence is a rapidly losing thing.

Compare a fighter, monk, or any martial really out of the core rulebook to a wizard, druid or cleric. Not only does the caster have a staggering number of options over the martial but those options grow as they gain levels. And because they gain levels at the same rate the martial is left in the dust around level 7

heck lol, both of you have exactly the same response. Be less predictable next time.

Because none of them are fundamentally broken rulesets?

>. An indie designer said

Its a fun but flawed game. There is a sizable number of people who wont move on, which would be fine if Paizo wasnt selling them their entire game all over again.

>so trying to actually have a good defence is a rapidly losing thing.
>He actually fights monsters in combat with his own character

Clearly you have never been to fantasy fuckin' Vietnam.

>spell scaling
>ac vs bab
>crafting system
>casters vs non casters

As a 3.5 player the game is very unbalanced most if the problems originated from A d&d and none of the othere editions have solved any of the problems with out gutting the game or making new problems.

>Be less predictable next time.

You asked people to list D&D editions. Are you surprised they have similar lists? That's like saying people are predictable when you ask them to name primary colours, it's a short list of known variables.

It's a bad system. The core mechanics aren't awful but it's full of poor design choices.

This.

It's basically sandwiched between a lot of upset people preceding it and following it. It's like the adage about why Grandparents and Grandchildren get along so well; They share a common enemy.

I wasn't disagreeing with you, just expanding upon how utterly useless sword+board is outside of one niche build.

AC is very frontloaded, but I'm reasonably sure this is intentional.

>2e
Its almost identical to 3.5 minus shit thaco and adding feats
>4e
Really guys. That game is a hot horse shit mmo clone. It was so bad that pathfinder became the most popular game till 5e.
>5e
Mix of 3.5 and 4e pretty much just making D&D lite version.

>AC is very frontloaded, but I'm reasonably sure this is intentional.

Eh, I'd be more hesitant to think so. I'd lean more towards 'They really didn't run the numbers'. Since they went from a game with a rather solid AC limit (+10 to -10) to an open ended one and stuff went crazy.

>Really guys. That game is a hot horse shit mmo clone.

I see you can spout memes.

Most people don't get to directly choose the system they play. Either the GM straight picks, the host straight picks, or the group votes. Some people will completely boycott games that aren't the one or two they want to play. There are entire groups that refuse to play anything except their one game, and that one game was very often 3.5. There are literally hundreds of stories of people stuck playing a specific game because their group won't change and it's either that or don't play.

Very specific question in regards to this;

I'm trying to draft a very bare-bones version of D&D using Pathfinder as a baseline, adapting some of 5e's stuff (Advantage the most noteworthy) and such. It's for a long-time playgroup, incorporating some house rolls and making it a semi-official sort of thing. This kinda stuff could help with the process.

How, specifically, would you improve 3.5/P if you could? If you like 3.5/P, what are your favorite things about it?

How is 3.5 fundamentally broken?

>There are literally hundreds of stories of people stuck playing a specific game because their group won't change and it's either that or don't play.

Or the endless 'Hey, so how do I try to crowbar this game into running something else rather than learning a second system?'

Why not get another group?

see along with the post chain at And that's just scratching the surface

See:

Groups don't grow on trees, and playing online is a very recent option that just wasn't there at the time.

I don't hate 3.5, in fact I rather enjoy the system

I do however, hate people who consider themselves fans of the system. As much as I like it, I'm not so foolish to believe it's somehow a good system, merely a popular one that happens to appeal to my particular tastes. Some people however keep defending the system despite it's hideous flaws, pretending that it's the best option when it very obviously isn't if they'd take their heads out of their own ass and just look around.

I guess by standards I'd be category 2, but you can see the bias that makes me hate 3.5 fans by the use of the words "terrible" and "niche" in that very sentence. It dismisses all systems that aren't 3.5 as inferior, refusing to acknowledge any of their strengths. That's the attitude that ruins 3.5 for me

3.5 a best.

Any neckbeard who's too autist to just settle some homebrew rules to fix the broken shit you may find shouldn't be listened.

DMing a party where i decided that everyone could use every single book or magazine they could find.
Just say "hey just dont go full godslayer mode", since you're supposed to play with your friends. We're having tons of fun.

>Its almost identical to 3.5 minus shit thaco and adding feats
Literally no. The skill system(s) are different, stats have different functions at different rates, spellcasting is much frailer (concentration only works if you are using NWPs and take 2 or less damage, and spells have casting times that can be disrupted), initiative works differently, saving throws scale entirely on level, classes have different abilities, xp rates, and soft caps, multiclassing is different, and a ton of other things aside.

>>There are literally hundreds of stories of people stuck playing a specific game because their group won't change and it's either that or don't play.

Why is it unsurprising that bitter little bitches, with zero charisma and no ability to persuade a group to do something as simple as try a new game, would try to put the blame on something that is popular rather than themselves?

Probably because refluffing a game you know really isn't that hard? And, just because a game is made specifically for something doesn't actually mean it will be any good. There's a lot of reasons people don't enjoy learning new systems, and the major one being that good systems are few and far between.

It's popular, so people who like it must be stupid, so you have to say you don't so people wouldn't suspect you of stupidity.

>Probably because refluffing a game you know really isn't that hard? And, just because a game is made specifically for something doesn't actually mean it will be any good.

But something being made for something else is generally a pretty good indication it won't be good for things it wasn't made for.

You are a perfect example of the kind of person who won't be convinced to try a new system.

It's videogamey.

When people say 4e is videogamey they're not wrong, but they're exaggerating the influence they had. Yes there were cooldown powers but those were almost already present in the tiers of X/day abilities, which would almost certainly be reserved for major obstacles, and needed a day to reset.

People forget the dialogue between vidya and TT. At first it was all one way, dos games through Baldur's Gate more or less directly imported the AD&D system.

However, thereafter vidya forked off into character builds, talent trees, point allocations, etc., and much to historical revisionsts' consternation, it was 3.x which incorporated all of those vidya elements developed over the years, from feats as talents, to a more complex skill math with a point system.

This lends itself to a system that is more concerned with builds for an endgame ideal that will likely never come, focused far less on character development, even in terms of learning about how to crawl a dungeon well, and far more focus on "what [thing] do I take next?" vibe.

>As much as I like it, I'm not so foolish to believe it's somehow a good system

Ah, one of those idiots who swallowed all the contrarian memes wholesale, and while unable to deny his actual feelings, decides to internalize a sense of superiority rather than moving past the memes and actually understanding what makes a system good.

>refusing to acknowledge any of their strengths.

Ironic.

>hot horse shit
Thats the only meme part.
4e was made using ideas from mmos because wizard was going to shill their version of roll 20 and compete with the vidya rpg market. The lead dev himself said it took influence from mmos but 4e fags still will not except it.

That's funny, because I'm the guy in my group who introduces them to new games.

How about you learn how to talk to people before blaming popular things for being too popular?

>The lead dev himself said it took influence from mmos

Citation required?

>Ironic.

And what are 3.5's strengths on it's own merits?

It's a single provably false quote, taken out of context. Mearls was full of shit, saying something to the effect that it was the first time D&D had taken inspiration from video games. When, well, fucking nailed it.

ITT: proof that 3.5 causes brain damage.
Good job everybody!

>Inb4 no u

>As far as I know, 4th edition was the first set of rules to look to videogames for inspiration. I wasn’t involved in the initial design meetings for the game, but I believe that MMOs played a role in how the game was shaped. I think there was a feeling that D&D needed to move into the MMO space as quickly as possible and that creating a set of MMO-conversion friendly rules would help hasten that.
-Mike Mearls

rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=8309:

>Mearls was full of shit, saying something to the effect that it was the first time D&D had taken inspiration from video games.

Didn't mearls also make claims about 5e having 'new' mechanics that were actually just 4e mechanics?

Not really. Many rule sets actually originated from other rule sets with no real thematic connection. Game designers refluff things like tank skirmish wargames and turn them into popular medieval fantasy roleplaying games.

Said by a man who thought Essentials was a good idea. Mearls never understood 4e.

>As far as I know
>I wasn't involved with the initial design
>but I believe
>I think

So a guy who admits he wasn't actually in the design meetings says he believes that MMOs played a role?

It's kinda funny when 4e's heavy focus on immediate interrupts and reactions would make any actual MMO adaptation utterly hellish. Something you see a lot in online card games, where everything grinds to a half when spells can be played in response to stuff.

Here's what's great about 5e you should absolutely steal:
>6 saves
makes great sense, depending on implementation makes casters work more
>scaling with spell slot rather than caster level
no explanation needed
>cantrips
allow you to make level 1 spells meaningful while not castrating the early caster completely
>all caster level stacking for spell slots
makes multiclassing really cozy
>AoOs on LEAVING threatened area
makes the game much more dynamic
>movement is no action anymore/won't be traded for other stuff
again, more dynamism
>capping stats, bounded accuracy in general
keeps everything more manageable and a +1 bonus is suddenly worth tracking
>magic item limit of 3
keeps character abilities more important
>strong combat actions like shove
gives the fighter more to do, keep
>proficiency
really elegant scaling mechanic, keeps your job of calculating DCs easy. If you want more granularity consider tiered proficiency going from
untrained +0 -> trained +half prof bonus -> expert +full prof bonus
>the action system
it's a bit more abstract, but really elegant. I'm torn between this and the Star Wars SAGA system, which was more simulationist and probably better suited for 'modern' style games with guns.
>almost nothing scales with class level
again, makes multiclassing really nice
>combat superiority dice
really strong idea to keep the fighter interesting. Should be the core mechanic of the fighter, instead of recharging at rest should recharge one on a successful hit

What is great from 3.5
>Feats
having more feats in smaller packages allows more customization. Overall powerlevel should be closer to 5e though, nobody likes feats like weapon focus.
>many different resource systems
resource management is fun.
>very expansive character options
fiddling with lots of bits to get exactly what you want from your character is great. Again, I recommend looking at Star Wars SAGA, picking talents is a great way to have open ended customization in a class-system.

as the guy who posted that's easy

Sheer quantity of options, and the weird combination of poorly-thought-out feats and features

3.5 is an optimizer's dream, it offers multiple levels of optimization, across multiple levels of power, with loads of individual crazy builds you can go for focusing on various oddities in the system.

>AoOs on leaving a threatened area

Isn't that how it works in 3.5 as well?

>>all caster level stacking for spell slots
>makes multiclassing really cozy

I honestly really liked 4e's multiclassing. Where a feat got you a skill from the class' list + an iconic class feature (that scaled with your own level). It helped deal with the whole 'I multi-classed badly and it really fucked over my PC because I'm all over the place'.

5e has a bit of an issue with it where since stat advancements are tied to class rather than overall level you can really mess up your overall progression if you don't multiclass in nice amounts of 4 levels.

>it was 3.x which incorporated all of those vidya elements developed over the years, from feats as talents, to a more complex skill math
with a point system.
>those bloody historical revisionsts'
Ahahahahaha. Oh, wait, you're serious. Bwahahahahahahahaha!
He doesn't realize that D&D 3.x merely brought D&D in line with current TTRPG trends. We had skill systems in Vampire, CP 2020, Shadowrun, even fucking Rolematser at least since the late 80s. D&D's Feats? Nothing but a bad rip-off of GURPS ads/disads.
If you want to see a revisionist, buddy, just look stare at your own reflection on that shabby computer screen of yours.