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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:49PM
#21
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Reply to thecasualoblivion:
You do seem to side with 4E. But don't you think they should have taken a closer look at their "revision" of the 3E rules? I mean, if Mike Mearls has so many complaints about 3.5, he shoulda playtested a bit more with it to get all the bugs out. He shoulda spoken up when he had the chance. I'm not ready to dish out 500 more bucks for a new edition. Because what was wrong with 3.5E was in the core baseline system. Nothing short of a complete revision from the ground up could fix the inherent imbalance in the core mathematics and the spellcasting system.
...whatever
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:50PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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I am going to give a tentative  for 4e. I don't know if I will like the final product, but I really like what I have read so far. I also love the rules used for Star Wars Saga more than I can express in words, so I have high hopes for 4e. As for what I dislike about 3.5 edition, the list is way to long for me to put a comprehensive list here. I could just state EVERYTHING (the way you stated NOTHING), but in the interest of accuracy here were my top 10 concerns with 3.5 edition. 1) Static and unchanging classes that created the need for a plethora of prestige classes. This would in turn mean that character concepts that did not fit the static norms would often be hard to realize without having me (the GM) create a new prestige class for my players, or the NPC I was building. (I like the ability to pick and choose what abilities my character will get from his class level.) 3) Poorly balanced classes and prestige classes. 2) Inconsistent internal rules. 3) A combat system that led to very long character rounds, which often led to players sitting around and doing nothing for long stretches of time during combat. 4) As a GM, building quests and creating NPC's was FAR to complex, and not very rewarding. 5) It was impossible to build characters who fill more than a single "skillfull archtype" (due to the lack of skill points and class skill/cross class skill system used). 6) The same was true in regards to feats. 7) Levels 1-3 or 4 were not really worth playing. Characters had a tendency to die from a single lucky hit, or not get hit at all, which made building a story arc for these levels cumbersome. If I didn't fudge rolls, characters would often walk through an encounter without a scratch, or not walk through the encounter at all. Unlike some GM's, I don't enjoy character death. Characters should fear death and injury, but when my group actually dies the story I wrote for them is lost without every actually having been enjoyed by anyone. 8) I didn't like the cut and dry alignments. I felt these pegged people into a number of very finite niches that would remove from the complexity of a story I could create if I included morally gray characters. 9) Characters often felt broken without magic items to boost certain abilities (such as defense). 10) Some of the classes were definitively boring to play. In the end, a fighter pretty much did the same thing every round: he rolled to attack as many times as possible. (I like tactics and decision making to be a feature of every class, not just magic using classes.) As for this "shouldn't they have gotten 3.5 edition right then?" complaint, no edition will ever get something fully right. The nature of persistent games is much like the nature of biological organisms, they adapt to the world around them. 3.5 was a good step from 3.0, which was a good step from 2e. Its time for the next step though, because 3.5 was far from perfect...
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:50PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Feb 29, 2008
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And when someone says to me, "I'm going to grapple him"? If you hate the grappling mechanics so much, why don't you take them out? You said that you hate teaching the system. Then don't! That's what I do with my players, 'cause they agree with me that it is too complicated. So I just leave it out, and we have a great time.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:50PM
#24
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I don't like having to explain to new players - you know, those things we need or our groups stagnate? - how grapples, turn undead, and other horribly overcomplicated subsystems work. Have to agree with turn undead. Very odd rule. The grappling rules could definitely be condensed and explained better, but I at least find the intuitive and consistent with the d20 mechanic. In fact, I think other rules should just be melded into grapple and be other options, like trip and bullrush.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:52PM
#25
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Mike Mearls joined the company well after 3.5 had been released. Around mid-2005, I believe. What's wrong with 3.5? It's not a bad system. In fact, it's a good, solid system. But the hangovers of old D&D versions persist, such as Vancian casting and save-or-suck rolls. As a DM, I avoid modifying monsters via templates or classes if I can help it, because it's such a fricking chore. Ditto for creating high-level NPCs, especially ones with spells. I'll bet that many 3.5 groups keep facing sorcerers or warlocks because their DM can't bear to spend ages making a wizard, just to get it flattened in the first combat round. Many classes exist which are outright suboptimal. There's something wrong when a gamer who wants to run a monk, fighter or paladin is told "No, those suck, play this instead". There are also unintuitive subsystems, such as grapple and undead, which cause headaches at the table whenever they come up. Races & Classes (pg 13) mentions an email from James Wyatt, who says "When the game gets to the point where we know the holes and pitfalls in the rules well enough that we constrain our design in order to avoid them, it's time for a new set of rules." Essentially, asking what's wrong with 3.5 is a bit like saying "This spoon works OK for eating my dinner, so why invent a fork?"
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:53PM
#26
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Date Joined:
Aug 28, 2006
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If you're glad for 3.5, why are you complaining so much about it? Because it is still a deeply, inherently flawed game. It's much better than 3.0, and I was glad to have it to play for these five years. However, 4e looks far better than 3.5, less flawed and more elegant, better balanced and better designed.
I enjoyed 2e. 3.0 was more fun than 2e. 3.5 was FAR more fun than 3e. 4e looks to be a marked improvement over 3.5.
You asked what was wrong with 3.5. I told you. I don't honestly see it as complaining.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:53PM
#27
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Date Joined:
Jan 10, 2006
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I'm not going to list everything that is wrong with 3.5, as there are many, many threads that go into as much detail as you want, both on these forums, and on the dev blogs.
I'll just say, that 3.5 does work. People enjoy it, people buy it, people play it.
However, saying "they should have fixed it with 3.5" is rather unhelpful. With that line of thinking, heck "they should have fixed it with 2ed!"
The fact is, the game evolves. 2ed fixed and elaborated on 1ed. 3.0 fixed and overhauled 2ed. 3.5 fixed a lot of issues with 3.0. 4ed will fix and overhaul 3.5.
The game evolves, and gets overhauled. Not because the developers were inept when making 2ed, 3.0, or 3.5, but because as people play, and get to know rules systems, lo and behold people think of BETTER ways to do things. Just because an old system is playable, doesn't mean that there can't be ways to streamline and improve the system.
Just my 2 cents.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:56PM
#28
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Date Joined:
Aug 28, 2006
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If you hate the grappling mechanics so much, why don't you take them out? You said that you hate teaching the system. Then don't! That's what I do with my players, 'cause they agree with me that it is too complicated. So I just leave it out, and we have a great time. So I'm supposed to tell my player who wants to grab the monster, "No. You can't."
Sorry, sir, but I'm not that sort of DM.
Plus, I rather like a lot of monster powers that base off of grapple, like Swallow Whole. If I didn't use grapple, I'd have toss out a whole other set of monsters from my 3.5 games - and I've already tossed the save-or-lose monsters.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:57PM
#29
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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If you hate the grappling mechanics so much, why don't you take them out? You said that you hate teaching the system. Then don't! That's what I do with my players, 'cause they agree with me that it is too complicated. So I just leave it out, and we have a great time. When a game is so full of mechanics that large sections of the game are ignored due to their problematic nature, even by development teams writing new products, its time for a new edition.
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5 years ago ::
Mar 13, 2008 - 5:58PM
#30
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2004
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OP title = loaded question. Actually, two questions. You're asking both "What is wrong with 3.5?" and "Did it justify making a new edition?". First question takes me longer to answer, though I've got a big list. Second question is the reason it's pointless for me to do so. They don't need any justification for making a new edition outside of "It might be an improvement". You don't need to buy their justification and you don't need to buy their new edition. Whether or not the new edition is worth your time is going to be specific to every group. So, to answer the OP: 4e - my thumb stays firmly in my fist until I actually see 4e, no point in prejudging it. 3.5 - nasty class imbalance straight from the start that was never fixed, tedious rules that demand much bookkeeping and backtracking over the char sheet (skills, carrying capacity, vancian spell slots), inability to balance different types of abilities (compare feats to spells, in general), not enough DMs willing to throw out the core casters in favor of Psionics+Pact magic+martial adepts  , and others. Moreover, there are a lot of things that aren't 'wrong' per se but can be done better.
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