D&D 3E/3.5 A list of 3e problems and how they were tackled in PF

[Twowolves]

You're entitled to your opinion, but I've heard similar comments from people who explicitly *had* playtested the rules, so I don't really agree with you there.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see.

Most of his points are flat out wrong, and those other complainers that I've seen around the web are those upset that their pet power trick got "nerfed". Massive ammounts of playtest went into this revision, and not all of the changes are obvious on first read. That won't stop people from reading one thing out of context and then dismissing the whole, this is the internet after all. But getting it SO wrong and then coming into a thread asking for how problems were solved, with the negative way he posted his "opinon" makes it look like he's actively campaigning against the success of this product instead of having an informed, intelligent discussion about what changed and how.

All in my opinion, of course.

 

[Daztur]

Except that melee characters now have a ton of extra feats and abilities, while some of the more problematic spells have been scaled back.

That doesn't change the general point. They reduced the number of overpowered spells so you don't have as much of a selection to choose from but there's still at least one powerful save or suck/be removed from combat spell every level and that's really all you need to make the caster be overpowered. As far as the other melee character abilities, I'm not really seeing anything (except for Paladins) that makes up for the power attack nerf (which was the main bread and butter of melee damage output in 3.5ed).

Except that monsters are being rescaled and there are new feats and abilities to boost poor saves.

Rescaling monsters doesn't fix a problem in the PC classes and it doesn't matter that there are more ways to boost saves since there are also more ways to boost the save DC and if you provide both of them, it tends to be easier to boost one number (the DC) than three numbers (the three saves).

I'll have to see this one in game before I see it as better or worse. I don't see that round per day would be any more difficult to keep track of than uses per day, though.

This is purely a personal taste question, I think that 3.5ed was already too complicated and Pathfinder added more bells and whistles (removing dead levels etc.). I'm sure some people like the added features.

Eldritch Knights got better from what I'm seeing. I also don't see multiclassing as nerfed. Sticking to one class is rewarded, but there are still a lot of things you can do with multiclassing, too.

Well in 3.5ed a lot of multi-class options were very very weak (pretty much any multi-classing that involved a caster) so there are a number of band-aid feats and PrCs that fix that problem but only if you take that specific feat or PrC. Pathfinder isn't changing this system.

What I meant by the "made it worse" part is that more things are tied to class level than before (look at monks for example) so now a character like a fighter/monk or rogue/monk or paladin/monk would be significantly weaker than before despite not being powerful to begin with. For me at least, this is highly annoying.

Except for more healing, several abilities that spellcasters can use many times per day or at-will, and more hit points to allow the adventure day to last longer.

Hit points was never really a limiting factor to the adventuring day once cure light wound wands became available.

Except that they limited stat-boosting items and shifted the focus more toward oft-neglected magic items.

*shrugs* Don't see a big difference here. There's still a crapload of magic items to keep track of.

The merged skill list and favored class bonus is a huge help.

Definite move in the right direction but I've still got to cry for the poor poor fighter's 2 skill points.

I think it should be Paizo's concern to make their core classes interesting, not to tell people to go buy some out of print books to really enjoy the game.

Probably a good business decision for Piazo, just personally annoying for me.

Perhaps you should. Most of the "problems" you say are made "worse" are more related player/DM issues than the game itself.

How so?

Massive ammounts of playtest went into this revision

I'm not a big fan of how Piazo carried out their playtesting. They wanted people to play the game normally and then report issues that came up during playtesting rather than have people crunch the numbers from a more statistical perspective or run sanity tests.

Basically I have nothing against Piazo, I just think that they really dropped the ball on revising 3.5ed. They had a lot of good ideas (some skill changes, some aspects of CMB, various spell changes, cleric domains) but on the really big make or break issues they either didn't change anything of real importance or made things worse. It seems that Piazo has a good grasp of D&D fluff but I just don't think that they looked at the crunch side of things with the right amount of statistical rigor.

I don't want to be rude, but giving the wizard (the most powerful core class and arguably the most powerful class period) a large power boost is just crazy.

 

[ruemere]

That doesn't change the general point. They reduced the number of overpowered spells so you don't have as much of a selection to choose from but there's still at least one powerful save or suck/be removed from combat spell every level and that's really all you need to make the caster be overpowered. As far as the other melee character abilities, I'm not really seeing anything (except for Paladins) that makes up for the power attack nerf (which was the main bread and butter of melee damage output in 3.5ed).

Many spells were reworded and rebalanced. Multiple no-saves were assigned saves. Death spells have been changed to "This spell instantly delivers 10 points of damage per caster level".

Melee abilities shifted focus from pure damage during full attack action to additional attack options and standard action attack options. Melee classes gained enhanced battlefield mobility and ability to inflict additional effects. It is also considerably easier to inflict critical hits (advanced characters) or interrupt actions (right build required).

Rescaling monsters doesn't fix a problem in the PC classes and it doesn't matter that there are more ways to boost saves since there are also more ways to boost the save DC and if you provide both of them, it tends to be easier to boost one number (the DC) than three numbers (the three saves).

Monster fixes (apart from CMB/CMD) are not part of PFRPG at this moment. Playtest experience indicates that monster fixes are not that important.

This is purely a personal taste question, I think that 3.5ed was already too complicated and Pathfinder added more bells and whistles (removing dead levels etc.). I'm sure some people like the added features.

I agree that this is purely your opinion, not based on actual play experience.

I'd like to admit that the preceding sentence may sound insulting since it directly challenges your competence, however in this case it is unavoidable - you are putting forth strong opinions while admitting your lack of knowledge.

Well in 3.5ed a lot of multi-class options were very very weak (pretty much any multi-classing that involved a caster) so there are a number of band-aid feats and PrCs that fix that problem but only if you take that specific feat or PrC. Pathfinder isn't changing this system.

d20 system introduces suboptimal options by design. I would argue that there are more improved and corrected things now, but then I would have to provide a long list of changes... for now my advice is to familiarize oneself with Pathfinder conversion document (freely available PDF download) and follow up with Pathfinder PRD.
Then run a test adventure, 1st level character recommended to ease introduction to changed rules.

What I meant by the "made it worse" part is that more things are tied to class level than before (look at monks for example) so now a character like a fighter/monk or rogue/monk or paladin/monk would be significantly weaker than before despite not being powerful to begin with. For me at least, this is highly annoying.

Monks were always an awful case of closed class. This time there are a bit more open (Flurry and Monkish weapons are no longer crucial to class advancement, Flurry rules are more standarized, Flurry rules mesh better with other attack options). Paladin restrictions were relaxed quite a lot.

Hit points was never really a limiting factor to the adventuring day once cure light wound wands became available.

Which is not at 1st level where sudden death ruled supreme. Fortunately, PFRPG fixed a lot of related pain.

*shrugs* Don't see a big difference here. There's still a crapload of magic items to keep track of.

Won't comment as magic items distribution in my campaign does not follow standards.

Definite move in the right direction but I've still got to cry for the poor poor fighter's 2 skill points.

2 base, +1 if the class is a preferred one and favored class bonus is set to skill points, +1 if Human, +LOTS due to cleaned skill list and improved skill system.

Not ideal, but much better than before.

I'm not a big fan of how Piazo carried out their playtesting. They wanted people to play the game normally and then report issues that came up during playtesting rather than have people crunch the numbers from a more statistical perspective or run sanity tests.

TRANSLATION: As opposed to armchair mathematicians and lawyers and designers trying to stir things up.

Actually, quite a lot of such suggestions were listened to and introduced into final rules. It's just not every outcry was paid heed too.

Basically I have nothing against Piazo, I just think that they really dropped the ball on revising 3.5ed. They had a lot of good ideas (some skill changes, some aspects of CMB, various spell changes, cleric domains) but on the really big make or break issues they either didn't change anything of real importance or made things worse. It seems that Piazo has a good grasp of D&D fluff but I just don't think that they looked at the crunch side of things with the right amount of statistical rigor.

I don't want to be rude, but giving the wizard (the most powerful core class and arguably the most powerful class period) a large power boost is just crazy.

You must be reading different rules then. And playing a different game.
More options and resources do not equal more power while they do help fix potential "short working day" and "going nova" problems common for inexperienced spellcasters (or characters in general).

It's worth mentioning that encounter design, xp awards and NPC creation were significantly improved though one may need PFRPG PDF/book to appreciate it.

Also, given the number of errors in their books, I would say that their understanding of system is much better than your opinion appears to convey. Suffice to say that by redacting stat blocks one can glean a lot of insights into mechanics of the system and their level of competence.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Mark Chance]

How so?

Well, here's just one example:

*shrugs* Don't see a big difference here. There's still a crapload of magic items to keep track of.

The number of magic items possessed by PCs is directly under the control of the DM. If you're a DM and your PCs have too many magic items, it's your fault, not the game's.

*It seems that Piazo has a good grasp of D&D fluff but I just don't think that they looked at the crunch side of things with the right amount of statistical rigor.

I don't want to be rude, but giving the wizard (the most powerful core class and arguably the most powerful class period) a large power boost is just crazy.

See, it's things like this that lead some to think you're just ranting. A rigorous statistical analysis of 3.5 reveals that the wizard isn't the most powerful core class. The druid is.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

Well, here's just one example:
The number of magic items possessed by PCs is directly under the control of the DM. If you're a DM and your PCs have too many magic items, it's your fault, not the game's.

QFT right there

 

[Shazman]

It's painfully obvious he hasn't read the rules, nor playtested them. Most of his "Pathfinder made it worse" responses are flat-out wrong, and it smells like troll-bait to me.

I have to agree. I haven't read every single line of the new rules, but I have read enough to know that I cannot see any of this "They made X problem worse." that he keeps repeating. I do agree that wizards seem to have gotten some slight buffs, when they should have been nerfed hard. On the other hand, I have been running a game using the Beta rules since April, and it's been the melee characters instead of the casters dominating combat.

 

[buzzard]

My personal thoughts:

1. General caster/melee imbalance.
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse (they nerf power attack, one of the few things that meleers had going for them and buff wizards)

False. A melee combatant has appreciably more options for putting the hurt down on a caster that gets anywhere near here. The 5' step away defense and casting defensively are no longer the sure thing they used to be. If a fighter is built right, casters should be very afraid.

2. Saving throw DC scaling faster than bonuses to saves since its easier to boost one number (the DC) than three numbers (three kinds of saves).
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse (easier to get mental stat bonuses, etc.)

The only save or suck spells (without repeat saves,) left are fort saves, so your melee people will be strong against that. From my initial purview the only save or suck spells left of this type are flesh to stone and baleful polymorph.

As for raising DCs easier than raising saves, let's look at the numbers.

Using baleful polymorph:
DC = 10+5(spell level)+5(int assuming base 18)+spell focus, greater spell focus= 22

Save bonus: d20 + 7 +3(16 con) +2 (great fortitude)= d20+ 12. You need to roll a 10, so it's a 55% chance of saving.

Now that's not the end of it. If I give the wizard (with fewer feats) two feats towards this effort, why not give it to the fighter? He'll get Improved Great Fortitude where he gets to re-roll the fort save if he wants once a day. That makes his chance of failure: (.45^2)= 20% chance of failing both.

If we take into account magic items towards the cause the wizard can add in an intelligence boosting item. Say for this level it's a +4(being nice). On the fighter's side, he's got two magic items to counter it with, both a stat boosting item and a resistance item (and resistance items are cheap). Since they now make the items take the same slot and you get a discount for stacking effects, the fighter might well have a +2 str/con belt. Add in a nice cheap +2 cloak of resistance, and the fighter still mostly shrugs off this attack. These two items (Belt of physical might +2 10k and cloak of resistance +2 4k) come to less than the stat booster of the wizard (Headband of Vast Intelligence +4 16k).

3. Too many little fiddly things to keep track of.
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse (too many round/day effects).

Huh? I don't see anything but a wash here.

4. The way the multiclassing works certain cool combinations just don't work unless you jump through a whole lot of PrC hoops
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse by nerfing multiclassing in general thereby making fighter/wizards even weaker than before (and I always loved playing them in 2ed ). This one is somewhat forgivable since it would require overhauling 3.5ed multiclassing to fix.

The continued lament of people hearkening back to the brokenly overpowered dual casters of 2nd Edition does nothing but make me laugh in derision.

As for the claim that they nerfed multiclassing compared to 3.5, sorry I don't see it. While they did make single classes better for those that stick with them, this isn't a problem considering how many classes ended up being dip classes in 3.5.

5. 15 minute adventuring days.
Pathfinder response: no change.

More abilities which can be used a bunch of times in a day, more healing, and bonded items say you are wrong. Now granted some moron can still go nova in a single encounter, but resource management has always been a factor in playing D&D correctly. If your people didn't figure that out, the game is not to blame.

6. Magic item Christmas Tree effect.
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse by making magic item creation easier.

From what I recall the wealth per level is less in Pathfinder which puts a damper on the magic item business, and they changed magic item availability. No longer is pretty much anything you want available at K-Magic. There's only a chance that things will be there, and making stuff yourself eats plenty of time and money.

7. Lots of classes just don't have enough skill points for things it makes sense for them to do.
Pathfinder response: small improvement because of merging skills and changing how cross class skills worked. But come on, would it have killed you to give the fighter 4 skill points?

The skill consolidation is a huge change, and with favored class, that 2 goes to a 3 if you care about skills.

8. Druid animal companions can often out melee a lot of melee characters ("my class feature is more powerful than your entire class!")
Pathfinder response: moderate move in the right direction, but the druid is still quite rather overpowered.

I question this. They smacked the druid pretty hard with the nerf bat.

9. A lot of the really cool splatbook classes I want to play are a lot weaker than their closest core equivalent (poor swashbuckler and warlocks, I weep for you).
Pathfinder response: make the problem worse by increasing the power of the Core classes so that they overshadow the splatbook classes even more.

Tough noogies. They can't be responsible for material they aren't even allowed to cite (closed content)

10. Combat is often pretty boring with the same one trick ponies using their tricks over and over again.
Pathfinder response: I haven't read the rules enough, but I'm not seeing that big of a change here, that said I can probably forgive this one since this would be hard to do without really overhauling 3.5ed in a big way.

Everyone got tons more feats, most classes got a bunch more special abilities. You aren't bothering to look.

 

[ST]

Sorry, guys, I just don't see this conspiracy angle. How CMB/CMD work is in the SRD, those values incorporate more modifiers than 3.5, and thus CMD is going to increase significantly faster than CMB as levels go up. A number of the pregenerated Pathfinder characters had a much more difficult time grappling someone with identical stats to themselves than a 3.5 character would. The math seems to work out that way.

If the math is wrong and it's actually *not* more difficult to grapple than it used to be, isn't it just easier to say "The math is wrong" than to suggest that someone bringing up the issue is engaged in some kind of shadowy defamation against your favorite rules system? Or that he's somehow bitter that his grappler character was nerfed? Was there ever such a thing in the first place? I mean, I get that people get defensive, but that just seems obstinate.

Or if the answer is "Who really cares about grapple anyway, why would you play a melee class in the first place", hey, that's cool too, but adding CMB/CMD requires fiddling with numbers for every monster out there, only a little number-crunching, but it's a stat that wasn't there before. So I'd hope for that work you'd at least get the advertised results.

 

[an_idol_mind]

As to the supposed boost in power that the wizard got, it looks to me like the boost is handy at low levels, when wizards traditionally suffer, while the most abusable spells at higher levels got pulled back. Additionally, defensive casting is now harder and melee characters have a host of new feats and abilities they can use to trash a wizard in close quarters.

Of course, a lot of the speculation going on right now is from a read through of the books rather than actual play, and therefore should be taken with a grain of salt. Rules tend to look very different in print than at the table. I'm guessing most people won't notice the changes in the system for a few months, after they've got a chance to play some sessions and get used to the game.

 

[buzzard]

Sorry, guys, I just don't see this conspiracy angle. How CMB/CMD work is in the SRD, those values incorporate more modifiers than 3.5, and thus CMD is going to increase significantly faster than CMB as levels go up. A number of the pregenerated Pathfinder characters had a much more difficult time grappling someone with identical stats to themselves than a 3.5 character would. The math seems to work out that way.

If the math is wrong and it's actually *not* more difficult to grapple than it used to be, isn't it just easier to say "The math is wrong" than to suggest that someone bringing up the issue is engaged in some kind of shadowy defamation against your favorite rules system? Or that he's somehow bitter that his grappler character was nerfed? Was there ever such a thing in the first place? I mean, I get that people get defensive, but that just seems obstinate.

Or if the answer is "Who really cares about grapple anyway, why would you play a melee class in the first place", hey, that's cool too, but adding CMB/CMD requires fiddling with numbers for every monster out there, only a little number-crunching, but it's a stat that wasn't there before. So I'd hope for that work you'd at least get the advertised results.

Grapple in many cases in 3.5 is an "I Win" button. The use of CMB and CMD gets rid of this. The most egregious examples of grapple being over the top was when employed by big monsters, so honestly something did have to be done to reign it in. Players using grapple, if they were whole hog in it also could just take people out without much of a chance. That's just not a reasonable way of doing things.