D&D 3E/3.5 Edition Experience - Did/Do you Play 3rd Edtion D&D? How Was/Is it?

[GrimCo]

Nice, that's a pretty good story to remember! I don't think it's totally representative of things, though, considering you essentially got surprise, got a bit lucky, and the Balor was dumb. Still, sounds like a good memory

It certainly is. It was one of those sessions you remember and jokingly retell with friends. To this day we bust his balls (friend that DMed that game) any time he mentions Balors. Just like they joke about me being "killer DM" since most of my campaigns tend to end with TPK or worse ( to my defense i run almost exclusively Ravenloft/CoC hybrid or Dark Sun campaigns).

When i run normal high fantasy games, they end at lv 10. At that level, characters are know players in the realm. They get land, titles, strongholds, 2ed ad&d style. They have power, so now they get some responsibility with that. No more running around killing critters Sir Fighter, you have meeting with financial magistrate about budget for road upkeep

 

[Voadam]

When i run normal high fantasy games, they end at lv 10.

With a Balor for the at will no save death from blasphemy for non-evil level 10 or lower characters.

 

[haakon1]

When i run normal high fantasy games, they end at lv 10. At that level, characters are know players in the realm. They get land, titles, strongholds, 2ed ad&d style. They have power, so now they get some responsibility with that. No more running around killing critters Sir Fighter, you have meeting with financial magistrate about budget for road upkeep

My campaign is the same with fame and responsibilities beyond slaying monsters, typically by about 7th level. Harder to talk some groups into it than others.

As for domains, I think of that as AD&D 1e stuff, not 2e. I only played 2e for an academic year before quitting D&D for about 5 years, and when I restarted D&D with friends who had all quit in the 2e era, it was “real” AD&D again.

I kind of miss when there were only Basic, AD&D, OA, and 2e to choose from. I laughed hard at the Knights of the Dinner Table cover with Bob walking arm-in-arm with a woman wearing a 5e t-shirt, but turning his head to stare longingly at the woman with the “1st Edition” t-shirt.

 

[Orius]

The DM needs to play foes effectively, I talked about this in a recent 3e discussion. Don't overdo it, but don't overlook it either. This is another case of players throwing out rules they find inconvenient or useless and then having issues with game balance.


Magic item creation is something that I don't want to nerf too hard. 2e had a problem of throwing too much in the DM’s lap without giving decent guidance in core. I'm going to require having a formula to create most items like 5e does, and I'll have power components as a variant option, so casters can either burn XP or track down a rare component.


Some spells in the system are just junk no matter what you do with them. In any case, stuff from outside core does need some hard controls. That doesn't make all the core spells perfect since some have balance issues too. Wizard spells are a little easier to control since a DM decides which ones to make available beyond the ones gained while leveling up. In my games , the spells gained from leveling are only the spells from the PHB. Also I think damage spells need a bit of a boost, as a lot of enemies tend to have more hp than in the past.


Sorcerer patrons are a thing I'd allow but not require. The sorcerer's problem is that WotC never looked much past the blood of dragons idea and pigeonholed sorcerers into that role. Sorcerers can cover a fairly wide range of magical origins, whether the descendants of magical beings, or pacts with magical or supernatural beings. It may even be something that appeared spontaneously from living in a world where magic is a thing. Plus by allowing patrons I can kill the bloody warlock dead in my campaigns and its obnoxious pewpewpew eldritch blast too.


Variants are still BtB to some degree, if they are options presented to the DM alongside the rules.

 

[haakon1]

Sorcerer patrons are a thing I'd allow but not require. … Plus by allowing patrons I can kill the bloody warlock dead in my campaigns and its obnoxious pewpewpew eldritch blast too.

Why are there Warlocks in a 3x game if you don’t like them? I think they were in a late splatbook, but I think of them as 4e/5e, and the late splatbooks of any edition seem more like tests for the next edition than “of” the one they were published in.

 

[GrimCo]

I played warlock couple of times in 3.5. And to be honest, as far as casters go, they hardly qualify. 5ed warlocks get spells, plus cantrips, plus invocations. In 3.5 eldritch blast was in many ways similar to rogues sneak attack. By most standards, it's subpar class. But, it's good combo with rogue. Darkness, devils sight, spider climb all make sneak attack very easy to pull off, plus they are very useful outside of combat. Warlocks go pew pew cause they don't really have anything else in 3.5. By the level 10, worlocks know 5 invocations only and those are least or lesser variants only.

 

[Orius]

I don't like the class and I'll take all the reasons I can get to ban it.

But in any case, they look different in 3.5 and 5e; 3.5 has one of the many magic systems the edition had, where 5e seems to act like a typical casting class with its own spell list.

And like I said, the 3e DMG at least in 3.0 already suggested flavor for the sorcerer as options that made the warlock unnecessary. But 3e never bothered to move past the blood of dragons explanation for sorcerers, and 3.5 bloat included many unnecessary base classes.

 

[Alzrius]

And like I said, the 3e DMG at least in 3.0 already suggested flavor for the sorcerer as options that made the warlock unnecessary. But 3e never bothered to move past the blood of dragons explanation for sorcerers, and 3.5 bloat included many unnecessary base classes.

Minor digression, but my favorite take on the 3.X sorcerer was in Octavirate Expansions: Feared and Hated (affiliate link), which was a short third-party supplement that played up the idea of sorcerers being outcasts that was present in WotC's 3.X material, but never really played up.

In this case, the book pushes that angle by introducing some new flaws and spelltouched feats (both from Unearthed Arcana) that highlight the bodily nature of the sorcerer's magic, such as them having a freakish appearance and potential random discharges of magic, but also being able to use certain minor magical effects without actually casting a spell.

It also introduced a variant sorcerer class, the bloodbound sorcerer, that had a spell list which was curated around a particular theme, such as plants, lightning, speed, etc. These were the only spells a bloodbound sorcerer could pick their "spells known" from, making them much more focused than wizards. Overall, I really liked how it pushed the flavor of the class forward (i.e. sorcerers as freaks, similar to mutants in Marvel Comics) compared to WotC's presentation.

 

[pablomaz]

I played it from 2004 to 2017 (I was playing it alongside with for a few years).
I enjoyed it; I liked the more complex combat and the abundance of material... But I really disliked the feat system, the enormous number of spells, and, most of all, I hated prestige classes.

 

[GamerforHire]

I liked Third as a vast improvement on 1e/2e, and as a good set of rules in its own right. Players I have known usually liked it because of the various features and options that Third provided for characters. But as GM, I found it very hard to run games at higher levels, and even some players found the escalating bonuses and such cumbersome after a certain point. We eventually adopted variations on E6 and other ways to cap character levels so as to avoid these issues.

I still think that in the hands of a good GM with engaged players, and probably while using some sort of level cap, Third is a very good game. But as a big OSR guy, we have moved to using Black Hack and related simple games instead.