The Gaming Den

So I've been playing a fair bit of Tome in the last few months, and here are the things about it that I've noticed that make it most different from other RPGs:

It's a bit easier to get off the RNG from the monsters, since people are stacking on a couple different houserules to raise their stats. Getting off the RNG in shadowrun or after sundown or D&D 5e is generally a bit harder to do, and so you do it for fewer statistics.

The combat slows down not because your action during a single round doesn't accomplish anything useful, like in 5e, but because people have a lot of random abilities to choose from and there are many different important status effects to keep track of.

Wizards who stick to the PHB spells have a lot of utility abilities. Some Tome classes have one or two abilities that match one or two of the spells a wizard can get from the PHB, but aside from one Tome feat chain about eating souls, don't really seem to surpass the Wizard in anything much.

If you still pine for 3.5e for something other than the PHB wizard spells like Contact Other Plane, Teleport, Plane Shift, Planar Binding, Magic Jar, Polymorph Any Object, Astral Projection, etc... why?

Oh, I guess you could also be nostalgic for when splatbooks were being regularly introduced, providing you with new dumpsters to dive through for the small handful of new pieces of content to use in ridiculous builds. I guess that doesn't spring to mind as readily any more because Tome is slightly more consistent and all builds meet basic ridiculousness standards.

Foxwarrior wrote: If you still pine for 3.5e for something other than the PHB wizard spells like Contact Other Plane, Teleport, Plane Shift, Planar Binding, Magic Jar, Polymorph Any Object, Astral Projection, etc... why?

To play Exalted-level fantasy superheroes without actually having to play Exalted. SR doesn't do this and shouldn't do this, 5e should do this but doesn't. Very few systems are actually geared towards fantasy superheroes.

Low level 3e D&D works shockingly well. Minor shit like jump distances and lifting capacity are all exhaustively math hammered and give quite reasonable results when using the numbers as-is.

If you want to bust out pitons and ten foot poles and silk rope and do old fashioned dungeon crawling with 2nd and 3rd level characters, 3e D&D is miles ahead of the competition. Even when that competition is Old School nonsense that literally does only that.

-Username17

I polled as 3.5, but 3e is what I really mean for nostalgia. 3.5 is... fine. 2 steps forward, 2 steps back, and an insane amount of lateral shuffling. I concur with Frank. Low level 3e has 10 playable starting core classes, and monks. I played with my fam doing some sort of 3.25 kludge and they had fun playing as whatever they wanted and everyone managed to stay relevant. Unlike say DCC where my latest character I just rolled has a net -2 stat mods, shitty spells and about no HP.

erik wrote:I polled as 3.5, but 3e is what I really mean for nostalgia. 3.5 is... fine. 2 steps forward, 2 steps back, and an insane amount of lateral shuffling. I concur with Frank. Low level 3e has 10 playable starting core classes, and monks.

Lolwhut?

What do you even do with a 3.0 armorless bard with less skill points?

Or even better, the 3.0 ranger that only gets track and one favored enemy at start then fuck all besides more HP and Bab until 5th level?

Two more skill points than the fighter at levels where being able to scale the cliff / swim across the river / Animal Empathy the wolves into fucking off instead of biting you actually matters?

In 3.0 Bards get one performance type for each rank of Perform. If you actually care about the musical instruments and dancing and shit, Bards get more skills in 3e than they do in 3.5. Most of the changes in 3.5 are completely untested. Some of the ideas are OK, but it's basically Andy Collins fucking around rather than ideas that were rigorously discussed and playtested.

So Bards get two extra skill points headline, but then they get hit with a massive skill tax where they no longer get a new level appropriate performance type every level. If the party find a Pipes of the Sewers in 3e, the Bard will be able to use it because the next time they level up they get to select "Pan Pipes" as one of their performance types. In 3.5, that's a separate skill and the Bard is basically frozen out because you're never going to be able to divert Level+3 skill points to something that's starting at zero.

There are very few changes in 3.5 that I would unambiguously say were good. Mostly it's not even PHB stuff. Like, I thought the Dread Necromancer class was pretty cool, and Heroes of Horror factually came out during the 3.5 era. But there's no particular reason it couldn't have been made had the PHB stayed 3e.

-Username17

rampaging-poet wrote:Two more skill points than the fighter at levels where being able to scale the cliff / swim across the river / Animal Empathy the wolves into fucking off instead of biting you actually matters?

Thing is the ranger needs to dump points in Wis for their spellcasting while the fighter could completely dump Wis and grab a few points in Int easy enough for an extra 2 skill points per level while also getting extra feats.

FrankTrollman wrote:In 3.0 Bards get one performance type for each rank of Perform. If you actually care about the musical instruments and dancing and shit, Bards get more skills in 3e than they do in 3.5. Most of the changes in 3.5 are completely untested. Some of the ideas are OK, but it's basically Andy Collins fucking around rather than ideas that were rigorously discussed and playtested.

So Bards get two extra skill points headline, but then they get hit with a massive skill tax where they no longer get a new level appropriate performance type every level. If the party find a Pipes of the Sewers in 3e, the Bard will be able to use it because the next time they level up they get to select "Pan Pipes" as one of their performance types. In 3.5, that's a separate skill and the Bard is basically frozen out because you're never going to be able to divert Level+3 skill points to something that's starting at zero.

The 3.5 bard doesn't need to divert level+3 skill points to use Pipes of the Sewers. 1 will be more than enough to make full use of the fancy magic instrument that doesn't actually care about your total skill modifier, just a binary check if you have any rank at all or not. Then for actual bardic music (which the pipes of the sewers doesn't buff in any way) the 3.5 bard can just use their favorite instrument. So the 3.5 bard is still pulling ahead in skill points and survivability because he gets light armor to boot.

FrankTrollman wrote: There are very few changes in 3.5 that I would unambiguously say were good. Mostly it's not even PHB stuff. Like, I thought the Dread Necromancer class was pretty cool, and Heroes of Horror factually came out during the 3.5 era. But there's no particular reason it couldn't have been made had the PHB stayed 3e.

-Username17

If we're talking about 3.5 splats, they made the 3.5 paladin and ranger a lot more playable with plenty of cool unique spells (and the bard gets plenty of cool prcs besides unique spells), also 3.5 ranger ACF for wildshape and plenty of other nice goodies, while the 3.0 paladin and ranger spellcasting is pretty weak which limited them to being boring beatsticks pretty much.

Could've they done that for 3.0?

Theoretically yes... But they never did. It took 3.5 for rangers, bards and paladins to get really nice things.

We are still playing 3.5... so not nostalgic

Korwin wrote:We are still playing 3.5... so not nostalgic

Precisely. If 3.0 was so super duper, why did you all switched to 3.5 and why did 3.5 last much longer seeing a lot more material?

maglag wrote:

Korwin wrote:We are still playing 3.5... so not nostalgic

Precisely. If 3.0 was so super duper, why did you all switched to 3.5 and why did 3.5 last much longer seeing a lot more material?

Higher quality production and more splats.

I like having actual rules for shit, which is something that 5e usually fails to deliver on.

3e's potentially the most fun to read and build for.

But there's a lot of garbage and needles to dive through which is not fun.


Outside of fixing wonky numbers, replacing skill ranks with a skill proficiency is most of what I'm looking for. Multiclassing is also a fun minigame to play by yourself

Seeing as I still actually play 3.x of some description, I'm not sure I can say I'm "nostalgic" for it, because I'm not looking back on something barely remembered. That said I'm kind of nostalgic for the height of its success, when we had the following:

• Healthy attendances at gaming conventions, with a lot of players and a lot of games
• Regular splat books with new things to look at, no matter how shit a lot of it was
• Game stores actually recruiting for games, and with people talking about games
• Relative ease in finding a game to join just by wandering into the gaming club at uni

As opposed to now, where basically none of the above is true even if you're not limiting yourself to "3E D&D" or "D&D generally". Just "any game at all", the conventions are struggling (not necessarily to do with D&D - renting convention halls has been getting more expensive and the typical sources of income to get a convention going (uni funding into clubs) have been shrinking) and there isn't as much general activity out there. Also I'm no longer personally living in a big city or rocking up at a university I'm not even enrolled in, so there's nostalgia on a personal level for my own timeline.

But aside from all of that, Fox, looking at the way you worded it all... when did 3E piss in your chips?

Is it nostalgia if I'm still actively playing and modifying it with an IRL group of people who refuse to move on to another edition?

maglag wrote: Precisely. If 3.0 was so super duper, why did you all switched to 3.5 and why did 3.5 last much longer seeing a lot more material?

The period of time between 3e and 3.5 was a fixed marketing strategy that WotC decided on before 3rd edition was even released. The amount of material being produced was fairly similar, but 3.5 didn't have a fixed expiration date built in to its marketing strategy.

This is just a nonsense statement. Yes, 3rd edition was objectively the best designed edition. Yes, 3rd edition and 3.5 are similar enough that it's not really a big choice one way or the other. And yes, there is more expansion material that says "3.5" on it than says "3rd edition." All of these things are true, and none of them are conflicting statements.

Most people who play 3.5 actually use some amount of 3rd edition rules without even knowing it, because some of the rules changes in 3.5 are so clunky and bad that people just ignore them. Like, in 3.5 it's literally impossible to use Rideby Attack because charges are required to center the opponent's square rather than merely targeting a square it's possible to attack from. No one actually uses that rules change, because it's retarded and adds nothing to the game but complexity and sadness.

-Username17

WiserOdin wrote:Is it nostalgia if I'm still actively playing and modifying it with an IRL group of people who refuse to move on to another edition?

It's me being annoyed at myself for using imprecise language when I really wanted to ask why you're all the 3rd edition version of grognards.

Koumei wrote:when did 3E piss in your chips?

This is me being disappointed that 3e is still the best RPG (at least among ones I haven't made) for utility adventures because even the people who still like it apparently like it for the wrong reasons. I'm mad at it because it's the best

maglag wrote:What do you even do with a 3.0 armorless bard with less skill points?

Actually sing while shooting or sword fighting because it doesn't require you to use up a Standard action in 3.0.

3.5 had a lot of things tucked into durations, loot table/item cost, buff stacking and action economy rules that were actually pretty grievous nerfs and typically the new early game benefits classes received in the new edition were just things that you could already get in 3.0 via smart level dips, equipment choices or a mild feat tax. So yeah, if you compare just the class pages of the SRD then at first glance a lot of hybrid and martial classes look vaguely better off in 3.5, but unfortunately that impression doesn't really hold up to scrutiny when you realize how many solid combat feats and prestige class options didn't officially survive the transition to the "new" edition. Bards and non-cleric archers in particular really took it in the pants after you got past the earliest levels.

ill throw still playing as my response. But slowly my group is adding more and more pathfinder. Which seems like a net loss.

3.0/3.5 - I'd say most of my group wouldn't notice if we were to swap between them and it really seems like something that a minority of heavy rules knowledgeable folks even realize. Nothing wrong with that, and Ill take an improvement over nothing, but its close enough for most people that distinguishing isn't super important.

I'm actually impressed. Wizards managed to take 3.0, which was 90% finished, and sell additional copies by making it less finished and less well-thought-out. The someone else made it even less of a complete idea, and made money.

Now that Pathfinder is moving to a new edition, I expect some moron to staple a few pages of house rules together with mediocre art and have a semi-successful business selling a new iteration of a thing that you can already buy a better version of.

I don't have the motivation or a stapler, otherwise...

maglag wrote: If we're talking about 3.5 splats, they made the 3.5 paladin and ranger a lot more playable with plenty of cool unique spells (and the bard gets plenty of cool prcs besides unique spells), also 3.5 ranger ACF for wildshape and plenty of other nice goodies, while the 3.0 paladin and ranger spellcasting is pretty weak which limited them to being boring beatsticks pretty much.

Could've they done that for 3.0?

Theoretically yes... But they never did. It took 3.5 for rangers, bards and paladins to get really nice things.

The Ranger got kicked in the dick going to 3.5 with changes to Power Attack, the Paladin lost some primo PrCs in the shift to 3.5 (Hospitaler comes to mind) and I don't remember 3.0 Bards at all. Being an ungodly charge monkey was easier in 3.0, so a mounted smol Paladin could kill things pretty easily. Mounted combat rules and charge lanes got stuffed by THIS CHAIR in the change to 3.5.

I think you're conflating 3.0 with very early 3.5.

Well, I have to ask then, is there a thread on here documenting all the changes from 3.0 to 3.5? I'd look for it myself but I'm a tad busy.

WiserOdin032402 wrote:Well, I have to ask then, is there a thread on here documenting all the changes from 3.0 to 3.5? I'd look for it myself but I'm a tad busy.

The one I found was 11 pages and they were spread out over that 11 pages. I thought about reviving it with an attempt at a comprehensive list from the thread but decided not to because it was probably pointless and no one cared.

Could you link me that? It'd be useful for the work I'm doing.