I keep this framed quote on my desk. Maybe you’ve heard it. It goes like this:
“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.”
That quote’s there to remind me that I’m not a critic. And I don’t want to be. I want to do something meaningful.
I admit I do a lot of s$&%-talking and I offer a lot of personal opinions, but I never do it for fun. Never for cheap laughs. Okay, sometimes, I do it for cheap laughs. And to needle Internet gamers who take themselves too seriously to make fun of the things they love. I make fun of the things I love all the time. But I always try to offer something of value in return. That’s my rule. Never tear something down without putting something else up to replace it.
Look, any idiot can break stuff down — and it’s fun to do — but if it’s all you do, you end up sitting bored in a room full of broken toys. And maybe the f$&%wits in Hollywood should remember that the next time they’re deconstructing something or subverting expectations just to prove how much smarter they are than everyone else.
If you’re choosing misery over joy and a world of broken entertainment, how smart are you really?
With all of that said, let me present you the first of two clickbaity, top and bottom five lists! Yay!
The Good, The Bad, and the Angry
With the year coming to an end and my gearing up to take my site in a new direction — or to find my vision again; whatever — I want to have a little fun. So, I’m engaging in the age-old Internet commentator practice of publishing a list! No, two lists! No, wait, four lists!
Four whole lists of unfettered, unqualified, worthless opinions!
Let me explain…
For years, I’ve been playing, running, and writing about the latest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons to hit store shelves. Which it did eight f$&%ing years ago now. During that time, I’ve had a lot to say about it. Some of it good and some of it bad. And I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t much care for D&D 5E in the grand scheme of D&D editions.
Meanwhile, in the last year, I’ve switched my personal home games — somewhat inconsistent though they are — back to the greatest incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons to hit store shelves. Which it did twenty-something years ago, depending on what you count. During that time, I’ve had a lot to say about it. Some of it good and some of it bad. And I’ve made it pretty clear that I very much love D&D 3E.
Now, I’m a hyperbolic guy. Hyperbole’s good for laughs. And it’s good for winning fights on the Internet because being right is less important than bullying people into quitting. Truth is, I don’t really think 3E was sent by a Heavenly Host to save us all from bad games any more than I think D&D 5E emerged from the stinkiest part of Satan’s hairy a$&.
But I want to give both editions a really solid — if very subjective — look. Specifically, I want to offer up my list of the five best and five worst things each edition has to offer. And I’m starting off with D&D 3E.
Rules of the Game
I was going to do this whole long speech about how all this crap is subjective. And I was going to explain all the weird little rules I followed when populating these lists. And explain my process. But you know what? F$&% that. I’m just listing things. Whatever things I want to list for whatever reason. Just things that make me happy or make my blood boil. In no particular order.
But I do have rules. For you. You commentators. Two rules.
First, if you want to add something good or bad of your own, fine. But you must add one of each. If you add a good thing, you have to add a bad thing too. And vice versa. Any idiot can praise what they like and bash what they don’t. Don’t be any idiot.
Second, no hearsay. If you ain’t played or run D&D 3E, you got nothing to say. Any idiot can parrot bulls$&% they read on Reddit and any idiot can prejudge s$&% they’ve never touched. Don’t be any idiot.
Break my rules and I’m going to delete your comment and call you an idiot. And if you start a f$&%ing edition war, I will make you regret it. Got it? Good. I ain’t f$%&ing around.
The Five Best Things in Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5
So what are the five best things about D&D 3E according to Angry? Here they are in random-ish order. Because Angry don’t rank s$&%. These five things are all equally best as far as I’m concerned.
How You Roll: Fail by Five, Take 10, and Take 20
First, the thing you all knew was coming. Yeah, after I piled all that praise on the Fail by Five rule in that last article, you had to know it would be here. But it ain’t alone. Because Fail by Five was one of three corollaries to the D&D 3E Core Mechanic that made that edition much less reliant on perfect GMing judgment.
I ain’t going to explain the Fail by Five rule again. I will briefly explain Take 10 and Take 20, but if the discussions in the Angry Supporter Discord Channel are any indication, you probably won’t grasp the subtle nuances that make those two rules such genius.
The Take 10 rule allowed a player to skip the die-rolling part of any ability check if the situation wasn’t particularly stressful. The character cleared their head, breathed, and took care in what they were doing because they didn’t have stress weighing on them. And the player calculated the result as if they’d rolled a 10 on the d20. Simple.
The Take 20 rule allowed a player to skip the die-rolling part of any ability check if they were willing to waste as much in-game time as was necessary to succeed. Taking 20 wasn’t an option on any check that had some kind of cost or penalty for failure. As above, the player calculated their ability check result as if they’d rolled a 20 on the d20. Simple again.
Taken together, Fail by Five, Take 10, and Take 20 provided solid mechanical rules for skipping unnecessary dice rolls and added stakes to the most stressful and dangerous of situations. Players could elect to settle for average results when that’s all they needed, provided the stakes weren’t too high. And players could always get the best possible result by spending inordinate amounts of in-game time provided they weren’t risking injury, death, or loss with every check. And thus, the GM’s ability to wreck the game by calling for unnecessary die rolls was drastically reduced.
Both D&D 4E and D&D 5E have experimented with different versions of these rules — but Passive Checks still don’t count as a Take 10 mechanic and you sound like a moron when you suggest they do — 4E and 5E experimented with different versions of these rules, but both are missing key elements and their implementations lack some of the nuances that made these three rules so powerful.
I’m all for teaching GM’s good judgment, but I prefer if good judgment ain’t a prerequisite for not running a s$&% game. Hence the need for solid rules that provide a good experience regardless of the GM’s judgment.
A World that Makes Sense: Internal Mechanical and Flavorful Consistency
D&D 3E was designed around universality. The designers wanted everything to work the same. That’s how the d20 Core Mechanic came to exist. But it was also evident in how the same rules applied to everything in the world. And how much care went into figuring out how those rules represented the fiction of the world.
Mostly.
The clearest example of this is in chapter 10 of Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 Player’s Handbook. The chapter that fully explained how magic worked. Not just mechanically, but fictionally as well. The rules explained what it meant to prepare spells and why spells that a wizard wanted to cast twice had to be prepared twice. It explained what spell components were for. And it explained how spellcasting interacted with magical items. Hell, in the DMG, it explained why wizards and clerics invented the magical items they did. Based on the limitations of their own magical systems.
The consistency ensured the GM usually wasn’t left in the dark to resolve weird rules interactions. GMs knew, for example, whether darkvision was magical and which monk abilities didn’t work in anti-magic fields and s$&% like that. Moreover, it ensured that when a GM couldn’t find the answer — or didn’t want to waste time looking — the GM still understood the world well enough to figure out a good, consistent, logical answer.
D&D 3.5 didn’t have a lot of handwaving. It never said, “well, it’s a magical fantasy world so anything is possible.” Small creatures couldn’t be as strong as the strongest humans. And if they were, magic was involved. Explicit magic. Magic that could be countered. Hell, there were a bunch of spells that existed solely so the GM could build magical effects into his adventures without having to handwave s$%&. Nothing was just fluff and nothing was just crunch. If you knew the rules, you understood the world. If you understood the world, you knew the rules.
Mostly…
DIY Bestiary: Monster Customization
By today’s standard, lots of D&D 3E’s monsters look a little bland. Especially the humanoids. D&D 3E just didn’t have the focus on push-button special powers that 5E does. But what D&D 3E did have was the single most customizable bestiary ever.
Say you wanted a giant toad for an adventure, but your high-level party was too tough for a giant toad. You could literally just advance the toad. Or the chimera. Or whatever. Make it bigger and more powerful. There was a systematic way to basically give every monster extra levels in its own species.
Monsters with feats and equipment could be re-specced and re-equipped very easily to change their focus. And the GM could give any intelligent monster levels in any class. Sure, the MM goblins are generic, 1st-level mooks, but if you wanted a war chief or skulk or shaman, you could just slap a few class levels on one. Hell, there were even five different NPC classes that weren’t quite as powerful as the normal character classes but were perfect for customizing mooks with class-like abilities. As well as for statting up any town guards or bandits or healer priests you needed.
Then there were templates. Everyone remembers templates. Take a monster, pick a template, follow the step-by-step process, and bam, you’d have a demonic monster. Or an angelic monster. Or an undead monster. Or a half-dragon monster. Whatever.
All of those options were spelled out in the Monster Manual alongside the build your own monster from scratch rules so the Monster Manual wasn’t just a bestiary but a fully customizable, do-it-yourself monster toolkit that didn’t require you buy a second book and then build every unique monster from scratch. Or ham-fistedly reskin s$&% and give it a different name.
Zeroes to Heroes: Humble Low Levels
I know some of you won’t call this a good thing — and you’re just f$&%ing wrong — but 1st-level characters in D&D 3E felt like 1st-level characters. They felt like neophytes, newbies, and greenhorns. Their skills, talents, abilities, and equipment were limited. They had room to grow and evolve.
You don’t get that same vibe from more recent incarnations of D&D. Yes, low-level characters are still delicate, but delicate like a glass cannon is delicate. They’re delicate superheroes.
D&D 3E just didn’t pile a lot of s$&% onto the character sheet. Especially at low levels. Most classes only gained a modest number of special abilities throughout their career and they had to wait for — and earn — their best stuff. But the stuff they did get was enough to make the class feel like whatever archetype it was supposed to.
In D&D 3E, you can’t start the game playing Aragorn but you can play a character that feels like a teenage Aragorn. Yes, I know teenage Aragorn lived a century before the LotR stories. Shut up. The point is, in D&D 5E, you can start the game playing Aragorn. Or at least, Aragorn with hemophilia and that brittle bone disease.
A Full Toolbox: The Dungeon Master’s Guide
There’s always fights over which D&D DMG is the best. But anyone who argues any DMG was better than the v.3.5 DMG either never read it or they’re an idiot.
This is the only thing on this list that ain’t a matter of subjective opinion. It’s a categorical, axiomatic, objective fact: the Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 Dungeon Master’s Guide is the best DMG ever published.
It’s amazing just how much s$&% is in there. Not prose s$&%. Not advice s$&%. Actual useful game-building tools. I mean, sure, it’s got all the DMG staples about managing games and using rules and magical items of course. But it also provides, for example, a survey of every major biome you might find on a D&D world map with descriptions of the features, hazards, and obstacles you might find in each. That includes the dungeon biome. There are extensive descriptions of the multitudes of terrain types, hazards, and features that litter the underground. There are tables of stats for every kind of NPC at every level you might need. Complete enough that you could use those stats in a pinch to run the NPC at the table. You wouldn’t — the tables were meant to help you build NPCs beforehand — but you could. There are pages of poisons, traps, and diseases and detailed rules for building your own versions of each. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to building and populating any kind of settlement in a fantasy world if you felt the need for that kind of exhaustive detail. And there are at least a dozen other useful things I’ve not listed.
And there’s a complete glossary of game terms and a fantastically complete index.
You can accuse the D&D 3E DMG of being overstuffed, but I cannot think of one thing that should be in there that isn’t. Which is something I can’t say about any other DMG that’s ever been published for any edition of D&D. The D&D DMG also understands its tripartite role as an instruction manual, reference book, and toolbox fully and completely. Its presentation is top-notch.
Honorable Mention: Opportunity Attacks
I’m cheating a little and I don’t give a crap. I started writing this article by writing down as many Bests and Worsts as I could come up with off the top of my head. Then, I pared each list down to five things. But there was one Best I really wanted to include, but which wasn’t quite big enough to qualify for such a list.
But I want to talk about it anyway and it’s my list, so I’m gonna.
D&D 3E had extensive Attack of Opportunity rules. And if I was making a list of super-important mechanics that don’t seem fun but can’t be removed without breaking the game, Opportunity Attacks would top that list. In D&D 3E, if you did basically anything other than make a melee attack where another creature could slap you, they got to do just that.
The rules were more detailed than that — I won’t deny they were complex — but they all amounted to that: if you’re in something’s melee reach, make a melee attack or suffer the consequences.
OA rules fall into this broader class of rules called Zone of Control mechanics. And they’re a mainstay of strategy and tactical games because they allow units to limit other units’ options by being in the right place at the right time. And that’s especially important in games that mix unit types — like, for example, melee, ranged, and magical units. Without robust ZoC rules, melee attackers lose their most important edge. That is, once a melee fighter’s in your face, they’re hard to deal with or escape from.
D&D’s worn down its OA rules because they’re complicated and they’re annoying and they lead to endless, nitpicky square-counting. They don’t, by the way. It’s GMs that create endless, nitpicky square-counting, but that’s a story for another time. The problem is players are starting to notice that melee combat is the crappiest combat in D&D 5E. You’re absolutely always better off having a bow-and-spell shootout than pulling a sword. And that means the only useful monsters are the ones with bows and spells too.
Simply put, if you want a strategic-and-tactical combat game that mixes melee and ranged combat — and supposedly, that’s what D&D wants — you need robust Zone of Control mechanics. Letting fighters scowl at specific foes and dare them to attack — as a variant rule — ain’t enough and it never will be. Melee fighters must exert strong, sticky, dangerous Zones of Control.
The Five Worst Things in Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5
The third edition may be the single best edition of Dungeons & Dragons ever published, but that doesn’t mean it’s a perfect game. Like every edition of D&D, it’s got bugbears. And some of its bugbears get pretty big size modifiers.
Mapping Progress: Character Planning Bulls$&%
Stop me if you’ve heard this one…
How do you make a 1st-level character in D&D 3E? Make a 20th-level character and then take their levels away.
In D&D 3E you started with a zero and made it a hero. You had to grow. But you were also discouraged from actually evolving. 3E offered lots of ways to customize your character. You had feat trees, liberal multiclassing — which I loved and hated — and prestige classes. But every cool option had an endless list of prerequisites and requirements you had to meet. If you wasted one rank on the wrong skill, you might never qualify for that prestige class you wanted.
Am I being hyperbolic? A little. It was totally possible to just build a fun character level-by-level, but once players got even a little experienced with the system, the game pushed them toward planning their advancement levels in advance. It wasn’t just the min-maxers and the delightful folks on the CharOps board. It was everyone.
Why? Well, it was down to two things, really. First, as I said, D&D 3E was very into its prerequisites and progressions. You had to spend a lot of resources on a lot of prerequisite s$&% to get the coolest toys. And second, some of the best fantasy archetypes were gated behind high-level prestige classes instead of being more freely available. If you wanted to play an effective swashbuckler, an actual draconic sorcerer, or any flavor of effective gish — a spell-sword, a spell-thief, or a spell-bow — you had to wait through at least six levels and follow a very carefully planned progression scheme.
And that sucked in a game that otherwise really hit the perfect balance of zero-to-hero.
You Now Have Nine Rounds to Live: The Death and Dying Rules
In D&D 3.5, you can have less than zero hit points. You can have negative HP, okay? And when you have negative hit points, you’re unconscious and bleeding out, right? And when you reach -10 hit points, you’re dead, got it?
Now, there are two consequences to this s$&% that, by themselves, aren’t problems but they become problems when you put them in the same game.
At low levels, there wasn’t much uncertainty about death. The death rules provided a very precise and very lenient timer. Your party had up to 10 rounds to save your dying a$&%. And because most fights rarely lasted more than five rounds — and because most people didn’t go down in the first round — most players figured out they could safely ignore their dying allies until after the fight was won.
At high levels, given the damage a single, powerful creature could dish out with one full attack action, an injured PC could go from conscious to dying to dead in the span of one monster’s turn. That 10-hit-point buffer wasn’t enough to cushion a PC from high-level damage.
As I said, neither of those is inherently a problem. I find the first scenario’s relaxed, casual attitude toward death — take your time, your dying friend will be fine for a while — a little lame, but it worked. But you can’t have that attitude for a little while and then switch to a game in which every low-health PC is one lucky hit from total existence failure. You can’t have it both ways.
Write the Gross Armor Class from Page 2, Box 2 in Box 13 B: The Character Sheet
Hey Alan! Do you want to play this amazing, freeform fantasy adventure game where you get to be a knight or a wizard or an elf and explore ruins and fight monsters and do literally anything you can imagine doing?
Hell yes! That sounds awesome!
Here’s your character sheet…
Uhh… I think I hear my mother calling me.
I Will Not Make a Grapple Joke: Fiddly Little Minutiae
D&D’s 3rd Edition had a lot of rules. A lot of tiny, fiddly little f$&%ing rules. Ignoring the fact that half of every PHB is devoted to its spell list, something like a third of the D&D v.3.5 PHB was taken up by the f$%&ing skills chapter. And the skills chapter was 10% useful rules and 90% setting precise DCs for any imaginable situation that might come up in any fantasy adventure ever.
Want to know the precise DC to Tumble one-half speed without provoking Opportunity Attacks up a gravel-covered, angled floor? It’s 19.
Want to know the exact number you need to roll to track a party of seven ogres that passed through this forest two days ago assuming it rained for two hours last night and the day’s kind of foggy now? DC 17.
Making an Intimidate check to demoralize a young adult black dragon that just downed a potion of remove fear? That’s… oh, wait, that’s an opposed check and the dragon rolls a d20+21 against your Intimidate check.
I ain’t complaining about the level of detail per se. It’s actually nice to have a sense of what figures into the difficulty of a given task. The problem’s more about the granularity. Most of the DCs fall into that nice, comfortable Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, Super-Ultra-Hard scale that goes up by 5 anyway, so it really wasn’t worth calculating the precise DCs. And it was a pain in the a$&. That’s why GMs winged the DCs most of the time.
But this ain’t just about DC calculations. D&D 3.5 also had a lot of tiny little rules that were just super easy to forget during play. They were neat — and included things like skill synergies and the Dodge feat — but a rule you forget to use is a rule that doesn’t exist.
My one player and I still forget about his damned Dodge feat every session.
Your Anger Meter is Empty: X per Day Abilities
D&D’s got spells, right? And those are powered with spell slots, right? Which are either Vancian spell slots or more like mana points depending on the edition you’re playing, right?
In D&D 3.5, things were more Vancian, but, as I mentioned, that was all worked into the worldlore and wizards make sense. I have zero problems with Vancian magic. In fact, I think the world was a better place before that at-will cantrip bulls$&% infected everything.
But D&D’s also got character abilities, right? Magical, supernatural, or exceptional things PCs can do that aren’t spells. And those things have charges right? They can be used a certain number of times each day or between rests or whatever. Barbarians just can’t fly into adrenaline-fueled bloodlust whenever a fight breaks out. That’s not how uncontrollable bloodlust works. Just ask sharks. Instead, the barbarian must deliberately choose to fly into a rage and it’s down to careful resource management.
It’s stupid, arbitrary gamey bulls$&% and I will never, ever like it no matter what dumba$&% excuse you spew from your noisehole. Abilities that only work a certain number of times per day are game mechanics and they only work that way because of game balance. And D&D 5E has leaned into that s$&%. Hard. Every class has expertise dice or inspiration dice or ki points or whatever.
Do you know where that s$&% started?
It started with Third F&$%ing Edition. 3E made that s$&% a staple of class design. Barbarian rage, bardic music, turn undead, wild shape, lay on hands, smite evil. That was all 3E. Bull. F$&%ing. S$&%.
The final note on X abilities per day got me to thinking about how abilities might be classified in a TTRPG. The current idea I have is to define abilities on a matrix, like alignment. The axis would be certainty and limitation. Certainty refers how certain one is of the ability, either guaranteed (incapable of failing), uncertain (capable of failing), and unreliable (capable of backfiring). Limitation refers to the limits of use on the ability, either limitless (use as many times as one wishes), costly (use hypothetically limitlessly, but at a cumulative cost that effectively introduces as hard cap), or limited (hard cap on the number of uses, like spell slots). I think that this introduces a great way to think about abilities, both from an analytical and design perspective, but I’d love to see what anyone else thinks.
For me, and to Angry’s point, it’s the “X per Day” that doesn’t make sense (it breaks verisimilitude). What would be better is, you can use it any number of times per day, but the X is the duration. So, Mr. Ragey can rage any time, but it’s tiring, and he can only do it for so long, and that duration increases as he levels. So maybe at level 1 it’s just a few rounds, and at level 20… Bruce Banner said it best, “I’m always angry.”
Given your love for 3.5, I have been trying to better understand your lack of love for Pathfinder. I’ll start by saying, I have not actually PLAYED 3.5, but I’ve played PF since it came out. I’ve spent the last few months acquiring nearly all the 3.5 books and reading them, and I just don’t see a significant rules difference and I have been surprised by that. Skill synergies seem cool, but you just said they get forgotten. PF ‘fixes’ grappling, but all-in-all it’s mostly a repackaging of 3.5 with a different coat of paint. It has all the same top 5’s, and all the same issues. I agree with all of your points. The PF classes have a few more powers, and I’m guessing that’s what changes the flavor for you?
I played 5e for a year, and it doesn’t suit me either. My group still loves PF, but after finishing a campaign that hit 18th level, we are trying a P6 game. I was just combing through 3.5 to see if there was anything to add to PF to try something new, but aside from a few minor things it’s all already in PF (except for some classes that seem cool).
And maybe I’ll give a 3.5 game a try to get a sense of the flavor difference. I’d love to see your side-by-side thoughts of 3.5 vs PF. Oh, and 100% the 3.5 DMG is fantastic. I’m so glad I finally read it. Like, it covers how to play the game for real better than any other.
Pathfinder just feels different. For me it was the art style. It just gives off a different vibe than 3.5 did.
It’s a little offtopic, but I have to agree that the art in Pathfinder had something special in it. It made me get the book (although I still haven’t played Pathfinder at all), and in my opinion, it’s one of the best in all RPGs.
I’m many ways, PF is just D&D 3.75. The people who made PF took 3.5 and made some updates to most classes to remove ‘dead levels’ and to make the fighter get abilities beyond just feats. Otherwise, they are basically identical and all their content is compatible with little to no effort.
This post may partially answer your question
https://theangrygm.com/how-i-really-feel/
Angry GM (understandably) seems cagey about elaborating on PF, so maybe a rando’s answer might satisfy you: Core Pathfinder is very similar to 3.5, but the books afterwards have a very different tone from 3.5. Catfolk race, a literal superhero class, enemies from Japanese mythology etc. And less focus on prestige classes in favor of archetypes. Definitely feels like the devs eventually saw 3.5’s legacy as a fetter on their game, judging by how Starfinder turned out.
I enjoy both systems, not trying to edition war, but I can get where the beef comes from.
I can’t elaborate on PF2 as I’ve still not run or played it sufficiently to say anything about it. I avoid commenting on games I haven’t played or run. I did run PF for several years, however, both at home and in the wild, and I can categorically say I like D&D 3.5 much better. As you’ll see in the D&D 5E article, I’m not a big fan of superheroes in fantasy clothes and PF ups the power-level to eleven. And while it did streamline a lot, it also added a lot of its own fiddly bits. It’s not really better or worse mechanically, but tonally and thematically, PF isn’t for me. D&D 3.5 is.
PF2 is currently my system of choice. Martials actually feel like they’re worth playing compared to casters, there’s a lot of customization without needing to plan out your character all the way to level 20, and I really like the action economy in the new tactical combat system.
But the characters are downright competent. Action movie stars, even. You might not really enjoy that part. Personally my go-to “fix” for that is just to make the entire world more dangerous to compensate, so that no one feels like a toothpick but even fighting a dog is a long fight where both sides will take several heavy hits. (It helps that I often run the ‘proficiency without level’ rules variant because otherwise it feels too much like a treadmill.)
It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than 5e and much more accessible to new players than 3.5 and PF1.
I remember4e having a solid DMG. But 3.5 was excellent too.
It’s funny, I can’t stand 3.5 or PF without copious amounts of houserules and homebrew. But I also totally understand how people like those editions.
It’s that difference in taste I believe that identifies what edition people enjoy and what their favorite parts of D&D are.
Fewer abilities is better. Less specialization, fewer prereqs, better.
Free Kriegspiel, better.
Bad: Prestige classes felt poorly implemented, in part because they were world-specific offices needing to fit a system designed for universality, and in part because they competed for levels with actual classes, rather than a more equipment + resources focused system.
Good: Remember THAC0? I do. The new armor and attack resolution system really helped 3.0 be easy to play compared to earlier editions. Thank you 3.0 for making that no longer a thing.
Most people are able to identify when things bother them. You seem very gifted at drilling down to the heart of why things are bad, which makes this list extremely useful to me. Please continue.
I’ve lived long enough to gain consciousness and the raw brain power to find, understand, appreciate, and comment on these articles. Perhaps the only articles I read outside of college. I WOULD give my two cents on 3.5…but no one will run it.
I guess if that means this comment gets deleted and I’m called an idiot, at least I get to tell my friends “ANGRY LOOKED AT ME! OH MY GOD!”
But I digress.
I just wanted to say that I know you’ve been talking about the Angry System for a long time now. I hope that’s the direction you take in the near future, because I’m currently working on my own system and there’s so many questions I have about how to make it the best. A whole system made by you could be the ultimate reference material I need. That and if you get old and die, then there won’t be any articles to answer my questions.
“If you’re choosing misery over joy and a world of broken entertainment, how smart are you really?”
Well… isn’t that the very definition of being a GM?
Now, in a more serious tone.
Good: The Reflex, Fortitude, Will saving throw trifecta. It was one of the greatest things ever created for D&D, genius, and even more so if you came from a pre-3E edition. It so simple, easy to understand, and effective. 5E really threw the baby out with the water by scraping it.
Bad: Feats. I know players love them, but for me they are the seed of analisys paralisys that plagued D&D ever since. So many build option during character generation, and so many possibilities and modifiers during combat. It transformed two essential gaming moments that should be blazing fast into addicting but slow, very slow turtles.
Man, those saving throws were so simple and intuitive. Good call.
Lol, I can’t even imagine asking for a Rod/Wand/Stave saving throw anymore.
ART GOOD: It had a really thought out visual concept design thing, a sort of alternate medieval timeline going on; it was reflected on all of the equipment, clothing, armor, weapons, etc. All very deliberate and thematically coherent and done by awesome veterans of fantasy gaming art.
ART BAD: I think the visuals they went for preceded the bland, non characterized, zero verisimilitude, concept-artsy look of the posterior editions of the game; got too far from the classical fantasy looks and feels that I loved from AD&D2E, witch never returned.
I’m commenting this after only reading the intro, because it got me thinking about something that I had been puzzling for a while, but recently just concluded:
“What should my Elven cities look like in my new campaign world?”
I wanted something that makes them feel “unique.” But it dawned on me: We have a conception of what Elven architecture looks like. It’s easier to narrate something I know what looks like, using terms the players might understand, than for me to try to explain something none of us has ever seen. In fact, I think people want that. (This is also why I don’t like the more far out racial options in 5E, because they don’t come with this pre-defined ideas to them, so they end up being “humans, only taller”)
And that’s why I think this “deconstruction” obsession Hollywood etc has been having for so long is bad. People want familiarity, to a certain point. It’s easier for us to understand.
I never played 3.5 so I can’t really comment on the Take 10/20 rules (Well that’s not true, I played my most iconic character in that edition, but I never knew a single rule, so it doesn’t count).
What I can comment on is how I seem to have adapted these rules for my 5E games. For tasks that are “possible to do” I will ask for a dice roll as normal, with the caveat: If you fail the roll you end up spending 10 minutes to unlock it. (or 20 if it’s particularly difficult).
I basically introduced this to avoid the “Can I try?” or “Can I try again?”
This also allows me to say: After 10 minutes of trying this lock, you realize you don’t have the skills required to open it. You either have to find a key, or comeback when you have become a better lock picker.
Good: The sheer amount of content put out for the system. There are specialized splatbooks for every conceivable character, setting, and genre you could run in 3.5. Want a desert campaign? Pick up “Sandstorm.” Want to sprinkle in some cosmic horror? Try “Lords of Madness.” Want to give your elves and halflings more options? “Races of the Wild” has you covered.
Bad: How complicated the action economy became. Alongside the Standard and Move actions, later books introduced the Swift action, and the Free action, and the Immediate action. Each one had different tasks you could perform, and with the right combination of abilities, you could put out several turns’ worth of actions at once.
Good: Skill system, while a bit too extended for some it was well codified and it didn’t need much brainpower to determine which skill was needed for which situation (I am looking at you 5e investigation)
Bad: The skill system after a point could be emulated almost fully by spellcasting, making a big part of the investment obsolete. (My first ever char was a 3rd edition halfling rouge)
Good: Tactical combat and game mastery made the game feel immensely rewarding (it feels good to know that you are getting better, however as others said it is a double edged sword)
Bad: Combat felt slow compared to 5e, you had to wind up (either buffing or full round spells) to start having impact on the game. Maybe something in between would have been ideal. (Combat reflexes and bonus actions and full attacks with movement? yes please and seriously boosting martials in 3/3.5 is not a problem)
I liked 3.5, If I find victims I might revisit it. Coming back to the article about restricting the options of your players, 3.5 is the edition to enforce that and it can only make the experience better (the bloat is real)
The Bad:
At higher level DnD 3.5 just added multiple attacks rather than making a single attack more meaningful.
Players were rolling 3 to 5 attacks, takiing 3 to 5 times longer, but not having 3 to 5 times more fun. The game became a dull slog for fighters.
Also: common combat options (shoving, disarming, tripping) were introduced as suboptimal alternatives to the regular dealing of damage, instead of as cool, ‘free’ opportunities that a fighter might get from time to time (as in some OSR rules).
You had to have special builds in order to disarm or bullrush effectively, and then you were locked in to a lower-damage fighting style.
The Good: 3.5 introduced us to the intuitive 1d20 roll-high-to-succeed mechanic.
Also it added AOO, and Will/Con/Dex saves.
Also: the ability to build your own PC with feats.
Also: the Level X = 2 * (Level X-2) challenge rating system was amazingly useful. Made it so easy to calibrate fights.
The Best: all the ‘Bad’ problems with Dnd 3.5 could be house-ruled away. The ruleset is an absolute treasure chest of great rules – and a terrific chassis for modding.
Anyone catch that the initial quote was from Ratatouille? Don’t know why, but that just made my day!
Out of curiosity how would you handle per day abilities like rage or lay on hands then?(obligatory first of two asks that mean everyone is asking) Rage has some friendly fire downsides to implement but I think you might dislike that for the same reason you don’t like wild mages fireball-ing their own party?
These dissociated X-use-per-day mechanics (h/t The Alexandrian) were irksome when they first appeared in 3.5, and became pathological in 4th edition.
If you were looking to mod DnD 3.5 to soften the hard-limits on X-use-per-day abilities, you would probably need to establish a common currency that was used to power all special abilities (something like ‘Resolve’ or ‘Endurance’ or ‘Power’ or ‘Stamina’).
Being able to spend e.g. 20 pts of Endurance per day to power your PC’s special powers works better than ‘X per day uses of Rage’, ‘Y per day uses of Riposte’ and so on.
This is because a slow drain of a single resource somewhat mimics natural exhaustion – something that we all understand.
A common currency is just “X per day but with a conversion factor.”
That’s correct – but the use of a common ‘Endurance’-type source helps the mechanics tied to it to be less dissociated.
By ‘dissociated’ I mean : “arbitrarily detached from reality”.
Instead of each cool ability having its own X-per-day uses, the number of times that your barbarian can Rage/ use second Wind/ kill multiple foes with Omnicleave/ employ Mythic HeadButt etc would all be determined by one metric: how much ‘Endurance’ he has.
This brings our pretend Elf game slightly closer to reality.
Using the real world as an example: sportsball players don’t run out of X-per-day uses of ‘greater bodycheck’ or ‘improved pass’ or ‘mythic slamdunk’ – but they do get tired.
Hope this made sense
I really do not agree that a pool of exhaustion points actually models real human endurance any more than 3/day does. It’s an arbitrary game mechanic for balance purposes. If you want it to reflect reality, you’d have to handle it very differently, but that’s a whole other topic. And modeling reality isn’t necessarily the best goal. Honestly, an internal batter of endurance points is a better model in that regard because it’s more intuitive than actual human exhaustion and easier to model. It’s how lots of people expect human endurance to work, see?
That said, if you’re suggesting that all resources should use the Endurance Pool, okay, fine, that is elegant. If you’re suggesting that there should be physical abilities that use the Endurance Pool and magical abilities that use spell slots, I would except that as well. But if you want one resource pool to rule them — magical or otherwise — or if you’re not going to very carefully delineate what is and is not magical, I am not on board. However, I can suggest an edition of D&D for you. D&D 4E.
Here’s the thing, though, the arbitrary daily limit of abilities, however you count them, are still an arbitrary game mechanic. There is no reason for an ammo counter on actions you can attempt EXCEPT because that was the way the game designers chose to model abilities that are too awesome to be used freely. That is, “barbarian rage can’t be used in EVERY fight; it’s too overpowered.” And honestly, I think there are better ways to design things. Especially with rage, a particular pet peeve of mine, because it needs neither be magical nor is there anything humanly rational about it being limited to any kind of pool. Trust me: I know anger.
You make an interesting point that bears repeating.
I agree that RPG games are not reality simulators, and that they shouldn’t try to be.
Game mechanics should be balanced + they should work cleanly without undue noise or attrition.
And they shouldn’t break immersion: they should do no violence to player expectations of how the (game)world works.
But Game mechanics mustn’t try to slavishly simulate reality. If they do, they will end up eroding the game experience.
I’m thinking here (approvingly) of the player experience in the Alien RPG.
That game doesn’t super-accurately model ammo or oxygen consumption, nor the human psyche.
But it does a fair job of modelling the genre experience of slowly running out of bullets or air while panic rises in your heart.
>> “However, I can suggest an edition of D&D for you. D&D 4E.”
SHOTS FIRED! Lol
In my home rules, I do keep the physical + magic resources separate.
I’ve recently been wondering ‘why not merge them’? The stark asymmetry of how magic vs physical ‘powers’ work in my game would probably make it work ok.
But YIKES the possiblility of looking even a little bit like 4E in a dim light is so horrifying that I will put off the idea for now.
Also – in line with your note on rules elegance elsewhere – a mod of 3.5 should probably move to all personal spell casting (as opposed to wands etc) being fuelled out of the same ‘Endurance’ resource pool.
Such a change would invoke Tolkien rather than Vance
‘A Balrog,’ muttered Gandalf. ‘Now I understand.’ He faltered and leaned heavily on his staff.
‘What an evil fortune! And I am already weary. Only 50 Endurance left – enough for one Arcane Parry and maybe a Pulverise spell to break this bridge’
I have my ways…
Also, I don’t hate wild mages because of blue-on-blue potential. “Accidentally” fireballing your own party is a well-worn TTRPG trope and I’m all for it.
I’M A HATER WHO CAN’T OVERCOME MY OWN BIASES AND ONLY WANT TO START AN EDITION WAR!
I warned you.
On X per day abilities:
I note that five of your six examples are clearly magical. So why isn’t ‘it’s magic’ explanation enough for those five? (I think I’ve figured out why it isn’t for Barbarian Rage.)
(Probably unpopular opinion: I like the idea of a Barbarian whose Rage is a magical ability based on anger the way a Bard’s abilities are based on music. Sounds like fun.)
Why is there magic that is spells that can be cast a certain number of days and has certain, specific mechanics and then there’s also magic that is not spells that can also be cast a certain number of days but have all sorts of different crazy mechanics, no two of which are alike. And in the world, what does it mean that there’s spell magic and there’s also magic that isn’t spells.
There’s this principle of game design called “elegance.”
If you want spellcasters, make them spellcasters. The bard doesn’t need two separate piles of magical effects that have a crap-ton of overlap in their practical effects but work based on two totally different mechanics and are fueled by two completely differently arbitrary resource pools. And as for magical barbarians: you’re free to like it. I don’t. I don’t play a barbarian to play a magical character. I play a barbarian to scream my head off and f$&% s$&% up with a giant-a$& axe.
Your point about elegance convinces me, at least with respect to spellcaster class features. (And now I am rewriting classes in my head to turn those per day class features into spells. (I think I’ll leave magic swords alone, and even the trident of fish command, despite their being magic that isn’t spells.))
I am sure that a barbarian whose “Rage is a magical ability based on anger the way a Bard’s abilities are based on music” could “scream my head off and f$&% s$&% up with a giant-a$& axe” with the best of them. That seems highly appropriate behavior for such a character.
Thanks for the idea for revising classes. If I end up posting the revised classes somewhere, would you like for me to send you the links? (You would probably rather write your own, but it seems polite to ask.)
Bad: Too many decision points. I have so much decision paralysis and I remember being so overwhelmed when building my 3.5 characters.
Good: Clarification. I like things to be pedantically clear.
Seeing monster customization in the “Bests” list is interesting to me. I remember monster customization being kind of a slog in my time running 3.5, especially when making monsters with classes at higher levels of play. Because you bring in all the same complexity of building a player character then, including outfitting the monster with appropriate magic items per the Wealth by Level standards. But thinking about it, cumbersome though it was, at least that sort of customization was an *option* laid out in the book. Which isn’t really the case for later editions, so I can see how it counts as a plus for 3.5.
One thing I did really like about 3.5 was the way it married game rules and flavor-feel. Not always perfectly (see: rages per day), and sometimes to excess (see: Fiddly Little Minutiae), but overall there was a lot of care given to making different kinds of characters *feel* different in play, which later editions haven’t really maintained quite as well. Particularly when getting into some of the alternative casting classes introduced in supplements later in 3.5’s run. I guarantee that the warlock’s popularity since 3.5 can be directly attributed to the unique mechanical approach to its magic. In a similar vein, the Binder class from 3.5’s Tome of Magic remains one of my all-time favorite spellcasters in tabletop. If you wanted, you could run a campaign in a setting where the rules of magic were completely different from the D&D norm, both in-world and in terms of the rules of game play, just by limiting which casting classes were allowed.
The monster customisation thing was a bit of a slog for the GM if you were building an entire monster, but it did give you a damn-near omnipotent 1pp, by-the-rules way to build a monster, either from scratch or just making a Half-Fiend Giant Toad with 30 HD, ten of which are Barbarian class levels. Obviously as a GM you can just wing it and give the toad 400 HP, +29 to hit, and +20 on all of its saves, but it’s nice to have it in the rules.
It probably made new GMs more comfortable with screwing with the monsters, and also gave you a sort of baseline to judge how tough your monster actually ended up being. Also, the thing that made monsters so advanceable – the fact that monsters actually follow almost all of the same rules as PCs (racial abilities aside) – gave the adventuring world a certain fairness. You can’t kill people and turn them into husks by looking at them unless you’re a bodak, but you know that pretty much everything else the bodak can do you can do, and vice versa, following the exact same rules. That might not’ve mattered if you’re just using an MM bodak, but if you wanted a bodak assassin, it suddenly does. You can’t just give a 5e bodak levels in rogue easily, but you absolutely can do that for a 3.5e bodak.
Angry, please tell me how to convert or replace x per day abilities. I’m dancing here.
Pretty much agreed on everything; but last year I went back even further to 3.0. I found that most of the changes in 3.5 I really didn’t care for: I want physical warhorses for my paladin, not pokemons; I want actual wizard specialists with actual drawbacks when selecting opposition schools; I don’t care for sorcerers replacing spells willy-nilly; I want weapons ranked from silver to different levels of magical pluses, not generic “magic”;
and I don’t like monsters advancing exactly like PCs: I want monsters of different species feel different, so vermins and animals don’t have skill points depending on their HD but a flat 10-15. And I f$&%ing hate the imposition of a grid on movement and combat (and the variable diagonal movement bullshit that shows the designers don’t understand math, mixing topology and metric concepts at odds with each other: in a city-block metric, ALL squares around a given square are at the same distance, FULLSTOP.)
I could go on, but 3.5 just went on a tangent that didn’t really fix what it could fix, but made a lot more things fiddlier for no apparent reason.
Anyway, thanks for the post!
Agree with all your points, Angry! Here are some of mine (note: core-only 3.5e is my fave edition of D&D by far).
Pros:
+ Alignment matters. A lot: I think the benefit this has on world-building and the players is huge. Especially for those who, like myself, like to insert a lot of morally gray choices into our adventures – having a good anchor in good/evil alignment is a must to weigh the gray against. Also, it gives more meaning to the players picking a class or a deity, so you can’t have a ‘good, but misunderstood’ cultist of God of Horrible Torture, and gives one more knob for DM to turn when the paladin decides to start burning orphanages
+ Buffs and debuffs matter: even though it can lead to long pre-buffing bursts
+ Rewards strategic play and teamwork: While my feeling is that 5e is one-man-army characters showing off what they can do, 3.5e places more emphasis on collaboration, buffing, and filling niche roles in the party. Unlike in 5e, party composition actually matters.
Cons:
– 5-foot adjustments: Those actually fly in the face of the ‘zone of control’ concept. It is actually possible for a spellcaster to just take a 5-foot adjustment to get out of reach of the melee warrior, and cast a spell freely without fear of attacks of opportunity.
– Too many magical items: Following the proposed DMG treasure advancement tables, magic items start appearing very early. By higher levels, they are so common that they don’t really feel… magical, anymore, if you get my drift. In 5e, magic items actually feel rarer.
– Game really starts falling apart at higher levels: At levels 10+, with numbers and DCs bloating, the characters are so specialized that all checks fall either into category of ‘eh, this will be a breeze’ or ‘don’t even bother trying’. With all the magic equipment now available, all that ‘low-magic’, ‘gritty realism’ of low levels has evaporated, and it becomes feeling like a superhero game again.
I’d basically forgotten all this. Going to read DMG3.5 again.