D&D 3E/3.5 AD&D 2nd vs 3.5

[VGmaster9]

Which edition do you prefer? Which advantages does one have over the other?

 

[Dandu]

Third edition seems more structure than second from what I can tell.

 

[Greenfield]

I like things about both.

The character progression in the earlier editions was designed to let character advance out of the low levels relatively quickly, then linger at the mid-levels for a time. You had time to explore what your character was, and what they could be.

3.* changed that so that level advancement was at a steady rate, and it became far too easy to concentrate on what your character was about to become, rather on what they were.

The old Save system was fraught with conflict: What if someone cast a death spell from a wand or staff? Did you Save v Death or Save v Rod/Wand/Staff?

But the pure fun of the game has always been in the story. A good DM can make any system work, and a bad DM can't make any system work. What we need are systems for all the DMs between those two extremes. Mechanically, 3.5 fills the bill better than 2.

 

[Ahnehnois]

Not another edition war thread.



Speaking seriously, I did play a little late 2e before starting 3e. I still play some Baldur's Gate which I guess is a bit of a refresher.

I liked 2e. There was great depth in character creation and innumerable options. The rules were flexible and open to stylistic interpretation. There was even some decent software support for making characters and stuff.

That said, 3e in all its iterations is strictly better. It's basically just an evolution of 2e, with a consistent groundwork instead of a hodgepodge of rules mashed together. 3e multiclassing makes sense. 2e's XP charts and multiclassing and dual-classing are confusing. 3e attack rolls make sense. THAC0 is confusing. 3e saves make sense. 2e saves are confusing. 3e skills were one of the great developments of the game and exactly what I was itching for when I was picking my NWPs.

3e didn't attempt to redefine the nature of roleplaying, add on useless elements gratuitously for profit, or violate basic conventions of D&D (or of common sense). There's no radical change in tone from 2e to 3e, and just about any game you could run in 2e you can run in 3e at least as easily. 3e just seems like a revision of 2e that addresses many of its flaws without harming the game.

The main things I miss from 2e are multiclass characters being kind of balanced (which takes a lot of finagling with the rules in 3e), the flaw aspect of NWPs (addressed somewhat by UA's flaws and traits), the fighter's scaled weapon proficiency system, the concept of attack speed, psionics being different from magic, and a few other odds and ends.

That said, feats, skills, base attack and save bonuses, and the d20 system as a whole are all masterfully crafted rules.

 

[Sekhmet]

The character progression in the earlier editions was designed to let character advance out of the low levels relatively quickly, then linger at the mid-levels for a time. You had time to explore what your character was, and what they could be.
3.* changed that so that level advancement was at a steady rate, and it became far too easy to concentrate on what your character was about to become, rather on what they were.
The old Save system was fraught with conflict: What if someone cast a death spell from a wand or staff? Did you Save v Death or Save v Rod/Wand/Staff?

Death.
Rod, Staff or Wand applies only to spells not covered by other saving throws, such as paralysis, poison, death, pretrification, or polymorph. Similarly, Save vs. Spell also only applies to saving throws not covered by other save types.


A side not, I like 3.5, but it's absolutely fraught with ways to break the system, which I don't like. The caster classes are far more powerful than they've ever been (five foot steps, casting defensively, cheap scrolls and wands, long buff durations, etc), and the melee classes slowly become less useful over the course of leveling, which (as it's been stated already) is a relatively quick process.

However, capping the level you can reach by race and class type bothered me. Why can an Elf Fighter, with his thousand year life span, not reach the level of a Human Fighter with his eighty year life span?
Why are Humans so versatile in the first place?
Some magic was far too powerful back then, too. Protection from Missiles rings a bell. It should have been called "Immunity to Rangers", and Stoneskin could have been called "Immunity to Fighters".

I liked Sneak Attack multipliers better than damage dice.
I like the current method of damage reduction. (Until it gets to DR */-)
I liked the variety of saving throws as opposed to just the three.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there were good and bad parts to both. I think, overall, AD&D was my preferred system... but that could just be because of a biased nostalgia.

 

[Dandu]

or violate basic conventions of D&D (or of common sense).

Your mileage may vary on that last one.

 

[Jimlock]

I guess what I'm getting at is that there were good and bad parts to both. I think, overall, AD&D was my preferred system... but that could just be because of a biased nostalgia.

More or less, those are my thoughts/feelings as well. Personally I will always like/love AD&D a lot more than 3.x.

As contradictory as this might sound, IMHO 2e caused less headaches. The DM had to resolve the rules conflicts on the spot, without having to go digging in some book, simply because there were no rules for most of the complications. Thus there was more room for storytelling/roleplaying, drama, suspense and the like. Combat moved faster, was more cinematic as I remember it, and characters relied more on the players to be unique.

3.x is a great system. Very well thought off, makes cense, while still keeping the D&D flavor alive. Feats are nice, skills work smoothly and PrCs offer plenty of mechanical differentiation.

...and in order to do all the above, 3.x got very complicated in this very attempt to nail everything down. 3.x gave birth to rules lawyers and evolved min/maxing in an entirely new level, things that I would have been much better without. I have the feeling that all those well thought of rules still get to smother Roleplaying/Storytelling to an annoying extent.

Again this is just an opinion, probably enhanced by my feelings for AD&D.

 

[Sekhmet]

3.x gave birth to rules lawyers

I seem to recall a lot more rules lawyering then, since a lot more was RAI instead of RAW. Where there is wiggle room, there are lawyers, and 3.5 nailed down a lot of loose boards (if you get the analogy).

 

[Arrowhawk]

More or less, those are my thoughts/feelings as well. Personally I will always like/love AD&D a lot more than 3.x.

As contradictory as this might sound, IMHO 2e caused less headaches. The DM had to resolve the rules conflicts on the spot, without having to go digging in some book, simply because there were no rules for most of the complications. Thus there was more room for storytelling/roleplaying, drama, suspense and the like. Combat moved faster, was more cinematic as I remember it, and characters relied more on the players to be unique.

3.x is a great system. Very well thought off, makes cense, while still keeping the D&D flavor alive. Feats are nice, skills work smoothly and PrCs offer plenty of mechanical differentiation.

...and in order to do all the above, 3.x got very complicated in this very attempt to nail everything down. 3.x gave birth to rules lawyers and evolved min/maxing in an entirely new level, things that I would have been much better without. I have the feeling that all those well thought of rules still get to smother Roleplaying/Storytelling to an annoying extent.

Again this is just an opinion, probably enhanced by my feelings for AD&D.

Boy, this nails a lot of how I feel on the head...except I came from AD&D 1e and went to 3.5.

I specifically empathize with your statements about min/maxing. It's one aspect of the game that I feel has undermined the flavor of what D&D was. People have lost sight of exactly what you stated above...

"and characters relied more on the players to be unique."

I played D&D Online for a couple of months. DDO is built on the 3.5 engine and it lead to some nasty metagaming. In PnP, the attitude that one build is bettter than another has very little real meaning because you aren't competing against those other builds in the overwhelming majority of people's campaigns. But in DDO, you get situations where parties wouldn't even take non-Drow Wizards/Sorcs. Or they'd boot you if they found out you didn't take the right combo of metamagic feats. Rangers...ha. Despite being extremely useful and versatile the min/maxers insisted the class was gimped and ignorant party leaders would often refuse to take them. Characers were never gimped in 1e...only the players. But with 3.5, you can copy a build and that's all that mattered.

At the same time, I get why WotC elminated the restrictions on multiclassing. Multiclassing is immensely popular, especially to the younger generation. Financially it was a smart move.

Another way I've come to understand the evoluation of D&D is that WotC realized the DM's had too much trouble offering consistency to the players. The game was so wide open, it was hard for young and inexperienced DM's to handle simple things like trying to bluff the guards. It also meant that DM's could easily be perceived as arbitrary. So I agree that the are better mechanics in 3.5, you just have to live with the trade-offs. In many ways, I think D&D has shifted the burden of the game from the DM to the player.

Oddly enough, I got into 3.5 because a group of us started a new campaign with two women who never played D&D and weren't even sure what it was about. I think it has been much easier to navigate them through 3.5 than it would have been with 1e....but maybe that's just me as a DM.

 

[Greg K]

Settings, supplements, and general "tone"? 2e. I prefer the 2e Complete Handbooks in terms of content and format to their 3e equivalents. I also like the green historical reference books and both PO: Combat and Tactics and PO: Spells and Magic. Then there were the settings. Al Quadim, Darksun, and Ravenloft.
Finally, 2e also had specialty priests.

Mechanically, I prefer 3e. I like the unified core mechanic, the unified ability scores, the skill system, the 3 saving throw categories, and monsters having ability scores and their AC broken down.
In addition to what are, in my opinion, better mechancis, 3e also has the benefit of third party support under the OGL and d20STL. The third party support is important for me, because outside of the core 3 books and Unearthed Arcana, there are so few WOTC products that I liked.
And, with the DMG variants, Unearthed Arcana, and third party products, I can capture much of what I liked about 2e.