Is there a big difference between 3e & 3.5e D &D ?

[Dinner]

No, there's only a small difference between 3.0 and 3.5. Making bard the favored class of gnomes hardly qualifies as a big difference.

Everyone knows Illusionists are the favored class of gnomes not bards. E. Gary Gygax made it so and thus it should ever remain.

[Dinner]

Self Biased is full of ****, and you shouldn't look to other people for your opinions.

Well, I'm certainly not going to play WoW or D&D so asking those who do seems reasonable.

[N35t0r]

Ever since 3rd ed RPGs have been a munchkin's paradise. Back when my friends and I played 1st and 2nd editions one of the most fun aspects of the game was low level where your PC really was weak, where he couldn't just power through everything, and so you often had to come up with creative & interesting ways to beat situations instead of just killing everything. Figuring out how to trap powerful monsters in different rooms since you couldn't beat them, negotiating your way out of situations, or sneaking around other tight spots was all part of it. Even better was role playing your way into tricking third parties into doing stuff for you or even tricking them into their deaths since you had no hope of killing them on your own.

The new kids don't seem to like role playing and instead simply attack everything in site. I'd love to see someone put the "role" back into role playing.

Only reward experience for accomplishing tasks, regardless of what was done.

[Hauldren Collider]

It doesn't allow me to do any of the roleplaying I would want to do.

As I said, there aren't many settings where it (or anything similar to it) are applicable. If there was, I would think differently.

Think of fantasy books/stories/etc, it jsut isn't relevant.

It isn't fun if the world doesn't work in ways liek I want to imagine it.

JM

I was making fun of you, but I understand where you're coming from. I actually totally get the appeal of imagining you are your character and stuff. I just don't find it as fun as the actual encounters. In my mind, the RPG element adds to the strategy element, not vice versa.

In terms of 4e taking away options, I see that as streamlining the gameplay, making it more accessible. A game that I can't find people to play with is a game I can't play at all. A game I can't play at all is less fun than a game I can play, no matter how much more I would theoretically enjoy it.

The irony is of course that at CMU everyone's a D&D kind of person and they all play 3.5e...so I can't find anyone to play 4e with me

[Ben Kenobi]

I take it that Jon Miller doesn't play barbarians. Barbarians are awesome.

[Jon Miller]

I do actually./

JM

[Dinner]

Only reward experience for accomplishing tasks, regardless of what was done.

We always do it as rewards for "defeating" an enemy or over coming an obstacle. If you tricked an enemy to his death then that was the same experience wise as killing him yourself though we'd also give bonus experience if someone was especially creative in problem solving or if they did a very good job at role playing. We wanted to encourage actual role playing instead of just hack and slash.

[self biased]

Why does everyone hate 4e? Everyone plays 3.5 here at CMU.

simple: if i wanted to play world of warcraft, i'd fcking play world of warcraft.

[Hauldren Collider]

Well it's what Kuci and I play, so eh. I never liked WoW, but I enjoyed playing 4e.

[Lorizael]

WoW and 4e are not the same, period. Anyone who thinks they are completely lacks imagination.

[self biased]

4e focuses very much on combat and various buffs/feats/attacks. there is less emphasis on the non-weapon proficiencies of yore. I once had a rogue that was able to usurp the seat of power in a small nation in a thomas-crown-affair-esque feat of forgery.

[MOBIUS]

The big differences between 1st & 2nd:

- The proficiency system was over hauled and standardized so that they became a much bigger part of the game. This was integrated with the "kit" system to allow players to more easily customize their characters with actually changing any of the rules. Also in 1st all class skills were the same for every person of that level in that class where as, for example, in 2nd you could allocate points to each skill and decide to specialize your character in certain tasks instead of always being a generalist.

- In first edition every little variation of a class was it's own class. Example: You had the thief, the assassin, the thief-acrobat and a bunch of even more specialized variants found in Dragon Magazine. In 2nd edition these were all made part of the thief class but you could customize your PC using kits. Kits added some minor bonuses (and some equally minor detractions) but helped people flesh out their characters. This really increased actual role playing even while it GREATLY simplified the rules.

- The rules were greatly cleaned up and simplified. There were over a dozen different AD&D books in 1st edition many of which contradicted each other or were just plain complicated. E.G. Gygax just loved to invent complicated **** just to show how smart he was; 2nd edition kept the flavor and feel of 1st edition but cleaned everything up and organized it in an easy to use,read, and find way so that even teen kids could quickly answer any questions. The indexing in 2nd edition books was INCREDIBLY EXTENSIVE especially compared to how crappy the indexes were in 1st edition book.

I'm sure I'm missing stuff since I haven't actually played AD&D in 20 years but that should give you an idea of some of the differences.

Look, 1st ed was basically fine until Unearthed Arcana came out. And it was basically 3 books that were essential - not over a dozen! Then they started ****ing with the whole game. I invested in 1st ed, so I wasn't going to buy the 2nd ed game all over again, especially when they were sort of making it up as they were going along. I think they were trying to compete with some of the more 'realistic' RPG systems like Runequest or Rolemaster that were already out, or coming out at the time - that and the whole sad fanboy collectors phenomenon of having to own every single piece of TSR ****...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Ironically it was 2nd ed that started turning me off D&D as a whole and got me into other RPGs as I certainly didn't want to own it as it required significantly more investment to play the game properly.

[Lorizael]

4e focuses very much on combat and various buffs/feats/attacks. there is less emphasis on the non-weapon proficiencies of yore. I once had a rogue that was able to usurp the seat of power in a small nation in a thomas-crown-affair-esque feat of forgery.

As I said, if you feel you can't do that in 4e, it's because you lack imagination.

[Felch]

4e focuses very much on combat and various buffs/feats/attacks. there is less emphasis on the non-weapon proficiencies of yore. I once had a rogue that was able to usurp the seat of power in a small nation in a thomas-crown-affair-esque feat of forgery.

That's entirely a matter of the DM and the players. Nothing about the rules in any edition of D&D really allows or prevents you from doing any of that. I can tell my DM in 4e that I want to forge documents and sneak around, and it's up to him, just like it always has been. Nothing prevents it.

So the fact that 4e has combat, buffs, feats, and attacks makes it like WoW? Did 1st edition not have combat? Did it not have buffs? Does WoW even have feats?

WoW is played in real time, and it focuses on killing a dozen wolves in some forest so you can bring some worthless ****ing NPC their pelts. 4e is turn based, played on a grid, and only the most superficial ******* would confuse it with WoW.

[Hauldren Collider]

And the combat and attributes are actually balanced. I was able to understand the 4e combat system with about 15 minutes of initial instruction from Kuci and picked everything else up within an encounter. The rules are simple enough that you can be sure you're following them, which makes it easier, in turn, to add your own rules.