M Faulkner
Disgruntled Democrat
- Joined
- Feb 1, 2003
- Messages
- 1,451
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- 510
- Location
- Formerly The Ghetto
- First name
- Michael
- Country
Portal,I dig the 3.5 version of the D&D game. The only aspects I felt had opportunity for significant improvement were:
1) Effects of damage on character performance. The whole "perfectly fine until 0 HP" thing is annoying. I always house-ruled this when DMing by placing living combatants who drop below 25% of their max HPs automatically at "Fatigued" status. Already Fatigued characters would become Exhausted.
2) Skill group consolidation. Probably too many different types of skills to throw rank points against.
3) Single-monster, single-page in the Monster Manuals. A 2nd Edition method which never should have been taken away.
4) Reduce emphasis on magic items in forming character power and potential.
4th Edition struck out big-time. The whole "Bloodied" character status is a near meaningless disappointment which didn't address Issue #1. Skills and multi-classing are excessively restricted and oversimplified. The only improvement was the monster presentation layout as seen in Issue #3. Magic items were de-emphasized but now the item construction rules are excessively simplified. Mucking around with available character races and classes was completely unnecessary. Since when is "Dragonborn" a classic D&D character archetype?
It seems like 4th Ed. is a throw-back to the 1970s perspective of the game, which flies in the face of RPG evolution and learnings over the last 20 years. Big disappointment.
Thanks for the input. I have not had a chance to look over the changes, but I for one like 3.5 and will most likely stay with it.