Remind me why 3.5e is better than 5e

[Brookshw]

It isn't a better game, just a different system. I think a simpler system shifts the focus from character building to development and adventuring. My experience with 5e are largely positive.

The more I hear about 5e the more interesting it sounds. Sounds as if there are some nice refinements.

[heavyfuel]

I have! Most of the complaints, though, are that a wizard isn't the god that it was in 3.5.

Really? Because most (well over 90%) of the complaints I've heard and read is that Mundane characters are vancian, 1 HP Fire Giants, Solos are weak despite their bonuses, and that the game feels too video-gamey. Honestly, I agree with all these complaits i've mentioned and their the reason I don't play 4e. However, only once I've read someone complaining they couldn't absolutely dominate the game with a Wizard like they could in 3e.

Overall, people did like martial and magical balance, they just didn't like other aspects of the game.

[Stella]

Optimizers are a fractional minority of players.

You should really stop acting as though optimized 3.5 is the only 3.5. It does more to make your stance look absurd than it does to help further your position.

The issue isn't optimized play. I agree with you that this is a minority, or at least it hasn't ever been seen in any of the great many different 3.X games I've played in.

The issue is when a player who wrote "Wizard" on their character sheet happens to select a few spells which are effective, and so naturally keeps using them. Or the player who writes "Druid" on their character sheet, and so gets two actions per round as a class feature, one of which can be to cast spells. This happens, and I've seen it happen a lot.

The player who wrote "Fighter" on their character sheet will never stumble onto a similar means of separating themselves in effectiveness from the reset of the players. They can try to hold their own for a few levels at a cost of all of their Feats narrowly focused at a single goal, but those stop adding any synergy after a while, with "a while" being about 5th level or below. More spells of increasingly higher level and multiple attacks with an ever more powerful animal companion never stops adding synergy. And to make this work at all takes a deliberate and knowledgeable attempt on the part of the Fighter to remain relevant for as long as is possible, unlike the simple selection of a better class for the other players in this example.

So while highly optimized play shouldn't be a part of the discussion and comparison, the simple fact of the difference in power between a Tier 1 class and a Tier 4-5 class is quite valid to the discussion and comparison.

But really, there is a lot of freely downloadable content available that can give anyone curious a decent idea of what 5e looks like. Even just looking at the starter set characters should be enlightening to anyone who hasn't looked at 5e at all. Flip to page two of the characters and read the level progression. You'll see a decent amount of additional competency for each class as they advance. Or look at the complete lists in the basic rules, available at the same site I linked above.

I don't know how it will play, because I haven't played it. But I'm looking forward to giving it a chance. A friend of mine has bought the PHB, and will probably be putting together an adventure for us soon.

[Petrocorus]

A significant number of people complained that the relatively even power level between, say, Fighter and Wizard was a thing that bothered them.

I've never been interested in 4E, but from what i could gather on this boards, i was under the impression that what bothered people was not that Fighter and Wizard had the same power level but more or less the same mechanics, with powers/encounters.

Interesting that you should mention it, and funny you picked those specific two.

A lvl 2 spell and a lvl 3 spell combo which is infamous for completely rendering two skills obsolete. And a base class therefore half-obsolete.

No, it's not worse with 5e. Casters are greatly reigned in - far more than in 3e.

Some posts in this very thread gave me the impression of the contrary.

especially in Point Buy.

Point Buy is only one of the method, and it has its variants. There are other methods and from day 1 of BECMI, people have always homebrewed their own method. Granted, it's not a good point for 3.5.

And an ex-con Paladin functions right out the door at level 1. Everyone gets at least 4 skills in 5e, 2 of them being of whatever floats your character concept regardless of class. No more 2-Int Penalty Skill Points on Painfully Restrictive Skill Lists going around. (And Intellect Devourers discourage dumping int.)

I do totally agree that starting skill points and skill list was a problem and a downside of 3.5's skill system. This and the lack of skill points / lvl of some classes like Fighter and Pally. It would have been simple to fix that by changing the formula from (n+int) x4 to (n+int x2 + fixed value, and to allow everybody to chose some skills as class skill for the first level, or by many other ways. They never did.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Does point buy still hard cap you to lower potential stats than rolling? And I think numerically the average rolls were better than the standard point buy, too.

I recall that, and it pissing me off.

[Petrocorus]

Better yet, had they done the not-so-huge necessary work to eliminate about 90% of the spells, and to ensure that the spells remaining were well worded and balanced, then balance would have been far easier to achieve almost immediately, with only minor changes to the bottom Tier classes needed to complete the job. It's the vast quantities of spells for every situation which make full casters so potent, not the fact that they get to cast spells at all.

My point exactly. Spells like Spectral Hand, while not broken by themselves, should not exist because they are specifically designed to overcome one of the limitation of caster that was bringing (some) balance. The same for DMM.
And of course spells like the polymorph line, shivering touch, love's pain, mindrape for instance are clearly broken or at least too leniently worded. Eliminate this and you'll get much more balance.

The sentence you didn't understand (because i badly worded it) was about some limitations of casters in 1st and 2nd that 3.X dropped for several reasons.
One of them was the fact that every classes in previous ed had their own level progression with different XP cost for levelling. A Fighter 20 was less powerful than a Wizard 20, but with the same amount of XP than a Fighter 20, the Wiz was only lvl 11 or 12.
The dropped that because it would have messed with the new levelling and multiclassing system they implement in 3.0. Which is sad because it was a big balancing factor. Another example is that it was much more difficult for a non multiclassed wizard to be able to cast in armor or to get something to lower his AC significantly.

[LTwerewolf]

I've never been interested in 4E, but from what i could gather on this boards, i was under the impression that what bothered people was not that Fighter and Wizard had the same power level but more or less the same mechanics, with powers/encounters.

We played 4e when it first came out, and I decided to play a wizard. It felt like playing a wizard. Combat took a long time, but that was ok, we were new and sometimes things take soem time to learn. So we finished a run from 1 to around 7 (some were 8) and decided to make some new ones. The new character I made was a warlock. It felt like playing a wizard. We started at level 5 and ended at level 12. Combat took longer and longer as we leveled up, despite how we learned the rules and didn't need to look most things up anymore.

The next run I played a fighter. It felt like playing a wizard. We started at 12 and got to 15. By level 15, combats took hours to resolve. It got to the point where you needed to kill something 6 times before it died. That doesn't really make for a fun experience, when every character I play feels identical. The other players said they had the same experience for the feel of their characters. One went Cleric->ranger->warlock, another went fighter->warlord->rogue, and they all felt the same.

[aleucard]

The two biggest problems with 4e is what LTwerewolf just described, namely how it's easy to file off the serial numbers from all the abilities, chuck them into a bowl, and the only people who would be able to tell which goes where by more than pure luck are the people who make money on knowing this sort of thing, which is more memory than anything, and the fact that it plays like Tabletop Gaming for the World of Warcraft age, while completely ignoring what the actual audience of DnD likes. That plan failed for the same reason that MMO's that try to muscle in on WoW's territory do; namely, marketing to WoW players won't work while WoW remains viable.

[Seerow]

The two biggest problems with 4e is what LTwerewolf just described, namely how it's easy to file off the serial numbers from all the abilities, chuck them into a bowl, and the only people who would be able to tell which goes where by more than pure luck are the people who make money on knowing this sort of thing, which is more memory than anything, and the fact that it plays like Tabletop Gaming for the World of Warcraft age, while completely ignoring what the actual audience of DnD likes. That plan failed for the same reason that MMO's that try to muscle in on WoW's territory do; namely, marketing to WoW players won't work while WoW remains viable.

For what it's worth, I like WoW. 4e's combat system was nothing like WoW. In fact, if it had been, the game as a whole might have gone over a lot better. If a typical non-caster in a TTRPG was half as competent as a bog standard Warrior out of WoW, I would be among the first to hail it as a great success.

[Psyren]

Well. I actually sort of agree with the premise that it's a feat tax. A rogue being able to sneakily ambush a target in the dark does feel like something iconic and baseline, not something hidden behind a feat tree.

I don't consider a standalone feat, available at 2nd level (1st level for Slayers and Ranger) with no feat prereqs and printed in their second splatbook ever released to be "behind a feat tree."

Most of the complaints, though, are that a wizard isn't the god that it was in 3.5.

None of my complaints had anything to do with wizards not being gods. In fact, Wizards are still godly in 5e (and once they have spells that can target all 6 saves, they will warp encounters just as thoroughly as they do now.) They just have a lot less ammunition and so they are unlikely to try exercising that godhood more than a few times per day.

You can also restrict 3.P wizards in similar fashion just by throwing out bonus spells.

The bigger point was the 10 year wait.

If you're counting from 3e's release, doesn't that mean that 5e is 14 years deficient on this issue and counting? Because they have yet to provide a solution either.

[Galen]

A lvl 2 spell and a lvl 3 spell combo which is infamous for completely rendering two skills obsolete. And a base class therefore half-obsolete.

Casters making whole mundane classes obsolete is 3.5e thing, not a 5e thing. Flying Improved Invisible Stoneskinned Wizard raining death on his enemies is gone. Well, it's not gone for you. Since you play 3.5....

Some posts in this very thread gave me the impression of the contrary.

{Scrubbed}

[squiggit]

I don't consider a standalone feat, available at 2nd level (1st level for Slayers and Ranger) with no feat prereqs and printed in their second splatbook ever released to be "behind a feat tree."

Yeah, my mistake. Thought I remembered it having a feat prereq

Casters making whole mundane classes obsolete is 3.5e thing, not a 5e thing. Flying Improved Invisible Stoneskinned Wizard raining death on his enemies is gone. Well, it's not gone for you. Since you play 3.5....


{Scrub the original, scrub the quote}

I'm not sure what you expect this ridiculous bitterness to accomplish.

[Sartharina]

Some posts in this very thread gave me the impression of the contrary.

Those posts are in error.

I do totally agree that starting skill points and skill list was a problem and a downside of 3.5's skill system. This and the lack of skill points / lvl of some classes like Fighter and Pally. It would have been simple to fix that by changing the formula from (n+int) x4 to (n+int x2 + fixed value, and to allow everybody to chose some skills as class skill for the first level, or by many other ways. They never did.

Actually, INTx2 would have been worse on fighters and paladins, and overvalued the INT stat. The baseline skills, I feel, were too low. And even the classes that got a "lot" of skill points didn't really, especially in 3.5. And Pathfinder improved this a lot with skill consolidation, but 3.0 had the best Perform skill ever.

[Wrenn]

Magic is reigned in with the concentration rule. Spells with ongoing effects (buffs/debuffs, fly, invisibility, etc.) are concentration spells. A spellcaster can only have a single concentration spell active at a time.

Rogue sneak attack is so much easier to gain than many of you seem to believe. Yes, advantage grants SA, but so does having an ally adjacent to your target. This grants SA to both Melee and Ranged attacks.

Advantage is not cumulative, no matter how many sources of advantage you have you only ever roll 1 extra d20. Same for disadvantage.

As far as the argument against rogues not getting SA when they are blind? Well, they're blind. But they do have a darkvision class feature built right in.

There are some legitimate arguments on this thread, but quite a few of them are made out of ignorance. I find this baffling considering you can read the rules for free.

[Psyren]

Those posts are in error.

Assuming he meant mine, I'll be happy to receive clarification on any parts I got wrong (e.g. Advantage/Disadvantage, vision and light, the stealth rules, saving throws etc.)

As far as the argument against rogues not getting SA when they are blind? Well, they're blind. But they do have a darkvision class feature built right in.

Is that in Basic? Because the only thing I see is the Blindsense feature they get at 14, and that doesn't actually remove the concealment (along with being really late.)

[Sartharina]

...Actually, I can't find a rule in 5e that says attacking someone in darkness conveys disadvantage.


Well, unless you're considered blind. But then again - rogues function just fine by creeping around in the (Far more common than absolute darkness) Dim Light, and ambushing from there. They can still sneak around in dim light, and don't suffer disadvantage on attacks against people they can see in said lighting.

[Wrenn]

Darkness imposes the blinded condition. Auto fail on ability checks requiring sight, disadvantage on attacks, advantage granted to attacks made against you.

And you are correct, blind sense is not what I thought. It only makes you aware of hidden and invisible creatures within 10 ft.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Why is 3.5 better than 5e? Because it works, it has worked, and will continue working long after its supposed obsolescence.

The OGL is another huge reason. Everything in 5e is closed source. You can't get the level of discussion about mechanics with 5e that you can with 3.5 because you can't cite sources, because everything is closed source. This discourages the sort of mechanics discussions that, ultimately, are good for the game. If the developer bothers listening to them.

Which is why I play Legend now. Basically, some people got together, had those discussions, and came up with a way to fix them. It's not perfect, no game truly is, but it's a damn sight more balanced than 3.5, and one hell of a lot more versatile than 5e.

Basically, 5e is preventing itself from ever becoming something better, in an attempt to make a quick buck. Long term fail for short term gains, which pretty much describes WoTC these days.

[Psyren]

In a heavily obscured area (i.e. darker than dim light) your attacks have dis- Oh never mind, you added it.

But beyond that, any source of disadvantage shuts off your class feature. Entangled? No sneak attack. Poisoned? No sneak attack. Prone? no sneak attack. Feared? etc.

[Wrenn]

Why is 3.5 better than 5e? Because it works, it has worked, and will continue working long after its supposed obsolescence.

The OGL is another huge reason. Everything in 5e is closed source. You can't get the level of discussion about mechanics with 5e that you can with 3.5 because you can't cite sources, because everything is closed source. This discourages the sort of mechanics discussions that, ultimately, are good for the game. If the developer bothers listening to them.

Which is why I play Legend now. Basically, some people got together, had those discussions, and came up with a way to fix them. It's not perfect, no game truly is, but it's a damn sight more balanced than 3.5, and one hell of a lot more versatile than 5e.

Basically, 5e is preventing itself from ever becoming something better, in an attempt to make a quick buck. Long term fail for short term gains, which pretty much describes WoTC these days.

It's much too early to judge on this alone, not even all of the books are released yet. The Mearls has said to wait until the beginning of the year before an announcement regarding that will be made.

In a heavily obscured area (i.e. darker than dim light) your attacks have dis- Oh never mind, you added it.

But beyond that, any source of disadvantage shuts off your class feature. Entangled? No sneak attack. Poisoned? No sneak attack. Prone? no sneak attack. Feared? etc.

It shuts it off only if you are relying solely on advantage to begin with. As long as your ally is adjacent to your target you gain sneak attack regardless of advantage or disadvantage.

[Psyren]

It shuts it off only if you are relying solely on advantage to begin with. As long as your ally is adjacent to your target you gain sneak attack regardless of advantage or disadvantage.

Not quite. If you have disadvantage and an ally is adjacent, that shuts it off too. Only if you are neutral and have an adjacent ally does it stay on.

[Wrenn]

Not quite. If you have disadvantage and an ally is adjacent, that shuts it off too. Only if you are neutral and have an adjacent ally does it stay on.

I stand corrected. Completely missed that.

[Psyren]

See, some of us HAVE read the rules, and simply don't prefer 5e even though we understand them

But let me go on record and say I absolutely consider it better than 4e, and 2e for that matter.

My ranking, for what it's worth: 3.P > PF > 3.5 > 5e > everything else.

[aleucard]

My ranking, for what it's worth: 3.P > PF > 3.5 > 5e > everything else.

Presumably by how you put this, 3.P refers to when you use material from both systems in a single campaign rather than just referring to them both at once (rather than typing out 3.5 and PF)? I'd love to play a game like that..... ;-; I've been trying to get into a game on roll20 for months.

[otakumick]

Presumably by how you put this, 3.P refers to when you use material from both systems in a single campaign rather than just referring to them both at once (rather than typing out 3.5 and PF)? I'd love to play a game like that..... ;-; I've been trying to get into a game on roll20 for months.

I can't answer for Psyren, but I say 3.P a lot myself... when I say it, it refers to 3.5 with a few cherry picked rules backported from pathfinder...

[Alent]

It's much too early to judge on this alone, not even all of the books are released yet. The Mearls has said to wait until the beginning of the year before an announcement regarding that will be made.

I hadn't heard that Mearls had said that, but I think that underscores my opinion that a decent percentage of what you learn about 5e's rules is going to be wrong in two months.

[eggynack]

I can't answer for Psyren, but I say 3.P a lot myself... when I say it, it refers to 3.5 with a few cherry picked rules backported from pathfinder...

I think it can also mean the opposite. I suspect that which it means really depends on which game you suspect has the better base system, which for you would probably be 3.5, and for Psyren would almost certainly be PF.

[Petrocorus]

Those posts are in error.

I see that now thank to the several answers on the matter.
I've started reading basic this morning, but i'm not going to invest time and money before the release of the DMG and more perspective on the rules as a whole.

Actually, INTx2 would have been worse on fighters and paladins, and overvalued the INT stat. The baseline skills, I feel, were too low. And even the classes that got a "lot" of skill points didn't really, especially in 3.5. And Pathfinder improved this a lot with skill consolidation, but 3.0 had the best Perform skill ever.

You seem to have missed the "+fixed value" part. I was meaning that the fighter, instead of having (2 + int) x4 could have something like (2 +int) x2 + 15 or (2 +int) x2 + 20, with the additional possibilities to chose 4 or 5 skills as class skill for the first level.
The +20 would be the same for everybody, downplaying the importance of class and Int in the starting skill set.
And yes, Fighters (and Pally) should have 4 / lvl anyway.

The OGL is another huge reason. Everything in 5e is closed source. You can't get the level of discussion about mechanics with 5e that you can with 3.5 because you can't cite sources, because everything is closed source. This discourages the sort of mechanics discussions that, ultimately, are good for the game. If the developer bothers listening to them.

I still think we should wait for that. They messed that up with 4E, i do hope they understood their mistake and will put some kind of OGL in place for 5E.

Does someone remember how long it took after the release of 3.0 for the release of OGL? Was it immediate?

[otakumick]

I think it can also mean the opposite. I suspect that which it means really depends on which game you suspect has the better base system, which for you would probably be 3.5, and for Psyren would almost certainly be PF.

As I understand it, pathfinder is supposed to have some backwards compatibility built in so importing some things from 3.5 is fairly normal... I do prefer 3.5 as the base, I wonder how you figured that out :p largely because I hate golarion... the setting just irritates me... also like the vast majority of 3.5 and just like backporting a few streamlined things and fixes.

[Wrenn]

I hadn't heard that Mearls had said that, but I think that underscores my opinion that a decent percentage of what you learn about 5e's rules is going to be wrong in two months.

He said that in a few interviews and I believe there was a Legends and Lore article about the possibility of an OGL, or perhaps a part of an article if not the whole. Basically, from what I gathered, it's still tied up in legal. I imagine it would be pretty difficult to persuade Hasbro to release the entirety of their product for free, especially after having done so in the past gave birth to what is now their biggest competitor. Mearls has said that their business model for this edition will steer clear of splat books in favor of high quality adventures and campaign settings. If that does indeed become the case, then convincing Hasbro could be easier. Regardless, I don't foresee the rules changing as much as you predict. In and of itself, it is a pretty tight game. Much more so than 4e was when it first released, I think we all remember the massive amount of errata that followed its inauguration.