Decline The good and bad of D&D 3.x

[thesheeep]

I bet he started playing D&D to meet hot chicks.

Isn't that why we all started?

Even worked out for some I know

 

[Jason Liang]

Jason Liang
Interestingly enough, Star Wars: Saga Edition is pretty much everything you say you wanted in that post. There's only 5 class or, in some campaigns, only 4. Everyone is a spontaneous caster if they're a caster. The skill list is further consolidated from the video game consolidations, skills are trained or untrained for a character, and bonuses are either +5, the option to reroll or (for damage) an extra die of damage. Feats are better balanced too. Prestige classes are very specialized roles ("Ace Pilot" is pretty terrible at anything but piloting) or smaller facets that don't justify a full class. Hit points are present, but they're augmented by a threshold system so powerful attacks cause penalties but smaller attacks can still wear you down (this is roughly similar to how DSA/Blackguards works)

Only thing it might not fix is multiclassing, but you give no information on why you dislike it. No class has abilities gain at fixed level except their proficiencies, of which you only get one of if you multiclass into the class (Armor OR Rifle proficiency), and class skills, so if you hate it encouraging players to go through 4+ classes to pick up early abilities (Barbarian 1 for fast movement, fighter 2 for some bonus feats) it fixes it. There's natural reasons to multiclass, like a soldier with abilities that debuff enemies they attack grabbing 3 levels in Noble (which is the class for random officers and just poorly named) to spend the two talents they pick up on buffing abilities. On the same token though there's no benefit to staying in a class for higher levels other than to keep picking its talents/bonus feats and being able to get things prerequisite locked (of which the highest in almost all cases is 2 other talents required, requiring a max level of 5 to get). In general characters higher level characters gain more varried and more versatile abilities than gaining expotentially stronger ones (Same with loot. Money is more options on tricky gadgets instead of +2 to hit).

When you move beyond generic fantasy into a niche genre like heroic sci-fi, then yes the system should change classes to reflect that genre. For example, take Marvel Avengers Aliiance (not really a gret game but). It's pretty hard to impose a class structure upon the Superhero genre, and yet they implemented quite an innovative 5-class system - Bruiser (Hulk, Thing, Thor), Scrapper (Daredevil, Spiderman), Infiltrator (Black Widow, Elektra, Invisible Woman), Tactician (Captain America, Mr. Fantastic) and Blaster (Iron Man, Human Torch). But having prestige classes so that a character can become a "Jedi Master" in a generic fantasy system like 3E is absurd.

 

[octavius]

I bet he started playing D&D to meet hot chicks.

Isn't that why we all started?

Even worked out for some I know

You mean there was actually hot chicks playing D&D?!?

 

[Jason Liang]

Most women I know would rather fuck you than play D&D with you.

 

[thesheeep]

The crux of a wounding system is that they apply penalties to someone wounded. (The word "penalty" is the important part of that sentence.) So, as in real life, in a fight between equals, the first person to get wounded is very likely going to die. Even a -1 penalty on a d20 sharply reduces the window of opportunity for an opponent to succeed, as they might have had a 25% to succeed in an attack, now they have a 20%, which (speaking in averages) means their opponent now gets an extra round to wail on them before they will successfully hit back. And on top of that, the penalty also makes it 5% more likely that they will fail a subsequent Wound Resistance roll and gain a second wound. Thus, the first wound starts a mechanical death spiral that is difficult to pull out of. (Now, most people immediately argue that their PCs have succeeded many times after being wounded, but rpg combats are not between equals. The first wound to a PC just makes the fight closer to actually being between equals, while if the enemy gets wounded first, they start death spiraling super fast.)

To put it into modern Build terms, an opponent built to have a high movement rate and To Hit but low toughness, with the intention of running up and getting a few hits gets in, that creature has its effectiveness broken by the first wound, and is much less likely to get a couple more good hits in before it dies. That, while an opponent built to have lots of stamina and toughness but low attack skill, that creature is rendered ineffectual by the first wound it receives, since it now has a terrible chance of landing any hits before it eventually dies. You can, of course, counter the above effects by building everyone with wound resistances and combat defenses, but then why even have wounding in the first place? - So PCs can lord it even more powerfully over weak creatures that have a low number of feats, and thus can't have those wound resistances?

Sounds pretty realistic and good to me. The one who gets hit first has the disadvantage. But the disadvantage is usually very small (if the character didn't receive an almost fatal blow).
I don't see the downside here.

And as you said yourself, most people have the experience of managing just fine even after being hit.
So in practice it simply works.


But I think the main problem you have is that you either played shitty systems or had bad encounter design.
I mean... what shitty encounter design is it when an opponent only has a 25% to hit you? I hope then there are at least five opponents.
The glass cannon hit&run build is a very risky one to begin with, but usually has some added evasion values to make getting hit less likely. Either way, what you describe as a downside is the entire point of such a build.
The tough build is meant as a bullet sponge, not as a damage dealing build.
If both are the only opponents (or PCs), then something went very wrong on a GM level.

And if we're talking about opponents, all of that can easily be alleviated by increasing their stats on the go.

Secondarily, wounds typically involve wound tables, and thus roll bloat. Every attack has multiple rolls to define what it is, with multiple tiered results based on those results. And that greatly slows the game down. As bad as 3e fights can drag, imagine doing 3x the work for each roll.

And to top it all off, since this whole concept is all about realism (or rather a common lack of ability of people to be able to think in the abstract), those who decide to implement it tend to want to have different types of wounding effects, instead of just wounded being a singular -1 penalty universally applied. And multiple types of wounds means a table where different effects have a different chance of occurring, that relative chance depending on the type of wound's considered rarity. And that not only means even more roll bloat, it results from someone not understanding ratios, and the fact that any one result, however rare it is made, can happen on the first roll. For instance, the RuneQuest critical hit table, which in an early form involved making a singular roll on a critical table, with a varying chance of different wound results, but also a chance on that table of a result indicating to roll on the devastating critical table, with a chance there of having to roll multiple times and keep both results. Long story short, in the first attack roll I ever made in RuneQuest, I critical failed, and in one swing lopped of my friend's head and cut off my own arm. And since there isn't much chance of healing in the early game, my friend was permanently dead and I was permanently maimed.

Again, you played some shitty systems there, roll bloat is indeed horrible.
And if you play something like RuneQuest, you (should) know what you're getting into. Those systems are played for the... interesting experience, rather than for long-lived characters that prosper.

Play some Shadowrun (which has wounds more or less as a "you get a malus after losing X HP - and everyone has the same amount of HP") - there's no rolling for hit positions.
Or Mutants & Masterminds, which doesn't have HP at all. Instead you only accumulate wounds, starting from small ones barely affecting you (but making it slightly more likely to get a bigger wound) to big wounds that actually give you general mali until eventually you are loaded enough with wounds that a damage roll will reach a certain threshold and knock you out for good.

I wouldn't even go into session with a system I know will make me roll endlessly. DSA/RoA is already borderline here - stepping over it especially for casters.

 

[deuxhero]

Telengard
Saga Edition handles it without wound tables. Attacks over a (character's fortitude save+armor bonus) simply move them down a -1/-2/-5/-10+half move/KO condition track.

Being unable to hit the PCs is rarely a problem. Either the injured character spends a turn (or their turn minus their attack with a feat one class gets for free) to improve their condition or they take advantage of how almost everyone has area attacks which (effectively, DC10) auto-hit unless the target has Evasion or cover.

Jason Liang
No reason "few flexible classes with many talent trees" can't adapted to fantasy though. Leader (who could, but doesn't have to, use music for their abilities), Warrior (with talent tree options like Archer, Berserker, Holy Warrior and Martial Artist), Knave (with Wilderness as talent options), and Mystic could easily cover most fantasy niches pretty easily with multiclassing. Especially so if you copied how Saga Edition handled magic (Spend a feat so you can take Use the Force as a skill and use its built in cantrips, then take another feat to get powers. Take that second feat multiple times for more or spend talents to improve uses).

 

[Haplo]

Pros: You can make some really silly builds with Multiclassing.

Cons: You can make some really silly builds with Multiclassing.

Best system evar!

(Just kidding... but I do love DnD 3.x character building, multiclassing and prestige classes).

 

[Jason Liang]

My point is that Luke Skywalker isn't a Pilot who multi-classed into Jedi Apprentice and then Prestiged into Jedi Master. He was *always* a Jedi, it's just he also had piloting skills (and droid repair). A class is a character's past, present and future. If Skywalker's destiny Jedi was, Jedi then he is.

Han Solo is an even better example. Just because he pilots the Millennium Falcon doesn't make him pilot class. When he lead the Rebels on Endor, he didn't become a General class or Leader class. When he marries Leia he doesn't become a Diplomat class. He was, is, and dies a rogue (scoundrel).

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

cons:
- HP bloat
- spells never got adjusted to HP bloat, e.g. fireball still does 10d6 max like in AD&D but mobs might have hundreds of HP now, this makes "blaster" casters crappy

 

[Haplo]

My point is that Luke Skywalker isn't a Pilot who multi-classed into Jedi Apprentice and then Prestiged into Jedi Master. He was *always* a Jedi, it's just he also had piloting skills (and droid repair). A class is a character's past, present and future. If Skywalker's destiny Jedi was, Jedi then he is.

Han Solo is an even better example. Just because he pilots the Millennium Falcon doesn't make him pilot class. When he lead the Rebels on Endor, he didn't become a General class or Leader class. When he marries Leia he doesn't become a Diplomat class. He was, is, and dies a rogue (scoundrel).

I see your point.
But the thing is, its not about realism. Games are meant to be fun. And mixing, matching, optimizing, multiclassing, reaching prestige classes - is a lot of fun!

 

[deuxhero]

My point is that Luke Skywalker isn't a Pilot who multi-classed into Jedi Apprentice and then Prestiged into Jedi Master. He was *always* a Jedi, it's just he also had piloting skills (and droid repair). A class is a character's past, present and future. If Skywalker's destiny Jedi was, Jedi then he is.

What the hell was Luke doing for almost 20 years if he was *always* a Jedi?

That thing you only learned (and not all that well, Luke barely understands Jedi stuff as late as the Thrawn trilogy, when he's almost 30) when you were 20? Always been you. Those races through Begger's Canyon? Hunting Womp Rats? Climbing caverns? You were always a Jedi.

 

[Jason Liang]

My point is that Luke Skywalker isn't a Pilot who multi-classed into Jedi Apprentice and then Prestiged into Jedi Master. He was *always* a Jedi, it's just he also had piloting skills (and droid repair). A class is a character's past, present and future. If Skywalker's destiny Jedi was, Jedi then he is.

What the hell was Luke doing for almost 20 years if he was *always* a Jedi?

That thing you only learned (and not all that well, Luke barely understands Jedi stuff as late as the Thrawn trilogy, when he's almost 30) when you were 20? Always been you. Those races through Begger's Canyon? Hunting Womp Rats? Climbing caverns? You were always a Jedi.

A Jedi is basically a space Paladin. Paladin is a core class, so characters start their adventuring careers at lvl 1 as a Paladin. It's not like you start as something else first and then class change into Paladin, you start as a Paladin. That doesn't mean a lvl 1 Paladin started Smiting and Detecting Evil and Laying on Hands at age 1. Luke didn't know he could do those Jedi things until he learned what a Jedi was.

An example of dual classing is Vader. Vader started as a Jedi, became a fallen Jedi, and finally dual classed into Sith. A class change is a dramatic, traumatic shift in a person's life and destiny.

 

[deuxhero]

So losing your parents, being taught special abilities you never knew existed, joining a criminal organization and killing a third of a million people isn't a "dramatic, traumatic shift" in "life and destiny"?

 

[Jason Liang]

So losing your parents, being taught special abilities you never knew existed, joining a criminal organization and killing a third of a million people isn't a "dramatic, traumatic shift" in "life and destiny"?

What? Are you talking about Vader or Luke?

 

[deuxhero]

Padme died right after popping him out and he hasn't seen his father ever. Owen and Beru were his parents.

 

[Cael]

1. HP. HPs do nothing other than track a progress bar of how long the enemy can last. The reduction in HP does nothing else to the enemy. Suggested fix: Replace with a wounds system, where the would deteriorate your stats somehow.

2. HP bloat: Leveling leads to increase in HP that only makes the above problem worse. Suggested Solution: See above.

3. Attack bonus / Skills / Saves like HP bloat without producing a noticeable effect after a while. Once you have the skill level of 15, the challenge level of the roll has to artificially increase to justify higher skill level. Suggested solution: make skill system point buy and make it incrementally costly to improve. Make saves static and add modifiers based on feats/attributes. Make attack bonus a skill associated with a weapon. So instead of weapon proficiency implying a perfect understanding of a weapon, make weapon categories (bladed, blunt, ranged etc) and invest skill points there.

4. AC: Armor class is one of the worst systems in D&D. It does have granulation but that granulation adds up to the same number. Why not instead have a separate dodge skill and a parry skill while armour is DR? I am curious to hear your opinions on this.

Please add your own criticisms to bloat this list.

1. HPs is an abstract system that is the standard for many, many games. The whole idea of HP is not that you are getting hit. It is you dodging, suffering minor wounds, etc. It is the blow that knocks you down below 0 that is the one that truly lands. That was explained by Gygax himself back 20-30 years ago.

2. HP bloat actually only lengthens the battle. If you are going to lose, you will lose whether you have 50 hp or 80 hp. Very rarely does a battle turn into one of attrition. If it does, it means your players need a kick in the nads to try something other than "I use my weapon" in battle. I suggest a few Pyrohydras and/or confiscating their Final Fantasy games.

3. This is actually wrong. There is always an effect.
i. For example, a Tumble skill of 14 has a noticable difference to a skill of 24 if you are trying to do something difficult. That is the key here: Higher skills allow you to attempt more difficult things. If you are always aiming for tumbling around in combat at half speed, then, yes, there is not much for you after 14. But if you want to tumble through someone's square or tumble at full speed, you'll find that investing in Tumble into the mid-20s to be worth it, by which time the game should be over or gearing up for Epic levels.
ii. A higher base attack bonus does not matter for your first attack, but it will always matter for the subsequent ones. This is where 3.x shows its elegance in the combat system. the -5 BAB for subsequent attacks actually was a very well done part of 3.x for a number of reasons. It eliminates the all or nothing nature of BG combat. It makes aiming for higher BAB worth something. Conversely, it makes AC worth pumping. It may not stop the first one, but the 2nd, 3rd, 4th are all worthy of stopping. The way the game is structured is that an average monster for that level (i.e., bog standard mook, not one that requires something special to take out or is deliberately made with tricks in mind) has a 50% chance of being hit by an average PC of that level. This is actually spelt out in the DMG or MM, I can't remember which one, in the creating your own monster section (probably MM near the back, now that I think of it). Therefore, pumping BAB has a direct effect of allowing your subsequent attacks to be more effective.
iii. Saves are most definitely something that is vital and worth pumping. A level 9 spell, for example, has a MINIMUM save requirement of 23. More if you pump your casting stat and/or have feats or items that increases DC. You need a save of +12 just to have a 50/50 chance to save against it, which is, not coincidentally, the base High save of a level 20 single class character. Save DCs, like AC vs BAB, was discussed in the creating your own monster section.

4. See above.

The thing is, 3.x DOES allow you to get large numbers in many things, but those numbers always comes at an opportunity cost. There are extremely few exceptions (Dragonwrought Kobold being one, but that is basically the creator of that not realising what was said in an earlier book about dragons).

A wounds system is BAD for tabletop gaming. It introduces extra tables, extra rolls, extra record keeping, and makes it so that the PC is heavily disadvantaged against the enemy. The PC needs to survive multiple combats. The enemy is meant to DIE. When you have a negative feedback loop in operation on getting wounded, the death spiral is unescapable for PCs. That is unacceptable in a game where you are trying to encourage long campaigns and the PCs going through whole story arcs.

 

[vivec]

cons:
- HP bloat
- spells never got adjusted to HP bloat, e.g. fireball still does 10d6 max like in AD&D but mobs might have hundreds of HP now, this makes "blaster" casters crappy

Even worse: After a while, doing HP damage to win is for chumps. What you really need is the fail or fail spells, like assuming control of the minds or just paralysing wave that allows the chumps to finish the villain off at their leisure.

 

[Alkarl]

Spoiler

If you don't mind my asking, why do you hate wounds as a system? Just for some personal insight, I haven't ever really messed with a system that used them or used them particularly well.
I'm curious cause I'm working on a thing.

I'll take that one up, but this is a question that has been answered many times on the Codex, so you can search out as many other accounts as you feel like.

*

Unfortunately, the reasoning against wounds (and, it should be noted, Dodge rolls and DR fall under the same argument) are manifold and subtle, which means most people take one look at the argument, and just ignore it in order to keep believing in their faith in some system that can finally mimic reality. But to sum it all up: the pursuit of reality in an rpg is much like the pursuit of reality in a modern fps, where the devs spend months and millions of dollars making sure the dust flies around just right when the helicopter lands on the pad, and so end up spending less and less time and money ensuring that shooting the guns is, you know, fun.

The crux of a wounding system is that they apply penalties to someone wounded. (The word "penalty" is the important part of that sentence.) So, as in real life, in a fight between equals, the first person to get wounded is very likely going to die. Even a -1 penalty on a d20 sharply reduces the window of opportunity for an opponent to succeed, as they might have had a 25% to succeed in an attack, now they have a 20%, which (speaking in averages) means their opponent now gets an extra round to wail on them before they will successfully hit back. And on top of that, the penalty also makes it 5% more likely that they will fail a subsequent Wound Resistance roll and gain a second wound. Thus, the first wound starts a mechanical death spiral that is difficult to pull out of. (Now, most people immediately argue that their PCs have succeeded many times after being wounded, but rpg combats are not between equals. The first wound to a PC just makes the fight closer to actually being between equals, while if the enemy gets wounded first, they start death spiraling super fast.)

To put it into modern Build terms, an opponent built to have a high movement rate and To Hit but low toughness, with the intention of running up and getting a few hits gets in, that creature has its effectiveness broken by the first wound, and is much less likely to get a couple more good hits in before it dies. That, while an opponent built to have lots of stamina and toughness but low attack skill, that creature is rendered ineffectual by the first wound it receives, since it now has a terrible chance of landing any hits before it eventually dies. You can, of course, counter the above effects by building everyone with wound resistances and combat defenses, but then why even have wounding in the first place? - So PCs can lord it even more powerfully over weak creatures that have a low number of feats, and thus can't have those wound resistances?

Secondarily, wounds typically involve wound tables, and thus roll bloat. Every attack has multiple rolls to define what it is, with multiple tiered results based on those results. And that greatly slows the game down. As bad as 3e fights can drag, imagine doing 3x the work for each roll.

And to top it all off, since this whole concept is all about realism (or rather a common lack of ability of people to be able to think in the abstract), those who decide to implement it tend to want to have different types of wounding effects, instead of just wounded being a singular -1 penalty universally applied. And multiple types of wounds means a table where different effects have a different chance of occurring, that relative chance depending on the type of wound's considered rarity. And that not only means even more roll bloat, it results from someone not understanding ratios, and the fact that any one result, however rare it is made, can happen on the first roll. For instance, the RuneQuest critical hit table, which in an early form involved making a singular roll on a critical table, with a varying chance of different wound results, but also a chance on that table of a result indicating to roll on the devastating critical table, with a chance there of having to roll multiple times and keep both results. Long story short, in the first attack roll I ever made in RuneQuest, I critical failed, and in one swing lopped of my friend's head and cut off my own arm. And since there isn't much chance of healing in the early game, my friend was permanently dead and I was permanently maimed.

It's a funny end, to be sure, but remember to think of it as a game. We all set aside a bunch of time, spent a lot more time getting prepared, and the game ended on the first roll made by anyone. Thus, the game itself was a game that forget that the first rule of a game is to be a game, and not an obsessive's list of stacked tables, finicky rules, and slot-machine style luck that can end in immediate defeat.

Thanks for the response. I have definitely seen exactly what you're talking about in early builds of the thing I'm putting together. First blood was a huge determining factor in how the rest of the combat played out, often making mobs a laughable affair. More difficult encounters often resulted in party casualties and consumed too many resources to keep the surviving members fit for the next encounter.

I can't really speak to table-top gaming in this respect, but I can say there is enough maths and tracking on the back end that I can see it not producing a very favorable Friday night.

I also can't exactly refute your points effectively without providing or producing a system where it is done well, and I know of none and am nowhere near ready for the latter (bias pending, of course).

 

[Spectacle]

Why is this thread on gRPG forums? It is to point out problems in D&D on which so many cRPGs are based or inspired from. By understanding where D&D (in my opinion; you can state your opinion below) fails we can understand why many cRPGs fail to be great games.

What is this thread not about? How badly balanced D&D is. Sure, we all know it. Balancing, however, is a separate issue because how extensive it is.

Also, NB. I *love* D&D 3.5 despite all its faults. It's a great system to kickstart a game for those who have played RPGs before. It can be used cleverly to create low to mid-level adventures that feel epic without hitting epic levels.

To get to the point at hand without much ado:

The good of D&D 3.5 is the spell variety. You get a lot of some amazingly well-written stuff that despite being broken badly comes with a lot of flavours. Most spells are combat focused and thus boring. But the out of combat spells is where the strength of the spell system lies. They are *also* broken but with proper resource enforcement and clever DM management, they shine a lot to produce fantastic RP opportunities. These include divination and summoning spells as well as the enchantment and the illusion school spells.

The second major strength of D&D is the monsters and their templates that allow you to construct a wide menagerie of beasties to threaten players.

The weaknesses sadly are many.

1. HP. HPs do nothing other than track a progress bar of how long the enemy can last. The reduction in HP does nothing else to the enemy. Suggested fix: Replace with a wounds system, where the would deteriorate your stats somehow.

2. HP bloat: Leveling leads to increase in HP that only makes the above problem worse. Suggested Solution: See above.

3. Attack bonus / Skills / Saves like HP bloat without producing a noticeable effect after a while. Once you have the skill level of 15, the challenge level of the roll has to artificially increase to justify higher skill level. Suggested solution: make skill system point buy and make it incrementally costly to improve. Make saves static and add modifiers based on feats/attributes. Make attack bonus a skill associated with a weapon. So instead of weapon proficiency implying a perfect understanding of a weapon, make weapon categories (bladed, blunt, ranged etc) and invest skill points there.

4. AC: Armor class is one of the worst systems in D&D. It does have granulation but that granulation adds up to the same number. Why not instead have a separate dodge skill and a parry skill while armour is DR? I am curious to hear your opinions on this.

Please add your own criticisms to bloat this list.

Are you 15 years old BTW? These are the same criticisms every teen seems to level against D&D after playing for a few years. Then they delve into alternative systems or extensive houseruling before coming back to straight D&D in their 20s when they realize there's actually a reason for why the rules are the way they are, and that they work really in practice even if they may not make all that much sense on first glance.

 

[vivec]

No spectacle. I am not 15. I have DM'd tabletops for last 15 years though and played with more systems than your age. And I don't even hate d&d. It's fun and its useful to bring in new players in. But eventually, everyone realizes it's problems and moves to more interesting and tactical systems.

 

[Cael]

cons:
- HP bloat
- spells never got adjusted to HP bloat, e.g. fireball still does 10d6 max like in AD&D but mobs might have hundreds of HP now, this makes "blaster" casters crappy

Even worse: After a while, doing HP damage to win is for chumps. What you really need is the fail or fail spells, like assuming control of the minds or just paralysing wave that allows the chumps to finish the villain off at their leisure.

Try fighting without the chumps on your side and see what happens. God-style wizards control the battlefield. They can't win it by themselves due to limited spell slots. They NEED the chumps to complete the kills.

 

[Alex]

Compared to the previous editions of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I would list the following as bad:

"Darkvision"
All characters use the same experience level table
Removal of THAC0
Ascending armour class
Only three categories of saving throws

There are many other lacking features. For instance, racial maximum levels were absent from the books, even though they went through several prints!

 

[Haplo]

Compared to the previous editions of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, I would list the following as bad:

"Darkvision"
All characters use the same experience level table
Removal of THAC0
Ascending armour class
Only three categories of saving throws

Those things are huge Incline IMO. Well, maybe except Darkvision. The earlier editions were really illogical, clunky and unintuitive. I'd like to think you were being sarcastic, but the inclusion of Darkvision kinda makes me doubt this.

 

[Alex]

Eh, I can understand why people thought THAC0 was illogical (it was just convoluted, not illogical; the logic on that point was still the same). And I actually agree the old saving throw categories seemed pretty arbitrary. However, the new system with only 3 categories manage to not match even Tunnels and Trolls (I think it was only in 5th that each attribute got its own save?). Furthermore, saving throws are still illogical in that they still abstract too much, to the point where whether you get a saving throw or not depends on the ability being resisted. For instance, why do you get a reflex save against fireballs? Does it represent you jumping away at the nick of time from the spell? If so, why don't you end up in a different position from where you started? If you are in a position where you can't dodge (such as trying to cross a rickety bridge), do you not get a saving throw? Saves are one aspect where you could improve over the old game a lot, and 3e did very little with that.

On the other hand, having separate experience tables for different characters made sense. Because different classes in 2e weren't, and still aren't in 3e, the same. Getting a magic user to be able to use 9th level spells was supposed to be a challenge, not simply the inevitable result of picking the magic user class and going through a long campaign. In 3e instead you got a whole lot of balancing that threw away a whole lot the charm and what was cool about the older game. Look at the charm person spell in the SRD. Its duration is now 1 hour/level. In 2e, charm person would last indefinitely; instead, the target would get new saving throw checks from time to time, based on its intelligence. A person of normal intelligence would get a check every 3 weeks. This meant that charm person was useful for all sorts of things, even long time plans. It could be used as a political intrigue weapon. Now it is pretty much just a combat spell.

 

[Haplo]

THAC0 was needlessly convoluted. And I really don't see the problem with "only" 3 save categories concerning:
Fortitude - bodily health, resistance to fatigue, poisons, diseases, negative energies and even instant death effects
Willpower - mental resistance to illusions and enchantments, as well as curses, transmutations and such
Reflex - ability to quickly respond to dangers, mitigate their effects (in your example this could be using a shield/furniture/foliage to hide behind to partially mitigate the explosion effect - it's usually for 1/2 effect after all), reaction speed and evade speed hampering obstacles. What you describe as jumping away would allow to fully negate the aoe effect - and it requires Evasion/Improved feats of Rogues and Monks. In case of those classes perhaps it would make sense to adjust their positioning basing on the evasion attempt.