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

[Melan]

THAC0 was a simple rule explained in the most ass-backwards way. Here it is, in plain words:

1. Roll 1d20 and subtract it from you THAC0. Apply modifiers.
2. The resulting number is the AC you have just hit.
3. There is no point 3.

This is all there is to it.

 

[Cael]

3.x's BAB is basically THAC0 with a + instead of a -

 

[Haplo]

It's not intuitive at all. THAC0 starts at an arbitrary number of 20 and goes down from that, AC starts at 10 and goes down from that. The lower your hitchance or AC the better you're off? It's not logical at all. Particularly when you want all the other numerical values to be highest possible. It's VERY counter-intuitive.

Sure, nerds who have played this system for the last 20 years will know it by heart and won't mind, but for a newcomer it's just mumbo-jumbo, it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Jason Liang]

... THAC0 stands for "To Hit AC 0". 20 means you need to roll a 20 to hit AC 0. 19 means you need to hit 19+ to hit AC 0, etc... This way the higher to roll, the better. Obviously as a character becomes more accurage, the lower the target number to hit AC0 should be.

Now, you might argue that instead of subtracting AC from THAC0, D&D should have made AC positive and simply add AC to the target number. In that case you'd make no armor AC 0, Full Plate AC 9, and start THAC0 at 10 instead of 20. Not sure why they didn't do that other than perhaps they didn't want THAC0 to go below 1.

 

[Telengard]

The other people who will (and did) intrinsically understand THAC0 is anyone who played any of the major strategy games of the day. Because Armor Class is just ripped from the IRL military Armor Classification system, much like all of the serious military strat games of the time did. THAC0 was not actually a direct game tool; it was just a useful base number with which to extract an armor rating table out of. Then (if you actually played right), you took the armor rating table and also used the weapon armor penetration table whenever making an attack.

Sure, casuals and power gamers never could wrap their heads around basic military terms, and needed everything reduced to a much more simplistic system, with subtraction and division stripped out, and definitely stripping out the armor penetration table ASAP. And D&D happily obliged, and began dumbing itself down while simultaneously bulking up its rules in order to define every little aspect of life in the game world, all in order to please those groups, until it all became a huge, snarly mess.

 

[Cael]

... THAC0 stands for "To Hit AC 0". 20 means you need to roll a 20 to hit AC 0. 19 means you need to hit 19+ to hit AC 0, etc... This way the higher to roll, the better. Obviously as a character becomes more accurage, the lower the target number to hit AC0 should be.

Now, you might argue that instead of subtracting AC from THAC0, D&D should have made AC positive and simply add AC to the target number. In that case you'd make no armor AC 0, Full Plate AC 9, and start THAC0 at 10 instead of 20. Not sure why they didn't do that other than perhaps they didn't want THAC0 to go below 1.

This is exactly what 3.x AC and BAB is about. They started at 10 so that there is a 50/50 chance a guy with 0 BAB would hit a guy with his willy out.

 

[Alex]

(...snip)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

While older editions may have had similar problems, I've always thought that fortitude saves in D&D can be completely against the inner logic of fantasy. I mean, sure, it makes sense that a really though character can withstand death from a vile poison. But resisting deaths spells by simply toughing them out seems like a cop out. Especially when a lot of those spells don't have any effect if they are resisted.

Willpower - mental resistance to illusions and enchantments, as well as curses, transmutations and such

And here we see already a limitation. Why would willpower be the kind of save associated with resisting illusions? Resisting illusions in D&D has always been about finding a contradiction on what your own eyes are seeing. So, I think intelligence would work as a much better attribute to base this save. In fact, in AD&D, a very high intelligence score made you immune to illusion spells of a certain level or below.

Strength could likewise be a useful stat in various spells. For instance, a "Str save" could allow you to hold on to some wall feature or statue to avoid falling up when a reverse gravity spell is cast. Now, I think that it would be very valid to complain here that this is not so much a save as it is a strength test. The difficulty of holding yourself against reverse gravity should depend on how good of a hold out you have and how much you weight in first place, not the level of the spell and whatever bonus the enemy wizard might have.

I would agree with you. But I think that should be the case for every save.

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.

Going on from what I was arguing, why should the difficulty of this save scale with spell level? Or the intelligence of the wizard? Or the charisma of the sorcerer (by they way, I still think having charisma as a spellcasting attribute is really dumb)? Would you be unable to save if you are in a bare room? Shouldn't the save be harder for a larger area spell? At least, if you have the improved evasion. Speaking of which, why do you need a feat to avoid the blast completely? I mean, it would make sense that someone might get lucky and avoid the blast, especially if they were already near the edge to begin with. Should the haste spell allow you to outrun area spells like fireball? Should the slow spell effectively remove the improved evasion feat from a slowed rogue?

My point is that a good DM could even work with how the new edition does saves, but he does so by working against the intent of the system. The saving throws don't give you any good tools to adjudicate saves based on the set up of the current "scene". Instead of building from the imaginary situation of the game, these rules override and define what the imaginary situation should be, or sometimes disregard those completely.

 

[DavidBVal]

On HP/wounds debate.

Vampire: the Masquerade Health Levels offered a nice & simple way to represent the penalties from being injured. However, it was a game not meant for frequent combat and in which healing was easily available to characters by merely spending blood, minimizing the frustration factor.

WFRP has the best HP system in my opinion. Basic human has 7hp, badass epic templar has 15hp, every hit after you're at zero hp brings horrible criticals. But of course that game had fate points (i.e., "lives").

In a fantasy game full with trash battles, we can't deny D&D HP bloat is what has worked best, historically.

 

[Dayyālu]

I'm rather suprised that the 'Dex is discussing what I always found minor annoyances (HP, AC) and as a plus the FUCKING SPELL SYSTEM. Sure, it's varied. Sure, it's huge.

It makes everything bar druids, clerics and mages useless. It's my personal saying that martials become useless as soon as you get Color Spray. So, immediately useless. Sure, "clever DM management". I have discovered the vast majority of DMs can't fully compete against a good player that knows his shit about the spell system, and if he does he manages to cripple even more the non- spellcasting classes.

Feat bloat. The entire feat system is chock-full of traps, bad choices, puzzling choices. Even supposedly "refined" 3.5 derivatives like Pathfinder.

HP and AC? What's the problem with them when casters can bypass the entire fucking system and nuke entire encounters? Class skills? What's the problem when casters can annihilate through spells everything?

It's a basic problem: if you say "then design the encounter to counter casters and make martials\rogue shine" you are already fighting against the system itself to rebalance things that are broken.

Even worse, martials do not enjoy the.... "status growth" in 3.5 derivatives. While casters become walking nukes capable of solving every problem, martials become marginally better at doing one thing, and have lost skills outside direct encounters (followers, political gain, gaining control of guilds and armies). 3.5 (in my experience) focused so much on murderhoboing that it became an end in itself.

 

[DavidBVal]

I'm rather suprised that the 'Dex is discussing what I always found minor annoyances (HP, AC) and as a plus the FUCKING SPELL SYSTEM. Sure, it's varied. Sure, it's huge.

It makes everything bar druids, clerics and mages useless. It's my personal saying that martials become useless as soon as you get Color Spray. So, immediately useless. Sure, "clever DM management". I have discovered the vast majority of DMs can't fully compete against a good player that knows his shit about the spell system, and if he does he manages to cripple even more the non- spellcasting classes.

Feat bloat. The entire feat system is chock-full of traps, bad choices, puzzling choices. Even supposedly "refined" 3.5 derivatives like Pathfinder.

HP and AC? What's the problem with them when casters can bypass the entire fucking system and nuke entire encounters? Class skills? What's the problem when casters can annihilate through spells everything?

It's a basic problem: if you say "then design the encounter to counter casters and make martials\rogue shine" you are already fighting against the system itself to rebalance things that are broken.

Even worse, martials do not enjoy the.... "status growth" in 3.5 derivatives. While casters become walking nukes capable of solving every problem, martials become marginally better at doing one thing, and have lost skills outside direct encounters (followers, political gain, gaining control of guilds and armies). 3.5 (in my experience) focused so much on murderhoboing that it became an end in itself.

This is "solved" by playing mostly between levels 1-8, when spell slots still work as a limitation and casters need to gauge when to use spells (if you spam them with several encounters/day, at least). In my case, I have always preferred to play low-level settings with slow XP progression so it's not been much of a problem.

After you reach certain level, well, yeah, it is a spellcaster system. Not two ways about it.

And indeed feat list is retardedly overcomplicated.

 

[Dayyālu]

This is "solved" by playing mostly between levels 1-8, when spell slots still work as a limitation and casters need to gauge when to use spells (if you spam them with several encounters/day, at least). In my case, I have always preferred to play low-level settings with slow XP progression so it's not been much of a problem.

It's a way to lessen the problem, but you'll admit that being forced to abandon 60% of the levels (and a shitton of spells and enemies) because "impossible to balance" is a tad more problematic than AC shenanigans.

Even worse, AC, HP, Skills, everything becomes secondary or useless. There is always a spell that will perform better than the guy who has been a rogue for fifteen levels. The Druid will outdamage in HtH combat the Barbarian. The Cleric will be better than the Warrior, and fuck reality in the meantime. Magical effects will cripple enemies far sooner than HP damage.

I'd guess this is a far, far worse problem than "wounds" and "HP". It makes both playing and GM'ing boring after a while. And trust me, i've played a shitton of 3.5 derivatives, it's pretty much all that is accepted in my God-forgotten town.

 

[Jason Liang]

Wizardry 1 managed to balance fighters and wizards quite well. The answer is vampires and liberal use of other level-draining, magic resistant undead.

Besides, it's an RPG. Just murder the wizard right before he reaches level 5. That will teach him to roll a fighter or a rogue next time.

 

[Haplo]

(...snip)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

While older editions may have had similar problems, I've always thought that fortitude saves in D&D can be completely against the inner logic of fantasy. I mean, sure, it makes sense that a really though character can withstand death from a vile poison. But resisting deaths spells by simply toughing them out seems like a cop out. Especially when a lot of those spells don't have any effect if they are resisted.

I do think there should be a way to resist them. Having "fit" characters have better chances of doing so, works for me. And it fits into the "rock, paper, scissors" approach.

Willpower - mental resistance to illusions and enchantments, as well as curses, transmutations and such

And here we see already a limitation. Why would willpower be the kind of save associated with resisting illusions? Resisting illusions in D&D has always been about finding a contradiction on what your own eyes are seeing. So, I think intelligence would work as a much better attribute to base this save. In fact, in AD&D, a very high intelligence score made you immune to illusion spells of a certain level or below.

Strength could likewise be a useful stat in various spells. For instance, a "Str save" could allow you to hold on to some wall feature or statue to avoid falling up when a reverse gravity spell is cast. Now, I think that it would be very valid to complain here that this is not so much a save as it is a strength test. The difficulty of holding yourself against reverse gravity should depend on how good of a hold out you have and how much you weight in first place, not the level of the spell and whatever bonus the enemy wizard might have.

I see your point regarding illusions. But its a universal system. Plus one where the DM can (and probably often should) make an arbitrary decision or modify rolls depending on player action descriptions.
Plus there are spells outside the standard saving throw framework. Including Str tests. Like the infamous Bigby line of spells featured in NWN games. Actually they often lead to problems with OP mages.

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.

Going on from what I was arguing, why should the difficulty of this save scale with spell level? Or the intelligence of the wizard? Or the charisma of the sorcerer (by they way, I still think having charisma as a spellcasting attribute is really dumb)?

It makes sense to me that a more experienced / talented caster will weave his spells in such a way they will be more difficult to resist/avoid.

Would you be unable to save if you are in a bare room? Shouldn't the save be harder for a larger area spell? At least, if you have the improved evasion. Speaking of which, why do you need a feat to avoid the blast completely? I mean, it would make sense that someone might get lucky and avoid the blast, especially if they were already near the edge to begin with. Should the haste spell allow you to outrun area spells like fireball? Should the slow spell effectively remove the improved evasion feat from a slowed rogue?

My point is that a good DM could even work with how the new edition does saves, but he does so by working against the intent of the system. The saving throws don't give you any good tools to adjudicate saves based on the set up of the current "scene". Instead of building from the imaginary situation of the game, these rules override and define what the imaginary situation should be, or sometimes disregard those completely.

Again, I do think it should be the DM's role to take such things into account. In PnP at least. The entire system is pretty abstract, starting from HP. But the interpretation is always in the hands of the DM. He can, and probably often should, alter the rules.

 

[Cael]

I'm rather suprised that the 'Dex is discussing what I always found minor annoyances (HP, AC) and as a plus the FUCKING SPELL SYSTEM. Sure, it's varied. Sure, it's huge.

It makes everything bar druids, clerics and mages useless. It's my personal saying that martials become useless as soon as you get Color Spray. So, immediately useless. Sure, "clever DM management". I have discovered the vast majority of DMs can't fully compete against a good player that knows his shit about the spell system, and if he does he manages to cripple even more the non- spellcasting classes.

Feat bloat. The entire feat system is chock-full of traps, bad choices, puzzling choices. Even supposedly "refined" 3.5 derivatives like Pathfinder.

HP and AC? What's the problem with them when casters can bypass the entire fucking system and nuke entire encounters? Class skills? What's the problem when casters can annihilate through spells everything?

It's a basic problem: if you say "then design the encounter to counter casters and make martials\rogue shine" you are already fighting against the system itself to rebalance things that are broken.

Even worse, martials do not enjoy the.... "status growth" in 3.5 derivatives. While casters become walking nukes capable of solving every problem, martials become marginally better at doing one thing, and have lost skills outside direct encounters (followers, political gain, gaining control of guilds and armies). 3.5 (in my experience) focused so much on murderhoboing that it became an end in itself.

Yes, yes, yes. And every caster is L20 and comes complete with a full complement of Extra Spells and Additional Spell slots feat and a special feat that allows them to spontaneously cast every spell in the game when they want, where they want without focus, material components or even somatic or verbal components. No wonder they beat the tar out of every one else.

As a veteran of over 20 years of playing DnD in every system up to 3.5, I have yet to see bog standard Fighters overshadowed by casters as thoroughly as the crybabies claim, and I play casters of every stripe almost exclusively. Never do I look down on Fighters for they have a role to play in the system, just like I do.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Late to the discussion and there's so much to cover...

Spells don't scale to address HP bloat at later levels.

That's when you start using your caster's Maximize and Empower feats. I don't remember all of the spells in D&D, but I do remember that there are several spell levels that don't have any damage-dealing spells. So you may as well fill those slots with lower-level maximized and empowered damage-dealing spells.

Also, like someone else pointed out, straight-up HP attrition is a tactic for chumps. There are so many more effective and fun builds and tactics out there. One of my personal favorites was the Spike Chain Tripper, A.K.A. Jack the Tripper: a spiked chain fighter who trips enemies when attacking, then makes attacks of opportunity when prone enemies try to move or stand up, and steps back 5 feet during every combat round, forcing any approaching enemies to enter his threatened squares again, and get AoO'ed and tripped again.

[Edit: And if we're just talking about spells here, there are tons of spells that instantly put your enemies out of the fight. You put your enemies to sleep or into a trance or turn them into mindslaves or whatever, and then you get free coup de gras attacks or you get to make your enemies fight each other.]

Feat bloat specifically, but content bloat more generally

This happens with every system as it ages. The author wants to sell more books. More spells, more feats, and more equipment all adds up to bloat. And for your wildshaping druid, more enemies means more bloat too, because those are your new wildshapes. I never really thought of that as a bad thing. It's just part of the metagame of building your character and part of the social game where you argue with your DM about what should be included.

Casters end up walking nuke launchers at later levels

I always thought of this as their reward for surviving with 1d4 hit points at first level. Also, if you're playing your caster right, you should be benefiting the whole group as you get XP because you're making magic items for them, thus exploiting the River of XP: When you're lower level than your partymates, you get more XP in every encounter. By staying just one level below them on their way to 20th level, you should accumulate something over 1,000,000 XP more than they get, which you should use to make magic items in order to stay below their level. This brings me to my next point, which I don't think anyone else has mentioned yet...

Wands
This is how you properly play a walking-arsenal caster. A spellcaster can use a fireball or two during his first encounter of the day, but the bulk of his firepower should come from wands. When you go into the Cave of Infinite Bugbears, your wizard can smoke maybe four or five of them per fireball, and if you just learned that fireball spell, you're not going to use it more than once or twice a day, so that fireball spell is worth up to 10 bugbears' worth of XP per day and then you hang back and cast Magic Missile until that's used up too. But if you learn that fireball spell and then immediately make a wand of it, then you can suddenly cast that fireball spell 20 times in a day (using up the wand in the process), killing about 100 bugbears in a day, and the XP value and treasure value of enemies incinerated via wand is worth way more than the XP and gold pieces you spent making that wand. And then you should take that extra XP (extra extra XP if you're also lower-level than your partymates and thus benefiting from the River of XP) and make another wand with it.

 

[Dayyālu]

Yes, yes, yes. And every caster is L20 and comes complete with a full complement of Extra Spells and Additional Spell slots feat and a special feat that allows them to spontaneously cast every spell in the game when they want, where they want without focus, material components or even somatic or verbal components. No wonder they beat the tar out of every one else.

As a veteran of over 20 years of playing DnD in every system up to 3.5, I have yet to see bog standard Fighters overshadowed by casters as thoroughly as the crybabies claim, and I play casters of every stripe almost exclusively. Never do I look down on Fighters for they have a role to play in the system, just like I do.

Lv. 1. Color Spray.

Lv. 2. Invisibility.


We're talking proper mechanics here, not "IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE FOR TWENTY YEARS I HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS". In my personal experience for fifteen years of playing 3.5 (and particularly 3.5 derivatives) I've seen casters costantly overshadow everything if the DM wasn't at least skilled enough to counter the in-built advantages. Casters enjoy mechanical superiority bar in very limited situations, and the supposed "limitations" (focus, material components, somatic and verbal) are trivial compared to how a martial can be stopped or completely fucked. If it incapacitates a caster-class, it mauls a Fighter. Remember, Druids and Clerics are casters. You don't have to live with a frail 6 HP thing that can cast nukes, you can live with a fully functional Fighter equivalent that can cast nukes.

I do not look down at Fighters, they just don't have a role to play in 3.5 derivatives. Like Monks, Barbarians, Bards and Rangers. A DM must plan to make them useful. I don't even like to play casters. It's a mere fact, and no amount of "IN MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE" is going to change that. OSR systems (Shadow of the Demon Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess for example) approach the problem far better, making for a better overall experience than 3.5. Pity I can't find a soul to play a campaign for them because everyone has a 3.5 fetish cult here.

If the thread can waste three pages on a meaningless point as HP\AC, surely it can waste some posts on a widely recognized weak point of 3.5.

EDIT: ohh, wait. You play mostly casters. Try not playing one and enjoy the fun. It will be.... enlightening if you reach Lv.4

That's when you start using your caster's Maximize and Empower feats. I don't remember all of the spells in D&D, but I do remember that there are several spell levels that don't have any damage-dealing spells. So you may as well fill those slots with lower-level maximized and empowered damage-dealing spells.

Also, like someone else pointed out, straight-up HP attrition is a tactic for chumps. There are so many more effective and fun builds and tactics out there. One of my personal favorites was the Spike Chain Tripper, A.K.A. Jack the Tripper: a spiked chain fighter who trips enemies when attacking, then makes attacks of opportunity when prone enemies try to move or stand up, and steps back 5 feet during every combat round, forcing any approaching enemies to enter his threatened squares again, and get AoO'ed and tripped again.

[Edit: And if we're just talking about spells here, there are tons of spells that instantly put your enemies out of the fight. You put your enemies to sleep or into a trance or turn them into mindslaves or whatever, and then you get free coup de gras attacks or you get to make your enemies fight each other.

Aww, yes. Someone who knows. Spiked chain fighers are fun to fight against full martials: I once used one as an arena fighter against my PCs, it was crazy fun. Thank God spells weren't allowed.

I always thought of this as their reward for surviving with 1d4 hit points at first level. Also, if you're playing your caster right, you should be benefiting the whole group as you get XP because you're making magic items for them, thus exploiting the River of XP: When you're lower level than your partymates, you get more XP in every encounter. By staying just one level below them on their way to 20th level, you should accumulate something over 1,000,000 XP more than they get, which you should use to make magic items in order to stay below their level. This brings me to my next point, which I don't think anyone else has mentioned yet...

Wands
This is how you properly play a walking-arsenal caster. A spellcaster can use a fireball or two during his first encounter of the day, but the bulk of his firepower should come from wands. When you go into the Cave of Infinite Bugbears, your wizard can smoke maybe four or five of them per fireball, and if you just learned that fireball spell, you're not going to use it more than once or twice a day, so that fireball spell is worth up to 10 bugbears' worth of XP per day and then you hang back and cast Magic Missile until that's used up too. But if you learn that fireball spell and then immediately make a wand of it, then you can suddenly cast that fireball spell 20 times in a day (using up the wand in the process), killing about 100 bugbears in a day, and the XP value and treasure value of enemies incinerated via wand is worth way more than the XP and gold pieces you spent making that wand. And then you should take that extra XP (extra extra XP if you're also lower-level than your partymates and thus benefiting from the River of XP) and make another wand with it.

 

[Cael]

Lv. 1. Color Spray.

Colour Spray? Seriously? You put your 1d4 hp caster within 15ft of a guy who might make his save? What the hell, man? Are you retarded?

Go get Grease. Longer range, save or fall prone (no Dex) and even with save, unless he has 5 RANKS of Balance, is flatfooted. Half speed, which requires another save or Balance check. Meanwhile, your Rogue goes to town with sneak attacks.

Alternatively, get Sleep and carry a scythe. Any who fail their saves get coup de grace with a 2d4 x4 crit weapon and it doesn't matter that you aren't profficient in it.

Your 15 years of experience with the system was poorly spent.

 

[Dayyālu]

Lv. 1. Color Spray.

Colour Spray? Seriously? You put your 1d4 hp caster within 15ft of a guy who might make his save? What the hell, man? Are you retarded?

Go get Grease. Longer range, save or fall prone (no Dex) and even with save, unless he has 5 RANKS of Balance, is flatfooted. Half speed, which requires another save or Balance check. Meanwhile, your Rogue goes to town with sneak attacks.

Alternatively, get Sleep and carry a scythe. Any who fail their saves get coup de grace with a 2d4 x4 crit weapon and it doesn't matter that you aren't profficient in it.

Your 15 years of experience with the system was poorly spent.

Then we evolve at ad hominem and you just prove caster supremacy at low levels again (Sleep, Grease).

Thanks for proving my point

I'll give you a good exercise, then: prove to me that Caster Supremacy does not exist and that the 3.5 system, out of the box, with a standard DM gives both martials and casters the same chances to shine in both combat encounters and standard play. It's a fool's errand, of course, but I'll give you a chance.

EDIT: We can even discuss further the thing, how 4th ed and 5th ed approached the problem, and how Pathfinder's way (the plethora of "something-based" classes like Gunslinger, Swashbuckler and Inquisitor) didn't engage the problem properly.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

Oh, and on the subject of HP: Maybe Gygax did say that it was meant to be more a symbol of fatigue and small wounds, until you finally fail to parry the blow that takes you to 0 HP, but he never treated it that way until 4e.

Attacks deal damage that you have to heal. After a single bad fight in 3.5 or AD&D, you would spend a month recuperating at the rate of 1 HP per day when you can get a full night's rest. The cleric in the party can only do so much to keep you a live during a fight. He's much more useful in increasing your healing rate with the use of spells like Cure Serious Wounds, which he will have to cast multiple times over multiple days in order to get the party back on its feet after a tough fight.

That doesn't sound like fatigue or small cuts and bruises to me.

And the use of healing spells, by the way, is what made every RPG since D&D have a healer class. In stories of epic heroes, we see swordsmen, archers, wizards, and even sneaky assassins. But the idea of adding a cleric into the mix--the guy whose job it is to help people heal from their wounds--only happened after D&D. And it's kind of a lame ability, which is why 4e finally introduced other "leader" classes whose abilities are all some variation on "hit something for damage and heal someone at the same time."

And Dayyālu I've never played 5th edition, but 4e basically addressed the problem of caster superiority by making everyone the same. Whether you're a wizard casting a spell, or a fighter swinging a sword, you all get the same number of at-will, encounter, and daily abilities. They all do comparable amounts of damage, and they all get stronger at the same rate. Did you have other observations?

 

[DavidBVal]

Wizardry 1 managed to balance fighters and wizards quite well. The answer is vampires and liberal use of other level-draining, magic resistant undead.

I think the unbalance between classes brought up by Dayyalu here is about tabletop, where you play ONE character and allegedly should have fun with it. It is true that in a level 14 party, the pure melee classes become irrelevant unless the DM tailors every encounter to give them things to do and makes up ways to hamper spellcasters. Of course a cRPG crawler like Wizardry with a front row would still use meatshields, but that doesn't mean it'd be fun to play as one...

Anyways, for those so concerned with 3.5 unbalances the solution is simple. Play 5ed in which they reduced considerably the spell slots per day and nearly removed the "save or die" spells.

 

[Dayyālu]

Nathaniel3W , yeh, 4th "solved" the problem in a rather brutal and direct way. It was an attempt, though.

Anyways, for those so concerned with 3.5 unbalances the solution is simple. Play 5ed in which they reduced considerably the spell slots per day and nearly removed the "save or die" spells.

Again, nothing to say, you are right. But if we have to consider the true weak points of D&D 3.X, it's not AC or HP or Skills. It's, from a basic perspective:

1) Caster Supremacy
2) Feat Bloat\Feat "traps"
3) Atrocious Class Balance (even if we avoid Caster Supremacy, some classes like Monk aren't simply good enough to work properly)
4) Without DM intervention, excessive focus on murdehoboing and not enough on "expanded play"

Going from the perspective of a new player, from a game I'll expect to be built to give people something useful to do and a chance to have fun. 3.x works, but its shortcomings are kinda obvious after a while. Sure, I'll never properly metabolize the Paladin changes in 5th ed., but I guess something had to be done....

 

[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.

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.

Ever heard of summons? They are generally better than fighters because they tend to be dispensable. Now understand the terrible condition the martial is in: It is worse because it's not dispensible. Sure at level 3 your summons last 3 rounds, but at level 9 they roflstomp everything that is debilitated by the mage.

 

[Nathaniel3W]

vivec A caster who has some summons available for meat shields definitely makes the job easier. But if you're a druid, it's not even necessary. Just cast Bear's Endurance on your animal companion, wildshape into a bear (or dire bear) yourself, and then you have plenty of plenty of AC and HP to protect yourself while casting Flame Strike and Call Lightning.

 

[DavidBVal]

I'd guess this is a far, far worse problem than "wounds" and "HP". It makes both playing and GM'ing boring after a while. And trust me, i've played a shitton of 3.5 derivatives, it's pretty much all that is accepted in my God-forgotten town.

You want to focus on the worse only? Well, those problems can be fixed with houserules and whatnot, but 3.5 will always be a slogfest. I mean, when a level 17 paladin attacks and you need to add/remove all the bonuses to hit and to damage for each... power attack, divine might, smite evil... etc etc. Monks are even worse. I've had turns last 30 minutes, and fights last a whole session.

 

[Dzupakazul]

Another issue as to why the cRPG analogue doesn't work, in my opinion, is that video game wizards are much more constrained in how they're able to flaunt their power compared to the ones possible at a heavily optimized D&D 3.5 table. You can't use scry or die tactics, you can't read minds of NPCs, you can't just Dominate the first important person in your way and become the de facto ruler of a whole country, the various variations on the Polymorph spell don't let you choose from every single possible splatbook in the universe to achieve a form that is a regular humanoid, but with +10 bonus AC, bonus reach and mild spell resistance or whatever else (I'm probably grossly exaggerating here). Even if the mage is the de facto most powerful class in the game, it mostly shows in how much damage they pack and how can they abuse buffs and spell interactions.

Martials in 3.x are supposed to be good at dealing damage. And they genuinely are in most cases; problem is, casters generally can do damage *and more*, or simply deliver that damage in a multitude of different ways. I think the reason Cael has never seen rampant caster supremacy at his table is that many players do not really explore the absolute depths of what the wizard class is capable of, especially with how computer RPGs condition us to believe that Fireball is the best spell ever. And it's not unlikely that the classic party markup was meant to include a burly frontliner, a healbot, a blaster caster and a dickass thief; within such boundaries, the "classic party" can still work if some restraint is observed. Of course, rather than playing policeman to yourself so that you aren't accidentally too useful, it'd probably also be easier to just move to 4e or 5e...

Of course, the other 3.x problem is that martials don't have much to do other than declaring full attack as an action. Tome of Battle definitely helps in that regard. Really, I think that you can have a somewhat well-balanced party where everyone has fun with their clearly defined role if you go for something like Warblade, Sorcerer, Beguiler and... idk, Favored Soul?

EDIT: Also, Color Spray has a shorter cast time, stays relevant longer and is an obvious favourite in choke points and other tight corridors, which are, well, what a lot of dungeon architecture looks like. It's probably the best self-defense a level 1 mage has at his disposal, should push come to shove.