วีดีโอ

I think if the PC and NPC squad building rules had just a bit more clarification, more people would have invested in the RPG elements over tactical wargame. Something like "I want to be an Imperial Guard. So I roll up a LT and get a 10 man squad equipped with xyz and one pick from the special category (mole mortar, walker, ogryn, etc). More clearly defined starting builds.

Great thing was the books only cost $30 brand new each. I played 3.5 and still run a campaign in it. It can get a bit crunchy compared to newer systems like 5e but my group enjoys that. Higher levels get very powerful especially compared to 5e but the ability to run a low magic game is incredibly more viable because only spell casters had spells.

Slandered? Decried? Really? I loved it! But admittedly, I liked 3.5 more. And nothing beats BECMI, for me. Even for its flaws. But I digress.

I don't have any bad memories of 3e, but I do remember people trashing it after 3.5e came out. I just thought it was still good.

NO WOKE! nothing more to add.

I stopped by because I use an orange Bic pencil as well! Aside from not having this game, I almost thought the thumbnail was a pic I had taken.

3.0 is currently my favorite version. I love the art style. I think the mechanics are solid. I also love how many extra modules, settings and 3rd party books there are for it.

I prefer 3rd edition to 3.5 I liked the haste spell in 3rd edition, and i preferred the buff spells (bulls str, owls wisdom etc) to be 1 hr/lvl I only played AD&D for about a year, but I think I'm right in saying they transferred a few spells from that system to 3rd edition, without considering any balance changes. One example (I think) is the Harm spell. In earlier editions you'd have a save v's spell, a cleric could have a 2+ save v's spell (which meant Harm would work 5% of the time) but in 3rd edition because the DC was based on a stat and possible feats, it made Harm difficult to prevent Regarding high levels. I remember running a level 17 to lvl 20 one off Christmas special, it ran very smoothly. Especially considering the players were new to their characters In Pathfinder (3.75 edition) i don't like infinite cantrip spells, because it negates resources. A group with a spellcaster that has unlimited light spells means you’ll never need to take torches

One of my fave sets cuz of the art work.

I played it, and I still do. And I still play p99 and daybreak. lol.

6:20 what is that little book? The rules of the new expansión or so?

3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Settings is one of the best of all D&D history.

Sorry I was there from the 2nd ed to 3.0 transition... 3.0 is a crime against gaming good ideas dog sh t implementation. 3.5 sure... it has its good points. If you could not figure out thac0 you probably lack the imagination required to play a game of the mind. But we went back to playing 1.0 have been since. Because all the books and modules were dirty cheap Like I picked up a fiend folio for 50 cents. Players hand book 2 dollars. Monsters manual a buck.

Anyone who is interested in any version of Fantasy RPGs should absolutely read Appendix N books! I love the Lankhmar boxed set, its great for Sword and Sorcery.

It was the golden age of rpgs. Especially for third party creators.

No, you aren't going to get away with perpetuating this nonsense about THAC0 requring a PhD in Math in order to understand. It's not an algorithmic equation. THAC0 minus die roll equals Armor Class hit. That's literally all there is to it. It even uses the same numerical gradations as 3e onwards. My math skills were so abysmal that I failed out of the lowest calibre math course in college with flying colors, as in I did not pass a single quiz or test in that entire semester. I had to struggle to earn a C- in a summer remedial math course afterwards. All this, and I had no difficulty understanding THAC0 when I played AD&D 2nd edition in middle and high school. Trying to understand why people hate THAC0 is harder than actually understanding THAC0.

3.0 is far superior to the crappy joke that is 5.0. My buddies and I still play 3.0 and after reading just the phb for 5.0 we all agreed how stupid and dumbed down it was then promptly went back to 3.0.

this might be weird but i googled the store that second magazine came from..and I think its a store in alberta canada that actually still has two locations

im not sure if this is really true or not but i'd heard in the nineties the second most played ttrpg (after D&D) was actually West End Games Star Wars Roleplaying Game, the old D6 one.

I hate 3.0 and 3.5. It's not very good. It is too gamified.

B/X player myself, but Odnd seems cool! Need to try it sometime🎉

I enjoy 2e because there is so much material you can play. Everything from AD&D you can play without some of the downsides. The only thing you need to add is the Thac0 for those monsters from the MM and you are set to go. Thac0 is not a big deal to me, it was just explained very poorly in the rule books. Regular D&D from that time gave a much better description of it.

I and my brother play adnd with my dad and when ever we have to play 5th we just want to rip are hair out bc of how unenjoyable it is too play

3e is so good and godly compared to 5e 😂

I believe there was a legal reason why they continued the basic series.

You expressed my exact feelings on 5th Edition. We started a game and ended up going all the way back to 1st Edition.

Gygaxian Prose... it's endearing.

I bought the wagon by itself, and one big problem with it is that the bed is not large enough to accommodate a miniature base. This seems like a pretty significant flaw. Also, the wood grain is cartoonishly exaggerated, but that's more a question of taste. I plan on applying a layer of GW's Liquid Green Stuff before priming/painting, to try to tone down the grain.

Great Book !!!

We stuck with 3.0 for awhile.

As a kid I preferred the b/x version and never got characters survive till the 14th level anyway. I recall switching over to advanced d&d at some point because that’s what my friends wanted to do because “advanced” sounds so clever and grown up compared to a basic game for kids. But to be honest I preferred the b/x version. The procedures for dungeon and wilderness adventures spelled out simply and the simple character creation. It just seemed more fun and more contained. Although the monster manual was a fun book to look at.

I have never played 3e... And probably never will. But I collect the books because it actually has lore and world building in them. My one big frustration with 5e is how hands off they are about defining the setting. And as a dm, I find that super annoying! Sure, my players may find ways to break cannon, and change the world around them. As a dm that is my job to track that. But the 5e setting is just a bland empty blank slate of "do what you want with it" that it puts all the work on me to build the world... At which point I'm just going to homebrew because then I know the back story and history of the world. But the 3e books have actual detail and events that you can pin a story to when you aren't going through a module. And I wish that d&d would do a better job of defining their setting and characters, with the understanding that the rules are easily transferred to a homebrew if you prefer that route.

The only edition I have heard any real hate on is 4e. And typically the critique is just that it is such a slog to actually play, so most greatly simplified things to keep everything moving. I think 3.5 gets a lot more love than 3.0, and people prefered ad&d or 5e over 3... But outright hate isn't a thing I've really come across.

I run 1e. But, 3e is actually a good game. With one proviso: any content used by PCs beyond the 3 core books needs to be weaker than typical content in the 3 core books. That means you can go ahead and make a Jedi prestige class, have fun, but don't make it more powerful than a Paladin. Unfortunately almost all splatbooks and especially 3rd party OGL content had absolutely no sense of game balance or testing to close loopholes. If you're a player who wants to run a hot build some more intelligent powergamer on the Internet wrote for you, and you want to enjoy breezing through a campaign and stunting on the DM, there are a lot of tables you're not going to have much fun at regardless of edition. Those tables are probably running some good D&D. But you're welcome to join some Zoom shitshow with a handful of randos with Critical Role quote soundboards. Everyone will be happier for it.

I love D&D 3.5e so much. My first proper experience with tabletop roleplaying games was when covid hit in 2020~2021. I started playing TTRPGs as an adult with D&D 5e, as is tradition at this point. After playing quite a bit of 5e, I got invited to a 3.5e table in January of 2023 and I've been having a blast, it very quickly became my favorite system between the two, and between me having played every CRPG at that point and having already experienced a d20 system, it was super easy to make a character, sit down, and play. There's so much content, so many things you can do and use as inspiration, both as a player and a DM, and I still think having a single codified system to build PCs, NPCs, creatures, etc, is great. Currently, I'm playing in a campaign, with all content available (and with players who adhere to the gentlemen's agreement) in a high-ish level party (my character is about to hit lvl 14) and it's so cool. Each character is so different and can do so many different things, creatures are unique, with the DM throwing enemies with templates and class levels into the fray once in a while, and the magic is wild. It's just so much fun. I really feel that sense of the world being rich with magic and peril. There's a lot of complexity, yes, but the biggest pitfall of the system in my opinion is the abundance of small stacking bonuses one has to keep in mind, and some of them are circumstantial or specific (like having + 1 caster level to spells of type X). it's a lot of tracking. Nowadays, with digital tools (we use gsheet to keep track of everything), it's a lot less of an issue, but still something to keep in mind. People will complain about the balance of the system, how you can make broken characters (both too powerful and too weak) and, while that's definitely true, a benefit that comes with teh system being so old at this point is that the community has all of that mapped out. The group can go in knowing exactly what they are getting into and decide which options to use and how. The system as it is today empowers the group to play the game they want essentially, instead of constraining you to a very specific narrow band, which is a plus to me as I enjoy the game aspects as much as I do the roleplay aspects of the tabletop roleplaying game experience. The change from 3.0 to 3.5e, from what I understand, fixed a lot of small, baseline things. Polymorph, Hastes, better rules for stacking bonuses, the DR changes. Some of those might not be seen as fixes by everybody, but I think for most tables those work better the way they are in 3.5e than how they work in 3.0e. It's pretty funny to see how much Polymorph got changed from 3.0 to 3.5e and then during the lifetime of 3.5e. They really didn't know what to do with that class of spells. And some people seem to think that PF 1e is a replacement for 3.5e, but, the way I see it, it's more of a lateral move. They de-emphasized Prestige Classes (one of my favorite aspects of 3.5e) in favor of having hundreds of archetypes, and pulverized the feats only to make a bunch more feat trees. CMD/CMB is a wash. It makes some things simpler but it's also another thing to keep track of. Anyhow, if you feel constrained by D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, or other similar systems, and you'd like something familiar, give 3.5e a go. It gives you a lot to work with, and those things also work great as a canvas or inspiration for homebrew.

3.0/3.5 was, and still is, the greatest edition. 2e was janky, way too focused on instant-death effects, loved percentage rolls, and come on, THAC0. 4e was made to appeal to WoW players. It's an MMO in a book. 5e is an attempt to step back closer to 3e but it doesn't go nearly far enough. It's too stripped-down and has no depth whatsoever. You have the bones of the most lackluster RPG ever designed, and not enough material to flesh it out. When a newer edition of D&D revisits Incarnum or Pact Magic classes, I'll give it a look. But after that debacle with the OGL, WOTC is never seeing another copper coin from me.

3e introduced the OGL and d20 system. Two things that are still with us and contributed to the long levity and success of D&D. 3.5 fixed quite a few of its biggest problems, especially with the core classes. It's a bit too detailed and complex, but otherwise its bones have survived in all versions of D&D since.

Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia is the holy grail of RPG.

I have played DnD since 1979. I still have my first character I ever played. I loved 3.0 and when it went 3.5, it became the GOAT. At a time when DnD was basically an afterthought, this put DnD in front of EVERYBODY. The D20 OGL brought gaming back. I tried 4.0, just trash. And now the 5.0 is a little to, shall I say politically correct when it comes to the way it's setup, so to each their own. To this day I still have over 150 hardcover books and probably that many soft covers for 3.0-3.5. I am still playing in a group running a 3.5 edition. The players actually prefer this version of DnD since they came from a 5.0 game. It's a bit more complicated they have said, but overall they all say the same thing. More options, and more fun.

Early D20 seemed like a middle-ground between older Dungeons & Dragons and Rolemaster. Similar concepts around skill ranks, roll high to succeed, etc. But D20 classes make it harder to create specific characters, and specific historical characters, without special powers; at least in PF, Rogues aren't going to be very good at animal handling and riding.

oh yeah! Man Alone!!

Wait… I’m out of the general community of d&d but I’ve been playing since back in the Ad&d era… does anyone actually believe 3.0 is a bad edition? That’s plainly delusional.

I don't understand the hate. I basically played this from 2000-2015 and somewhat beyond. Aside from some minor tweaks 3.0, 3.5, Pathfinder 1 are all the same game. Some of the features I loved from that edition were the crafting of magic items where you could make magic items but had to spend XP to invest them with magical power, and the ECL rules for playing monstrous characters. When 3.5 came out the only book I bought was the Players Handbook. I might have eventually gotten round to the Monster Manual. But there were not so many changes that it really mattered. 3.0 felt like a really nice improvement over 2nd Edition which was basically the 3.5 of 1st edition.

Nice video! Very helpful when making a character!

Loved 3.0. Enjoyed 3.5 as well. I was driven away from the game by 4.0 and now play PF.

A side mention - 4th ed. helped give rise to the 1st ed. of Pathfinder. I have heard Pathfinder 1st ed. referred to as D&D 3.75.

I started playing in '82. One of the things I think needs mentioning is the quality of the original 1st ed. books. Many of the other books from other editions I've played have fallen apart in fairly short order; my old 1st ed. books are in better condition than the newer books, despite having been moved around repeatedly & used extensively. Also, I would argue that the 1st ed. Bard is the first Prestige Class.

You missed a bunch of editions including the best, B/X

3.5 or Die... Its THE BEST PERIOD 5e players will have their minds blown THAC0 was basically a quick math that reflects the 1rst Edition hit tables ( you looked up your score and cross referenced by AC) You can download 3.5 update material for the 3.0 books if you are stuck with a 3.0 books 3.5 just tweeked a bunch of stuff that was messed up in 3.0 I use both 3.0 and 3.5 most people do because some books never got a 3.5 update, just an update .pdf Most people who hate it are 5e players who never really played 3.5/3.0 3.0 - 3.5 barely changed actually Harm is a 6th level spell the opposite of heal... You need to be 11th level to cast that spell, you should be facing pretty tough creatures by then CR 11+ its hardly broken, remember that SR is a thing, also not going to work in any encounters with Undead (which is VERY common) 11th level is powerful look at other 6th level spells a lot of them are doozies 3.5 fixed a lot of the CR ratings for most encounters, traps and monsters Because something with a CR of 11 or 12 would have a good chance of ressisting it even without a saving throw, the cleric needs to make a melee touch attack to use it as well,

3rd was good the way 4th was good. And likely the way 5th was good. Which is to say they should have left the game alone at AD&D 1st edition and worked on making ROLE play the point and not ROLL play. Because D&D has become nothing but a math test. There is little point for the Intelligence stat, and Wisdom is also a why bother stat, and Charisma is are you serious? stat. D&D is only for the combat. Which make me think 4th was back stabbed to sell more books all over again. Anyone buying 5th 2024 is a willing sucker and fool. If you want quality settings and adventures, you want something other than D&D. Warhammer FRP any edition, Forbidden Lands, A group that actually like roleplaying. Roleplaying in D&D just ends up being called a pointless waste of time.