Inspired by one of Pundits new vid threads.

For those of you that did change over from an older edition of D&D to 3e. How smoothly or not did it go for you?

I never got to play it much as the players disbabded after a few sessions due to moving away or just far away enough gathering was not really viable anymore. But for me 3e felt alot like 2e and even used large chunks of text from A and 2e D&D books. The only thing I had any hassles with was figuring out the feat tree and how the BABs factored in. Once got all that more or less sorted out it was not too bad really once you got to actual gameplay. Just a bit more moving parts than I tend to like. The DM though loved 3e and still does. His transition to 3e was boom! we there! lets go!

And I guess the same applies to other RPGs.

Shadowrun comes to mind. I tend to prefer 1st ed. But have played alot more 2e. Transitioning to 2e was for me fairly smooth once got used to some of the changes. 3e was meh and 4e was just blah.

I tired to transition when 3rd ed came out. I liked the concept of a framework that covered everything, and where you only had to learn one set of "rules" - that would cover all classes, spells and abilities. But it didn't quite work for me - for 3 main reasons.
1) There were too many edge cases that RAW, didn't make any sense. Like how your bard was (and always would be) way better than your barbarian at intimidating people.
2) The Feats broke the game in ways that did not make sense in my world. Like the quick reload xbow feat - perfectly fine in game rules terms, game breaker for me in verisimilitude terms. There were far too many feats to try to come up with a set that made sense for my game.
3) There were far, far too many splat books that added "semi-official" classes and so forth. As a GM you couldn't keep up, and players would be unhappy if you refused to allow their latest favourite class because you didn't have access to the book.  

So. I tried to like 3rd ed, but it just wasn't for me in the end. Put me in the "Not Smoothly" category!

My groups have played pretty much all of the editions along the way. Transition from OD&D to AD&D was easy. Transition from AD&D to 2E was easy. Transition from 2E to 3E was hard. I feel like OD&D through 2E was a gradual evolution of ideas, but 3E was a total redesign and reboot.

In other words if you take OD&D (plus supplements and Strategic Review) and re-arrange the contents, you get something very similar to AD&D. Sure, AD&D was expanded over OD&D, but OD&D had most of the classes (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-user, Assassin, Druid, Thief, Monk, Bard, Illusionist, etc) and a high percent of the monsters and the magical items. AD&D felt like the same game as OD&D, but organized better. Same with 2E, which felt like you could have taken 1E and Dragon Magazine and Unearthed Arcana and whatnot, then recast it into the second edition. Then 2E had all those other add-on books that evolved into ...

... well, not 3E. 3E doesn't have the 2E feel. It doesn't look or feel like someone took 2E and supplements and just re-organized. 3E feels like a whole new game.

I see the editions like this:
Type-I: OD&D, AD&D, 2E
Type-II: 3E, 3.5, Pathfinder, PF2?
Type-III: 4E
Type-IV: 5E (blend of all of the above)

I bought a lot of stuff in the Type-II category, but I just never could mix it well with Type-I. For example, a Type-I monster statblock takes a line and the info is a small paragraph, but a Type-II monster statblock has all these extras (monster stats, special powers, etc.) and fills a page. I always figured that in theory I could just ignore the parts I didn't need, but the scale of stats and hit points and AC are all different so the monsters don't seem to translate well.

Dunno if that helps or not.

I've never DM'd 3e so that is one part I cant speak on for transitioning from old to new on the DM side. As a player it was a little confusing but not bad. I've never really looked too deeply at the monsters in 3e. Probably should some day.

Makes me curious if I'd have as easy a time learning to DM 3e as did playing it.

Quote from: spon;1136651I tired to transition when 3rd ed came out. I liked the concept of a framework that covered everything, and where you only had to learn one set of "rules" - that would cover all classes, spells and abilities. But it didn't quite work for me - for 3 main reasons.
1) There were too many edge cases that RAW, didn't make any sense. Like how your bard was (and always would be) way better than your barbarian at intimidating people.
2) The Feats broke the game in ways that did not make sense in my world. Like the quick reload xbow feat - perfectly fine in game rules terms, game breaker for me in verisimilitude terms. There were far too many feats to try to come up with a set that made sense for my game.
3) There were far, far too many splat books that added "semi-official" classes and so forth. As a GM you couldn't keep up, and players would be unhappy if you refused to allow their latest favourite class because you didn't have access to the book.  

So. I tried to like 3rd ed, but it just wasn't for me in the end. Put me in the "Not Smoothly" category!

It is a lot simpler to roll a d20 add in your attack Bonus and see whether that equals or exceeds your opponents Armor class to determine whether you hit or miss, than to subtract your d20 roll plus your attack Bonus from 10 to determine whether you matched or went below your opponent's Armor class for hit determination the way AD&D did it. Why would you want to do that?

3e changed A LOT of things mechanically relative to 2e and almost all of those changes were things that upped the complexity quite a bit (all monsters being built exactly like PCs for example made it a lot more work for GMs to homebrew their own) and unbalanced spellcasters relative to everything else by taking away most of 1/2e's restrictions, but adding nothing to replace them. Conversion CAN be done, but you'd almost be better served just building from scratch "in the spirit of" the previous version than any sort of hard and fast "this = this" conversion.

One piece of advice I will give because it is absolutely critical; the 3.5e core books are actually where the MOST broken (good and bad) classes and spells are found (there's a reason the term CoDzilla is a thing and why Godwizard is also tossed around. Doing the quite typical "core only" setup is more likely to cause problems than fix things. Later non-core books actually had far better designed and thematic classes (in fact, I've seen far more successful 3.5e campaigns where everything, but the bard*, barbarian, ranger and rogue in the the PHB is banned, but classes from any other WotC supplement are allowed... than campaigns where 'core only' is the rule).

A good discussion of the relative strengths of the many 3.5e classes can be found HERE.

My personal recommendation after years of play is that limiting class choices to those listed in tiers 3 and 4 will lead to the strongest campaigns. The classes in those tiers have the tools needed to shine in their area of focus, but lack the game-breaking abilities that the tier 1 and 2 classes can acquire (sometimes completely by accident).

Until you get a better feel for it, let your players know that because there are some really game-breaking (and character gimping) options throughout 3e, you'll be making adjustments to what is and isn't allowed in your game. Once you're more aware of the problem points you'll just be able to do that from the start... but until you do, being frank that 3e has a learning curve for DMs as well as players and fixing problems will be better in the long run than just living with them, is a good thing.

Quote from: finarvyn;1136653My groups have played pretty much all of the editions along the way. Transition from OD&D to AD&D was easy. Transition from AD&D to 2E was easy. Transition from 2E to 3E was hard. I feel like OD&D through 2E was a gradual evolution of ideas, but 3E was a total redesign and reboot.

In other words if you take OD&D (plus supplements and Strategic Review) and re-arrange the contents, you get something very similar to AD&D. Sure, AD&D was expanded over OD&D, but OD&D had most of the classes (Fighter, Cleric, Magic-user, Assassin, Druid, Thief, Monk, Bard, Illusionist, etc) and a high percent of the monsters and the magical items. AD&D felt like the same game as OD&D, but organized better. Same with 2E, which felt like you could have taken 1E and Dragon Magazine and Unearthed Arcana and whatnot, then recast it into the second edition. Then 2E had all those other add-on books that evolved into …

… well, not 3E. 3E doesn't have the 2E feel. It doesn't look or feel like someone took 2E and supplements and just re-organized. 3E feels like a whole new game.

I see the editions like this:
Type-I: OD&D, AD&D, 2E
Type-II: 3E, 3.5, Pathfinder, PF2?
Type-III: 4E
Type-IV: 5E (blend of all of the above)

I bought a lot of stuff in the Type-II category, but I just never could mix it well with Type-I. For example, a Type-I monster statblock takes a line and the info is a small paragraph, but a Type-II monster statblock has all these extras (monster stats, special powers, etc.) and fills a page. I always figured that in theory I could just ignore the parts I didn't need, but the scale of stats and hit points and AC are all different so the monsters don't seem to translate well.

Dunno if that helps or not.

It's the skills than make the stat block entries so long, every character has them, as does every monster entry in the Monster Manual, under AD&D the longest statblocks where those of spellcasters because you had to write a list of their spells, the ones that weren't spellcasters were very short, and skills weren't emphasized very much in AD&D. Each character class had a set of built in abilities, thieves could pick pockets, backstab, find traps and secret doors and pick locks, those were turned into skills and Feats.

Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 characters are more customizable than AD&D characters, because of that, the stat sheets were longer than those for AD&D. If you wanted to know what your AD&D thief could do, you just had to look it up in the Player's Handbook and cross reference it with you character's level, all thieves had the same abilities having to do with their character's level and ability scores, in 3.5, you have to write that information on your character Sheet, because the abilities he has depend on the player's choice for those characters and he has to write those down on the character Sheet, this produces long stat blocks.

I like 3.5 because it is part of the d20 system, rpg companies have moved on and produced their own proprietary game systems because they like to keep their game designers busy. I like d20 because it is universal, can be adapted to a modern or futuristic setting, you can create your own character classes, with the propriatary rpg systems a lot more work is involved. If you want to make D20 Modern using 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons, you have to make up for the lack of skills that system has as Modern characters are going to need more skills than is supplied by 5th Edition D&D, but 3.5 is good for that.

It was an easy transition for our group, but I don't think we are a good case study.  Because what we actually did was go from 1E/BEMCI to Fantasy Hero to 3E.  Plus, I rather like learning new systems when they are pointed at a genre and space that I like to run.  Plus, in the FH interval, there was of course some changes in the players that make up the group.  Since 3E was in part deliberately designed to edge into Hero/GURPS territory, we were already primed.   For those reason, I have no regrets at giving 3E a solid run, but I do wish I had stopped after campaign #2 instead of trying campaign #3.

Also, 3E is so much easier at low levels than it is at mid to high levels, and the difficulties can sneak up on you.  So for us, it was this thing that was easier than FH at first but later was more complicated.  Which is why now rather than run 3E, I'd just provide some appropriate limits and maybe prebuilt packages in FH and go with that.  A little more work up front, but run a lot smoother.

AFAICR 3e seemed simple enough at low level. It took a while to get a game to 3rd level where the problems with caster/martial imbalance really appeared - a level 3 Cleric could easily buff to be better than a level 3 Fighter. Of course it only got far worse from there!

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1136666It was an easy transition for our group, but I don't think we are a good case study.  Because what we actually did was go from 1E/BEMCI to Fantasy Hero to 3E.  Plus, I rather like learning new systems when they are pointed at a genre and space that I like to run.  Plus, in the FH interval, there was of course some changes in the players that make up the group.  Since 3E was in part deliberately designed to edge into Hero/GURPS territory, we were already primed.   For those reason, I have no regrets at giving 3E a solid run, but I do wish I had stopped after campaign #2 instead of trying campaign #3.

Also, 3E is so much easier at low levels than it is at mid to high levels, and the difficulties can sneak up on you.  So for us, it was this thing that was easier than FH at first but later was more complicated.  Which is why now rather than run 3E, I'd just provide some appropriate limits and maybe prebuilt packages in FH and go with that.  A little more work up front, but run a lot smoother.

That is the fault of the character classes. If you design a character class right, they don't get too powerful. One suggestion I have is you can use D20 Modern in fantasy gaming. Use the Modern core character classes in a fantasy setting, swap out the modern stuff for medeaval equipment.

Others have addressed mechanical specifics, I'll speak anecdotally. We had a pretty large gaming group going when 3e came out, and it divided us -- half of us went on to adopt 3e, and the other half stuck with 2e. The 3e group disintegrated before 5th level, while the 2e group is still playing today.

For me, it was the introduction of Feats that completely changed the timber of the game, and syphoned creativity from our sessions like a nerd with a straw sucking from bottle of Mt. Dew.

Note, we didn't attempt to "transition" anything except ourselves -- 3e  was too different to try to wedge our previous campaign into it, so we started fresh.

Okay, a follow-up now that I laid out the 2e - 3e that the OP asked for is that I think they'd probably have an easier time converting from 2e to 5e.

Don't use feats or multi-classing. There's guidelines for removing skills and just using ability checks. My hunch is that will play more like a 2e campaign than 3.5e will.

Quote from: Omega;1136650Inspired by one of Pundits new vid threads.

For those of you that did change over from an older edition of D&D to 3e. How smoothly or not did it go for you?

I never got to play it much as the players disbabded after a few sessions due to moving away or just far away enough gathering was not really viable anymore. But for me 3e felt alot like 2e and even used large chunks of text from A and 2e D&D books. The only thing I had any hassles with was figuring out the feat tree and how the BABs factored in. Once got all that more or less sorted out it was not too bad really once you got to actual gameplay. Just a bit more moving parts than I tend to like. The DM though loved 3e and still does. His transition to 3e was boom! we there! lets go!

And I guess the same applies to other RPGs.

Shadowrun comes to mind. I tend to prefer 1st ed. But have played alot more 2e. Transitioning to 2e was for me fairly smooth once got used to some of the changes. 3e was meh and 4e was just blah.

For me with D&D, the shift from 1E to 2E was pretty easy. Keep in mind I was only a player during the 1E years, but I started GMing after the second edition PHB came out. We still used a lot of the old books and classes from AD&D in our games and it wasn't an issue (for instance we had a player in our group who liked to use the 1E monk). Mechanically it wasn't hard. Flavor-wise, there were clearly differences. The transition to 3E for me, was grueling. I ran Ravenloft and the flavor of that setting never felt like my old games using 3E. I think it was a lot of things: slow combat, social skills, skills that tended to undermine the players immersing directly in the setting with their actions, character builds and optimization, etc. I do know when I experimented by running a 2E session in 2007 in Ravenloft, the difference was night and day. But by far the hardest transition for me was 4E. That pretty much killed my interest in playing the existing edition of D&D. Fifth edition came out, it looked like more of a return to form, but by then, I just wasn't interested in what WOTC had to offer (I think I just never really liked D&D under WOTC). If I do play D&D I will do 1E, or BECMI or something along those lines (or I will happily play a retro-clone). At some point I would like to try some more 5E just to see how it runs. But I bought the Ravenloft book for the current edition and it simply didn't connect with me the way the old Ravenloft books did.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1136666Since 3E was in part deliberately designed to edge into Hero/GURPS territory, we were already primed.   For those reason, I have no regrets at giving 3E a solid run, but I do wish I had stopped after campaign #2 instead of trying campaign #3.

This is something I noticed. Several people I know who are really into Gurps and/or Hero are also really into 3e. The aforementioned DM sure is.

Quote from: spon;1136651I tired to transition when 3rd ed came out. I liked the concept of a framework that covered everything, and where you only had to learn one set of "rules" - that would cover all classes, spells and abilities. But it didn't quite work for me - for 3 main reasons.
1) There were too many edge cases that RAW, didn't make any sense. Like how your bard was (and always would be) way better than your barbarian at intimidating people.
2) The Feats broke the game in ways that did not make sense in my world. Like the quick reload xbow feat - perfectly fine in game rules terms, game breaker for me in verisimilitude terms. There were far too many feats to try to come up with a set that made sense for my game.
3) There were far, far too many splat books that added "semi-official" classes and so forth. As a GM you couldn't keep up, and players would be unhappy if you refused to allow their latest favourite class because you didn't have access to the book.  

So. I tried to like 3rd ed, but it just wasn't for me in the end. Put me in the "Not Smoothly" category!

1) Is basically an issue with almost every system there is. If you base Intimidation on Cha (which makes sense sometimes), then give warrior classes (other than Paladin) zero reason to pump Cha, Intimidation becomes useless to them. One "fix" is to base Intimidate on Str instead (or higher of the two). Another, far harder fix is to make Cha more generally useful for warriors, but difficulties aside, that still runs into the issue of having to split your focus between Str & Cha, plus all the other attributes that are also potentially useful for warriors (like Con or Dex).

2) Is partly a matter of taste and DM being able to tell anyone who even inquires about joining their group that they (as DM) may use some house that contradict the game rules, including the prohibition of certain (or all) feats.

3) Is mostly a real issue. But its hard to blame a system for players being babies that just want to have their way, when its someone else who has to deal with the burden of running the game.

PS: I find that a lot of issues with certain game systems (particularly those with actual options) stem from people in general not understanding who gets to wear the Viking Hat in any given campaign (hint: its not the players, the game books, or the people who designed the game).