Why 3.5 is the BEST Edition in Dungeons and Dragons

What are your thoughts?? Is 3.5 REALLY the best edition in Dungeons and Dragons??

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#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #3.5

[cherrybombles]

One day we get the dragon born puberty... one day

[erayergi]

I would like to add one more thing: the 3/3.5 books give detailed descriptions for the spells and abilities so you can know the limits and possibilities better, which makes it look "complicated" but after reading the books you realize it doesn't leave any question marks in your head, unlike 5e.

[asasindj]

As a Pathfinder 1E player, I agree tbh, it's just been a bit understated how much there is

[blackmage]

For those who want the long answer, 3.5e is a grittier, more rules-heavy, and number-crunchy system.
- If you can think of it, without being too specific, there is probably a rule for it in 3.5e, and it may involve a formula like:
1d20 + 4 + 7 +2 + 2 - 1 +2.
- Many of the classes have smaller hit dice. The Wizard and Sorcerer get a d4, and the Rogue gets a d6. There are no death saves, you straight up start bleeding out when you go down. And instead of healing all of your broken bones overnight, you only heal a number of hit points equal to your level each night.
- 3.5e has no shortage of DM supplements. 5e is very player-oriented, there is little to no DM support. 1e is GM-oriented, half the rules you find in the 5e PHB are not in the 1e PHB, but in the DMG instead. Whereas 3.5e has many options for both players and DMs in great supply.
- For those people inevitably bringing up Pathfinder, I would say it did some things right and some things wrong. Its existence essentially doubles the already impressive amount of content available for 3.5e, and vice versa. We all love more content. I also agree with how Pathfinder handled favored classes and multi-classing: while 3.5e punishes players for multi-classing, Pathfinder rewards players for sticking to their favored class.
But Pathfinder has A LOT more power creep, and has an even greater power disparity between martial classes and casters. It's also a very attractive system for min-maxers. If you're like me and power-gaming is a turn-off, you may prefer 3.5e since it can really only get broken if people go out of their way to do it.

[richardmoore]

Considering that 5e came after 3.5, doesn't that technically make 5e dumbed down 3.5 instead?

[ZeroGForce]

As a longtime 3.5 and Pathfinder (1E) player, all I can really say about this is...
_...FINALLY, PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP AND REALIZING THE TRUTH._

[kyotokitsune]

I've been playing 3.5e for over 20 years and I still have classes and races I want to try. New builds I want to play. And I'm still learning about stuff. There are cool classes and classes I didn't think would be cool but I tried them and absolutely love them.

[AtomicJuggernaut]

I started off in 5th edition then my entire playgroup switched to 3.5 and im strongly in the 3.5 being the best edition camp. The sheer amount of content and freedom is amazing. Plus the magic in 3.5 is a bit more powerful than in 5th and has some more freedoms with you actually being capable of raising armys of the dead with necromancy I have a dread necromancer (soon to be lich) in a long running villain campaign that has gotten to higher levels and i have 2 young skeletal dragon dragons a village worth of frost giant zombies.

[VampDemigod]

As someone who dms in 5e but cherry picks 3.5 for house rules (such as crit ranges), I can confirm this. TBH the only reasons I don’t dm in 3.5 is because it’s harder to teach to new players and that I can barely keep track of my notes as is 😅

[Auron]

For me, 3.5's great strength is modularity: if I want to attach Part A to System B there is enough information and uniformity to do so. For example, there is an entire section of the Monster Manual for advancement so you can relatively easily give class levels, templates, or just normal HD advancement and have a good idea of about how strong it is. Markedly, this plus the sheer amount of content makes non-optimized vs optimized the difference between a sword and a modern battleship, but that's not always a bad thing.

Also, Illusion magic wasn't a bad joke.

[andreanecchi]

I find that the 3.5 gave more possibilities in creating the character, I enjoyed it more than the 5e

[Lady_Corwin]

Pretty much the reason I like PF1e to be honest. More advanced, more customisation, actually has a crafting system, but doesn't have the weird stuff like XP penalties for multiclassing and crafting that 3.x did.

[TheOnlyTherazan]

3.5 was also open for custom monsters. Basically, each monster type mechanically acted as a class. For example, a brown bear had 6 Hit Dice, so it had progression as though it was a Lvl 6 Animal. It didn't equate to its CR, because it's still one creature against a party but it helped make monsters follow the same mechanics as players. As far as I know, monsters and PCs exists under different rules in 5E.

It was a tough rule to crack at the time, but once you did, it meant once you had decided how many HD/levels your custom monster had, his attack bonus, proficiencies, etc. would be simple to fill out, leaving you with the "only" task of adding special features.

[JustSpag]

You are actually very much right here. but also...when you dropped that FAT stack of books on the table and the sound thudded through the room?

That's why I love 3.5. We will probably never have such a wealth of splatbooks ever again. It was such an aggressive boom era for the game.

[Attilathepun]

We play 3.5e almost exclusively at our table, sometimes we throw in content from 1st edition Pathfinder. By far my favorite edition.

[cocaloca]

I started with 5e, played 5e for years before one of our DMs ran 3.5 for us and ngl I kinda love it
(Disclaimer: the DM was rather strict with the amount of usable supplements as he explained a lot of them were never meant to be balanced/compatible with each other or the modules we were playing)

The options and realism are refreshing and tbh not that big of an issue even for the two casual players in the group that played no DnD prior.

What stuck out to me the most though was the different behaviour it encouraged.
5e a lot of combat and exploration can feel sloggy and disjointed, skill rolls can be done by anyone and most of the time the difference in bonuses is minor the d20 does most of the work and proficiency is rarely stipulated as a requirement ("the DM can ay that" but that's not the point).
As for combat it feels like a lot of times you play by yourself along with other people and why wouldn't you ? as a caster you are very flexible and the best use of your spells are 95% of the time better used on yourself. (not to mention cantrips can trivialize martials)

3.5 exploration was wild, a lot of options for tackling environmental challeges a Rogue feels like a peerless expert and when it comes to combat, buffs on the martials are by far the most impactful means of gridning enemies down. I felt like a lot of our planning and prepwork was rewarded in 3.5 be it what spells to select and their instances, what items to buy, using summoned creatures to provide flanks for the rogue and giving the fighter +4s to Str and Con just made me feel like we were overcoming impossible odds with our craftiness.

The classes are not remotely balanced between them in terms of combat prowess but I feel like (from the one campaign I've played with 4 supplements used) that niche protection is done a lot better in 3.5 and the overall player behaviour and mechanics made us feel like we are exploring dangerous places methodically and taking on horrifying threats only to get through by the skin of our teeth.

5e I ejoy a lot, but oftentimes I just feel like danger is not really present and oftentimes combat can be repetitive, a lot of the groups seem to gravitate in a Roleplay > ENCOUNTER > Rest cycle

[megsley]

my group has been playing 3.5 for 12 years now (it was 2e before) - my husband has an encyclopedic knowledge of the rules and we just plain enjoy the system. it can absolutely be ALOT to keep track of, especially as you progress in levels, but we use 6 page character sheets that have every piece of info laid out (with explanations of how to calculate certain things) and there are some great apps like the D&D 3.5 Spellbook that can help magic users keep track of their spells and what they do. we've played all sorts of campaigns and I think because of the insane amount of optimization you can really set up some interesting things!

[blueflameking]

I mean... I want to argue but I can't. I came up in 3.5 and the amount of customization options was truly overwhelming at times and I loved every second of it. You didn't choose between Feats and Ability Score Improvements you got both and tons of them, Sub classes were called Prestige classes and you could mix and match them however you pleased assuming you met the requirements, every class got Extra Attack because of a thing called the Base Attack Bonus which is the precursor to 5e's proficiency bonus, and instead of adding that bonus to your skill checks you had an additional pool of points based on your class and Int score that you could distribute willy nilly across all your abilities without restriction, its a beautiful chaotic wonderland of analysis paralysis

[steamedtoast]

Damn I thought he was gonna say it was the best because it's an insane power trip for players.

[harrywhiteley]

3.5 was the edition before 4th, it is also nice and detailed in important areas that generate more things to do, ironically lots of things in 5e can be enhanced by the sub sections from 3.5 (5th is probably the easiest to learn edition which makes it the best at getting people into the game)