I'm not so keen on the whole "cutification" I see sometimes, where monsters etc have the over-dimensioned heads and eyes and look more cute than scary. The gnome mind flayer being an obvious example of this.
If mind flayers are now canonized to "breed" via taking over a host body and now also perhaps taking the form of them, then it kinda messes up all previous interactions we've had with them since they were then always of "human" form even if they were encountered in Underdark and probably breed from Deurgar or Swirfneblins. But I'm no expert on lore, so I might be mistaken here.
Mi[ndflayer have always been able to infect non-humanoid creatures. The result is not a mind flayer though but an abomination of some sort, depending on the base creature.
Aha, I had no idea. Seems a bit weird that only the humanoid Illithids band together to form communities, especially in the Underdark where I assume then that all Illithids must then be sprung from Drow (though Drow are a fair bit shorter, right?). But I'll stop analyzing this now and just accept it's just another one of the classic star trekifications.
Drow in the Forgotten Realms can be as short as dwarves, give or take a head. So, yeah, Drow are the midgets of the pointy ears (Maztica's Poscadar elves on the other hand being the sole race member with a heigh exceeding that of humans).
But honestly it wouldn't make any difference to a mind flayers growth. The only change should be the size difference, given that shorties simply have less biomass to work with than, say, githianki. Or even giants for that matter. On a similar note, Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Halfbreeds by Green Ronin Publishing for 3rd edition already pretty much covered all of 5e's illithidian "newcomers" to a t. Half-illithids being victims who survived the battle of will and stopped the transformation halfway. Or something. I take that explanation over gnome flayers every day of the week.
Looks like Descent into Avernus also has a dungeon for worshipers of the dead three.
Apparently, with what is happening in the adventure taking up much of the Flaming Fists time, the cult has been free to murder people in the city streets. You are tasked early in the adventure with dealing with the cultists.
Aha, I had no idea. Seems a bit weird that only the humanoid Illithids band together to form communities, especially in the Underdark where I assume then that all Illithids must then be sprung from Drow (though Drow are a fair bit shorter, right?). But I'll stop analyzing this now and just accept it's just another one of the classic star trekifications.
The "stock" Mind Flayer is created from ceremorphosis of any mammalian humanoid of Medium size roughly between 5 to 6 feet tall. As of 3.X, mind flayers are not created from dwarves and their subraces, although perhaps later editions revised this. (Given that the Mozgriken, a vile illithid spawn that is the product of ceremorphosis on a deep gnome, would normally die save for a magical ritual involving infusing the hapless creature with Negative energy, I'm inclined to think that there is something in dwarven and gnome biology that is just incompatible with illithid tadpoles.)
Within the Underdark, most candidates for ceremorphosis are drawn from the drow, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and grimlocks. Humans are viable candidates too, although it is the rare human captive that is selected for ceremorphosis rather than simply becoming a brain meal. Githyanki and githzerai also make viable candidates, although most gith will not allow themselves to be taken alive for fear of that very fate, becoming the thing they hate most.
As the video on the previous page showed, the illithids do experiment with ceremorphosis on other creatures they capture. Most of the time these experiments fail miserably with both the tadpole and the host subject perishing, but on rare occasions it results in a completely new illithid type.
Animate dead + cloudkill is the best anti mindflayer spell on BG2.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
Animate dead + cloudkill is the best anti mindflayer spell on BG2.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
This is my preferred tactic for dealing with illithids too. Just summon one and send it ahead into the room and let it hack them all to pieces while the mind flayers and their umber hulks flail uselessly against it.
Wow, that was confusing.. first @sarevok57 posts just above then I thought he posted again and said he hadn't been online for a few months before I realize @brunardo just had a very similar avatar, hehe..
Animate dead + cloudkill is the best anti mindflayer spell on BG2.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
I raise the both you, Mordenkainen's Sword.
MK swords are great, but I tend to always take out mindflayer's before I get them (usually my mages are MC).
I like to cheese the hell out of the doors, open and throw in a poisonous gas, close door and wait. It's not pretty, but efficient.
To this day, and I've played BG for many hundreds of hours, I still have never even once summoned an invisible stalker
Animate dead + cloudkill is the best anti mindflayer spell on BG2.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
I raise the both you, Mordenkainen's Sword.
i've used those before ( at least in the vanilla ) but i still found them dying from INT drain, is their AC better in the EEs? plus invisible stalker is a much easier scroll to find than MS is sometimes
Animate dead + cloudkill is the best anti mindflayer spell on BG2.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
I raise the both you, Mordenkainen's Sword.
i've used those before ( at least in the vanilla ) but i still found them dying from INT drain, is their AC better in the EEs? plus invisible stalker is a much easier scroll to find than MS is sometimes
kind of ironic really, one thing im not of fan of 5th edition is the "easier ruleset" i feel that too much has been "dumbed down" which i can understand because its helps spread the game to a greater audience, but for, its just feels boring, i feel like i have way less options ( at least in terms of combat ) so i feel meh, although i do admit they did some great stuff for RP in 5th edition, but fights in 5th edition i feel are very lack luster and are no where near as tactical as 3.5
kind of ironic really, one thing im not of fan of 5th edition is the "easier ruleset" i feel that too much has been "dumbed down" which i can understand because its helps spread the game to a greater audience, but for, its just feels boring, i feel like i have way less options ( at least in terms of combat ) so i feel meh, although i do admit they did some great stuff for RP in 5th edition, but fights in 5th edition i feel are very lack luster and are no where near as tactical as 3.5
IMO 3.5 > 5e, 5e dumbed down certain RPG elements, but AT LEAST only simplified. 4e removed. They removed skill, re writed the magic system to be more mmo like, homogenized classe, etc. I believe that there are a middle ground between spend hours doing math in a single round due overcomplication and mmo style homogenization. 5e allow roleplay and is not that boring to DM, also doesn't have this X/Y/Z/etc mutliclass and pun pun broken builds, nor number inflation at higher levels, i still prefer 3.5, but 5e has his merits.
About Larian, when i saw that they helped Solasta kickstarter, i an no longer with bad expediencies for BG3. I have now neutral. Maybe Vincke said "missing obviously not work", that spell slots are not intuitive and leveling is too slow, to see how the public reacts. No way that an studio that made Divine Divinity would believe that adaptations since Pool of Radiance(1988) "obvious not work"...
I am still slightly negative on it since I am not a fan of the D:OS games and I do not think the BG games need a sequel and would prefer an entirely new story. But I am not making any definite statements until I see more of the game, especially gameplay.
kind of ironic really, one thing im not of fan of 5th edition is the "easier ruleset" i feel that too much has been "dumbed down" which i can understand because its helps spread the game to a greater audience, but for, its just feels boring, i feel like i have way less options ( at least in terms of combat ) so i feel meh, although i do admit they did some great stuff for RP in 5th edition, but fights in 5th edition i feel are very lack luster and are no where near as tactical as 3.5
It's a fine line to walk, I'll admit. Ease of entry is definitely an important factor when it comes to attracting new blood, but at the same time, the game has to be complex enough to provide depth and versatility in order to keep and maintain interest. As some above have said, I believe the biggest mistake that 4th Ed made was that it dumped the complexity in favour of ease of use, which wounds up destroying a lot of the "flavour" that made D&D such a unique and compelling experience.
I prefer 3.5e over 5e, but I'm currently playing 5e with newbies, and I can see that ease of use is a big advantage of new edition.
The only thing I really dislike are infinite cantrips.
I am still slightly negative on it since I am not a fan of the D:OS games and I do not think the BG games need a sequel and would prefer an entirely new story. But I am not making any definite statements until I see more of the game, especially gameplay.
I an not an big DOS fan but about the story/lore, Bhaal could be impregnating a lot of woman again or Mindflayers could be using an Bhaalspawn body to weird experiences. Is possible to continue the series without an reboot or messing with the story. Anyway, i believe that BG3 will occur in Baldur's Gate city but will not be an Bhaalspawn saga sequel. The "3" is questionable, but i believe that will be heavily inspired by 'Descent Into Avernus'
In therms of licensing, WotC is only strict on lore but not strict on rule-set. TSR would never allow any post nwn2 D&D adaptations...
Truth be told I stopped caring about D&D editions after 3.5e and stuck to Pathfinder as the ruleset of choice ever since. Even the little I saw of D&D 5e makes it look more like the ugly cousin of Pathfinder 2.0 to me than anything.
So, yeah. My stance of being cautious and skeptical of BG3 has not shifted one bit.
@SorcererV1ct0r No, that's incorrect. TSR was probably one of easiest companies to get licenses from in terms of strictness and affordability. Especially in their later years where they were constantly in the red, ultimately filing for insolvency around 1995~1996. The only reason as to why WotC was able to aquire TSR in the first place back in 1997 was because they *direly* needed the money.
Now we are stuck with the draconian WotC that guards any and all parts of their IP's with humongous licensing costs. That's the main reason why pretty much all developers opt out of D&D and start either their own IP (PoE, Tyranny) or search for cheaper alternatives (OGL, Pathfinder, The Dark Eye, ect.).
T. TSR was probably one of easiest companies to get licenses from in terms of strictness and affordability. Especially in their later years where they were constantly in the red, ultimately filing for insolvency around 1995~1996. The only reason as to why WotC was able to aquire TSR in the first place back in 1997 was because they *direly* needed the money.
Now we are stuck with the draconian WotC that guards any and all parts of their IP's with humongous licensing costs. That's the main reason why pretty much all developers opt out of D&D and start either their own IP (PoE, Tyranny) or search for cheaper alternatives (OGL, Pathfinder, The Dark Eye, ect.).
D&D technically have more video game adaptations than other pnp games. WotC can demand a lot of $$ for D&D adaptations, but my point is that once they give the license, they don't care if you don't adapt rightful the D&D rules.
Paizo is IMO much better than WotC in this aspect. I an not sure, but i heard that PF:KM can use PF 1e or 2e, is up to the dev team.
The Dark eye has lots of videogames too: From Drakensang games to Blackguard games, legends of Eisenwalt series, Realms of Arkania series, Memoria, Demonicon, Chains of Satinav and a bunch of mobile games.
They are not that picky with their licenses but they implicate more in the development of the games.
T. TSR was probably one of easiest companies to get licenses from in terms of strictness and affordability. Especially in their later years where they were constantly in the red, ultimately filing for insolvency around 1995~1996. The only reason as to why WotC was able to aquire TSR in the first place back in 1997 was because they *direly* needed the money.
Now we are stuck with the draconian WotC that guards any and all parts of their IP's with humongous licensing costs. That's the main reason why pretty much all developers opt out of D&D and start either their own IP (PoE, Tyranny) or search for cheaper alternatives (OGL, Pathfinder, The Dark Eye, ect.).
D&D technically have more video game adaptations than other pnp games. WotC can demand a lot of $$ for D&D adaptations, but my point is that once they give the license, they don't care if you don't adapt rightful the D&D rules.
Yeah, just look at Sword coast legends, demonstone, Daggerdale or some other forgettable games
kind of ironic really, one thing im not of fan of 5th edition is the "easier ruleset" i feel that too much has been "dumbed down" which i can understand because its helps spread the game to a greater audience, but for, its just feels boring, i feel like i have way less options ( at least in terms of combat ) so i feel meh, although i do admit they did some great stuff for RP in 5th edition, but fights in 5th edition i feel are very lack luster and are no where near as tactical as 3.5
I'm a gigantic fan of 3.5 and of 5e (now that I'm playing it a lot). 3.5 was great in a lot of ways (The way it handled skills and feats) but was absolutely abhorrent in the way it handled power creep by releasing 50+ supplements all with their own feats/rules/etc.
3.5 was also pretty bad at balancing the classes and and therefore contributions of the players at the table.
5e is simpler in a number of ways (Some of those being just generally worse - like skills and feat selection, and others being elegant solutions such as the advantage/disadvantage system and the bounded accuracy system). 5e does a generally better job at balance as far as I've seen (although I've got a poor ranger at the table, who is kind of outclassed right now. I have to throw him a lot of bones) and doesnt have significant power creep owing to its release strategy.
I can see the benefit of each, but at this point I seem then interchangeably as the best two editions available.
More cool stuff for you and for your friends do (animate undead army, craft items, etc)
Easier to reach superhuman stats at higher(15~20) levels
Much more deadly magical effects. Petrification, OHKilling spells, etc
Dragons and other legendary creature are stronger
Most of things in game design have trade-offs, for eg, if you give too much freedom to the PC create his charname, he can end up with 3.5e pun puns, if you railroad everything, you can end up with Diablo 3/generic mmoish everyone is a clone. Choices and consequences are often against balance. For eg, an vampire PC could be broken op during the night or in a underdark campaign but useless in an "desert" campaign with few people to feed and a lot of sun. Same with combat mechanics, if you consider a lot of things, you will spend an eternity doing math instead of playing the game. If you doesn't consider a lot of things, the combat is fluid but less immersive and makes less sense.
Some things i honestly think that 5e "overcorrected", for eg, while on 3.5e, was possible to have characters with superhuman attributes at low level, on 5e, is insanely hard to raise anything above 20, even for high level characters. IMO an lv 18~20 Sorcerer with 21~24 CHA should be OK. But an lv 5 guy not.
More cool stuff for you and for your friends do (animate undead army, craft items, etc)
Easier to reach superhuman stats at higher(15~20) levels
Much more deadly magical effects. Petrification, OHKilling spells, etc
Dragons and other legendary creature are stronger
Most of things in game design have trade-offs, for eg, if you give too much freedom to the PC create his charname, he can end up with 3.5e pun puns, if you railroad everything, you can end up with Diablo 3/generic mmoish everyone is a clone. Choices and consequences are often against balance. For eg, an vampire PC could be broken op during the night or in a underdark campaign but useless in an "desert" campaign with few people to feed and a lot of sun. Same with combat mechanics, if you consider a lot of things, you will spend an eternity doing math instead of playing the game. If you doesn't consider a lot of things, the combat is fluid but less immersive and makes less sense.
Some things i honestly think that 5e "overcorrected", for eg, while on 3.5e, was possible to have characters with superhuman attributes at low level, on 5e, is insanely hard to raise anything above 20, even for high level characters. IMO an lv 18~20 Sorcerer with 21~24 CHA should be OK. But an lv 5 guy not.
that goes without saying, see the thing about 3.5, if you are insane and allow your players to grab classes, feats and items from the bajillion books that are available, then yeah, your characters are going to be completely OP
right now, im DMing an epic 3.5 session and the only books allowed are the 3 core rule books and the epic players hand book, and everything is going pretty smooth at the moment, we have only had 2 character deaths and one party wipe and the team just hit level 23
in my opinion, 3.5 is the best for PnP if you have a good DM who knows what they are doing, and really understands the rules so you cant make superhuman characters at level 10 and even at level 20 and above, there should always be something that is a challenge for the characters
in fact for example; the first encounter in my adventure was a colossal black dragon with a CR of 26 and the characters were level 21, and only using monster manual, player's handbook and epic players hand book, the dragon almost wiped the team, if it wasnt for a lucky critical hit that did some critical damage on the dragon, the team would have lost
if i had the same scenario where the players could use as many books as possible, then the players could have probably taken out 10 of those dragons, based on stupid broken OP abilities
and actually speaking about that, in my opinion, i think the reason why the other books were made was to give your adventures a little bit of flare, i think the idea was that you were supposed to use the 3 core rule books as a veto on rules, and then you use an extra book MAYBE two, to spice things up a little bit and make your setting a bit different
i dont think it was ever intentional that you were supposed to use all the rulebooks at once because a lot of abilities do the same thing but in different words, so people would stack those abilities based on that
i always found it strange; what was the point of doing a million d6 damage at level 10 if things only had 100 HP? i feel as if players were ruining the game for themselves by making unstoppable gods, and then they complained that nothing was a challenge, ya no kidding sherlock, thats like saying an FPS is way too easy when you are using the god mode cheat, what did you expect? but maybe im out to lunch and have no idea what im talking about, but for me at least, i enjoy how i do my 3.5 sessions
I keep seeing two things that inconsistent to me. Maybe someone can clear it up. I keep saying people praising 3.5 because it has so many options available and criticize 5 because it is much more limited.
Someone always responds to this with, "Yeah but its really unbalanced and some things are utterly broken."
The defense to this always seems to be, "THat's because you're using too many options. Limit the books allowed and you wont have a problem." So, uh, what's the advantage of 3.5 over 5 again?
Comments
Aha, I had no idea. Seems a bit weird that only the humanoid Illithids band together to form communities, especially in the Underdark where I assume then that all Illithids must then be sprung from Drow (though Drow are a fair bit shorter, right?). But I'll stop analyzing this now and just accept it's just another one of the classic star trekifications.
But honestly it wouldn't make any difference to a mind flayers growth. The only change should be the size difference, given that shorties simply have less biomass to work with than, say, githianki. Or even giants for that matter. On a similar note, Bastards & Bloodlines: A Guidebook to Halfbreeds by Green Ronin Publishing for 3rd edition already pretty much covered all of 5e's illithidian "newcomers" to a t. Half-illithids being victims who survived the battle of will and stopped the transformation halfway. Or something. I take that explanation over gnome flayers every day of the week.
The "stock" Mind Flayer is created from ceremorphosis of any mammalian humanoid of Medium size roughly between 5 to 6 feet tall. As of 3.X, mind flayers are not created from dwarves and their subraces, although perhaps later editions revised this. (Given that the Mozgriken, a vile illithid spawn that is the product of ceremorphosis on a deep gnome, would normally die save for a magical ritual involving infusing the hapless creature with Negative energy, I'm inclined to think that there is something in dwarven and gnome biology that is just incompatible with illithid tadpoles.)
Within the Underdark, most candidates for ceremorphosis are drawn from the drow, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and grimlocks. Humans are viable candidates too, although it is the rare human captive that is selected for ceremorphosis rather than simply becoming a brain meal. Githyanki and githzerai also make viable candidates, although most gith will not allow themselves to be taken alive for fear of that very fate, becoming the thing they hate most.
As the video on the previous page showed, the illithids do experiment with ceremorphosis on other creatures they capture. Most of the time these experiments fail miserably with both the tadpole and the host subject perishing, but on rare occasions it results in a completely new illithid type.
actually invisible stalkers are way better than skellies when it comes to taking out mind flayers
i believe now adays mind flayers can drain the INT of undead so the skellies can only take a couple of hits before falling over and this will happen pretty quick since their AC is bleh
but not only do invisible stalkers hit pretty hard, their AC is really good and the flayers i believe need crits to hit them, and they are immune to all of the mind flayer psionic whackiness
I raise the both you, Mordenkainen's Sword.
This is my preferred tactic for dealing with illithids too.
MK swords are great, but I tend to always take out mindflayer's before I get them (usually my mages are MC).
I like to cheese the hell out of the doors, open and throw in a poisonous gas, close door and wait. It's not pretty, but efficient.
To this day, and I've played BG for many hundreds of hours, I still have never even once summoned an invisible stalker
i've used those before ( at least in the vanilla ) but i still found them dying from INT drain, is their AC better in the EEs? plus invisible stalker is a much easier scroll to find than MS is sometimes
I've never seen a sword die to mind flayers.
kind of ironic really, one thing im not of fan of 5th edition is the "easier ruleset" i feel that too much has been "dumbed down" which i can understand because its helps spread the game to a greater audience, but for, its just feels boring, i feel like i have way less options ( at least in terms of combat ) so i feel meh, although i do admit they did some great stuff for RP in 5th edition, but fights in 5th edition i feel are very lack luster and are no where near as tactical as 3.5
IMO 3.5 > 5e, 5e dumbed down certain RPG elements, but AT LEAST only simplified. 4e removed. They removed skill, re writed the magic system to be more mmo like, homogenized classe, etc. I believe that there are a middle ground between spend hours doing math in a single round due overcomplication and mmo style homogenization. 5e allow roleplay and is not that boring to DM, also doesn't have this X/Y/Z/etc mutliclass and pun pun broken builds, nor number inflation at higher levels, i still prefer 3.5, but 5e has his merits.
About Larian, when i saw that they helped Solasta kickstarter, i an no longer with bad expediencies for BG3. I have now neutral. Maybe Vincke said "missing obviously not work", that spell slots are not intuitive and leveling is too slow, to see how the public reacts. No way that an studio that made Divine Divinity would believe that adaptations since Pool of Radiance(1988) "obvious not work"...
Anyone else who was with bad expectancy changed the mind?
It's a fine line to walk, I'll admit. Ease of entry is definitely an important factor when it comes to attracting new blood, but at the same time, the game has to be complex enough to provide depth and versatility in order to keep and maintain interest. As some above have said, I believe the biggest mistake that 4th Ed made was that it dumped the complexity in favour of ease of use, which wounds up destroying a lot of the "flavour" that made D&D such a unique and compelling experience.
The only thing I really dislike are infinite cantrips.
I an not an big DOS fan but about the story/lore, Bhaal could be impregnating a lot of woman again or Mindflayers could be using an Bhaalspawn body to weird experiences. Is possible to continue the series without an reboot or messing with the story. Anyway, i believe that BG3 will occur in Baldur's Gate city but will not be an Bhaalspawn saga sequel. The "3" is questionable, but i believe that will be heavily inspired by 'Descent Into Avernus'
In therms of licensing, WotC is only strict on lore but not strict on rule-set. TSR would never allow any post nwn2 D&D adaptations...
So, yeah. My stance of being cautious and skeptical of BG3 has not shifted one bit.
@SorcererV1ct0r No, that's incorrect. TSR was probably one of easiest companies to get licenses from in terms of strictness and affordability. Especially in their later years where they were constantly in the red, ultimately filing for insolvency around 1995~1996. The only reason as to why WotC was able to aquire TSR in the first place back in 1997 was because they *direly* needed the money.
Now we are stuck with the draconian WotC that guards any and all parts of their IP's with humongous licensing costs. That's the main reason why pretty much all developers opt out of D&D and start either their own IP (PoE, Tyranny) or search for cheaper alternatives (OGL, Pathfinder, The Dark Eye, ect.).
D&D technically have more video game adaptations than other pnp games. WotC can demand a lot of $$ for D&D adaptations, but my point is that once they give the license, they don't care if you don't adapt rightful the D&D rules.
Paizo is IMO much better than WotC in this aspect. I an not sure, but i heard that PF:KM can use PF 1e or 2e, is up to the dev team.
They are not that picky with their licenses but they implicate more in the development of the games.
Yeah, just look at Sword coast legends, demonstone, Daggerdale or some other forgettable games
I'm a gigantic fan of 3.5 and of 5e (now that I'm playing it a lot). 3.5 was great in a lot of ways (The way it handled skills and feats) but was absolutely abhorrent in the way it handled power creep by releasing 50+ supplements all with their own feats/rules/etc.
3.5 was also pretty bad at balancing the classes and and therefore contributions of the players at the table.
5e is simpler in a number of ways (Some of those being just generally worse - like skills and feat selection, and others being elegant solutions such as the advantage/disadvantage system and the bounded accuracy system). 5e does a generally better job at balance as far as I've seen (although I've got a poor ranger at the table, who is kind of outclassed right now. I have to throw him a lot of bones) and doesnt have significant power creep owing to its release strategy.
I can see the benefit of each, but at this point I seem then interchangeably as the best two editions available.
Things that i like on 3.5e over 5e
Most of things in game design have trade-offs, for eg, if you give too much freedom to the PC create his charname, he can end up with 3.5e pun puns, if you railroad everything, you can end up with Diablo 3/generic mmoish everyone is a clone. Choices and consequences are often against balance. For eg, an vampire PC could be broken op during the night or in a underdark campaign but useless in an "desert" campaign with few people to feed and a lot of sun. Same with combat mechanics, if you consider a lot of things, you will spend an eternity doing math instead of playing the game. If you doesn't consider a lot of things, the combat is fluid but less immersive and makes less sense.
Some things i honestly think that 5e "overcorrected", for eg, while on 3.5e, was possible to have characters with superhuman attributes at low level, on 5e, is insanely hard to raise anything above 20, even for high level characters. IMO an lv 18~20 Sorcerer with 21~24 CHA should be OK. But an lv 5 guy not.
that goes without saying, see the thing about 3.5, if you are insane and allow your players to grab classes, feats and items from the bajillion books that are available, then yeah, your characters are going to be completely OP
right now, im DMing an epic 3.5 session and the only books allowed are the 3 core rule books and the epic players hand book, and everything is going pretty smooth at the moment, we have only had 2 character deaths and one party wipe and the team just hit level 23
in my opinion, 3.5 is the best for PnP if you have a good DM who knows what they are doing, and really understands the rules so you cant make superhuman characters at level 10 and even at level 20 and above, there should always be something that is a challenge for the characters
in fact for example; the first encounter in my adventure was a colossal black dragon with a CR of 26 and the characters were level 21, and only using monster manual, player's handbook and epic players hand book, the dragon almost wiped the team, if it wasnt for a lucky critical hit that did some critical damage on the dragon, the team would have lost
if i had the same scenario where the players could use as many books as possible, then the players could have probably taken out 10 of those dragons, based on stupid broken OP abilities
and actually speaking about that, in my opinion, i think the reason why the other books were made was to give your adventures a little bit of flare, i think the idea was that you were supposed to use the 3 core rule books as a veto on rules, and then you use an extra book MAYBE two, to spice things up a little bit and make your setting a bit different
i dont think it was ever intentional that you were supposed to use all the rulebooks at once because a lot of abilities do the same thing but in different words, so people would stack those abilities based on that
i always found it strange; what was the point of doing a million d6 damage at level 10 if things only had 100 HP? i feel as if players were ruining the game for themselves by making unstoppable gods, and then they complained that nothing was a challenge, ya no kidding sherlock, thats like saying an FPS is way too easy when you are using the god mode cheat, what did you expect? but maybe im out to lunch and have no idea what im talking about, but for me at least, i enjoy how i do my 3.5 sessions
Someone always responds to this with, "Yeah but its really unbalanced and some things are utterly broken."
The defense to this always seems to be, "THat's because you're using too many options. Limit the books allowed and you wont have a problem." So, uh, what's the advantage of 3.5 over 5 again?