Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition

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The third edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game, albeit dropping "advanced" from the title to make it more accessible to new players. Though initially published in 2000 by Wizards of the Coast (as the version commonly referred to as "3e"), a "3.5" revision was published in 2003 with some significant changes, and it is the 3.5 revision that most 3rd edition players use. Wizards have since gone on to release 4e, which has made trolls and reasonable players very angry.

System

The Core Mechanic

3rd edition introduced the now ubiquitous "d20 System", where almost every action with a chance of failure is resolved by rolling a d20, applying relevant modifiers, and comparing the result to a set difficulty (or in, some cases, another character's roll) to determine success, referred to by the system as the "Core Mechanic". For example, a fighter attempting to hit a monster with his sword rolls a d20 and may add his Base Attack Bonus, Strength bonus, relevant Weapon Focus bonuses, magical enhancements, etc. with the objective of beating his opponent's Armour Class. Rolling equal to or over the target's AC means he has successfully hit and gets to deal damage. In a similar vein, a rogue attempting to pick a lock rolls a d20 and adds his skill ranks, dexterity bonus, any relevant skill bonuses from feats, modifiers depending on the quality of his equipment, etc. in an attempt to beat the target DC (Difficulty Class) of the lock.

This was generally regarded as a significant improvement on the systems used in 1e and 2e, where many different parts of the game were governed by vastly different mechanics. Restructuring the game around the single core mechanic made gameplay much simpler and easier to pick up for new players.

Characters and Creatures

Characters and creatures in the system are structured around Hit Dice and ability scores, wherein bonuses and traits from various hit dice are stacked together and combined with modifiers derived from the base ability scores to determine the other statistics of the entity. For example, a 2nd level Cleric/3rd level Fighter would have a +1 BAB for his two cleric hit dice and a +3 BAB for his three fighter hit dice, combining to give him a total Base Attack Bonus of +4, which would then be modified by other abilities such as strength or dexterity to determine his overall bonus when making an attack. The hit points granted to him by each of those hit dice would be added together and modified by the constitution score to determine his overall hit point total, and so on.

Almost all entities have six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma - that describe basic qualities of their character. The human average ability score, as the baseline from which all other ability scores are referenced, is 10 or 11. Ability scores higher than this grant bonuses to their relevant checks, and lower than this impose penalties. Every two points of score results in a +1 modifier, such that a score of 8-9 is a -1 penalty, 10-11 is +0, 12-13 is +1, and so on. Different races generally have bonuses and penalties to some ability scores to represent how they differ to humans; for example, the graceful but frail elves have a +2 to their dexterity (giving them an extra +1 bonus to dexterity-related checks in general) but a -2 penalty to their constitution, whereas the stout but surly dwarves receive a +2 to their constitution but suffer a -2 to their charisma.

In general, having any ability score reduced to 0 (by magic or other effects) results in incapacitation or death; a 0 Str or Dex character is unable to move himself, a 0 Con character is dead, and a 0 in a mental ability stat results in a coma. Some entities are lacking certain abilities entirely, a situation explicitly different from having a 0 in the stat; for example, a mindless magical construct that cannot think for itself both has no constitution score, as it is not a living being and is not subject to poisons, diseases, and other such things as living beings are; it also has no intelligence score, as it is generally incapable of making its own decisions and instead acts only on the orders given to it by its master.

Settings

Eberron - called "dungeonpunk," and winner of the "make a new setting for D&D" contest. It made your RPG more JRPG. Seriously; robot player characters, magick trains, and dragon tatoo materia. But maybe you'll like it. 2e gave use Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft, Dark Sun and Birthright. 3e gave us Eberron and more Forgotten Realms.

Open Gaming License

WotC heard about this "open source" thing, and thought they'd get on the bandwagon with Open Gaming License. Players had been making house rules for forever and a day, but WotC riffed off the GNU Public License and wrote some rules where anyone could publish supporting material off the core rules, for free, just acknowledge the source and use the same license so people can make splatbooks for your stuff. The amount of non-WotC material written for 3rd edition skyrocketed, and the d20 System became the heart of dozens of role-playing games in dozens of genres. WotC didn't see royalty cheques, but it helped cement their grip on the roleplay game industry during the 3ed era and sold a lot of corebooks.

WotC chickened out in the next edition, offering a "new and improved" licensing scheme for it, which is more restrictive and far less used.

Gameplay

Fandom

(placeholder for why people think it is over 9000)

Criticism

This article or section contains opinions shared by all and/or vast quantities of Derp. It is liable to cause Rage. Take things with a grain of salt and a peck of Troll.

Some of the criticisms of third edition D&D include:

  • Not enough anime powers and weeaboo artwork. Later fixed.
  • Katanas are seen as underpowered by fags, and overpowered by heterosexuals, who feel it doesn't deserve its masterwork quality and instead feel it should receive -4 Str.
  • Women don't receive -4 Str, destroying any sense of verisimilitude players may have otherwise felt.
  • People who enjoy being fucked in the ass prefer FATAL.
  • RULES. RULES. RULES. ENDLESS RULES
    • Addendum to previous: And thusly, it's both easy to break and damn near impossible to dig through sometimes. Although you could easily have your DM wing it.
  • Spells all work differently from one another, so instead of looking up the rules on a type of action, you look up the rules for a specific spell. And then the spell's errata. And the Ask the Sage article about that spell. Unfortunately, this problem has not been fixed in 4e; it has gotten worse.
  • No one can even pretend the various classes are balanced against one another. After 10th level or so spellcasters are so powerful and versatile that the average dungeon crawl is cut short when they use a spell or two to redirect a nearby river into the front door, killing everything inside but the skeletons. For comparison, the fighter is about to get his third attack a round! But he'll miss with it.
  • No reason to play anything but Druids, Clerics or Wizards, unless you're going for some goofy build that will allow you to destroy the earth with an eight foot sphere of iridium.
  • Some rules make a lot of sense for the sake of mechanics in combat and game play but sound silly in realistic terms... like "the older you get the wiser you get"... and by default the better your sense of sight and hearing become. Silly things like these are often pointed out in Rich Burlew's Order of the Stick, an online comic based on D&D characters.
  • It fails in just about every aspect of a game,and it is more of a rule playign game than role playing game. It is way to liniar. It is over comlicated,and simplist at the same time. d20 is too many rules, and not enough rules at the same time.Has too many strick rules, while leaving many feild wide open with no reason.

See also

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