Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition - 1st part
We've spent a long time playing with the old 2nd edition rules. Some might as well have played quite some time with the older 1st edition rules, not my case however. Now that I've got the 3rd edition player's handbook and have read some of it, I can now really give my opinion about how good it is.
Third edition is far better than 3nd edition, in my opinion. We were used to the rules, which might inhibit us from becoming aware of it. I'm gonna talk about a few things that make the new edition better.
First of all, the book itself is much more better organized and laid out. The book for the first time takes some time to give a complete view of each race. Back at the 2nd edition player's handbook, everything you could really get to know about an elf is that it's ears are pointed, that a dwarf is strong, etc. The whole chapter explaining the races is very detailed, containing both data and images, so that you may know just what each looks like, females and males from each race. For people that are learning to play the game, it is much more easy to pick a race, enabling them to be able to play with an elf because they like it and not just because they have +1 to dexterity.
The character creation proccess has been improved also because now you don't have to worry about the race restrictions for each class, as well as ability restrictions. Now you can pick a character of any race, with any ability scores, and make him any class you wish. Of course that some classes are not very advisable to play as some races, and the ability scores should also be directed towards the class expectancies. That is, if you create a fighter, you should give him a good score for strengh. A problem I got notice of, is that all characters were very similar in 2nd edition. Wizards were the same among themselves, and so were fighters, thieves, etc. Why? I think it's because the characters laked something to make them different from each other, all characters from the same class could do the same things. Roleplaying was the only thing that could really hope to differentiate characters. But now, the staff of TSR had a great idea, by introducing skills and feats (rather than proficiencies, than didn't quite make it). A skill is an ability that can be used by your character, demanding a skill check. A feat is an ability too, with the advantage that it does not require ability check. By carefully selecting each skill and feat, you can help your character be more unique. Apart from that, skills and feats are very cool, some at least, they permit you to enhance your character's natural abilities, and offer a possibility to make wild and crazy things.
Also, the game has been simplified. You no longer need to calculate several things before realizing that you don't hit. Forget THAC0, because it's gone now. And now every time you roll a dice, you'll be rolling for high numbers. In the old days, high rolls were good sometimes and bad some others. This simplifies the game quite a bit, especially for the ones learning to play, because it was always difficult to teach what exactly was THAC0. You now get an attack bonus, instead, and to make an attack you no longer need to substract anything: you just roll 1d20, add your attack bonus and any other bonus, and the final number is the armor class you succesfully hit (of any worse). The concept of AC has changed: the higher the better, a 15 is better than a 12. Therefore, higher attack rolls will allow to hit higher AC scores.
Any high roll will be good no matter what you are doing. It is easier, but I have found there is a possible inconvenience: if you only want to roll high, you could trick your dice to make them roll high more often. According to 2nd edition rules, if you roll everytime high you will get hurt sometimes, with ability checks for example.
You no longer get lucky for using a heavy armor. Under 2nd edition rules, you could dodge (for example) as well with a shirt as you could with a full plate armor! Each armor now has a certain armor penalty, that will apply in several situations. It is improved, and that makes an unable-to-use-armor sorcerer have an advantage over an almost-inside-a-tank fighter. What resembles weapons, each one has it's own critical hits' table. It is more sensible also, because hitting right in the head with an axe (which would be a perfect critical hit) is not so painful as being hit in the same manner with a rapier. Each weapon now has more advantages over each other, not counting the weapon damage, because if not, why would you use a 1d4-damage dagger when you could use a 1d8-damage sword?
The only thing that can be considered bad in 3rd edition is that character kits have been removed. To create a character, you only select the class among the available, but you cannot select any sort of kit, they simply do not exist. It is bad, because it was sometimes good, and sometimes unbalancing, to have a character with special abilities, different from ordinary characters from that class. Some kits were good, but some others, like the famous Archer (horribly unbalancing, in my opinion), were too powerful. And these sort of things make the other characters look down on their characters, and may even drop out of campaigns, just because they feel they are not needed. It did destroy the spirit of the game.
This is only an opinion. I have not yet read the whole book, but as far as I've read, I can see that 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons will be much more fun than it's predecesors. If you disagree with any of the things I've said, you are free to post your opinions at the forum or submit your opinion to me.
Magneto