Wow, Mundane classes were BADASS in 2e.

[oslecamo]

You could make all significant spells 1-round cast minimum, like Summon Monster, so that martials always get a shot at stabbing the mage in the face before the magic goes off.

However another thing to take in account is that before 3e, spellcasters had no bonus spell slots, and those were harder to recharge. So they couldn't afford to walk around with a zillion buffs all the time.

[Samwise]

Minor nitpick: unless samwise is talking Skills & Powers (Which I'm still fairly unfamiliar with), 2nd ed still had 1 minute rounds, and 10 minute turns.

...A round is approximately one minute long. Ten combat rounds equal a turn (or, put another way, a turn equals 10 minutes of game time).

Otherwise, he's got the rules pretty well spelled out, to my eye.

That would be me remembering wrong and not checking.
C&T went to 12 second "combat rounds", and d20 went the full 6 second round.

Let that be a lesson to me for not double checking my work after not playing for 15 years. 

[Samwise]

So I suppose the question becomes, how do we alter 3.5 initiative to hose casters without nerfing mundanes? Let all spells be 'called shots' with no takes-backsies pre-initiative, but let attack targeting be flexible?

Well, so far I've just gone back a bit and stopped hosing mundanes:
No more iterative attack penalty. All attacks go out at highest BAB (with the usual modifiers for maneuvers).
To keep that somewhat controlled, I'm using a modification from C&T that phases movement and attacks. Every action you take after the first occurs 5 counts later in initiative. It requires some bookkeeping, but it means mundanes can unleash some severe punishment without requiring a caster to constantly port them around.

I'm almost scared to contemplate telling a group that spells must be declared at the top of every round and can't be changed without losing them.
I can't run away from outraged players as fast as I used to. 

[Chemus]

Honestly, except for the swath of history that is 3e/3.5, making casters less certain of success by having to call spells first would go a ways toward nerfing them a bit. Unbeliever's concern about increasing 'Scry n Die' methods is valid, but it's always been the option of greater certitude. Gentleman's agreement would still have to be in place. And for Scry n Die, there ought to be an in story 'gentleman's agreement' among casters not to use Scry n Die tactics, enforced by, say the gods of magic or a cabal of diviners...or the MIB

[Unbeliever]

Unbeliever's concern about increasing 'Scry n Die' methods is valid, but it's always been the option of greater certitude.

More generally, I'm not sure that I want to have the default style of play being that the Wizard bunkers herself away from all harm at all costs.  Scry and Die is just the extreme edge of that style of play.

I'm not necessarily opposed to that  playstyle, but I'm pretty sure I'd prefer to have the Wizard at risk generally, and then taking actions to avoid doing so.  If you set up something where the player's contributions to the encounter can fizzle, they will naturally put a ton of effort into avoiding that from happening.  Everyone likes to do something.  And, if we're talking about gentleman's agreements, they would have a very reasonable point.

For what it's worth, I played D&D for many years in AD&D, etc.  Meaning in 3E's predecessors.  And, I in no way remember it being some golden age for melee combatants.  It's not that making badass mundane combatants was impossible or even super difficult -- one of my most fun characters was a Dark Sun Gladiator and another was a Paladin -- but that in now way distinguishes it from 3E.  But, if I wanted to play a powerful character, it was Cleric, Druid, and Wizard. 

This may have been a product of whatever initiative rules we used at the time.  I'm pretty sure we didn't do "declare first" (honestly, I've never seen anyone do it for more than a session, in any game system outside of ORE, where it actually works), though we did use casting time/speed factor.  Rules which I actually kind of like. 

Your mileage and experience my vary.  And, take with a small grain of salt as there's been a lot of intervening years and miles.

[brujon]

Damn, being too young to have played AD&D myself and only experiencing it through Baldur's Gate & company, i'm speechless at how much had changed between AD&D & 3E.

I'm not surprised the change was popular, though. As much as some of those rules actually help balance the game, when you put it all together... How much time it took to resolve a single combat? And there were even more encounters per day? The game must've moved in glacial pace. Also, so many different rules for every different class, that's a lot of bookkeeping to be doing constantly.

3E is so much more streamlined than AD&D was. And it became popular. I now can kind of see why Wizards went the way they did with 4E, they tried to streamline it even more than they did from AD&D to 3E, but they went too far, and it didn't catch on as well as it did with 3E.

Kind of interested to see how some of these things could be applied to 3E, though.

[phaedrusxy]

I started playing D&D over 20 years ago myself, and yeah casters were still by far the most powerful, especially in the late game. There was just no comparison. Everyone was more fragile, too, including dragons, etc, which kept blasting viable throughout the levels. And magic resistance was a lot bigger deal than spell resistance.

I definitely don't think 3.0/3.5 is streamlined compared to earlier editions, though. You didn't get nearly as many attacks in the earlier editions, and there weren't nearly as many fiddly modifiers to worry about (Power Attack and other feats, etc). It was much more "I walk up and hit it until it's dead" as far as combat goes. There weren't a lot of tactical options available, from what I remember anyway.

[Unbeliever]

^ pretty much.  But, a big part of the streamlining was the unified d20 mechanic.  So, rather than having separate rolls for every attempt to bend bars and/or lift gates and/or move silently, and then a whole separate mechanic for saving throws, proficiency checks ... you get the idea. 

3E added a lot of general tactical options.  Its implementation is deeply imperfect, and that's a big place I'd focus revisions, but it was a whole lot more than had existed previously.  I can't recall whether there were as many or not fiddly modifiers.  There was a lot of the situational stuff, mostly from magic items.

[phaedrusxy]

I can't recall whether there were as many or not fiddly modifiers.  There was a lot of the situational stuff, mostly from magic items.

Yeah, but those were mostly permanent, from what I recall (like having a +3 sword, guantlets of ogre power (which set your Str to 18/00 IIRC, etc).

[Samwise]

I'm not surprised the change was popular, though. As much as some of those rules actually help balance the game, when you put it all together... How much time it took to resolve a single combat? And there were even more encounters per day? The game must've moved in glacial pace. Also, so many different rules for every different class, that's a lot of bookkeeping to be doing constantly.

Actually, combat was significantly faster than most "standard" d20 combats.
With moderately system experience players we could clear a level of a G series module in an afternoon of play, and that's a good 40-50 giants or so.
With low system experience players you could still manage half of a low level module in a session, which is 5-10 battles.
A high system experience group could demolish GDQ1-7 in an extended weekend session with time left over to pillage the Lost Caverns.

One of the biggest issues switching to d20 for me was the massive increase in time for even a simple combat.
Part of that was people who simply had ZERO tactical ability, which was absolutely shocking to me as an old school wargamer.
Part was people who simply had ZERO clue as to even vaguely efficient tactical and rules play, which was just difficult to deal with in "mixed" competence parties.
I wound up with a "reputation" both good and bad for being able to finish an LG adventure in under 3 hours simply because I didn't dither through the combats.

3E is so much more streamlined than AD&D was. And it became popular. I now can kind of see why Wizards went the way they did with 4E, they tried to streamline it even more than they did from AD&D to 3E, but they went too far, and it didn't catch on as well as it did with 3E.

There's a difference between streamlining and obsession with classifying EVERYTHING, and WotC went way over that with d20. While that may have made things better in an organized play environment, it actually slowed play down considerably. Having to memorize or search through 30 different conditions is not going to make things easier.
After 15 years of d20 play, I still don't have most of the rules memorized.
In 20 years of AD&D play, I knew rules from 50 books I had barely read and never used, and could cite obscure core rules when half asleep.

The "4dventure system" made that worse by tying everything into high end tactical maneuvering. The result was, rather inevitably, even longer combats except among the most system experienced players. That's what really killed it - they made it unplayable by the mass of casual organized play people they drew in via LG during d20 days.

What really made d20 attractive to AD&D players like me was the streamlining of options, particularly in the form of feats and prestige classes. AD&D had teased that with the "2.5" Player's Option stuff, and anyone who liked those books dove into d20 eagerly.
Of course that ultimately overwhelmed d20, just as it had late-2nd ed AD&D.

[brujon]

Interesting. I would think that with the complicated(so far as i could see) combat rules, AD&D combats took longer, but combats in D&D are faster? I'm unsure, i don't know if its the crowds i hang with, but usually for me, combats in d20 almost never go past 4-5 rounds. The only time it ever happens is when it's a much higher ECL than the party average, like a fight with a big creature with a lot of HD's, or when it's a LOT of small mooks (10~20 lower level critters, a few bigger threats).

Most of the time, it's absolute slaughterfest. Bigger threats get eliminated on the first round, smaller threats get melted on the other rounds, and by round 4 or 5, the rest of the enemies either flee or are dead already. Each round usually doesn't take longer than 30s~1m for each player(many times, much less than that), plus about 20s for the DM to decide the actions of every individual enemy in the fight. With 5 players and 12 enemies, i expect the longest an encounter will last will be about 45 minutes (9 minutes avg. per round, 5 round fight).

That's for the hardest, longest lasting fights. I only experienced fights that took longer than that when there was either:

A) A lot of roleplaying/talking involved, including off-character chit chat.
B) Rules debate, when a player and a DM enter in a disagreement and rules lawyering begins, slowing down progress.
C) Battle fatigue for the characters makes it so the most powerful options aren't available, and combat can't be quickly ended.

Most of the time, though, combat is resolved faster. Of course, this depends a lot on the DM, the group and the style of play.

Personally, as a DM i try to avoid these really big encounters, and intead focus on dangerous skirmishes with fewer and more powerful enemies, to avoid dragging the game down. Sometimes i'll throw in a lot of mooks, but in that case their limited amounts of options make it so that the combat is resolved quicker.

I'd expect most "meh" encounters don't last more than 20 minutes, tops. Which means that in a 4 hour gaming session of nothing but combat after combat with nothing happening in between, like an arena, you could clear 12 combats easily. Three very tough fights lasting 45 minutes each won't take up much more than half of a 4 hour session time. I feel that's pretty reasonable.

YMMV of course, but i believe 3.5 strikes a very nice balance, time-wise. It REALLY depends on the experience of the DM and the players, though. My figures are for a moderately to pretty experienced gaming group, a noobish game group can take up to an hour for even a simple combat.

[Samwise]

It is not so much the number of rounds but how long each action takes in a round, and system experience HEAVILY modifies that.

I've seen d20 players who prep their charts ahead of time, take 5 seconds to plot their move, 5 more seconds to select their target and attack action, and 10 seconds to resolve their action.
I've seen other d20 players with characters half as complex take 5 minutes to calculate their move to avoid any possible AoO, 10 minutes to discuss and decide on a target and attack action, and another 5 minutes to resolve that action.
As for DMs who angst over their monsters . . .

The thing is, the most complex of AD&D characters rarely require more that 10 seconds of decision making and resolution. The options and complexity just aren't there. If you have 2 active buffs up you are probably 11th level or higher. Attacks just don't have variables. Effects are minimal and rarely beyond standing, laying down, and being unable to act at all.

From what you say, you have a solid d20 group, so you can resolve combat at a decent pace.
From my experience with the RPGA, you are lucky. As I said, I got a reputation because of my speed. Those who were coming from work and just wanted a few hours to de-stress before catching the bus home loved me. Those who couldn't dither their way out of a paper bag and refused to accept responsibility for their tactical incompetence hated me. (Role-players split - some liked I got rid of combat fast so they could interact, others felt I cut the interactions too short. Both were probably right.)

In terms of technical complexity, both systems have their strong points, weaknesses, and quirks. I loved AD&D, but I'm just not going back to it from d20, however much I praise the former and kvetch about the latter.

[Unbeliever]

I agree with Samwise's general system mastery comment. 

The thing is, the most complex of AD&D characters rarely require more that 10 seconds of decision making and resolution. The options and complexity just aren't there.

Spellcasting, however, could easily take forever due to a combination of system paralysis and the spell descriptions themselves.  Some of the descriptions spanned multiple pages and were rife with idiosyncrasies.  Not that 3E is a whole lot better in this regard. 

In terms of technical complexity, both systems have their strong points, weaknesses, and quirks. I loved AD&D, but I'm just not going back to it from d20, however much I praise the former and kvetch about the latter.

Completely agree.  There's a slight surreality when I read a thread like this one.  I played the hell out of the game, but ... how do I put this?  I went onto Rifts and felt the rules were an improvement. 

[phaedrusxy]

It is not so much the number of rounds but how long each action takes in a round, and system experience HEAVILY modifies that.

<snip>

The thing is, the most complex of AD&D characters rarely require more that 10 seconds of decision making and resolution. The options and complexity just aren't there. If you have 2 active buffs up you are probably 11th level or higher. Attacks just don't have variables. Effects are minimal and rarely beyond standing, laying down, and being unable to act at all.

This nails it. AD&D just wasn't that complicated. The characters only had a few options, and all of them were pretty straight forward. Casters might take a bit longer because they had to worry about weird things like Fireballs getting "squeezed" back down hallways and stuff like that, but the spells themselves weren't any more complicated than 3.0/3.5 spells, you got fewer of them per day, and there weren't as many conditions/bonuses/etc to worry about stacking, etc, with.

Of course you had to look up things like the THAC0 and saving throw tables, but you used those so much you pretty much just kept the book open to them, or had their page numbers permanently bookmarked/memorized.

 I was definitely in the group who relished the added depth/complexity from the Skills and Powers books and who eagerly jumped ship as soon as 3.0 came out because of it.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

So wait, 3.5 mundanes have too many options? Or are all the options besides move+attack bad? I'm confused, I thought people complained about 3.5 being all "I hit it with my sword again"

so far I've just gone back a bit and stopped hosing mundanes:
No more iterative attack penalty.

Including effects similar to flurry of blows, I assume. Any other buffs you can think of?

How many of the OP's things could be safely ported forward without casters reaping all the benefits?

[Chemus]

The stuff in Amechra's OP was 'Epic-level' stuff from the book: "DM's Option: High-Level Campaigns" and would likely have been for lvl 21+, just like 3rd.

Fighters Diplomancing with their studliness... is... rather campaign specific. Fighters Diplomancing (or other skill use) breaks almost nothing, except for the silly-ass 'role protection' it provides rogues/bards. Bumping fighter's skills and skill list would enhance their roleplay options, as well as give them something mechanical to do besides hit the thing with the other thing.

[brujon]

There are traditionally a few roles that are important in party-based games (not just PnP RPG's), that are important:

Damage Dealer: Nullifies the threat by means of killing it. Doesn't matter if it's HP or Ability Damage, the DD job is to kill it dead, not necessarily with fire.

Controller: Nullifies or mitigates threat by means of restricting what actions it can perform. Either reduces the number of actions an enemy can take, or make it so that they can perform no action at all, and also shapes the battlefield.

Healer: Self descriptive. They maintain the party functioning. Heals HP/Ability Damage and also any debuffs & control effects the party may be suffering from.

Buffer/Debuffer: Makes it so that everyone in the party is better than they would be without him.

Skillmonkey: Mainly concerned about out-of-combat utility, they're the ones that deal with mostly environmental hazards.

At present, Casters can perform any of these functions. Therein lies the problem.

You can make a non-caster excel at almost any of these things, but he'll most likely be a character that's a one trick pony. He'll excel at one of those things, and suck at everything else.

You don't have to know anything about D&D to build a Caster(esp. the Big 3) that can deal a ton of damage, control the battlefield, buff & debuff, heal and deal with out-of-combat situations. He's able to do all of these things by virtue only of his spell slots.

Non-casters are restricted by the chassis of their class, while casters(except fixed-list casters), are unbound by their spell slots. Single spells can emulate entire class chassis, making them redundant.

ToB was a step in the right direction because it gave mundanes many more options, which they sorely lacked. And yet, they're still much more restricted than Casters are in what options are available to them. Maneuvers are generally more restricted AND less powerful than level-equivalent options for Casters.

My opinion is you can't really try to buff mundanes to reach the level of Casters in 3.5, the only option is to nerf the Casters to be more in-line with the mundanes.

Fixed-list casting is the easiest way to do it. Essentially, you're making it so that Casters have to choose from a limited amount of options, just like mundanes have to by virtue of their chassis. But people generally don't like that. They like that their Wizards, Druids, Clerics & Sorcerers can pick and choose spells from the hundreds or thousands that are availble, to suit their character to whatever situation presents itself.

Nerfing casters while maintaining all the spell options present in all the splats a possibility is... Tricky. There are too many unbalanced spells, too many variables & unforeseeable interactions to keep a hold of.

Getting rid of concentration and making one hit enough to fizzle a spell while making all spells take longer to cast will just make it harder for a caster to actively participate in a heated battle, but with a little prep, he'll still be able to do it. Plus, it'll make the early levels even harder for casters, when they're already pretty hard for them.

Which is another problem. The imbalance doesn't take hold until later levels, which is why things like E6 are popular.

Honestly, i don't see a way of making casters more equal to mundanes without getting rid of the possibility of picking and choosing from every spell ever printed.

[Samwise]

So wait, 3.5 mundanes have too many options? Or are all the options besides move+attack bad? I'm confused, I thought people complained about 3.5 being all "I hit it with my sword again"

Remember, this involves system competence, but I have seen people angst over:
How much do I power attack for?
What is my attack bonus for each point of power attack?
What is my damage bonus for each point of power attack?
What if I flurry (or similar bonus attack) with power attack?
How do my bonuses change when I'm enlarged?
When I'm hasted?
Do I take an AoO for moving here? What about here? Over here?
Can I tumble this through square?
Do I have enough movement to tumble through these squares but not these squares and not take any AoOs but still get in position to flank?
I'm flanking, I can power attack for another 2 points now!
And on and on and on and on and on and . . .
"Hey dude, you should have just been a spiked chain tripper!"

Some people would prepare 1-3 pages of tables with EVERY option already calculated.
Others would have to do the calculations at the table.

And then there were the barshall's who either mentioned they were inspiring courage before every roll someone else made, had a "table tent" for their inspire courage as a reminder, or both. Not that I blame them for wanting to, you know, SURVIVE!, but it could become a chore because of the people who needed the reminders.

There were also the clerics who insisted on taking 4 rounds to buff up then wondered where the combat went or had to flee because the rest of the party was already dead because nobody was healing them, the clerics who refused to heal at all then wondered why nobody would back them up in melee when they were doing 1d8+3 damage per hit at PL 9, the druids who couldn't figure out their wild shape bonuses, and so on.

Including effects similar to flurry of blows, I assume. Any other buffs you can think of?

Well, and this is a sticky one:
All combat options are allowed with a -4 to hit.
If you have the feat it does what it says, typically voiding the -4 to hit.

Want the "flurry" feats for regular melee types?
-4 to hit (on all attacks).
Want to pin at range?
-4 to hit.
Want to throw a friend as an improvised weapon?
-4 to hit.
Want an extra 5' reach?
-4 to hit.

The basic principle being:
"Go ahead and try it."
Rather than:
"You don't have the feat."
That was the operating principle for "special actions" back in AD&D - just assign a difficulty and run with it, rather than constantly saying "no".
And since you pretty much limit that to "mundane" special actions, casters don't get to wallow in it. If you want to metamagic your spell, you need the feat. (In AD&D, you needed the spell, most all of which sucked big time anyway, so there is no burden on casters not getting the bonus. Not to mention only wizards got metamagic in AD&D, though I expect there would be a clerical revolution if you tried that in d20.  )

How many of the OP's things could be safely ported forward without casters reaping all the benefits?

I think those were all from the High Level Play book, which means they are the equivalent of Epic Level options to begin with.
More "mundane" (as it were) options came from various kits, and those are rather thoroughly incorporated into d20 through Prestige Classes, ACF's, substitution levels, and just plain feat choices.

For that, second wild thought, which I haven't tested AT ALL:
Reduce the Prestige Class entry requirements for non-spellcasting classes.
From the general 6th level to . . . 3rd level?
Let mundanes get the funky cool special powers starting at 4th level and all that.

Another possibility which I "use" as much as it matters:
Incorporate Epic skill uses into regular skill uses wholesale.
If you can make DC 50-100 at 5th level, you can make DC 50-100 at 5th level, and more power to you.
Naturally that typically requires a LOT of magic to get those buffs, but it still requires the ranks, which means rogues and factotums. (And bards and beguilers, but such is life. Indeed it is barshalls and arcane tricksters that I've seen take these to the greatest extremes. The arcane trickster walked through the RPGA LG Tomb of Horrors "taking 1" and ignored all the traps.)

[Unbeliever]

So wait, 3.5 mundanes have too many options? Or are all the options besides move+attack bad? I'm confused, I thought people complained about 3.5 being all "I hit it with my sword again"

To the extent this is true for 3E, it was much much more true for AD&D.  Remember, there are no options to trip, bull rush, sunder, disarm, etc.  Furthermore, there are no feats, etc.  It was pretty much all reliant on magic items or the occasional thing like a kit or odd weapon or weapon proficiency.  For example, in the Gladiator's Handbook, a book for a Dark Sun base class, there were some cool weapon options, especially if you specialized.  But, you can see how deep you had to go.  Basically, any warrior type swung his/her pokey thing.  There wasn't any graeter decisionmaking that needed to be made.

The problem 3E has, imho, in this regard is that while it has a fair number of options, you quickly realize that they aren't going to be worth it unless you build your character around them.  So, the number of options, effectively, shrinks precipitously.  But, again, this is a lot more than there was in AD&D. 

[Chemus]

Samwise is quite correct, the base maxim was indeed 'try it', with an explicit or hidden difficulty determined by the DM.

Curious though, what metamagic, Samwise? Reversible spells? I recall no modifying written spells beyond their descriptions... Izzat from Skills&Powers/Combat&Tactics?