The changes are very extensive, and I don't agree with all of them, but overall, 3e is very streamlined in comparison to 2e. I'll go over the most important of them:
- First of all, the D&D-like six stats were revamped into eight stats. Five of these stats are equivalent to the old ones, only renamed. Dexterity is split into Desterity (governing hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity) and Agility (speed and reaction on the whole-body scale), and Fighting is added (guess what it does). Instead of D&D-style ability scores and bonuses derived from those, every stat is denoted directly by its bonus (So Str 1 is equivalent to Str 12, and Str -5 is equivalent to Str 0). Stats still cost the same, but this eliminates the newbie-trap of buying useless odd numbers in stats. Finally, stats influence attack rolls and defense now, instead of attack and defense rvalues being completely separate - Fighting adds to melee attacks and melee defense, Dexterity to ranged attacks, and Agility to ranged defense.
- Second, skills now cost double what they costed in 2e (i.e. 1 power point per 2 ranks). In exchange, there are fewer skills in total. Skill monkey type characters still take a hit in comparison, however. Attack rolls are now skill checks, with ranks in Close Combat or Ranged Combat effectively replacing 2e's Attack Specialization feat. PL caps on skills were altered: You may only have a total bonus (i.e. Rank+Ability modifier) on any one skill up to PL+10, rather than caps being applied to ability modifiers and skill ranks separately. This does not apply to the attack skills, which are capped as per attacks.
- Third, speaking of PL caps, the cap dynamics on attacks are clarified: anyone attack cannot have a total (effect rank+attack bonus) than twice your PL. This results in exactly the same caps as for 2e, but explicitly allows you to have different attacks with different attack/rank spreads. Also, a Fortitude/Will cap is added, at the same value (Fort+Will may not exceed twice your PL).
- Fourth, perhaps my favorite change. 3e replaces all the status effect powers like Stun, Paralyze, and so on, with a single power called Affliction. Affliction offers a list of conditions it inflicts at different degrees of failure, from which you can mix and match. In other words, it can replicate any of the old condition powers, plus any number of other debuffs you could come up with through mixing up the inflicted conditions. Some other powers got revamped as well, but this is the single most significant one.
- Finally, this last one is subtle but still significant. The success mechanic was altered slightly, and instead of every separate skill and power separately defining success thresholds that end up being the same anyway, success is always defined in "degrees of success", with one degree corresponding to an exact success, two degrees success by 5 or more, and so on. The numbers are slightly and very subtly different from 2e, but more intuitive, I think.
There are other changes, suck as the Luck feat and Luck Control power being altered to use floating rerolls instead of hero points and many individual feats being altered, but I feel these are the most important changes. Overall, I feel the edition is an overall improvement on 2e - extremely streamlined, especially. Definitely worth a look at least, even if you end up liking 2e better.
