Recapping 2000, 25 Years Later

I suppose this post should have been made last night while it was still 2025, but who wants to be writing blog posts on New Year's Eve? Besides, I don't have the January stuff here yet, so this is a good time to pause and reflect on what went down in the initial stages of 3rd edition D&D.

Things started much earlier with the Dragon Magazine Countdown articles that ran for nearly a year before the release of the Player's Handbook on August 10th, 2000 at GenCon. The core books came out one at a time, the Dungeon Master's Guide releasing in September and the Monster Manual in October. After that, there were a few additional supplements and adventures, along with, of course, the magazines: Dragon, Dungeon, and Polyhedron. And the Living Greyhawk Journal, of course.

So, my initial experiences with 3rd edition actually go back to 3.5; I was one of the grognards who didn't see the need to buy a new edition when I had a perfectly good 1e/2e hybrid to work with. A friend of mine convinced me to try the Neverwinter Nights computer game, which ran a 3rd edition ruleset, and that was enough to get me on board. I picked up the 3.5 core books and collected a few additional supplements (the 3.0 class splatbooks among them), but I rarely got a chance to actually play or run a game. I did run a short-lived campaign with the Shackled City book; the party only got to the third adventure before life happened and the campaign was cut short.

But now that I'm taking a closer look at 3rd edition, there are a few things that stand out to me. First of all, the new feat mechanic really changes the game. The new saving throws, the universal d20 mechanic, ascending armor class...those are things that could easily be adapted to the earlier editions. Prestige classes were just a new version of kits and subclasses from earlier editions. But the feats were what really stood out. Some of the feats were actually reworked spells (the vocalize spell became the Silent Spell feat, for example), which I think was a good idea. And the new Focus feature of spells is a welcome idea; there were always questions in earlier editions about whether some material components were expended or if they would stick around after the spell was cast. 3rd edition answered those questions definitively.

The changes to monsters is very profound; the idea that monsters can have classes like PCs makes a lot of low-level humanoids suddenly far more interesting. And the templates are another great idea. Instead of all werewolves having the same stats regardless of what they were prior to being infected, now you've got werebeasts with class levels. A weretiger with levels in monk or rogue? Be afraid.

Some of the changes I'm not that keen on. I don't like the rules for creating magic items; there's no wonder or mystery anymore. You might as well have a Ford plant assembling magic items for mass consumption. All you need are a crafting feat, a few specific spells, and money, and you can make magic items in batch lots. The one saving grace of this system is that it does cost XP to craft a magic item. I know Pathfinder took this rule out, but I disagree; there has to be a brake on magic item creation of some sort, and having to pay valuable XP is far more tangible to players than just erasing gold piece totals.

I think the biggest change in tone for 3rd edition is this: Original D&D and 1st edition (and, to a lesser extent, BECMI) felt like a fantasy version of a post-apocalyptic wasteland. There are pockets of civilization, but there are monsters threatening everywhere, and ruins galore. Like in our own world, there were fallen empires that left behind ancient secrets of knowledge, mathematics, engineering, literature...and, in the case of D&D, magic in the forms of lost spells and magic items. It's hard to create a magic item in 1st edition; the DM is in control of the process, and he can send you on wild goose chases to find rare and unique components to make the magic item work. And there's no way to know ahead of time what you'll need; the DM can come up with new things on the spot.

Conversely, 3rd edition feels like the aforementioned fallen empires...before they fell. Magic is plentiful; there are magic shops where you can buy magic items, trade spells, etc. Any race-class combination is possible. PCs are much more powerful from the start; a 1st-level specialist wizard in 3rd edition can start with three spells; in 1st edition, that wizard has a total of one spell per day. A 3rd edition fighter can have Power Attack and Cleave to start, giving him extra combat ability right off the bat. The 1st-edition fighter is just swinging his sword; he might be specialized, but that's all the variety you get. Dragons are just uber-powerful compared to earlier editions. Fighting a 3rd edition dragon is a great way to make sure your family never collects on your life insurance policy.

Speaking of variety and fighters, the Weapon Proficiency feats make life as a fighter much easier. Back in the day (get off my lawn!), fighters had a limited number of weapon proficiencies to work with. They had more than any other class (until the barbarian), but they were still limited to four weapons to start. This was to the fighter's advantage if the DM used the weapon vs. AC table; he could pick weapons that would be more useful against heavily-armored opponents such as a mace, as well as the high-damaging weapons like swords. But if you found a magic weapon that no one had proficiency with, it was either sell the weapon or wait until a fighter gained enough levels to add a new proficiency so he could learn how to use that +2 trident properly. In 3rd edition, a fighter automatically gets proficiency in...are you ready for this?... FORTY-SEVEN different weapons. At 1st level. Yes, I counted them. All the Simple and Martial Weapons in 3rd edition are included in every fighter's starting class features. Forty-seven of them. The only ones they don't get are the Exotic weapons.

Now, for clerics, I find 3rd edition clerics are suffering in comparison to their 2nd edition counterparts. 1st edition clerics were all the same; they all had the same weapon choices, same armor choices, same spell lists...it was tough to tell a cleric of Aphrodite from a cleric of Odin. In 3rd edition, there is some variety in the Domain system. However, this is an inferior system to the 2nd edition spheres system, where each deity had its own list of what spells would be available to their priests and priestesses. I might consider reworking the 3rd edition cleric spells into the sphere system just to see how it would work out. Since most of the spells are carryovers from 2nd edition anyway, it wouldn't be that difficult to do.

And so, to summarize, 3rd edition made a lot of changes; some of them were quite good and useful and make the game more accessible to new players; there's no question that 3rd edition (and the follow-up 3.5 edition) was massively popular and grew the gaming populace quite a bit. However, there are other things that I feel were a worse direction to go. I suppose the same could be said of any edition of any RPG; there will always be things people like and people don't like. I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who has been involved in gaming for over forty years now, so my views will differ from someone who is only familiar with the 5th edition. But it's my blog, so I get to post my opinions.

Alright, moving forward into 2026 and the 2001 retrospective, there are four physical products that came out in January: Dragon 279, Dungeon 84, The Standing Stone (adventure module), and Sword and Fist, the first 3rd edition splatbook (Hero Builder's Guide doesn't count). I actually picked up Sword and Fist at a comic shop a while ago, so I'll be starting with that one. However, the WotC online archives have more accurate dates on their releases starting in January 2001, which means I can actually track when each thing first appeared on the WotC website and post about them 25 years later to the day. So, that will be a thing going forward as well.

I'll start with Sword and Fist tomorrow, and sprinkle in the online stuff when it appears. And I hope to have the other products here soon. Until next time, Happy New Year, and game on!