I am not signing up for an "online 5E character creation tool" ever again. D&D 5E has proved to be a trail of tears and a source of subscription service scams. The rules never needed to be this complicated, and every time I put faith in a version of 5E, here comes the website to "make it all easy."
5E is painful because the entire system is designed to force you into an online support model, free or not, creating dependency. Digital book sales. For-sale character options. Digital goods. I love A5E, but if I had to choose between this and D&D 3.5E, the OG game of the 2000s would win. D&D 5E is so hard to support. 2024 D&D, ToV, or A5E - they all need a company's website to help them be playable.
D&D 3.5E is from an era before "software as a service" was a thing, and it is mostly immune to the concept. Since the game is still complex enough to warrant using a software tool, we have a good option for this.
I have D&D 3.5E, and it says D&D on the cover, so I can say, "I am playing D&D." The art doesn't suck, and the fantasy races are toned down and not so silly. The books are cool and edgy. They are frozen in time, so I don't need to worry about someone coming along and messing up a setting, adventure, class, or rules. The game is all about tactical combat, so I don't need a special "fantasy tactical combat RPG." I don't need a storytelling game because that is what you do with this.
The DMG in this version is one of the best they ever wrote. And it does not have the "Pathfinder" feeling. I loved Pathfinder 1e, but the game was too focused on Golarion for me, and it stopped being neutral regarding the setting. Pathfinder 1e got too focused on "it's stuff," and the game felt more like Golarion: the RPG. Straight, on-the-metal, clean 3.5E does the job.
Is the system broken? Well, 5E is, too. So that is a silly question. At least characters can die in this edition. The complexity and time taken for a turn are the same, as 5E at high level is marginally better than 3.5E. It is not that much of a difference with a skilled group that knows what they are doing.
If I want a digital character sheet, I have Hero Lab. One purchase and done: no subscription fees, local storage, the ability to create custom data, and I have it all. And this gives me all the "complicated character builds" I will ever want or need. It is fun to "mix and match pieces" and "play with the stuff" in these tools, and there is that nerdy side of me that still likes this part of the hobby. If I still want to have the "Wizards D&D experience" without the monthly subscription fees, I have Hero Lab and 3.5E.
If Hero Lab ever goes away, I will be back in first edition and enjoying that. I will have had my fun with 3.5E and then roll back to something I can create character sheets for by hand. Part of me wonders why I would even spend time with 3.5E, given I have one of the best first-edition games ever written on my shelf, and that may be the case.
This is the rub with 3.5E versus a game like ADAD. In 3.5E, I need to jump through hoops and build a character, choosing from the ways the designers intended them to be. There are a lot more "working parts" to a character, and you fit them together to make a character build. In the first edition, you just level up and record changes. Any random things that happen or are added to your character (outside of the skill system in ADAD) are just added to your character sheet, and you "just play." There is no feat system here, nor are there illegal choices that result in an invalid build.
First edition says, "Who cares about all that stuff?"
And I get it. Do we need all this stuff in D&D 3.5E? Not really. You need to ask yourself how much of it is essential and whether any of it adds to the story you want to tell. I like navigating the character builder in Hero Lab and making choices. It frustrates me when I have to create hacks to the system to add a "claw attack" to a character, figure out how to do it within the interface, and then not have it come out perfectly. Does it need a feat? How do I add claws as a weapon? Do I need to add a new database entry for this in a custom file? Please stop fighting me, user interface! In ADAD, guess what? Write it on the character sheet. You are done.
The strengths and weaknesses of D&D 3.5E lie in the character design framework. If you love it, you love it. If it fights you, limits your ideas, and you struggle with it, play something else and walk away. Different types of games will be better in other systems. Wizards D&D has always been more like a video game in that regard, where you don't have many great choices, and if you try to work outside the ones they give you, you start running into huge problems.
Still, of all of the versions of Wizards D&D we have, D&D 3.5E is the best of the bunch.
Outside of that, Adventures Dark and Deep is the perfect first edition retroclone, with plenty of new material and quality of life improvements.
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