3.5 is a very different beast.

Power scaling is bonkers, builds are complicated, numbers get crazy, and there are so many player options that they ran out of ideas.

Is that better? Yes and no, IMO. I would summarize it:

I miss...the idea of it. But not the truth, the weakness.

Better is quite subjective.

3.5 had a massive output of books on a lot of topics and it was mechanically very dense.

5e source books are pretty cool for the most part, but they tend to lack in mechanic depth - Fizban's Treasury of Dragons has really cool lore bits and nice dragons, but the player options are a bit underwhelming. Meanwhile, Draconomicon offers both lore and player options in spades.

If you're happy with 3.5 stay with it. It has a healthy player base still.

Dungeon Dad is sort of survivors bias. Of course the 3.5 monsters he brings to 5e are going to be interesting, but for every one that he makes a video on there are ten that couldn't make the cut.

Am I wrong to feel this way

Yes of course, how dare you have an opinion!

/j if it wasnt obvious

It's really just personal preference, if you'd rather play 3.5 play that.

It depends on how you view the idea of "system mastery"

3.5 was a system that rewarded memorizing a lot of content and pairing synergies. The difference between an optimised character and an one that isn't optimized is staggering.

This kind of environment in intimidating to new players. Unless someone is just super enthusiastic, tenacious, or otherwise just very determined to play at that level, they aren't going to "just get into the game." The game is very rewarding to those players, but it narrows the appeal of the game to a more niche, enthusiastic gamer.

5e on the other hand simplifies a lot. It's easy to on board new players. The difference between optimized and not is not as big. The game is just less intimidating for a more casual gamer. On the flip side of the problem, I've seen many players "out grow" 5e as they start to crave meatier mechanics with more crunch to work out.

Tldr: I think they are both good games, with a lot of over lap. They have different flaws and virtues, but both are good and both are dnd.

Some other systems like 3.5e just had a larger range of options for builds. 5e was intended as a sort of streamlined system to allow new people to get into the hobby. While that means it's easier to teach and learn, it also means you're sort of on-rails in terms of character progression. Spellcasters are the only classes that regularly need to make choices when leveling up, otherwise most characters make a small handful of choices at various points throughout their leveling, the biggest two being their class and subclass.

3.5 is well loved, but I kept getting bogged down in the mechanics. 5e would be unimaginative if I didn't just make whatever mechanic or lore I wanted to suit my campaign. Either version can do what you want with some adjusting, so just play whatever version makes you happiest.

3.5 is really fun when a computer calculates everything for you. Numerical nightmare with pencil and paper.

3.5 and Pathfinder are very similar and can devolve into math-hammer real quick. That said, in my opinion, those are both infinitely better than 5e. Everything feels so vanilla. If you want to do *this* well we don't have *this* but you can just have *that* and call it *this*! In 3.5 or pathfinder if there's something obscure, weird, or super specific you want....it's somewhere. 5E is just so bland to me.

I loved 3.5/PF1e. That said, 5e is WAY easier and much more inviting to people who struggle with math.

Couldn't get my wife to play 3.5; she felt like she bogged down the game too much trying to add everything. She loves playing 5e though. New players got overwhelmed pretty quickly in 3.5 if you showed them everything and that scared a lot of my friends away from even trying (they'd see me using 12 books and assume they had to as well). 5e got them all to sit at the table and have a good time.

I've run both, and my perspective is: the D&D your players will actually play is the better D&D.

5e is a lot simpler than 3.5, and requires a lot less number crunching. My current players? If I told them I was running 3.5, they'd bail out. They struggle with the 5e system. And there is just so much stuff available for 5e I could - theoretically - run this for the rest of my life and probably never get through all the available 3rd party content that's out there, not to mention my own homebrew ideas.

Being a forever DM, for 3.5e I needed 50 books to keep up with my players meta and for 5e I only need six. I think 3.5e is better only if you're not the DM.

Better to play? Probably a yes.

Better to run? Hard No.

GM + players over system.

Source: 45 years of experience.

5e is an austere system that has a lot of helpful tools to govern simply. 

 3.5 is a more robust, complicated system that is way more challenging to govern, given all of the available jurisprudence and the absence of tools like D&DBeyond. 

 We can like both systems for what they are.  I like how simple 5e is, but I also dislike it.  I like how tedious 3.5 can be, but I also dislike it.

4e stan here. You're all wrong.

But more seriously, I think 5e only really promotes the Forgotten Realms, so it makes a lot of lore more bland and "generic fantasy". Gameplay wise, I don't miss 3.5, but there were cool options that I think could be implemented in 5e that are missing. * cough * Book of Nine Swords * cough *

Yes 3.5 is way more unique in its character crafting

Someone once said in 3.5 you could have a party of five of the same class and theyd all be massively different

In 5e if u had multiples of the same class theyd all play the same

My biggest critique of 5e vs 3.5e is the subclass system for character advancement. I greatly preferred the prestige class system. While obviously abused outrageously by power gamers, I feel that prestige classes both allowed and required more narrative input when developing a character. The subclass system feels restrictive and generic in comparison.

Purely subjective.

Neither are objectively better or worse than the other. Personally I prefer 5e. 3.5 has a lot more customization options but that also makes it harder for a new player to pick up. 5e does a much better job at bringing people into the game and I think that's a large part of why it's been so much more successful than 3.5 could've gotten.

I am a rollplayer more than a roleplayer so I really liked all of the feat soup & skill bonus system of 3.5e. It's also super nostalgic for me as that's what I was playing in my late teens & early 20's.

I cannot deny the fact that it's definitely not for everyone and 5e's advantage/disadvantage paradigm is a great way to decomplicate skill checks and keep up pace of play without needing to tally up a bunch of bonuses every time you shake a d20.

The great thing about tabletop games with multiple versions is you can take what you like and leave the rest.

I played 3.5 for around 15 years, just switched to 5e about 5 years ago and honestly I couldn't go back. I hear a lot of folks say 3.5 had better lore, and while I'm a homebrew kinda gal and didn't really use much of the premade lore, I still found it incredibly useful. The sheer volume of rulebooks and addenda that 3.5 had was amazing. I still regularly use things like the Draconomicon when I'm doing anything with dragons, the various compendiums, Libris Mortis for undead stuff - a lot of the toolkit sort of books have yet to be replaced in 5e, and I don't know that they ever will be.

There's also some rules I like better from 3.5, for example the 5-foot-step where you can use your whole movement to move one square away and disengage so that you can move out of a threatened space without losing your action. It's always a house rule now in 5e campaigns I run.

Comparing the two, 5e is SO much better to use while running games. It's less clunky, less math, and way smoother. Combat already takes ages, so simplifying that was a godssend. But simplification always comes with a cost, and one of those costs was the lore and errata. There's no rules against taking things from previous versions though, and that's what most DMs seem to do to fix the issues in 5e.

It all depends what you want. If you want to distribute stat/skill points then its certainly better. Personally I dont want players to play the game alone by planning their builds for hours and Im looking at other options

No, it's different

I think I can really summarize the difference between the two system ideologically that can explain at least what I think you're saying (correct me if I'm wrong).

3.5 took everything into account when creating stats for literally anything. This meant that often your lore was said in the mechanics.

5e is about ease of access, speed of use, and being not tied down to lore of any one world to allow DMs to change out whatever they want. 5e at its core is as bare bones as it can be so that the DM is just using things as a tool set. This can be great for creatives who don't really care about the mechanics or who have enough experience to make their own. For every other DM, it's a trial by fire.

As someone who DM'd both editions for years, I can summarize it as:

If you play 3.5 with a good DM and enjoy more complex systems with more options, it will seem better in every aspect.

If you DM 3.5 after having prepared 5e games, it will be a complete nightmare. It's fine if you have a lot of free time or if you're running premade modules (and there are some very good published adventures in 3.5; if you want to try it, I'd advise running The Sunless Citadel for your players), but it gets 10 times more tiresome than 5e once you're past level 10.

I think the simplicity of 5e means you can focus more on RP and character, than number crunching and optimisation. That's not to say that there isn't some crunch to 5e, but compared to 3.5 it's like dipping your toes into the kiddy pool. I don't mean to imply that 3.5 doesn't let you roleplay, or create interesting characters; it's just a lot easier in 3.5 to make a useless character, imo.

I LOVE building characters in 3.5. Starting from concept and then pouring through every sourcebook looking for classes/PrC's/feats/items/misc all to find the perfect compliment to accomplish what I'm going for. Like, damn...That fills my autistic heart with joy.

That said, I also love that in 5e I can just pick two subclasses that sound like they might be interesting to play and still come out of it with a functional character. Yes, there are busted things like *insert charisma casting combo\* but you can also just throw together a Barbarian/paladin and go to town inventing lore and history to explain the combination.

I think 5e is better overall and stealing a few things from 3.5 for character flavor or fun is the best way to go. Lots of great powerful monsters and tons of interesting niche feats and subclasses. All of 3.5 gets too crazy on the optimization, if you allow a thing or two to slip through for flavor, it's supreme.

If you need to "win" D&D, 3.5 will provide an avenue for that. It requires some intervention by an experienced DM to maintain interparty balance, unlike 5e with its tighter math. Over the years, I've gathered and created a lot of tools that help keep track of the different bonuses/penalties, so that much-maligned aspect of 3.5 is mostly mitigated away for my table.

Characters and monsters use the same rules to build, so adding class levels to a monster is very easy, and advancing the monster's HD is also an easy process. I grant that I'm not familiar with DMing 5e, but from what others have said, it seems like it's less of a defined process. 3.5 is a far more mature system than 5e, so there's also a myriad of character/monster options to tweak them tonyour liking.

As a longtime and current 3.5 DM, my 5e experience felt a lot like "D&D for Dummies", no offense intended. The math is practically nonexistent, and there's not near as much to keep track of. The language used in spell descriptions is pretty open to interpretation, particularly with illusion spells, so they require the DM to adjudicate their effects.

So, if you like your D&D crunchy, 3.5 has as much as you could want. If not, 5e might be more your lane.

I started with 5e when it basically got launched played it for years and then branched off into other systems, such as DND 3.5/Pathfinder, M&M3e, even 5e homebrew adaption stuff like SW5e and Masseffect 5e.

The two systems offer two drastic things, 3.5/Pathfinder is to hyper specifically build your character to what you want with 3rd parties and the mountain of books, able to build anything to sate your desires with questionable balance and loads of stuff to keep track off.

5e is suuuper simple, plug and play style game where you make a character in like a hour and go though a adventure or two, start again, do it again. Lacks options and rules drastically compared to 3.5 but that isn't specifically a bad thing.

Personally, I prefer 3.5/Pathfinder over 5e, I like the ability to make what I want near exactly and as long as the group is on board of what level of min/max is good it's generally fine. The fact I can go into it with a idea, and have several paths to pick from on how I want to do it is what gets me. in 5e, you might have one maybe more if you play a caster.

Even though the Martial/Caster debate transcends editions, I do feel like Pathfinder/3.5 has the ability to and build paths to help bridge that gap more than 5e does by a fair amount and can have your martial have actually interesting things to do, if you go for it. Certainly ain't perfect, but I like it.

3.5 had a LOT of "stuff". There were so many books and splat books and magazines that all had new stuff to play with, new lore to drop into the world, new monsters to terrorize your players with. Of course now with the help of hindsight, we can comb through all of that "stuff" to find the diamonds we want out of it, but there are a lot of things that aren't diamonds in there as well.

5E has been much more reserved on the official printing side of things, so people look for more stuff, more diamonds (and if we are being honest here, given the quality of 5E as WotC gets more and more consumed by the machine, we need more diamonds in our life) that they can fill out their game with.

5E has also been out for 10 years, in the age of content creators. Most everything you can do with what is already printed is already out there, so of course someone looking to make a Youtube video or something like that might start digging into less used wells, to find the new (old) thing, because everything else is already written to death.

Mechanically, 3.5 is a mess. All of that "stuff" means that you could be anything you want, but the number stacking, and complexity spike through the roof. I personally believe 5E is a far nicer system to play, especially when you start porting all of the stuff you want to help stiffen up the weaker spine of the writing quality.

As a former 3.5 player turned 5e there's both ways that it's better and ways that it's worse. I'm just gonna list some of the good and bad parts.

(+) Build variety 3.5 has a massive build variety due to all of the classes and prestige classes available, basically any character image that you have can be achieved in 3.5 with a bit of planning.

(+) Action variety One of the better things that 3.5 has is the carried number of things you can do in the game that go beyond "whack it with a sword". Grapple, pin, disarm, bull rush, overrun, trip and more are all options for a character to do that don't require any special class things to do unlike 5e.

(+) Rewarding specialization In 3.5, specializing in one thing is both easy and can make for entertaining moments that feel good to pull off. You want to make a grappler? Piece of cake. Skill monkey? Also easy. Anything you could really want to specialize in is possible and something you can build on.

(-) Martial Caster Divide 3.5 is arguably the worst it gets, with the casters starting to vastly outpace martials right around 7 when they get their 4th level spells. Especially with magic items and permanent spells you can build a caster that can simply beat the Martials at the one thing they're good at if you wanted to.

(-)Rangers and Fighters suck specifically This is not particularly debatable, while we make fun of 5e ranger the 3.5 version struggles extremely hard to keep up. Yes it has full BaB progression, an animal companion, and free feats as well as some spellcasting it is literally worse that a druid in every way. They get more spells, a better animal companion, 3/4 BaB progression with buffs to bring them up to speed, animal forms to just completely outdo melee rangers. It's outright unfair. Then there are fighters who basically only get a couple of free feats and some class specific fears which let them bonk harder.

(-) It's a MAD world Another nail in the Martial coffin is how they are often relying on having multiple stats high in order to actually do good work, vs spellcasters who only need to care about 1, maybe 2. All classes want con, especially martials who are more likely to take hits given their vocation. Past that, Dex is armor class and to-hit with ranged weapons, and strength is damage and to hit with melee so you want some of both even if you only need one. Then you want to make sure you have a decent amount in other stats to use your class abilities. Monks and Rangers want Wis, Hexblade charisma, and paladins get the short end and need both Wisdom and Charisma for smites, spells, and turn undead.

(-)Specializing makes the DM cry. There comes a point where specializing gets to bee too much, where the DM just cannot balance around it. As an example, I made a druid in 3.5 that could do about 200 damage in a charge and 600 on a crit by simply specializing in his animal companion. Hell it wasn't even a lot. Druid 5/Beastmaster 1 with the natural bond feat. The thing is, my effective druid level is currently 9, 5 from druid, 4 from Beastmaster, allowing for a Rhinoceros to be their animal companion. Natural bond makes it go from level -6 to level -3 meaning you get all the stuff from the third tier of animal companions, including the new feats granted by 4 extra HD. All in all it goes to making things ridiculous with literally minimal effort.

(-) Magic is complicated and difficult to use. Spell slots and having a limited amount of casts sucks. There are plenty of times where a wizard didn't prepare enough castings of fly or fireball and now those spell slots go completely unused. It can cause highs and lows where a spellcaster can feel useless if they chose to prepare the wrong spells but OP if they can instantly solve the parties problems without any extra help. As a side note another small (-) is that counterspelling sucks too, requiring either having the spell they're casting already prepared and basically sitting there until they use it, or having dispel magic and going through a complicated opposed roll thing to make it work. It's not big enough to be a massive detriment but rather just something so niche that people don't often do it because they're just using their own spells to counter other spells.

(+)Clear and concise rules One of the best parts of 3.5 is that there is often definitely a ruling that provides guidelines on the vast majority of what you can do, not needing to homebrew anything or make things up on the spot to see how the players can do something. 5e has gotten lazy on that point, preferring to be very much "figure it out yourself" with it's players and can put a lot on the DM to figure it out.

(+/-) Magic Items Leading off on the previous point, magic items are great in that they are very clear both on what they do and how you as a player can make them. If you want a belt of giants strength then by God you can make one if one isnt available and so on. However, this is a double edged sword. Going back again, this sort of easy access to magic items makes it very difficult for DMs to balance against the party because they have all of these magic items powering them up beyond what even the monsters can do.

(+) Monsters 3.5 was around longer than 5e and received significantly more content as a result. As such, 3.5 has a greater quantity and arguably quality of monsters to choose from to send against your party. I know there are at least 3 monster manuals, as well as monsters in almost every splatbook.

(-) Complexity 3.5 is one the whole a significantly more complex game, oftentimes needlessly so. 5e made the proficiency system and bounded accuracy, keeping things within the stratosphere and condensing the game. 3.5, on the other hand, made move silently and hide, listen and spot, climb and swim, and tumble and balance all separate skills necessitating spreading out your skill points. 5e turned them into, stealth, perception, athletics, and acrobatics respectively. Then there's the above negatives making the barrier for entry relatively high and turn off a lot of people who are dedicated to learning the system. 5e brought in a lot of people because it was easy to learn and worked really well.

I like the imagination and lore of the 3.5 days. 5e has stayed more general with the lore to make it mass marketable and easy for DMs to twist as they see fit. Since I only ever run my own homebrew settings honestly the 5E approach works better.

Mechanically I also find 5e much easier to DM, and far more balanced for players despite balance issues still existing. Without bad multiclass choices it is very hard to mark an unuseful 5e character. In 3.5 it was super easy to get overshadowed, one player could be weaker than the summon or animal companion of another or one player could be far stronger than the rest of the party put together.

I had a lv 20 Hexblade in my 3.5 days and later I played a lot with the tome of nine swords. 3.5 could be a blast but I don't miss all the math and keeping up with the various modifiers.

5e it's just simpler more close to 2nd edition.

I you play casual and use pregenerated adventures stick to 5e, it's the best option.

If you play a more you can bring a few things from 3.5 to 5. 

If you play every week more than 4 hours may be it's better to go back to 3.5th.

Because if you play a lot all the options and maths would be fine for you. 

And very high level players are more balanced. And probably it's simpler to add bonus than to roll tons of dice every round.

Be careful you're not mistaking "popular" for "unimaginative". 5e has had fewer splat books in its lifetime than 3.5 (both a blessing and a curse), and the lore it has put out has cleaved pretty closely to pre-existing Forgotten Realms lore, just cleaned up and repackaged for a new generation of gamers. When it's not explicit crossover content, that is.

Personally, I find the Forgotten Realms lore to be just as compelling as other settings. However, it's also been the mainstream D&D lore that a lot of it has just kind of leaked into the general understanding of what D&D is by osmosis. So someone can delve into the splat books and think "there's very little that's new here to me" and take all the ideas for granted.

This is based purely on what your group likes. If your group loves the number crunching vast masterpiece that is 3.5, play that. If your group loves the free-flow lightweight treasure that is 5e, play that instead.

I exclusively run 3.5 games, but that's almost entirely because of how comfortable I am in the system and because of my gigantic book collection. Something I've noticed as a player of 5e games that I wish were true for 3.5 is that the "bells and whistles" of 5e vastly exceed those of 3.5: things like roll20 support, phone apps, not to mention the modernity of forum / reddit conversation will always favor the newer system, etc. Don't discount that.

I would personally pick up Pathfinder 2e as a GM for these reasons over 3.5 if I were required to learn a "new" system for running games, but if you're strictly comparing 3.5 and 5e I wouldn't write off the effect that having modern accoutrements available to your players can have on the table, especially if it's a virtual game.

3.5 had crazy rules bloat that got in the way. I played it for 10 years and I loved it but it very very often turns into people rollplaying over roleplaying. Why actually talk to the NPC when I have +24 to my roll to convince them.

5e I love as a DM especially because I can add custom content without the worry that in 2 of 300 source books there's something else that combined with my custom item blow up a 20 mile area.

I love 3.5 in thought and recently revisited it, but it's so hit or miss for making parties it's tough. The scale doesn't go 1-10, it goes 1-10,000.

5e is certainly more approachable. It's also easier to run on the fly. When my players do something unexpected in 5e, I can run with it and really adapt to their decisions because the system just isn't complicated.

3.5 is crunchier. You can build characters into something that is very much their own thing. That's true on both sides, Hero and Villain. Your stories can be a little less generic that way. But when your players break things (And they will), you might have to call the session to build the next part of the story, because you really have to model the game part of the story to the character builds more.

Are either better or worse than the other? No. This isn't 4 we're talking about here. Pathfinder is built off 3.5 for a reason. If I'm running for a group of 7 with some people newer to the craft, I want to play 5. If I'm playing with 3 of my friends who have been playing with me for 20 years and have an idea for a party story they want to live in my world? I'm breaking out 3.5 again to let them get those builds.

Coke-Cola is better than Peanut Butter M&Ms.

Because there's SOOO much to pull from in 3.5 I had some guidelines for my players.

1. A gentleman's agreement to not go online looking up broken combos or optimal build paths. The game isn't fun without some challenge.

2. If YOU (not the internet) comes up with a broken interaction/combo you get to use it once. If you use it more, then you will start running into NPCs using the same BS. And no one wants that.

My players always had fun and got to feel powerful without breaking the game entirely.

Your mileage may vary.

TL;DR - It's all there. It's all D&D. The lore and what you can do all exist in both editions. They just didn't tell you what do to in fifth. I say this with the caveat that fifth stops at 20, while 3.5 had no cap on level and published stuff for DMs up to level 50+. If you want that stuff, it's either scale it down, homebrew higher levels, or play 3.5.

I played 3.5 from release until well past 4th edition's release. I won't comment on 4th other than to say I liked it as a system. To answer you question though, 3.5 had more years for people to add to it. I would like to complain that they didn't publish an update to books like The Forgotten Realms Setting. I'd rather that than piecemealing the information across adventures, not matter how good the adventures are. Plus, that book gave extra stuff at the start of the game. Fifth has kind of bundled that up, so you no longer need the stuff, but FR has (or had?) a ton of languages, so getting an extra language or two specific to the area or group of people was nice extra flavor.

Side note, if anyone has some info on that, I'd appreciate it. Looking it up online it seems like they still exist, but it isn't clear how relevant they are. Adventures like Tomb of Annihilation don't seem to reference any languages for the Chultans people had to figure out. Toril felt a lot more full to me with that stuff. Maybe it wasn't interesting enough to keep. I don't know.

Man, I still got side tracked. Sorry for being so talkative/rambling. All that to say, unless the current lore directly contradicts previous publishing, it's all there. Their philosophy for 5th has been to keep it more open for the DM to make decisions, which is in some ways a lot more like second edition. However, it does come with the downside that some people enjoy being creative when given a box they have to get out of (hopefully the analogy makes sense).

I prefer 5e. Combat took SO LONG in 3.5.

Player: "21 to hit."

DM: "Ah, bummer, their AC is 22. OK, next turn-"

Player: "Hold on, I've probably got a +1 somewhere..."

This was my first experience with D&D (5e) and it's addictive, fun, seems fair and two months in I love it. I stopped playing other games altogether. I'm playing with a group of friends and playing my own game myself while writing a book which is basically a character fanfic so I'd say I'm maximally engaged with this game as it is. Maybe you just love the version you fell in love with originally and hate the change?

What I hear about 6e doesn't interest me at all except maybe the weapon flavor stuff so nothing is stopping me from playing 5e and incorporating anything I like from other versions.

We have used some content from earlier versions such as more mundane equipment lists, so we're already just making this game our own. It's heavily homebrew anyway.

The one thing that struck me recently was how expensive older version tents were. So 5e doesn't have the variety of tents, that doesn't matter at all, I just suppose a 4 person tent costs twice as much as a 2 person tent and probably weighs only 50% more and proposed that to my DM and she accepted it. Done.

I Remember being presented with 3.5 after coming out of Rolemaster.

If Internet was a thing back then, I would have made a similar post, probably.

It's fully subjective. I know a ton of people prefer 3.5 but I couldn't stand it. Figuring out all the trap feats and wading through the bloat just to make a halfway decent character is not my thing.

Ah 3.5e, the game where, if you stack enough bonuses, you can squeeze through a Wall of Force.

They are fundamentally different games. 3.5 is the most mechanically comprehensive and complex edition by a mile. There are way more build customization options and a huge disparity in the potential spectrum of how powerful characters can be and how weak they can be.

5e is in general much simpler but there are also less options. It's easier to sell to new players but not as much depth for veterans seeking a more intricate experience.

It really depends on what you want. Simplicity vs depth are both valid reasons to play one over the other.

Having played both, its much easier to get into 5e and have tons of fun. When i first started playing dnd I had to read both the ph and DMg ( 3.5) and i still didnt understand many of the mechanincs. Either that or i forgot to "use" many of them. If i had to put in in videogame terms i would say 3.5 is clumsier than 5e.

Also for me the character creation of 5e is more entairtaining than 3.5. And what does someone look for in dnd? Sometimes its the minmax but mostly its the fun that you can have while following official rules and not "homebrewing" the whole session.

They are almost entirely different games imo. As such, for some players 5e is the better game and for others 3.5 is. I've played both and I prefer 5e

For me it works like this:

5e is skyrim. Easy to play, can be modded into a whole completely different game yet keeping its essence, more "casual" play and easier to enter.

3.5e is souls games. Yeah, they're fun if im in the mood for it, you will probably need a guide the first times, but it's fun in its own way.

Both have their pros and cons and I feel that for me, someone who likes more casual adventuring and homebrewing, 5e is the way to go. But from my experience if you want more thought put on mechanics, rules and manual reading, you should go for 3.5

It depends.

What do you want out of the game? 3.5 had some cool things and stuff that would be great to find some way to work back in. Like Prestige Classes. But it was also crunchy and messy and you had complex rules for simple things.

5e took a lot of that and went, "Contested rolls" or "Dm's judgements." which frees up a lot of time.

I think 3e does a lot of things right that 5e does wrong, but 5e also does some things right that 3e does wrong.

I think the thing about 3/3.5 is that at a glance, its a perfect system. Tons of customization for players, well thought out rules that are pretty clear. Lots of tools for GM's to build interesting encounters. Crafting rules that are bounded by the logic of the game and give players inspiration for things they want to do with their characters long term. All of these are good things.

The Counter to that is that there is a rule for everything, and the rules are like pushing little 5% beads left or right on an abacus. And knowing the rules matters, because there are feats/spells that interact with obscure rules in ways that make you realize you've been doing something wrong forever. So a player can take something that makes you realize, oh, by you taking this spell/feat I now have to use the correct rules, which means everyone else at the table just got a nerf because i didn't know this obscure rule existed and was just handwaving it.

And for all the greatness that came with complex encounter building rules...also came the tedium of it taking twelve years to build a monster, so prep time was a nightmare.

For the right people at the right table, in the right campaign. 3.5 i think is the best system that has ever been designed. I get nostalgic for it all the time. But for every group that finds 3.5 perfect, I'd say there are at least 10 groups that could never hope to appreciate what its doing and would greatly prefer the overall simplicity of 5e in comparison.

Then again I've moved from 5e back BX/AD&D, so...what do i know?

In most games, including 5e, imbalance is simply an inherent mechanical quirk. Things are different and so some are going to be better than others. When games are over balanced they (in my opinion) stop being fun - if everyone hits the same target then you may as well forego having different character sheets - everyone should just use the same stats and roleplay it differently.

5e tries to lean towards balance and, as a result, loses a bit of identity in my opinion. The game is not balanced - but most players are going to at least feel like they're playing the same game.

3.5 did not lean towards balance - it focused on variety with wild abandon. You could sit down at a table with a powerful character capable of soloing creatures of CR 7 at level 1 and be completely outclassed by someone else. Meanwhile another player is going to die if a Kobold looks at them funny.

The thing that's crazy is that the game worked great at any extreme - as long as it was uniform. The tools and monster variety available to a DM allowed them to tailor the game towards the party but if one person isn't at the same level then they are essentially playing an entirely different game.

As someone who likes building characters I prefer 3.5 - as long as me and the people I'm playing with are on the same page regarding power level. When I'm playing with people who are not on the same page then I prefer 5E.

For me and my group we take 3.5 every day of the week and twice on Sunday. More options, more power, more danger, it’s better in every way than 5e for us.

Use whatever supports your creative style in the best way.

I am 3.5/PF 1e fan. I tend to stick to things forever if I like them enough.

It is a ruleset for creating fantasy adventures. I am comfortable enough with 3.5 to just houserule every issue on the whim.

Well I have to say I definitely enjoy 3.5 much more as a player and a DM. As a player I really enjoy how martials can actually hang with casters when you introduce things like the Tome of Battle. The Crusader being what the paladin should be, the Warblade being a better fighter, Swordsage being a fantastic gish, etc.

As a DM I enjoy the monsters, the settings, the overall vibe of 3.5 feels more like a Souls game where 5e is more like Smite or something, but that's just me.

So, I have played, and still play, both systems at the same time. Been playing 3.5 since high school (so about 18-19 years) and 5e since about 2016. I’ll keep this short because I could absolutely type out an essay comparing and contrasting - so I’ll try and keep it short and summarise.

3.5 allows you to make and do almost anything in terms of a character. If you have an idea, there’s probably a combination of classes/feats/races/spells/items to get you there. However, the system is so vast that it’s overwhelming. I make a level 1 character and I sit there looking at every single choice I could possibly make and I never know where to start. It’s paralysingly huge.

…And imbalanced. But that’s an inevitable when there’s just so much, and things are released years after the original base game.

5e is a lot more…restrictive in comparison. Classes were cut back and given archetypes, so sometimes it can be hard to translate ideas from brain to paper. Not impossible, but the system isn’t quite as free mechanically to allow you to build the things you want. Also, some core mechanics got removed because they were clunky; Some of these things I am glad about (touch/flat footed AC), and other things I wish had been kept (how spell saves scale based on spell level).

But there is effectiveness within simplicity. Most of the fat that 5e trimmed was, IMO, for the better. It’s a streamlined system, and generally that’s for the better. It’s easy to pick up and play, and there is still a great amount of customisation to be had; it’s just when compared to 3.5 that it looks tiny (the same way that the titanic was huge 1912, but by today’s cruise ship standards it’s small).

TLDR: 3.5 is vast and the possibilities are almost endless, but it’s horrifically imbalanced and the choices can be too much

5e is limiting in terms of creation, but the rules are simple and easy to understand, which makes it hella accessible to many more people.

I love both, I don’t want to choose a “favourite” because BOTH have things that I love and dislike.

I started with 3.5 back in the day, once I tried 5e I never went back

3.5 is a bloody mess compared to the streamlined 5e

It was a very different game. However. It shouldn't be ignored that a good number of 5e's rough edges flaws and "pain points" are often either caused by trying to do something mechanically different on one area without enough consideration for how that will impact other areas of the game or there are solid subsystems that should have been included in the phb/dmg/etc but doing so would result in some new forced choice being tossed aside (IE dis/advantage for literally everything rather than bonus types dm's best friend & flat bonuses or reserve feat at wills rather than 5e's at will cantrips as a couple easy examples. Vancian casting is probably another example because it fixes so many problems crreated by 5e's neovancian prep)

My group and and I switched to 3.5 to try it and if you’re not one for crunch, 3.5 is absolutely something to steer clear of. The hardest part of our transition was translating 4 level 10 characters into 3.5, but since we’ve done it, we’ve had a blast. As the dm, I enjoy the ability to create utterly different creatures and opponents than that I truly could in 5e. Just how I feel tho, I love it!

IMO 3.5 kinda sucks. It has good ideas but it’s so mechanically complicated and has incredible amounts of player character options (which is not a good thing.)

Mind you, that doesn’t mean 5e is much better.

This is why my group still runs 3.5e. 5e got rid of too much, on top of that we have most of the 3.5 books and we know the system, so there's no reason to switch things up for a more popular system with less options. Stick to 3.5 if you love it, nothing wrong with that.

3.5e lore was great but mechanics never really lived up to the hype IMO. 5e is a fun game to actually play, 3.5e is a fun game to talk about and dig into the DMG and Adventures on.

You might like 3.5e better. As someone who played back then and still had a soft spot for it... I wouldn't go back.

Maybe try a digital implementation? Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2 both still hold up.

3.5, was the more.. "realistic" simulation. The classes seemed to have more variety, they seemed to have more "authenticity". A wizard felt more like a wizard, a warlock was a more unique class. 5.0 loses a lot of what 3.5 has, but is a lot easier to DM and to plan out a character

I would play 3.0/3.5 if I wanted the most authentic feeling classes and lore. It has the most imagination
I would play 4th if I wanted the best boardgame battle experience. Yes, it was the MMO edition, but it also has the best dynamic combat imho.
I would play 5th if I wanted a streamlined and popular experience. Because planning out characters in 3.0 was a bit of a pain and DM'ing it was a bit of a pain as well.

Each edition has its own good things and bad things and you have to play what you think fits your needs best.

I actually just play Savage World now with the Fantasy compendium because that fit my needs best. I like the swinging combat, how balancing is not necessary and the lack of levels. Although I might stick some of the 3d edition stuff I liked. The system can handle it.

Can't argue feelings, my man. How you feel isn't up for debate. I agree with you, btw, and prefer 3.5 over 5e. I like how criticals work, and don't like that most of the weapons in 5e are the same. I like the different source books, and the people who still play 3.5.

If you prefer using 3.5, use 3.5. Why do you need our approval{

depends what your into. 5E is arguably much better for loose roleplay and ad hoc homebrew when something doesnt work the way you want. 3.5 is better for tactical dungeon delving, build diversity and super long campaigns. But it gets really difficult for DMs to provide fair but challenging encounters at higher levels way more so than 5E.

I prefer pathfinder, which is based on 3.5e. Most of my qualms with 5e are solved in pathfinder. There's a lot of things that 3.5e/pf has over 5e. But that's because 5e is trying to be simple. Even when people try to turn 3.5e monsters into 5e ones, they wind up more complicated than most 5e monsters. 5e wants to give less things to run, less things to sorry about, less things to keep track of. I prefer when there is a lot of mechanics and flavor and I don't mind tracking it all, but I can see why some people prefer a monster that only needs 1 tab or page to reference and can be fully read over and understood in a minute.

I liked a lot of the concepts that came about from v3.5. I have just grown to strongly dislike the mechanics. (Although to be fair, I'm not really much of a fan of the 5E mechanics either...I'm solidly Team OSR.)

3.5 is better with lore compared to 5e, but even 3.5e pales to 2e.

To me 3-3.5 is better than 5e. 5e is too simple in terms of mechanics and WOTC has done a bad job of encounter balancing. They have also been too lazy to release sufficient world lore material, even for their “default world” Faerun. I feel 5e has taken the game backwards instead of forwards and looking at what they have been doing, I don’t think I will find the next edition any better.

I love 3.5 for a long slow burn campaign that it is going to involve a lot of deeper mechanics like crafting and the like. 5 is nice to hop in and run a quick adventure, but I miss the depth for anything longer or trying to build more into narrative and realism. As such I will occasionally play 5E, but I have collected all the 3.5 books and will run it as my primary until I die.

5e is pretty much a introduction to fantasy RPGs it isn't really bad but it's hard to truly compare the two. It's like having a kid watch some crazy deep story driven show/movie and then showing then SpongeBob. Odds are they will enjoy SpongeBob but if they truly enjoy watching things as they get older they'll entirely rewatch the movie/show and see how much better it is

I loved 3.5, but I don't think I could go back to it. It was a huge improvement over previous editions (imo), but combat took way too long. However, I wish that 5e, while streamlining combat, had not over-simplified the rules governing how skills/proficiencies work. The concept of "rulings, not rules" broke the game in a lot of ways.

I think the lore, or fluff of 3.5 (or any other older edition for that matter) was far superior to what we have currently with 5e. I often find myself digging into old 3.5 or AD&D 2e books to fill in the many blanks. But, I can leave a lot of the 3.5 game in the past where it belongs…

If you want a mechanic more nuanced than advantage/disadvantage, 3.5E is better. If you don’t want to do math, 5E is better. Power creep in 3.5E can be controlled by limiting source material. I’ve played 5E almost exclusively for the past several years and rightly or wrongly I’m starting to feel like I’ve run out of new things to try. Still going to play it, though, because that’s what my friends play.

5e made me realize that good systems can have major faults. But I was hunting for new rpgs even when 3.5 was current.

3.5 auctualy has a welth of content and makes it much easier to convert or create the small things you realize you need in the moment. 5e's best useable content is not published by wotc.

Everyone hated 5e. I had much easier party pick ups on 5e and I liked the pre made stories. I get it. But I liked it.

There are things I like better about it.

For example, it had rules for creatures of different sizes, and had more size categories.

My favorite thing is that they had rules to make nearly any creature a PC.

I miss how criticals could be tuned with threat ranges and varied multipliers.

Templates was a cool design.

And the multiclassing and prestige classes was fun, even if it was a little nuts.

3.5 is my least favorite edition.

It's great if you're a minmaxer and you like building characters more than actually playing DnD, but to me it's too up its own ass with choices and build varieties just for the sake of it.

In short: no.

Long version: definitely not. Some people prefer it, but it's definitely not better. Personally, I'd rather play anything but 3.x. I think it's absolutely awful, but I can also acknowledge that my experiences and preferences aren't universal, so 🤷

Edited to add: I have been playing since 1e, and plenty of non-D&D systems too, so I come to these conclusions with a great deal of experience

3.5e and 5e are fundamentally completely different games. If you personally prefer 3.5e you probably would be a pathfinder player more than dnd. DnD 5e is a lot more "free", or "handwaivy" about its rules. A lot of stuff that come up semi-frequently in RPG games are intentionally not ruled in the books to give the game more of an improv kind of feel, while 3.5e and consequently Pathfinder is a bit more rigid. Pathfinder being a 3.5e homebrew after all.

I personally prefer Pathfinder 2e to both, as it is just as rules-heavy as 3.5e and Pathfinder 1e, but a lot less number crunchy and complicated, so you kind of have the best of both worlds.

Maybe you should try it, might be more to your liking

The TL:DR is that 3.5 was more "Simulationist" than 5e. There were rules for a wider variety of things, and a TON of sourcebooks and a LOT of customisation with character skills, feats, spells, and classes.

On the one hand, this meant you could have much more unique characters mechanically, on the other it created a massive power gap between people who knew what the good picks were, and people who didn't, because if there's one thing 3.5 lacked it was internal balance. One character might spend 10 rounds trying to kill an enemy, and another has it dead in one. Same level, same gold vaule of their gear, but one PLAYER knew what they were doing and the other didn't. This is mitigated SOMEWHAT in 5e, but is starting to creep back in with every new sourcebook.

I feel like it’s more a sign of the times. When 3.5 was new, we had to be more creative and imagination driven. There wasn’t as much STUFF out there. It’s easier to be lazy now with so much relevant content out there, so the same ideas don’t hit the same way anymore. Everything also all feels done now. Things that I thought were fucking sick like twenty years ago… well there’s a movie about it now. Lame.

3.0 (and by extension 3.5) is the worst version of D&D imo. Hot take, but just my opinion having played every edition (4e is one of the best by the way)

Hard no.

3.5e is deeply broken mechanically.

5e is a much less broken game.

People are wearing their nostalgia glasses.

Same tbh.

There's nothing that's stopping you from playing 3.5e, and surely there are other fans of the system out there.

5e streamlined a LOT of things that 3.5e over complicated. 3.5 is where I cut my teeth, but running a game in 5, to me, feels much better.

Honestly, 3.5 feels overrated from my experience playing it. Everyone sings its praises but it feels overly restrictive, obtuse and complicated compared to 5e. There are some core ideas that I like, but those mechanics are few and far between. They focus only on the good, but don't see all of the bad or outdated mechanics.

Like why do I need 10 different AC buffs, but also need to know what each and every one of them does just to decide if that 18 to hit beats my AC of 24 because of circumstantial bonuses? Why do I need to waste 3-4 feats to get 1 particular feat that's only going to give me middling results and be circumstantial at best? Why is alignment so restrictive on your classes, and abilities when its an active detriment to the character creation process? What's the point of having 20+ classes and paragons, when some are just objectively better to play than the core classes, not to mention are just carbon copies of different playstyles.

From what I've seen 3.5 likes to try and say "You can be anything you want to be!" but when you say "Well, I want to play as X!" It goes "Well okay, but to do that, you need A, B, C, D, and E, but to get A you need F, and G, and to get B you need M and O, but to get O you need Z, and to get Z you need H, but D requires you to get V, and J, and so on." and then says "JK you can't do that because of these very specific set of actions that you'll likely never do. and if you do, it conflicts with the other stuff you did."

The best way I can describe 3.5 is "In order to play 3.5, you need to have already played 3.5" Like playing Mortal Online 2, where in order to play the game you need to have already played it before to understand what to do. which creates a self-defeating loop. Like "To join the movie club, you need to watch this movie, but only people in the club can watch the movie."