3.5 was edition I played the most. It was a reason why I quit RPGs for nearly a decade because I hated it so much.
Every time I see another meme about how amazing 3.5 Tarrasque is, I remmember how amogn actual 3.5 players Tarrasque was the biggest joke. It was always brought up as definite proof designers have no idea how to make good monster. It was laughably easy to beat. A wizard could casually solo it, the same abilities people now miss in 3.5 amounted to ribbons. It was a laughingstock, forums had 100+ pages discussions how to fix it and general consensus was it';s beyond saving. It was first proof in 3.5 if you cannot use magic you're only good to roll over and die.
I honestly don't know if everyone claiming 3.5 Tarrasque is such a horrifying monster are trying to rewrite history or unintentionally proving what a broken, unplayable pile of garbage 3.5 was, if it's biggest punching bag is actually dangerous in a different, better designed game.
what I liked about 3.5 was that it was insane, and the system was exploitable in ways the GM could not predict. it let you surprise even a railroady GM. there's a kind of vibrancy that gives to a fantasy world. I think for a lot of people, that was the first time they saw anything like that. it was a tedious 90s/00's kind of good.
it was tedious, and required knowing far too many rules. it was a tedious sprawling 90s/00's kind of shitty. I don't think it was a good system on balance, I just think it's better than any other D&D, unless pathfinder counts.
and you can absolutely play a non-wizard, you just have to be as broken and weird as the wizards are.
Yeah rogues would literally just walk up to wizards and explode their whole body with a sneak attack and +40 Stealth checks.
Then they kill the wizard's familiar with their other two attacks.
Fighters acted like they were poor little victims vulnerable to mean old spellcasters but that's because players don't like taking defensive feats. By the time 3.5 was done there was a build floating around that basically made you immune to magic.
I don't recall 3.5 spells having nearly as many guaranteed success effects as 5.0 has. It was generally considered, you know, a bad idea to be able to reliably CC ancient wyrms with no hope of defense.
About 14-15 years ago, I was playing in a 16th level game where the DM did NOT know how to challenge us. He put us against an astral behemoth with double hit points and our fighter soloed it in one round, dealing out a whopping 2,500ish points of damage in 7 attacks. One of the toughest monsters in the game, with double hit points, and the rest of the party didn't even get to act.
Later in that game, we abused gate spells to crash rocks into the Abyss at 80% the speed of light.
3.5 is ridiculous.
I know this is a long shot, but can you remember how they managed this? I've played pathfinder and this still seems like ten times more than what a well-optimised could do!
Ah, now this just sounds like the DM didn't know how to say no to your crazy ideas that don't fit into the rules!
But that requires using real-life physics to figure out damage. It's better if you stick entirely to game physics, like the Locate City nuke.
having more variance in player capabilities and unique strengths (this build can fight orcs forever without getting tired!) that can kind of shape a campaign is much better than all the shit that tries to reduce variance and balance, keeping players at similar levels of general capacity just isn't worth the effective homogeneity.