History TabletopGame / DungeonsAndDragonsThirdEdition

** All psionic characters gain a perk called "psionic focus", which at its basic can help with Concentration checks, and furthermore with many psionic feats depending on keeping or expending your psionic focus. However, such characters need to keep at least 1 power point in their reserve to benefit off the psionic focus; if this last point absolutely needs to be spent, the psionic focus is unavailable until they can rest.

* CastFromExperiencePoints: In 3rd and 3.5 editions, crafting magical items cost XP for the maker, in addition to stiff cost in gold. Many powerful spells are also costing XP when cast, the cost rising up with how game-breaking they are (in particular, the reality-altering ''wish'' and ''miracle''). Not only this dissuade players to cast them too often if they want to progress in their class, but it introduces an additional limitation: the rule that characters cannot spend so much XP that it would bring them below the minimum for their current level.[[note]]There are a few exceptions with XP loss able to reduce the character's level, like losing a familiar, but those are rare.[[/note]] This means those spells cannot be cast at all if a character can't invest enough XP.

* FictionalAgeOfMajority: In 3.5 Edition humans reach majority at 15, whereas elves, who can expect to live into their 500s, do at 110.

** ''Mark of the outcast'' (''Underdark'') is a minor curse putting a mark visible to all on the subject's head, giving penalties to bluff and diplomacy checks.

** The dolghast from ''Magic of Eberron'' is an Aberration with a body that's constantly healing and rotting, giving it the "Half-Dead" special quality. In addition to gaining some of the immunities of undead (including a 50% chance of negating critical hits), it has a unique interaction with positive and negative energy - ''both'' are harmful to it, but if it succeeds on its saving throw against such an effect (which would normally negate or reduce damage) it's converted to healing instead.

** Most notably, the Abyssal Heritor category of feats, which are drawing on some demonic ancestry. Each of them induces a -2 penalty to a specific, different skill, for various reasons. Also, having more than one Abyssal Heritor feat will skew the character's alignment toward Chaotic, if not already (and those feats get more powerful the more you have, which is a strong motivation to take several).

** The Wu Jen is another arcane base class using a spell book (or an oriental-flavored equivalent). A few {{Prestige Class}}es also uses spell books without formal wizard training -- Chameleon, Corrupt Avenger, Cultist of the Shattered Peak, Death Master, Ebonmar Infiltrator, Hoardstealer, Merchant Prince, Prime Underdark Guide, Telflammar Shadowlord, Thayan Slaver...

* VagueStatValues: DetectMagic, DetectEvil, and similar spells only differentiate faint, moderate, strong, [[PokeInTheThirdEye overwhelming]], and residual {{aura|Vision}}s rather than reveal a specific {{Spell Level|s}} or creature level.

** The Iron Heart Surge technique from ''Tome of Battle: The Book of Nine Swords'' is probably the strongest non-magical form of anti-debuff, able to dispel immediately a wide array of conditions through fighting spirit. That is, if you manage to settle the endless debate over ''what'' it can exactly be used against.

** Several "evil" diseases provide growing bonuses at the cost of penalties in other areas, in effect becoming a DeadlyUpgrade. The players were quick to notice that the PrestigeClass Cancer Mage from ''Book of Vile Darkness'' can adapt to diseases, hoarding bonuses while ignoring the penalties.

* {{BFS}}: In 3rd edition it was possible for a character to wield swords created for creatures much bigger (a human wielding a sword designed to be used two-handed by ''giants'', for example). 3rd also has the "Fullblade", which is explicitly an even bigger greatsword, à la ''Manga/{{Berserk}}'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''.

** Third edition has weapons with an increased critical hit range (chance to make a critical hit), due either to their physical nature or magical enhancements. There are spells (like ''keen edge'') and feats that do likewise (e.g. "Improved Critical"). A character can concentrate on gaining as large a critical hit range as possible (though most of the time, different critical range improvements do not stack).

** ''Eberron'' also has the Undying, beings very much like undead except that the energy that reanimates them is ''positive'' energy, the energy of life (instead of negative energy, the energy of death, like undead). Similarly, ''The Book of Exalted Deeds'' has rules for the Deathless, good-aligned beings who have come BackFromTheDead in a form powered by positive energy. It includes the wrinkle that they react to Turn Undead and Rebuke Undead in the opposite manner, being rebuked or bolstered by turning and turned or destroyed by rebuking.

* MoveInTheFrozenTime: In the 3[[superscript:rd]] edition, the ''Epic Level Handbook'' includes a feat called "Spell Stowaway" which allows a character to pick one spell and share in its effects each time it's cast within 300ft (as long as it would have a clear path to travel to you). One of the examples (used by the Phane monster) is choosing ''time stop'' so that you join the caster in their accelerated timeframe.

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* CastFromExperiencePoints:
** In 3e crafting magical items costs XP, with powerful spells like ''wish'' and ''miracle'' also costing XP.
** In 3.5, the following common spells require XP: [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/planarAllyLesser.htm Planar Ally]] (all spells), [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/atonement.htm Atonement]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/commune.htm Commune]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/restorationGreater.htm Greater Restoration]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/gate.htm Gate]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/miracle.htm Miracle]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/awaken.htm Awaken]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm Permanency]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/vision.htm Vision]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/simulacrum.htm Simulacrum]], [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/limitedWish.htm Limited Wish]], and [[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/wish.htm Wish]].

** Attacks are represented by rolling a twenty-sided dice and adding the character's attack bonus to the result, hitting if the total exceeds the target's Armor Class. However, if the dice lands on "1" before attack bonus is added the attack is a CriticalFailure, conversely a "natural 20" is an automatic hit and a CriticalHit if it would have hit anyways in some editions.

* AscendToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: It can be an InvokedTrope if you like in 3/3.5 edition. Standard class progression stops at level 20, but the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook'' contains rules for advancing beyond that, with no actual cap. The easy multiclassing in that edition also means that you can simply add new classes and prestige classes pretty much forever. However, by this point game balance is non-existent so few games ever hit epic levels, and even those that do rarely go very far into them. Deities and Demigods allows your character to engage in this trope rather than just advance forever.

** All psionic characters gain a perk called "psionic focus", which at its basic can help with Concentration checks, and furthermore with many psionic feats depending on keeping or expending your psionic focus. However, such characters need to keep at least 1 power point in their reserve to benefit of the psionic focus; if this last point absolutely needs to be spent, the psionic focus is unavailable until they can rest.

* CompetitiveBalance: 3E, [[QuirkyBard Bards]] were [[MasterOfNone largely useless as they were really too versatile for their own good]], while Druids were {{Game Breaker}}s; Fighters on the other hand were largely useless in anything that wasn't, [[CripplingOverspecialisation um, fighting]] and other physical activities like riding, climbing and balancing, and often a Druid's animal companion would outclass a Fighter PC in those regards.

** On the note of 3.x Edition, former Wizards of the Coast employee Monte Cook enforced LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards '''''much more''''' than in previous editions. Martial classes were either mechanically schizophrenic (monks), ridiculously generic (fighters), or straight up terrible (3.5 samurai, which was a straight port of the 3.0 samurai without any reworking). Caster classes were overpowered due to both the number of overpowered spells they could get and the introduction of metamagic feats. [[CreatorsPet Wizards]] in particular were the worst about it. With 5E, Fighters are far more viable mechanically (retaining a lot of the tools they gained in 4E, for instance being the only class to keep the action surge feature) and Concentration rules for most spells limit the number of magical effects casters can keep up at one time, making the playing field much more even.

** The 3[[superscript:rd]] edition ''Planar Handbook'' includes the 5[[superscript:th]]-level ''death throes'' spell, which makes the caster explodes violently if he or she is killed. It ranks fairly high in the UselessUsefulSpell category, since it destroys the body and thus makes resurrection more difficult. Although it can become a GameBreaker if used intelligently, [[spoiler:for example combined with the ''magic jar'' spell...]].

* TortureIsIneffective: ''The Book of Vile Darkness'' included rules for torture that increased one's susceptibility to Bluff checks by how successful the torture was. In other words, the better you are at getting the subject to say ''anything at all'', the more likely you are to fall for them ''lying''.

* AttackSpeedBuff: The spell Haste in 3.5 Edition grants targets one extra attack when they make a full attack on their turn, in addition to other perks. This is a substantial {{Nerf}} from the 3rd edition version, which grants [[ExtraTurn an extra action per turn]].

* BarehandedBladeBlock: The third edition version of ''Oriental Adventures'' has the feat "Grappling Block" to perform a bare-handed block against melee weapons and disarm the opponent (though it can also be used with a sai or jitte). It happens during an attack and count as an attack of opportunity. However, it has no less than ''five'' feat prerequisites, which makes it unlikely that any character will bother with it.

** Also, in rules supplements like the ''Arms and Equipment Guide'', you'll find a variety of little bits-and-pieces items, like a stick of chalk, a hacksaw blade, extremely long pieces of string, a piece of ebony wood, and a bag of marbles. Each of these were individual items that had shown up in a variety of different other modules by one lone, clever writer, and since they're mundane items they are remarkably cheap (some not even breaking a single gold piece). It only takes a player willing to comb through the book and dedicate maybe a hundred gold of his budget (which, again, represents thousands and thousands of gold) to always have the right tool for an obscure job.

* ForcedAddiction: As part of the ''Book of Vile Darkness''[='=] DrugsAreBad theme, there's a spell to inflict a drug addiction with a touch, using the drug in question as an EyeOfNewt.

** Many creatures, such as plants, slimes, insects and other arthropods, {{Golem}}s and TheUndead are immune to hypnosis and all other mind-effecting magic. Depending on the edition there can be specific methods or techniques to bypass the immunities of some of them (such as various PestController options for arthropods) or exceptions to the general rule (for example, in 3E the immunity of plants, ooze and arthropods was based on that they don't really ''have'' a mind to control in the way animals have -- so things or variants that granted them some degree of thought also tended to remove the immunity).

** All psionic characters gain a perk called Psionic Focus, which at its basic can help with Concentration checks, and furthermore with many psionic feats depending on keeping or expending your Psionic Focus. However, such characters need to keep at least 1 power point in their reserve to benefit of the Psionic Focus; if this last point absolutely needs to be spent, the Psionic Focus is unavailable until they can rest.

** ''Mark of judgement'' (''Player's Handbook II'') marks opponents of a CharacterAlignment opposed to the caster as favored target for allies during a fight.

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, and unlike previous editions which either disallowed nonhuman races from taking certain classes or level-restricted them on classes they could take, this is the first edition of D&D to allow any race to be any class with no restrictions; and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, and unlike previous editions which either level-restricted or flat-out disallowed nonhuman races from taking certain classes, this is the first edition of D&D to allow any race to be any class with no restrictions; and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, and unlike previous editions which either level-restricted or flat-out disallowed nonhuman races from taking certain classes, this is the first edition to allow any race to be any class with no restrictions; and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, and unlike the game's previous editions, any race is able to be any class with no restrictions; and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, and unlike the game's previous editions, any race is able to be any class with no restrictions, and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system, with any race being able to be any class with no restrictions, and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

This time the CharacterClassSystem dominates the weaker race system and for powerful and unusual creatures what was racial HD is treated as "class". The standard level limit was set at 20 (higher levels were covered in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''), again without racial restrictions of any kind, although each race had a "favored class" that factored into multiclassing. The previous, crufty system of "weapon proficiency slots" was revamped into a somewhat-less-crufty system of Feats. Overall, the game became a lot simpler to use without losing very much of its depth. In addition, much of the material thrown out in 2nd edition -- half-orcs, monks, battles with demons, and so on, were added back in (some in the core rulebooks, others in supplements).

* ReincarnatedAsANonHumanoid: As in AD&D, the results of ''reincarnate'' are based on a d100 roll and can only be an animal or a playable race. Unlike previous editions though, in 3E it's explicitly stated that a reincarnated player retains their previous intellect and retains their class abilities (with new stat modifiers from their new body); before it was left to the DM's discretion.

* SexuallyTransmittedSuperpowers: The ''Book of Vile Darkness'' and ''Book of Exalted Deeds'' sourcebooks for 3.5E have the feats "Lichloved" and "Nymph's Kiss", both of which provide some minor magical benefits in exchange for maintaining "friendly" relationships with an intelligent undead or fey being, respectively. While technically neither one require the relationship to be sexual, it is very obvious that it is expected to be.