Munchkins have been around forever.  I say in a private game, what the hell, who cares how you play.  The only bad part is shame on the DM for grooming a munchkin.



In my last game, there was a ' 9th level Half-Bugbear/Half-elf, War priest, martial artist with 18/00 str, 17+ dex, 17+ con ac -3, thaco 3.  This guy could move 15", could unerringly find traps, had healing, could deal 30 points of damage (w/ a thaco 3 almost unerringly).



He got mad when the DM told him he couldn't wade through a forest with thick underbrush and attack as well, since even though he was 300 pounds, he had tumbling and blind fighting.



He was always in front of the theif, out magiking the mage, out blasting the Paladin.  With him, you didn't need a party, he was the party.



Min-maxer, that is being nice.

I started logging all of his skills, I have them all written down.  It was much sicker than my description.  Of course, he carried a bastard sword.  Aptly named .

Actually, I find there are a lot of aspects I like about 3E, but I honestly miss many things about 1E.



I do admire the fact that with 3E they ironed out alot of the internal contradictions and came up with a much cleaner and unified rules set. It is also a lot more regimented, which I tend to prefer for the most part. Unfortunately, as has been noted, they went and added a bunch of extraneous rules... in my experience, this has caused our play sessions with 3E to bog down significantly as a result, as we are spending many minutes at a time looking up some sort of minutia.



I actually consider 1E to be perhaps better able to handle high level adventurers provided one actually follows the rules to the letter. There are a number of play balance rules that I suspect were not understood and simply ignored (I noticed 2E did away with them altogether) such as weapon vs. armor adjustments and the "Step" function in the To Hit tables that. The latter in particular really keeps things in line since unless you are very high level many of the negative ACs require a natural 20 to hit no matter what kind of magic/strength bonuses you possess.



As a goofy aside, I am actually writing my own D&D rules based on the original set and Dr. Holmes' "Basic" set, that borrows some ideas from AD&D and 3E, along with some of my own, just as an exercise in game design. Won't ever see the light of day, but I find it entertaining.