D&D 3.5 features that fail (At least in your opinion!)

[Sunhawk]

The craft skill; in fact, making stuff in general.

My major gripe with the craft skill is how it's split up.  Making armor is as different from making weapons (and they're both separate skills) as making weapons is from knowing stuff about religions.  I'd probably have the same gripe for profession, but I never use it... hell, I don't know if ANYONE uses profession.  Craft (alchemy) is fine as a separate category.  But armor vs. weapon vs. bows vs. gemcutting vs. blacksmithing vs. carpentry vs. leatherworking, etc?  If I want to make a handy-man character (say, an artificer), I have to spend ridiculous amounts of skill points.

Perhaps if there were a separate skill point pool for "trade" skills, or you could buy them for a lot cheaper or something.  It's not like most of them have any kind of effect on balance.  Spellcraft, yeah.  Concentration, tumble, disable device, open locks, and most definitely Use Magic Device.  Those can significantly alter play (that last especially).

Next up... experience point costs for creation.  Urgh!  Seriously, the trade-off is really not worth it... unless you have that epic crafting class or Eberron's Artificer (which I love... but am leery of playing).  Experience directly translates to power; if I spend a few thousand to create a few wands and scrolls that I end up using up, I've given up the power an additional level would give me for some temporary gain.  Yeah, they made things easier for me, but...

(continuing briefly)

Yeah, the expendable items made things easier, but I probably could've done as well through clever use of spells and abilities... and kept my experience to boot.  Gold comes and goes, but I've yet to meet a DM who was stingier with money than with experience.

And the rationale for the experience cost often gripes at me.  So... you make a potion or scribe a scroll and it somehow takes away some of what you've already learned or achieved?

I realize the experience cost is to prevent certain kinds of players from stocking up on massive amounts of magical items and just going apeshit... but the time and money restraints already work to do this to a certain extent.  And, honestly, if a player's inclined to take this route, they'd find plenty of other things to do to achieve the same purpose.

[Dracos]

Does profession still exist?

Dracos

[Sunhawk]

I think so -- I remember seeing it

[Anastasia]

I'll second AoOs. From everything I've read they're unwieldy, clunky and overreaching. I intensely dislike that the system actively encourages them, doubly so for many non standard melee or movement actions.