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Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Reviewed
WorselWorsel writes "The new edition of the seminal Dungeons & Dragons paper-RPG comes out this Friday and d20zines.com has this review. This is the first new edition of D&D since Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast. The last edition came out almost two years ago, and this time around the prices of three core books are up by $10 each. Since these are partially incompatible with older 3rd edition books, WotC is printing/making downloadable a short booklet explaining some changes." In addition to being a product review, it's a good overview of what's changed since 3rd edition, and really helps one decide if the changes are important enough to rebuy the core rulebooks.
Ha! Only nerds play Dungeons & Dragons and post to Slashdot about it....oh, wait.
this time around the prices of three core books are up by $10 each
Up $10 over the price of the old books when they were first released. Exactly the same price as the old books have been selling at since January 2001.
True the MSRP of the books is now $29.95 but a quick look at almost all online retailers shows them going for about $20. Walmart.com and abebooks.com have em for around 18 each.
Granted this is the shortest core rules turnaround of all time, it would seem that WoTC is milking the public.. but if you check their website... htt://wizards.com/dnd you sill see that there is just an INSANE ammount of free stuff. Adventures, additional classes, monsters, maps.. just a bunch of stuff. As long as WoTC puts out free quality stuff like that, I'll bite on new rule books.
If you're like me, and you know you're going to buy them anyway, pre-order the books from Amazon at a discount, instead of paying retail.
You can even do a little better if you buy all three books and then use the "share the love" feature to invite the rest of your gaming group to buy the books at 10% off the already reduced price.
(Not that I, er, still play D&D or anything.)
As much as I like to support the local game shops, some offers are too nice to pass up.
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
Back when I played (years ago), we had the rulebooks, and used them as a guide, but didn't actually stick to most of the rules. we found that when we did most of the time was spent looking stuff up and rolling a lot of dice. Our game ended up being mostly a storytelling game, and pretty much the only rules we used were for combat.
There was still a lot of min/maxing and THAC0 manipulation going on... i can't imagine how bad it would have been if we were actually following the rules!
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Er...where do you get that idea from? 3.5 is a replacement to 3.0. The shows the differences between the two; you don't need 3.0 in order to use 3.5.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Real geeks know that this "thac0" thing was a 2E crap term and has no place in "real" (1st and 3rd) DnD. :PM
Real geeks played 1st Edition AD&D know that THAC0 was present then too. They changed the system for 3rd edition.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
You're still getting more entertainment time for the buck playing paper D&D in a regular group than virtually anything else out there.
Show me a D&D-playing college student (that's hardcore about it) with a 4.0 and I'll give you my ocean front property just outside of Phoenix, Arizona.
I'm sure there are tons of us that wish we could do some kind of class action lawsuit like the tobacco addicts. D&D killed our GPA! As did Warcraft II, Quake, MUDs, etc. I think females were in there somewhere, but I can't really remember.
I now own a set of books that are just going to sit around until they are worth more to someone else than they are to me.
;-)
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate that they are breathing some nice life into it, and that they are trying to balance everything. But to revamp the core rulebooks entirely in just 2 years?
Who do they think they are? Microsoft?
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
HA!
REAL geeks still PLAY 1st edition!
And live in their parent's basement.
And hope someday they'll actually meet a real GIRL (with +5 ta-tas).
You can get even geekier and point out that 3E D&D is not "Advanced" D&D any more (even though it's 3E which would seem to come after 1E and 2E in the AD&D chain of releases). So if the original poster was claiming that THAC0 wasn't part of 1E or 3E D&D, he was probably right -- THAC0 was a part of AD&D.
:P )
(Sorry to assume gender up there, but sometimes it's just a safe bet
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
So just download the free update from their website. It details the differnces between 3e and 3.5e.
3e books + update (think of it as errata) = 3.5 game
3.5e books = 3.5 game
Really, you are getting a better deal since the 3e books were cheaper and the update is free.
Or just play 3e.. and houserule to your hearts content.
(I'm always amazed by how much /. ignores this.)
D&D has been, since 3.0 came out, the lead-runner in "Open Gaming."
Go to this page on WotC's website, and you can get quite nearly every rule in the core 3.0 books--soon to be quite nearly every rule from the core 3.5 books.
The only rule that's really missing is awarding XP--and there are easily a half-dozen ways to find that on the web.
(So, everyone who's complaining about a 3 year turnaround for a revision--do you complain about how quickly Linux gets a new kernal, or how swiftly Mozilla moves from 1.0 through 1.4?)
Not really. The differences between 3.5 / 3.0 and the bulk of the precessor versions are easily as noticable as the differences between D&D and any other RPG
I didn't say they were the same, but mechanically they are. Examples? Armor class, 1/2 ed you have a number that starts at 10 (unarmored man sized target) that decreases as it gets "better" AC -10 is very well protected, etc. You have a THAC0 score, that gives you a number, the lower the better, that you subtract the targets AC from to arrive at the roll needed to hit them.To hit an AC 10 target with a THAC0 of 20 (1st level character) needs to roll a 10 or better
In 3/3.5 ed they just combine the THAC0 and the AC to just straight out give you the same value. AC 10 is the base, and the number increses as protection gets better, but the number is the same, 3rd ed just does the math for you.
In either edition, a first level fighter needs to roll a 10 to hit the naked guy, a 15 for that naked guy in chainmail, or a 17 if that naked guy invests in platemail. 90% of the weapons and items in 3/3.5 have the same effect as they did in 1/2 ed (long sword does 1d8, mace does 1d6) So the framework is the same.
Even skill checks are basically the same. In 2 ed you had NWP's (skills) that had a target number that you had to roll under on a d20. Guess what, 3/3.5 is the same thing, but once again the math is reveresed. an average task has a DC around 20. Well? a 4 in the skill means I need a 16 or better on the roll, or I have a 20% chance to success. in 2 ed If I have a 4, I have to roll a 4 or less, which is OMG! a 20% chance.
What 3/3.5 did was change saving throws, and introduce feats, and prestige classes which were positive improvements.
Call it semi-professional interest, but what exactly are you finding "unbalanced" about the game? Sure you're reading the rules right?
My first reaction to that statment is that you were trying to insult me. Perhaps you just haven't played the game enough to know all the ins and outs.
3 ed gave people a lot of freedom in their character design, but the problem is, that there are a lot of feats that are very powerful, and in certain combinations they can be used to make hideously powerful characters. (the Ranger/Rogue dual-weilder springs to mind) Other feats on the other hand, are boderline useless (most of the Meta-Magic). As a DM I never let people just build and pick whatever feats and prestige classes they wanted, because it got out of control all to quickly. You would end up with a super tank melee guy, that in order to challenge them, you need to throw things out that could ahniliate the other characters instantly. Throw in some of the optional texts that gave new races and classes and good luck keeping things reasonable if you don't tone it down. I forced my players to work their characters training into the story and I even forced them on quests and so on and this went a long way to keeping things honest.
thats all the energy im going to waste on this.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
1. Allow skewed flanking (the three squares opposite you are all considered flanks.)
2. Cut the XP rewards to about one-fifth where they are in 3rd Ed. It's supposed to be D&D, not NWN.
3. Allow magic bows to penetrate DR just as well as magic arrows.
4. Give the sorcerer some charisma-based skills.
5. Increase the Bard's skill points, and come up with some more interesting song effects at high levels.
6. Burn all the munchkin books, and play out of the core rules only.
7. Create a "Combat Aim" feat, similar to Combat Casting, to allow the use of ranged weapons without provoking attacks of opportunity, at a -4 penalty to hit.
8. Pull out the old 2nd Edition Legends and Lore book, and re-introduce "granted powers" to clerics who dedicate themselves to a specific god, perhaps at the cost of other feats. It was a feature of 2nd Edition that made clerics a lot more colorful and interesting.
9. The moment a player in your campaign pursues a "prestige class," beat them senseless.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No one is forcing anyone to upgrade. If you want to buy the darn things do so. I personally still play with 2nd edition books and I haven't upgraded for years. I mean, If I were to still play, I'd use 2nd edition....Not that I play D&D anymore...No. Never.
Just stick with your old books and don't upgrade. It's that simple. Yea, it sucks that they raised the price. Even more reason not to buy it. It may show them that people won't buy at those prices.
Interesting, but incorrect.
Dungeons and Dragons was published by TSR in 1974. This is the three volume set (Men and Magic, Monsters and Treasure, and the Underworld and Wilderness Adventures).
Advanced Dungeons and Dragons wasn't published until 1977 (Monster Manual), 1978 (Player's Handbook), and 1979 (Dungeon Master's Guide).
So, Dungeons and Dragons existed for at least three years before Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out.
Sources: here, here, and TSR's list of every product ever.
I'll post the same thing here I did on the WOTC forums. In fact ... I'll cut and paste!
WHY IS THERE NO REBATE POLICY?!?!?!
Two reasons, I suspect.
1: The pricing for books in America is so skewed that rebates for printed paper simply aren't workable.
2: You can get every last changed rule in the SRD. Think of it as "the mother of all eratta."
Don't pirate the books--just get the rules, honestly, from the source: www.wizards.com/d20
(Oh, and there IS a rules-conversion guide, which you'll only really need if you play in a mixed system. 3.0 is still the exact same game it ever was, after all...)
Yes, I do realize that the bard is a spellcaster. He's not a very effective one, but he is a spell-caster.
ut of the sorceror's seven class skills in 3.0, three are used in spellcasting (Concentration, Scry, Spellcraft), two are general skills (Craft & Profession), and two are "all magic-users get these" (Knowledge (arcana) and Alchemy.)
In other words, skills that would require intellectual rigor and study to master, which were not supposed to be what a sorcerer is all about. Researching ancient tomes, studying history, and struggling to comprehend the very nature of magic itself is what wizzards do. The Sorcerer in D&D summons magic from his own essence, "blood of dragons" and all that. They are charisma-based spell casters, without the jack-of-all-trades inquisitiveness found in bards. Doesn't it make sense that their skills would reflect, not a life of booklearnin' (knowledge skills, spellcraft, alchemy) but a life of relying on force of personality? Skills such as diplomacy make much more sense. The king-maker sorcerer is something you can build an interesting campaign around. With the current skill-set, sorcerers do pretty much the same things as wizards, only not as well (because they are not likely to be as intelligent).
A 3e Paladin with the 2e minimum stats has a better save bonus mechanic, can lay on hands for more hp each day, gets spellcasting five levels earlier, and has a shiney new Smite Evil ability.
Comparing the Pally to the 2nd Ed version is not really all that valid. Almost all of the characters from second edition have been munchkined up, stat-wise. But compare a level 12 paladin to a level 12 fighter, and the problem becomes obvious. Yes, the paladin can heal a little, turn undead a little, do some priest stuff, and has that fancy Smite ability... but stack it up against the 7 additional feats that the fighter of the same level will have acquired at that point, and the paladin benefits are no longer much of an edge. Paladins have that code of honor which under a strict DM makes them "first to the field" in a crisis while fighters have more latitude about choosing how and wen to fight; avoiding sneaky tactics, when fighters will gladly raid that cove of sleeping brigands; giving a lot of their wealth away while the fighters shop for better armor and weapons. These restrictions should be rewarded with a knight who is the epitome of excellence, not a weaker fighter who also casts a few spells.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.