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Wizards Releases 3.5 Edition System Reference

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the rules-lawyering-and-world-building dept.

Randar the Lava Liza writes "Wizards of the Coast have released the 3.5 Edition System Reference Document. Essentially it's the three core rulebooks in RTF format. This includes the 3.5 Edition Player's Handbook, 3.5 Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and 3.5 Edition Monster Manual. All of these are released under their Open Gaming License. You can also read a very interesting review of 3.5 Edition by Monte Cook, one of the original creators of 3rd Edition D&D. He goes into detail on a number of the changes in this new edition."

3 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. It's not quite the core rulebooks.... by Drantin · · Score: 5, Informative
    Q: What's missing from the SRD compared to the core D&D rulebooks? A: Mostly the "flavor" elements. There are no named gods, none of the spells have significant NPC names, there's no mention of Greyhawk, etc. You'll also note that there are no rules for character creation, for advancing characters in level, calculating experience, or anything else related to the topics forbidden by the Usage Guide.
    It doesn't seem to be quite the three core rulebooks, although the missing information shouldn't be hard to find elsewhere...
    --
    Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
  2. Damn you Hasbro!!!! by WildFire42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Damn you for making me buy something else to keep up with current D&D gaming! Damn you for not respecting the gamers, your true source of...

    Wait, you mean I can download it?

    Without Kazaa?

    I'm dead sure I'll get modded to hell for this, but for the cynicism impaired, I'm making a slight social commentary on bi*ching gamers who have, for years, complained about first about T$R, then about Wi$ard$ of the Coa$t, now about Ha$bro, if you catch my drift. Oddly, I don't hear that many Warhammer fans who bitch about GW though, and they actually have some very good reasons to (80 dollars for a few pieces of unpainted plastic? Some assembly required, of course).

  3. Re:Is it worth switching from 3.0 to 3.5? by Outland+Traveller · · Score: 4, Informative

    In true software-development form, 3.0 introduced tons of new, poorly tested ideas. Even the copyediting quality was abysmal. If you turn to the combat section you will find the same information repeated again and again, without any clear organization. In some cases the exact same paragraphs repeat.

    3.5 is a cleanup, both on the production quality and on the rule balancing. I think it's much better, I only regret that more time wasn't spent making sure 3.0 was ready. There's a quite a bit of nerfing, but again that is 3.0's fault, not an intrinsic problem in 3.5.