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Just curious if anyone is still playing 3rd or 3.5 edition D&D. I'm tossing around the idea of putting together a game and the vast majority of the resources I have available are 3rd with a smattering of 3.5 stuff.

So, anyone still play? If so, why have you stuck with 3.x? Any tips on putting together a game or things that you recommend modifying?

My group transitioned to Pathfinder and kept on playing. It’s basically a second edition of 3.5, cleaned up a bit. We never touched D&D 4 or 5.

At the time 3.5 was in full bloat mode. So much material, so little balance. Of course, over time Pathfinder has been getting more and more tacked on, so it’s heading down the same path. I think 3.5 is still a very playable system, the DM just needs to keep a lid on what’s allowable, and vet the characters to make sure everyone is on the same page, power-wise.

As for tips, one of the basic things we did near the end of the time we were playing was book caps. Normally PHB plus the first round of class books. Kept things a little under control. If people wanted more, another good idea was to limit them to one additional source.

You also need to keep a close eye on spellcasters. Especially divine ones who have access to every spell. It’s one thing for sorcerers, who have a finite number available, or wizards who can in theory have everything, but need to acquire most of them in-game. But clerics can just pray for whatever.

Also keep a tight leash on item creation and custom magic items. Some potential for abuse there.

Their are some still hidden groups who play 3.5, but most have moved onto 5th ed DnD or some few still play pathfinder.

3.5 were it has amazing customization and some great enemies ( they were very creative at that time) it suffers from being several decades old and the rules hence being arcadic in todays standards. I feel Pathfinder ( even though I like some of the nasty enemies in that game, and some good creativity, though they copied a lot from 3.5 which is rather disappointing, regardless if it was made by the same designers) loses the focus on roleplaying for combat game play become more a tabletop wargame with light RPG instead of having rules that focus on Role playing.

Personally I love games like The Burning wheel, and Dungeon World has some fantastic concepts that really keep combat fun but speedy and allow the focus to be on the characters and their interactions with each other and npcs. 5th edition DnD of course however is what is played the most due to the most available groups are playing it. Over all 5th ed has really hit well most of the spots ( still misses a few things I would like to see for sure) and I can clearly see the need for pathfinder to modernize their game with more sleek rules, modular character building cutting down on the complexity of character management and focusing on role playing much more.

So go ahead with 3.5 if you want, personally I stay away from the system now for gaming its just is far too outdated for our groups in the area. good luck!.

I'm in a group that still plays 3.5. I'm also in a Pathfinder group. Both games are similar, but PCs tend to be markedly more powerful in Pathfinder than in 3.5.

The reason we've stuck with 3.5 is simply the fact that everyone and their house pets have a copy of the 3.5 PHB. Between the 3 qualified DMs, we have every 3.5 splatbook worth having (and more than a few that aren't worth having). We are comfortable with the rules and rarely have to look anything up (except for druid spells, because almost nobody takes a druid). In short, we basically don't see a compelling need to shift to 5.0. No-one is able to tell us exactly what 5.0 can give us that we aren't already getting from 3.5. Conversely, we all immediately saw the benefits of 3.0 over 2.0 (most of my group has been playing since '88) and gladly made the switch (and made it again when 3.5 appeared and cleaned up most of the bad stuff in 3.0).

I will say that, as Nevelon mentioned, if you're going to 3.5, you need to limit the amount of books your players can pull from. The last few campaigns we have run have been core rulebooks only, base classes and base races only, with some exceptions made for feats from PHB 2. You don't need to hold the leash quite so tight, but you probably should put some restrictions in place. I advise not allowing the Spell Compendium or the Item Compendium *at all* as there are things in there that will break a game if you aren't prepared for them.

Also, the later in the game's run that a book was released, the more insane and unbalanced it's contents are likely to be. This is true of any game, but with 3.5 being the oldest in this discussion, it has the most examples to cite.

One of the feats I always allow players to take is from the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting (it is an official D&D setting; not a D20 third party book, but it isn't a very common one). The feat is called "Skill Prodigy" and it allows a character to select a number of cross-class skills equal to their Intelligence bonus and treat them as class skills. This allows characters with good INT scores, but with extremely limited skill selections to broaden their talents. A fighter can now take Sense Motive or Spot or whatever and not feel like he or she is flushing skill points down a hole.

One other house rule that has made it into every campaign, regardless of who the DM is, is for item creation situations. Normally, the person creating the items must spend XP to make them. This means a wizard is less likely to make items for the party, because they will always be leveling up more slowly than the party due to XP cost of magic items. Item creation feats beyond Scribe Scroll tend to not get taken, since there isn't much point in a wizard making themselves a level behind the party (the level gap can be worsened if the wizard dies and gets raised). At our table, we decided that the wizard has the option of getting someone else to eat the XP cost, if (and only if) the item is being made for that certain someone else. In other words: the fighter wants a +2 magic spiked chain, because he had to be a special snowflake and not take sword and shield like everyone else. The wizard can make the weapon, but doesn't want to cough up the XP for something that will make the fighter better and the wizard worse. Instead, the fighter fronts the XP because the weapon is being made for him. The same thing would apply if the rogue wants the wizard to make her a +5 vorpal garrote wire. The rogue loses a level so that the wizard doesn't have to. Now the wizard has enough XP that he can make that awesome flesh golem he's been trying to build for the last three dungeons, and he won't have to sacrifice his ability to cast chain-link bouncing betty fireball to do it!

Plenty of people do still play, I can think of a couple of groups around my area that ended playing 3.5, mostly because they just have the books for it, plenty of people like it a lot, I would recommend keeping a tight lid on the books people get in with, best expierences I have ever had with 3.whatever was with pathfinder actually, we only used the CRB and APG, and we played for around 3 years without going any further, best advice I can give about the system honestly. I'm not playing it any more, I got sick of the system after about 5 years, and I'm more of a Sci-fi fan anyways, I just had a fantastic group for those last 3 years

Absolutely. I still play 3rd/3.5. Like most have said, a lot of people moved onto 5th for the cleaned up rules, new features, etc. I considered it, but the vast amount of stuff I have for 3/3.5 and the current costs of the books of 5th is kinda holding me back.

I still love 2nd/AD&D, but I just have way more books for 3/3.5 so that is the edition I play. Never tried Pathfinder, but heard good things about it.

 jreilly89 wrote:
Never tried Pathfinder

But you just said you played 3/3.5, so you've essentially played Pathfinder.

 jreilly89 wrote:
but heard good things about it.

Lies and deceit!

 jreilly89 wrote:
Absolutely. I still play 3rd/3.5. Like most have said, a lot of people moved onto 5th for the cleaned up rules, new features, etc. I considered it, but the vast amount of stuff I have for 3/3.5 and the current costs of the books of 5th is kinda holding me back.

I still love 2nd/AD&D, but I just have way more books for 3/3.5 so that is the edition I play. Never tried Pathfinder, but heard good things about it.

It's slightly more different from 3.5 as 3.5 was to 3rd and still compatible (with some prep on the DM's part) with the earlier two. It cleaned up and/or simplified some 3/3.5 spots like grappling and skills and (more importantly for a time) hit the reset button on the options bloat of 3.5 (until Pathfinder created its own bloat). I viewed all but one or two of the changes as improvements.

I started roleplaying a few years ago with 3.5, and quickly tried Pathfinder as a player for like two sessions. So it's basically the only system I know. I'm currently DMing a campaign with evil characters and it's fun so far ! It's true there is unbalance, we were playing a short campaign before that and the monk player kept getting trounced on every fight, while my cleric was basically John Cena on steroids. One of my player likes to powergame a bit, but without abusing, he stays with a fixed idea of the RP of his character. He likes to explore every option on every book to have more possibilities, the problem being I don't know half of these books, I only read the class supplements basically, and I don't know about all these add-ons that no one knows. So thanks to that I can clearly see what is broken and what to limit if I do another campaign someday.

As for Pathfinder I explored the character creation quite deeply and concluded that new characters are totally more powerful than in 3.5. Especially the new classes like Gunslinger, which had a D10 for HP, with medium armour, innate mastery of war weapons and of course guns, who're really damn good when used well (hello D12 musket at lvl 1). So I don't really know if Pathfinder is really balanced because I never got very far with it but the starting characters seems more likely to stay alive anyday.

 Aaranis wrote:
I started roleplaying a few years ago with 3.5, and quickly tried Pathfinder as a player for like two sessions. So it's basically the only system I know. I'm currently DMing a campaign with evil characters and it's fun so far ! It's true there is unbalance, we were playing a short campaign before that and the monk player kept getting trounced on every fight, while my cleric was basically John Cena on steroids. One of my player likes to powergame a bit, but without abusing, he stays with a fixed idea of the RP of his character. He likes to explore every option on every book to have more possibilities, the problem being I don't know half of these books, I only read the class supplements basically, and I don't know about all these add-ons that no one knows. So thanks to that I can clearly see what is broken and what to limit if I do another campaign someday.

As for Pathfinder I explored the character creation quite deeply and concluded that new characters are totally more powerful than in 3.5. Especially the new classes like Gunslinger, which had a D10 for HP, with medium armour, innate mastery of war weapons and of course guns, who're really damn good when used well (hello D12 musket at lvl 1). So I don't really know if Pathfinder is really balanced because I never got very far with it but the starting characters seems more likely to stay alive anyday.

The power level of pathfinder is a little higher base. But I think there is more internal balance between the classes. Think of the power level being set to match the top end of the 3.5 classes. 3.5 seemed like you spent the first half of your career racing for a prestige class, and didn’t start to play the character as you envisioned him until level 5 or so. Pathfinder rewards just sticking with a base class, and rather then multi/prestige classing to mix things up, you use archetypes. So you get to play the character from the start. IMHO a better system.

Gunslingers are a bit powerful, but not much more then a straight fighter. Sure, d12 seems powerful, but reload times and a poor crit range are issues. Not insurmountable, but the class does have some issues.

Also, for anyone interested, I have a 3rd edition copy of Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil I'm looking to sell. PM me if interested.

 Nevelon wrote:
The power level of pathfinder is a little higher base. But I think there is more internal balance between the classes. Think of the power level being set to match the top end of the 3.5 classes. 3.5 seemed like you spent the first half of your career racing for a prestige class, and didn’t start to play the character as you envisioned him until level 5 or so. Pathfinder rewards just sticking with a base class, and rather then multi/prestige classing to mix things up, you use archetypes. So you get to play the character from the start. IMHO a better system.

Gunslingers are a bit powerful, but not much more then a straight fighter. Sure, d12 seems powerful, but reload times and a poor crit range are issues. Not insurmountable, but the class does have some issues.

Indeed, I quite liked the archetypes system, it allowed for a easy custom variant to play with.

And yes it's painfully obvious when you play it to see that your character is so squishy and powerless until lvl 5. I made my players start at lvl 4 I think, and now they're lvl 6 and to me it's quite hard sometimes to estimate their power when I put up a fight. It's starting to become really nice to play with them, seeing their characters being badass and all.

It's equally satisfying for me to build their enemies and unleash the stuff I always wanted to try as a player and see how it turns out

 Nevelon wrote:


Gunslingers are a bit powerful, but not much more then a straight fighter. Sure, d12 seems powerful, but reload times and a poor crit range are issues. Not insurmountable, but the class does have some issues.

Whatever you do, do not let a player take a gunslinger through the Iron Gods adventure arc. Our GM made this mistake and I can say, without exaggeration, since level 8 there have been exactly five combat encounters that lasted longer than two turns. What happened at level 8? Our gunslinger got a laser rifle that wasn't time-worn (so it could be re-loaded). So now every fight opens with the gunslinger killing the boss monster on turn one, while the rest of the party attacks the various mooks. Then on turn two, the gunslinger kills half of everything on the board, followed by the rest of the party killing whatever is left. Then on turn three our GM lets out a defeated sigh and tallies up the xp for the encounter.

squidhills wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:


Gunslingers are a bit powerful, but not much more then a straight fighter. Sure, d12 seems powerful, but reload times and a poor crit range are issues. Not insurmountable, but the class does have some issues.

Whatever you do, do not let a player take a gunslinger through the Iron Gods adventure arc. Our GM made this mistake and I can say, without exaggeration, since level 8 there have been exactly five combat encounters that lasted longer than two turns. What happened at level 8? Our gunslinger got a laser rifle that wasn't time-worn (so it could be re-loaded). So now every fight opens with the gunslinger killing the boss monster on turn one, while the rest of the party attacks the various mooks. Then on turn two, the gunslinger kills half of everything on the board, followed by the rest of the party killing whatever is left. Then on turn three our GM lets out a defeated sigh and tallies up the xp for the encounter.

Now you tell me! I dropped out of my weekly RPG group due to real life issues. Playing a gunslinger, at about that level, in that adventure path. Hadn’t come across the non-timeworn laser rifle yet. Did covet one though. Modern weapons remove the reload issue from the gunslinger, letting them do some crazy things.

I was having enough fun vital striking stuff with a musket. Big spiky damage at range (2d12+5 IIRC) but only one shot a round. The ork barbarian did far more damage then I did. High STR and a good crit weapon hurts a lot.

Tons of people. Check Giant In The Playground Forums.

We still play Pathfinder about once a week using Roll20.net.

But I like 5th edition much better.

3.5 was the system I started with back in college, so of course it'll always have a special place in my heart. It's just hard to beat that level of customization from a player's perspective (though it creates a lot of headaches for DMs). 4E was just a debacle, but 5E has been a lot of fun so far. Unfortunately, 5E is the only system my group's DM/unofficial leader will play, so it does tend to get old. I had to start a secondary group so that those of us who prefer variety can try some other stuff. I'm working on a Dark Heresy campaign to run with them soon and I also hope to try out the Dragon Age PnP.

EnTyme: I didn't play much after 3rd. ed. What was so bad about 4th? What do you dislike about 5th?

I am curious how much is editions and how much is D&D's inherent hodge podge system. It looks like they tried to move everything to a more coherent and consistent d20 based difficulty system and the fans hated it.

4th is my favourite, but 3rd will do in a pinch. Haven't tried 5 yet, but given my preferences I don't think it's really for me, which is fine, I've got a shelf full of material for AD&D/3rd/4th already.

 jmurph wrote:
EnTyme: I didn't play much after 3rd. ed. What was so bad about 4th? What do you dislike about 5th?

I am curious how much is editions and how much is D&D's inherent hodge podge system. It looks like they tried to move everything to a more coherent and consistent d20 based difficulty system and the fans hated it.

4th was just such a drastic departure from what D&D was before it. I very much felt like Wizards was trying to make it play like an MMORPG. I really don't have anything against 5th, but it is severely lacking in the customizability that made 3.5 so much fun. It's getting better about that with time, but without prestige classes, it'll never quite live up to 3.5 in my mind.

 EnTyme wrote:

 jmurph wrote:
EnTyme: I didn't play much after 3rd. ed. What was so bad about 4th? What do you dislike about 5th?

I am curious how much is editions and how much is D&D's inherent hodge podge system. It looks like they tried to move everything to a more coherent and consistent d20 based difficulty system and the fans hated it.

4th was just such a drastic departure from what D&D was before it. I very much felt like Wizards was trying to make it play like an MMORPG. I really don't have anything against 5th, but it is severely lacking in the customizability that made 3.5 so much fun. It's getting better about that with time, but without prestige classes, it'll never quite live up to 3.5 in my mind.

5th may be lacking in customization, but 3rd had almost too much customization. I mean, the amount of splat books they had was nuts.

 jreilly89 wrote:
5th may be lacking in customization, but 3rd had almost too much customization. I mean, the amount of splat books they had was nuts.

Oh definitely. There were feats that one of the designers flat out admitted were 'traps', they were included in basically the same way sub-optimal or 'bad' Magic Cards were; to give an illusion of having greater variety, and to reward players who put the time/reading/effort into 'system mastery' and thus knew to skip them (unless absolutely necessary for a prestige class or feat chain, but that's a Richard move, if you catch my drift).

Yeah, that reeks of bad design. The goal should be to make many options viable and make building decisions important because they are trade offs, not just win/lose. Power inflation is another big issue.