Am I the only 3.0 grognard left?

[Imagicka]

Greetings...

Grognard? I don't think so. If you were one, you wouldn't misuse the term.

Why? Are a bunch of Fatbeards going to attack him by pelting him with chits and miniatures?

But seriously. Does anyone ever just play a straight D&D 3.5, 3.0 or... this is the one I'd really be suprised at... a straight, unmodified, no house-rules AD&D 2?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

3.5's major changes almost all counted as Good in my book, although the inability to get an extra attack out of haste without using a full attack annoyed me, and was houseruled.

The wonderful new DR rules have to be my favorite. Golf bag of weapons? More like "attacks are actually effective against creatures with DR, just less so."

The ranger and bard updates also served an important purpose (fixing two classes that had been shown to have serious problems). Unfortunately, the sorcerer and fighter didn't get the same boon. One thing that doesn't get enough play is the fixing of the monk's flurry of blows/unarmed BAB rules... the old ones were clunky enough to be almost 2e-ish.

What amazes me is how many people complain about the turnaround time between 3.0 and 3.5. Three to five years is standard for Games Workshop, and they don't provide nearly the detailed, download-and-print updates that Wizards did.

Overall, I probably wouldn't buy the 3.5 DMG, and the 3.5 PHB's improvements can be easily replicated with the SRD. But the 3.5 MM added and clarified so many things, it at the very least seems worth buying.

 

[Rolemancer]

I bought 3.0 and I have boycotted Eberron products due to 3.5 coming out. I encouraged everyone else to do the same on the WotC boards but I was banned for it. Go figure.

 

[dead]

I'm another one who didn't buy 3.5 for moral reasons.

Sure, the Monster Manual rules were greatly improved but, hey, I get all of that 3.5 stuff in the start of the Fiend Folio.

What I wanna know is: Am I the only grognard still playing the 3.0 Psionics Handbook?

 

[Raven Crowking]

What I wanna know is: Am I the only grognard still playing the 3.0 Psionics Handbook?

Nope.

Me, too.

RC

 

[timbannock]

I'm currently playing in a 3.0 with some 3.5 changes as well. I'm beginning to find this to be the way to go; i.e., combine the editions for best effect. Obviously it's expensive, but (as my girlfriend knows all to well) I'm always willing to dump my life savings down on some game stuff.

3.5 changes we've added to the 3.0 game include:
--3.5 Monster Manual, and thus DR changes...I like these because, as MoogleEmpMog said >> The wonderful new DR rules have to be my favorite. Golf bag of weapons? More like "attacks are actually effective against creatures with DR, just less so." <<
--3.5 Ranger, Bard and Sorcerer...maybe they're not perfect either, but they fit with the setting we use, so that's more important than perfect rules-balance or anything
--3.5 Psionics...I just could not get down with 3.0 Psionics. I find the whole Psionic Focus thing to be odd (outside of combat, you can theoretically just keep rolling that Concentration roll to gain it, so why not make it automatic, or more difficult?), but overall, it plays 100 times smoother.
--DEFINITELY NO WEAPONS SIZES. Why did 3.5 have to change that? It worked just fine in 3.0. Oh, and some of the racial changes didn't make sense either (Half-elf changed for what reason? Half-orc is nerfed why? Gnomes are Bards, eh?)

I like a lot of the revisions of feats and maneuvers, including the changes to Improved Sunder, Improved Trip, Improved Disarm, etc, but we don't use them at the moment because not everyone owns either the 3.5 PHB or has access to the internet (damn neanderthals! who doesn't have cable nowadays?)

3.5 has some great ideas, and although I guess I'm a stupid poseur fanboy because I bought the books, I get mileage from them, but I also think an extra 2-3 years and a solid 4th edition would have been fine. Editions changing in less than 4-5 years seems odd...releasing the PHB with errata and the occasional restructured rule as a "revised printing" wouldn't have been a bad idea, rather than redo the books for the amount of changes they made.

All just IMHO, of course

 

[Mark]

Why? Are a bunch of Fatbeards going to attack him by pelting him with chits and miniatures?

Stranger things have happened!


(Welcome to the boards, neuronphaser! )

 

[RFisher]

I certainly liked some of the 3.5 changes. Just as many seemed gratuitous, though.

I don't know why my group decided to switch to 3.5, but they did. I'd have probably been very annoyed by 3.5 if it weren't for the SRD. (Instead I was just kind of annoyed.) I've since bought a Mongoose Pocket PHB instead of trying to print out enough of the SRD to sub for a PHB. I don't have any plans to ever buy the 3.5 books.

As for new material, I'd pretty much stopped buying new material before 3.5 came out anyway. There have been a few products I probably would have bought had 3.5 not happened, but it helped convince me that I really didn't need them.

My group in theory switched as soon as they'd bought the books, but they kept a lot of the 3.0 rules. Not out of preference, but just because they didn't realize some things had changed. (The rest of the group plays 2 games a week; I can only make it to one of them.) It's been a slow conversion as differences are discovered.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, my group and I have enjoyed the new edition. Different strokes and all that.

 

[Arnwyn]

Hybrid, here.

I really liked the spell changes in 3.5, but everything else (including psionics) is pretty much 3.0.