Publishers: Where are your 3.5 Updates?

[tensen]

So do you think we'll see publishers update their material via PDF, quietly ignore any updates until reprints/revisions or just little pieces here and there?

I for one hope that some publishers are pro-active and have material already ready to roll to update their old stuff. Swashbuckling Adventurers for example, probably needs a lot of updates since it has so much gaming material in.

Well for one thing.. the changes aren't all that difficult to make. However it will take considerable time to check each and ever sections to make sure some of the really minor changes didn't affect you. Obvious changes like rechecking pricing on magic items, or making such our Gnome spell have Bard Caster levels listed, as well as Wizard will be done fairly quickly. Actually knowing the rules inside and out enough to find the minor changes will take several months.

I fully expect to see over the next few months a lot of little erratas pointing out that this page or that page should be modified slightly to fall under the 3.5 system.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

Joe,
A number of companies, designers, and authors have had access to draft copies of the 3.5 material. This is *NOT* the SRD. It is an important distinction. We have been able to ask Andy Smith for confirmation about what will or won't be in the SRD but none of us has a copy of the SRD for 3.5.

Yes, there are spell school changes, and a few name changes. In all honesty, the changes aren't as huge as some want to believe. Most of your NPCs are still going to work fine as is. It isn't really necessary to change sorcs/rangers/monks etc over. They are still perfectly playable (and deadly) as they are in most modules, supplements, etc.

Creatures might need some adjustment with respect to a few things, but even these aren't all that major.

I honestly don't know how many companies are going to do "official" conversions. If I find the time I'll post a few updates/changes for my Necro games modules on the Necromancer Games forums and I am pretty sure some of the other authors will too. To the best of my knowledge, there is no official plan for pdf releases containing updates to the previously printed modules for Necro. All new modules and books from Necromancer Games are slated to be 3.5.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Patrick, as far as NPCs and even monsters go, I'll give that they're not a big deal.

Prestige and Core Classes, Spells, levels, schools, durations, and other crunchy bits, yea, those need some serious tweaking in a lot of cases.

Bard spell list has undergone a lot of changes.

Monk and Ranger have both undergone some signifigant changes and any PrCs that mimick/follow those paths have to be updated.

Rogues, Fighters, Druids, Clerics, Paladins and Barbarins I'm not as worried about as many PrCs provided special abilities at higher levels, which is what a common issue with the Paladins and barbarians always was.

 

[d20Dwarf]

I don't really think publishers have any obligation to update their material. They didn't sell the book under the pretense that someone would get a free upgrade, so why should they give one?

Now I could see them putting together a pdf with revisions of their products and then selling it via RPGNow, say a $5 pdf for revisions for 3-5 books, depending on their size and the amount of work involved.

 

[Cyberzombie]

I'm reworking my PDF, Elements of Magic, top to bottom. It's a magic system, and many of the little changes are in magic. (And some of the big changes, too, like Polymorph.)

I've got the 3.5 books now, so I can march ahead with great confidence now. I'll need to check things against the SRD when it comes out, but that shouldn't be a major concern for what I've done.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I don't really think publishers have any obligation to update their material. They didn't sell the book under the pretense that someone would get a free upgrade, so why should they give one?

Now I could see them putting together a pdf with revisions of their products and then selling it via RPGNow, say a $5 pdf for revisions for 3-5 books, depending on their size and the amount of work involved.

Wil, I agree with you in theory 100%.

However, let's say I get three new people into the hobby with 3.5. They see Path of the Sword and ask if it's 3.0 or 3.5. I tell them 3.0 with no plans to update it to 3.5. Three sales lost.

That's just how the people I play with work. Not an indication of how others are at all but from other groups I've played with, a lot of talk has been on seeing the 3.5 updates. Almost none of them plan on buying any more d20 stuff unless it's fully 3.5.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Wil, I agree with you in theory 100%.

However, let's say I get three new people into the hobby with 3.5. They see Path of the Sword and ask if it's 3.0 or 3.5. I tell them 3.0 with no plans to update it to 3.5. Three sales lost.

That's just how the people I play with work. Not an indication of how others are at all but from other groups I've played with, a lot of talk has been on seeing the 3.5 updates. Almost none of them plan on buying any more d20 stuff unless it's fully 3.5.

Then publishers had best focus their efforts on putting out new material that's 3.5 compatible!

 

[JoeGKushner]

Then publishers had best focus their efforts on putting out new material that's 3.5 compatible!

Well, we've already seen that in action. This Gen Con looks like a friggin Summer Release Feast of all the action movies one brain can stand.

In some ways, I'm kinda glad that there were some printing issues with various books that looked all kicking because it gives me recovery time.

I wonder if this will cause some publishers to try and push out old stock though in order to make room for new material? Sales, cons and other events maybe?

 

[Stormprince]

We're actually going to be stradling both sides of the fence on the 3.0 and 3.5 rules debate.

For Sovereign Stone, we are not planning on updating to 3.5 in the near future. The reason is that our core rulebook has everything that you need very easily available. All of our core classes are included in the book, and they won't change. Tweaks to the Ranger, Bard, Sorcerer, etc., did not affect us Plus, since we have always had our own distinct magic system (granted, which some people never liked) we're not affected by changes to spells like "Polymorph" or the splintering of "Emotion." All of our sourcebooks thus far, building upon the world, have been 3.0. We have projects in the near future that will be summing up the "core" of the world. So, Sovereign Stone, for now, will be remaining 3.0. It's not like all the 3.0 books are going to go away...they're still out there. Plus, they'll be cheaper to get a hold of now!

Alternately, Dragonlance is pure, unadultered 3.5, from the get go. And with our surprising ability to release it at Origins, we got a jump on many of the other 3.5 campaign worlds out there. Dragonlance will be 3.5.

Christopher

 

[jmucchiello]

Patrick, as far as NPCs and even monsters go, I'll give that they're not a big deal.

Not a big deal? So when I release the 3.5 version of an adventure and the bard has the wrong spells and the skill list contains alchemy instead of Craft (alchemy), you are saying that this will not affect, say, the way you review this product? Not affect the way others review the product? Not affect the way consumers view the product? Horse pucky! NPCs have always been the hardest thing to get right in a release and having a new ruleset to do it under does not make it any easier.

It's not the end of the world. But it is a difference. My next school book was going to be Divination. I was especially looking forward to analyzing a world of magic with the 3.0 identify spell. The fact that people could buy and sell magic items was absurd since you needed an 11th level wizrd to cast analyze dweomer to know for sure what magic was on the magic item. They fixed that in 3.5's identify. On eless thing for me to write about. In fact, they fixed Divination pretty good. I'm planning to study the changes in depth to see if some other school is now the shafted one.

My other question about the revision is "Will the planar and epic material in the DMG make the initial SRD or will we still have to wait for those books to be SRDed?"