ZEITGEIST [Zeitgeist] Using 3.5 sourcebooks ?

Poul Wrist · Mar 1, 2018

Hi all - sorry if this has been posted before, I tried searching, but Google and this forum did not offer up any real answer.

I bought the Zeitgeist campaign a couple of years ago when we were running 4e. However, since then guy who DM'd the 4e sessions sold most of the 4e books as they were his - leaving me with currently just a smattering of 4e stuff. And not much of a desire to really play 4e anyway.

However, I have a ton of 3.5 stuff, a stack of PHB, DM books, MMs, almost literally all the things... and I was wondering if it'd be possible to run Zeitgeist using the 3.5 rules without spending tons of time re-working things? I have 0 experience with Pathfinder (I realise it's like 3.5+), so I don't know at this moment what would be required to enjoy the campaign using those rules.

1 of the group does own a single 5e base set, and I can see that I can subscribe to a Patreon and get it through there? But I'd prefer not to have to spend more money buying more 5e books at this moment when I have all this damn 3.5 stuff that, as far as I can tell, is very close to Pathfinder rules.

Hope you can help

Thanks!

Morrus · Mar 1, 2018

You might have to tweak things here and there, and make the occasional GM snap judgement, but it should work OK by and large. 3.5 and Pathfinder are pretty similar in the underlying engine, although Pathfinder has 15 years of splat books and options which 3.5 doesn't have.

Poul Wrist · Mar 1, 2018

Morrus said:
You might have to tweak things here and there, and make the occasional GM snap judgement, but it should work OK by and large. 3.5 and Pathfinder are pretty similar in the underlying engine, although Pathfinder has 15 years of splat books and options which 3.5 doesn't have.

Yes, this is what I'm thinking. I just don't want to start spending on a full set of Pathfinder... mostly because I have all this stuff already. But thanks for your reply.

Even if I have been looking at those pathfinder core books... still. Recycling!

RangerWickett · Mar 2, 2018

If there's anything in a PF statblock that doesn't make sense, you can search d20pfsrd.com, which has nearly all the open gaming content.

It's a great resource for Pathfinder, and basically is why I actually pay for new books of theirs. I wouldn't have picked up the game if not for that immense free sample.

Andrew Moreton · Mar 4, 2018

Archives of Nephys also has a lot of the pathfinder material.
If using 3,5 to your advantage a lot of the more powerful npc's in the AP are not designed strictly to the rules and so have a lot of their abilities described and so will work well with 3.5
Depending on the class your players want to play you may wish to use the pathfinder version of the class as they improved many of the martial classes, you will need rge firearm rules from the pfsrd I don;t think they existed for 3.5