D&D 5E Wanting more content doesn't always equate to wanting tons of splat options so please stop.

[Imaro]

Both 1st and 2nd Ed put out "new core 3" books partway through their lifespan. Were those new editions?

You tell me because as I understand it (and I could be wrong as this is a little before my D&D time) the "new core 3" for 1e and 2e were the same rules with a different cover, trade dress, etc... Were the rules different, what were the differences?

 

[Maxperson]

Yet the changes did create a new edition... invalidating third party 3.0 published content and creating changes in the classes, skills, spells, feats and general rules of 3rd edition. Not sure how much change is needed to constitute a new edition but any way you slice it a new edition was created and new corebooks released that were not just reprints or errata 'd 3.0 rules.

Nothing was made invalid. I used 3e content for the entire time 3.5 existed up until last night.

Here's a quick, non-comprehensive run down of the most important changes from 3.0 to 3.5... seems pretty significant to me.

Class Changes

• Bards received more skill points and spells on their spell lists were changed.
• Clerics are allowed to spontaneously cast cure and inflict spells of the "mass" variety.
• Druid Animal companions advance as the druid levels up now, making the druid more playable, Druids were given access to far more spells than before.
• Fighters Feat list received an overhaul and many of the feat descriptions changed.
• Monk's Flurry of Blows was changed to have different advancement, and received different options for bonus feats. (It didn't help much in the long run, Multi-attribute-deficiency cripples this class)
• Paladin's can summon their mounts instead of them being ever-present. They can also smite evil more times per day.
• Rangers received a hit die increase, more skill points, Favored enemy and animal companion also received large revisions for the class, making it playable.
• Sorcerers were allowed to make small revisions to their spells known when they level up (but still have stunted casting when compared to wizards, picking up their spells a full level later)
• Wizard spell specialization was changed, and Familiars bonus stats were changed as well.

Skill Changes

• Alchemy was rolled into Craft(Alchemy)
• Animal Empathy was removed from the game and instead Ranger and Druid now get the skill as a class ability.
• Innuendo which before was used to covertly pass messages along was rolled into the Bluff skill.
• Intuit Direction was rolled into the new Survival skill.
• Perform was rolled into its own skill, which works similar to the Craft and Profession skills.
• Read Lips was removed from the game and rolled into the Spot skill.
• Ride no longer is specific to different mount types.
• Pickpocket was rolled into the Sleight of Hand skill.
• Scry was removed, and now only relies on the spell Scry.
• Wilderness Lore was rolled into the Survival skill.

Feat Changes

• Ambidexterity and Two-Weapon fighting were rolled into each other so that Two-Weapon Fighting provides the benefits of both feats.
• Expertise was renamed to Combat Expertise
• Weapon Finesse was redone, and now provides a benefit to every light weapon instead of requiring a new taking of the feat for each individual weapon that needed to be taken advantage of.
• Sunder was rolled into the Sunder special attack, and the Improved sunder feat was added to avoid Attacks of Opportunity while using Sunder.
• Shield Expert was rolled into the feat Improved Shield Bash.
• The feat Improved Critical was changed to not allow stacking with other Critical Range Enhancing effects.

Spell Changes
The following spells were added to the game:
Acid Splash, Animate Plants, Arcane Sight, Arcane Sight (Greater), Baleful Polymorph, Bear's Endurance (Mass), Blight, Bull's Strength (Mass), Call Lightning Storm, Cat's Grace (Mass), Command Undead, Cure Critical Wounds (Mass), Cure Moderate Wounds (Mass), Cure Serious Wounds (Mass), Daze Monster, Deep Slumber, Dimensional Lock, Disrupting Weapon, Eagle's Splendor, Eagle's Splendor (Mass), Enlarge Person (Mass), False Life, Fox's Cunning, Fox's Cunning (Mass), Glibness, Heroism, Heroism (Greater), Hold Monster (Mass), Inflict Critical Wounds (Mass), Inflict Moderate Wounds (Mass), Inflict Serious Wounds (Mass), Longstrider, Moment of Prescience, Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, Owl's Wisdom, Owl's Wisdom (Mass), Polar Ray, Prying Eyes (Greater), Ray of Exhaustion, Reduce Person (Mass), Shout (Greater), Summon Instrument, Symbol of Weakness, Sympathetic Vibration, Touch of Fatigue, Touch of Idiocy, Undeath to Death, Waves of Exhaustion, Waves of Fatigue.
The following spells were completely removed or changed:
Animal Friendship, Emotion (Fear), Emotion(Friendship) became Charm Person, Emotion (Hate), Mass Haste, Negative Energy Protection became Death Ward, Nystul's Undetectable Aura became Nystul's Magic Aura, Polymorph Other became Baleful Polymorph, Polymorph Self became Polymorph, Symbol (Discord), Symbol (Hopelessness).
The following spells had their names changed:

• Change Self → Disguise Self
• Charm Person or Animal → Charm Animal
• Circle of Doom → Inflict Light Wounds (Mass)
• Command Plants → Control Plants
• Emotion (Despair) → Crushing Despair
• Emotion (Hope) → Good Hope
• Endurance → Bear's Endurance
• Enlarge → Enlarge Person
• Greater Dispelling → Dispel Magic (Greater)
• Healing Circle → Cure light wounds (Mass)
• Improved Invisibility → Invisibility (Greater)
• Invisibility to Animals → Hide from Animals
• Invisibility to Undead → Hide from Undead
• Mass Charm → Charm Monster (Mass)
• Minor Globe of Invulnerability → Lesser Globe of Invulnerability
• Protection from Elements → Protection from Energy
• Rage → Emotion (Rage)
• Random Action → Confusion (Lesser)
• Reduce → Reduce Person
• Resist Elements → Resist Energy
• Symbol → Symbol of (Death, Fear, Insanity, Pain, Persuasion, Sleep, Stunning)
• Teleport Without Error → Teleport (Greater)
• Vanish → Teleport Object

On top of that, Many spells had their spell schools changed as well as some substantial changes to spell levels as well.
The spell effects of the following spells were changed:
Blade Barrier, Blindness/Deafness, Call Lightning, Endure Elements, Eyebite, Flame Arrow, Harm, Haste, Heal, Neutralize Poison, Otiluke's Freezing Sphere, Polymorph, Reduce Person, Righteous Might, Scrying, Scrying (Greater), and Wall of Force.
Along with those, many Domain spells were changed to either different domains or removed from domains entirely.
Damage Reduction Changes
Damage reduction was changed to allow many different types of things to bypass that damage reduction, Including Special materials such as Silver, Adamantine, and Cold Iron; Weapon Types, such as Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning; Alignments, such as Good, Evil, Lawful, and Chaotic; Magic and Epic were also added to indicate physical damage reduction, and epic damage reduction. These factors were also combined to indicate monster weaknesses to certain aspects.
Equipment Changes
Equipment is now listed in small and medium-sized version for use by small and medium sized characters. The largest effect of this adjustment is the Shortsword/Small Longsword issue, which means that small characters will usually do one die-size less damage.
(The medium shortsword and small longsword both do 1d6 damage. In 3.0, only medium sized weapons were listed, and a gnome rogue could use the medium shortsword. In 3.5, our gnome needs to use a small longsword to get 1d6 damage, which requires martial weapon proficiency, or a small shortsword, doing only 1d4 damage.)
DMs should take this into account and make sure small characters can get small weapon rewards (or just house-rule it away.)

Most of that is exceedingly minor. I mean, you included name changes for God's sake. Teleport Without Error is now called Teleport(greater). Oh, no! This needs to be a new edition! Even the more significant name changes were still just errata. 4e also had tons of errata. WotC had just learned that it was a mistake to put out new core books with a .5 tacked on. 3e was fully compatible with 3.5, because virtually all of the changes were so minor.

 

[Maxperson]

Based on your usage, then how do you differentiate between 1e/2e and 3e/3.5e?

2e was similar to 1e, but added some major new systems like skills, cleric spheres, specialist wizards and the like. It might have been doable as a .5, but I'm okay with it as a new edition. 3e and 3.5 were sometimes hard to differentiate if 3.5 isn't said on the cover of a book. The changes were mostly very minor.

 

[Imaro]

Nothing was made invalid. I used 3e content for the entire time 3.5 existed up until last night.

Most of that is exceedingly minor. I mean, you included name changes for God's sake. Teleport Without Error is now called Teleport(greater). Oh, no! This needs to be a new edition! Even the more significant name changes were still just errata. 4e also had tons of errata. WotC had just learned that it was a mistake to put out new core books with a .5 tacked on. 3e was fully compatible with 3.5, because virtually all of the changes were so minor.

The above shows 3e was not in fact "fully compatible" with 3.5 but would require conversion and changes to come in line with it (the fact that you chose to ignore those changes doesn't invalidate them, you could also use 1e stuff with 2e if you ignored some of the changes) . As for whether the changes. were minor or not is a subjective call... the fact of the matter is that a new edition was created to introduce those changes called 3.5... In the same way that 4e incorporated rule changes with Essentials.

 

[Parmandur]

The 3.5 changes were significant enough to destroy a lot of third party publishers with outdated product, IIRC. That's an edition change.

 

[Maxperson]

The above shows 3e was not in fact "fully compatible" with 3.5 but would require conversion and changes to come in line with it (the fact that you chose to ignore those changes doesn't invalidate them, you could also use 1e stuff with 2e if you ignored some of the changes) . As for whether the changes. were minor or not is a subjective call... the fact of the matter is that a new edition was created to introduce those changes called 3.5... In the same way that 4e incorporated rule changes with Essentials.

That's simply not true. Many fully compatible items need some prep to make work. My fully compatible universal remote needs to be set up to work with my TV.

 

[Maxperson]

The 3.5 changes were significant enough to destroy a lot of third party publishers with outdated product, IIRC. That's an edition change.

It wasn't the changes that destroyed them. It was the publishing of 3.5 books. Suddenly, instead of merely being errata, the misperception was that it was a new edition and the old stuff didn't work, even though it was just minor errata changes.

 

[Imaro]

It wasn't the changes that destroyed them. It was the publishing of 3.5 books. Suddenly, instead of merely being errata, the misperception was that it was a new edition and the old stuff didn't work, even though it was just minor errata changes.

There wasn't a misperception... a new edition was published and unless you wanted to convert or ignore the changes you didn't want 3.0 stuff, you wanted 3.5 stuff.

 

[Imaro]

That's simply not true. Many fully compatible items need some prep to make work. My fully compatible universal remote needs to be set up to work with my TV.

Changing rules to bring them in line with a new edition isn't prep... it's converting stuff to the new editions rules. I can "prep"/convert 1e stuff to 5e as well, does that mean they are the same edition?

 

[delericho]

You tell me because as I understand it (and I could be wrong as this is a little before my D&D time) the "new core 3" for 1e and 2e were the same rules with a different cover, trade dress, etc... Were the rules different, what were the differences?

The 'changes' amounted to nothing more than incorporating the errata, which they had generally done with each reprint. Indeed, the 2nd Ed "black cover" PHB included a new foreword that made sure to state that it was not a new edition.

But that was my point: putting out a new "core three" is not, by itself, enough to constitute a new edition.

As with the "what constitutes a general/setting specific" sub-thread, my argument on that one is fairly simple: it's a new edition if the publisher says it's a new edition. So 1st -> 2nd was a new edition where 3.0e -> 3.5e was not. Because although the former probably had fewer significant rules changes than the latter, TSR said that was an edition change while WotC didn't.

Edit: Specifically, from the introduction to the 3.5e PHB: "But also rest assured that this is an upgrade of the d20 System, not a new edition of the game. This revision is compatible with all existing products, and those products can be used with the revision with only minor adjustments."