Is There Possibility of a PF1.5 or a 3.5 Revival? Whether Directly or Something With Similar 'Ethos'

[aramis erak]

You make it sound like those players are not making informed choices but instead are being unknowingly manipulated by..."them".

To some extent, some players have been. It was supposed to be (and corrected to by edit) OSE. Old School Essentials. Which is a selection bias on the part of local game stores.

 

[payn]

It's the combination of both. Pathfinder 2 also has assumed magic items per level (though less strict than 3e) for PCs, but just gives NPCs/creatures desired stats for their level. Why does this guard have a +15 attack bonus? Because they're a 5th level creature with a melee focus and thus that's the appropriate attack bonus. I don't have to design the guard as a 5th level fighter with Str 16 (and quaffing a potion to get to 20) and the Weapon Focus feat and a masterwork weapon to get to the +12 that'd give them in 3e. I just decide "5th level melee dude, that's +15.". If they happen to have a magic weapon, it's because I want to give it as loot to the PCs.

Well thats an entirely different conversation. I would prefer NPC built as PCs with bounded accuracy as I disagree with many of the PF2 choices.

 

[Celebrim]

Another problem is that "NPCs are made with the same rules as PCs" and "PCs need magic items to get the stats the game system expects" combine to "NPCs need to be loaded down with magic items to get appropriate stats." This in turn means that any time the PCs defeat a group of moderate-level NPCs, they acquire half a dozen of +1 to +2 items per NPC and those are worth the same as a small village.

Definitely this could be a problem if you weren't careful as a DM. It is particularly a problem for DMs whose adventure/encounter design focuses entirely on humanoid enemies. Honestly, this could probably be a problem in 1e AD&D as well if you ran your games that way and you loaded NPCs down with items to make them effective.

My general take on this is that with wealth considered part of CR, the game didn't do enough to explain the relationship between CR and wealth. I was running this like 1e AD&D and generally just eyeballing things and estimating CR based on how much wealth deficit in equipment the NPC had compared to an expected PC. CR = character level just doesn't work in all cases.

 

[Celebrim]

That's also why banditry doesn't work.

I read this joke as mocking people who take guidelines as rules.

 

[Joanna Geist]

The last page or so of discussion is an excellent advertisement for games that don't require player characters to use gear at all

 

[Bohandas]

What I meant by the "Christmas Tree is required" problem was that certain things like Cloak of Resistance, Amulet of Health, Gloves of Dexterity and so forth were considered at many tables to be essential to maintaining game balance, primarily because they made up for the gap in defenses between what you would have without magic items and what the design of higher level monsters assumed was the sort of defenses a character would have. And because your wealth had to go to procuring these essential basic items with obvious and general utility, you couldn't have wacky weird magic items at all, as it was always better to sell these and procure the basic Christmas tree decorations. Furthermore, to keep the game balanced, you had to as a GM ensure the players were moving up the Christmas Tree ladder continually.

I think the solution to that would be to stick multiple abilities on items.

 

[Faolyn]

I think the solution to that would be to stick multiple abilities on items.

And/or items where you can unlock new abilities as you level up.

 

[Belen]

Right. What would it look like to be a 3.x game that wasn't PF?

Star Wars Saga Edition.

Saga style rules should have been the basis of a fixed 3.5.

 

[Bohandas]

I think the solution to that would be to stick multiple abilities on items.

I've been thinking more about this and I think that part of the solution here might paradoxially be to make those necessity items cheaper so that there's more cash left over for additional enchantments

 

[haakon1]

I’m running two 3.5e games (1 started in 1998 with 1e, 1 started in 2025). Of the 4 players in the new game, 2 have only played 3.5e, 1 has played 3-5 but likes 3.5e best, and 1 is new to D&D.

More importantly, my 14 yo niece started DMing in 2024 and after considering 5e (which she plays in the gaming club in her high school) and 3.5e (which she played with me), decided 3.5e is better.