D&D 3E/3.5 Combining 3.0 and 3.5 - A Thread

[Voadam]

• Skills
• Monster spacing instead of facing
• Damage Reduction
• Ranger, Monk.

Skills, pick one list and go with it. You don't need to adjust class skills needed, the 3.5 class skill adjustments were adjustments for the classes (like making rangers more skills oriented by bumping up their skills per level) not an adjustment to the specific skill list. My house rules was everybody got at least 4 skill points per level so people had a higher minimum skill competency.

I disliked the fiddliness of facing in 3.0 at the table in combat so I liked the abstract 3.5 square monsters and adjusting shield to be a straight defense and not a directional one. It would be fairly easy to change 3.0 to this rule straight with very few complications.

I went with options to use either variety in my game, so sometimes you needed a +2 sword, sometimes you needed a magic cold iron one. If you go with 3.5 alone just use the values from the 3.5 MM for monsters and things like the 3.5 sources for things like the stoneskin spell. It is mostly a matter of flavor taste whether you want to require higher plus weapons to hit mid level devils or silver or good ones.

Ranger went from front loaded specialized lightly magical fighter to more fragile higher skill warrior with some magic. You can pick the one you like better or go with both as options really. The 3.5 one has fewer dead levels. My house rules was to make their favored enemy a flat bonus instead of type specific for combat and have the favored types count for skills so they have a more defined universal combat niche.

For monks the big switch is not having the different BAB iterative chart for flurry. I felt they were underpowered melee combatants and house ruled them to have a phantom +1 to hit on levels when they did not get a BAB to avoid the flurry of misses.

 

[_Michael_]

I've seen dozens of houserules about the Shapechange series of issues (not to mention the multiple ways WotC tried to fix it). My personal method of dealing with it at the time was to attack if through the Natural Spell feat. I came up with two similar methods.

Option 1 is to just remove Natural Spell altogether. When you remove the ability to cast in polymorphed form, it forces the character to change back to normal form a lot more often, and puts an immediate end to the worst abuses of characters walking around in alternate firm 24/7.

Option 2 is to make Natural Spell a Metamagic feat instead of a general feat. This means the character has to decide when they prepare spells if the spell will be cast in alternate form or in normal form. This puts a much larger focus on the strategy of spell prep and resource management.

Neither of these options are complete fixes, but I find they are the simplest changes with the biggest effect. While I think Option 1 is cleaner, it comes across to players as a straight nerf. Option 2 is a more complicated, but makes players feel like they have more control.

Why not just use Option 1, and change the spell to require constant focus and concentration to maintain the form? Cuts out the ability to cast spells while polymorphed, gives a grounded explanation (because maintaining the form of a dragon requires a lot of mental effort), and doesn't come across as quite nerfed?

I therefore require a player who could shapechange (or summon creatures) to have already prepared an adjusted character sheet (or stat block) for each and every form that they wish to assume and further require that the form be one the character is familiar with through study or experience. They can't just flip through a monster manual and pick out forms. They either have to be acquainted with the creature from personal experience or find a suitable library for conducting research and spend time studying and researching forms. Unpracticed and ad hoc forms would generally require a spellcraft check to get "right" with failure indicating penalties to effective dexterity and unusual appearance that would readily cause anyone actually familiar with the form to recognize it as false and assumed. And again, I wouldn't even allow it unless the player can immediately provide the adjusted character sheet.

This is also a solution that can be used with Option 1 above, and you could go further and require the player who wants to be a shapechanging archmage to have skills in Knowledge (Dungeoneering) or other appropriate categories, and each monster would have to be researched (leading to the wizard's notebook becoming something of a plot device itself as such notes would be highly sought by other wizards...) and studied for a minimum period of time/a minimum number of successful knowledge checks made.

"Natural Spell" was a mistake, as it produced a situation where the Druid was a better fighter than the fighter while simultaneously being competitive with a Cleric as a healer and with a Wizard as a general caster. I don't allow the feat, as it was both overpowered and therefore compulsory.

You'll notice if you read carefully I dropped "Druid" as a class altogether in favor of a Shaman class based off the Green Ronin class, but that's a different discussion. It's still possible to build a Druid in my game, by playing a Shaman and selecting the appropriate totems, but the class is generally less versatile. You'll notice from above "Wild Shape" isn't a class feature but a spell.

Making "Natural Spell" into a metamagic feat isn't required or even helpful, as there are already things like "Silent Spell" that would let you cast a spell in animal form if it only had a verbal component, etc. Just pay attention to those components and remember they are a balancing factor in being a spellcaster. Spellcasters should not outshine non-casters, and it is a mistake to make it easy for them to do so in the name of making playing a spellcaster less situational or complex. You want an easy class to play, play a (well designed) fighter class.

I'm actually planning on doing something similar within my own version of 3.5e that I'm tweaking specifically for my campaign world (a low-magic campaign), and using books like, The Practical Enchanter and other books that introduce folk magic and witchcraft in a way that doesn't involve use of spells and the like. That, in turn, provides a way for characters to get healing without requiring the landscape be dripping in magic. It also sets up conflicts with locals who now have a ready source of superstition and regions where witchcraft and folk magic is outlawed entirely.

Also, why not build out the subskills more? Has anyone tried expanding skill lists and/or expanding their subskill uses? I'm putting together a list of tweaked Skills to be added to the SRD skills (mostly Craft, Knowledge and Profession with a few others not in those categories) specifically so that players have more options within their own skill sets to do the stuff normally done by magic, or at least, able to be accomplished without magic. I'm drawing from the Ultimate Game Designer's Companion, Experts v.3.5, 101 New Skill Uses by Rite Publishing, and other more obscure 3.5e third-party supplements, and putting them together in a list to offer players that is (hopefully) far superior to the standard skill list. Doing this will, I hope, encourage players to get more creative with their skill checks and use them more than falling back on magic.

 

[el-remmen]

This is exactly how we did it when 3.5 came out and it was never really a problem. I never owned the 3.5 DMG or MM. So basically, we only changed most player facing stuff.

I know everyone has different preferences, but depending on your group, I'd say don't sweat it, just change (or don't change) whatever and if something ends up broken, just fix it when it comes up. Worked for us!

We actually switched to 3.5 spells BUT grandfathered a few or houseruled them to split the difference. For example, in 3.0 the various stat boosting spells (Bull's Strength, Bear's Endurance, etc) lasted 1 hour per level, in 3.5 they made them 1 minute per level, so we made them last 10 minutes per level. Long enough to cast ahead of time and do use them for non-combat contexts, but not so long that casting them on folks every morning of an adventuring day became a no-brainer.

The big non-3.5 change we adopted was Base Defense Bonus that went along with Base Attack Bonus that was based on class and improved AC (since we also did not play with easy access to crafting items)

 

[Gorg]

Have you looked at Arcana Evolved from Monte Cook/Malhavoc? It is an interesting take on 3.5 that you may find a source of ideas. He did a 3.0 version as well called Arcana Unearthed.

I got the latter. Interesting ideas, to be sure, but I hated the races... Never cared for anthropomorphic animals as PC races.

I must say, though- 3.5 did the monster summoning spells WAYYYY better. Much more interesting/useful list of possibilities there. I had a Sorcerer use Monster summoning 2 to summon 2 giant fire beetles off the MS1 list- then sick them on the boss and his pet cleric in the back line. effectively took them out of the fight, until their bodyguards had been dealt with. No special abilities, but they bite HARD, lol. Gave me an entirely new appreciation for those spells. (likely because there are now GOOD choices in the lower level ones- the 3e lists kinda stank)

My core books are new soft cover reprints, and they're THICK. Way thicker than I remember the hardbacks being. Being reprints, the set was cheep on Ebay, but I find the softcovers to be a bit annoying to use in play- because they don't STAY open.

As for some other spells, etc, I've never had an issue with Haste or polymorph, despite all the howling over the years on message boards. But my groups are like the OP's- not ones to go crazy trying to destroy the game with every loophole and OP combo they can find. I'm currently running a 3.x game- using whichever book comes easiest to hand. So far no problems.

There's a bazillion monster books out there for this version of the game, many of them quite good. You'll never run out of surprises to throw at your players!

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

Howdy.

Fellow by the name of Steven Cooper rather exhaustively covered the differences back in...2006. Helpfully, he put all his notes into little pdfs. I've still got mine, but it looks like it's still accessible via the Wayback Machine:

Changes for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, collected by Steven Cooper

web.archive.org/web/20090216171437/http://www.users.bigpond.com/steven_cooper/dnd/

Folks might wanna download them, as 20 years is getting a bit long to rely on it staying archived.

It should help provide a solid starting point for discussing actual changes in case someone wants to Frankenstein 3.0 and 3.5 too.

 

[Staffan]

If you're looking for a more balanced approach to polymorph spells, you might want to check out what Pathfinder did. They turned it into a whole family of spells, each of which gives various stat buffs and special abilities. So for example, beast shape I is a 3rd level spell that can turn you into a Small or Medium animal, gives you either +2 Dex and +1 natural armor for Small or +2 Str and +2 natural armor for Medium, the creature's land speed and natural attacks (but using your stats and BAB), and whatever special abilities from this list that the animal has: climb 30 feet, fly 30 feet (average maneuverability), swim 30 feet, darkvision 60 feet, low-light vision, and scent. There are other spells for other creature types, and at higher levels there are versions that let you turn into differently-sized creatures and expand the list of special abilities.

Polymorph then becomes a 5th level spell that can function as beast shape II, elemental body I, or alter self in addition to being castable on a willing target (most polymorph spells are self-only). The druid's Wild Shape ability starts out as mimicking beast shape I, but as you gain levels you can use it as higher-level versions and eventually as elemental body and plant shape.

On the plus side, this approach puts a cap on the power level of polymorph-type spells, and no longer has every added monster increase the spells' power levels. You also can't dump your physical stats as a druid anymore – 3.0 and 3.5 makes that an attractive choice because you'll be in bear shape anyway so who cares that your normal Strength is 8? On the minus side, they work via ability score modifiers which means there are a whole bunch of cascading changes, much like any other 3e stat buff.

 

[Mannahnin]

If you're looking for a more balanced approach to polymorph spells, you might want to check out what Pathfinder did. They turned it into a whole family of spells, each of which gives various stat buffs and special abilities. So for example, beast shape I is a 3rd level spell that can turn you into a Small or Medium animal, gives you either +2 Dex and +1 natural armor for Small or +2 Str and +2 natural armor for Medium, the creature's land speed and natural attacks (but using your stats and BAB), and whatever special abilities from this list that the animal has: climb 30 feet, fly 30 feet (average maneuverability), swim 30 feet, darkvision 60 feet, low-light vision, and scent. There are other spells for other creature types, and at higher levels there are versions that let you turn into differently-sized creatures and expand the list of special abilities.

Polymorph then becomes a 5th level spell that can function as beast shape II, elemental body I, or alter self in addition to being castable on a willing target (most polymorph spells are self-only). The druid's Wild Shape ability starts out as mimicking beast shape I, but as you gain levels you can use it as higher-level versions and eventually as elemental body and plant shape.

On the plus side, this approach puts a cap on the power level of polymorph-type spells, and no longer has every added monster increase the spells' power levels. You also can't dump your physical stats as a druid anymore – 3.0 and 3.5 makes that an attractive choice because you'll be in bear shape anyway so who cares that your normal Strength is 8? On the minus side, they work via ability score modifiers which means there are a whole bunch of cascading changes, much like any other 3e stat buff.

Yup. You CAN make polymorph-type spells work and be balanced, but it requires a fair bit of complexity and setting numerous hard limits.