Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Akrasia" data-source="post: 1728173" data-attributes="member: 23012">First some flame-guard: these are merely my opinions, based on my experiences, having DM-ed two 3.x campaigns now.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> If you're just starting out as a DM, I would strongly advise you to stay AWAY from all the new "Complete Splatbooks", "Books of Exalted Vileness", "Races of Stuff", and so forth.You just don't need all that additional crap ...er ... feats, prestige classes, racial variants, templates, etc. at this stage.You also probably don't need loads of new spells, classes, rules variants, etc. right away.  (E.g. *The Complete Book of Eldritch Might* is a decent book later on, but hardly essential for beginning a campaign.)If you need a setting, choose one that appeals to you.  If I were a beginning DM and absolutely *had* to use a premade campaign setting, I would probably choose Greyhawk because it does not use any new rules, and leaves the DM a lot of latitude to shape the world as s/he sees fit.And buying Dungeon is a good idea (or a subscription, if you can be confident that your friendly local postperson will not sadistically mangle it en route to your mailbox).Overall: the 3.5 rules might not seem too difficult if you view them as a player.  But that is because you do not need to "master" the rules as a player (you only need to know what is relevant for your character, plus the basics).  As a DM you do need to have a very good grasp of all the rules. And 3.5 includes A LOT of variables (feats and skills that interact with each other in various wasy; spells that interact with feats, skills, and combat in various ways; monsters that can take class levels; etc).  Master the basics first.  There's plenty in the core rules alone -- all that bloat out there is not at all necessary for running a great campaign.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification