Monster Handbook - will it work with 3.5?
- Thread starter Olive
- Start date
haiiro
First Post
A lot of it is just suggestions -- like, taking certain classes is a waste of time for dragons, etc. I can't see those portions being any less useful now than they were pre-revision.
The crunchy bits include feats, templates and the like, so you'd definitely need to do some conversion work there. I'm not sure how much work you'd need to do because I haven't done any of it yet.
The crunchy bits include feats, templates and the like, so you'd definitely need to do some conversion work there. I'm not sure how much work you'd need to do because I haven't done any of it yet.
I think most will still be usable. As noted, there are a lot of feats. Monsters in 3.5 tend to have MORE feat slots to work with than in 3.0, so it is actually good in that regard.
The sections that may need work are the parts on altering monsters and using templates. Some templates may prove more or less powerful than in 3.0, and so may need to be re-balanced. The customizing section, IIRC, talked about swapping abilities; the decisions as to what is a fair swap may need to be re-examined in light of 3.5's changes.
The sections that may need work are the parts on altering monsters and using templates. Some templates may prove more or less powerful than in 3.0, and so may need to be re-balanced. The customizing section, IIRC, talked about swapping abilities; the decisions as to what is a fair swap may need to be re-examined in light of 3.5's changes.
Psion
Adventurer
Olive said:
I've been using it pretty much as-is. There are few conversion headaches.
The biggest things you have to worry about:
1) DR purchasing might need tweaked a bit.
2) "Shapechanger" is no longer a type, but there is pretty much no reason you couldn't use this chapter for a creature with the shapechanger subtype.
Most of the book should work fine. In fact, the 3.5 changes to how monsters receive feats and skills makes the system a bit easier to use. Around March of this year, I'll have time to work up a document on how to create monsters using the 3.5 rules and the MHB. Now that monsters progress like characters, it's a lot easier to determine a monster's CR simple by giving it X HD for its monster type, then using the system to give it special abilities. Under 3.0, monster feats and skill ranks were really driven by stats and other outside factors that made it hard to regularly predict where creatures would fall into CR categories based solely on HD.
The tricky thing is that there isn't a linear relationship between base HD and CR. For example, a 1 HD magical beast might be CR 1, but a vanilla 5 HD magical beast might be CR 3 before you add any abilities.
In most cases, even the templates should remain the same. I've done some 3.5 update work specifically to learn the differences between the two versions, and it looks like the biggest changes are that monsters receive a lot more skill ranks and about 1 bonus feat.
The tricky thing is that there isn't a linear relationship between base HD and CR. For example, a 1 HD magical beast might be CR 1, but a vanilla 5 HD magical beast might be CR 3 before you add any abilities.
In most cases, even the templates should remain the same. I've done some 3.5 update work specifically to learn the differences between the two versions, and it looks like the biggest changes are that monsters receive a lot more skill ranks and about 1 bonus feat.
