So how many of you made the switch?

[Aus_Snow]

On the other hand, I found the 3.0 weapon rules horribly clunky, and consider the 3.5 rules an elegant fix that provides consistent weapon rules that scale perfectly to any creature size, and allow creatures of any race to wield the particular weapon they want instead of looking for a larger or smaller 'equivalent'.

Same here.

 

[Zhaleskra]

It's been a while since I've said anything here.

That said, I voted for the combination. An example of why that comes to mind involves cover: most of the time, I feel it doesn't matter how much cover a being has - they either have it or they don't - but there are cases where knowing exactly how covered a creature is becomes important.

 

[scourger]

Other

I voted other.

I got the 3.5 books and ran the 1st 2 modules of The Shackled City with some classes thrown in from Judge Dredd, Omega World and Star Wars. Overall, I've decided that I prefer 3.0. 3.5 makes some interesting changes, but I never really thought 3.0 needed it. More difficult was that 3.5 made just enough changes to ruin what mastery I had over 3.0. If I go back to D&D, it will be back to my old 3.0 core campaign. It's more likely I would return to OW or JD, and 3.0 works better for those games since they are derivatives.

Since 3.5, I've run Savage Worlds with much success. I'm now about 6 sessions into a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game that the players did not want converted to d20 of any stripe. It's actually less work for me to just use the WFRP module with learning those new rules than it is to convert to d20.

But, I'm holding onto my 3.5 books for now in the hope that some great campaign will be published that makes it worthwhile. I don't think The Horned God will ever see the printing press, and Ravenloft has been played to death by some of my players. So, I'll probably keep on until 4e comes out and 3.x can become a closed system.

 

[jcfiala]

beyond this discussion, has anyone had these items make a serious difference in their campaign? Are they as bad as I and DungeonMaster are thinking or are we exaggerating their usefulness?

I think you're exaggerating their usefulness and their availability. In one campaign, I'm a 12th level wizard with a lesser rod of Maximize - it's a useful rod to have around, but given that I can't maximize my top level spells with it, it's mostly best for keeping some of the lower-level spells useful - I can fire off a fireball, maximize it, and then watch the demon I'm fighting actually take some damage instead of firing it off and watching his fire resistance swallow a third of the rolled damage.

I'd love a Rod of Maximize (4-6), but at 54,000 gp, it's not easy to afford or to find one, and there's other options that may be more consistantly useful.

In another campaign I think we've picked up some rods (that's pretty much a 3.0 campaign), but with the higher costs there's definately more useful things to pick up...

 

[Knight Otu]

As a further tribute to the splatbooks crappiness, the rods there break the rules for normal magic items. if it's more than 200k gp, it's supposed to be either an artifact, or an epic item, which is made with entirely different rules.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that Tome and Blood came out before the epic rules were finalized, and the 200k limit (or many of the other limits, for that matter) didn't come about until the ELH. It was released after the primitive proto-epic rules (FRCS and Bastion of Broken Souls), but those didn't have any rules on items, as far as I recall.

 

[DungeonMaster]

Oh god I just looked at 3.5 wish and you're completely correct, DungeonMaster.

Not prob. I'm of the school of thinking that the DM has absolute authority over the rules of the game and I'm sure you'll not allow nonsense to creep into your game. I'm still rather disenheartened that even after 3 generations of D&D the same mistakes keep cropping up, even after they've been fixed.

Just for the record your druid can't actually drop two empowered maximized call lightnings in the first round of combat. You can only call down one bolt every 10 minutes per the spell description.

Normal players (non-powergamers) will find and use Haste and Harm/Heal. And inexperienced 3.0 DM's will have whole campaigns mauled by those unbalanced spells.

My experience is inexperienced DMs can have their campaigns mauled by unbalanced spells but more often than not the PCs get mauled by inexperienced DMs. Non-powergamers will use 3.5 spells and find ludicrous imbalance as well, shapechanging into a dragon is a common theme in literature, but 3.5 shapechange alllows you and your familiar to shapechange into a dragon and have both of you use your breath-weapon. The same applies to polymorph into digesters, etc...
Blasphemy is a common mid-to-high level demon/devil ability. People playing at these level will pick up really quickly that this line of spells is broken.

I've seen a wizard bar transmutation. They can pick up boots of speed, it's not that big a deal. Teleport isn't that useful at high levels where shadow walk ends up being much more effective (that is to say 3rd edition shadow walk).

And yes I was exaggerating when I quoted the cost of metamagic rods, though I remain baffled to this day as to why they decreased the cost AND made them core rules.

I think the idea that the lesser metamagic rod could effect a spell brought to 5th level by metamagic is somewhat shady.

Those are the rules, in plain black and white. An empowered fireball is a 3rd level spell despite taking up a 5th level slot. A lesser metamagic rod of maximize works! This has to do with the retarded 3rd edition rule that metamagic doesn't increase the spell level. THAT should have been fixed in 3.5.

I see what you're saying in terms of the Ranger's hit dice, but my experience is much like the two above posters, without a normalizing effect on hit dice, d10 is really very much like d8. I find Constitution to be much more important than 1 step of HD.

Sure but assuming you put your stats in the same place the 3rd edition ranger has more hitpoints. To normalise the hitpoints the 3rd edition ranger takes more intelligence and the 3.5 takes more constitution. Really the 3.5 ranger has gained very little and I'm surprised anyone at all is happy with them. I did a comparison once between 2 14th level rangers and the 3rd edition ranger moped the floor with the 3.5 one because he has better spells and generally cheaper and better gear. Polymorph self, not even trying to be abused, makes a huge difference.

My impression is that people really like the pseudo-abilities that the 3.5 ranger gets, like "camouflage" at high levels but the reality is at the levels you gain these they are useless against all but a very small selection of monsters.

As it stands now, my 3.5 bard/8 is very happy to run around in a chain shirt with no spell failure chance, while singing his (standard action to start) inspire courage at twice the effectiveness of the 3.0 bard.

You could have your mage armor spell up 8/hours per day and use the cash you spent on armor to buy something else to better protect you like rings of protection and amulets of natural armor. Or you could buy mithral full plate with a spell selection that generally doesn't involve somatic components and/or use long-duration buff spells (you can take your armor off, that's what I would do).

Spells I see as most important that the bard lost or were significantly reduced in power, starting from the top:
6th:
Eyebite - no longer a free action i.e. sucks
Geas - target can now benefit from magical healing, is useless in 3.5
Mass haste - need I say more?
Project image - can no longer have spells decent magic cast on image duplicate
Plane shift - always relevant
Repulsion - for archer-bards.
5th:
Contact other plane - always relevant
4th:
Dismissal - always relevant
3rd:
Clairaudience/Clairvoyance - no longer unlimited range.
Emotion - fantastic multipurpose spell for bards, don't need 4 seperate versions
Greater magic weapon - always relevant.
Haste - we know which is better
Keen edge - always relevant.
Magic circle vs. - always relevant
2nd:
Bull's strength - why did they remove this?! 1hour/lvl.
Levitate - always relevant
1st:
Expeditious retreat: nerfed.
Mage armor
Protection vs. - always relevant

Then there are spells that got their levels juggled up/down for no real reason like see invisibility but these are spells you generally want on a scroll so they're not highly relevant.
Overall I feel the threat a bard poses in 3rd edition is much much greater than in 3.5. Free action bard inspire courage + greater magic weapon + keen edge + eyebite (free action) + bull's strength + haste partial action (attack or spell) + mithral full plate + bull's strength (empowered even maybe) + faster movement + protection spells is generally a better deal.
Next round he can do the same, switching to inspire greatness and get an eyebite attack and cast a spell from haste and full attack. Then do that again on round 3 with another ally as the inspire greatness target.
I still think the bard lost a lot in the transition and that all the other gains are really just gloss rather than actual effectiveness. I still don't get it why people think the 3.5 bard got anything at all?! They don't even come close in power level.