So how many of you made the switch?

[MerricB]

I switched immediately it came out. (I preordered all three books, and got them all the day they arrived). 3.5e was a clear improvement over 3e in almost every respect, and the couple of areas where it might not have been an improvement are debatable in my mind anyway, and haven't really come up!

Added to that, 3.5e set a really good base for the supplements to be built upon. I think the 3.5e supplements have blown away the 3e ones for quality.

Cheers!

 

[Aaron L]

Could you run that past me (how the 3.0 version differs) ? I can't remember for the life of me right now.

Well, for starters they werent summonable for a limited number of hours per day and then vanished back to the Upper Planes. Other than that I dont think there is anything different. I find the summoning silly, I dont envision Paladins as summoning thier horse every morning, so I axed it. You get your mount and then its there forever, just like a regular horse.

Ive compensated Paladins for losing the ability to summon thier mounts anywhere they want by adding Call Mount spell as a 2nd level Paladin spell, which acts as a Greater Teleport, but only for calling thier mount to them. And granting them the benefits of Mounted Combat when riding thier mount.


But in all I think, with only a few exceptions, 3.5 is a clear improvement over 3.0.

 

[Gundark]

Ya, we switched when 3.5 came out. The classes are abit better, the DMG is a lot better and I'm happy with the improvements on the game.

amen...QFT

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

We took a vote as a group soon after 3.5 was released; the vote passed.

As DM I've opted to un-nerf those elements of play that I felt 3.5 screwed up (spell durations, keen stacking, weapon sizing rules, cover) but have otherwise adopted it wholesale for my Realms Campaign.

The players in my group have -in their own games- opted for 3.5 as well.

So far I'd say I'm happy with it. No more Haste abuse, in particular.

J. Grenemyer

 

[Aus_Snow]

Well, for starters they werent summonable for a limited number of hours per day and then vanished back to the Upper Planes. Other than that I dont think there is anything different. I find the summoning silly, I dont envision Paladins as summoning thier horse every morning, so I axed it. You get your mount and then its there forever, just like a regular horse.

Ah. Yeah, I've noticed that you're not alone in disliking the "pokemount" feature/bug.

But in all I think, with only a few exceptions, 3.5 is a clear improvement over 3.0.

Same here, pretty much. As I've said before, I run kind of ~3.3. . . with a lot of other changes, mind you.


I had to ask because, though I have read the 3.0 rules to some extent (mainly thanks to friends' books and the Zombler SRD), I started playing and running 3rd ed with 3.5 in '03 - not long after it first came out actually. So I kind of sidestepped any issues of doubling up etc., anyway.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I switched immediately it came out. (I preordered all three books, and got them all the day they arrived).

This is exactly what I mentioned. MerricB is a perfect example of the "standard" Enworld gamer. He's not interested in reading the book before he buys. I'm not trying to insult you Merric, you're generally quite bright (as most gamers are I'de like to mention), but it is a classic buying habit I've noticed on Enworld where people pre-order and go with the flow.

3.5e was a clear improvement over 3e in almost every respect, and the couple of areas where it might not have been an improvement are debatable in my mind anyway, and haven't really come up!

I think I know of maybe 2 or 3 improvements over 3e and I attribute that to more luck than design intent because they clearly didn't know what they were doing.
I have to ask you Merric, because I'm curious: do you actually use the rules or do you houserule them so that they work?
Every single game session encounter has to "start somewhere" and you have to deal with the awareness of various members of the party and the monsters.
How for instance do you start your "standard" encounter of orcs on a plain, a la Lord of the Rings?
3.5 rules say that you need to make a spot check modified by distance, the average distance being 6*3.5*40 = 840 feet away. So do you make your players and monsters roll to spot DC 84 to see the other group on an open plain? What if it's a tarrasque, on an open plain, at 900 feet? Spot DC 90?
Do you in all fairness hit your level 8 PCs with a search/disable device DC 32/32 destruction trap, fort save DC20 vs. utter destruction or 10d6 damage on a save?
Do you then claim that a deathblade coated scyth at DC 24/19 for at worst 3d6 DC20 Con damage is likewise CR 8 and fair?
Do you honestly think it's fair to hit a 10th level party with a fort save DC 23 wail-of-the-banshee trap?

It's critical basic elements of the game rules - such as starting encounters and traps - that drive me nuts that they got so wrong in the transition. I'm not interested in starting another edition war, that battle was moot long ago, I'm just honestly curious how you cope with these basic elements of D&D play in your 3.5 game?

I think the 3.5e supplements have blown away the 3e ones for quality.

This amazes me as well. I don't judge quality among rotten apples.

 

[anhar]

I switched about two months after the books came out. Was starting a new campaign at the time and wanted to try the new rules. I like all the changes except weapon size and the nerfing of some of the buff spells. They did last too long in 3.0, but we go with a happy medium of 10 minutes/level. works much better that way.


So, DungeonMaster, I don't care at all about the distance suggestions, I've been DMing 3.x since it came out and literally never read that part of the DMG in 3.0 or 3.5. I only know what you're talking about because I've seen a random encounter generator that includes the calculation. I agree that trap CR's are messed up, especially for magic traps. I also think that trap costs are massively inflated. a camoflagued 10ft pit should not cost 1800gp to make. As a solution, I mostly just design my own traps and give them a CR/gp value based on my own reasoning. I find it hard to believe that you find those {IMHO} petty annoyances more important than...

1. Fixing haste {game-breaking}

2. Fixing time stop {same as above, especially if you let them stack. double especially if someone in your party has the epic feat spell stowaway-time stop. If anyone is confused about this, time stop let you cast attack spells in 3.0, and they'd all go off at once when the time stop wore off. oh and spell stowaway-timestop let you get a free timestop whenever anyone within 300 feet cast timestop}

3. Fixing HARM {dragon killer! used and abused it myself} and to a lesser extent {cause of the casting time}, Creeping Doom.

4. Making it so there is a good reason to take more than 1 level of Ranger. I saw so many first level rogues take their second level as Ranger and never touch the class again.

5. Fixing Bards {they're still not spectacular, but seriously, SO much better}.

6. Making it so not every monk went to the same fricking school and learned the exact same fighting style. {stunning fist and improved trip for everyone!}

7. Making Pokemounts, everyone loves the pokemount. See how much support and love it gets on the boards?

7. Cleaning up the action definitions and combat system.

8. Reworking the stat blocks {I believe someone earlier said "yay! grapple checks!"}


It's not perfect, they really should have done something with sorcerers, I mean... seriously, sorcerer is a terrible class. And I don't like the weapon sizing rules. And I think they removed something about repairing broken magic items, but the changes they made seriously outweigh the problems. Especially if you play with a bunch of rules lawyers who hate house rules and love RAW, like most of my players. I tried to fix haste before 3.5 but no one would ever go along with me on it. Even people who weren't playing spellcasters, because haste made it easier for the casters to buff them. God the fights were horrid: "I activate my contingency Haste, cast horrid wilting, horrid wilting, and quickened fireball." Well that's it for that archmage and his minions, good thing he didn't win initiative.


To say that it's worthless and idiotic is a very knee-jerk reaction. You seem way too angry/frustrated over this topic.

Oh and I don't go out and buy all the books that come out or anything like that. in terms of 3.5, between my whole 7 person group we have the full set of complete X books and 2 sets of core 3.5. before 3.5 I had a few of the splatbooks and the MM2 {which was godawful but that's another story}. One of my players had the epic level handbook, which I hated hated hated hated.

I've played with quite a few people and I've never met anyone who played 3.0 who didn't switch to 3.5. Especially given the availability of the SRD.

now the 2e players I know are different. no offense, but I think they take the... length-challenged bus to play dnd. [/kidding] [/notreallytho] [/flamebaitz]

 

[Alceste]

Anhur has pretty much hit the major improvements on the head.

1. Haste was just overpowering. A truly great change to a broken spell.

2. Heal/Harm both needed fixing and both were.

3. Bards were awful in 3.0. They are not "uber" now, but they are okay.

4. Rangers and Monks needed a little help and they got it.

All in all, 3.5 is simply a better version than 3.0.

 

[DungeonMaster]

I
I find it hard to believe that you find those {IMHO} petty annoyances more important than...

I don't call them "petty annoyances". Setting up encounters is perhaps the most important thing the DMG should do. Traps are integral to D&D in my opinion. Those are 2 big things messed up from the get go.
One of the first experiences I had with a novice DM in 3.5 was the poor guy trying to figure out how neither us nor the orcs could see each other across a plain. He shifted the terrain to woods so that we could see each other better. No joke.
The next thing we got was the prismatic spray trap that the rogue couldn't detect on anything but a 20 and couldn't disable at all. So half the party died. We were ok with that, until we learned the trap was an automatic reset - at which point most of the rest of the party died. Then the DM decided the rules were @#$# and waved the magic wand of DM to fix everything.

I'm bored tonight...
I'll reply to your issues - but I don't want to turn this into another bickering thread, I'll just state my arguments and if the discussion gets too heated I'm gone. I don't have time anymore for long dead issues.

Neither haste nor time stop are game-breaking, no more so than metamagic rods. If anything the metamagic rods are way more broken.
Time stop only freezes in place "effect" spells, such as rays (enervation), not every spell.
Compare haste+timestop in 3rd edition vs. metamagic rod extended timestop in 3.5. Plus you can shapechange into a choker for even more spells. Anything you can do in core 3rd edition you can break even more with 3.5 core rules metamagic rods.
The epic rules are horrible horrible rules, the largest fraction written by Andy Collins who is the cheif architect of all 3.5's problems incidentally.
Harm is a dragon killer in 3rd edition, no problem. Holy word & company in 3.5 are way, way more broken than harm ever was. Holy word can kill roomfulls of titans, balors and pitfiends without rolling a die. No rolls, all dead, by core rules. If you go non-core then shivering touch in 3.5 is even better than harm at killing dragons. It's a moot issue really, 3.5 has much more abusable magic. It's the single worst aspect of 3.5 . Wish loopholes that were corrected in 1st edition re-opened by good old Andy to boot.
I've actually seen only a single multiclass ranger ever. And he had 5 levels of it, not 1. I've seen many pure high level rangers. 3.5 rangers are wildrogues and they're terrible at it since the 3.5 druid outclass them in every way. Bards suck in 3.5 even worse than before, not only does bardsong take up an action but they have worse armor, spell lists. They gained very little in the transition and rangers lost more than any other class.
I really don't care that 1 in 4 monks are different by a feat or two. Really it's pointless.

7. Cleaning up the action definitions and combat system.

The 3.5 combat system is worse than 3rd edition in every way, I don't know of a single thing 3.5 did better for combat.
You can't ready a charge unless you're slowed for instance, this makes tons of sense of course. Attacks of opportunity rising from prone is broken, sorry, I've not even tried to abuse this mechanic in the few 3.5 games I've played and it was already clearly broken. I played a 1-armed 1-eyed fighter with mediocre strength and a bastard sword. I still managed to trip tons of things with improved trip. Everyone just crowds around the fallen enemy to get free attacks, it's ridiculous really.
And it's about as clear as mud whether you can trip an opponent that's rising from prone. Or that lances gain 2-for-1 power attack despite being 1-handed.
Why should I be better off dual weilding a bastard sword and halfling bastard sword but not a bastard sword and a longsword?
The list goes on.

I agree the stat blocks are easier to use in the 3.5 MM. That was clearly Skip's input, and it's one of the few things 3.5 did better than 3rd edition.

God the fights were horrid: "I activate my contingency Haste, cast horrid wilting, horrid wilting, and quickened fireball." Well that's it for that archmage and his minions, good thing he didn't win initiative.

In 3.5 core it's "I cast maximized horrid wilting through my metamagic rod of maximize, then quickened horrid wilting through my quicken rod and then with my extra action from being shapechanged into a choker I'll toss another maximized horrid wilting, through my rod of course." Your combats should be worse, not better.

Oh and I don't go out and buy all the books that come out or anything like that. in terms of 3.5, between my whole 7 person group we have the full set of complete X books and 2 sets of core 3.5.

How do you cope with the garbage and nonsense in the complete books? As you said, a whole different can of worms but I'm amazed you're upset with the MM2 but not the downright disgusting "complete" series.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I picked up 3.5 because I was playing in Painandgreed's campaign, and it was easier for me to pick up a PHB for myself.