D&D 3E/3.5 Time shift; Going back to 3.5!

[delericho]

So I'm looking for ideas and support concerning a 3.5e campaign, but kind of trying for a darker aspect to it that may possibly include the true name system, and a sanity variant as well, it's been quite some time since I've DM'ed but am really looking for suggestions right now.

I'll second "Heroes of Horror" and "Book of Vile Darkness. Oh, and the Taint system is reprinted in "Unearthed Arcana". Beyond that, is there anything specific you want help with?

Is anyone familiar with Glen Cooks series The Black Company?

Yep. Good novels.

Also, The Book of Vile Darkness (3.5 and AWESOME, find this book if you can) introduced a similar mechanic that caused a type of damage that could not be healed normally nor by magical healing unless cast from inside a Sanctified area.

Nitpick: "Book of Vile Darkness" is 3.0e. It predates the publication of 3.5e.

 

[Herobizkit]

Nitpick noted, [MENTION=22424]delericho[/MENTION]. I don't mind being corrected.

 

[nijineko]

i confess curiosity as to what you found useful in it. i found the philosophies and concepts expressed to be muddled, confused, inaccurate, and misleading; worse than worthless.

 

[delericho]

i confess curiosity as to what you found useful in it. i found the philosophies and concepts expressed to be muddled, confused, inaccurate, and misleading; worse than worthless.

I agree on all counts.

However, treated as nothing more than a sourcebook for material for the game, it has a lot of good stuff - monsters, spells, Prestige Classes, magic items... Of course, IMC it's strictly for DM use only.

 

[nijineko]

I agree on all counts.

However, treated as nothing more than a sourcebook for material for the game, it has a lot of good stuff - monsters, spells, Prestige Classes, magic items... Of course, IMC it's strictly for DM use only.

i see. i was so turned off by the aforementioned, that i never really got around to perusing the mechanics; what i read via others online simply sounded like support for my opinion. furthermore, i don't really need rules for villains. easy as pie to come up with unique and interesting ones. and the quirks in my campaign rules invalidate a lot of the stuff i've read about anyway.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've gotten a ton of mileage out of the BoVD. It has some of the most interesting spells I've seen in any supplement (many of which were never reprinted in 3.5), as well as a great group of monsters. I really wish that corrupt spells and the new components had been exploited more in later books. Some of the other variant rules are nice. I won't call the drugs accurate to life, but I've used almost all of them (as have other DMs in my group). I've used evil weather repeatedly. I constantly look at the end of a chapter that has rules for the imprints that evil events have on creatures and locations.

The prestige classes aren't particularly good, but that pretty much can be said of most 3e supplements. The advice by and large is unnecessary and not worthwhile, but again, that's true of most of them. In short, there's enough good thought-provoking "crunch" that I don't much care about the "fluff".

 

[Marflarius]

Thanks a ton for the input so far guys, so far I see that Green Ronin, BoVD, Heroes of Horror, Unearthed Arcane and Tome of Magic have been noted and a couple of those repeatedly noted. I will definitely look into each of them to see what I can conjure.

Thanks again!

Marf

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Be wary of the Truename stuff because the Truenamer is actually mechanically broken in the sense of not working under normal use. To give you an idea, your personal Truename has a DC of 15 + (2x your HD). In other words, to reliably make the check for your own name you have to have at least +5 at 1st level and +2 at every level after. A creature's truename is DC 15 + (2x its CR) so you'll need at least a +7 at first level for that and maybe even +9 since the difficulty for uttering another creature's personal truename increases by +2. Also, as you use an Utterance more often in a day it usually gets more difficult to do.

You may find http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2773.0 and http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=214115 useful if you intend to really use truenaming.

 

[Greg K]

horrible book, along with the boed. avoid both of them like the plague. about the worst pair of d&d books ever published. completely clueless.

I disagree about BOVD, sort of.... As a player resource, I would never let a player use it except for a couple of spells. (Then again, I don't like or allow evil PCs when I run). As a DM sourcebook, I found enough worth while that I would give it a 3 on scale from 1-5 which means I like it better than most WOTC 3e books- Unearthed Arcana, Fiendish Codex I, Heroes of Horror, Forgotten Realms Campaign setting, Lords of Madness and Stormwrack being the only books that would rate higher than 3.

 

[Greg K]

Treated as nothing more than a sourcebook for material for the game, it has a lot of good stuff - monsters, spells, Prestige Classes, magic items... Of course, IMC it's strictly for DM use only.

This my feeling on it as well although there are a couple of spells that I allow for PC use when I run 3e.