What to do with all those 3e adventures?

[nb5e]

I've been researching the whole 3.0 vs 3.5 question lately. I know what you're thinking, "You're about 3 years late, aren't ya?" Well...

I got into 3e hot and heavy when it first came out, buying all the crunchy books, most of the settings and a whole slew of adventures. As time went on, I got sidetracked and didn't keep up with it except to buy the latest adventures as they came out (WotC, FR, Necromancer Games, etc.) because I knew that my sons were eventually going to be old enough to join me in some games and I wanted to have a library of things to run with them.

Well, my oldest is almost 8 now and recently discovered Lego's "Knight Kingdoms" and we got to talking about D&D and we both fell in love with the game again. He's been spending the last week creating a PC and it's everything I could do to stay one step ahead of him. Since I haven't touched the game for about 4 years, I've had to start almost from the beginning and reacquaint myself with the mechanics.

Somewhere along the line, I ran into a lot of posts indicating that a lot of things about the game were fixed in 3.5. I've read through the upgrade guides and I like what I see in 3.5 in the areas of class changes, combat simplifications and damage reduction. I don't want to start a "is 3.5 better or worse than 3e" debate, but here is my dilemma: On the one hand, if I'm going to move to 3.5, now is the time to do it since I've got to re-learn 3e anyway. On the other hand, I have a whole bookshelf of 3e adventures I have never even read and want to use in our game. Think back to the original WotC adventures like Sunless Citadel, etc. and the NG stuff like Rappan Athuk, etc.

Since you all are much more experienced, I would like your opinion on which is going to be more rewarding for us in the long run, shifting to 3.5 now and having to convert everything on my shelf to the new rules? or sticking with 3e and not enjoying the fixes that have gone into 3.5? Is it hard to convert for a novice? I guess the main issue is converting the skills and monsters in the adventures?

Thanks for your input!

 

[Hussar]

I would shift over honestly. I just think that 3.5 is a better game.

That out of the way, I think that it is not terribly difficult to modify modules to 3.5. For standard monsters, there's always the online SRD's, which will give you the updated stats. For non-core creatures, most of them are included in the updated stats found on the WOTC site. For 3rd party stuff, that gets a bit trickier. Not impossible, but trickier. I know that updating my Creature Collection 2 critters gets a bit annoying sometimes. Not impossible, but a bit time consuming.

However, from an adventures standpoint, I don't think modding them up to 3.5 would take a huge amount of work. Just some stat block tweaks mostly.

 

[Mouseferatu]

However, from an adventures standpoint, I don't think modding them up to 3.5 would take a huge amount of work. Just some stat block tweaks mostly.

And sometimes, even that's not necessary.

After all, in many cases, the changes in the monsters are pretty minor. It's not going to hurt the adventure at all if the kobolds have the wrong skill distribution, or if the hill giant's hit points are off by 5 or 10.

Now, there are some monsters that have changed a lot more than that, certainly, so you'll want to compare the stat blocks in the module to 3.5 sources. But honestly, unless you see major differences, I wouldn't worry about updating at all.

 

[freyar]

Well, I didn't get into D&D (other than a brief stint in the early '90s) until a couple years ago, but I picked up a number of 3.0 books at the time, not quite realizing the differences, esp since I first read the PHB and DMG 3.0 versions from the library. (Boy, did I find out quickly, though -- one of my bigger disappointments was that some of the nice explanatory sections in Song & Silence, which I bought, were replicated in the 3.5 PHB!) But I find that the 3.0/3.5 differences in things like adventures and most monsters are very small. And there are conversion guidelines available from WotC in some instances. For example, the web enhancement for Players' Guide to Faerun has 3 to 3.5 conversion notes for all the 3.0 FR monsters (or at least most of them). I'd say go ahead and use the adventures. The only thing that I ran into as a problem was that ogres are a higher CR in 3.5 than 3.0 (and rightly so), and I didn't quite realize that in one adventure... Ended up ok, though.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

3.5 is a misnomer.

I think of it as more of a 3.1.

If I gave 3.0 a 7 of 10, I'd give 3.5 an 8.

Overall I like it better.

THe are a few philosophical changes that come about in 3.5 that vary from 3.0.

One is Spell Durations.

Many of the Spells (Buffs, etc) went from hours to minutes. (Designed from Daily to Encounters).

Aside from the Ranger (big boost), there isn't that much I say that'd be a lot better in 3.5

 

[Celebrim]

While a few of the more glaring exploits in 3.0 were fixed by 3.5, the majority of smaller changes IMO negatively impact the game.

I wouldn't worry to much about it. Play 3.0 and when you find yourself having problems with Haste, Polymorph, Persistant Spell, or something of the sort, look at 3.5 edition and see what they did to fix it and if that fix is one you approve of or if you can think of something better.

 

[Nyaricus]

3.5 is a misnomer.

I think of it as more of a 3.1.

If I gave 3.0 a 7 of 10, I'd give 3.5 an 8.

Overall I like it better.

THe are a few philosophical changes that come about in 3.5 that vary from 3.0.

One is Spell Durations.

Many of the Spells (Buffs, etc) went from hours to minutes. (Designed from Daily to Encounters).

Aside from the Ranger (big boost), there isn't that much I say that'd be a lot better in 3.5

I agree with Vraille here almost completely. But buy 3.5 - you might as well It's much superior in regards to classes etc.

cheers,
--N

 

[Huw]

I un 3.5, but most of my adventures are 3.0, or earlier editions. Things you've got to watch for:

1) Damage reduction has changed for most monsters which have it.
2) Many spells have changed, and this can affect some encounters dramatically. Examples include buff spell durations and a major encounter from City of the Spider Queen.
3) 3.5 characters are slightly more powerful than 3.0 characters on the whole. A few broken 3.0 prestige classes and feats have been made weaker or completely changed for 3.5.

 

[Keith Robinson]

I'd say play 3.5 and update the adventures you have.

Revising the modules isn't that hard as, for the most part, the changes you'll need to implement aren't that major. You just need to check the monsters, especially for CRs (for example, ogres went up from CR2 in 3.0 to CR3 in 3.5). But it's relatively painless to modify encounters to get the correct EL. You'll also need to check spell lists, as some spells changed.

I've ran a few of the adventures as 3.5 (Sunless Citadel, Heart of Nighfang Spire) and it worked out pretty seamlessly.

Good luck!

 

[Ravellion]

I've ran quite a few Dungeon 3.0 adventures in a 3.5 group. I never bothered converting them, except some on the fly rulings about damage conversion (and renaming wilderness lore to survival). Your son won't be rules savvy enough to know that the creature he's fighting has stats that are slightly off.