Whisperfoot said:
Alright, now that the books have been out for a while and people have had a good chance to look them over, lets look at the pros vs. the cons.
Sure thing! Though I'm not certain all of your pros will be pros for me.
Pros:
* Virtually every spell has been rewritten to reflect the original intent of what the designers. This includes the elimination of numerous vaguaries that were often exploited by power gamers (important in home games, but huge in organized games).
This was the biggest turn off. It meant that I
couldn't as DM get the revision myself and hand my players a list of changes. As you said, virtually every spell had been rewritten! As about half the PHB is spells, that makes the current books pretty worthless.
* Improvements upon the core classes to make them more enjoyable and worthwhile to play.
I'm all for that - I especially like the changes to the Druid and Bard. The ranger didn't go far enough IMO, but then everyone and his cousin has a concept of the 'perfect ranger'.
* The skills have been streamlined and slightly reworked to make more logical sense.
No biggie here, although things like renaming skills fall under fixing what isn't broken. IMO the confusion of players familiar with 3.0 isn't worth the gain made.
* More feats in the core rules.
Two thumbs up on this one!
* More prestige classes in the core rules.
Good in theory, but I don't care for the Mystic Theurge. Dreadfully dull. And I don't like FR stuff in the core. I thought Greyhawk was the default setting?
* Now includes the basic epic level rules.
Speak not the Black Speech of Mordor.
* Monster entries expanded to include both tougher versions and the information necessary to easily make them player characters.
To be honest, if I were to get any of the 3.5 books it would be the Monster Manual. Those changes don't really bother me as much.
* Fully supported by the SRD.
Another set of thumbs up on that one. You WotC delivered the SRD with the release as promised.
Cons:
* A few errors, such as accidentally omitting that prestige classes don't count towards your XP penalty for multiclassing.
All books have errors. I don't expect perfect books.
* Having to buy the books again. Oh, but wait, you don't since its fully supported by the SRD.
It isn't that I'm cheap - heck I have several hundred dollars worth of D&D and d20 books next to me. Its that the revision offered me a LOT of work in reteaching the game to my players, ticked off players that their books were now useless, and arguements over how things used to work versus how they work now. The gains? Some feats and classes that I mostly already had. Some spells that bothered me were fixed, as were some classes. But the cost of using them would be too high for those fixes to be worth it. And the money would be better spent on three new sourcebooks.
I'm not trying to flame your point of view, I just don't comprehend it. If re-buying the books is the big hangup, just compare the number of hours of enjoyment you get out of the game to the dollars you spend to see a movie.
Don't worry, I'm not one of those for whom game version is a religion, no matter what they say about me on Dragonsfoot.
. And it isn't just me that would need to rebuy the books, but all of my players. They don't want to do that. Some of them would drop out before spending $30 on a new player's handbook when the one they have works just fine. The SRD is great for reference, but it sucks hard at the game table. What are you going to do, print the whole thing out? Won't save any money that way. And I don't see where I would get any MORE enjoyment out of them than the set of 3.0 books I already have.
Like I said, no flames, just explaining where I'm coming from here. I was all hot for the revision - I thought it might be a little soon, but still there were things that needed fixed. Then the fixes were worse than the original problem and there was a TON more that got changed seemingly just to be changing it.
And the lack of playtester credits doesn't fill me with confidence either. Was the book playtested like the 3.0 books were? (and no, listening to complaints about 3.0 doesn't count - were playtesters shown the material before the books were finalized?)
Technically Monte is now the owner of a competing business, and he was one of the original designers who didn't get the chance to revise the game the way that he would see it done. Just because it wasn't done the way he would like doesn't mean that it wasn't done well. In fact, when Monte gave his review, he voiced some concerns, but his review was largely favorable. He did say that overall he likes it and that the negative elements of what he said were taken out of context and used for purposes that run contrary to his original intent.
Yeah, I remember that. He pretty much said that it wasn't the way he'd have done it and it was a bit early, but it was a pretty good job. Heck, I think it's a pretty good game. Just not good enough to get me to go through the effort to convert.
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