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Jastermereel
2009-06-07, 01:47 PM
So my group is starting a new campaign at the end of the summer and the question of what edition we should use came up. Everyone is familiar with 3.5 (to various degrees), and none are particularly curious about 4.0, but like a few elements of it. Odds are, after this impending campaign we'll be more inclined to try the new material, so we were thinking of including some elements to ease the transition.

So the question is, what features does 4.0 improve on that would be easily imported into 3.5?

Is there any reason not to use the 4.0 way for determining what stat modifies your saves? That is, that it's the better of STR/CON that contributes to your Fort save?

Would it make sense to try and print out an analogus set of attack cards?

Any other ideas to improve the old without wholly adopting the new just yet?

Animefunkmaster
2009-06-07, 01:58 PM
If your running with tome of battle, having everyone being a martial adept and changing the flavor to anything else they want to play is relatively close to 4e (or perhaps even just giving everyone maneuvers from a specific discipline might do the trick).

hamishspence
2009-06-07, 03:04 PM
Star Wars Saga Edition seems reminicent of both in general style- the trimming of skills, the "trained skills" concept, yet retaining the prestige class format.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-07, 03:43 PM
Star Wars Saga Edition seems reminicent of both in general style- the trimming of skills, the "trained skills" concept, yet retaining the prestige class format.

Yeah, SAGA is essentially a mix of D&D 3.5/d20 Modern and D&D 4E. Check that out for an example of the integration.

hamishspence
2009-06-07, 03:45 PM
also, one of the last 3.5 free online Dragon magazines had Epic Destinies in a 3.5 realization- might be one to look at to add 4th ed flavour to 3.5 mechanics.

Tiki Snakes
2009-06-07, 07:10 PM
I'd say the simple things would be the best to introduce. The Simplified Skill system, for example. Group the obvious skills together like 4th basically has, so you have 'Perception' rather than all the individual senses seperately, etc and merely consider them 'trained' or 'untrained', no splitting of skill points, just keep them at max.

Which is how I treat 3.5 based skill choices anyway, tbh.

Rolling the physical skills together into a simple two, (Acrobatics and Athletics) really makes it more likely the adventuring party's supposed warriors and athletes will be able to actually swim, or climb anything, ever.

If you can work it in without too much trauma, a version of the Defences rather than defence rolls might be usefull, if you couple it with the core concept from 4th edition of an attack/etc's instigator rolling vs the relavant defence. Might be more trouble than it's worth though, in the long run.

To be honest, 4th isn't really that massively different. using a 'hybrid' system of some kind would probably just end up leaving people feeling even more confused when you eventually do actually try 4th.

I'd say in 3.5, allowing the choice of paired abilities to determine defence could either work fine, or be hideously abusable. It depends partly on your group, but if they tend to min-max, that's just really giving them more amunition to do so. (It's a core, expected feature of 4th, so the maths is balanced with it in mind. I'd say in 3.5, it could be more open to hijinks, perhaps.) If your group play nice, and don't go in too much for stat-dumping, you'll probably not see anything too crazy, though.