3.0 Vs 3.5

[PetterTomBos]

Hello

I've been looking at some 3,0 books at the norwegian equivavelent of ebay, finn. I'm really running a 3.5 campaign but some DMs material that can be fudged and some pretty pictures of dragons would be awesome so:

How different are they? Is it a waste of money?

[LOTRfan]

For the most part, they are pretty much the same. The stat blocks are slightly different, and may require a little improvisation, but you should be able to use the stats in the book with no problems.

If you want them to be as close as possible, however, there is an official update booklet here (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20030718a).

[Yora]

The old Splatbooks that had prestige classes for certain character tyes (like the later Complete series) and the Monster Manual II are probably the most problematic. Most other 3.0 books I know work perfectly well with 3.5e rules as they don't have much hard rules. The only thing to look out for is creatures with Damage Reduction, as the DR system got quite significantly changed. Everything else mostly stayed the same.

[hamishspence]

The SRD has most of the Epic Handbook's content- as well as material from a few other books:

http://www.d20srd.org/

[PetterTomBos]

The old Splatbooks that had prestige classes for certain character tyes (like the later Complete series) and the Monster Manual II are probably the most problematic. Most other 3.0 books I know work perfectly well with 3.5e rules as they don't have much hard rules. The only thing to look out for is creatures with Damage Reduction, as the DR system got quite significantly changed. Everything else mostly stayed the same.

Good to hear :)
Thinking of the monster manual/song and silence/sword and fist/fiend folio/dracomnicon and some modules. Any one of these to 100% avoid?

[Yora]

I'm quite sure Draconomicon is 3.5e.

I would avoid Sword and Fist and Song and Silence and instead try to find Complete Warrior and Complete Adventurer. I haven't read the books but the series was all about Prestige Classes and those usually need the most changes to work in a 3.5e game. Also, I think they were not very good.
The 3.0 Monster Manual 1 I really wouldn't buy. All the creatures are in the SRD with only 5 or so exceptions, so you can get all the stats online for free. Monster Manual 2 is somewhat of a mixed blessing, it's biggest problem are apparently the completely randon CRs for the monsters. Many have a CR that is listed as way too high, while others are rated much too low. There are some interesting creatures in it, but I think most of them are very boring and I have no idea how I would ever use them in a game. Fiend Folio is just another 3.0 Monster Manual only with a different name. I've heard less complains about it than about the MM2 and the creatures in it are a great deal more interesting, at least in my oppinion.

[nedz]

Several of the classes got re-written. e.g. Bard went from 4+ skill points to 6+, got the ability to wear light armour, and their spell list was completly re-worked; I think that this class was probably the most effected.
Lots of spells got changed. Haste got a major nerf, Teleport moved schools, etc.
Oh, and has already been mentioned: DR was re-written

Strip #1 of OoTS covers this issue :smallsmile:

[Eldan]

Unless I'm mistaken, Fiend Folio is what is generally known as 3.25, a book that came out at about the same time as the 3.5 core books and already incorporates some of the rules. IT should work perfectly fine in 3.5 and has a lot of nice beasties.

[Welknair]

3.0 books that I think are particularly good: Epic Level Handbook and Deities and Demigods. As previously mentioned, most of the ELH is on the SRD, but it's still a nice book to have...

[Firechanter]

Some PrCs are majorly different, for instance Tempest used to be a 10 level PrC in Masters of the Wild, but with the various TWF-related changes in 3.5 it was rewritten to 5 levels. (And is still not worth it if you ask me, but that's just an example.)

[awa]

rangers are pretty diffrent in 3.0 they had less skills more hp and got most of their abilities at level 1

[FMArthur]

The Book of Vile Darkness is easily the most commonly-used 3.0 supplement in 3.5, and is mostly compatible. Next is probably Savage Species, despite essentially being some kind of bizarre museum of hopelessly inept design. Oriental Adventures is much better in quality and introduces way better races (very cool ones, too), the Iaijutsu Focus skill, and at least one notably useful prestige class (all of its original base classes except Sohei were updated in 3.5 books and there exists a 3.5 update for the rest of the material in Dragon 318 that didn't change much except take away any reason to play Vanara and made the awesome Hegeyokai LA+0). Fiend Folio is probably what I'd get after that, which is not just an evil monster manual but the main source of grafts and a few other neat player options.

[awa]

personally i really liked oriental adventures but a lot of the material is for a specific campaign setting and if your not using that setting (or taking any inspiration from it) then you wont be using a large portion of the book.

savage species trys to do something interesting it just failed badly in many ways primarily by adding way to much LA on everything

[FMArthur]

All I can do is raise an eyebrow in confusion at discluding OE material from a generic fantasy setting. Adventurers are travellers almost exclusively. Why is it unreasonable for one to come from a far-off land in the midst of adventures? Why must it be weird for asian folktale-history fantasies to exist in the same world as western ones? Both have real-world connections that don't need to mean anything in the game besides that there exists cultural diversity in the world. It would be like deciding that Sandstorm monsters don't exist because they're from somewhere else. You can do it, but is that normal?

[awa]

im not saying you shouldn't play a nezumie in a normal dnd game or what ever.
im referring to the fact that a large portion of the book is fluff for a specific campaign setting. it would be like buying a forgotten realms book with no intention of using any of the forgotten realms fluff you could still buy it for the crunch but that still means you are paying for content you don't really want and if you have a limited budget that might not be something you want to do.

[Swooper]

3.0 books that I think are particularly good: Epic Level Handbook and Deities and Demigods. As previously mentioned, most of the ELH is on the SRD, but it's still a nice book to have...
...Are you serious? That was the worst balanced waste of paper ever published for 3.X :smallconfused: Epic Spellcasting right next to Epic Sneak Attack.

@OP: Personally, I see no reason to buy any particular 3.0 book - get the 3.5 equivalent instead, they're much higher quality in general. This excludes the borderline "3.25" books like Fiend Folio, though.

[Ozreth]

One thing I noticed when looking through the 3.0 handbook the other day is that the battle chapter is significantly shorter and there are only 1 or 2 picture of actual combat and there is no grid displayed under the tokens they use, just walls around them.

This makes me think that they were still under the 2e mindstate of little to no battle representation. Some of the rules may possibly reflect this as well?

I could be way off as I only glanced it.

[Eldan]

It's not really setting specific, though. The impression I got from reading OA was that it's more about introducing some asian fluff into any campaign setting, rather than any kind of special world. After all, there's not much world description in there, and certainly nothing that would make a setting.

[awa]

a large portain of the book was dedicated to the legend of the 5 ring setting (the actual name i cant remember) although certainly the not everything is.

[faceroll]

The biggest changes are in magic items and spells. Skills take a minor change, as do several class abilities. Some monsters change, too. The biggest I think is the creation of skeleton and zombie templates, as opposed to having unique zombies and skeletons of various sizes. I would recommend using the SRD for the PHB and buying a MM so you get stats for beholders and mindflayers. Plus, pictures.


Fiend Folio is just another 3.0 Monster Manual only with a different name.

It's called that because it's a replication, in part, of 2.0's Fiend Folio.

[Yora]

One thing I noticed when looking through the 3.0 handbook the other day is that the battle chapter is significantly shorter and there are only 1 or 2 picture of actual combat and there is no grid displayed under the tokens they use, just walls around them.

This makes me think that they were still under the 2e mindstate of little to no battle representation. Some of the rules may possibly reflect this as well?

I could be way off as I only glanced it.
I think they put all the grids in 3.5e to boost miniature sales. The rules don't really need them any more than in 3.0.

[Swooper]

I would recommend using the SRD for the PHB and buying a MM so you get stats for beholders and mindflayers. Plus, pictures.
It's worth pointing out that the SRD (d20srd.org at least) does have pictures. Press the eye-icon next to any monster's name and you get a popup that shows you the picture of that monster on the wizards.com art archives. I didn't realise this for a long time, myself.

[nedz]

It's worth pointing out that the SRD (d20srd.org at least) does have pictures. Press the eye-icon next to any monster's name and you get a popup that shows you the picture of that monster on the wizards.com art archives. I didn't realise this for a long time, myself.

Cool - but it would be more useful for the less well known monsters in the other books.

BTW I thought that they put more combat diagrams in because of complaints feedback that some rules were hard to understand, e.g. AoO

[Yora]

The Monster Manual is still a ver handy book to have... you know, at hand. But in that case get the 3.5e Monster Manual, not the 3.0 version.

[pres_man]

Hello

I've been looking at some 3,0 books at the norwegian equivavelent of ebay, finn. I'm really running a 3.5 campaign but some DMs material that can be fudged and some pretty pictures of dragons would be awesome so:

How different are they? Is it a waste of money?

I think the 3e PHB and DMG are useful to have as reference books. One thing to keep in mind is that weapon sizing changed from 3e to 3.5.

The 3e MM, I would avoid unless you get it really cheap and just want it for reference as well. The monster entries were streamlined in 3.5 and some of the monsters were beefed up a bit. But if you want slightly different versions of the same creature, then you might look at the book. Also keep in mind some monster traits were changed.

MM2 and some other monster books, such as Monster Compendium: Monsters of Faerun (even if you are not playing the realms), Fiend Folio, and such is nice to have since many never got undated to 3.5. I've never been interested in the BoVD myself so I can't say. The Savage Species book is interest if you want to look at to just get an idea of how you might change races into class levels like later 3.5 MMs did, but I would probably not bother unless you could get it cheap.

As for the 3e class books (Sword and Fist, etc), if you have the 3.5 versions, I might not bother. But there are a few things that didn't get changed. Also you might like to see a different version of something that you might like better. For example:
3.5 Monkey Grip=Use weapons sized for a larger creature with same effort as they would use.
3e Monkey Grip=Pick one two-handed weapon and you can now use it one-handed.

[faceroll]

It's worth pointing out that the SRD (d20srd.org at least) does have pictures. Press the eye-icon next to any monster's name and you get a popup that shows you the picture of that monster on the wizards.com art archives. I didn't realise this for a long time, myself.

Yes, but the book pictures are nicer and easier to show at a table, imo.