New Group, Pirates Problem!!!

[Big_MacCloud]

Hi all, long-time gamer, first-time poster here. I'm hoping you can give me some insight into a situation that wasn't really an issue the last time I played:

I recently joined a group of 3.5ers, who shortly thereafter found themselves without a DM. I'm not crazy about the system from what I've played, but after some discussion I agreed to run the 3.5 game that the younger players know.

The problem came when we sat down to roll up PCs for my campaign. It turns out that half the players don't actually own the books -- they use pirated pdfs! Now the last time we played, we had a "Don't own it? Don't play it" rule, which is just as appropriate today as it was then. (If not more so!) But when I told my new group, it was mutiny.

I feel very strongly how wrong it is to rip off the guys who put their time and energy into writing these books, but they don't. They've been playing for years using probably every 3.5 book written in pdf form. Even those who own books don't own much beyond the PHB. And they all say the game is boring without tons of books -- although I think "boring" is code for "reasonable." (One wants to make some cheesy tempest PC from the Complete Fighter book; another wants to use some rogue kit that lets him sneak attack anything. Don't get me started on how 3.5 has cheesed up the rogue! A third player wants to use some shaman class that lets him cast like a sorcerer...oi!)

So I'm kind of stuck here; I compromised and took back that everyone has to have a physical PHB. (They showed me the online PHB, so I guess that's fine.) But they still insist that PHB-only is boring, and we ended the first session early and tensely. (I got one player to make a PC, but the others are holding out.)

[Vladislav]

<Elastigirl voice>
You need to be a bit more ... flexible
</Elastigirl voice>

[hobbitkniver]

This seems like it's more about piracy than DnD. I personally don't like the whole "you have to own it to use it" rule because that gives players an advantage if they'll willing to spend more money. If its made by WotC, what makes it any more unbalanced than the already crazy core books?

[FearlessGnome]

Limiting book choices is one thing. Lots of people do it for balance reasons. But... saying that someone is cheesing up the rogue because they are finding ways of sneak attacking more things? Really? A core-only wizard can beat any rogue build your players can come up with. With pure damage dealing.

On piracy: It's a touchy subject, and we're not allowed to go into deep discussion about it on these forums, since it involves legal matters and stuff. But do note: 3.5 is out of print. If you demand physical copies of the books, your players are going to have to find their 50+ books on ebay, netting WotC a grand total of zero cent. Taking the moral high ground won't impress your players. Or the majority of the people on these forums.

Forcing one player to make a core only build, by the way, will be a disaster if you let anyone else use more books. Give everyone the same options unless you have very good reasons not to. "Guy A had the actual book and guy B only had the same book as a PDF" typically won't result in anything positive. And it does punish people who don't have money to spend on books, just like Magic the Gathering punishes people for not having bought a Black Lotus and four Mana Drains on ebay.

[pffh]

You could try a compromise and let everyone play with what books they do own (and let everyone use the same books so if one person owns book X everyone can use that book) and what is available in the SRD (you can find that on d20srd.org) which is legal and includes among other things a bunch of variant races and alternate class features for the core classes and the psionic rules and classes.

That should give everyone more then enough options but if they still complain you could go a little bit further and let them vote on one pdf that gets allowed and no more.

[Flickerdart]

PHB-only is not only boring but also utterly broken. At least allow all the free stuff (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0) WotC has put up on their site.

[Alleine]

While I heavily dislike the rule of "only if you own it", I do respect people who want to use it. There are problems with it though. D&D books are quite expensive, doubly so since 3.5 went out of print. The likelihood of amassing a collection of books is pretty much limited to people with large disposable incomes now. I don't even want to know how much money it would take to buy all of the 3.5 books in existence. The other problem is what if someone DOES have all of the books? There's little chance they're going to be bringing all of the books everyone needs, let alone the entire collection.

Of course, the counter to that is that computers at the table have a decent chance of being too distracting, and they whole piracy being illegal thing. It's too bad WotC never released books in PDF form.

I recommend asking them to at least stick to solely the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) for a few games to see how 'boring' it actually is. You may also want to emphasize how piracy doesn't so well with you. Finally, I invite you not to think of whatever it is they want to do as "cheesy" and instead compare what they want to do with the relative power of the rest of the group. I hope you can reconcile these problems without too much trouble.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Don't DM for them. Simple as that.

But I have to utterly laugh at your definition of cheesy. Tempest is one of the weakest PrCs there is, and it's only good IF you want to play a TWF fighter, which is already really weak, and if you've already taken ten levels of Dervish. Then, Piercing Strike is cheesy? Really? It's half the normal dice, and sneak attack is the one thing making rogues relevant in mid- and high-level combat, barring UMD builds that use blasts, buffs, and debuffs, and basically make the rogue a weaker wizard or sorcerer. Spirit shaman and spontaneous druid... that's more iffy, but it's not exactly the most powerful thing in 3.5. In fact, I can show you three things more powerful than it if you just give me your copy of the PHB. Wizard, cleric, and druid. Then there's Spell to Power erudite and artificer in splatbooks. On par with the spirit shaman is sorcerer and psion, favored soul is a bit weaker. That's not to say it isn't really powerful, it is, but don't expect the problem to go away by forcing them to play basic druid, because it won't.

3.5 is broken at the core of it. "Cheese" isn't eliminating the -2 to attack rolls with five levels of Tempest, "cheese" is making a wizard who can beat anything within the acceptable CR rating for a full party with enough preparation... starting at level 9, in core only. Or, with full splat access, achieving infinite power at level 1.

[Dsurion]

If you have such an issue, you don't need the internet to back you up - just don't DM for them.

Also, you shouldn't bother with 3.5 at all if you have a problem with Rogues being able to use Sneak Attack on everything. Rogues are FAR from your worst nightmare.

EDIT: OP, have you ever played a Rogue in 3.5? At all?

[opticalshadow]

even the books i do own i have pdf's for, and i rarely bring my books anywhere. ihauling around so many books gets in the way, i can load it all on my phone or laptop and its quite easy to move about.

people who dont own the books but have the pdf, like stated above, its more of a moral decision. i know that it can be hard for some people to find even core books, let alone splat books, i only limit books by what i prefer or dislike.

[Fluffy_1.0]

Well... if you consider it a major problem if your players get their yar on to get the books and you have serious balance concerns there's always e6 (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d-d.html). Nice and balanced and perfectly playable with just the SRD. Alternatively, you can use Gnorman's Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215986#post11881641) and Races (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=231153). It's free to use and adds way more variety than just the SRD available stuff.

Oh, and feats and spells can be found here (http://dndtools.eu/).

Between those resources your players should be set with no need to pirate.

[Yoven]

Well i wouldnt sweat too much over the pdfs.. i dont know how the situation is where you live, but over here 3.5 wasn't printed and sold for the last 5 Years or so, making it practically impossible to get the books. If they want to earn money with it, they will print them, and we will buy them. Since then, we dont really have any options.

[Myou]

Limiting book choices is one thing. Lots of people do it for balance reasons. But... saying that someone is cheesing up the rogue because they are finding ways of sneak attacking more things? Really? A core-only wizard can beat any rogue build your players can come up with. With pure damage dealing.

On piracy: It's a touchy subject, and we're not allowed to go into deep discussion about it on these forums, since it involves legal matters and stuff. But do note: 3.5 is out of print. If you demand physical copies of the books, your players are going to have to find their 50+ books on ebay, netting WotC a grand total of zero cent. Taking the moral high ground won't impress your players. Or the majority of the people on these forums.

Forcing one player to make a core only build, by the way, will be a disaster if you let anyone else use more books. Give everyone the same options unless you have very good reasons not to. "Guy A had the actual book and guy B only had the same book as a PDF" typically won't result in anything positive. And it does punish people who don't have money to spend on books, just like Magic the Gathering punishes people for not having bought a Black Lotus and four Mana Drains on ebay.

This, so much this.

[Krazzman]

A few years ago? I would've said yes to the "I own it, you can use it" policy. In fact I want the DM to use the books I will be using. As one guy in our former group said: "At first glance it seems OP, because it's just the character that gets it, but if you read it yourself and as a DM let it influence your NPC's as well, I don't see a reason to bash the book." He said this after he first said Psionics are sooo overpowered. After a few weeks where he read through he said this sentence.

But now? Nope. If you have to pay nearly 100 $ for one copy of a book, well no I stay with my PDF then. (FYI ToB costs about 50 [used] to 82 € on amazon.de)

Either switch to a newer system, like pathfinder or allow them to take specific books, after you have read them yourself. "Solid" books would be ToB and the Completes, in my experience.

[pffh]

Either switch to a newer system, like pathfinder or allow them to take specific books, after you have read them yourself. "Solid" books would be ToB and the Completes, in my experience.

Don't forget the magic item compendium. That and Tome of battle are probably my two favorite 3.5 books.

[Eldest]

Well... if you consider it a major problem if your players get their yar on to get the books and you have serious balance concerns there's always e6 (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d-d.html). Nice and balanced and perfectly playable with just the SRD. Alternatively, you can use Gnorman's Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215986#post11881641) and Races (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=231153). It's free to use and adds way more variety than just the SRD available stuff.

Oh, and feats and spells can be found here (http://dndtools.eu/).

Between those resources your players should be set with no need to pirate.

Keep in mind, that if you go with Gnorman's classes and races, they are on an even power scale with each other. They are all more powerful than most of their mirror classes in the PHB, with the exception of the three most powerful. So you will need to expermiment to see how strong your players are and how much you can safely throw at them. Same with the races: most of his races are balanced around what is LA+1 in normal D&D. So it may be stronger than you expect.

Also, I am going to echo the other posters: while I have no experience with the Fighter thing you mentioned, the Rogue variant and the Spirit Shaman aren't really cheesy.

[stack]

Pathfinder has a lovely SRD (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/), where they post pretty much everything as Open Game License content. Its not that big of a switch, new content keeps coming out, and its totally legal to use. It is a low-cost barrier method to get people into the game, which can also help sell their very well thought of adventure paths (which are not on there, obviously).

[Fatebreaker]

Honestly, I think your best bet here is to not DM.

It's a system you don't want to DM in the first place and the players aren't really interested in your rules. That's just bad all around.

When the players aren't even willing to make characters, it's time to evaluate the future of the game.

[HeadlessMermaid]

Is your background from 2nd Edition or from 3rd? Either way, I should warn you that playing a few sessions of 3.5 isn't enough to make you understand how different the game became, especially regarding class abilities and their relative power.

Basically, I'm trying to say that even if you have loads of experience, and even if you are a great DM in previous editions, you are not yet qualified to judge what's cheesy and what's not in 3.5. It's not just the mechanics that changed, it's the whole mindset.

I believe that piracy is the least of your concerns. Your style as a DM seems incompatible with the style of your players. Honestly, if I were you, I'd step down. It'll save everyone a lot of grief.

If you insist, however, here are my suggestions:

1) Under no circumstances disallow a player to use something that others are allowed. Your motives may be noble, but the result is an incomprehensible injustice towards the poorer players.

2) If your players are not exclusively into hack-and-slash games, if they are interested at all in story and character development, lure them with that. Ask them to use "core only" (which is PHB, DMG and MM) or the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/index.htm). Forget the piracy argument and use Diplomacy. Explain that you're not limiting them to punish them, but because your own experience in 3.5 is limited, so it'll be smoother if everyone uses stuff you know well.

But to make it up for them, promise an awesome story - and deliver it. Make them feel special as characters. Work with them with their backgrounds, give them goals and mortal enemies and prophesies, anything that will make them feel unique. Hopefully, if you can immerse them in your fictional world, they will forget how boring their character sheets are.

3) If that doesn't fly, I'd go to the other extreme. Allow everything, but ask your players to refrain from making super-powerful characters - gentlemen's agreement. Trust THEIR judgment on what "super-powerful" means. If your encounters seem too easy for them, adjust accordingly and use higher CRs next time. Remember that you're DMing a different game than the one you're used to play.

Do not, under any circumstances, punish players with instant death (or an otherwise horrible fate) for using stuff that you find cheesy (but they find reasonable). Simply adjust. And it's better if you design a low-level game, before Prestige Classes and odd options come into play. Good luck...

[HeadlessMermaid]

And now that I got the helpful stuff out of the way, I'm allowed to respectfully disagree, yes?


Now the last time we played, we had a "Don't own it? Don't play it" rule, which is just as appropriate today as it was then. (If not more so!)

I'm not touching the subject of piracy with a 10-foot pole in this forum, but I HAVE to answer to this statement.

I started playing D&D long before PDFs started to circulate. And for the first couple of years, I couldn't afford a single book. The group owned a few books collectively, and we borrowed each other's stuff (books, dice, maps, miniatures, pencils...), and we played collectively, because it's a freaking collective game. That's the whole point of it.

If your rule was in universal effect, more than half of us would have never played D&D at all. Ever. And TSR/WotC would have lost all the money we eventually spent on their products.

In my humble opinion, your rule makes no sense whatsoever. Less now, in the era of OGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Game_License), than it did then. Even TSR ("They Sue Regularly", remember?) never dreamed of forcing people to own personally the books they played, or of going after those who borrowed books from their fellow-players. It goes against the entire concept of a Group Game. Frankly, I can't fathom how you came up with that rule in the first place, it's the most counter-intuitive thing I've ever heard in my life...

[Big_MacCloud]

PHB-only is not only boring but also utterly broken. At least allow all the free stuff (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1109.0) WotC has put up on their site.
I took a look at the first class link, and...wow. A MU with mage and priest magic? I'm sorry, but that doesn't belong in D&D. If this is what 3.5 is like, I think you all are right -- I don't want to DM it. I'm not sure I even want to play it.


Well... if you consider it a major problem if your players get their yar on to get the books and you have serious balance concerns there's always e6 (http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d-d.html). Nice and balanced and perfectly playable with just the SRD. Alternatively, you can use Gnorman's Classes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=215986#post11881641) and Races (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=231153). It's free to use and adds way more variety than just the SRD available stuff.
Thanks for the links. E6 looks less insane than what my group wants to play, but it's sad that I'd have to cut out three-quarters of the game just to get something playable. (And what's the point of playing a MU if you never get to the good spells?) Don't think my group would play E6 anyway, so no harm no foul.

[Flickerdart]

I took a look at the first class link, and...wow. A MU with mage and priest magic? I'm sorry, but that doesn't belong in D&D. If this is what 3.5 is like, I think you all are right -- I don't want to DM it. I'm not sure I even want to play it.
You took a look at it, but did you read it? The Archivist only knows and casts divine spells.

[hamishspence]

with all the arcane spells that can become divine though via various means- it's not a huge limitation.

[Krazzman]

I took a look at the first class link, and...wow. A MU with mage and priest magic? I'm sorry, but that doesn't belong in D&D. If this is what 3.5 is like, I think you all are right -- I don't want to DM it. I'm not sure I even want to play it.


That is like saying that all steaks taste horrible because you ate a medium one while having ordered a done one. It's just wrong.

If you want to play a low power game try DSA, the magic might be utterly broken if you tweak it right but that is soooo hard to achieve that you'll have a long time before this should come up.

Else I have to admit Flickerdart said it right, you might have a problem with biased opinion. Next time you read something set your first impression aside, better put it into a box and dump it into hudson river. Then read it again, and do a full analysis. Then you could have had a proper opinion.

Sorry if this is harsh but it feels more to tell a full grown person how to handle texts...it just seems wrong.

[Mari01]

Just adding to this, that I also would NEVER have started playing D&D with your "own it to use it rule." I didn't buy my first book until this year, and I've been playing for three. Between borrowing from friends and using PDFs, our group got by without constantly spending money every other week.

[Siosilvar]

I took a look at the first class link, and...wow. A MU with mage and priest magic? I'm sorry, but that doesn't belong in D&D. If this is what 3.5 is like, I think you all are right -- I don't want to DM it. I'm not sure I even want to play it.

No better casting than the cleric; the archivist knows divine spells exactly like a wizard knows arcane spells, which is to say less than his whole list, which stands completely apart from the two core divine casters. It's strong, yes. It's also completely dependent on the DM to get stronger than it starts out (which, as a 9th-level caster, is very strong already if played mechanically optimally).

But "doesn't belong in D&D?" Feel free to ban it, but with that attitude, it's no wonder you don't like 3.5. 3.5 isn't as restrictive with setting and style as previous editions were, and I think it's a better game for it. There's a published campaign setting with magic lightning trains and magic-powered robots. It's not "traditional", but it is a refreshing change of pace.

I have to agree that books are not going to be the major issue with this new group of yours; there's a definite disconnect in playstyle and I think you'd be better served finding a different group if you can than frustrating yourself and them trying to play together.

[Heatwizard]

I took a look at the first class link, and...wow. A MU with mage and priest magic? I'm sorry, but that doesn't belong in D&D. If this is what 3.5 is like, I think you all are right -- I don't want to DM it. I'm not sure I even want to play it.

Archivist is the strongest class on the list(also they don't cast wizard magic). If you look at any of the other ones, they've all got lower power ceilings.

Before you reject the whole system in disgust, let us at least tell you that there's a lot of stuff in 3.5 that can look a lot scarier then it actually is. Wizards, Clerics, and Druids (and Sorcerers, to a lesser extent) are all capable of accelerating into space and becoming unstoppable, if you know what you're doing, but nearly every other class doesn't have that kind of potential. A rogue is not going to crush your campaign just because he can sneak attack plants like he can sneak attack humans. At no point are you going to say to yourself, 'gee, I wish I hadn't allowed the fighter to take levels in Dervish, now he's invincible!'.

[Supermouse]

Also, I too feel conpelled to comment on your attitude of "you don't own it, you don't use it".

I think that it may be a moral issue about the piracy and all that **** if no one in the group had the books and everyone was playing with pdfs.


However, D&D is a group game, and everyone, players and DM, should be playing together. So, as I did in most of my groups, the books are colletively owned (or someone in the group owns them and everyone else use them). Restricting your players with this rule will cause unbalance and ressentment between players.

It's totally unfair for your players if one of the rogues on your group has only access to the PHB while the other has access to Complete Andventurer, Complete Scoundrel and the Magic Item Compendium.

So, you either allow everyone to use all the books available to your group (either if they phisically own it or not), or you restrict everyone to use only the books the entire group have in physical copy.


Alternativelly, you can allow them to use the SRD, as people have sugested.