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View Full Version : do you prefer 3e 3.5e or pathfinder



paladinofu.s.a
2013-06-13, 07:43 AM
I prefer 3.5e because it was the version I played first and it makes the most sense. What do you guys prefer.

Eldan
2013-06-13, 07:49 AM
Strawberry is the flavour I always go back to. Everyone knows strawberry. That said, my real favourite is homemade hazelnut.

hamlet
2013-06-13, 08:00 AM
None of the above.

Jormengand
2013-06-13, 08:00 AM
Strawberry is the flavour I always go back to. Everyone knows strawberry. That said, my real favourite is homemade hazelnut.

Uh what?

In any case, PF. Because it's basically taking 3.5, making the tiers a little less horrific, and chucking the completely dysfunctional handbook out of the window.

CowardlyPaladin
2013-06-13, 08:02 AM
How about Arcana Evolved if we are naming 3E systems.

My favorite is Pathfinder of the three though

supermonkeyjoe
2013-06-13, 08:03 AM
Yes.

To clarify, I run a piecemeal version of 3rd edition with influences taken from 3e, 3.5, 3.p, 3rd party and 5th edition.

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-13, 08:16 AM
I personally prefer Mutants & Masterminds.

RFLS
2013-06-13, 08:22 AM
I'm really just a vanilla fan, myself. Maybe a bit of chocolate syrup.

Reathin
2013-06-13, 08:27 AM
I haven't played pathfinder, but I like many of their design choices, especially since it's still modeled on the familiar 3.5. Would love to give it a try one day.

Krazzman
2013-06-13, 08:34 AM
Depends on what I want to play:
Casters: Pathfinder.
Clerics/Druids: 3.5 or Pathfinder.
Anything else: 3.5.

For a few things I would like to have the Pathfinder version of the class (Fighter and Barbarian mainly).

Skill system would be pathfinder too but most feats I would rather take the 3.5 version than the PF version due to nerfs.

Totally Guy
2013-06-13, 08:40 AM
There's an xkcd for that. (http://xkcd.com/915/)

I'm the guy saying there's a whole world of games out there. And the 3.5 discussion is in the box.

Waar
2013-06-13, 08:40 AM
No actually :smalltongue:, personally I have always found that more local fantasy rpg creators are preferred.

Dienekes
2013-06-13, 08:47 AM
I just raid 3.5 and Pathfinder for the good bits.

navar100
2013-06-13, 08:57 AM
Pathfinder, mainly because of spruced-up classes. I like they were given more stuff to do, including the spellcasters. I like that each class has significant choices to make in development through class features and archetypes where as in 3E the choices were only in feats, spells, and whether to go into a prestige class. The tweaks in general from 3E I either like, don't care, or I've gotten over it already depending on the tweak.

I would still play a 3E game.

If there's no chocolate, it's not ice cream.

paladinofu.s.a
2013-06-13, 09:38 AM
None of the above. well which version do you like

Eldariel
2013-06-13, 09:42 AM
3.0 was a great system with literally billions of flaws. 3.5 had some good ideas for fixes, and then some bad ones. PF had some more good ideas mixed in with bad ones. All of them have their sides, none of them is nearly satisfactory and if I had free hands to write one of my own and publish it, it'd be better than any of them and nearly problem-free. As it stands, I'm playing whatever my DM wants. If I'm DMing myself, I combine stuff from PF with ToB and such and call it a day unless I feel like drawing upon the infinite array of houserules (well, I always remove melee full attacks).

Jeraa
2013-06-13, 09:47 AM
I prefer 3.0. With a bit of 3.5 and Pathfinder mixed in, a dash of 4e, and sprinkled with some 1st and 2nd edition AD&D ideas.

erikun
2013-06-13, 10:59 AM
D&D3.5e has a SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/) and is what my group is familiar with, so that's what we end up playing. I'm fine with using 3.0e and Pathfinder material, as long as it isn't abusive or broken.

However, I prefer another system entirely. There is almost nothing D&D3e does well, outside making spellcasters powerful, and there are even other systems that can give you powerful spellcasters.

Amidus Drexel
2013-06-13, 11:35 AM
I'm really just a vanilla fan, myself. Maybe a bit of chocolate syrup.

Everyone knows chocolate is superior to vanilla, and that using a splash of chocolate syrup is only hiding the fact that your chassis is still pretty weak. :smalltongue:

hamlet
2013-06-13, 11:52 AM
well which version do you like

AD&D of either color and the Rules Cyclopedia.

EccentricCircle
2013-06-13, 01:55 PM
I tend to use 3.5 as thats what I learnt to play first and have the most experience with. But I regularly use stuff from both 3e and Pathfinder books in my 3.5 games, as well as houseruling things for certain campaigns. I'd say that pathfinder is maybe a better renaisannce base than 3.5 but ultimately its similar enough to not be a major issue. I do prefer pathfinder skills though. really its apples and oranges.

But then again while I really like all the flavour they put into Oranges I find that the crunch is fairly lacking compared to the really good crunch you get with apples. Ideally i'd houserule the hell out of it so that it used the apple crunch but with all the orangy flavour. still, to each their own.

The Fury
2013-06-13, 03:00 PM
I guess it depends on what sort of game I'm playing in. I have a lot of nostalgia for 3.0 and 3.5 both, but with that said nearly all 3.0 games I played in had a hefty amount of house rules and third party material heaped on. 3.5 was a bit more robust as a rules set but there seemed to still be an emphasis on Prestige Classes which I never liked. And yes, I am aware that originally Prestige Classes were for spicing-up NPCs but that doesn't change the fact that virtually everyone was planning on taking one as soon as they qualified for it. (I think. Maybe our group was just weird.)
Most of what was changed for Pathfinder was good though. I like that some skills were merged and I like how class features and levels were changed. The net result is that, in my opinion, Pathfinder was much kinder to Rogues, Fighters, and specialist wizards. It's for this reason that I tend to default to Pathfinder out of the three.
If for some unfathomable reason I wanted to play in an Epic Level game again I'd want to do it in 3.0 because it's the only version with a comprehensive ruleset for it, though I guess adapting it to 3.5 or Pathfinder wouldn't be so hard.

edit: I think the ice cream metaphor is lost on me, but I like chocolate/orange and I wonder why it's not available in my area.

Geigan
2013-06-13, 03:02 PM
Strawberry is the flavour I always go back to. Everyone knows strawberry. That said, my real favourite is homemade hazelnut.

Chocolate and buttered pecan 4 life. :smalltongue:

TuggyNE
2013-06-13, 04:55 PM
Everyone knows chocolate is superior to vanilla, and that using a splash of chocolate syrup is only hiding the fact that your chassis is still pretty weak. :smalltongue:

Chocolate with chocolate syrup is where it's at. (Metaphorically and literally.)

BWR
2013-06-13, 05:50 PM
I prefer blue, though green tastes good too.

More seriously, Pathfinder, hands down.

Eldonauran
2013-06-13, 07:33 PM
While 3.5E will always have a place in my heart (and 3.0E for that matter), I've got to give it up to Pathfinder. Of course, I do import some 3.5E material over to pathfinder on occasion. Still play a bit of 3.5E but always with some Pathfinder changes (like skills, feats every odd level and polymorph rules).

Kaun
2013-06-13, 07:52 PM
Your choice in ice cream is bad! My choice of ice cream is far superior!

ALTER YOUR OPINIONS!

Hiro Protagonest
2013-06-13, 08:04 PM
Uh what?
Playgrounders have long memories, mostly thanks to bookmarking.

well which version do you like

Gelato.

Rhynn
2013-06-13, 08:11 PM
well which version do you like

I, for one, like ACKS (http://www.autarch.co/), Artesia: Adventures in the Known World (http://artesiaonline.com/blog/?page_id=40), and RuneQuest (http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/runequest.php) a lot more. Out of d20 games, Mutants & Masterminds (2nd ed.) and Mongoose's Conan RPG are my favorites.

Basically, almost any other RPG is better at delivering a specific experience than the very generic D&D 3.X, because they've been tailored for that specific experience. And most RPGs are much, much lighter on the rules than D&D 3.X.

PS. People are messing with you because this is not the D&D 3E/d20 subforum, this is the general RPG subforum (but not the "other RPG systems" subforum, either).

Kaun
2013-06-13, 08:29 PM
PS. People are messing with you because this is not the D&D 3E/d20 subforum, this is the general RPG subforum (but not the "other RPG systems" subforum, either).

Could just be a general distaste for edition debates.

The Rose Dragon
2013-06-13, 08:29 PM
D&D 3rd Edition (and 3.5) isn't generic; it's very tailored towards dungeon crawling. Not necessarily involving actual dungeons, just that kind of plot and encounter structure. And there are so many other systems that can do dungeon crawling and more that I'm not ever willing to go back.

Alleran
2013-06-13, 08:36 PM
Could just be a general distaste for edition debates.
I don't quite think that it's a matter of distaste for certain sorts of ice-cream, it's just that people have tried most of them already, so when arguments over which is best do pop up, it's something that everybody has tasted already, sometimes to excessive consumption.

Also, cookies and cream is the choice of a true aristocrat.

shadow_archmagi
2013-06-13, 08:39 PM
On the assumption that a mod is going to move this, I prefer 3.5 over pathfinder. I find pathfinder's rules changes largely good ideas, but not nearly good enough to justify sacrificing 3.5's primary strength as an edition: the mountains of splat.

I'll take Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum, etc. over Pathfinder.

Rhynn
2013-06-13, 08:43 PM
D&D 3rd Edition (and 3.5) isn't generic; it's very tailored towards dungeon crawling. Not necessarily involving actual dungeons, just that kind of plot and encounter structure. And there are so many other systems that can do dungeon crawling and more that I'm not ever willing to go back.

Yeah, okay, setting-generic. Although, honestly, I'd call the gameplay generic, too. It doesn't do anything... specific with it. Plenty of games do dungeon-crawling in a better way, too, often because they were designed for it. It's not really 3E's fault: it's a distillation of what began as a natural aggregation of rules at a gaming table (OD&D and AD&D 1E), then became a corporate product (AD&D 2E), without ever really being designed from the ground up. Legacy code, man. With no comments. :smallfurious:

137beth
2013-06-13, 08:47 PM
On the assumption that a mod is going to move this, I prefer 3.5 over pathfinder. I find pathfinder's rules changes largely good ideas, but not nearly good enough to justify sacrificing 3.5's primary strength as an edition: the mountains of splat.

I'll take Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum, etc. over Pathfinder.
I've heard this, but I really don't understand why you can't mix the two. What's stopping you from using ToB and MoI in a Pathfinder game?

Rhynn
2013-06-13, 09:01 PM
Plenty of games do dungeon-crawling in a better way, too, often because they were designed for it.

Actually, to elaborate on this:

First of all, I'm not granting without reservations that D&D 3.X is about dungeon crawling mainly, or even mostly. If it were, it'd bet he first edition of D&D (not counting the IIRC BECM-based RPG-boardgames) that was! OD&D's Volume 3 is, after all, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures (the first gets 10 pages, the second gets 11). In B/X, Basic is adventuring in dungeons, Expert is adventuring in the wilderness. In BECMI, it's the same deal, but then Companion focuses on ruling domains, and Master gets into that whole "becoming an immortal god-king" business (the less said about Immortals, the better).

AD&D didn't have the focus and clarity of BECM's endgame, and didn't have as explicit of a split, but rules abound for things outside of dungeons, and the wilderness hexcrawl was still a thing. Modules generally combined wilderness adventuring and dungeons. 2E lost the hexcrawl and story-based adventuring became more common - indeed, I'd say that in 2E, the dungeons were often set dressing.

This is what D&D 3.X came out of, and the lack of focus shows.

Now, dungeons are still a big part of the experience, especially at lower levels, where they can actually be challenges. Higher-level spells generally negate dungeons that aren't pretty contrived, which confuses make players and DMs who lack the context to understand that this was a natural progression back in the day - and the rulebooks certainly don't help there!

However, D&D 3.X has a lot of rules interaction and general details that just... makes it much harder to focus on dungeon adventuring. For one thing, if it's actually about being in the dungeon, you need rules to reflect that. Well, 3.X has rules for darkness and light, etc. Cool. But there's a general absence of rules for wandering monsters (how often do you roll?), rules for surprise get folded into stealth, and there's a ton of rules interaction that just negate dungeon adventuring. At 1st or 2nd level, solving the problem of light - which is IMO integral to dungeon adventuring - is trivial: everburning torches are cheap as dirt. In OD&D, your spellcasters weren't going to waste a spell-per-day on light (unless the magic-user rolled that as his sole 1st-level spell!), so you were stuck with torches and lanterns (blown out by winds, extinguished by water, run out, lost to falls, etc.). Food isn't ever really presented as an issue to think about.

ACKS, for instance, is designed from the ground-up despite being a retroclone (the economics, in particular). It does, for me, much better at dungeon-crawling and wilderness adventures - which are, as activities in themselves, largely about planning. You have to plan your expedition well. Time is a hugely important component - there's specific rules for how fast you move while mapping, for foraging in the wilderness, etc. These things are challenges in themselves (if you don't want them to be, you can just ignore those rules), in the early game. Eventually name level (9th) comes along, and the characters - who have already become big names and important people, as an inevitable consequence of the wealth they've brought out of dungeons or otherwise amassed - move their focus to domains and politics and war.

There are other games that really focus on dungeon-crawling, too, but ACKS is very relevant because it's such a faithful re-working of D&D (B/X or Holmes/Moldvay Basic).

Hiro Protagonest
2013-06-13, 09:52 PM
Could just be a general distaste for edition debates.

Or, y'know, the fact that the OP's basically asking "which of these similar-quality same-flavor ice creams do you prefer?".

137beth
2013-06-13, 10:17 PM
Or, y'know, the fact that the OP's basically asking "which of these similar-quality same-flavor ice creams do you prefer?".

There are already a bunch of threads on the 3.X forum debating PF vs. 3.5...
I honestly don't notice a difference outside of forum debates. The rules changes between 3.5 and PF are smaller than the changes needed to adjust published content to your own house rules, so outside of optimization challenges on the forum it will almost never matter whether a particular book was "intended" for 3.0, 3.5, or pathfinder.
Now, a 3e vs 2e debate, I can get behind that! Or a 2e vs GURPS thread, or a GURPS vs white wolf thread, or whatever. But yea, 3.0 vs 3.5 vs PF is a rather limited decision.

TuggyNE
2013-06-13, 10:25 PM
Legacy code, man. With no comments. :smallfurious:

Written in Visual FoxPro. #itssotrue!

Kaun
2013-06-13, 10:25 PM
There are already a bunch of threads on the 3.X forum debating PF vs. 3.5...
I honestly don't notice a difference outside of forum debates. The rules changes between 3.5 and PF are smaller than the changes needed to adjust published content to your own house rules, so outside of optimization challenges on the forum it will almost never matter whether a particular book was "intended" for 3.0, 3.5, or pathfinder.
Now, a 3e vs 2e debate, I can get behind that! Or a 2e vs GURPS thread, or a GURPS vs white wolf thread, or whatever. But yea, 3.0 vs 3.5 vs PF is a rather limited decision.

Hence....

....Boysenberry!

Eldariel
2013-06-13, 10:29 PM
There are already a bunch of threads on the 3.X forum debating PF vs. 3.5...
I honestly don't notice a difference outside of forum debates. The rules changes between 3.5 and PF are smaller than the changes needed to adjust published content to your own house rules, so outside of optimization challenges on the forum it will almost never matter whether a particular book was "intended" for 3.0, 3.5, or pathfinder.
Now, a 3e vs 2e debate, I can get behind that! Or a 2e vs GURPS thread, or a GURPS vs white wolf thread, or whatever. But yea, 3.0 vs 3.5 vs PF is a rather limited decision.

Those debates I find fairly useless though since the different systems tend to cater to different tastes; 2e and 3e are distinct enough that I, for instance, play both side-by-side depending on whether I want true multiclassing & subsystems or more solid core with some really random issues. It's impossible for me to say which is better since they serve different functions; apples and oranges.

JusticeZero
2013-06-13, 11:46 PM
Pathfinder. I'm happy with any of the three, plus a few other variants, but I don't have to prowl around in search of arcane out of print sourcebooks then loan them to other players who haven't found them yet for a Pathfinder game.

navar100
2013-06-14, 07:44 AM
There are already a bunch of threads on the 3.X forum debating PF vs. 3.5...
I honestly don't notice a difference outside of forum debates. The rules changes between 3.5 and PF are smaller than the changes needed to adjust published content to your own house rules, so outside of optimization challenges on the forum it will almost never matter whether a particular book was "intended" for 3.0, 3.5, or pathfinder.
Now, a 3e vs 2e debate, I can get behind that! Or a 2e vs GURPS thread, or a GURPS vs white wolf thread, or whatever. But yea, 3.0 vs 3.5 vs PF is a rather limited decision.

All those threads are about bashing 3E or Pathfinder again and again and again and again, ad infinitum. We've had them in the past. We'll have them in the future. It's rather refreshing that there is a thread like this where its purpose is at worst neutral matter of the fact all the way to praising.

Knaight
2013-06-15, 12:23 PM
Or, y'know, the fact that the OP's basically asking "which of these similar-quality same-flavor ice creams do you prefer?".

That does seem to be a large part of it. This isn't even the difference between French Vanilla and Vanilla, it's more like Parisian Vanilla and Tours Vanilla. The games are basically the same.

Snowbluff
2013-06-23, 06:18 PM
I've heard this, but I really don't understand why you can't mix the two. What's stopping you from using ToB and MoI in a Pathfinder game?

Are you kidding? PF doesn't convert ToB properly, due to the concentration change. Then you are homebrewing a fix, so what you are playing is not PF. It's not really fair to treat PF that way, either. PF is a standalone system (giving it credit) or a few changes to the rules so we can just use the 3.5 material (then why did we bother?).

Dienekes
2013-06-23, 06:37 PM
Are you kidding? PF doesn't convert ToB properly, due to the concentration change. Then you are homebrewing a fix, so what you are playing is not PF. It's not really fair to treat PF that way, either. PF is a standalone system (giving it credit) or a few changes to the rules so we can just use the 3.5 material (then why did we bother?).

Ehh, we just use Perception or add back in Concentration. It's really not that big a deal. Also how is it not being fair to a system? It's a table-top game, one of the best and greatest benefits of such a game is that you can alter it to your tables desires, something you can't do with a computer game unless you're good at working with code.

We bother because Pathfinder had some good ideas, but left behind some of 3.5s best stuff. So why don't we just take the initiative and re-add it? It's not like anyone is getting hurt, or we are hurting the games feelings by treating it that way.

erikun
2013-06-23, 07:32 PM
Are you kidding? PF doesn't convert ToB properly, due to the concentration change. Then you are homebrewing a fix, so what you are playing is not PF. It's not really fair to treat PF that way, either. PF is a standalone system (giving it credit) or a few changes to the rules so we can just use the 3.5 material (then why did we bother?).
I don't see how homebrewing, especially just adding or modifying a single skill, makes you not playing Pathfinder anymore. I mean, I'm sure that lots of groups make some change or another to the Pathfinder base rules, but that doesn't mean they're running a completely different system.

I am a bit confused about the "not really fair to treat PF that way" line, though. How can you not be fair to a ruleset? The Pathfinder rules aren't going to be hurt that you aren't using them verbatim, and the point of the ruleset is for everyone to enjoy the roleplaying and game together. Why would allowing them to do so be unfair to anything?

JustinA
2013-06-25, 02:08 AM
I use 3.5, but with a few key elements reverted back to 3.0 or blended with 3.0.

I haven't switched to PF because I consider the improvements of PF to be minor enough that making the transition simply isn't worth it. Also, my main 3.5 campaign has been running since 2007.

I have, however, used various PF supplements and adventures. These systems are, frankly speaking, massively cross-compatible.

Eldan
2013-06-25, 05:02 AM
Since this thread has been surprisingly non-flamey, I suppose I can give a serious answer.

I play 3.5 with lots of homebrew. That said, I also add in Pathfinder elements, especially a few of the more interesting spells. There are some very flavourful things in that SRD.

Longcat
2013-06-25, 07:05 AM
3.5 with some PF content available. Pure Pathfinder has too many inane rulings for my taste, but I like some of their new classes (Witch, Summoner) and their PrC revisions (Arcane Archer mostly. What they did to the Assassin was close to unconsential intercourse).

Ashtagon
2013-06-25, 07:48 AM
I prefer chocolate flavour. Although I mess around wit it by stirring in chopped walnuts and coffee sprinkles.