Player handbook availability

[Elana]

As I currently looked through the pdf sales of Wizard of the Coast products, I noticed that the 3.5 Player Handbook is not in there.
(Just the PHB2)
Same with the DMG.

And that got me wondering.

Is their currently a market for those books?

Or are 3.5 players just a dying breed with no way anyone new would be interested in that game version.
Or is it just that the used book market can handle any possible demand for it.
(And of course I'm aware of the free available SRD compilations, but those are no real substitute for a rule book)

And since I can't give myself useful answers I thought I ask in the playground ;)

Do you think there would be demand for the 3.5 core rules?
And if yes and WotC doesn't want to deliver (because they don't want to impact their 5e sales) do you think one of the other companies out there should use the srd to make a real clone of the original rules (instead of an upgrade ala pathfinder)

Discuss!

[Ellowryn]

Well, actually, its more that WotC is going out of their way to kill anything having to do with 3.0/3.5e. About 5 months ago they pulled all related content from their website, so it makes sense they would start pulling all the core material from their downloads section.

That being said if all you are looking for are pdf's of 3.5 there are probably ways to download them from other places if you look around.

[Elana]

Personally, I do have the books and all the SRD material I could ever wish for.
My thoughts are more in the line of potential new players.

Also WotC is still selling pdfs of 3.5 material. Just not the books beginners would need.

Also I was wondering about book in print.
Maybe even with some sort of Ersatz license to replace the now defunct d20 license.
Something that would inspire more 3rd party companies to produce books for that system again

[manyslayer]

The core rules (aside from advancement) are available as the SRD (my favorite site is http://www.d20srd.org/). I do agree that it is strange that they don't have the core books, but then again, they have the reprints for sale.

WoTC has been adding 3.X books as PDFs every month for quite a while.

Almost all of the the 3.x articles are still available on the website (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/dnd).

I've actually been surprised at the amount of support (not new material, certainly, but not flushing the old) they have been doing. Much different than when they introduces 4.0 and flushed all their PDF from sites like RPGNow.com.

[Elana]

Wow, I wasn't aware they made reprints of 3.5.
That renders most of my original post kinda moot.
At least for as long as the reprinted version is still available.

[Telonius]

The most important thing that the SRD doesn't include is the XP table from the PHB. (The one that tells you how many XP a player needs to advance to the next level). If your group doesn't have access to that information in any way, it would be really hard to get the game to actually function.

There are other things that are absent as well (descriptions of the various deities, a few proprietary monsters and spell names, and so on) but you can plug in some things to substitute. Especially if you have some of the various campaign settings, or Deities and Demigods.

[rrwoods]

There are two different reprints of the 3.5 core books available; one is leather bound, and one is just really shiny. One or both of those contain some number of updates to the rules made since the original printings.

Not PDFs (therefore not searchable), but if you're having trouble finding electronic copies it's an option.