[3.5] Tips for a New Group?

[thewizardguy]

Technically, I'm not a beginner. DnD 3.5 was the first roleplaying game I played, about 10 years ago when my dad would run it or me and my friends after school. We moved on to 4e after it came out, and then moved on to other systems because we didn't enjoy 4e. It's been a long time since I last played DnD, and when I did play it I played with a 'helper' sheet next to my character sheet that explained how to actually play the game.

In the meantime I've played various other systems such as SW, Fate, OVA, Supers! and more. But after re-discovering a stash of character sheets from my very first game, I've decided I might give 3.5 another shot. After all, I keep hearing good things about it.

Of course, I also keep hearing that this game is incredibly unbalanced and needlessly complicated. Any time anyone talks about this game it seems to be taken as a given that Fighters are useless and that high-level Wizards are essentially God.

So, as someone who'd love to GM a game for players who have either never played 3.5 or haven't played it for many years, is there a way for me to run a semi-balanced game? Are there classes I should ban? Are there common pitfalls to be avoided? Are there any books I need to read/buy?

Thanks in advance.

[Silva Stormrage]

3.5's mechanical issues frankly don't show up in most groups that have a basic grasp of what is particularly broken. Once you have a decent grasp of the major broken abilities and you don't go too high level things don't commonly break unless one player is trying to.

Main "broken" or unbalanced things to worry about that could show up by accident.



Polymorph and derivative spells. The ability to select any monster to turn into can render fighter types obsolete
Certain types of minionmancy can overwhelm new and lower optimization parties. A single cleric animating a dire wolf (A cr 3 creature) as a zombie creates a 81 HP meat shield that can reasonably compete with a low op fighter in damage. Animal companions are notorious for being basically as strong as low op fighters.
Planar Binding is just broken. This is a 5th level spell but it's iconic enough that I have seen it get used by many a new player who thinks the concept is cool.
Certain spells can just obsolete certain encounters. Stinking Cloud + Web can trap and remove over half the encounter from a fight if done correctly. Spellcasters are a lot more potent in this edition but can run out of steam and be forced to just use a crossbow if they run out of spells. 5e's cantrips don't really exist in 3.5.



I introduced my current group to D&D 3.5 and they hadn't really played any tabletop RPG's before. There wasn't that much of a learning curve as long as you don't expect them to learn ALL the subsystems of 3.5 at once. Teach them what they need to know to play their character and that should be good. The core system is still "Roll a d20 add your bonuses and compare your result to a DC".

The main thing to note for balance issues is that the core rulebook is actually the MOST unbalanced as they didn't know what they were doing. Monk Fighter and Paladins are some of the weakest while Cleric, Druid and Wizards are some of the strongest. Classes introduced later such as the Beguiler, Favored Soul, Warblade and Duskblade are much closer in terms of balance to one another.

[MisterKaws]

It's not that fighters are useless per se - the game is just balanced with the preconception that casters are going to cast supportive magic on the martials, and everyone is going to be a happy family. The problem? there's nothing stopping said casters from using support spells on themselves to win every fight alone. Now, on a well-balanced party, where the martials actually know how to play the game, casters are usually better off being played as they're supposed to be(crowd control/utility), because the martials will usually be better at their jobs(deleting monsters).

The balance breaks when an experienced caster-player goes on a party of newbies who still think like getting 10+ attacks with Two-Weapon Fighting is the most OP thing ever. Caster comes, pulls a Sleep or Glitterdust, then just goes around killing enemies himself with his trusty Crossbow, while the fighter is doing two 1d6+1 attacks at a +0 to hit because he thought it'd be OP as hell to get TWFing with 18 Dex and 12 Str. You get it? And it just gets worse when the wizard gets stuff like Wind Wall, Fly and Polymorph. Of course, if you have a party Barbarian who's well built, that Polymorph would be better used in turning said Barbarian into a Pyrohydra to eat up the whole field... But you could do it yourself, just slightly less effectively.

And then there's the problem children Cleric and Druid. You said you wanted to be careful with imbalanced stuff, so probably keep a close eye on those. They don't need to be flat-out banned; that's reserved to Incantatrix/Red Mage/Ur-Priest/Apostle of Peace/Shadowcraft Mage/Dweomerkeeper and the like(you'll learn of these soon enough if you spend some time here). Those two classes get too many ways to simply take the place of another role. As long as you talk to your players, it's probably going to be fine, but do keep an eye in case you get a more experienced player with a questionable degree of maturity.



For books, you'll probably want at least the core three: Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual. There's also the extended Player's Handbook II and Dungeon Master's Guide II which provide more options. Though do note that the Dungeon Master's Guide II had very poor editing, and got published full of stuff that's either bonkers or useless.

For recommended additions, I'd say at least the Completes: Adventurer, Arcane, Champion, Divine, Psionic, Scoundrel, Warrior. Do note that if you're buying Complete Psionic, you'll probably want the Expanded Psionic Handbook as well, although you can find most of the psionic stuff in the SRD. I'll also recommend the Spell Compendium, which is the book with most spells in the game(seriously, it has a lot). For the same reason, I'll recommend Magic Item Compendium.

If you're looking into getting more monsters, there's Monster Manuals from II to V, but the II is infamous for its dubiously balanced Challenge Ratings. There's also the Fiend Folio, which is mostly like another Monster Manual. For specific types of monsters, you can choose from: Draconomicon, Exemplars of Evil, Fiendish Codexes I and II, Libris Mortis, Lords of Madness, and Elder Evils(this one is for end-of-campaign evil guys).

For environmental design, you'll want Cityscape, Dungeonscape, Frostburn, Planar Handbook(also get Manual of the Planes if you get this one), Sandstorm and Stormwrack. Those each focus on a specific type of environment, but you usually won't need more than one or two of these unless your players want the book's options.

For races, you have Drow of the Underdark, Races of Destiny, Races of Stone, Races of the Dragon, Races of the Wild and Savage Species. The latter is for building monstrous characters, but it gets broken sometimes, so you always need to revise whatever your players take from there.

For alternative power systems(other than psionic), there's Dragon Magic(this one's more of an extension to the others), Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Tome of Magic and Weapons of Legacy(this one's kinda crappy). Do note that Tome of Battle has a higher optimization floor, ergo, it's harder to be utterly useless with a ToB class compared to a newbie Fighter, so help the players who want to play normal martial classes. Tome of Magic is one-third brilliant and two-thirds meh - the Binder class is a beautifully balanced class, and pretty fun to play overall, but the rest of it is half-useless(Truenaming) and half-underpowered(Shadow Magic), although I still like the Shadowcaster, and it is a decent caster despite the weakness compared to others.

If you want to get heavy into Good and Evil conflicts, you may want the Book of Exalted Deeds and the Book of Vile Darkness, although both are famous for getting a bit extreme into both ends. If you have to choose, I recommend the Book of Vile Darkness, which actually has a better view into Good characters than its weird sibling.

Other than those, there's two more from the non-campaign books: Dragon Compendium and Unearthed Arcana. I personally like the Dragon Compendium a lot, but since it's a book with just Dragon Magazine content, it gets some contempt, because of all the broken stuff on Dragon. Unearthed Arcana is a book on alternative rules only, and you can find most of its contents on the SRD, under Variant Rules. Take care with those rules: most are imbalanced if left at the players' hands unsupervised.



There, I listed every single 3.5 book other than campaign-specific ones. Overall, the necessary books without getting superfluous are the Core tree, the six Completes(not counting Psionic), Spell Compendium and Magic Item Compendium. If you want the stuff from other books, you can cherry-pick each one depending on your tastes. You should have your players bring their own copies of a book if they want the stuff in there for their own characters.

Whew, I wrote a lot. TL;DR is get Core+Completes+SC+MIC. And don't be too restrictive, though you should keep a firm hold of the balance in-game. If you want to run a campaign, I recommend you stay away from Forgotten Realms(it's broken as hell), and instead look into Eberron. To reduce Martial-Caster disparity, make sure to follow the Wealth-by-Level rules on the Dungeon Master's Guide, because non-casters suffer much more from lack of magic items than casters.

By the way, SRD (http://www.d20srd.org).

Also ban Pazuzu.

[Karl Aegis]

Don't shoot into melee.

[Biggus]

Some things to consider banning, restricting or altering:

Clerics and Druids
Very powerful straight out of the box, but in each case there's a single feat which makes them ridiculous. For Clerics it's Divine Metamagic (from Complete Divine) especially when used in conjunction with Persistent Spell (Complete Arcane) and for Druids it's Natural Spell (Player's Handbook).

Spells
Consider banning: Consumptive Field, Greater Consumptive Field, Wraithstrike (Spell Compendium), Venomfire (Serpent Kingdoms), Shivering Touch (Frostburn), Starmantle (Book of Exalted Deeds), Celerity, Greater Celerity (Player's Handbook II)

As Silva said, Polymorph and similar spells (Polymorph Any Object, Shapechange). If players are allowed to take any form they like with no restrictions, they can use these spells to do pretty much anything. Shapechange says you can become anything "you are familiar with", but doesn't define exactly how familar you have to be. Personally I require a knowledge check to become anything they haven't previously encountered in-game for all Polymorph-type spells.

More generally, certain 9th-level spells, notably Wish, Miracle, Gate, Time Stop, and Shapechange, can allow players to rewrite reality to a large extent, and require careful handling.

Prestige Classes
Most of the prestige classes listed here (http://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1573.0) in the "marvellous tier" should probably not be allowed for PCs until you understand the game well enough to know what makes them so powerful.

Feats
A lot of DMs ban Leadership, partly because if used intelligently it's arguably the most powerful feat in the game (you can have the ideal assistant to improve your strengths and/ or nullify your weaknesses), and partly because it complicates things by adding extra characters. In small groups (3 players or less) this is less of a problem though, having an extra character to fill in a gap in the party's abilities can be very useful in fact.

Other feats that are often banned: Craft Contingent Spell (Complete Arcane), Fell Drain (Libris Mortis), Greenbound Summoning (Lost Empires of Faerun), Initiate of Mystra (Player's Guide to Faerun).

In general
Don't worry about trying to get the game perfectly balanced, that would require rewriting it pretty much from scratch. A lot of the worst balance problems don't appear either until higher levels (13+) or until your players become moderately expert (it's pretty easy to create a warrior who uses their abilities effectively, much less so a spellcaster). The stuff I've listed are mostly just the worst examples of their kind, which have the potential to completely break a game if not handled properly.

[rel]

If everyone is new to D&D then you probably won't see a lot of the issues that are discussed on the internet.
You are far more likely to get the kind of issues that people new to roleplay in general or 3.5 specifically tend to come up against. Unexpected results, poor character build or play choices, feeling overshadowed by the other PC's, not being sure what to do and so on.

In terms of balance the main things to watch for are:

poor build choices: there are a lot of trap options in 3.5 (toughness, alertness) and a lot of build rules that are not written down (if you are going to be in melee then you need str and con as your 2 highest stats).
Offer a few opportunities to retrain once you have played a few sessions and everyone has seen a bit more of how the game works.

-character survivability: Characters can die easily in 3.5. everyone might seem like they have a lot of health but burst damage is common and save or dies are a thing too.
Make sure the expected level of character death matches the game. Consider starting games at a higher level, handing out bonus HP or healing items or using variant rules for things like critical hits if you want a less lethal game.

-surprisingly ineffective characters: There is a big gap between the descriptive prose and mechanical reality in 3.5. Often if you want a character to do something particular you need to approach the game as a toolkit for achieving what you want rather than picking an option that sounds right.
For example if you want a character that slays fearsome monsters with grit and steel you will probably make a more effective character if you decide what boxes you want to check mechanically then set about achieving them rather than picking fighter as your one and only class because it says 'fight' right there in the name.
The option to try out a lot of options and see what works helps here, consider setting your game up such that your players can bring new characters in if they want to try something without upsetting things.

I don't recommend banning any classes or options outright although if someone wants to play something really weak like straight PHB monk or fighter you might want to talk to them about the potential issues.
The magic users, wizard and especially cleric are difficult to remove because a lot of effects in 3.5 flat out need a specific spell to negate.
If a mummy has infected you with mummy rot or a chaos beast has given you instability you pretty much need a cleric of the correct level with the right spell prepared to avoid dying.
the only way to beat a spell is often another spell.

you can run a perfectly serviceable game with just the PHB and MM. DMG is extremely useful but not actually required.
In terms of reading, reading through the PHB a few times is a must so you know how the game works.
paging through the DMG is very helpful and carefully reading the entry of any monster you plan to use is a good idea.
Otherwise you can get awkward moments in / after fights; wait the green hag stuns you for how long? Oh, that monster had spells, no wonder the boss fight was so easy for you guys...

In terms of purchases, I say hold off everything except the main three; PHB, MM and DMG.
Once you have those play a few sessions or even a short game with what you have then decide what you want to buy based on what you felt was missing.
Fighters and monks are boring, get tome of battle.
wizards seem awkward and in need of different options, maybe complete arcane.
want more toys, magic item compendium.
etc.

[Malphegor]

I'll second what people are saying. It is tempted to book dive and use all sorts of sources, but ultimately it just makes your character overcomplicated and un-fun whilst you're learning how to play.
Your first games probably should be with the 3 main books. PHB, DMG, and MM1.

Once the players as a whole are confident, I recommend going PHB2 (because it adds a lot of fun stuff that a lot of people forget because it gets oveshadowed by the main PHB), and only then go hogwild getting every book you can.

I'll also recommend that none of your players look at any optimisation guides, because on casters in particular I find a lot of fun can be found in picking things based on what sounds right more than what's mechanically good for them to do. At least for the first few characters.

(I also recommend everyone plays one of the PHB classes at least once eventually, even if in odd one-shots eventually, because nothing makes you respect clerics more than being one and realising being expected to be a healbot when you have more potential than that is demoralising)

[Shocksrivers]

I allowed my players to retrain or just plain switch characters as far as the third year, because no one (including me) knew the game all that well, and many people made boring or just really crappy characters. We started with just the PHB and the DMG, and then added books as we got familiar (also part of the reason why we allowed retraining, a lot of option were just not on the table earlier).

Maybe one tip: Tome of Battle characters *fix* the melee classes from the PHB, but the book is rather complicated. It takes a lot of time getting used to, and it is just a little unclear, so if you really want to use it, make sure you read up!

Otherwise, enjoy, don't take it to seriously and just make sure people can have fun playing their character the way they want!

[GreatDane]

There is a big gap between the descriptive prose and mechanical reality in 3.5. Often if you want a character to do something particular you need to approach the game as a toolkit for achieving what you want rather than picking an option that sounds right.
For example if you want a character that slays fearsome monsters with grit and steel you will probably make a more effective character if you decide what boxes you want to check mechanically then set about achieving them rather than picking fighter as your one and only class because it says 'fight' right there in the name.
This is officially my favorite quote regarding the biggest difficulty with character creation in 3.5. All character options are not created equal, but they are described as more or less equal. This is the biggest hurdle for new players, in my opinion: system mastery (IE, knowing which options are decent and synergistic) has a huge impact on the game. Like others have mentioned, this is especially concerning when players have different levels of system mastery.

In response to your original question, then: the biggest tip I can give (that is specific to 3.5 and not just general DMing advice) is too make sure everyone - including you! - is playing at the same level of system mastery. If some are ahead of the curve, make sure they're far enough ahead to understand where the other players are and tone it down. A more time-consuming alternative would be to bring the other players up to speed, which is a great option if only one player is likely to fall for "trap" options.

The "horrible imbalances" you've heard about only really come up when they're unknown. If everybody knows about them and plays around them, you get to access the wide, wide universe of 3.5 material that lets you play whatever kind of game you want.

[RNightstalker]

I personally love Forgotten Realms as there's more material on that setting than any other that I know of. Settings build familiarity and common knowledge bases.

That being said, I would highly recommend starting with modules as they will be more along expected encounter difficulties and rewards, and will save you a lot of trouble on trying to come up with everything, which will give you more time to teach the actual game instead of trying to match optimization.

Don't forget, there's this thing called fun which is supposed to be the whole point of the game...the more you have, the better y'all are doing.

[MisterKaws]

I personally love Forgotten Realms as there's more material on that setting than any other that I know of. Settings build familiarity and common knowledge bases.

That being said, I would highly recommend starting with modules as they will be more along expected encounter difficulties and rewards, and will save you a lot of trouble on trying to come up with everything, which will give you more time to teach the actual game instead of trying to match optimization.

Don't forget, there's this thing called fun which is supposed to be the whole point of the game...the more you have, the better y'all are doing.

The problem with Forgotten Realms is that it has the highest amount of imbalanced content in the game. Over half of the metamagic cheese classes only exist because of that campaign setting too, so I don't think it's a good fit for new players. They'll either get broken stuff by mistake, or make useless characters with the classes that are imbalanced downwards.

[False God]

So, as someone who'd love to GM a game for players who have either never played 3.5 or haven't played it for many years, is there a way for me to run a semi-balanced game? Are there classes I should ban? Are there common pitfalls to be avoided? Are there any books I need to read/buy?

Thanks in advance.

First and foremost: Trust your players!

I cannot emphasize this enough. Well, I could probably use all caps and larger font, but figuratively. In all the discussions I see online, I see a lot of talk about hypothetical builds and theoretical problems and quadratic math and yes those problems exist. But those problems exist in a space where you have players with both the system mastery and the desire to break the game.

For the most part though, I've never actually encountered these problems at the table. Because most of the time the players who understand how to break the game aren't interested in actually breaking the game.

Before you ban anything, before you write a single houserule, figure out what kind of players you have. If you discover you have masters of the game who want to tear it to shreds, (which with new people I suspect you won't) you can more easily resolve the situation by banning the player rather than the class, or the spell that they used to break the game.

3.5 is to a large degree, a toolset. You can bash someone's skull in with a hammer, but you can also build a house with it. If you don't know if you've got psychopaths or contractors, find out before you assume that you need to ban hammers.

And remember: turnabout is fair play. There's no reason your Mighty Morphin Power Wizard can't be attacked by an advanced epic archdragon sporting a magic item in every slot and prestige class for every age category.

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Eberron has a lot of awesomely flavorful races. Shifters are the descendants of lycanthropes, warforged are living robots, and changelings can change their appearance at will (making them masters of disguise).

I have an abiding love of Stormwrack. More cool races, and the Hadozee (gliding monkey people) work well even in non-aquatic settings with no sailing. If you are doing anything with sailing, absolutely check out narrative naval combat. It is so much simpler than trying to deal with minimum turning radius, wind-speed/-direction, and all that jazz. Just roll Profession (sailor) occasionally and say what you want to do (e.g. get closer to them, stay away from them, grapple them, pull a clever maneuver to surprise them) and there'll be some easy instructions for how to do it.

[jdizzlean]

i wouldn't ban anything outright if they're all new players, instead run a few one-shots, or a short adventure to break everyone into the mechanics of the game. core only so the staggering number of options aren't a overload to them. once everyone is comfortable w/ the system, then go for your main campaign and branch out as you like.