Various 3.5 questions

[Murg]

There are a few random questions I've been pondering. Many thanks to anyone who can provide answers!

1. It's stated that "A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities."

Was there ever any official errata allowing exceptions? Like for taking monster class levels, or bloodline levels.

2. Does anyone know of a good 3.5 random monster generator?

The SRD one is very limited.

I found this one, but it isn't very random. The stat blocks are identical and there's as much chance of generating a rare dragon as a common orc.

http://www.monsteradvancer.com/send/monster/randomCreatureSelection.ma

3. For creatures with an alignment of "always good" or "always evil," what happens if they change alignment? Like if a hill giant with the celestial template becomes evil, does he lose all the abilities of the celestial template and become just a normal hill giant?

4. Was there ever an official errata for updating Savage Species or Forgotten Realms Campaign setting to 3.5 from 3.0?

5. Many people disparage Dragon magazine as unbalanced and ban it from their campaigns, but they seem to be OK with Dragon Compendium, why is that? Is it because the Compendium is generally more balanced than Dragon as a whole, or am I misreading this?

Thank you for any help!

[Cygnia]

There are certain PrCs you can spec into that will let you continue pallying up (Grey Guard, Witch Slayer, Cavalier off the top of my head).

[Tzardok]

There are a few random questions I've been pondering. Many thanks to anyone who can provide answers!

1. It's stated that "A paladin who gains a level in any class other than paladin may never again raise her paladin level, though she retains all her paladin abilities."

Was there ever any official errata allowing exceptions? Like for taking monster class levels, or bloodline levels.

There are certain feats that allow multiclasing with the Paladin. Dedicated Performer in Complete Adventurer for example allows freely multiclassing between Paladin and Bard.


3. For creatures with an alignment of "always good" or "always evil," what happens if they change alignment? Like if a hill giant with the celestial template becomes evil, does he lose all the abilities of the celestial template and become just a normal hill giant?

"Always" alignment mean something like 99% of the race have that alignment. It doesn't truely mean always, otherwise there weren't any fallen angels. Ruleswise racial abilities aren't lost with alignment. The description of the alignment subtypes even gives examples about how you still count as, for example, lawful, despite not being lawful anymore.


4. Was there ever an official errata for updating Savage Species or Forgotten Realms Campaign setting to 3.5 from 3.0?

No to Savage Species. The Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting was updated to 3.5 by the Player's Guide to Faerûn.


5. Many people disparage Dragon magazine as unbalanced and ban it from their campaigns, but they seem to be OK with Dragon Compendium, why is that? Is it because the Compendium is generally more balanced than Dragon as a whole, or am I misreading this?

Thank you for any help!

I've got no idea. I think the Dragon Compendium was meant to be a "best of" of the Dragon magazine. Maybe people assume that they only took balanced stuff, or rebalanced it for republishing. Or maybe "It's unbalanced" is just an excuse to not have to read over a hundred issues of a magazine. Who knows? *shrug*

[DivineOnTheMind]

I don't know about Dragon Magazine being broken or whatever, but I'm a lot friendlier to the Compendium than the issues themselves because digital magazine scans are basically a step less unusable than trying to pick information out of a youtube video.

[loky1109]

5. Many people disparage Dragon magazine as unbalanced and ban it from their campaigns, but they seem to be OK with Dragon Compendium, why is that? Is it because the Compendium is generally more balanced than Dragon as a whole, or am I misreading this?

Dragon Compendium is a single book, but Dragon magazines have about 160 issues. Plus, some Dm issues contend elements what intentionally are unbalanced with regular rules (Dark Sun races, for example). So yes, Compendium is generally more balanced than Dragon as a whole.

[Zanos]

5. Many people disparage Dragon magazine as unbalanced and ban it from their campaigns, but they seem to be OK with Dragon Compendium, why is that? Is it because the Compendium is generally more balanced than Dragon as a whole, or am I misreading this?
Because for the most part, people only see Dragon magazine material when a player wants to use something very good or outright busted from it. As a whole Dragon Magazine is about as balanced as any other material, and probably moreso than the Player Handbook, which contains the most showstopping content in the entire game.

It's just survivorship bias. People are rarely exposed to the content in Dragon Magazine that is bad or mediocre.

[Ramza00]

Because for the most part, people only see Dragon magazine material when a player wants to use something very good or outright busted from it. As a whole Dragon Magazine is about as balanced as any other material, and probably moreso than the Player Handbook, which continues the most showstopping content in the entire game.

It's just survivorship bias. People are rarely exposed to the content in Dragon Magazine that is bad or mediocre.

Nods in agreement. Brings up pathfinder as a point of comparison since 3.5 and its culture was crafted in a time long ago even if we still play it.

Remember culture surrounds this cultural question. The "market" / "democratization" is different with mid 00s vs mid 10s vs now in 2022. If we are talking pathfinder everything eventually gets on Archives of Nethys something as easy to search as a SRD, yet with the 00s it was different. In the 00s physical books were the norms not websites or pdfs, and dragon magazines were even rarer. Thus someone searching out the rare thing often was met with a skeptical eye.

But in today pathfinder (which is a child of 3.5, and was made by some of the dragon magazine people the company though paizo hired a lot of people over the decades) at least the material is easy to find and search and everything is equally obscured, thus it is up to your DM to make a judgement call. So yeah what Zanos said about exposure.

[Twurps]

Because for the most part, people only see Dragon magazine material when a player wants to use something very good or outright busted from it. As a whole Dragon Magazine is about as balanced as any other material, and probably moreso than the Player Handbook, which continues the most showstopping content in the entire game.

It's just survivorship bias. People are rarely exposed to the content in Dragon Magazine that is bad or mediocre.

Although I agree with this, for me it's also an issue of availability. Although second hand, the books seem to be readily available, the dragon magazines are not. (note I like my material hardcopy, so I've never tried obtaining digital copies) Also: I already have more books than I will ever manage to read (D&d and otherwise), and within those books I have found more character options than I probably will ever get to play in my remaining lifetime. So there's also the issue of: at some point enough really is enough.

[Saintheart]

2. Does anyone know of a good 3.5 random monster generator?

The SRD one is very limited.

Most of the ones online won't be much better, mainly because monsters outside the SRD tend not to be OGL, i.e. they're copyright and there's no licence given to use them.

However, there's this one that's at least a little more customisable than the Monster Advancer:

https://www.dinglesgames.com/tools/MonsterGenerator/dnd35/


At least it allows you to tinker with the stats and add class levels, even if its reach isn't far outside the SRD.


Also, donjon's random dungeon generator contains random monster generators by default:

https://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/


Lastly, more of a joint to peruse rather than a direct link: Chartopia's website has a lot of random generators, which might include some 3.5 ones. On a quick browse here I can see someone's been producing random encounter generators by EL for Stormwrack, which makes me wonder how long that'll last before the takedown notice, but still:

https://chartopia.d12dev.com/?q=3.5+random+monster+generator&f=

[Murg]

There are certain PrCs you can spec into that will let you continue pallying up (Grey Guard, Witch Slayer, Cavalier off the top of my head).

1. The main reason I was asking was I was thinking of using the optional rules from Libris Mortis for undead class advancement. So a paladin of tyranny gets turned into a wight, is required to take 8 levels of wight, but afterwards can't take paladin levels anymore because they took levels in a non-paladin class? RAW, it seems the wight-paladin gets a bad deal, RAI, it seems it should be allowed...

2. Saintheart, thank you for the info.

3. Tzardok, I was thinking it would work like that, it makes a lot of sense! and...

4. ...Cool! I actually have the Player's Guide to Faerun, so that works out well. I'm sad about Savage Species though, especially since I'm interested into the undead PC class levels from Libris Mortis which are based off of Savage Species, but since Libris Mortis is 3.5 I thought more than just undead monster class levels might have been brought over to 3.5...

5. Zanos&Ramza00, that explains it pretty well. The quality of Dragon Magazine content does vary quite a bit, and there's so much of it the amount of additional options and potential for exploitation can be overwhelming...

Thank you all for the help!

[Tzardok]

1. The main reason I was asking was I was thinking of using the optional rules from Libris Mortis for undead class advancement. So a paladin of tyranny gets turned into a wight, is required to take 8 levels of wight, but afterwards can't take paladin levels anymore because they took levels in a non-paladin class? RAW, it seems the wight-paladin gets a bad deal, RAI, it seems it should be allowed...

That's what happens when two different optional things (paladin variants and adding a monster class later) interact. In cases like this it's always "Ask your DM." Who knows, maybe he'll homebrew a feat in the direction of Dedicated Performer for wight and paladin of tyranny.



4. ...Cool! I actually have the Player's Guide to Faerun, so that works out well. I'm sad about Savage Species though, especially since I'm interested into the undead PC class levels from Libris Mortis which are based off of Savage Species, but since Libris Mortis is 3.5 I thought more than just undead monster class levels might have been brought over to 3.5...

I think there are a smattering of other monster classes in 3.5 sources. Player's Guid to Faerûn should have "monster" classes for drow, duergar and so on, and I remember monster classes for the chromatic and the metallic dragons in two different issues of Dragon Magazine.

[nedz]

2. Does anyone know of a good 3.5 random monster generator?

The SRD one is very limited.

I found this one, but it isn't very random. The stat blocks are identical and there's as much chance of generating a rare dragon as a common orc.

http://www.monsteradvancer.com/send/monster/randomCreatureSelection.ma

Well it depends on how many books you own (mainly Monster manuals) ?
I normally look through the lists in the Monster manuals and choose a 'random' encounter based on the setting (climate/terrain/etc.).
If you wanted to do this randomly then you need to create your own tables, which is not hard - I do this sometimes.



4. Was there ever an official errata for updating Savage Species or Forgotten Realms Campaign setting to 3.5 from 3.0?

There were the Savage Progressions web articles, which have been taken down; but you should be able to find them with a suitable web search.