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Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Wizards Releases 3.5 Edition System Reference 61

Posted by CowboyNeal from the rules-lawyering-and-world-building dept.
Randar the Lava Liza writes "Wizards of the Coast have released the 3.5 Edition System Reference Document. Essentially it's the three core rulebooks in RTF format. This includes the 3.5 Edition Player's Handbook, 3.5 Edition Dungeon Master's Guide and 3.5 Edition Monster Manual. All of these are released under their Open Gaming License. You can also read a very interesting review of 3.5 Edition by Monte Cook, one of the original creators of 3rd Edition D&D. He goes into detail on a number of the changes in this new edition."
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Wizards Releases 3.5 Edition System Reference More

Wizards Releases 3.5 Edition System Reference

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  • It's not quite the core rulebooks.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Drantin ( 569921 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @09:31AM (#6570452)
    Q: What's missing from the SRD compared to the core D&D rulebooks? A: Mostly the "flavor" elements. There are no named gods, none of the spells have significant NPC names, there's no mention of Greyhawk, etc. You'll also note that there are no rules for character creation, for advancing characters in level, calculating experience, or anything else related to the topics forbidden by the Usage Guide.
    It doesn't seem to be quite the three core rulebooks, although the missing information shouldn't be hard to find elsewhere...
  • My local gaming group has decided to switch up to 3.5, and we'll be starting a campaign this saturday with the ruleset. At first glance, this edition seems far more streamlined, more flexible, and much more open-ended when it comes to character development. I think it will promote a lot more variety, and overall will speed up the mechanics of game sessions. That and at first glance, the classes are better balanced.

    At the same time, there is no pressing reason to switch from 3.0 - the core of the game remains the same, and 3.0 is still a very solid ruleset. There is nothing terribly broken in 3.0 that was fixed in 3.5. That in itself leads to a fair amount of "wizards is grubbing for money" comments.

    I can see both sides of the coin here - while 3.5 is indeed an easy way for wizards to make money, it also provides some sweet new art, greater flexibility for classed monsters, and just feels slicker.

    Since I made pretty good use of 3.0, I'm not opposed to spending some cash on 3.5 - bare minimum it's cheep entertainment/hour compared to just about everything else.

    • Re:Is it worth switching from 3.0 to 3.5? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Outland Traveller ( 12138 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:24AM (#6571448)
      In true software-development form, 3.0 introduced tons of new, poorly tested ideas. Even the copyediting quality was abysmal. If you turn to the combat section you will find the same information repeated again and again, without any clear organization. In some cases the exact same paragraphs repeat.

      3.5 is a cleanup, both on the production quality and on the rule balancing. I think it's much better, I only regret that more time wasn't spent making sure 3.0 was ready. There's a quite a bit of nerfing, but again that is 3.0's fault, not an intrinsic problem in 3.5.

    • I think 3.0 harm was terribly broken, but I'll conceed that you don't need to buy a $30 book to fix that.

      I also thought the Bard class was pretty much broken, and to a lesser degree the fact that a lot of the classes gained a significant amount of power at level 1 then not much else. The bard was merely the largest example of this to some degree. 3.5 seems to do a good job of fixing that. I don't like Rangers having d8 HD, but I also didn't have a problem with 3.0 Rangers at all, which a lot of people did.

      • Yeah, I agree with harm and most of the class tweaks. I think the bard looks pretty good now, and overall, fixing the front-loading of classes was a great idea.

        But because I had an issue with the 3.0 ranger I have no issue with the d8 hd in 3.5, in light of all the other stuff they get. In fact, I'm playing my first 3.x ranger in our first 3.5 campaign. I almost fear that they're too powerful in 3.5, but it's hard to judge without playing one. Thus my "sacrifice" for the campaign... ;)

        I must be angsty thi
        • +2 dipolomacy? I thought one of the traits of the race is that they never feel at home with either human or elves. Why would an outcast get a diplomacy bonus in neither parent race seems them as "one of us"?

          I never did like elves, maybe I have this backwards...
          • +2 dipolomacy? I thought one of the traits of the race is that they never feel at home with either human or elves. Why would an outcast get a diplomacy bonus in neither parent race seems them as "one of us"?

            Because years of practice at dealing with awkward social situations has honed their skills at smoothing out relations in tense situations. Also, their mixed lineage makes them perceived obvious choices when you need a neutral adjudicator in a dispute. "The king wants to clear out a forrest for more fa

      • Rangers as a class were fine. I had a wonderful low STR (~10) ranger that I loved playing as a hunter sort. Moderateratly high dex, really really high Con.

        It was one class level of ranger that killed it. Take one level ranger, get a d10 hit die, a +1 BaB added, Fort save increase, three free feats (two that only work in light armor) and you had a problem. 1st level: Rogue 2nd: Ranger 3-20 Rogue... and you had a game killer. : )
      • I really like where rangers are now - they really fit in well between rogues and fighters. Before they were too much like poor fighters without enough skill pts for the skills they needed. Now they are skillful hunters - what I view rangers to be.

        They aren't tanks - that's left for the fighters. They really have their own place now, and I like that. I think it's a stride forward towards making the class more of a core class, and less of a "we've got a fighter and a rogue, what else can I play?" sort of cla

        • I guess my other problem is that my first character in 3rd edition was a rogue, and I was immensly pissed off at what I perceived to be major problems with the rogue class. Basically I felt that the rogue should be where the ranger is now melee wise. As it stood, the gnome psion in our group had more hp than my elven rogue at level 10, which was quite distressfull considering my rogue had to melee to survive (I didn't have spring attack yet, and spring attack means no multiple attacks/round) and so much of

          • I agree with your rogue complaints myself, at least I did during first and second edition as far as HP is concerned but the number of skills and abilities that they now have in 3rd/3.5 more than makes up for it.

            The medium leveled rogue will take no damage from powerful AOE attacks if they can pass a simple reflex save (which they likely will) where as the fighters and clerics are going to see a large chunk of their HP knocked off in a heart beat. Also the reworking of sneak attacks makes them ideal snipe

            • I actually had a few levels of fighter. When we quit that campaign I was a 3 fighter, 4 rogue, 2 wizard (Elf) and 1 shadowdancer, IIRC. You have to be very careful with multiclassing. Sure, you get better hp (on average, but you can always roll a 1 as a fighter too) attack rolls and some feats, but you also don't get X levels of rogue, wich means more rogue skills, backstab and those nifty evasion abilities.

              I'm not claiming my character was perfect by a long shot, it was my first 3rd edition character, mad

          • If your rogue was going into melee a lot, then you were playing him wrong. Rogues do not get many extra hit points because they make it their business to almost never need them.

            The Rogue Way is to let the foolish Paladins keep the monsters busy, while you sneak off and help yourself to the best gems in the treasure horde. They might resent your "cowardice," but what are they going to do about it? Kick you out of the trap-filled dungeon for not joining the fight?

            Insist that you are a pacifist by nature,

            • While that's a perfectly viable way to play a rogue, to insist it's the only way is silly, especially given the whole point of them changing the class name from thief to rogue so as to encompass other rogue-like characters. Besides, by not fighting, you're basically neglecting one of the primary purposes of a rogue, the huge amount of sneak attack damage they can do. What's the point of being able to do +10d6 on a hit if you never melee (sneak attacks are much harder in ranged combat when you can't flank...

              • The other major "rogue" skill, besides thievery, is scouting. In large-scale campaigns, they are pretty good at sneaking behind enemy lines for recon.

                As for the backstab, it does a lot of damage, but the intention is that you avoid melee one way or another so the enemy will ignore you, then you sneak in to the flank and jab them, especially if it looks like that +10d6 will probably be enough to finish them off.

                If any monster lets a rogue just hang around on their flank for an entire melee confrontation

  • Damn you Hasbro!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WildFire42 ( 262051 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @09:37AM (#6570493) Homepage
    Damn you for making me buy something else to keep up with current D&D gaming! Damn you for not respecting the gamers, your true source of...

    Wait, you mean I can download it?

    Without Kazaa?

    I'm dead sure I'll get modded to hell for this, but for the cynicism impaired, I'm making a slight social commentary on bi*ching gamers who have, for years, complained about first about T$R, then about Wi$ard$ of the Coa$t, now about Ha$bro, if you catch my drift. Oddly, I don't hear that many Warhammer fans who bitch about GW though, and they actually have some very good reasons to (80 dollars for a few pieces of unpainted plastic? Some assembly required, of course).
    • I'm surprised they released as much of it as they did. I don't know if levelling and all that is changed much from 3.0, but if it isn't, that pretty much means you don't need to buy the new books. Maybe the Monster Manual, but if you're the kind of person who's willing to hack together a ruleset between some old books and some RTF files, I expect you've already made monster entries for much of what got put into the new Monster Manual.

      In that sense it's about the same as how SuSE released their version of
    • People can complainin about T$R, Wi$ard$ of the Coa$t, and Ha$boro along with Micro$oft all they want... this is because these companies have letters easily replaced by the dollar symbol. Warhammer does not.

    • Re:Damn you Hasbro!!!! (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      These games are never going to be like Monopoly- buy the box once and play. You will ALWAYS be needing to get the next version in order to keep up. If you can't handle that, get out of the hobby or try and find people who still play 3.0 (though I suspect you may soon have an easier time finding people who still play 1st edition!)

      On the GW side. Unpainted and unassembled plastic is the whole point! Warhammer is just as much about building and painting your troops as it is about playing. If you are to
      • Is anyone else as bitter as I that WoC has changed to pre-painted plastic miniatures? I get almost as much fun from painting miniatures as from playing the game. I wish they'd kept the chainmail line and added the plastic prepainted miniatures as a (required) option.

        Actually, I also dislike the 3.5 changes that make it a-lot harder to play without miniatures (I paint miniatures as a hobby, not to use in a campaign). What happened to imagining things in your mind? As Monte Cook mentions, many of the rules n
    • You definitely need to talk to my friends about GW. They are the devil, but unfortunately they are the true rulers of the minature wargaming market. Hell, they come out with revised books every 6 months...that alone makes Wizards look like saints. Though, I would have liked more new art and better editing for 3.5. Your going to see second print books w/in 6 months that correct alot of the typos.
  • I know that we're all geeks here and such, but it would have been helpfull if someone would have mentioned that this was Dungeons and Dragons we were talking about. It took me a second to figure that out.
    • it would have been helpfull if someone would have mentioned that this was Dungeons and Dragons we were talking about.

      Yes, because Wizards of the Coast puts out so many other high-quality, well-loved games, it's hard to tell them apart. Such as Magic: The Gat...uhhh, well, there's always Lord of the Five...

      Harry Potter the Trading Card popularity milking?

      NFL Showdown?

      Hello? Is this thing on?

      /me sighs.

      The only other game that I respect Wizards/Hasbro/whatever for is Call of Cthulhu. Now that's a fun

      • To be fair, the headline doesn't specify "Wizards of the Coast", just "Wizards". It took me a bit to figure out what they were talking about, too.

      • Isn't Call of Cthulhu still a Chaosium product?
        • Yes. CoC-D20 exists, but the Cthulhu license and brand still belongs to Chaosium. They've an arrangement with Wizards to release some products, but it's specifically referred to as "Call of Cthulhu D20". Not sure how long-lived that venture will be -- the Delta Green D20 book seems to have gone on hold, and not much has been released in the line aside from the core rulebook.
      • The only other game that I respect Wizards/Hasbro/whatever for is Call of Cthulhu. Now that's a fun game.

        Roborally, don't forget Roborally. This has got to be one of the best board games ever made. Mind you, I don't think it was a WOTC original, but they do own the license to it now. No other game offers the sheer joy of watching your opponent finish out his registers after you bump him a square or two on the first phase, especially on the can crusher map.

  • It's quite nice really (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Jonsey ( 593310 )
    I've got the 3rd edition books, even bought 'em locally to help my gameshop. I now have a SRD with the majority of 3.5's changes.

    Due to easier format, I now have a snazzy, easy reference to rules I had been bending my DMG to get photocopies of (Those last ~8 pages)

    Maybe I'm somewhat alone in the no-screen DMing... But it makes my concience clear when I kill a PC :D
    • Eh, I'm 50/50 with no-screen DMing. I'd do it more often if it weren't for my bizzare rolling. I often have to tone down rolls in one fight when I crit 3 times in a row on the same PC, and then have to buff them up in another when I constantly roll under 5.

      It's supposed to be fun - if you smite the boss with ease and then fall to his puny henchmen, it's not that much fun. If both are good fights, it's more fun.

      But I agree - the format is much better than 3.0. Now I just have to re-memorize the page number
    • My "DM screen" is an LCD. The iBook takes care of all of my roles, as well as holding all my notes and maps. I also have HTML-ized some of the core rules so I can look up spells, monsters and items quickly.

      Paperless, bookless DMing rocks! I no longer need to lug around 60 pounds of 2nd Edition books and notebooks when DMing away from home.

  • damn RTF (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @03:00PM (#6573525)
    I'm very happy that WoTC released their rules, and I probably sound like a jerk for bitching, but I wish the information was in a more useful format then RTF.

    The D20 rules would really benefit from a conversion to heavily linked HTML, so that I can quickly hop around between skills/spells/feats etc.

    Anyone agree?

    More importantly, anyone willing to assist with such a conversion? We've got at least a couple of years before the next version is out, so a hyperlinked D20 ruleset would be useful for a long time.
    • I started working on an HTML version of the previous edition of the SRD. I'm potentially interested, but I think I need to tackle it again, with more automation this time...
      • I've found that it's totally worth doing, whether you are a player of DM. Especially if you index-link the spells from the class lists and such.

        Does the OGL let us share this sort of work, I wonder? (I probably can't share mine anyway, as I removed all the license information and stuff from most of the pages while I was editing them.)

        • Sure it does. Just convert the license text to a license and copyright page, and add a link to that page to each of your HTML files, and you're legal.

          Unlike you, I looked into the legal questions before I started the work :-)

      • Re:damn RTF (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        matamatic sez:
        > with more automation this time...

        Amen. I've playing with XML and XSLT right now. Ideally I'd generate HTML and PDFs from the same XML source.

        Yesterday and today I converted a dozen skills to XML, with cross-references. I'm tweaking a style sheet to generate the HTML.

        There's a ton of material to convert, but marking up an individual skill or feat doesn't take very long. If a dozen people contributed 1 marked-up XML spell or skill or feat every day, the conversion would be complete withi

    • Re:damn RTF (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Yuioup ( 452151 )
      I believe you can open the .rtf with Word and then you can use a wizard to create a table of contents and an index.

      Does openoffice have functions like that? Are there any open source auto-indexers out there? It would be cool to be able to feed those .rtf in an app and generate indexes, etc...

      Yuioup
  • ...and that's without even having read the SRD or new books. Alas.

    • More clearly... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Uriel ( 16311 )
      People are reacting without actually knowing anything. Many people in the community rail against this or that change they've heard about without considering the new rules as a whole. The SRD is free, go read it.

      Though reacting before reading is a pretty common /. problem.

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