Birthright 3.5 ?

[Fizz]

While the Birthright 3E team is working hard on converting our favorite setting, WotC will be releasing a revised (known as 3.5) PHB, DMG and MM starting in July. Has anyone considered any possible ramifications for Birthright 3E? For example, apparently monster stat blocks will be different, and some classes will have some heavy modifications (ie ranger, druid, sorcerer).

So, Are we going to need a Birthright 3.5 team? :)

-Fizz

[Azrai]

Well, all "new" Wizards products underline their support of the 3.5 Edition. THis holds for example for the new Dragonlance setting or Savage Species.

I don't think that there will be major changes in the game mechanics, seems to be some kind of marketing campaign.

The changes will be to small to affect the Birthright edition.

Here are some of the latest quotes concerning this topic:

Quote:
"There were two presentations about 3E Revised given at Winter Fantasy. The first was for Convention Judges on Thursday (I was not present at this one) and another for the Players on Saturday (at 8 AM) prior to the first slot of the day (I was present for this one).

The host for Saturday's presentation was nice woman from WotC Marketing (I am sorry, I have forgotten her name). Also in attendance were Anthony Valterra, Andy Collins, and Skip Williams (he was one of the guest of the convention). After a brief introduction about 3E from a marketing standpoint our hostess turned the mike over to Anthony Valterra. He basically launched into the whys and wherefores of the update to the 3e rules, information that has been covered in the Press release and Dragon Magazine previously. He did go into a bit more detail about when the process to update the rules began. Play testing, both internal and with official play tests groups, continued after the final version of 3e Core books went to the printers. This started as a small stream of errors and new ideas that turned into a flood when the books were released to the general public. With thousands of gamers load testing the new rules all sorts of interesting ideas and problems became obvious, stuff that no amount of in house testing or outsourced testing could hope to catch.

Basically the areas that became evident fell into three categories:

1) Unclear rules. Attacks of Opportunity were given as an example of
something that will be re-edited for clarity.
2) Underdeveloped rules. Prestige classes were originally just a small
section. This has ballooned into something that practically every D20
supplement has as content. The rules for creating them will be
expanded.
3) "Broken" rules. The "H" spells (Harm, Haste, and Heal) were given
as examples of spells that will be re-addressed.

After his presentation Anthony introduced Andy Collins and a presentation on what is staying the same and what is changing in the
rules began.

First off here is what is going to be the same.

Roll high

11 basic character classes

AC

Hit Points

Magic (as a system, not individual spells)

Feats

Skills
Basically all the things that are good and true about 3e will be the same. What is changing is internal consistency and easy of use. For instance, instead of having a lot of different rules for Damage Resistance (DR) the rules would be unified. Right now, to hit a Skeleton with a slashing or piercing weapon does 1/2 damage (essentially it is DR 1/2 damage/blunt). That means that a Titan with a huge sword gets the same DR penalty as a tiny sprite with a dagger, which doesn't make a lot of sense since a Titan's attack should obliterate Skeletons by the swing full. Further, the hierarchy of DR made "lesser" materials less useful. Why would you need a silver weapon if a +1 or better weapon will do the same damage and effect more creatures?


So DR has been rethought. It no longer has a hierarchy of materials and magic. That means that while silver weapons will effect lycanthropes, +1 weapons will not. Devils and Demons will require holysilver to bypass DR. That's right to bypass the Pit Fiend's DR15/holysilver, a Paladin will need at a minimum a +1 holy slivered
weapon (the DR is from the back of the Winter Fantasy t-shirt that has the Pit Fiend Stats).


So what does this mean for the Skeletons? Well, Skeletons will no longer have a custom entry for "pseudo" DR and will now have DR 5/blunt, so when that Titan start's practicing his golf swing the skeletons will basically explode on contact, even if he doesn't have a blunt weapon and the sprite will still be ineffective with his tiny
little dagger.


This has some implications; fighters will need to start thinking about what materials and magical abilities they want for their weapons. They may have to haul around a second weapon. Quickdraw becomes more desirable when you figure out that your primary weapon is ineffective but your secondary weapon works fine. Move-equivalent action to sheath the primary, free action to draw the secondary and standard action to attack.


Andy mentioned the needing cold iron or silvered weapons for some creatures. I asked him about the materials section and he said new materials will be added and rules for the old ones will be cleared up.

I know people want to know character classes; four of them will have some major changes. Those playing Bards, Druids, Monks, and Rangers will want to see what happens. These "tweener" classes as Skip Williams named them will see some improvements and some of their abilities will be stretched out. Rangers will definitely no longer be front loaded with their feats. However their spell selection and abilities will be beefed up for mid and high levels of play.

Spells will be cleaned up. Some heavy changes will also be done to some. Haste was especially a hot topic. The new haste will still have +4 AC but will not give a partial action anymore. Instead it will provide an extra attack. This was done because it was making the Quicken metamagic feat undesirable. Why shell out for a feat when a spell does this already and does more? Speaking of Partial actions, they are gone. There will be move, move-equivalent, standard and full actions. If there is a need for an exception (say the Zombie) it will be part of the zombie listing.

Feats will have some clarity issues cleared up. Not much said about what will be cleared up but they will.

Facing and Miniatures. Revised 3e will acknowledge the fact that most players use some type of surface with markers (usually battlemats and figures). Facing for 3e will take a page from Chainmail and no longer have odd lengths. Instead a creature will control an area (i.e., a medium creature will control 5 ft./5 ft. while a large one will control 10 ft./10ft.) so a horse would be 10 by 10 but only fill a part of the space they control during combat. See the Chainmail rules for a better understanding of this.



Take also here a look:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rs/20030225a