Monte's 3.5 Review

[Birthright-L]

dition by then silly gamer. ;-)



j/k ya. :-)





Tony





----Original Message Follows----

From: Michael Romes <Archmage@T-ONLINE.DE>





Perhaps when a revised version with the errors corrected would be

published in a year or so, then

I would purchase 3.5.

bye

Michael



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[Osprey]

The goal seems to be more of a money thing than for lucky
group of gamers employed by a company to write creatively and make new ideas come to life.

TSR is engulfed by WOTC, who is then swallowed by Hasbro...

At each step, the pressure for profit grows, and the wallets of loyal fans suffer.

Why are WOTC super secretive about putting out revised material? So they can sell off as many of the 3.0 copies still on shelves as is possible. But wouldn&#39;t you be pissed if you went out and bought the three 3.0 core rulebooks, only to have 3.5 come out a week later?

I&#39;ve been through all of this before. Having started roleplaying D&D about 20 years ago, I ended up by most of the hardcover AD&D books (TSR, 1st ed.). Then they came out with 2nd edition - which was really just a prettier, more kid-friendly version of 1st edition, and had the benefit of compiling a lot of the better stuff from supplements into core rulebooks.

Well, having invested hundreds of dollars in 1st edition, I refused to buy any 2nd edition books. And honestly, there were very few rule conflicts or necessary conversions, so it wasn&#39;t a problem. I did buy a few campaign sets (Birthright and Dark Sun), but that had nothing to do with the edition.

However, 3rd edition represented a giant step forward in revamping the game mechanics and making a far more modular RPG system. Having dropped D&D altogether for a good 8+ years in favor of more sophisticated games, 3e actually impressed me so much that I decided to get back into D&D again&#33; I think that says a lot for the improvements that 3rd Ed represents. Sure, it has some problems (like all rangers having 2-weapon fighting and no archery), and I am glad that 3.5 was geared towards addressing some of these issues.

But is it worth &#036;90+ to get the core rulebooks again? Not likely. The things I didn&#39;t like I&#39;ve already changed in my own games, and some of them are so common-sensical that I can convince almost any reasonable DM to adopt such changes.

But to be fair, I haven&#39;t been able to go through the 3.5 books in great detail, so I&#39;ll refrain from making final judgements. However, echoes of the 1st to 2nd edition move keep haunting me, and I find myself a bit grudging...

Osprey