Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Aphreal 03-17-04, 12:05 PM	Let me start by saying I'm pretty new at DMing and at D&D in general. Most of my players are experienced gamers, but not with 3e. Having little playing experience myself, I now come to the boards with a balance question. We've been playing completely 3.0 rules up to this point, and I had no intention of converting anything for this campaign. (Please don't turn this into a discussion of why or why not; that's not important right now.) The ranger is a bit bored with the way his character progression is set up and can't find a PrC that he really likes. He's asked if he can use the 3.5 ranger progression from this point on (he's level 4). Will this cause any problems if I don't update the rest of the PCs or anything else in the world? The one problem that I see immediately is animal companions as the group also has a druid. I think I should keep the two of them on the same rules for that, so I'd stick with 3.0 animal companions since that's what we've been doing so far. I'd really appreciate thoughts on any other issues people think might come up. Thanks, Aph
gonzoron 03-17-04, 12:17 PM	I've done something similar and have had no problems. We play mainly 3.0, but have included a few 3.5 things: Ranger, Bard, Weapon Finesse, Two Weapon Fighting, Skill Focus. I haven't noticed any balance issues, but then my group aren't really minmax power-player types. The only trouble we ran into was the 3.5 Monk. We were going to use it, but didn't want to revamp the ki strike progression to work with 3.0 DR.
Escef 03-17-04, 12:37 PM	It should fit in 3.0 just fine. Just double check the spell lists, the 3.5 ranger may have stuff added/taken away that you don't agree with. If so, just use the 3.0 spell list. As for the lack of animal companions, you may want to consider giving him something in return for that, though I don't heavily recommend it.
Aphreal 03-17-04, 12:52 PM	Thanks for the advice so far. Nice to know that people have tried this without ill effects. I have a feeling that I'll use the 3.0 spell list, again for consistancy with the rest of the party. I didn't mean that he doesn't get an animal companion; he'll still have the 3.0 option of casting Animal Friendship on the trained hawk and/or dog he has right now or any other animals he picks up later, subject to the HD limit. I just meant that I don't want to give him the more familiar-like advancing 3.5 animal companion when the druid has been using the 3.0 rule since 1st level.
Illithidbix 03-17-04, 04:00 PM	Yeah, many of our campaigns seem to be a mix of 3.0 and 3.5 (for example we absolutely refuse to turn Invisibility into a combat spell and keep it's duration as 10mins/level), they work just fine. In fact one of our current games has a "base" of 3.0 but has a 3.5 ranger in it and we have had no problems with either balance or conceptualisation. (He mainly uses a blow pipe of all weapons... rather amusingly able to cause 5 points of damage with it because of taking human as his favoured enemy, although we think a better term is “studied race”, since the whole animosity thing has been downplayed in 3.5)