Post/Author/DateTime	Post
SneakyPetey 02-09-07, 06:24 PM	Okay I've been gaming for twenty years, right? The last 13 of those years have been spent with the same group of guys who utterly refuse to make the switch to 3.5e. I have no complaints, we have fun. But a couple of us have purchased the 3.5e core books and are ready to actually use them! Since I now find myself with more free time on my hands (no need to bore you with the details), I've decided to join another group. I'm not abandoning the first group, mind you. We only get together once per month and this other group only gets together once per month, so there should be no problems there... Anyhoo, does anyone out there have any advice for a old gamer who's new to 3.5e? How about advice from anyone who's played in multiple groups. I never have. Do you see any problems there? Thanks in advance! :D
Keiichi_m 02-09-07, 06:28 PM	You roll high now. other then that, just be willing to learn and ask the DM some questions before and after play.
Serrin 02-09-07, 06:35 PM	Roleplay more. 3.5 is supposedly more about the story and less about breaking into dungeons like a primitive SWAT team and crushing everything into your path. I find that's only a little true.
Matthew77 02-09-07, 08:07 PM	Did you use Minis and battlemaps before? 3.5 pretty much assumes that you do, and if you haven't used them before, it can make combat seem more like a wargame. If you've got a good DM you can still do all the fun stuff like leaping off tables and swinging from ropes, but having the minis in front of you sometimes makes combat seem less fluid. But it does take care of having to ask "so where's the Ogre again" every round. Feats and Prestige classes are immensely fun to play with, and I appreciate the attempts to make the rules more standardized. Sometimes I felt like everything in AD&D was an exception :) In the end, its the players that determine the quality of the game, not the ruleset, so don't stress the change-over. My only advice for multiple campaigns is don't make your characters too similar in both campaigns.
Far_Traveler 02-09-07, 09:04 PM	Look up the conversion booklet, it highlights the main changes to the mechanics, but otherwise just roleplay more. You may know the differences, but highlighting the differences in your mind will make it easier.
SneakyPetey 02-13-07, 02:02 PM	Thanks for the advice, folks. I just met with the DM yesterday to create my character. What an experience! It's quite a bit different that 2e! It's an Eberron campaign, and I took a Shifter Ranger. Very cool stuff! :D The DM used a point-buy system, so rolling high was not an issue. My character is very middle-of-the-road in almost every aspect. He ended up with a 16 Dex, which is good because he's going to specialize in ranged combat. We spoke for a long time about the differences in skills and combat mechanics. I was a good player and read the PHB as much as possible last weekend, so my new DM was fairly impressed at how much I actually understood. The skills still threw me for a bit of a loop, though... Overall, I'm very impressed with the changes. 3.5e is much more complicated in terms of characters skills and feats, but there are a lot of standardizations that make the game easier to understand. I like that combat is more technical. I also like that different character classes can take the same skills. No, I've never used a battlemat or minis. When I DM 2e, we lay everything out on a white board. I know what the actual distances are from my encounter maps, but it's nowhere near as accurate as the battlemaps and minis are. I've always tried to stress roleplaying and I don't see how the new rules do a whole lot to accentuate roleplaying... Although I thought it was neat that there were a list of Shifter sayings in the Races of Eberron book. The only real difference is the 3.5 books provide this kind of info for the DM, while in 1e and 2e the burden was on the DM to create that material. As far as my roleplaying skills when it comes to playing a Shifter, I've seen "Underworld" and "Underworld: Evolution" about 90 times each, so I should be okay! :D Since I've picked a Shifter and the other campaign I'll be playing in will be 2e, I highly doubt my characters will be similar... At all. I'm sure I'll have a whole slew of questions after I actually get to play this character for the first time, but the only real question that remains is... What the heck do I name him? ;) Anyone have any good Shifter names they would like to share? Thanks again!
Puca 02-13-07, 02:12 PM	Anyone have any good Shifter names they would like to share? Proteus