Pathfinder and 3.5


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


I am the owner of almost every 3 and 3.5 edition rule book that was released. How interchangeable are they with PF? Easily adjusted to work with PF?

Thanks!

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16

Usually easily adaptable.

Where they overlap, Pathfinder tends to be more balanced on specific things.

Be aware that 3.5 and PF stuff can interact in VERY unusual ways due to design changes, and you will have to stomp on these.

PF relies MUCH less on prestige classes to make things viable.

Otherwise, the base foundation is much the same. you're just going to have to be careful what you integrate.

Any specific concerns?

==Aelryinth


I'd say you can stick with 3.5 rules, spells, and items, but avoid classes and do feats on a case by case basis because some feats were not carried over for a reason.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
RaFon wrote:

I am the owner of almost every 3 and 3.5 edition rule book that was released. How interchangeable are they with PF? Easily adjusted to work with PF?

Thanks!

Quite frankly, I'd throw most of them away, sell them, keep them for momentos, or throw away Pathfinder.

Things that were overpowered in 3.5 become absolutely crazy in a Pathfinder game. Some of that stuff can be used, but I'd learn the Pathfinder system reasonably well before doing so. Even things that were innocus like Cure Minor Wounds, can completely wreck the balance of a Pathfinder game.

Quite frankly though, aside from some of the magic items, there isn't a thing from 3.5 I'd use, and I still have a large collection of those books.

Sovereign Court

I would recommend to mostly focus on PF, and everything else from 3.5 on a case by case basis, cure minor wounds was removed for a good reason since in PF you can use 0 level spells at will. Right now there is so much material for PF, you can literally do everything that you ever wanted. DSP version of the Book of the Nine Sword (Path of War) and psionic (Ultimate psionic) is actually a great replacement for these 3.5 books and best of all, available on d20pfsrd.com.


And, on the other side of the fence, I happen to use 3.5, some 3.0 (certain bits that needed upgrading, like Savage Species), and Pathfinder, all rolled into one in the games I DM.

It can be messy.

Pathfinder was meant to be 'reverse compatible', back in the days when 4th came out and the rest of us 3.X types didn't want to go that way. So Paizo used it as a foundation. PF was really like 3.75 when the Core Rulebook came out, and it slowly progressed from there, building on itself and becoming its own thing.

The parts that Pathfinder 'revised' tend to be improvements, as many spells, feats, and the like were tweaked to be a bit more balanced. Gone are the days of D4 HD Wizards and D6 HD Rogues. The 'weaker' classes got upgraded. Fighters still aren't that great, but they have many more options. The Paladin, for one, got some major upgrades and is definitely a heavy-hitter. Sorcerers got improved by additional powers tied to their bloodlines. The Ranger also got some lovin too, and I prefer it in its current incarnation over the old 3rd Ed versions any day.

Pathfinder maintained the 'old' DMG prestige classes and upgraded them. They've added a few on their own since, but they don't focus on them nearly as much. Instead, they use Archetypes, which are modified versions of base classes. Using them, you can build a character much more in line with what you want early in its life, rather than having to wait until you get X of one Prestige Class and Y of another. Of course, now it might be X of one base class with A and B archetypes along with Y of another with C and D archetypes, but hey, it happens sooner, and that's what matters.

Note that many base classes, mostly the non-Core ones, never got an upgrade. While some, like the Hexblade (which is functionally replaced with the superior Magus) are no loss, others like the Dread Necromancer or Artificer may be important to you. (Fortunately, the latter one was already a high-tier class and needs no changes, but the D.N. might need some love.)

One of the major things is the "Combat Maneuver Bonus" (CMB) and "Combat Manuever Defense" (CMD). Basically, this is a To-Hit and Armor Class for all the 'special attacks' like Disarm, Grapple, Trip, and the like. Unlike 3rd, the base rule is that there is no 'opposed roll' on the Defender's part, they just have a straight CMD. The attacker rolls, adds his CMB, and if it's bigger, he wins. I find this rather irritating since it's quite possible to make a character that will always autohit in this category, so I simply use CMD-10 as a bonus on the opposed roll.

Some things are VERY different. Cantrips are infinite-use now, so the DM will have to decide what to do with pre-existing ones like Cure Minor Wounds which got removed (else everyone is fully healed after every fight) or consider the campaign-shifting implications of transitioning non-Core 3rd edition ones over. (Amaneunsis is my favorite, a Cantrip that copied X pages of script from one page to a blank one, effectively a magical copying machine. Of course, it was limited uses in 3rd. In PF, if you retain it, even the lowliest Adept or Magewright can basically serve as a living copying machine and your magical world functionally has a printing press from the get-go.)

There are many, many 3rd Ed feats, spells and magic items I wish existed in PF. Fortunately, I use both systems, so no worries.

The biggest problem of all, as hinted above, will be the unusual ways in which the two systems interact, and the horribly broken things that can result. Each version has its own cheese, and while it can be powerful on its own, it can be game-breaking when stacked together. Two base classes with specialized archetypes going into a prestige class or two to focus it? Yeah. This is something the DM will have to watch for.

Having said all that, there are a few other drawbacks as well. Pathfinder Society, for all its good traits, has caused the PF devs to establish some wonky rules to maintain balance in that system, and many of the things they make takes that into consideration. Also, some basic mechanics of the D20 system seem to have been ignored. You'll realize this when you have such situations as when you have a Vermin companion and are allowed to give it an Int boost but can't then gain skills and feats, when you are horribly limited in being able to access a flying mount at low level (and having to waste extra feats at high), when you or your familiar are disallowed feats 'just because', or when some monster uses its CR as a part of the calculations of its stats (most glaring example being Robots with Forcefields from the Iron Gods path, where the shields have Hit Points based on the Robot's CR... something that is supposed to be an abstraction).

In most cases, the DM will likely have to start small, and say that one system is the 'primary' system (usually the one the DM is most familiar with) and then allow parts from the 'secondary' system in on a case-by-case basis. Having said that, and from my experience, I'd say it's easiest to make Pathfinder the 'primary' system, simply because of its streamlined and upgraded nature.

EDIT: And note, I know 3rd much better than PF, and still say it's easier to make Pathfinder the 'primary', for whatever that's worth.


As others have said: case by case.

Some stuff works. Some stuff is crazy-powerful. Sometimes it's crazy-powerful because it was in baseline 3.5-- Sorcerer casting nine spells in one turn? Totally possible. Sometimes it's the interactions-- 3.5 didn't have anything like Spell Perfection, to my knowledge, which makes its interactions with things like Twinned Spell. On the flip side, PF has nothing like the Metamagic Shaper (might be the wrong name; it's from the Book of Erotic Fantasy and actually not focused on boinking allies or opponents) or the Incantrix, which can propel casters to hilarious new heights.


It's pretty easy to convert from one to the other.

All the numbers mean the same thing and have the same names.

There's nothing in Pathfinder that couldn't be fairly described as a house rule for 3.5 -- more frequent feats, grapple being a pre-calculated value, etc.

All in all, they're probably the two closest RPG systems I can think of.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder PF Special Edition, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

It's pretty easy to convert from one to the other.

All the numbers mean the same thing and have the same names.

There's nothing in Pathfinder that couldn't be fairly described as a house rule for 3.5 -- more frequent feats, grapple being a pre-calculated value, etc.

All in all, they're probably the two closest RPG systems I can think of.

It's always the minor differences that come back to kick you in the pants when you least expect it.

Abjurant Champion was cheese in 3.5. It's so much more so in Pathfinder.


Pathfinder and 3.5 tend to be quite interchangeable. For the most part it's not too hard to make a case-by-case ruling when discrepancies pop up. In the case of cure minor wounds, the ramifications of infinite orison castings are blatantly obvious here so it's not really a good example. You'd need to find something more borderline where the interaction isn't obviously broken.

In general Pathfinder has more powerful base classes while 3.5 has more powerful feats and prestige classes. This means combining the two rulesets tends to result in more powerful characters overall. In practice, that's not a huge deal since difference in optimization will mean you need to calibrate for your own table anyways.


LazarX wrote:
Mythic Evil Lincoln wrote:

It's pretty easy to convert from one to the other.

All the numbers mean the same thing and have the same names.

There's nothing in Pathfinder that couldn't be fairly described as a house rule for 3.5 -- more frequent feats, grapple being a pre-calculated value, etc.

All in all, they're probably the two closest RPG systems I can think of.

It's always the minor differences that come back to kick you in the pants when you least expect it.

Abjurant Champion was cheese in 3.5. It's so much more so in Pathfinder.

Right, nobody's claiming that you can just grab anything from 3.5 and drop it in Pathfinder and it won't be overpowered -- especially if it was overpowered to begin with!

What I'm saying is that conversion is usually a problem of accounting for the various features an entity has in one system, and representing those features in another system.

The fact that both games use levels, skills ranks, feats, spells, gold, and hit points and more in common, that makes conversion "easy".

So, if you're going to jump from 3.5 to just about anything else, Pathfinder is arguably the closest.

The results are not guaranteed to be balanced, because both games have significant complications with respect to balance... but the actual conversion of stats meaningfully is super easy.


3.5 stuffs are like PF stuffs, you have to consider them on case by case.

Grand Lodge

There are many fan-made conversions available out there too.

Liberty's Edge

I haven't really tried it yet, but it seems like a lot of 3.5 modules (e.g. from Dragon) can be run in Pathfinder with only on-the-fly alterations. You'd want to use them as if they were 1 level lower than the actual module, and you might have an odd balance issue, but if only Pathfinder options are available to players, I don't think it'd be too tough.

Opening 3.5 options to Pathfinder players, or vice-versa, though, would definitely require vetting.


A lot of good material cannot be carried over for OGL reasons. Monsters, spells, and magic items are the things I personally am most open to allowing in PF games.

But be careful with everything else.

Liberty's Edge

Uh . . . you can still use (for example) mind flayers in your home games, I think. Just don't go publishing adventures with them.


Check for yourself if its easy enough for your taste

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