Here is my dilemma.... I'm a long time 2e fan. I was briefly browsing through my Fantasy Flight Games' Midnight books when I was seized with inspiration. With a great idea for a campaign brewing in my head, I launched into my sales pitch to convince my brother and friends to join a game. I played it a while back using a loose 2e conversion but now my brother has been pushing for us to make the leap to a new edition. He says he is tired of 2e....blasphemy, I say! Some of the Midnight books were published under 3e and some 3.5, I believe. Problem is I've never read any of the 3.5 rule books. I own the 3.0 books only cause someone gave them to me and I've never cracked the covers.
So I've bought the Pathfinder Corebook and I am currently having a staring contest with it right now. I always have to work myself up to read rules...hate rules.
If I delve into the Pathfinder book and then attempt to use the Midnight books am I gonna notice the difference? Will problems arise? Will I understand the stat blocks or will I scratch my head wondering how the FFG designers crunched the numbers. Am I better off under taking a full conversion to another system to avoid any chance of confusion?
advice would be appreciated! Thanks.
You can use 3.0 and 3.5 material in Pathfinder virtually untouched. There's some very minor changes to subsets of rules (some skills are consolidated, some hit dice changes, spell changes, etc), but Pathfinder and Midnight should be 95% or more compatible. We've been running a series of 3.5 adventures in Pathfinder without even bothering to update the monster or NPC stat blocks and it's worked out fine.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
|
These are all my personal position, bsed on translating a fair amount of material back and forth between D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. Other people will probably jump in and disagree with me.
If I delve into the Pathfinder book and then attempt to use the Midnight books am I gonna notice the difference?
Oh, yes. For two reasons: the difference between Midnight and D&D, and the difference between D&D and Pathfinder.
Playing Midnight, you're likely to skip over a lot of the changes from 3.5 to Pathfinder, because Midnight introduces its own classes and spells. You're not going to care that a half-orc sorcerer casting grease has different mechanics in D&D versus Pathfinder, because Midnight's half-orcs are very different and there is no grease spell.
The rules differences that will come to the fore when running Midnight under the Pathfinder ruleset are likely to show up in the skills lists and the combat system, particularly how different combat feats and techniques work.
Will problems arise? Will I understand the stat blocks or will I scratch my head wondering how the FFG designers crunched the numbers.
More than half will make sense. Less than everything. And some feats in a Midnight module will have the same name as feats in Pathfinder but do different things.
Am I better off under taking a full conversion to another system to avoid any chance of confusion?
That's up to you. Running Midnight according to its own rulebook, or in D&D (either 3rd Edition or 3.5), is probably your best bet.
I converted my Midnight game from 3.5 to pathfinder as soon as I got the core rule book. There where are a few hurdles to get over, and a few things that would clearly not work within the Midnight setting. But on a whole I think it’s working well, and my players are for the most part happy with the changes, the only big complain I have gotten so far is the change to exp, my players are not happy about the slower progression.
the only big complain I have gotten so far is the change to exp, my players are not happy about the slower progression.
Assuming you're using the "medium" column on the chart, there should be no noticeable change in progression speed. The numbers are very carefully balanced to be identical to the 3.5 numbers (13.3333... encounters of a level equal to yours per level).
the only big complain I have gotten so far is the change to exp, my players are not happy about the slower progression.Assuming you're using the "medium" column on the chart, there should be no noticeable change in progression speed. The numbers are very carefully balanced to be identical to the 3.5 numbers (13.3333... encounters of a level equal to yours per level).
Your correct I think the problem lies in that the numbers have changed and none of my players have bothered to do the math, witch is not a surprise really.
|
XP is no longer a resource that can be spent on anything, it just accumulates until you level.....which makes it even easier to use my favorite XP method...don't hand it out at all. Tell the party when they level :).
Agreed. There's not really any reason for the players to even know these numbers any more.
I do the XP tracking for the campaign I'm running and while I do post numbers on our forum once in awhile, I mostly just tell them when it's time to level up. We're using the fast progression so early on they were leveling a little quicker than I thought they should based on running a 3.5 AP (Crimson Throne) using the PF Beta ruleset so I slowed it down a little.
With the group at mostly 9th level now (two are just about to break into 9th level), I think the power level is still a bit higher than the 3.5 module expects. I'm feverishly working on a new Profiler sheet for PF Final that will help me with number crunching and working up new NPCs (I hope) so I can start to modify the NPCs and monsters for PF Final.
I think using 3.0 or 3.5 material with Pathfinder requires a bit of finesse. The less familiar you are with 3.0 and 3.5, the harder that will be.
For the OP, who has never played 3.0 or 3.5, you may have some difficulties converting on the fly.
For example, the skill system in Pathfinder is quite a bit different - those who played 3.5 and Pathfinder will do a quick conversion from Search to Perception in their head - you, not so much.
I think Pathfinder is a better system than either 3.0 or 3.5, however, if you are not experienced with either of those systems, I would probably play 3.0 with 3.0 adventures until you do become more comfortable.
Or buy Pathfinder specific adventures to play with Pathfinder.
Otherwise you may find it slows down gameplay - which is already going to be slow since you are learning a new system.
At least IMO.
There where are a few hurdles to get over, and a few things that would clearly not work within the Midnight setting.
Thanks for the info. Do you mind being specific about the things that would not work within the midnight setting?
I think Pathfinder is a better system than either 3.0 or 3.5, however, if you are not experienced with either of those systems, I would probably play 3.0 with 3.0 adventures until you do become more comfortable.
Most of the advice is leaning toward learning 3.0 or 3.5 first, eh?
so I'll ask another question....and one probably addressed by a couple threads I noticed earlier. Since I do own the 3.0 books and not the 3.5 and since the 3.5 books have gotten expensive of late (I haven't checked the price in a few months so if they dropped give me a heads up) is 3.0 a viable game? I read that whole Monte Cook blog which basically read that 3.5 was designed to be a cash grab.
Does that imply that 3.0 is a good system to run? Should I just bite the bullet and buy the 3.5 core books?
All but three of the books were written for 3.5 so probably the best bet is to start searching ebay.
3.0 is a decent system. Personally, I found it an improvement over 2E.
You will also find 3.0 and 3.5 are extremely similar.
I would think running a 3.5 adventure with 3.0 rules would be easier for someone unfamiliar with the rules than a 3.5 adventure with Pathfinder Rules.
So...3.5 rules are going for good money on Ebay eh? Hmmmmmm....
|
Well I started with 3.0 and honestly never switched to 3.5 I read the book and their was difference and we used some of them but I didn't think enough to buy the books again. I used both 3.0 and 3.5 stuff with little tweaking.
I am now running PFRPG and using a lot of 3.0 and 3.5 books, adventures, splat books etc. Honestly i am finding I am having to do very little tweaking. No more than I normally have to do for any RPG that has been out for awhile written by a host of different people. Aka watch out for power creep and be ready to deal with the broken extra stuff in other books.
That is just my own personal experience and IMHO view.
No more than I normally have to do for any RPG that has been out for awhile written by a host of different people. Aka watch out for power creep and be ready to deal with the broken extra stuff in other books.
That is just my own personal experience and IMHO view.
Thankfully since I am the only person who will DM and I refuse to let my players use books I haven't read and since I can devour fluff material in no time but have to gently bribe and coax myself into reading rulebooks....we usually don't end up employing a lot of the extra splat books. Power creep tends not to be a problem because I can't get to the reading necessary for the creeping....