Help! Having d20 edition lag...

[KingsTears]

Several of our "new" friends used to play d20, as did my husband and I... about 10 years ago. We all have fond memories of wild adventures and good times hanging out. After playing a Pathfinder event at the local game store on Free RPG Day, I've decided maybe we should quit reminiscing and actually PLAY.

We all have old 3.5 books (many, many books), and I'll probably homebrew a campaign setting. Still, I don't want to overlook the improvements in the game that have occurred in the last 10 years. But the product landscape is now so alien...

There are a number of character and monster generators and advancers that I've looked over. If I use them, what are the differences that I should expect to see? What would you recommend to the olden gamers in terms of "must haves"?

Thanks!

[Tinalles]

Hmm. To get a good feel for what changes Pathfinder has wrought, I would suggest this strategy: get a short, published module and run it in one or two sessions.

I would specifically recommend the module Crypt of the Everflame for this purpose, for these reasons:

1) It's fairly short; it can be run in one long session or two more reasonable ones.

2) The module was specifically designed for GMs who are not familiar with the changes between 3.5 and Pathfinder; it has helpful sidebars throughout giving explanations of what's changed and how things work.

3) PCs start at level 1 and end at level 2, which should help minimize the amount of rules players need to digest.

4) It's a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl, so your players will likely be on familiar ground in terms of what they're expected to do. That leaves them more attention to give to figuring out how things work.

5) The PDF, at ten bucks, is fairly cheap; and you can extract the images of NPCs and such and print them out separately from the rest of the module. It's very nice to say "You look around a corner and see THIS", flash a picture of some nasty undead critter, and hear your players saying "Wow, it's like the skeletons, only WAY grosser."

Lastly, you and your players can use the the Pathfinder Reference Document for free. It has all the core mechanics plus the monsters from the bestiary. So there's no need to spring for a pricey book when all you want to do is test the waters to see how the temperature has changed.

[Dark_Mistress]

The only things I would say is a must have is the core book and bestiary. Obviously if you have old 3.x DnD books you could use them. But I would recommend giving Pathfinder a chance. It fixed some of the issues with 3.x DnD while still staying more or less the same. As in the game still feels the same even if their are changes that make some things better.

The adventure listed above is a solid starting one, it was the one made when the core rulebook just came out. If the price of the core book is a bit much for you to take the plunge. If you don't mind reading online you can get the PDF for 10 bucks(in fact all the hardback Pathfinder RPG books are only 10 bucks for the PDF) and check it out that way.

I would high recommend checking out Pathfinder Beginner Boxed set but it doesn't come out till Oct.

As far as computer aids and stuff, i personally never use them so I couldn't tell you which ones are good or not. There is a lot of good free or cheap character sheets you can get here on Paizo to print out, which is what I do.

Hopefully you find this helpful. If you have any specific questions feel free to ask. Also welcome to the boards and Pathfinder. :)

[Urath DM]

There is also the 3.5 to Pathfinder Conversion Guide... kind of surprised no one mentioned that yet :) although if your past experience is with "unrevised" D&D 3rd Edition.. you may need to hunt for a copy of the free conversion guide for that, as well. Most of what would be helpful is probably in the linked guide here, though.