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Here's some stuff I'll be including in my next game, I'm curious what you're allowing (and if it requires any conversion).
PRC
Jaunter (Expedition to the Demonweb Pits)
Malconvoker (Complete Scoundrel)
I intend to go through my books on my shelf and cherrypick feats and spells as well, but I haven't dont that yet.
So what do you allow from 3.5? Or conversely, if you're one of those people who allows nearly everything, what DONT you allow?
I was allowing the Forceful Personality feat which allowed a character to use his Cha modifier in place of his Wis modifier on Will saving throws. Changed my mind when Wis became the "dump" stat for every character a specific player would make.
I will allow anything from 3.5 so long as I give it a quick one-over. As DM, I've used some of the combat style feats from various splat books. One I remember was Spinning Halberd. Though, if you compare that against Anvil of Thunder, you can definitely see a difference in "balance."
Edit: Oh, Oversized Two-Weapon Fighting. I always allow that one.
Here's some stuff I'll be including in my next game, I'm curious what you're allowing (and if it requires any conversion).
PRC
Jaunter (Expedition to the Demonweb Pits)
Malconvoker (Complete Scoundrel)I intend to go through my books on my shelf and cherrypick feats and spells as well, but I haven't dont that yet.
So what do you allow from 3.5? Or conversely, if you're one of those people who allows nearly everything, what DONT you allow?
To be honest, nothing. And in the games I play in, none of my friends ask either.
3.5 material generally comes with years of unmitigated and unchecked power creep, and a great deal if it is just flat out substantially better than Pathfinder options. Our general consensus is that there is more than enough "cool options" available within just official Pathfinder material to make bringing 3.5e stuff in not worth the risk.
That's just my personal group's consensus, YMMV, opinions, yadda yadda.
To determine if something would be allowed, the best way to do it is to compare it to the closest Pathfinder equivalent. If it's just flat out better in all ways, then it shouldn't be allowed. If the same feat exists already, a 3.5 version should never be allowed. For example, there is no reason to ever allow 3.5e power attack. Feats like Monkey Grip also have no place in Pathfinder, as it's just flat out better than comparable options (though I really am hoping for Titan Mauler errata soon...)
As a funny story though, in a 3.5e game I was once allowed to research 3.0 haste as a 5th level spell, and it was still grossly overpowered.
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To be honest, nothing. And in the games I play in, none of my friends ask either.
3.5 material generally comes with years of unmitigated and unchecked power creep, and a great deal if it is just flat out substantially better than Pathfinder options. Our general consensus is that there is more than enough "cool options" available within just official Pathfinder material to make bringing 3.5e stuff in not worth the risk.
I agree. That's why I won't allow just ANY 3.5 material. And I've been allowing few to no 3.5 rules in my past games as well. But I've run a few games with Pathfinder + Forgotten Realms (it was an FR campaign). And I've allowed monkey grip (which is weaker than power attack after a certain point) - I may have raised the prereqs on that one to make them have to wait a while longer to take it. I think I worked out what BAB Powerattack and Monkey grip were the same power level, and then raised the prereqs to be around there (slightly lower since it doesn't scale.)
But I'm starting to want more than pathfinder has, want options that aren't in pathfinder, and starting to want more options I'd use. I have another thread on the board talking about how in many of the PF books I've got on my shelf, there are too many trap options. things so bad nobody ever takes them, or takes them once and regrets it until they get rid of the character or the GM lets them swap it out, because its so weak/useless/whatever. So I'm wanting a more in my pathfinder, and I'm wanting it to be less Pathfinder, and more "My Ideal d20 game" which happens to have more pathfinder in it than anything else.
To determine if something would be allowed, the best way to do it is to compare it to the closest Pathfinder equivalent. If it's just flat out better in all ways, then it shouldn't be allowed. If the same feat exists already, a 3.5 version should never be allowed. For example, there is no reason to ever allow 3.5e power attack. Feats like Monkey Grip also have no place in Pathfinder, as it's just flat out better than comparable options (though I really am hoping for Titan Mauler errata soon...)
Yeah, Thats the basic process I follow too. Though in addition to comparing it to the most similar feat, I also compare it to the good feats you can get at that level as well in the core book. That way, if the closest feat in pathfinder is really weak, I can tell, and I have an upper-limit to compare it to. Sometimes this involves more math than I'd like.
I was hoping for some good suggestions, so I could have a decent list before I start combing through all my 3.5 books.
As a funny story though, in a 3.5e game I was once allowed to research 3.0 haste as a 5th level spell, and it was still grossly overpowered.
That is kindof funny. At least it wasnt 2e haste, where you get an extra turn, but age a year.
There are a few Eberron feats I like to include, but they get revised to fit with PF feats, if they seem to build on each other. Most of the ones I really consider are from Monte's Arcana Evolved.
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The iterative attacks/weapon speed system from "Player's Guide to Fighters and Barbarians" (a supplement for the Scarred Lands setting).
A lot of spells from a number of sources, mostly The Complete Book of Eldritch Might and Relics and Rituals I and II (the latter are Scarred Lands supplents).
Stuff about the drow from The Tome of Drow Lore and Ecyclopedia Arcane: Drow Magic (both by Mongoose).
Stuff about werewolves from The Complete Guide to Werewolves (Goodman Games).
The political debate system from Dynasties and Demagogues (Penumbra Publishing).
Monsters from a boatload of books.
Whooops, forgot the rules from Heroes of Battle to manage mass warfare.
As I'am running a Planescape campaign, I allow the following in my games :
- Spells and prestige classes from the Manual of Planes
- Spells, feats, prestige classes from the Book of Exalted Deeds
- Spells, prestiges classes and some races (bariaur and blarel) from the Planar Handbook
- Feats and prestige classes from the 2 Fiendish Codex
- Justiciar (prestige class) from Complete Warrior (great for Mercykiller character) and Dervish
No other horrible Complete stuff
Well, I run Eberron with pathfinder, which of course is a bit of a conversion nightmare. But I guess its sort of worth it to get to play the system I like best in the world I like best. Sadly there will never be a Pathfinder Guide to Eberron. Stupid intellectual property laws getting in the way of my gaming convenience.
Additionally I generally discourage but allow any prestige classes that a player sets their heart on, but I put the onus of converting it on the player. Then when they spend hours converting, I spend a few minutes revising away all of the unbalanced/unpathfinder goodies they left themselves and we're good to go.
I recently had a back-and-forth with a player who really wanted to play an inquisitor, and really wanted to use the prestige class from the complete divine. I thought this was a stupid hassle because the APG already has a fully detailed core inquisitor class for pathfinder. Then I took a good hard look at the APG inquistor and decided that it was terrible so I helped him convert the 3.5 PrC.
The Practiced Spellcaster feat was always incredibly helpful. Especially since my players tend to be fightery-heavy with only dips into spellcasting classes. It always helped a bit to have that available, just to even up things like duration, area of effect, etc.
I am still shocked it is not in any Pathfinder book. I certainly have complained enough about it.
There are one or two other feats, healing feats, from Complete Divine, that one of my players has carried over from a 3.5 character. They might have equivalents now, but I've been lazy about checking.
Really hard to say, actually I do not allow any 3.5 material except for inspiration, like converting monsters from 3.5 (beholders, mindflayers, some demons/devils and others), but I am willing to adapt most anything after some conversion if a player needs it to make a concept work.
I'd like to use skill tricks from complete scoundrel.
That is all I can think of right now, while there seems to be alot of material for 3.5 I always considered relatively little of it to be viable for actual play where PF has alot of usable crunch stuffed in the books. The APG is simply amazing and worth 4 or 5 books of 3.5's completes in crunch, and done better at that, even UM and UC top those books by far while there were chapters in both I was not interested in (Words of Power, Firearms).
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"No im sorry but I need to pull the plug on your frenzied berserker, you can remake him using a different PRC or archetype of make a new character."
If i had players that were not ok with my rule of "I'll pull the plug if i don't like it" Then i would be strict with everything. But since they are I let them try anything.
This is a really interesting approach I've never seen taken before. I've had enough players give me a "you can take away/houserule the feats I took when you pry them from my cold dead hands" attitude that I try to assume they're all going to act like that nowadays, so I try to plan it in such a way that I know how things are going to interact before I let players take them.
I may add in a "and if you're willing to count it as a playtest and possibly have the feat/spell/whatever nerfed or replaced, you can bring other materials to my attention and say what you'd like to take, and I may allow them."
Yeah, I really like the 3.5 version of this feat.
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Monsters - I have hundreds of d20/3.X monster book PDFs. And most of them still work perfectly well with PFRPG, with minor tweaks.
Advemtures - Hell, even Paizo has four APs, about two dozen modules, and a dozen supplements for 3.5. If I'm not going to ignore those, why should I ignore the wealth of other great
Select few sourcebooks - I cherry pick a few books that I let in with only minor tweaks to make them PFRPG-compatible. A good example would be The Worst of Grimtooth's Traps...nobody should be restricted to the boring traps of the Core Rules.
Inspiration - If it exists in 3.X (or outside of 3.X) then I can draw inspiration from it, even if I discard all the mechanical bits altogether.
Some spells from the spell compendium (I loved a lot of the smaller teleportation spells like baelful transposition).
A number of magic items from the magic items compendium are still in regular use at my table was well.
I still use tome of battle but fairly infrequently.
Skill tricks from complete scoundrel - I loved these relatively minor but very flavorful and fun tricks.
Cherry picked feats and options from various sources though that is happening less and less now adays.
I always liked Greater mage armor.
Like mage armor, but third level and adds +6
I also really liked the reserve spell feats. Basically take a feat to get an at will spell a ility that has some perquisites and some caveats.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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I always liked Greater mage armor.
Like mage armor, but third level and adds +6
Just allow Empower to work on fixed numeric bonuses, problem solved ;-)
(Seriously, is a 4th level spell that gives a +6 to an attribute that game breaking? Or a 8th level heal that tops out at 275? Really?)
What I 'miss' from D&D and would allow would be a lot of the fluff. CHangelings (working on my own version with different fluff) Warforged (easily explained, from Numeria to Alkenstar and beyond)* I used to miss duskblades, but I made my own stabracadabra, and I have the magus and vanguard now to draw from.
And psionics of course, but Dreamscarred has me covered.
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