Are Paizo adventure paths and PFS scenarios compatibles with DND 3.5?
The Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, and Legacy of Fire Adventure Paths, along with Season 0 of Pathfinder Society, were originally written for D&D 3.5 (indicated by the "OGL" in the product title). Since Pathfinder is based off of the 3.5 ruleset, you could "roll back" the rules, but Pathfinder RPG characters and creatures are more powerful than their 3.5 counterparts.
Thanks a lot for the quick response!
The first pathfinder APs (council of thieves, kingmaker, serpent's skull) are probably "easy" to convert, the APs after them tend to include quite a lot of things that are pathfinder specific and there aren't 3.5 counterparts, surely you can still "convert" them by changing them but in my opinion the work is too much.
In the same vein there a lot of modules released by Paizo that were written for 3.5 (and most of them are on the discount price of 2$) and also the "first" modules released for the pathfinder system are in the same boat as the first APs.
The Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, and Legacy of Fire Adventure Paths, along with Season 0 of Pathfinder Society, were originally written for D&D 3.5 (indicated by the "OGL" in the product title). Since Pathfinder is based off of the 3.5 ruleset, you could "roll back" the rules, but Pathfinder RPG characters and creatures are more powerful than their 3.5 counterparts.
By 3.5 OGL rules, a Pathfinder creature or NPC is usually 1 or 2 CRs higher than its PFRPG CR would indicate. This disparity tends to increase with level.
Your best bet would be to look at how the creature or NPC's PFRPG stats compare with the monster creation rules on pp 295-302 of the 3.5 Monster Manual, and adjust the PF monster's CR upward accordingly.
And, then you'll need to come up with 3.5 equivalents of some of the Pathfinder-specific rules.
A down-and-dirty way to do it would be to just reduce the PF creatures' hit points by 20% or so, and either ignore PF-specific rules or make them up on the fly. Or, run the PFRPG adventures straight, but make sure your 3.5 PCs be at least two levels higher than the PF game calls for.
Either way, running an adventure written for Pathfinder with 3.5 rules is going to be a bit of a challenge. The systems are just different enough to make running a game written for one in the other ruleset challenging.
Honestly, it's easier to run a 3.5 adventure with PF rules on-the-fly.
Good luck!
There is the difference in CR, yes, but that is relatively simple to compensate for. The muddled spot becomes CMB and CMD, but, again, simple to deal with.
You can ignore CMD and CMB if you're running a PF creature in a 3.5 game. Just use the more-complicated 3.5 Grapple, Bull Rush, Overrun, etc rules.
Another thing you have to think about are the combined skills, but that's pretty easy: Just ignore making sure that skill ranks are mathematically correct, and give the creature the same rank in the uncombined skills.
e.g. A PF creature has Acrobatics +4, Stealth +6 and Perception +5. In 3.5, give it Balance +4, Hide +6, Jump +4, Listen +5, Move Silently +6, Search +5, Spot +5, and Tumble +4.
You can also give it Use Rope equal to its PF CMB score.
That said, the Pathfinder Core Rulebook is reasonably priced and includes all the information you need to run the game except for monster stats. (It's basically the Player's Handbook and DMG in one guide.) All of the rulebooks are available online at Paizo's website (the PRDs) including the monsters, so you could even run the game without rulebooks or with just the Core Rules.
I originally got into Pathfinder because I couldn't find any 3.5 books in print. The rules are comparable and in my opinion an improvement. With the exception of Mythic Adventures which needs some overhauling. ;)
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theres a lot of reasons i got into pathfinder, the two biggest 1) the art is Miles ahead of 3.5 and 2) the Writing is smarter:)