Pathfinder Compatibility?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Hello all. Sorry if this has been asked before and/or numerous times, but a (quick) search didn't show anything in the last couple of years so felt I should ask fresh.

I'm cleaning house...making room for all of the indie games I've bought into over the last decade plus and I think it's time to let go of my MASSIVE amount of D&D 3E, 3.5, and 3/3.5 OGL books.

So I'm looking to sell them (not advertising here) and was going to market to Pathfinder players/GMs as well as D&D.

I DO NOT want to falsely advertise that compatibility. So I'm hear to ask you experts if that is still the case or what kind of qualifiers I should put in my sale notice regarding compatibility with Pathfinder?

Thanks for any and all help on this matter.

Chris

The Exchange

You'll probably get vastly different opinions on that. Mine is that it has never been very difficult to convert 3.X material to Pathfinder, and I don't see that this has really changed over the years. What might have changed though is that a lot of options has already been brought to Pathfinder through official Paizo or through 3PP means. For example I cannot imagine that a Pathfinder player would rather use a 3.5 version of the Psionics rules when they can use the stuff brought to us by Dreamscarred Press.

This said I know that there is 3.X stuff out there I'd probably still would spend money on, but that has more to do with me giving in to my collector urges.


Personally I would consider almost all of 3.X to be incompatible with Pathfinder. Mathematically and mechanically it will technically work, but much of 3.X material is too strong by comparison (or much too weak). Usually the stuff that my players wanted to use was the stuff that was broken before.

Don't try to sell it as anything to do with Pathfinder. People are generally familiar with what 3.X books are/were. They can decide if they think it is compatible with Pathfinder.

Honestly, you might consider checking on ebay what the books are going for (last time I checked it wasn't that much). Unless you can convince someone to pay for shipping, you might actually find that it's not worth it to sell them. The price I saw when last I looked was about $30, but shipping costs could be half of that.


Thanks for the reply and thoughts WormysQueue!

The items I'd be selling are less rules supplements as they would be new settings (Nyambe: African Adventures or Wheel of Time for example) or the many great supplements of AEG & Mongoose Publishing with tons of new feats, spells, weapons & gear, and really just tons of cool and varied options to add to a game for all the varied tastes out there.

So then it would likely be okay to put a note on compatibility for Pathfinder players/GMs that it's compatible with a little effort?


Claxon wrote:

Personally I would consider almost all of 3.X to be incompatible with Pathfinder. Mathematically and mechanically it will technically work, but much of 3.X material is too strong by comparison (or much too weak). Usually the stuff that my players wanted to use was the stuff that was broken before.

Don't try to sell it as anything to do with Pathfinder. People are generally familiar with what 3.X books are/were. They can decide if they think it is compatible with Pathfinder.

Honestly, you might consider checking on ebay what the books are going for (last time I checked it wasn't that much). Unless you can convince someone to pay for shipping, you might actually find that it's not worth it to sell them. The price I saw when last I looked was about $30, but shipping costs could be half of that.

Thank you for your thoughts. I'll likely be selling local, so shipping shouldn't be a concern.

I also have no plans to advertise the books AS Pathfinder books...just that anyone can use the OGL material for their Pathfinder games. But having never read through Pathfinder proper, I didn't want to over sell on the compatibility if the game had changed enough to make conversion difficult.

I know I was a HUGE fan of the OGL back in the day with so vary many options for bringing at least ideas and concepts over from one game to another, if not the direct item in full. I went a little nuts and ended up with about two full bookcases of varied OGL products. Time to let them go as my tastes have moved on to other RPG systems. [Okay...won't be able to let ALL of them go as some still hold a special place in my heart...like Dragonlance's last RPG showing...or for the hilarious novelty like Macho Women with Guns and Solid!]

I definitely know that I won't get what I paid for these books, which is sad because most have had a single read through and then sat on a shelf in Near Mint condition all this time. But it is what it is. I need the space, I won't likely use them again, and I'd rather get them into the hands of folks that might enjoy them than let them sit in my basement for my inheritors or a flood to clear them out.

The Exchange

Chaos Mage wrote:
But having never read through Pathfinder proper, I didn't want to over sell on the compatibility if the game had changed enough to make conversion difficult.

Technically, you can simply plug 'n' play most 3.X/d20 rules option into Pathfinder without having to worry that it won't work on a mechanical level. Balance might be an issue, though the worst offender on that front is still the Core Rules and as the power floor of Pathfinder has been lifted up a bit, I'd be more worried about 3.x options being relatively weak compared to Pathfinder.

This said I agree with Claxon that you probably don't needadvertising that compatibility much, because the people potentially interested in those books might know 3.X quite well, and if they play Pathfinder, they'll have their own stance on how problematic conversion is.

Quote:
I know I was a HUGE fan of the OGL back in the day with so vary many options for bringing at least ideas and concepts over from one game to another, if not the direct item in full.

Same here, and the good thing is that this didn't end with Pathfinder. Quite the opposite, as the OGL movement is still in full swing, with new awesome offerings nearly on a daily base. Which might make it difficult to sell your books to Pathfinder players that didn't play 3.X before, because there is so much to find in the Pathfinder universe, that it's basically not worth to look at older editions only to have to put some work into it to run it in Pathfinder, when you'll never be able to use all the things that are already Pathfinder.

I'm not saying that to discourage you in any way. As you mentioned Mongoose Publishing, I still like their Quintessential and Slayers series and would say that you can find a lot of inspiration in there even for a Pathfinder game. But just to be clear: I say that as someone that regularly uses 2E books together with Pathfinder, so using 3.X books is really not a big deal for me. I might be the exception, though.


I find 3.x and pathfinder to be highly compatible, and actually plan to run a mix & match campaign as soon as I can manage planning the scenarios for smooth progression of the characters... I think I'll use the 3.5 XPprogression for character levels, as it is most logical, but of course for thes classes and PrC that are in PF, I'll use that version, as more beneficial to the players, similarly, I'll use the 1 feat/odd level progression from PF as more interesting... and if the characters puree my giants when I find them strong enough to do that story arc, well, so be it.


I run a combination of Pathfinder and 3.5 without taking much effort to convert one to the other and it works very well.

The back cover of the Pathfinder Core Rulebook advertises 3.5 compatibility.


This is exactly what I needed to know folks. Thanks so much!

Enjoy your games!

:)


I pull 3.5 stuff into my Pathfinder campaign all the time. I usually don't bother converting much, other than to bring monster stats in line with it CR according to Table 1-1: Monster Statistics by CR (Bestiary, p. 291). As written, most 3.5 monster stats come out 1 or 2 CRs below their Pathfinder CR equivalents.

(For that matter, that table is really useful for converting monsters from other editions of the game, such as AD&D or 5E.)

So... the PCs in my Pathfinder game have fought umber hulks, carrion crawlers, and a beholder or two...

That said, I don't in general allow players to use 3.5 PC options without specific permission regarding the particular individual option. I keep a list of allowed 3.5 options on my campaign website. (e.g. I allow the "Practiced Spellcaster" feat from Complete Arcane, and include a paraphrase of the rules on my site.)

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