Tome 3.0 compatibility?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Since a lot of people like 3.0 better than 3.5, are there any serious barriers to using the Tome material with the 3.0 books?

[Kaelik]

Since a lot of people like 3.0 better than 3.5, are there any serious barriers to using the Tome material with the 3.0 books?

Well, to be clear. No one actually likes the 3.0 books better than the 3.5 ones.

It's the rules in the PHB. And still I bet everyone could agree that DR/+1 or +2 is dumb.

The 3.5 splatbooks are pretty much in general just as good as the 3.0 ones, but more expansive. Some in each edition are shitty, but basically the editions are 99% compatible, so to answer your main question:

No, there is no problem using the 3.0 rules or materials in a Tome game.

[Lago PARANOIA]

The 3.5 splatbooks are pretty much in general just as good as the 3.0 ones

Kaelik, why don't you name the 3.5E splatbooks that were better than their 3.0E counterparts?

We know for a fact that as shitty as Defenders of the Faith was, Complete Divine manages to eclipse the suckage in that book by a comfortable margin. Player's Guide to Faerun was flat-out worse than the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, having less useful setting material and more overpowered material. Yes, we lost Persistent Spell, but we gained Incantatrix. Complete Warrior took Sword and Fist--probably the best book for fighter-types--out into the backyard and shot it, handing out nothing but nerfs and a ridiculous version of Frenzied Berserker because that smirking rat bastard Andy lurves his dwarven barbarbian/fighter. Tome and Blood was a by-and-large useless, but harmless book, which automatically makes it better than Complete Arcane/Mage. I will say that the Complete Adventurer was better than Loot and Lute, however, which is a depressingly low hurdle to clear.

Use the 3.5E splatbooks if you must, but if there's ever a conflict between new material and old material go with the 3.0E stuff. I think that the only useful changes done by a 3.5E splatbook to 3.0E splatbook material that wasn't undone by future changes (like Persistent Spell) were the Hospitaler, Knight of the Chalice, and Eye of Gruumsh PrCs.

[Username17]

Yeah, gotta say that most of the 3e source books are higher quality than their 3.5 counterparts. 3.5 books are longer, but in many cases this additional length is filled up with neither useful crunch nor fluff.

I like a couple of the tactical feats, but all of them together don't equal the loss of Knockdown. Even the exotic weapon list is worse. No number of exotic versions of martial weapons that do an extra point of damage can make up for the loss of the Harpoon.

Complete Warrior is just incredibly bad. Sword and Fist was a much better book, despite all its very real problems. Even the fact that it is shorter was advantageous in that it took less time to read.

-Username17

[ggroy]

[Kaelik]

No number of exotic versions of martial weapons that do an extra point of damage can make up for the loss of the Harpoon.

Is there any particular reason that the 3.0 harpoon is so much better than the 3.5 one?

As for Lago:

I don't know what you are smoking. I'm not talking about a specific book and all it's contents compared against a different book. I'm talking about the collective material.

I don't care if Complete Arcane isn't as good as ... The magic book that I've never heard you mention.

If Cold + Hot + Wet + Tome of Battle + Completes (including the second series which actually has some very nice stuff) + Races provides comparable good material to everything produced in 3.0, then that's pretty fucking much the same.

So Complete Warrior is worse than Swords, Tome of Battle + Complete Warrior + Hot + Cold is probably just as good if not better than 3.0 warriors.

[ggroy]

[Lago PARANOIA]

I don't know what you are smoking. I'm not talking about a specific book and all it's contents compared against a different book. I'm talking about the collective material.

First of all, where 3.5E material conflicts with 3.0E material, the 3.5E change 95% of the time tends to be worse. So our hatred of 3.5E doesn't tend to be just the core books but also how 3.5E skullraped good 3.0E material. There is no excuse, and I mean no excuse for what they did to the Order of the Bow Initiate or the Sacred Exorcist.

Secondly, I also don't agree with the contention that 3.5E gave us more useful books even when you ignore the good material it took a dump on. Here's what 3.0E gave us:

Miniatures Handbook
Sword and Fist
Defenders of the Faith (deserves to be on this list for nothing more than making paladins playable even if it gave us the Hospitaler)
Arms and Equipment Guide
Oriental Adventures
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
Monster Manual II
Epic-Level Handbook
Stronghold Builder's Guide (I don't like it, but everyone else does so I'm putting it on the list)
Book of Challenges
Book of Vile Darkness
Manual of the Planes

Good books of 3.5E:
Book of Nine Swords
Complete Adventurer
Spell Compendium
It's Hot Outside
It's Cold Outside
Heroes of Horror
Players Handbook II

Yeah, and you can see how you can have a book like Oriental Adventures or the Book of Challenges which is mostly good compared to Player's Handbook II or Heroes of Horror which only has a couple of good things in them. I didn't include 3.0E material if it just had one or two really good ideas in it (like Masters of the Wild) but I did set the bar this low for 3.5E material. But even with this low standard 3.5E just doesn't match up.

3.0E produced a greater volume of usable material than 3.5E.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, and you can see how you can have a book like Oriental Adventures or the Book of Challenges which is mostly good compared to Player's Handbook II or Heroes of Horror which only has a couple of good things in them. I didn't include 3.0E material if it just had one or two really good ideas in it (like Masters of the Wild) but I did set the bar this low for 3.5E material. But even with this low standard 3.5E just doesn't match up.

3.0E produced a greater volume of usable material than 3.5E.

Actually, you just lied your ass off.

First of all, the Book of Challenges has exactly zero usable material. It's a book of applications of existing material. And Arms and Equipment is straight up 100% inferior to MiC in every fucking way, so I'm going to assume all your other entries are equally suspect.

Second, you cheat like a mother by including MM II, but not III IV and V, all 3.5. Or Complete Arcane/Mage/Champion/Divine, all of which introduce good material, not to mention Races books and Libris Mortis/Lords of Madness/Draconomicon.

EDIT: Further bullshit from you:

Planar Handbook is pretty much identical to Manual of the Planes, but apparently it's shitty because... It's 3.5 and so you irrationally hate it?

Epic level handbook? WTF? Really, that's your 3.0 book full of good content?

Forgotten Realms Campaign setting: So you mean that 90% identical Players Guide is shit, but FRCS is magically full of awesome? How the fuck is that again? They have the same content.

[ggroy]

[Gelare]

EDIT: Further bullshit from you:

Planar Handbook is pretty much identical to Manual of the Planes, but apparently it's shitty because... It's 3.5 and so you irrationally hate it?

I'd just like to say that the Manual of the Planes is awesome, I would (and did) buy it only for the fluff, and it is a great thing to just flip through at one's leisure to set up ideas for the future. Planar Handbook, on the other hand, was, in fact, balls.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Actually, you just lied your ass off.

As we have established in previous threads, when Kaelik accuses someone of lying what he really means is 'You've said something I don't like so I'm going to try to be Billy Badass to intimidate you into changing your point'.

Whatever, little boy.

Second, you cheat like a mother by including MM II, but not III IV and V, all 3.5. Or Complete Arcane/Mage/Champion/Divine, all of which introduce good material, not to mention Races books and Libris Mortis/Lords of Madness/Draconomicon.

As I've said previously in this very thread, the 3.5E counterparts are worse than the 3.0E books.

Complete Arcane/Mage? Worse than Tome and Blood because they introduce overpowered material while the worst thing in Tome in Blood was that stupid Spellpool wizard. Overpowered is worse than harmless, so CA/M loses.

Defenders of the Faith is on the whole a bad book, don't get me wrong. There's just no excuse for the Hospitaler and the Contemplative even though it made the paladin/LG multiclass playable. But Complete Divine is just that much worse than Defenders of the Faith.

Worst thing in Defenders of the Faith? The Hospitaler. Worst thing in Complete Divine? The Ur-Priest.

I haven't read Complete Champion in awhile, I just got a general feeling of suckage from it. I'm prepared to be proven wrong by a non-Kaelik person, however.

Monster Manual II is just better than the MM3 and IV. Same reason why Monster Manual I is better than Monster Manual II. I don't know why this is surprising; people use their best ideas for monsters in the previous books and the later shit is diminishing returns. That's why Elder Evils and Fiend Folio is a pile of worthless crap. If they had been published near the beginning of 3E's lifecycle they would've turned out better.

I have Races of the Wild. It sucks. The only memorable things it does is power up elven wizards and introduce a PrC where clerics can snag druid spells. Yeah, that's a real good book.

Races of Stone doesn't have anything good in it, either. Yes, most of the material in it is harmless and that racially insulting Goliath race gets used in 4E, but it doesn't have anything good in it.

Draconomicon... you mean that dragon-wanking book where druids get Dragon Wildshape? Yeah, no. My knowledge of Draconomicon is pretty limited, I admit, so I'm willing to listen to a counterargument why it's any good. But it's a dragon fanboy book so my initial attitude towards the book is 'skeptical'.

First of all, the Book of Challenges has exactly zero usable material. It's a book of applications of existing material.

So to the DM who pastes this material into the campaign, what exactly is the difference?

It's not just a book of ideas. It's set up in such a way so you can paste adventures like the Evil Magic Item shop directly into a campaign, down to the bugbear magician. And as far as ideas go, this is a subjective opinion of mine but the ideas were genuinely cool. So it gets the nod from me.

Planar Handbook is pretty much identical to Manual of the Planes, but apparently it's shitty because... It's 3.5 and so you irrationally hate it?

I never said the Planar Handbook was shitty. That's an out-and-out strawman from you, which isn't surprising, since I can tell from your post you tend to read things that you want.

I will not give the Planar Handbook any credit as a good 3.5E book because like you said it's pretty much identical. The Inevitables were kinda cool but Manual of the Planes created a 3.0E cosmology from scratch. Planar Handbook retread old ground. If the Planar Handbook added a bunch of cool new material I would list it as a good 3.5E book. But it didn't. It gets no credit from me.

Epic level handbook? WTF? Really, that's your 3.0 book full of good content?

Yes. On a mechanical level it had several huge flaws, especially with the spell creation chapter. However, it took an idea people genuinely wanted to go with (advance past level 20) and gave it the old college try. It was a project doomed from the start but we did get lots of badass monsters and adventure hooks and NPC descriptions. The closest 3.5E ever came towards trying to match the ambition and scope of that book was with Magic of Incarnum.

Forgotten Realms Campaign setting: So you mean that 90% identical Players Guide is shit, but FRCS is magically full of awesome? How the fuck is that again? They have the same content.

No, they don't, which leads me to believe that you haven't read them. The FRCS had settings, organization, and NPCs in them. The FRPG did not have these things; except for a chapter on cosmology all that book was was errata for existing material and a couple of crazy things. The FRCS is usable on its own; the FRPG is not.

And like the Planar Handbook I would be willing to give the FRPG a pass if it actually stuck to its original goal of introducing errata for the stuff in that book (and it DID need it WTF persistent spell) and it didn't introduce crazy shit like the Incantatrix and Hathran and Initiate of Mystra. But no, it failed as that, too. It's no good as errata and it's worthless as a campaign setting book, because it can't do that.

[Prak]

EDIT: Further bullshit from you:

Planar Handbook is pretty much identical to Manual of the Planes, but apparently it's shitty because... It's 3.5 and so you irrationally hate it?

I'd just like to say that the Manual of the Planes is awesome, I would (and did) buy it only for the fluff, and it is a great thing to just flip through at one's leisure to set up ideas for the future. Planar Handbook, on the other hand, was, in fact, balls.

In my opinion, MotP and Planar Handbook are both good, but in different ways. MotP was a very well done overview of the planes, but it's primarily DM material, it had all of three PrCs, a spell or two, and maybe a few things that could be playable if not for D&D's shitty LA system.

Planar Handbook has races, prestige classes, items, etc.

I don't, however, know how many of those are really any good....

[Username17]

Is there any particular reason that the 3.0 harpoon is so much better than the 3.5 one?

Well, existing like it does in Sword & Fist is, I believe, rather superior to not existing like it does in Complete Warrior. Rather a slam dunk I think.

And Arms and Equipment is straight up 100% inferior to MiC in every fucking way

Arms & Equipment Guide is short but it has legitimately useful material in it. K and I included some of the materials and armor types into our work because they are legitimately cool. I personally have seen use of both the Gladius and the Lucerne Hammer, because they are balanced and cool weapons. The Magic Item Compendium has nothing to offer. Seriously, that's just easy. Is there anything in the entire MiC that is good for the game? Weapon sockets? 1/day worn items galore? Is there any reason to transform the game at first level into Pretty Princess Dressup: Insect Assault?

Planar Handbook is pretty much identical to Manual of the Planes, but apparently it's shitty because...

Because the Manual of the Planes has enough information about the planes to run a game on them, and the Planar Handbook does not? Yeah, it's that fucking simple. I honestly don't give a fuck whether there are playable rules for Mephlings or not, if you don't include even a one-paragraph description of the contents of Gehenna your use as a Planar Handbook is essentially zero.

Forgotten Realms Campaign setting: So you mean that 90% identical Players Guide is shit, but FRCS is magically full of awesome? How the fuck is that again? They have the same content.

No. They don't. The FRCS has descriptions of places and shit, the PGtFR has the regional feats for those places, but no descriptions. You can actually play a game out of the FRCS, but you can't use the PGtFR unless you already know the setting. But of course, if you know the setting, you don't need either book.

Second, you cheat like a mother by including MM II, but not III IV and V, all 3.5.

Go ahead and scroll through material like the Totemist and ask yourself how many of the referenced monsters come from the MMII and the Fiend Folio and how many come from the MMIII, IV, or V. I'll wait.

It's Hot Outside and It's Cold Outside were pretty good books that have no 3e equivalent. But only the Complete Adventurer is on par with its 3e equivalent, and that's because it's competing against Loot and Lute. And let's face it: most of the usable material in Complete Adventurer is actually for Druids, making it more equivalent to Masters of the Wild (to which it does not compare especially favorably). If you instead compare Lute and Loot to Complete Scoundrel, they are simply "equally useless."

The fact is that 3e had a substantially higher quality to quantity ratio and a much tighter editing standard. There were bad books, even terrible books (Magic of Feyrun), but the quality level was higher almost straight across the board.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Forget Persistent, 3.0 thought Irresistible Spell (the spell loses its saving throw. +4 levels, IIRC, so a level 9 Wizard auto-charms) was a goo idea.

Races of Rabbitfucking played a small role in making a viable grappler (the elf wizard). Races of the Fanboy helped Sorcerers not feel quite so small in the pants.

MMII is the worst of the MM books with the exception of V and maybe IV (which are just boring, but not broken). It is to balance what styrofoam is to food. MMIII is way better, and FF is somewhat better. For MM1 3.0 vs 3.5 it's a toss-up: 3.0 wins for the Dryad art, 3.5 for the Nymph and Erinyes.

The books on Hell and Other Hell aren't bad - only a little stuff for players, but a bunch of extra monsters each (largely "whatever"), some boss fights, and well-described planar locations for mid-high level adventure.

Draconomicon isn't really so bad. For starters, if you're going to use a dragon as a monster, then this saves you having to stat it up yourself (something the core book/SRD forces you to do) as it has one of each age category of each colour. It also has some material for PCs, some of which is decent, much of which isn't. And it has some interesting fluff, I actually considered it worth reading.

Also we have the Calamari Cookbook. Pure gold, I tell you.

On the other hand, we have Magic of Blue, Tome of Magic, Races of Short, IT BREEDS TRUE!, It's Wet Outside and, let's face it, a rather sub-par Complete series (with special mention to Buy Your Own Nerfs/Complete Shit). Whereas Sword and Fist as well as Masters of the Wild (I'll admit to hating Tome and Blood) were pretty good books. Knockdown was an awesome feat and I pretend it was never written out of existence. That feat plus Karmic Strike kept a Half Dragon Fighter relevant to level 10 (and possibly onwards, if the game didn't end then), such was the awesome.

I'm not sure what Harpoons did, though. But 3.0 also gave us, via Dragon, the other Scourge, which gives you three attacks (for 1d3? 1d4? per hit) per attack you would get normally. Power Attack, Sneak Attack and similar things say "IT'S A DEAL!"

[Prak]

Is there any particular reason that the 3.0 harpoon is so much better than the 3.5 one?

Well, existing like it does in Sword & Fist is, I believe, rather superior to not existing like it does in Complete Warrior. Rather a slam dunk I think.

Frank, the harpoon is in Stormwrack in 3.5. So, yes, Sword and Fist is superior to Complete Warrior in that respect, but the harpoon was written up in 3.5.

[Lago PARANOIA]

But 3.0 also gave us, via Dragon, the other Scourge, which gives you three attacks (for 1d3? 1d4? per hit) per attack you would get normally. Power Attack, Sneak Attack and similar things say "IT'S A DEAL!"

One of the most important things 4E did, as far as marketing went, was to restore the respectability of the material from Dragon and Dungeon.

Yes, material from those magazines still isn't viewed as highly as it is from stuff from published book when it comes down to it, but unlike in 3E people aren't automatically laughed out of the room if they say that their character uses material from Dragon.

I overall don't like 4E but I do need to give it a lot of credit for this. In the 3E days Dragon Material was held below the standards of stuff in Kingdoms of Kalamar and Relics and Rituals. And that's pretty sad.

[Hegemonic]

Depends how you're judging stuff. I judge the workability of content separately from the fluff and ideas for adventures, and sometimes will buy something just because I enjoy reading it and daydreaming campaign ideas. For instance, Lords of Madness. I have no idea if I would actually use much of it, but, hey, I enjoyed reading it and I picked it up second-hand. Epic Level Handbook? Hilarious reading. Usable? Not without some serious work. I adopted a new PC race out of there but not much else, although I want to incorporate 'Vengeful Gaze of God' into a Level 1 dungeon at some point just to be a dick.

Monster Manuals, same way - I'll take good concepts and art even if I don't always get 100% balanced monsters with pre-prepared encounters. If I can get them together, I may actually purchase the book from a store. How often did that happen? Two, three times? (MM 3.5, MM II, Fiend Folio). For the record, I liked the tendency in MM IV to do longer, more detailed entries and fewer new monsters overall - but the focus on really, really long subcategories killed the book. Who cares about the Spawn of Tiamat that much?

I also enjoyed Frostburn and Sandstorm, kind of enjoyed Dungeonscape, but usually rely on older material such as 2E Undermountain (still an insanely useful box set) or the 3E Underdark book for my dungeon inspiration. Book of Challenges was alright too - I'd say that's a secondhand pickup.

Of course, even the good books have many utterly useless or uber-specialized feats. Sandstorm - Blessing of Tem-Et-Nu - bonuses against Hippopotami, ability to Turn/Rebuke Hippos? NICE. Sign me up for that snake cult, Mr. Tem.

[Kaelik]

Well, Prak explained the Harpoon issue, so I'll skip straight to some Frank book stuff and finish with telling Lago he has a fucking terrible idea of how to compare editions and has no fucking clue what "material" actually is.

Frank: 1) The fact that you personally can take an idea, like a shitty implemented armor, and turn it into something cool by making up your own rules, has nothing to do with the fact that Arms and Equipment presents a couple exotic weapons (that to characterize your own issue are "exotic versions of martial weapons that do an extra point of damage") that are okay, and then a few magic enhancements.

MiC presents more and better magic enhancements, and it gives you magic items that provide actual abilities, causing people to actually buy items that don't add +1 to X. It also errata's the item slot rule so that Clerics can have Constitution enhancements and that people can buy magic cloaks with abilities without paying out the ass for it.

And that's not even going into the new types of items, some of which are fucking great. See Eternal Wands.

2) We are talking about the material available to the editions. Having a big old chunk of fluff is great. It also has absolutely no version specific anything, and that's precisely why they didn't reprint fluff. Would it make the 3.5 books better to have that? Yes. But it doesn't make the available material more or less or different, because the setting fluff is identical in both versions.

3) MM III +IV +V has more usable and awesome material than II alone. No it's not as good in one book, but it's still there in total, not to mention they suffer from having all the Dragons/Undead/Aberrations/Demons/Devils published in other books which combined offer more good monsters than the MM II by themselves anyway. So yes, MM II + Fiendish Codex is not as good as the full set of 3.5 monster books. Not even close.

Lago. You are fucking crazy, and your comparison is rendered completely invalid by your own craziness.

1) You declare that whole books full of good useful material are completely negated by the existence of a single overpowered thing in the same book. That's stupid and crazy. I'm sure people will be surprised to know that Beguilers are actually worthless and unplayable because Arcane Thesis also happens to be in the PHB II.

All that shit that is legitimately much better than 3.0 material in complete Divine? It doesn't magically disappear because it also has Persist Spell. And I know you fucking know that when you aren't applying your bullshit double standard because you called FRCS a great book filled with good shit.

It does explain how you can say "I didn't include 3.0E material if it just had one or two really good ideas in it (like Masters of the Wild) but I did set the bar this low for 3.5E material." and come up with your list.

Because what you meant was "I did set the bar this low for 3.5 material, unless of course it has even a single thing I don't like, in which case I pretend it doesn't exist."

But moving on to more of your ridiculous double standard:

2) You claim that 3.0 books have useful material in them, and that 3.5 ones don't have as much useful material.

You then declare that given two completely identical books:

The 3.0 is "mostly good"
and 3.5 doesn't even have "one or two really good ideas"

This is fucking retarded.

You can't compare the books this way. The question is:

Given either:
A) the entire subset of 3.5 books
or
b) the entire subset of 3.0 books

what do you gain from having each of those?

I don't care if Church Inquisitor is a word for word reprint from a 3.0 book. It's still a useful class that does not suck and is an addition to your game. It is a real thing that really exists and is a reason to buy Complete Divine. As is the Divine Oracle, Contemplative that doesn't suck, Divine Feats other than DMM, and even DMM not Persist.

Just to be extra damn clear. You did fucking lie.

This is your lie:

"I didn't include 3.0E material if it just had one or two really good ideas in it (like Masters of the Wild) but I did set the bar this low for 3.5E material."

You didn't include tons of 3.5 books with "one or two really good ideas" or more. The number of 3.5 books that meet that standard and you didn't include is actually twice as long as your 3.0 list. So lying, and claiming that you did is in fact, lying.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Depends how you're judging stuff. I judge the workability of content separately from the fluff and ideas for adventures, and sometimes will buy something just because I enjoy reading it and daydreaming campaign ideas.

That's pretty much how I constructed the list. I didn't include Stormwrack not because it's bad but because a sea campaign book is just automatically less useful than a desert or tundra one. I wanted to include Cityscape, I really did, but the book just doesn't build up to anything special. The standards I have for a good 'City' book are higher than for a good 'Desert' book because there is already a bunch of material you can use to make cities such as the Stronghold Builder's Guide, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Forgotten Realms Players' Guide. But those books also have other useful functions.

Libris Mortis could've gone up on the list but like Cityscape it doesn't go anywhere special. There's already tons of material on Undead and Evil in the game at this point so this book had to go the extra mile, which it didn't. If this book came out near the beginning of 3E's lifecycle it could've been awesome (I'll even forgive the graft silliness because that's really the MM2's fault).

Similarly, the Miniatures Handbook is actually pretty useful if you want to run a miniatures game out of 3E material (I'd rather cut my own eyes out) or just if you want to plunder horde monsters out of it without wasting more than a page. The Warmage in it sucked mostly because evocation spells sucked, but it provided us a template for characters that gave us the much better Beguiler and True Necromancer. But as a fluff book it's not a good read.

The Players Handbook II is barely saved by the rebuild rules, the Beguilder, and the class-based and organization-based fluff. Of course handing out Celerity and teamwork-based mechanical options nearly completely killed the good will I had for it.

Complete Divine is the worst class book for 3E. I'm not joking. It's typo-ridden, introduces/reprints crazy-go-nuts spells and feats, nerfs useful PrCs, and has a bunch of useless fucking chapters on deities and relics. I don't know why Kaelik said that it should be included; I thought everyone agreed that that book sucked harder than any other class book in that edition, except for maybe Complete Warrior--and THAT book at least had some moderately interesting diversions on gladiator fights and how magic effects low-level warfare.

Spell Compendium is a good book for all of the wrong reasons. Since all of your bullshit is in one book it cuts down on the amount of dumpster-diving or DM auditing substantially. The actual material in it though is a pile of donkey dicks, though. That spell that gives A WIZARD a fucking FIGHTER BONUS FEAT is one of the gravest insults to gaming ever. And they reprinted that fucking Spell domain, too; at least beforehand we could just pretend that it was overpowered FR shit and ignore it, but no, they had to put that domain in. And the Elf domain. Great. Fucking beautiful. Nice job, guys.

I still think that Oriental Adventures, aside from some crazy shit in the book like the Maho Tsukai, is the best sourcebook ever produced for 3rd Edition. And like a fine wine, it's become better with age. The Shaman was modestly overpowered at the time it came up but if you hold a Shaman to an agreement only to use spells in that book and the PHB then they're better for the game and more interesting than the cleric and druid. Same for the Wu Jen.

Manual of the Planes does comes pretty close in matching the awesomeness of that book, though. I'll read that book just for fun.

[Lokathor]

The Magic Item Compendium has nothing to offer. Seriously, that's just easy. Is there anything in the entire MiC that is good for the game?

The Healing Belt? Lets low level parties be much more durable when they don't have a Cleric.

[Lago PARANOIA]

2) We are talking about the material available to the editions. Having a big old chunk of fluff is great. It also has absolutely no version specific anything, and that's precisely why they didn't reprint fluff. Would it make the 3.5 books better to have that? Yes. But it doesn't make the available material more or less or different, because the setting fluff is identical in both versions.

For people who don't pirate their books, yes, it's a big deal. It makes us wonder why we should plop down thirty bucks for a book that doesn't do anything but provide spot-errata. I don't mind paying thirty bucks for brand new material, which is why Heroes of Horror gets a pass when we already have Book of Vile Darkness and Monster Manuals, but the FRPG? Fuck that shit.

1) You declare that whole books full of good useful material are completely negated by the existence of a single overpowered thing in the same book. That's stupid and crazy. I'm sure people will be surprised to know that Beguilers are actually worthless and unplayable because Arcane Thesis also happens to be in the PHB II.

Nuh-uh. I'm willing to overlook overpowered/stupid/broken things if the other things in the book are genuinely good. The Maho Tsukai is fucking crazy and so are the Iaijutsu Focus rules, but they barely hurt Oriental Adventures because there's so much other good stuff in it. The PHBII is hurt real bad by Arcane Thesis and Celerity and the teamwork rules because the Beguiler and retraining rules is the only thing it really has going for it.

All that shit that is legitimately much better than 3.0 material in complete Divine? It doesn't magically disappear because it also has Persist Spell.

WHAT SHIT??

Well, the Hospitaler, maybe, but I don't consider making the PrC unusable an improvement. But other than that, Complete Divine didn't get a single goddamn thing right over 3.0E! They nerfed things that were just fine and saw fit to reprint a bunch of overpowered bullshit like Brambles.

And I know you fucking know that when you aren't applying your bullshit double standard because you called FRCS a great book filled with good shit.

Yeah, it is. It has some stupid shit in there like Practiced Spellcaster and Rune Magic but it's a great campaign setting tool. I actually feel like I'm in Forgotten Realms when I read that book. I don't feel the same way about the Eberron campaign book or the Dragonlance one so points for Forgotten Realms.

It does explain how you can say "I didn't include 3.0E material if it just had one or two really good ideas in it (like Masters of the Wild) but I did set the bar this low for 3.5E material." and come up with your list.

Because what you meant was "I did set the bar this low for 3.5 material, unless of course it has even a single thing I don't like, in which case I pretend it doesn't exist."

First of all, you saying that Complete Divine was anything but a complete shitstain on 3E's record makes your judgment of what constitutes a good book extremely suspect.

Second of all, what's your problem with this? Yes, even though the bar I have for 3.5E (the amount of good to bad material has to be marginally positive) is higher than your own bar (it just has to have anything good), this bar is still lower than the bar I have for 3.0E material (the amount of good to bad material has to be substantially positive). I'm holding a double standard, yes, but it's in your own goddamn favor. Are you seriously whining that I'm not giving you enough favoritism?

2) You claim that 3.0 books have useful material in them, and that 3.5 ones don't have as much useful material.

You then declare that given two completely identical books:

What two identical books? As people besides me have told you repeatedly, the Planar Handbook is similar to the MoTP but different enough so we can excise different amounts of judgment on it. The FRPG flat-out has less material than the FRCS.

The 3.5E setting books have less material than their 3.0E counterparts and what few good points they have (nerfing Persistent Spell) is immediately undone by some other shit (printing Incantatrix).

So tell me, Kaelik, what is the advantage of using the 3.5E books, hmm?

You can't compare the books this way. The question is:

Oh yes I can. I don't have to buy every 3.5E book. I don't have to use any 3.5E books at all. I only have to look at the good ones. 3.0E can print two-hundred books with only twenty good ones while 3.5E can print a hundred books with fifteen good ones--guess what? 3.0E still comes out fucking ahead because when Magic of Faerun or Quintessential Rogue comes by I can just put the books back onto the shelf and buy Oriental adventures.

But even by going by your stupid standard, 3.0E comes out ahead. It has fewer blatantly stupid/unusable books than 3.5E and has more useful material. So 3.0E wins yet again!

I'm not the only one that feels that way, Kaelik, so you can't just dismiss my opinion with one of your simpering 'Y-You Lie!'s, you butthurt crybaby.

I don't care if Church Inquisitor is a word for word reprint from a 3.0 book. It's still a useful class that does not suck and is an addition to your game. It is a real thing that really exists and is a reason to buy Complete Divine. As is the Divine Oracle, Contemplative that doesn't suck, Divine Feats other than DMM, and even DMM not Persist.

The 3.5E Church Inquisitor is an awful piece of trash. With the change, you easily can take the PrC by level 4, which means that almost every fucking cleric in existence is going to have it since most PrCs aren't available until level 6. It's not a bad PrC if you ignore the meta-effect, but with that subtle change it means that every fucking Cleric in existence unless stopped by the DM or trying to qualify for some crazy PrC is going to be a Cleric 3 / Church Inquisitor 2 / Whatever X.

That's bad for the game, by the way.

The Divine Oracle can be entered two levels earlier now. It also hands out Trap Sense. Big deal.

The Contemplative change also sucks. It doesn't suck nearly as much as the Church Inquisitor change, but I don't know why you would include it as a positive. You used to be able to take that PrC as an anything, which was helpful for arcane Spellcasters. Now you can't. Sucks to be you, fucker! But then they introduced the Arcane Disciple feat in this very book, so in case you were going to try to tell me that the change of barring arcane spellcasters from grabbing divine spells was good (ProTip: It wasn't) your argument gets instantly negated.

I really can't believe you said that the non-DMM Divine feats were good. What was so good about them? Was it the feat that granted fast healing 3 for a short period of time? Or the one where you get to heal elementals? Or on the other end of the scale, did you like the Divine feat that let you add your fucking turning check modifier as a caster level bonus? Or let you spontaneously cast Anyspell or Polymorph Any Object?

You didn't include tons of 3.5 books with "one or two really good ideas" or more. The number of 3.5 books that meet that standard and you didn't include is actually twice as long as your 3.0 list. So lying, and claiming that you did is in fact, lying.

But if I go by your standard of a good book is, I'd have to include Complete Divine. And only dumbshits--such as yourself--think that book is any good.

I went by my standard of what a good book is and I explained my reasoning. If you don't like my opinion, you can go pound sand, but it definitely doesn't mean that I lied. It just means that you have poor taste.

[A Man In Black]

Not to be nitpicky, but in what sense is the Miniatures Handbook a 3.0 book? It was released about five three months after the 3.5 PHB and used the 3.5 rules throughout.

It also had some neat ideas like the aspects of the gods as versions of the gods that you can actually beat up without using the near-unworkable epic rules, the swift 1-round-duration spells, and the first introduction of alternate core classes outside of setting-specific books. (It predates the Complete series in that regard, and managed to have at least one playable new class.) Not everything it did was necessarily a good idea, but there was a fair stab at mass combat, some crunchy stuff that gave new options that didn't suck and didn't wreck the game, and some decent salvageable ideas.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You are correct, good sir, the Miniatures Handbook is a 3.5E rulebook and even says so on the back.

So that's a point in 3.5E's column. And a pretty good point, too, because I think that Miniatures Handbook is one of the better books of the edition, period. Like I said, I'd rather play Sonic 2006 than play with actual Miniatures but I could see the good this book did. Probably something to do with Johnathan Tweet working on it.

[A Man In Black]

I'm also kind of curious about MMII. I've always found MMII to be a near-unusable book full of oops-you-all-died monsters, with basic stats ranging all over the place without regard for CR. There's the caster level < CR creatures like elemental weirds and sylphs and spellweavers, creatures like the sirine who have no combat ability other than polymorphing themselves, some templates that Just Don't Work At All like half-golem or warbeast, and some random CR >23 stuff that nearly nobody will ever use for anything. And that's not even counting stuff that just overpowers its CR in mundane ways or the many, many pages devoted to utter noncombatants (three and a half pages devoted to myconids? seriously?)

What am I missing?

-edit- It even managed to give players overpowered things for no good reason. Why do legendary animals exist except as a powerup for druids? What party is taking an animal-intelligence tiger seriously at level 10?