Hey Veeky Forums, I have a few questions. Complete noob so they will literally be "how do I right click" questions

Hey Veeky Forums, I have a few questions. Complete noob so they will literally be "how do I right click" questions.

First, what books do I need at the most basic level. I've seen a lot of references to the player's handbook, but a quick look on the 3.5 section on wikipedia makes it look like I won't be able to play effectively without guides to whatever class I want to play as, monster handbooks to learn strengths/weaknesses, books of spells and so on.

I've read a few greentext threads and it seems like you guys play online, is there a website to find other players or even play with online resources?

Finally, any basic tips like always checking for traps before touching stuff or certain items to always keep on hand?

Thanks!

Other urls found in this thread:

d20srd.org/
dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules
5esrd.com/
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

3.5 is a meme edition, which is only advised by neckbeards, because it's the edition they've played for as long as they remember, they're so used to it. But it's literally the worst game to approach if you're a newcomer.
You want 5e instaed - it's simple, it's fun, it's what you play if you want your standard fantasy experience. You only need the player handbook, but you can also get a Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide if you want, since it provides additional character options.

You can find people to play with on roll20, but I would like to warn you - majority of people who play online are those, who are too autistic to play with friends in real life. Not all of them, but most.

if you absolutely need to do D&D (sigh), go with 5e. when you're ready to advance beyond a game that lives mostly due to its brand and size of community, i recommend Dark Heresy, Call Of Cthulhu, Star Wars FFG, The One Ring, Shadowrun, or Warhammer Fantasy 1E/2E instead.

Your absolute basics are Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and the first Monster Manual. Those are collectively referred to as core. You can also find that stuff, along with a few other things you should probably ignore for now, on the SRD.
d20srd.org/

Some people play online. There are sites like Roll20 or you can find a Gamefinder thread here. Those are still a thing, right?

Ten-foot pole is the most useful item of all time. Figure out the rest yourself.
Like it's any less neckbeard to not answer OP's question in the name of edition wars.

First, don't play D&D. Find a system that requires just one book to start off. It'll be cheaper and easier.
Second, don't read monster manuals to metagame. That's not cool.

Do you really want a newcomer to the hobby start by playing 3.5?

I think he should have the freedom to choose for himself rather than watch a bunch of angry fa/tg/uys have a row over their preferred editions.

this, adding Savage Worlds and Atomic Highway.

And he was just given information with which he can make a more informed decision.

Information that comes from someone who actually uses "meme" as an adjective is information that can safely be ignored.

This. He complained about sheer number of books he must read at OP post, just imagine him trying to power through all the handbooks, the meta and the optimization guides required to play 3.5. Informing him about 5e is mercy.

D&D generally wants to sucker you into buying further supplements, in addition to purchasing the first three source books individually. Other RPGs don't necessarily pull this shit. There are plenty whose rules are confined to a single sourcebook.

tl;dr - Stop playing D&D. Alternatively, look into some OSR D&D stuff. The Rules Cyclopedia is a self-contained sourcebook, and there are numerous (free) old-school D&D clones you can download in PDF format.

Thanks all, there's a lot of conflict here but I'm getting the sense that 3.5 is bad. It's what my local group says they play on their website so I just assumed it was standard.

5e has some hefty recommendations. Any further thoughts?

Is that core collection for 3.5? What would be the books for 5e?

Other players will know mob strengths and weaknesses, I could guess from vidya, zombies, fire, skeletons, big fuck off axes etc, why is it bad to metagame?

Holy shit besides one ring are you me?

>Thanks all, there's a lot of conflict here but I'm getting the sense that 3.5 is bad.

3.5 is rules-dense and arguably imbalanced. I'm not getting into that, however. You're simply asking why there are so many core books to juggle, and other anons are pointing out that other RPGs don't require multiple core books like D&D does.

Core books for 5e are likewise Player's Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master's Guide.

If you go the the /5eg/ in the catalog, you'll find a MEGA link in the op containing all of them in pdf form for free.

Awesome thanks, I'll check it out.

>Ten-foot pole is the most useful item of all time. Figure out the rest yourself.

Incorrect. It won't even stem a 2 square wide chasm. 11 foot pole confirmed best. thats a whole extra 1/5 of a square!

That extra foot comes from the live chicken on the end.

three anons with good taste

OP what is your sitaution? If you have a group playing 3.5 and they know how to play, go for it, they will help you build a character. Otherwise I hate to say it but it's not the best for beginners. Neither is D&D 5e, it's less complicated but still a lot to get into. Look at something like Savage Worlds or barbarians of Lemuria.

Really, though, find a group first, and play whatever they are playing.

Dark Heresy YES
murdohobo detectives IN SPESS

dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules

5esrd.com/

You guys are the poison of Veeky Forums, you know that?
The whole "I need to sperg everytime someone mentions something popular" is ridiculous.

3.5 > 5e > 4e

dont listen to the Veeky Forums majority, they're a bunch of babies. 3.5 is the truest dnd experience.

OP I got into tabletop playing AdEva. Pick something with one book to start off; check out gamefinder and see how it is. What are you interested in playing?

>majority

A few dedicated trolls =/= majority.

OP, the problems you are hearing here with 3.5 are not beginner issues. Yes, it is rules dense and can be broken - with experienced hands. To a newcomer, those rules are like railings on the road. You can jump them, but until then they serve as guideline for "how do I X".

5e's strength lies in its simplicity - much of it is boiled down to a flat "Roll 2d20, take the higher/lower)" instead of "Roll 1d20 plus whatever modifiers you've accrued". It simple and rules lite, a good way for developed players to really take the narrative in their own hands. For someone getting started, it might be more akin to telling a kid to ride a bike without training wheels first.

3.5/pf has a lot of rules. You don't have to follow those rules if, down the road, you find that they don't make sense. Yes, you can break the world with a few low level spells, but that ability comes with metaknowledge of many rules and interactions. If you (and whoever you play with) are first getting started, the best place to start is anywhere. 3.5, 5e, Dark Heresy - anything. Like any hobby, people who acclaim their favorites and slander what they don't like or have had bad experiences with. Take everything here, including my own advice, with a grain of salt, and don't be afraid to make your own opinion.

That being said, Pathfinder/3.5 has a large online (free!) repo at d20pfsrd. It has a number of guides freely accessible, and I would recommend that system simple because it covers the basis of any d20 system at no cost whatsoever, for getting your feet wet.

It's also the core for Pathfinder btw

Eat shit, faggot, this is you.

Oh, look.

5e is trash my dude

The core for pathfinder is the pathfinder core book. You don't need any of 3.5 stuff to play pathfinder, they're just compatible

...

And 3.x is lower than whaleshit.

>I need to shitpost!

I'm sorry to hear you had a bad day.

don't listen to this faggot OP

do 3.5 if you don't care about balance so much as cusomization/making cool "builds".

do 5e if you want slightly more balance at the cost of some customization

Don't be a fighter in either of them; 5e's "muggle" classes are a lot less underpowered than in 3.5 but wizards, druids, clerics, basically all spellcasters still have a much more diverse set of options than the non-magical in 5e, as with every edition.

>this entire fucking thread

What have I done?

Could someone please explain to me what the most major differences dark heresy has to d&d? Also could someone explain what exactly rogue trader works? Most info I can find on RT is extremely vague.

(Meant to type how, not what.)

>desperately want to start playing dark heresy
>most people haven't even heard of it, even "experienced" tabletop players
>those that have, have maybe heard it mentioned once, in passing.
>absolutely nobody wants to DM it
why.

I don't know D&D very well but I can answer any questions about the 40K RPGs.

The first difference is setting (high fantasy vs sci-fantasy) but beyond that D&D uses a d20 whereas 40Krpgs use d100. D20 is the classic 20-sided die you see whenever TV needs to illustrate someone is a nerd. d100 is two ten sided dice, with one representing the 10's digit and one representing the 1's digit giving a range of 01-99. d100 is literally a percent chance system, I'm not really sure how d20 works.

Honestly, OP, the system is only so important. The really critical thing is having a good group to play with. If you have an invitation to an existing group, and you all click really well, they'll get you started just fine with whatever they're playing.

In answer to your original post: D&D 3.5 has a gigantic following, there are resources everywhere online and in any local gaming community you might be near. It has been and will probably continue to be the common denominator for quite some time. If you want into it, there will almost always be other people willing to play it.

That said, I personally feel it is the lowest common denominator. It's very expensive to acquire the necessary rulebooks, let alone the optional gaming aids like tabletop battle maps and miniatures. It's also terribly rules-heavy, and it can be very obtuse, slow, and inflexible. I can't speak for newer editions, because I dropped D&D in favor of other systems long before 4th came out. I have had good experiences with 2nd Edition, but that's mostly because our GM knew the system like the back of his hand and didn't make us worry about hardly any mechanics.

Given a choice of game system, I would advise you to check out Savage Worlds or FATE, as they offer a heavier focus on cinematic whizz-bang-fun that's a little more accessible if you don't mind a bit of narrative theorycrafting (or a lot, in FATE's case). If you want to go fifty caliber indie, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, and Monster Hearts are amazing genre emulators, but they have a small cult following for a reason.

Dark Heresy is based on different dice mechanics rooted in a system known as Basic Roleplaying. I don't like the Dark Heresy iteration of the rules, but if you are into 40K go nuts. If you want a small system with similar roots see the attached, 34 pages and it's a detailed preview system built to introduce that style of game.

D&D is fun and easy to find others to play with, but has some issues. 3.5/4e require maps to play, and older editions are really hard to understand and pick through. I would 1000% use 5e because it's easier to get into and get going on adventures. Download the basic rules for free from Wizards' website, or check the 5eg trove. The only other game I would recommend is Rules Cyclopedia from the OSR trove, for many of the same reasons.

In the case you want to play the game to roleplay over anything else, check out some of the simple indie systes. Dungeon World gets shit on but is really good at teaching the actual basic skills to play or run any game. It also has an srd you can google that has all the rules in a single resource. Alternatively, the core rules are better implemented in games like Apocalypse World or Monsterhearts which are much more niche genres but accomplish them better. World of Dungeons is better crafted for dungeon crawling and the rules are more elegant.

Anyways, if you have a group of friends interested already the system doesn't matter much so just try whatever free or cheap game you want and branch out.

3.5 does not require maps to play lol. yeah you might fudge some rules sometimes but you do not have to play on a grid

Thanks user!

They're pretty much entirely different under the hood.

DnD, all editions, uses a d20 as its main die for determining success or failure, with other dice sizes for other stuff, like damage. It's a game suited only to fantasy settings. Since 3.5 is a terrible choice for newcomers and 4e isn't really like other editions, let's talk about 5e.

I could explain why I personally can't recommend 3.5 or why 4e is different, if you'd like.

5e is pretty simple and streamlined, has support for many character types out the box, and doesn't have much of an ivory tower/system mastery aspect as some previous editions. Generally, you can assume that your character will be competent enough to be heroic.

Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader (and Only War, Black Crusade, and Deathwatch) are all essentially the same rule set with some major adjustments to fit the theme of each game. They are d100 (2 10-sided dice, one representing the tens place, to produce a result of 00-99), tend to be rather lethal games where combat is tense and scary, and noncombat abilities are pretty important. They're also built with the 40k setting (GRIMDARK space fantasy) in mind, though that's easy enough to change.

3.5 requires maps to play correctly. Combat rules like flanking and cover literally exist in reference to a square combat grid, and just about every official module (possibly all of them?) come with grid maps. The rules for reach and size are extremely granular, and while it's certainly possible to theatre-of-the-mind 3.5, no sane person would do it. There are games much well-suited to handle that kind of play.

3.5 is a system that hews very closely to D&D's Chainmail-esque wargaming roots. You can ignore that--anybody can houserule anything if they feel like it--but you really shouldn't.

Go for it. Explaining WHY 3.5 tends to help more then just saying "trust me".

3e uses and needs maps. Requiring maps and grids are not a bad thing, though. I found that it gives people something visual to focus on and keep their heads in the game.

Yeah, I mean I could just add more house rule on top of the bloated garbage heap that everyone houserules to prevent the very obvious and glaring flaws of the very basic core rules of the game - or I can take the much easier route of using a different game.

You are talking too broadly about maps. Maps are a big help in every game, but a map is a picture you can print out and hand players or lay in front of them.

3.5/4e requires maps with grids and codified everything around that. A map without requiring an overhead view and grid is really easy to understand and can even be a picture of a fantasy location that players can use to play off of in their minds.

TL;DR - Not all maps are gridded battle maps.

I said maps because and said maps even though battle grids would have been better. Is the map you are talking about is a general picture of the current location? That is good for giving players an idea of what kind of area they are in but it is a prop and all games benefit from that, as you said. However I think battle grids also build on that to a smaller scale and work well if the system supports it.

So you deny that requiring three separate full-priced books to play is bullshit? Because that's what I'm arguing here.