Quote from: jrientsAm I the only one who has contemplated diechart driven character advancement for 3.5?  You earned a feat?  Roll percentile dice and I'll tell you what you get.

kind of like traveller meets 3.5?  sounds pretty cool, i'd give it a go :raise:

Abyssal Maw and enelson nailed, IMNSHO. The key is looking to player skill instead of character skill. You get there by making the players be more detailed in what they want to do.

In 3e, if you want to find a secret door, you make a Search check and the DM says something like, "You notice that if you pull on the candelabra a secret door will open." In 1e, you had to specifically figure out that you had to pull that candelabra.

IMO, the key to getting there is to pull back the autopilot nature of skills. For instance, the Search check might reveal a secret door in the area, but it doesn't show how to open.

Same thing for Listen and Spot. You might tell the players, "You hear a weird, grinding noise from up ahead," and leave it to them to figure out what that means.

As for monster creation, 90% of the fiddly math is a waste of your time. You could create monsters and give them total skill mods of CR +3, and you'd be fine 90% of the time. Don't bother with math that you can just eyeball.

IMNSHO, if you want to design monsters look at a creature with the same basic schtick and CR in the MM, use its stats, and apply different special abilities.

Quote from: mearlsIn 3e, if you want to find a secret door, you make a Search check and the DM says something like, "You notice that if you pull on the candelabra a secret door will open." In 1e, you had to specifically figure out that you had to pull that candelabra.

If only 3e modules would supply the neccessary information, as 1e modules did.

Calithena,

If you want to use D&D 3e rules to run 'old school' style adventures, you might consider the E6 variant rules.  While not exactly intended to recapture 'OS', it might have that effect insofar as E6 prevents the high-level 'over-the-top' abilities that PCs get in 3e.

I've started a thread on E6 here:
http://www.therpgsite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=116851#post116851

Quote from: CalithenaDoes the updated 3.5 MM have the monster design rules (as far as standard damages for bites/claws etc. by size, feats/skills by HD, etc.) that were first put out in the Skip Williams article and the MMII and FF prefaces? Can you build a monster from scratch using the rules there?

For what purpose? Porting creatures?

Very few creatures haven't been ported somewhere.

But the balance may be different. A 3e mountain giant is much stronger than a 1e mountain giant. For one game I converted, I threw in a jazzed up hill giant (using a template in Advanced Bestiary) rather than the over-the-top mountain giant.

Tome of Horrors revised has almost all the missing creatures I've needed to run old school adventure.

No, for the purpose of scratch-building my own creatures. I want to know if all the rules for this are in the MM and DMG or not. (Sample rules: DCs depending on attribute scores and hit dice, the number of feats you get based on the number of hit dice, etc.) That's all.