Dungeons and Dragons 3.5

[Kratenser]

Some of my warhammer buddies told me that now Dungeons and dragons has gone fully to its 4th edition, all of the old 3.5 stuff is now available for free on the net. Considering the books are no longer for sale and most people are going to 4th edition, it makes sense. However, they somehow forgot to tell me where to get it from. By that i mean the character creation and DM guides, the adventures, the bestiaries and item books (etc).

Anyone here know where I can download em? I know they were all typed up as PDF documents because i've seen the printed versions, i just dont know where from.

Oh and if my buddies were wrong and it isn't legal to download em then i apologise, I don't encourage piracy at all. But you can't buy the 3.5 books any more, seems a shame to let them fade into history.

Oh and if you are wondering why i'm interested in 3.5, I play D&D with some friends roughly once per month (we go to different colleges so its difficult finding a date we can meet up on) but we only have the 1992 and 2003 board game versions. I want to try a pen and paper instead but I don't want to buy all the books only to discover that my friends don't like it. Seems unlikely but even so.

Thanks to anyone who responds.

 

[tzimize]

Afaik the books are not free. Just because they dont produce them anymore doesnt mean the content is automatically worthless.

I'd suggest you try out Pathfinder. Its sort of the continuation of 3.5, in a new fantastic world. If you want you can buy the pdfs of that off of Paizo (google it, the creators of Pathfinder). They are a lot cheaper than the books themselves, and totally worth the low price.

The world, and the game is fantastic. But be careful, its pretty addictive stuff

Edit:
Pathfinder is OGC (open gaming license) so a lot of the content can be found online for free.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ is a fantastic reference page with updated stats and information from the Pathfinder Core books.
http://paizo.com/ is the home of Pathfinder, you can buy Pathfinder pdfs here for cheap.
There is a brilliant spellbook app for the smartphones that we use a lot when we play, makes it very easy looking up spells

Comment: Does this count as "advertising"? I'm in no way affiliated with Paizo, I just love them If I'm not allowed to post this, feel free to let me know/edit my post mods.

 

[Kratenser]

Afaik the books are not free. Just because they dont produce them anymore doesnt mean the content is automatically worthless.

I'd suggest you try out Pathfinder. Its sort of the continuation of 3.5, in a new fantastic world. If you want you can buy the pdfs of that off of Paizo (google it, the creators of Pathfinder). They are a lot cheaper than the books themselves, and totally worth the low price.

The world, and the game is fantastic. But be careful, its pretty addictive stuff

Edit:
Pathfinder is OGC (open gaming license) so a lot of the content can be found online for free.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ is a fantastic reference page with updated stats and information from the Pathfinder Core books.
http://paizo.com/ is the home of Pathfinder, you can buy Pathfinder pdfs here for cheap.
There is a brilliant spellbook app for the smartphones that we use a lot when we play, makes it very easy looking up spells

Comment: Does this count as "advertising"? I'm in no way affiliated with Paizo, I just love them If I'm not allowed to post this, feel free to let me know/edit my post mods.

Thanks man i really appreciate this. I didnt mean to imply that the old version was worthless, I was just told that now wizards of the coast can no longer profit from 3.5, that they were doing some kind of free release.

And nope, it doesnt count as advertising because you are answering a thread

 

[squeekenator]

I haven't heard of any free release, though the core books and a few others have always been freely available (SRD [d20srd.org]), which is all you need to play. Other books just add extra content.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Oh D&D 3.5...how many countless hours I've sat looking at your books and counting the ways my players tried to break the game in their never-ending quest for power.

But if you do want to start with 3.5, definitely do as others are suggesting, and check out Pathfinder.
There's a lot of good stuff in it, and without most of the power-creep bullshit that made their way into the "Official" expansions.

 

[Damien Granz]

None of the Wizards of the Coast books have changed their status to free. Wizards is trying to bury older editions of the game to promote 4th Edition.

However, 3.0 and 3.5 editions were published before Hasbro and were published under the Open Gaming License, so much of the material for the games is free to distribute and free to modify. It basically made it very easy for third party creators to make new books.

http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/dnd35/soveliorsage/home.html
This link is to an System Reference Document. It has nothing illegal there, but 90% of what is needed to play a game of 3.5 D&D is included. What's not included is methods for generating ability scores and new character starting gold for a new character, and experience point tables.

Distributing those things though aren't legal though, and I'm pretty sure it's against forum guidelines to encourage piracy and place links to them here.

The online System Reference Documents also are missing specific setting information. References to Greyhawk (the default 3.5 campaign setting) in the spell names, as well as a handful of proprietary monsters are missing. So there's no god "Pelor", but there's information on domains for clerics so you can make your own setting up, and there's no Illithids or Githyanki, but there's plenty of other things to face, and there's no "Melf's Acid Arrow" but there is an "Acid Arrow" spell. Because 'Melf' is copywritten.

Anyways, all of what I've put is 100% legal and free, so if you're gaming on a $0 budget, I hope that helps, and good luck and happy gaming.

I'm not sure what Paizo charges (if anything) for Pathfinder, as I'd never had a problem with 3.5 as it was written. I didn't have a problem with power creep so much in 3.5 because I didn't use a lot of 'extra' books, nor did I have players that actively tried to ruin the game to power game.

I never had to ban anything in the default set of books because my players would self police, so to speak.

So I can't really comment on it (Pathfinder) at all, sorry.

 

[tzimize]

Afaik the books are not free. Just because they dont produce them anymore doesnt mean the content is automatically worthless.

I'd suggest you try out Pathfinder. Its sort of the continuation of 3.5, in a new fantastic world. If you want you can buy the pdfs of that off of Paizo (google it, the creators of Pathfinder). They are a lot cheaper than the books themselves, and totally worth the low price.

The world, and the game is fantastic. But be careful, its pretty addictive stuff

Edit:
Pathfinder is OGC (open gaming license) so a lot of the content can be found online for free.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/ is a fantastic reference page with updated stats and information from the Pathfinder Core books.
http://paizo.com/ is the home of Pathfinder, you can buy Pathfinder pdfs here for cheap.
There is a brilliant spellbook app for the smartphones that we use a lot when we play, makes it very easy looking up spells

Comment: Does this count as "advertising"? I'm in no way affiliated with Paizo, I just love them If I'm not allowed to post this, feel free to let me know/edit my post mods.

Thanks man i really appreciate this. I didnt mean to imply that the old version was worthless, I was just told that now wizards of the coast can no longer profit from 3.5, that they were doing some kind of free release.

And nope, it doesnt count as advertising because you are answering a thread

My pleasure, hope you get as many hours of fun out of it as I already have!