Dungeons & Dragons 3.5

Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 is a revision of the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition rules, released in 2003. It remained the current edition of D&D until 2008, when it was officially superceded by Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition.

Features

See also: Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition#Features

Rules changes

D&D 3.5 is largely the same as the original D&D 3rd edition, the latter retroactively and unofficially being known as "D&D 3.0". D&D 3.5 is differentiated by a large number of mostly small changes. The most significant are as follows.

Damage reduction was revised significantly. The amount of damage reduction was reduced, and is no longer overcome by a specific "plus", instead requiring weapons of different type; e.g. a special material or magical property. This lead to the "golf bag of weapons" approach where a fighter might need to carry multiple specialized weapons.

Many skills, feats, spells, and other game terms were re-named. For example, "Subdual" damage became "nonlethal", "Wilderness Lore" became "Survival", and teleport without error became greater teleport.

Many spells changed in level, school, or effect. Most notably, buff spells like bull's strength were generally reduced in duration from hours to minutes, and haste became a mass-target spell. Certain instant kill spells including disintegrate and harm were given damage caps.

Monsters now gain feats every three levels like PCs, instead of every four. Skills are also calculated the same way as PCs. This required editors to add numerous feats to monster statblocks. Monsters now have fewer non-combat spell-like abilities, which rarely came into play. Monsters have had their challenge ratings made more accurate, and some have been made more powerful, demons and devils in particular. The Beast type was removed.

The three core rulebooks had new cover designs and were increased in size with the addition of new content, much of which was drawn from existing 3.0 sourcebooks. These include rules for monsters as PCs (Savage Species (2003)), planar adventuring (Manual of the Planes (3e) (2001)), PCs above 20th level (Epic Level Handbook (2002)), and several spells, feats, monsters, and prestige classes.

A notable original addition to the Dungeon Master's Guide (3.5) (2003) was a set of generic prestige classes to make multiclass spellcasters more viable: arcane trickster (rogue/wizard), eldritch knight (fighter/wizard), and mystic theurge (cleric/wizard).

Weapon sizes for Small characters such as halfling and gnome are handled differently; they suffer penalties for wielding weapons sized for Medium creatures.

The core rulebooks are now written to assume miniatures use, although in practice the combat rules have not significantly changed, and miniature-free play is still supported just as well as in 3.0. Differences adapted for miniatures include that all monsters now have square facing/space, and all distances are given in both feet and squares.

Various changes are made to races and classes. Most notably, dwarves no longer suffer movement penalties in heavy armor, the ranger has d8 hit dice and can choose between two-weapon fighting and archery, and gnomes' favored class has changed from illusionist to bard.

Content

A large amount of official game content was produced during the D&D 3.5 era, including 750 prestige classes. Many D&D 3.0 prestige classes received a D&D 3.5 update, either in an official errata document or a revised version published in a 3.5 sourcebook.

See also:

• List of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition character classes
• List of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition prestige classes
• List of Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition monsters

Development and release

Origin

Even before the release of the original D&D third edition core rulebooks, Wizards of the Coast's business team had future plans to release revised editions. The products were intended to incorporate errata and new art, and were tentatively scheduled for a 2004 or 2005 release, during a predicted slump in sales based on previous editions. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition had similarly published revised rulebooks around six years after its original release. The D&D third edition lead designers were generally opposed to the concept.

In a contemporary publication, Ed Stark asserted that D&D 3.5 was inspired by feedback given by attendees to a seminar at Gen Con 2002, where Wizards of the Coast designers were quizzed on rules issues. However, according to Andy Collins, the publication of D&D 3.5 was "very much a business decision ... Its mandate was not 'change'; its mandate was 'sell more books'."

Development

Around summer 2001, Andy Collins was given the task of analyzing the Dungeon Master's Guide (3.0) (2000) to look for avenues for improvement. The D&D 3.5 revision was not yet planned at this stage. By winter 2001, however, the project had become more concrete, and Collins was tasked with developing a revision of the Player's Handbook (3.0) (2000). Rich Redman was similarly put in charge of revising the Dungeon Master's Guide (3.0) (2000), and Skip Williams in charge of the Monster Manual (3.0) (2000).

Over the next 16 months, Wizards of the Coast R&D worked on the revision. The third edition rulebooks had been released too recently to justify a D&D 4th edition, so the goal was instead to make a meaningful revision of third edition consisting of worthwile improvements. Rich Baker and Dave Noonan also worked on the project, with D&D Design Manager Ed Stark setting the project's goals and settling disputes.

The three stated goals of the 3.5 update were "Options, Not Restrictions", which included incorporating some content from expansion sourcebooks into the core rulebooks; "Tools, Not Just Rules", including guidelines for DMs to create their own content; and "Rules the Way You Play Them", meaning to incorporate feedback based on actual play.

Some influence was taken from other d20-based RPGs, including d20 Modern, Star Wars d20, and other companies' d20 products. Significant feedback was drawn from the RPGA, who effectively served as a continuous playtest for D&D 3rd edition. The Wizards of the Coast R&D team also learned a lot through their own play sessions, and by reading online discussions. A surprising source of useful feedback came from D&D translators, who had astute questions about the exact wording and meaning of rules.

Skip Williams and Andy Collins described the changes made as relatively small: "two players could sit down at the game table with different versions of the books and play for hours without knowing they weren't using the same rules." A new metamagic system and a new item creation system were originally written for the book, but were ultimately cut from the rules as too radically different.

Due to the retirement of the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game (3e) (2000) introductory product, the Dungeon Master's Guide was reorganized to serve as a better introductory guide for new DMs.

Skip Williams particular worked on the Monster Manual, leading an internal focus group to find ways to make monsters easier to use, incorporating existing errata into the monsters statblocks, and adding the full attack/grapple to all monsters. He also wrote the first draft of the chapter on how to build a monster. Rich Baker joined the Monster Manual after Williams left it, and had received instructions to push for more aggressive revisions to that book. Baker was responsible for the decision to have monsters to gain skill points and feats at the same rate as player characters, and for adding those changes to all monsters in the book. Gwendolyn Kestrel and Jennifer Clarke Wilkes were also responsible for much of the grunt-work of adding the attack lines and new skill/feat sets to monsters.

In the later stages of development, Dave Eckelberry and Andrew Finch were responsible for changes to the demons and devils, who had been defensively weak; the challenge ratings of several fiends was improved. Advanced variants of monsters were created to provide more high-level challenges; Eckelberry, Finch, James Wyatt and Mike Donais were responsible for this work. Numerous monsters were tweaked to better suit their role or play better.

On January 30, 2003, an issue arose among the designers regarding damage reduction. It was settled the following day by Ed Stark.

A major change involved reducing the duration of popular second-level buff spells like bull's strength. Originally having a duration of 1 hour/level, which would last a full adventuring day at high level, they were reduced to 1 minute/level, generally lasting one combat encounter. In playtesting, this resulted in the spells being almost entirely unused. Andy Collins reduced the duration in part due to his players spending too much time fighting over who should receive second-level buffs, especially since Tome and Blood (2001) added spells increasing the mental ability scores too. He also felt that it was too popular relative to other second-level spells, and supplanted the role of magic items like belt of giant's strength. The haste spell was similarly nerfed because it made Quicken Spell irrelevant.

The name "3.5" was used to signify that the changes were significant, but not enough to consist of a full new 4th edition of D&D. The numeric system was patterned after software, which often identifies minor updates with decimal points. The nomenclature "3.1" was not used, to avoid setting the expectation of further minor updates to the edition. D&D design manager Ed Stark declined to speculate on whether "3.5" implied D&D was halfway to a 4th edition; in fact, development on Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition began two years later, in May 2005.

Announcement and previews

On December 6, 2002, Wizards of the Coast announced the upcoming release of a revision to the D&D third edition core rulebooks, based on player feedback. According to press release on the Wizards of the Coast website, "While the overall rules system remains intact, these targeted changes have been designed to help with character play, convey consistency, and improve overall game flow." A short FAQ promised that the new books would remain fully compatible with existing third edition rulebooks.

The D&D 3.5 revision covered in an ongoing series of magazine articles titled Revision 3.5 Update, beginning with Dragon #304 (Feb 2003). Previewed changes included treating exotic racial specialty weapons as martial for that race, monsters as PCs (from Savage Species (2003)), new prestige classes, abolishing partial actions, standardizing spell area templates, round-by-round monster tactics, embracing miniatures use, damage reduction to special materials, changes to the specific spells greater bestow weapon, harm, hold person, haste, and polymorph other, and changes to the barbarian, fighter, ranger, and classes in general.

At the same time, Wizards of the Coast's official D&D website posted a series of articles titled Revision Spotlight, from February 11 to July 8, 2003. It provided FAQ entries to address common player concerns and previewed some content, including some feats, spells, monster stats, chapter listings, lists of prestige classes and feats, and the gnome and druid.

On July 1, 2003, the RPGA website previewed a D&D 3.5 statblock for the pit fiend. Changes with the final version include the term "Face/Reach" which would become "Space/Reach", miscalculated Strength-based bonuses, damage reduction to "holy silver" instead of "good and silver", a missing Knowledge (nature) skill, mass hold monster instead of quickened fireball in its round one strategy, and missing movement speed in squares.

Several third-party publishers of D20 system content were given D&D 3.5 rules in advance.

Release

All three D&D 3.5 core rulebooks were released in July 2003: the Player's Handbook (3.5) (2003), Dungeon Master's Guide (3.5) (2003), and Monster Manual (3.5) (2003).

On July 18, 2003, complete D&D 3.5 conversion guides for select D&D 3.0 sourcebooks were provided as a set of free PDF downloads. These were the Monster Manual II (3e) (2002), Fiend Folio (3e) (2003), Deities and Demigods (3e) (2002), Epic Level Handbook (2002), and Manual of the Planes (3e) (2001). Update documents were also provided for the D&D 3.0 core rulebooks, but due to the scope of changes these only provided an overview.

Following the release of D&D 3.5, issues #310, #311 and #312 of Dragon Magazine were dedicated to the D&D 3.5 update.

Reception and influence

Critical reception

Monte Cook, original lead designer on D&D 3.0 and an independent d20 publisher at the time, criticized the release of D&D 3.5 as "too much, too soon". Cook believed that the 3.5 revision was based on corporate pressure to increase sales rather than player demand as officially stated. He criticized the many small changes as confusing and unnecessary, and held a cynical view of Wizards pushing miniature use when they conveniently had a miniatures line to sell. However, he praised many changes, including character class improvements, harm balance, and appropriately increased difficulty of demons and devils.

In 2025, Skip Williams praised 3.5, saying "It lets me tell the stories I want to tell. Older versions of the game don't do that, and newer versions don't do it either."

Influence on other works

The release of D&D 3.5 had a substantial negative effect on third-party publishers. The public perception that D&D 3.0 and 3.5 were incompatible led to the devaluation of existing third-party D&D sourcebooks. However, an overall decrease in public confidence in third-party sourcebooks may also have been caused by the "d20 glut" of low-quality sourcebooks.

Thanks to the Open Game License, D&D 3.5's System Reference Document was used as the basis of the Pathfinder roleplaying game. Numerous retro-clones also used 3.5's SRD as a source under the OGL, allowing the use of traditional D&D game terms despite typically not using the d20 rules system.