Where's the 3E D&D Ruleset?

[Vlek]

This seems so odd to me, but why isn't 3E, just plain old 3E and not 3.5E, available? There seems to be everything else under sun. Can someone either explain why it doesn't appear to be available or point me in the direction of a download link for the ruleset and modules?

[damned]

3E was considered to be flawed by many and most moved to 3.5E.
No 3E ruleset is available for Fantasy Grounds (AFAIK).

[Mirloc]

Well, the difference between 3e and 3.5e was less in the way the game actually worked, and more in 3.5e was a balancing act on 3e I see no reason you couldn't use the D&D 3.5e ruleset to play with no real issues. Changes between the two (and I'm being a bit jaded here perhaps) were damn near inconsequential in the way the game was PLAYED. Now they did balance quite a few of the monsters to match the challenge ratings so that the CR11 goblin should be at the same ACTUAL challenge rating as the CR11 dragon.

But the basic concepts of the deep down core rules are virtually identical between the two versions. So basic rules like armor class calculations, hit point calculations, etc are based on the same formula and therefore the mechanics of the game system are universal between the two systems. Since the 3.5e rules do not contain the values of any of the content - you'd just use the 3e rather than 3.5e rules.

The major differences between the two can be seen here: https://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/20030718a.

[Trenloe]

As Mirloc says, there's nothing stopping you using the 3.5e ruleset to run a 3.0e game. The only thing you'd have to pay attention to is the data in the 3.5e library modules being different from the same data in 3.0e - that's it. FYI - the data in the 3.5e library modules is taken directly from the d20 SRD: https://www.d20srd.org/