While my D&D campaign goes well generally speaking, the other day I suggested to my players we change rules. I told them about what that would imply for their characters and we voted on our Facebook group… So at our next game session, we’ll convert all the characters from ‘Castles & Crusades’ to ‘Dungeons & Dragons 3.5’.

  ‘Castles & Crusades’ is great for what it is, a retro clone of D&D’s earlier editions mixed with a unifying mechanic based on 3rd edition’s and a compatibility with all previous versions of D&D… But in the end, the Bard couldn’t do much under C&C rules and the ranged attack-centric Fighter was stuck with melee abilities that didn’t suit his purpose.

  D&D 3.5 simply allows you to customize a lot more and the players will get the characters they had in mind before I started to explain what the C&C classes could and couldn’t do. The worst part of it was that I kept thinking “If we were playing 3.5 we could do this very easily actually, but I guess it’s best to stick to simpler rules.” (As all the players are new to RPGs) And in the end I found that the rules of C&C are not that much simpler than those of D&D 3.5… They are, but not dramatically so. In some cases, C&C even has more complicated rules. What’s more, my players enjoy the miniatures aspect and strategy of the game, which are an intrinsic part of D&D 3.5.

  In the end, while both Castles & Crusades and D&D 3.5 have their ups and downs, this campaign will be better served with D&D 3.5. Castles & Crusades will remain in my collection as an equally valid version of D&D, and in another type of campaign I’m sure I would have chosen it over 3.5… But for now, I’m sure my players can deal with Attacks of Opportunity.