Doing my best not to sound rude over text, just curious about this.  I know everyone prefers different editions of a given game, especially D&D, and that makes sense to me when there are substantial differences between editions.  But Pathfinder has been out for years, and there is a perfectly adequate SRD online, and it is almost identical to D&D 3e.  As far as I can tell, the differences that are there are either cleaning up things that didn't work as well in 3e, or adding new features that still fit within the same framework.  And yet to this day I still see frequent posts in both WP and WGM offering or asking for 3e.  So for people who still play that edition, what is its appeal over Pathfinder?

For me the main difference is variety. There's a lot of material for 3.5 that hasn't been, and will never be, converted for use with Pathfinder. If I want to play a Factotum, or a Duskblade, or in Eberron, or make use of things like Reserve Feats, then my options are: play 3.5, convert, or use 3rd party conversions.

Also, I know a lot of people who've learned 3.5 and they don't feel the need to learn the intricacies of a new system. Pathfinder is really similar to 3.5, but it's not the same. And lots of people don't want to learn a new thing that almost the same as the old thing.

Because I didn't want to invest the money into essentially the same game (Pathfinder) or something that blows (4E) and 5E doesn't impress me.

In a lot of ways, Pathfinder is 3.5 with an elaborate set of houserules on top.  Just as 3.5 was 3.0 with the same and 3.0 was 2nd edition with the same.  A lot of folks spend a lot of time making an edition into what they want, and they don't necessarily feel the need to change over to someone else's version.  There are plenty of people out there that are still playing games using 2nd edition with houserules on top (and not even Skills & Powers 2nd edition).  Once some people find what they like, they stick with it.

Personally, I prefer PF over just about anything else in that genre right now, but I know that isn't a universal opinion.

for me, it's simple cost effectiveness.  I have nearly every 3.5 book out there.  Really don't want to spend more on pathfinder.

Eh. All the books that you really need for Pathfinder are available on the PRD.

Having said that; there are some concepts which don't work quite as well.

I guess a change of rule sets doesn't draw me to a new game.  If pathfinder had a new, cool setting, or classes, or something that seemed interesting, it might make me decide to try it.  But if it's just an online guide on how to implement the rules, I'm not sure why I'd bother.

As someone who happily plays all three (3.0/.5/PF), for me, I agree with a few of the notes above, but also: each seems to have a different 'frame' of reference and powerlevel.

In 3.0 - the PCs are not as powerful/versatile as they are in PF.  (just the basic stat mods of races covers this concept.)

I *LOVE* the solid editing and attempts to make cool Adventure Paths done within Pathfinder.  I despise Pathfinder Organized Play.  (Though, I still like some of the modules.)

For 3.5, it really did feel like "hey, here's the 37 house rules that half of the people playing 3.0 were doing anyway.. we repackaged into a book"  But, there are still some splat books that I enjoyed.  But, using those 'backwards' (into 3.0) is dangerous and has unintended consequences.

So - it depends.  What do I want to play?  I love grim-n-gritty games.  I prefer every fight to be fatal.  I like political intrigue games.

So, 3.0 with hit locations or wounds?  Perfect

If I want to play in someone's view of Ebberon or similar?  3.5

If I want Golarian, or my own homebrew world - PF

As someone who does not play any 3.x or PF, I ask you a question to yours, Why Not?

Because my (admittedly limited) experience with PF has been "oh, it's everything I enjoyed about 3e, plus they cleaned up some of the things that I didn't."  And while I understand the financial argument (the main reason I haven't gotten into 5e myself yet), the SRD has all of the core rules and more expansions then I'm ever going to use, all for free, so that's not an issue.



Gonna have to disagree with you there.  As someone who grew up on 2nd ed, I will attest that the change from 2nd to 3rd was far more radical than the change from 3 to PF.  The core mechanic of the game changed pretty drastically; even the fact that you could now say that there was a "core mechanic" was a pretty huge difference from the days of roll high for combat (using THAC0), roll low for saves and proficiencies, and some classes have completely different rules to handle some of their special abilities (like thieves' percentile-based skills).  3e wasn't just house rules on top of that, it was a fundamentally different game that kept enough of the central concepts around that it could still be called D&D.