I'm about to start playing D&D 3.5 and have two people who disagree on how spells work.

For example if someone was going to cast magic missle in battle how would it go.

Situation A.

Round 1:  Sorceror/Wizard casts Magic Missle

Round 2: Sorceror fires magic missle and Goblin he takes 1D4+1

Or Sitaution B.

Round 1: Casts magic missle, fires magic missle at goblin.  He takes 1D4+1.

Lol, I remember playing D&D when I was younger.

It's situation B in both 1st and 2nd edition, so it's probably situation B in version 3 and 3.5.

Magic Missile does not require a full-round action to cast unless the Sorcerer is applying metamagic to it.

(B)

There are more D&D gamers on these boards!?  :/

That's pretty cool. Seriously there can't be that many of us?

So if it was a full round action for casting cost it would be sitation A?

Yes.

In 3.5 D&D, you have a lot of different kinds of "actions" you can take including:  Free, Swift, Immediate, Standard, Move, and Full-Round.  On your turn you get 1 standard action, 1 move action, 1 swift action, and as many free actions as you like or 1 full-round action instead of your standard/move actions.

A spell's description will tell you its casting time which is usually a standard action.  You can use your move action before or after you cast your spell.  If you look in the PhB it says that Magic Missile's casting time is "1 standard action" so it goes off as soon as you cast it on your turn.

Sorcerers have a really nasty problem with metamagic which lengthens the casting time to a full-round when using a metamagic feat (extend spell, empower spell, maximize spell, etc) which means it takes effect just before your next turn.  Note that this doesn't mean the spell uses up two turns.  They still get all their actions again on the second turn.

Ah good. Things were as i thought they were desite it going against someone that's actually played the game before.

Thanks Words i've done nothing but self games really outside of it.

Now i've just go to run through my campaign a couple times and make sure it's kinda balanced.

We're rotating GMs and i'm getting to go first.  Well second but first with the static bunch of characters.

Sounds fun. Good luck with it.

I wouldn't suggest worrying about balance yet though. The classes aren't really, but that's a matter of opinion I guess.

Well i just mean GMing.  I mean having not played much i haven't got a clue what would kill people and what won't outside of using the challenge levels and then making adjustments for obvious things like "Don't have them fight magic resistant guys if all they do is cast spells."

Keep the character sheets and run mock battles against the monsters you put in the game.  It's really useful for seeing whether you just made a good encounter or sent them to their deaths.  Also remember that groups are always preferable over single powerful baddie ones because the latter tend to end rather anticlimactically (3-5 player actions vs 1 baddie action = slaughter).