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Gnomo
2009-02-05, 10:13 AM
Firstly, hello to everyone, I'm new to this boards.

I'm going to DM a high level campaign this month, and when I say high level I mean partially epic, the lowest level characters are 18th and the highest is 23th, I started this campaign six years ago and since then the DM has changed almost every year so all of us have DMed in the same homebrew setting. Almost all of us have been playing with the same characters, except for a couple of players that are more interested in trying new character builds than developing their characters.

One issue is that there are many things that go out of control at this level particularly with heavily optimized builds, and on the other side there are some players that are not very interested on trying to abuse the rules... so, I have a couple characters heavily multiclassed and some other characters who hasn't taken the most optimized choices (one is a pure fighter... go figure). During roleplay there's no problem cause they are all fairly decent roleplayers, but when encounters arise the optimized characters take all the glory and the regular characters do almost nothing, which has been a problem from a while now.

The other problem is that, to challenge the optimized characters I have to create optimized NPCs and monsters, and at this level is a bit tiring... epic level NPCs can take a while to create with all the multiclassing required, just to offer some challenge to some members of the party. I have given up on the idea of toning down the power level of the game, cause then this players complain... so I'm going the other way around... not multiclassed characters are going to be more powerful. So I'm planning to pimp up the base classes and so the players who doesn't go crazy multiclassing can have something nice and I can take single classed NPCs and challenge them enough without so much fizzle.

I said that the characters were epic, but I will not play with epic rules, those are so stupid that it hurts my eyes to read them, there are no epic feats, no epic class level progressions, no epic anything. Anyway at this levels they are so powerful that Epic is the only word to describe them.

So there are a few house rules I'm using that you might want to consider when analyzing the changes I'm proposing to base classes in my campaign:


All good saves are 1 point lower than indicated in class tables.
Characters are disabled when their hit points are less than 0 and at least their negative Constitution score. Characters are dying when their hit points are less than their negative Constitution score and at least double their negative Constitution score. Characters with less hit points than double their negative Constitution score are dead.
Racial Hit Dice receive a 1 extra hit points each Die. Racial Hit Dice receive one extra skill point per Die.
Maximum ranks in a class skill is equal to their character level.
Maximum ranks in a cross class skill is equal to half their character level.
All skill ranks prerequisites are lowered by 3, with a minimum of 1.
Characters choose two skills, those skills will always be considered class skills.
Characters do not multiply by 4 their skill points at first level.
A character can read and write in a language only if he knows the alphabet used in said language (table here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/speakLanguage.htm)).
All characters can choose to learn an alphabet instead of an extra language due to an increased Intelligence score at first level, except Barbarians.
New skill: Knowledge(alphabet). This skill lets you know a new Alphabet for every rank you have in it.
All bonuses equal to a Characteristic modifier have a maximum equal to the levels taken on the class that grants it.
All metamagic and metapsionic effects do not stack, they are all calculated off the base spell.
All characters have only 1 free action per turn, another free action will spent the use of a bigger action at player's choice (swift, move or standard).
All shields grant 1 more point to AC than indicated, except bucklers.


These are the changes to the classes i have thought so far:

Fighter
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain 1 fighter bonus feat every class level.

Cleric
Gain 3 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Lose the ability to spontaneously cast cure spells.
Lose the spell slots dedicated to domain spells.
At second level can spontaneously cast the 1st level spells from his two chosen domains. Every two levels after the second, the cleric gain the ability to spontaneously cast the spells of the next superior level from his two chosen domains.
At 20th level the Cleric gain access to a third domain of his deity.

Sorcerer
Gain 1d6 hit points every level.
Lose 1 spell slot per spell level.
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain the feat "Extra Spell" (Complete Arcane) at 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, but all spells chosen must belong to the same magic school.
Gain the feat "Extra Slot" (Complete Arcane) at 2nd level, then again every two levels thereafter.

Monk
Gain 5 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain 1 bonus save point at 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, this point can be added to any one of the three saves permanently.
Every 2 levels after 12th gain a new daily use of the class feature "Abundant Step".

Ranger
Gain 7 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His effective druid level to calculate the abilities gained by his animal companion is equal to his Ranger level -3.
At 12th level gains blindsense 10 ft. At 16th level gains blindsense 20 ft. At 20th level gains blindsense 30 ft.

Barbarian
At 9th level the class feature "Fast movement" increases its bonus to movement to 20 ft while raging.
At 15th level the barbarian gains "Mettle" while raging.
At 18th level the class feature "Fast movement" increases its bonus to movement to 30 ft while raging.
While in rage the barbarian gain 1 temporal hit point per class level.

Wizard
Gain 3 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Lose 1 spell slot per spell level.
Gain the feat "Extra Slot" (Complete Arcane) at 3rd level, then again at 13th level and at 19th level.
Gain the feat "Extra Slot" (Complete Arcane) at 2nd level, then again every two levels thereafter.

Paladin
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Holy Aura (su): At 7th level can, as a standard action, spend one daily use of Turn Undead to grant a morale bonus to attack rolls, damage rolls, AC, saves, skill checks or grant fast healing (the Paladin chooses one benefit when using the power) equal to the bonus on the cleric level check of a turning attempt (the paladin can add bonuses granted by feats to this check but not by other means), minimum 0, to all allies adjacent to him (but not himself), this bonus lasts for a number of turns equal to the Paladin's Wisdom modifier + 3. The paladin can have only one aura active at a time, if he uses a new one the older one is dissipated.
At 13th level his Holy Aura class feature can affect allies within 10 ft away from the Paladin and the minimum bonus granted or fast healing amount is 1.
At 19th level his Holy Aura class feature can affect allies within 30 ft away from the Paladin and the minimum bonus granted or fast healing amount is 2.

Rogue
Gain 9 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain fast movement at 14th level.
Increase the bonus of fast movement to 20 ft at 20th level.

Swashbuckler
Is competent with light and heavy shields.
Gain 5 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain the "Dash" feat (Complete Warrior) at 5th level, and every 5 levels thereafter.

Ninja
Gain the "Dash" feat (Complete Warrior) at 5th level, and every 5 levels thereafter.

Warlock
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain the "Extra Invocation" feat (Complete Arcane) at 7th level, and again at 13th and 19th levels.

Scout
At 5th level gains an animal companion, in a similar fashion that of a Druid, but his effective Druid level to gain abilities with his animal companion is one half his class level.

Psychic Warrior
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His power point table is reduced by 1 power point per level.
Do not gain a bonus feat at first level.
Gain the "Psionic Talent" feat at 1st level, and every six levels thereafter.

Psion
Gain 3 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His power point table is reduced by 2 power points per level.
Gain the feat "Psionic talent" at first level, and again every 3 levels thereafter.

Spellthief
The "Steal spell" class feature works with psionic powers in a similar fashion that it works with spells, the victim loses a number of power points equal to the Spellthief class level and cannot manifest the stolen power in his next round (and also the actual round if he's playing at the moment). The Spellthief can manifest the stolen power once, the power level goes against the maximum spell levels that the Spellthief can hold, until he manifests it. The Spellthief can use the power points stolen to augment the power, but this power points do not belong to the Spellthief and can only be used to manifest this particular stolen power (the Spellthief do not gain a power point reserve when stealing a psionic power).
The "steal spell effect", "steal energy resistance", "absorb spell" and "discover spells" class features work against powers and manifesters in the same way they work with spells and spellcasters.
The "steal spell-like ability" class feature work in the same way with "psi-like abilities".
The "steal spell resistance" class feature work in the same way with "power resistance".

Warmage
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain medium base attack bonus instead of poor.

Favored Soul
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Lose 1 spell slot per level.
Gain the feat "Extra Slot" (Complete Arcane) at 2nd level, then again every two levels thereafter.
Gain 1 bonus save point at 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, this point can be added to any one of the three saves permanently.

Ardent
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His power point table is reduced by 2 power points per level.
Gain the feat "Psionic talent" at first level, and again every 3 levels thereafter.
Divine Mind
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His power point table is reduced by 1 power point per level.
Gain the "Psionic Talent" feat at 1st level, and every six levels thereafter.
Lurk
Gain 5 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
His power point table is reduced by 1 power point per level.
Gain the "Psionic Talent" feat at 1st level, and every six levels thereafter.

Hexblade
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain the "Extra Slot" feat (Complete Arcane) at levels 8th and 14th.
Gain the "Extra Spell" feat (Complete Arcane) at levels 11th and 18th.

Knight
Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Gain good Fortitude save.

Druid
Gain 5 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
Lose 1 spell slot per level.
Gain the feat "Extra Slot" (Complete Arcane) at 2nd level, then again every two levels thereafter.



What I would like now is some insight on the changes proposed. What do you think of them?. The idea is not to provide another way of breaking the game, so most changes are very simple and straightforward.

PS: Please be brutally honest and forgive my crappy english :smalltongue: .

azalinthegreat
2009-02-05, 12:25 PM
Hey, I really like the changes you made to the cleric class. It seems to be more in theme with what they're meant to do, and it might even them out a little bit more.

I wouldn't personally give the paladins the "Holy Aura" thing, just because I find that they're pretty powerful as is. But that's just me.

Finally, on another note, I've had some trouble with min/maxing characters too. What I typically do is make the enemies learn, figure out that one guy is especially tough, and use careful application of tactics to bring them down. I've learned that no matter how powerful a party gets, there's always something that'll take them down. One of my favorite examples is when I killed like half of a very brute-force based party by using a lot of "Hold" spells, haha.

Baron Corm
2009-02-05, 04:56 PM
I think the best fixes here, as far as making them more viable single-classed, are the ones for the barbarian and ranger. Changing skill points per level or making the class move faster isn't too much of a power increase, and adding bonus feats is certainly not an incentive to stay with the class, when you can just take as many levels as you need for as many feats as you need.

Just make more level-based effects, like your 2 temporary hp/level for the barbarian. The way I see it, the paladin is a good example to stand by. Dipping is futile when your Lay on Hands, Smite Evil, and Mount are all directly level-based.

The other option is "capstone"-like effects at lower levels. Give everyone something really powerful at around levels 10, 15, and 20, not just bonus feats. Something like what you did with the ranger.

Elder Brain
2009-02-05, 06:51 PM
Yeah. I agree with flyingpoo. (Never thought I'd say that!)

I like the level based stuff, but I don't have to worry about maxing, because my only Veteran player hates multiclassing, and everyone else is new.
We rebuilt all of the base classes, including some supplements, or are in the process of, and one of my favorites is the Sorcerer; we gave them d6s, took away spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana), but gave them the ability to cast their spells better (much like a manifester's augment option).

ericgrau
2009-02-05, 07:22 PM
I had some comments but most of them were "ok, that's fine". So I'll post what I think might break the game a little:

Bullets:
2. Should create less accidental death. But it minimizes what martial classes & clerics can do and barely hampers arcane casters at all. They often sit there and lob spells anyway. Or perhaps all classes will only use it to chug a potion.
3. That's a lot of HP to give out to monster PCs. Even if you think they're underpowered, adding that much defense without offense can really skew things.

Fighter: seriously imbalancing in one way, yet ineffective in another if he runs out of feats to pick. Just makes fighter more of a dip class.

Some other things just seemed unnecessary, clunky or needlessly complicated, but not game breaking. Others just a flavor change I guess.

Triaxx
2009-02-06, 09:27 AM
Fighter: Perhaps give them a bonus feat every other level. So level 1, just the normal feat, level 2 bonus feat, and so on.

Yakk
2009-02-06, 12:42 PM
# All good saves are 1 point lower than indicated in class tables.
Are you using fractional saves and BaB?
Are you using "having a good save in 1 or more classes just gives you a flat +2 bonus"?


Characters are disabled when their hit points are less than 0 and at least their negative Constitution score. Characters are dying when their hit points are less than their negative Constitution score and at least double their negative Constitution score. Characters with less hit points than double their negative Constitution score are dead.
This makes the "disabled, but not dead" state get much narrower as the character gains levels.

As a suggestion: You no longer take damage below 0 HP.
For every X damage (or fraction thereof) that 'overflows', you take 2 points of con damage.
X = 1 at level 1, 5 at level 5, 10 at level 10, and 20 at level 20.
In addition, each round while at 0 HP, make a con check or take another 2 con damage. On a natural 20, you stabalize.


# Racial Hit Dice receive a 2 extra hit points each Die. Racial Hit Dice receive two extra skill points per Die.
You could pseudo-gestalt racial HD. Every 2 racial HD gives you 1 level of class Gestalt. This helps both casters and melee...


Sorcerer

* Gain 1d6 hit points every level.
* Gain 4 + Int. mod. skill points every level.
* Gain the feat "Extra Spell" (Complete Arcane) at 5th level and every 5 levels thereafter, but all spells chosen must belong to the same magic schoo
While the Sorcerer is weaker than the Wizard, do you have no problem with Batman?

You also boosted the Wizard. So apparently you don't have Batman problems (where casters overshadow non-casters). But you do have Cleric problems?

Rogue
No changes to sneak attack? I find that Rogue damage cheese is based off generating a ridiculous number of attacks, which makes non-optimized Rogues ... have issues.

If you find a way to boost sneak attack damage super-linearly, and allow it once per round, there is still benefit to attacking multiple times (more chances to land), but it isn't needed to be effective...


Swashbuckler

* Is competent with light and heavy shields.
For flavor purposes... What about +3 +Class Level/4 shield bonus to AC when not using the offhand to attack.

That gives the Swashbuckler basically a magic heavy shield in the offhand that scales to a +5 shield at level 20, without having to equip a shield.


Scout

* At 5th level gains an animal companion, in a similar fashion that of a Druid, but his effective Druid level to gain abilities with his animal companion is one half his class level.
There is the same Rogue "sneak attack" issue. And by halving the level, you end up with the same issue the Ranger had (that by level 20, the animal companion is a speed bump).


I haven't changed some classes, like the Druid which I believe doesn't need any change or some of the base classes in additional supplements (like Shugenja or Wu-Jen), but I don't consider doing so necessary cause most of this classes are bleh.

What I would like now is some insight on the changes proposed. What do you think of them?. The idea is not to provide another way of breaking the game, so most changes are very simple and straightforward.
Pretty good. Do you have issues with polymorph cheese? Summon cheese? Etc?

As noted, the Fighter is seriously in danger of running out of feats.

One thought: To generate 'save or die' like attacks, melee effectiveness is based off of the Power Attack tree.

For Polymorph and Summon cheese:
Each Polymorph and Summon spell names a specific creature or creature type. Spells for more powerful beings are rarer, or non-existent.

Gnomo
2009-02-07, 02:27 PM
Thanks to all for your opinions.

@ azalinthegreat
I also like what I did with the cleric class, the whole spontaneuos cure or inflict wounds never striked as the right feature, but more like specialized to their chosen domains. About the paladin, I know this feature is strong, I have received different opinions about it, but the idea is that the Paladin shares his divine powers between his comrades, as you can read this power doesn't affect him, I guess I will have to see it in play to realize how powerful it is... and thanks to your pointing now i realized that the Aura has to be limited to 1 active at a time, so the Paladin cannot grant different bonuses at the same time.

@ flyingpoo22 and Elder Brain
The whole class level based idea is what I'm trying to pull off here, but is very difficult to check at what extent it can be abused by the players, for me is safer to offer simple changes like more skill points (now that my houserules don't have your skill points multiplied by 4 at first level) and increase the movement of classes that use tumble, hide (reduce movement to half) and need mobility for positioning (flanking or escaping). If you have good ideas for class features then please feel free to comment those, so I may got them in my game.

@ ericgrau
You're right about that being disabled barely hampers the casters, but I couldn't thought of a simpler way to handle hurt characters (which I really want to do), if you have one idea I would like to see it. Maybe if I add some other penalties to the disabled condition... like a spell/power failure chance. Yes, you are possibly right about that too, I still feel that Racial Hit Die are very weak, so I will just lessen the benefits a bit.

@ Triaxx and ericgrau
The fighter is one of the most complicated classes to change, cause they don't have real class features, so all the "fixes/variants" I have seen around lack the "template" feeling the class has, so I just took the simpler road, more customization, more skill points and more bonus feats... I don't know if it's more of a dip class now, cause I'd definitely take this Fighter to 20, of all the changed classes this is the one that worries me the most... 27 feats can be very nasty.

@Yakk
Fractional saves and bab is a pain... I don't want to be calculating this for my 40+ important epic NPCs, and I know my players don't want to be calculating this for their own, so I just make it easier... I know it is a nerf, but it adds more danger to the game, which is something I can live with. This houserule has already been playtested by us and works fine.
As I commented before, I hate that you get "disabled" only when having 0 hp, it's stupid... so I just took the mechanics and make it more likely to happen. It's getting narrower at higher levels, subjectively yes, but not more than the original mechanics for going disabled:smalltongue:, your proposed idea sounds very nice, but I want something simpler.
Racial gestalt sounds like a nice idea... but kind of abusable, and I don't want to modify monsters that much.
Of course I have Batman problems, but not coming from pure Sorcerers/Wizards/Clerics, coming from overly multiclassed gishes and other builds that besides high level spells have too powerful class features. In fact I would love to hurt all spellcasting progressions a little bit (like I did with my Cleric if you multiclass out of it) but so far I have only thought of more complicated mechanics, and I don't want that.
Rogue is a very good class, it's one I would take all the way up, I don't think there are issues with sneak attack, it's as hard to use for the character who has 2d6 extra damage and the one who got 15d6, to avoid this I usually pump the enemies AC a little bit... uberchargers on the other hand cause a lot more trouble. I will actually ban the Shock Trooper feat from my campaign.
About Polymorph, I don't have problems with it... I have problems with Shapechange, but I guess I can't solve them except than banning it and that will make one player really mad... so I can't touch it.

Again, if you have implemented mechanics that achieve what I want to do here, and they are simple and not broken, please comment them out, I'd really want to read about it.

Until next time, and forgive my crappy english, I'm still learning.