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Oslecamo
2009-12-04, 08:33 PM
This thread will be the start of my own rebalancing of 3.X. I'm perfectly aware that there are at least a dozen others rebalancings out there, but none of them really apeals to me. Some stuff here and there I like, but for everything else I feel like I could do better myself. So I will. If you see something in here that you've posted yourself, then congratulations, I was probably inspired by you.

Before actualy starting to fix anything, however, one must identify what is broken. After pointing out the problem, I sugest a solution draft. Your job, if you're willing to help me, is to point out any problem I may have missed, and/or any solution that may not be the more apropriate one.


Basics:
Problem-Charisma weaker than other stats. Not enough skill points. Not enough feats. Save or dies. Size matters. Immunities.

Sugested solutions:

6 stats as usual. They're fairly balanced, except for charisma, for wich I have yet to find an extra use besides the fact that it boosts several powerfull class abilities, but just for certain classes. One idea is that once per day per HD you get to add your charisma modifier to a d20 roll of your choice, as a result of a burst of self confidence.

Feats every three levels, but their power will be increased, specialy combat feats. Probably combining several combat related feats into single ones. Base feats roughly of the same power, but chain feats will stronger the longer the chain.

Skills will pretty much be simplied to the pathfinder system. Everybody can pick whatever they want, trained skills with at least one rank on them get a bonus. Will try to boost less used skills like athletics. wich become pretty much useless when one gains flying.

Few immunities. Even a zombie will have vital points to cut. Only something completely amorphous like an ooze will be truly immune to crits. Only something like an epic rampaging force of nature will be truly immune to mind control. Altough there will be resistance bonus and reductions to make up for that.

Few insta something effect. Pretty much everything besides damage will allow a save of some kind. Spells and abilties will have diferent effects based by on how much you failed/suceeded on the save. For example, slay living will still exist, but it will only insta kill the target if it fails it's save by 10 or more, otherwise it will just deal some damage/negative levels.

Size will matter less for grapples, but you can kiss freedom of movement complete immunity to it goodbye.

Experience as a resource and vancian casting will be kept.

Loopholes and munchkin interpretations will be hunted, clarified and/or erased. No, the shop won't buy your broken ladder.




Classes:
Problem-casters rulez, thanks to huge amount of spells available, and the cleric gets heavy armor on top of that.

Solution:

There's plenty of classes out there, but first I'll focus on the 4 mains:

Cleric: divine caster, specialized in buffs, defense and healing. No super self only buffs or turn undead out of the bat, neither he'll know all spells at once anymore. Can learn extra spells, but can only cast a very small number of those extra spells per day.

Fighter: feats galore, and dead levels will be filled with special abilities collected from a variety of sources, including the numerous oficial fighter variants like dungeoncrasher.

Rogue: Stealth and jack of all trades, the rogue specializes in moving around hidden and hiting where it hurts. Sneack attack will affect more stuff, and rogue will also be a master of crafting cheap alchemical trinkets and poisons to boost his capacities.

Wizard: arcane caster. Combines utility spells and combat tricks wich are however less efecient than nonmagical solutions, and powerfull magics that however can backfire horribly. Focused on ofense, the wizard will be pretty squishy whitout a bodyguard, thanks to the nerfing/removal of most arcane defensive spells. Can learn extra spells, but can only cast a very small number of those special spells per day.



Nonmagical combat:
Problem: Besides diferent crit ranges and diferent HD, there's really not much diference between using diferent kinds of weapons. Shields and heavy armor are suboptimal choices. Not being able to full attack after moving, and iterative attacks at -15 penalty aren't that good. BAB not that relevant. Casters can easily get away from melee reach even whitout magic.

Sugested solution:

Besides making size less relevant, diferent weapons will be added with special abilities, plus older weapons geting new abilities, like a spear ignoring part of the enemy's armor.

Inclusion of parries. Magic weapons will be able to parry ranged spells.

Iterative attacks go away. Combat classes will get ways of making more attacks on their own. After moving.

More benefits for using heavy armor and shields, detailed in the equipment section.

BAB will matter a lot more, being the main modifier for special abilities. The spear for example would ignore an amount of enemy armor equal to your BAB. Noncombat classes like wizards will get 0 BAB progression.

Most defensive stuff to prevent aoos goes away. Sucessfull aoos for an oponent moving automaticaly block the movement. If you're trying to cast near a fighter, you'll be eating a sword to your face. Point.


Magic
Problem-too strong, too versatile, too few drawbacks.

Sugested solutions:

I'll take the painfull task of reviewing spells one by one. Damage spells will receive extra effects to make them more atractive. Utility spells will be nerfed untill it's more effecient for the rogue/fighter to do mundane tasks. No save spells besides pure damage like magic missile will be eliminated or changed to allow a save, like solid fog being able to be passed with a strenght check. Save or dies will only kill if the target fails the save by a lot (like -10), and if the target makes the save the caster will suffer feedback. Same for other super spells.

For now there'll be two main kinds of magic:

Arcane magic is based on the manipulation of one self's energy and capturing energy from his surroundings. In particular It's much easier to use arcane magic to destroy than to create, so arcane magic is mainly used for ofense, but experienced wizards will still be able to build powerfull items and long lasting effects, altough always at a cost.

Divine magic is based on pacts with other creatures, gods and places and direct channeling of their power. In particular, the connection with the positive plane of energy allows a cleric to be a master of healing. However, a cleric is uncapable of refined control of the power he channels, and thus unable to perform the wide array utilities a wizard can do like scrying and mind manipulation, altough he'll be able to compensate that by easily summoning allies to batle. Divine magic users will be expected to pay some kind of meaningfull tribute for the forces they work with, detailed in the classes/spells. For example, a cleric may have to donate a percentage of his material gains in offerings to his deity.
For both kinds of magic, valuable materials like gold and jewels make great conduits of energy, altough the process destroys the materials. A cheap cantrip allows to quickly determinte the magic potential of any object, wich is normaly measured in GP, the magic potential of a standard gold piece.

On the other hand, magic is easily disrupted by the wrong materials, particulary if glued to the caster's body. Casters normaly wear robes of magic null materials since most armor materials interferes with magic, but armor using mages are possible if one has the money to invest in exotic magic-friendly armors.


Equipment
Problem-too much focus on magic. Poisons too expensive. Special materials matter litle.


A good chunk of the magic stuff will be converted to nonmagic and semi-magic stuff.

Alchemy:Will allow to produce several cheap expendable trinkets like diferent kinds of acid and alchemist's fire. Potions and oils are now made by alchemy, replicating the effects of low level spells. Rogues will be specialy good at this.

Armor:Heavier armor will be heavier, but won't slow down your movement speed if it doesn't leave you encumbred. Will grant DR and more protections, like fortification against sneack attacks and crits.

Masterwork: have now several nonmagic levels, up to legendary equipmet, wich grants a +5 enanchment bonus on attack and damage rolls or AC depending on the equipment.

Magic items:Will still be there, but now mainly focused on special activated abilities, like beam shooting swords, animated shields, wands, scrolls, staffs, ect, ect. Magic items that create permanent stuff out of nothing will only be crafteable by plot power.

Poisons:Much cheaper, more variety, rogues will be specialy good at crafting and using these.

Runes:Originaly designed by dwarfs, runes can boost the ability of heavy equipment in several ways. The better your BAB, the more the runes do for you. Armor runes make the armor more protective, weapon runes gives them special abilities like "weight arrows" that make hit fliers drop to the ground. Runes will wear down with use, but be cheap enough to be spammable.

Shields: now will offer more defensive bonus to make sword and broad more worthwile.

Special materials:Will be expanded. Old materials will be able to be refined for and/or combined for greater bonuses, and new uses for old mundane materials like gold, lead, copper, brass. Fighters will be specialy good at building and using those.

Weapons: divided in weapon categories, swords, polearms, axes, bows, blunt, simple(daggers, clubs, staff crossbows all in one package) and exotic(includes stuff like the whip and spiked chain wich demand special training to be effecient, taken one at a time). Weapons will now have special abilities on their own besides diferent size, but these abilities will be tied to BAB, so only skilled warriors will be able to use them to their full potential.

Also for the non equipment lovers, I'll design a savage template, that grants a series of bonus with the drawback of the character being forbidden from using any good item, a la vow of poverty. But really worth it now.


Races
Problem-human rulez. Other races weaker in diferent degrees.

Solution

Human as power base, then start by buffing the basic ones to his levels. Exotic races will be later.



Monsters
Problem-players are always wanting to play monsters, or catch them and use them to their advantage, or some monsters are just clearly better than others of the same CR.

Solution:

Most monsters will be redone with players wanting to use/abuse them in mind. This means that:

Monster HD=CR. No more monsters with more or less HD than their CR. It just messes things up. Tough monsters will get high con and/or some toughness abilitiy that gives +X HP. Fragile monsters will have few com. This of course means a redoing of the monster advancement rules, so that each extra HD counts for +1CR.

No abuseable abilities: Since monsters are now suposed to be directly played by PCs, then I'll make sure to remove/nerf any abuseable abilities that normaly rise problems. SLAs will cost as much exp and money as the spells they replicate. No teleport at will. Ect ect. I'll also work to make monster abilities dependant on their HD, so one can easily make a monster class based on it and start playing it from lv1, becoming the full monster whent they reach the total HD.


Savage bonus: monsters normaly don't get equipment, so they get a “savage” bonus to their statistics to make up for it, representing an harsh life in the wilderness and lack of morals and inibitions. Players using monsters lose this savage bonus, but can pimp themselves with equipment. Think vow of poverty. Maybe make "Savage" a template for the players interested in no-equipment characters.

Templates:Will come with built in drawbacks, or the payment of costs. Half golem for example would demand a fat payment of gold and exp, while Half celestial would remove three of your feats, and half fiend would penalize your mental stats(just examples out of my mind for now). Certain templates may also simply be converted in short prestige classes.



Multiclassing
Problem-casters multiclass horribly.

Solution:

Almost unchanged, except that now certain abilities will be based on your HD when you take the level. Spells and spell slots for example.

So if you're a fighter for 4 levels and then multiclass for wizard, you get to pick lv 3 spells and have caster level five, but you'll know and be able to cast only a couple of spells per day.

TheThan
2009-12-04, 10:06 PM
You want to Identify a list of design flaws in 3.5? ok sure not a problem here’s a short list.


Design flaws

Few classes scale with level.
Melee classes are punished for trying to use their various options (trip, sunder etc).
Weird mix of realism and total fantasy causes strange rules interpretations.
Absolute size bonuses and penalties
Point based skill system in a class/level based game system
Vaguely written rules for various aspects of the game.

Pluto
2009-12-04, 10:14 PM
It pretends that it is (and that it for some reason needs to be) "balanced."

Gpope
2009-12-04, 10:33 PM
Lots of good ideas. These sound a lot more appealing than some of the d20 fixes I've seen discussed on this forum, which seem to tend more towards the abstract.


6 stats as usual. They're fairly balanced, except for charisma, for wich I have yet to find an extra use besides the fact that it boosts several powerfull class abilities, but just for certain classes. One idea is that once per day per HD you get to add your charisma modifier to a d20 roll of your choice, as a result of a burst of self confidence.

Make Charisma to Will the default? I think it has as much claim to Will saves as Wisdom does nowadays, with Wisdom mostly being perception and intuition more than anything else (4e puts them on equal footing re: Will).

I guess that leaves Wisdom in pretty much the same position, although its skills are a little more broadly useful, so it has that going for it. It's probably easier to justify another use for Wisdom than Charisma, though. Maybe Wisdom could take over Initiative, as kind of an alertness/danger sense thing.


Feats every three levels, but their power will be increased, specialy combat feats. Probably combining several combat related feats into single ones. Base feats roughly of the same power, but chain feats will stronger the longer the chain.

I'd prefer more feats instead of stronger feats (although some feats just plain need to be stronger anyhow). Fewer, stronger feats does simplify character builds, though, and that's not a bad thing.


Besides making size less relevant, diferent weapons will be added with special abilities, plus older weapons geting new abilities, like a spear ignoring part of the enemy's armor.

Diversity is interesting, but this seems likely to lead to overcomplication.


Iterative attacks go away. Combat classes will get ways of making more attacks on their own. After moving.

I'd prefer to see combat classes getting more powerful attacks rather than more attacks for speed and simplicity of play (this is one thing I like in 4e), but I could dig this too.


Alchemy:Will allow to produce several cheap expendable trinkets like diferent kinds of acid and alchemist's fire. Potions and oils are now made by alchemy, replicating the effects of low level spells. Rogues will be specialy good at this.

Masterwork: have now several nonmagic levels, up to legendary equipmet, wich grants a +5 enanchment bonus on attack and damage rolls or AC depending on the equipment.

To me, carting around a sack of non-magical junk isn't substantially different from carting around a sack of magical junk. Your mileage may vary.


Runes:Originaly designed by dwarfs, runes can boost the ability of heavy equipment in several ways. The better your BAB, the more the runes do for you. Armor runes make the armor more protective, weapon runes gives them special abilities like "weight arrows" that make hit fliers drop to the ground. Runes will wear down with use, but be cheap enough to be spammable.

And here's more expendable junk to carry around, I guess.


Also for the non equipment lovers, I'll design a savage template, that grants a series of bonus with the drawback of the character being forbidden from using any good item, a la vow of poverty. But really worth it now.

I might suggest going halfway on this: give a lot more inherent bonuses to characters as they level, and make a lot of equipment with magical enhancement bonuses go away. It's going to be a nightmare trying to balance item-based and non-item-based systems side by side.


Monster HD=CR. No more monsters with more or less HD than their CR. It just messes things up. Tough monsters will get high con and/or some toughness abilitiy that gives +X HP. Fragile monsters will have few com. This of course means a redoing of the monster advancement rules, so that each extra HD counts for +1CR.

No abuseable abilities: Since monsters are now suposed to be directly played by PCs, then I'll make sure to remove/nerf any abuseable abilities that normaly rise problems. SLAs will cost as much exp and money as the spells they replicate. No teleport at will. Ect ect. I'll also work to make monster abilities dependant on their HD, so one can easily make a monster class based on it and start playing it from lv1, becoming the full monster whent they reach the total HD.

Good luck rewriting the Monster Manual(s), but my hat's off to you if you get it done! A unified HD/CR/LA system would be a huge boon to any d20 derivative system.


Almost unchanged, except that now certain abilities will be based on your HD when you take the level. Spells and spell slots for example.

So if you're a fighter for 4 levels and then multiclass for wizard, you get to pick lv 3 spells and have caster level five, but you'll know and be able to cast only a couple of spells per day.

A very attractive concept, but how exactly are you going to balance this? Even assuming that you're dialing spells waaaay back, a wizard's handful of highest-level spells are almost always going to be far and away their most valuable resource. It also runs counter to the concept of balancing feats by prerequisite chains: if a level 16 fighter can multiclass to wizard and pick up Meteor Swarm (as a quintessential blasting spell, I assume it's probably going to survive the conversion), what does a level 16 wizard get if they multiclass to fighter?

Oslecamo
2009-12-05, 06:45 AM
Lots of good ideas. These sound a lot more appealing than some of the d20 fixes I've seen discussed on this forum, which seem to tend more towards the abstract.
Thanks! I hate abstraction!



Make Charisma to Will the default? I think it has as much claim to Will saves as Wisdom does nowadays, with Wisdom mostly being perception and intuition more than anything else (4e puts them on equal footing re: Will).

I guess that leaves Wisdom in pretty much the same position, although its skills are a little more broadly useful, so it has that going for it. It's probably easier to justify another use for Wisdom than Charisma, though. Maybe Wisdom could take over Initiative, as kind of an alertness/danger sense thing.

Hmm, interesting idea. Charisma boosts will, wisdom boosts iniative, and I was planing on making dex more relevant anyway, so it may work out!



I'd prefer more feats instead of stronger feats (although some feats just plain need to be stronger anyhow). Fewer, stronger feats does simplify character builds, though, and that's not a bad thing.

Indeed. No longer will you need to burn a dozen feats just to be a decent archer.



Diversity is interesting, but this seems likely to lead to overcomplication.

You're probably right, but with all the other stuff I'm planing, I guess I can leave basic weapons for last. Plenty of work to do untill then.



I'd prefer to see combat classes getting more powerful attacks rather than more attacks for speed and simplicity of play (this is one thing I like in 4e), but I could dig this too.

Some people like rolling lots of dices, and also sometimes there are abilities that can easily shut down single attack characters.



To me, carting around a sack of non-magical junk isn't substantially different from carting around a sack of magical junk. Your mileage may vary.
...
And here's more expendable junk to carry around, I guess.

The diference now is that each class has his own sack of junk, instead of the casters building everything and anything.



I might suggest going halfway on this: give a lot more inherent bonuses to characters as they level, and make a lot of equipment with magical enhancement bonuses go away. It's going to be a nightmare trying to balance item-based and non-item-based systems side by side.

I was thinking of increasing inherent bonus, but hey, I've heard plenty of people scream that they want to do Naked Mc Naked, so some kind of vow of powverty/savage template will be in.



Good luck rewriting the Monster Manual(s), but my hat's off to you if you get it done! A unified HD/CR/LA system would be a huge boon to any d20 derivative system.

This one I plan to go forward. It just messes up too bad with the system when monsters have random numbers of HD wich decide everything. Like I pointed out in my DM's guide thread, monster advancing HD get pretty ridiculous pretty fast.



A very attractive concept, but how exactly are you going to balance this? Even assuming that you're dialing spells waaaay back, a wizard's handful of highest-level spells are almost always going to be far and away their most valuable resource.

The strongest spells will come with strong drawbacks. A wizard will be able to shoot one or two really impressive effects, but then he'll need to jump back on his weaker spells or seriously risk killing himself. For example an idea I have in mind is that the strongest spells burns the magic in you, removing part of your own magical buffs. If you don't have enough buffs left, then it burns directly on you!

So if you multiclass into wizard, you get to shoot a couple impressive spells, but whitout the backup of smaller spells, you'll probably burn yourself if you try to use the strongest stuff.



It also runs counter to the concept of balancing feats by prerequisite chains: if a level 16 fighter can multiclass to wizard and pick up Meteor Swarm (as a quintessential blasting spell, I assume it's probably going to survive the conversion), what does a level 16 wizard get if they multiclass to fighter?

One of the super high level fighter abilities I'll be designing.

TheThan:I plan to make rules more clear, but what do you mean "punished" by using special options like trip and sunder? Feats too weak? Size matters too much? Destroying loot?

Doc Roc
2009-12-05, 06:47 AM
So.... Have you heard of the Tome Series?

BobVosh
2009-12-05, 07:07 AM
Just don't nerf wizards to the point of unplayable. Seems like you may be on a fast track to doing such.

How are you going to handle arcane spell failure? Fighter 16/Wiz 1 for a meteor swarm sounds nice, unless you lose the buffed war-door and heavy armor that you created by hand as well.

Since you plan to simplify HD=CR, do you plan on simplified summoning? Like SM III summons CR 3 and lower?

As for multiclassing maybe 1 for 1 should be similiar to ToB with 1/2 for noncaster/melee.

Also good luck going through the spells + MM1. You obviously are a glutton for punishment :D

Ra-Thoth
2009-12-05, 08:08 AM
First post ever, hopefully not spawning too much antagonism right away. ;-)

In my opinion, the problem with DnD 3.5 lies within the scaling. By level 10 (or maybe even before, depending on the degree of optimization) power gets massively out of hand.

As a DM, I want the party to have challenging encounters. I want them to sit there near to death after a final encounter and lick their wounds, proud of what they have accomplished. I do NOT want to see my best friends dead, though.
How can that be achieved? By level 9-10 its almost impossible. Most of the stuff that is within the CRs of what my party should be able to handle, is a laugh for the party (mildly optimized, here). If I start to rise higher in the CRs than what they can officially handle, funny stuff happens. Save-or-die, huge damage numbers, etc. On both sides. That results in deaths of players, or a boring encounter.

By adding more options and more power to the PCs, you only add to this mechanic. Even if it means buffing the poor fighter. Stop the arms race. As a DM, one has to watch carefully what to have the party face. If you add more options to PCs, you practically take from yourself the possibility to anticipate how the encounter will work out.
(Spellstoring Weapon: Maximized Lvl 10 Fireball, combined with several maneuvers and stance (ToB), Power Attack and Heartseeking Amulet (MIC), to name only one thing.)


PS: And nerfing beyond playability, as stated above, is not an option either. We are currently trying to homebrew this stuff away, but it's really more like shooting into the blue. If there's interest I can keep you updated.

Oslecamo
2009-12-05, 06:12 PM
Doc Roc:Yes. They have some good ideas. Buried in such a pile of madness that it makes core look balanced.


Just don't nerf wizards to the point of unplayable. Seems like you may be on a fast track to doing such.

Yeah, that's a real danger I'm trying to avoid.



How are you going to handle arcane spell failure? Fighter 16/Wiz 1 for a meteor swarm sounds nice, unless you lose the buffed war-door and heavy armor that you created by hand as well.

Runes for reducing arcane spell failure will be possible, altough you'll need to be an high level fighter to do them. A wizard geting a fighter dip will be able to use use light armor at best.




Since you plan to simplify HD=CR, do you plan on simplified summoning? Like SM III summons CR 3 and lower?


No, because that would add obscene versatility to a single spell, wich is precisely what I'm trying to avoid.



As for multiclassing maybe 1 for 1 should be similiar to ToB with 1/2 for noncaster/melee.

I really don't like the 1/2, because it leads people to optimize a lot to get the best maneuvers possibly, plus people want to cast high level spells.



Also good luck going through the spells + MM1. You obviously are a glutton for punishment :D

It is a good pain... Well, here I go to start the monsters, since this whole project started with trying to fix LA. Gonna post the link here once I get some templates and popular monsters done.

Ra-Thoth:I'm perfectly aware of that. As I had already pointed out I plan to nerf/erase all extreme effects and replace them by usefull but not absolute effects. The other thing to take in acount will be to find a way to prevent too much stacking effects.

erikun
2009-12-06, 01:46 AM
Oh, wow. This promises to be a long post. I think the simplest answer would be "everything", but that isn't very informative. I'll try to be concise and systematic, but this will probably be a long read.

Problems with D&D in General

Combat-centric

D&D is centered around combat, so much so that every class and every challenge is measured by how well it can fare in combat. Classes which don't relate to combat are ignored, reguardless of their capabilities. Abilities which don't revolve around getting into combat, getting out of combat, or surviving combat are "worthless". Entire armies marching upon undefended homesteads are measured, not by how difficult it is for the party to stop them, but by their collective CR.

4-Party-centric

D&D revolves around the party of Fighting-Man, Skill-Monkey, Magic-User, and Healbot. So much so that that the system is designed to accompany the 4-Party, and does not deal well outside of it. Monsters are designed with high HP and high damage for the Fighting-Man to take on, savings throws or hordes of monsters for the Magic-User to deal with. Traps, stealth, and most "non-combat encounters" are designed for the Skill-Monkey. Large lifebars which are manditorily depleted in combat specifically cater to the Healbot.

Parties can do without one of the 4, but are generally at a disadvantage in doing so. Situations where the 4-Party would not be necessary, such as diplomatic meetings or exploring a natural cavern, are glossed over and ignored. Monsters are statted for their combat role, and creatures which would be a challange in other realms are generally ignored.

Wealth-by-Level oddities

You need a magical sword when you level up. You need magical armor for defense and magical rings for wardings and magical boots for flying. What's more, you need more powerful magical gear the higher level you achieve, resulting in characters selling to discarding swords and armor just to receive the exact same gear at higher pluses.

This becomes even stranger when economics are applies to the WBL system. A first-level smith crafting a masterwork weapon can feed his family for years. Purchasing and selling magical supplies implies a vendor, but a vendor implies the characters are free to purchase whatever magical supplies are available. A single +5 sword could purchase every kingdom, hire every soldier, acquire every land, and buy every mundane item found in most campaigns.


Okay, enough of that. What problems are specific to D&D 3rd edition?

Ability Scores

Specifically, the ability score power spiral that occurs at mid-high levels.

You begin with 18 INT. You then get an additional 5 points from level increases, and Wish for 5 more. You wear a +6 Headband of Intellect, and got another +2 from old age. You now have 36 INT.

What the heck does that even mean?! It's hard enough to consider what 20 in an ability score actually is - that's supposed to be an amazingly talanted olympic athlete. And yet, characters routinely end up with 40+ in a stat by high levels. Not only do runaway stats cause problems with the system (see high STR Ubercharger) but at some point, the ability scores don't even make much sense anymore. How much smarter is 40 INT than 30 INT? Is 1 extra spell slot each level an accurate representation? Is 10 more skill points?

Recommended Solution:
Cap ability scores, probably either at 20 or 25. Magic spells like Cat's Grace increases an ability score to a set amount, not just adds to it. Gauntlets of Ogre Power does the same. For example, Lesser Cat's Grace would temporarily increase DEX to 16 (or do nothing, if the target had 17+ DEX) while Cat's Grace would increase to 20 and Greater Cat's Grace to 24.

On the other hand, granting +1 to two ability scores rather than just one allows characters to "branch out" rather than needing to put all bonuses into one score. Wizard no longer need to devote 100% to INT - you can have dexterious wizard and wise wizards and hearty wizards. A fighter who hits 25 STR, either through level bonuses or Wish spells, can choose to focus on other abilites.


Races

Drop ability score modifiers. Far too often you'll hear of Fire Sun Elf wizards because of their +4 INT, or Anamorphic Bat Druids thanks to their +8 WIS. Even outside of such extreme optimization, race/class choices are frequently made over simple plusses or minuses. Orcs make good cleric but poor adepts, despite most orc spellcasters being adepts. Elves make better rogues than wizard, despite the fluff. Dwarves make poor clerics, marshals, and paladins, simply because of their CHA penality.

Races should be better defined by what they can do. I'm not talking about the elven +2 to listen checks that's forgotten by level 5, either. Take a look at 4e for this. Dragonborn are best known for breathing fire. Halflings can dodge any hit. Elves can reroll for a second chance on any attack. Dwarves' special ability makes them more resiliant. 4e is still about the ability scores, true, but racial feats and abilities make a much larger factor.


Classes

I'm almost not going to touch these, as classes are already a mess. However, a few recommendations.

"Kits" or "Alternate Class Features" as a way to create different kinds of fighter, different kinds of wizard, etc. We don't need 50 different flavors of rogue fighting style when a dozen ACFs will do the same job.

Tone down spellcasting worldbreaking, make martial useful, kill the necessity of the Full Attack.

Prestige classes don't do what they are supposed to do. Some are little more that alternate class features, some are gishes, some are overpowered base classes, and some just fail at whatever they were trying to be. Prestige classes need to be reinvented to be any use.

SEPERATE EPIC FROM LEVELS! Level 21 is not epic. A level 21 fighter is just a fighter with +21 BAB. A level 21 wizard is just a wizard with a few more spell slots. This isn't epic, nor should it be. Epic should be the equilivant to Divine Ranks - something the DM hands out by choice, and that virtually breaks the game. Epic should feel Epic; it is okay for high level to just be high level.


Feats

Feats need to die, and die a lot. Like Prestige Classes, Feats are a mismash of either bonuses, abilities, combat maneuvers, or just general stupidity. No more feat taxes, like Natural Spell. No more +1 to all attacks. No more needing to wait 4 levels to do something everyone should be able to do.

Fix the classes, setup Alternate Class Features, redesign combat, then come back here. If there is something that feats can still accomplish, use them for that. If not, leave them in the garbage bin.


Skills

I'm almost not going to say much. If you've seen 4e and Pathfinder, you probably have a good idea on how to fix skills.

I will say that skills should be more in line with combat. You roll a skill, you compare it with the difficulty. +2 for bonuses, -2 for penalities, et cetera. Players should have a good idea of how to use their skills, not need to fish through a lengthy list to see what they can and cannot do with them.

Also, all character should be able to participate in a given task, although not necessarily equally well.


Combat

D&D 3.5e combat is bad. Really, really bad.

For starters, the Standard Action/Move Action/Minor Action from 4e works wonders. Adopt it. Kill the Full Attack, and make standard attack meaningful.

Combat maneuvers need to be practical out of the door. Bull Rush, Trip, Grapple and such shouldn't need feats to be useable. Feats to make them more likely to succeed, sure, but you shouldn't need a bunch of feats to shove someone over.

Make sword-and-board practical. Make two weapon fighting practical. Make two handed fighter less absurd. (Although ability score caps may do that.)


Magic

I'm not sure at this point if Wizard-roll-to-hit or saving throws are a better way to go at this point. I think I'd need to consider it more.

Combat spells should do more than just fistfulls of d6 damage. Take a look at 4e: Ice spells will freeze the floor, fire spells ignite enemies for damage, thunder and lightning magic knocks opponents off their feet.

Save-or-die can take a cue from 4e, too. Finger of Death, rather than being an instakill, could weaken an opponent and drain their strength each turn. They get a saving throw each round, and as long as the mage maintains focus, it keeps damaging until the target shakes the spell or dies. Even if the opponent saves, they are still fighting at a reduced STR stat. Stone to Flesh would reduce DEX and gradually immobilize, while Disintegration deals damage and reduces CON. The lower level save-or-suck spells can follow suit: Glitterdust and Hold Monster will only last until the monster can make its save, making it less of a "save or lose" and more of a delay tactic.


Alignment

Either fix it, redefine it, redesign what it does, or dump it completely.


Polymorph

Wildshape

Gate/Summon Abuse

Other thoughts:

Perhaps redefine HP, allowing character to regain it after a 5 minute rest? While doing so may seem "4e-ish", there really is a point. HP regain between battles means less need for HP-Bloat, allowing classes to survive with less HP in general. It also means combat will be faster and more dangerous, as everyone has less HP to go through. And while HP is recoverable, spell slots are not. In-combat healing would be more important, and running out of healing options means the party will be running on fumes and a lot more vulnerable.

Call it personal preference, but I'd like to see skills and out-of-combat situations to more resemble in-combat situations. For example, if a masterwork rope grants a +2 to climb checks, then a masterwork sword grants a +2 to hit. A character with "full ranks" in Arcana should have the same bonuses as a character with full BAB in combat. It makes going from one system to another easier to understand and deal with.

Reduce the total number of "spell levels". I really don't see a need for wizards to have much more than 5 levels of spells.

Reduce the 10,000 different ways to cast an arcane spell. The way I see in, INT = spellbook memorization, WIS = spontaneous, CHA = aura at-will magic. It makes more sense than the "Sorcerer who casts magic with PERSONALITY but does so basically identical to a Wizard" we have with 3.5e.


EDIT: One last thing.

I do think the monster CR = LA idea. Especially if the "LA" could be split up actually class levels. It would allow weaker and stronger monsters with little modification, rather than needing to resort to character classes. It would also allow players to play as "lesser" versions of monsters, just by having a lower "level" of the particular monster.

Racial Paragon classes would basically be the same thing; a 5 level "racial level up" class.

Oslecamo
2009-12-06, 05:36 AM
EDIT: One last thing.

I do think the monster CR = LA idea. Especially if the "LA" could be split up actually class levels. It would allow weaker and stronger monsters with little modification, rather than needing to resort to character classes. It would also allow players to play as "lesser" versions of monsters, just by having a lower "level" of the particular monster.

Racial Paragon classes would basically be the same thing; a 5 level "racial level up" class.


Yeah, speaking of that, here's my first draft on monsters (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=133971).

As for the rest of your post, a lot of ideas I agree with, others I don't agree so much (there are reason why I'm not playing 4e after all).

In particular I plan to indeed remove ways to increase stats, and make even monsters have lower stats, so players can use them more easily.

I don't really see a diference between move+standard+swift from 3.X and move+standard+minor from 4e.

Feats stay. Point.

More noncombat stuff, agreed.

No auto heal HP. I hate it. A party should stop to rest when they are starting to bleed to death too much, not when they have run out of special powers.

Classes will be more independant, altough eventualy teamwork will result in a stronger combination than the sum of the parts.

No class packages, but I'll try to give each class several choices.

Alignment will be left for after(and if) the rest of the mess is cleaned up.

Rixx
2009-12-06, 05:44 AM
How to balance 3.5: E6.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/206323-e6-game-inside-d-d.html

Zincorium
2009-12-06, 06:10 AM
E6 is a solution to 3.x's problems the same way denial is a solution to anxiety.

Roc Ness
2009-12-06, 06:38 AM
Have you seen this thread (Tome of something, I can't remember what its called) on the Wizard's forum? It has a (I think) good fix for feats, where they all are tacticalish and scale with your level. So taking Two Weapon Fighting automatically grants you ITWF and GTWF once you hit the prerequisites of either. I don't think this was exactly how it works but it was similar.

Also, Charisma is force of will now, right? So how about you make it the default for all spell saves? That way it'll see a lot more usage in Wizards and Druids, and possibly Clerics too. Heck, make it the prerequisite of Metamagic feats, "I will this spell to be more powerful"

Rixx
2009-12-06, 07:21 AM
E6 is a solution to 3.x's problems the same way denial is a solution to anxiety.

I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over all this great fun I'm having at low level play!

mostlyharmful
2009-12-06, 07:49 AM
Have you seen this thread (Tome of something, I can't remember what its called) on the Wizard's forum?

best version of that I know of is the Races of War (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294) stuff from Frank Tollman (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=48453)

Fenix_of_Doom
2009-12-06, 08:25 AM
Design flaws

Absolute size bonuses and penalties
Point based skill system in a class/level based game system



What are the problem with these two points?
I've always greatly enjoyed the skill point system and I can't think of another way to adjust for size, though a more gliding scale could be useful(but also more complicated).

Noodles2375
2009-12-06, 10:41 AM
"Fighter: feats galore, and dead levels will be filled with special abilities collected from a variety of sources, including the numerous oficial fighter variants like dungeoncrasher."

You're still going to run into problems with the fighter vs. the wizard if you're using vancian casting and being sufficiently vague with the fighter's abilities and feats. Even if you go so far as to totally replace the fighter with the warblade, a strict improvement, the warblade still comes in as a tier 3 class. The overall power level of full casting GREATLY eclipses the power level of swinging a sword at mid to high level.

Volkov
2009-12-06, 10:43 AM
Charisma is incredibly powerful, it boosts Bluff and Diplomacy, which can defeat any foe with an int score higher than 2 with ease when enough skill points and/or charisma points are invested in these.

Volkov
2009-12-06, 10:49 AM
Also a level 21 wizard is omnipotent if you 4e players haven't heard.

Lord Loss
2009-12-06, 12:07 PM
Just a small detail regaring skills, I find that intimidate should be strength based, after all, what scares you more:

A politician who charms the population with his people skills?

An eight foot tall bodybuilder?

I don't see a problem with the skill point system. Size is, in my opinion, well made. Yes the huge ogre can smash face better than the halfling, that's the point! However, the halfling can run through the little tunnel that the huge ogre doesn't fit through.

Kesnit
2009-12-06, 12:26 PM
You're still going to run into problems with the fighter vs. the wizard if you're using vancian casting and being sufficiently vague with the fighter's abilities and feats. Even if you go so far as to totally replace the fighter with the warblade, a strict improvement, the warblade still comes in as a tier 3 class. The overall power level of full casting GREATLY eclipses the power level of swinging a sword at mid to high level.

The OP has already said he's looking for ways to nerf full casters.

Sebastian
2009-12-06, 12:47 PM
Just a small detail regaring skills, I find that intimidate should be strength based, after all, what scares you more:

A politician who charms the population with his people skills?

An eight foot tall bodybuilder?


Right, except that the skill is not about "scare" but it is about "intimidate".
Who do you think would be more intimidating , the Joker or Killer Croc?

TheThan
2009-12-06, 04:12 PM
TheThan:I plan to make rules more clear, but what do you mean "punished" by using special options like trip and sunder? Feats too weak? Size matters too much? Destroying loot?


Have you looked at the special combat rules that the heroes get?

Every one (and I mean every one) forces attacks of opportunity, opposed rolls against creatures that are bigger, stronger, and have other advantages above and beyond that. It’s so bad, that the fighter character who wishes to do cool things (and be successful at it) can’t actually do those things.

Doing things other than simply straight hit point damage is incredibly hard, even when optimized for doing it, you still come up against things that are impossible or nearly so to use the few options you have on it. Forcing you to rely on straight hit point damage. Its not that melee it too weak, a properly decked out fighter can do tremendous damage. It’s that it’s too punishing. You don’t get to do anything cool other than bash it with your great sword.

Seriously try to trip a centaur some time, he’s large, giving him a +4 to his check, he gets another +4 bonus for having more than two legs. So combined with his strength score of 18, he has a +12 to trip, while a human fighter has a +4 or +5 at best. Barring the Dm bombing his rolls, the fighter is going to loose every time. Even if the fighter is decked out with a spiked chain and improved trip. The centaur has a ranged weapon to negate the reach of his spiked chain.

So just looking at that, we see that the human fighter is not capable of using a trip attack against a centaur and stand a reasonable chance of success.

Now, 4E takes the right idea, they said “to hell with this, lets make it fun” so they introduced powers, now if you want to trip that centaur, you activate your power, make your attack roll, and if you succeed, you trip him. It’s simple, and gives fighters the ability to do cool things.




What are the problem with these two points?
I've always greatly enjoyed the skill point system and I can't think of another way to adjust for size, though a more gliding scale could be useful(but also more complicated).

Now on to point buy:

Its not so much that the system doesn’t work, it does. The problem is that it’s the wrong sort of system to use in a game designed around the class/level concept.

You see with the class/level concept, every aspect of a character is based upon his level and his class. When he levels up, he gains more power, based on what his class does, in dnd terms he gains HP, saves, bab, and special class features (either new ones or improvements on old ones). Everything is dependant on your level, except your skills, these are based on an abstract number of points (why do fighters get 2+int modifier? Why do barbarians get 4+int modifier?) and has skill rank limit based upon class level (level +3). Wait, why is there a limit based on level? Why doesn’t it have an artificial limit like my skill points per level?
See, the system is simply a bit wonky. It works and it gives you flexibility to build your character’s skills any way you want, but it doesn’t conform to the rest of the system, which is the real problem. The whole system should function the same way. Its like writing a program, you don’t switch programming languages in the middle of it do you? No I think no, you start with one use it through the entirety of the program.


It stands to reason, that two creatures of the same size would not get any inherent advantages or disadvantages, due to their size, when they fight each other. I mean, two creatures of the same relative size shouldn’t suffer a penalty to hit each other. But one should if it is trying to smash something smaller than it.

Which one sounds more right:
“I’m larger than you, therefor I get a penalty to hit, but a bonus to grapple”.
“I’m size category large, so I suffer a –1 to hit everything and +4 to any grapple checks.”

Yukitsu
2009-12-06, 05:04 PM
Seriously try to trip a centaur some time, he’s large, giving him a +4 to his check, he gets another +4 bonus for having more than two legs. So combined with his strength score of 18, he has a +12 to trip, while a human fighter has a +4 or +5 at best. Barring the Dm bombing his rolls, the fighter is going to loose every time. Even if the fighter is decked out with a spiked chain and improved trip. The centaur has a ranged weapon to negate the reach of his spiked chain.

So just looking at that, we see that the human fighter is not capable of using a trip attack against a centaur and stand a reasonable chance of success.


Most people who trip have improved trip, which brings them up to +8. Many try to be enlarged, which gives them a +13, and having this done for them or doing it themselves is possible at the level where fighting centuars comes up. If they took a race with a strength bonus, they'll beat it.

Andras
2009-12-06, 05:09 PM
It stands to reason, that two creatures of the same size would not get any inherent advantages or disadvantages, due to their size, when they fight each other. I mean, two creatures of the same relative size shouldn’t suffer a penalty to hit each other. But one should if it is trying to smash something smaller than it.

Which one sounds more right:
“I’m larger than you, therefor I get a penalty to hit, but a bonus to grapple”.
“I’m size category large, so I suffer a –1 to hit everything and +4 to any grapple checks.”

Except the size modifier comes with an AC modifier as well as a hit modifier. So yes, it's -1 to hit against another large, but at -1 to the opponent's AC. So effectively, 0 hit and 0 AC modifier total, which was the idea.

TheThan
2009-12-06, 08:58 PM
Most people who trip have improved trip, which brings them up to +8. Many try to be enlarged, which gives them a +13, and having this done for them or doing it themselves is possible at the level where fighting centuars comes up. If they took a race with a strength bonus, they'll beat it.

Aha, now your simply adding in variables I haven’t accounted for. I put an 18 in the fighter’s str, because that’s not unreasonable for at a 2nd or 3rd level fighter (approximate CR for a base centaur). Either a magic item, or some other strength bonus (say from race). The wizard might not have taken enlarge person, or the party cleric might not have prepared it. There are lots of things we could throw into the equation to change the outcome.
But just looking at what a fighter can do by himself, at best he can get a +8 bonus to his opposed roll, so he still needs to beat the centaur by 5 on the roll to trip the centaur. Now even with the bonus from improved trip, you’re still pretty likely to fail at it.

I’m not saying that its impossible, in fact there are optimized builds that make it very possible. But out of the box and without any focused optimization you aren’t going to be able to do it effectively. A fighter, warrior, shoulder whatever should have all these options open to him and stand a reasonable chance of success to be able to do them. That way if a fighter should decide to use one of his special combat actions that he’s not focused in he should be able to pull it off.

Wizards don’t have to focus on a school of magic to be effective (to the point of being overpowered). Why should fighters.

erikun
2009-12-06, 09:00 PM
Stupid, stupid, stupid post-eating forum! *kicks computer*

Okay, with that said, let me try that again. This will probably be shorter than what I had originally typed out, so hopefully that is a plus.

Oslecamo, I like what you did with the dragon. It looks good, although some may consider it underpowered. I note that it only has 10th level casting for a 12 HD dragon, though.

I would recommend having some monsters "as-is", though. A gelatenous cube probably wouldn't have "Cubist Levels" and a low-level Balor wouldn't make much sense. Plus, if someone wants to make a new creature for their campaign, they're more likely to look at monster-building guidelines in the MM than designing a 20-level monster progression for something that is unlikely to survive more than a minute.

I'm not sure you should discard 4e simply because it is 4e. There were a lot of good ideas in 4e. There were a lot of bad ideas in 4e. There were a lot of sideways ideas in 4e. There were a lot of ideas that made me wonder what the designers were on, and why they weren't sharing.

The point is, don't disregard something simply because it is "4e-ish". It might turn out to be one of the good 4e ideas.

There isn't much difference between Standard + Move + Swift and Standard + Move + Minor, honestly. Perhaps the biggest is that Minor actions don't take up the Immediate action for the round, so you can still respond after using a minor action. Note that 4e didn't have Quicken metamagic, though, so it wasn't a problem.

The main use of Minor actions is for taking, well, minor actions. There aren't a lot of minor actions by default - most are either racial or class abilities. The Kobold has an ability of "shift 1 square" (5-ft step) as a minor action - which is a big deal if you think about it and incredibly useful. They're also used to maintain "concentration" on a spell. If you don't use an action to maintain it, the spell ends. It's to keep wizards from throwing out a Fog Cloud and a Fire Rain while summoning a half-dozen creatures. They can't maintain them all, simply because they don't have enough actions.

Using swift actions may be more tactical, in a way. A wizard who uses their swift action to maintain concentration won't be able to Quicken Teleport away from danger, after all. On the other hand, spending their standard or move action to maintain concentration limits what they can do in a round.


No auto heal HP. I hate it. A party should stop to rest when they are starting to bleed to death too much, not when they have run out of special powers.
I will admit, this is one of the more radical changes I had in mind. It is based off the idea that HP = endurance, and it is a measure of how long they can stand in a fight. Being attacked while defenseless (asleep, paralysed, 0 HP) would deal damage directly to CON, something that would take far longer to recover from. It would also explain why low level clerics can't heal broken bones with their Cure Light Wounds spells.

Also, if you've played 4e, you have to agree that all the fights in 4e can be just as deadly. You can have 1 fight or 5, and they will all be dangerous. You can encounter the BBEG in your first fight of the day, and it won't be much easier. Compare this to 3.5e, where you typically need to go through 3-4 fights to "wear you down" before things start getting difficult.


No class packages, but I'll try to give each class several choices.
What I was thinking is something like this.

Base Ranger: Two weapon fighting, nature magic, half-power animal companion, favored enemy

Alternative 1: replace two weapon fighting with archery style
Alternative 2: replace two weapon fighting with full-power animal companion
Alternative 3: replace nature magic with low-level arcane magic
Alternative 4: replace favored enemy with undead hunting

Between those four, I've probably eliminated close to a half-dozen prestige classes and a couple of feats. Unlike a prestige class, I can have my character concept from level 1-20, rather than just 6-15. Unlike feats, I won't need to spend resources "creating my character concept" that others are using to make their own characters good.

Eldariel
2009-12-07, 01:37 AM
I'm sorry, what was that? I couldn't hear you over all this great fun I'm having at low level play!

Some of us prefer high-level play and while we do love it as it stands, fact is that we're limited to only couple of real options. As such, y'know, fixing that stuff is the preferable option to saying "Don't play high-level D&D".

As for the OP, I'm sorry I haven't written out a comprehensive list of stuff I feel needed to be corrected, but I got stuck in how to write out the combat-section, since my opinion is that "individual turn"-based combat is almost unworkable. I'll try to get it all written later today tho.