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Analytica
2011-01-14, 10:01 AM
I am sketching on a homebrew rules system. Since it is effectively translating OGL material into another language, I feel I have little need to retain sacred cows and the like. However, I am not certain which of the changes I speculate on are really good and which work together. I would appreciate your input, comments and suggestions. :smallsmile:

1 - Pathfinder? Should I include the changes Pathfinder made to the SRD (skill system, combat system, race balance, feat and spell revisions)?

2 - I have thought of doing something a little d20 modern-like, where most people would be around level 5 rather than level 1. The first levels would be in base classes representing different backgrounds (like stronger versions of the NPC classes, maybe). Then you could go into prestige classes representing things like priest, mage, paladin, warlord etc. I am not sure if this is a good idea or not.

3 - I might remove a lot of magic items as well as WBL. Alternately, perhaps magic items depend on some trait of the user, a bit like Incarnum. Suppose a level 15 warrior has 10 or 15 points of some form of essence, these would then be tied up each day to unlock her personal buff items. Possibly the same source is what would allow spellcasting, so spellcasters would have a trade-off between spellcasting power and autoscaling magic items.

4 - I also considered giving every class a defense bonus progression (something similar exists in Conan d20 and that african-inspired d20 setting), maybe adding half BAB to AC whenever you are armed and combat-ready.

5 - Blurring arcane and divine magic. I would like this to work maybe so that all spellcasters are basically arcane, but gain spellcasting benefits from being servants of deities. Possibly I would split up the spell lists and give access to subsets of spells through feats and prestige classes.

6 - Removing spell slot class features? I am not sure what to do here. I would like classes to synergize magically rather than give separate progressions. Maybe a spellcaster level stat (like some kind of magical BAB), increased by some classes and feats? This would grant spell slots or spell points. Alternately, could I tie this to a skill, or several skills? Say there was an Abjuration skill, and your ranks in it would determine your Abjuration caster level and thus which levels of Abjuration skills you could cast. Maybe Spellcraft determines spell points. Or is this all overcomplicating things?

7 - Spellcasting MAD. Spells would require Int = 10 + level to understand and cast (perhaps avoided if a deity is helping you, i.e. you are a priest), bonus spell points off of Wisdom (because it depends on inner strength) and save DCs from Charisma (how good you are at imposing your will externally).

8 - Use psionics instead? Maybe rewriting existing spells into psionic powers?

... as well as some other assorted ideas. I am not sure which of them would work in practice, and would be grateful for your input.

Yours sincerely,

Analysis

ericgrau
2011-01-14, 11:02 AM
0-My rule of thumb for such things is to pick something existing or invent something simple. Even pathfinder alpha was a horribly, horribly unbalanced set of house-rules with 100 people working on it. Now they got rid of most of the craziness and some friends are playing it, so I may give it a shot. My main complaint now is that they didn't change much rulewise except as annoying minor added complications, but I like that they added new classes, feats, etc. The tendency with DMs who make a million house rules is to create massive player headaches when the untested rules fail much harder than PF. New things should be similar to existing things when possible. If you don't like the system then play another rather than going through the hazards of making your own. With that in mind...

1-If you want.
2-Hard to estimate CR and ECL, but doable.
3-Horrible balancing nightmare, don't do it. But there is a low magic item system in my sig that replaces part of the player's wealth by level with points used to buy abilities with the same effect. That way balance stays unchanged.
4-Don't, see #0. Plus AC items with proper optimization scale at the same rate as monster AB. See #3 if you don't like magic items.
5-Very difficult per #0, but do-able. Power boost from versatility if you don't force the caster to take some divine spells. Use wizard BAB & HP to err on low side of power.
6-Ya, it is overcomplicated. Doing it similar to PrCs might work.
7-Over-complication with minimal impact. Smart players will SAD cha, noobs who don't get shafted.
8-Psionics is fine with transparency. Changing 100 spells is a nightmare per #0. A full caster with automatic still/silence is a huge power boost. Probably why most existing psionic powers are a level higher and psions are more limited on versatility.

Analytica
2011-01-14, 11:23 AM
Thanks for your comments! :smallsmile:


0-My rule of thumb for such things is to pick something existing or invent something simple. Even pathfinder alpha was a horribly, horribly unbalanced set of house-rules with 100 people working on it. Now they got rid of most of the craziness and some friends are playing it, so I may give it a shot. My main complaint now is that they didn't change much rulewise, but I like that they added new classes, feats, etc. The tendency with DMs who make a million house rules is to create massive player headaches. New things should be similar to existing things when possible. If you don't like the system then play another rather than going through the hazards of making your own. With that in mind...

I actually made a system from scratch as well and playtested it a little, but it feels hard to get it to balance and it seems there is a lot to gain from using something that is already well-established. The fact that it would be easy to plug-and-play d20 expansion material into it would be nice as well. This certainly speaks in favour of leaving as much as possible as it is. The main reason I need to change some things is really to match the setting fluff.

As for the spellcasting system, what I really would like to be possible is for a character that starts as a non-spellcaster to become a spellcaster in-game, by taking prestige classes, skills and feats, and roughly reach the same power and versatility by high levels as a character who started out that way. I would also like to be able to represent something like a cleric out of faith with her deity that instead turns to arcane magic, without that character ending up with many useless levels. This can be done with retraining and trading in levels, but I would like to avoid that if possible. Is there some way I can accomplish this using minimal changes?

Of course, for the latter part maybe it would be possible to just treat arcane magic as something like being a cleric of a cause...

stainboy
2011-01-14, 03:32 PM
Quote-splitting like I'm being trolled:


1 - Pathfinder? Should I include the changes Pathfinder made to the SRD (skill system, combat system, race balance, feat and spell revisions)?

I prefer skill consolidation, but it depends on your group's gaming style. My rule of thumb is that if I routinely says "roll either skill X or skill Y," or a player with skill X acts surprised that they have to roll untrained skill Y instead, I should probably combine skills X and Y. The usual suspects for my group are Spot/Listen/Search, Hide/Move Silently, Diplomacy/Bluff or Intimidate, and pretty much every Knowledge skill.

As for other Pathfinder stuff, almost everything it changes was changed because hundreds of players thought the old way was dumb. Even if you don't make the same changes, it's a good way to spot problems in 3.5.


4 - I also considered giving every class a defense bonus progression (something similar exists in Conan d20 and that african-inspired d20 setting), maybe adding half BAB to AC whenever you are armed and combat-ready.

I was surprised Pathfinder didn't do this, because almost every D20 genre adaptation does. AC needs to scale with level. It already effectively does for monsters, who all have stuff like +20 natural armor at high levels. You just need to get touch AC to scale too, and keep players from combining their new base AC bonus with five different AC-buffing spells and items.


6 - Removing spell slot class features? I am not sure what to do here. [snip] Or is this all overcomplicating things?

Magic needs fixing, even if it means players have to learn a new magic system. I think spells as a daily resource is a bigger problem than spell slots though.

By the way, how do you feel about high-level spellcasters? Do you plan to rein them in at all?

Analytica
2011-01-14, 04:07 PM
By the way, how do you feel about high-level spellcasters? Do you plan to rein them in at all?

Primarily by removing or nerfing all spells that I can't thematically see working in the setting, and restricting all casters to spells they have gained access to. Probably there won't be any teleportation, for instance. How far do you think I can get with that?

stainboy
2011-01-14, 05:49 PM
I'm trying to do something similar. It's a lot of work, because I ended up cutting so many high level spells that I had to rewrite the classes that cast them. YMMV.

What do you mean about restricting casters to certain spells? No spell research, or no spell discovery with level, or no prepared casters?

DracoDei
2011-01-14, 06:27 PM
For #6 the following might or might not be useful:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic/magicRating.htm

ericgrau
2011-01-14, 09:56 PM
Primarily by removing or nerfing all spells that I can't thematically see working in the setting, and restricting all casters to spells they have gained access to. Probably there won't be any teleportation, for instance. How far do you think I can get with that?
Well combat and plot are two different things, so in the case of teleport if you kept dimension door and so on but got rid of teleport it shouldn't change much on balance. For other spells there are a lot of monsters that expect you to have them, so once you start removing combat spells you need to be careful about which monsters you send at the party. Removing other non-combat spells like scry should be ok.




As for the spellcasting system, what I really would like to be possible is for a character that starts as a non-spellcaster to become a spellcaster in-game, by taking prestige classes, skills and feats, and roughly reach the same power and versatility by high levels as a character who started out that way. I would also like to be able to represent something like a cleric out of faith with her deity that instead turns to arcane magic, without that character ending up with many useless levels. This can be done with retraining and trading in levels, but I would like to avoid that if possible. Is there some way I can accomplish this using minimal changes?

It's difficult. You might be able to retroactively give them mystic theurge / eldritch knight, but then you have to explain where all their other class features disappeared to. Tacking on casting as an LA onto an existing build (without losing past nor future class features) might be possible, but it sounds like a balancing nightmare. All I can say is that the LA is probably in the same ballpark as PrC pre-req levels (on one side only).

The easy way around this is to eliminate full casters and make this the only way to gain casting, so there's nothing you need to balance it against. Even if you make the LA too high they still gotta have a caster if they want to do certain things. That'd work for arcane casting but for divine casting you need to retroactively drop their BAB by one step (minimum poor) to keep every fighter/cleric from automatically being a DMM persist divine power cleric :smalleek:. Likewise the reason why I say drop BAB one step and not only full to medium is because many medium BAB classes have combat abilities to compensate for their medium BAB. That on top of cleric buffs would create the same problem. You'd probably also have to make poor BAB cleric divine power only give medium BAB.

Analytica
2011-01-15, 07:26 AM
What do you mean about restricting casters to certain spells? No spell research, or no spell discovery with level, or no prepared casters?

In the material I write, I mean restricting the class spell lists. Adding new spells from supplements, or researching spells across lisrs, or designing entirely new spells, will always require DM adjudication anyway, so...


Well combat and plot are two different things, so in the case of teleport if you kept dimension door and so on but got rid of teleport it shouldn't change much on balance. For other spells there are a lot of monsters that expect you to have them, so once you start removing combat spells you need to be careful about which monsters you send at the party. Removing other non-combat spells like scry should be ok.

For some spells (maybe the various polymorph ones), I will probably nerf them as well as restrict them to members of certain prestige classes or clerics of certain deities. I am not entirely sure which (core) spells are most unbalanced, however. People keep mentioning Gate, but that seems to derive from a few outsiders having SLAs of spells with high XP costs, which I would generally disallow. Shapechanging of all sorts would be limited to just a few thematic forms. At least no long-range teleportation (because why else would distance be an issue in the world?). Probably no spells that seem very silly.


It's difficult. You might be able to retroactively give them mystic theurge / eldritch knight, but then you have to explain where all their other class features disappeared to. Tacking on casting as an LA onto an existing build (without losing past nor future class features) might be possible, but it sounds like a balancing nightmare. All I can say is that the LA is probably in the same ballpark as PrC pre-req levels (on one side only).

The easy way around this is to eliminate full casters and make this the only way to gain casting, so there's nothing you need to balance it against. Even if you make the LA too high they still gotta have a caster if they want to do certain things. That'd work for arcane casting but for divine casting you need to retroactively drop their BAB by one step (minimum poor) to keep every fighter/cleric from automatically being a DMM persist divine power cleric . Likewise the reason why I say drop BAB one step and not only full to medium is because many medium BAB classes have combat abilities to compensate for their medium BAB. That on top of cleric buffs would create the same problem. You'd probably also have to make poor BAB cleric divine power only give medium BAB.

Spellcasting as a template is a very interesting idea, though probably not what I will do here - as you say, getting the LA right seems difficult and it would seem a little like it is just tacked on.

My current sketch has a single spellcasting base class, the Initiate, which is basically the cloistered cleric. By default, they would cast off a reduced cleric list and their domain lists, with spontaneous domain spell casting to make up for the lack of spontaneous cures/inflicts and Turn Undead. By taking a feat that represents independent (arcane) magical ability, they can retain casting, but not domain slots or domains, even without having a divine sponsor, in which case spells must be prepared from spellbooks. Either that feat, or another which requires it, opens up parts of the wizard spell list from spellbooks, and other prestige classes and feats open up the rest. I think this results in something much like Archivists in power, which might mean I should nerf it more...

Half-casters like bard or paladin would be hybrid prestige classes for Initiates/something else, and druids, necromancers and wizards might also be Initate prestige classes.

As a result, adding spellcasting to a build is always done using the same class, which still means spellcaster/non-spellcaster is an issue, but not arcane vs divine.

GhostwheelZ
2011-01-15, 08:46 AM
For #3 I'd recommend using something like this (http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Balanced_Wealth_(3.5e_Variant_Rule)); it gives characters the base items they need to be able to contend with creatures near their CR while allowing you as the DM the ability to give or take away magic items without having TOO much of an impact on characters, allows you to ignore the wealth-by-level tables, and fixes the "christmas tree" effect.

Edit: Going along with the whole "essence" thingy, Complete Gear (http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Publication:Complete_Gear) might be what you're looking for, though it still includes the natural disparity between what meleers need compared to what casters need.

Ziegander
2011-01-15, 08:58 AM
The idea of investing your items with essentia, or whatever you want to call it, is a very cool one, nonetheless. I might have to look into this.

ericgrau
2011-01-15, 01:48 PM
For some spells (maybe the various polymorph ones), I will probably nerf them as well as restrict them to members of certain prestige classes or clerics of certain deities. I am not entirely sure which (core) spells are most unbalanced, however. People keep mentioning Gate, but that seems to derive from a few outsiders having SLAs of spells with high XP costs, which I would generally disallow. Shapechanging of all sorts would be limited to just a few thematic forms. At least no long-range teleportation (because why else would distance be an issue in the world?). Probably no spells that seem very silly.

Living Greyhawk banned polymorph not for being overpowered, but for being overcomplicated. And I don't think the setting suffered for lack of it. It's an optional spell that many players don't even take. Even so, olymorph abuse typically comes from high CR / low HD splatbook forms, cheesing in functional gear ("My gear melds and becomes nonfunctional, ok I buy +1 dire tiger barding at the local walmart, geeze why do they even have that rule it's just more bookkeeping") and creative interpretations of the alternate form rules ("Attacking with 5 hydra heads is a special ability not a violation of the rule against extra attacks").

Likewise ya gate and most other "broken" (game breaking, not merely strong) spells require char op cheese that doesn't appear in 99.5% of games or else is met with flying dice to the forehead. Sometimes it also comes from lack of rules understanding, like the DM not knowing the ways to detect an invisible foe / fight while blind, or the various mundane and magical ways to thwart other spells.

stainboy
2011-01-15, 07:34 PM
Gate is a fantastic tool for pulling in level-appropriate encounters for high level PCs, without filling your world with level 20 orc paragon frenzied berserker/bear warriors. One high-level wizard or cleric can generate things for the PCs to fight for weeks. You might still want high-level spellcasters to be able to open gates to the Outer Planes, just... not as a standard action.

You probably don't want Gates to be two-way either, so they can't emulate Greater Teleport. You could rule that Gate can only be cast from the Material Plane, but creates an inactive portal the caster can reopen from the far side. (As an added bonus, that explains why demon lords need mortal BBEGs to summon them.)

For Polymorph, you might look at Pathfinder, which does a good job of returning shapechanging spells to sanity.

DracoDei
2011-01-19, 06:48 PM
Every time I hear people talk about nerfing Polymorph, I get worried... I am not saying anything one way or another about power levels, just that I find it very flavorful based on the obscure and odd special abilities... which get lumped in with the first things to get cut. Generic forms are... generic. I happen to like skunks and the idea of taking ranks in Use Rope and Craft(Weaver) to make monsterous spider-silk ladders for the slaves the party is rescuing to climb. MOAR POWAH! is... uncreative and boring. I would like to see a Polymorph spell that encourages selecting the perfect creature for each situation.

No idea what Pathfinder does with any of this, but I am just throwing out the basic thought.