Critique my house rules please!

[OverdrivePrime]

Hi gang,

Could you please take a look at the House Rules for My Game (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bv14UIgrJdY2c0kg61yzvpsg_R9rq3-8c6Fto-iRymc/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CIfes8sN) and let me know if you see any unintended ramifications of what I have here? I'd love to avert disaster, and really make my game as fun for all players (martial or magical) as possible.

House Rules for the World of Daera
Experience Points and Gaining Levels
All cross-class skill limitations are eliminated
Characters do not suffer experience point penalties for mixing multiple character classes
When adding hit points, use the following instead of rolling for hit points:
d4: 3, d6: 4, d8: 5, d10: 7, d12: 9

Base Attack Bonus
We’re going to use Fractional Base Attack Bonus (BAB) in this game. That means that each level you gain a certain fraction of a base attack bonus, which adds up to a whole. A class with Good BAB progression (fighter, paladin) adds 1.0 BAB each level. A class with Medium BAB (cleric, rogue) progression adds .75 BAB each level. A class with Poor BAB (wizard, sorcerer) adds .5 BAB each level.

So a character with 2 levels of Paladin (2.0 BAB), 1 level of Sorcerer (.5 BAB), Three Levels of Bard (2.25 BAB) and a level of the Ruthar prestige class (.75 BAB) would have a BAB of 5.5. Since we always round down in D&D, that makes for an effective Base Attack Bonus of 5. With out this system, that same character would have a BAB of 4. We will always use effective base attack bonus to determine a character’s attack power.

Natural 1s and Natural 20s
A natural 1 on a skill check does not mean you automatically fail. It does mean that even if you succeed, something dumb and kind of funny probably happened.
A natural 1 on an attack roll automatically fails, and could get messy. Roll a d20 again. A result of 5 or lower means that something bad happens. Note that once you have a BAB of 10 or better, you no longer are in danger of screwing up in this way.
A natural 20 on a skill check does not automatically succeed. Instead, roll a d20 again, and add both results to the skill check. (Do not roll a third time, even if the result is 20 again.)
A natural 20 on an attack roll automatically means you hit. Most of the time it means you will roll again to check for a critical hit.

It’s Diplomacy, not Diplomancy.
We’ll be using Rich Burlew’s revised Diplomacy rules. I love diplomancy as much as the next guy (perhaps more), but Rich’s version keeps things from getting too silly.

Death
A character dies when they reach the negative of their permanent constitution score. (example - A character with a constitution score of 8 dies when they reach -8 hit points. Someone with a constitution score of 30 dies when they reach -30 hit points.)

Massive Damage
If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply. Add +1 to the save DC for every 20 additional points of damage above 50. For example, 70 points of damage from a single attack would require a Fortitude save of DC 16. 250 points of damage from a single attack would require a Fortitude save of DC 25.

Combat
Archery and Other Ranged Attacks
You can ignore the standard -4 penalty for shooting into melee as a move action.

Replace the Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot feat with the following, which is used to qualify for any feat that Point Blank Shot or Precise Shot would qualify for.


Ranged Fighting[General]
Benefit
You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet. You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll, as long as the opponent is within 10 feet per point of base attack bonus that you posess (minimum 10 feet).
Special
A fighter may select Ranged Fighting as one of his fighter bonus feats. This replaces Point Blank Shot as the prerequisite for the archery tree.

Exotic Weapons That Shouldn’t Require Feats to Use
Bastard Swords are considered “Martial Weapons” for humans and hobgoblins
Any weapon with a creature’s race in its name is a “Martial Weapon” for that race.

Magic
Learning Spells
Magical characters are able to learn any spell from the player’s handbook as normal.
Learning spells from other resources require seeking out another spellcaster to learn from, finding a scroll or spellbook to study from, or researching that spell. Spontaneous casters may learn exotic spells after consultation with the DM.

Changes to Spells
A number of published spells have been deemed to have been set at inappropriate level, and have been adjusted. Some other spells require a skill check to be used. Please refer to the following list of changes.

Healing Spells
You can use two full-round actions to cast a healing spell at maximum effect. This generally means that you are casting outside of combat. Example, a 1st level cleric normally casts cure light wounds for 1d8+1 damage, as a standard action. The cleric can take 2 full round actions (12 seconds) to cast cure light wounds to heal (8+1) 9 damage.

Polymorph Spells
The Polymorph line requires contact and knowledge checks to use properly. To turn a creature or object into something else, the spellcaster must have firsthand knowledge of the desired new form, and must make an appropriate knowledge check of DC 20 + (2 x hit die) Turning something into a goblin (1 hit die) would require a knowledge: local check of DC 22. Turning something into a dire bear (12 hit dice) would require a knowledge: nature check of DC 34.

Spells that Screw With Time Itself
The whole celerity line was pretty poorly thought out by whoever designed them. We won’t use them, and if we see the guy who let them into the PHBII, we’ll kick him in the shins. The spell time stop is also notoriously overpowered. It moves up one level.

Teleportation Spells
It’s well known that teleportation spells really screw with games. With the exception of Blink, Dimension Hop and Dimension Door, any teleportation effect will be moved one spell level higher. The world is inherently resistant to teleportation.

Planar Travel Spells
Hopping between planes is hard work. Assume that any spell that allows characters to travel between planes is moved up one level. Any creature that can travel between dimensions/planes as a supernatural ability must use a full round action to do so.

Tenth Level Spells
After reaching epic level, spellcasters have the option to gain 10th level spell slots (and higher level down the road). These spells can be used to cast standard spells with metamagic applied, or a few of the rare 10th level spells.

These spells are:
Time Stop
Teleportation Circle
Gate

[Greenish]

Since we always round down in D&DExcept when taking average hp from HD, it seems. :smalltongue:


A natural 1 on an attack roll automatically fails, and could get messy. Roll a d20 again. A result of 5 or lower means that something bad happens. Note that once you have a BAB of 10 or better, you no longer are in danger of screwing up in this way.Well, that's not as horrid as some other fumble rules. Still, even 0.125% chance of the ominous "something bad" is a bit annoying if you're making several attacks (say, with TWF), and having it suddenly stop at 10 BAB instead of scaling away is a bit, well, sudden.


Massive Damage
If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save.That means that at higher level, most any hit will have 5% chance of killing you.



Ranged Fighting[General]
Benefit
You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet. You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll, as long as the opponent is within 10 feet per point of base attack bonus that you posess (minimum 10 feet).
Special
A fighter may select Ranged Fighting as one of his fighter bonus feats. This replaces Point Blank Shot as the prerequisite for the archery tree.Why the range limit?


Any weapon with a creature’s race in its name is a “Martial Weapon” for that race.Call bastard sword a "hobgoblin sword"? :smalltongue:

(Humans don't need no perks.)



Learning Spells
Magical characters are able to learn any spell from the player’s handbook as normal.
Learning spells from other resources require seeking out another spellcaster to learn from, finding a scroll or spellbook to study from, or researching that spell. Spontaneous casters may learn exotic spells after consultation with the DM.How's that work with warmage-style casters? I'm assuming they'd get all the spells on their list as normal.


It’s well known that teleportation spells really screw with games.Really? I wouldn't count bypassing some random encounters as "really screwing with the game". The stronger part of "scry and die" is the "scry" part, in my opinion.

[King Atticus]

Characters do not suffer experience point penalties for mixing multiple character classes

Massive Damage
If you ever sustain a single attack deals 50 points of damage or more and it doesn’t kill you outright, you must make a DC 15 Fortitude save. If this saving throw fails, you die regardless of your current hit points. If you take 50 points of damage or more from multiple attacks, no one of which dealt 50 or more points of damage itself, the massive damage rule does not apply. Add +1 to the save DC for every 20 additional points of damage above 50. For example, 70 points of damage from a single attack would require a Fortitude save of DC 16. 250 points of damage from a single attack would require a Fortitude save of DC 25.

The only worry I would have with no multiclassing penalties is you might get the guy who takes a different class every level (even if it sacrifices optimization), getting those beautiful +2's to saves...every level. So by level 10 or so there is NO save that they aren't making. We've had this happen , one thing you might consider is putting a cap on the number of classes a build can be made from.

Second. Massive Damage (Disclaimer: It should be noted that I hate all massive damage rules not just yours :smallbiggrin:)

Does massive damage apply to bad guys too or just PC's? You could loose some encounters pretty quickly this way.

Also if your starting at level 1 people could be keeling over left and right.

Other than that it looks pretty legit.

[Greenish]

The only worry I would have with no multiclassing penalties is you might get the guy who takes a different class every level (even if it sacrifices optimization), getting those beautiful +2's to saves...every level. So by level 10 or so there is NO save that they aren't making.Well, since the actual multiclassing rules encourage taking lots of short dips, I don't see how it'd get any worse. :smalltongue:


Also if your starting at level 1 people could be keeling over left and right.That's the default when starting from level 1, surely? Not that you should be taking over 50 damage in lower levels…

[Das Platyvark]

It’s Diplomacy, not Diplomancy.
We’ll be using Rich Burlew’s revised Diplomacy rules. I love diplomancy as much as the next guy (perhaps more), but Rich’s version keeps things from getting too silly.



I usually just try to ditch diplomacy in lieu of players talking and then judging how convincing they actually are, but where might I find Rich's version?
I have a game coming up.....

[Greenish]

I usually just try to ditch diplomacy in lieu of players talking and then judging how convincing they actually are, but where might I find Rich's version?
I have a game coming up.....Here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9606632&postcount=2)

[King Atticus]

That's the default when starting from level 1, surely? Not that you should be taking over 50 damage in lower levels…

True enough, I misread the OP. I was reading percentage instead of 50 points. :smallredface:

[OverdrivePrime]

Well, that's not as horrid as some other fumble rules. Still, even 0.125% chance of the ominous "something bad" is a bit annoying if you're making several attacks (say, with TWF), and having it suddenly stop at 10 BAB instead of scaling away is a bit, well, sudden.
Hmm... a good point about the suddenness. Scaling by every 4 BAB maybe?


That means that at higher level, most any hit will have 5% chance of killing you.
That seems... appropriate, I think. We've been playing with the DBMD rules since 3.0, and it always seemed dumb to have a laughably easy Fortitude check to shrug off getting punted into the stratos by a cloud giant or sucking down 200 points of disintegrate damage and just dusting your shoulders off.



Why the range limit?
I was trying to stick with the precedent from other precision/archery feats. Too limiting?


Call bastard sword a "hobgoblin sword"? :smalltongue:

(Humans don't need no perks.)
I'm a human supremacist. :smalltongue:


How's that work with warmage-style casters? I'm assuming they'd get all the spells on their list as normal.
Hmm... good point. Um... I think that's how it'd work?


Really? I wouldn't count bypassing some random encounters as "really screwing with the game". The stronger part of "scry and die" is the "scry" part, in my opinion.
I have a couple scatterbrained players who are known for just up and teleporting all over the place for no damned reason.
"So you guys are approaching the town of Tookmeforever Todesign. Princess Critical Plotpoint calls out a greeting to you from the balcon..."
"Yeah, we teleport to the monestary of Peacethe Effout."
"But... That's two continents away!"
"Yep. Can we attack?"
"... [sets notes on fire with pure frustration]"

[Metahuman1]

Ok, not bad. Suggestion, make it so full attack is a standard action just like a regular attack. This makes sense as just about every school of melee combat in history teaches you how to advance on a target with half or full guard up and make feints and attacks at them often in rapid succession, and I'm not just talking oriental fighting forms either. (Heck, what do you thing Fencing/Boxing/Vikings with Axes and hammers and Claymores/Greeks with Spears and short swords + Shields DO!)

This is NOT going to over power the melee characters, and all it does before 6th lvl, by which point the casters have 3rd lvl spells anyway, is let a twf/Sword and Board character charge and attack in the same round. Trust me, even with the house rules for casters, there STILL a solid head too head and shoulders above the warriors, all this does is let them have a shot at not getting left totally in the dust.

[Greenish]

I was trying to stick with the precedent from other precision/archery feats. Too limiting?I don't know any precision damage feat where the range scales with level, and can think of no such archery feat, either. And, well, as you've doubtlessly noted, archery does sort of get the short end of the stick in many things.

Also, as written, it hurts the low levels (when you have low attack and really want to use the range most) the worst.


I'm a human supremacist. :smalltongue:So were the developers, and they most certainly did you job for you. :smallamused:


I have a couple scatterbrained players who are known for just up and teleporting all over the place for no damned reason.
"So you guys are approaching the town of Tookmeforever Todesign. Princess Critical Plotpoint calls out a greeting to you from the balcon..."
"Yeah, we teleport to the monestary of Peacethe Effout."
"But... That's two continents away!"
"Yep. Can we attack?"
"... [sets notes on fire with pure frustration]"Weird, but it seems the randomness of the players is to fault, not teleportation. After all, they could just walk another way if they were so inclined.

Still, I can see why'd you want to restrict their access to teleports. :smallcool:

[OverdrivePrime]

I don't know any precision damage feat where the range scales with level, and can think of no such archery feat, either. And, well, as you've doubtlessly noted, archery does sort of get the short end of the stick in many things.

Also, as written, it hurts the low levels (when you have low attack and really want to use the range most) the worst.
OH! I just realized that you're talking about the scaling levels on ignoring firing into melee, not the 30 feet. Yeah. That's awkward. I'll take that out.


So were the developers, and they most certainly did you job for you. :smallamused:
Touche. :smallbiggrin:


Weird, but it seems the randomness of the players is to fault, not teleportation. After all, they could just walk another way if they were so inclined.

Still, I can see why'd you want to restrict their access to teleports. :smallcool:
Yeah, I'm aware that it's a limited problem. The guy who's usually problematic with it can't even join the game until September, but I've designed whole campaign settings around preventing teleportation dickery. Over the last 17 years I've had dozens of teleport-induced facepalms.

[McSmack]

I have a couple scatterbrained players who are known for just up and teleporting all over the place for no damned reason.
"So you guys are approaching the town of Tookmeforever Todesign. Princess Critical Plotpoint calls out a greeting to you from the balcon..."
"Yeah, we teleport to the monestary of Peacethe Effout."
"But... That's two continents away!"
"Yep. Can we attack?"
"... [sets notes on fire with pure frustration]"

I don't let my players pull crap like that. They try that once and there will be a Terrasque there to greet them.

Hmmm I like the idea of having teleportation magic be unreliable. Instead of messing with the spell levels, you could simply have a caveat that all teleportation has a chance to fail miserably unless you are at least passingly familiar with the area.

Or that you simply can't teleport off of a description or a map, you have to have personally been at the location previously or make a hellacious Knowledge (geography) check.

Or have some sort of mysterious extra-planar creatures that stalk the magical lines that are used for teleportation, and randomly eat people while they're being teleported.




That seems... appropriate, I think. We've been playing with the DBMD rules since 3.0, and it always seemed dumb to have a laughably easy Fortitude check to shrug off getting punted into the stratos by a cloud giant or sucking down 200 points of disintegrate damage and just dusting your shoulders off.

As for Massive Damage. I've pretty much done away with it. I prefer to have it be a fort save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. DC= damage dealt -40. I haven't tried this with high level play, I cap my games around level 12.


Ranged Fighting[General]
Benefit

You get a +1 bonus on attack and damage rolls with ranged weapons at ranges of up to 30 feet. You can shoot or throw ranged weapons at an opponent engaged in melee without taking the standard -4 penalty on your attack roll, as long as the opponent is within 10 feet per point of base attack bonus that you posess (minimum 10 feet).

Archery feat: I'd remove the ranging effect and just have it simply combine the effects of Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. I've seen houserules somewhere that have PBS's benefits increase with BAB. Something like "when your BAB reaches +6 these bonuses apply out to 60', 90' at BAB +11, etc."



Healing Spells
You can use two full-round actions to cast a healing spell at maximum effect. This generally means that you are casting outside of combat. Example, a 1st level cleric normally casts cure light wounds for 1d8+1 damage, as a standard action. The cleric can take 2 full round actions (12 seconds) to cast cure light wounds to heal (8+1) 9 damage.


Healing Spells - You might consider changing this to 1 minute instead of 2 full-rounds. Two-full rounds might encourage players to try this in combat. While 1 minute is way to long for combat, out of combat it can be handwaved in most cases.


Spells that Screw With Time Itself
The whole celerity line was pretty poorly thought out by whoever designed them. We won’t use them, and if we see the guy who let them into the PHBII, we’ll kick him in the shins. The spell time stop is also notoriously overpowered. It moves up one level.

Personally I'd simply remove Time Stop or cap it at 2 rounds.

[OverdrivePrime]

I don't let my players pull crap like that. They try that once and there will be a Terrasque there to greet them.

Hmmm I like the idea of having teleportation magic be unreliable. Instead of messing with the spell levels, you could simply have a caveat that all teleportation has a chance to fail miserably unless you are at least passingly familiar with the area.

Or that you simply can't teleport off of a description or a map, you have to have personally been at the location previously.

Or have some sort of mysterious extra-planar creatures that stalk the magical lines that are used for teleportation, and randomly eat people while they're being teleported.


As for Massive Damage. I've pretty much done away with it. I prefer to have it be a fort save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds. DC= damage dealt -40. I haven't tried this with high level play, I cap my games around level 12.

Archery feat: I'd remove the ranging effect and just have it simply combine the effects of Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. I've seen houserules somewhere that have PBS's benefits increase with BAB. Something like "when your BAB reaches +6 these bonuses apply out to 60', 90' at BAB +11, etc."

Healing Spells - You might consider changing this to 1 minute instead of 2 full-rounds. Two-full rounds might encourage players to try this in combat. While 1 minute is way to long for combat, out of combat it can be handwaved in most cases.

Personally I'd simply remove Time Stop or cap it at 2 rounds.
Yeah, that archery feat needs an overhaul.

For the healing spells, it's intentional that they have the option to try it in combat. If someone desperately needs a major healing and the cleric wants to spend 2 full rounds casting, he's going to need someone to defend him while that's going on. It creates a nice cinematic setup, I think.

For my old setting, I wrote in some crap about atmospheric effects inflicting electrical/arcane damage depending on the distance traveled. 1 mile would inflict 1d6 damage. 10 miles would inflict 3d6 damage. 100 miles would inflict 10d6 damage... 1000 miles would inflict something like 40d6 damage. It was a bit heavy-handed, but it kept the teledickery to a minimum.

[McSmack]

Yeah, that archery feat needs an overhaul.

For the healing spells, it's intentional that they have the option to try it in combat. If someone desperately needs a major healing and the cleric wants to spend 2 full rounds casting, he's going to need someone to defend him while that's going on. It creates a nice cinematic setup, I think.

For my old setting, I wrote in some crap about atmospheric effects inflicting electrical/arcane damage depending on the distance traveled. 1 mile would inflict 1d6 damage. 10 miles would inflict 3d6 damage. 100 miles would inflict 10d6 damage... 1000 miles would inflict something like 40d6 damage. It was a bit heavy-handed, but it kept the teledickery to a minimum.

Yes some sort of signal degradation caused by the ether they move through. Hmm. I like this <yoink!>. Boy my players are gonna be pissed when parts of them just fail to show up after a teleport. "Hold on to your junk!" MWAHAHAHAHA!

[Kantolin]

I don't let my players pull crap like that. They try that once and there will be a Terrasque there to greet them.

Would that actually help? That just sounds like you've decided, "They didn't do what I figured? Well, my game is over, so may as well go out with fiat."

[OverdrivePrime]

Would that actually help? That just sounds like you've decided, "They didn't do what I figured? Well, my game is over, so may as well go out with fiat."

Yeah, I'm kind of obsessive about my world making sense. If I pulled something like that, I'd first have to justify exactly why in the metaplot the Terrasque was hanging out exactly where they showed up. Most of the time I couldn't justify using an overt angry fist of the GM. Except the one time they were trapped in the dream realm. Oooh, that was some wicked fun. :smallamused:

[DementedFellow]

I have a couple scatterbrained players who are known for just up and teleporting all over the place for no damned reason.
"So you guys are approaching the town of Tookmeforever Todesign. Princess Critical Plotpoint calls out a greeting to you from the balcon..."
"Yeah, we teleport to the monestary of Peacethe Effout."
"But... That's two continents away!"
"Yep. Can we attack?"
"... [sets notes on fire with pure frustration]"

Not to derail, but would you be so kind to tell me more about your custom world. I think it's delightfully droll.

[opticalshadow]

the lighting dmg would become an argument to any wizard, because they can just immunize the party and ignore your rule, you could argue them, but now were no longer even playing.


my prefrence for dealing with teleportation is simply letting them do it, i give one warning in all my campaigns, do want you want i wont stop you, but your eneimes are far more in numbers and power. if they start teleporting around liek madmen, they are likly to attract sevral powerful mages, and powerful mages tend to get paranoid, and they dont like watching compition rise. restricting a spell by either of the above means can cause a tpk when its really needed most, or when there is legitimite reason for useing.

[OverdrivePrime]

the lighting dmg would become an argument to any wizard, because they can just immunize the party and ignore your rule, you could argue them, but now were no longer even playing.


my prefrence for dealing with teleportation is simply letting them do it, i give one warning in all my campaigns, do want you want i wont stop you, but your eneimes are far more in numbers and power. if they start teleporting around liek madmen, they are likly to attract sevral powerful mages, and powerful mages tend to get paranoid, and they dont like watching compition rise. restricting a spell by either of the above means can cause a tpk when its really needed most, or when there is legitimite reason for useing.
Oh yeah. I'll normally roll with harebrained teleportations. It's tough though. I basically keep a few back-up adventures slotted about halfway down my brain.

The teleport restriction on my old world was half untyped damage, half electrical damage. It led to more investment in fast means of travel, which was kind of fun to see. Lots more airships and alliances with faster dragon types.

[Gnoman]

I limited teleportation in my game by adding this line to the relevant spell(s):

Material Component: At least 1 cubic inch of material gathered from the target site within the last twelve months (as relative to the target area) This can never be found in a spell component pouch or bypassed by any feat.

This made the mundane use of teleporting back to town or base after a quest or between a remote base and a town no more difficult, but completely eliminates scry and die tactics, while making it much harder to warp to the dungeon.

[DonDuckie]

For the teleportation part, I have been dabbling in some house rules myself:

Teleportation over long distances works in a network of teleportation circles, the circle is the network access. By casting teleport in a circle, you can choose another circle within range of the spell. Greater teleport would access all circles in the network.

The idea is to use a special plane(where creatures can't stay) to teleport through. It allows control of where the players can go, and the requirement of a 9th level spell with expensive permanency will make it an exotic and limited form of travel; at least pre-tippyverse. There would also be strife to control the circles, and even missions to dispel other circles. It creates a completely new industry. As well as new tactics: go in, set up circle, await backup.

So the spell teleportation circle wouldn't teleport, only allow teleportation. And no grand army teleportation.

Short range(less than ten miles or so) teleportation is unchanged.

I also like the idea of the material component from target site, but what would qualify such a component? what if it was accidentally dropped elsewhere? how do you know where it leeds? would a spell need to be cast on the object to create an anchor? the anchor thing would automatically prevent it from being in a component pouch or eschew(in my interpretation, at least - spell casting = expensive component).

This idea would also create great industrial adventures. Now I like it a lot.

[McSmack]

Would that actually help? That just sounds like you've decided, "They didn't do what I figured? Well, my game is over, so may as well go out with fiat."

From what Overdrive indicated, the players were aware that there was a relevant and necessary plot point there and just up and decided to go someplace else in the middle of it knowing that it probably had nothing to do with the DM's plot. From the looks of it they decided to do this just to see him squirm and derail his plot. At least that's what I saw.

They're deriving their fun from screwing with him. Them ain't kosherized rules.

Looks like the player's needed the fear of god put back in to them.
Not THE God, but the lesser god, De Emicus, Destroyer of Dreams.

Now if the place had actually been relavent to the plot - like "hey this is where the final BBEG is." Then I might have been more lenient, they probably still would have died; it's bad news to storm the enemie's stronghold without preparation in my games.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

When it comes to teleportation houserules, I like AD&D's take on it: Even if you get where you want to go, you always arrive off-target by some not-insignificant amount, and "off-target" can mean up in the air (yay falling damage!) or underground (yay shunt damage!) as well as simple horizontal shifting--and you have to aim for a solid surface, so you can't just aim for 50 feet up in the air and cast feather fall when you get there. Now, it used to be that arriving underground meant death, but I'm not so mean and simply increase the damage dealt by being shunted out of an object to 1d6 for 10 feet, 2d6 for 20 feet, 4d6 for 30 feet, and so on.

The danger of scry-n-die isn't really that you can get somewhere fast but rather that you can appear right behind your target (or wherever) to attack; if you're as likely to show up 80 feet away and 40 feet underground, you probably won't want to risk that. I don't mind teleportation used for transportation as much, so I don't add anything in like requiring material components or teleportation circles or the like; however, levitating platforms sort of serve the same purpose, as they're "safe" for teleportation in that appearing 20 feet below a platform 30 feet in the air won't really hurt you and therefore most people would restrict themselves to those platforms.

[Rejakor]

The only worry I would have with no multiclassing penalties is you might get the guy who takes a different class every level (even if it sacrifices optimization), getting those beautiful +2's to saves...every level. So by level 10 or so there is NO save that they aren't making. We've had this happen , one thing you might consider is putting a cap on the number of classes a build can be made from.


If a guy wants to sack his BAB and spellcasting and take 1 level in a bunch of classes in order to have high saving throws... let him. And then when he dies of hitpoint damage, shrug, and point at the Serenity Monkadin who has just as high saving throws and is an actual viable character.

[Essence_of_War]

d4: 3, d6: 4, d8: 5, d10: 7, d12: 9

I'm not in love with the fact that some people get 75% of their full hit die and some people get (the cleric!) as low as 62% of their max hit die.

I would probably roll with either this:
d4 = 3; d6 = alternate 4/5; d8 = 6; d10 = alternate 7/8; d12 = 9

or (my personal preference if you don't mind that it isn't random)
everyone gets max hp!

or (if you still want some randomness but want a little more than average hp)
d4 = 2+1d2; d6 = 3+1d3; d8 = 4+1d4; d10 = 5+1d5; d12=6+1d6

[Darth Stabber]

I'm usually against massive damage rules of any kind (exception SWSE condition track). The possibility of of an attack so massive it instant kills you is already accounted for in the rules, It's called hp. If you have the HP to survive an attack, you do, you know that an attack is too big to survive when it actually kills you.

Teleportation has the ability to wreck things depending on what kind of story you are running. I run a sandbox game, and let player bite whatever hooks they want, and resolve them however they want (note, this can easily lead to evil party, but that doesn't actually bither me, but if you are sensitive to that it may not be ideal). If you are running a tighter narrative then teleportation could easily detract, so I can't really tell you how to deal with that.

The hp rule is fine, my own version is to take the greater of roll or low average (ie d4=2, d6=3, d8=4, and so forth), it maintains the chance element of rolling hp with a safetynet against the depredations of the dice gods, 10hp at lvl8 hurts. Granted it still doesn't help d4 classes much, but the game designers already gave them everything they need. There is a running gag that I will let you take high average instead of low average for a feat (improved toughness).

[stainboy]

Firing Into Melee Penalty: It seems like you really want to get rid of the stupid thing, and you should just go ahead and do it. Giving everyone free Precise Shot is much easier to explain.

Massive Damage: This rule is so problematic that the ELH actually tells you to house-rule it out. I'd cut it rather than changing it. (You might still attach a Fort save vs death to environmental effects that deal 20d6 damage - falling at terminal velocity, or immersion in lava.)

Polymorph Rules: Bear Lore is bad enough without making new rules to shine a light on it. I have to roll a 22 on a skill no one takes to know what a goblin is? If you just want saner Polymorph rules just look at the Pathfinder SRD.


Overall this looks pretty good. I'm just focusing on the negative because you asked for critique.

[Greenish]

If a guy wants to sack his BAB and spellcasting and take 1 level in a bunch of classes in order to have high saving throws... let him. And then when he dies of hitpoint damage, shrug, and point at the Serenity Monkadin who has just as high saving throws and is an actual viable character.They use partial BAB, so dipping around wouldn't hurt if you weren't overly attracted to half BAB classes.

As for serenity monkadin being a viable character… well, if that's the level of optimization, dipping frenzy wouldn't prevent you from being one, either. You could even have better casting than said monkadin. :smalltongue:

[Tyndmyr]

Aright, apologies if this seems negative, but it was lengthy, and plenty of the things were pretty aright, so I really only addressed the potentially problematic bits.

1. Crit failures. They're generally bad. Much has been written about this, including an article in my blog(link in sig). I'd advise just ignoring this, and having fun with the flavor text to describe the results of very poor rolls instead.

2. Massive Damage. Just drop the whole thing. It gets silly in D&D, since it doesn't scale, 1s on saves auto-fail(generally), etc. Other systems, such as D20M, use it better, but it really just doesn't work well in 3.5

3. Drop the "w/in 60 feet" for precise shot. Archers are usually not terribly broken anyway, and they already have range increment penalties for long range. No need to penalize them additionally at long range, which is the only point where they shine anyway. Also, the less distance-based modifiers included, the less math players have to do to determine what they need to roll. If you have multiple distance-based modifiers....try to use the same distance for all of them. Makes play go smoother.

4. The static portion of the polymorph modifier seems steep. In addition, you've got a truenamer like effect going off with the modifier. Basically, you've turned polymorph into truenaming. You'd be better off banning the school entirely than leaving it in as a trap.

5. Time Stop is level 9. Why bother moving it up to level 10? You've already got access to Wish, etc. The Celerity line is not actually that bad...unless you negate it's penalties in some way. Then it becomes a free source of ridiculous power. Toss some text in the spell to avoid immunity to dazing, and you're done with that.

6. Tenth level spells are already a thing in epic. There are feats for that. If you're feeling creative, feel free to whip some up.

Edit: I have absolutely no problem with the healing spell changes. I think they're generally not worth using in combat, myself...but it's an option. You don't HAVE to do it. That said, it makes OOC healing even more attractive.

[UndeadCleric]

Learning a spell from another source as a Cleric would still take another source? How would that work?
Turning into a dire bear should take a nature check of 44, not 34 as the rules are written. It seems like you either added the bear's HP to the goblin's check total of you mistyped the 3 as a 4.
That's all though.

[Darth Stabber]

Actually quick question on the healing modifications: Do they effect wands as well? If so, be prepared for them to have full HP every encounter for a very limited investment (wands of curelight would over shadow wands of lesser vigor). In my experiance this is not a big deal (I've been known to give tombtainted soul free to parties with a dread necromancer), but it is a change to be aware of, given that wand healing is already a very popular means of out of combat healing.

[DiBastet]

Hp: Perfect. However, the d8 should be 6. I use too.

BAB: Obviously the only way someone could play right.

Naturals: If you put "A natural 1 counts as -10 and a natural 20 counts as 30." it works wonders. You only need to add: "In addition to this, in attack rolls, and only on attack rolls, a natural 20 is an automatic success and a threat, and a natural 1 is always a failure". It's easier than rolling a second dice, since 10 is the middle of the die anyway.

Diplomacy: Necessary. I use too.

Death: Perfect. I use too.

Massive Damage: Can't say I like.

Ranged: The move action is okay. It's easier if you combine both feats, as I do.

Exotic Weapons: Perfect. I use it too.

Magic: A necessary fix. I would recommend to expand the "basic spells", specially for bards, paladins and rangers, to include the SC, but woul keep the ban on all other sources.

Healing spells: That won't work. You should rewrite the healing spells or make them swift actions with short range or something. Personaly i've chosen the route 1d6/lv (max 5d6) for cure light wounds and friends.

Polymorph: It works. I've used it once. However, I found tht was far easier to remove the spell and fit pathfinder's polymorph subschool, or make spells work like the spells of the polymorph subschool presented in the PHB2, like form of the dragon. If you band the original polymorph, you could so something like this:

Polymorph X
Transmutation (Polymorph)
Level X
Standard Action
Target: You.

In this spell then the character assumes the "character sheet" of the defined monster. Let's say that the player could assume the form of a monster one level lower than the level spellcasters are suppoded to learn the spell (like, assume a CR 1/2 form with the I version, or a CR 8 creature with the V version). You use the monster statistics instead of your own except HP: You mantain your own hp, but gain the difference between the monster's and yours as temporary HP, if the monster's is larger. Also, you keep the "firsthand knowledge" thing to avoid unintentional abuse or something like that.


Screwing with time: Seems cool. Keep haste, however ô.o

Teleportation: I did the contrary: Every non-combat spell went a level lower. But then, in my game there's no prepared caster, only spontaneous (reworked the wizard, druid and cleric to be spontaneous).

Tenth Level: I would say allow at 19th level, since it would be the logical progression, but needing a feat that you can buy with a feat or whatever.