Want to Help me Fix 3.5? (Sure Vilpich, why not! :D )

[Empedocles]

I love 3.5. If you're considering helping me here, you also love 3.5. It's a great system. Really feels like home. Too bad all people ever do on here is fix the damn thing :smallfurious:

It's been done before, but I'm interested in fixing 3.5 with some very, very specific design goals in mind, which should help to make it a more enjoyable game all around. This was inspired by the 3.5 fix/new system Virdish and I began working on (along with some other people, although I never chatted directly with them) but Virdish seems to have stopped posting so I'm taking matters into my own hands :smallwink:

Primary Design Goals (the more difficult ones are bolded):


Fix magic. 'Tis a biggy...
Streamline skills, and make them more important. Also, skills should be used mostly to do cool stuff, not really redundant stuff that shouldn't require a roll.
Don't just rewrite classes, make newer, cooler classes. My big thing here is that all classes should give fairly powerful, unique special abilities. For example, wild shape (broken as it is) is wayyyyyyy more interesting then rage.
Eliminate all the nitpicky teeny bonuses. Put an end to the ceaseless +2s and +4s. Replace them with tactics and awesome abilities. Make it fun instead of an equation.
Feats should open up a small little new thing for you to do, not just give you more bonuses.
Give racial abilities that scale with class levels.
Allow for High Fantasy, Gritty Fantasy, and even alternative, less traditional fantasy.
Keep it all fairly balanced.

I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff, but if anyone, anyone at all, would like to help, your assistance would be welcomed. Just post :smallbiggrin:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Look up some of the things I've done for my homebrew campaign setting Falcora. It runs along similar lines, and you may find some ideas which are relevant to your interests.

Basically, I did the following:

1) Magic: We broke it. The only full casters left are things like Beguilers and other 'specialty casters' with relevant class abilities and an extremely limited spell selection.

2) Bonuses: You can't stack them. Not even untyped.

3) Stats: You can't stack them. Hard cap at 25, and limited access to the more common methods of stacking them.

4) Stats: You can't apply them more than once to a given roll. So if you have Crusader giving you Cha bonus to Will, you can't also pick up Dark One's Own Luck and apply it to Will as well (although you might still apply it to Ref or Fort, if Cha isn't being applied there).


4a) Also Stats: You can't apply more than two of them to any given roll. I don't care if you have a way of applying all six stats to a roll, no you can't.

5) Conjuration (Calling) no longer exists.

6: Neither does spells like Rope Trick/MMM which act as a reset button.

7) Or anything that twists the action economy into funny shaped pretzles. Hard-cap one bonus standard OR move action allowed. Ever. Even then. Celerity most especially doesn't exist.

8) Contingency is limited to a few pre-set condition clauses. Craft Contingency no longer exists.

Then I went in and came up with a decent classes allowed list, and did some homebrewed classes you may want to look over.

[SSGoW]

Ok... So you want to do the same thing as Pathfinder... But actually do it? Good luck!.

Before 5th came out I started working on a 4th/3.5/2e hybrid mass homebrew system. I'm waiting to see how 5th works before starting back up on my project.

What you need to do is scrap all classes , feats, and spells and go from well err scratch. Actually a good idea would be to keep the specialty castedrs and add tome of battle + magic incarnum (fiiiiix it tho), and binders. Make that your chassis and it might help.

Ok I'm falling asleep soooo ill send some of my ideas later.

[Lord_Gareth]

So, someone did this already. They called it Legend. Have fun with it.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Also, check out Legend at ruleofcool.com. It pretty much does what you ask, with fixing magic and making sure that every class has something relevant at every level.

EDIT: Dag nabbit... Swordsaged!

[Empedocles]

So, someone did this already. They called it Legend. Have fun with it.


Also, check out Legend at ruleofcool.com. It pretty much does what you ask, with fixing magic and making sure that every class has something relevant at every level.

EDIT: Dag nabbit... Swordsaged!

I love Legend, but I guess I'm trying to make something closer to core 3.5.

[Empedocles]

DAMN IT. This Belongs in Homebrew :smallfurious: I've never made that mistake before..... :'(

[Lateral]

4) Stats: You can't apply them more than once to a given roll. So if you have Crusader giving you Cha bonus to Will, you can't also pick up Dark One's Own Luck and apply it to Will as well (although you might still apply it to Ref or Fort, if Cha isn't being applied there).

4a) Also Stats: You can't apply more than two of them to any given roll. I don't care if you have a way of applying all six stats to a roll, no you can't.

I don't understand what people have against applying multiple stats to things or applying stats to things multiple times. Exactly what does it break?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I don't understand what people have against applying multiple stats to things or applying stats to things multiple times. Exactly what does it break?

How about Con 3 times, Dex twice, Wis twice, and Charisma twice to your AC?

Also, this prevents certain infinite loops involving Bellflower Tattoo which Pun-Pun uses to obtain deityhood.

[wayfare]

So, someone did this already. They called it Legend. Have fun with it.

He knows. Everybody knows. Legend is great.

V wants to do his own thing. It will be different. It will be fun. Nothing wrong with that.

Also, you know, maybe he is trying to make a portfolio of his own work? So he can get hired by showing off said work?

Or maybe he just wants to tinker, cause its fun?

Maybe he has similar goals but different methodology.

You know what else was already done? The fighter. Doesn't mean that ToB didn't do a good job reimagining it.

Look, just because we think we've seen everything, doesn't mean that we actually have. Remarks that amount to "why are you bothering, its already been done" are not helpful in a homebrewing community. Look over in home brewright now -- somebody is doing solid work making predators. Saying "pft, do we really need this when we have Thri-Kreen" does not help. You miss out on the fluff, the sweat, the sweet ideas that can rise out of this kind of effort.

Worst case scenario, V literally remakes Legend. So what? He will be a better brewer for it, and awesome new ideas will rise from that experience.

Bottom Line: saying something like "you might want to look at this and get some ideas" is good

Saying "your efforts are in vain, so why waste my time" is bad.

Note -- everything after the comma is not what you said, but is certainly implied.

@Vilpich: Shine on you crazy diamond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SqFPNTBnv8

This is wayfare, signing out

(waiting for banhammer in 3...2...1...)

[Telonius]

This design goal:

Don't just rewrite classes, make newer, cooler classes. My big thing here is that all classes should give fairly powerful, unique special abilities. For example, wild shape (broken as it is) is wayyyyyyy more interesting then rage.

And this one:
Allow for High Fantasy, Gritty Fantasy, and even alternative, less traditional fantasy.

... might come into conflict with each other. On the one hand, it sounds like you want to have unique classes that each have their own iconic (and very cool) stuff attached to them and only them. But on the other, you want to build the classes generally enough that you could port it into basically any setting and playstyle that could possibly come up.

This could be very tricky to pull off. If something had to give, which one would it be: iconic abilities, general applicability, or the time it takes you to write up dozens of classes?

Personally I would concentrate less on the general applicability. You can always add in specialty packs for it later (like 3.X did with psionics, Tome of Battle, campaign settings, etc).

EDIT: For three of your other design goals:

Eliminate all the nitpicky teeny bonuses. Put an end to the ceaseless +2s and +4s. Replace them with tactics and awesome abilities. Make it fun instead of an equation.


Streamline skills, and make them more important. Also, skills should be used mostly to do cool stuff, not really redundant stuff that shouldn't require a roll.


Feats should open up a small little new thing for you to do, not just give you more bonuses.

You might be able to kill all three of those birds with one stone. Instead of the +2's and +4's and feats, you might get skills - either new skills, better uses of skills, or small numerical bonuses to skills. (Yeah, I know, moving the +2s to skills instead of anything else, but if it's its own subsystem it could be more manageable.)

[HeadlessMermaid]

Then I went in and came up with a decent classes allowed list, and did some homebrewed classes you may want to look over.
I would want to look over these! I've seen the Priest in your sig, are there more? I'd love to see them. :)

I'm very interested in full-casters restricted to a specific flavor, instead of an "anything goes" approach. Preferably with relevant, flavorful abilities. (So, like the Beguiler, but addressing other needs.) Have you made something like that, or does anyone know of similar attempts?

[Eldest]

I wish you luck, and might even chime in with advice from time to time.

Jiriku made a bunch of limited-list casters.

[VGLordR2]

My one request: Give the Eidolon some love. It was such a cool concept.

[Empedocles]

My one request: Give the Eidolon some love. It was such a cool concept.

Which eidolon?

I'll address a lot of other people in a minute, sorry.

[VGLordR2]

Which eidolon?


The one from Ghostwalk.

[Draz74]

I'm neck-deep in working on my own spin-off system, and trying to dabble in Legend from time to time too, but just out of curiosity ...


I love Legend, but I guess I'm trying to make something closer to core 3.5.

How so? I mean, I assume you're going to use traditional class levels rather than the Track system, but ... that's more a difference of details, rather than a difference in how the game will actually play differently.

Is your primary intention to make it less Rule-of-Cool-ish, more "simulationist"? (While I love Legend, this is the reason I still want to make something else. I can get more immersed into an RPG if it's a little more verisimilar, a little more gritty.)

Or is it something else? Are there specific mechanics in 3.5e that Legend gives up that you want preserved? And are you unwilling to change some of 3.5e's fundamental issues that Legend kept, such as the traditional 6 ability scores or the existence of iterative attacks?

Questions about clarification aside, I suggest you start with Ernir's Spellcasting Fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194002). No, really. I can't believe that more people haven't based full 3.5e fixes on this foundation yet. He's taken what dozens of people keep saying they're going to do -- fix the Core spellcasting system -- and actually done it. (Some of his homebrew is worth considering for a full 3.5e fix, too.)

[navar100]

Sigh!

Forget it. 3E is horribly broken and you shouldn't play it. Obviously you dislike it so much. It is the abomination of all that is gamedom. To "fix" it is to rewrite it. Might as well play a different game system. I'm sure you can find one that is so superior that prostrates itself to the Overdeity of Balance.

[Empedocles]

The one from Ghostwalk.

Yes! Definitely. The whole thing where you can always be switching between incorporeal and corporeal is so awesome!

[Lateral]

How about Con 3 times, Dex twice, Wis twice, and Charisma twice to your AC?

BIG. WHOOP. I'd like to see you get all that on one character (for more than once a day, mind you) and still have any levels left with which to actually contribute. In the end, it's just another source of bonuses, and it's certainly a lot more interesting than finding litttle +2s.

[erikun]

I'm fairly certain you can message a mod to have the thread moved to a more appropriate forum.

Also, I'd be interested in helping out a bit and seeing where this goes. 3.5 has a lot - a lot - of fairly big problems, and I don't think that more minor surface-patches really fix things. For example, a big problem with melee combat is the stand-there-hitting-things approach; making melee classes that bypass normal combat (Swordsage, Warblade, Crusader) are a patch over the bad combat rules, not a fix for them.

Also, I should point out that re-writing classes to be better and/or cooler will eliminate some playstyles. When the classes you are using focus on Warblade - Beguiler - Psychic Warrior, you lose the basic Fighter - Rogue - Healer gameplay style. Not everyone will want to play a class with what is effectively a spellcasting mechanic.

Here are a few recommendations.

Melee Combat:
Problem: Melee combat is far too focused on 5' steps and full attacks, because that is nearly the only optimal option. Doing anything else is generally a bad idea, to the point where a character trying to disarm or grapple is more likely to take damage than actually succeeding.

Tome of Battle doesn't fix things, but rather introduces a new subsystem that bypasses the problem. It doesn't help characters who didn't take one of the three classes at all.

Solution: Get rid of the attacks of opportunity and other awkward conditions. That is, make combat options viable and useable, much light they are with a feat through the current system. Sundering is just an attack roll, feinting is a move action, and so on.

While this won't make combat maneuvers the go-to solution all the time, it would give melee characters far more options in combat. The choice to disarm an opponent, or try to trip and get a bonus on later attacks, or try to grapple a spellcaster, would make fights far more than "attack again". The Improved X feats, if still there, would probably just grant +4 to hit and a followup attack if successful (and remote the prerequisites). In addition, it would make Strength somewhat more relevant, as a fighter could threaten more than just HP damage.

Potential Issue: Mosters tend to have higher Strength and larger size than PCs, meaning most monsters will be far better at the various combat maneuvers than PCs. The fact that PCs tend to use weapons and are vulnerable to tripping, while a number on monsters aren't, is another issue.

Spellcasting Multiclassing:
Problem: Multiclassing with spellcasters sucks. They lose spell slots, they lose caster level, and they lose spell save DC (through lower level spells). It makes gishes difficult to pull off well, and make most theurges pointless. It doesn't make much sense for a melee-focused character to multiclass into spellcaster, either, as those caster level 1 spells generally don't last long enough to be worth it.

Most importantly though, giving such penalities to multiclassing with spellcasters means that players much choose between playing a spellcaster and playing a non-spellcaster... and we know how that choice frequently ends up.

Solution: Increasing caster level based on character level, rather than class level, would be the easiest fix. Either give spells durations based on ECL, or add half the character's non-spellcaster levels to their caster level (much like how the Tome of Battle system works).

Potential Issues: This will make generally good gishes, like the Swiftblade or Abjurant Champion, just that much better.

You will also want to specify what "non-spellcaster levels" actually mean with the second choice. A prestige class that progresses spellcasting shouldn't count, and an ability like the Ur-Priest's casting benefit (which gains caster levels equal to one-half the chracter's non-Ur-Priest levels) obvious shouldn't apply together.

[Empedocles]

This design goal:


And this one:

... might come into conflict with each other. On the one hand, it sounds like you want to have unique classes that each have their own iconic (and very cool) stuff attached to them and only them. But on the other, you want to build the classes generally enough that you could port it into basically any setting and playstyle that could possibly come up.

This could be very tricky to pull off. If something had to give, which one would it be: iconic abilities, general applicability, or the time it takes you to write up dozens of classes?

Personally I would concentrate less on the general applicability. You can always add in specialty packs for it later (like 3.X did with psionics, Tome of Battle, campaign settings, etc).

EDIT: For three of your other design goals:

You might be able to kill all three of those birds with one stone. Instead of the +2's and +4's and feats, you might get skills - either new skills, better uses of skills, or small numerical bonuses to skills. (Yeah, I know, moving the +2s to skills instead of anything else, but if it's its own subsystem it could be more manageable.)

Probably general applicability would have to go.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting with the +2's and +4's...


He knows. Everybody knows. Legend is great.

V wants to do his own thing. It will be different. It will be fun. Nothing wrong with that.

Also, you know, maybe he is trying to make a portfolio of his own work? So he can get hired by showing off said work?

Or maybe he just wants to tinker, cause its fun?

Maybe he has similar goals but different methodology.

You know what else was already done? The fighter. Doesn't mean that ToB didn't do a good job reimagining it.

Look, just because we think we've seen everything, doesn't mean that we actually have. Remarks that amount to "why are you bothering, its already been done" are not helpful in a homebrewing community. Look over in home brewright now -- somebody is doing solid work making predators. Saying "pft, do we really need this when we have Thri-Kreen" does not help. You miss out on the fluff, the sweat, the sweet ideas that can rise out of this kind of effort.

Worst case scenario, V literally remakes Legend. So what? He will be a better brewer for it, and awesome new ideas will rise from that experience.

Bottom Line: saying something like "you might want to look at this and get some ideas" is good

Saying "your efforts are in vain, so why waste my time" is bad.

Note -- everything after the comma is not what you said, but is certainly implied.

@Vilpich: Shine on you crazy diamond

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SqFPNTBnv8

This is wayfare, signing out

(waiting for banhammer in 3...2...1...)

:smallbiggrin: I smiled at this.



I wish you luck, and might even chime in with advice from time to time.

Jiriku made a bunch of limited-list casters.

I'll take a look.


How so? I mean, I assume you're going to use traditional class levels rather than the Track system, but ... that's more a difference of details, rather than a difference in how the game will actually play differently.

Is your primary intention to make it less Rule-of-Cool-ish, more "simulationist"? (While I love Legend, this is the reason I still want to make something else. I can get more immersed into an RPG if it's a little more verisimilar, a little more gritty.)

Or is it something else? Are there specific mechanics in 3.5e that Legend gives up that you want preserved? And are you unwilling to change some of 3.5e's fundamental issues that Legend kept, such as the traditional 6 ability scores or the existence of iterative attacks?

Questions about clarification aside, I suggest you start with Ernir's Spellcasting Fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194002). No, really. I can't believe that more people haven't based full 3.5e fixes on this foundation yet. He's taken what dozens of people keep saying they're going to do -- fix the Core spellcasting system -- and actually done it. (Some of his homebrew is worth considering for a full 3.5e fix, too.)

Hmmm I guess there're two big motivators for me not just playing Legend.

I want this to be basically compatible with 3.5 material.

I want to make it. :smalltongue:

[Draz74]

Hmmm I guess there're two big motivators for me not just playing Legend.

I want this to be basically compatible with 3.5 material.
Hmmm. Well, I'm skeptical how much of a "fix" it can really be, then. Good luck, though.


I want to make it. :smalltongue:

OK, I understand that craving. Unfortunately. I'd have more free time in life if I were just a little better at accepting other people's RPG ideas (rulesets, builds, etc.) rather than wanting to make my own ...

[Endarire]

Careful about "compatible with 3.5!" You want something new and something old to work well together. Which will you favor?

[Mystic Muse]

I'm fairly certain you can message a mod to have the thread moved to a more appropriate forum.

While you can do this, you can also "Report" the first post with the note "Needs moved to *Insert appropriate section here." This is in fact mentioned as a viable use when you press the report button, and this may result in your thread getting moved faster as more mods could potentially respond to it.

[Rejakor]

If you want something that feels more like the awesome-on-crack feel of 3.5, but with more balance and shiny things for fighters, you should probably check out 3.Tome.

Legend does feel and play very differently to 3.5.


Also, your design goals are very general and scattered, and probably won't lead to anything playable.

[TuggyNE]

If you want something that feels more like the awesome-on-crack feel of 3.5, but with more balance and shiny things for fighters, you should probably check out 3.Tome.

The Frank and K Tomes? Isn't the apparent balance point for those about T1/T2?

[hoverfrog]

Make magic weaker. The magical classes are so much more versatile and powerful at higher levels than the other classes. You could make the other classes stronger instead but that kind of throws the strength differences between levels out even more.

I've been thinking about running a point based system for ages with class abilities, hit dice, combat bonuses, saves, etc all having various point values. Then allow players to pick skills from a menu. This is clearly open to abuse so there would have to be a prerequisite system for selecting them. There is already an excellent thread on a point based system for feats (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=245177) that might be useful here.

Also the D20 modern system has base classes that are a bit more balanced than the usual D&D classes.

[hoverfrog]

Actually that's probably too big a change.

[Rejakor]

The Frank and K Tomes? Isn't the apparent balance point for those about T1/T2?

Having played it, the balance point is more like high t3 - like a good warblade or warlock.

Mostly, it just feels more '3.5ish' than Legend, which while fine, is lot less bat**** crazy than 3.5 got, and more.. I dunno. 'Smooth'-ey. Not spiky enough.

The stated balance point was T1, but other than a few broken things (don't talk to me about ninja/samurais wielding scythes, or the Combat School feat), it doesn't really reach that benchmark - wizards still outclass fighters, just not as much, and not til like level 14.

[Lord_Gareth]

Frank & K didn't really 'fix' fighter so much as make it better at rocket tag. Their versions are still T4/5 at best and have no reasonable counters for the aspects of spellcasting that actually cause the problems.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Swinging the Nerf-Bat at Magic

Quite bluntly... magic owns 3.5. If you don't have it, you don't win. It's that simple. Here's some ideas to try and bring it back under control:

1) No Metamagic Reduction - This is where a LOT of the abuses come from. Basically, if it can mitigate or reduce the additional spell level cost of a metamagic feat... it goes away. This includes DMM.

2) Spells that break the action economy are gone - The biggest complainant to this is Celerity, but Contingency probably needs to get a case of get-gone as well.

2a) As a corollary, no character may ever get more than one additional full round action, or one additional move AND standard action, per turn, from ANY effect. No character may gain more than one additional swift action per turn.

3) Nerf Polycheese - Have it go from Wildshape to Aspect variant. In other words, it can give pre-defined bonuses or penalties, but that's about it.

Baleful Polymorph is left as-is

PAO can only affect non-living targets and only

Shapechange can only be used to take on the form of a creature from MM1, and the ability to use the (Su) abilities of the assumed form is removed, although you can use any (Su) abilities of your native form.

Assume Supernatural Abilitiy explicitly does not work with any spell from the [Polymorph] subschool. Nor does any other method of being able to obtain the form's SLA, SU, or Extraordinary special qualities.

4) Magic Is Slow - In AD&D, it took TIME to cast magic. During which time it could easily be interrupted.

So how about this: When you begin casting a spell, you declare any and all variables (I cast a Fireball at this area), and it finishes and produces an effect at initiative (your initiative - spell level). Therefore, if you are on Initiative 15, and you cast a Fireball at a group of Goblins, the spell itself doesn't go off until Initiative 12. If the goblins move on Initiative 13, they could well end up scattering before the fireball lands.

As a corollary to this: Magic normally takes a full-round action to cast, rather than a standard action. This limits their mobility and their ability to flit around the battlefield tossing around Win Buttons.

Now then, Swift action spells (such as Feather Fall) are exempt from this, which makes them very useful, if rare. However, this means we need to strongly look at Quicken Spell (although if you can't reduce metamagic, then it's not so much of a problem, since it's a +4 adjustment).

4a) Blastomancy (evocation permitting Ref/Half) no longer has a saving throw. Your 'saving throw' is that you can actually get out of the area of effect before it goes off. Evasion is altered thusly: If you are in the area of an area effect which does not allow a saving throw, you get a Reflex save (DC calculated by what the spell's DC would have been normally. For other effects, calculate as a trap of appropriate CL). If this Reflex save is successful, you have the option of being able to move up to your full movement before the effect is applied. If you do so, you lose your move action in the following round (much like an immediate action eats your swift action for the following round). This ability may be used once per round. Improved Evasion functions as evasion, but is an Immediate action, and only eats your swift action for the next round rather than a move action.

5) Magic Isn't Easy - Again, in earlier editions, if a wizard got hit while he was casting a spell... it went poof. No save, no concentration check... goodbye. While I don't want to be quite that cruel, wizards do have far too easy a time of casting spells in melee without worrying about getting hurt.

First off, remove Casting on the Defensive. The Concentration check is just too easy to pull off. So any time a wizard casts a spell, he provokes AoO.

Second, if he gets hit by a non-damaging effect which negates his ability to finish casting the spell (for example, if he failed his saving throw against a Stinking Cloud while he was in the middle of casting), he automatically loses the spell slot, as though it had been cast, but to no effect. This includes any status condition which prevents taking a full-round action (such as Nauseated), conditions which make you do something else (Panicked or Confused), or preventing him from using one or more of the spell components (Silence for Verbal, Hold Person for Somatic...).

If he is affected by a non-damaging effect which does not negate his ability to cast (Ray of Enfeeblement), he has to make a Concentration check equal to the opponent's (10+Spell Level of effect + Casting Mod) or lose the spell. If he takes damage while casting the spell, he has to make a Concentration check DC 10+ damage taken or lose the spell.

Effects which the caster is immune to, or has no effect on him due to a successful saving throw do not affect casting.

Third off, spells with no Somatic components do not provoke AoO when cast in melee. This makes Still Spell very valuable, and I find that a +1 SL adjustment is a fitting price to pay for making it safer to cast in melee. We may need to remove somatic components from touch spells, though, to prevent nerfing them entirely. On the other hand, touch spells can be kept charged, so the wizard can cast it on one turn, then step in and release it on the next, so maybe not.

[Thiyr]

Had a few thoughts on this matter myself, actually.

a) Use skill tricks for small new things you can do, nifty tricks that are a smaller edge, as befitting their cost. Makes a good addition to streamlining skills as a whole

b) Use feats as larger new additions to your available arsenal of abilities. You get a lot less, so they should make a lot larger of a splash.

c) Immunities are a bad thing, junk 'em. Nothing sucks the fun out of a game quite as fast as going into that combat with, say, a beguiler and running into mindblank. Or being a grappler hitting freedom of movement. An illusionist hitting true seeing. Easily gamed auto-wins aren't cool.

d) Make things work less as a true/false. It slows things down, but in conjunction with the above never leaves an action as doing completely nothing. By this I mean find a way to fix the critical existence failure at 0 hp, make it meaningful that you failed that save by 1 instead of by 15. glancing blows when you don't quite hit their AC. A return (somewhat) to the dr/+1-5 system, so that if your weapon isn't quite high enough, it only pierces -some- of the dr.

I also have some views on Shneekey's comments on magic.

for point 1), I'd say metamagic on the whole needs -some- mitigation, just not the extremes we saw. Set up a system like psionic focus for magic, and have reductions not stack. Alternate costs for metamagic are fine so long as they can't be gamed easily. Make the resources expended be meaningful. free metamagic at no cost = bad, but unless the system is tweaked, the numbers it has are kinda off, so full cost = bad as well.

point 2), I agree that action economy abuse is potent. I don't see this as a problem with casting, though. its that who the heck else can take advantage of it? Outside of magic, there's not a whole ton of things that CAN do that, and there's currently not a whole ton of options to take advantage of it aside from "hit it more!". Just thought of this now, but rather than see it gone, I'd rather limit what can be done with said actions. Have actions fall under certain classifiers, and you can only use certain classifiers once per round. Only one spell-attack per round, one physical-attack per round, etc.

point 3) Polymorph is defined by the forms you can take. I find it far less fun to use flat bonuses, as that just makes it feel like I'm using a different bear's endurance. The alternative would be to limit the forms available by means of making individual forms or groups of forms into individual spells. Aspect of the wolf is a solid example for this. From there, it puts a more defined "You need to know what the animal you want to turn into is", and puts a lot more control as to what abilities can be gained.

4) To a degree I agree with the concept. I think out-of-combat magic should take a lot more time. I don't mind the idea of slowing magic via initiative, but I don't think that's as huge a deal when you start toning down the win buttons to begin with.

5) i don't see a whole ton of issues with yet. cool beans.

[Draz74]

a) Use skill tricks for small new things you can do, nifty tricks that are a smaller edge, as befitting their cost. Makes a good addition to streamlining skills as a whole
Ooooh, good call. If you're going for compatibility with 3.5e at all, you should at least expand the skill tricks system to be more universal. This includes Core concepts like Track, Trapfinding, and Hide in Plain Sight becoming skill tricks.


c) Immunities are a bad thing, junk 'em. Nothing sucks the fun out of a game quite as fast as going into that combat with, say, a beguiler and running into mindblank. Or being a grappler hitting freedom of movement. An illusionist hitting true seeing. Easily gamed auto-wins aren't cool.
Good principle, although personally I have a hard time with e.g. fire elementals not being immune to fire.


d) Make things work less as a true/false. It slows things down,
Slows things down too much IMO.

[TuggyNE]

Ooooh, good call. If you're going for compatibility with 3.5e at all, you should at least expand the skill tricks system to be more universal. This includes Core concepts like Track, Trapfinding, and Hide in Plain Sight becoming skill tricks.

This ... sounds extremely awesome and quite exciting.


Good principle, although personally I have a hard time with e.g. fire elementals not being immune to fire.

Keep in mind that 3.5 eventually worked out a hacky way to bypass fire immunity, which suggests that a more sensible approach that makes fire elementals merely heavily resistant to fire damage might be more robust.

[Draz74]

Keep in mind that 3.5 eventually worked out a hacky way to bypass fire immunity, which suggests that a more sensible approach that makes fire elementals merely heavily resistant to fire damage might be more robust.

I'm more of a simulationist holdout person than some. I'd approve of Red Dragons, Fire Giants, Fiends, Phoenixes, etc., being heavily resistant to fire rather than immune. But true Fire Elementals should be immune, and there should be no way to bypass it.

A fire mage who has no other tricks should not be able to kill fire elementals by blasting. (He should, instead, have some sort of natural Rebuking power over them, if they're enough weaker than he is. I suppose if you were ok with such complicated rules, you could build that into fire blasting spells as an automatic secondary function.)

[Tvtyrant]

I have been working on an idea recently to kill the action economy. See, in 3.5 you have 6 different types of actions, but they have fixed moves associated with them.

My thinking is to give people a new stat, "Coordination," which grant you a number of "Coordination Points" a turn. Actions cost a certain number of Coordination Points, which lets you parse your abilities out more. For instance, a melee or ranged attack only costs a single coordination point, and a 10 ft. step costs 1 point each, but a spell costs its level in coordination points. You still can only make as many attacks as your BaB allows in a turn though. Upper level spells cost more Coordination points than you have, so you partially cast them one turn and then complete casting them the next.

It has some other effects, like ending the full attack or move and attack binary situation by allowing you to make as many attacks as your movement allows (so the further you move the less attacks, but not the "move at all and you can't make more than 1!" problem). It also limits the amount of natural attacks of an enemy to their coordination, which limits some monsters but also reigns in on Wildshape and the like.

This doesn't even start to fix casting unfortunately, but it does fix (IMO) some of the other problems in the game.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Keep in mind that 3.5 eventually worked out a hacky way to bypass fire immunity, which suggests that a more sensible approach that makes fire elementals merely heavily resistant to fire damage might be more robust.


I'm more of a simulationist holdout person than some. I'd approve of Red Dragons, Fire Giants, Fiends, Phoenixes, etc., being heavily resistant to fire rather than immune. But true Fire Elementals should be immune, and there should be no way to bypass it.

A fire mage who has no other tricks should not be able to kill fire elementals by blasting. (He should, instead, have some sort of natural Rebuking power over them, if they're enough weaker than he is. I suppose if you were ok with such complicated rules, you could build that into fire blasting spells as an automatic secondary function.)

I don't necessarily think fire elementals should be entirely immune to fire. It kind of goes back to the "what creatures should be immune to crits" discussion. We're made of meat yet can be harmed by things made of meat; water, magma, ooze, etc. (para)elementals could have their integrity disrupted by more viscous materials; earth elementals and stone golems can be harmed by rocks. I could see fire elementals being disrupted by sufficiently forceful fire, but you should definitely have to go to some effort to harm them with it. (And entirely as an aside, I like the idea of removing and downgrading immunities enough that I'd hate to make an exception in this case. "Fight fire with fire," after all. :smallwink:)

Idea: Energy resistance subtracts damage per die, rather than total damage. Fire resist 1 turns a 10d6 fireball into 10d6-10, fire resist 3 makes it 10d6-30, and so forth. First of all, this makes energy resistance proportional, which means energy resistance can be something you care about past low levels. Secondly, you can simulate fire "immunity" by giving things fire resistance 6; that way, they're immune to most fire, but a Searing Spell equivalent that gave +1 fire damage per die or a spell that did d8 damage (which should be rare) would have a chance of damaging them. That would mean that a dedicate pyromancer would be the only ones able to harm fire elementals, rather than being useless against them...but even then, he'd only be able to do a little bit of damage and then only with some lucky rolls, so trying to kill one by pure blasting wouldn't be the smartest idea.

[Psyren]

I don't necessarily think fire elementals should be entirely immune to fire. It kind of goes back to the "what creatures should be immune to crits" discussion. We're made of meat yet can be harmed by things made of meat;

Going to stop you right there and say I agree with Draz on this one. Yeah, we may be made of meat, but we're not defined by being made of meat the way a fire elemental is defined by being made of fire (and magical fire at that.)

There are other solutions to keep a fire mage from being totally hosed against them though (besides rebuking, though I do like that idea.) For instance, an area fire spell could momentarily disrupt the elemental with interference, stunning it for a round or two and giving the party time to flee or strategize.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Going to stop you right there and say I agree with Draz on this one. Yeah, we may be made of meat, but we're not defined by being made of meat the way a fire elemental is defined by being made of fire (and magical fire at that.)

There are other solutions to keep a fire mage from being totally hosed against them though (besides rebuking, though I do like that idea.) For instance, an area fire spell could momentarily disrupt the elemental with interference, stunning it for a round or two and giving the party time to flee or strategize.

Granted fire elementals are more "the essence of fire" than we are "the essence of meat," but that doesn't necessarily make them immune to fire. If you have a creature made of water, or fire, or air, or something else similarly insubstantial, what happens when you add more of that substance to it? Either it adds to/reinforces the creature, healing it; subtracts from/disperses the creature, damaging it, if added forcefully enough; or does nothing to it. I don't see any reason why the third option has to be the only right one--in fact, I'd love to see more creatures that are healed by the appropriate element, since "creature made of X moves into/absorbs a bunch of X and gets bigger and stronger" is a fairly common trope--and I don't see why adding special rules for energy/elemental interactions is preferable to the standard turn-immunity-into-resistance route.

It's like the critting undead debate. On the one hand, skeletons are held together by negative energy, not physics, and zombies traditionally drag themselves along after being dismembered so sneak attacks and crits shouldn't work on them; on the other hand, you can sneak attack and crit creatures who have skeletons, and in D&D humans are held together by positive energy, so sneak attacks and crits should work on them. Which is better? The former case just screws over certain characters, just like mind-affecting immunity or any other immunity, while the latter case makes them just like any other creature. The common solution for making such creatures sort-of crittable is to give them Amorphous or fortification or something similar, which makes them highly resistant but not necessarily immune if someone focuses on that method of fighting, which is exactly what I'm suggesting for elementals.

Also, on the topic of meat creatures being powered by positive energy, might I remind you that adding more positive energy to such creatures makes them explode. If it works for positive energy, why not fire?

[Psyren]

No, the sneak attack/crit debate is totally unrelated; the structure of a creature's body and the very material it is composed of are two different concepts. Everything with an anatomy has weak points, and Pathfinder solved this problem by now allowing you to SA corporeal undead/constructs/plants. (Amorphous critters like oozes and elementals are still immune.)

The positive energy argument doesn't wash either. The PEP healing explosion is an overload situation; your computer runs on electricity, but pump a million volts into it and you get a similar result. But your computer isn't made of electricity.

Now, I agree with you that making it so fire mages, regardless of power, can do nothing to fire elementals is similarly unfair. I would envision fire spells of sufficient power affecting them in ways similar to how golems are affected by certain spells (e.g. Transmute Rock to Mud slowing down a Stone Golem.) But I find outright killing a fire elemental with fire to be odd.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

The positive energy argument doesn't wash either. The PEP healing explosion is an overload situation; your computer runs on electricity, but pump a million volts into it and you get a similar result. But your computer isn't made of electricity.

Now, I agree with you that making it so fire mages, regardless of power, can do nothing to fire elementals is similarly unfair. I would envision fire spells of sufficient power affecting them in ways similar to how golems are affected by certain spells (e.g. Transmute Rock to Mud slowing down a Stone Golem.) But I find outright killing a fire elemental with fire to be odd.

Pump a gallons of pure water into a two-gallon bucket of salt water and the fresh water will be diluted; shove a bunch of negative ions into a positively-charged plasma and it will start neutralizing; throw a counter-clockwise-rotating whirlwind at a clockwise-rotating one and they'll cancel out slightly. I'm not asking for pyromancers to be able to easily burn fire elementals to death, I'm just saying that the idea of throwing a bunch of fire infused with destructive magic at a bunch of other fire held together by magic and having it do nothing whatsoever is counterintuitive from a flavor perspective and kind of unfair from a mechanical perspective.

Having fire spells stun them or control them or something else is one option, but I think it would be easier and more consistent to work with the existing HP system for damage-dealing spells. To turn mind blank from an immunity to a resistance, you could bolt on mechanics for various mind-affecting spells affecting a warded target, or you could simply give the target a bonus to Will saves, because it interacts with the existing mechanics of the spells simply and cleanly instead of making up something new.

[Eldan]

Skill tricks: in my opinion, they should never have existed. Most of those, to me, should simply be slightly harder standard skill checks. Like, "I intimidate the entire group of bandits!" - "Sure! Let's say that's intimidating the bandit leader, +10 DC for him having a band with him!" or "I want to take one hand of the wall while climbing, to fire my hand crossbow." - "Sure! Give me a climb check, let's say as the wall, but +5!"
Quite a few of those skill tricks do quite cool things. But not things you should have to spend resources on.


Swinging the Nerf-Bat at Magic

-snip-

Have you seen the Arcane Magic fix in my sig? It addresses a lot of these (not all, mind you), even if it does not necessarily solve them all. But I made an effort at making magic more difficult and removing action-economy ruiners.

[Thiyr]

Slows things down too much IMO.

I think it depends on how its done. I can see my DR example being a bit slower, for instance, but depending on implementation it could work out well. For other things, so long as its at standard increments, it's not terribly bad. Let's say that instead of 2 states, there are 3, just to keep it simple. State one is fail outright. Next is fail save by 5 or less, next is make save. If (like me) you're too lazy to do the math and remember bonuses every time you cast a spell, and just write it down instead, then you could, instead of saying "1st level spell: DC 15" or somesuch, do "1st level spell: DC 10/15". Added time is mostly the time it takes to think "Is 14 higher than 10 and lower than 15?" which isn't too bad. More states means it takes more time, of course, but even 1 extra state can be a lot better if you don't have save DCs so high opponents can't succeed.

Then again, I'm working with the mindset of "What makes things fun", and I tend to find that it's less fun when I can do one thing during my turn and it flops horribly and does nothing.

As far as fire elementals, fire immunity, and fire magic, I'd actually say that elemental immunities would be the one exemption i'd put to my suggestion. The positive energy example works well, actually. Cure spells can't kill a person under normal conditions, but inflicts can. Undead are hurt by cure but healed by inflict, as their life-giving source is negative, not positive, energy. It's just the positive energy plane which can do the whole death-by-healing thing. Using this as a baseline, it leads to two ideas. Either a) the fire elemental is healed by fire damage, as it is having that which gives it life (and is the physical component parts that make it up, but that's actually somewhat irrelevant to the point). Cold, being the opposite, does extra damage. Alternatively, it is possible that there is such a thing as too much heat, causing overload. Thus, after a certain threshold of damage, fire can damage a fire elemental, but up to that point it is safe, meaning it would just have extremely high resistance, which is only likely to be relevant in particularly hot parts of the elemental plane of fire, or to certain spells which can cause similar heat levels.

Regardless, the intent of my point was more towards status immunities than damage immunities (as even without things like searing spell, there is an answer in the form of energy substitution), but still an interesting point to be brought up.

[Eldan]

You know what I'd like to see? A good implementation of Save-or-die effects. I'm not quite sure how it would work, honestly, but I could see Death magic getting a progression of states, similar to Fear magic. Something like Fatigued-exhausted-drained-dead or somesuch.

[Ashtagon]

Granted fire elementals are more "the essence of fire" than we are "the essence of meat," but that doesn't necessarily make them immune to fire. If you have a creature made of water, or fire, or air, or something else similarly insubstantial, what happens when you add more of that substance to it? Either it adds to/reinforces the creature, healing it; subtracts from/disperses the creature, damaging it, if added forcefully enough; or does nothing to it. I don't see any reason why the third option has to be the only right one--in fact, I'd love to see more creatures that are healed by the appropriate element, since "creature made of X moves into/absorbs a bunch of X and gets bigger and stronger" is a fairly common trope--and I don't see why adding special rules for energy/elemental interactions is preferable to the standard turn-immunity-into-resistance route.


With your hypothetical fire elemental being hurt by a sufficiently forceful fire attack, it's not the fire itself that is damaging; it's the impact. In effect, the elemental got hurt by a broad-area (conceptually similar to falling) bludgeoning attack.

I suppose you could say that 10% of fireball damage is considered bludgeoning. Although I subscribe to teh school that says you are immune to attacks from what you are made of.



It's like the critting undead debate. On the one hand, skeletons are held together by negative energy, not physics, and zombies traditionally drag themselves along after being dismembered so sneak attacks and crits shouldn't work on them; on the other hand, you can sneak attack and crit creatures who have skeletons, and in D&D humans are held together by positive energy, so sneak attacks and crits should work on them. Which is better? The former case just screws over certain characters, just like mind-affecting immunity or any other immunity, while the latter case makes them just like any other creature. The common solution for making such creatures sort-of crittable is to give them Amorphous or fortification or something similar, which makes them highly resistant but not necessarily immune if someone focuses on that method of fighting, which is exactly what I'm suggesting for elementals.

Also, on the topic of meat creatures being powered by positive energy, might I remind you that adding more positive energy to such creatures makes them explode. If it works for positive energy, why not fire?

I never really bought the "meatbags are positive energy" argument. To me, they are a mix of all four elements (following classical Greek theory) and positive energy. Positive energy has an odd interaction with them because they aren't pure positive energy.

Also...

Unify the energy resistance and damage reduction mechanics.

Full casters need de-tiering.

Merge ranger and scout.

Divorce the paladin from alignment, and marry them to a deity instead.

[Eldan]

I agree that a fireball should also deal bludgeoning damage, actually. But that's only the explosive fire spells, not quite all of them. How about a wall of fire? Not much impact there.

But then, I firmly believe that most classical blasting spells should get added secondary effects, as they are just too boring otherwise. Make the Explosive Spell feat from CArc the standard.

[hoverfrog]

We used to run a critical hit system (I know, don't even go there) in one of the games I played in years ago. One good thing about it was the following chart that replaced negative hit points. Damage after being reduced to zero hit points was applied to the table with each six damage adding an additional severity. After heavy wounds the person was dead or at the very least lost the limb.

Critical Damage
{table=head]Body part|Light|Moderate|Heavy

Head|||
Left Arm|||
Right Arm|||
Torso|||
Left Leg|||
Right Leg|||
[/table]

A light wound caused a -2 penalty on actions with that body part or a 10% failure chance, medium was -4 or 20% and a heavy wound was -8 or 40%. So a light head wound had a 10% chance of spell failure and a -2 on things like Spot and Search while a Heavy leg wound reduced movement by 40% and caused a -8 on AC as someone hobbled round the battlefield with a large neon sign showing that they were a prime target. Light, Moderate and Heavy wounds recovered normally to the next severity after one day, week or month respectively and healing spells reduced the severity by one for each level of the spell. CLW reduced a Moderate wound to a Light wound.

It really came in useful when facing zombies (which you literally had to hack to pieces) but most people would get a wound and beg off the fight or surrender, pretty much the same as normal play. Needless to say called shots were a much invoked house rule.

[Empedocles]

All the work I've done so far has been with the Legends of Eridia (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=246412) 3.5 fix on the homebrew forums. All the work is currently contained in inbox folders and skype histories, but if you're still interested in helping feel free to post there now that Virdish is back :smallsmile:

Eventually I may be opening a separate web forum to design this game.

[Seerow]

I don't necessarily think fire elementals should be entirely immune to fire. It kind of goes back to the "what creatures should be immune to crits" discussion. We're made of meat yet can be harmed by things made of meat; water, magma, ooze, etc. (para)elementals could have their integrity disrupted by more viscous materials; earth elementals and stone golems can be harmed by rocks. I could see fire elementals being disrupted by sufficiently forceful fire, but you should definitely have to go to some effort to harm them with it. (And entirely as an aside, I like the idea of removing and downgrading immunities enough that I'd hate to make an exception in this case. "Fight fire with fire," after all. :smallwink:)

Idea: Energy resistance subtracts damage per die, rather than total damage. Fire resist 1 turns a 10d6 fireball into 10d6-10, fire resist 3 makes it 10d6-30, and so forth. First of all, this makes energy resistance proportional, which means energy resistance can be something you care about past low levels. Secondly, you can simulate fire "immunity" by giving things fire resistance 6; that way, they're immune to most fire, but a Searing Spell equivalent that gave +1 fire damage per die or a spell that did d8 damage (which should be rare) would have a chance of damaging them. That would mean that a dedicate pyromancer would be the only ones able to harm fire elementals, rather than being useless against them...but even then, he'd only be able to do a little bit of damage and then only with some lucky rolls, so trying to kill one by pure blasting wouldn't be the smartest idea.

I'm just going to chime in and say I like this idea. In fact, going along with what you said in a followup post about how using an improper element could potentially heal the creature, I'd go so far as to say add an extra property:

_____ Absorption: If as a result of the creature's resistance to ______ the damage result is negative, that negative amount is healed to the creature's hit points. Any amount above the creature's max hit points is converted to temporary hit points.


So if you have a Fire Elemental with a Fire Resist 6, hitting him with a normal fire ball isn't going to just be inneffective, you're most likely giving him 25 or so extra hit points. But if you have that same Fire Elemental with Fire Resist 6 going up against a dedicated Pyromancer who has Explosive Spell (reduce enemy fire resist by 2 plus a knockback/knockdown effect), Empower Spell (increase damage die 1 step), and Searing Spell (increase fire spell damage by +1 per die), then you're instead looking at 10d8+10 (average 55) - 40, so will on average deal 15 points of damage.



The only real problem I have with the mechanic is that by making scale with dice, it makes it much harder to use the same mechanics for both melee and spells. I mean, melee just doesn't get 1 d6 per level, they typically get more flat damage modifiers. So either you resign to having a different mechanic for Physical Damage resistance and Elemental Resistance, or you change the way melee scaling works, or you deal with Melee just ignoring most resistances.

[Tyndmyr]

I love 3.5. If you're considering helping me here, you also love 3.5. It's a great system. Really feels like home. Too bad all people ever do on here is fix the damn thing :smallfurious:

It's been done before, but I'm interested in fixing 3.5 with some very, very specific design goals in mind, which should help to make it a more enjoyable game all around. This was inspired by the 3.5 fix/new system Virdish and I began working on (along with some other people, although I never chatted directly with them) but Virdish seems to have stopped posting so I'm taking matters into my own hands :smallwink:

Primary Design Goals (the more difficult ones are bolded):


Fix magic. 'Tis a biggy...
Streamline skills, and make them more important. Also, skills should be used mostly to do cool stuff, not really redundant stuff that shouldn't require a roll.
Don't just rewrite classes, make newer, cooler classes. My big thing here is that all classes should give fairly powerful, unique special abilities. For example, wild shape (broken as it is) is wayyyyyyy more interesting then rage.
Eliminate all the nitpicky teeny bonuses. Put an end to the ceaseless +2s and +4s. Replace them with tactics and awesome abilities. Make it fun instead of an equation.
Feats should open up a small little new thing for you to do, not just give you more bonuses.
Give racial abilities that scale with class levels.
Allow for High Fantasy, Gritty Fantasy, and even alternative, less traditional fantasy.
Keep it all fairly balanced.

I'm sure I missed a ton of stuff, but if anyone, anyone at all, would like to help, your assistance would be welcomed. Just post :smallbiggrin:

This sounds like a lot of work. I'd like to point you to Legend and Pathfinder. Or, yknow, any one of dozens of D&D knock off systems. Take your pick.

[lsfreak]

Fire damage is colder than a fire elemental's fire, thus while it's still fire, it's like throwing someone used to 110-degree weather straight into some place that's only 60 degrees (whereas actual cold damage would be throwing them into a -40 blizzard).

[Ashtagon]

Fire damage is colder than a fire elemental's fire, thus while it's still fire, it's like throwing someone used to 110-degree weather straight into some place that's only 60 degrees (whereas actual cold damage would be throwing them into a -40 blizzard).

So if a humble fireball deals damage to a fire elemental because it is colder than their normal fire, how much damage per round should they be taking from simply being in a normal human-comfortable temperature environment?

Allowing fire elementals to take any damage at all from fire is simply unplayable once you examine the logical consequences.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

So if a humble fireball deals damage to a fire elemental because it is colder than their normal fire, how much damage per round should they be taking from simply being in a normal human-comfortable temperature environment?

Allowing fire elementals to take any damage at all from fire is simply unplayable once you examine the logical consequences.

The plane of Fire is just as large as the Prime is, full of beings which, traditionally, have fiery tempers. How would war be waged on their plane when they can't affect one another?

[Ashtagon]

The plane of Fire is just as large as the Prime is, full of beings which, traditionally, have fiery tempers. How would war be waged on their plane when they can't affect one another?

Presumably, they use their slam attacks. Which deal both bludgeoning damage (which can hurt other fire elementals) and fire damage (which can't).

[Eldan]

There's nothing stopping the various elemental races from just using weapons. Or learning magic, even.

[Draz74]

The plane of Fire is just as large as the Prime is, full of beings which, traditionally, have fiery tempers. How would war be waged on their plane when they can't affect one another?

Maybe the ineffectuality of their attacks against each other is the only reason they're all still alive. :smallamused:

[Lord_Gareth]

This sounds like a lot of work. I'd like to point you to Legend and Pathfinder. Or, yknow, any one of dozens of D&D knock off systems. Take your pick.

If the goal is a fixed game, Pathfinder should be avoided at all costs.

[Lans]

Keep it all fairly balanced.

You might want to decide on a balance point.
Everybody tier 1? Tier 4? Making sure everybody fits between a high 4 and a low 2? 4E balancing?

[willpell]

My tinkering continues apace; I'm being very tentative for now, wanting to change as little as possible while satisfying myself, tossing a lot of ideas around but not putting any into effect until I understand the RAW a lot better. Still, I've had a few very broad-strokes ideas.

Any class whose sole raison d'etre is to fight should have full BAB. Monk, Soulknife, probably Marshal...I'm looking at you.
A class as powerful as Druid should have half BAB. This doesn't come close to fixing it, but it at least waters it down a bit more.
Sorcerers are supposed to be more combative than wizards, and their magic is weaker, so let's give them 3/4 BAB. Their rays will hit more often and their proficiency with the almighty morningstar, which is forever denied to their otherwise superior wizardly brethren, has more chance of actually being relevant.

The Fighter is much maligned for not having basically anything going for him, want to hear my solution? He is the only non-NPC class except for maybe the Scout who is not set apart from society in a significant way - no magic, no special quasimystical training, no criminal tendencies, just lots of combat practice. So he should be the guy who everyone in the village looks to as a defender, without wishing he'd go away the rest of the time. Thusly, he gets Leadershp free at level 6...or perhaps even earlier. (This doesn't seem quite right since some fighters ought to be "lone knights", but I still like it in general.)

For a MUCH bigger change, here's a quick and dirty adjustment: increase all monster CRs by 50% (on average, some will deserve higher or lower values but x1.5 is the thumb rule), and then all spellcasting classes gain a new level of spells every 3 character levels instead of 2. Thusly, Wizard vs. Balor is pretty much the exact same fight as ever, but the fact that the Fighter hasn't a prayer against the balor is made more explicit by the fact that the balor is now CR 27 (I'm remembering it as 18 normally, if that's wrong adjust accordingly); if the fighter is epic it might still happen but normally it won't. The level 18 fighter is now comparable to what is currently a level 12 wizard; the wizard is probably still winning, but it's nowhere near as close. And the wizard gets a few more spell slots each day than he would at the normal level 12, hopefully giving him a bit more longevity without significantly increasing his power (this is dubious I know, but as I say this is all very preliminary).


DAMN IT. This Belongs in Homebrew :smallfurious: I've never made that mistake before..... :'(

I wouldn't have found it if you'd put it in there...must be fate.....