limejuicepowder
2013-03-07, 04:17 PM
I have two completely unrelated rules I'd like to get some opinions on.
1) Banning all direct-damage and creature-summon spells.
Before someone points out that a good caster isn't going to waste spell slots for damage anyways, I want to justify myself. As it stands, perhaps the main problem between casters and mundanes is that spells are so good that once a caster is in no real danger of running out of slots, there is virtually no situation where it is better to have a mundane instead of a caster. But if casters were unable to do damage, mundanes would at least still have their place: at some point in most fights, hit points are going to need getting rid of.
Casters will still have save or die spells, which means they won't be totally incapable of killing when solo, but they just won't be stepping on the toes (or lives) of mundanes so much.
2) This is totally unrelated to the above, but the other day I was thinking of an alternate leveling system where the character's total level determines what abilities they gain, including multiclassing. For an example, if a 1st level fighter gains a level and multiclasses to barb, he would gain 4+int skills, +1 fort save, d12 hp, and uncanny dodge. If he then took a level of wizard, he would gain 2+int skills, +1 fort and ref, a 2nd level spell slot, and 2 spells known.
Prestige classes would need some looking at, as the first 5 or more levels would be impossible to take. Maybe add 5 to the level of each prestige class, so the 1st level abilities may be gained when taking the 6th character level. Alternatively, erase all prereqs and allow access to prestige from level 1 (this would be entirely insane however).
How much would this change the game, and what kind of builds would become possible - and impossible? With this system, you can no longer dip in other classes to gain low-level abilities; if you some classes' 3rd level ability, that has to be the class you take at 3rd level (or you need to wait for a higher level when the class gets an improvement on that ability).
1) Banning all direct-damage and creature-summon spells.
Before someone points out that a good caster isn't going to waste spell slots for damage anyways, I want to justify myself. As it stands, perhaps the main problem between casters and mundanes is that spells are so good that once a caster is in no real danger of running out of slots, there is virtually no situation where it is better to have a mundane instead of a caster. But if casters were unable to do damage, mundanes would at least still have their place: at some point in most fights, hit points are going to need getting rid of.
Casters will still have save or die spells, which means they won't be totally incapable of killing when solo, but they just won't be stepping on the toes (or lives) of mundanes so much.
2) This is totally unrelated to the above, but the other day I was thinking of an alternate leveling system where the character's total level determines what abilities they gain, including multiclassing. For an example, if a 1st level fighter gains a level and multiclasses to barb, he would gain 4+int skills, +1 fort save, d12 hp, and uncanny dodge. If he then took a level of wizard, he would gain 2+int skills, +1 fort and ref, a 2nd level spell slot, and 2 spells known.
Prestige classes would need some looking at, as the first 5 or more levels would be impossible to take. Maybe add 5 to the level of each prestige class, so the 1st level abilities may be gained when taking the 6th character level. Alternatively, erase all prereqs and allow access to prestige from level 1 (this would be entirely insane however).
How much would this change the game, and what kind of builds would become possible - and impossible? With this system, you can no longer dip in other classes to gain low-level abilities; if you some classes' 3rd level ability, that has to be the class you take at 3rd level (or you need to wait for a higher level when the class gets an improvement on that ability).