Fixing/Balancing the core classes?

[Gwazi Magnum]

So, hoping to start a fun/positive filled topic for a change.

Looking at all the base classes of 3.5 there are obviously some massive unbalances.

Wizard >>>>>> Monk for example.

What kind of things can you think of that would balance all these classes out to make them equal?

Note: Homebrew variants of these classes are allowed and encouraged to an extent since the goal here is to make the class itself as effective, not a specific build as effective.

Also I'd rather see weaker classes like Monk and Fighter boosted than classes like Wizard take a hit. Both balance reasons and so no player who picks any class feels like they've been cheated out on.

Some ideas I have...


Full BAB for Monks with HD10
Fighters gain bonus abilities like armor agility, exotic weapon proficiencies etc

[eggynack]

I feel like it's going to be said, so I might as well say it. Monks, fighters and paladins have perfectly viable alternatives in the swordsage, warblade and crusader. Wizards have dread necros, beguilers and warmages. The problem with the balance you're suggesting, is that it doesn't do much to alleviate the core problem (pun absolutely intended). A monk with full BaB, standard action flurries, no MAD and more skill points is still a monk. They can't really compete with wizards without all new mechanics, and the ones in ToB are as viable as they get. The high tier replacements aren't quite as well designed, but they're still about as well as anyone has done. Giving them a limited list is a great way to cut their versatility, and their class features outside of spell casting make them interesting. There's some other good caster and melee replacements out there that are closer to the middle tiers, like psychic warrior, warlock and totemist. You can find classes for most archetypes at tier 3, and that seems like a good solution to me.

[Duke of Urrel]

What about endowing monks with certain psionic skills and spells as class features? I've heard this suggested before.

[DownwardSpiral]

I think the first step is to look into pathfinder, see what they did. And the next steps would be to go further.

Having said that it would take a complete redesign of pretty much all the classes to rebalance core. It's easier to just replace them with warblade beguiler etc.


What about endowing monks with certain psionic skills and spells as class features? I've heard this suggested before.

we got that already. There's a feat called tashalatora, and it gives you monkish advancement on any psionic class.

[Barsoom]

What about endowing monks with certain psionic skills and spells as class features? I've heard this suggested before.Just play a Psychic Warrior and call it "Monk" (as a social status, not a D&D class)

[MukkTB]

Eggynack has the right way. Just select a set of classes that are balanced. Almost any role can be covered from tier 3.

[GoatBoy]

It's a fundamental imbalance in the 3.X system. Either just accept things the way they are, or switch systems.

The fact that 3.X produces such emotional discussion about its imbalances, perceived or otherwise, demonstrates that in spite of itself, it's a fun and versatile system and you will get out of it what you put into it.

The best part? If you don't like the way a class works, you can change it yourself. I think that the writers' approach to the earlier editions was just this, they trusted anyone who perceived imbalances as coming up with ways to fix them.

This isn't a video game. Hacking is encouraged.

[eggynack]

A major problem with balancing directly from the imbalanced classes, is that it's incredibly difficult to gain parity. In order to get a fighter equal to a wizard, you'd have to somehow push them up to tier one. I'm pretty sure that, short of giving them spells of some kind, this is impossible. Pushing wizards all the way down to tier 5 is a bit less difficult, but still not worth the effort. One reason why tier 3 is often touted as an ideal balance point, is that it's where a lot of archetypes meet. What you want to do is pull wizards down to tier 3, and push fighters up to tier 3. Fortunately, as I've noted, the game has already done this for you. It's a clean change, which is nice, and it's balanced practically by definition. A game with all tier 3's would probably have a tier system of its own, but the imbalance is so much less than that of the base game, that the imbalances aren't even visible from our perspective.

[Just to Browse]

The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.

What level of balance are you playing at? Your balanced play could be splatbook fighters, splatbook paladins, adepts, warlocks, and rogues, but it could also be wizards, beguilers, clerics, tome barbarians (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Barbarian,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29), fightificers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12108951&postcount=33), and druids. Both of those are balanced within themselves.

[eggynack]

The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.

What level of balance are you playing at? Your balanced play could be splatbook fighters, splatbook paladins, adepts, warlocks, and rogues, but it could also be wizards, beguilers, clerics, tome barbarians (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Barbarian,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29), fightificers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12108951&postcount=33), and druids. Both of those are balanced within themselves.
I wouldn't exactly call it stomping. Beguilers and dread necros have a pretty narrow core specialty. Also, fighting things with a sword is often an essential role, and warblades are about as good at that as it gets. Basically, I'd be comfortable playing as any one of those classes in a party with any other of those classes, and I almost certainly wouldn't feel overshadowed. The way I see it, there's a list of roles that a fighter is supposed to fill. They're supposed to be good at combat, be more survivable than their caster counterparts, and be able to control the battlefield such that the casters don't get punched. In a high level game with a wizard, the fighter isn't really filling any of those roles. By contrast, in a game with a beguiler and a warblade, I think that the warblade is filling all of those roles successfully. Wizards have been capable of obsoleting those roles for so long that they've almost become invisible, but I think that these are things that the TOB classes tend to excel at to various degrees. Besides, even if beguilers were better than warblades, which I don't think they necessarily are, the difference between a wizard and a fighter dwarfs the difference between a beguiler and a warblade so much that it's absurd.

[DMVerdandi]

Well, I am going to go ahead and come up with some things...

1. Get rid of like almost every PHB class. Instead, Turn most of their class features into "roles", which will be templates that can be purchased with feats.

Roles: Healer, Warlock, rogue, ranger, monk, paladin, bard, marshal, artificer, druid, ect. (essentially, the roles will take whole class feature lists from classes, and give them to the adventurer)


2. Designate new Core classes.
Those will be

Warrior
Mage
Factotum



Warrior will be a fighter that gains power from skill in battle as well as tapping into ferocious emotions. Essentially, it will be using the barbarian class features as it's primary foundation alongside fighter bonus feats.
The warrior will be able to use more than one class role at a time.


The mage will have access to all spells, but must prepare those it casts every morning. Those spells prepared will be cast spontaneously. It's spells known is 2 per level+ spells researched. Those spells are memorized permanently.
If the mage sacrifices the 2 free spells per level, they can instead focus on physical training. The mage cannot hold any class roles.


The factotum will be as is, while also being able to switch out roles.
While it doesn't get spells, or bonus feats and high BAB, it gets all skills, and gets all class roles for free, but can only work within one role at a time, and switching them also takes a certain amount of time.

[Harrow]

What you have to keep in mind is the separation of differences in scale and differences in kind.

Classes like Monk and Fighter really only gain differences in scale as they level up. AC, BAB, skills, they go up. But that's it. Sure, Monk gets a lot of more 'unique' abilities in theory, but in practice they are far too limited to actually come to bear in any situation that isn't specifically tailored for them. For all practical purposes Fighters and Monks get some things at level one and the numbers attached to those things go up as they level, and that's it.

Wizards, Clerics, and Druids? They get differences in scale like the Fighters and Monks do. Their spells do more damage, can be cast from further away, and they can do it more times per day. But they also gain differences in kind.

Take for instance teleportation. A Wizard can use Plane Shift. How can a Fighter possibly compete with that? What would competition with that even be? It's an ability completely out of the scope of what a Fighter can do. And that's one subschool of spells. Throw the rest of conjuration onto the table. Calling, summoning, creation... these things can solve a vast array of problems in a manner that a Fighter couldn't ever do. It is simply a different league of versatility.

Both spells and feats alter the rules of the game. But spells do so more radically than feats. Wizards get more spells per day than Fighters get bonus feats, and Wizards can change what spells they have ready with little effort. Then you have to take into account how much vaster the Wizard's pool of potential spells is than the Fighter's pool of potential Fighter bonus feats.

If you want to put Fighters and Wizards on the same level, you don't have to balance the difference in scale as much you do the difference in kind. You have to limit the amount of options a Wizard has while giving the Fighter more options. The simplest way to do this that comes to my mind would be use of Tome of Battle classes and the school based casters like the Dread Necromancer and Beguiler. I don't know of equivalent base classes for Transmutation, Abjuration, or Conjuration, but those are generally versatile enough that even limiting a caster to spells mostly from one of those schools would make them more useful in general than their allies.


TL;DR Comparing Fighters and Wizards isn't comparing apples and oranges, it's like comparing apples against oranges, bananas, pears, peaches, plums, grapes, ect.

[VanIsleKnight]

4th Edition "balanced" all the classes. It made the game unplayable and thoroughly unenjoyable for some people, and accessible and fun for others.

The classes have their own playstyles, and are useful in their own ways. They shouldn't really be looked at purely as combat pieces in a strategy board game, they should be looked at as an RP tool based on the character concept a player comes up with.

If 20th fighters were just as "powerful" as 20th wizards, what point would there be in playing one over the other?

[Gwendol]

The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.


That seems like a hyperbole. Both wrt the beguiler and necro, and the outclassing of the crusader (and swordsage). In what way?

[The Boz]

Copied verbatim from another thread about making the classes less MAD. It still applies.


I made my own Monk fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=13536035#post13536035) which I shamelessly link to every chance I get... It's Pathfinder, but the required modifications for a 3.5 game are minimal, if any.

So, how to de-MAD the classes... It is incredibly hard, the MAD classes (Monk, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, etc.) aren't problematic solely for their madness but their versatility as well. I'd start by giving them a choice between some role-dependant bonuses at certain levels. Example:

Fighter
At level 1, the fighter chooses a Martial Specialization and a Career Specialization. At levels 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20, he can either improve his current specializations, or he can learn others.
Martial Specializations:
Armored Warrior - Lowers armor check penalty and increases armor max dex by 1.
Sword & Board - Increases AC and attack by 1 when wielding a shield in one hand and a sword in the other.
Wrecker - Increases damage with all two-handed melee weapons by 2.
Archer - Increases attack and damage with all ranged weapons by 1.
These are all simple numerical bonuses, but they could play a minor role in the fighter's madness by compensating for some lower ability scores.

Career Specializations:
Diplomat - Gains Knowledge (nobility) and Diplomacy as class skills, gains a +1 bonus on said skills. When taking this specialization again, the bonus is doubled.
Mercenary - Gains Appraise and Knowledge (local) as class skills, gains a +1 bonus on said skills. When taking this specialization again, the bonus is doubled.
Soldier - Gains Heal and Profession (Soldier)as class skills, gains a +1 bonus on said skills. When taking this specialization again, the bonus is doubled.
Etc, you see where this is going. The goal here is to give the fighter more options besides bashing things up, and it kind of helps with the skill point costs of said things as well.

Rogue
Something very simple for the Rogue this time. A choice between three things at level 1:
Agile - You gain a number of additional skill points equal to four times your Dexterity modifier. At rogue level 2, and at every rogue level after that, you gain a number of additional skill points equal to your Dexterity modifier. You can only spend these skill points on Balance (Dex), Escape Artist (Dex), Hide (Dex), Move Silently (Dex), Open Lock (Dex), Sleight of Hand (Dex), Tumble (Dex) and Use Rope (Dex).
Thug - Your rogue hit die increases to 1d8, and you gain 1 additional hit point every time you gain a level.
Dabbler - You gain the ability to cast Bard spells governed by your Intelligence. At level 1, you can cast 1 cantrip once per day. At level 3, you can cast a level 1 spell once per day. Your spellcasting ability continues to improve at levels 6, 9, 12, 15 and 18, but you only ever know one spell of each level. Usual ability-based spellcasting stuff (DCs, extra spells per day, etc).

The challenge here is to address the simple problem that is MAD, and not try to delve into the whole "primary casters > non-primary casters > mundanes" thing, because that problem will consume hundreds if not thousands of hours.

[Fable Wright]

I support the idea of starting the process by cutting out all of the old class designs, and instead using all tier 3/4 classes. Of course, that's only a jumping off point; there's still going to be some discrepency in the power of different classes. Consider, for example, Factotums, having access to things like Polymorph at higher levels, and opening that whole can of worms. Doing something like banning every spell that isn't on a set list caster's list, for instance, would help remedy that, but might put the Beguiler/Dread Necromancer a bit higher on the scale compared to other classes. And, while I agree that they're a bit higher on the list for their flexibility, I have to correct this:


The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.


Yeah, no. This is so wrong it isn't even funny. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are a bit higher in their tier than the ToB classes, but that doesn't mean that they 'stomp' over tier 3 classes. It just means that they have more out of combat versatility. For example, Silent Image to cover out of combat utility, Command Undead to grab skeletons to check traps. It doesn't mean that they obviate the other classes as you imply. If they ever had to fight each other, the Warblade would win hands down; Hearing the Air defeats illusions and most mirror image tactics, Moment of Perfect Mind to cut through the critical counter-attack spell, Sudden Leap to close the distance, Wall of Blades to parry Ennervation/Energy Drain, and so on. With item use, the distance between them decreases further, as getting a friend to cast Hide from Undead from a scroll on the Warblade means that the DN's undead armies are suddenly less useful, and it's a lot of work to replace powerful, fallen minions. If you're talking about out of combat ability, they don't dominate as much as you imply. While a Beguiler can do a lot of damage in social situations with Glibness/Charm Person/Whatever, the Warblade has utility through having Diplomacy, and in non-social out of combat areas, they have Mountain Hammer and Sudden Leap/other jumping tactics to get into hard to reach places or the other side of traps.

And when you're talking about Warblade vs. Crusader vs. Swordsage, you're wrong again. Swordsage has the least of sheer combat prowess among the initiator classes, yes, but they have a ton of option they bring to the table that a Warblade can't get. Ranged attacks, actual teleportation, stealth skills, sense motive, and so on are all Swordsage only options that bring utility to the table, even if they can't stab things as well as the Warblade or Crusader. And when you're saying a Warblade is better than a Crusader, you're wrong again; they're good at their own niches. Crusaders can tank significantly better than Warblades. They can keep enemies from moving past them, take significant hits and heal without sacrificing attacks, and they have high damage Devoted Spirit maneuvers, and all of the Mountain Hammer/Diplomacy of the Warblade. Really, all of them are on fairly equal ground and roughly balanced against one another, especially compared to, say, a Fighter and a Wizard. I'm not saying that they're perfectly balanced against one another, I'm saying that they're close enough to the same power level that you can tweak them to be equal without overhauling the way Magic works, and that they can all be run together in the same party without anyone overshadowing anyone else, barring competition for roles combined with differences in optimization ability.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Guys, please remember the goal here is to make weaker classes better and more viable in general. Not more viable or better with a certain feat or what not.


What about endowing monks with certain psionic skills and spells as class features? I've heard this suggested before.

This can be an interesting feature. Monks already have minor magic with disease immunity, ki strike and self healing. No reason psionics wouldn't fit with the concept.

Another thing we might want to try though is to reduce their MAD issue somehow.
Maybe give them Dex to Damage for free? That way its just Dex, Con, Int and Wis to worry about?


A major problem with balancing directly from the imbalanced classes, is that it's incredibly difficult to gain parity. In order to get a fighter equal to a wizard, you'd have to somehow push them up to tier one. I'm pretty sure that, short of giving them spells of some kind, this is impossible. Pushing wizards all the way down to tier 5 is a bit less difficult, but still not worth the effort. One reason why tier 3 is often touted as an ideal balance point, is that it's where a lot of archetypes meet. What you want to do is pull wizards down to tier 3, and push fighters up to tier 3. Fortunately, as I've noted, the game has already done this for you. It's a clean change, which is nice, and it's balanced practically by definition. A game with all tier 3's would probably have a tier system of its own, but the imbalance is so much less than that of the base game, that the imbalances aren't even visible from our perspective.

My main goal here is to allow people who play classes like fighter not feel gimped or incompetent.

While not having spellcasters feel they've been crippled/robbed of something as a result.

I know it won't be perfect, we won't have fighters = wizards any time soon.

But the smaller the gap the better at least.


The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.

What level of balance are you playing at? Your balanced play could be splatbook fighters, splatbook paladins, adepts, warlocks, and rogues, but it could also be wizards, beguilers, clerics, tome barbarians (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Barbarian,_Tome_%283.5e_Class%29), fightificers (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12108951&postcount=33), and druids. Both of those are balanced within themselves.

I wouldn't argue this because they are valid suggestions.

However my personal goal is to make the core classes better, so for people who stick to core (don't go into every manual in the game) can enjoy more balance. Just replacing them all it's like saying we're playing d&d without core in my opinion and that's something a lot of players (mainly the more casual, less knowledgeable ones who need balancing like this the most) may be unhappy about.


Well, I am going to go ahead and come up with some things...

1. Get rid of like almost every PHB class. Instead, Turn most of their class features into "roles", which will be templates that can be purchased with feats.

Roles: Healer, Warlock, rogue, ranger, monk, paladin, bard, marshal, artificer, druid, ect. (essentially, the roles will take whole class feature lists from classes, and give them to the adventurer)


2. Designate new Core classes.
Those will be

Warrior
Mage
Factotum



Warrior will be a fighter that gains power from skill in battle as well as tapping into ferocious emotions. Essentially, it will be using the barbarian class features as it's primary foundation alongside fighter bonus feats.
The warrior will be able to use more than one class role at a time.


The mage will have access to all spells, but must prepare those it casts every morning. Those spells prepared will be cast spontaneously. It's spells known is 2 per level+ spells researched. Those spells are memorized permanently.
If the mage sacrifices the 2 free spells per level, they can instead focus on physical training. The mage cannot hold any class roles.


The factotum will be as is, while also being able to switch out roles.
While it doesn't get spells, or bonus feats and high BAB, it gets all skills, and gets all class roles for free, but can only work within one role at a time, and switching them also takes a certain amount of time.

I like this system.
Though I tried something similliar once.

It was a build your own class called the Adventurer.
One rule with it though was that you couldn't multi-class, ever.
Because the adventurer was already your custom cross built character in one package.

Essentially you started in d4 hit dice, 2 skill points per level, low BAB and all low saves.

You then got to pick one saving throw to increase to high for free.

And then got a pool of points to invest anywhere you want.

This could be stuff like more skill points, higher hit die, higher BAB, more high saving throws, class features like rage, sneak attack, bonus feats, unarmed damage etc.

And also gaining spell tree's where technically you could progress in more than one spell tree at once.
The spell tree customization also varied determining what attribute it was based on, how many spells per day you got, what spell tree was it based off of, what's the maximum level spell you can cast, spells known, spontaneous or not etc.

This was beta testing with my group of friends briefly, but they decided in the end the system was took broken.

But noteworthy when they ruled this it was related to core alone, not to anything outside of core of the possible combinations that can be made with core and out of core classes, feats etc.


4th Edition "balanced" all the classes. It made the game unplayable and thoroughly unenjoyable for some people, and accessible and fun for others.

The classes have their own playstyles, and are useful in their own ways. They shouldn't really be looked at purely as combat pieces in a strategy board game, they should be looked at as an RP tool based on the character concept a player comes up with.

If 20th fighters were just as "powerful" as 20th wizards, what point would there be in playing one over the other?

4th edition got some things right which I like, but other things they got dead wrong.

My main five issues with it are...

1. Skills are almost non existant, and Intelligence barely relates now. You can't simulate a very skilled character because all characters are of comparable skill levels now. No one is left behind, but no one can really shine either.

2. Healing surges, self healing out of the blue is just silly and why after so many times the Cleric can't heal you specifically anymore? Not in general I get, they exhausted their spells, but can't they just not heal a specific person?

3. Encounter/daily powers.
These are a pet peeve, if you can do something once, why can't you do it again?
It makes some more sense for classes like Wizard, but for Fighters?

4. All ability scores rise!
There's no specializing in ability scores?
I mean I agree it might be good to start off well rounded so characters aren't stereotyped or useless in some areas. But to increase them all during level up means...

a) It's coming later so characters still go through much of the campaign useless in some areas
b) It means in the end, everyone is very bright, strong, charismatic for some reason... for no reason. They sure didn't start off that way.

5. Multi-classing is almost impossible and when it is it almost always weakens/punishes you for it.

[Deaxsa]

a couple of short thoughts for you:

1. warblades get weapon aptitude, and so should fighters. also, this makes those fighter-only feats much more useful. (still does not fix fighters but makes them much, much more versatile. (to buff them even more, maybe let them retrain all their fighter bonus feats every day or something)

2. let monks get flurry attacks with the standard action attack. (as well as giving them high BAB and a higher hit die, obviously. this would also allow a VERY natural progression into the scout class)

[Evard]

4th Edition "balanced" all the classes. It made the game unplayable and thoroughly unenjoyable for some people, and accessible and fun for others.

The classes have their own playstyles, and are useful in their own ways. They shouldn't really be looked at purely as combat pieces in a strategy board game, they should be looked at as an RP tool based on the character concept a player comes up with.

If 20th fighters were just as "powerful" as 20th wizards, what point would there be in playing one over the other?

Hahaha

I better tell my friends that we wasn't able to play 4e and that we didn't have a great time. Nice propaganda. Just because you are on a 3.5 forum doesn't mean that there aren't 4.0 fans here, some of us can appreciate each edition (even 2nd which I love) for what it is.

But hey I better let my friends know that are 4e game is off lest we break time and space by playing the unplayable and enjoying the unenjoyable.

Also if the 20th level fighter was as powerful as a 20th level wizard then you would have an epic game. When Fighter and Black Mage were about to fight black mage said "we would raze the earth" (or something like that) and that is what I want. (8 bit theater). Actually no it doesn't take that, it just takes my knight/fighter/sell sword with a weapon and armor to no be totally inept after 7th level.

OP: Try E6, it has the flavor of 3.5 (cause it is) but you don't run into spells and effects that totally shut down non magic classes.

I also hear Legend is pretty good, not my cup of tea but others tend to like it so there must be something there.

Edit: Also this should be moved to homebrew.

[eggynack]

I don't really see a point in attempting to balance wizards and fighters directly from the core class. Any changes to their balance requires an actual increase in the abilities in the fighter, and an actual reduction in the wizard. Just finagling the numbers wouldn't accomplish that. In order to do this, you'd need to come up with new mechanics for the fighter to use, and I don't see why warblades are worse than any random mechanic we could come up with. There's some homebrewed fighter fixes out there, but those are just about as different from fighters as warblades are. I just don't see the difference.

[Divide by Zero]

Hahaha

I better tell my friends that we wasn't able to play 4e and that we didn't have a great time. Nice propaganda. Just because you are on a 3.5 forum doesn't mean that there aren't 4.0 fans here, some of us can appreciate each edition (even 2nd which I love) for what it is.

But hey I better let my friends know that are 4e game is off lest we break time and space by playing the unplayable and enjoying the unenjoyable.

It made the game unplayable and thoroughly unenjoyable for some people, and accessible and fun for others.
You should probably read what they said more closely before making assumptions like that :smallannoyed:

[Black Jester]

My main goal here is to allow people who play classes like fighter not feel gimped or incompetent.

While not having spellcasters feel they've been crippled/robbed of something as a result.



If one truly wants to balance the core classes, a few upgrades for mundane characters will not be sufficient. To actually balance the classes in D&D, it is necessary to nerf spellcasters, and nerf them hard. Your two stated design goals are actively antagonistic to each other.
Thus, the central question is: How do you plan to nerf spellcasters? Any upgrades for fighters et al. are of secondary importance.

[ericgrau]

I think the problem usually falls upon the player. The best casters tend to be the ones that support the mundanes via slowing down foes and buffing allies. Whereas directly killing or fully disabling foes often comes from sub-optimal spells.

It's also how much of a jerk you make yourself in bragging and taking the credit. A "batman" caster, while effective, is just an over-glorified support role. It's very much a team player, but when you take all the credit for winning when you're being supportive, you go from peace, harmony and fun to jerkiness. I remember a DM who mistakenly tried one as a solo boss. He slowed the PCs down a lot yet without being able to accomplish much on his own. It was a long one sided fight in the PC's favor.

But most people aren't jerks. Most groups I've seen play well together regardless of class.

Exploiting loopholes is another problem that simply doesn't tend to happen IRL, except rarely with people who need to be booted. A lot of them are trying to pull something obvious or from theoretical boards. I've even heard of idiots trying to play pun pun. Then the DM flat out says "no", the player rages, DM still says "no" and deals with the player if necessary, then that's the end of that.

I am in favor of using new material, slight nerfs to discourage a path that's become too popular and giving out interesting things via items or abilities or alternate classes/builds to those who have limited and boring options. New and different = more fun. But as for sweeping system changes which assume the worst players, they tend to be system destroying and yet ineffective at stopping those players.

[Evard]

You should probably read what they said more closely before making assumptions like that :smallannoyed:

Saying opinions as facts and then giving a "disclaimer" doesn't change the fact that they were spewing opinions as if they were facts.

Also 4e didn't "balance" the classes, they balanced the classes.

Also OP you may get more help in the homebrew section.

[Draz74]

Eggynack has the right way. Just select a set of classes that are balanced. Almost any role can be covered from tier 3.

Eh, not so much any role. To name just the two most obvious examples that come up the most often in these discussions: Cleric and Ranger archetypes are rather difficult to build within Tier 3 range. Also an arcane caster that emphasizes the "scholarly" flavor of the Wizard.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

You would have to a) boost up the viability of the melee classes AND b) nerf the insane amount of options available to casters.

Effectively, you would have to kill vanican casting and replace it with something closer to Shadowcasting or Invocations. THEN boost up melee to something like ToB levels.

Besides, there's already a valid Monk fix. It's called Swordsage.

[Gavinfoxx]

Use these:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174628

[Hiro Protagonest]

Saying opinions as facts and then giving a "disclaimer" doesn't change the fact that they were spewing opinions as if they were facts.
Um... no. He's completely correct. A lot of people hate 4e because they get the feeling of sameness. A lot of people love 4e because they find it way easier to get into. I'm one of the latter, I hate the 3.X chargen minigame.

Also 4e didn't "balance" the classes, they balanced the classes.
Please, Wizard is still easily the strongest class in the game, although not by that much unless you're into serious optimization (like Surrealistik; he knows a ton about 4e op. There's actually quite a large disparity between unoptimized/optimized in 4e). Assassin and Vampire are also pretty weak.

Also OP you may get more help in the homebrew section.

Not really, no. More people read this part.

[DeltaEmil]

UPlease, Wizard is still easily the strongest class in the game, although not by that much unless you're into serious optimization (like Surrealistik; he knows a ton about 4e op. And here I thought the fighter (weapon master) was the strongest class because of its ability to deal extremely high damage and being the stickiest of all defenders, doing its role the best of all classes. Unless you count the ranger, who does obscene amount of damage because of everybody's popular at-will ability twin strike. :smallsigh:
Although the wizard (arcanist and mage) still does utility stuff that the mundanes like the warlord and the fighter can only dream off, like giving everybody the ability to fly (even if nerfed to a very short time, it's still quite good), creating magic dimensional mansions for everybody to rest in (epic), and being able to substitute diplomacy check with its arcana skill.
The wizard is the best controller for sure.

[Draz74]

What about endowing monks with certain psionic skills and spells as class features? I've heard this suggested before.
It's been homebrewed at least twice. I like my version, but Ernir's version (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=270919) is a little more elegant and easy to learn.


The beguiler and dread necro still stomp all over "T3" classes like swordsage and crusader, which are both regularly outclassed by the warblade.
I'd argue, but other people have already done so sufficiently. :smallsmile:


2. Designate new Core classes.
Those will be

Warrior
Mage
Factotum

I tried that once ... but eventually concluded that I might as well drop classes entirely and let people pick all their abilities from a menu ...


Wizards, Clerics, and Druids? They get differences in scale like the Fighters and Monks do. Their spells do more damage, can be cast from further away, and they can do it more times per day. But they also gain differences in kind.

Take for instance teleportation. A Wizard can use Plane Shift. How can a Fighter possibly compete with that? What would competition with that even be? It's an ability completely out of the scope of what a Fighter can do. And that's one subschool of spells. Throw the rest of conjuration onto the table. Calling, summoning, creation... these things can solve a vast array of problems in a manner that a Fighter couldn't ever do. It is simply a different league of versatility.
It's true, a purely-mundane character is never going to be truly balanced with a character who can do things like plane shifting and long-distance teleportation, or calling outsiders. But it can be close enough that it's not a problem for the game.

There are a few general strategies to make this qualitative difference in character power less overwhelming:

Make otherwise-mundane characters able to learn how to use slow, non-combat magic relatively freely, just like their spellcaster friends. (Downside: sometimes the flavor of a truly "mundane" character is appealing, and just using mundane combat tactics isn't enough.)
Attach a significant cost to abilities such as plane shifting or calling. So the spellcasters, although they still have greater options available to them, can't use those options on a routine basis; they have to be careful to save them for the highest-priority moments.
Figure out non-combat abilities that truly give a character power over the world, that are still nonmagical. Then give those abilities only to high-level mundanes, not to spellcasters. (Example: leadership abilities, in a system with decent mechanics for NPC followers, politics, military direction of mass combat, and stronghold construction.)
Make it so that casters, in spite of their versatility, are actually slightly weaker in combat than mundanes of the same level. Then, the Cleric's dependency on the Fighter within combat helps to balance out the Fighter's dependency on the Cleric when he needs to Plane Shift. (This breaks down in games with little or no combat ... but IMO, if your game doesn't have much combat, you really should be playing a different system rather than D&D or a D&D spinoff.)



4th edition got some things right which I like, but other things they got dead wrong.

My main five issues with it are...

Nitpicking:


1. Skills are almost non existant, and Intelligence barely relates now. You can't simulate a very skilled character because all characters are of comparable skill levels now. No one is left behind, but no one can really shine either.
A valid complaint IMO.


2. Healing surges, self healing out of the blue is just silly and why after so many times the Cleric can't heal you specifically anymore? Not in general I get, they exhausted their spells, but can't they just not heal a specific person?
A valid complaint ... but really, this is just a symptom of the bigger problems with Hit Points and Healing mechanics, rather than a fundamental flaw in 4e.


3. Encounter/daily powers.
These are a pet peeve, if you can do something once, why can't you do it again?
It makes some more sense for classes like Wizard, but for Fighters?
This is really more of an abstraction. It makes sense that Fighters shouldn't be able to pull off whatever move they want, whenever they want. 4e just says "look, we're saying you'll be able to pull off [this move] once per fight, on average; so just make things easy on us and assume that the average will hold up at all times."

Of course, that might still bother you, and moreso with Daily powers. But I do think it's silly when people argue that everything a Fighter does should be usable at-will. (Although even that style, as I understand it, is basically available in 4e via Essentials.)


4. All ability scores rise!
There's no specializing in ability scores?
I mean I agree it might be good to start off well rounded so characters aren't stereotyped or useless in some areas. But to increase them all during level up means...

a) It's coming later so characters still go through much of the campaign useless in some areas
b) It means in the end, everyone is very bright, strong, charismatic for some reason... for no reason. They sure didn't start off that way.
I think you have a flawed understanding of 4e ability increases. You increase all scores twice in your entire Level 1-30 career. So yeah, everyone ends up with Charisma +2 from where they started, just by virtue of being very experienced adventurers. That's ... really not crazy.

Meanwhile, the ability scores you actually focus on (generally two scores, occasionally three for slightly sub-optimal characters) get boosted by a total of ... 10 or 12 over the course of your career?


5. Multi-classing is almost impossible and when it is it almost always weakens/punishes you for it.
Did you mean Hybrid-ing? Because almost every 4e character is multiclassed, especially the optimal ones. However, mutliclassing (unlike Hybrid-ing) doesn't actually make you feel much like a mix between both classes; it only gives you a little taste of the class you multiclass into.


OP: Try E6, it has the flavor of 3.5 (cause it is) but you don't run into spells and effects that totally shut down non magic classes.
It's a start, yeah. Which is why I have used similar structure in my own attempts to fix 3e.


I also hear Legend is pretty good, not my cup of tea but others tend to like it so there must be something there.
Legend is great ... but it's more like "4e done right" than "3e done right." Very gamist, fairly combat-centric, and a lot of character archetypes rely on re-fluffing the mechanics in order to pull them off.


There's actually quite a large disparity between unoptimized/optimized in 4e). Assassin and Vampire are also pretty weak.
Seeker, too, I believe? Or has it gotten a lot of boosts from later material?

[JaronK]

One really easy method is to just replace the 11 core classes with 11 other core classes that are more balanced and yet cover the same general character archetypes. This is a simple approach that, I find, gets the job done.

The 11 core classes I use when I want to do this are (in parenthesis, the classes they replace):

Bard (stays, Bardic Knack and Divine Bard variants available)
Ranger (stays, Wild Shape variant available to replace Druid)
Warblade (replaces Fighter, Barbarian)
Crusader (replaces Fighter, Paladin, Cleric)
Swordsage (unarmed variant replaces Monk)
Factotum (replaces Rogue, Wizard)
Beguiler (replaces Rogue, Wizard, Sorcerer)
Dread Necromancer (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric)
Warmage (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)
Binder (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)
Warlock (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)

Now, obviously no one of these can do everything a T1 class can do, but none is as weak as the Fighter or Monk either. Overall, they're close enough to balanced, and they can do most of the same general character concepts.

JaronK

[Gavinfoxx]

I would consider Pathfinder 3.55, Trailblazer 3.60, True20 3.65, D&D with the Frank & K Tomes 3.65, Fantasycraft 3.70, 'Mutants and Dragons' also 3.70, and Legend 3.75, as far as the 'number of things fixed' goes...

Legend is Here:
http://www.ruleofcool.com/

Use mutants and masterminds 2e to make Mutants and Dragons:
http://greywulf.net/2011/06/03/mutants-and-dragons-third-edition/

Fantasycraft is found here:
http://www.crafty-games.com/node/348

Trailblazer is found here:
http://badaxegames.com/

The Frank & K tomes are here:
https://sites.google.com/site/middendorfproject/frankpdf

True20 is here:
http://true20.com/

ONE of these should, at least, fit your needs, eh?

[Gwazi Magnum]

a couple of short thoughts for you:

1. warblades get weapon aptitude, and so should fighters. also, this makes those fighter-only feats much more useful. (still does not fix fighters but makes them much, much more versatile. (to buff them even more, maybe let them retrain all their fighter bonus feats every day or something)

2. let monks get flurry attacks with the standard action attack. (as well as giving them high BAB and a higher hit die, obviously. this would also allow a VERY natural progression into the scout class)

1. I'll look into that, but the description I found seems a bit odd in it's description. Is it basically letting me use focus on any weapon?
I wouldn't let them retrain feats everyday though, not only does it not make sense to completely alter fighting styles each day but any player whose found a competent build would feel little reason to use it.

2. Flurry on standard seems a bit far fetched...
That's a full attack with a movement, no pounce/charge limitation kind either and with a Monks **** ton of movement... yikes.

I can see that feature alone making Monks completely broken.


You would have to a) boost up the viability of the melee classes AND b) nerf the insane amount of options available to casters.

Effectively, you would have to kill vanican casting and replace it with something closer to Shadowcasting or Invocations. THEN boost up melee to something like ToB levels.

Besides, there's already a valid Monk fix. It's called Swordsage.

Swordsage I'd have to look more into.
I do agree though that from a glance it is stronger than Monk.

However, a Monks and swordsages main similiarity is unarmed combat, outside of that their feels are very different.


Use these:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174628

I'll take a look at them, thanks.




There are a few general strategies to make this qualitative difference in character power less overwhelming:

Make otherwise-mundane characters able to learn how to use slow, non-combat magic relatively freely, just like their spellcaster friends. (Downside: sometimes the flavor of a truly "mundane" character is appealing, and just using mundane combat tactics isn't enough.)
Attach a significant cost to abilities such as plane shifting or calling. So the spellcasters, although they still have greater options available to them, can't use those options on a routine basis; they have to be careful to save them for the highest-priority moments.
Figure out non-combat abilities that truly give a character power over the world, that are still nonmagical. Then give those abilities only to high-level mundanes, not to spellcasters. (Example: leadership abilities, in a system with decent mechanics for NPC followers, politics, military direction of mass combat, and stronghold construction.)
Make it so that casters, in spite of their versatility, are actually slightly weaker in combat than mundanes of the same level. Then, the Cleric's dependency on the Fighter within combat helps to balance out the Fighter's dependency on the Cleric when he needs to Plane Shift. (This breaks down in games with little or no combat ... but IMO, if your game doesn't have much combat, you really should be playing a different system rather than D&D or a D&D spinoff.)



Mechanically this does work, but it turns fighter into arcane fighter and I doubt that's what everyone who picks fighter is looking for
You mean stuff like higher material costs basically?
Aren't those things normally left to roleplaying or the Charisma attribute?
I'd have to re-write the spell trees them and cut out a lot of powerful spells, no easy job and even then it probably wouldn't be that balanced.





Nitpicking:


A valid complaint IMO.


A valid complaint ... but really, this is just a symptom of the bigger problems with Hit Points and Healing mechanics, rather than a fundamental flaw in 4e.


This is really more of an abstraction. It makes sense that Fighters shouldn't be able to pull off whatever move they want, whenever they want. 4e just says "look, we're saying you'll be able to pull off [this move] once per fight, on average; so just make things easy on us and assume that the average will hold up at all times."

Of course, that might still bother you, and moreso with Daily powers. But I do think it's silly when people argue that everything a Fighter does should be usable at-will. (Although even that style, as I understand it, is basically available in 4e via Essentials.)


I think you have a flawed understanding of 4e ability increases. You increase all scores twice in your entire Level 1-30 career. So yeah, everyone ends up with Charisma +2 from where they started, just by virtue of being very experienced adventurers. That's ... really not crazy.

Meanwhile, the ability scores you actually focus on (generally two scores, occasionally three for slightly sub-optimal characters) get boosted by a total of ... 10 or 12 over the course of your career?


Did you mean Hybrid-ing? Because almost every 4e character is multiclassed, especially the optimal ones. However, mutliclassing (unlike Hybrid-ing) doesn't actually make you feel much like a mix between both classes; it only gives you a little taste of the class you multiclass into.


3.5 handles the healing a lot better, Clerics have heals per day, not heals per character per day.

I get Wizards balance reasons for daily and encounter powers on Fighters, but still a sword trick is a sword trick.

For the ability scores I admit I did it off memory and on this case it seems my memory was off.

Hybriding is probably what I meant, but still. The only way to mix classes feels normally seems to cripple you by cutting off the better powers from you.


One really easy method is to just replace the 11 core classes with 11 other core classes that are more balanced and yet cover the same general character archetypes. This is a simple approach that, I find, gets the job done.

The 11 core classes I use when I want to do this are (in parenthesis, the classes they replace):

Bard (stays, Bardic Knack and Divine Bard variants available)
Ranger (stays, Wild Shape variant available to replace Druid)
Warblade (replaces Fighter, Barbarian)
Crusader (replaces Fighter, Paladin, Cleric)
Swordsage (unarmed variant replaces Monk)
Factotum (replaces Rogue, Wizard)
Beguiler (replaces Rogue, Wizard, Sorcerer)
Dread Necromancer (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer, Cleric)
Warmage (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)
Binder (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)
Warlock (replaces Wizard, Sorcerer)

Now, obviously no one of these can do everything a T1 class can do, but none is as weak as the Fighter or Monk either. Overall, they're close enough to balanced, and they can do most of the same general character concepts.

JaronK

I can see how this works, but I'd rather try to fix some of the classes than give up on them.

Expecially for cases where a group wants to stick to core and not dig through many manuals who probably would need this kind of balancing the most anyways.


I would consider Pathfinder 3.55, Trailblazer 3.60, True20 3.65, D&D with the Frank & K Tomes 3.65, Fantasycraft 3.70, 'Mutants and Dragons' also 3.70, and Legend 3.75, as far as the 'number of things fixed' goes...

Legend is Here:
http://www.ruleofcool.com/

Use mutants and masterminds 2e to make Mutants and Dragons:
http://greywulf.net/2011/06/03/mutants-and-dragons-third-edition/

Fantasycraft is found here:
http://www.crafty-games.com/node/348

Trailblazer is found here:
http://badaxegames.com/

The Frank & K tomes are here:
https://sites.google.com/site/middendorfproject/frankpdf

True20 is here:
http://true20.com/

ONE of these should, at least, fit your needs, eh?

I'll look here too, but none of these seem like from a glance mechanics that work with 3.5

[Gavinfoxx]

I'll look here too, but none of these seem like from a glance mechanics that work with 3.5

They aren't, aside from Pathfinder. They are replacements. You have to replace huge swaths of the system to balance it. You can't do easy fixes, that isn't enough to work.

I know you are trying to just tweak the classes to fix it. But we are saying, it won't work. To ACTUALLY balance D&D, you need to make Legend.

Forgot to link you to Pathfinder:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Which, again, is the 3.55, ie, the smallest number of changes (no real balance fix).

[eggynack]

I can see how this works, but I'd rather try to fix some of the classes than give up on them.

Especially for cases where a group wants to stick to core and not dig through many manuals who probably would need this kind of balancing the most anyways.


This is the core of the stuff you say, and it's highly problematic. Any way you could possibly come up with to balance wizards and fighters to be on the same level, would get you two classes that are both indistinguishable from the originals. There's no easy fix that just puts them both at the same power level, because wizards can just do so much more than fighters. Melee characters can already kill just about anything really quickly, especially at high-op levels. It just doesn't mean anything without fundamental changes. Also, on monks, I think he meant that it would give the same amount of extra attacks compared to a standard attack, as a flurry gives compared to a full attack. Even if he didn't, it wouldn't make monks broken. Monks could flurry with 10 punches on a standard attack, and it wouldn't give them parity with wizards. It wouldn't even come close.

[Gavinfoxx]

Another thing you could do is replace all classes with these:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174628

[Gwazi Magnum]

They aren't, aside from Pathfinder. They are replacements. You have to replace huge swaths of the system to balance it. You can't do easy fixes, that isn't enough to work.

I know you are trying to just tweak the classes to fix it. But we are saying, it won't work. To ACTUALLY balance D&D, you need to make Legend.

Forgot to link you to Pathfinder:

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Which, again, is the 3.55, ie, the smallest number of changes (no real balance fix).

This is the core of the stuff you say, and it's highly problematic. Any way you could possibly come up with to balance wizards and fighters to be on the same level, would get you two classes that are both indistinguishable from the originals. There's no easy fix that just puts them both at the same power level, because wizards can just do so much more than fighters. Melee characters can already kill just about anything really quickly, especially at high-op levels. It just doesn't mean anything without fundamental changes. Also, on monks, I think he meant that it would give the same amount of extra attacks compared to a standard attack, as a flurry gives compared to a full attack. Even if he didn't, it wouldn't make monks broken. Monks could flurry with 10 punches on a standard attack, and it wouldn't give them parity with wizards. It wouldn't even come close.

So basically what you're both saying is that d&d 3.5 couldn't fix this and still be 3.5 in the end?

Can't say that really surprises me though with all the spells magic users have available to them. Guess it's back to making a whole new homebrew system then.

I'm thinking something like how the TV show Merlin works (the one that recently ended) where magic exists but it's outlawed and forbidden the most powerful spells known is stuff like weapon enchants, lightning etc.


Another thing you could do is replace all classes with these:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174628

This was already posted :P

[eggynack]

I think you're missing the point a little. I'm saying that the core classes are irreconcilable without major systemic changes. You don't need to homebrew those changes though. They're all over the place already. Warblades are a D&D 3.5 class, and have a new system with cool abilities that can put them on par with other tier 3 classes. There are also tier 3 casters built into the system. For some odd reason, you've decided to restrict yourself entirely to core. It's not gonna work very well. Just use some other books, and pick the classes that work for your planned balance level, and things are fixed. JaronK has a list up there, but you can easily make your own. The world is your oyster.

[Grod_The_Giant]

So basically what you're both saying is that d&d 3.5 couldn't fix this and still be 3.5 in the end?
You can get better. You can get a lot better. But 3.5 is fundamentally broken at the bottom in a lot of ways. Unless you mess with spells themselves, you're still going to have magic dominance.

But to not be discouraging, I'll link to to a bunch of my core class rewrites. The general power level is high, but they should be able to stand with competent-but-not-really-optimized casters and ToB classes.


Barbarian (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12460610&postcount=1)
Bard- is actually fine, especially if you allow stuff from splatbooks. If you're going core-only, I'd make the flat number boosts from Inspire Courage and Competence scale (+Cha, max bonus equal to level seems fair) and allow casting and magic items while singing (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-mage--58/melodic-casting--1918/).
Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12348960&postcount=2)
Druid (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230514)
Fighter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230514) (rather complicated)
Monk- I haven't touched it apart from a ToB rewrite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14783115), but jirku (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150122)'s was pretty good.
Paladin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12150015#post12150015)
Ranger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14192508#post14192508)
Rogue (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259254)
Sorcerer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12623413&postcount=1) (note: does not to crap for balance. Actually makes it a bit more powerful, probably, but it's flavorful power and doesn't matter compared to spells.)
Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12623421&postcount=2)


For something totally different, I've been working on turning D&D material into Mutants and Masterminds 3e stuff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279503). It's probably about 634% more balanced, as long as you're not particularly attached to realism, but also doesn't have much to do with 3.5 anymore.

[Czarzian]

I find talk such as this to be silly.

The core classes were never meant to be " balanced", they were meant to be different.

If you want the classes to be the same then make them such. Ban class X, insert house-rule X. Replace this class with that class.

If a Fighter can cast Rope Trick at level 4 with a rod of Meta, Extend, Lesser to break the encounters per day, then I have a problem with that.

Just sayin'.

[Gwazi Magnum]

I think you're missing the point a little. I'm saying that the core classes are irreconcilable without major systemic changes. You don't need to homebrew those changes though. They're all over the place already. Warblades are a D&D 3.5 class, and have a new system with cool abilities that can put them on par with other tier 3 classes. There are also tier 3 casters built into the system. For some odd reason, you've decided to restrict yourself entirely to core. It's not gonna work very well. Just use some other books, and pick the classes that work for your planned balance level, and things are fixed. JaronK has a list up there, but you can easily make your own. The world is your oyster.

The reason I'm restricting to core in this case is

1. I want to see if it's possible to fix them rather than give up on them
2. I'm hoping at some point I can take advice from this thread to make the classes more balanced for my own group of friends who play d&d and they prefer to stick with core to keep it simple.

I personally have no issue with going beyond core.


You can get better. You can get a lot better. But 3.5 is fundamentally broken at the bottom in a lot of ways. Unless you mess with spells themselves, you're still going to have magic dominance.

But to not be discouraging, I'll link to to a bunch of my core class rewrites. The general power level is high, but they should be able to stand with competent-but-not-really-optimized casters and ToB classes.


Barbarian (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12460610&postcount=1)
Bard- is actually fine, especially if you allow stuff from splatbooks. If you're going core-only, I'd make the flat number boosts from Inspire Courage and Competence scale (+Cha, max bonus equal to level seems fair) and allow casting and magic items while singing (http://dndtools.eu/feats/complete-mage--58/melodic-casting--1918/).
Cleric (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12348960&postcount=2)
Druid (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230514)
Fighter (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=230514) (rather complicated)
Monk- I haven't touched it apart from a ToB rewrite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14783115), but jirku (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150122)'s was pretty good.
Paladin (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12150015#post12150015)
Ranger (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=14192508#post14192508)
Rogue (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=259254)
Sorcerer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12623413&postcount=1) (note: does not to crap for balance. Actually makes it a bit more powerful, probably, but it's flavorful power and doesn't matter compared to spells.)
Wizard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12623421&postcount=2)


For something totally different, I've been working on turning D&D material into Mutants and Masterminds 3e stuff (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=279503). It's probably about 634% more balanced, as long as you're not particularly attached to realism, but also doesn't have much to do with 3.5 anymore.

This looks nice, I might get some inspirations off of this, thanks.

[Just to Browse]

This is also related to the other people who disagreed.


Yeah, no. This is so wrong it isn't even funny. The Beguiler and Dread Necromancer are a bit higher in their tier than the ToB classes, but that doesn't mean that they 'stomp' over tier 3 classes. It just means that they have more out of combat versatility. For example, Silent Image to cover out of combat utility, Command Undead to grab skeletons to check traps. It doesn't mean that they obviate the other classes as you imply. If they ever had to fight each other, the Warblade would win hands down; Hearing the Air defeats illusions and most mirror image tactics, Moment of Perfect Mind to cut through the critical counter-attack spell, Sudden Leap to close the distance, Wall of Blades to parry Ennervation/Energy Drain, and so on. With item use, the distance between them decreases further, as getting a friend to cast Hide from Undead from a scroll on the Warblade means that the DN's undead armies are suddenly less useful, and it's a lot of work to replace powerful, fallen minions. If you're talking about out of combat ability, they don't dominate as much as you imply. While a Beguiler can do a lot of damage in social situations with Glibness/Charm Person/Whatever, the Warblade has utility through having Diplomacy, and in non-social out of combat areas, they have Mountain Hammer and Sudden Leap/other jumping tactics to get into hard to reach places or the other side of traps.So ignoring the "My character can beat your character" stuff which not only proves nothing but it's also poorly-researched, the warblade has little to nothing to bring to the table outside of combat, whereas the dread necro has a near-limitless number of trap-springers, dominates intimidate attempts and other social encounters, and comes loaded with battlefield control, debuffs, damage, and SoDs. The warblade gets the damage, little of the utility (though he's got nice skills), and that's it. The beguiler is actually competitive with the sorcerer, being the strongest out of any T3 class, and totally wins espionage/sneaking minigames, social encounters, and will end encounters faster than a warblade regularly. If you replaced a warblade with a dread necro or beguiler, you would see overall party effectiveness go up.


And when you're talking about Warblade vs. Crusader vs. Swordsage, you're wrong again. Swordsage has the least of sheer combat prowess among the initiator classes, yes, but they have a ton of option they bring to the table that a Warblade can't get. Ranged attacks, actual teleportation, stealth skills, sense motive, and so on are all Swordsage only options that bring utility to the table, even if they can't stab things as well as the Warblade or Crusader.Right, some awesome stealth skills that last 1 or 2 rounds. If your sneak-into-the-castle minigames last 6 seconds, then of course you will notice that the swordsage is useful. But most sneaking attempts take several rounds and the swordsage really isn't auto-winning those at all. In combat, the warblade regularly beats the swordsage out because his damage output, tankiness, and sustainability are far better, so the only thing that the swordsage can use to make himself superior is use of the hide skill, maybe sense motive, and some tricks that take a full-round action to even get back.


And when you're saying a Warblade is better than a Crusader, you're wrong again; they're good at their own niches. Crusaders can tank significantly better than Warblades. They can keep enemies from moving past them, take significant hits and heal without sacrificing attacks, and they have high damage Devoted Spirit maneuvers, and all of the Mountain Hammer/Diplomacy of the Warblade.The crusader randomly determines his maneuvers and can't regularly switch them out. I think you finally remove all of your level 1 maneuvers when you're in the double-digit levels.

That means that in a fight, there's a fair chance that while the warblade and swordsage will be throwing out level-appropriate abilities for several rounds (and the warblade will be getting those back), the crusader could spend several rounds without a level-appropriate attack at all. And even when he does get them, they're in limited supply (3 at most I think) and he has to use all his crappy maneuvers afterwards to get the good ones back! The warblade has a higher hit die, gets more feats (which tend to be better than the crusader's small scaling bonus to hit), and will be tossing out maneuvers potentially orders of magnitude more effective than a crusader.

Of course they're balanced two of the most disparate classes (fighter/wizard), and in general you could play a game (particularly a low-level one) where the crusader and swordsage didn't feel shafted compared to the warblade. But the difference is there, and it is distinct.

[TuggyNE]

I find talk such as this to be silly.

The core classes were never meant to be " balanced", they were meant to be different.

If you want the classes to be the same then make them such. Ban class X, insert house-rule X. Replace this class with that class.

There is a world of difference between "balanced" and "same". "Balanced" means "all build choices are of roughly similar value to a party" (in the context of a group cooperative game, like D&D normally is). "Same" means "X, Y, and Z are just A dressed up in slightly different terms". An example I have heard used is Starcraft: the different races play quite differently, but the (competitive) balance is almost perfect.

There is no good reason for 3.x to be as imbalanced as it is, and there is no need for 3.x to be "same-ified" in order to balance it. Therefore, the imbalance is a design failure, not a feature to be glorified.

[eggynack]

Well, in that case you should just move beyond core. You can always keep in core, and play an all mundane, or all caster party. However, if you want both in the same party, you're going to need some splat books, or homebrew. If the question is whether you can fix the base classes such that fighters equal wizards while keeping both classes in line with their essential base nature, you really can't. They're just acting on two completely different levels.

You should try to convince your friends that playing with warblades is basically playing with fighters except better, cause it is. It's not like the classes in that book are particularly complicated compared to core casting classes, or the insanity that is modern melee optimization. Try to figure out what the members of your playgroup actually want out of their characters on an archetypal level, and use splat books to give them balanced versions of those characters. It's not that complicated, due to the wide variety out of core. It doesn't take crazy D&D high op knowledge to figure out what a more balanced fighter or wizard would look like if you're using supplements.

[Just to Browse]

A way you can pop melee classes up to a higher power level is by turning spells into combat abilities or alchemy. If the rogue can use fireball as a fire bomb (Alchemy DC 16, cost 10gp) and the fighter can use blur as dervish dance (BAB+Str DC 18, lasts 2 rounds), you preserve a bit of believability while boosting power.

Weird stuff like rope trick, shadow evocation, and temporal stasis still exist, but you can explain away plenty of things by coupling at-will spells to classes and just changing the names.

[Harrow]

Something that has been brought up without a whole lot of discussion has been E6. If you want to do a mostly core game to keep things simple and still want to notice when the guy who does the fighter/monk multiclass hasn't shown up for three sessions, E6 works well enough. I personally don't find it elegant or graceful, but I do find it boatloads of fun. There are a lot of abilities that you simply can't get without homebrew, especially a lot of unique PrC abilities, which is why I don't think the system is very elegant, but if you're willing to work with you players for anything they want but can't possibly be squeezed onto a character in six levels it then E6 will give you a core game where the guy who plays a Fighter still feels like he adds something to the session even though the party has two Wizards and a Druid.

Now, it's not too hard to replace higher level class features with feats, but something that I have always seen come up in E6 discussions is something you're trying to avoid : casters complaining about not getting enough nice things. You shouldn't just let them cast higher level spells because then you're back where you started. Spells 4th level and above need to be something that they can only do through quests. The players should come to you, say "Grak Scullcrusher, our barbarian, wants permancied Enlarge Person. What do we do?" Then you drop them some plot hooks for some ritual and get them to gather rare ingredients, ancient texts, curry favor with organizations like churches and arcane universities, that kind of thing. That way those more powerful magical effects are the result of the entire groups effort.

[Draz74]

However, a Monks and swordsages main similiarity is unarmed combat, outside of that their feels are very different.
Not necessarily. They both put a high value on self-discipline, self-perfection, mind over matter, martial arts over brute force. On a more mechanical level, they tend to depend on the same ability scores, and the Setting Sun/Diamond Mind disciplines in particular are generally filled with moves that feel quite Monk-ish.

Granted, you can make a Swordsage that's not very Monk-ish, like with a lot of Desert Wind maneuvers or by embracing the default (wuxia-inspired) fluff for the class.


[list]
Mechanically this does work, but it turns fighter into arcane fighter and I doubt that's what everyone who picks fighter is looking for
Agreed. Unfortunately. I wish solving the problem was this simple. :smallannoyed:

You mean stuff like higher material costs basically?
Higher material costs could work, if the WBL guidelines weren't so ridiculously exponential, and if there weren't a bunch of ways to use magic to gain infinite wealth anyway. Long casting times (hours or days) could also work, if all campaigns put appropriate time pressure on the PCs. But in systems close to 3e, XP costs are probably the most effective way to implement this kind of limitations. (It works well for most of Psionics!)

Aren't those things normally left to roleplaying or the Charisma attribute?
In D&D? Yes, they have been, traditionally. But there's no reason they have to be. Check out the Thrallherd. Now imagine that its ability to attract followers was a class feature of a non-magical (non-psionic) class. Something like that. Just brainstorming.

I'd have to re-write the spell trees them and cut out a lot of powerful spells, no easy job
Correct. Or use someone else's re-write of all the spells, like Ernir's. I've got bad news for you, buddy: any method of balancing the 3e Core Classes is going to be a lot of work. :smalltongue:


3.5 handles the healing a lot better, Clerics have heals per day, not heals per character per day.
I'm not sure the former actually makes any more sense than the latter, except for the fact that you're more used to it. After all, I see no reason why healing magic wouldn't depend on drawing on the target's inner reserves of strength in order to accomplish its effect.


I get Wizards balance reasons for daily and encounter powers on Fighters, but still a sword trick is a sword trick.
All "sword tricks" are not created equal, and they don't tend to work well (in real combat!) if you use them over and over and over again; they become too predictable. A lot of a warrior's best sword tricks would logically be something that he can only do when he is presented with a fortuitous opening.


So basically what you're both saying is that d&d 3.5 couldn't fix this and still be 3.5 in the end?

Can't say that really surprises me though with all the spells magic users have available to them. Guess it's back to making a whole new homebrew system then.
... or, again, use a homebrew system that someone has already done the work for. That's kinda what Gavinfoxx is trying to help you do.


I'm thinking something like how the TV show Merlin works (the one that recently ended) where magic exists but it's outlawed and forbidden
Restrictions on magic like that can work, but they're hard to codify in game rules. They're more dependent on the individual DM. So they might work great in your playgroup to balance mundane with magical characters, but you can't expect other people on the internet to feel like you've "fixed" the system.


the most powerful spells known is stuff like weapon enchants, lightning etc.
Sounds like E6 to me. Exactly like.

[Fable Wright]

So ignoring the "My character can beat your character" stuff which not only proves nothing but it's also poorly-researched
Given that you just introduced the debate with the fact that they "stomp all over" Warblades and other tier 3s, I felt obligated to provide for the two senses in which you could have meant it: In a direct brawl, and in party utility. My objective in this section of my argument here is to prove that an out of the box Warblade has the materials to counter the tactics of a Dread Necromancer or Beguiler and so could easily defeat them in a direct brawl, refuting the first possible interpretation of that statement. While I admit that I'm mostly experienced with E6, which is different than high level play, in what way is my argument flawed from poor research? In any case, assume that I'm referring to the levels 1-8 range below, as that's what I'm familiar with, though I have no doubt that the principles hold up at high levels.

the warblade has little to nothing to bring to the table outside of combat, whereas the dread necro has a near-limitless number of trap-springers, dominates intimidate attempts and other social encounters, and comes loaded with battlefield control, debuffs, damage, and SoDs. The warblade gets the damage, little of the utility (though he's got nice skills), and that's it.
As compared to the Warblade who, if he isn't flatfooted, can shift his maneuver loadout to become much better at locating and defeating traps than the mindless minions of the Dread Necromancer (Diamond Mind/Iron Heart counters/IHS to escape the effects of the trap, Mountain Hammer to smash the mechanisms), has a very good reason to take and use diplomacy and Intimidate, and comes with the ability to get in hard to reach places.

The beguiler is actually competitive with the sorcerer, being the strongest out of any T3 class, and totally wins espionage/sneaking minigames, social encounters, and will end encounters faster than a warblade regularly. If you replaced a warblade with a dread necro or beguiler, you would see overall party effectiveness go up.
While they do win espionage/sneaking/Social encounters, as that's their specialty, much as a Warblade's is Combat, the problem with your argument is that you appear to assume that the party is entirely melee and you're adding a caster to it. When you're adding a new character to a party of a Dread Necromancer and a Beguiler, adding a new DN or Beguiler would cause the party effectiveness to go up much less than adding a Warblade into the mix. The Beguiler can do some damage distracting mobs, but against mindless or Mind Blank immune Truesighted creatures, and/or Tremorsense/Blindsense/Blindsight and Burrowing, it is significantly harder for them to do much of import than the Warblade can.

Right, some awesome stealth skills that last 1 or 2 rounds. If your sneak-into-the-castle minigames last 6 seconds, then of course you will notice that the swordsage is useful. But most sneaking attempts take several rounds and the swordsage really isn't auto-winning those at all.
Oh, and teleporting 50ft up onto a balcony is much worse than walking up the stairs for the purpose of not being detected? That an ability to use Greater Invisibility for a round to get to a better hiding place is bad for a sneak-into-the-castle minigame? The thing about minigames is that they're minigames. If one spell can handle it, it isn't a minigame. And when the Swordsage has a variety of tools to use, between a good hide skill anyways, the ability to turn invisible as a backup in case someone sees him when the Dispel Magic trap you didn't see activates, and the ability to efficiently deal with guards from range and in hiding, you know that they have at least a good an arsenal of tools than the Beguiler.

In combat, the warblade regularly beats the swordsage out because his damage output, tankiness, and sustainability are far better, so the only thing that the swordsage can use to make himself superior is use of the hide skill, maybe sense motive, and some tricks that take a full-round action to even get back.
I'm not going to disagree that in a straight brawl, a Warblade would walk all over a Swordsage. It's like a Dungeoncrasher fighting against a Rogue. Same tier, different focuses in combat, and playing right into the hands of one of their specialties. In combat together, though, the Swordsage justifies his inclusion in the party, between Sneak Attack, even better maneuverability than the Warblade, ranged, decent to high damage ranged attacks, and better ability to deal damage to multiple opponents at the same time (Death Mark, Fire Snake, and counters that deal damage to the attacker) all give the Swordsage good utility in combat, especially with a fighter like the Warblade next to him. And the difference between durability? The Swordsage spends a full round action to refresh all of his much more varied suite of maneuvers less often than the Warblade spends his Swift to recover (and he can occasionally be forced to spend the useful part of his turn, the Standard action, to do it if he was forced to use a Counter on the round before he wants to recover).


The crusader randomly determines his maneuvers and can't regularly switch them out. I think you finally remove all of your level 1 maneuvers when you're in the double-digit levels.
There's also the Idiot Crusader, which really abuses that mechanic. It's also the only maneuver that requires no action on the part of the user to recover, making it at the same time the strongest maneuver there is. According to the text of the class, you can swap out readied maneuvers just like the other classes, with 5 minutes of rest, and many 1st level maneuvers still have utility at higher levels.


That means that in a fight, there's a fair chance that while the warblade and swordsage will be throwing out level-appropriate abilities for several rounds (and the warblade will be getting those back), the crusader could spend several rounds without a level-appropriate attack at all. And even when he does get them, they're in limited supply (3 at most I think) and he has to use all his crappy maneuvers afterwards to get the good ones back! The warblade has a higher hit die, gets more feats (which tend to be better than the crusader's small scaling bonus to hit), and will be tossing out maneuvers potentially orders of magnitude more effective than a crusader.
Hahahabull.
The crusader, first off, can replace maneuvers at the same rate as Warblades, and the number of maneuvers readied to granted is constant. With their replacement ability and their ability to swap out the readied maneuvers with 5 minutes of rest, they can steadily change out their options for level-appropriate ones, albeit some that are a few levels behind. Manuevers that are still of the same calibre that the Warblade is using. The problem of your understanding of the situation is that the Crusader only readies the maneuvers he finds useful at his level. The Crusader never has to deal with low-level drek he doesn't want in an encounter, because he simply doesn't ready it. Sometimes the granted maneuvers are not what the Crusader was hoping for, admittedly, but they're always useful, and again, require no action to get back, making them arguably the best recovery mechanic by far.


Of course they're balanced two of the most disparate classes (fighter/wizard), and in general you could play a game (particularly a low-level one) where the crusader and swordsage didn't feel shafted compared to the warblade. But the difference is there, and it is distinct.
I am 100% certain that a Crusader and a Warblade could fight back to back from levels 1-20 and neither one would feel shafted, given equal optimization. In fact, they would probably be grateful of the other being there, as they have synergistic White Raven abilities and Devoted Spirit healing. I agree that there is a difference in the classes, but it's a difference of focus, and not power level.

[Gwazi Magnum]

A number of the homebrew classes look nice and I'm looking off them for some inspiration.

However, I did also take a look at E6 and it looks amazing.
I just sent it to the rest of the people I play with to look at too and see what they think of it.

If they like it enough I think we might end up going that route.

Though note, this thread wasn't mean to fix core classes for my group specifically but discuss it and try to fix them for players in general, so please don't let this topic die just because my specific issue might of been resolved.

[Fable Wright]

A number of the homebrew classes look nice and I'm looking off them for some inspiration.

However, I did also take a look at E6 and it looks amazing.
I just sent it to the rest of the people I play with to look at too and see what they think of it.

If they like it enough I think we might end up going that route.

Though note, this thread wasn't mean to fix core classes for my group specifically but discuss it and try to fix them for players in general, so please don't let this topic die just because my specific issue might of been resolved.

Some advice for you, if you do go the E6 route: Try to restrict people to tier 3/4 as well. Optimized Wizards in E6 can still end encounters in one spell. For example, against mooks, Stinking Cloud and move to cleanup step. Against a single opponent, (Sculpted) Grease, proceed to cleanup. Against moderately powerful enemies en mass? Glitterdust/Web, proceed to cleanup. It's incredibly annoying for the rest of the party, and the principle still remains with other tier 1s. Druids still have ridiculously powerful animal companions in addition to really powerful spells (e.g. Entangle) that take away the challenge of combat the rest of the party. I'm currently playing a Duskblade in a tier 3/4 E6 game, and it's a blast. No one really feels overshadowed, encounters have been overcome only after a good amount of effort, and the feel of the generic D&D world (Remorhazes being terrifying monstrocities, Ankhegs being dangerous, Otyughs being the reason that people should rightly fear the sewer, Fireball being a terrifying force wielded by great and terrible spellcasters, 4th level spells reserved only for the most terrifyingly powerful adventurers (and accessible only through capstone feats and Versatile Spellcaster set list casters), and armies of mooks are still things to be afraid of) comes through so resoundingly clear that you'd think that the game designers were only playing at the low levels when they came up with most of it. When an optimized Wizard entered the group, some of that immersion faded away as combat was no longer as difficult or rewarding, but after they switched to a Beguiler the versimilitude returned.

[lordzya]

This topic seems to have gotten quite off topic. The goal of this was to close the power gap between the core classes, not replace them with stuff from other rulebooks. I've been making a new setting that I wanted to be very traditional fantasy, with knights and lords. To do this, I endeavored to do just this, fix fighter and paladin so that my players would actually think about using them.

For fighters, the main problem to me is that their stats don't fit what they are supposed to be. Fighters are meant to be skilled, disciplined fighters, soldiers who fight with their brains as much as their arms. My fix here was to give them expanded skills (heal, diplomacy, gather information, knowledge (nobility and royalty)) and to give them abilities on their "dead levels" that use their intelligence and charisma. This lets them have the rp clout to fill the main character role that people expect.

For paladins, I revamped their spellcasting to charisma based to reduce their MADness. Paladins are generally hotheaded crusaders who need the wisdom of their priest cousins to keep them in line, so I find this fitting. Also smiting needs more ammo (I added a smite chaos), and charging smite should be an ability, not an ACF. I also threw some bonus feats in there and added an ascendance feature at level 20, because they also benefit from disciplined training.

[Gwazi Magnum]

So I looked over E6, picked the feats from it that seemed most appropiate and added some of my own to it I thought might be nice.

Would anyone be willing to look it over and let me know if they would work or not?

Note: The ones made by me have (Anthony Made Feat) next to it.

Ability Advancement [General]
Your training pays off, and one of your Abilities increases.
Prerequisites: Ability Training
Benefit: Choose one Ability for which you have already taken Ability Training. You gain a permanent +2 bonus to that ability. This bonus overwrites the effects of the Ability Training feat.

Ability Training [General]
You spend time honing one of your Abilities: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma.
Benefit: Choose one Ability; treat that Ability as having a +2 bonus to that Ability Score whenever you are making an Ability Check. This bonus does not count when making a skill check or for any other use of that ability.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times, its effects do not stack. Each time you take this feat it applies to another ability.

AC Bonus (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Increase a Monks AC bonus by +1, this bonus cannot go higher than +5.

Barbaric Resilience [Capstone]
Prerequisite: Barbarian level 6th
Benefit: You gain DR 1/-

Bardic Inspiration [Capstone]
Prerequisite: Bard level 6th
Benefit: The bonus granted by your inspire courage ability increases to +2.

Combat Style Mastery (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Ranger level 6
Benefit: Gain the feat that would of been given from Combat Style Mastery, even if you do not have the normal prerequisites for it.

Craft Rod [Item Creation]
Change caster level requirement from 9th to 6th.

Craft Staff [Item Creation]
Change caster level requirement from 12th to 6th.
Diamond Body (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6, Wholeness of Body
Benefit: Gain Diamond Body

Diamond Soul (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6, Diamond Body
Benefit: Gain Diamond Soul

Druidic Animal Companion (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Ranger level 6
Benefit: A rangers effective druidic level for their animal companion is now equal to their full Ranger level rather than half of it.

Excelling Flurry [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Monk level 6th.
Benefit: You use Flurry of Blows with no penalty to your attack bonus. In addition, you qualify for feats that a Monk may take as 6th level bonus feats.
Expanded Casting
Prerequisite: Character Level 6th
Benefit: Choose a spellcasting class in which you have levels. You gain an additional spell slot for that class at any one level you can already cast.

Expanded Knowledge
Prerequisite: Character Level 6th
Benefit: Choose a spellcasting class in which you have levels. You gain an additional spell known from that class's spell list at any level you can cast.

Extra Domain Access [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Wis 18 +, Cleric level 6, Knowledge (religion) 9 ranks, Extra Domain Power, Skill Focus: Knowledge (religion)
Benefit: You gain access to the domain spell list of one additional domain associated with your deity. This domain must be the same one as that chosen for the Extra Domain Power feat. You may only take this feat once.

Extra Domain Power [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Wis 18 +, Cleric level 6, Knowledge (religion) 9 ranks, Skill Focus: Knowledge (religon)
Benefit: You gain the domain power of one additional domain associated with your deity. You may only take this feat once.

Forge Ring [Item Creation]
Change caster level requirement from 12th to 6th.

Greater Rage (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Barbarian level 6
Benefit: Gain Greater Rage

Greater Weapon Specialization (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Greater Weapon Focus
Benefit: Gain Greater Weapon Specialization

Holy Strikes [Capstone]
Prerequisite: Paladin level 6th.
Benefit: Your melee attacks are considered good for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

Improved Extra Invocation [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Extra Invocation
Benefit: You gain a new invocation of the best type you can cast.
Special: You may take this feat multiple times, but not more times than you have taken Extra Invocation.

Improved Evasion (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Evasion
Benefit: Gain Improved Evasion

Improved Uncanny Dodge (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Uncanny Dodge
Benefit: Gain Improved Uncanny Dodge

Improved Smite Evil (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Smite evil
Benefit: Gain an additional daily use of Smite evil

Improved Sneak Attack (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Rogue level 6
Benefit: Increase Sneak attack to Sneak Attack +4d6

Ki Strike (Adamantine) (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Gain Ki Strike (Adamantine)

Ki Strike (Lawful) (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Gain Ki Strike (Lawful)

Martial Veteran [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Fighter level 6th.
Benefit: You may select feats with a requirement of up to fighter level 8, and with a Base Attack Bonus requirement of up to +8.
Special: A fighter may select Martial Veteran as one of his bonus feats.

Mighty Rage (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Tireless Rage
Benefit: Gain Mighty Rage

Open Minded [General] (Anthony Altered Feat)
You are naturally able to reroute your memory, mind, and skill expertise.
Benefit: You immediately gain an extra 9 skill points. You spend these skill points as normal. If you spend them on cross-class skills they count as ½ ranks. You cannot exceed the normal maximum ranks for your level in any skill.
Special: You can gain this feat multiple times. Each time, you immediately gain another 9 skill points.

Rage (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Barbarian level 6
Benefit: Gain an extra daily use from Rage

Restoration [Spell]
Prerequisites: ability to cast 3rd level divine spells, Wisdom 18, Healing 9 Ranks
Benefit: You can use Restoration as the spell (paying the material component) once per day with a casting time of 1 hour.

Roguish Ability [Capstone]
Prerequisite: Rogue level 6th.
Benefit: You learn one rogue special ability.

Sorcerers Might (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Sorcerer level 6, Expanded Casting, Expanded Knowledge, Swift Metamagic
Benefit: You may now learn 4 spells you are already capable of casting. Any metamagic feat you have now increases the spell level of your spells by 1 less. This means metamagic feats like Silent spell increase your effective spell level by 0.

Spontaneous Caster (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Wizard level 6, Cleric level 6 or Druid level 6, Expanded Casting, Expanded Knowledge, Swift Metamagic
Benefit: You are now able to cast spells spontaneously as if you were a Sorcerer.

Skill Beyond Your Years
Prerequisites: Character Level 6th
Benefit: Choose a skill that is a class skill for you. Your maximum ranks in that skill increases from Character Level plus 3 to Character Level plus 6.
Step of the Wild Lands [Capstone]
Prerequisites: Ranger level 6th
Benefit: You gain the Woodland Stride and Swift Tracking class abilities.

Stone to Flesh [Spell]
Prerequisites: 6th level, ability to cast 3rd level arcane spells, Intelligence 18, Craft (Alchemy) 9 Ranks
Benefit: You can use stone to flesh, as the spell, with an expensive and secret magical ingredient with a market value of 1000 gp and a casting time of 1 day.

Swift Metamagic
Prerequisite: Metamagic feats (see below), Caster Level 6th
Benefit: When you take this feat, select a metamagic feat you possess. Once per day, you may apply this metamagic feat to a spell you cast with no adjustment to the level of the spell cast and no increase in casting time.
Special: You must have a number of Swift metamagic feats equal to the level increase of your chosen metamagic, minus one, to take this feat. For example, Empower Spell, which boosts the level of a spell by 2, has a prerequisite of 1 Swift feat. Split Ray, which has an increase of 1, would have no prerequisites. This feat may be taken multiple times.

The Wilds hide anything (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Step of the Wild Lands
Benefit: Gain Camouflage and Hide in Plain Sight as class abilities

Tireless Rage (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Greater Rage
Benefit: Gain Tireless Rage

Unarmed Damage (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Increase your effective unarmed damage by 1 step according to the monk table. Cannot go higher than 2d10 (2d8 if small, 4d8 if large).

Unarmored Speed Bonus (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Increase your speed bonus by +10ft, this cannot go higher than +60ft.

Venom Immunity (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Druid level 6
Benefit: Gain Venom Immunity

Wholeness of Body (Anthony Made Feat)
Prerequisites: Monk level 6
Benefit: Gain wholeness of Body

Wondrous Rings [General]
You are able to craft magical rings.
Prerequisites: 6th level, Craft Wondrous Item
Benefit: You treat rings as wondrous items for the purpose of meeting item creation prerequisites. You must still meet caster level requirements for any ring you create.

[eggynack]

This topic seems to have gotten quite off topic. The goal of this was to close the power gap between the core classes, not replace them with stuff from other rulebooks. I've been making a new setting that I wanted to be very traditional fantasy, with knights and lords. To do this, I endeavored to do just this, fix fighter and paladin so that my players would actually think about using them.

For fighters, the main problem to me is that their stats don't fit what they are supposed to be. Fighters are meant to be skilled, disciplined fighters, soldiers who fight with their brains as much as their arms. My fix here was to give them expanded skills (heal, diplomacy, gather information, knowledge (nobility and royalty)) and to give them abilities on their "dead levels" that use their intelligence and charisma. This lets them have the rp clout to fill the main character role that people expect.

For paladins, I revamped their spellcasting to charisma based to reduce their MADness. Paladins are generally hotheaded crusaders who need the wisdom of their priest cousins to keep them in line, so I find this fitting. Also smiting needs more ammo (I added a smite chaos), and charging smite should be an ability, not an ACF. I also threw some bonus feats in there and added an ascendance feature at level 20, because they also benefit from disciplined training.
The reason we've gone off topic is because the original topic doesn't actually work. You can't fix the core classes without using material from other rule books, even if it's material you've invented. The list of features that you've given don't actually change much, unless they're actually really powerful and versatile abilities, and if they are you might as well just use another class.

Also, in giving the fighter a host of int and cha based powers, you're giving them the same problem that you hoped to alleviate in the paladin. Now the fighter has to raise strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence and charisma, and are therefore only able to dump wisdom. You've made them one of the MADdest classes in the game. The stuff you gave the paladin has an known power level, because it largely already exists. Therefore, we know that the changes you've made do very little to bridge the power gap between melee and magic.

[Gwazi Magnum]

This topic seems to have gotten quite off topic. The goal of this was to close the power gap between the core classes, not replace them with stuff from other rulebooks. I've been making a new setting that I wanted to be very traditional fantasy, with knights and lords. To do this, I endeavored to do just this, fix fighter and paladin so that my players would actually think about using them.

For fighters, the main problem to me is that their stats don't fit what they are supposed to be. Fighters are meant to be skilled, disciplined fighters, soldiers who fight with their brains as much as their arms. My fix here was to give them expanded skills (heal, diplomacy, gather information, knowledge (nobility and royalty)) and to give them abilities on their "dead levels" that use their intelligence and charisma. This lets them have the rp clout to fill the main character role that people expect.

For paladins, I revamped their spellcasting to charisma based to reduce their MADness. Paladins are generally hotheaded crusaders who need the wisdom of their priest cousins to keep them in line, so I find this fitting. Also smiting needs more ammo (I added a smite chaos), and charging smite should be an ability, not an ACF. I also threw some bonus feats in there and added an ascendance feature at level 20, because they also benefit from disciplined training.

Crap I'm sorry, I completely missed this post somehow.

@Fighter: I like the idea here. Makes Fighters more than just 'I swing my sword'. But doesn't this also run the risk of making them too MAD?

@Paladin: I'm liking the fixes here so far. Personally I'm not too fond of Charges myself but I see no reason why Paladins can't have it as a feature.
Charisma for spells is a big one, this alone might change them from 'meh' to 'damn powerful'.

[Jerthanis]

Personally, I might approach the problem from the perspective of dungeon, encounter and adventure design rather than by way of mucking about with the guts of classes and perhaps overcorrecting the caster classes into worthlessness or making the noncasters not feel mundane (if that's important to you for some reason).

Not that encounter design can't overcorrect on this point either. I've played a game up to level 12 as a sorcerer with full access to cleric spells and barely contributed for the whole game because every enemy had double digit saves, SR that I had to roll 11+ to beat even though I had Greater Spell Penetration, were flat immune to many common spell effects such as polymorph, flesh to stone or poison (We were ruling Stinking Cloud a poison effect and I seriously used it more for its miss chance than for its powerful disabling debuff), or had abilities that forced me to make difficult concentration checks to cast spells or just outright spammed Feeblemind at me. Meanwhile these monsters charged into melee with their 24ish AC and 60-90ish HP and got butchered easily by the Greatsword fighter.

But a more measured approach in this same vein could produce similar results. If Knock is making rogues useless, make a dungeon with dozens of locked doors, rather than one, or require doors be unlocked and relocked repeatedly to accomplish the party's goals. If Great Cleave is collecting dust, throw an encounter with 30 hobgoblins into the mix. Give enemies higher saving throws, SR, or multiply their numbers and distribute them so they can't be disabled so effortlessly by individual spells.

The issue of being able to have more concrete control over a story is more difficult, since wizards can cross the globe, bore holes through mountains, mind control people, and conjure anything out of nothing... but it's still possible. For one thing, not treating interaction with the story as intrinsically an issue of challenge might be a key. If there's an important choice to make, make it possible to be made regardless of how powerful the characters are, and find a way for its consequences to have meaning without spellcasters being able to mitigate all of those consequences.

[Gwazi Magnum]

Personally, I might approach the problem from the perspective of dungeon, encounter and adventure design rather than by way of mucking about with the guts of classes and perhaps overcorrecting the caster classes into worthlessness or making the noncasters not feel mundane (if that's important to you for some reason).

Not that encounter design can't overcorrect on this point either. I've played a game up to level 12 as a sorcerer with full access to cleric spells and barely contributed for the whole game because every enemy had double digit saves, SR that I had to roll 11+ to beat even though I had Greater Spell Penetration, were flat immune to many common spell effects such as polymorph, flesh to stone or poison (We were ruling Stinking Cloud a poison effect and I seriously used it more for its miss chance than for its powerful disabling debuff), or had abilities that forced me to make difficult concentration checks to cast spells or just outright spammed Feeblemind at me. Meanwhile these monsters charged into melee with their 24ish AC and 60-90ish HP and got butchered easily by the Greatsword fighter.

But a more measured approach in this same vein could produce similar results. If Knock is making rogues useless, make a dungeon with dozens of locked doors, rather than one, or require doors be unlocked and relocked repeatedly to accomplish the party's goals. If Great Cleave is collecting dust, throw an encounter with 30 hobgoblins into the mix. Give enemies higher saving throws, SR, or multiply their numbers and distribute them so they can't be disabled so effortlessly by individual spells.

The issue of being able to have more concrete control over a story is more difficult, since wizards can cross the globe, bore holes through mountains, mind control people, and conjure anything out of nothing... but it's still possible. For one thing, not treating interaction with the story as intrinsically an issue of challenge might be a key. If there's an important choice to make, make it possible to be made regardless of how powerful the characters are, and find a way for its consequences to have meaning without spellcasters being able to mitigate all of those consequences.

On paper this sounds like a great idea and I do honestly think it would fix a lot of the issues.

However, if experience from my d&d group speaks for anything. Then if you have a moderately intelligent player have a spell casting class who either

a) Wants glory a lot
b) See's d&d as a competition
c) Wants to spite the DM
d) Has an ability to bull****
e) Has knowledge into science and such you don't so they can make bull**** and you wouldn't know how to disprove it, or worse yet you can't because they're right but twisting it to their own advantage

They will find reasons they spells can work even when it shouldn't and/or you don't want it too. Granted you can use the "DM has final say rule" but you generally want that to be a last result so players don't feel so restricted and if this indeed is a player that fills any of the 5 requirements above, they will continue with the bull**** and complain until they either get to use their spells or the campaign falls apart and/or is unenjoyable.

Note: This may be more a player issue than a balance issue, but the fact remains even if you as the DM put in conditions that should limit a very powerful class that someone has, it only encourages them to bull**** to the point it doesn't effect them anymore.

Also let's assume you are not dealing with a bull**** player but a player who is legit trying to enjoy the game. You are now basically throwing penalties at those players for making effective characters.