Non core only?

[Invader]

I often see a lot of "core only" threads/settings/restrictions but I'm curious as to how everyone would think a campaign in which the major core material was not allowed.

Of course some things would have to stay. Obviously I'm not talking about not using core rules but let's say races, feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes were all out. We'll leave base classes and skills for the sake of not making it to hard and work on the assumption that obviously there will have to be some modification for prerequisites into certain feats and prestige classes will have to happen.

Does this pose to big of a problem? To much imbalance somewhere, though it seems like casters would be more affected than martial classes.

At a quick glance this doesn't seem like a terrible way to breath a little life into a game that can quickly fall into the same old fighter, rogue, cleric, mage trope. Thoughts anyone?

[ZamielVanWeber]

Cutting out the feats makes it hard (since a lot of non-core feats have core feats as pre-reqs). Banning the core classes is generally a better idea.

[ngilop]

if you leave out EVERYTHING core as you want, spells, feats, skills, classes, PrCs magical items.

i mena you are basically geting rid of 95% of the game, so you are pretty much never going to be able to play D&D, peopel will say
what i can't cast magic missle!!; what do you mean there are no +1 or adamantine weapons?; or uhm.. so i have to be a lunar ravager who worshpis shueshue the god of cupcakes?

if you just get rid of the core classes it actually ytends to be a much more 'balanced' game.

[KillianHawkeye]

I don't think the answer is to blindly ban all core or non-core material. Rather, a more nuanced approach that involved evaluating individual items, not only on their own strength but also their interactions with other elements, would probably be the best method of achieving game balance.

[Amnestic]

Nothing wrong with cutting out the core classes (except for my precious Bard ;-;). The areas of expertise (divine caster, arcane caster, skillmonkey, face, beatstick, etc.) are all covered in one way or another by none-core classes.

O'course you'd have to decide what to do with none-core spellcasting classes (eg. Beguiler) whose spell list incorporates core spells. If you trash the core spells from their list, such classes receive a significant and major nerf to their capabilities.

There's also some core feats (such as Power Attack) which are more than a little important to melee classes.

I'd cut the classes (Baaaaaaard ;-;) and work out how you want to get rid of spells, keep at least some of the feats, and not bother touching magic items.

Just my two coppers.

[ArcturusV]

Hmm. I'd see no problem with it. I know a lot of the "OMFG THAT'S OP!" stuff can come out of core.

The only real problems I see? If you're cutting out all items and such is possibly dealing with DR stuff. As you're cutting out things like Cold Iron, +X weapons, Anarchic, Holy, Unholy, Axiomatic, etc, weapons/weapon abilities.

Might have a problem with Resurrections, but I don't consider that a fatal flaw.

Might have a problem with some basic condition removal.

But on the whole I don't see it being an unworkable problem.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

I don't think the answer is to blindly ban all core or non-core material. Rather, a more nuanced approach that involved evaluating individual items, not only on their own strength but also their interactions with other elements, would probably be the best method of achieving game balance.

Takes too much time.

Ban the core classes and spells. Leave everything else. Actually, I'd call this a way better balance fix than "Core Only."

Mind, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a better balance fix than "Core Only."

[TuggyNE]

If you take out all the specific classes and magic items (leaving NPC classes and rules for generic magic items like +1/flaming/bane) you'd probably do OK. Stripping out everything but the rules will leave you kind of awkward, though, since suddenly bypassing DR/magic is a real challenge even at level 20 (to name but one of countless examples).

Most Core feats aren't especially bad, except for being weak, so while a nice trimming job wouldn't go amiss, banning them is likely to remove a lot of essential options. (No Power Attack or Two-Weapon Fighting means melee just doesn't scale hardly at all, period.)

Core spells contain many brokenly good options, but also many that are absolutely crucial; you can make do without (true) resurrection/raise dead, but dealing with the complete lack of stat boosters (no wombat's boost series spells, y'know) and resistance boosters (no resistance) is painful in the extreme.

And, obviously, leaving the spells in but taking out those items is also a bad idea: as well as the aforementioned problems with DR/magic, AC/attack boosting, basic energy damage for mundanes (you don't have a flaming sword or alchemist's fire? guess this troll is gonna eat your face then!), extradimensional storage, and probably half a dozen other essentials I'm forgetting.

For that matter, stripping mundane items like tents, backpacks, inns, hireling services, holy symbols, and so on is going to put a massive crimp in nearly all adventuring plans.

Finally, dumping out all of MMI means you're gonna have some odd gaps in your world (no wolves or bears or horses or dogs?); the lack of any player-identifiable* humanoid species is both a blessing and a curse, since sometimes you really do want a fairly plain character, if only for an NPC.

*I.e., creatures players can identify with, like humans, and to a lesser extent elves and dwarves and halflings and what-not.

Edit:
Mind, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a better balance fix than "Core Only."

Oooh, next game I run is totally gonna use Leaning Tower of Pisa rules! It'll be great and balanced and stuff. Sweet deal, thanks for telling me about it!

[eggynack]

Well, banning the classes is a good start, obviously. Most of them can be replaced decently by other things, so it's not the biggest deal.

The first question that should be asked is whether magic items can be banned. I think they can be in general, though you might want to keep a couple of them. weapon and armor stuff might want to stay in the game in general. It's generic enough that it won't hurt anything. The magic item compendium is pretty sweet, so you can probably do well with non-core items. You're not even losing the basic stuff, because there's rules for adding that kind of thing in the MIC.

Races, I dunno. I mean, you can do it, and it won't be too bad, but is that a thing that's wanted? From a mechanical standpoint, it's not that big a deal. Most folks pick human, and strongheart halfling is sitting right there being generally similar if not better. Losing those base races just feels off somehow though.

Feats, I think should probably stay in the game in general. They're just so irreplaceable. A lot of them are prerequisites for the stuff that would replace them, and it's just a mess. You might want to ban stuff like leadership, because I think that you should pretty much always ban leadership.

Spells, I dunno. I think that they should be banned to some, but not to others. Like, maybe the archivist can only access non-core stuff, because he has replacements, but the beguiler just has the list he has. That's a good metric for how to work that in general. If it's on the class' list, then the class has it, but if it's not, then he has to get it from not-core.

Skill points I think should obviously stay, because that's really a system rather than a thing a character takes. As I mentioned above, classes should definitely be banned. I was referring to base classes for the most part, but you can probably hit the prestige classes too without ill effect. They're just so lackluster compared to the other options out there.

I think that core shouldn't include psionics in this case, because the goal is really replacing core stuff with alternative systems. and I think it's cool. It doesn't have to stay though. I think that generally, I'd be using core to just mean the PHB and DMG in this case. Monsters seem like fair game for the DM, because why not? He can't use stuff that the players don't use though. Maybe the players can use stuff he uses, like if they get a wildshape somehow, they can become MMI monsters in addition to everything else. Abilities that involve taking monsters and doing stuff with them tend to be pretty powerful, but I don't see why the players couldn't summon monsters that exist.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on non-core games. You could probably ban the other tier one characters while you're at it, and possibly the rest of the regular arcane and divine casters from above tier one. That's a whole different thing though.

[sonofzeal]

I've done this. Banned classes too, except for named variants. It worked... really well, actually. Spellcasters, especially, worked better - they still had powerful tools, but the lack of things like Levitate and Mirror Image and Displacement meant that they tended to be a lot more fragile than their Core counterparts, and the omission of Black Tentacles / Solid Fog / Wall of Force limited their ability to shut things down. And the lack of Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, and True Seeing means a lot of the "no" buttons are gone too. And that's not even mentioning the gaping holes left by Commune and Contact Other Plane for campaign destruction!



Melee, meanwhile, gets ToB. The lack of core feats as prereqs is manageable given how many "this feat counts as that feat" workarounds there are, and the fact that few things requiring specific feats are all that necessary. A non-Core Warblade is less powerful than an all-book Warblade, but miles ahead of a Core Fighter.

Basically... going full non-Core raised some interesting challenges, but nothing unmanageable. It weakened full-spellcasters without neutering them, and summarily dealt with a whole bunch of "Story Breaker Powers" that can destroy campaigns if not properly handled. There's still a vast sea of options and some rather good ones for any character archetype, but I'm confident in saying that it's a more balanced, and more stable, game.

In short: highly recommended.

[JusticeZero]

Core is actually a pretty weird blend. Remix things dramatically and you'll get a similar newness with more thought. My current campaign bans all arcane and divine casting for instance.

[eggynack]

What'd you do about beguilers? Did you let them use their core spells, replace them, eliminate them, or ban beguilers? I'm pretty sure that that covers all the options. This question applies to just about all of the limited list casters, which I would think would take a decently large role in a non-core game.

[Waker]

Though not precisely what you are talking about, but I am running a game with very little in the way of core material, definitely none of the core classes. Here is the rough guideline I followed for the setting.

[Invader]

I've done this. Banned classes too, except for named variants. It worked... really well, actually. Spellcasters, especially, worked better - they still had powerful tools, but the lack of things like Levitate and Mirror Image and Displacement meant that they tended to be a lot more fragile than their Core counterparts, and the omission of Black Tentacles / Solid Fog / Wall of Force limited their ability to shut things down. And the lack of Freedom of Movement, Mind Blank, and True Seeing means a lot of the "no" buttons are gone too. And that's not even mentioning the gaping holes left by Commune and Contact Other Plane for campaign destruction!



Melee, meanwhile, gets ToB. The lack of core feats as prereqs is manageable given how many "this feat counts as that feat" workarounds there are, and the fact that few things requiring specific feats are all that necessary. A non-Core Warblade is less powerful than an all-book Warblade, but miles ahead of a Core Fighter.

Basically... going full non-Core raised some interesting challenges, but nothing unmanageable. It weakened full-spellcasters without neutering them, and summarily dealt with a whole bunch of "Story Breaker Powers" that can destroy campaigns if not properly handled. There's still a vast sea of options and some rather good ones for any character archetype, but I'm confident in saying that it's a more balanced, and more stable, game.

In short: highly recommended.

This is pretty much how I'd expect it to work when I was thinking about it. Like I said there would have to be a bit of finessing to get some of the feat prerequisites to work and obviously keeping base +X magic armor and weapons would be fine so you can add all the other enchantments from other books but I see it taking minimal work while forcing your average group (not necessarily playgrounders) into breaking the mold a bit and really gettinga different experience from D&D.

[Rhynn]

I like this idea so much. Quite aside from the rules, imagining what the world this creates is like is fun.

The idea of creating a pantheon from non-core only domains is fun, too. You can have a deity of Summer, but not of Sun, etc. There's mostly decent substitutions, but it maeks for interesting variety.

And I really like the idea of (variant-only) casters, like cloistered clerics, etc., being based on the Spell Compendium (and PHB2, etc.).