Starting a tier 3 campaign help.

[Master Thrower]

Hello playground I am going to be running a tier 3 only campaign, and I had some issues I was running into.

A. I would like to make archery relevant, how do i do this, and especially eliminate the feat tax.

B. I feel as though tier 3 is too restrictive on divine casters, what divine casters could be added in apart from divine bard?

C. What common house bans/rules are popular and or commonplace

D. Should I add in lower tier classes with variants? (lion totem barbarian, dungeon crasher fighter etc)

and any other advice you guys have would be really helpful

[Grod_The_Giant]

A. I would make "shooting into melee" a thing anyone with at least +1 BAB can do with no penalty, allow archers to add Dex to damage, and replace Point-Blank Shot with a ranged power attack feat. That should cover an awful lot of issues.

B. If you don't mind homebrew, how 'bout a domains-only cleric fix (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=12348960&postcount=2)of your choice? You could also maybe include a druid, if you use the Shapeshift variant from the PHB2 and, oh, bard-type casting. Or maybe turn him into a fixed thematic list caster like the Beguiler and Warmage, cherry-picking a balanced and limited set of spells known.

C. There's a thread on that just a little bit down the page. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=296024)

D. Eehhhh... depends. You can have a T3/T4 game and do just fine-- there are plenty of borderline classes like rogues, warlocks, and warmages that can play with T3 classes without issue. But you will be letting T4's into the game-- I can't think of any ACFs that are enough to lift the classes into T3.

[Incanur]

The thing to remember about the tier is that tier 4s can still be absolute combat beasts, especially at the low levels. As dips, tier 4 and 5 classes can significantly enhance tier 3s. Something like Lion Totem Whirling Frenzy Barbarian 1/Fighter 2/crusader 1/warblade x can deal out absurd amounts of damage with surprising flexibility. (I can't charge? Okay, and move and use a martial strike. The enemy is 100 feet away? Okay, I pull out my composite longbow that I can only draw in frenzy. Etc.)

As far as archery goes, while reducing the feat tax would help, terrain and spells cause archers even more problems. In a dungeon crawl, the bow's range just rarely comes into play. (Note: This is actually pretty reasonable.) If you include long-distance outdoor encounters, archers will feel much better about themselves. Especially at the lower levels, bows rock for such encounters. However, if there's any cover it's easy enough for foes to just hide if they can't compete in the missile duel. Even in featureless plain, a single low-level spell - obscuring mist - enables escape from arrows. That's what really hurts 3.5 archery in my opinion.

[Mithril Leaf]

I'm going to leap on the fact that you mentioned house rules to toot my own horn (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=277806). That's an option for archery if you like.
Shugenja are generally considered tier 3 or very low tier 2.
No death from massive damage or drown healing.
Yes, tier 4s can function just fine in games with tier 3s if they're built well.

[prufock]

A. I would like to make archery relevant, how do i do this, and especially eliminate the feat tax.
In addition to what Grod said, just gestalt ranger and scout without the feat requirement. We can argue about whether this is tier 3, high tier 4, or whatever, but it's definitely better than either class on its own, and makes a good archer class.


B. I feel as though tier 3 is too restrictive on divine casters, what divine casters could be added in apart from divine bard?
Mystic Ranger, Favoured Soul restricted to a number of domains granted by his deity, Healer with a better spell list.


D. Should I add in lower tier classes with variants? (lion totem barbarian, dungeon crasher fighter etc)
Yes, though some of those are still only tier 4, but can be high on the tier 4 list - ie Barbarian with pounce can deal craptons of damage, but still aren't all that useful out of combat.

[Person_Man]

A) Remove Precise Shot and Point Blank Shot. Allow most melee Feats (Such as Power Attack and Know-Down) to apply to ranged attacks. Allow Arcane Archer PrC to provide full caster progression to any Tier 3 caster.

B) Check out my Healer (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=221867). Paladin 20 with free Leadership for a better Mount (rules in DMG) and free Battle Blessing Feat (Standard Action spells are Swift Actions to cast) is Tier 3. Or you can basically just use any caster, and agree to a reasonable spell list together. Remember, it's not spell per se that makes a class broken. It's the spell list.

3) Varies widely. I would actually suggest just playing a RAW game. Once you've limited classes to Tier 3 only, you knock out 90% of the problems with the game design.

4) Free Gestalt of any two "mismatched" (not filling the same role) Tier 4-5 will generally bring it up to Tier 3. For example, Paladin (tank)//Healer (healing), Rogue (Skills and Damage)//Knight (aggro/defense), etc.