Sanity check on some house rules

[Malimar]

House Rule #1:
Any spell or effect that transforms you or another person into a creature of your choice (such as polymorph) requires you to have seen the creature in person, or to make a Knowledge check (at twice the usual difficulty) to know enough about it to transform into it.

I'm now reconsidering whether this is a good solution to the problem of polymorph and its ilk being OP. I'm considering a.) keeping it, b.) reducing it to +10 DC on the Knowledge check instead of double (keeping a "you need to know more than just 'this exists' to transform into it" tax), or c.) throwing it out altogether. Or, I suppose, d.) do you have any better suggestions?

I allow almost any first-party book and a few third-party ones, so it's easy to go book-diving for powerful or useful forms.

But a Dragonfire Adept player who just picked up the Humanoid Shape invocation in my game made the good point that applying the same rule to Druids and Wizards as to Dragonfire Adepts might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Where Polymorph gives a book-diving wizard crazy good powers, Humanoid Shape only gives a book-diving DFA some movement modes and AC, so I can see his point that it's not quite the same scale of problem.


House Rule #2:
Level adjustments may be reduced as follows: A character’s level adjustment may be reduced at any time, provided the character has enough experience, as per the rules for spending experience on things. The experience cost to reduce your level adjustment by 1 is equal to 5,000 x your current level adjustment.

I instituted this rule years ago as an attempt to simplify the overcomplicated LA buyoff rules, as well as make it easier for high LA to be bought off while making it slightly harder for low LA to be bought off. (Some pretty complicated math and statistics went into this house rule, but I no longer remember the math.)

How is this house rule as a solution to LA? How is it as a solution to the complicatedness of default LA buyoff rules? How does it compare to "The experience cost to reduce your level adjustment by 1 is 5,000, regardless of your current level adjustment" (which would make it very easy to reduce high level adjustments down to nothing)?


House Rule #3: Of course I do away with experience penalties for multiclassing, but I want favored class to do something, and my current solution is unnecessarily complicated and doesn't actually do anything for any of my players. So I've been considering a simplified variation on one of Curmudgeon's house rules:
Any time a character takes their first level in their favored class, the character gets a free feat of their choice. If their favored class is "any" or "first class taken", they recieve this feat the first time they multiclass to any base class that isn't their first class.

My sense is that the simplification makes it not as good as Curmudgeon's original rule (which, as I recall, gives a gold option instead of the feat, includes a Pathfinder-esque +1 skill point per favored class level, puts a limitation on humans because they already get all the nice things, and puts some limits on what feat you can take), but I'm currently leaning towards maximizing simplicity over maximizing goodness.

I'm comfortable giving out free feats like candy. One concern, though, is that I'd be giving a free thing to some players and nothing to other players (unless they decide to multiclass to their favored class) mid-game, which isn't ideal. Thoughts?

[noob]

Players might get crazy on templates giving only LA then buy them off and be a bunch of levels lower than the rest of the team and thanks to all the templates be correct then he gets tons of XP for playing (and helping thanks to the power of his templates) in high level quests while being low level(because he bought off all his LA) and then get super high level above the rest of the team because of the low level_high level catapult(phenomenon resulting in the accession to good hood of one commoner helping a level 20 team of heroes)(honestly this catapult phenomenon should be fixed as soon as possible)

[rockdeworld]

#1. Very reasonable, and commonly implemented for polymorph. If your DFA isn't already seeing every humanoid he can shape into, you're running a strange campaign. Btw, "double the knowledge check" for most humanoids is still less than 30.

#2. The rule isn't insane.

Its value depends on the PC's level. The math is simple: it's terrible for level 1-4, fine for level 5, and great for levels 6+, because it's the equivalent of 1000 * level * current LA for a level 5 character.

Do you give more experience to lower-levelled characters (like in the rules for awarding XP)? If so, it's great. Otherwise not so much, since it's more expensive than the UA rules for buying off LA +1.

#3. Seems fine, and not OP, since feats are about as good as level 1 spells.


the low level_high level catapult(phenomenon resulting in the accession to good hood of one commoner helping a level 20 team of heroes)(honestly this catapult phenomenon should be fixed as soon as possible)
This particular example doesn't work because you don't get XP if you're more than 4 levels below an encounter's CR. And because you can't go up more than 1 level per encounter.

And I don't think players going crazy is possible in most campaigns, where XP before the final boss is a finite resource.

[torrasque666]

#1. Very reasonable, and commonly implemented for polymorph. If your DFA isn't already seeing every humanoid he can shape into, you're running a strange campaign. Btw, "double the knowledge check" for most humanoids is still less than 30.To be fair, "every humanoid" also consists of things like the Aventi, Darfellen, Skulk, etc. There are a lot of "humanoids" that are still humanoids yet being in very odd or out of the way places.

[Brova]

1. Okay, but doesn't really solve the problem. What's stopping him from setting up a shopping list at mid levels, then having someone use planar binding to grab one of each creature he wants to turn into?

Honestly, unless the spells are vital to someone's character concept, you should probably ban them outright. The next best option is to work out a summon monster-esque list of allowable transformations. After that you basically need to rewrite the spells. That's doable, but annoying.

From my recollection DFA is weak enough that it's not overpowering even with anything goes alter self, so you could just do nothing. That does set a problematic precedent if people do go for polymorph or shapechange though.

2. I would also drop LA by one almost across the board. Seriously, what does that break? Is 1/day darkness really a power for which you must pay an entire level at any point in your career?

3. Seems fine. Sort of encourages dumpster diving for races, because you get a pretty big boost from finding something with the right stats and favored class.

[Sliver]

#1. Very reasonable, and commonly implemented for polymorph. If your DFA isn't already seeing every humanoid he can shape into, you're running a strange campaign. Btw, "double the knowledge check" for most humanoids is still less than 30.

Not all humanoids are as common as you imply. My DFA has not yet seen any form that would give him flight, burrow or climb, with Locathah perhaps for swim, though such a meeting hasn't been explicit.

On the other hand, I have +9 to Knowledge Local, which I got just for the Humanoid Shape ability. With that, I can't reliably know enough to transform about any race that hasn't been seen, and with the choices that I do have, the ability ends up being almost purely a disguise ability.

I haven't optimized my Knowledge Local, partially because I haven't thought about needing it until shortly before leveling up, so I retrained some points into it and invested all I get on the level up for it, and mostly because Humanoid Shape doesn't offer a direct power increase that should warrant high investment.

Malimar asked for optimization aimed at T3 levels. I don't feel like Humanoid Shape, without requiring that much investment in the skill, should warrant a houserule that is intended to try and keep T1 classes like the Wizard or Druid easier to handle.

I don't think the DFA deserves the same restrictions, and I honestly doubt that players with Wildshape or Polymorph would complain if they get a different treatment. If you need an in-world reasoning, you can always say that the DFA's ability gives them more than the knowledge of how to change their form, but also the knowledge of what they can turn into, even without the research that a Druid or a Wizard might need.

I think that all involved are mature enough that if some form proves problematic, we can reach a compromise at that point, instead of gimping the entire ability to the point of it being near useless to the weakest character that can access it.

[Sagetim]

House Rule #1:

I'm now reconsidering whether this is a good solution to the problem of polymorph and its ilk being OP. I'm considering a.) keeping it, b.) reducing it to +10 DC on the Knowledge check instead of double (keeping a "you need to know more than just 'this exists' to transform into it" tax), or c.) throwing it out altogether. Or, I suppose, d.) do you have any better suggestions?

I allow almost any first-party book and a few third-party ones, so it's easy to go book-diving for powerful or useful forms.

But a Dragonfire Adept player who just picked up the Humanoid Shape invocation in my game made the good point that applying the same rule to Druids and Wizards as to Dragonfire Adepts might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Where Polymorph gives a book-diving wizard crazy good powers, Humanoid Shape only gives a book-diving DFA some movement modes and AC, so I can see his point that it's not quite the same scale of problem.


House Rule #2:

I instituted this rule years ago as an attempt to simplify the overcomplicated LA buyoff rules, as well as make it easier for high LA to be bought off while making it slightly harder for low LA to be bought off. (Some pretty complicated math and statistics went into this house rule, but I no longer remember the math.)

How is this house rule as a solution to LA? How is it as a solution to the complicatedness of default LA buyoff rules? How does it compare to "The experience cost to reduce your level adjustment by 1 is 5,000, regardless of your current level adjustment" (which would make it very easy to reduce high level adjustments down to nothing)?


House Rule #3: Of course I do away with experience penalties for multiclassing, but I want favored class to do something, and my current solution is unnecessarily complicated and doesn't actually do anything for any of my players. So I've been considering a simplified variation on one of Curmudgeon's house rules:

My sense is that the simplification makes it not as good as Curmudgeon's original rule (which, as I recall, gives a gold option instead of the feat, includes a Pathfinder-esque +1 skill point per favored class level, puts a limitation on humans because they already get all the nice things, and puts some limits on what feat you can take), but I'm currently leaning towards maximizing simplicity over maximizing goodness.

I'm comfortable giving out free feats like candy. One concern, though, is that I'd be giving a free thing to some players and nothing to other players (unless they decide to multiclass to their favored class) mid-game, which isn't ideal. Thoughts?

So, for the first one: Does each creature have a different DC to know about them? I haven't gone diving through monster manuals like that for a while, and as I recall not all monsters in 3.5 even had knowledge entries. So, let's run this through some example dc's:

If it's a DC 15 required to recognize an Aasimar as being a humanoid with some angel in their ancestry, then there are probably some scaling dc's to know more about Aasimars, maybe up to a dc 20 or 25 to know 'everything relevant there is to know about Aasimars'. So if the DC was double 15, that would be 30. And 30 is pretty hittable at mid to high level. Aasimar racial traits aren't overpowering either. However, if we go with the higher dc and double that, we get 50. That's in the land of 'you're either epic level already and being an Aasimar is nearly useless' or 'you're really twinking your knowledge checks in some way'. By comparison, if you just add +10 it bumps the dc up to either 25, or 35, both of which are reasonably hittable for someone at mid to high level that's invested in the knowledge skill in question.

Before I went further into this example, I double checked how humanoid form works. It's not that great. That is to say, if someone used it to go Aasimar, they could net..a few resistances at 5 and darkvision? Let's try another humanoid- Drow. Drow would get...120ft darkvision and light blindness? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the humanoid form invocation would grant the spell resistance that drow get as a racial thing. No, wait...Change Shape (what Humanoid Form is based on), says nothing about gaining the special qualities of the new form, only natural weapons, movement modes, extroidinary special attacks, and size. So you wouldn't even get the resistances or sensory modes of a humanoid form you've turned into. It seems like a glorified Disguise Self. So...I would say that humanoid form is an exception to the shape changing house rule and doesn't need a knowledge check, you just have to be aware that a type of humanoid exists.

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One downside to your version of the LA buyoff rules is that some people may misinterpret your rule to be saying that a +1 LA is equivalent to a wish (since wish costs 5k xp to cast). A more specific downside is that your houserule is actually delaying the buyoff of LA's. If you're level 3, you would hit level 4 before you would have 5k of xp to spend to buy your LA off. Unless the DM let you delay leveling, you would need to be level 5, going on level 6, before you would have enough xp between levels to save up 5k of xp. And that's in addition to costing you multiple times more xp than the UA rules would. That's painful.

To start buying off a +2 LA, you would start at needing a place where you can save up 10k xp. We're going to assume that you aren't allowed to delay leveling. This means that you need to wait until you're ECL 10 before you can save up the 10k necessary to buy your LA down to 2. At which point saving up to buy down the +1 is admittedly easier, because you don't have to wait levels between buy offs. With the UA system, you could start buying off a +2 at level 6, then finish at level 9. The UA rules would cost you a total of 16k, while yours would cost a total of 15k. However, you would be stuck with the LA of +2 longer. These are trade offs so far.

At +3 LA, your system would require someone to be able to save up 15k before they could bring it down to +2, so a minimum of level 15 going on level 16. So while a half dragon with the UA rules could start buying off at level 9, and be done by 18, the same half dragon under your house rule could start at level 15 and be done before they hit level 16 (becaase they would keep spending the xp until their LA was gone). But wait, it's a bit stranger than that.

If you were ecl 15 with a +3 LA, then you have 12 levels/hit dice. So when you spend 15k to lower your LA by 1, you become ECL 14, while the rest of your party is now level 16. And when you save up 10k of xp, you'll drop down to ECL 13, while they're on their way to 17. And 5k later you're ECL 12 while the rest of the party is nearing in on 17? I imagine the math is more complicated. But your character's ECL is going to be going down as you buy off your LA under your system.

So let's look at LA +4. In the UA system, you're only going to bring that down by 1 in a non epic game. In your house rules, a character could start buying it down at 20. Well, more than 20, because they would be 20, and then 20k in (so 1k away from epic level). Then, like tantalus, they would have to keep approaching epic levels and veering off to buy down their LA. Well, I suppose they would go from 20 to 19, to 18, to 17, to 16 and now have four levels to catch up on between themselves and their team mates.

This has been assuming that you aren't allowed to delay level(s) to pay xp costs for things. If you can do that, then someone could potentially not gain levels for the first few levels of their adventuring career, while the rest of the rest of the party is supposedly advancing and gaining levels, then bam, their ecl goes down by one, and again, and so on until they have no ecl left. So let's look briefly at half celestial doing that with their +4 ecl. Starting at level 1, they have to be level 5, so let's assume the rest of the party is also level 5. Using your house rule to buy off ecl from +4 down to +0 would cost a total of 50,000 xp. Everyone in the party is starting at 10k. So everyone else in the party is going to go from 10k to 60k (level 10). To maintain some semblance of balance, I'm going to assume you need to have at least the minimum xp to be your new ECL after the buy off. So going down from ecl 5 to ecl 4 would mean the minimum xp you need to maintain is 6,000 after you spend the first 20k. So you need to save up to 26k of xp before you can spend 20k on bringing your LA down from 4 to 3. This leaves you at ECL 4 while the rest of your party has moved on to level 7, nearly 8. So your next big buyoff is going to cost 15k of xp, and you'll need to maintain a minimum of 3k xp to be your new ecl of 3. So you save up to 18k, and spend 15k, and you are now ECL 3 (LA +2). The rest of your party has gained 12k of xp in the meantime and advanced to level 9. Already there is a huge disparity between your 1 hit die, +2 ecl character and whatever else they might be playing.

I think think the UA rules work out better, even if they are more complicated at face value and cost more xp to the characters using that option. It feels like you would keep up with the party better using the UA rules.

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Well, if you want to throw out multiclassing penalties, I would suggest just lifting pathfinder's favored class bonuses or doing something like them. Maybe a option of +1 skill point or +1 hp or some special options for certain class types, like casters being able to grab a +1/4 to caster level checks (including spell penetration), or fighter archetypes being able to pick +1/4 to hit...or...actually...fighters getting a +1/4 to AC as an armor bonus while wearing armor could work, while rogue archetypes could pick up a +1/4 to hit to help them not wiff.

[rockdeworld]

It seems I wasn't thinking of all humanoids. Simple compromise: in your next session, introduce humanoids that can fly, burrow, and climb. Although DFAs get fly anyway.


So, for the first one: Does each creature have a different DC to know about them? I haven't gone diving through monster manuals like that for a while, and as I recall not all monsters in 3.5 even had knowledge entries. So, let's run this through some example dc's:

If it's a DC 15 required to recognize an Aasimar as being a humanoid with some angel in their ancestry, then there are probably some scaling dc's to know more about Aasimars
But Aasimars aren't humanoid - they're outsiders. Unless you meant lesser aasimar.

And yes, there's a different DC for each creature:

In many cases, you can use this skill to identify monsters and their special powers or vulnerabilities. In general, the DC of such a check equals 10 + the monster’s HD. A successful check allows you to remember a bit of useful information about that monster.
Emphasis mine.

[Curmudgeon]

Rule # 1 still allows for the shopping list approach; it just makes spellcasters do some skill-boosting shenanigans. Guidance of the Avatar and Divine Insight together can grant a fat +28 to any one check at level 3, so this is trivial to accomplish for any Cleric; they can get Alter Self with either Alteration or Transformation domains (a level 2 spell, so also at Cleric level 3). I make this an and combo, not an or: see the creature and know what you're seeing.

Rule # 2 skews things to encourage higher LA. It forces PCs to carry LA +1 around an extra 3 levels compared to the normal rules, where 1 level makes a significant difference. You can't acquire enough XP (5,000) to buy off that first LA with Rule # 2 until level 6; the normal rules allow LA buyoff at class level 3. You'll be about even at LA +2, and do better at LA +3 and higher.

[rockdeworld]

^Exactly right on the LA. Well done.

I'm not sure why you'd need to do more than see a creature though - it gives the DM full control over what you can and cannot shape into.

[Brova]

they can get Alter Self with either Alteration or Transformation domains

Alteration is specific to the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, and (IIRC) available only to the Mystic class.

[Curmudgeon]

Alteration is specific to the Dragonlance Campaign Setting, and (IIRC) available only to the Mystic class.
Good catch. I had thought it was extended to Clerics in some later book, but I can't find any evidence of that. Still, one domain (Transformation) is all that's required.

[Malimar]

I'm very close to convinced at this point that DFA's Humanoid Shape does indeed merit an exception to Rule #1.

Curmudgeon makes an excellent point, which I was already a bit concerned about, that this rule might have the effect of encouraging skill-boosting shenanigans rather than discouraging polymorph shenanigans. So I'm also inclined to, at the very least, bump the knowledge check down to +10 rather than double. I was thinking double would be a soft ban on high-HD polymorphs, but it's more likely to just encourage souping up your checks.

Curmudgeon's solution, to leave the difficulty at the default and make it and rather than or, might be a little harsh, but makes intuitive sense: if you see a monster, that means (outside of shenanigans) the DM is using that monster, which means the DM is okay with that monster being in the game, which means it should be fine to polymorph into. (I can see a couple points where that reasoning is a little shaky, but only a little.)


The thing where Rule #2 discourages low LA and encourages higher LA was more or less deliberate -- I'm always told "avoid like the plague LA higher than +1 or at most +2", and I wanted to even that out a little bit, make high LA more worth it and low LA less worth it.

As a few people, such as noob and Sagetim, have pointed out, with the existing form of Rule #2, if you can pay off any LA at all, you can start paying it off and then finish paying off 100% of your LA before you level up again. Which is ennh, I don't know if I think it's a problem, but it's a little funky.

How do people feel about "pay 5000 to reduce your LA by one, no matter how much LA you have"? Is that just ludicrously good at high LA and/or high levels? Would "pay your class level x 1000 to reduce your LA by one, with no restriction on when you can do it" be any better? I'm having a hard time coming up with a solution (other than the default UA rules) that avoids the problem of the previous paragraph.

Brova's notion to just drop LA by 1 across the board might wind up being what I fall back on. Allow the default UA LA buyoff rules but chop LA. Actually, what I'd be inclined to do is divide listed LA by two across the board (maybe rounding up instead of down, I dunno), but I don't know if that would break anything.


#3: Now I am pondering just lifting Pathfinder's favored class system. Less front-loaded than a feat the first time you take a level in the class, doesn't encourage dipping.

But I kind of think that encouraging dipping might be my goal, or if not that, at very least not an undesirable consequence. One idea of favored classes is that most people in a given society are likely to have some experience with a given class, and dipping represents that well. I'm torn.

[Sagetim]

It seems I wasn't thinking of all humanoids. Simple compromise: in your next session, introduce humanoids that can fly, burrow, and climb. Although DFAs get fly anyway.


But Aasimars aren't humanoid - they're outsiders. Unless you meant lesser aasimar.

And yes, there's a different DC for each creature:

Emphasis mine.

Aren't all planestouched humanoids? I know half celestials are native outsiders, but...then I looked up Aasimar. They're native outsiders, but I thought they were humanoids because they don't have a blurb in their racial traits entry that calls special attention to them not being a humanoid. I guess I got spoiled on race entries that call that out (like Elan calling out that they're Abberations).

Anyway, Change Shape doesn't grant any spell like abilities or special qualities. So while burrow speeds might be pretty handy, they're not that helpful without a means of navigating while burrowing. Like blindsight, or tremorsense. Swim speeds are helpful, but if you can't breathe water, might not be as helpful as you thought. And fly speeds are nice, but level 6 is around when a warlock could pick up fell flight anyway...and I generally compare anything a dragon fire adept can do to a warlock.

As far as I'm aware, polymorphing and shape changing spells don't function off of the change shape supernatural ability from the monster manual. So you could say that there is a fundumental difference between the supernatural ability and the spells/spell like abilities that results in not needing knowledge checks.

[Brova]

Good catch. I had thought it was extended to Clerics in some later book, but I can't find any evidence of that. Still, one domain (Transformation) is all that's required.

Yep. I find anyspell, via either the Spell domain or the Initiate of Mystra feat is a pretty good way to get alter self as a Cleric, should that be a thing you want to do.

That's getting a bit off topic though.


How do people feel about "pay 5000 to reduce your LA by one, no matter how much LA you have"? Is that just ludicrously good at high LA and/or high levels? Would "pay your class level x 1000 to reduce your LA by one, with no restriction on when you can do it" be any better? I'm having a hard time coming up with a solution (other than the default UA rules) that avoids the problem of the previous paragraph.

Brova's notion to just drop LA by 1 across the board might wind up being what I fall back on. Allow the default UA LA buyoff rules but chop LA. Actually, what I'd be inclined to do is divide listed LA by two across the board (maybe rounding up instead of down, I dunno), but I don't know if that would break anything.

Random thoughts on LA follow.

There are three sorts of things with LA: PC races (stuff that advances by PC class), Monsters (stuff that has racial hit dice), and Templates (creatures that are strange and hard core).

PC races tend to be rather dramatically over LA'd. A Tiefling gets +1 LA, and while it gets some nice stats, it's not really a full level ahead of a Grey Elf or Human, except maybe at first. Even the +2 LA Drow are basically unexceptional, other than shockingly good spell resistance. Honestly, you could probably drop LA altogether here and be fine. Maybe give some random bonuses to the "normal" PC races (like the favored class deal), or just accept that people are fairly likely to be Drow or whatever.

Monsters get shafted super hard by the ECL rules. A PC Minotaur has an ECL of 8, meaning that four CR 4 Minotaurs with the exact same stats as him is an appropriate encounter. That's screwy, and it's not even the worst case. PF had a decent solution, although it makes monsters very good for certain roles. Basically, you start at level = CR and every three levels you gain an extra level. So a Minotaur is a 4th level PC, and a Minotaur Barbarian 4 is a 7th level PC. It does make a lot of caster monsters pretty sweet though. For a simpler option, just let monsters start taking levels at CR or CR+1 or 2 for some of the nastier ones (Dragons, Mind Flayers).

Templates are a mixed bag. Some are great (Feral, Saint), some are not (most of the "big scary undead" templates like Vampire or Lich). Can be a decent way to balance out races with very good benefits or PCs who are under-performing. I wouldn't open the floodgates, because there is some legitimately insane stuff out there (I'm looking at you Saints), but select ones can be pretty okay.

[Curmudgeon]

I'm not sure why you'd need to do more than see a creature though - it gives the DM full control over what you can and cannot shape into.
"Turn yourself into the big thing!"

"What big thing?"
"The big thing from last week!"

"They were all big things!"
"The one with the attack!"

"They all had attacks!"
"He means the Humanoid with the Half-Minotaur template and Improved Grab."

"Why didn't he say so? I can't do templates." :smallfurious:

There's a difference between just having seen, and having identified, the creature.

[rockdeworld]

There's a difference between just having seen, and having identified, the creature.
Of course there is. And I'm saying I don't think there's anything wrong with "that looks pretty cool/has a movement mode I want - I turn myself into it with Humanoid shape. Do I succeed?" followed by "Yes" because it's a humanoid, or "No" because it's not. And it still gives the DM full control over what you can turn into, which is primarily what the OP was worried about.

[Troacctid]

Requiring a Knowledge check doesn't really discourage book-diving. You're still incentivized to seek out the best forms possible--it's just that now there's a chance that when you get in-game, that effort will have been for nothing.

[Curmudgeon]

Requiring a Knowledge check doesn't really discourage book-diving. You're still incentivized to seek out the best forms possible--it's just that now there's a chance that when you get in-game, that effort will have been for nothing.
I think that nearly all of the time that effort should be for nothing, because you'll only encounter the creatures the DM wants you to encounter. That seems like a reasonable disincentive to dive into the various creature books. However, recognizing a creature when you do encounter it has rewards.

[Brova]

I think that nearly all of the time that effort should be for nothing, because you'll only encounter the creatures the DM wants you to encounter. That seems like a reasonable disincentive to dive into the various creature books. However, recognizing a creature when you do encounter it has rewards.

Honestly, I don't think this is a useful restriction. The character in question has alter self, which is very good utility but not as bad as polymorph any object or shapechange. Also, he's not doing anything else particularly problematic. And the restriction given is not really going to block a dedicated Wizard. I mean, lesser planar binding exists, and unless you nerf that to he can just call up a sample platter of whatever he wants to turn into.

[Troacctid]

I think that nearly all of the time that effort should be for nothing, because you'll only encounter the creatures the DM wants you to encounter. That seems like a reasonable disincentive to dive into the various creature books. However, recognizing a creature when you do encounter it has rewards.

The proposal is that making the Knowledge check means you don't have to have encountered it in-game. I stand by my statement.

[marphod]

I'm now reconsidering whether this is a good solution to the problem of polymorph and its ilk being OP. I'm considering a.) keeping it, b.) reducing it to +10 DC on the Knowledge check instead of double (keeping a "you need to know more than just 'this exists' to transform into it" tax), or c.) throwing it out altogether. Or, I suppose, d.) do you have any better suggestions?


This is perfectly reasonable, and may stop some of the more cheesy examples of polymorph (creatuee doesn't appear in game, polymorphing into it is really hard). It, however, doesn't fix the underlying problem of the high power of polymorph spells.


You could make the check based on the level of the spell, or on the type you are changing into, if you want to level it out a bit. Although, you also don't want to make Baleful Polymorph useless.




I instituted this rule years ago as an attempt to simplify the overcomplicated LA buyoff rules, as well as make it easier for high LA to be bought off while making it slightly harder for low LA to be bought off. (Some pretty complicated math and statistics went into this house rule, but I no longer remember the math.)

I don't really think the LA buyoff is that hard -- you only need to consider it when leveling up, so not during active game time, and the online SRD has the entire thing as a chart. That said:

Another simple system.

You can buy off a LA each time your character levels (original LA Adjustment) levels. So, after 2nd level for LA+1, after 3 and 5 for LA +2, after 4, 7, and 10 for LA +3, etc.

You earn a pseudo level costing (1000 * (ECL-1) ) XP (so, an LA +1 character at 2nd level would need a pseudo-level costing 2000 XP, a LA+3 after 4th level would need to earn 6000 XP, etc.). After earning the pseudo-level, your XP re

How is this house rule as a solution to LA? How is it as a solution to the complicatedness of default LA buyoff rules? How does it compare to "The experience cost to reduce your level adjustment by 1 is 5,000, regardless of your current level adjustment" (which would make it very easy to reduce high level adjustments down to nothing)?


House Rule #3: Of course I do away with experience penalties for multiclassing, but I want favored class to do something, and my current solution is unnecessarily complicated and doesn't actually do anything for any of my players. So I've been considering a simplified variation on one of Curmudgeon's house rules:

My sense is that the simplification makes it not as good as Curmudgeon's original rule (which, as I recall, gives a gold option instead of the feat, includes a Pathfinder-esque +1 skill point per favored class level, puts a limitation on humans because they already get all the nice things, and puts some limits on what feat you can take), but I'm currently leaning towards maximizing simplicity over maximizing goodness.

I'm comfortable giving out free feats like candy. One concern, though, is that I'd be giving a free thing to some players and nothing to other players (unless they decide to multiclass to their favored class) mid-game, which isn't ideal. Thoughts?[/QUOTE]

[ericgrau]

#1: +10 or +20 is better. It is a dirty fix, as it is more limiting than anything so there are less ways to break things. But all a player needs to do is fight one monster that's a broken combat form and it's over. The advantage is that those 2% of monsters are unlikely to appear by chance, though a knowledge check might do it. The drawback is limited options to creative polymorphing, which is what makes the spell so cool in nonbroken ways.

But you want some limits anyway. Players should prep forms ahead of time to avoid bogging down the game.

IMO just ban the worst forms such as war troll. Ban or nerf questionable interpretations such as hydra combat expertise giving 6x6 attacks of opportunity a round.

Summary: It's an ok dirty fix that neither fully fixes nor kills polymorph, but I'd rather ban bad polymorph forms and require to see forms statted out by the player before the game starts.

#2: This rule could be simpler than buyoff and work as well. I don't like buyoff though. In particular I don't like having it at low level and not having it at high level. LA is usually worse at low level, for nearly everything except SLAs. I'd rather multiply all LA by some fraction depending on your group optimization. HD is more complicated but pretending each HD is about 1/2 an LA is a quick and dirty solution. For example say that all LA is multiplied by 3/4, usually rounding down or at the DM's discretion. A good race might get rounded up. so 2 LA + 4 HD => 4 effective LA => 3 effective LA => 1 LA + 4 HD. You could allow partial buyoff depending on how many SLAs a race has, if any.

Summary: This is better than buyoff, but I prefer blanket LA reductions instead.

#3: A feat for taking at least one level in your favored class is fine. Though multi-classing penalties aren't the bane of all D&D like most people think. They balance out precisely with the bonus xp for being behind. The result is a very gradual onset and reversible -1 level. Unless you maintain the penalty for 4 levels you won't even fall behind the full level, and when you fix it you catch up again. If you want a more glass-half-full version you could give out bonus xp but only when the player isn't ahead a level. Or any bonus is fine too. I mean if anything your bonus feat is a bit light, but it is also easier to get than no multi-classing penalty. I wouldn't worry about some players not getting the feat; it's not big enough to kill a concept that doesn't use a favored class.

Summary: Sure, why not, go for it. Or even do more if you like.