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Draconium
2015-10-05, 02:01 PM
I was recently thinking about homebrew, and I thought it might be fun to try and create some myself. However, I've never done it before. So I thought that, before I went about this, I would see if I could ask for advice on how to create and balance homebrew.

If it matters, I usually play D&D 3.5, so that's what most, if not all, of my homebrew would be based around.

Solaris
2015-10-05, 03:47 PM
Like it says in the DMG, it's best to start small and do little replacements - like swapping a paladin's smite evil for the ranger's favored enemy, for example, or the dwarf's bonuses against goblins, orcs, and giants for bonuses against aberrations. You can get a lot of mileage out of mix-and-match class features to create a 'new' base class or 'new' race.

The Tier System (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?PHPSESSID=58o322d9v134s8nh16o6n9upn6&topic=5293) and how it works is a good thing to know for making classes. More important than the 'what' is the 'how' and 'why' - you need to know how the game works before you can start tinkering with it, after all.

Of course, given the nature of D&D 3.5E, it's hard to accidentally make a class that's too powerful unless you're making a full caster.

For creating a race, things like flight that grant extra movement capabilities should be available only to higher levels. That's not to say you can't make a flying race with LA +0, but rather that its flight shouldn't be readily available until about 4th-6th level. If you make something with a high level adjustment, it's going to suffer a deficit of HP that needs either a +4 Constitution bonus or damage reduction (not DR X/magic) and broad-spectrum energy resistance to compensate for the loss of staying power.
Spell resistance isn't compensation. It's as much a hindrance as it is a benefit, because it also stops a lot of buffing spells from working and your average PC is going to be subject to at least as many buffing spells as hostile spells.

Don't think of powerful abilities as requiring a high level adjustment. Rather, think of a high level adjustment as opening up the option for powerful abilities. You don't give the goliath a +1 LA because he has powerful build, but rather you give him powerful build because he's a melee race with a +1 LA. If you start thinking of abilities as having a minimum level adjustment, it's easy to end up over- or under-estimating the race's level adjustment (like the drow with their 'powerful' spell resistance).

Level adjustment, after all, is supposed to offset the advantage a powerful race has - not make it worse to play than a standard race. You may find this mindset can produce races that are more powerful than a lot of the WotC-published races of similar level adjustment. That's because WotC deliberately and explicitly inflated level adjustments in the Monster Manual (they say so in the DMG) in order to discourage non-standard races. You don't want to do that if you're making a race you want your players to play.

Stratovarius
2015-10-05, 04:55 PM
I was recently thinking about homebrew, and I thought it might be fun to try and create some myself. However, I've never done it before. So I thought that, before I went about this, I would see if I could ask for advice on how to create and balance homebrew.

If it matters, I usually play D&D 3.5, so that's what most, if not all, of my homebrew would be based around.

In terms of creating homebrew, where I usually start is with an idea or a theme that's appealing to me - this is usually something that already exists in D&D, and either doesn't have enough content to satisfy me or was done wrong (IMO, obviously). This creates the underlying theme that all of the class abilities (or other content) are going to hang off of, and also starts to restrict the material that I can work with (Necromancers can't have much to do with Paladin material, after all).

To give you an example of this in the context of one of my recent pieces of homebrew (Walker in the Wastes (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?447143-Walker-in-the-Wastes-Base)), I was originally thinking of a way to turn the Blighter prestige class (which is a miserable waste of book space) into a base class as a counterpoint to all the nature loving that the Druid gets up to. With that idea in mind, I then I started looking at related classes, primarily around the theme of destruction of nature or wastelands (Talontar Blightlord, Walker in the Wastes, Sand Shaper). Playing around with the ideas and class features that I liked meant that I ended up settling on the Sand Shaper and Walker in the Wastes prestige classes as being mechanically and thematically superior. So a class idea that had originally started as anti-nature morphed into a much more wasteland vibe, and by building on existing abilities from those two classes, plus Dark Sun's Defiler and an adapted version of the Blighter's Undead Wild Shape, I was able to create the core for the Walker in the Wastes base class.

Now, the mechanics part are where people have the most trouble, and the best advice I can give here is go look at existing classes. If you're looking at building a Tier 3 equivalent class, look at the Tier 3 classes and what they get at each given power level. While WotC designers most certainly didn't always know what they were doing, by the time they got around to the later books, they had smartened up enough to produce useful material for balance purposes. And Solaris is right - unless you are tossing around immunities and huge bonuses left right and centre, a class will never be stronger than Batman (the Wizard) and his CoDZilla (Cleric and Druid) buddies.

Try to find people you can trust when they go over the material you've created. Because no matter how good a homebrewer is, they are going to miss a power combo or flaw in the system somewhere. Having colleagues who can find the mistakes and give you an honest critique is amazingly precious, and they will always appreciate a good critique back.

Most importantly though, have fun. If a piece of work is frustrating you, put it down and move on to something else or just take a break. There's no one looking over your shoulder saying a project must be finished, so if it stops being a joy, work on something that is. And remember to actually play D&D between all the homebrewing sessions. A few of us forget that rule :redface: