3.5 Homebrew and Third Party: What do you allow?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

I've noticed Pathfinder and 3.5 seem to have different standards for third party and homebrew. What material do you as GM allow or is allowed by your GM?

I've played plenty of campaigns where GMs had a generally anti-third party stance and were generally OK with any homebrew they created, but didn't want to have to consider others' homebrew.

[Jormengand]

I usually allow anything I can get access to, where I don't need to learn a new subsystem I'm not interested in, where the tone fits and the power level fits too.

[OldTrees1]

I judge the source and then judge the material.

Homebrew from D&D wiki? Nope. I don't trust the quality enough for it to merit my review.
Homebrew from places like giantitp? I would happily review it, but together we might be altering it further.
Homebrew from inside our group? Sure, unless we can't think of a way to balance it.

[flappeercraft]

I usually don't add homebrew but when I do it all depends on flavour since mechanically 3.5 is for the most part covering everything.

[Mike Miller]

What material do you as GM allow or is allowed by your GM?

I generally don't do homebrew in my campaigns, although I enjoy making homebrew things. I don't trust myself to be unbiased and balanced to use the things I make. As for third party, I generally stay away from it. There are plenty of first party books to cover bases, but I am willing to review them before saying no...usually

[NOhara24]

I'm not sure how many sourcebooks there are for PF, but I know for D&D 3.5 there is a _ton_ of material to sift through which might explain the different standards for homebrew in the games. For this reason I generally don't allow homebrew; chances are there's going to be a way to accomplish what a player wants to do inside of a book written by Wizards for D&D 3.5.

However, I do use drama cards (https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Drama_Cards) that I've edited for 3.5 because I like what they bring to the gameplay experience - they're an easy way for me to reward my players for strong roleplay and test my skills as a DM.

[zlefin]

For 3.5 I stick to first party; there's more than enough material there; and even there there's sometimes more than I can handle.
I might allow homebrew if it's higher quality, like from these forums, but in trend I prefer to stick to the existing stuff.
For PF, I stick mostly to first party, but would allow some of the higher end products made by the better companies. iirc Dreamscarred press in particular puts out a lot of well balanced PF stuff.
I'd tend not to allow homebrew for PF, because there's enough interesting options already, and the balance is sufficiently better from 3.5 that there are ways to not need homebrew.

[Buufreak]

Greetings, all!

I've noticed Pathfinder and 3.5 seem to have different standards for third party and homebrew. What material do you as GM allow or is allowed by your GM?

I've played plenty of campaigns where GMs had a generally anti-third party stance and were generally OK with any homebrew they created, but didn't want to have to consider others' homebrew.

I generally play one of two things: either 3.5.PF, where anything official flies, and probably DSP too. Or, a homebrew setting where everything is made up and the points don't matter. Sadly,
google can't find any decent whose line point analogies. I am ashamed for it.

[Crake]

The only homebrew I allow is my own, and that homebrew is typically made in conjunction with the players to match a theme that they wish. For example, a martial adept character wanted to make a dragon hunter, but didn't want to lose out and initiating to do so, so together we made a dragon hunter prestige class that also was also tailored toward the campaign setting and a homebrew artifact that was included.

It helped a lot of course that the particular adventure focused around dragons, and the last boss was ashardalon (it was a heavily modified game of the sunless citadel adventure path). There was a pretty amusing red herring involving Lolth and drow on the moon though :smalltongue:

[Pleh]

I've been playing with my group over 5 years.

If they want some homebrew/3rd party, I already know it's an innocent desire to make a cool character, not a munchkin wanting to pull the wool over my eyes.

I'll just review it so I can prepare my encounters for it and check to see that it won't spoil the fun for the others. While I know that isn't their intent, it helps to have multiple eyes on it to make sure it doesn't surprise us in a bad way later. We'll tweak it as needed.

[LordOfCain]

I personally shy away from others' homebrew, but some nice, in-group, homebrew will be used along with all 1st party and any reputable 3rd party. So not necessarily Mongoose's stuff, but Hyperconscious for sure. The same goes for the OSR and Pathfinder games I play.

[Dr_Dinosaur]

I primarily run 3.PF games in a homebrew that uses DSP material heavily, as well as Spheres of Power, Xefas' Mythos classes, and a handful of other well-made brews.

I generally keep a tight lid on homebrew/3p stuff players bring in, since the setting isn't really a kitchen sink fantasy thing like Faerun et al, but if I read it, it's not grossly overpowered, and it can fit into the world I'm pretty liberal.

[mabriss lethe]

I tend to avoid most 3rd party/homebrew material. There usually isn't a need that isn't already addressed by an existing 1st party mechanic. If there is a need I'll work with the player to come up with the most modular method to get what they want. Scratch building an acf where possible And generally tinkering with existing material to make the relevant change without impacting too much else.

[Afgncaap5]

For homebrew: like a lot of other people here have said, I generally have to take the time to look at it on a case by case basis. D&D Wiki has effectively earned itself an automatic ban (which is probably not fair on my part, but eh...) and things on this board actually has a pretty good success rate (I often suggest Edge's Race Revisions to players who aren't sure what to do but what something different).

For 3rd party: I generally don't allow it unless I'm already familiar with it and know how it fits into the world since the romanticist in me feels like mechanical options can represent specialties within the world ("A kobold with Weapon Focus (Spiked Gauntlet)? Why, you must be one of the Bullhound Clan of kobold mercenaries who hails from Mount Koth!") I generally prefer D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder, so Pathfinder gets treated kinda like a 3rd party product for me, but I can find a room for features or things in Pathfinder if they make sense (add in the different purpose for "favored class", the fact that half-elves can get two of them and a Skill Focus feat from Pathfinder, and the suggestion that half-elves get an extra skill point at every level from Unearthed Arcana and I've actually had some renewed interest in the race from players.) Spheres of Power has earned an almost automatic acceptance from me since it was similar to what I was trying to push as an alternate style of magic on my players before SoP came out, but now that there's an actual book I can point to my players like it, and it fits the worlds I run (though I *do* alter it a bit; for example, the Destruction sphere is just a shade too generous for the less-hearty 3.5 monsters, so I increased the cost of Destructive Blast's two uses by one spell point and made a third 0-point blast that functions as a 1/3 level alternative.)

[BearonVonMu]

If we are playing 3.5, I don't do homebrew, plain and simple. With the immense pile of books available in hard and soft copy to my players, the thing you want to do is somewhere in the pile.
If it really truly isn't, we can look on Pathfinder's SRD, where I accept everything there are equally valid.
I haven't had anyone still say it does not exist between those two sources.

For the Planeswalker campaigns, we do homebrew in house, starting with a base class chassis that most resembles the effect you're looking for and swapping out features until it fits the word picture you're looking for. Ideally, the class we end up with will be more limited than classes that already exist, shooting for Tier 3 as the target area. It helps that a large amount of the material for that campaign is already at the edges of homebrew.

DandDWiki is so riddled with horrifyingly overpowered or off-balance creations (the Champion of Khorne that was being messed with recently here was one example) that I would take nothing more than the word picture of the class and rebuild it ourselves.

[Afgncaap5]

It also just occurred to me that I sometimes incorporate rules meant for other games entirely ("fourth party" material?)

For instance, I lift from Chuubo's Marvelous Wish Granting Engine a lot because its love of XP-driven progress bars is actually a great way to mechanically reward players for story-based goals. So if the Paladin has been seeking the Tome of Tritherion since level 1, and then when the Dark Sorcerer's plans for world domination are being fulfilled at the story's end around level 7 to 10 and the paladin has completely filled up the quest bar, then not only will the Paladin find it by using the Sorcerer's Time-Maelstrom while being briefly separated from the party, but it'll give him a short-duration power up or recharge that can help him cause some major damage.