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mabriss lethe
2018-11-08, 06:13 PM
I'm currently calling the project RE-3 (Refined 3rd edition) I'm still very much in the spitballing stage of development.



Here's where I'm currently at:

Initial Scope of Material: 3.5 Core material included in the PHB, DMG, and MM, along with Psionics. Effectively, the material available on the SRD.

Current Goals:
1. Improve the parity between mundane combat, the skill system, and spellcasting. I know that spellcasting will generally beat out all other options no matter what I do, but making physical combat and skills more robust options would go a long way.

2. Streamline kludge-y mechanics: In general, look for ways to simplify overly fiddly rules.

3. Retune the magic system: As per point 1, but it's a big enough part of the project to demand its own section. The big thing I want to do is reduce magic "auto-win" options. I don't necessarily want to nerf the overall power level of spells, but make sure that spells that see use in combat don't fall into "no save, just suck/die" traps and that individual spells that can trivialize encounters have commensurate costs, big enough to think twice about using it, but not so annoying that the player doesn't think "Totally worth it!" after casting.

4. Make racial choices have a larger impact on the character throughout their career. I'm thinking more along the lines of scaling abilities and maybe a few new ones that appear as characters level up, functioning almost like half of a gestalt.


I already have a few pages of specifics that I'm ironing out, but that's the gist of it.

I'm asking, what do you, the collective Playgrounders, think should be in a modern reinvention of 3.5?

Durzan
2018-11-08, 08:05 PM
Magic should be skill based in nature.

Grod_The_Giant
2018-11-08, 08:20 PM
As much as possible should be compatible with existing material. 3.5's main selling point is the rediculous breadth of options--if you lose that, then you're left with Just Another d20 Fantasy RPG, of which there are probably hundreds.

Alent
2018-11-08, 10:57 PM
1. Improve the parity between mundane combat, the skill system, and spellcasting. I know that spellcasting will generally beat out all other options no matter what I do, but making physical combat and skills more robust options would go a long way.

2. Streamline kludge-y mechanics: In general, look for ways to simplify overly fiddly rules.

3. Retune the magic system: As per point 1, but it's a big enough part of the project to demand its own section. The big thing I want to do is reduce magic "auto-win" options. I don't necessarily want to nerf the overall power level of spells, but make sure that spells that see use in combat don't fall into "no save, just suck/die" traps and that individual spells that can trivialize encounters have commensurate costs, big enough to think twice about using it, but not so annoying that the player doesn't think "Totally worth it!" after casting.

4. Make racial choices have a larger impact on the character throughout their career. I'm thinking more along the lines of scaling abilities and maybe a few new ones that appear as characters level up, functioning almost like half of a gestalt.

Some thoughts:

1) In some aspects, these systems are already in parity. The problem is that access to the rules they each in turn invoke is being gated behind a series of artificial restrictions for reasons. For example, Wizards can research any original spell, but Fighters can't research a sword technique to launch sword beams at far off enemies when they're at full health or anything else nifty, no matter how much they cosplay as Link. Some other mundanes- traps though they may be- give access to those concepts through class features and make up much of the kitbashing fun in 3.5.

Addressing these arbitrary limits that prevent obtaining the systems is more important here than addressing the actual systems. The systems are actually pretty functional if you can use them. That said, if you take this too far you get to 4e's "everything looks the same!!!" and if you overvalue or undervalue the access, you keep things lopsided. Making too much automatic also kills the fun- 3.5 is very much a "some assembly required" game in the Lego/minecraft sense of the phrase.

I think Grod is both right and wrong (edit: there's got to be a better word for what I'm trying to say here, wrong isn't quite what I'm looking for.) on this note- Compatibility with legacy material is super important, but compatibility will likely require a conversion doc and many changes you have to make will keep things from being 1:1. I made some hefty changes to skills and BAB in my project, and while I'm happy with the change, adapting anything 3.5 to work with it will take a few minutes. I'm attempting to spare DMs much of this by having baseline support for as many subsystems as I can.

2) Wholly agreed. 5e's greatest strength is that you can understand what's going on without understanding a single thing about how the rules work. The natural language use in 5e is phenomenal, and worthy of emulation.

3) Fundamentally, this is the lion's sum of your work, and your approach sets the tone for your entire project. Spend the most time thinking about this.

4) I think this is the exact wrong thing to do. Racial choices need to have less impact. The stronger a racial choice of any sort is, the more restrictive the rules on Polymorph have to be. Also, the stronger any given build is, the more "obvious" certain builds become- the best outcome here is that races be more about flavor and less about rules. I don't really like having to play a Human Bonus Feat for my build when what I really want to play is a (fill in blank).

Lastly, if you mean for this to go beyond your table, you need a business plan. Don't drop everything to work on it, but think about what you're offering as a product, what it will cost, and how you intend to grow it.

mabriss lethe
2018-11-09, 12:44 AM
Some thoughts:

1) In some aspects, these systems are already in parity. The problem is that access to the rules they each in turn invoke is being gated behind a series of artificial restrictions for reasons. For example, Wizards can research any original spell, but Fighters can't research a sword technique to launch sword beams at far off enemies when they're at full health or anything else nifty, no matter how much they cosplay as Link. Some other mundanes- traps though they may be- give access to those concepts through class features and make up much of the kitbashing fun in 3.5.

Addressing these arbitrary limits that prevent obtaining the systems is more important here than addressing the actual systems. The systems are actually pretty functional if you can use them. That said, if you take this too far you get to 4e's "everything looks the same!!!" and if you overvalue or undervalue the access, you keep things lopsided. Making too much automatic also kills the fun- 3.5 is very much a "some assembly required" game in the Lego/minecraft sense of the phrase.

Perhaps I should clarify: I'm not really looking to break across the niches that they already inhabit, and I personally loathe the total uniformity of 4e. What I'm currently looking at, taking combat for example, is stuff like revamping the basic combat maneuvers (bullrush, overrun, feint, etc) to be both more accessible, and worth attempting, whether it be by increasing their effectiveness or by improving action economy, or, well... whatever other fix I decide to implement. Alongside that, improving the usefulness of AC in mid to high level play, tweaking action economy in general to favor mundane actions over magical (I'm still muddling through how, or even if I can do that)


I think Grod is both right and wrong (edit: there's got to be a better word for what I'm trying to say here, wrong isn't quite what I'm looking for.) on this note- Compatibility with legacy material is super important, but compatibility will likely require a conversion doc and many changes you have to make will keep things from being 1:1. I made some hefty changes to skills and BAB in my project, and while I'm happy with the change, adapting anything 3.5 to work with it will take a few minutes. I'm attempting to spare DMs much of this by having baseline support for as many subsystems as I can.

That's pretty much my line of thinking. I have some rough idea as to how basic conversion guidelines should go, but considering some of the changes I want to make "under the hood", backwards compatibility, while important, is a secondary concern. I'm not going to lie, Grod's Giants & Graveyards revisions are one of the sources I'm looking at pretty regularly as I plot out some of the work.


2) Wholly agreed. 5e's greatest strength is that you can understand what's going on without understanding a single thing about how the rules work. The natural language use in 5e is phenomenal, and worthy of emulation.

Definitely. It's one of the things I love about 5E. I can take a table of people who've never played a tabletop in their lives and all it takes is a quick read-through for most of it to just click.


3) Fundamentally, this is the lion's sum of your work, and your approach sets the tone for your entire project. Spend the most time thinking about this.

OH... I would say "you have no idea" but you do. Item by item spell revisions to make sure they fit with the guidelines I'm working on. (making sure the guidelines themselves are universally applicable) Putting metamagic under the microscope and probably the knife.


4) I think this is the exact wrong thing to do. Racial choices need to have less impact. The stronger a racial choice of any sort is, the more restrictive the rules on Polymorph have to be. Also, the stronger any given build is, the more "obvious" certain builds become- the best outcome here is that races be more about flavor and less about rules. I don't really like having to play a Human Bonus Feat for my build when what I really want to play is a (fill in blank).

You have a point, and one I still consider, but I disagree. I can't go into a whole lot of detail because it's late and I'm falling asleep at my desk, but in short, I'm taking a lot of inspiration from the way Numenera handles character creation. I'd like race to fill the niche that the secondary descriptions (official name escapes me) filled in that game. Or at least be willing to build a working model of this style of play and see how it fares before deciding if it's worth it.


Lastly, if you mean for this to go beyond your table, you need a business plan. Don't drop everything to work on it, but think about what you're offering as a product, what it will cost, and how you intend to grow it.
In it's current state, it's primarily an intellectual exercise. I won't rule out a more professional approach at a later date, but for the immediate future, it will stay an informal project.

nonsi
2018-11-09, 01:57 AM
I'm currently calling the project RE-3 (Refined 3rd edition) I'm still very much in the spitballing stage of development.



Here's where I'm currently at:

Initial Scope of Material: 3.5 Core material included in the PHB, DMG, and MM, along with Psionics. Effectively, the material available on the SRD.


. . . and practically everything from Unearthed Arcana.





Current Goals:
1. Improve the parity between mundane combat, the skill system, and spellcasting. I know that spellcasting will generally beat out all other options no matter what I do, but making physical combat and skills more robust options would go a long way.

2. Streamline kludge-y mechanics: In general, look for ways to simplify overly fiddly rules.

3. Retune the magic system: As per point 1, but it's a big enough part of the project to demand its own section. The big thing I want to do is reduce magic "auto-win" options. I don't necessarily want to nerf the overall power level of spells, but make sure that spells that see use in combat don't fall into "no save, just suck/die" traps and that individual spells that can trivialize encounters have commensurate costs, big enough to think twice about using it, but not so annoying that the player doesn't think "Totally worth it!" after casting.

4. Make racial choices have a larger impact on the character throughout their career. I'm thinking more along the lines of scaling abilities and maybe a few new ones that appear as characters level up, functioning almost like half of a gestalt.


I already have a few pages of specifics that I'm ironing out, but that's the gist of it.

I'm asking, what do you, the collective Playgrounders, think should be in a modern reinvention of 3.5?


For me, the answer to your bolded question would be: "Take my overhaul project in its entirety".
The first item in my sig links to my 3.5e overhaul codex. Its evolution was driven by all the points that you mentioned, and many more.
1. When it comes to improving skills, I believe that my proposals in post #7 elevate skills to a whole new level. Especially Craft and Heal, but there are a lot of goodies for most skills.
2. Posts #3 and #5 (Combat Rules and General Rules respectively) go a long way in allowing noncasters to do a lot more in and out of combat than core enables.
3. In post #4, I handle a lot of issues that allow spellcasters to abuse spells (ranges, AoIs, buffs, conditions etc). I also address all the problematic spells that I know of. Also, my proposed classes are a lot harder to shut down with a single spell than the official 3.5e classes.
4. Post #6 upgrades races significantly. I strongly advise against tying races to level progression. I tried that angle several times and I'm convinced that no matter the gain, the effort will not be worth your trouble.
In every change that I propose, I always take steps in making things as simple and intuitive as possible.


That said, I can tell you that a workable game redesign is more work than you could possibly imagine.
So, if my dream game is not your dream game (a high probability - statistically), then you should look for a practical satisfactory alternative before you dive head first.

The second item in my sig poses a solid solution to all the known major problems and issues of official 3.5e (with all the official game supplements).
It is based on the collective knowledge, observations and insights that I've collected on the various D&D discussion forums throughout the years (GiantITP, ENWorld, Gleemax, MinMaxBoards, BrilliantGameologists, etc). You could add my proposals regarding skills to that and you're golden. I believe that this should elevate your game experience to a level you haven't dreamed of and it wouldn't be 1:50th the level of effort that writing a new system would be.

Alent
2018-11-09, 02:52 AM
Perhaps I should clarify: I'm not really looking to break across the niches that they already inhabit, and I personally loathe the total uniformity of 4e. What I'm currently looking at, taking combat for example, is stuff like revamping the basic combat maneuvers (bullrush, overrun, feint, etc) to be both more accessible, and worth attempting, whether it be by increasing their effectiveness or by improving action economy, or, well... whatever other fix I decide to implement. Alongside that, improving the usefulness of AC in mid to high level play, tweaking action economy in general to favor mundane actions over magical (I'm still muddling through how, or even if I can do that)

Spiffy, I figured it would be something like that, but with how 5e and PF2e both seem to have decided that anything resembling core d20 math is wildly inappropriate, I thought it wise to mention.

On the basic combat maneuvers, the accessibility problems those have come from excessive AoO and failure consequences baked into the game's system. Throttling that back makes them more desirable. Grod's got some automatic feat progression for those, ToB also offers a few interesting alternatives.

As to the action economy, I'm a huge advocate of backporting the 5e Standard action full attack. Pounce minmaxing is a time honored tradition that needs to go away. Addressing AC also gives you a good option for dropping the iterative attack penalties, greatly simplifying table math.

One thing I did to Skills I figured worth sharing, I made it so that Spells act as masterwork tools. (I have scaling masterwork tools, so the spell is effectively a level appropriate masterwork tool) Knock? Masterwork thieves' tools. Etc. They can also be cast by a wizard and utilized by party members, so this scales back the huge bonus spells or automatic success spells into a support structure that encourages skill use.


That's pretty much my line of thinking. I have some rough idea as to how basic conversion guidelines should go, but considering some of the changes I want to make "under the hood", backwards compatibility, while important, is a secondary concern. I'm not going to lie, Grod's Giants & Graveyards revisions are one of the sources I'm looking at pretty regularly as I plot out some of the work.

Definitely a good starting point. I know I referenced his fixed list caster project more than once while trying to get an idea of what Druid spells were more thematic than others. It's funny, my first D&D 3.5 PC was a Druid that made it to level 24 and I still cannot for the life of me tell you what spells are iconic to them outside of a handful of core spells.


OH... I would say "you have no idea" but you do. Item by item spell revisions to make sure they fit with the guidelines I'm working on. (making sure the guidelines themselves are universally applicable) Putting metamagic under the microscope and probably the knife.

*laugh* Yep! For me, I initially set about splitting the spells up into national lists. I had the idea that I could limit certain spell combos by splitting the required spells up between nations, and balance without nerfing that way. To some extent it works, but I shelved that part of the project for later because it was so much work. :smalleek: (It didn't help some of my preconceptions about which spell combos were bad turned out wrong.)


You have a point, and one I still consider, but I disagree. I can't go into a whole lot of detail because it's late and I'm falling asleep at my desk, but in short, I'm taking a lot of inspiration from the way Numenera handles character creation. I'd like race to fill the niche that the secondary descriptions (official name escapes me) filled in that game. Or at least be willing to build a working model of this style of play and see how it fares before deciding if it's worth it.

Give it a ramble whenever convenient, I'm curious to hear this. From just that it sounds almost like it could be a Background system rather than races.


In it's current state, it's primarily an intellectual exercise. I won't rule out a more professional approach at a later date, but for the immediate future, it will stay an informal project.

Ah, gotcha. That means I don't need to worry about offering business advice! :D

AvatarVecna
2018-11-09, 03:48 AM
I've been contemplating a similar system remake. Here's some thoughts I've had on it that you might find useful.

1) Feats Improve Over Time

Item Creation feats and Metamagic feat multiply the resources put into them, and the resources you can put into them increases over time. Extend Spell is worth a great deal more at lvl 15 than at lvl 5 for a multitude of reasons relating to the larger system of magic - meanwhile, feats like Skill Focus, Weapon Focus, Toughness, and far too many others are left with the same slight change to numbers they made in the first place. About the only feat of that nature that doesn't inherently scale and is still decent (Improved Initiative) could be argued to scale the way Extend Spell does (where everything else connected to it is getting better, so a bonus to initiative is worth more at lvl 15 than at lvl 5 even if it's the same bonus). Make all feats scale, and suddenly even fighters are scaling quadratically (even if it's still not quite as fast as casters).

2) Shorten and/or do away with feat chains

There's lots of interesting feats throughout 3.5 and PF, but a lot of them are locked up behind garbage feats. This is presumably because the designers thought "this is too good a benefit for the cost of a single feat, but it's such a cool ability I want players to have access to it, so I'll make it require this/these garbage feat/feats, that way the two/three of them will be worth the number of feat slots spent on them". This is a bad thought process. All feats should be worth a feat slot, and if that means making feat slots more valuable across the board, that's fine because most feats are garbage as it is and could use a boost. Combine this with the above, and you'll see a lot more non-caster builds making their feat slots count for a lot more.

3) Every skill should have uses that scale up indefinitely

There are a number of skills that basically are pointless to invest more than a few ranks in - when the highest DC for a skill is 35, and you only ever expect to have to deal with DC 20s anyway, you can be satisfied with 5 ranks for the synergy bonus and a decent attribute adding in. But if every skill gets better effects the more you put into them, now investing heavily in previously-garbage skills can have uses. Pathfinder gave the Heal skill the ability to actually heal HP damage (albeit slowly), but it's a flat DC 20 to do so, or 25 if you want a tiny bit of extra healing on top of that; it's a great deal more valuable if you get Unchained Heal, but even if you have that, wouldn't it be great if getting a 35 on the heal check healed more damage? One easy way to do this with some skills is to tie them into an opposed check of some kind. Case in point: 3.5's Tumble skill capped at a flat DC 25 to tumble through an enemy space at half speed (with a higher DC for each additional enemy tumbled through in that fashion), and trying to go full speed gives you a penalty instead of increasing the DC, and so once you could reliably hit DC 35 who cares anymore? Pathfinder's Acrobatics, on the other hand, just changes the DC to involve the CMD of whoever you're tumbling through, and bam now investing in Acrobatics for tumbling purposes isn't ever something you can just say "don't ever need to spend resources improving that ever again".

4) PF Skills Unchained+

Pathfinder has done a lot of great things for the skill system, so looking at those is a good starting point, but one that's both good and bad is Unchained. Unchained Skills is an interesting change to the skill system where people specializing in particular skills could get extra advantages (Unchained Intimidate increases the duration and the penalty applied, Unchained Perception helps offset invisibility penalties and extends the distance you can see before taking a distance penalty, Unchained Disguise lets you disguise yourself faster and faster, etc). Implement things like that, but make it modular, where every time you reach an unchained benchmark (every 3, 4, or 5 ranks, or whatever), you get a new benefit or two from a list of possible options...and don't limit this to people who spend a feat or a talent to be allowed to use skills in interesting ways, just build it directly into the skill system. I say this partially because I've played PF characters for whom it makes sense to have a skill untrained in the fluff but for whom the mechanical benefit is absolutely worthless - the most extreme example of this is playing a shapeshifting master-of-disguise rogue who can Full-Round Disguise from level 1, meaning the Unchained benefits are worthless to them. Take Unchained further than PF did, give a whole bunch of options for making skills bigger and better, let people choose which ones to aim for, and now the skill system has a level of simple flexibility at least vaguely comparable to the casting system. About the only ideas I've got that should be easy to apply to every single skill are "make it take less time to use this skill" and "tie the 3.5 skill tricks into this Unchained system". Beyond that, it's probably gonna come down to specific things. Make sure it's more than just "the current Unchained system, but modular", make sure to add a bunch of options rather than just shuffle the existing ones around.

5) Think About Scale

At level 1, a wizard isn't engaging a goddamn house cat on his own. At level 5, a wizard is engaging a whole squad in the same turn as long as they're grouped together close enough. At level 15, a wizard is engaging an entire army in the same turn. At level 1, a fighter is engaging one or two guys in melee range at a time. At level 5, same thing. At level 15, same thing. This is a problem. Engaging the army of weaklings should definitely be more the wizard's strong suit than the fighter's, don't get me wrong, but the fighter 15 should be able to run along a line of dudes with his axe cleaving through them all (this is, in fact, the point of Great Cleave, even if it doesn't necessarily work out that well in practice), the fighter 15 should be shooting a bow so powerful the shot passes through lines of people at once. The barbarian should be throwing dudes around in such a way that they're knocking down mooks like bowling pins. If the pinpoint-focused violence of the fighter is good enough, and there's a dude on the battlefield where the fighter's enormous DPR isn't wasted trying to kill, then the fighter could be argued to still be relevant, but when you're killing a person with half the damage on each swing and there's nobody else in range, what can you do? You should be relevant to the larger-scale battles, and while there's things in the system that allow better for that (pouncing, cleaving, certain style feats), they don't always work perfectly (charging is easy to counter, while cleaving and style feats tend to only work under rather particular circumstances), and opening that up to be more accessible to the high-level noncasters would be great.

6) Change how their general rules work on you specifically

Casters have a lot of ways to say "your damage/grappling/knowledge gathering/sneaking doesn't work on me, or doesn't work as well on me". Non-casters don't have too many beyond "I hope I make my save". Evasion is one of them, and is among the reasons why in the mid-high levels, blasting is considered quite inoptimal, because who knows if tossing a fireball will even do anything to that guy? One thing I've seen done in a few different ways is giving people the ability to lessen or throw off conditions - one way I saw was a Fighter remake that was just "if you're hit by one of these conditions, you suffer this lesser version of that condition instead", while another version I saw was "you can ignore this condition/this entire spell effect if you pay a number of hit points to avoid it". But stuff like that should go further. Feats and class ability to ignore DR or miss chance, to interrupt teleports or contingencies, making it harder for your own actions to be interrupted. I particularly like the "spend HP to ignore thing" version because even if it's a universal rule instead of a class feature, it still favors the noncasters with the big hit dice.

7) Change immunities to "significant defenses"

Just in general, defense in 3.5 is either "shoot your numbers into the stratosphere and hope to god that's gonna be enough" or "refuse to play the numbers game and find a way to legally cheat". Immunities shut down tactics, but they're a bad way of doing so because it shuts those things off for everybody no matter how much more powerful they are than you; if immunities were instead a large bonus to saves/AC/DR/ER vs particular sources, like how Mind Blank works in Pathfinder, you could hand them out more freely and wouldn't need to worry about building "immunity-piercing effects" into the system like certain epic homebrews do so that every single tactic in the whole game is just out of luck forever.

8) Find a way to cut down on rocket tag

Connected to the two previous points, you should improve defenses across the board so that combats last more than 1-2 rounds even at the larger scales. A lot more HP across the board means longer fights even if some of the other suggestions here end up increasing damage. If AC scales a bit with level, and people can spend HP to ignore conditions, and avoiding AoOs is easier, and not getting interrupted with a blasting spell is easier, fights will go longer and you get to actually play climactic fights out rather than playing a game of "I hope I hit that guy for a billion damage before he hits me for a billion damage".

AOKost
2018-11-11, 04:20 PM
I agree that you should check out Pathfinder's works, but I also _highly_ suggest checking out Custom Characters (http://easydamus.com/CustomCharacters.html).

Custom Characters is a classless system that fits neigh perfectly with almost any system that has classes.

mabriss lethe
2018-11-12, 04:40 PM
Random things that I've currently been hammering out:

1. BAB/Iterative Attack overhauls: I definitely want to move away from having an action economy penalty built into multiple attacks. Backporting a variation of 5e's mechanics is a simple way to do it, though I'd still like some more granularity. I'm contemplating shifting attacks per round to working class by class, but simplifying iteratives into Primary and Secondary, in the same vein as natural attacks. In a similar vein, I'm considering decoupling BAB from class: I'm thinking of porting over some version of weapon skills as they're handled in other systems and rolling basic combat into the skill system. I plan on both bumping up skill points per level and simplifying the existing skill list, so that should still balance out well enough. Keeping it simple as either just an "attack" skill, or maybe breaking it down to "melee" and "ranged", with proficiencies being roughly unchanged.

2. convert sneak attack to a basic combat maneuver: OK. Hear me out on this one. Give everyone the option to sucker punch a mook for +1d6. Otherwise SA granting classes would replace SA progression with Dirty Fighting: It can be used to boost SA damage as it already does, add rider effects, or improve other dirty fighting style maneuvers like trip, feint, or disarm. (all of which are getting an overhaul in the system to make them more viable options)

3. Class overhauls: All of the classes will have to be tweaked at least a little: The the big offenders that I'm considering for more significant overhauls will be pretty obvious. Fighter and Monk will both be overhauled but in different ways. Fighter will get some actual class features: Namely I'm thinking of something similar to the above mentioned "Dirty Fighting" Maybe called something like "tactical combat" that grants extra bonuses and riders to maneuvers like Overrun, bullrush, Aid another, etc. Monk will need a total rebuild. Stripping out most abilities and replacing them with something both useful and level appropriate. Rogue will get a smaller facelift, just flipping SA progression to "Dirty Fighting". Much like the fighter, Sorcerer will get actual class features, probably going the tried and true route of Metamagic improvements. (though the metamagic system is itself up for an overhaul, and I'm still playing around with how I want to handle it)

Aetis
2018-11-12, 05:53 PM
To be honest, I think half of DMs on this site has their own version of 3.5 in one shape or form. (mine's here (https://d20celerity.net))

I think instead of asking on a forum like this, you should ask your players what kind of changes should be implemented. Because at the end of the day, as a DM, you can only really affect the handful of players you play with, and if they are satisfied, then you've done your job.

ahyangyi
2018-11-13, 09:31 AM
I think this is the exact wrong thing to do. Racial choices need to have less impact. The stronger a racial choice of any sort is, the more restrictive the rules on Polymorph have to be. Also, the stronger any given build is, the more "obvious" certain builds become- the best outcome here is that races be more about flavor and less about rules. I don't really like having to play a Human Bonus Feat for my build when what I really want to play is a (fill in blank).

This can be remedied by the following ideas:

Giving particularly strong buff only for otherwise un-optimal race-class combinations. (some of the 4e racial+class feats are clearly this)
Allowing multiple options for the same race (4e flexible racial bonuses, pathfinder's alternative racial abilities)
Giving universally useful but non-synergistic options to races. (4e human's "Heroic Effort" and elf's "Elven Accuracy" comes into mind. But alas, it's 4e. it's harder to get something as universal in 3e because classes are actually different)

mabriss lethe
2018-11-13, 03:45 PM
This can be remedied by the following ideas:

Giving particularly strong buff only for otherwise un-optimal race-class combinations. (some of the 4e racial+class feats are clearly this)
Allowing multiple options for the same race (4e flexible racial bonuses, pathfinder's alternative racial abilities)
Giving universally useful but non-synergistic options to races. (4e human's "Heroic Effort" and elf's "Elven Accuracy" comes into mind. But alas, it's 4e. it's harder to get something as universal in 3e because classes are actually different)


I've been leaning more toward the third option: Some sort of orthogonal ability or related groups of abilities that grows with the character's HD so that it remains relevant throughout their career. sure, there will always be some combinations that can make greater use out of things like that, but I want them to be useful options for any race/class combination.

Unrelated note: I forgot to mention earlier that I was also planning on removing Power Attack as a feat, and moving it into the pool of generally accessible combat maneuvers that everyone can use. (and still considering doing the same with Sneak Attack, since I think upgrading and increasing the variety of basic combat tools is a good thing.)

Nifft
2018-11-13, 04:04 PM
Yeah, 3.5e has a lot of flaws. And a lot of attempts to fix those flaws.

- Pathfinder has some clever fixes. (PF2 might have some clever fixed for the problems caused by their previous clever fixes; you may want to check it out, too.)

- 4e had some elegant fixes, many of which address your point about intra-party balance.

- 5e has some backsliding but also some nice work.

Figure out how much you're comfortable stealing, then put together what you've stolen and we can pick over the compiled work for flaws.