Would you play in a game with these Tweaks/Changes?

[AnimeTheCat]

My work here is to compile a list of changes that I've tested or that I would like to make based on the input of the community here so that I can formulate a concise list of information on how I balance and run my games. The idea is to create a list that I can present on online websites such as Roll20 to give prospective players a feel for what it will be like playing in one of my games so as to not waste their time, other players time, or my own time. My highest priority is to ensure the party is having fun and are comfortable with each other, and to that end I will definitely overlook some of these changes if they are getting in the way of that fundamental priority. With that, here are my changes broken down in to categories for easier searching.

This is a Work in Progress that I hope to be refining for the forseeable future until I feel like it's a good compilation to get the game to the power point I'm trying to reach without sacrificing fun for the player, and also complementing the world(s) i've created.


Combat Expertise: No longer limited to +/-5, if character is weilding a shield the bonus to AC is doubled (similar to how bonus damage is doubled with a 2-handed weapon and power attack). There is no intellligence requirement for Combat Expertise.
Two Weapon Fighting: The only feat required in the two weapon fighting tree is the first feat Two Weapon Fighting. The Improved et al versions don't do anything, the standard version grants an additional attack per iterative attack at an increasing penalty (just like the other versions). Rangers get dual strike (Complete Adventurer pg 108) when they would normally get their second combat style feat if they chose two weapon fighting, and two weapon rend (PHBII pg 80) after that (If they already have those feats, they may select any feat they qualify for from the list of fighter bonus feats, or that has Two Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite that they meet the requirements to take.).
Pounce: Pounce is a feat that any character can take, is a fighter bonus feat, and has prerequisites of 13 Dexterity and 13 Strength. Functions as the creature ability in MMI.



All Classes except Paladin and Cleric: Remove Alignment Restrictions!
Fighters : Change skill points to 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills. *Under Review to be removed or amended*
Ninja : Sudden Strike functions exactly as Sneak Attack, and can be used while flanking.
Rangers: get dual strike (Complete Adventurer pg 108) when they would normally get their second combat style feat if they chose two weapon fighting, and two weapon rend (PHBII pg 80) after that (If they already have those feats, they may select any feat they qualify for from the list of fighter bonus feats, or that has Two Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite that they meet the requirements to take.). At level 4 when rangers receive spellcasting they are full list spontaneous spellcasters just like beguilers (PHBII class).
Paladin: Paladins must match their deities alignment. For evil deities or neutral deities that rebuke undead this makes the lay on hands ability negative energy and the standard turn undead rebuke undead. Paladin Smites are per encounter not per day and increase at a rate of 1 for every 3 paladin levels. Prestige Classes that improve a Paladin's spellcasting or Special Mount class feature also improve their smites per encounter. Smiting does not cost an action which makes it possible to make every attack on a full attack a smite if you have enough per encounter uses to do so. Paladin spellcasting no longer requires Wisdom to determine the highest level spells the Paladin can cast and relies solely on Charisma. Lastly Paladins are full list spontaneous spellcasters like Beguilers (PHBII Class).
Favored Soul: Favored Souls are Charisma only casters, they no longer use Wisdom to determine the highest level spell they can cast.
Sorcerer: Sorcerers get Heritage bonus feats at levels 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20. Heritage feats must all be from the same line and can't be changed after they've been selected.*I'm considering some other changes I found in some old notes of mine to include metamagic feats and a unique "signature spell" for the sorcerer*
Cleric: Clerics only receive Light Armor proficiency, not medium, heavy, or shield proficiency. *Currently, Cloistered Cleric is still an option, but in a later post I am discussing either removing it or adding other variants to the cleric that include the cloistered cleric, such as a War Priest for clerics of warlike deities*
Healer: Healers are charisma only casters, and can cast spontaneously from their full list of spells (as a Beguiler). Additionally, they gain lay on hands at level 1. This functions the same as a paladin. Sanctified Spells are added to the list of spells available for Healers to cast from spontaneously.
Scout: The 6th level scout ability "Flawless Stride" allows a scout to make a 10 foot step in place of a 5 foot step, thereby allowing them to activate their Skirmish ability.



Goblins: Goblins gain Swarmfighting as a bonus feat at first level.
Half-Orcs: A half-orc receives a +2 Strength bonus and a -2 Charisma penalty OR a -2 Intelligence penalty. This choice is made at character creation and can't be changed after.
Orcs: An orc receives +4 strength bonus and two of the following; -2 Intelligence, -2 Wisdom, -2 Charisma. This choice is made at character creation and can't be changed after.



Flight Granting Spells: Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall from the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.



Craft (Poisonmaking): Craft (Poisonmaking) can be used to concentrate or dilute poison, and can also be used to increase the DC of a poison when crafting it. To concentrate a poison two doses of the poison are needed and the character must succeed on a skill check with a DC equal to the craft DC of the poison. This produces a concentrate with that adds +5 to the save DC of the poison. Diluting a poison takes a single dose and creates 2 doses with a -5 save DC by succeeding on a DC 15 skill check. Increasing the save DC of a poison on creation requires the craft DC to be increased by 3 for every +1 to the save DC attempted to increse.



To fill in a bit about how my world is run, here's a response to Palanan that I posted detailing a bit more about how my world handles Magic in general:

Sure, so after I've made my world I basically take some confetti that includes 3-5 pieces of about 30 different colors and I shake it all over the map. then, I connect those pieces. The pieces are portals to other planes that feed the energy and magic to the material plane. Along the leylines, casters occasionally gain some benefit when casting spells aligned with that leyline. To see if it's a "good day" I roll percentiles against the distance from the nearest portal. At halfway between two portals there is a 25% chance of magical anomaly. so if I roll a 78 that means that there is a chance of a magical anomaly when casting spells associated with that leyline. If the individual is casting burning hands along or near a fire leyline or evocation leyline, they roll a spellcraft check, DC is equal to 10+spell level being cast (easy to control). If they succeed, they contain the power added from the leyline and gain a benefit. I usually go with either a free empower or add an extra damage dice for free. Spells that don't add damage dice might get extended duration, or empowered effects (+1 or +2 depending on the spell). Magic weapon cast along a Magic leyline or Transmutation leyline might grant +2 to attack and damage instead of +1, or last an extra minute or two. If the spellcraft check fails, nothing happens and the spell goes off as normal.

That brings me to intersections. Sometimes, the leylines intersect. At times they are symbiotic intersections, such as an intersection of fire and evocation or magic and transmutation. When these intersections occur, it can be overwhelmingly powerful and particularly learned and practiced wizards can control the power (or lucky young apprentices). If Both leylines roll and come up above the anomaly threshold, a spellcaster casting a spell along or near the intersection must succeed at a Spellcraft check equal to 20+(2xSpell Level) to contain the magic. If they are successful I will usually hand out a free extended spell metamagic, maximized spell metamagic, increase all damage dice by 1 step (1d6 becomes 1d8) or similar effects. If the spellcraft check if failed, there's some feedback, but the spell still goes off as normal. In the case of a damage spell like fireball or burning hands, the spellcaster takes 1 point of damage per damage dice to be dealt (so a level 10 wizard casting a fireball would take 10 points of fire damage from the backfire, 1 point per damage dice). If more than 2 lelylines intersect that are beneficial to each other, the DC increases to 30+(3xspell level), etc adding an additional 10 and multiple of the spell level to cast. As these succeed or fail, I continue to grant free metamagics and increases to the spells power and potentcy, and increase the backfire damage or, in severe cases (failure by 15 or more) the feedback is so great that it overloads the spellcasters senses and shocks the spellcaster's ability to cast spell for a time (not too long, no more than a few minutes for a first time failure, no more than an hour for a second time failure, and possibly for a day if the matter is pressed further). A restoration spell can return the ability for a number of minutes equal to the damage that would hav been healed (1d4+1).

If two leylines that don't support each other intersect, and they were rolled to cause an anomaly, the spellcaster must make a spellcraft check at the same DC or else their spells might have some diminished effect on failure (or function normally on success) such as a reverse of the empower metamagice efect (deal -50% damage) or drop 1 damage dice or duration is reduced by a round or two. This is only for leylines that oppose each other, such as Fire and Cold leylines. If either a fire or cold spell are cast, the spellcraft check must be made. If a shock spell were cast, there is no ill effect. Essentially, this check is to make sure you're drawing power from the appropriate leyline.

If you are simply casting a fire spell near an opposing leyline, there is no ill effect. As the caster, you're able to know better than to try and pull power from a clearly opposing leyline to power you spell and it's easier to differentiate those magical powers.

That's it in a nutshell. There are more nuances to it, but those are really an as you go sort of ad-lib addition and I welcome input from the players as to what they think would be cool. The portals also allow for easy travel to and from those planes, or even fast travel around the material plane if you know where you're going or what you're doing.



7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.
10) Spells must still have an effective spell level of 9 or less before they can be effected by Divine Metamagic or similar effects. Metamagic reducers can be applied to get spells into this range, but essentially, if the spell level would be 10 or greater, Divine Metamagic can't be applied to it.
11) Druids must have either encountered or specifically researched the animals they are attempting to wildshape into. If a druid attempts to wildshape into an animal that they have not encountered they must succeed on a percentile check. The threshold to succeed is equal to 100-Druid Level-Knowledge(nature) skill. For example, a level 5 druid with an intelligenc score of 14 that is trying to wildshape into a crocodile that has never seen one would have to succeed on a percentile check with a threshold of 83, meaning that the druid must roll 83 or higher to succeed on changing shape. If they are unsuccessful, the wildshape attempt is lost. Researching an animal takes 1 day per HD of the target creature in some kind of infromation repository (library, druid circle, etc).
20) Caster Level can't exceed 1.5x the current caster level or 20 (whichever is lower). Once a spellcaster reaches level 21 and takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, they are limited only by the 1.5x caster level cap. Spells that scale with caster level are capped at this caster level unless they have an improved version at a higher spell level (such as dispel magic and Greater Dispel magic).


Oh yeah, you guys think I'm not gonna thank you for your help... you're wrong... dead wrong

[TheYell]

11) "As a small boy, I ran away and joined a circus..."

19) What do you mean they may be tripped while flying?

[heavyfuel]

While I don't oppose any of these houserules, they seem to be a bit too many in numbers.


19) What do you mean they may be tripped while flying?

Creatures that fly by means of wings can be tripped and knocked to the ground.


Tripping a Flying Defender

A winged creature can be tripped, and if it is, it falls as if it didn’t maintain its minimum forward speed.

[TheYell]

Well that's that then.

[AnimeTheCat]

11) "As a small boy, I ran away and joined a circus..."

19) What do you mean they may be tripped while flying?

While joining a circus may get you access to some exotic creatures, it won't allow you to have broad sweeping knowledge of every animal in the animal kingdom or game, and I have discussed with my players what creatures they would most likely be well acquainted with.

as for 19, heavyfuel answered adequately enough.


While I don't oppose any of these houserules, they seem to be a bit too many in numbers.

I didn't think there were all that many, considering I've seen many DMs with a veritable book/bible of houserules and homebrew they use. But fair assessment. I didn't used to use housrules or homebrew all that much, but lately i've just been experementing to try and achieve my desired balance and complexity point.

[Buufreak]

19 basically reads "The DM doesn't want you having specific nice things, but any monster he uses isn't limited by the same rules." Which, in lack of better terms, is bull****.

[AnimeTheCat]

19 basically reads "The DM doesn't want you having specific nice things, but any monster he uses isn't limited by the same rules." Which, in lack of better terms, is bull****.

how so? There are very few monsters that have innate magical flight and it's just that, innate. If a PC was a race or class that granted innate magical flight of some kind, they too would be in the same boat. Further, most enemies that I use are going to either have some form of spell-related magical flight (invisible wings, capable of being tripped) or have natural wings. What I find to be "bull***" as you say it is that 3/4 of the game is unplayable for a large number of classes due to the inability to meaningfully contribute. By applying a minor change to a widespread mechanic, i'm allowing a large chunk of that 3/4 to meaningfully contribute to a wide number of situations. to me, that doesn't seem like "bull***" it seems like a two-fold change that makes more potent character think more carfully about their actions while simultaneously allowing for less powerful characters to contribute.

Could you explain your thought process on how it's "bull***" so that I can understand and possibly tweak the houserule if you make such a compelling argument? Genuinely, I would like to know.

[Aetis]

Honestly, these houserules look pretty tame. I use some of these myself actually.

Good work.

[Elricaltovilla]

I don't like that clerics lose armor proficiency. Buff & Smash clerics are solid, reliable, fun, and not particularly broken varieties of cleric and really don't need to be nerfed. It's cleric spells that cause problems, not their armor proficiency.

[Aetis]

19 basically reads "The DM doesn't want you having specific nice things, but any monster he uses isn't limited by the same rules." Which, in lack of better terms, is bull****.

It looks like he wants tripping to be a thing after level 5.

It's not the most elegant way of doing things, but his thought process is easily followed and I appreciate his effort on trying to let martials do things.

What's up with you? :smallconfused:

[TheYell]

While joining a circus may get you access to some exotic creatures, it won't allow you to have broad sweeping knowledge of every animal in the animal kingdom or game, and I have discussed with my players what creatures they would most likely be well acquainted with.


This actually came up when our druid wanted to choose his animal forms. The player is notorious for not being able to RP on his feet, taking the attitude that if a mechanic existed in a book, it was valid for gameplay, period, as in "I can take on an animal form, gimme the bestiary". The DM had a pet peeve about "video game mentality" and said if he couldn't find an RP reason for a form, he couldn't use it. I have a BA from the University of California, I learned how to BS coherently and spontaneously :P I suggested the circus as a compromise, which neither one was happy with for some reason. Sounds like you're not too impressed either.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Buufreak
19 basically reads "The DM doesn't want you having specific nice things, but any monster he uses isn't limited by the same rules."

I’m not seeing a problem with this, and nothing in this houserule prevents a player from having good options.

Just because a character can’t access every possible option in the entire game world doesn’t mean the player is being unfairly restricted. From what I can see, this is a minor rule that adds some common-sense parameters. As a DM it makes sense to me, and as a player I would be fine with this.

[Quertus]

1) Combat Expertise: No longer limited to +/-5, if character is weilding a shield the bonus to AC is doubled (similar to how bonus damage is doubled with a 2-handed weapon and power attack). There is no intellligence requirement for Combat Expertise.

I like letting muggles have nice things. And people really don't like "sword and board" style. So, yeah, cool. Same for #4.



2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.

Eh, I like the idea, but not the implementation. Bluff? Diplomacy? Sense Motive? Why would a Fighter be better at these than anyone else? It doesn't follow, unless you make them class skills for everyone.



7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.

Not a fan. My preferred archetype - what drew to D&D in the first place - is the scholar who delves into ruins for scraps of Arcane power. Automatic spell access was bad enough, but forced specialization is horrible for me.

Although, I suppose I could still play an Archivist...



10) Spells must still have an effective spell level of 9 or less before they can be effected by Divine Metamagic or similar effects. Metamagic reducers can be applied to get spells into this range, but essentially, if the spell level would be 10 or greater, Divine Metamagic can't be applied to it.

I'll use this as the poster child for this comment: it sounds like a lot of your many, many house rules could be replaced with, "balance to the table" and "don't be a ****".



11) Druids must have either encountered or specifically researched the animals they are attempting to wildshape into. If a druid attempts to wildshape into an animal that they have not encountered they must succeed on a percentile check. The threshold to succeed is equal to 100-Druid Level-Knowledge(nature) skill. For example, a level 5 druid with an intelligenc score of 14 that is trying to wildshape into a crocodile that has never seen one would have to succeed on a percentile check with a threshold of 83, meaning that the druid must roll 83 or higher to succeed on changing shape. If they are unsuccessful, the wildshape attempt is lost. Researching an animal takes 1 day per HD of the target creature in some kind of infromation repository (library, druid circle, etc).

Good thing I'm a 1,000 year old Necropolitan, whose 2,000 year old, NI level master made sure I knew absolutely everything before letting me out in the world.



12) Clerics only get light armor proficiency and do not get medium armor, heavy armor, or shield proficiency. If a cleric takes the cloistered cleric alternate class, they get no armor proficiency.

... Why?



14) Pounce is a feat that any character can take, is a fighter bonus feat, and has prerequisites of 13 Dexterity and 13 Strength.

Nice things for muggles, sure. How many monsters take it?



18) Craft (Poisonmaking) can be used to concentrate or dilute poison, and can also be used to increase the DC of a poison when crafting it. To concentrate a poison two doses of the poison are needed and the character must succeed on a skill check with a DC equal to the craft DC of the poison. This produces a concentrate with that adds +5 to the save DC of the poison. Diluting a poison takes a single dose and creates 2 doses with a -5 save DC by succeeding on a DC 15 skill check. Increasing the save DC of a poison on creation requires the craft DC to be increased by 3 for every +1 to the save DC attempted to increse.

Much like your skirmish change, I find this... interesting. Not sure if it's good or bad.



19) Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall fro the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.

Is tripping really a big thing in your games? What about levitate? What about researching a custom flight spell without this limitation?



20) Caster Level can't exceed 1.5x the current caster level or 20 (whichever is lower). Once a spellcaster reaches level 21 and takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, they are limited only by the 1.5x caster level cap. Spells that scale with caster level are capped at this caster level unless they have an improved version at a higher spell level (such as dispel magic and Greater Dispel magic).

What about a level 200 Wizard who never took Epic Spellcasting? Is he still limited to caster level 20?

Why would you allow Dispel, Fireball, Disintegrate, Magic Missile, Greater Magic Weapon, etc, to continue uncapped?




As of now, that's all I've implemented. A lot of minor tweaks and a few mechanical changes, but otherwise I don't feel as though anything to too outrageous and I feel like it all helps to trend things towards a central power level, as oppposed to trying to bring everything to the highest or drop everything to the lowest power levels. Like I said, I'm interested in what others think of these. If you have criticism, I ask that you please keep it constructive.

I mean, I'd suggest the much simpler "encourage people to self-balance and play to the group power level" rather than writing your own system. But, if it works for you, great.

[zlefin]

they seem fine to me. I'd play with them.

I'd worry slightly about the combat expertise one, as at higher levels you could gain a tremendous amount of AC off of it; but high AC doesn't break games much.

[Hiro Quester]

I would play at your table.

More skills (half-orcs, fighters), less feat-intensive builds (TWF, ranger etc.), less MAD, easier availability of spontaneous-cast spells (paladin, favored soul), fighters with better options for skills and combat expertise without having to be MAD and have 13+ INT. All good things.

Heritage feats for sorcerers seem appropriate. A glass cannon incantatrix sorcerer has feat investment as one of the main caps on their power getting too out of control. But adding heritage feats adds flavor and role-playing possibilities without adding too many power multipliers. I assume you restrict the heritage feats to a single category (so a player can't choose celestial, dragon and elemental heritages) right?

The druid restriction on wildshape seems reasonable. You might want to make the same restriction on Summon Nature's ally, though. Otherwise I just summon a crocodile to study, in order to be able to wildshape as a crocodile. (I played a druid in a game with a similar familiarity/knowledge check restriction on wildshape and summoning, and it enabled the DM to keep my druid from being overpowered. But I still had fun. Our game was in a tropical climate so I had to use big cat wildshape forms, not knowing enough about colder climate bears, polar bears, dire bears to take or summon those forms.)

[heavyfuel]

I don't like that clerics lose armor proficiency. Buff & Smash clerics are solid, reliable, fun, and not particularly broken varieties of cleric and really don't need to be nerfed. It's cleric spells that cause problems, not their armor proficiency.

While this is very true, Buff & Smash Clerics do tend to step on Paladins' toes rather harshly. Perhaps this is OP's way of making Clerics more "Divine Wizards" and not necessarily nerf their utility.

[JeenLeen]

Clerics seem a bit too limited, especially cleric with regards to armor. If a cleric wants to be mostly blasty/buff/heal, that armor really helps. Though I can see limiting it for more optimized groups.
I feel like it might be a bit too much on wizards, too... maybe not because wizards aren't OP, but this feels annoying while not really preventing brokenness? I'm not quire sure, and don't have time to dwell on it to really parse out my feelings.

I also feel like the druid restriction is a bit much. It makes sense in-character, but it feels like it's just an arbitrary limitation. I can see saying "no <whatever that broken dinosaur is>". Maybe, to compensate, let them have X number of researched exotic forms from the start.
I do understanding limiting the druid in some way, but this way simply seems annoying. The player feels like having to justify things or waste resources to better use a class feature. The DM is annoyed enforcing such.

However, all in all, not bad rules, and I like how you help martials, paladins, and rangers. Seeing the multitude of houserules would probably make me a bit wary, though, so I'd recommend presenting them to potential players with a short preface. Probably something like you've had optimizers and folk kinda ruin the fun for everyone, so these are some methods to curb that as well as to help fighters and similar not feel underpowered compared to spellcasters. Knowing the spirit you are coming from would help me as a player.

[GloatingSwine]

2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty),


This implies a specific type of fighter with a specific background.

I would parcel out these sort of skills into a background pack where every class that doesn't have inherent knowledge skills gets to choose one, so class knowledge skills are representative of how the character has lived.

[Hunter Noventa]

The rules aren't too bad. I don't really play Druids myself, but I can see how that would be an issue for some. I agree that they should have a few exotic forms 'known' at the start of play, likely local to the region.

I don't much like the cleric change. if I were to go into a change like that, I would honestly base the cleric's armor and weapon proficiencies off their chosen deity, or give out bonus feats based on their deity. Similar to how the War domain gives you proficiency in your deities' favored weapon, if you follow a deity of war and battle, you get the armor proficiency feats. If you follow a deity of magic, maybe you get the Spell Penetration feats, or following a Nature deity gets you, I don't know, Track and Skill Focus for survival and Knowledge nature, that sort of thing. Don't dump them all on at first level of course, but it would make clerics of different deities more diverse.

[Remuko]

This implies a specific type of fighter with a specific background.

I would parcel out these sort of skills into a background pack where every class that doesn't have inherent knowledge skills gets to choose one, so class knowledge skills are representative of how the character has lived.

i disagree. fighters should (imo) have all the class skills to fit nearly any background of fighter, and if your fighter isnt that one, then you just dont put points into it. 0 points means you dont know it, whether its a class skill or not.

[daremetoidareyo]

This implies a specific type of fighter with a specific background.

I would parcel out these sort of skills into a background pack where every class that doesn't have inherent knowledge skills gets to choose one, so class knowledge skills are representative of how the character has lived.

Cityscape has a list of four or five skills that players cannot free access to that depends on their social class. I forgot the page number

[InvisibleBison]

18) Craft (Poisonmaking) can be used to concentrate or dilute poison, and can also be used to increase the DC of a poison when crafting it. To concentrate a poison two doses of the poison are needed and the character must succeed on a skill check with a DC equal to the craft DC of the poison. This produces a concentrate with that adds +5 to the save DC of the poison. Diluting a poison takes a single dose and creates 2 doses with a -5 save DC by succeeding on a DC 15 skill check. Increasing the save DC of a poison on creation requires the craft DC to be increased by 3 for every +1 to the save DC attempted to increse.

So to make a poison with a DC 5 points higher than normal, I'd need to either make one DC X+15 Craft (poisonmaking) check or 3 DC X Craft (poisonmaking) checks. It seems a bit odd that the method you use to create a high-DC poison would so dramatically change how difficult it is.

[AnimeTheCat]

This actually came up when our druid wanted to choose his animal forms. The player is notorious for not being able to RP on his feet, taking the attitude that if a mechanic existed in a book, it was valid for gameplay, period, as in "I can take on an animal form, gimme the bestiary". The DM had a pet peeve about "video game mentality" and said if he couldn't find an RP reason for a form, he couldn't use it. I have a BA from the University of California, I learned how to BS coherently and spontaneously :P I suggested the circus as a compromise, which neither one was happy with for some reason. Sounds like you're not too impressed either.

I'm all for backstory, and if you were like the character Quertus refernces below, I guess you do have a reason to be well educated and knowledgable on most, if not all, standard animals in the game. Granted, you have other problems to take care of, namely being undead, but you've successfully navigated something of a minor setback that doesn't allow you to wildshape in to every brand of bear, every variety of bird, or every caste of cat. If it really bothers a player that much, I will work around this to make sure the player is having fun without negatively impacting the fun of others, because that's the most important part of the game.


I like letting muggles have nice things. And people really don't like "sword and board" style. So, yeah, cool. Same for #4.

Eh, I like the idea, but not the implementation. Bluff? Diplomacy? Sense Motive? Why would a Fighter be better at these than anyone else? It doesn't follow, unless you make them class skills for everyone.
The idea behind bluff, diplomacy, sense motive, etc, is that "fighter" is such a broad classification for a class, I thought it would be appropriate to give the class a moderate number of skill points to specialize in a broad number of skills. For instance, you could create a diplomatic fighter that focuses of handling things by word first, and sword second. Giving Diplomacy as a class skill allows this to be a reality without playing a different class. How about the cliche dirty fighter? as it stands now, fighter's can't really do the whole feint in combat thing, but this opens that option to them. Spot, Search, Listen? Fighters should have trained to be able to detect threats so they can choose the most appropriate response, or to detect smugglers trying to enter the city. Sense Motive? Something should set a warrior guard apart from a Fighter guard, the fighter guard might be more difficult to lie to or sneak something past. While no one fighter can pick up all of these skills, at least they are an available option to help customize and flesh out a fighter that is actually capable at doing something other than using their sword. That's the idea anyway.


Not a fan. My preferred archetype - what drew to D&D in the first place - is the scholar who delves into ruins for scraps of Arcane power. Automatic spell access was bad enough, but forced specialization is horrible for me.

Although, I suppose I could still play an Archivist...
This has more to do with the way that I use magic in my world. Similar to how Faerun has the Weave, I have created an intriquite network of leylines across my maps. There are lines for domains, schools, and elements (shock, fire, cold, acid, etc). To add flavor to my world, I use the leylines to determine what kinds of wizards, cleric, sorcerers, etc are in my cities/towns/villages. If a player truly wanted to be a generalist wizard, I wouldn't have a problem with it and I would just discuss with them what the desired party strength and such are designed to be. I do have a few factions that don't follow this rule, and as such I will never limit my players strictly to the rule. You would certainly be allowed to play an archetypal bookworm wizard that seeks out any scrap of arcane knowledge, so long as it didn't upset the party balance or ruin another party members fun (which based on many of your previous posts, it would not).


I'll use this as the poster child for this comment: it sounds like a lot of your many, many house rules could be replaced with, "balance to the table" and "don't be a ****".
And most of the time, that's all it takes. This is specifically so that once I finish building my higher end computer, I can start running roll20 games and I'll be able to have solidly written houserules that people can see if, for no other reason, they can get a feel for what kind of DM i would be and decide whether they want to join the game or not.


Good thing I'm a 1,000 year old Necropolitan, whose 2,000 year old, NI level master made sure I knew absolutely everything before letting me out in the world.

... Why?

Like I said above, you can do that and it's fine, but you will have to deal with the ramifications of being undead.

As for why the armor reduction to clerics? Holy Warriors should be paladins, clerics should be clergymen, healers, and preachers. Simple as that. If a play so chooses, they can burn a feat or two to get their proficiencies back.


Nice things for muggles, sure. How many monsters take it?
not too many, if I'm being honest. If it makes sense for a monster to have it, they likely already have it. More NPCs take it, but again only if it fits thematically. I have a minor kingdom of well armed and armored lizardmen that train their light infantry in the ways of hit-and run warfare (which acrually reminds me of how I changed Dodge...) that use it pretty regularly. Otherwise, big cats already have it, dinosaurs already have it, most other creatures (like bears) it doesn't really make sense in my head, but maybe a legendary or dire bear might have picked it up as a bit of added challenge or "gee wiz" with the damage numbers.


Much like your skirmish change, I find this... interesting. Not sure if it's good or bad.

Is tripping really a big thing in your games? What about levitate? What about researching a custom flight spell without this limitation?

Poisons should be more versatile and useful than they are. They are either too potent or too weak and there isn't any way in-game really to change that. All I did was introduce a way to do such. As for the Scout, i just get irritated that they get such a cool class feature that they never really get to utilize to any sort of potential without a feat sink or a cleric dip. Just seems like a waste to me. As for tripping, it's just the one that has come up the most in my games and the one that i've made the most custom rulings on. Since levitate already has a mechanic for stability, it absolutely follows the same rules for being tripped. As for custom spell research, yes. I'm a big supporter of custom spell research as long as it's thoroughly discussed with the DM and it fits the power dynamic of the group and world. I will not, however, create custom spells without making the available to the players as well.


What about a level 200 Wizard who never took Epic Spellcasting? Is he still limited to caster level 20?

Why would you allow Dispel, Fireball, Disintegrate, Magic Missile, Greater Magic Weapon, etc, to continue uncapped?
I'm not sure why a wizard wouldn't take epic spellcasting, but i would be willing to work with them or grant them the feat for free (as a reward from a deity or for completing a major questline). I don't usually play epic levels so this is more of a gray area for me. As for dispel, I do cap it. Greater Dispel is uncapped. I uncap Fireball, disintigrate, magic missile, GMW, etc because there's no real mechanical reason to cap them. A level 20+ wizard should have a more powerful fireball than a level 11 wizard. a higher level wizard should be able to channel more arcane powers into their buffing and damage spells.


I mean, I'd suggest the much simpler "encourage people to self-balance and play to the group power level" rather than writing your own system. But, if it works for you, great.
I think I hit on my reason pretty well above, but these are in preparation for writing them out coherently and putting them on roll20 for others to read and decide if they want to join a game. I find it harder to ask people to "self-balance" online than in person, and that could be just my opninon.


While this is very true, Buff & Smash Clerics do tend to step on Paladins' toes rather harshly. Perhaps this is OP's way of making Clerics more "Divine Wizards" and not necessarily nerf their utility.

This, it's pretty much the reason. I didn't take the Medium Armor proficiency of Favored souls because they feel more like divine warriors and they need a little helping hand. Clerics can still be very powerful without heavy armor or shields.


This implies a specific type of fighter with a specific background.

I would parcel out these sort of skills into a background pack where every class that doesn't have inherent knowledge skills gets to choose one, so class knowledge skills are representative of how the character has lived.
When I DM, if something makes sense in a character's background I tend to grant them skills as class skills or bonus feats that help flesh that out. I do this evenly and fairly across all of my players. Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) and Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) seemed like the most likely knowledge skills for a fighter, one lending itself to identifying royalty, armies, and generals, the other helping to identify and use seige engines, find weak points in structures, and determine the origin of stuctures, all of which seem like something that a unit leader, general, or otherwise highly trained fighter would be capable of doing. In general though, I do try to be giving when it comes to knowledge skills.

EDIT:

So to make a poison with a DC 5 points higher than normal, I'd need to either make one DC X+15 Craft (poisonmaking) check or 3 DC X Craft (poisonmaking) checks. It seems a bit odd that the method you use to create a high-DC poison would so dramatically change how difficult it is.

It's a matter of time. One is easier but takes 3x as long. Risk vs reward.


The rules aren't too bad. I don't really play Druids myself, but I can see how that would be an issue for some. I agree that they should have a few exotic forms 'known' at the start of play, likely local to the region.

I don't much like the cleric change. if I were to go into a change like that, I would honestly base the cleric's armor and weapon proficiencies off their chosen deity, or give out bonus feats based on their deity. Similar to how the War domain gives you proficiency in your deities' favored weapon, if you follow a deity of war and battle, you get the armor proficiency feats. If you follow a deity of magic, maybe you get the Spell Penetration feats, or following a Nature deity gets you, I don't know, Track and Skill Focus for survival and Knowledge nature, that sort of thing. Don't dump them all on at first level of course, but it would make clerics of different deities more diverse.

Maybe the druid rulling is too strict? I'm not sure, but I do work with my players so as to not make it burdensome. Like I said above, my primary goal is for everyone to have fun. If these houserules start getting in the way of the fun, I'll find another way to balance things (if necessary). This is kind of my baseline thought process. As for the clerics, the only thing I can say is that clerics strike me more as clergymen/women, healers, and preachers, the ones that are devoted to the faith and weild the power of their deity in the form of magic. Paladins and Favored Souls are more like the crusaders and holy warriors of the deity, and as such their chassis focuses more on war and combat. If a player wants to play a holy warrior based around a cleric, I'll consider the prestige paladin class for them, in which case they would get heavy armor and shield proficiency from whatever class they take to qualify. For the deities that are more war-focused (Hextor, Heironeous, Grummsh, etc) it is not unlikely that the clerics would take a level of paladin or fighter.

[Blue Jay]

19 basically reads "The DM doesn't want you having specific nice things, but any monster he uses isn't limited by the same rules." Which, in lack of better terms, is bull****.

I strongly disagree. One of my biggest pet peeves as a DM is player hubris. In my mind, allowing PCs to match a monster with its own signature ability really just undermines the monster's legitimacy.

If a certain monster's entire shtick is being able to fly, then it ought to be better at flying than a PC who just happens to know a flying spell.

Taking it further, the creature that's best at being a dragon ought to be an actual dragon. If your dragonfire adept PC has a better breath weapon than an actual dragon, then the dragon just comes off as lame and pathetic; and dragons, as iconic as they are, should never come off as lame and pathetic.

And the Big Bad Evil Lich Lord really ought to have a much bigger and better undead army than Edgelord McNecrodouche the PC. Otherwise, what's the point of him?

-----

I think these house rules are fine, and I would play with them. But, I do agree with the sentiment others have expressed that house rules should be made with an eye toward streamlining the game.

If you don't want players to break Wild Shape, then it's probably best to just tell people not to break Wild Shape. Trying to "discourage" or "limit" it by introducing tedious extra hurdles is probably going to come off as passive-aggressive and dishonest.

One possible idea might be to let a druid learn Wild Shape forms the same way a sorcerer learns new spells. Like, give them a "forms known" progression of some kind, and maybe even create the equivalent of a "class spell list" with a range of different forms the druid can choose from. This would give you the power to regulate the ability, while also leaving creative control in the hands of the player, and avoiding tedious roleplay hurdles.

But, if your players like roleplaying the character's "off time," then your idea is quite reasonable. It will just depend on the group.

[Calthropstu]

So to make a poison with a DC 5 points higher than normal, I'd need to either make one DC X+15 Craft (poisonmaking) check or 3 DC X Craft (poisonmaking) checks. It seems a bit odd that the method you use to create a high-DC poison would so dramatically change how difficult it is.

Reread it. The 3x dc X attempts require 2x doses. You are basically combining 2 doses of poison into one making the whole thing more potent.

The crafting poison up dc is basically doing the same thing as you extract it. Poison extraction causes a lot of waste. A better skilled crafter can extract better quality with less contamination and less waste.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by AnimeTheCat
Similar to how Faerun has the Weave, I have created an intriquite network of leylines across my maps. There are lines for domains, schools, and elements (shock, fire, cold, acid, etc).

This sounds really cool, and very similar to something I’ve been thinking about for my own campaign world.

Could you share more detail about how your leylines work? I’d be really interested to know more about how you’ve implemented this, especially with the different schools and domains.

[eggynack]

13) Healers are charisma only casters, and can cast spontaneously from their full list of spells (as a Beguiler). Additionally, they gain lay on hands at level 1. This functions the same as a paladin.
This actually probably reduces the power of healers in its current form. Healers naturally have access to sanctified (and corrupt, technically) spells, and switching them to spontaneous removes that. Adding those to the base list straight up would resolve that problem.

[Selion]

4) you risk to actually nerf martial classes instead of buffing them. Fighters have a lot of bonus feats that allow them to easily qualify to the dire requirements of some feats. If two weapon fighting costs just one feat expect the cleric to qualify easily for it and make fighters and rangers even less unique.

I had an idea to nerf spell casters without breaking them:
Every full spellcaster must choose a school or a descriptor (eg fire) as specialization. Any other spells costs him two slots AND doubles the casting time (eg standard to full turn). An illusionist this way could cast fireball at the cost of two third level spells, and the spell would start the following turn, making it less appealing. The same would apply to an invocator wanting mirror images, summons would require two full rounds and so on.

I never tried this in game though

[AnimeTheCat]

This sounds really cool, and very similar to something I’ve been thinking about for my own campaign world.

Could you share more detail about how your leylines work? I’d be really interested to know more about how you’ve implemented this, especially with the different schools and domains.

Sure, so after I've made my world I basically take some confetti that includes 3-5 pieces of about 30 different colors and I shake it all over the map. then, I connect those pieces. The pieces are portals to other planes that feed the energy and magic to the material plane. Along the leylines, casters occasionally gain some benefit when casting spells aligned with that leyline. To see if it's a "good day" I roll percentiles against the distance from the nearest portal. At halfway between two portals there is a 25% chance of magical anomaly. so if I roll a 78 that means that there is a chance of a magical anomaly when casting spells associated with that leyline. If the individual is casting burning hands along or near a fire leyline or evocation leyline, they roll a spellcraft check, DC is equal to 10+spell level being cast (easy to control). If they succeed, they contain the power added from the leyline and gain a benefit. I usually go with either a free empower or add an extra damage dice for free. Spells that don't add damage dice might get extended duration, or empowered effects (+1 or +2 depending on the spell). Magic weapon cast along a Magic leyline or Transmutation leyline might grant +2 to attack and damage instead of +1, or last an extra minute or two. If the spellcraft check fails, nothing happens and the spell goes off as normal.

That brings me to intersections. Sometimes, the leylines intersect. At times they are symbiotic intersections, such as an intersection of fire and evocation or magic and transmutation. When these intersections occur, it can be overwhelmingly powerful and particularly learned and practiced wizards can control the power (or lucky young apprentices). If Both leylines roll and come up above the anomaly threshold, a spellcaster casting a spell along or near the intersection must succeed at a Spellcraft check equal to 20+(2xSpell Level) to contain the magic. If they are successful I will usually hand out a free extended spell metamagic, maximized spell metamagic, increase all damage dice by 1 step (1d6 becomes 1d8) or similar effects. If the spellcraft check if failed, there's some feedback, but the spell still goes off as normal. In the case of a damage spell like fireball or burning hands, the spellcaster takes 1 point of damage per damage dice to be dealt (so a level 10 wizard casting a fireball would take 10 points of fire damage from the backfire, 1 point per damage dice). If more than 2 lelylines intersect that are beneficial to each other, the DC increases to 30+(3xspell level), etc adding an additional 10 and multiple of the spell level to cast. As these succeed or fail, I continue to grant free metamagics and increases to the spells power and potentcy, and increase the backfire damage or, in severe cases (failure by 15 or more) the feedback is so great that it overloads the spellcasters senses and shocks the spellcaster's ability to cast spell for a time (not too long, no more than a few minutes for a first time failure, no more than an hour for a second time failure, and possibly for a day if the matter is pressed further). A restoration spell can return the ability for a number of minutes equal to the damage that would hav been healed (1d4+1).

If two leylines that don't support each other intersect, and they were rolled to cause an anomaly, the spellcaster must make a spellcraft check at the same DC or else their spells might have some diminished effect on failure (or function normally on success) such as a reverse of the empower metamagice efect (deal -50% damage) or drop 1 damage dice or duration is reduced by a round or two. This is only for leylines that oppose each other, such as Fire and Cold leylines. If either a fire or cold spell are cast, the spellcraft check must be made. If a shock spell were cast, there is no ill effect. Essentially, this check is to make sure you're drawing power from the appropriate leyline.

If you are simply casting a fire spell near an opposing leyline, there is no ill effect. As the caster, you're able to know better than to try and pull power from a clearly opposing leyline to power you spell and it's easier to differentiate those magical powers.

That's it in a nutshell. There are more nuances to it, but those are really an as you go sort of ad-lib addition and I welcome input from the players as to what they think would be cool. The portals also allow for easy travel to and from those planes, or even fast travel around the material plane if you know where you're going or what you're doing.

EDIT:

This actually probably reduces the power of healers in its current form. Healers naturally have access to sanctified (and corrupt, technically) spells, and switching them to spontaneous removes that. Adding those to the base list straight up would resolve that problem.

I actually don't have many players that want to use the sanctified spells, and if I did have a player that wanted to use them, I wouldn't be stingy with it. That applies across the board for all of the spontneous spellcasters though. Good catch though, I don't normally consier sanctified or vile spells.

EDIT 2:

4) you risk to actually nerf martial classes instead of buffing them. Fighters have a lot of bonus feats that allow them to easily qualify to the dire requirements of some feats. If two weapon fighting costs just one feat expect the cleric to qualify easily for it and make fighters and rangers even less unique.

I had an idea to nerf spell casters without breaking them:
Every full spellcaster must choose a school or a descriptor (eg fire) as specialization. Any other spells costs him two slots AND doubles the casting time (eg standard to full turn). An illusionist this way could cast fireball at the cost of two third level spells, and the spell would start the following turn, making it less appealing. The same would apply to an invocator wanting mirror images, summons would require two full rounds and so on.

I never tried this in game though

I don't know many fighters that stick around once they qualify for prestige classes, and I feel as though clerics being restricted in their armor selection really helps to pull them off of the front-line duty that would normally entice them to take the feat. Also, it allows other combat styles to be accessible even to the fighter. With the two weapon fighting feats changed in this way, you drop a 2 feat tax. Then you can more freely pick up something like improved shield bash and oversized two weapon fighting and be competent at two weapon fighting with a heavy shield and a longsword when in the past, that my not have been an option. I know Agile Shield Fighter is a feat, but whenever I read it I only see it granting you 1 extra attack, which never changes.

As for nerfing spellcasters, I understand that the spellcasting classes themselves are not the problem (except for druids being heavily loaded with a whole host of pretty awesome class features in addition to spells, and clerics only being 1/3 BAB off from being exactly like a fighter or paladin). So I changed those two specific things I thought were issues. The spells, on the other hand, are where the real problem kicks in, and I don't have a comprehensive list of my adjudications on spells. It does tend towards limiting some of the more potent spells like planar binding, but not the the point of being unusable, and usually with a caveat that any sort of looped servitude will absolutely incure the ire of something else. Even if it's just a lowly devil that isn't worth much, that's still a servant that you're stealing away from someone else. Again though, I don't have a comprehensive list of adjudiactions on specific spells.

[Elkad]

I like basically all of those.

I did something different for the Pounce problem, but I could live with that version.

My version is adding two more full-round combat actions. Just giving everyone Pounce (even if they have to spend a feat) makes everything tend towards chargers.

- Rapid Advance. Move up to your speed in a straight line and full attack (melee only) at the end.
Not doubled movement, no charge bonus/penalty, terrain limits apply as charging (can't Advance through difficult terrain, allies, etc).

- Position Shift. Move at half-speed with no restrictions, full attack at the end (not restricted to melee). Difficult terrain, tumbling, etc will further increase cost by standard stacking rules (triple cost for one of those, quad for both)

Note the second one fixes Skirmish, so they don't need your 10' step rule. But it's slow enough that perpetual kiting is difficult, and abilities like Greater Manyshot still have a purpose.



Oh, one more Charge change. The "nearest valid square" rule is silly and is removed. Still need a straight line, but if you have reach and want to move adjacent to your target anyway, that's fine. Or charge slightly farther to end up on one side of your target (either for positioning purposes, or to angle past a bit of difficult terrain).






I don't like that clerics lose armor proficiency. Buff & Smash clerics are solid, reliable, fun, and not particularly broken varieties of cleric and really don't need to be nerfed. It's cleric spells that cause problems, not their armor proficiency.
By making them spend feats (or spell slots, or cash, or a martial dip) on AC, you limit their giant buff stacks somewhat. They can still get it done, but they have to build for it, instead of just changing their spell loadout.
Minor nerf, but sound.



11) for druids is reasonable, but it's fiddly as hell, and vulnerable to the Circus Performer argument.
Instead I might go with something like. At each Druid level - including before you have access to wildshape - pick a "studied" form with HD=< your druid level. Re-choose a form every level or two, but must keep HD limit (so you could change your 2HD form to another 2HD form)

So a Druid would have to use lower HD forms to cover utility or an odd combat environment. Full power bear most of the time, but if he needs to get Earth Glide or Swim or something, he'd be less effective.

Simpler, but more powerful. You know a number of forms equal to your druid level. Rework the whole list every level if you want. You'd have a nice selection, but you probably couldn't turn into a zebra to infiltrate a herd.

Even simpler. Rework your whole list once a day when you prepare spells. If you needed the zebra, you could have it tomorrow.

No matter which one of those is in effect, might add a bonus form known of "whatever your current animal companion is". So if you were in the most restrictive one, you could spend a day releasing your tiger, taming a zebra, and then turn into a zebra.

[Quertus]

i disagree. fighters should (imo) have all the class skills to fit nearly any background of fighter, and if your fighter isnt that one, then you just dont put points into it. 0 points means you dont know it, whether its a class skill or not.

The Court Mage is archetypal in fantasy, yet it is not supported in 3e. Why don't Wizards have Diplomacy, Bluff, and Sense Motive as class skills, only taking ranks if it matches their background?

No, afaict, this list isn't Simulationist house rules. Afaict, they have been written with a Gamist mindset.

They're generally probably pretty decent as Gamist rules changes, for a particular table and optimization level. At my tables, with optimization levels across the spectrum, I prefer "play to the table balance range" and "don't be a ****".

Personally, I'd say that the OP has done a good job with this list. It's one if the most lists I've seen. However, some parts seem so fiddly - and it didn't address any of numerous exploits that I'm aware of - that I suspect that, if they gamed with my groups, this list would quickly bloat by an order of magnitude.

[AnimeTheCat]

Double Posting is bad, I know, but I want to try and catch some people that I missed earlier in the thread that deserve responses.


I don't like that clerics lose armor proficiency. Buff & Smash clerics are solid, reliable, fun, and not particularly broken varieties of cleric and really don't need to be nerfed. It's cleric spells that cause problems, not their armor proficiency.

If a buff and smash cleric is what a player wants, they have options. They can spend a feat or two on armor and shield proficiency or they can spend a level on a paladin or fighter level, or they can spend money on mithral medium armor. Alternatively, they could just play a Paladin and get similar effects.


I would play at your table.

More skills (half-orcs, fighters), less feat-intensive builds (TWF, ranger etc.), less MAD, easier availability of spontaneous-cast spells (paladin, favored soul), fighters with better options for skills and combat expertise without having to be MAD and have 13+ INT. All good things.

Heritage feats for sorcerers seem appropriate. A glass cannon incantatrix sorcerer has feat investment as one of the main caps on their power getting too out of control. But adding heritage feats adds flavor and role-playing possibilities without adding too many power multipliers. I assume you restrict the heritage feats to a single category (so a player can't choose celestial, dragon and elemental heritages) right?

The druid restriction on wildshape seems reasonable. You might want to make the same restriction on Summon Nature's ally, though. Otherwise I just summon a crocodile to study, in order to be able to wildshape as a crocodile. (I played a druid in a game with a similar familiarity/knowledge check restriction on wildshape and summoning, and it enabled the DM to keep my druid from being overpowered. But I still had fun. Our game was in a tropical climate so I had to use big cat wildshape forms, not knowing enough about colder climate bears, polar bears, dire bears to take or summon those forms.)

Heritage feats are definitely bound to whatever heritage is selected at level 1, although I don't know why you would ever NOT go with draconic heritage. You know, in all of my years I haven't once experienced anyone even try to play an incantatrix, let alone anyone who's gone overboard witht he caster level buffing. I'm not super concerned with it, but if it did become a problem in my game I would talk to the player and come to a consensus as to a balanced and fun point.

I usually just assume that whatever a druid can summon with summon natures ally they can wild shape into (assuming appropriate HD and size requirements). This is mostly to help stave off the more obscure things like dinosaurs (though I do have some wildlands that include dinosaurs that my players can easily go to) or other supernatural creatures. I haven't really had many problems, and the one player that I did run in to a problem with also had a few other problems with me on a personal level that needed to be sorted out. None the less, I am trying to put my line of thinking out there so that others (potential players) can get an early feel for how I run the game.


Clerics seem a bit too limited, especially cleric with regards to armor. If a cleric wants to be mostly blasty/buff/heal, that armor really helps. Though I can see limiting it for more optimized groups.
I feel like it might be a bit too much on wizards, too... maybe not because wizards aren't OP, but this feels annoying while not really preventing brokenness? I'm not quire sure, and don't have time to dwell on it to really parse out my feelings.

I also feel like the druid restriction is a bit much. It makes sense in-character, but it feels like it's just an arbitrary limitation. I can see saying "no <whatever that broken dinosaur is>". Maybe, to compensate, let them have X number of researched exotic forms from the start.
I do understanding limiting the druid in some way, but this way simply seems annoying. The player feels like having to justify things or waste resources to better use a class feature. The DM is annoyed enforcing such.

However, all in all, not bad rules, and I like how you help martials, paladins, and rangers. Seeing the multitude of houserules would probably make me a bit wary, though, so I'd recommend presenting them to potential players with a short preface. Probably something like you've had optimizers and folk kinda ruin the fun for everyone, so these are some methods to curb that as well as to help fighters and similar not feel underpowered compared to spellcasters. Knowing the spirit you are coming from would help me as a player.

As i told Quertus, If a wizard wants to be a generalist, I won't stop them, but I will make sure that the balance is maintained. Nearly all (solidly 90%) of the wizards in my world are some kind of specialist, but I also do that to flesh out what items are available in which cities and such. I include it because if they come from one of the locations that train wizards, they likely teach the character to specialize. As for specialization not granting any bonus, it feels dirty to me that a wizard should have better spell progression AND equal spells per day to a sorcerer, so that's just my opinion on balancing those two classes against each other a little bit.


So to make a poison with a DC 5 points higher than normal, I'd need to either make one DC X+15 Craft (poisonmaking) check or 3 DC X Craft (poisonmaking) checks. It seems a bit odd that the method you use to create a high-DC poison would so dramatically change how difficult it is.

so, the idea is that with the DC X+15 check, you're trying to create a concentrate in one go from limited resources. For instance, you only have enough wolfsbane to make one poison of werewolf bane, but you know that these werewolves are extra stout as they've resisted your poisons before. You don't have time to go out scrounging for more materials because you've already scoured all the shelves of the alchemists shops in the city and you're running out of time before the blood moon. You concoct the concentrated poison in one go extracting every last bit from the resources you have available, at the higher risk or ruining the whole batch. OR, you are right on the edge of the forest in a druid's lodge that has a plethora of all sorts of alchemical reagents and you're making as much preparations for the blood moon as you can, but you don't want to be wasteful. So you make up many doses of the poison at normal strength over the week and then slowly combine and distil them making few doses of stronger poison, but at a higher chance of success. Two ways to get to the same goal, each driven by time, materials, and circumstances.

[Telonius]

I like the rule on poison; sounds like you want it to play more of a part in the campaign. I did homebrew up a few poison rules, feats, and a PrC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?89314-3-5-Poison-Feats-and-PrC) ... (checked the datestamp on it; dear gods, 10 years ago. Get off my lawn). Hope it helps out.

[Troacctid]

I don't like some of these, but none of them is a dealbreaker or anything.

[AnimeTheCat]

I like basically all of those.

I did something different for the Pounce problem, but I could live with that version.

My version is adding two more full-round combat actions. Just giving everyone Pounce (even if they have to spend a feat) makes everything tend towards chargers.

- Rapid Advance. Move up to your speed in a straight line and full attack (melee only) at the end.
Not doubled movement, no charge bonus/penalty, terrain limits apply as charging (can't Advance through difficult terrain, allies, etc).

- Position Shift. Move at half-speed with no restrictions, full attack at the end (not restricted to melee). Difficult terrain, tumbling, etc will further increase cost by standard stacking rules (triple cost for one of those, quad for both)

Note the second one fixes Skirmish, so they don't need your 10' step rule. But it's slow enough that perpetual kiting is difficult, and abilities like Greater Manyshot still have a purpose.

Oh, one more Charge change. The "nearest valid square" rule is silly and is removed. Still need a straight line, but if you have reach and want to move adjacent to your target anyway, that's fine. Or charge slightly farther to end up on one side of your target (either for positioning purposes, or to angle past a bit of difficult terrain).

By making them spend feats (or spell slots, or cash, or a martial dip) on AC, you limit their giant buff stacks somewhat. They can still get it done, but they have to build for it, instead of just changing their spell loadout.
Minor nerf, but sound.

11) for druids is reasonable, but it's fiddly as hell, and vulnerable to the Circus Performer argument.
Instead I might go with something like. At each Druid level - including before you have access to wildshape - pick a "studied" form with HD=< your druid level. Re-choose a form every level or two, but must keep HD limit (so you could change your 2HD form to another 2HD form)

So a Druid would have to use lower HD forms to cover utility or an odd combat environment. Full power bear most of the time, but if he needs to get Earth Glide or Swim or something, he'd be less effective.

Simpler, but more powerful. You know a number of forms equal to your druid level. Rework the whole list every level if you want. You'd have a nice selection, but you probably couldn't turn into a zebra to infiltrate a herd.

Even simpler. Rework your whole list once a day when you prepare spells. If you needed the zebra, you could have it tomorrow.

No matter which one of those is in effect, might add a bonus form known of "whatever your current animal companion is". So if you were in the most restrictive one, you could spend a day releasing your tiger, taming a zebra, and then turn into a zebra.

I actually really am warming up to the idea of selecting a series of animals for the day that are eligible wild shape targets. That does seem far more elegant, and when combined with the other recommendations of allowing known animals based on level, it seems like a pretty good way to smoothe it out.

The movement feats seem pretty good too, and I may steal them (if I may).


The Court Mage is archetypal in fantasy, yet it is not supported in 3e. Why don't Wizards have Diplomacy, Bluff, and Sense Motive as class skills, only taking ranks if it matches their background?

No, afaict, this list isn't Simulationist house rules. Afaict, they have been written with a Gamist mindset.

They're generally probably pretty decent as Gamist rules changes, for a particular table and optimization level. At my tables, with optimization levels across the spectrum, I prefer "play to the table balance range" and "don't be a ****".

Personally, I'd say that the OP has done a good job with this list. It's one if the most lists I've seen. However, some parts seem so fiddly - and it didn't address any of numerous exploits that I'm aware of - that I suspect that, if they gamed with my groups, this list would quickly bloat by an order of magnitude.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Gamist", but that's probably because I'm just ignorant. could you explain?
As for the court wizard idea, if you wanted to play that I would be more than happy to let those be class skills for you, just like I would expand the list of knowledge skills for a Monk that wanted to be a bookworm or survival skills for a bard that is used to getting along in the forest (and didn't want to play a savage bard).

Like I've said before, gentleman's agreements are fantastic, but in groups that you've never played with before they can sometimes not work. Putting these concepts at the front of the conversation help to get everyone in the same mindset and on the same page. Also Like I've said before, the number 1 priority is that everyone is having fun. Even if there in an imbalance, if nobody's upset then there is no problem, and if everyon's having fun, then all is well.


I like the rule on poison; sounds like you want it to play more of a part in the campaign. I did homebrew up a few poison rules, feats, and a PrC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?89314-3-5-Poison-Feats-and-PrC) ... (checked the datestamp on it; dear gods, 10 years ago. Get off my lawn). Hope it helps out.

I'll take a look at those for sure. I'm not above stealing someone else's work (as long as I have permission). That's less work for me.

EDIT:

I don't like some of these, but none of them is a dealbreaker or anything.
Which ones don't you like? I assume the Druid and Wizard ones, but any of the others?

[King of Nowhere]

they all seem reasonable, some are much-needed buffs or nerfs. I'd have no problem with any of them. Of course I expect the DM to keep me straight in case I forget some

[Elkad]

I actually really am warming up to the idea of selecting a series of animals for the day that are eligible wild shape targets. That does seem far more elegant, and when combined with the other recommendations of allowing known animals based on level, it seems like a pretty good way to smoothe it out.

The movement feats seem pretty good too, and I may steal them (if I may).

If you think of Wildshape like preparing spells, it makes a lot of sense. You spend some of your devotional time prepping your mind and body to assume those forms rapidly. If you choose the daily option, I might even let them leave a slot open, just like an open spell slot, so they could spend 15 minutes and prepare that zebra form at need.


I tried a lot of different things with movement. Some were OP (full attack as a standard action made keeping the squishies alive impossible on both sides of the DMscreen). Some didn't go far enough. This has been a happy medium at my table.

Note they aren't feats at my table, just basic actions. I considered gating them behind BAB, and just threw it out in the interest of simplicity and giving love to low-level dual-wielders. If the 1st level rogue wants to Advance and stick the badguy with both shortswords, I'm fine with it. Just remember the Kobolds are going to do it to the Wizard too, unless someone stands in front of him.

[ngilop]

In regards to the wildshape cornundrum.


Might I suggest allowing a number of animals based on the number of ranks in knowledge: Nature as well as something like 3 to 5 bonus animals you get for a race/ culture?.


Maybe add in a feat that expands that to 1 or 2 'exotic' animals. I.E. desert animals if you live in a temperate mountain area or tropical animals if you live underground?

[Elkad]

In regards to the wildshape cornundrum.

Might I suggest allowing a number of animals based on the number of ranks in knowledge: Nature as well as something like 3 to 5 bonus animals you get for a race/ culture?.

Maybe add in a feat that expands that to 1 or 2 'exotic' animals. I.E. desert animals if you live in a temperate mountain area or tropical animals if you live underground?

The difference between that and "your druid level" is minimal. But if you stretch the idea a bit, I'd assume you'd need to pick up other Knowledge skills if you took alternate shifting feats (dungeoneering for aberration wildshape, arcana for dragons, planes for elementals, etc). Not completely terrible I guess.

[AnimeTheCat]

I like the rule on poison; sounds like you want it to play more of a part in the campaign. I did homebrew up a few poison rules, feats, and a PrC (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?89314-3-5-Poison-Feats-and-PrC) ... (checked the datestamp on it; dear gods, 10 years ago. Get off my lawn). Hope it helps out.

Preliminarily read through it, and I like it. Solid framework and, if I have your permission, I would love to use it.


they all seem reasonable, some are much-needed buffs or nerfs. I'd have no problem with any of them. Of course I expect the DM to keep me straight in case I forget some

Anything that you would change, add, or remove?


I tried a lot of different things with movement. Some were OP (full attack as a standard action made keeping the squishies alive impossible on both sides of the DMscreen). Some didn't go far enough. This has been a happy medium at my table.

Note they aren't feats at my table, just basic actions. I considered gating them behind BAB, and just threw it out in the interest of simplicity and giving love to low-level dual-wielders. If the 1st level rogue wants to Advance and stick the badguy with both shortswords, I'm fine with it. Just remember the Kobolds are going to do it to the Wizard too, unless someone stands in front of him.

Noted. I may think about that as an addition and just remove the pounce. I'm undecided. Maybe wrape all of that up into a tactical feat or something. Put it in Combat Expertise or something? I'm not sure. Thinking about it.


If you think of Wildshape like preparing spells, it makes a lot of sense. You spend some of your devotional time prepping your mind and body to assume those forms rapidly. If you choose the daily option, I might even let them leave a slot open, just like an open spell slot, so they could spend 15 minutes and prepare that zebra form at need.

In regards to the wildshape cornundrum.
Might I suggest allowing a number of animals based on the number of ranks in knowledge: Nature as well as something like 3 to 5 bonus animals you get for a race/ culture?.
Maybe add in a feat that expands that to 1 or 2 'exotic' animals. I.E. desert animals if you live in a temperate mountain area or tropical animals if you live underground?

The difference between that and "your druid level" is minimal. But if you stretch the idea a bit, I'd assume you'd need to pick up other Knowledge skills if you took alternate shifting feats (dungeoneering for aberration wildshape, arcana for dragons, planes for elementals, etc). Not completely terrible I guess.

I think this is what I'm going to do. I think that Druids naturally get access to all of the animals listed in the highest level Summon Nature's Ally spell that they can cast. On top of that, they also get to wildshape into the same creature that their animal companion is. Lastly, they add an additional animal who's HD are equal to or less than their druid level each time they gain a druid level. At the start of each day, the druid selects one animal per 3 druid levels to be "prepared" (1 at 3, 2 at 6, 3 at 9, 4 at 12, 5 at 15, 6 at 18). To combat how restrictive that is, the druid can change between each prepared animal during their wildshape duration, however each time reduces the wild shape duration by 1 hour. If changing shapes would end your wild shape, you can't change forms (i.e. if you only have 50 minutes left, you can't change forms). I'm stealing that idea from the Produce Flame spell, albeit changing it a little bit. I think that accomplishes what I want, limiting animals available to druids to not include every animal under the sun, but give enough variety that it doesn't kill the class feature or require any excessive work to use.

Does that unruffle some feathers for those that had comments about it earlier? I am looking for feedback and I appreciate the feedback that I've received thus far.

[Quertus]

@AnimeTheCat - I just read your reply, and I take back my previous post. While these rules look great from a Gamist perspective, they apparently weren't created with a strictly Gamist mindset.

I'd say that, after your responses, yes, I'd game with you online, if I were into that kind of thing.

I would recommend... Heck, I don't know what I'd recommend you do to encourage compatible players, while simultaneously discouraging incompatible players. I'll think about it.

Maybe open with a summary, like, "I have a big'ol list of house rules that I think gives character to my world, and also happens to address a number of balance issues." This communicated what your priorities are as a GM (although, clearly, "player fun" needs to be stated as prominently as it was in the OP).


I strongly disagree. One of my biggest pet peeves as a DM is player hubris. In my mind, allowing PCs to match a monster with its own signature ability really just undermines the monster's legitimacy.

If a certain monster's entire shtick is being able to fly, then it ought to be better at flying than a PC who just happens to know a flying spell.

Taking it further, the creature that's best at being a dragon ought to be an actual dragon. If your dragonfire adept PC has a better breath weapon than an actual dragon, then the dragon just comes off as lame and pathetic; and dragons, as iconic as they are, should never come off as lame and pathetic.

And the Big Bad Evil Lich Lord really ought to have a much bigger and better undead army than Edgelord McNecrodouche the PC. Otherwise, what's the point of him?

That's just... OK, cool monsters should be cool. But there's a whole lot of options other than "the PCs need to be cool at the monsters expense" and "the monsters need to be cool at the PCs expense".

If a monster's entire schtick is being able to fly, it probably isn't that cool. And there's lots of reasons to be a Lich other than to maximize the size is your undead army (especially since being a Lich dies nothing to benefit that).

Be a fan of the PCs. What's that lowly NPC got that this awesome PC can't do better?

[eggynack]

Without form adding feats, how many wild shape forms do you realistically need? Fleshraker for combat, desmodu for flight and defense, maybe something that can swim and something that can burrow, toss on that snake with fast healing if you're feeling frisky, and then the rest can mostly go to a couple of weird plant forms, maybe with a couple of combat form upgrades. I guess something tiny and flying for stealth, if you really want? You add dire tortoise at 15th, and you're done. This arrangement strikes me as, more than acceptable and in keeping with this daily limit, downright optimal. All this to say, I'm not sure this operates as a meaningful restriction so much as it is a minor inconvenience. It gets quite a bit more of an issue if you want dragon or aberration forms, but I'm not sure that's even the goal here, and those forms tend to replace the plant and animal forms instead of adding to them. If you can replace, then it's still not that big a downside, and if you can't, it just seems annoying.

Edit: If there's a limit on creatures per day, that's somewhat more restrictive, but honestly, how many forms do you really need? Bats are sweet. Keep a combat form in your back pocket and you're covering most things. Some of interesting plant forms have between adventure utility too.

[Troacctid]

Which ones don't you like? I assume the Druid and Wizard ones, but any of the others?
If you force all wizards to specialize for no benefit, then every wizard is a diviner.

Making pounce the only accessible way to move and full attack creates an unhealthy focus on charging and promotes homogeneity among martial builds.

The restrictions on flight are just kinda weird.

[Telonius]

Preliminarily read through it, and I like it. Solid framework and, if I have your permission, I would love to use it.


Glad you like it! Go on ahead.

[SLOTHRPG95]

1) Combat Expertise: No longer limited to +/-5, if character is weilding a shield the bonus to AC is doubled (similar to how bonus damage is doubled with a 2-handed weapon and power attack). There is no intellligence requirement for Combat Expertise.
...
4) Two Weapon Fighting is the only feat required in the two weapon fighting tree, the Improved et al versions don't do anything, the standard version grants an additional attack per iterative attack and an increasing penalty (just like the other versions). Rangers get dual strike (I think that's the feat name) when they would normally get their second combat style feat if they chose two weapon fighting, and two weapon rend after that (If they already have those feats, they may select any feat they qualify for from the list of fighter bonus feats, or that has Two Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite that they meet the requirements to take.).


These, I really like. They help encourage often-hated-upon (at least on this forum) fighting styles, and honestly there's something just iconic about a dwarf fighter wielding an axe (or hammer) and shield, or a ranger with two blades. My only question is: why not address Weapon Finesse? I feel like waiving it further helps in that vein of thinking, and it's definitely not going to be game-breaking.


2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.
...
12) Clerics only get light armor proficiency and do not get medium armor, heavy armor, or shield proficiency. If a cleric takes the cloistered cleric alternate class, they get no armor proficiency.

Given your explanation of clerics being clergy/preachers primarily, and not divine crusaders, the latter change makes total sense. However, it then seems like the logical thing to do would be to give them (and not just fighters) more skill points and/or more class skills.


3) Ninja Sudden Strike functions exactly as Sneak Attack, and can be used while flanking.

Yeah, the Ninja already suffers enough. The scout has an entirely different mechanic for Skirmish, but the Ninja just gets a lower-quality, off-brand Sneak Attack. Sudden Strike always seemed to me like something you'd give an NPC knockoff Rogue, not a PC class whose whole deal should be sneaking around and then dishing out tons of damage.


7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.

Okay, having read your explanation of how magic works in your campaign, this makes sense to me. This might push me away from playing a Wizard were I at your table, since I do like the archetype of the seeker of all magical lore (not just six schools' worth). With that said, I've toyed with mandatory specialization before in one form or another, and never had one of my players grumble.


10) Spells must still have an effective spell level of 9 or less before they can be effected by Divine Metamagic or similar effects. Metamagic reducers can be applied to get spells into this range, but essentially, if the spell level would be 10 or greater, Divine Metamagic can't be applied to it.

Now this seems weird to me. If you've had trouble with DMM abuse or metamagic reducer abuse, go the simple route and ban the one or the other. Full casters have enough goodies as-is (and are still my favorite to play), and don't really need free metamagic, nor do I think it generally adds anything. If, however, you do want to give your casters free metamagic, then this rule seems to be against that spirit.


15) Goblins gain Swarmfighting as a bonus feat at first level, even if they do no meet the prerequisistes.

This seems oddly specific compared to most of your other changes, especially most of your other feat changes. Care to explain the thought process behind this? For that matter, if you don't often/ever have players playing Goblins, why not give them an Ex ability similar to the feat w/o giving them the feat itself? Why Goblins, and not Kobolds (classic swarm-fighters themselves)? Etc.


16) Half-Orcs only have a -2 charisma penalty, they do not take the -2 intelligence penalty at character creation.

Fair enough. It's long been my opinion that none of the core playable races should have an Int penalty.


20) Caster Level can't exceed 1.5x the current caster level or 20 (whichever is lower). Once a spellcaster reaches level 21 and takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, they are limited only by the 1.5x caster level cap. Spells that scale with caster level are capped at this caster level unless they have an improved version at a higher spell level (such as dispel magic and Greater Dispel magic).

If (as you say) you rarely/never play into Epic levels, the latter part of this just seems redundant.

[Elkad]

Without form adding feats, how many wild shape forms do you realistically need? ...

I think part of it is by putting up a restriction, even a "meaningless one", you speed the game up. Because the player has to think about his choices ahead of time, instead of leafing through a stack of monster manuals trying to pick the perfect aberration for the situation (You have 40ish Aberrations in your handbook alone).

And the DM can still shop for a weakness in your list, at least at low-mid levels.

If you go with the harsh option and get 1 form (permanent, unretrainable) per wildshape level (so starting at 5th), plus your companion form, a 5th level druid is probably going to use his companion as his combat form, and take a flyer. Which means you can still "attack" him with swim or burrow or climb (with a tight space or severe wind so he can't fly) challenges. As he levels up, he has to juggle filling in missing forms with the need to upgrade his prior choices. Does he want a large flyer to carry a party member at 8th? Or the Brown Bear?

[Blue Jay]

That's just... OK, cool monsters should be cool. But there's a whole lot of options other than "the PCs need to be cool at the monsters expense" and "the monsters need to be cool at the PCs expense".

Oh, absolutely. But, I was writing in response to "If a monster can have X, then I should get to have X too." Maybe my examples were a bit too rigid and flippant, but I'm not saying that every monster should be better than the PCs at something. I'm just saying that the DM should have the right to design some monsters and some NPCs that have unusually potent abilities or that otherwise outclass the PCs in some way. "Being outclassed by a monster" should be one of the things that happens to a PC during the course of their adventuring career.

From the perspective of a DM, if I draw up an adventure arc about battling an evil necromancer with a huge and powerful undead army, I want that necromancer and his undead army to actually come off as huge and powerful and frightening and EVIL and whatnot. A player who comes into that game with a PC necromancer whose goal is to put together an even better undead army is just going to come off as a smart***.


Be a fan of the PCs. What's that lowly NPC got that this awesome PC can't do better?

The ability to win direct pissing contests is usually more integral to a monster's awesomeness than to a PCs. PC's can be awesome without out-dragonning the dragon; dragons really can't be awesome if they can't out-dragon the PCs.

[Calthropstu]

I'd like to propose a change to the wildshape restrictions.

Instead of "creatures you've researched" why not "creatures found in your current environment."

There's a reason you don't find rhinos in the desert or alligators in temperate forest. I am reminded of a joke actually...

What's the stupidest animal in a jungle? A polar bear.

[Fizban]

Eh, sure I'll bite.


1) Combat Expertise: No longer limited to +/-5, if character is weilding a shield the bonus to AC is doubled (similar to how bonus damage is doubled with a 2-handed weapon and power attack). There is no intellligence requirement for Combat Expertise.
No reason for weapon users to be intelligent is a shame, and doubling that AC bonus is gonna bite you if anyone actually makes serious use of it.

2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.
Yeah Sense Motive, that's what I was looking for. A rare skill that almost every mundane in other stories has, good for fighter.

3) Ninja Sudden Strike functions exactly as Sneak Attack, and can be used while flanking.
Acceptable, though I find the focus on "zomg flanking makes sneak attack always" annoying. I'd prefer more activation methods. Sneak attack doesn't have to be more than 1/round, but I can guess what I'll be objecting to further down.

4) Two Weapon Fighting is the only feat required in the two weapon fighting tree, the Improved et al versions don't do anything, the standard version grants an additional attack per iterative attack and an increasing penalty (just like the other versions). Rangers get dual strike (I think that's the feat name) when they would normally get their second combat style feat if they chose two weapon fighting, and two weapon rend after that (If they already have those feats, they may select any feat they qualify for from the list of fighter bonus feats, or that has Two Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite that they meet the requirements to take.).
Two weapon fighting isn't really a valid combat style so it doesn't need the boost as far as I'm concerned. Making it super cheap just further devalues shields any further punishes and rogue or ninja who dares not be a TWF flanker.

5) Paladins cast off of charisma alone, and are full-list spontaneous casters (similar to Beguiler).
6) Rangers are full-list spontaneous casters (like changed paladins and beguilers).
Might have some unforseen effects, but should generally be fine.

7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.
So non-specialized wizards (which were fine) are penalized, and focused specialist wizard (which are overpowered) are exactly the same, and also specialization can just be significantly offset with feats that can come out of your bonus feats. This is a classic example of trying to look like you're addressing a problem, while actually being afraid of making people mad, and thus being completely toothless about it. In fact, Lost Empires of Faerun already has feats that offset prohibited schools, with a cost of 1-3 feats. This just adds a fourth option which is more or less convenient depending on what you want.

8) Favored Souls are Charisma only casters.
9) Sorcerers get Heritage bonus feats at levels 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20.
FS is fine, but Heritage feats suck. Those have to have metamagic options at the least, and should also include the Extra Spell feat, which should also not have any limits on what level you can take.

10) Spells must still have an effective spell level of 9 or less before they can be effected by Divine Metamagic or similar effects. Metamagic reducers can be applied to get spells into this range, but essentially, if the spell level would be 10 or greater, Divine Metamagic can't be applied to it.
You need to actually address metamagic stacking, otherwise, this is once again a toothless limit. It prevents higher level persistent buffs (Divine Power, just say Divine Power) and possibly the maximizing of your higher level spells (the phrase "or similar effects" is impossibly vague), but metamagic reducers and how they stack are the bigger problem. If you have a problem with Divine Metamagic on certain metamagics, you can just not allow those combinations. If you have a problem with many sorts of free metamagic, you need a broad entry that isn't focused on this one specific version.

11) Druids must have either encountered or specifically researched the animals they are attempting to wildshape into. If a druid attempts to wildshape into an animal that they have not encountered they must succeed on a percentile check. The threshold to succeed is equal to 100-Druid Level-Knowledge(nature) skill. For example, a level 5 druid with an intelligenc score of 14 that is trying to wildshape into a crocodile that has never seen one would have to succeed on a percentile check with a threshold of 83, meaning that the druid must roll 83 or higher to succeed on changing shape. If they are unsuccessful, the wildshape attempt is lost. Researching an animal takes 1 day per HD of the target creature in some kind of infromation repository (library, druid circle, etc).
If you're going to track known animals, track known animals. Don't make up futzy rolls to let people maybe get out of it because they can't stand the idea of not having their favorite OP morph for no reason. You know where the character came from, you know what animals they can have reasonably seen (and what animals you are willing to allow), you know what they've seen in-game. If you absolutely must have some sort of mechanism for druids created at higher level to have weird animals, just give them a flat number of known forms (which can have a CR limit for each "slot", as they encountered the animals at different levels).

12) Clerics only get light armor proficiency and do not get medium armor, heavy armor, or shield proficiency. If a cleric takes the cloistered cleric alternate class, they get no armor proficiency.
Why not just remove cloistered cleric? Even if they pay the penalty in full, light armor is only one feat in return for a ton of stuff that's otherwise impossible to get. This is less of a cleric nerf and more of a cloistered cleric buff.

13) Healers are charisma only casters, and can cast spontaneously from their full list of spells (as a Beguiler). Additionally, they gain lay on hands at level 1. This functions the same as a paladin.
Eh, it's not terrible, but healers really need more and less. Making the healer a full list spontaneous caster makes it ridiculously hard to land any sort of, well, anything on the party. The only limitation on status removal is generally that you won't have the exact one you need prepared, take that away and you've got a bunch of extra rolling and spellcasting that all amounts to nothing in the end.

14) Pounce is a feat that any character can take, is a fighter bonus feat, and has prerequisites of 13 Dexterity and 13 Strength.
And that's where I just nope, full stop. Any game that thinks everyone needs pounce is a game that I'm not playing in.

But let's continue.

15) Goblins gain Swarmfighting as a bonus feat at first level, even if they do no meet the prerequisistes.
What is this for, exactly? Golbins aren't massively underpowered for characters- are you comparing them to the full spectrum of Kobold SLAs and free caster level faff? This also makes groups of goblins even more dangerous for low-level parties by buffing them.

16) Half-Orcs only have a -2 charisma penalty, they do not take the -2 intelligence penalty at character creation.
Barely worth noting it's so common.

17) The 6th level scout ability "Flawless Stride" allows a scout to make a 10 foot step in place of a 5 foot step, thereby allowing them to activate their Skirmish ability.
I would object to removing the entire main limiting factor of the class, but I allow mounted skirmishing. . . and yeah actually I will object, because you still need a special ability to full mounted attack with melee. And I'll bet you're expecting TWF scouts 10' stepping into skirmish.

18) Craft (Poisonmaking) can be used to concentrate or dilute poison, and can also be used to increase the DC of a poison when crafting it. To concentrate a poison two doses of the poison are needed and the character must succeed on a skill check with a DC equal to the craft DC of the poison. This produces a concentrate with that adds +5 to the save DC of the poison. Diluting a poison takes a single dose and creates 2 doses with a -5 save DC by succeeding on a DC 15 skill check. Increasing the save DC of a poison on creation requires the craft DC to be increased by 3 for every +1 to the save DC attempted to increse.
The poison system is already terrible for player use, and any attempts to extend or improve it are doomed to fail as far as I'm concerned. It needs a full rewrite if it's going to be a major thing. All this does is make the few poisons which are cheap and effective that much more cheap and effective, while leaving the more interesting expensive poisons completely useless.

19) Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall fro the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.
Sure, fine, but this is hardly a problem to begin with. I'll bet this is another laser targeted "ahhh wizard are always flying and we need to nerf it somehow" reaction. If you want to nerf magical flight then nerf magical flight. Better yet, use encounters where magical flight is not a prerequisite or massive advantage.

20) Caster Level can't exceed 1.5x the current caster level or 20 (whichever is lower). Once a spellcaster reaches level 21 and takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, they are limited only by the 1.5x caster level cap. Spells that scale with caster level are capped at this caster level unless they have an improved version at a higher spell level (such as dispel magic and Greater Dispel magic).
Bwahahahahaha, "only" 50% more than your actual cater level. If you've got casters boosting their level that much all the time, you've got bigger problems then any of the non-caster fixes listed here. Why not just get rid of the few problematic caster level boosts?

So what I'm seeing is less of moving towards a unified power level, and more moving towards the same set of homogeonized builds you always see brought out.

All melee characters should have easy access to pounce.
All bonus dice should be TWF and active as easily as possible.
Free metamagic and massive caster level boosts are poked at just enough to make it obvious they're expected without actually reducing their power.
Sorcerers get the usual backhanded freebie while wizards and clerics take their more powerful variants at no cost, and druids have a mechanic to "prevent" them from knowing every animal which still lets them know every animal.

If you really want to the first things, just do them. Go 5e full attacks where you can move before and after and in-between all your attacks, and make TWF just a thing everyone can (and then does) do- but don't be surprised when shields finish completely evaporating. And don't expect this to make much of a difference compared to casters that haven't actually been de-powered. Unless you're using a "harsh" rolling style (like oh, standard 25 point buy), the prerequisites on your pounce feat aren't going to keep persist-o-mancers from having it, and apparenl lack of limits on mailmen builds makes it obvious why you've decided that weapon users need to full attack with all bonus dice all the time.

This is a paradigm that apparently seems to work for plenty of tables, so if it works for you that's fine. I just don't see how, when it goes so much against the expected power and teamwork levels of the game (as coded into most monsters). And whenever I've read a campaign journal operating near this level, it quite clearly has the DM either performing a high-wire act to keep it all going (with PCs frequently curb-stopming or being stomped), or just throwing whatever and hoping for the best.

I will say though, good on you for actually making a big list of "house rules." Or as I think it would be more appropriately called, "list of tweaks required to make the massive amount of source material I'm willing to allow actually work together." I don't agree with most of them as either too much or not enough, but it's good that you're addressing it.

[Doctor Awkward]

7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.

I'd play one of three things:
-a Focused Specialist Illusionist that prestiges into Shadowcraft Mage.
-a Focused Specialist Conjurer that prestiges into Malconvoker.
-a gray elf with the Elven Generalist Wizard substitution from Races of the Wild, an ACF which replaces the ability to specialize in a school. Just to spite this rule.


19) Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall fro the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.


To which, I would say, "Alright. Then by extension such spells also qualify the caster to use Pectoral Fins of Maneuverability from the Draconomicon to increase their maneuverability, since they require you to have wings, which you get when you cast the spell. The wings of air druid spell would also serve to increase maneuverability as you now meet the wing requirement."

[AnimeTheCat]

I'm on mobile so the formatting could get real wonky real fast. Just bear with me and I'll fix it when I get to a real computer.


@AnimeTheCat - I just read your reply, and I take back my previous post. While these rules look great from a Gamist perspective, they apparently weren't created with a strictly Gamist mindset.

I'd say that, after your responses, yes, I'd game with you online, if I were into that kind of thing.

I would recommend... Heck, I don't know what I'd recommend you do to encourage compatible players, while simultaneously discouraging incompatible players. I'll think about it.

Maybe open with a summary, like, "I have a big'ol list of house rules that I think gives character to my world, and also happens to address a number of balance issues." This communicated what your priorities are as a GM (although, clearly, "player fun" needs to be stated as prominently as it was in the OP).

That's just... OK, cool monsters should be cool. But there's a whole lot of options other than "the PCs need to be cool at the monsters expense" and "the monsters need to be cool at the PCs expense".

If a monster's entire schtick is being able to fly, it probably isn't that cool. And there's lots of reasons to be a Lich other than to maximize the size is your undead army (especially since being a Lich dies nothing to benefit that).

Be a fan of the PCs. What's that lowly NPC got that this awesome PC can't do better?

I do need to work on the preamble and delivery, otherwise people will probably think just like you did and pass.

As for PC vs NPC, if it's an NPC warrior or an NPC monster with a handful of NPC class levels, there shouldn't be too much that they do (if anything) that the PCs cant do better. Rare exceptions being wholly unique ex and su abilities. If it's an Npc with PC class levels, they should be peers of an equally leveled PC. The diverse populations of the world surely produce many fantastic and unique people, and to think that the party is the tip top cream of the crop in everything I feel is misguided. Theres surely someone out there better at SOMETHING than your PCs, right? Or did I misunderstand your statement?


Without form adding feats, how many wild shape forms do you realistically need? Fleshraker for combat, desmodu for flight and defense, maybe something that can swim and something that can burrow, toss on that snake with fast healing if you're feeling frisky, and then the rest can mostly go to a couple of weird plant forms, maybe with a couple of combat form upgrades. I guess something tiny and flying for stealth, if you really want? You add dire tortoise at 15th, and you're done. This arrangement strikes me as, more than acceptable and in keeping with this daily limit, downright optimal. All this to say, I'm not sure this operates as a meaningful restriction so much as it is a minor inconvenience. It gets quite a bit more of an issue if you want dragon or aberration forms, but I'm not sure that's even the goal here, and those forms tend to replace the plant and animal forms instead of adding to them. If you can replace, then it's still not that big a downside, and if you can't, it just seems annoying.

Edit: If there's a limit on creatures per day, that's somewhat more restrictive, but honestly, how many forms do you really need? Bats are sweet. Keep a combat form in your back pocket and you're covering most things. Some of interesting plant forms have between adventure utility too.

I understand your point, I think, and Elkad did a pretty good job as to why I would make the decision I made. I'll be up front and go ahead and put it out there that I very much dislike how bloated magic and spellcasters are in the game, wild shape being no exception to that. If I can limit the amount of bloat to make things easier on me or my players in-game, that's a thing I like, even if it doesn't particularly have any meaningful gameplay ramifications.


If you force all wizards to specialize for no benefit, then every wizard is a diviner.

Making pounce the only accessible way to move and full attack creates an unhealthy focus on charging and promotes homogeneity among martial builds.

The restrictions on flight are just kinda weird.

I dont want to sound like Darth Ultron, but if the only reason someone is playing a wizard is to "win" or be the most strongest, I feel like they're missing the essence and character of the world. While yes, that is an option, you'll likely only find diviner specialists along the planning, divination, and similar leylines and maybe you'll come across legendary oracles at those intersections, but most wizards are not divination specialists, and favor other schools. I feel like someone who would only play a diviner specialist because of that houserule is missing the chance to dig in to some lore that I've put a lot of time and effort in to, and I would rather them just play a generalist, which I've said I'll work with them on as well.

Pounce isnt the only means of full attacking after a move, there are still the options of travel devotion with a cleric dip that already exists, and I'm considering the tactical movement ideas as well. I dont feel as though its promoting homogeneity when I'm also granting benefits to other classes and combat styles that dont include charging.


These, I really like. They help encourage often-hated-upon (at least on this forum) fighting styles, and honestly there's something just iconic about a dwarf fighter wielding an axe (or hammer) and shield, or a ranger with two blades. My only question is: why not address Weapon Finesse? I feel like waiving it further helps in that vein of thinking, and it's definitely not going to be game-breaking.

The only thing I would change about weapon finesse is to remove the +1 BAB requirement and not allow it to work with spiked chains. My rationale is that fighting with coordination and dexterity is a very specific fighting style that is not normally trained except in certain circumstances, in other words swashbucklers. Otherwise, most forms of melee combat focus on breaking through via brute force. I dont like how 5e made finesse a weapon attribute. I may end up granting it as a bonus feat for certain classes that should likely swing that way, but the again I've had a player play a barbarian/rogue that yelled sneak attack whenever they got to, and used a great sword. In that case, I wouldn't have given the feat. In game, I tend to give out the feats that are useless filler, but I dont stick to any criteria as a hard-fast rule.


Given your explanation of clerics being clergy/preachers primarily, and not divine crusaders, the latter change makes total sense. However, it then seems like the logical thing to do would be to give them (and not just fighters) more skill points and/or more class skills.

You're right, and I had overlooked that I do increase cleric skill points to 4+int as well, but I still reserve the all knowledge skills and 6+int points for cloistered clerics.


Yeah, the Ninja already suffers enough. The scout has an entirely different mechanic for Skirmish, but the Ninja just gets a lower-quality, off-brand Sneak Attack. Sudden Strike always seemed to me like something you'd give an NPC knockoff Rogue, not a PC class whose whole deal should be sneaking around and then dishing out tons of damage.

Yeah... when I was young on the forums I made a bit of a fool out of myself proposing how SS was just as good as SA. I learned how wrong I was quick.


Okay, having read your explanation of how magic works in your campaign, this makes sense to me. This might push me away from playing a Wizard were I at your table, since I do like the archetype of the seeker of all magical lore (not just six schools' worth). With that said, I've toyed with mandatory specialization before in one form or another, and never had one of my players grumble.

Now this seems weird to me. If you've had trouble with DMM abuse or metamagic reducer abuse, go the simple route and ban the one or the other. Full casters have enough goodies as-is (and are still my favorite to play), and don't really need free metamagic, nor do I think it generally adds anything. If, however, you do want to give your casters free metamagic, then this rule seems to be against that spirit.

maybe I'll go back an reassess this then.

As for the nerd, it's purely a DMM nerf. I dont mind metamagic reducers, those are actually relatively tame and if a player is trying to go wild, it's easier to rein in. With DMM, you cant reign it in without coming across as a jerk, especially mid-game. Since spell cant normally have a spell level above 9th, I rule that they cant even with DMM. It solves some buffcake cleric problems that I personally dislike without removing the entire use of the feat. You can still persist up to 5th level spells normally and if you want to persist more you can choose to do so by spending some of your build resources.


This seems oddly specific compared to most of your other changes, especially most of your other feat changes. Care to explain the thought process behind this? For that matter, if you don't often/ever have players playing Goblins, why not give them an Ex ability similar to the feat w/o giving them the feat itself? Why Goblins, and not Kobolds (classic swarm-fighters themselves)? Etc.

Kobolds got tons of love in web enhancements and in their very own splatbook Races of the Kobold. I only partially joke, but that book takes kobolds from low-level modular threat to overly potent mini death lizard.

Goblins didn't get such love, and I've always though of goblins as the kind of critters that would swarm you while kobolds preferred hit and run tactics to lead you in to traps.


Fair enough. It's long been my opinion that none of the core playable races should have an Int penalty.

If (as you say) you rarely/never play into Epic levels, the latter part of this just seems redundant.

If I wanted to exhort the effort, i would rebuild all of the races to have 20 levels. All of them. Every single one. And each time you gained a level, you gained some racial power. Humans get bonus feats and +1 to any ability score and +1 to any one skill, plus the existing +1 skill point per level. Elves get a blend of spellcraft and magic related bonuses, +2 to int and dex, and some occasional spell like abilities. Half orcs get physical skill bonuses, intimidate bonuses, strength bonuses, and weapons to hit and damage bonuses. Dwarves get con bonuses, craft bonuses, hp bonuses, resistance bonuses, etc. Halflings get dex, ranged to hit and damage, resistances, etc. They all follow the same trend, but there are no penalties, only benefits. This would open the door for a PC to play ogres, trolls, mindflayers, etc from level 1. That's just how I would do it if I were to overhaul the playable races.

I put that about epic levels up there primarily out of "fear". Its a relative unknown for me, so until I can wrap my head around it, I just standby with a limiter.


I think part of it is by putting up a restriction, even a "meaningless one", you speed the game up. Because the player has to think about his choices ahead of time, instead of leafing through a stack of monster manuals trying to pick the perfect aberration for the situation (You have 40ish Aberrations in your handbook alone).

And the DM can still shop for a weakness in your list, at least at low-mid levels.

If you go with the harsh option and get 1 form (permanent, unretrainable) per wildshape level (so starting at 5th), plus your companion form, a 5th level druid is probably going to use his companion as his combat form, and take a flyer. Which means you can still "attack" him with swim or burrow or climb (with a tight space or severe wind so he can't fly) challenges. As he levels up, he has to juggle filling in missing forms with the need to upgrade his prior choices. Does he want a large flyer to carry a party member at 8th? Or the Brown Bear?

More or less yeah, but I also included the animals from the SNA line. I dont really want to limit the players, but at the same time I do want to dial things back on the hottest burners so I and try to bring everything to a medium to medium high heat.


Oh, absolutely. But, I was writing in response to "If a monster can have X, then I should get to have X too." Maybe my examples were a bit too rigid and flippant, but I'm not saying that every monster should be better than the PCs at something. I'm just saying that the DM should have the right to design some monsters and some NPCs that have unusually potent abilities or that otherwise outclass the PCs in some way. "Being outclassed by a monster" should be one of the things that happens to a PC during the course of their adventuring career.

From the perspective of a DM, if I draw up an adventure arc about battling an evil necromancer with a huge and powerful undead army, I want that necromancer and his undead army to actually come off as huge and powerful and frightening and EVIL and whatnot. A player who comes into that game with a PC necromancer whose goal is to put together an even better undead army is just going to come off as a smart-ass.



The ability to win direct pissing contests is usually more integral to a monster's awesomeness than to a PCs. PC's can be awesome without out-dragonning the dragon; dragons really can't be awesome if they can't out-dragon the PCs.

I think the PCs beating a monster at it's own game is pretty cool to be honest, though I'm not sure how they can out-dragon a dragon. I do get the essence of what you're saying though I think. Fun fact, of the 75 monsters in MMI that can fly, only 22 of them have innate, magical, wingless flight (2 of which require their alternate forms) and of them, none have that as their sole schtick. So, i dont know that flight is going to be lorded over any of the PCs heads.

EDIT:

Eh, sure I'll bite.


No reason for weapon users to be intelligent is a shame, and doubling that AC bonus is gonna bite you if anyone actually makes serious use of it.

Yeah Sense Motive, that's what I was looking for. A rare skill that almost every mundane in other stories has, good for fighter.

Acceptable, though I find the focus on "zomg flanking makes sneak attack always" annoying. I'd prefer more activation methods. Sneak attack doesn't have to be more than 1/round, but I can guess what I'll be objecting to further down.

Two weapon fighting isn't really a valid combat style so it doesn't need the boost as far as I'm concerned. Making it super cheap just further devalues shields any further punishes and rogue or ninja who dares not be a TWF flanker.

Might have some unforseen effects, but should generally be fine.

So non-specialized wizards (which were fine) are penalized, and focused specialist wizard (which are overpowered) are exactly the same, and also specialization can just be significantly offset with feats that can come out of your bonus feats. This is a classic example of trying to look like you're addressing a problem, while actually being afraid of making people mad, and thus being completely toothless about it. In fact, Lost Empires of Faerun already has feats that offset prohibited schools, with a cost of 1-3 feats. This just adds a fourth option which is more or less convenient depending on what you want.

FS is fine, but Heritage feats suck. Those have to have metamagic options at the least, and should also include the Extra Spell feat, which should also not have any limits on what level you can take.

You need to actually address metamagic stacking, otherwise, this is once again a toothless limit. It prevents higher level persistent buffs (Divine Power, just say Divine Power) and possibly the maximizing of your higher level spells (the phrase "or similar effects" is impossibly vague), but metamagic reducers and how they stack are the bigger problem. If you have a problem with Divine Metamagic on certain metamagics, you can just not allow those combinations. If you have a problem with many sorts of free metamagic, you need a broad entry that isn't focused on this one specific version.

If you're going to track known animals, track known animals. Don't make up futzy rolls to let people maybe get out of it because they can't stand the idea of not having their favorite OP morph for no reason. You know where the character came from, you know what animals they can have reasonably seen (and what animals you are willing to allow), you know what they've seen in-game. If you absolutely must have some sort of mechanism for druids created at higher level to have weird animals, just give them a flat number of known forms (which can have a CR limit for each "slot", as they encountered the animals at different levels).

Why not just remove cloistered cleric? Even if they pay the penalty in full, light armor is only one feat in return for a ton of stuff that's otherwise impossible to get. This is less of a cleric nerf and more of a cloistered cleric buff.

Eh, it's not terrible, but healers really need more and less. Making the healer a full list spontaneous caster makes it ridiculously hard to land any sort of, well, anything on the party. The only limitation on status removal is generally that you won't have the exact one you need prepared, take that away and you've got a bunch of extra rolling and spellcasting that all amounts to nothing in the end.

And that's where I just nope, full stop. Any game that thinks everyone needs pounce is a game that I'm not playing in.

But let's continue.

What is this for, exactly? Golbins aren't massively underpowered for characters- are you comparing them to the full spectrum of Kobold SLAs and free caster level faff? This also makes groups of goblins even more dangerous for low-level parties by buffing them.

Barely worth noting it's so common.

I would object to removing the entire main limiting factor of the class, but I allow mounted skirmishing. . . and yeah actually I will object, because you still need a special ability to full mounted attack with melee. And I'll bet you're expecting TWF scouts 10' stepping into skirmish.

The poison system is already terrible for player use, and any attempts to extend or improve it are doomed to fail as far as I'm concerned. It needs a full rewrite if it's going to be a major thing. All this does is make the few poisons which are cheap and effective that much more cheap and effective, while leaving the more interesting expensive poisons completely useless.

Sure, fine, but this is hardly a problem to begin with. I'll bet this is another laser targeted "ahhh wizard are always flying and we need to nerf it somehow" reaction. If you want to nerf magical flight then nerf magical flight. Better yet, use encounters where magical flight is not a prerequisite or massive advantage.

Bwahahahahaha, "only" 50% more than your actual cater level. If you've got casters boosting their level that much all the time, you've got bigger problems then any of the non-caster fixes listed here. Why not just get rid of the few problematic caster level boosts?

So what I'm seeing is less of moving towards a unified power level, and more moving towards the same set of homogeonized builds you always see brought out.

All melee characters should have easy access to pounce.
All bonus dice should be TWF and active as easily as possible.
Free metamagic and massive caster level boosts are poked at just enough to make it obvious they're expected without actually reducing their power.
Sorcerers get the usual backhanded freebie while wizards and clerics take their more powerful variants at no cost, and druids have a mechanic to "prevent" them from knowing every animal which still lets them know every animal.

If you really want to the first things, just do them. Go 5e full attacks where you can move before and after and in-between all your attacks, and make TWF just a thing everyone can (and then does) do- but don't be surprised when shields finish completely evaporating. And don't expect this to make much of a difference compared to casters that haven't actually been de-powered. Unless you're using a "harsh" rolling style (like oh, standard 25 point buy), the prerequisites on your pounce feat aren't going to keep persist-o-mancers from having it, and apparenl lack of limits on mailmen builds makes it obvious why you've decided that weapon users need to full attack with all bonus dice all the time.

This is a paradigm that apparently seems to work for plenty of tables, so if it works for you that's fine. I just don't see how, when it goes so much against the expected power and teamwork levels of the game (as coded into most monsters). And whenever I've read a campaign journal operating near this level, it quite clearly has the DM either performing a high-wire act to keep it all going (with PCs frequently curb-stopming or being stomped), or just throwing whatever and hoping for the best.

I will say though, good on you for actually making a big list of "house rules." Or as I think it would be more appropriately called, "list of tweaks required to make the massive amount of source material I'm willing to allow actually work together." I don't agree with most of them as either too much or not enough, but it's good that you're addressing it.
A lot to unpack there, and I will when I'm no longer on my phone.


I'd play one of three things:
-a Focused Specialist Illusionist that prestiges into Shadowcraft Mage.
-a Focused Specialist Conjurer that prestiges into Malconvoker.
-a gray elf with the Elven Generalist Wizard substitution from Races of the Wild, an ACF which replaces the ability to specialize in a school. Just to spite this rule.

To which, I would say, "Alright. Then by extension such spells also qualify the caster to use Pectoral Fins of Maneuverability from the Draconomicon to increase their maneuverability, since they require you to have wings, which you get when you cast the spell. The wings of air druid spell would also serve to increase maneuverability as you now meet the wing requirement."

Spiteful... interesting. Contemplating potential changes that more acutely accomplish my goal.

As for flight, go for it i guess. Near as I can tell, those arent in any way game breaking, so neat.

[Troacctid]

I dont want to sound like Darth Ultron, but if the only reason someone is playing a wizard is to "win" or be the most strongest, I feel like they're missing the essence and character of the world. While yes, that is an option, you'll likely only find diviner specialists along the planning, divination, and similar leylines and maybe you'll come across legendary oracles at those intersections, but most wizards are not divination specialists, and favor other schools. I feel like someone who would only play a diviner specialist because of that houserule is missing the chance to dig in to some lore that I've put a lot of time and effort in to, and I would rather them just play a generalist, which I've said I'll work with them on as well.
Thing is, though, every specialist school is exactly identical under your houserule except that divination bans one school and all the others ban two. In the absence of any other mechanics to distinguish them, the only question is whether you want to ban one school or two. Why not use the UA variants to replace the bonus spells instead? They do a great job of distinguishing different specialists from one another, and are more flavorful than bonus spells.

[AnimeTheCat]

Thing is, though, every specialist school is exactly identical under your houserule except that divination bans one school and all the others ban two. In the absence of any other mechanics to distinguish them, the only question is whether you want to ban one school or two. Why not use the UA variants to replace the bonus spells instead? They do a great job of distinguishing different specialists from one another, and are more flavorful than bonus spells.

I do need to think a bit more about this then because you're bringing up good points.

[Doctor Awkward]

Spiteful... interesting. Contemplating potential changes that more acutely accomplish my goal.

As for flight, go for it i guess. Near as I can tell, those arent in any way game breaking, so neat.

In general, specialist wizards are more powerful than generalists simply because they get more spells per day.

This is especially true when you are in a situation where you can replicate entire schools of magic that you have banned.

Focused specialist wizards have the same number of casts per day as sorcerers, obviating the class entirely.

This houserule makes wizards more powerful overall, not less.

[Cosi]

2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.

I don't think the Fighter is alone in having too restrictive a list of class skills. I would probably make a list of Backgrounds that granted several class skills and let everyone pick one. Bumping up the Fighter's skill points is fine.


4) Two Weapon Fighting is the only feat required in the two weapon fighting tree, the Improved et al versions don't do anything, the standard version grants an additional attack per iterative attack and an increasing penalty (just like the other versions). Rangers get dual strike (I think that's the feat name) when they would normally get their second combat style feat if they chose two weapon fighting, and two weapon rend after that (If they already have those feats, they may select any feat they qualify for from the list of fighter bonus feats, or that has Two Weapon Fighting as a prerequisite that they meet the requirements to take.).

Good change. Is there a reason you aren't doing something similar with other feat chains?


5) Paladins cast off of charisma alone, and are full-list spontaneous casters (similar to Beguiler).
6) Rangers are full-list spontaneous casters (like changed paladins and beguilers).

How do you intend this to interact with Sword of the Arcane Order?


7) Wizards must specialize, but this initial specialization grants no benefit it only limits the schools a wizard may learn spells from. Taking focused specialist grants all of the benefits of specialist and focused specialist, for the cost of an additional school being restricted. Additional schools may be learned through a feat, but a wizard may only learn spells from those schools as if they were a wizard of half their level. Feat has a prerequisiste of Wizard level 5 and may be taken as a wizard bonus feat. Classes that progress wizard spellcasting progress effective wizard level for qualifying for the feat. Other classes that grant arcane spellcasting do not qualify for advancing effective wizard level.

I feel like this means everyone plays either a Diviner (as noted), or goes all the way to Focused Specialist. Pushing Wizards towards Focused Specialist also kind of makes Sorcerers sad because they lose their spell slot advantage and still have their disadvantages (heritage feats help a bit though). I also don't think it's that big of a power hit. Until a fairly high level of optimization, you aren't really drawing on all the schools to begin with.


10) Spells must still have an effective spell level of 9 or less before they can be effected by Divine Metamagic or similar effects. Metamagic reducers can be applied to get spells into this range, but essentially, if the spell level would be 10 or greater, Divine Metamagic can't be applied to it.

The hard cap at 9th level causes some strange effects. It means Clerics stop scaling their "permanent" buffs at 5th level, which is weird. I think it might be cleaner to cap things by the highest level of spell you can cast, and reduce some metamagic costs.


20) Caster Level can't exceed 1.5x the current caster level or 20 (whichever is lower). Once a spellcaster reaches level 21 and takes the Epic Spellcasting feat, they are limited only by the 1.5x caster level cap. Spells that scale with caster level are capped at this caster level unless they have an improved version at a higher spell level (such as dispel magic and Greater Dispel magic).

This is another effect that is weirdly more restrictive at high levels than it is at low levels. An 8th level Cleric can get a bigger CL bonus than a 18th level one, even if his net CL will be lower. Is there a reason you have a hard line at 20?

[eggynack]

I do need to think a bit more about this then because you're bringing up good points.
It seems like a pretty straightforward problem to solve. Wizards just have to ban two schools. That's the neutral state, and is equivalent to the current generalist. From that point, you can have some notion of specialization that grants spells in exchange for banning another school. If you'd like to not limit access to stuff like abrupt jaunt, you can just put forth the rule that all choices that depend on specialization have to be consistent. So, if you make a choice that's reliant on being specialized in conjuration, then you can't later make a choice based on specialization in transmutation or whatever.


Alternatively, you could literally just make divination not special for the purposes of specialization.

[Torpin]

no, thats too outside a fighters wheel house, go swashbuckler or paladin if you want this stuff.
2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.
no more bonus feats that a wizard, which bonus feats are what bring wizards in line with sorcerers
9) Sorcerers get Heritage bonus feats at levels 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20.
no, clerics live and die by their armor, they dont have the ability to gain mage armor and shield like their arcane counter parts and then become way to squishing having somewhere between 10-15 less ac than they should
12) Clerics only get light armor proficiency and do not get medium armor, heavy armor, or shield proficiency. If a cleric takes the cloistered cleric alternate class, they get no armor proficiency.

no, every race that isnt a la that gets a plus to str loses 2 other stats because of damage usually being the end all in games.
16) Half-Orcs only have a -2 charisma penalty, they do not take the -2 intelligence penalty at character creation.
absolutely not, its magical flight, not functionally invisible flight
19) Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall fro the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.

[RoboEmperor]

I don't like some of these, but none of them is a dealbreaker or anything.

Agreed although with different reasons. Nothing on the list stops my shtick so I would play but I will be wary of you springing a new house rule on me mid-session. Knowing you from your other posts from other threads however, I doubt that this will be a problem.

[Elkad]

... I will be wary of you springing a new house rule on me mid-session...

Dunno about his table, but my houserules don't change mid-game unless something completely breaks - in which case I likely have player consensus for it.

Which means I have a couple versions of houserules. Whatever is currently in effect, and my "next campaign" document, which might take years to go into effect with our sporadic play schedule.

[Ashtagon]

My preferred druid wild shape fix:

Any given animal form is either prepped, known, or unknown.

An unknown animal form cannot be wildshaped into.

A known animal form is one that the druid has ever met and studied. This normally requires an hour of observation. It takes a full minute (ten rounds) to wild shape into a known animal form. There is no real limit to the number of known animal forms, beyond role-play, backstory and what is met during the campaign.

A druid can have a maximum of three forms "prepped". It takes a single round to wild shape into a prepped animal form. Druids will normally choose their prepped animal forms at the start of each day at the same time they meditate to refresh their spells. They can freely swap out prepped animal forms from among their known animal forms each day.

----

The above combo effectively means that any form that isn't prepped is effectively not going to be used in combat, which avoids the last-minute book-flipping, while still allowing utility forms to be selected outside of time-critical situations.

[Pleh]

Short on time, but I'd say if Druids have to research their animals, they should have a Beastiary like a Wizard's spellbook and they should start play with 3 or 4 already in their book.

[Doctor Awkward]

Short on time, but I'd say if Druids have to research their animals, they should have a Beastiary like a Wizard's spellbook and they should start play with 3 or 4 already in their book.

This. With additional forms added automatically as the druid levels up.

I would also greatly simplify the process to get new forms.

When attempting to Wildshape into a form that isn't on their list, first make it a knowledge check as though identifying the creature (DC 10 + creature's HD). If they fail, they cannot try again for that creature until they get a new rank in that knowledge. If they succeed they can make the wildshape attempt, which is a character level check against a DC equal to the HD of the desired creature. Every 5 they beat the knowledge check by adds a +1 to this check.

If they succeed, they add the form to their "shape book", if they fail it still uses a wildshape attempt and they cannot try again for 24 hours.

[Quertus]

From the perspective of a DM, if I draw up an adventure arc about battling an evil necromancer with a huge and powerful undead army, I want that necromancer and his undead army to actually come off as huge and powerful and frightening and EVIL and whatnot. A player who comes into that game with a PC necromancer whose goal is to put together an even better undead army is just going to come off as a smart***.

Here we disagree. "My goal is to be richer than Bill Gates / The King / whatever" is a perfectly valid character goal. Seeing the necromancer's army as a desirable metric to beat actually makes the NPC necromancer seem cool, and make the PC seem cool when he achieves his goal of exceeding said necromancer's army.

Not that I'm into undead armies or anything. :smallredface:

(also, in the "why the **** would you be a Lich" thread, "to have the biggest undead army" is, IIRC, a stance posited by noone)


My preferred druid wild shape fix:

Any given animal form is either prepped, known, or unknown.

An unknown animal form cannot be wildshaped into.

A known animal form is one that the druid has ever met and studied. This normally requires an hour of observation. It takes a full minute (ten rounds) to wild shape into a known animal form. There is no real limit to the number of known animal forms, beyond role-play, backstory and what is met during the campaign.

A druid can have a maximum of three forms "prepped". It takes a single round to wild shape into a prepped animal form. Druids will normally choose their prepped animal forms at the start of each day at the same time they meditate to refresh their spells. They can freely swap out prepped animal forms from among their known animal forms each day.

----

The above combo effectively means that any form that isn't prepped is effectively not going to be used in combat, which avoids the last-minute book-flipping, while still allowing utility forms to be selected outside of time-critical situations.


Short on time, but I'd say if Druids have to research their animals, they should have a Beastiary like a Wizard's spellbook and they should start play with 3 or 4 already in their book.

So, why does this change to the rules exist? (and I try to define "Gamist" and "Simulationist" by example)

If it's because it helps balance the game, then it's a Gamist reason. But, if you limit the Druid to just a few forms, our resident Druid expert says that this in no way really limits the Druid's maximum power. I'll go further, and say that it actually encourages the Druid player to optimize their forms, and thereby increases the expected Druidic power level.

If it's because it helps make the game run more smoothly - ie, requiring the player to have just a few forms planned out, looked up, statted out, etc - then it's a Gamist reason. And I think that this house rule will... mildly help?

If it's because it just feels wonky to let Druids arbitrarily change into creatures that they've never seen, then it's a Simulationist reason. However... if it's a matter of Knowledge, then, it seem to me that the Druid should be able to change into any animal form that they can make a successful Knowledge check about.

Now, I like the idea of combining that last one with some upper limit of forms, like what the quoted posters have suggested. My idea would have been something like "Number of Prepared Forms = 1 + (1 per 5 Ranks in appropriate Knowledge skill)", and to then add feats to increase this number, plus a feat to allow the Druid to spontaneously add a form to their "Prepared" forms 1/day . Otherwise, they can change into any creature that they can make a Knowledge check about... eventually. With preparation. Or instantly, by consuming a bit of the flesh of the creature to be changed into. Or instantly, by invoking the appropriate Entity (Bast, the Cat God, would work to change into a house cat, for example, whereas most invocations would be made to something more akin to Okkoto, I'd imagine) with the appropriate invocation (whether they are just happy to be called, or demand a sacrifice, or ride with the invoker in the form, or some combination of these), perhaps with a chance of failure or side-effects (perhaps depending on who/what they invoke).

Yeah, I don't make simple house-rules. :smallredface:

Anyway, my point is, since this is 3e, what a character knows is largely controlled by Knowledge skills. Not my preference, tbh, but, if we're playing 3e, I advise letting Knowlege skills resolve the question of "does the character know enough to turn into...".

[AnimeTheCat]

Eh, sure I'll bite.

No reason for weapon users to be intelligent is a shame, and doubling that AC bonus is gonna bite you if anyone actually makes serious use of it.
This particular houserule I've playtested as both a player and a DM and even used against my party. The most prominent reason I don't think it will become a problem is the same reason that weapon&shield fighter/warriors/etc aren't a threat in the first place, they just aren't threatening. the paltry 1d8+str damage they do (or lackluster +xd6 they get from other sources) still isn't any more of a priority or threat if their AC is 1-10 points higher. Further, skills are always a reason for weapon users to be intelligent, lest they get the big dumb fighter lable.


Yeah Sense Motive, that's what I was looking for. A rare skill that almost every mundane in other stories has, good for fighter.
I genuinely can't tell if you're being serious or not, but I regularly take and use sense motive on most of my characters. Nobody likes being hoodwinked, and when i responeded to someone else I explained my thouht process.


Acceptable, though I find the focus on "zomg flanking makes sneak attack always" annoying. I'd prefer more activation methods. Sneak attack doesn't have to be more than 1/round, but I can guess what I'll be objecting to further down.
I did this mostly to give the ghost step ability more versatility in other fields as oppposed to basically being used only to proc sudden strike. What I realized is that this probably won't happen at most other tables, but at my current tables this is the outcome that I've experienced. I felt as though it opened up the class to use its features for more than just combat.


Two weapon fighting isn't really a valid combat style so it doesn't need the boost as far as I'm concerned. Making it super cheap just further devalues shields any further punishes and rogue or ninja who dares not be a TWF flanker.
I'm sad that you feel it's not a valid combat style. Is it because it fails to bypass DR regularly or what? I don't think it devalues shields at all, as I explained in another post that removing the additional 2 feat tax for improved and greater TWF opens up a fighter or other character to take many of the other two weapon fighting feats such as dual strike, oversized two weapon fighting, etc. In my previous example, a sword and shield fighter can spend one of those feats on improved shield bash, pick up a light shield, and get full attacks with both sword and shield, increasing the shield's value. If the fighter sticks with it and gets a piercing one handed weapon and a spiked shield, they could also pick up melee weapoon mastery (Piercing) and get further bonus damage. I don't think that reducing investment devalues anything, so I can't really understand your reasoning. Could you maybe try to explain a little more?


Might have some unforseen effects, but should generally be fine.

So non-specialized wizards (which were fine) are penalized, and focused specialist wizard (which are overpowered) are exactly the same, and also specialization can just be significantly offset with feats that can come out of your bonus feats. This is a classic example of trying to look like you're addressing a problem, while actually being afraid of making people mad, and thus being completely toothless about it. In fact, Lost Empires of Faerun already has feats that offset prohibited schools, with a cost of 1-3 feats. This just adds a fourth option which is more or less convenient depending on what you want.
Yeah, I'm going to be coming up with another way to encourage wizards to specialize, and since I already have a diagram showing opposed schools i may have specialization only cost one school, then give options select a second one for the normal specialization benefits, and a third for focused specialist benefits, but one school being a mandatory ban without special exception because (as I've said many times) I just want my players to have fun above any of these changes.


FS is fine, but Heritage feats suck. Those have to have metamagic options at the least, and should also include the Extra Spell feat, which should also not have any limits on what level you can take.
captial. I had forgotten about some other changes that I wanted to make with sorcerers that included adding the metamagic feats as bonus feats at different points from heritage feats, and about spontaneous spellcasting and metamagic in general. I dislike how it takes more effort, so I want to change that, but I am going to give it more thought before I push something out there as an idea. Youre right though, just heritage feats isn't enough, I included them because they're fun and should be rolled in to the class in the first place. There are more of them than you could ever hope to take on a character, but they aren't really worth feats. This actually gives them use and play time which is a good thing.


You need to actually address metamagic stacking, otherwise, this is once again a toothless limit. It prevents higher level persistent buffs (Divine Power, just say Divine Power) and possibly the maximizing of your higher level spells (the phrase "or similar effects" is impossibly vague), but metamagic reducers and how they stack are the bigger problem. If you have a problem with Divine Metamagic on certain metamagics, you can just not allow those combinations. If you have a problem with many sorts of free metamagic, you need a broad entry that isn't focused on this one specific version.
I haven't had a problem with metamagic stacking, reducers, or free metamagics. What I have had an issue with is stacking 50+ turn undead attempts and then persisting immense numbers of buffs, including higher level effects. I will agree though, this doesn't really fix the probem, however I think the armor on the cleric does fix the problem because it makes it far less appealing to buff up and enter melee combat without that added layer of protection, or it makes the character more MAD by trying to raise Dex high enough to be worthwhile in light armor.


If you're going to track known animals, track known animals. Don't make up futzy rolls to let people maybe get out of it because they can't stand the idea of not having their favorite OP morph for no reason. You know where the character came from, you know what animals they can have reasonably seen (and what animals you are willing to allow), you know what they've seen in-game. If you absolutely must have some sort of mechanism for druids created at higher level to have weird animals, just give them a flat number of known forms (which can have a CR limit for each "slot", as they encountered the animals at different levels).
Did you see the idea that I came up with using Elkad's and Ngilop's suggestions? I think it is more elegant and much more aligned with "Just say you track animal forms".


Why not just remove cloistered cleric? Even if they pay the penalty in full, light armor is only one feat in return for a ton of stuff that's otherwise impossible to get. This is less of a cleric nerf and more of a cloistered cleric buff.[/QUOTE
It is just a straight up nerf to both though. It drops clerics down to light armor only and removes the light armor proficiency for cloistered clerics. Later on I did forget to add that clerics do get 4+int skill points, but no changes to class skills, and Cloistered Clerics get the 6+int and all knowledge skills. A normal cleric could just take the Knowledge domain and then... they're behind by 2 skill points? What's the big deal?

[QUOTE]Eh, it's not terrible, but healers really need more and less. Making the healer a full list spontaneous caster makes it ridiculously hard to land any sort of, well, anything on the party. The only limitation on status removal is generally that you won't have the exact one you need prepared, take that away and you've got a bunch of extra rolling and spellcasting that all amounts to nothing in the end.
But I like the idea that healers are actually good at healing and quite reasonably better prepared for it than Clerics because, unfortunately, it's kind of all they do. Besides, in the ideal situation don't clerics have wands and scrolls for rare or obscure situations or normal ability damage? I thought it was pretty standard to pick up at least partial wands of lesser restoration and have a few scrolls of remove disease and such at the ready just in case, or is that just how my groups use clerics? Further, that just adds more dynamic to the game because if a healer can be positively identified by an opponent, they've become a much more alluring target, and they lack the primary means of defending themselves.



But everyone doesn't need pounce, and I've had this available to my players for a long time. The only characters that I normally see take it are barbarians that don't want to mix totems (or don't want to use them at all), rangers, and druids. I've even asked my rogues, fighters, and initiators if they wanted to take it and the answer was normally like "well, yeah, but I want to take this other stuff more". I do think that melee centric characters do need some method of using their full BAB more regularly, but Elkad and many others have suggested pretty great ways to do that that I'm going to take into strong consideration.

[QUOTE]What is this for, exactly? Golbins aren't massively underpowered for characters- are you comparing them to the full spectrum of Kobold SLAs and free caster level faff? This also makes groups of goblins even more dangerous for low-level parties by buffing them.
My low level parties haven't found goblin warrior 1's threatening in the least, and Sir Bimbo the Paladin with his sword and shield usually 1-shots them. Swarmfighting only gives a +1 attack bonus per swarmfighter in the square. That's it. hardly the most threatening buff I could give to a creature. The reason I explained above is that goblins aren't a threat, but this helps to make them moreso.


Barely worth noting it's so common.
While true, I was trying to make an all inclusive list of my personal houserules.


I would object to removing the entire main limiting factor of the class, but I allow mounted skirmishing. . . and yeah actually I will object, because you still need a special ability to full mounted attack with melee. And I'll bet you're expecting TWF scouts 10' stepping into skirmish.
The entire main limiting factor of the class can be removed with a 1 level dip... and I realize this would allow a scout to 10' step into melee combat and full attack, and I would expect that. That's the kind of buff or benefit that two weapon fighting needs to be i guess what you consider a relevant fighting style. It gives survivability and enough damage to potentially allow the scout to bypass DR without needing to resort to power attack, and without needing to charge. I don't see how this is a bad thing.


The poison system is already terrible for player use, and any attempts to extend or improve it are doomed to fail as far as I'm concerned. It needs a full rewrite if it's going to be a major thing. All this does is make the few poisons which are cheap and effective that much more cheap and effective, while leaving the more interesting expensive poisons completely useless.
I use a liberal amount of ad lib when it comes to poisons. Poison synthesis in my game can be derived from a number of sources, even from mundane food such as ginger beind distilled down to a consumption based toxin that causes nausea with a base fort save DC equal to 10+the crafter's Int Modifier (or higher or lower, thus modifying the crafting DC accordingly). Cost is determined the best I can based on the supplies and the result of the poison being crafted. I'm working on fleshing these out as specific rules to make it a major thing that player characters, and non-player character, can use. Hopefully.


Sure, fine, but this is hardly a problem to begin with. I'll bet this is another laser targeted "ahhh wizard are always flying and we need to nerf it somehow" reaction. If you want to nerf magical flight then nerf magical flight. Better yet, use encounters where magical flight is not a prerequisite or massive advantage.

Bwahahahahaha, "only" 50% more than your actual cater level. If you've got casters boosting their level that much all the time, you've got bigger problems then any of the non-caster fixes listed here. Why not just get rid of the few problematic caster level boosts?

Flight, innately, is not a problem, nor do I see it as a necessity. The world is not filled with flying things that always terrorize everthing. Far more creatures are land, water, climbing, or earth based forms of traveling. Changing the way that the flight granting spell function only gives them a minor weakness that should give the user cause to think and enable more tactical planning. Currently, what are the downsides or weaknesses of Flight or Overland Flight or Air Walk? You get high maneuverability, long duration, and there's no way to bring you down except through magic or physcially pulling the recipient of the spell down. All I'm doing is introducing a potential weakness that should be considered by the PCs before assuming that flight is a given, granted way to bypass an encounter.

As for caster level caps, I've had a few bad experiences with some bad eggs. Normally most of my players don't touch their caster level except through some odd feats like some reserve feats and such. As a result, after those few campaigns, I put limiters in place. The truth is, since then I've never had anyone use much in the way of caster level boosters. These were mostly from my notes pages from previous campaigns I ran that I felt were still applicable to how i felt abou the game.


So what I'm seeing is less of moving towards a unified power level, and more moving towards the same set of homogeonized builds you always see brought out.

All melee characters should have easy access to pounce.
All bonus dice should be TWF and active as easily as possible.
Free metamagic and massive caster level boosts are poked at just enough to make it obvious they're expected without actually reducing their power.
Sorcerers get the usual backhanded freebie while wizards and clerics take their more powerful variants at no cost, and druids have a mechanic to "prevent" them from knowing every animal which still lets them know every animal.

If you really want to the first things, just do them. Go 5e full attacks where you can move before and after and in-between all your attacks, and make TWF just a thing everyone can (and then does) do- but don't be surprised when shields finish completely evaporating. And don't expect this to make much of a difference compared to casters that haven't actually been de-powered. Unless you're using a "harsh" rolling style (like oh, standard 25 point buy), the prerequisites on your pounce feat aren't going to keep persist-o-mancers from having it, and apparenl lack of limits on mailmen builds makes it obvious why you've decided that weapon users need to full attack with all bonus dice all the time.
I can see how you would read those rule in that way, and I'm not upset, but I do think you missed the intent of removing some limitations on some things, and place some limitation on others. One of the biggest problems I see is that a spellcasting character gets boundless versatility while non-spellcasting characters are usually stuck doing one type of schtick. By making other things more accessible, that shouldn't shoehorn anyone in to anything, as it isn't forcing anyone to do anything. ranged combat is still an option, and you could even be a proficient ranged combatant AND a proficient melee combatant WITHOUT charging (See again benefits of using a shield with combat expertise, possibly combined with two weapon fighting, or with deadly defense or other feats that already exist that you can take now because you have less feats that you have to inves in to progress your feat chains because you take them once and they progress with you). Depending on what kind of game I want to play, I may do 4d6b3 or 25 pb, it all depends on what kind of game I'm interested in running and what kind of game my players are interested in playing.


This is a paradigm that apparently seems to work for plenty of tables, so if it works for you that's fine. I just don't see how, when it goes so much against the expected power and teamwork levels of the game (as coded into most monsters). And whenever I've read a campaign journal operating near this level, it quite clearly has the DM either performing a high-wire act to keep it all going (with PCs frequently curb-stopming or being stomped), or just throwing whatever and hoping for the best.
I regularly operate under the concept that just because an option is available, does not mean that an individual is going to take it. This is regardless of it's position of power/versatility/etc relative to other options. I've experienced that players are more likely to go with something that fulfills a function, and grants a capability that they want. The reason that I urge specialization and try to force it a little is because I don't particularly like wizards that solve all the problems and I don't enjoy running games for parties full of full spellcasters. To me, that goes so much against the expected power and teamwork levels of the game, moreso than cutting back on the number of feats or granting easier access to something that clearly you perceive as a toxic playstyle. Since I've had Pounce available as a feat, I've had 3 players take it. 1, a wolf totem barbarian that didn't want to take both wolf totem and spirit lion totem. 2, a spirit shaman tha like using bite of the werewolf. 3, a web enhancement kobold scout. The players I had that didn't take it included a 2-handed Whirling Frenzy variant Barbarian, all of the players that play rogues, any players that played Ninja (with the changes to the sudden strike ability), Clerics (without the removal of the bonus armor), Gishes, etc. They all knew about it, knew it would be an "optimal" choice, and didn't take it because it wasn't the look or feel they wanted and moved on. Just because they had the option, didn't mean they took it. Just because it's a powerful style of play, does not make it the only acceptable style of play.

Also, for the record, I rarely (if ever) just "throw whatever" and hope for the best. I put a lot of time, effort, and energy into crafting the personalities, thought processes, motives, and methodology of my villains, how they would react to what the party is doing, and what they would do specifically to combat a team of adventureres coming to ruin their day.


I will say though, good on you for actually making a big list of "house rules." Or as I think it would be more appropriately called, "list of tweaks required to make the massive amount of source material I'm willing to allow actually work together." I don't agree with most of them as either too much or not enough, but it's good that you're addressing it.
My desire is to continue addressing them until I'm satisfied that i'm not being too restrictive, but at the same time i'm making the standards in the game know.


In general, specialist wizards are more powerful than generalists simply because they get more spells per day.
This is especially true when you are in a situation where you can replicate entire schools of magic that you have banned.
Focused specialist wizards have the same number of casts per day as sorcerers, obviating the class entirely.
This houserule makes wizards more powerful overall, not less.

Thanks, that actually helps me a pretty good amount in how I think about how I might differentiate the classes and how I might change that houserule.


I don't think the Fighter is alone in having too restrictive a list of class skills. I would probably make a list of Backgrounds that granted several class skills and let everyone pick one. Bumping up the Fighter's skill points is fine.
The fighter is just the one that I have the most notes on. I think that, from PHB alone, Monks should have additional skills and 6+int skill points (plus a plethora of other fixes, but I need to iron those out and give them a try with my groups first), Paladins need some skill love, and Sorcerers desperately need it (in general I do give Sorcerers all of the social skills, knowledge (local, planes, and dungeoneering), sense motive, gather information, and bump them up to 6+Int skill points. However I've only tried that out in one very short lived game. It died due to people getting new jobs and moving after a mere 2 sessions. Not enought time to gague the change). I haven't forgotten about any of them. As for preset backgrounds, I'm not opposed to the idea, but I do like to get to know my player when we discuss the character's background and build it custom. I think it adds an additional level to the connection between player and DM that helps for out of game situations that possibly arise.

Good change. Is there a reason you aren't doing something similar with other feat chains?
I haen't gotten a chance to try them out. I've got a few changes in testing with a group right now where feats like Improved feint, disarm, trip, etc all of those are rolled in to their parent feats (improved unarmed strike, power attack, combat expertise, etc) and if you have the parent feat (with minimal or no prerequisites) you qualify as having the feat for other prerequisites. I've also got the "Weapon Focus" line testing as being tied to BAB, granting 1/3 BAB as an attack bonus and 1/2 BAB as a damage bonus. If you take the weapon focus feat, you're treated as having all of the other prerequisites. Also, brewing in the same game, I've got the combat form feats not requiring 13 Wis (no prereq), I have the Dodge feat just granting a static +1 dodge to your AC (always active), and I have one player playing a Knight that I've changed the Shield AC bonus to always active, stacks with Shield Focus, and tweak to the way the Knight's Challenges work. I've also removed the static knight's code and worked up a unique code tied to the leige lord they are in the service of.

How do you intend this to interact with Sword of the Arcane Order?
It works the same way. If you use a Paladin slot to prepare a wizard spell that slot becomes unavailable to cast a paladin spell from. Essentially, that spell is locked in until you rest and either prepare a different spell or leave it open. If you leave a slot open when you would normally prepare spells, you can't then later prepare a wizard spell in that slot. This helps to prevent the 5 minute wizard, not allowing slots to remain open and be filled later in the day.

I feel like this means everyone plays either a Diviner (as noted), or goes all the way to Focused Specialist. Pushing Wizards towards Focused Specialist also kind of makes Sorcerers sad because they lose their spell slot advantage and still have their disadvantages (heritage feats help a bit though). I also don't think it's that big of a power hit. Until a fairly high level of optimization, you aren't really drawing on all the schools to begin with.
Yeah, I've gotten a lot of feedback on this one and I'm going to be changing the way I do things. It won't be fast, but I think my group will be open to trying out new things till I can get something that feels good.

The hard cap at 9th level causes some strange effects. It means Clerics stop scaling their "permanent" buffs at 5th level, which is weird. I think it might be cleaner to cap things by the highest level of spell you can cast, and reduce some metamagic costs.
This is another true one. I'll need to again test some more stuff out with my group to see how it feels. They're good sports about this kind of thing and I never just spring it on them, I always ask and converse first.

This is another effect that is weirdly more restrictive at high levels than it is at low levels. An 8th level Cleric can get a bigger CL bonus than a 18th level one, even if his net CL will be lower. Is there a reason you have a hard line at 20?
This is probably just going to get thrown out. I so rarely see it aboused that I don't know that it's worth having as a written rule. I may just make a note about caster level, divine metamagic, and metamagic reducers and not pushing the bill too far, then explain the desired level of play as opposed to trying to houserule something into a fine powder. That's probably for the best and you all helped me start thinking that way.


It seems like a pretty straightforward problem to solve. Wizards just have to ban two schools. That's the neutral state, and is equivalent to the current generalist. From that point, you can have some notion of specialization that grants spells in exchange for banning another school. If you'd like to not limit access to stuff like abrupt jaunt, you can just put forth the rule that all choices that depend on specialization have to be consistent. So, if you make a choice that's reliant on being specialized in conjuration, then you can't later make a choice based on specialization in transmutation or whatever.
Alternatively, you could literally just make divination not special for the purposes of specialization.
What if, upon specializing, you don't get bonus spells but you do get the specialist features in UA that replace them, and then if you take focused specialist you simply get the one bonus spell slot that you would normally get for specializing? Also, I didn't think that you could mix someting like an Enchanter Specialist and Abrupt Jaunt? I think I may make divination not special for the purposes of specialization... that sounds like a pretty good idea. can you forsee any problems that would arise from, specifically, that?


no, thats too outside a fighters wheel house, go swashbuckler or paladin if you want this stuff.
2) Fighters get 4+int skill points per level, have Knowledge(Nobility and Royalty), Knowledge(Engineering and Architecture), Profession, Diplomacy, bluff, sense motive, Search, Spot, Listen, and Use Rope added to their list of class skills.

I don't think that being a general, guard captain, banding leader, or dirty fighter is outside of the fighter's wheelhouse... i mean, the PHB says, "The questing knight, the conquering overlord, the king's champion, the elite foot soldier, the hardened mercenary, and the bandit king--all are fighters... Fighters who are not actively adventuring may be soldiers, guards, bodyguards, champions, or even criminal enforcers." so I don't think that giving them feats to actually fulfil any of those roles is outside of the fighter's wheelhouse. Do all of your diplmatic warriors have a level of paladin?


no more bonus feats that a wizard, which bonus feats are what bring wizards in line with sorcerers
9) Sorcerers get Heritage bonus feats at levels 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, and 20.
I missed a few things I give sorceres, and there are a few ideas I want to try out for sorcerers as well. I'm considering giving them 3/4 BAB, but I'm not sure.


no, clerics live and die by their armor, they dont have the ability to gain mage armor and shield like their arcane counter parts and then become way to squishing having somewhere between 10-15 less ac than they should
12) Clerics only get light armor proficiency and do not get medium armor, heavy armor, or shield proficiency. If a cleric takes the cloistered cleric alternate class, they get no armor proficiency.
If you want to play a buff and smash divine character, there's the paladin and favored soul, or you can spend a couple of feats to get those proficiencies. If clerics are as versatile as everyone on these forums tout them to be, why exactly is removing their armor such a big deal? This is easily solved by taking a dip in fighter, paladin, knight, or other class that grants those features. If you're playing a crusading cleric, it's likely that you serve a deity that would already urge martial training in Paladin or Fighter anyway. This really seems more like a complaint that I'm taking away 1 sort of beat up, hand-me-down toy from a toybox full of awesome, pristine, unique toys.


no, every race that isnt a la that gets a plus to str loses 2 other stats because of damage usually being the end all in games.
16) Half-Orcs only have a -2 charisma penalty, they do not take the -2 intelligence penalty at character creation.
That +2 strength nets +1.5 damage... whoo... I'm not sure if you were being sarcastc with this or not, but i don't think I've ever encountered a situation where 1.5 damage made the difference between victory and defeat.


absolutely not, its magical flight, not functionally invisible flight
19) Spells that grant magical flight function as if the recipient has grown invisible, magical wings, and as such the individal may be tripped to stall them or cause them to fall fro the sky. Creatures with innate magical flight (ghosts, some dragons, etc) are not hindered by this effect unless otherwise stated in their entires.
That's your opinion. My opinion is that magic is innately vastly more powerful than most other things and introducing a potential weakness to that magic by changing is base function is not a bad thing. Truthfully, how many DMs throw enemies that make ranged trip attempts at you? If the answer is "none" then this rule change would have literally no effect on you.


Agreed although with different reasons. Nothing on the list stops my shtick so I would play but I will be wary of you springing a new house rule on me mid-session. Knowing you from your other posts from other threads however, I doubt that this will be a problem.
If something were a problem and was causing a problem for the other players, I wouldn't necessarily make a rule on it, but I would talk to you and discuss the situation and ask you to not to the thing that was upsetting the other players. If it was just a personal problem I had as a DM with something happening, I would figure out a way to challenge you without dwarfing anyone else in the party, quite possibly turning to these forums if I can't seem to figure anything out. If it felt like an insurmountable problem, I may make a note and implement a houserule in future games.

[Ashtagon]

Balance? That wasn't my reason. It doesn't fix the bear-riding-bear-summoning-bear issue of druids. And that's quite aside from druids being full casters. Does it make the problem worse? It certainly encourages the druid to plan ahead, which according to conventional wisdom results in higher power levels. But given the trade-off between a bit more power and sitting around the table waiting for the player to read the entire Monster Manual searching for the perfect beastie, I can accept the extra power level.

Run more smoothly? Yes, this was definitely my intention.

Simulationist? I'll admit, the idea of a druid who spent his entire life in the desert casually wildshaping into a polar bear feels odd. And casually wildshaping into a critter that the GM has decided, for whatever reason, doesn't exist in their campaign world, is even odder.

So, why didn't I tie this into the Knowledge skills? Surely (as you say), it's a matter of knowledge? Well, no. It's a matter of class features. In a very real sense, every class feature is something the character knows how to do. But we don't make the fighter's bonus feats depend on a Knowledge skill. We don't give bards more uses of bardic music based on a Knowledge skill, nor does their bardic lore feature benefit from a Knowledge skill. Rogues don't backstab better based on Knowledge skills, and spells don't generally work better if you have high ranks in Knowledge (arcana). Knowledge lets you know things. It shouldn't (and generally isn't; archivist is a notable exception) be an automatic tie-in to improving class features.

Another reason not to tie this "three shape limit on prepped forms" to Knowledge is that not all conceivable wildshape forms would be based on the same Knowledge skill, which potentially creates a wonkiness.

I'd be cool with feats (and possibly class-level-based modifiers) to increase that limit on prepped forms. Having a feat to allows a druid to spontaneously choose a "prepped" form would defeat the entire point of the houserule (speed up gameplay at the table), and at that point you may as well drop the houserule entirely.

Instant wildshape by consuming a bit of the critter's flesh? Maybe, but that radically changes the flavour (ahem) of the druid class. Cool if that's your intention, but otherwise, odd.

Instant wildshape by invoking $deity? Again, radical change of class flavour. Also, I'm not sure how this leaves the houserule relevant at all, since it still allows the player to peruse the entire MM then find a relevant deity.

So, what about replacing the roleplaying/backstory/campaign aspect of adding critters to the known list with Knowledge checks to add them to the known list?

Well, any wildshaper will clearly spend their downtime taking 20 on whatever Knowledge check you ask for to make the critter known. Which means you have to set the DCs arbitrarily high and you're removing any randomness because they are taking 20. And without the randomness aspect, the whole concept of a "check" becomes meaningless. Basing things on Knowledge also removes the GM's ability to declare that certain monsters simply don't exist in-world, and enables the lifelong desert dweller to morph into a polar bear because they passed their Knowledge take 20.

[Pleh]

So, why does this change to the rules exist? (and I try to define "Gamist" and "Simulationist" by example)

I don't have much time on my breaks at work.

I was working on the assumption that the desire for limiting Wild Shape was primarily Gamist balance and secondarily simulationist.

It feels like the desire expressed in the OP is to reign the druid in a bit, but to moderate how we do so through some simulationist consideration.

The second half of my idea would be that the first 3 or 4 couldn't be just any animals. Those are the "training forms" the druid's master taught with. They're not going to have a trainee learn by taking on the more complex forms.

[Quertus]

@Ashtagon - Oh, wow, that was a reply to me. Well, I was intending to ask the OP what their reason was for making these changes, and use that both to guide their direction going forward, and to preface their house rules, to optimize their odds of attracting appropriate players. But, sure, I'll explain myself.

OK, so here's my logic: if the jungle Druid sees polar bear, there's a set skill check and DC to determine if he knows the creature. It is both reinventing the wheel and prone to wonkiness if there is a separate, independent mechanic for knowing creatures.

Yes, there are different Knowledge skills involved. Under my system, when the Druid gains a new Type, the number of forms he can keep prepared of that Type is given by that formula. So, if the Druid has different Knowledge skill levels, he might have 4 animal forms, 4 plant forms, 2 dragon forms, and only 1 elemental form. One feat could boost that to 5/5/3/2.

What is the value of my full proposal? Flavor. Sure, maybe some of these you might want to gate behind ACFs, feats, out even prestige classes, but they're all ways I've seen at actual tables. Maybe not 3e D&D tables, but still - they are ways that I've seen people try to answer the question, "how do I access animal forms?". If you make that a question (by introducing such as house rule), I like to be prepared for as many people's responses as possible.

If what you care about is speed, progress, how far you make it in a night, then, much like "balance to the table", the best thing to do is to play with people who care about that. Play with people who will take quick turns by dent of knowing the rules and being prepared. Or who are "beer and pretzels" players who understand that people care about speed, and who choose to play characters that they can play both competently and quickly without getting a PhD in D&D.

If you have to codify rules, just say that you need to take your turn in X seconds or you will be skipped, and you must post the new form's stats to group chat as part of your turn. Hint: have intended forms looked up ahead of time.

However, if what you care about is fun, player enjoyment, avoiding dead air, then my suggestions work fine. While the Druid's player is haggling with the GM about what their Knowledge check says about the side effects of invoking Kringle to turn into a reindeer are, someone else can be looking up the stats for a reindeer and posting them to group chat.

Most of my recent groups would prefer the former (being quick) to the latter (taking time enjoyably), but I've certainly seen tables where the latter would be preferable.

-----

Yes, like with my sample character, infinite downtime results in infinite known forms - if you can take 20 on knowledge checks.

Really, I would have three categories: known, prepared, and a new one: studied. So, a knowledge check makes them Known. You have a limit for number Prepared. And you have to have actually seen one and studied it in person to count as Studied. Without Studied, it doesn't look right, and can give away as not natural.

There's a reason I don't make house rules.

@AnimeTheCat - so, what are the components of your style? What are the characteristics of a successful player in your group? Here's my take (which is probably completely wrong):

"Here are my house rules. The rules - including my house rules - are more of suggestions than guidelines. The goal is to give the world flavor, and to let every play style be viable. That this happens to usually make for a more balanced game is just a convenient side effect."

[Ashtagon]

@Ashtagon - Oh, wow, that was a reply to me. Well, I was intending to ask the OP what their reason was for making these changes, and use that both to guide their direction going forward, and to preface their house rules, to optimize their odds of attracting appropriate players. But, sure, I'll explain myself.

[Spoiler="spoiled for length"]OK, so here's my logic: if the jungle Druid sees polar bear, there's a set skill check and DC to determine if he knows the creature. It is both reinventing the wheel and prone to wonkiness if there is a separate, independent mechanic for knowing creatures.

Yes, there are different Knowledge skills involved. Under my system, when the Druid gains a new Type, the number of forms he can keep prepared of that Type is given by that formula. So, if the Druid has different Knowledge skill levels, he might have 4 animal forms, 4 plant forms, 2 dragon forms, and only 1 elemental form. One feat could boost that to 5/5/3/2.


Part of the reason I set the default at three prepped animal forms was to prevent decision paralysis during combat. Your example gives the player 11 choices. Many studies dating back to the 1950s onwards have shown that given more than 7 choices, people suffer from a serious amount of decision paralysis that slows them down. Three choices is the absolute minimum to give what feels like a meaningful choice, and gives a good base from which to allow feats/class features to expand that back up to 7. 11 choices, and it may as well be the unlimited choice that is the default RAW situation, because it won't avert the decision paralysis problem.

Note that outside of combat, a PC still has effective access to all "known" animals -- they just need to spend a full minute to wild shape instead of doing it in a single round. However, outside of combat, things aren't anywhere near so time-critical for the players (because no one is waiting on your decision in order to do their mission-critical decision).

[blackwindbears]

Most of the houserules seem fine. I wouldn't play a cleric mostly because the loss of armor seems pretty bizarre. Clerics being relevant in melee isn't a disaster, and at low to medium OP this takes away one of their main options.

Caster level caps probably don't need to cap at level 20, if you're having a specific issue with holy word or something just fix the spell. No reason to make superior dispelling worse.

[Fizban]

This particular houserule I've playtested as both a player and a DM and even used against my party. The most prominent reason I don't think it will become a problem is the same reason that weapon&shield fighter/warriors/etc aren't a threat in the first place, they just aren't threatening. the paltry 1d8+str damage they do (or lackluster +xd6 they get from other sources) still isn't any more of a priority or threat if their AC is 1-10 points higher. Further, skills are always a reason for weapon users to be intelligent, lest they get the big dumb fighter lable.
Never said the the lack of int requirement would be a problem, just that there's no reason for fighters to have skills. Because "skills" isn't actually a role. As always, if you want "non-combat" encounters to be important, you need to build an encounter system for them and split it up between the classes. The problem is how that's a huge amount of AC that *should* matter if you're running the game normally.

The fact that you don't consider it a problem specifically because "they're not a threat" is the most troubling part. So the meatshield role which is part of the game's intended balance isn't important enough to actually pay attention to AC differences because it's not DPS. And apparently your expected damage output is such that the "paltry xd6" of a martial maneuver doesn't count either. Your response below that shield users should just TWF completely misses the point, and gets extra points when one acknowledges that the damage from TWF with a shield is basically a few paltry d6's.

I genuinely can't tell if you're being serious or not, but I regularly take and use sense motive on most of my characters. Nobody likes being hoodwinked, and when i responeded to someone else I explained my thouht process.
Yes, I am being serious. I don't endorse the idea that everything needs more skill points, but putting sense motive on their list is on my own list.

I did this mostly to give the ghost step ability more versatility in other fields as oppposed to basically being used only to proc sudden strike. What I realized is that this probably won't happen at most other tables, but at my current tables this is the outcome that I've experienced. I felt as though it opened up the class to use its features for more than just combat.
Fair point. Though I think this could also be accomplished by teaching people how to sneak attack without dedicated features by using the hide rules.

I'm sad that you feel it's not a valid combat style. Is it because it fails to bypass DR regularly or what?
Has any culture in the world ever entered the battlefield with a "TWF" style? No, it's shields, or heavy armor and two handed weapons.

I don't think it devalues shields at all. . In my previous example, a sword and shield fighter can spend one of those feats on improved shield bash, pick up a light shield, and get full attacks with both sword and shield, increasing the shield's value.
That's not the value of a shield. The value of a shield is not getting hit. What you have here, is requiring anyone who wants to use a shield to also be a TWFer, because there are almost no tadeoffs. How do you use a shield in real life? Not by swinging with both arms like a madman. Shields are already screwed by how little credit anyone gives to things that aren't maximum offense, so TWF doesn't devalue shields because you can just TWF with them is. . . ?

What I have had an issue with is stacking 50+ turn undead attempts and then persisting immense numbers of buffs, including higher level effects. I will agree though, this doesn't really fix the probem, however I think the armor on the cleric does fix the problem because it makes it far less appealing to buff up and enter melee combat without that added layer of protection, or it makes the character more MAD by trying to raise Dex high enough to be worthwhile in light armor.
Then. . . why don't you just get rid of the problems!? Instead of complaining about stacking turn undead attempts, stop letting them stack! Instead of complaining about Persistent Spell, get rid of it!

Did you see the idea that I came up with using Elkad's and Ngilop's suggestions? I think it is more elegant and much more aligned with "Just say you track animal forms".
No solution is more elegant than just making a list of what makes sense. Crawl through the SNA lists to excuse those animals specifically? More work. Base number of forms on ranks, which is actually just based on level, with some sort of restriction so you can't jump ahead? More work. All you get from making up extended familiarity mechanics is another fiddly bit to optimize without actually decreasing the power level. You can either cut the list down to a very few specific forms, or make choices based on logic and experience. If you want more than a very few forms, then basic logic of where the person has lived gives the most options in the least time.

But everyone doesn't need pounce, and I've had this available to my players for a long time. The only characters that I normally see take it are barbarians that don't want to mix totems (or don't want to use them at all), rangers, and druids. I've even asked my rogues, fighters, and initiators if they wanted to take it and the answer was normally like "well, yeah, but I want to take this other stuff more". I do think that melee centric characters do need some method of using their full BAB more regularly, but Elkad and many others have suggested pretty great ways to do that that I'm going to take into strong consideration.
Even so, that means it's in there just because. The list of tweaks isn't carefully considered, it's just stuff. You made pounce a feat specifically because SPLTB made it a 1st level feature, which never should have happened in the first place. Which is still a type of game I'm not too interested in playing in.

And that's still a feat=casting level for druids who would have had to lose a casting level in order to pounce with non-pouncing animals.

The entire main limiting factor of the class can be removed with a 1 level dip... I don't see how this is a bad thing.
The bad thing is that you're balancing based on broken content, with no regard for central game mechanics. There is a reason you can't full attack while moving. It's kindof a whole thing. And then the scout is specifically supposed to have difficulty because of that. If you want skirmish to work all the time you might as well just make it work all the time, or just get rid of the central mechanic of standard and full attacks.

Currently, what are the downsides or weaknesses of Flight or Overland Flight or Air Walk?
Dispel magic, the fact that you're isloated from the rest of the party up there, the fact that they cost spell slots when they're supposedly not a necessity. . .

All I'm doing is introducing a potential weakness that should be considered by the PCs before assuming that flight is a given, granted way to bypass an encounter.
This statement is at odds with your claim that you don't see it as a neccesity. If it's not a neccessity then the PCs using it isn't a given, same as you say happens with your pounce feat. If you have a problem with encounters being bypassed with fly, then you just stop making those encounters. Or reduce the xp, or count them as nothing but an obstacle to force a spell usage, or change the level of the flight spells, or. . .

Specifically being trippable out of magical flight only matters against trip builds. So it matters for PCs with trip builds, and for when you throw NPC trip builds at them.

As for caster level caps, I've had a few bad experiences with some bad eggs.
You seem to be preferring circuitous limiting formulas rather than just removing problems. More work for less fixing of the problem, and instead of getting the confrontation with a player who wanted to use it out of the way immediately, just delays and turns it into an argument.

One of the biggest problems I see is that a spellcasting character gets boundless versatility while non-spellcasting characters are usually stuck doing one type of schtick.
And the biggest problem I see is claiming characters need to be good at things other than dungeoneering combat without actually rebuilding the game to work that way. The versatility of spellcasters isn't, until you start making up new roles that can be filled by spells (also applies to social skill checks) but nothing else.

By making other things more accessible, that shouldn't shoehorn anyone in to anything, as it isn't forcing anyone to do anything.
Incentivizing something a person isn't interested in is the same as pressuring them to use it anyway- if they do any amount of optimization (which almost all players do in some way). And while you keep suggesting that people don't use all the char-op staples and just do what they want, you poo-poo the damage and effectiveness of builds that aren't using them. So I'm getting mixed messages.

and you could even be a proficient ranged combatant AND a proficient melee combatant WITHOUT charging
You could already do that, until someone raises the bar on what "proficient" means.

(See again benefits of using a shield with combat expertise, possibly combined with two weapon fighting, or with deadly defense or other feats that already exist that you can take now because you have less feats that you have to inves in to progress your feat chains because you take them once and they progress with you).
What reduction in feat costs? The only feat costs you've reduced are TWF. You made Combat Expertise drastically more powerful and unlocked from int, but in the very same response you basically said it didn't matter, so clearly that's a waste of a feat. Making pounce a feat is actually a feat cost if you take it, still not something that should be a feat but certainly not a reduction in feat costs.

I regularly operate under the concept that just because an option is available, does not mean that an individual is going to take it.
That is not how you create balanced rules or mechanics by any definition of balance.

You don't need to make your list of houserules about fixing the game, but if you're just allowing whatever and expecting the "gentleman's agreement" to hold everything together, then that's not a list of houserules I want to play under.

I don't enjoy running games for parties full of full spellcasters.
Then don't allow them. All characters (and by extension all parties) must be approved by the DM.

Since I've had Pounce available as a feat, . . .
Did making these changes actually reduce a problem of too many spellcasters which you previously had? 'Cause the way you're talking about it sounds like your group never had any of those problems to begin with. Houserules to fix problems that don't exist which open up new potential problems. . oof.

Just because it's a powerful style of play, does not make it the only acceptable style of play.
And so what do you do if someone does decide to make one of those characters, and they don't match the rest of the party? Do you ask them to just not use the thing you specifically houseruled in?

My desire is to continue addressing them until I'm satisfied that i'm not being too restrictive, but at the same time i'm making the standards in the game know.
Then I would suggest a giant disclaimer including some of those examples of things you specifically houseruled in but people didn't use, as why you're not concerned by their potential effect on the game.

You've asked the question of "would you play under these houserules," suggesting that we should look at these houserules from our perspectives. But apparently the most significant part of your game, and a foundation of the houserules, is a very specific power level and a bunch of self-limiting players, far more than any of these houserules.

Edit: and to be clear, my own list would require the same thing. As would most.

[Talverin]

Another one for your skills addition list to consider would be the Background Skills from Pathfinder.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/background-skills/

It adds two skill points per level for 'background skills' like Knowledge Engineering, Nobility, and such. You could give Martial characters four of these points per level to balance out their generally lower int score without giving them too much overt power. 4+Int skills and 4 Background per level would make for very skill-versatile Fighters.

If you want to make fighting vs flying a little more approachable, you could try making things like a bolas into a Martial weapon instead of Exotic, to make them easier to use. This would allow melee-oriented characters to keep a few on backup to trip up flying creatures and bring them down to a more manageable height. Perhaps change over net launchers, too, to give more options at range?

[Cosi]

As for preset backgrounds, I'm not opposed to the idea, but I do like to get to know my player when we discuss the character's background and build it custom. I think it adds an additional level to the connection between player and DM that helps for out of game situations that possibly arise.

I just think backgrounds are better from a flexibility perspective than fixed additions to class skills. Saying that Fighters all get Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) says something fairly specific about Fighters. A "Noble" background that you can opt into as one of several choices is more flexible. You could even go totally ad hoc and let people pick a certain number of extra class skills that complement whatever their background happens to be.


It works the same way. If you use a Paladin slot to prepare a wizard spell that slot becomes unavailable to cast a paladin spell from. Essentially, that spell is locked in until you rest and either prepare a different spell or leave it open. If you leave a slot open when you would normally prepare spells, you can't then later prepare a wizard spell in that slot. This helps to prevent the 5 minute wizard, not allowing slots to remain open and be filled later in the day.

Alright. That's what I expected, and I think it's the most likely interaction, but I would probably make a note somewhere.

[mabriss lethe]

5/6) Touched on further up, but never answered. There will be some potentially hazardous interactions with some paladin-specific feats. Namely Sword of the Arcane Order and Battle Blessing. Two feats would allow you free Auto-quicken and access to the Wiz/sorc list. Otherwise, bumping paladin and ranger up to 9th level casting is stepping all over the cleric and druid's toes. There would be a lot of overlap.

[Covenant12]

By and large reasonable, with some I'm fairly enthusiastic about.

Not thrilled about forced wizard specialization, but I could deal with it (and wizard is generally my favorite class). Not sure what the druid wild shape rules are adding, likely he knows other druids and can research other forms readily. You could outright remove wild shape and druid is still a great class.

Light armor cleric though, I'd refuse to play that, and discourage the rule. Remove some combination of DMM or Persistent Spell I'd support (including removing both), but I can't support reducing the cleric's durability. They traditionally are the least favorite class people choose across editions, make them squishy and that makes it worse. You could nerf or remove melee-powerhouse cleric self-buffs as needed. But if they are always standard actions I'm not sure there's a need to. Until every caster has quicken spell, but by then that melee brute doesn't overpower that level of play.

[ericgrau]

Looks like a mess of bad forum tips that don't accomplish much. With #1 it's pretty easy to make yourself immune to attack rolls and still hit most of the time. #18 is easily abusable with drow poison: don't forget even on a passed save the attacker still does normal damage. You get double the KOs because those that don't die might be poisoned and vis versa. Other than that I wouldn't care much one way or another about the rules if joining such a group.

I'd probably avoid such a gaming group and look for others for two reasons. (1) The optimization allowed looks pretty high based on what's implied characters will try in these rules (e.g., metamagic reducers). That's a lot to keep up with. (2) While all but #1 and #18 are little more than minor annoyances, it makes me suspicious about DM judgement in general. I'd join the group if I couldn't find anything better, which is very possible because DMs are hard to find. I'd ask other players what character builds they're doing so I could better guess the optimization level and then work on my character. That way I could cheese him out a little and keep up without it getting way out of hand.

Personally I'd strike the whole list, ban all or most metamagic reducers and ban some of the easier caster level boosters. Deal with other abusive things like NI loops as they come, because there are too many to count and most players won't attempt any. Job done. But that's my opinion, and like I said I'd tolerate it as a player.

#2 for example just make sure spot checks are usually rolled against foes hiding behind cover or concealment, which RAW requires, and spot is not so essential to have as a class skill. As it is more likely to be ruled those "extra" skill points will likely need to go to spot and so on. The house rule is not a significant problem, it's just pointless.

[SLOTHRPG95]

Light armor cleric though, I'd refuse to play that, and discourage the rule.
[snip]
They traditionally are the least favorite class people choose across editions, make them squishy and that makes it worse.

I've seen multiple people saying something along the lines of the first bit of this, and I don't get it. Not the not wanting to play a Cleric at that point, but rather the "this is a big and bad enough change to discourage it" bit. The former is a matter of taste. But this being a big deal? Putting aside the fact that a single level of Fighter would still fix this (as spell failure still isn't a problem), Clerics function predominantly as divine mages with a slightly better chassis but fewer broken spells. This rule isn't stripping Clerics of any of their potent self-buffs either, it's just (a) hurting their AC, or (b) forcing them to pay for their armor proficiency. Sure, that can be annoying enough that as a matter of taste I or someone else might not want to play a Cleric, but I don't think it's a huge deal from a balance perspective.

As to this specific comment on the supposed unpopularity of Clerics, do you have any support for this claim? Speaking anecdotally, I'd say Monk and/or Ranger are the least popular core classes in this edition. Speaking with the backing of surveys conducted by WoTC, I know that Ranger is definitely the least popular class in 5e.

[AnimeTheCat]

@AnimeTheCat - so, what are the components of your style? What are the characteristics of a successful player in your group? Here's my take (which is probably completely wrong):

"Here are my house rules. The rules - including my house rules - are more of suggestions than guidelines. The goal is to give the world flavor, and to let every play style be viable. That this happens to usually make for a more balanced game is just a convenient side effect."

Really close, more like:
"Here are my house rules. The rules - including my house rules - are more of suggestions than guidelines. The goal is to give the world flavor, and to let every play style be viable, while simultaneously attempting to bring all play styles to an approximate middle level. The concept is that, by homogenizing fluff and crunch of the world, the rules are not simply arbitrary guidelines that exist simply to outline limitation, but serve as a function of the world and seem logical and wholesome in their implementation."

I guess it is a blend to of simulationism and gamism, because some rules do exist for the sake of overall balance, but they don't exist in a vacuum of reason and rationale.


Most of the houserules seem fine. I wouldn't play a cleric mostly because the loss of armor seems pretty bizarre. Clerics being relevant in melee isn't a disaster, and at low to medium OP this takes away one of their main options.

Caster level caps probably don't need to cap at level 20, if you're having a specific issue with holy word or something just fix the spell. No reason to make superior dispelling worse.

So, in my world(s), clerics follow something more akin to priests, monks, nuns, and other clergy, while paladins follow a more crusader or holy warrior image. Think about the Era around the holy Roman empire and the crusading period. Much of the armored crusaders were not clergy men, but warriors from some other walk of life. There were, of course, some clergy that wore armor and led or fought in combat, but those were a rare sight indeed. I mirror most of my in-game religions after this, with the more warlike ones taking a level of fighter or paladin if there was an expectation for clerics to be competent in martial combat. These deities primarily being hextor, heironeous, grummsh, kord, and corellon loratheon. But others as well, such as some branches of moradin (I call them each moradin's hammer arm and moradin's shield hand, but I digress) and some more outspoken sects of st. Cuthbert (that call themselves 'The Word of the Cudgel'). So, cleric warriors are not uncommon, but clerics aren't innately warriors and that training must be additive and extra in my game world. With a toolbox the size of a cleric's, surely the only option isn't relying on heavy armor and/or a shield.

As for caster level caps, I need to do some more serious thinking, and really converse with more people to gage a more complete vision of the total magical experience from a wider audience before I try to actually create any houserules or tweaks pertaining to them, and that's something i'm glad this thread has helped me realize. The thing is, I don't want to make magic less deairable, as that leaves people with a bad taste in their mouths and as some others have already said it makes them question what kind of DM I am going to be. I am more willing to work and find an appropriate middle ground than I am to sit back and not budge from a position or stance i've claimed. Fun is the point of the game and if rules and restrictions sap the un out of fun, all you're left with is F and F is not what you wanna be left with.?



Never said the the lack of int requirement would be a problem, just that there's no reason for fighters to have skills. Because "skills" isn't actually a role. As always, if you want "non-combat" encounters to be important, you need to build an encounter system for them and split it up between the classes. The problem is how that's a huge amount of AC that *should* matter if you're running the game normally.

The fact that you don't consider it a problem specifically because "they're not a threat" is the most troubling part. So the meatshield role which is part of the game's intended balance isn't important enough to actually pay attention to AC differences because it's not DPS. And apparently your expected damage output is such that the "paltry xd6" of a martial maneuver doesn't count either. Your response below that shield users should just TWF completely misses the point, and gets extra points when one acknowledges that the damage from TWF with a shield is basically a few paltry d6's.

Yes, I am being serious. I don't endorse the idea that everything needs more skill points, but putting sense motive on their list is on my own list.

Fair point. Though I think this could also be accomplished by teaching people how to sneak attack without dedicated features by using the hide rules.

Has any culture in the world ever entered the battlefield with a "TWF" style? No, it's shields, or heavy armor and two handed weapons.

That's not the value of a shield. The value of a shield is not getting hit. What you have here, is requiring anyone who wants to use a shield to also be a TWFer, because there are almost no tadeoffs. How do you use a shield in real life? Not by swinging with both arms like a madman. Shields are already screwed by how little credit anyone gives to things that aren't maximum offense, so TWF doesn't devalue shields because you can just TWF with them is. . . ?

Then. . . why don't you just get rid of the problems!? Instead of complaining about stacking turn undead attempts, stop letting them stack! Instead of complaining about Persistent Spell, get rid of it!

No solution is more elegant than just making a list of what makes sense. Crawl through the SNA lists to excuse those animals specifically? More work. Base number of forms on ranks, which is actually just based on level, with some sort of restriction so you can't jump ahead? More work. All you get from making up extended familiarity mechanics is another fiddly bit to optimize without actually decreasing the power level. You can either cut the list down to a very few specific forms, or make choices based on logic and experience. If you want more than a very few forms, then basic logic of where the person has lived gives the most options in the least time.

Even so, that means it's in there just because. The list of tweaks isn't carefully considered, it's just stuff. You made pounce a feat specifically because SPLTB made it a 1st level feature, which never should have happened in the first place. Which is still a type of game I'm not too interested in playing in.

And that's still a feat=casting level for druids who would have had to lose a casting level in order to pounce with non-pouncing animals.

The bad thing is that you're balancing based on broken content, with no regard for central game mechanics. There is a reason you can't full attack while moving. It's kindof a whole thing. And then the scout is specifically supposed to have difficulty because of that. If you want skirmish to work all the time you might as well just make it work all the time, or just get rid of the central mechanic of standard and full attacks.

Dispel magic, the fact that you're isloated from the rest of the party up there, the fact that they cost spell slots when they're supposedly not a necessity. . .

This statement is at odds with your claim that you don't see it as a neccesity. If it's not a neccessity then the PCs using it isn't a given, same as you say happens with your pounce feat. If you have a problem with encounters being bypassed with fly, then you just stop making those encounters. Or reduce the xp, or count them as nothing but an obstacle to force a spell usage, or change the level of the flight spells, or. . .

Specifically being trippable out of magical flight only matters against trip builds. So it matters for PCs with trip builds, and for when you throw NPC trip builds at them.

You seem to be preferring circuitous limiting formulas rather than just removing problems. More work for less fixing of the problem, and instead of getting the confrontation with a player who wanted to use it out of the way immediately, just delays and turns it into an argument.

And the biggest problem I see is claiming characters need to be good at things other than dungeoneering combat without actually rebuilding the game to work that way. The versatility of spellcasters isn't, until you start making up new roles that can be filled by spells (also applies to social skill checks) but nothing else.

Incentivizing something a person isn't interested in is the same as pressuring them to use it anyway- if they do any amount of optimization (which almost all players do in some way). And while you keep suggesting that people don't use all the char-op staples and just do what they want, you poo-poo the damage and effectiveness of builds that aren't using them. So I'm getting mixed messages.

You could already do that, until someone raises the bar on what "proficient" means.

What reduction in feat costs? The only feat costs you've reduced are TWF. You made Combat Expertise drastically more powerful and unlocked from int, but in the very same response you basically said it didn't matter, so clearly that's a waste of a feat. Making pounce a feat is actually a feat cost if you take it, still not something that should be a feat but certainly not a reduction in feat costs.

That is not how you create balanced rules or mechanics by any definition of balance.

You don't need to make your list of houserules about fixing the game, but if you're just allowing whatever and expecting the "gentleman's agreement" to hold everything together, then that's not a list of houserules I want to play under.

Then don't allow them. All characters (and by extension all parties) must be approved by the DM.

Did making these changes actually reduce a problem of too many spellcasters which you previously had? 'Cause the way you're talking about it sounds like your group never had any of those problems to begin with. Houserules to fix problems that don't exist which open up new potential problems. . oof.

And so what do you do if someone does decide to make one of those characters, and they don't match the rest of the party? Do you ask them to just not use the thing you specifically houseruled in?

Then I would suggest a giant disclaimer including some of those examples of things you specifically houseruled in but people didn't use, as why you're not concerned by their potential effect on the game.

You've asked the question of "would you play under these houserules," suggesting that we should look at these houserules from our perspectives. But apparently the most significant part of your game, and a foundation of the houserules, is a very specific power level and a bunch of self-limiting players, far more than any of these houserules.

Edit: and to be clear, my own list would require the same thing. As would most.
Unfortunately, once again I am on mobile, and I think you deserve the respect of a thought out and complete response as opposed to just a few sentences, especially since you took the time to wholesome respond to everything I had to say. Once I get to a real computer I will compose my more complete response. In the meantime, I do want to say that I do appreciate where you looking at this from and it is helping me to try and formulate a more complete idea on a more inclusive list of tweaks and changes, some of which are houserules.


Another one for your skills addition list to consider would be the Background Skills from Pathfinder.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/background-skills/

It adds two skill points per level for 'background skills' like Knowledge Engineering, Nobility, and such. You could give Martial characters four of these points per level to balance out their generally lower int score without giving them too much overt power. 4+Int skills and 4 Background per level would make for very skill-versatile Fighters.

If you want to make fighting vs flying a little more approachable, you could try making things like a bolas into a Martial weapon instead of Exotic, to make them easier to use. This would allow melee-oriented characters to keep a few on backup to trip up flying creatures and bring them down to a more manageable height. Perhaps change over net launchers, too, to give more options at range?

Like I told Cosi, i'm not opposed to preset generic backgrounds, but I vastly prefer a more ad lib or peronalize background that I come up with for the player.

As for flight and the tripping interactions and such, I will give those changes a bit more thought. I hadn't really thought about changing nets to be honest because they seemed pretty realistic and spot on to begin with, so that's worth investigating.


I just think backgrounds are better from a flexibility perspective than fixed additions to class skills. Saying that Fighters all get Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) says something fairly specific about Fighters. A "Noble" background that you can opt into as one of several choices is more flexible. You could even go totally ad hoc and let people pick a certain number of extra class skills that complement whatever their background happens to be.

Alright. That's what I expected, and I think it's the most likely interaction, but I would probably make a note somewhere.

Like I Talverin, I prefer a more ad hoc and personalized back story crearion, and I usually do so when I review the character sheets and desired progression during session 0.

I will make a note of sword of the arcane order and put it in the OP when I go through and do some major overhauls to the formatting (breaking change gesture down by type; class, feat, spell, etc.)


5/6) Touched on further up, but never answered. There will be some potentially hazardous interactions with some paladin-specific feats. Namely Sword of the Arcane Order and Battle Blessing. Two feats would allow you free Auto-quicken and access to the Wiz/sorc list. Otherwise, bumping paladin and ranger up to 9th level casting is stepping all over the cleric and druid's toes. There would be a lot of overlap.

Well, battle blessing won't allow you to automatically quicken sorcerer/wizard spells in the first place, because battle blessing specifically states that you cast your paladin spells faster. Then, as I responded to cosi, you still must select a slot to prepare a sorcerer/wizard spell in when you would normally prepare spells. If you don't prepare the spell then, you can't choose to do so later. This prevents the 5 minute wizard effect, and also answers the question about the interaction between the two feats. As for how battle blessing effects the full list spontaneous paladin, it just let's them have access to a list of always quickened spells, as long as they're paladin spells. I haven't encountered this yet in my games, so i'll have to wait to see if it causes any damage to the game.


By and large reasonable, with some I'm fairly enthusiastic about.

Not thrilled about forced wizard specialization, but I could deal with it (and wizard is generally my favorite class). Not sure what the druid wild shape rules are adding, likely he knows other druids and can research other forms readily. You could outright remove wild shape and druid is still a great class.

Light armor cleric though, I'd refuse to play that, and discourage the rule. Remove some combination of DMM or Persistent Spell I'd support (including removing both), but I can't support reducing the cleric's durability. They traditionally are the least favorite class people choose across editions, make them squishy and that makes it worse. You could nerf or remove melee-powerhouse cleric self-buffs as needed. But if they are always standard actions I'm not sure there's a need to. Until every caster has quicken spell, but by then that melee brute doesn't overpower that level of play.

Yeah, ward and specialization I need to heavily revisit. I'm glad for the feedback though.

As for the cleric, look at my response to @blackwindbear for my in-world reasoning. As for the divine metamagic and such, I need to revisit that too. It seems that I got comfortable with an out of sight out of mind concept that i'm glad that you and other people have pointed out. It helps me to build a better game for my players.


Looks like a mess of bad forum tips that don't accomplish much. With #1 it's pretty easy to make yourself immune to attack rolls and still hit most of the time. #18 is easily abusable with drow poison: don't forget even on a passed save the attacker still does normal damage. You get double the KOs because those that don't die might be poisoned and vis versa. Other than that I wouldn't care much one way or another about the rules if joining such a group.

I'd probably avoid such a gaming group and look for others for two reasons. (1) The optimization allowed looks pretty high based on what's implied characters will try in these rules (e.g., metamagic reducers). That's a lot to keep up with. (2) While all but #1 and #18 are little more than minor annoyances, it makes me suspicious about DM judgement in general. I'd join the group if I couldn't find anything better, which is very possible because DMs are hard to find. I'd ask other players what character builds they're doing so I could better guess the optimization level and then work on my character. That way I could cheese him out a little and keep up without it getting way out of hand.

Personally I'd strike the whole list, ban all or most metamagic reducers and ban some of the easier caster level boosters. Deal with other abusive things like NI loops as they come, because there are too many to count and most players won't attempt any. Job done. But that's my opinion, and like I said I'd tolerate it as a player.

#2 for example just make sure spot checks are usually rolled against foes hiding behind cover or concealment, which RAW requires, and spot is not so essential to have as a class skill. As it is more likely to be ruled those "extra" skill points will likely need to go to spot and so on. The house rule is not a significant problem, it's just pointless.

As with Fizban, I feel like you deserve a more lengthy and thought out response than I can reasonably do on mobile, so I will get back when i'm not cramping my thumbs on a tablet.

[RedWarlock]

On the topic of metamagic reducers, you could just say that you cannot create an effective spell slot higher than you would otherwise be able to cast, with metamagic reducers still affecting a 'virtual' spell level to the spell in question. This makes metamagic reducers more cost-effective with your lower-level slots, without increasing the upper-level bounds of your casters' capabilities, and is more mid-level relevant, without being an arbitrary lvl20 cap.

Could cause other problems, and I might be mis-identifying the problem the other fix was meant to address, but it's one I've used in my houserules before with little objection.

As for the wild shape stuff, I had a similar concept for wild shape, polymorph, and any other open-target summon or shapeshifting spell, even retrofitted into the summon monster/nature's ally spells, perhaps compressed into a comprehensive 'bestiary' mechanic. Originally determined per caster level, for each level, the caster would learn one 'creature' known to summon/polymorph/wild-shape/etc. Maybe add a 'better of caster level or ranks in relevant creature knowledge skill', to give some early options. Early selections would be based on home region's terrain type (circus doesn't count) or at least wherever they learned their first level of Druid (for instance), while later options would be added from creatures sought out or encountered. Any summoned/shapechanged creatures MUST have been pre-collected by the player.

Problematic "must-have" creatures (fleshraker, dire turtle, etc) are either errattad to be more in line with the average, or don't exist. (Personally, as a dinosaur aficionado, I take personal insult to the Fleshraker's existence.)

[Fizban]

In the meantime, I do want to say that I do appreciate where you looking at this from and it is helping me to try and formulate a more complete idea on a more inclusive list of tweaks and changes, some of which are houserules.
Funny enough, I checked back on some of our previous conversations and we were more in agreement on how the game should be played. This here is a disagreement on rules presentation, which we've had before. Once again I'm gonna actually have to swing the other way and say that based on what you're trying to do it might be better to go even broader: drop weird formulas, ban only the things which you already know need it without searching for the rest, and then just supply a writeup on what your goals are and how people should look at material you haven't already addressed. It's not necessarily worth making a huge list until you have a huge list, to the point that your list conveys the mission statement implicitly (and then leave the statement in anyway)

So regarding caster level boosts for example, you'd just say that characters shouldn't use more than a couple, which shouldn't be more than a couple (and ban any problems you already know). Outline how much casting, how much uber-charging/pouncing/bonus dicing/etc.


(Personally, as a dinosaur aficionado, I take personal insult to the Fleshraker's existence.)
A grave insult, I agree. I think I've taken it a bit further though, as my raging against the supreme power of the "Brown Bear" made me go research brown bears and discover that the 3.5 "Brown Bear" is not the common grizzly bear the MM and druids who want one at all times present it as. The MM "Brown Bear" is actually the much rarer and region-locked Kodiak Bear, which is waaay heavier and taller. So I've begun taking that as a personal insult as well, and recommending the "Brown Bear" take a HD increase and be matched to the Polar Bear on the table as it should be. I haven't found anything to take issue with in the horse, elephant, or wolf/dog rules though.

Edit: oh, and missed this one-

It is just a straight up nerf to both though. It drops clerics down to light armor only and removes the light armor proficiency for cloistered clerics. Later on I did forget to add that clerics do get 4+int skill points, but no changes to class skills, and Cloistered Clerics get the 6+int and all knowledge skills. A normal cleric could just take the Knowledge domain and then... they're behind by 2 skill points? What's the big deal?
Looking the wrong direction. A normal cleric takes the knowledge domain and is "only" behind 2 skill points (even though you're considering the giving of skill points buffs, so that should be a big deal). . . and a bunch of extra features. A cloistered cleric takes Light Armor Proficiency and now they're the same as your normal cleric, plus 2 skill points, extra class skills, the Lore ability, the free knowledge domain, and the extra spells added to the main list. The only thing that your normal cleric has over the cloistered with these changes is one feat, and 3/4-d8 instead of 1/2-6d. Except without heavy armor and shields, that 3/4-d8 matters a whole heck of a lot less, compared to the pile of extra stuff the cloistered gets. Even if you want to consider clerics with medium instead of heavy tanky enough for the front line, they're still two feats behind because you took shields.

To be clear, I don't really think there's any excuse for keeping the "cloistered" variant around. It is blatantly the most gimmie gimmie free stuff variant around. It's billed as "spending greater time in study and prayer" and people give it credit for merely not having heavier armors, but just look at it. A full free domain when those otherwise require special PrCs, granted to anyone no matter how knowledge-hating their deity is. The Bard and Loremaster PrC's special know everything mechanic on there just because, and most of another domain's worth of spells because hey why not? And nevermind that the stuidious wizard uses the normal base 2+ int. "Cloistered" cleric is basically a fake-out where they put all the bard's "I'm not a full caster" features on a full caster. So just as you will not convince me that anything based on SPLTB pounce is ever a good idea, you will not convince me that any comparisons to cloistered cleric are a good idea. Nerf clerics, sure if you must, but that variant will need more of a nerf than just one feat's worth of armor to go alongside it.

[Pleh]

bumping paladin and ranger up to 9th level casting is stepping all over the cleric and druid's toes. There would be a lot of overlap.

Are you kidding? There's already just about total overlap.

Is there much any Ranger build you can't do better with Druid?

I know I've commonly seen advice given that there's no point to playing a paladin when you can do all the same stuff better with cleric.

The classes are already just about entirely overlapped. Giving Paladin and Ranger 9th spells would mean there was actually a reason to play those classes.

I feel a bigger criticism is that Paladin and Favored Soul overlap pretty strongly, having almost identical flavor (the spontaneous divine caster) and both casting off charisma only.

[Quertus]

@Ashtagon - fair enough. I'm familiar with phenomenon of decision paralysis first hand(ish) through my character Raymond. He was a Telepath who was given completely arbitrary magic. He didn't know what to do with it, and gave it to his prodigy to return to simpler choices.

@AnimeTheCat (and others)

For armored Clerics, why not grant armor proficiency with the War domain? I agree that no-one wants to play the box of bandaids at many tables, btw. On a related note, I'm a fan of letting people play whatever they want, building characters separately, and then playing the "how do we make this party work" minigame rather than trying to create a formulaic party where someone is "forced" to play the Cleric.

For Wild Shape, my original "1,000 year old Necropolitan" was invented for "you must know the creature in order to polymorph into it" house rules, could just as well be an elf or sometime trained on a timeless plane except that I love the idea of an Undead or robotic Druid, and originally made sure that he "knew" every creature quite intimately.

With regards to skills, why not just explicitly tell players that class skill lists are open to negotiation based on background / backstory? You will allow for noble fighters, court mages, city Druids, whatever, and allow players to add to their character's class skill list accordingly?

[chaos_redefined]

For the wizard specialisation... Some options

1) Grant Metamagic School Focus in the chosen school with increases in uses as you level up. This means there is a point in being a non-focused non-diviner.

2) Go check out the Master Specialist school, and yoink their estorica's.

3) PH2/Unearthed Arcana offered school-specific ACFs. Maybe worth checking those out?

The druid house rule is off putting, although your reasoning makes sense. I usually limit myself to a few forms anyway.

While it's not a deal-breaker for me... I'm not happy about the armor proficiency on clerics, but not for the reason that everyone else is throwing around... You could solve my concerns by upping the range on healing spells. Probably give them a boost while you're here.

[Pleh]

For Wild Shape, my original "1,000 year old Necropolitan" was invented for "you must know the creature in order to polymorph into it" house rules, could just as well be an elf or sometime trained on a timeless plane except that I love the idea of an Undead or robotic Druid, and originally made sure that he "knew" every creature quite intimately.

If you're starting as a higher level character, it makes sense you'd already know more forms anyway.

If you used this shenanigan for a 1st level character at my table... heh. "Wow, the animals I studied in the timeless plane have evolved and changed over the 1000 years I've been gone. I have to start my research almost completely from scratch!"

Ultimately, even if you play as a millenial necropolitan, if you're a level 1 druid, you haven't been doing the proper study on all the animals you're familiar with. Not to wild shape into them. We all could name a dozen animals from around the world, but few of us have studied or worked closely with them. We see them at the zoo a few times in our lives.

If you've been studying them correctly all this time, then you are not only level 1 in druid. You just don't get that kind of knowledge without doing the work and study that results in levels.

And since you're making 1st level characters, you clearly aren't already an advanced druid, regardless the amount of time you could have used to that effect.

[blackwindbears]

So, in my world(s), clerics follow something more akin to priests, monks, nuns, and other clergy, while paladins follow a more crusader or holy warrior image. Think about the Era around the holy Roman empire and the crusading period. Much of the armored crusaders were not clergy men, but warriors from some other walk of life. There were, of course, some clergy that wore armor and led or fought in combat, but those were a rare sight indeed. I mirror most of my in-game religions after this, with the more warlike ones taking a level of fighter or paladin if there was an expectation for clerics to be competent in martial combat. These deities primarily being hextor, heironeous, grummsh, kord, and corellon loratheon. But others as well, such as some branches of moradin (I call them each moradin's hammer arm and moradin's shield hand, but I digress) and some more outspoken sects of st. Cuthbert (that call themselves 'The Word of the Cudgel'). So, cleric warriors are not uncommon, but clerics aren't innately warriors and that training must be additive and extra in my game world. With a toolbox the size of a cleric's, surely the only option isn't relying on heavy armor and/or a shield.

As for caster level caps, I need to do some more serious thinking, and really converse with more people to gage a more complete vision of the total magical experience from a wider audience before I try to actually create any houserules or tweaks pertaining to them, and that's something i'm glad this thread has helped me realize. The thing is, I don't want to make magic less deairable, as that leaves people with a bad taste in their mouths and as some others have already said it makes them question what kind of DM I am going to be. I am more willing to work and find an appropriate middle ground than I am to sit back and not budge from a position or stance i've claimed. Fun is the point of the game and if rules and restrictions sap the un out of fun, all you're left with is F and F is not what you wanna be left with.?

Virtually any in-game reason is probably enough to convince me on the cleric business. The main concern I have is that play at typical OP levels might result in the player getting pigeonholed into healbot status.

Regarding the CL stuff most anything that effects the D20 roll should have additive effects applied to it, rather than multiplicative ones. So, don't use 50%, instead just pick a flat bonus that you find acceptable and cap it there.
I'd suggest a Caster level of no more than 5 higher or something. If you're caster level is much higher you're probably doing something dumb. A level 13 wizard with a level 19 CL is probably doing something dumb. A level 20 wizard with a CL of 22, probably just wants a slight boost to some of their spells, and many spells cap caster level anyway.

The only other house rule I'd like to ask you about is the combat expertise. I was most excited about this one, but the more I think about it the more problems are apparent. I love the symmetry with two-handed fighting and Power attack. The problem is that you have a multiplication factor being added to a d20 roll. It can get dumb fast. A level 4 fighter using a shield falls off the d20 roll for a great number of monsters using this. If we look at a level 10 fighter, his AC might as well read N/A.

Feats are not generally designed to be able to give bonuses that large. I'm sure there are some other broken feats in the game, but it seems like you're adding one.

The other issue with the design is a little trickier. With power attack, there is an inherent tension between lowering your attack roll and increasing your damage. If you want the benefit of the increased damage, you still have to hit. With the combat expertise rule there is no incentive, once you've decided you don't actually need to hit, not to just dump all of your attack bonus into the dodge bonus to AC.

Maybe you could only get the dodge bonus against enemies that you hit that turn, then you don't have to deal with the arbitrary +5 cap, and it'd introduce an interesting decision for the player to make. That's kind of a pain-in-the-ass rule though, because literally nobody likes tracking dodge (the feat).

Maybe a feat where you lower your AC by a certain amount (-4?), and enemies provoke an Attack of opportunity from you if they miss. Maybe having a shield reduces the amount your AC gets lowered.

Combat Shenanigans
Prerequisite:
Dex 13

Benefit
As a free action on your turn, you take a -4 dodge penalty to your AC. During the next round, if anyone attempts to hit you with a melee attack, they provoke an attack of opportunity if they miss. (This is an exception to the normal rule that AOO's happen before the action that provokes them). If you are using a shield and benefiting from it's shield bonus the penalty to AC is reduced to -2.

Normal
Attacking foes do not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Special
A fighter may select Combat Shenanigans as one of her bonus feats.

[Quertus]

And since you're making 1st level characters, you clearly aren't already an advanced druid, regardless the amount of time you could have used to that effect.

Ah, but I was a higher-level Druid when I studied them, back before that encounter with a wight / interview with a vampire / whatever.

Admittedly, that one's pure cheese; the original "Master taught me intelligently given the rules of the world" is just, well, having a smart master.

Seriously, who wouldn't train their apprentice intelligently by letting them study different forms if it was required in the world? :smallconfused:

Yeah, Sorcerers (and other untrained, innate power classes) are as FUBAR as ever.

[Covenant12]

I've seen multiple people saying something along the lines of the first bit of this, and I don't get it. Not the not wanting to play a Cleric at that point, but rather the "this is a big and bad enough change to discourage it" bit. The former is a matter of taste. But this being a big deal? Putting aside the fact that a single level of Fighter would still fix this (as spell failure still isn't a problem), Clerics function predominantly as divine mages with a slightly better chassis but fewer broken spells. This rule isn't stripping Clerics of any of their potent self-buffs either, it's just (a) hurting their AC, or (b) forcing them to pay for their armor proficiency. Sure, that can be annoying enough that as a matter of taste I or someone else might not want to play a Cleric, but I don't think it's a huge deal from a balance perspective.

As to this specific comment on the supposed unpopularity of Clerics, do you have any support for this claim? Speaking anecdotally, I'd say Monk and/or Ranger are the least popular core classes in this edition. Speaking with the backing of surveys conducted by WoTC, I know that Ranger is definitely the least popular class in 5e.The first is I see it as punishing the "good guy Cleric". Walking band-aid, mediocre tanky beatstick, a lot of debuff removal. Most heals are touch spells, I like giving this guy good ac cheap if he's in melee range. Honestly if the war domain granted heavy armor that would be fine as an option.

And certainly not a deal breaker, I'd willingly play a druid healer under these rules, or several other roles. Maybe an archivist if I was feeling divine pure caster, and the DM was ok with the class.

And I should have been far more clear on clerics being disliked. I was thinking 3.5 and earlier (D&D, 1st, 2nd, 3.0, 3.5) and also really mostly Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard roles. I hated 4th since I first heard an overview, 5th I've only skimmed and never played. Before 3rd no one wanted to be the cleric in my groups, I got stuck with it often. (and shocked them with how effective "harm" is, pre-3.5) That was a common thing I heard from other groups. Anecdotal yes, but consistent.

Meanwhile the *idea* of rangers and monks are quite popular with Tolkien/Kung-fu fans. The implementation varies among editions, monks are not good in 3.x. And rangers need effort to keep up. I'm sorry to hear ranger isn't well liked in 5.0. The class concept is great for an adventuring party. Again, different from implementation.

[Florian]

@Covenant12:

The PF Cleric comes only with Medium Armor Proficiency by default, some of the better archetypes even drop this to Light or drop even Light.... and it works. Still a damn fine class, a good battlefield healer and able to be in or near the frontline.

[SLOTHRPG95]

The first is I see it as punishing the "good guy Cleric". Walking band-aid, mediocre tanky beatstick, a lot of debuff removal. Most heals are touch spells, I like giving this guy good ac cheap if he's in melee range. Honestly if the war domain granted heavy armor that would be fine as an option.

And certainly not a deal breaker, I'd willingly play a druid healer under these rules, or several other roles. Maybe an archivist if I was feeling divine pure caster, and the DM was ok with the class.

And I should have been far more clear on clerics being disliked. I was thinking 3.5 and earlier (D&D, 1st, 2nd, 3.0, 3.5) and also really mostly Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard roles. I hated 4th since I first heard an overview, 5th I've only skimmed and never played. Before 3rd no one wanted to be the cleric in my groups, I got stuck with it often. (and shocked them with how effective "harm" is, pre-3.5) That was a common thing I heard from other groups. Anecdotal yes, but consistent.

Meanwhile the *idea* of rangers and monks are quite popular with Tolkien/Kung-fu fans. The implementation varies among editions, monks are not good in 3.x. And rangers need effort to keep up. I'm sorry to hear ranger isn't well liked in 5.0. The class concept is great for an adventuring party. Again, different from implementation.

Yeah, the low-OP "good guy cleric" would have to splash Fighter or pay a feat tax, but I don't view that as punishment per se. A druid trying for the same role in core has to pay a feat tax if they want to be proficient in their dragonscale full plate, but that's just the cost of their choice. Furthermore, they'll probably have to spend even more feats if they want to fit the walking band-aid role as well (Spontaneous Healer, Augment Healing, whatever). I don't think this is punishing someone who wants to play a support-oriented low-OP druid.

As for anecdotal evidence, it looks like yours and mine conflict. Hence the problem with anecdotal evidence, I guess. I've mostly played 3.x and some 5e, and all the earlier stuff was AD&D 2nd, so I can't speak of before that and/or 4e. I can say though that the only complaint I remember hearing back with 2nd edition was the potential weirdness about weapon use. But there could've been a lot more people that I didn't game with who had other complaints.

[Yogibear41]

While this is very true, Buff & Smash Clerics do tend to step on Paladins' toes rather harshly. Perhaps this is OP's way of making Clerics more "Divine Wizards" and not necessarily nerf their utility.

1 level of fighter pretty much invalidates all the cleric nerfs to be honest.

[RoboEmperor]

1 level of fighter pretty much invalidates all the cleric nerfs to be honest.

I think people here are vastly underestimating the fighter dip.
1. Multiclass Penalty
2. A level is like an entire month of gaming. You are delaying your shtick by an entire month
3. Campaigns rarely go to 17 let alone 20. This dip might rob you of an entire spell level.

[King of Nowhere]

Since you're still considering caster levels and metamagic reducers, i offer you my houserules on that:
- caster level boosting get more difficult the more you boost it. Getting +1 to cl works normally, but the second extra level costs 2. The third three, the fourth four, and so on. So you need a +1 cl bonus to getan actual +1, a +3 bonus to get +2 to cl, +6 to get a +3, +10 to boost your cl by 4, and so on. I hope i'm clear enough, it's easier done than said.
- metamagic reducers can't reduce the cost of metamagic by more than half. If you want to persist a spell, you need at least a slot 3 levels higher, no matter what.
Divine metamagic doesn't work on the fly, but it lets you prepare your spells with reduced metamagic cost while sacrificing some daily uses of turn undead. To keep the feat useful, you only need one and it works for all metamagic feats. For example, if you have divine metamagic you can prepare persistent divine power as a 7th level slot, and you start the day with 3 less uses of turn undead.

Those work well enough for me. Although i never had to use them because none of my players tried to abuse caster level or metamagic reducers. I mostly use them to limit boss villain optimization

[zergling.exe]

For example, if you have divine metamagic you can prepare persistent divine power as a 7th level slot, and you start the day with 3 less uses of turn undead.

Just want to point out that the formula for DMM is 1 + spell level adjustment, so Persistent would cost 4 uses under your rules instead of the normal 7. Unless your house rules also get rid of the base +1.

[Pleh]

Ah, but I was a higher-level Druid when I studied them, back before that encounter with a wight / interview with a vampire / whatever.

Sure, but funny thing is that while you remember shaping into all those forms, you've strangely forgotten how. I imagine it's like going into physical therapy for regaining lost motor skills. You remember the ability to walk, but the memory doesn't alleviate your handicap.


Admittedly, that one's pure cheese; the original "Master taught me intelligently given the rules of the world" is just, well, having a smart master.

Seriously, who wouldn't train their apprentice intelligently by letting them study different forms if it was required in the world? :smallconfused:

I'm currently studying karate (white belt beginner).

My teachers are not going to try to make me master every kata, no matter how sensible it would be to do, if it were possible.

My point is that one can interpret Wild Shape as requiring extensive knowledge and practice for each form. The master will give you all you can handle, but the brain can only learn so much at a time. After you've got 3 or 4 forms, mastering more would mean being a higher level druid by definition.

[Particle_Man]

I like 16. Half-orc assassins are back on the table, as they should be!

I assume every monk will take Pounce as soon as possible.

[Elkad]

Cleric Armor.
Medium and shield seems a happy midpoint (maybe just light shield?).

Paladin casting. I'm not fond of the spontaneous thing the more I think about it. It's not just Arcane Order interaction.
The shift to Cha is still excellent (and I use it myself)
There was some discussion about giving them 9ths.. Silly.
They need more smites. 1 swing per paladin level. Or even 1 round per paladin level.

[Pleh]

They need more smites. 1 swing per paladin level. Or even 1 round per paladin level.

Agreed. But I've also been a fan of Smite being universal damage, not limited to evil targets. I feel like it puts more of the onus on the paladin to be responsible with their power. Then let smiting an innocent be an act that might require atonement (I mean generally, not as per the mechanic necessarily).

Instead of 1 attack, maybe charge all melee for 1 round. Also, I don't like the Daily structure for it. I'd almost rather give them a pool of Paladin points (like Willpower or something) per level which can be spent to Smite, Lay on Hands, or Turn Undead.

[King of Nowhere]

Just want to point out that the formula for DMM is 1 + spell level adjustment, so Persistent would cost 4 uses under your rules instead of the normal 7. Unless your house rules also get rid of the base +1.

I only gave it to one major villain the party hasn't encountered yet, so I never decided. I'm mostly handwaving it anyway for that specific use.

[Particle_Man]

For paladin smites you could crib from Pathfinder and make smites per enemy rather than per attack, so that the paladin only uses one smite against evil opponent A, and uses that smite to give bonuses are every attack vs. that evil opponent A.

[AnimeTheCat]

Never said the the lack of int requirement would be a problem, just that there's no reason for fighters to have skills. Because "skills" isn't actually a role. As always, if you want "non-combat" encounters to be important, you need to build an encounter system for them and split it up between the classes. The problem is how that's a huge amount of AC that *should* matter if you're running the game normally.

The fact that you don't consider it a problem specifically because "they're not a threat" is the most troubling part. So the meatshield role which is part of the game's intended balance isn't important enough to actually pay attention to AC differences because it's not DPS. And apparently your expected damage output is such that the "paltry xd6" of a martial maneuver doesn't count either. Your response below that shield users should just TWF completely misses the point, and gets extra points when one acknowledges that the damage from TWF with a shield is basically a few paltry d6's.

Yes, I am being serious. I don't endorse the idea that everything needs more skill points, but putting sense motive on their list is on my own list.

Fair point. Though I think this could also be accomplished by teaching people how to sneak attack without dedicated features by using the hide rules.

Has any culture in the world ever entered the battlefield with a "TWF" style? No, it's shields, or heavy armor and two handed weapons.

That's not the value of a shield. The value of a shield is not getting hit. What you have here, is requiring anyone who wants to use a shield to also be a TWFer, because there are almost no tadeoffs. How do you use a shield in real life? Not by swinging with both arms like a madman. Shields are already screwed by how little credit anyone gives to things that aren't maximum offense, so TWF doesn't devalue shields because you can just TWF with them is. . . ?

Then. . . why don't you just get rid of the problems!? Instead of complaining about stacking turn undead attempts, stop letting them stack! Instead of complaining about Persistent Spell, get rid of it!

No solution is more elegant than just making a list of what makes sense. Crawl through the SNA lists to excuse those animals specifically? More work. Base number of forms on ranks, which is actually just based on level, with some sort of restriction so you can't jump ahead? More work. All you get from making up extended familiarity mechanics is another fiddly bit to optimize without actually decreasing the power level. You can either cut the list down to a very few specific forms, or make choices based on logic and experience. If you want more than a very few forms, then basic logic of where the person has lived gives the most options in the least time.

Even so, that means it's in there just because. The list of tweaks isn't carefully considered, it's just stuff. You made pounce a feat specifically because SPLTB made it a 1st level feature, which never should have happened in the first place. Which is still a type of game I'm not too interested in playing in.

And that's still a feat=casting level for druids who would have had to lose a casting level in order to pounce with non-pouncing animals.

The bad thing is that you're balancing based on broken content, with no regard for central game mechanics. There is a reason you can't full attack while moving. It's kindof a whole thing. And then the scout is specifically supposed to have difficulty because of that. If you want skirmish to work all the time you might as well just make it work all the time, or just get rid of the central mechanic of standard and full attacks.

Dispel magic, the fact that you're isloated from the rest of the party up there, the fact that they cost spell slots when they're supposedly not a necessity. . .

This statement is at odds with your claim that you don't see it as a neccesity. If it's not a neccessity then the PCs using it isn't a given, same as you say happens with your pounce feat. If you have a problem with encounters being bypassed with fly, then you just stop making those encounters. Or reduce the xp, or count them as nothing but an obstacle to force a spell usage, or change the level of the flight spells, or. . .

Specifically being trippable out of magical flight only matters against trip builds. So it matters for PCs with trip builds, and for when you throw NPC trip builds at them.

You seem to be preferring circuitous limiting formulas rather than just removing problems. More work for less fixing of the problem, and instead of getting the confrontation with a player who wanted to use it out of the way immediately, just delays and turns it into an argument.

And the biggest problem I see is claiming characters need to be good at things other than dungeoneering combat without actually rebuilding the game to work that way. The versatility of spellcasters isn't, until you start making up new roles that can be filled by spells (also applies to social skill checks) but nothing else.

Incentivizing something a person isn't interested in is the same as pressuring them to use it anyway- if they do any amount of optimization (which almost all players do in some way). And while you keep suggesting that people don't use all the char-op staples and just do what they want, you poo-poo the damage and effectiveness of builds that aren't using them. So I'm getting mixed messages.

You could already do that, until someone raises the bar on what "proficient" means.

What reduction in feat costs? The only feat costs you've reduced are TWF. You made Combat Expertise drastically more powerful and unlocked from int, but in the very same response you basically said it didn't matter, so clearly that's a waste of a feat. Making pounce a feat is actually a feat cost if you take it, still not something that should be a feat but certainly not a reduction in feat costs.

That is not how you create balanced rules or mechanics by any definition of balance.

You don't need to make your list of houserules about fixing the game, but if you're just allowing whatever and expecting the "gentleman's agreement" to hold everything together, then that's not a list of houserules I want to play under.

Then don't allow them. All characters (and by extension all parties) must be approved by the DM.

Did making these changes actually reduce a problem of too many spellcasters which you previously had? 'Cause the way you're talking about it sounds like your group never had any of those problems to begin with. Houserules to fix problems that don't exist which open up new potential problems. . oof.

And so what do you do if someone does decide to make one of those characters, and they don't match the rest of the party? Do you ask them to just not use the thing you specifically houseruled in?

Then I would suggest a giant disclaimer including some of those examples of things you specifically houseruled in but people didn't use, as why you're not concerned by their potential effect on the game.

You've asked the question of "would you play under these houserules," suggesting that we should look at these houserules from our perspectives. But apparently the most significant part of your game, and a foundation of the houserules, is a very specific power level and a bunch of self-limiting players, far more than any of these houserules.

Edit: and to be clear, my own list would require the same thing. As would most.


Looks like a mess of bad forum tips that don't accomplish much. With #1 it's pretty easy to make yourself immune to attack rolls and still hit most of the time. #18 is easily abusable with drow poison: don't forget even on a passed save the attacker still does normal damage. You get double the KOs because those that don't die might be poisoned and vis versa. Other than that I wouldn't care much one way or another about the rules if joining such a group.

I'd probably avoid such a gaming group and look for others for two reasons. (1) The optimization allowed looks pretty high based on what's implied characters will try in these rules (e.g., metamagic reducers). That's a lot to keep up with. (2) While all but #1 and #18 are little more than minor annoyances, it makes me suspicious about DM judgement in general. I'd join the group if I couldn't find anything better, which is very possible because DMs are hard to find. I'd ask other players what character builds they're doing so I could better guess the optimization level and then work on my character. That way I could cheese him out a little and keep up without it getting way out of hand.

Personally I'd strike the whole list, ban all or most metamagic reducers and ban some of the easier caster level boosters. Deal with other abusive things like NI loops as they come, because there are too many to count and most players won't attempt any. Job done. But that's my opinion, and like I said I'd tolerate it as a player.

#2 for example just make sure spot checks are usually rolled against foes hiding behind cover or concealment, which RAW requires, and spot is not so essential to have as a class skill. As it is more likely to be ruled those "extra" skill points will likely need to go to spot and so on. The house rule is not a significant problem, it's just pointless.


On the topic of metamagic reducers, you could just say that you cannot create an effective spell slot higher than you would otherwise be able to cast, with metamagic reducers still affecting a 'virtual' spell level to the spell in question. This makes metamagic reducers more cost-effective with your lower-level slots, without increasing the upper-level bounds of your casters' capabilities, and is more mid-level relevant, without being an arbitrary lvl20 cap.

Could cause other problems, and I might be mis-identifying the problem the other fix was meant to address, but it's one I've used in my houserules before with little objection.

As for the wild shape stuff, I had a similar concept for wild shape, polymorph, and any other open-target summon or shapeshifting spell, even retrofitted into the summon monster/nature's ally spells, perhaps compressed into a comprehensive 'bestiary' mechanic. Originally determined per caster level, for each level, the caster would learn one 'creature' known to summon/polymorph/wild-shape/etc. Maybe add a 'better of caster level or ranks in relevant creature knowledge skill', to give some early options. Early selections would be based on home region's terrain type (circus doesn't count) or at least wherever they learned their first level of Druid (for instance), while later options would be added from creatures sought out or encountered. Any summoned/shapechanged creatures MUST have been pre-collected by the player.

Problematic "must-have" creatures (fleshraker, dire turtle, etc) are either errattad to be more in line with the average, or don't exist. (Personally, as a dinosaur aficionado, I take personal insult to the Fleshraker's existence.)


Funny enough, I checked back on some of our previous conversations and we were more in agreement on how the game should be played. This here is a disagreement on rules presentation, which we've had before. Once again I'm gonna actually have to swing the other way and say that based on what you're trying to do it might be better to go even broader: drop weird formulas, ban only the things which you already know need it without searching for the rest, and then just supply a writeup on what your goals are and how people should look at material you haven't already addressed. It's not necessarily worth making a huge list until you have a huge list, to the point that your list conveys the mission statement implicitly (and then leave the statement in anyway)

So regarding caster level boosts for example, you'd just say that characters shouldn't use more than a couple, which shouldn't be more than a couple (and ban any problems you already know). Outline how much casting, how much uber-charging/pouncing/bonus dicing/etc.


A grave insult, I agree. I think I've taken it a bit further though, as my raging against the supreme power of the "Brown Bear" made me go research brown bears and discover that the 3.5 "Brown Bear" is not the common grizzly bear the MM and druids who want one at all times present it as. The MM "Brown Bear" is actually the much rarer and region-locked Kodiak Bear, which is waaay heavier and taller. So I've begun taking that as a personal insult as well, and recommending the "Brown Bear" take a HD increase and be matched to the Polar Bear on the table as it should be. I haven't found anything to take issue with in the horse, elephant, or wolf/dog rules though.

Edit: oh, and missed this one-

Looking the wrong direction. A normal cleric takes the knowledge domain and is "only" behind 2 skill points (even though you're considering the giving of skill points buffs, so that should be a big deal). . . and a bunch of extra features. A cloistered cleric takes Light Armor Proficiency and now they're the same as your normal cleric, plus 2 skill points, extra class skills, the Lore ability, the free knowledge domain, and the extra spells added to the main list. The only thing that your normal cleric has over the cloistered with these changes is one feat, and 3/4-d8 instead of 1/2-6d. Except without heavy armor and shields, that 3/4-d8 matters a whole heck of a lot less, compared to the pile of extra stuff the cloistered gets. Even if you want to consider clerics with medium instead of heavy tanky enough for the front line, they're still two feats behind because you took shields.

To be clear, I don't really think there's any excuse for keeping the "cloistered" variant around. It is blatantly the most gimmie gimmie free stuff variant around. It's billed as "spending greater time in study and prayer" and people give it credit for merely not having heavier armors, but just look at it. A full free domain when those otherwise require special PrCs, granted to anyone no matter how knowledge-hating their deity is. The Bard and Loremaster PrC's special know everything mechanic on there just because, and most of another domain's worth of spells because hey why not? And nevermind that the stuidious wizard uses the normal base 2+ int. "Cloistered" cleric is basically a fake-out where they put all the bard's "I'm not a full caster" features on a full caster. So just as you will not convince me that anything based on SPLTB pounce is ever a good idea, you will not convince me that any comparisons to cloistered cleric are a good idea. Nerf clerics, sure if you must, but that variant will need more of a nerf than just one feat's worth of armor to go alongside it.


Are you kidding? There's already just about total overlap.

Is there much any Ranger build you can't do better with Druid?

I know I've commonly seen advice given that there's no point to playing a paladin when you can do all the same stuff better with cleric.

The classes are already just about entirely overlapped. Giving Paladin and Ranger 9th spells would mean there was actually a reason to play those classes.

I feel a bigger criticism is that Paladin and Favored Soul overlap pretty strongly, having almost identical flavor (the spontaneous divine caster) and both casting off charisma only.


@Ashtagon - fair enough. I'm familiar with phenomenon of decision paralysis first hand(ish) through my character Raymond. He was a Telepath who was given completely arbitrary magic. He didn't know what to do with it, and gave it to his prodigy to return to simpler choices.

@AnimeTheCat (and others)

For armored Clerics, why not grant armor proficiency with the War domain? I agree that no-one wants to play the box of bandaids at many tables, btw. On a related note, I'm a fan of letting people play whatever they want, building characters separately, and then playing the "how do we make this party work" minigame rather than trying to create a formulaic party where someone is "forced" to play the Cleric.

For Wild Shape, my original "1,000 year old Necropolitan" was invented for "you must know the creature in order to polymorph into it" house rules, could just as well be an elf or sometime trained on a timeless plane except that I love the idea of an Undead or robotic Druid, and originally made sure that he "knew" every creature quite intimately.

With regards to skills, why not just explicitly tell players that class skill lists are open to negotiation based on background / backstory? You will allow for noble fighters, court mages, city Druids, whatever, and allow players to add to their character's class skill list accordingly?


For the wizard specialisation... Some options

1) Grant Metamagic School Focus in the chosen school with increases in uses as you level up. This means there is a point in being a non-focused non-diviner.

2) Go check out the Master Specialist school, and yoink their estorica's.

3) PH2/Unearthed Arcana offered school-specific ACFs. Maybe worth checking those out?

The druid house rule is off putting, although your reasoning makes sense. I usually limit myself to a few forms anyway.

While it's not a deal-breaker for me... I'm not happy about the armor proficiency on clerics, but not for the reason that everyone else is throwing around... You could solve my concerns by upping the range on healing spells. Probably give them a boost while you're here.


Virtually any in-game reason is probably enough to convince me on the cleric business. The main concern I have is that play at typical OP levels might result in the player getting pigeonholed into healbot status.

Regarding the CL stuff most anything that effects the D20 roll should have additive effects applied to it, rather than multiplicative ones. So, don't use 50%, instead just pick a flat bonus that you find acceptable and cap it there.
I'd suggest a Caster level of no more than 5 higher or something. If you're caster level is much higher you're probably doing something dumb. A level 13 wizard with a level 19 CL is probably doing something dumb. A level 20 wizard with a CL of 22, probably just wants a slight boost to some of their spells, and many spells cap caster level anyway.

The only other house rule I'd like to ask you about is the combat expertise. I was most excited about this one, but the more I think about it the more problems are apparent. I love the symmetry with two-handed fighting and Power attack. The problem is that you have a multiplication factor being added to a d20 roll. It can get dumb fast. A level 4 fighter using a shield falls off the d20 roll for a great number of monsters using this. If we look at a level 10 fighter, his AC might as well read N/A.

Feats are not generally designed to be able to give bonuses that large. I'm sure there are some other broken feats in the game, but it seems like you're adding one.

The other issue with the design is a little trickier. With power attack, there is an inherent tension between lowering your attack roll and increasing your damage. If you want the benefit of the increased damage, you still have to hit. With the combat expertise rule there is no incentive, once you've decided you don't actually need to hit, not to just dump all of your attack bonus into the dodge bonus to AC.

Maybe you could only get the dodge bonus against enemies that you hit that turn, then you don't have to deal with the arbitrary +5 cap, and it'd introduce an interesting decision for the player to make. That's kind of a pain-in-the-ass rule though, because literally nobody likes tracking dodge (the feat).

Maybe a feat where you lower your AC by a certain amount (-4?), and enemies provoke an Attack of opportunity from you if they miss. Maybe having a shield reduces the amount your AC gets lowered.

Combat Shenanigans
Prerequisite:
Dex 13

Benefit
As a free action on your turn, you take a -4 dodge penalty to your AC. During the next round, if anyone attempts to hit you with a melee attack, they provoke an attack of opportunity if they miss. (This is an exception to the normal rule that AOO's happen before the action that provokes them). If you are using a shield and benefiting from it's shield bonus the penalty to AC is reduced to -2.

Normal
Attacking foes do not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Special
A fighter may select Combat Shenanigans as one of her bonus feats.


Ah, but I was a higher-level Druid when I studied them, back before that encounter with a wight / interview with a vampire / whatever.

Admittedly, that one's pure cheese; the original "Master taught me intelligently given the rules of the world" is just, well, having a smart master.

Seriously, who wouldn't train their apprentice intelligently by letting them study different forms if it was required in the world? :smallconfused:

Yeah, Sorcerers (and other untrained, innate power classes) are as FUBAR as ever.


The first is I see it as punishing the "good guy Cleric". Walking band-aid, mediocre tanky beatstick, a lot of debuff removal. Most heals are touch spells, I like giving this guy good ac cheap if he's in melee range. Honestly if the war domain granted heavy armor that would be fine as an option.

And certainly not a deal breaker, I'd willingly play a druid healer under these rules, or several other roles. Maybe an archivist if I was feeling divine pure caster, and the DM was ok with the class.

And I should have been far more clear on clerics being disliked. I was thinking 3.5 and earlier (D&D, 1st, 2nd, 3.0, 3.5) and also really mostly Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard roles. I hated 4th since I first heard an overview, 5th I've only skimmed and never played. Before 3rd no one wanted to be the cleric in my groups, I got stuck with it often. (and shocked them with how effective "harm" is, pre-3.5) That was a common thing I heard from other groups. Anecdotal yes, but consistent.

Meanwhile the *idea* of rangers and monks are quite popular with Tolkien/Kung-fu fans. The implementation varies among editions, monks are not good in 3.x. And rangers need effort to keep up. I'm sorry to hear ranger isn't well liked in 5.0. The class concept is great for an adventuring party. Again, different from implementation.


Ok. I took a computer break this weekend and to just kind of relax a bit (it was thanksgiving weekend in the USA. Not sure how many, if any, other countrires celebrate). While I was taking the break, I was preparing some changes to a module that i'm going to be running for a group this weekend and I happened to find my old spiral notebook with tweaks and changes that I've tried in the past (I thought I lost it in one of my various moves). This helped me a lot because it reminded me of a TON of changes that I've already tried and didn't remember, and those changes target some of the problems that a lot of you have brought up for me to think about. But first, to address some specific things that stand out to me.

Starting with Clerics and their changes. I had forgotten about Cloistered Clerics getting more of everything and nothing but a bunch of gimmies even when not following a deitiy who's portfolio includes knowledge, indexing, research, etc. I actually found where I had tried a number of different things and my notes indicate that it seems to have worked well, so I'm not sure why I forgot it (could be that I took about 3 years off of D&D). What my notes had was that I had indeed dropped the standard cleric down to light armor only, no heavy/medium, or shields. The part that I had forgotten is that I had created a bunch of OTHER options for clerics based on various archetypes (I prototyped them off of the Pathfinder archetype system). For instance, Cloistered clerics HAD to worship a deity that either offered the knowledge domain or had some sort of learning, education, or otherwise "bookworm" status in their portfolio, they also had their light armor proficiency removed, and were reduced to d4 HD and 4+int Skil Points (making them nearly exactly like wizards). Clerics that worshiped a deity with the War domain (or similar warlike parts of the portfolio) could take the War Priest alternate class that granted 1d10 HD, smite like a paladin, medium armor proficiency, shield proficiency, and the War Domain (in addition to the two that could be selected from the deities other domains), but War Priests only got 2+int skill points and, similar to the stalwart or battle sorcerer, your number of spells per day are reduced by 1 for each spell level (minimum 0 per day). There were other variants, but most of them were just NPCs. If a PC wanted another special variant, I would work with them on it to make it meet the flavor they wanted (I think one got some monk stuff but traded some skill points or something and didn't get any armor proficiency). That is most likely what I'm going to revitalize, which leads me to...

Paladins. Paladins, as some noted, are only slightly different from Favored souls, sharing similar flavor and power. To me, they are different enough that it comes down to a matter of choice. Do you want to play a slightly less magical more innately combat focused character, or a slightly more magical less innately combat focused character? It's two gradients of a similar feel that accomplish two different goals, and should both be considered in my opinion. As for Paladin Smites, I made notes about them being per encounter as opposed to per day, and that minor change seemed to be enough with the exception of the note "no action" which I can only assume to mean that using a smite isn't any sort of action cost and can be done as a part of any sort of attack action (including a touch attack delivering a spell).

Also,when I was looking at my various notes, I uncovered some changes that I made to both Favored Souls and Sorcerers. I'll Start with Favored Souls. For Favored Souls, I changed the casting progression to the same as clerics, essentially removing the original first level, and continuing the progression logically for the 20th level. I did this for sorcerers too. I don't know how that turned out, as I can't seem to find any notes about that change. It's possible I wanted to give it a try, but just didn't get the chance to (it was closer to the back of the notebook). I also gave Favored Souls Turn Undead at level 1 and Lay on Hands at level 3, plus a few other healing and buffing abilities 1/day and 1/week (I had them broken down into choices starting at level 4 with a choice of 1/day bull's strength/cat's grace/bear's endurance/fox's cunning/owl's wisdom/eagle's spelndor spell, at 6th level with a 1/week remove disease, 8th level with a 1/day mass CLW, all with a caster level equal to the favored soul level. The page got ripped in half, so I think these changes may have been a dud). I think I would still keep the Turn Undead at 1, and the Lay on Hands at 3, but I don't know if I would give some measley 1/day abilities because daily abilities are kind of not so great. For Sorcerers, I gave the heritage feats at 1, 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20, but I also gave them an abilitiy called "signature spell" that seemed to work out pretty well by my notes. It worked by allowing a single spell for each spell level to be tagged as the "Signature Spell" which would not change casting times when using metamagic, and would get free metamagic cost reduction (only a total of -3 at level 20 for a 1st level spell, can't be any less than a +1). Looking more closely at it, I can't decide whether it would be better to just remove the increased casting time for spontaneous metamagics, or to try and engineer something more robust. I'm leaning towards removing the casting time increase, but keeping the metamagic cost reducers. Essentially, at levels 5, 11, and 17 Sorcerers receive a magic cost reduction pool of 2, 3, and 4, respectively. This would work by taking the level of the spell and subtracting it from the pool, then whatever remains can be removed from the spell's metamagic cost. For example, a level 11 sorcerer with the empower spell feat could empower a 1st level spell without incresing the level (magic pool 3, spell level 1 [3-1=2] empower spell metamagic cost +2) or could empower a 2nd level spell for only +1 level (magic pool 3, spell level 2 [3-2=1] empower spell metamagic cost +2, remainder +1), but could not effect a third level spell. Naturally, this wouldn't work with Empower Spell. Is that confusing enough? I don't know that I like it too much in present me, but past me seemed to be quite enamored with the concept. Lastly, I gave Sorcerers a Free metamagic feat at level 3 and every 3 levels after (6, 9, 12, etc). They could select any metamagic feat that they qualified for (including the easy metamagic feats so that they could use them with their non-signature spells more easily).

I think it was Quertus that said that maybe I should just advertise that class skills are not set in stone and that I would be willing to make changes to lists to better suite backstories and such. For the most part, I agree, but I want to work on the wording so that I don't get a player that comes along and tries to take too much advantage of that. It will all be in the wording, probably by including things like "within reasonable limits" and such. I don't want a Fighter to end up having the skill list of a rogue (if you want a fighter with rogue skills, play a feat rogue). Otherwise though, I think this is a good idea.

My notes had a few items on the topic of specialist wizards, but what all of the notes boiled down to were just primarily spell tweaks, so I think that I will just abandon the specialist wizard mandate and just keep my world in the flavor that it is, but add a paragraph describing the nature of magic and magical study within my world so that if a player wants to come from a specific school of study, they have information to base that on.

Also, I think that I'll take the advise and just include a line or two about not adjudicating caster level increses, but if they become a problem I may feel the need to do so. With that though, I will include that I will do my best to discuss any issues with the player prior to making any amendments to any rules or implement any houserules.

For Druids, I think I will just ask my players to have the animals that they want to wild shape into already created on notecards so that it doesn't slow the game down, and if they don't they can't do it. The more I read suggestions, the more I disliked the idea of placing some needless roll or something else to track on a character sheet. Everyone is right about one thing and that's the fact that houserules and tweaks should make the game easier or more fun, not increase the confusion or needlessly complicate things. I'm going to try to remember that as I move forward and document/test changes that I want to make.

Enough of generalities, here are some specific responses I didn't cover:


Never said the the lack of int requirement would be a problem, just that there's no reason for fighters to have skills. Because "skills" isn't actually a role. As always, if you want "non-combat" encounters to be important, you need to build an encounter system for them and split it up between the classes. The problem is how that's a huge amount of AC that *should* matter if you're running the game normally.

The fact that you don't consider it a problem specifically because "they're not a threat" is the most troubling part. So the meatshield role which is part of the game's intended balance isn't important enough to actually pay attention to AC differences because it's not DPS. And apparently your expected damage output is such that the "paltry xd6" of a martial maneuver doesn't count either. Your response below that shield users should just TWF completely misses the point, and gets extra points when one acknowledges that the damage from TWF with a shield is basically a few paltry d6's.
Ok, so here's why I don't see a massive AC as a particular threat to the balance of a game. Take Dwarven Defender for example. They get a defensive pose as a class feature that is quite nice for increasing defense. It has it's flaw though, you can't move. I liken this to my proposed Combat Expertise change. While it is potentially a monstrous increase to AC (+40 at level 20), that carries a monstrous penalty to hit as well. Being unhittable is all well and good, but it doesn't end encounters. When I play most of my enemies, I play them to their intellligence score and skills. An enemy barbarian with 8 int is likely to rush in and start swinging on this nearly unhittable fighter, but eventually (especially after a few rounds if they're alive) they will determine the real threat (the rogue shooting from the trees/bushes, the wizard incapacitating him or his allies, etc) and transition to those targets which will inevitably be more easy to hit. Simply having a high AC isn't enough in most circumstances to serve as a meatshield, and if a character is planning on being a tripper, they're going to want more than what their strength can provide to hit enemies past about level 3. It's not that I don't see it as a problem, because I admit it can become one, but only if the enemies only ever attack that one character. Further, Dodge bonuses to AC can be easily combatted by the Improved Feint feat on a rogue. Something that could be considered a 'Hard Counter' to the S&S CE Fighter 5 with a 32 AC (10 base, 8 plate, 1 dex, 2 shield, +1 shield (shield focus), 10 Dodge (CE)), would be a sneak attack fighter 3 with the Improved Feint feat, 14 strength, and a greatsword. Round 1, charge in - Round 2 if Round 1 misses feint and attack/if hit - try again. Even with a good Con and the d10 HD, a single attack will deal 4d6+3 damage, and stands a fair chance of hitting (FF AC is only 21, targeted by a +5 possibly more if freindly buffs exist for the fighter). I make sure to include encounters easy for some party members and difficult for others, and with that I include rationale as to why that is there. My players shouldn't expect to encounter hell hounds on the side of the road unless there's a reason for them to be there, that kind of thing. Or, if there's a specialized team that exists to take down the party and target their specific weaknesse, there's a reason that group exists (it's not just chance). I don't see the +40 AC at level 20 to be a problem for the same reson I don't see x4 power attack multipliers as a problem, they're only a problem if they're allowed to be. This is not the case for some spells, and those I need to be more careful about because they give actual power and control of the flow of events to the player in a way that is not condusive to a living breathing world without special adjudication.


Has any culture in the world ever entered the battlefield with a "TWF" style? No, it's shields, or heavy armor and two handed weapons.
That's not the value of a shield. The value of a shield is not getting hit. What you have here, is requiring anyone who wants to use a shield to also be a TWFer, because there are almost no tadeoffs. How do you use a shield in real life? Not by swinging with both arms like a madman. Shields are already screwed by how little credit anyone gives to things that aren't maximum offense, so TWF doesn't devalue shields because you can just TWF with them is. . . ?
There are a few Japanese swordplay styles that permit the use of two swords, although I don't know if they were for show or actual use in combat. Two knives or daggers were commonly used by vikings as a last line of defense when all othe forms of weaponry were discarded, destroyed, or disarmed from them. Many tribal cultures regularly used two large bludgeoning weapons. Even when discussing weapoon and shield, shields were VERY common off-hand weapons to use. So much so that many more ornate and advanced shields had integrated spiked gauntlets or bladed edges to be used in conjunction with weapon slashes, thrusts, or strikes. The offhand dagger or knife saw regular use in various forms of fencing and dueling as a tool for deflecting and disarming, or striking quickly when in close quarters. A hand crossbow (or pistol) saw common use on ships during naval combat as an off-hand complement to the sabre, rapier, or cutlass. Rebels in japan and china would use the sickle and chain or even two bamboo shafts of about .3-.6 meters in length. The most common example though is definitely the weapon and shield being used in conjunction with each other to form a concerted pair or weapons on the battlefield. Having done some medieval live steel exhibitions, the shield has a plethora of striking and deflecting edges and is well suited to be used in conjunction with another weapon as a means of attacking. For instance, if an opponent is making an overhand swing, you can easily surge forwards to meet their swing stopping it before they have a chance to gather momentum, while simultaneously angling your shield's bottom edge (whatever edge or corner is facing your feet) and make a jab or thrust at the face of your attacker. This accomplishes a number of tasks. If you hit, you've likely damaged the occular cavity or nose of your target, if not outright incapacitating them with the force of your blow. If you don't hit, you've caused a distraction at the very least and obscured their vision, ideally allowing you to deliver a short cut, thrust, or blow to the inner leg, armpit, or throat of the attacker.


This statement is at odds with your claim that you don't see it as a neccesity. If it's not a neccessity then the PCs using it isn't a given, same as you say happens with your pounce feat. If you have a problem with encounters being bypassed with fly, then you just stop making those encounters. Or reduce the xp, or count them as nothing but an obstacle to force a spell usage, or change the level of the flight spells, or. . .

Specifically being trippable out of magical flight only matters against trip builds. So it matters for PCs with trip builds, and for when you throw NPC trip builds at them.
Specifically with the changes to flight, I don't want to remove the capability and I don't want to change the types of encounters (I already do include a fair number of encounters that can't simply be solved by flight), but I wanted there to be an additional element of consideration when solving problems with flight and flight based spells. That's really all I'm trying to include. The easiest way I could think of was to make fly as if the caster grew wings since rules already exist for tripping targets with wings. I didn't think that would create too many problems (and for the most part it doesn't that I've experienced).


Incentivizing something a person isn't interested in is the same as pressuring them to use it anyway- if they do any amount of optimization (which almost all players do in some way). And while you keep suggesting that people don't use all the char-op staples and just do what they want, you poo-poo the damage and effectiveness of builds that aren't using them. So I'm getting mixed messages.
You're absolutely right, and I need to remember that going forward.


What reduction in feat costs? The only feat costs you've reduced are TWF. You made Combat Expertise drastically more powerful and unlocked from int, but in the very same response you basically said it didn't matter, so clearly that's a waste of a feat. Making pounce a feat is actually a feat cost if you take it, still not something that should be a feat but certainly not a reduction in feat costs.
I have more, but I need to consider them more carefully before I throw them up in the first post.


That is not how you create balanced rules or mechanics by any definition of balance.
You don't need to make your list of houserules about fixing the game, but if you're just allowing whatever and expecting the "gentleman's agreement" to hold everything together, then that's not a list of houserules I want to play under.
You're also right about this, and I think it's the most important thing I forget when I start thinking about changes I would make. The whole point of this is to limit what needs a "Gentleman's Agreement" so that a written set of concepts and tweaks are what truly hold the game and balance together.


And so what do you do if someone does decide to make one of those characters, and they don't match the rest of the party? Do you ask them to just not use the thing you specifically houseruled in?
Pounce, High AC, and Easier/more accessible Two Weapon Fighting is far easier to balance on the fly than most spells or magical effects that are traditionally more problematic. When I encounter a situation where the rest of the party are laying less powerful builds, it is pretty easy for me to grant small boons to them to bring up their effectiveness without ruining what makes that other character special. This is a lot harder to do if a character is playing a bufftoast cleric with 5 persisted buffs on themselves and spells for the rest of the day without even considering magic items, or a universe altering wizard that never leaves his sanctum and operates purely on astral projections or other effects. It just what I find easier to maintain control of is all.


Looks like a mess of bad forum tips that don't accomplish much. With #1 it's pretty easy to make yourself immune to attack rolls and still hit most of the time. #18 is easily abusable with drow poison: don't forget even on a passed save the attacker still does normal damage. You get double the KOs because those that don't die might be poisoned and vis versa. Other than that I wouldn't care much one way or another about the rules if joining such a group.

I'd probably avoid such a gaming group and look for others for two reasons. (1) The optimization allowed looks pretty high based on what's implied characters will try in these rules (e.g., metamagic reducers). That's a lot to keep up with. (2) While all but #1 and #18 are little more than minor annoyances, it makes me suspicious about DM judgement in general. I'd join the group if I couldn't find anything better, which is very possible because DMs are hard to find. I'd ask other players what character builds they're doing so I could better guess the optimization level and then work on my character. That way I could cheese him out a little and keep up without it getting way out of hand.

Personally I'd strike the whole list, ban all or most metamagic reducers and ban some of the easier caster level boosters. Deal with other abusive things like NI loops as they come, because there are too many to count and most players won't attempt any. Job done. But that's my opinion, and like I said I'd tolerate it as a player.

#2 for example just make sure spot checks are usually rolled against foes hiding behind cover or concealment, which RAW requires, and spot is not so essential to have as a class skill. As it is more likely to be ruled those "extra" skill points will likely need to go to spot and so on. The house rule is not a significant problem, it's just pointless.
So, I'm not sure what your take on the above is, but I am readdressing the metamagic and caster level changes as well as the skills portion. As for the poison, What's the issue with Drow Poison? Just like with any poison it can be resisted and not take effect right? what makes it unique or special? Honestly curious because I've used Drow Poison (I just call it knockout poison and don't restrict it to Drow) and the baked in DCs don't make it all that difficult to resist even for low-level characters (DC 13). I understand it's effect takes you to unconscious, but again I don't know how this is particularly bad. If anything, I see it as allowing a non-violent (or limitied force) party to perform stealth style missions more effectively. With Poisons being carriers for effects like sleep or unconsciousness, it takes the BFC function out of JUST the spellcaster's court and places it in the court of every class because (I could be wrong) every class has Craft as a class skill (and if they don't... they do). It opens up options for more classes from what I see. What's your take, specifically, on that? I appreciate you sharing your opinions.


On the topic of metamagic reducers, you could just say that you cannot create an effective spell slot higher than you would otherwise be able to cast, with metamagic reducers still affecting a 'virtual' spell level to the spell in question.
Interesting idea, and I'll consider it. That might be the easiest way to handle it. Can I get some input from some others on what they think of this idea?


I think I hit everyone, if I missed someone just drop another comment making your statement or asking your question. There were a lot of posts and a long time since I last posted so I'm sure I missed someone. I'm also thinking about changing the title of the thread to "would you play in a game with these tweaks/changes" to better show that it's not really houserules. Lastly, When I get the chance I'm going to be making some formatting changes to the OP to break down the changes I'm considering and making based on what category they fall in to. I'm thinking the categories should be classes, races, feats, skills, and spells, am I leaving anything out or does that pretty concisely cover all the bases? Thanks for all the help everyone, you're helping me build a better future for my groups.

[Quertus]

I would recommend, if you change the OP, archive (in a spoiler) the old list, so that comments about "item #16" or such still have a context in which to make sense.

[AnimeTheCat]

I would recommend, if you change the OP, archive (in a spoiler) the old list, so that comments about "item #16" or such still have a context in which to make sense.

I already edited it out, but I will compile it again (I think fizban full quoted it) and stick it in a spoiler at the bottom. Good idea.

[Fizban]

You know, I told myself I was going to do something else with my day, but I guess not :smallamused:


For Sorcerers, I gave the heritage feats at 1, 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20, but I also gave them an abilitiy called "signature spell". . .Lastly, I gave Sorcerers a Free metamagic feat at level 3 and every 3 levels after (6, 9, 12, etc).
Got enough bonus feats there mate?

My favored fix for making a caster more competitive on the metamagic front is to nerf bat the free metamagic until it's no longer necessary to be "competitive," because it's certainly not required to play the game. Don't power creep to match bad rules, just get rid of bad rules- or if you don't think they're bad rules then just let everyone have them. If pounce is a feat for everyone, why not an arcane version of DMM?

My own sorcerer fix is just the equivalent bonus feats (including metamagic, reserve, bloodlines and heritages, Extra Spell tweak, and poaching allowed wizard ACF options, and a note that if the odd/even level thing is a problem then Sorcerers will function as Psions. Along with the general fact that I don't run a game where the perfect theory-op wizard functions or with parties that are all full casters- wizards will not know every spell in the land and lack of spontaneous ability will hurt sometimes. There should only be one sorcerer or one wizard in the party in the first place, so how the two classes compare is pretty moot in the end. As long as they feel equivalent enough during character creation (at the beginning and for replacements).

If I want more free metamagic available, I'd allow taking the Sudden metamagics multiple times and maybe increase the base uses of Still/Silent/Extend. One thing I won't do is put Arcane Thesis, Practical Metamagic, or other reducers on bonus feat lists. A lot of people forget how useful a limiting factor there is in the general feat progression and level based prerequisites. You only have one 6th level general feat, one 9th, one 12th- Arcane Thesis has a very specific limit on how many you can have, applying to what level of spells.

I probably said it already but one of the easiest ways to nerf metamagic abuse into the ground is to just put actual prerequisites on the feats. Even just requiring that you be able to apply it to 0 level spells: no Empower until 3rd (or 6th for the poor Sorcs), no Maximize until 5th or 6th depending on bonus feats, no Quicken until 9th, and no Persist until 12th- and no DMM Persist until 15th. Makes builds less bogus in-game ("why yes, I somehow survived to Xth level despite not being able to use any of my feats"), and less broken overall.

Ok, so here's why I don't see a massive AC as a particular threat to the balance of a game. Take Dwarven Defender for example. They get a defensive pose as a class feature that is quite nice for increasing defense. It has it's flaw though, you can't move.
Wrong bit to focus on there really- Defensive Stance isn't even important. It's the +4 Constant AC they get throughout the class that's more significant- and it's also the most out of almost any PrC. Defensive Stance is just for if you happen to have a place to plant your feet.

Considering how people tend to ignore how important the penalties are for Power Attack, and how attack bonus is often assumed to be "yes" for full BABs, it's odd that you'd say the attack penalty of Expertise is so important. It only takes a few points of AC to make a huge difference in enemy accuracy, that's why AC bonuses are so controlled, but once again I think people forget this because they design AC-dumping characters, often vs op'd NPCs. With the expected AC (full armor, shield, and magic items), you hit at least a 50% miss against almost all monsters. +4 AC increases that to 70%. Another +4 to 90%. And AC stacks with actual miss chances. You want to take expertise from -4 for -4, to -4 for +8, which is enough to make you functionally immune to most monsters, and is within the range you can offset with most buffs.

Back to that Dwarven Defender? So he's getting hit maybe half as often as the normal character to start at the end of the class, and when he's got a place he can actually stay put, only then does he become nigh-unhittable. Also note, that increase in monster attack bonuses that makes it look like normal AC isn't any good? Yeah, that starts at basically the same level you could be entering Dwarven Defender. I'd bet that just as Melee Weapon Mastery looks like a response to rage, Dwarven Defender's flat AC bonus (added in 3.5) was a response to realizing their attack values might have been a bit too high. Just that slight problem of being racially locked. . .

I should address the use of the word "balance"- because balance of the game is not (just) in how the characters compare to each other. More importantly, more measurably, and more in line with the roles the game is based on, is the balance of monsters vs PCs. The party is expected to expend a certain amount of resources per monster. AC protects hit points, a resource, and buys time for the use of cheap resources (basic attacks, Eldritch Blast, series of low level spells) to conserve the use of more powerful resources. The same way having a character that can solo one-round things that are supposed to require the entire party is bad, having a character who can't be seriously harmed by something is bad. Too much AC and why even bother risking the rest of the party? The monster can't "go around" and hit them if they're not even there because they know the tank can whittle down anything but the boss without being hit by anything but a 20. No reason to expend any offensive power from the rest of the party once this guy is unstoppable, not even attack buffs really. The role of the meatshield is to conserve resources, but too much conservation means your boss monsters get nova'd.

Simply having a high AC isn't enough in most circumstances to serve as a meatshield,
If this is true in your games then it's true in your games, but every evaluation I've done has found it to be far less true than advertised. I think a lot of it is the assumption that a "meatshield" will. . . run straight at the enemies instead of being a meatshield, while his allies just stand there and wait to be attacked. It's a lot harder to "just go around" when the meatshield is in position and their allies are actually using him as a meatshield.

It all comes down to the idea that if you aren't dealing enough damage, you don't matter. Nevermind that every attack wasted while that foe figures out they can't hit you is resources in the bank and time bought for your allies to bring them down. Or that most monsters really don't have that much hp and you're only responsible for maybe 1/4 of it at most. I will never condone this stance which goes directly against foundational mechanics of the game, or balance anything based on it. I'll add things to increase damage here or there if I think it's a good idea, but I won't ignore the power of something else just because it's not damage. Heck, you could probably say that' a lot of WotC's own problems, adding feats and abilities and spells willy nilly as long as they don't have a damage number directly attached.

Dodge bonuses to AC can be easily combatted by the Improved Feint feat on a rogue.
An option meant for PCs that requires you to char-op monsters to fight it doesn't sound like a good idea to me, unless you already want to char-op your monsters and are buffing the PC's options to match. A specific feat to counter a specific feat is a lot like the counterpsell rules- in practice, far less significant than advertised.

[stuff about people having things in both hands]
Yup. And how much of that is actually TWF the way 3.5 presents it? If you really want to represent realistic use of "two weapons," you'd put a minimum +1 AC on using anything in your off hand (which then hoses existing shield bonuses of course) when you're not attacking with it. All those shield strikes you can and might make in real life have no bearing on how dnd combat works. They're things you do without needing Heroic Feat levels of training, you're not swinging wildly with both hands while giving up the defense of the shield, and so on. They're parts of the abstract attack roll, and since even realistically a shield is not as good of a weapon as your actual weapon (or else you'd just use two shields), the game has your weapon deal more damage and so you attack with the weapon, not the shield, because why would you do anything else?

You can take a bunch of feats that make you swing with both your weapon and shield while somehow defending against attacks from all sides like a coreographed movie fight, but that's not how shields should be assumed to work. Hence I find it annoying when people tell me the "fix" for shields is to use a TWF build. Your Combat Expertise change would actually be closer, if I didn't find it too strong. For reference, my own fix is a general boosting of AC here and there (add kite shields at +3, reduce the penalties for tower shields, bump dodge to +2, bump medium armors to +6, and most importantly, not char-oping monster attack rolls or using PC-style NPCs as my point of balance- that includes nerfing or re-CR-ing a later printed monster if I find it to be in error).

If you really absolutely must have the shield doing the damage, change the shield bash limitation from "bashing makes you lose shield AC" to "a shield wielded by itself can only be a weapon or shield at one time"- so when you've got a weapon and shield you can choose to go for bash damage instead of weapon damage if that is your wish. The only mechanical effect this has is removing the Improved Shield Bash cost from TWF with shield bash- but there's already a special feat trying to reduce that cost anyway, and you seem to want all TWF styles to be accessible with a single TWF feat. Or if you want to keep that cost (an important one for keeping a *cost* in fighting with both hands), then you transfer the AC loss to the base TWF rules specifically- so shield alone is bash or AC, shield and weapon lets you attack with either and have AC, but invoking TWF for extra attacks costs AC until you get Improved Shield Bash.

The way to "fix" shields without turning them into something else, is to make shields a bit more worth using on their own, give them a bit more pop in the numbers on the page, add a feat or two for sword 'n board offense that aren't actually some other style*, and rein the stuff that makes them look bad. Of course in the end, there are so many "eh just let them two-hand without giving up their shield bonus" things that unless you curb those the main benefit is mostly just unspent feats. Using your shield as-is without TWF or THF+shield feats means you have a bunch of feats left to spend on other things. Most people don't even think about them but there are plenty of defensive feats that can further save on spells- and also the dragonmarks and CM heritage if you want some of that, the companion, leadership, and landlord type feats, martial study, weapon mastery. All of those are fine, because the game does not require massive damage from the fighter. . . until you bring in a bunch of things that put pressure on the fighter to deal massive damage.

*I made one that gives you the choice of +4 damage or +2 attack next turn after a foe misses or refuses to attack you, when using a shield, for example. That's your "guy messed up so I use my shield to take advantage and make a better attack" feat. And as a concession to more active use, you can trigger it by hitting them with a bash if you really must (though it's expecting iterative or TWF, not the free bash I suggested you might like above). Haven't made a higher level version 'cause I'm not sure it would be necessary, but a simple doubling in the 12th-15th range would probably be fine. And yes, this is adding damage to your weapon attack by default- abstract combat, if I'm opening them up with the shield that means the weapon blow I'm hitting can just do more. Pin their arm off to the side for a good jab.

The kicker is that when you're using a shield, you shouldn't be taking attack penalties. You don't have to drain your combat skill in order to cover your lack of something, because you're not lacking in anything: you have offense and defense, the standard battlefield combo employed as default for millenia. If you must be taking a penalty, it should be reducing your AC for more attack (and since PA hates one-handers and only costs one feat, "attack" should include a comparable damage option natively, hence why my shield feat has both). But you can't make something that just trades AC for attack or it'll make the all-in builds even more all-in, it has to actually require the use of a shield, with a high shield bonus, preferably a sword 'n board configuration that you can't Improved Buckler Defense or Animated Shield out of.

I wanted there to be an additional element of consideration when solving problems with flight and flight based spells.
Something I've never seen anyone dare to suggest is: take a page out of Levitate and the OG Polymorph, and give people who can't naturally fly some penalties while flying. Even a -2 should be enough to actually make people think twice.

Pounce, High AC, and Easier/more accessible Two Weapon Fighting is far easier to balance on the fly than most spells or magical effects that are traditionally more problematic. When I encounter a situation where the rest of the party are laying less powerful builds, it is pretty easy for me to grant small boons to them to bring up their effectiveness without ruining what makes that other character special. This is a lot harder to do if a character is playing a bufftoast cleric with 5 persisted buffs on themselves and spells for the rest of the day without even considering magic items, or a universe altering wizard that never leaves his sanctum and operates purely on astral projections or other effects. It just what I find easier to maintain control of is all.
I would think the exact opposite of this to be true. If you find a weapon combat character has become overpowered, you really can't do anything to reduce that without targeting the few abilities they have- and having to creep the power level of all the other players and monsters to match one person doesn't seem fair to me (particularly the me who is the DM). If you have an overpowered spell on a prepared caster, or even on a spontaneous caster, you just get rid of that one spell and leave them with. . . all the rest of the massive pile of spells. Or better yet, ban all those problem spells before the game even starts.

More telling remains the the comparison against Divine Metamagic Persetent Spell'd buffs. A pounce feat is not the same- not in the magnitude of role infringement, nor the cost, nor the number of moving pieces required. DMM abuse can be stopped at half a dozen or more different points of the combo, many of which can be done even mid-campaign without actually removing anything from their sheet, without power creeping the whole game. A weapon combat character who built on a pounce feat that later turns out to be overpowered basically just has the one thing you specifically added, which means either more negativity in admitting the mistake and then taking it away, or the universal creep.

Really, it's not that hard to have multiple attack movement or pounce options in the game without breaking things. You just have to figure out where your limits are and bake them into the feat cost, prerequisites, and function. There are like half a dozen other sources of multiple moving attacks that aren't SPLTB, easy, all of which have actual cost and limited effect, which can be used to build characters that can do that without the same problems. You can add a general use version without making it an all you can eat buffet.

[AnimeTheCat]

You know, I told myself I was going to do something else with my day, but I guess not :smallamused:

Got enough bonus feats there mate?

My favored fix for making a caster more competitive on the metamagic front is to nerf bat the free metamagic until it's no longer necessary to be "competitive," because it's certainly not required to play the game. Don't power creep to match bad rules, just get rid of bad rules- or if you don't think they're bad rules then just let everyone have them. If pounce is a feat for everyone, why not an arcane version of DMM?

My own sorcerer fix is just the equivalent bonus feats (including metamagic, reserve, bloodlines and heritages, Extra Spell tweak, and poaching allowed wizard ACF options, and a note that if the odd/even level thing is a problem then Sorcerers will function as Psions. Along with the general fact that I don't run a game where the perfect theory-op wizard functions or with parties that are all full casters- wizards will not know every spell in the land and lack of spontaneous ability will hurt sometimes. There should only be one sorcerer or one wizard in the party in the first place, so how the two classes compare is pretty moot in the end. As long as they feel equivalent enough during character creation (at the beginning and for replacements).

If I want more free metamagic available, I'd allow taking the Sudden metamagics multiple times and maybe increase the base uses of Still/Silent/Extend. One thing I won't do is put Arcane Thesis, Practical Metamagic, or other reducers on bonus feat lists. A lot of people forget how useful a limiting factor there is in the general feat progression and level based prerequisites. You only have one 6th level general feat, one 9th, one 12th- Arcane Thesis has a very specific limit on how many you can have, applying to what level of spells.

I probably said it already but one of the easiest ways to nerf metamagic abuse into the ground is to just put actual prerequisites on the feats. Even just requiring that you be able to apply it to 0 level spells: no Empower until 3rd (or 6th for the poor Sorcs), no Maximize until 5th or 6th depending on bonus feats, no Quicken until 9th, and no Persist until 12th- and no DMM Persist until 15th. Makes builds less bogus in-game ("why yes, I somehow survived to Xth level despite not being able to use any of my feats"), and less broken overall.
Because of the way that feat bloat is presented in the game as it is currently, before I have any other tweaks or changes to feats, no. There's always a shortage of feats obtained, and always a surplus of feats. I'm chosing the easier option of granting more feats obtained rather than the more difficult option of refining the expansive feat bloat. That being said, I don't consider the heritage feats as real feats in this instance, because they really should just be class feature options for the sorcerer. I feel as though they are more akin to a rogue's special abilities that can be taken from level 10 and up, but should be granted from the beginning of the sorcerer's career. If considered in this fashion, they are more like class features than bonus feats. I could make the description more wordy to better convey this, but at the end of the day the core of the change is that you get to select your heritage feats as if they were a list of class abilities that you could select if you qualified for them. The metamagic feats are designed to mirror those that the wizard gets.

In general, I want sorcerers to be more like "smaller toolbox, but more adaptive toolbox" while wizards are "really big toolbox, but needs time to find the right tool". I think that being able to have more adaptive metamagic will help that sorcerer toolbox, but only to a certain extent. If anything, I feel like Wizards should be the class that is a spell level behind Sorcerers, but that's just a design opinion and not something I think is necessary to change (and is also not really something that is pertenant to the discussion).

On the metamagic front, good points that I'll think about. Especially about needing to be able to apply the metamagic to be able to take the feat. I'll take a look at it and give it some thought as to how that would feel with the other changes.


Wrong bit to focus on there really- Defensive Stance isn't even important. It's the +4 Constant AC they get throughout the class that's more significant- and it's also the most out of almost any PrC. Defensive Stance is just for if you happen to have a place to plant your feet.

Considering how people tend to ignore how important the penalties are for Power Attack, and how attack bonus is often assumed to be "yes" for full BABs, it's odd that you'd say the attack penalty of Expertise is so important. It only takes a few points of AC to make a huge difference in enemy accuracy, that's why AC bonuses are so controlled, but once again I think people forget this because they design AC-dumping characters, often vs op'd NPCs. With the expected AC (full armor, shield, and magic items), you hit at least a 50% miss against almost all monsters. +4 AC increases that to 70%. Another +4 to 90%. And AC stacks with actual miss chances. You want to take expertise from -4 for -4, to -4 for +8, which is enough to make you functionally immune to most monsters, and is within the range you can offset with most buffs.

Back to that Dwarven Defender? So he's getting hit maybe half as often as the normal character to start at the end of the class, and when he's got a place he can actually stay put, only then does he become nigh-unhittable. Also note, that increase in monster attack bonuses that makes it look like normal AC isn't any good? Yeah, that starts at basically the same level you could be entering Dwarven Defender. I'd bet that just as Melee Weapon Mastery looks like a response to rage, Dwarven Defender's flat AC bonus (added in 3.5) was a response to realizing their attack values might have been a bit too high. Just that slight problem of being racially locked. . .

I should address the use of the word "balance"- because balance of the game is not (just) in how the characters compare to each other. More importantly, more measurably, and more in line with the roles the game is based on, is the balance of monsters vs PCs. The party is expected to expend a certain amount of resources per monster. AC protects hit points, a resource, and buys time for the use of cheap resources (basic attacks, Eldritch Blast, series of low level spells) to conserve the use of more powerful resources. The same way having a character that can solo one-round things that are supposed to require the entire party is bad, having a character who can't be seriously harmed by something is bad. Too much AC and why even bother risking the rest of the party? The monster can't "go around" and hit them if they're not even there because they know the tank can whittle down anything but the boss without being hit by anything but a 20. No reason to expend any offensive power from the rest of the party once this guy is unstoppable, not even attack buffs really. The role of the meatshield is to conserve resources, but too much conservation means your boss monsters get nova'd.
I think the primary reason that people ignore the attack penalty from Power Attack is because they can. There are a huge number of ways to offset or fully mitigate that penalty, or even shift it to another penalty type (shock trooper shift to AC penalty). For example, a +4 enhancement bonus to strength is a +2 attack, +3 damage. You could just be fine with that, or you could look at that as a way to offset your power attack and get a net +7 damage for no real penalty to hit. If you're consistantly hitting without the +2 attack from your strength enhancement item, why not do that? I'm not downplaying, or even ignoring the attack penalty associated with power attack, but when you have an 18+ strength, you can hit many enemies at lower levels with just strength alone, and masterwork weapons or friendly buffs, you further mitigate that attack penalty or deficit you may have had, for ever increasing damage bonus. As Combat Expertise and shields exist normally, you can really only ever get +7 to your AC, which is little more than an easy threashold for an attacker to overcome. Allowing Combat Expertise to function in the manner I'm indicating, you coudl potentially free up a ring slot for a weapon and shield fighter to gain some other form of utility instead of sinking into +5 deflection AC from high level ring of protection or free up the neck slot that might have gone to an amulet of natural armor. If AC is all the character cares about, then they can absolutely get those items still, but this uses Combat Expertise as the engine and shields as the bus to hav relatively competative AC throughout the entire game without the need for magical influence*.
*for the most part. There are always exceptions

Let me ask you this. What equipment would you expect your average 2-handed warrior type to look like and what would you expect your average weapon and shield warrior type to look like at levels 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. When I go about making NPCs (specifically those with class levels), I do a sort of rudimentary optimization. I use elite array ability scores (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 for those who may not know that), typically put the highest in the most prevelant attribute, and then calculate gear based of of player wealth by level if they are adventurers, or NPC wealth by level if they are likely not to see any form of combat (it just speeds things up). This gave me a fair overview of what these two types of characters look like when juxtaposed with one another. By the very nature of a innate attack increase, armor class simply can't keep up. At level 10, the base 10 is completely irrelevant to a full BAB character, and that's not even considering any other form of attack bonus from strength, magic items, spells, or feats. Back to the question above though (what do each of the two types look like in comparison to each other), I genuinely want to know (You can PM me or reply in the thread. I am looking to expand my experience by see what others create). Maybe there's something I'm doing that you're not or maybe there's something you're doing that I'm not that can enlighten me.

Comparing the two styles is only half of it though, comparing those levels to appropriately CR'd enemies is also telling in the direction of the attacker as opposed to the defender. CR 3, an apropriate challenge for a 4 player party of level 3 characters or in combinations of 2 or more for parties level 4 and higher. At level 3, full BAB characters can expect to have +3 attack from their BAB, +1 from a masterwork or magical weapon, and anywhere from +2 to +5 from primary attribute score (strength or dex, depending on what method of attack and feat choice). Without any modifiers to the attack, that's +6 to +10 attack. Compare that to the AC and attack bonuses of a variety of CR 3 creatures. Allip (AC 15 Incorporeal/+3 touch), Large Animated Object (AC 14/+5 Melee), Ankheg (AC 18/+7 Melee), Juvenile Arrowhawk (AC 20 and flying/+9 Touch, +9 Melee), Assassin Vine (AC 15/+7 Melee), Centaur (AC 14/+7 Melee, +5 Ranged), Cockatrice (AC 14/+9 Melee), Deinonychus (AC 16/ +6/+1/+1 full attack), Derro (AC 19/+4 Melee, +6 ranged), Dire Ape (AC 15/+8/+8/+3 Melee), Dire Wolf (AC 14/+11 Melee), Ogre (AC 16/+8 Melee). That's a fair spread of the different AC and Attack Bonuses in the CR 3 category. At level 3, most character probably won't have dropped the 1,700 gold on full plate, and likely won't have gotten it as loot in a dungeon. What's more likely is either a breastplate, banded mail, or half-plate. Stack a heavy shield on that and your maximum AC is going to be something like 20 (Dex 16, Breastplate, Heavy Shield), or 19 (Half-Plate, Heavy Shield/Dex 12, Banded Mail, Heavy Shield). Of those enemies above, there is a 25% to 55% chance of being hit with the highest reasonable AC at that level. If a character fully defended with the changed combat expertise, that changes the hit range to 5% to 25%. Some enemies have multiple attacks which will effect that creature's chances of hitting on a full attack (but math is hard).

That is all to draw attention to the difference between just hitting the thing as hard as you can and killing it before it can even hit you, and trying to "tank" things and defend against them without some kind of help. under the normal curcumstances, you may be able to handle 4 encounters each day without using up other party resources, but you're more likely to only be able to handle 2 or 3. Under the change, you're more likely to last those 4 encounters before needing to tap in to party resources to restore yours. I understand this is just a snapshot of CR 3, but it doesn't end up much better as things progress (especially when you start getting in to creatures with 40+ attack bonues or 6+ attacks on a full attack).

As for not feeling the need to take an attack penalty when usning combat expertise, I think that is indicative of a shift in focus away from the precision of the attack to the deflection of the incoming blow. As someone with experience in medieval style fighting with a weapon and a shield, simply having the thing in your hand usn't enough to gain it's benefit. You have to move it and angle it properly, otherwise you'll be absorbing impact with your sholulder, elbow, wrist, and arm as opposed to deflecting or parrying the blow. Properly focusing on your shield, however, takes away from your ability to properly spot gaps in the opponents defense, however so slightly. it does make sense and is probably one of the more simulationistic things about D&D from my personal experience.


If this is true in your games then it's true in your games, but every evaluation I've done has found it to be far less true than advertised. I think a lot of it is the assumption that a "meatshield" will. . . run straight at the enemies instead of being a meatshield, while his allies just stand there and wait to be attacked. It's a lot harder to "just go around" when the meatshield is in position and their allies are actually using him as a meatshield.

It all comes down to the idea that if you aren't dealing enough damage, you don't matter. Nevermind that every attack wasted while that foe figures out they can't hit you is resources in the bank and time bought for your allies to bring them down. Or that most monsters really don't have that much hp and you're only responsible for maybe 1/4 of it at most. I will never condone this stance which goes directly against foundational mechanics of the game, or balance anything based on it. I'll add things to increase damage here or there if I think it's a good idea, but I won't ignore the power of something else just because it's not damage. Heck, you could probably say that' a lot of WotC's own problems, adding feats and abilities and spells willy nilly as long as they don't have a damage number directly attached.

So, even if the party is appropriately taking cover behind the meatshield and the currently visible enemies, that doesn't help in the case of ambushes, traps, or enemies with unique modes of movement (climb, burrow, flight, etc). Further, if a character is using a shield and boosting their AC, they only threaten a very small area or require magic and other buffs to help them threaten a larger area. Even with a larger area threatened or blocked, that doesn't actually protect the rest of the party that is taking cover behind the tank. If the tank doesn't engage the enemy, they can sit behind cover and use ranged attacks to whittle away at the party. If the tank does engage, the enemy can more easily maeuver around them. Because there is no way to force an enemy to reliably attack them, the tank has a nearly impossible job. Some enemies have no business even targeting a heavily armored character for example. If there is a band of bandits, for what purpose would they target the most visibly heavily armored opponent when there are more lightly armored opponents visible? That doesn't make any sense. That guy looks like bad news, those other guys look like easy targets. Also, robes usually hide goodies, armor doesn't really leave much to the imagination when it comes to goodies. Further, if the meatshield is just sitting back in a defensive stance, it's obvious he's prepared to receive the attack, how would a crafty goblin or kobold circumvent that? Attack someone who doesn't look as prepared. I'm not saying "if you're not dealing damage, you're not contributing" even though I know it looked that way, but just having a high AC and positioning yourself between the enemy and your allies isn't particularly effective. If you look hard to hit and your allies don't, why would the enemy attack you? what reason have you given them to target you in particular? Typically, making youself a threat to the enemie's life is enough, hence why many will close the distance and get in the enemie's face to make themselve's a threat. It's not a matter of not being a combat contributor if you're not doing damage, it's a matter of not having a means to actually protect those behind you against attacks without having a method of forcing the attack on you, especially when you already look like the most difficult target to kill. This doesn't even come down to being able to know the wizard is going to end you in one spell or anything like that. It's all just simple logic that even int 6 creatures should posess (not always). Against mindless or unintelligent creatures that can't identify armor vs cloth, yeah sitting there between the enemy and your allies should work because these enemies should target the closest available threat or enemy, regardless of other influence.


An option meant for PCs that requires you to char-op monsters to fight it doesn't sound like a good idea to me, unless you already want to char-op your monsters and are buffing the PC's options to match. A specific feat to counter a specific feat is a lot like the counterpsell rules- in practice, far less significant than advertised.
A large portion of my worlds are inhabited by intelligent creatures. Said creatures come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and are diverse in nature. Starting with at cities, towns, villiages, or other population centers, you will have bandits, nere-do-wells, or other ruffians that will be picking on the locals for their personal benefit. I don't, necessarily, create hard counters (in fact I usually have pre-gen camps, strongholds, and fortresses that I plop as necessary for narrative, fun, or story elements) but if a player complains that they don't feel challenged, I will absolutely make sure I tailor encouters to make that player feel more challenged. The feats in the player's handbook or any supplemental book are not solely intended for players. look at the orc entry in the monster maual. They come with alertness, a PHB feat. Look at Ogres. Weapon Focus (greatclub) and Alertness. Owlbear - Alertness, track. Doppelganger - Dodge, great fortitude. Derro - Blind fight, improved initiative. Azer - Power Attack. It goes on. Plenty of creatures in the MM have PHB feats, so those feats aren't restricted to players. Making use of alternate class features when creating elite opponents isn't outside of the realm of standard use of the rules either. I'm simply using the exact same resources that are available to the players in broad application. I already create tons of NPCs using NPC classes, PC classes, and other playable races from the various splat books, monster mauals, and other resources, again all that are available to the player in the first place. The whole point of my tweaks are specifically to buff the PCs options, hence the move to cut down on feat chains and improve already existing feats. Improved Feint, isn't even necessary is the thing... Any enemy can already feint in combat as a standard action. Improved Feint just makes it better. An NPC expert that realizes that the super heavily armored guy in the hall blocking his exit would be succeptable to attacks from a direction he isn't expecting, might almost certainly weigh the action cost associated with the standard action feint, and may even utilize other defensive measures such as feinting, then tumbling out of threat range to force the attacker to move, thus protecting his/her life possibly precious seconds longer.


Yup. And how much of that is actually TWF the way 3.5 presents it? If you really want to represent realistic use of "two weapons," you'd put a minimum +1 AC on using anything in your off hand (which then hoses existing shield bonuses of course) when you're not attacking with it. All those shield strikes you can and might make in real life have no bearing on how dnd combat works. They're things you do without needing Heroic Feat levels of training, you're not swinging wildly with both hands while giving up the defense of the shield, and so on. They're parts of the abstract attack roll, and since even realistically a shield is not as good of a weapon as your actual weapon (or else you'd just use two shields), the game has your weapon deal more damage and so you attack with the weapon, not the shield, because why would you do anything else?
So, in my personal opinion, it fighting with a shield in D&D mirrors real life pretty well. Any bloke that picks up a shield is not likely to know the fundamental methods of using it as a weapon without losing it as a defensive tool. This is nicely captured by improved shield bash, the feat signifying that you have trained to be able to appropriately use a shield as a weapon and defensive tool simultaneously. And for two weapon fighting, this marks your ability to learn how to use a weapon in each hand in a less cumbersome manner than any other random joe who just picks up two weapons. The feat itself signifies the difference between flailing about with a weapon in each hand and making calculated motions so as to not wate any movement and make more precise attacks. The two weapon defense feat signifies your training and ability to use your weapons to block, deflect, absorb, and parry attacks as if you were using a shield (though as shown by the lower bonus, less effectively than if a shield was in use). While shields make fantastic off-hand weapons and defensive tools, they lack appropriate armament to be full weapons. This is attempted to be combatted by applying spikes, blades, or reinforced edges to the shield, but ultimately the fundamental shape of the shield is not one of a weapon, but a defensive device. That is why, even realistically, the shield is less of an optimal weapon than the hammer or sword or spear, and why one would favor that implement over the shield as the primary device of attack. For those that want a blend of attack and defense though, or want to be more aggressive with their attack while weilding a shield, using it as an off-hand weapon and even weaponizing it further, is not a bad option. As for why you wouldn't use two shields, in game because bonuses don't stack if they're the same type. In life, becuase they are cumbersome and aren't as good as devices designed to be weapons as i described above.


You can take a bunch of feats that make you swing with both your weapon and shield while somehow defending against attacks from all sides like a coreographed movie fight, but that's not how shields should be assumed to work. Hence I find it annoying when people tell me the "fix" for shields is to use a TWF build. Your Combat Expertise change would actually be closer, if I didn't find it too strong. For reference, my own fix is a general boosting of AC here and there (add kite shields at +3, reduce the penalties for tower shields, bump dodge to +2, bump medium armors to +6, and most importantly, not char-oping monster attack rolls or using PC-style NPCs as my point of balance- that includes nerfing or re-CR-ing a later printed monster if I find it to be in error).
I don't assume shields to work in such a manner that you are protecting yourself from all sides like a movie coreographed fight scene. AC, as I understand it, is a aggregate of how nimble you are, your body's natural defenses, the protective gear you are wearing, and other circumstantially useful countermeasures (magic and such). It encompasses the ability for you to dodge attacks, deflect them, absorb the damage, and represent how difficult you are to actually harm in any way. When weilding a shield, you're still ensuring you're aware of what's going on behind you, so if someone attacks you from your non-shield side you could be slightly stepping over to dodge the blow, pivoting to bring the attack to bear against your shield, batting the swing away with your own weapon, or simply letting the attack hit your armor if you don't react in time. This is also nicely wrapped up in the flanking rules where you are less capable to defend yourself from attacks of opposite directions (indicated by an attack bonus to the enemy).

Maybe something more like 1.5x the penalty to attack you take from Combat Expertise gets added to the total bonus if you're using a shield would work better, netting you +3 for every 2 points you reduce. I wouldn't mind aligning tower shields to be more like the other shields (equal AC Penalty as the AC bonus provided, but still carry an attack penalty... using one of those is like carrying a door around), and adding a+3/-3 shield as a kite shield doesn't seem bad either, though I would change the convention to light, medium, and heavy personally (or small, heater, and kite...). I've gone back and forth about making the Dodge feat just a static +1 dodge bonus to AC always (having to designate a foe is very cumbersome to me) and let it be taken multiple times (though, not sure why you would). I'm still researching how that would change other feats if done so that i can be prepared with fixes/changes to those too.

Since I make a very wide range of NPCs that I plug in to a wide range of scenarios, situations, and encounters, I use that method to control the CR and EL of my games rather than try to rework the CR system as it exists now. You're more likely to encounter enemies that I have created than you are to encounter pre-made monsters in most situations (notable exceptions being dungeon delves, cave crawls, or tomb raids but even those will contain some variety of bone creatures many times).

I don't claim that two weapon fighting is the sole method of improving the shield, but it is a way to get added benefit from an otherwise solely defensive item, and with my change to two weapon fighting it's realatively easy to do as it isn't particularly feat intensive (2 feats and you're set with the style for the game). It's more of a lateral improvement, that is covering more functions with the same tool, as opposed to a vertical improvement, that is improving the effectiveness or efficiency within a particular function the tool already covers. Combat Expertise is designed to be the Vertical improvement, two wepon fightin and improved shield bash are intended to be one of the horizontal improvements. Other horizontal improvements exist as well such as the shield sling, although I don't particularly like that one, and other vertical improvements exist such as shield specialization and shield ward.


If you really absolutely must have the shield doing the damage, change the shield bash limitation from "bashing makes you lose shield AC" to "a shield wielded by itself can only be a weapon or shield at one time"- so when you've got a weapon and shield you can choose to go for bash damage instead of weapon damage if that is your wish. The only mechanical effect this has is removing the Improved Shield Bash cost from TWF with shield bash- but there's already a special feat trying to reduce that cost anyway, and you seem to want all TWF styles to be accessible with a single TWF feat. Or if you want to keep that cost (an important one for keeping a *cost* in fighting with both hands), then you transfer the AC loss to the base TWF rules specifically- so shield alone is bash or AC, shield and weapon lets you attack with either and have AC, but invoking TWF for extra attacks costs AC until you get Improved Shield Bash.
I don't innately want all two weapon fighting styles accessible with a single feat, I'm still requiring improved shield bash to be able to bash and retain the AC bonus. If one wanted to two weapon fight with a shield and forego their shield bonus to AC each time, they could simply skip the improved shield bash feat, and I could see merit to this as well. I don't dislike the idea you have though that when weilding a weapon in your main hand and a shield in your off hand you can choose to attack normally with just the shield or just the weapon, but I think that just creates almost a false feat tax for fighting with a shield. Most of my shield bearing militia don't use improved shield bash or combat expertise, favoring weapon focus or alertness as early feats. Maybe a wiser, older, (higher level) warrior or militia member may have picked up one of the two, but it's not commonplace unless it's part of some higher trained regular army (which would me more likely to contain fighters than warriors).


The way to "fix" shields without turning them into something else, is to make shields a bit more worth using on their own, give them a bit more pop in the numbers on the page, add a feat or two for sword 'n board offense that aren't actually some other style*, and rein the stuff that makes them look bad. Of course in the end, there are so many "eh just let them two-hand without giving up their shield bonus" things that unless you curb those the main benefit is mostly just unspent feats. Using your shield as-is without TWF or THF+shield feats means you have a bunch of feats left to spend on other things. Most people don't even think about them but there are plenty of defensive feats that can further save on spells- and also the dragonmarks and CM heritage if you want some of that, the companion, leadership, and landlord type feats, martial study, weapon mastery. All of those are fine, because the game does not require massive damage from the fighter. . . until you bring in a bunch of things that put pressure on the fighter to deal massive damage.

*I made one that gives you the choice of +4 damage or +2 attack next turn after a foe misses or refuses to attack you, when using a shield, for example. That's your "guy messed up so I use my shield to take advantage and make a better attack" feat. And as a concession to more active use, you can trigger it by hitting them with a bash if you really must (though it's expecting iterative or TWF, not the free bash I suggested you might like above). Haven't made a higher level version 'cause I'm not sure it would be necessary, but a simple doubling in the 12th-15th range would probably be fine. And yes, this is adding damage to your weapon attack by default- abstract combat, if I'm opening them up with the shield that means the weapon blow I'm hitting can just do more. Pin their arm off to the side for a good jab.

The kicker is that when you're using a shield, you shouldn't be taking attack penalties. You don't have to drain your combat skill in order to cover your lack of something, because you're not lacking in anything: you have offense and defense, the standard battlefield combo employed as default for millenia. If you must be taking a penalty, it should be reducing your AC for more attack (and since PA hates one-handers and only costs one feat, "attack" should include a comparable damage option natively, hence why my shield feat has both). But you can't make something that just trades AC for attack or it'll make the all-in builds even more all-in, it has to actually require the use of a shield, with a high shield bonus, preferably a sword 'n board configuration that you can't Improved Buckler Defense or Animated Shield out of.

maybe once I've narrowed down all of my other tweaks and such using the existing material, I'll move on to homebrew to install new feats and abilities that different play styles can use. presently, I'm trying to use existing material to shape and mold a better baseline, that will ideally have fewer holes that need homebrew to plug. The thought process is to simply use material that is already known so as to no have players learning a whole host of new content, rather different application of existing content.

As for how I feel about attack penalties while weilding a shield, see my explaination above. Shock Trooper already simply trades AC for attack and damage, so I think that's a rather moot point personally. I'm trying to niche out something more of an "all defense" style, even though I don't think it will be as effective as something that can handle threats more adequately (namely something that can actually lock down and enemy or remove it from threatening allies as opposed to just trying to be a wall of flesh and steel).


Something I've never seen anyone dare to suggest is: take a page out of Levitate and the OG Polymorph, and give people who can't naturally fly some penalties while flying. Even a -2 should be enough to actually make people think twice.
What exactly are they taking a -2 penalty to? Everything? sounds decently reasonable, but at higher levels this doesn't actually do anything to limit magical classes, they can get bonuses like crazy for nearly everything, and when a non-magical character needs to fly without the aid of a mount (via a magic item or friendly spell) they lack the native methods of making up for those penalties.


I would think the exact opposite of this to be true. If you find a weapon combat character has become overpowered, you really can't do anything to reduce that without targeting the few abilities they have- and having to creep the power level of all the other players and monsters to match one person doesn't seem fair to me (particularly the me who is the DM). If you have an overpowered spell on a prepared caster, or even on a spontaneous caster, you just get rid of that one spell and leave them with. . . all the rest of the massive pile of spells. Or better yet, ban all those problem spells before the game even starts.

More telling remains the the comparison against Divine Metamagic Persetent Spell'd buffs. A pounce feat is not the same- not in the magnitude of role infringement, nor the cost, nor the number of moving pieces required. DMM abuse can be stopped at half a dozen or more different points of the combo, many of which can be done even mid-campaign without actually removing anything from their sheet, without power creeping the whole game. A weapon combat character who built on a pounce feat that later turns out to be overpowered basically just has the one thing you specifically added, which means either more negativity in admitting the mistake and then taking it away, or the universal creep.

Really, it's not that hard to have multiple attack movement or pounce options in the game without breaking things. You just have to figure out where your limits are and bake them into the feat cost, prerequisites, and function. There are like half a dozen other sources of multiple moving attacks that aren't SPLTB, easy, all of which have actual cost and limited effect, which can be used to build characters that can do that without the same problems. You can add a general use version without making it an all you can eat buffet.

I enjoy non-magical characters more than I enjoy magical ones. When I first started playing I didn't really want to deal with magic because I was enamored with the Errant Knight, Stalwart Brute, and Strong Willed Warrior persevering against the forces of evil and against all odds. I enjoyed that, but then as I learned about the game and the system, that wasn't particularly realistic. While learning about this I tried so hard to try and figure out how a non-magical character could do it. I still try to. All that digging around acquainted me with a wide amount of tactics that non-magical characters can use as well as the means of countering those tactics. The thing about a character with pounce is that they need to charge to be able to use that ability. My terrains are never devoid of features, and charging is only an option in the first round about 40% of the time. I play my enemies clevarly, using cover and obstacles until they can close with a single move (especially if they just saw an ally get pulped by a single charge). I include difficult terrain regularly (jagged cobblestone popped loose over the years, roots curling up on the bottom of the cave, slick floors covered with moss and mold, you get the idea). These features actively combat the "Pounce" mechanic and don't make it an always-on, 100% guarentee method of fighting, which forces players to think more tactically. Two Weapon Fighting has the unique problem of being many lower-damage attacks that add up to be a greater amount of damage. This is already nicely handled by DR. Even a small amount (2-3 points) is enough to knock down the damage output of a two weapon fighter by enough to make it a challenge to overcome. If there is a character that gets cocky and sees something I describe as a skeleton, which they charge with pounce and dual maces thinking they will pulp it, I may have been describing a different creature a 'blood bones' (a skeleton alchemically altered by the creator to make the brittle bones more flexible, but prone to injury from puncturing). Same everything as a standard skeleton, but their bones have a slight red hue to them and the DR is weakness piercing as opposed to bludgeoning.

Challenging non-magical characters on the fly is easier than challengin magical characters on the fly for me because I am far more acquainted with the abilities and counters of non-magical characters. I am planning on evaulating the whole spell list of all of the classes to target the most problematic spells, but I will not be banning anything. I am more likely to bing down what needs to be brought down, or improve that which needs improvement (probably less improvement).

[AnimeTheCat]

Does anybody see any issue with just choosing to use the aspect of nature wild shape variant instead of wild shape at all, just with the caveat that I will work to come up with new aspects if the player wants something not represented?

[Cosi]

Does anybody see any issue with just choosing to use the aspect of nature wild shape variant instead of wild shape at all, just with the caveat that I will work to come up with new aspects if the player wants something not represented?

Which variant is that? The PHB II one, or the Unearthed Arcana one, or something else?

You might also consider removing Wild Shape from the Druid and encouraging people to play Wild Shape Rangers instead. If you're aiming for a slightly lower power level, the Druid is fine without it, and it preserves the ability for people it's really important to.

[AnimeTheCat]

Which variant is that? The PHB II one, or the Unearthed Arcana one, or something else?

You might also consider removing Wild Shape from the Druid and encouraging people to play Wild Shape Rangers instead. If you're aiming for a slightly lower power level, the Druid is fine without it, and it preserves the ability for people it's really important to.

Unearthed arcana. It's less a concern of bringing down the power levels of the class, and more a concern of that one class feature being singularly more powerful than multiple classes combined in terms of not only combat strength, but also combat and non-combat versatility, which can be used to obviate entire swathes of playstyles. I want there to be some form of melding with raw nature energies into something beastial yourself, but the scope of wild shape is insane, and what it grants to the user is immense.

Like with all of these ideas, if a player really really wants it, I will work with them to make sure everyone is satisfied, but if the expectation is that of the "aspects of nature" level, hopefully the players I attract will be more willing to understand my ideas and hopes for the game, and thus be willing to be more restricted in what is available to them. If that makes any sense...

If you can't tell, I struggle with whether I want to reduce power and versatility for more powerful and versatile classes, or increase it for lesser classes... both really, but I do want to be careful about how i do it because I do want to be inviting, not so houserule/fix/change ridden that it's like a new game...

[Fizban]

The cracks begin to show.


As Combat Expertise and shields exist normally, you can really only ever get +7 to your AC, which is little more than an easy threashold for an attacker to overcome.
Uh, you mean +7-9 max from the shield, and +5 from CE, right? Either way, if a +7 difference in attack is an "easy threshold" in your game, esepcailly for monsters which have no real way of changing their stats. . . then you're so far off the base you're gonna have to make up your own balance. You're also continuing to assume no-shield as the expected AC level and everything else as a bonus (which doesn't even matter because somehow no-shield has no problems but if you have a shield it will just be easily overcome), when yes-shield is the expected AC level.

Allowing Combat Expertise to function in the manner I'm indicating, you coudl potentially free up a ring slot for a weapon and shield fighter to gain some other form of utility instead of sinking into +5 deflection AC from high level ring of protection or free up the neck slot that might have gone to an amulet of natural armor. If AC is all the character cares about, then they can absolutely get those items still, but this uses Combat Expertise as the engine and shields as the bus to hav relatively competative AC throughout the entire game without the need for magical influence*.
*for the most part. There are always exceptions
That's a completely different issue. And you've turned around again and said that instead of the shield being pointless this one feat makes it so good you don't need any other magic items. When the bonuses of those items will clearly add up to more than the feat, and cause a huge loss of attack, when you yourself are basically saying anything less than two-handed damage has so little of an effect on the game it doesn't matter. I'm still getting mixed signals.

By the very nature of a innate attack increase, armor class simply can't keep up. At level 10, the base 10 is completely irrelevant to a full BAB character,
Comparing what, their own AC to their own attack? That comparison is meaningless. And as always, if a +10 bonus to attack is "completely irrelevant," to your game, then your math is out the window.

I could do basic weapons/defense, but further reading makes it seem to be pointless. I'd be more interested in, how you've got such a dizzyingly variable "baseline."

CR 3, . . .Of those enemies above, there is a 25% to 55% chance of being hit with the highest reasonable AC at that level.
So, working as intended.

If a character fully defended with the changed combat expertise, that changes the hit range to 5% to 25%. Some enemies have multiple attacks which will effect that creature's chances of hitting on a full attack (but math is hard).
Except you've chosen 3rd level, before Combat Expertise is capable of capping, and before any of the four different AC boosting magic items have come into play. And the result is that your boosted Expertise makes people super hard to hit even then.

under the normal curcumstances, you may be able to handle 4 encounters each day without using up other party resources, but you're more likely to only be able to handle 2 or 3. Under the change, you're more likely to last those 4 encounters before needing to tap in to party resources to restore yours.
And stop. Under normal circumstances, you should never be able to handle any encounters without using part resources. And there is no such thing as needing "party" resources to "restore yours." There is one pool of resources, which contains all the hp, abilities, and spell slots (mostly spell slots) of the party. Every. Single. Encounter. Is expected to drain some of those resources. Beating even a single encounter equal to your level without burning 20% of those resources is a concern and hopefully was due to luck. Having any reliable chance of doing so without luck is the definition of being overpowered.

As for not feeling the need to take an attack penalty when usning combat expertise, I think that is indicative of a shift in focus away from the precision of the attack to the deflection of the incoming blow. As someone with experience in medieval style fighting with a weapon and a shield, simply having the thing in your hand usn't enough to gain it's benefit. You have to move it and angle it properly, otherwise you'll be absorbing impact with your sholulder, elbow, wrist, and arm as opposed to deflecting or parrying the blow. Properly focusing on your shield, however, takes away from your ability to properly spot gaps in the opponents defense, however so slightly. it does make sense and is probably one of the more simulationistic things about D&D from my personal experience.
So someone who hasn't used a shield much loses some of their ability to attack? That's a non-proficiency penalty you're describing there. Meanwhile HEMA-types I've watched seem to say the opposite, taking it for granted that a shield is all upside for basically anyone that can manage to keep it in front of themselves. I'm sure there's some amount of acclimation involved, but that's not a variable penalty that comes from using this grand Heroic Feat you've learned. It's just the difference from gaining proficiency.

Even with a larger area threatened or blocked, that doesn't actually protect the rest of the party that is taking cover behind the tank. If the tank doesn't engage the enemy, they can sit behind cover and use ranged attacks to whittle away at the party.
Stop. Bro, what do you think the rest of the party is for? You just said the tank's job is to go kill the enemy. No, the tank's job, in any game has a role called a tank, is to hold aggro and take hits (which is also why people think meatshields are bad, because MMOs have trained them to expect "holding aggro" instead of learning how to meatshield). If the enemy sits over there and shoots at your party, you stand in front of their shots to grant cover bonus, while the rest of your party, who all have better ranged attacks and better magical attacks, kill the enemy. Bonus points when you pull out your bow and help shoot back.

Because there is no way to force an enemy to reliably attack them, the tank has a nearly impossible job. Some enemies have no business even targeting a heavily armored character for example. If there is a band of bandits, for what purpose would they target the most visibly heavily armored opponent when there are more lightly armored opponents visible?
A band of bandits is made up of multiple lower CR foes. The more foes, the lower their CR. Foes whose CR is far lower than the party aren't actually of terrible crippling threat to anyone, unless those people have been dumping defense and let themselves be ganged up on and so on. If the party is already surrounded and being ganged up on in the back, that's called a tactical advantage, see below. Otherwise their individual threat is small, and you have the opportunity to eliminate some before things go bad, and a whole party role dedicated to masses of dudes.

That guy looks like bad news, those other guys look like easy targets.
Which is why you kill the threat first so you can deal with the rest in peace- you've not even got the right reasoning there, it's supposed to be "all enemies automatically target caters because they know casters are the real threat" when you're explaining why no one attacks melee guys.

Also, robes usually hide goodies, armor doesn't really leave much to the imagination when it comes to goodies.
Nope. It's just a big expensive suit of armor and weapons, no value there at all.

just having a high AC and positioning yourself between the enemy and your allies isn't particularly effective.
Have you tried it? Take a look at the ranged attack values of these enemies you're proposing (the normal versions), and compare them to the cover boosted AC and standard hit points of the PCs you're saying are in such dire threat. Run the round by round on actually trying to get past a guy who's standing in your way, with a back row that's actually trying to avoid you, see how many attacks are lost, and how much damage you can actually deal just by "ignoring" the tank. Then compare the results to the expected resource drain for the encounter, and remember that killing that foe without losing enough resources means you're overpowered.


look at the. . .Improved Feint, isn't even necessary is the thing... Any enemy can already feint in combat as a standard action. Improved Feint just makes it better.A bunch of examples of single feats with no prerequisites, or str 13 which every monster has, when normally Improved Feint is a two feat sequence that requires int 13 to start. Feinting requires Bluff, which most anythings don't have in any serious amount, and is opposed by BAB, and wastes a standard action- I'd happily have such a foe feint against me, wasting their turn, allowing me to drop CE and go full aggro next turn, or back off, or just say "eh, what do I care about one single attack getting through my defenses?" And you added Sense Motive to the Fighter list, so their feint-defense will be enough to match even actual feint-ers.

So, in my personal opinion, it fighting with a shield in D&D mirrors real life pretty well. Any bloke that picks up a shield is not likely to know the fundamental methods of using it as a weapon without losing it as a defensive tool. This is nicely captured by improved shield bash, the feat signifying that you have trained to be able to appropriately use a shield as a weapon and defensive tool simultaneously. And for two weapon fighting, this marks your ability to learn how to use a weapon in each hand in a less cumbersome manner than any other random joe who just picks up two weapons. The feat itself signifies the difference between flailing about with a weapon in each hand and making calculated motions so as to not wate any movement and make more precise attacks. The two weapon defense feat signifies your training and ability to use your weapons to block, deflect, absorb, and parry attacks as if you were using a shield (though as shown by the lower bonus, less effectively than if a shield was in use). While shields make fantastic off-hand weapons and defensive tools, they lack appropriate armament to be full weapons. This is attempted to be combatted by applying spikes, blades, or reinforced edges to the shield, but ultimately the fundamental shape of the shield is not one of a weapon, but a defensive device. That is why, even realistically, the shield is less of an optimal weapon than the hammer or sword or spear, and why one would favor that implement over the shield as the primary device of attack. For those that want a blend of attack and defense though, or want to be more aggressive with their attack while weilding a shield, using it as an off-hand weapon and even weaponizing it further, is not a bad option. As for why you wouldn't use two shields, in game because bonuses don't stack if they're the same type. In life, becuase they are cumbersome and aren't as good as devices designed to be weapons as i described above.
Sure. Now why would I want to bother using a shield when you've said that the AC isn't worth it anyway, and the only supported upgrade paths cost more feats to do less of the damage you're expecting me to do? And while we're talking realism- so it's realistic that Power Attack lets you cut through iron practically at level 1? Why is it that the *only* way to use a shield to ad oomph to your attack is by explicitly training two feats into punching them with it, when the simple ability to force and/or take better advantage of an opening is the first thing you would learn? Why is it that even though shields didn't fall out of favor until the land was saturated with heavy armor, when a warrior's first concern should be not dying, that you've got a world where the expectation is that the only real defense is more kill?

I don't assume shields to work in such a manner that you are protecting yourself from all sides like a movie coreographed fight scene.
You basically just described how it does anyway, eh.

Maybe something more like 1.5x the penalty to attack you take from Combat Expertise. . . I don't claim that two weapon fighting is the sole method of improving the shield,
If +7s and +10's don't matter in your games, then there's really nothing you can do to fix the shield, because the whole attack and AC system is shot as far as I can tell. So whatever numbers.

I've gone back and forth about making the Dodge feat just a static +1 dodge bonus to AC always (having to designate a foe is very cumbersome to me) and let it be taken multiple times (though, not sure why you would).
If your fix to AC is bigger numbers (that still don't matter), then give dodge bigger numbers, but see above.

Since I make a very wide range of NPCs that I plug in to a wide range of scenarios, situations, and encounters, I use that method to control the CR and EL of my games rather than try to rework the CR system as it exists now. You're more likely to encounter enemies that I have created than you are to encounter pre-made monsters in most situations (notable exceptions being dungeon delves, cave crawls, or tomb raids but even those will contain some variety of bone creatures many times).
Well there's your problem then. You're basing a ton of your game evaluation on the one thing the game isn't balanced on, PC vs PC-classed and leveled NPC. Which means you're basically playing your char-op characters vs the PCs char-op characters (at whatever op-level they're at), and yeah, none of the CR or EL system matters because you aren't even using it.

(And no, I don't care that NPCs give xp rewards based on level, that's not what the system is based on. NPCs are shoved into the monster system, which is based on the monsters in the books, not the NPCs the DM personally designed.)

(2 feats and you're set with the style for the game).
Still more than Power Attack.

It's more of a lateral improvement, that is covering more functions with the same tool, as opposed to a vertical improvement, that is improving the effectiveness or efficiency within a particular function the tool already covers. Combat Expertise is designed to be the Vertical improvement, two wepon fightin and improved shield bash are intended to be one of the horizontal improvements. Other horizontal improvements exist as well such as the shield sling, although I don't particularly like that one, and other vertical improvements exist such as shield specialization and shield ward.
How is TWF "horizontal" when you yourself say shield users aren't threatening enough to matter, and TWF is the only way to boost their damage? How is CE a "vertical" improvement when it's still requiring you to sacrifice attack?

maybe once I've narrowed down all of my other tweaks and such using the existing material, I'll move on to homebrew to install new feats and abilities that different play styles can use.
Both should be done simultaneously- or rather, doing one then the other just means you'll need to go back to the first and repeat, thus meaning they're being done simultaneously. You can't tweak without a goal in mind, you can't brew without a goal in mind, you can't calibrate brew until you know your tweaks, and often a tweak warrants more brew.

Shock Trooper already simply trades AC for attack and damage, so I think that's a rather moot point personally.
Yeah, moot in the sense that "shield" using characters who spend the extra feats can leave their defensive position to charge people and deal half the damage given to two-handing builds. So actually not moot at all.

I'm trying to niche out something more of an "all defense" style, even though I don't think it will be as effective as something that can handle threats more adequately
Clearly not, since the fact that you don't consider it possible and run your games in a way that apparently makes it impossible means that it won't work. Just know that once you get around to making an "aggro" feat, you'll find that the combined ability to force foes to attack you while also being impossible to hit will truly be broken, and boring to play as the DM no longer even controls the foes.

What exactly are they taking a -2 penalty to? Everything? sounds decently reasonable, but at higher levels this doesn't actually do anything to limit magical classes, they can get bonuses like crazy for nearly everything, and when a non-magical character needs to fly without the aid of a mount (via a magic item or friendly spell) they lack the native methods of making up for those penalties.
If you have a martial/caster disparity problem then target that problem and fix it. The ability to trip Fly spells actually doesn't do anything to limit "magical classes," but penalties are penalties. You seem to have the view that numbers don't matter, even though all the things that make those numbers so apparently hard to control. . . are under your control. And most are known at character creation.

Don't like crazy high AC mages? Ban Abjurant Cheeselord. Bard bonus too high? No more stacking four sources of bard bonus buffs. Greater Heroism stupidly huge? Well the original was a specific potion in 3.0, ban both the spells and make them pay for it. Casters too invincible and too unstoppable from buffing themselves and then insta-winning? Slash the spells per day, durations, ranges, nerf the OP status effects, boot them to higher levels.

The thing about a character with pounce is that they need to charge to be able to use that ability. My terrains are never devoid of features, and charging is only an option in the first round about 40% of the time. I play my enemies clevarly, using cover and obstacles until they can close with a single move (especially if they just saw an ally get pulped by a single charge). I include difficult terrain regularly (jagged cobblestone popped loose over the years, roots curling up on the bottom of the cave, slick floors covered with moss and mold, you get the idea). These features actively combat the "Pounce" mechanic and don't make it an always-on, 100% guarentee method of fighting, which forces players to think more tactically.
Well if you have a percentage then there's your header, but you're forgetting another one of those parts of the DMG's encounter system. Because giving enemies a significant tactical advantage, like say, 60% of fights preventing a charge from the frontline character who is apparently built for charging while ranged foes have enough output to kill the rest of the party if he doesn't get in there- that's an xp boosted encounter. Not a normal encounter. Whether you're doing it via terrain, monster synergy, or flat out monster-op, jacking up an encounter is jacking it up.

(Not that WotC even remembered or stuck with this. I took a look at The Sinister Spire since it keeps coming up for killing characters, and the other day I was looking at Return to the Temple. In RttoEE, there are many encounters with foes far below the level of the PCs, encounters that can have total ELs below theirs, be divided, etc, and encounters with tactical advantages [even for underleveled foes] give an xp bonus. In Sinister Spire, every single encounter in the module is overleveled and swimming in tactical advantages for the monsters. No xp adjustments, no semblance of the DMG's own expected variation in encounter difficulty. Just an entire module at 6th or 7th+ level marketed for 5th level characters, biased for the monsters at every turn.)

But we've already revealed just how far you've already moved from the existing system, so that is indeed moot. Even if you have a lower target, like most char-op DMs you've taken the entire game into your hands and there's really not much advice I can see you using.

Two Weapon Fighting has the unique problem of being many lower-damage attacks that add up to be a greater amount of damage. This is already nicely handled by DR. Even a small amount (2-3 points) is enough to knock down the damage output of a two weapon fighter by enough to make it a challenge to overcome.
Not sure where the idea that TWF was itself a problem came from. The pressure and expectation that anyone not two-handing will be TWFing is the problem- though even if you rule that DR can prevent SA from triggering, you'll need more than 2-3 points to prevent it.

If there is a character that gets cocky and sees something I describe as a skeleton, which they charge with pounce and dual maces thinking they will pulp it, I may have been describing a different creature a 'blood bones' (a skeleton alchemically altered by the creator to make the brittle bones more flexible, but prone to injury from puncturing). Same everything as a standard skeleton, but their bones have a slight red hue to them and the DR is weakness piercing as opposed to bludgeoning.
And that's all the usual problems of being obtuse. Aside from "puncturing flexible bones" being a terrible example, describing something exactly as normal but then "surprise it's different" isn't fun, it's gotcha obstructionism. I don't think you're actually saying you do that, but that's not a great way of phrasing "I use custom monsters so players can't metagame when I'm throwing a wrench in their plans."

I am planning on evaulating the whole spell list of all of the classes to target the most problematic spells, but I will not be banning anything.
You'll regret that stance when you find something that needs banning. There are enough duplicated themes that trying to bring down a lot of problems will just result in a duplicate, and the whole problem you seem to have with numbers being out of control is primarily caused by splatbook buffs being out of control. Even if you reduce them all to +1s, that's still half a dozen +1's that you'll have to complain about making it easy to overthrow any AC or DC.

In sum: if I'm giving advice based on normal monsters and situations, and your entire line of game balance is custom monsters and NPC builds with tactical advantages, obviously most of that advice isn't going to matter. There's no point in delaying the brewing of fixes for problems you can already see, and expecting it to be possible to fix spell lists without banning anything is either very optimistic or very foolish.

Edit: Oh, and Aspect of Nature. Very different from normal, requires a significant change in concept, because the aspects have almost nothing to do with the usual turn into X animal concept. Otherwise, they're basically a bunch of untyped buffs, many of which are not created equal. Lots of defenses and some flight on tap, and also a +8 str. Limits the uber melee druid but still leaves plenty on the table. 100' speed Gaseous Form is something to be aware of at high levels.

I'm generally fine with the idea, though I don't think the druid needs even that power. Obviously people who expect druids to actually turn into animals will be disappoint. But that's another one that's actually quite easy to curb, just by locking the animals to Medium. No more super stealth, no more Brown Bears of Doom, no more common cat or dog or horse, no carrying the party around, etc. Maybe give Large back later on. Make some spells for turning into stronger things, [polymorph] subschool or Aspect of the Wolf style. And drop a line in the Bite of the Were spells that they only affect your natural form.