Ban PHB?

[Endril_69]

When discussing game balance, I've seen a few people claim banning the PHB would balance the game pretty well, but I'm wondering if anyone's tried it. Has anyone done it for more than just a game or two, and what did you think? Did you just ban classes, or did you also ban feats and/or spells? What are some pros/cons you can think of?

[bean illus]

When discussing game balance, I've seen a few people claim banning the PHB would balance the game pretty well, ...

I agree with banning wizard and druid.

[Venger]

Banning classes does a lot to help balance in that players are more likely through happenstance to pick classes that are closer in tier to one another. However, this is possible just talking to your players ahead of time so you don't have untenable situations like a wizard and a monk in the same party, and instead get something like a beguiler and a swordsage, both t3. Banning all feats from phb is not possible since they are all used as taxes in splats.

[tyckspoon]

There are some things you will have to work around - for example most splat material uses PHB feats for prereqs, you pretty much have to keep the Skills chapter, there aren't a lot of healing spells outside of the PHB because there isn't a lot of call for 'Cure X Wounds but slightly different' or printing new things to cover the ground already handled by Remove Disease, Cure Blindness, Break Enchantment, etc. But assuming you don't literally ban the entire PHB, then yes, removing the PHB classes does a lot to remove both the most powerful and some of the weakest options in the game, which tightens up the balance range considerably.

[NigelWalmsley]

Banning the PHB is dumb. Yes, the PHB has game-breaking spells like Planar Binding and Shapechange in it. But it also has spells that your game absolutely needs in it, like Raise Dead, Flesh to Stone, or Restoration. Just ban the things that are broken, and don't ban the things that are not broken. If you don't know what things are broken, that probably means your group is playing at a power level where you don't need to worry about imbalance.

[rel]

I've tried it, it works but it's... clunky.

Pros
If you have players that are interested in making the most powerful character and players that are interested in not reading the rules at all in the same group a PHB ban is a really simple way to force some balance.

The ban flat out eliminates a lot of the high end builds and cuts out a lot of trap options.
It also removes the bulk of item creation making it possible to further adjust the balance within the party by throwing tailored loot at people who are struggling while denying it from those that are doing well.

If you are likely to see a party featuring both 'monk with toughness' and 'druid with natural spell' then a PHB ban may well be a good option.

The ban forces players to stop thinking in terms of class; if they want to play a fighter but Fighter the class isn't available they have to consider other ways to achieve their goal and will probably make a more effective character as a reult.

Cons
A major problem is a lack of debuff removal. A lot of monster abilities are basically a death sentence without specific spells, usually clerical, often only printed in the PHB.
Competent players can work around this issue but a better fix is for the GM to consider this when selecting monsters and if necessary, modify problematic monster abilities to simply wear off.

e.g. medusa

Petrifying Gaze (Su)
Turn to stone permanently, 30 feet, Fortitude DC 15 negates. The save DC is Charisma-based.
If the medusa is slain then any creatures it stoned in the last 10 minutes return to flesh after 10 minutes pass.
Painting a petrified creature with medusa blood also reverses the effect.

A lot of PHB options are referenced over and over again in other splat books. An easy solution is to simply ban anything referencing the PHB or remove the PHB elements from other content.
You still end up with more content available than the ever popular PHB only game.
A more practical approach is to address any references to the PHB on a case by case basis and work out suitable alternatives.

e.g. the sword sage class references weapon focus.


You could remove the weapon focus component of discipline focus from the swordsage class and leave the rest unchanged.

or you could modify the weapon focus component to read:
Weapon Focus: At 1st level, you gain a bonus to hit equal to your wisdom modifier when using weapons associated with the chosen discipline. See the discipline descriptions in Chapter 4.


Conclusions
I think a no PHB game is preferable to a PHB only game but banning books in general is a crude solution to issues of balance or tone in a game.

A better alternative is to treat available 3.5 content as a toolkit you can use to make a specific game and world then either provide the players with a specific subset of options (modified if necessary) to build characters that fit a particular game or give the players a design brief and power level and trust them to build to the provided specifications on their own.

[sreservoir]

There are some things you will have to work around - for example most splat material uses PHB feats for prereqs, you pretty much have to keep the Skills chapter, there aren't a lot of healing spells outside of the PHB because there isn't a lot of call for 'Cure X Wounds but slightly different' or printing new things to cover the ground already handled by Remove Disease, Cure Blindness, Break Enchantment, etc. But assuming you don't literally ban the entire PHB, then yes, removing the PHB classes does a lot to remove both the most powerful and some of the weakest options in the game, which tightens up the balance range considerably.

You can get a long way to what break enchantment does by casting resurgence (SpC 174) until they pass the save. Remove blindness/deafness seems like a bit less of a problem when the main cause of permanent blindness/deafness is also banned, but panacea (SpC 152) gets rid of it fine.

Cure X wounds variants aren't all that widespread, but there are plenty of effects that can restore hit points just fine without them—the whole vigor line makes a fine substitute out-of-combat (11 hp wands of lesser vigor are generally preferred over 2-9 (average 5.5) hp wands of CLW anyway), invest light protection (Clr 1, PH2 115) doesn't heal quite as much as CLW but DR 1/evil for a minute helps make up for 3 points of damage at that level, and faith healing (SpC 87) is basically maximized CLW if your party goes to church together.

Ability drain removal becomes a way higher-level effect though—naberius heals it slowly for binders, but everyone else might have to be the recipient of either the healer 10 feature, psionic restoration (egoist 6), or mass restoration (Clr 7)? Though to be fair, the gap between CR 3 shadow and restoration at 7th level (Clr 4) in Core is already pretty disgusting.

It's probably more possible than you'd expect to substitute for the things that are missing after throwing away all core spells.

[King of Nowhere]

Banning the PHB is dumb. Yes, the PHB has game-breaking spells like Planar Binding and Shapechange in it. But it also has spells that your game absolutely needs in it, like Raise Dead, Flesh to Stone, or Restoration. Just ban the things that are broken, and don't ban the things that are not broken

+1
There are only a handful of broken things in the phb. Banning it all would be as dumb as putting a crowd in jail because there are a handful of criminals among them.

And if you have a druid with natural spell and s monk with thoughness, you won't fix it by banning the druid. If he tries to take thoughness, You have to help the monk player in his build. Or he will never be at the same level of the other, not even if he's the one playing druid

[NigelWalmsley]

Though to be fair, the gap between CR 3 shadow and restoration at 7th level (Clr 4) in Core is already pretty disgusting.

The Shadow deals strength damage, which Lesser Restoration heals just fine. On the other hand, the CR 3 Allip does do ability drain. On the gripping hand, both of those creatures are pretty obviously under-CRed even before considering whether you can heal up after the fight properly.

[Vaern]

The PHB is only as broken as you allow it to be. A simple fix to wizards being broken is to limit their access to spells. Roll to determine what scrolls a shop might have in stock instead of just letting them pick whatever they want from Magic*Mart. Restrict their options at level up to spells they are already familiar with, having seen the spells used before or via a knowledge (arcana) check. Treat their spellbook as a singular item and only allow them to spend a limited portion of their starting gold filling it with spells.

[King of Nowhere]

The PHB is only as broken as you allow it to be. A simple fix to wizards being broken is to limit their access to spells. Roll to determine what scrolls a shop might have in stock instead of just letting them pick whatever they want from Magic*Mart. Restrict their options at level up to spells they are already familiar with, having seen the spells used before or via a knowledge (arcana) check. Treat their spellbook as a singular item and only allow them to spend a limited portion of their starting gold filling it with spells.

unlikely to work. a resourceful wizard player will eventually get around all of that. and a non-resourceful wizard player will struggle.
in my experience, balance has to be tailored for the table. And when you must ban stuff (like the planar calling or shapechange) ban it hard. don't say "you may be able to learn this if you can find a scroll or pass a high dc check"; they will, and then they will feel entitled to use it in all its brokenness because they earned it. no, if you want the players to use this thing, don't put restrictions, and if you don't want, just say the spell does not exhist in your world.

[NigelWalmsley]

Limiting the Wizard's spells known is not a good balancing strategy, because the most problematic Wizard strategies aren't the ones where you have a bunch of spells in your spellbook and prepare ones that are good today, but the ones where you cast the same absurdly overpowered spells over and over again. A Wizard who only ever casts Planar Binding + spells that make Planar Binding work is one of the most broken builds in the game and needs to know all of four spells. If you want to balance casters there's really no alternative to bringing down the banhammer on the specific spells that break the game. And honestly once you've done that, casters aren't really the problem anymore.

[Quertus]

Conclusions
I think a no PHB game is preferable to a PHB only game but banning books in general is a crude solution to issues of balance or tone in a game.

A better alternative is to treat available 3.5 content as a toolkit you can use to make a specific game and world then either provide the players with a specific subset of options (modified if necessary) to build characters that fit a particular game or give the players a design brief and power level and trust them to build to the provided specifications on their own.

Agreed. The bolded part is (the basis of) what I call "balance to the table".


The Shadow deals strength damage, which Lesser Restoration heals just fine. On the other hand, the CR 3 Allip does do ability drain. On the gripping hand, both of those creatures are pretty obviously under-CRed even before considering whether you can heal up after the fight properly.

You know what else heals the shadow? Mundane rest. That becomes available at level 0. :smalltongue:

[CharonsHelper]

The Shadow deals strength damage, which Lesser Restoration heals just fine. On the other hand, the CR 3 Allip does do ability drain. On the gripping hand, both of those creatures are pretty obviously under-CRed even before considering whether you can heal up after the fight properly.

Shadows aren't that bad so long as the PCs have holy water and the GM doesn't play the shadows smarter than they are. They have a 6 INT: they shouldn't be reaching out from the wall/floor at the PCs.

It also does show one of the limitations of CR - as how challenging a foe is varies a lot based upon party capabilities. If the PCs have a cleric in the party, the CR 3 is about right, while without a cleric or some other effective way to deal with incorporeal undead, they can be pretty rough.

[Silly Name]

I agree with Nigel. "Banning the PHB" is mostly said in jest, and if we wanted to be serious about it, one would quickly realises it makes the game unplayable because it still contains some fundamental building blocks of the game.

If a spell or ability is problematic, homebrew a non-problematic version of it, ban it outright, or simply lay down a gentlemen's agreement at the table to not engage in broken tactics.

I don't particularly like minionmancy outside of theoretical building because it tends to grind down the game to an halt, and most of my players are of the same inclination. I don't ban it, but I discuss with players what everyone of us likes and dislikes, and we agree to give some leeway to each other while not purposefully ruining anyone's fun. So I sometimes see "contained" minionmancy (only a few minions, summoned or otherwise), but nothing that is cause of concern to me.

Another practical example is that I really like using undead, constructs and oozes, because I think they're neat and often fit my villain concepts. But I also have a couple players who like the rogue class and other precision damage-dealing things, so I make sure to warn them beforehand "hey, this campaign is going to heavily feature constructs, here's a list of ways to get around and/or mitigate their immunities to sneak attack and the like".

[CharonsHelper]

I don't particularly like minionmancy outside of theoretical building because it tends to grind down the game to an halt, and most of my players are of the same inclination. I don't ban it, but I discuss with players what everyone of us likes and dislikes, and we agree to give some leeway to each other while not purposefully ruining anyone's fun. So I sometimes see "contained" minionmancy (only a few minions, summoned or otherwise), but nothing that is cause of concern to me.


Yeah, while not TECHNICALLY the most powerful abilities, heavy summoning/companions and polymorph (including wildshape) are the worst offenders IMO. (The change to polymorph abilities was probably my favorite change that Pathfinder made, though summoning spells are arguably even worse than in 3.5.)

Besides the minions slowing down gameplay, they and polymorphing do the most to step on the toes of martial characters' niche. While other spells can be more powerful, it's different enough to not be as frustrating to martials due to differences in kind, rather than just in scale.

[Quertus]

The PHB is only as broken as you allow it to be. A simple fix to wizards being broken is to limit their access to spells. Roll to determine what scrolls a shop might have in stock instead of just letting them pick whatever they want from Magic*Mart. Restrict their options at level up to spells they are already familiar with, having seen the spells used before or via a knowledge (arcana) check. Treat their spellbook as a singular item and only allow them to spend a limited portion of their starting gold filling it with spells.

This seems like a terrible plan.

This encourages Wizard players to only take the best spells, rather than wasting their gold expanding their toolkit into the suboptimal. Note: buffing the Fighter is generally suboptimal.

This lack of availability either nerfs the Fighter from needful things, or strains credulity that cheap scrolls are unavailable, while the Fighter can buy / commission much more expensive items.

It does nothing to stop CODzilla from replacing the Fighter (to the extent that they can), or to make the Toughness Monk playable. It does nothing stop the BFC Tainted Sorcerer (or - bear with me - the furry ursine Druid, combining green bond summoning, training their animal companion, boosting their healing power, and Vow of Nudity, who is a bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear) from dominating the game.

So, what were you *trying* to accomplish with this?

[NigelWalmsley]

Shadows aren't that bad so long as the PCs have holy water and the GM doesn't play the shadows smarter than they are. They have a 6 INT: they shouldn't be reaching out from the wall/floor at the PCs.

Certainly there are things that beat Shadows. Holy Water, Cure spells, Magic Missile. The issue is twofold. First, a lot of the things that beat Shadows are strategic-level decisions. You either have some holy water or you don't. You either prepped Magic Missile or you didn't. There's very little in the way of tactical counters at that level, when magic weapons aren't yet reliably present. Second, even if you do have a counter, it's fairly easy for the Shadow to 2-hit someone, and which you get to do the whole fight again down a man. Nothing else at that level snowballs like that.


It also does show one of the limitations of CR - as how challenging a foe is varies a lot based upon party capabilities. If the PCs have a cleric in the party, the CR 3 is about right, while without a cleric or some other effective way to deal with incorporeal undead, they can be pretty rough.

I don't think it's a limitation of CR. Yes, if you have a hard counter the Shadow is easy, but generally speaking a CR of 5 would be a much better fit for what it has going on.


I don't particularly like minionmancy outside of theoretical building because it tends to grind down the game to an halt, and most of my players are of the same inclination. I don't ban it, but I discuss with players what everyone of us likes and dislikes, and we agree to give some leeway to each other while not purposefully ruining anyone's fun. So I sometimes see "contained" minionmancy (only a few minions, summoned or otherwise), but nothing that is cause of concern to me.

Minionmancy badly needs an overhaul. It's an absolutely iconic concept, and it's one of the most broken types of abilities. I think the only minionmancy effect that's really satisfying is Animate Dead, because it creates minions that are close to balanced and mechanically simple.


This encourages Wizard players to only take the best spells, rather than wasting their gold expanding their toolkit into the suboptimal. Note: buffing the Fighter is generally suboptimal.

Or, put another way, even if the Wizard only gets his base spells from level-up, he's still getting as many spells as the Sorcerer (and with a much nicer distribution). And the Sorcerer is still very much better than the Fighter.

[CharonsHelper]

Minionmancy badly needs an overhaul. It's an absolutely iconic concept, and it's one of the most broken types of abilities. I think the only minionmancy effect that's really satisfying is Animate Dead, because it creates minions that are close to balanced and mechanically simple.

I think that the issue is that too often magical minions require a one-time cost and you're done. They either need to be a major & default class feature (Ex: animal companions - though they're still a bit OP) or they need to be a constant drain on your magical resources. Off the top of my head (not a great solution) have a magical minion lower your spells/day that you can cast - because basically they're absorbing that much of your magical mojo each day.

It's overcomplicated (like the rest of the system), but I really liked the vibe of summons in Anima.

[NigelWalmsley]

I think that the issue is that too often magical minions require a one-time cost and you're done. They either need to be a major & default class feature (Ex: animal companions - though they're still a bit OP) or they need to be a constant drain on your magical resources. Off the top of my head (not a great solution) have a magical minion lower your spells/day that you can cast - because basically they're absorbing that much of your magical mojo each day.

I mean, that kind of is how Animate Dead works. The nature of the control pool makes it so that Animate Dead is less a spell and more a secret class feature (particularly for the Dread Necromancer, who basically has an "Animate Dead" class feature). In principle, there's no reason that can't be balanced. The issue is things like Charm/Dominate and Planar Binding which are largely uncapped. In those cases, having the spell slot stay expended as long as the minion is active is potentially reasonable, though that doesn't solve the in-combat concerns particularly (because you can still get four or five full-complexity boss monsters as mooks).

[CharonsHelper]

I mean, that kind of is how Animate Dead works. The nature of the control pool makes it so that Animate Dead is less a spell and more a secret class feature (particularly for the Dread Necromancer, who basically has an "Animate Dead" class feature). In principle, there's no reason that can't be balanced. The issue is things like Charm/Dominate and Planar Binding which are largely uncapped. In those cases, having the spell slot stay expended as long as the minion is active is potentially reasonable, though that doesn't solve the in-combat concerns particularly (because you can still get four or five full-complexity boss monsters as mooks).

It can only be balanced like a class feature if virtually everyone with that class uses it. (Though I 100% agree - it's not the worst offender.) Maybe if they had the Necromancer sub-class be the only wizard who could use Animate Dead effectively, but they gave up some other equivalent class feature. (totally spit-ballling)

That, and any special abilities that a minion uses should probably use up the spellcaster's resources - which works from a fluff perspective for any summon as the caster is the conduit of them into the mortal plane. There's even an argument that the caster should need to dedicate their action to it.

Note: This is NOT an easy fix which should be slapped onto the existing system. I'm only speaking about how it might be fixed if summoning was redesigned from the ground up.

[rrwoods]

When I hear "ban core", where my mind actually goes is "ban the classes in the Player's Handbook". I think this is probably better than banning absolutely everything in core, and it does a few things: (1) it removes (some of) the most powerful classes and (some of) the absolute weakest classes from consideration, meaning that players' choice of class is more likely to fall within a medium-ish range, and (2) it makes people go "wait, what?" which can be useful for getting the conversation about balance started.

...

That said, I think that the conversation about balance itself is the end, and "ban the PHB" is a suboptimal means to that end. When the players and the DM are in agreement about what kind of game they want to play -- not just narratively but mechanically too! -- everything is much smoother and the players have more fun. At many tables, this may very well result in the players naturally tending away from playing the classes in the PHB anyway!

[Zanos]

Trying to balance 3.5 against people that are actively trying to work against the power level of the group is a lost battle. You can make builds that are just as broken if not more so than a core wizard without using anything in the PHB, and you can make a core wizard that's weaker than a fighter if you don't know what you're doing (or if you do, and are doing it on purpose).

Let people play wizard's and clerics, they're some of the most iconic character archetypes. If you don't like what people are doing in your game, ask them to stop. If they persist, remove them. Simple as.

[sreservoir]

When I hear "ban core", where my mind actually goes is "ban the classes in the Player's Handbook". I think this is probably better than banning absolutely everything in core, and it does a few things: (1) it removes (some of) the most powerful classes and (some of) the absolute weakest classes from consideration, meaning that players' choice of class is more likely to fall within a medium-ish range, and (2) it makes people go "wait, what?" which can be useful for getting the conversation about balance started.

Well, yes and no—Core nabs about half the top slots, but there's really no shortage of options that match PHB classes in game-breaking potential. The PHB classes' spell lists are absurd, sure, but keep in mind that most of the worst-offending individual spells are also in Core, and there's plenty of access to those from non-Core classes too.

On the other end, well, PHB having some of the absolute weakest classes is straight up not true, and no, not even after we take NPC classes out of consideration. There are ... a lot of bad classes printed, plenty worse than PHB-only fighter, and certainly plenty that don't match any PHB class with all books open. They're just far less likely to be taken into consideration at all, since people generally exercise a level of critical judgement toward them that's often skipped over for PHB.

That's last bit's a real benefit, though. Banning PHB classes gets you immediately out of the mindset that just because it's in Core, it must be balanced and well-conceived. It's easy to understand that not everything printed in supplementals may have be rigorously tested and balanced, but that Core should be is quite common and unfortunately very wrong.

[Endril_69]

I've tried it, it works but it's... clunky.

Conclusions
I think a no PHB game is preferable to a PHB only game but banning books in general is a crude solution to issues of balance or tone in a game.

A better alternative is to treat available 3.5 content as a toolkit you can use to make a specific game and world then either provide the players with a specific subset of options (modified if necessary) to build characters that fit a particular game or give the players a design brief and power level and trust them to build to the provided specifications on their own.

This was pretty much what I was thinking. Thanks everybody.