Advice needed on stopping the worst abuses of D&D 3.5 in a home game

[Feldar]

Next year I plan to start a new home game based on the World of Greyhawk, which is continuation of sorts (8 years later) than my previous home game which was a loose continuation of Living Greyhawk.

Towards this end, I've been researching broken combinations and working on a set of house rules designed to limit said broken combinations. Without posting a full document here it would be lengthy to document the exact changes, but in doing so I have tried to keep as much open as possible.

Here's a list of broad stroke limitations:

1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.
2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).
3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).
4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)
5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".
6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.
7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.
8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...
9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.

I could visit domains to limit the one level dip in cleric, but frankly I believe this can be controlled with the alignment handcuffs.

I've reviewed many, many, many power builds on this and other sites and so far they all seem to be constrained by my rules set. So, what's left aside from domains? What else do I need to constrain?

[Tvtyrant]

I personally think it is easier to just ask players not to abuse the rules than try to craft perfect ones. D&D hasn't made a balanced edition yet, while balanced games are pretty common.

[JNAProductions]

1) Okay. I wouldn't really hew too closely to alignment, but saying "I want to DM for heroes, not villains," is a fine stance.

2) You could just allow for a single Nightstick-one isn't OP. It's STACKING them that is. The Candle, though, yeah. And Grafts as a tonal thing, also fine.

3) Reminder that spells like Deathwatch have the [EVIL] tag. So... Yeah.

4) That'll make the mundane folk a LOT weaker, while not really limiting the magical folk. I think you're better off just judging content on its merits, and asking your players to not abuse your generosity.

5) Interesting-not sure how that'd affect balance. For the latter, fine.

6) Makes sense.

7) Makes sense-I'd include a caveat that applying multiple zero adjustment metamagics does not raise it, though.

8) Okay.

9) Okay.

Overall, though? You're barking up the wrong tree.

If you want a balanced game of 3.5, your best bet is to find players who are good at making balanced PCs. Even with all these restrictions, I guarantee you that the game can be broken wide open. You need players who are willing to play along-and by throwing down lots of restrictions, I think you're more likely to get players who might see that as a challenge.

[Cerefel]

I suppose the answer to your question really depends on where you draw the line for things being broken/unbalanced. This stops a lot of the crazier shenanigans, but doesn't necessarily have any effect on whether the party wizard is going to solve every encounter with a single spell.

If you have serious concerns about your players unbalancing the game, the best way to stop them is to ask them not to

[Feldar]

4) That'll make the mundane folk a LOT weaker, while not really limiting the magical folk. I think you're better off just judging content on its merits, and asking your players to not abuse your generosity.


Clarify what you mean about #4 please -- how would that make mundanes weaker?

As for the players, we got what we got :). Sometimes you can't pick your audience.

[Segev]

2) You could just allow for a single Nightstick-one isn't OP. It's STACKING them that is. The Candle, though, yeah. And Grafts as a tonal thing, also fine.Also, while I acknowledge that this is not the typical interpretation, the way I close-parse the RAW on Nightsticks is that they give you four more uses of Turn/Rebuke per day. They don't "store" 4 uses in them. When you're holding it, you have 4 more than you usually do.

So if you usually have 4, and are holding one, you have 8. If you usually have 4, and are holding two, you have 12.

But you've still used 12 of them after you've used 12 of them. It doesn't matter if you put down both of them (meaning you've used 12 of your allowed 4 for the day) and pick up two "fresh" ones, you now have still used 12 out of your 12 allowed uses for the day.

This means that more than two is probably worthless to most characters, and also that you can share them pretty effectively: if you have a cleric and a paladin, the cleric can use his normal alotment of turn/rebukes, then hold the rod and have 4 more he can use, then pass the rod off to the paladin who now has 4 more than the paladin's normal number.

This is, however, just an argument-from-RAW for what most would view as a house rule, and a soft solution to the problem of stacking the things indefinitely. (+8 uses is still a lot.)



Overall, though? You're barking up the wrong tree.

If you want a balanced game of 3.5, your best bet is to find players who are good at making balanced PCs. Even with all these restrictions, I guarantee you that the game can be broken wide open. You need players who are willing to play along-and by throwing down lots of restrictions, I think you're more likely to get players who might see that as a challenge.

This is the best advice, though: work with your players and look at the balance overall. Ask them to let you know about what they plan to do and how they plan to play. If they have any "cool tricks," ask them to let you know what they are. You can forbid any that are too broken, or you can even try to incorporate them into your plans once you know it's their intention. You might even permit some cool, cheesy tricks if the characters are appropriately in check/weak in other ways.

Work with the players to make a party that is balanced, and get their buy-in on it. Work with the players. Use the game as a tool to make something fun for everyone.

[JNAProductions]

Clarify what you mean about #4 please -- how would that make mundanes weaker?

As for the players, we got what we got :). Sometimes you can't pick your audience.

Because, in core only, there's Polymorph, Shapechange, Wish, Rope Trick, Black Tentacles, all the core Wall spells, etc.

Whereas mundane folk get... Weapon Focus. Improved Sunder. Toughness.

Adding in every single splatbook increases the power of everyone, but not equally. Wizards and other casters are already top-tier with just core, so making them a bit stronger won't be a huge deal, but it opens up a LOT for mundane folk.


Work with the players to make a party that is balanced, and get their buy-in on it. Work with the players. Use the game as a tool to make something fun for everyone.

Exactly! Segev be smart.

[Telonius]

The houserules these seem fine, as far as they go. They definitely seem to support a particular theme and tone of the game; which is perfectly fine. But they really don't address what you're trying to address: namely, the essential imbalance that exists in core D&D because of the power and versatility of spells and spellcasters. Some of the biggest and most frequent offenders are in the PHB: Shapechange, Natural Spell, Divine Power, Solid Fog/True Seeing combinations. Even lower-level stuff like Grease, Glitterdust, or Color Spray can act as a "Win" button early on.

Limiting things to core is tempting, but it doesn't actually achieve balance. Martial classes need the options that things outside Core can give them. Dungeon Crasher and Shock Trooper come to mind as things that Fighters really need to have available, but if you're going Core-only they're out of luck. Same way with Rogues and the Craven feat.

[Feldar]

Because, in core only, there's Polymorph, Shapechange, Wish, Rope Trick, Black Tentacles, all the core Wall spells, etc.

Whereas mundane folk get... Weapon Focus. Improved Sunder. Toughness.

Adding in every single splatbook increases the power of everyone, but not equally. Wizards and other casters are already top-tier with just core, so making them a bit stronger won't be a huge deal, but it opens up a LOT for mundane folk.



Exactly! Segev be smart.

Well, when speaking with SRM a few years back he gave me one of my favorite D&D 3.5 quotes "fighters are spell components" :)

I get where you're going with your critique there.

One of the things I'm doing there is boosting up paladins with bonus feats at interval levels and I'm going to take a look at rangers, and I'm going to make sure that most encounters do present challenges for non-casters to handle.

[Segev]

If you're worried about martial/caster imbalances, I strongly recommend using either Tome of Battle, or going for Pathfinder's Path of War.

[Feldar]

If you're worried about martial/caster imbalances, I strongly recommend using either Tome of Battle, or going for Pathfinder's Path of War.

Here's my list of allowed sources so far:


Arms & Equipment Guide*
Book of Vile Darkness
Cityscape
Complete Adventurer
Complete Arcane
Complete Champion
Complete Divine
Complete Mage
Complete Scoundrel
Complete Warrior
Draconomicon
Dragon 315
Dragon 319
Dragon 323
Dungeon 113
Dungeon Master’s Guide
Dungeonscape
Frostburn
Heroes of Battle
Heroes of Horror
Hordes of the Abyss
Lords of Madness
Magic Item Compendium
Miniatures Handbook
Player’s Handbook
Player’s Handbook II
Races of Destiny
Races of Stone
Races of the Dragon
Races of the Wild
Sandstorm
Spell Compendium
Stormwrack


Many of these are just excerpts that work, like a feat or two from Heroes of Horror a prestige class from Dungeon 113.

I'll review Tome of Battle.

[Telonius]

So for #4, it ought to read more like, "No setting-specific things other than Greyhawk." The way it's worded now sounds like you aren't allowing anything outside of core and Greyhawk materials.

[icefractal]

It seems to me that you have two goals here:
1) Have the party internally balanced enough that nobody is being generally overshadowed.
2) Keep the total power low enough that you can still use the MM rather than needing to optimize every foe.

Strictness on allowed sources doesn't help at all with #1 (it might hurt, in fact), and while it somewhat helps with #2, I find that the alternate approach of saying "No unbound loops, and please be reasonable" works just as well while being less dictatorial.

Like frankly, a big list of restrictions and allowed sources feels unpleasant. It feels like the GM has no trust in us, and also that there's a higher probability of railroading to come (there's no causal link there, but it's a correlation I've seen a number of times). And it means that if the GM missed something and later wants to change it, I'll be annoyed - "I jumped through all your hoops and you're still not happy?!" Whereas if they were more open at the start I wouldn't have minded.

[GrayDeath]

I personally think it is easier to just ask players not to abuse the rules than try to craft perfect ones. D&D hasn't made a balanced edition yet, while balanced games are pretty common.


If you're worried about martial/caster imbalances, I strongly recommend using either Tome of Battle, or going for Pathfinder's Path of War.


Cant agreee strongly enough.

Unless all your players play fullc asters, I would suggest simply bringing in the non/Low Casters in their Pathfinder version (its ll online), and even then boosting them with say, flat Ability Boosts every even level isntead of every 4, and similar.

Wont make the game balanced, but at least they wont be feeling underpowered/useless ALL the time.

If you WANT people to play a Paladin, might give my homebrew here a look. Solves some of the problems without maiing the class "Wins because GOOD says so"^^

[NigelWalmsley]

I think people tend to overestimate the degree to which they need to worry about characters being overpowered and underestimate the degree to which they need to worry about characters being underpowered, and it definitely seems like that's happening here. If you just tell people "try not to break the game", even spellcasters will generally end up at a manageable power level. Conversely, it's very easy for someone who builds a Fighter or a Monk to end up with a character who can't meaningfully contribute.

Generally speaking, given the state of 3e, any set of houserules should be focused more on lifting characters up than on pushing them down. People are pretty good about self-policing for power, but it's very, very difficult to modify the power of an underpowered build up.

[Xervous]

This is assuming you know how to handle magic mart so the Martials remain relevant I guess?

Belker claws is the weirdest thing here, considering most 3.5e combats are decided well before round 4, the damage is pitiful at the levels you’d have access to higher duration, and casters have enough slots at that point that they’d not be well served trying to touch everything. If you’re worried about low level mega damage spells there’s power word pain... but again, better blasting is out there, and BFC is head and shoulders above. You’re going to see pouncing barbarians with two 2H attacks at really low levels already if they want gimmicky low level damage. If a wizard wants to blast who cares, they’ll be second place.

[Biggus]

1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.
2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).
3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).
4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)
5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".
6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.
7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.
8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...
9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.


I do quite similar to these. In my case it's as much because I enjoy tinkering with the rules as to actually balance the game if I'm honest though :smallwink:

The three core books I've modified spells, classes etc individually, but obviously it's not practical to do that for the dozens of splats. Rather than outright ban books, I have a "restricted list" which players are required to get permission to use anything from on a case-by-case basis. I rarely say no to martial types, but casters much more often. Of those on your allowed list, PHB2, Sandstorm and Frostburn all have some pretty stinky cheese in them.

I like the "only one reroll no matter what" rule, I'd considered doing something like that myself.

Making Natural Spell into a metamagic feat with a +1 spell level modifier goes a long way towards making Druids a merely very good class rather than an insanely good one.

There are a handful of other spells it might be worth banning: Polymorph Any Object, Shivering Touch, Wraithstrike, Celerity and Greater Celerity come to mind.


it's very easy for someone who builds a Fighter or a Monk to end up with a character who can't meaningfully contribute.

Generally speaking, given the state of 3e, any set of houserules should be focused more on lifting characters up than on pushing them down.

I think this is good advice, 90% of the changes I make to classes are improvements to the weaker ones rather than nerfs to the stronger ones. I liberally raid PF and 5E for ideas. A couple of my favourites are:

Rangers and Paladins' caster level is class level minus 3 not half class level. Stops their buffs from being laughably easy to dispel at high levels (from PF).

Fighters gain the Indomitable ability, which allows them to reroll a failed save one or more times per day as they gain levels (from 5E). This has saved our Fighter-Barbarian's neck several times already. I also start it at level 3 not level 9, as there are plenty of disabling spells that become available before that.

[NigelWalmsley]

Rangers and Paladins' caster level is class level minus 3 not half class level. Stops their buffs from being laughably easy to dispel at high levels (from PF).

Honestly it should just equal character level. Getting lower level spells already represents "weaker magic" fine. The extra penalties on top of that rapidly take it from "bad" to "worthless". Frankly, if I had my druthers, they'd be 6/9 casters that used Recharge Magic.

[Melcar]

Next year I plan to start a new home game based on the World of Greyhawk, which is continuation of sorts (8 years later) than my previous home game which was a loose continuation of Living Greyhawk.

Towards this end, I've been researching broken combinations and working on a set of house rules designed to limit said broken combinations. Without posting a full document here it would be lengthy to document the exact changes, but in doing so I have tried to keep as much open as possible.

Here's a list of broad stroke limitations:

1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.
2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).
3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).
4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)
5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".
6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.
7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.
8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...
9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.

I could visit domains to limit the one level dip in cleric, but frankly I believe this can be controlled with the alignment handcuffs.

I've reviewed many, many, many power builds on this and other sites and so far they all seem to be constrained by my rules set. So, what's left aside from domains? What else do I need to constrain?

1) Why?

2) Why?

3) Why do you think Spell Engine game breaking? First you ahve to have access to level 8 spells, secondlly its not game breaking. Full stop!

4) You should not ban stuff that is not setting specific. If the feat, class, item does not mention a specific region or deity of FR, its not setting specific!

8) You do know that all races exist in all settings righ? Plannar travel is a thing... Thats why Mordenkainen's Disjunction spell are in all. In other words its fine to say you only allow certain races, but saying that there are only a certain specific set of races in Greyspace is wrong!


All it all I dislike you houserules. I simply ask my players to not break the game! Seems much easier and achieves what you want to a higher degree... with your rules, they can cheese full pull within you rules...

[ExLibrisMortis]

1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.
2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).
3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).
4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)
5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".
6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.
7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.
8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...
9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.
For (1), (4), (8), and (9), I think you're missing the point. It's not that the houserules don't work, as such, but you're essentially throwing out whole swathes of options because some unspecified number of them can be used to unbalance your game. There's a lot of good material that you've banned. Even a class like Incantatrix can be balanced in the right context (e.g. when not used with Persistent Spell and Item Familiar, or on a duskblade).

For (2) and especially (3), you're not aggressive enough, and you're banning the wrong spells. There are a few more broken items (thought bottle, for one), and a lot more broken spells, many of them in core. None of the spells you're listing are as broken as simple polymorph. (Enhance wild shape is close, but it requires considerable investment in Wild Shape to really break the game, and Wild Shape + form-granting feats bear part of the responsibility for the broken tricks. By contrast, polymorph all by itself is very broken, and it's cheap for virtually any old caster to get.)

(5) is fine. It can be useful, it can limit some tricks, but I don't expect a noticable effect.

(6) is effective and the most well-targeted ban you list.

(7) is fine, assuming that +0 metamagics are still +0. It doesn't really target alternate ways of paying metamagic costs, but it gets rid of Arcane Thesis abuse.

[icefractal]

As an aside, I do have some specific restrictions / removals I use, but they're more for world consistency than practical in-game balance, since they mostly apply to high-level strategic uses of magic.

Like for example, Simulacrum only knows the "public" knowledge of the target. Because otherwise nobody with high-level foes can have secrets.

Or that variable components can't be specified if you aren't paying them. So that there's a middle ground between "can get access to a single SLA Wish" and "has infinite resources and minions".

Or that temporary-ness is contagious and applies to all products of the temporary effect. Similar to the one before, so that there's a middle ground between "has two scrolls of Astral Projection" and "unlimited everything".

But honestly those are only necessary because I do imagine that high-level people would use the abilities they have to go above and beyond the standard power level that WotC assumes. For a normal campaign where the PCs are just trying to deal with the BBEG and finally get that legendary sandwich they've been hearing about, most of this isn't going to matter.

[GrayDeath]

OK, had more time to go over it with a fine tooth comb.

Prefacing that I fully agree with Nigel: Any balancing attempts outside of banning totally broken things should focus on strengthening the weaker side, not weakening the stronger, unless the first is not possible with the material you ahve.

And since youa re the DM. well...^^



Next year I plan to start a new home game based on the World of Greyhawk, which is continuation of sorts (8 years later) than my previous home game which was a loose continuation of Living Greyhawk.

Towards this end, I've been researching broken combinations and working on a set of house rules designed to limit said broken combinations. Without posting a full document here it would be lengthy to document the exact changes, but in doing so I have tried to keep as much open as possible.

Here's a list of broad stroke limitations:

1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.
2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).
3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).
4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)
5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".
6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.
7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.
8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...
9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.

I could visit domains to limit the one level dip in cleric, but frankly I believe this can be controlled with the alignment handcuffs.

I've reviewed many, many, many power builds on this and other sites and so far they all seem to be constrained by my rules set. So, what's left aside from domains? What else do I need to constrain?

1.: I would be very wary of a GM stating this limitation exactly as you did. Why?
Because it smells of "do something that I deem not good/harming my plot/going against my taste, and bang your character is now an NPC!:

Which honestly I know no palyer who would LIKE or find it funny.

How about rephrasing thusly:

This game is intended to be a Heroic game.
You will paly heroic characters. They may be Good or neutral, or even a redeeming-aimed Evil Character, but the Adventure willb e a heroic one.
Much better than the other restriction,a s it will 2quickly be followed by you and your group clarifying what that means for you. ^^

2.: Agreed. No Adventure NEEDS them, and removing the first is something I also do quite often unless we aim for "Out the Wazoo" optimization.
Could add a few other items ^^

3.: Where is Planar Binding? Polimorph any Object?
If yous tart banning magic, do so comprehensivcely or dont do it at all.
Only removing things you think clearly broken now risks running into Game Breaking in Game.
I suuggest discussiing this point in depth with your players.
You might not need any bans at all if youc an alla gree on what magic should be used (see point 1).

4.: You amended that alter, but still; I would allow any and all books that "give good things" to noncasters.
And/or buff them in other Ways.
Tome of battl, while badly edited and not a fluff fitting any campaign setting (but fluff can be adapted^^), helps A LOT with that.

Intersting, and I do so too for the points. Nothing much to add, but while discussing the game with your palyers, be ready to add some more, be it because a palyer found something or you did. :) Discussions like that help with EVERY game.

6/7:I almost always do the same. Nothing to add.

8.: Dont. Playing interesting races is part of the fun for many, and they can boost martials well (I almost always allow any non full caster/manifester/etc 1 or 2 LA Races for free when we paly below level 13/14ish, as it is often a quick and dirty balance patch^^).

9.: I never allow tricks.
I instead adapt the entry as befits what the class is actually trying to do (for example, Kensai. A really cool prestige class, not OP, that allows your MArtials to customize ther Favourite Weapon. But its entry has totally stupid requirements. Instead I always change that to "Knowledge Martial 5 ranks BAB 4 or higher, Weapon Focus).
What I am trying to say is: bee forgiving with entry for Classes that are behind on the pwoeer curve.
Your Casters dont need to be Incantatrix/Swiftblades/etc to dominate (Druids,C lerics and Wizards do that all by themselves).

A specific pack of rules I sued for my alst "not clearly defined and hence characterwise open game":

All Martial Classes are Initiators with 2 starting maneuvrs and a progression one Level behind the Warblade" or "only use Initiator Classes, including PoW ones".
All purely amrtial or 4th level Caster Characters can play a LA 1 or 2 Race or a "rare" LA +0/+1 Race with Template LA +1 for free".
All Wizards only have 2 Spells per Levelup written in their Spellbook, all others must be payed with WBL, and they cannot spend more than 1/2 their WBL on Spells.
Druids and Clerics are spontaneous Casters with the Favoured Soul Rpogression, but free conversion to heal/Harm spells and Summon antures ally remains.
Sorcerers get to use the Bloodlines from pathfinder, but 1/2 or more of their spells must fit that Bloodline (arcane is obviously out^^).

Worked well without hard Banning stuff, yet granted these are no perfect works at any table solution.

I hope my 2 Copper pieces helped.

[NigelWalmsley]

As an aside, I do have some specific restrictions / removals I use, but they're more for world consistency than practical in-game balance, since they mostly apply to high-level strategic uses of magic.

Like for example, Simulacrum only knows the "public" knowledge of the target. Because otherwise nobody with high-level foes can have secrets.

Or that variable components can't be specified if you aren't paying them. So that there's a middle ground between "can get access to a single SLA Wish" and "has infinite resources and minions".

Or that temporary-ness is contagious and applies to all products of the temporary effect. Similar to the one before, so that there's a middle ground between "has two scrolls of Astral Projection" and "unlimited everything".

But honestly those are only necessary because I do imagine that high-level people would use the abilities they have to go above and beyond the standard power level that WotC assumes. For a normal campaign where the PCs are just trying to deal with the BBEG and finally get that legendary sandwich they've been hearing about, most of this isn't going to matter.

Also, the lower level the PCs are, the less stuff like this matters. Simulacrum is a 7th level spell. If the PCs don't hit 13th level, it doesn't really matter what it does. But having a huge list of houserules can be a hurdle. So unless you plan to start at 10th level or something, I recommend a blanket "some things may become problematic, we can work them out when we get there", rather than trying to guess exactly how you want Planar Binding to work before anyone rolls up a character.

[icefractal]

Also, the lower level the PCs are, the less stuff like this matters. Simulacrum is a 7th level spell. If the PCs don't hit 13th level, it doesn't really matter what it does. But having a huge list of houserules can be a hurdle. So unless you plan to start at 10th level or something, I recommend a blanket "some things may become problematic, we can work them out when we get there", rather than trying to guess exactly how you want Planar Binding to work before anyone rolls up a character.For actual play purposes, sure. For world consistency, I think it's helpful to know at least the range that the campaign will eventually cover.

For example, let's say that there exists in the setting an organization of ruthless contract binders who enslave planar beings and have hundreds working for them. In that case, you do want to know how Planar Binding works, because it would determine what kind of resources and capabilities (and weak points) such an organization has.

TBF, this is a personal preference that not everyone's going to care about. Lots of people go with "they'll have whatever level of capabilities fits their role in the game, and it doesn't matter how they got those" and that's fine. But for me, I prefer it more concrete.

[Rynjin]

I think you're overpreparing for what is a player problem, not a game problem.

If a player tries to do something that is going to derail/break the game, there's only one "houserule"/"ban" you need:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/17/a1/7a/17a17ae6b93faf667b39af6d8fe34d68.gif

Give 'em the same if a "Neutral" character tries to murder an orphanage or what have you, because limiting characters to Good only is...kinda boring, especially for people like me who really like Lawful Neutral guys.

Either you have a good group of players or you don't. No amount of preemptive bans is going to change that.

[Biggus]

Honestly it should just equal character level. Getting lower level spells already represents "weaker magic" fine. The extra penalties on top of that rapidly take it from "bad" to "worthless". Frankly, if I had my druthers, they'd be 6/9 casters that used Recharge Magic.

I certainly wouldn't complain if a DM houseruled either of those things. Personally I'm happy with the -3 level as if they can just take Practised Spellcaster to get full CL if magic is something they want to focus on (likewise I make Ranger's animal companion as Druid level -3; if they take Natural Bond they can improve it to full level).

[NigelWalmsley]

For actual play purposes, sure. For world consistency, I think it's helpful to know at least the range that the campaign will eventually cover.

That's fair. But at the same time, I think over-world building can also be a problem. You probably want to be running at the level of "organizations the PCs care about" rather than just "the PCs" for making these kinds of calls. To take your example, I think at low levels it's perfectly sufficient to pencil in "Black Tower here?", and then figure out how Planar Binding works when the players start dealing with them on the level where the number of Planar Bindings they have running matters.

That said, there's nothing wrong with planning it all out, or with doing large-scale world-building. But it's important to understand that at a certain point where you're writing stuff because you enjoy writing stuff, rather than because it's going to be directly useful to your game. Failing to do that can result in railroading when you want to make sure the players see your cool toys.


But for me, I prefer it more concrete.

That I definitely agree with. But I think from a time-management perspective, you often want to make sure you're only mathhammering things when you need them.


If a player tries to do something that is going to derail/break the game, there's only one "houserule"/"ban" you need:

I agree that you don't want pre-emptive bans, but the hard no can also be an issue. If a player does something that breaks the game, you want to (to the best of your ability) work with them to find a non-broken alternative, not just immediately nope them. Ditto for morality. Obviously there are exemptions, like people who go full Pun-Pun or start sexually assaulting NPCs, but in most cases compromise is better than laying down the law.

[NevinPL]

Worst abuses, are performed by "worst" players, so you should start there. And you should stop there also, because trying to make it abuse-proof, is Sisyphean as they come.

Simply pick mature players, that want to have fun for themselves, and others.

[Adamantrue]

It seems to me that you have two goals here:
1) Have the party internally balanced enough that nobody is being generally overshadowed.
2) Keep the total power low enough that you can still use the MM rather than needing to optimize every foe.


One of the things I'm doing there is boosting up paladins with bonus feats at interval levels and I'm going to take a look at rangers, and I'm going to make sure that most encounters do present challenges for non-casters to handle.
As an alternative that I haven't seen mentioned, have you considered a low-tier Gestalt for some problem classes?

For example, instead of adding bonus Feats to a Paladin at intervals (which already sounds like a partial Fighter//Paladin Gestalt), you could go Paladin//Marshal to get something distinct and versatile. A pairing like Monk//Ranger is fun (speaking from experience), etc.

Even if you think that's too potent, pairing within the same tier can still be viable. Paladin//Knight has a lot of synergy, for example.

Just trying to save you some work.

[NigelWalmsley]

Giving martials a ToB gestalt does a good job of providing a variety of classes while mitigating imbalance.


Worst abuses, are performed by "worst" players, so you should start there. And you should stop there also, because trying to make it abuse-proof, is Sisyphean as they come.

Simply pick mature players, that want to have fun for themselves, and others.

Eh. The worst abuses maybe, but most abuses are a result of good-faith misunderstandings. D&D 3e is an enormously complicated game, and it's very easy to have differences of opinion about what "medium power" or "low optimization" means, let alone how specific rules work out. A long list of houserules is often unhelpful, but it is necessary to sit down and discuss things with players, even if they are mature adults.

[icefractal]

Eh. The worst abuses maybe, but most abuses are a result of good-faith misunderstandings. D&D 3e is an enormously complicated game, and it's very easy to have differences of opinion about what "medium power" or "low optimization" means, let alone how specific rules work out. A long list of houserules is often unhelpful, but it is necessary to sit down and discuss things with players, even if they are mature adults.Yeah. I don't think most people here would consider a two-handed weapon Warblade with decent feat and item choices to be OP or indicate a bad player, but if you put that in a party with a sword-n-board Fighter who takes things like Toughness, there's going to be significant imbalance.

Ditto with a Wizard (BFC oriented, effective use of items) and ... another Wizard (blaster with no metamagic, bad items).

[Jay R]

Just don't forget that preventing rules abuse is an ongoing task. It isn't completed by the rules you publish at the start.

I ran a game of Champions once, and one of my rules was the following:

"I know most of the ways to try to build a character worth much more than the rules intend. If you come up with such a strategy, I will congratulate you on your cleverness and ruthlessly disallow it. "

[Adamantrue]

Giving martials a ToB gestalt does a good job of providing a variety of classes while mitigating imbalance.

I personally like Samurai//Swordsage, Knight//Crusader, and Swashbuckler//Warblade.

Obviously, there are more optimized combinations, but these three are generally considered the least effective of the mundanes. This gives incentives to play something different.

[gijoemike]

Next year I plan to start a new home game based on the World of Greyhawk, which is continuation of sorts (8 years later) than my previous home game which was a loose continuation of Living Greyhawk.


That is absolutely fantastic. I loved Living GH back in the day. What origin regions will you be limiting the party to? What overall power level do you want this game to shoot for? How many players would you prefer? Will these be the same players it was 8 years back?



Towards this end, I've been researching broken combinations and working on a set of house rules designed to limit said broken combinations. Without posting a full document here it would be lengthy to document the exact changes, but in doing so I have tried to keep as much open as possible.

Here's a list of broad stroke limitations:


Sounds like your intent is to stop the nonsense without having to even be asked. Sadly I have never seen this work. There is always a different flavor of cheese in the world. I haven't even read your rules yet. You have to have a session 0 talk with all your players and make sure they all aim for the same power level. If you have someone who wants to go 10 levels of monk and a second that wants straight fighter, and a 3rd that wants to do focused specialist wizard. It doesn't matter, you have massive imbalance, cheese, and issues. Moving on to rules.



1. The characters must be good aligned and alignment will be enforced. (There is a nod for true neutral druids.) Slip off the good and your character is an NPC.

I have seen paladins do unforgivable acts in the name of LG. And I played a LE traitor backstabbing sell his mother type that was on the side of light and righteousness. Alignment is not a straightjacket. It is a general disposition. One can totally go against alignment and alignment doesn't change overnight. Instead explain you want this game to be about big heroes of light and justice. Think of the justice seeking lawman or the nameless wanderer out to settle his score with the bad guys archetypes. Do either of these fit into your game concept?


2. I have banned only three items: nightstick, candle of invocation, and grafts (they just don't fit the good aligned theme).


This list was stated to be about broken combos. Rule 2 misses the intent. You talk about your good party vision here and don't bother to list a dozen far more broken items. Nightsticks by themselves are not that great. Its only when paired with Divine Meta Magic that they get OP.


3. I have banned only a few spells: Belker Claws, Body of War (no warforged in Greyhawk), Energy Transformation Field (too hard to keep it from breaking), Enhance Wild Shape (just cheese), Spell Engine (too hard to keep it from breaking), Sphere of Ultimate Destruction (cheese), and Stun Ray (cheese). All other spells, even those with the Evil descriptor are allowed (see #1 -- the character needs a really good reason to do this!).


As the DM just say no to nonsense. This list is not even 1/10 of the length needed. Have a discussion with your players.



4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)


Reword this to say you want a Greyhawk focused campaign. Origin of PCs will be Greyhawk, the campaign will be (greyhawk, elemental planes, astral). Many settings specific spells were updated with errata and added to the spell compendium. So one must have your approval for almost anything. And consider allowing exceptions, especially for the martials and feats.

The book unearthed arcana has certain ACFs that are very good for martials, and they make sense. Many parts of that book aren't great and I wouldn't include it in the OK to use category by any means.



5. A few advance rulings, the two big ones being "If you knowingly use an item or spell that inflicts a condition on you, any immunity you have to that condition does not apply" and "Rerolling anything is limited to a single reroll".


Words of Creation and being immune to subdual, cant be level drained if immune to negative energy, etc; I see what you are trying to stop but certain rule issues can happen. Instead of a blanket statement I would say some magic comes at a price, if you invoke a power that has a cost or effect against you, some sort of payment will be suffered even when you have immunity to that effect. That way instead of completely negating a feature of their character something interesting happens. Invoke story instead of negating a player ability.



6. Persistent Spell is an epic feat.


I ban the feat. I have never seen that feat used for well intent.



7. Cost for application of metamagic to a spell cannot go below one level when combining metamagic feats.


Certain feats specifically call out it can go to 0, others call out 1, and even more don't specify. I would reword this to
Spell Level adjustment for a given metamagic feat cannot fall below 0. 0 is the minimum adjustment and adjustments do not carry over to other applied metamagic feats. Metamagic feats are applied in the order designated by the caster.

That still weakens Arcane Thesis, but doesn't kill Metamagic school focus.



8. Races are limited to those allowed in LG, but special requests suitable to the good-aligned nature of the campaign and the Greyhawk setting will be allowed. (Level adjustment can only be bought off with feats gained through advancement and not initial feats.) No whisper gnomes, no stoutheart halflings...


Let the player ask, weird subraces can be fun and greyhawk is connected to the planes. You are the GM, say no.



9. Early entry tricks have been shut down.


Good.



I could visit domains to limit the one level dip in cleric, but frankly I believe this can be controlled with the alignment handcuffs.


Even using the phrase "alignment handcuffs" is a red flag. Alignment isn't handcuffs as Good people make mistakes, they just try to do better in the future. It also doesn't address the limited domains issue at ALL. List the deities you want your PC's to be limited to and maybe further list the domains available to said deities.



I've reviewed many, many, many power builds on this and other sites and so far they all seem to be constrained by my rules set. So, what's left aside from domains? What else do I need to constrain?

Dear Sir or Madam,
UberCharger. Barbarian -> Power Attack -> Imp Sunder -> Shock Trooper -> Leap Attack. Item: anklets of translocation
UberCharger: Halfing pally-> Power attack -> Mounted Combat -> Spirited Charge
War weaver: has issues of its own.

That took me 2 seconds to come up with. You may not be dealing with infinite damage loops, or clone armies but there is still over the top issues one can deal with as early as level 6.

I would consider limiting the prestige classes specifically. Some will not fit the image of the game, others are borderline troublesome. Once again talk to your players.

The concept of your game given thus far seems pretty cool. Would you consider posting an ongoing campaign journal?

[rel]

I'm going to echo what a lot of others have said; Talk to the other players.

Sit down with everyone and explain:
the tone of the game you want to run
anything you don't want to see in your game
The kind of characters you want to see
The kind of characters you don't want to see
what you expect the focus of a game session to be (combat, exploration, talking)
where you see the game going
your general GMing approach and how you plan to handle common problems

This is also a great time for the other players to voice any concerns or interests they have.

None of this is obvious or universal and most problems at the table result from the players not being on the same page.

when the time comes to create characters reiterate what the game is about and what the players should aim for and avoid when building.

The best way to avoid things becoming unbalanced is to explain what you want the balance to be and asking your friends to help you achieve that

[NevinPL]

D&D 3e is an enormously complicated game, and it's very easy to have differences of opinion about what "medium power" or "low optimization" means, let alone how specific rules work out. A long list of houserules is often unhelpful, but it is necessary to sit down and discuss things with players, even if they are mature adults.
Yeah, that's why I wrote that trying to make it abuse-proof, is an "unending journey", and one should focus on players "attitudes" instead.

P.S.
Adulthood != maturity.

[King of Nowhere]

I personally think it is easier to just ask players not to abuse the rules than try to craft perfect ones.



If you have serious concerns about your players unbalancing the game, the best way to stop them is to ask them not to

this is a common sentiment here, and it certainly has merits - if your players WANT to break the game, they will. unless you keep stopping them. and the game won't be fun.
at the same time, that's a very faulty argument, because it relies on a lot of unspoken assumption.
If you ask me to bring in a character that would not break the game, i may play a monk. this way, i'm reasonably certain i won't overshadow anyone.
if you ask my best buddy to bring in a character that would not break the game, he would pick a wizard/incantatrix casting tons of metamagic for free, and abusing polimorph at high level. but he'd consider it "balanced" because he'd refrain for some of the even worse cheese.
so, you can't just ask your players to not break the game, because it's not an accurate enough statement. you have to define a power level. "this kind of optimization is ok, that kind of optimization is not". so, a list of restrictions is absolutely a good thing.



4. Only core and Greyhawk-specific material are allowed, with no exceptions. This takes care of most of the Forgotten Realms/Unearthed Arcana cheese and keeps folks from asking for home brew cheese. (This one thing seems to break the majority of power builds.)


i disagree with blanket bans. there's tons of content out there that is not broken and should not be banned just for being in the same book as something else. you should judge that stuff on a case-by-case basis.
I also disagree on homebrews. what if somebody tries an homebrew that is NOT cheese? would you stop him just because some other people tried to get advantage with homebrew?
if you restrict material wholesale, you may as well force the whole party to play vop monks

[noob]

Simplest way: hand out to your players their character sheets.
They only pick things like appearance, background, personality and other stuff like that which are not game mechanics.
Now you just have to figure out how to hand to your players character sheets that allows them to have fun, are balanced with each other and does not allow game breaking actions.
Then pick yourself which kind of magic items they get during the adventure but make sure they get magical items that actually helps them(ex: for the martial characters get them the items from "list of cool stuff to have on any characters" that includes an option for flight, one option to protect yourself from stuns and so on).
So for example provide them with the following sheets: one sorcerer(with already chosen spell list), one spontaneous cleric(with already chosen spell list), one battlemage, one barbarian that pulverise things it hits and turns into a bear, some sort of skill monkey that is also a dark creature(succeed at all the hide checks),Some kinds of half casters(ex: paladin and bard) and with the right spell and feat selections all that can be sort of balanced in terms of spotlight amounts.

[Xervous]

Simplest way: hand out to your players their character sheets.
They only pick things like appearance, background, personality and other stuff like that which are not game mechanics.
Now you just have to figure out how to hand to your players character sheets that allows them to have fun, are balanced with each other and does not allow game breaking actions.
Then pick yourself which kind of magic items they get during the adventure but make sure they get magical items that actually helps them(ex: for the martial characters get them the items from "list of cool stuff to have on any characters" that includes an option for flight, one option to protect yourself from stuns and so on).
So for example provide them with the following sheets: one sorcerer(with already chosen spell list), one spontaneous cleric(with already chosen spell list), one battlemage, one barbarian that pulverise things it hits and turns into a bear, some sort of skill monkey that is also a dark creature(succeed at all the hide checks),Some kinds of half casters(ex: paladin and bard) and with the right spell and feat selections all that can be sort of balanced in terms of spotlight amounts.

So a preset move list and you choose the cosmetics? People are here in 3.5 for options and expression, not picking between narrow boxes like you’d see in 4e.

[JNAProductions]

this is a common sentiment here, and it certainly has merits - if your players WANT to break the game, they will. unless you keep stopping them. and the game won't be fun.
at the same time, that's a very faulty argument, because it relies on a lot of unspoken assumption.
If you ask me to bring in a character that would not break the game, i may play a monk. this way, i'm reasonably certain i won't overshadow anyone.
if you ask my best buddy to bring in a character that would not break the game, he would pick a wizard/incantatrix casting tons of metamagic for free, and abusing polimorph at high level. but he'd consider it "balanced" because he'd refrain for some of the even worse cheese.
so, you can't just ask your players to not break the game, because it's not an accurate enough statement. you have to define a power level. "this kind of optimization is ok, that kind of optimization is not". so, a list of restrictions is absolutely a good thing.

Which is why the conversation is ongoing, and performed with everyone.

If you have a session zero where people settle on character concepts, you and your friend will see "One of us needs to change." It won't mean everyone is exactly as useful as everyone else at all times, but it will help everyone be on a similar level.

[Feldar]

Hey folks, all your responses are greatly appreciated and I am working through them all.

Naturally I'll be chatting with the players in advance, but I also want to save them some time researching complex things in advance and then finding out that it's problematic for some reason.

Please do keep listing spells, items, feats, class features, prestige classes, etc that you think can cause problems.

I am tempted, but not enough to commit to it yet, to building my own web app that contains a library of what is good with my specific modifications built in. I have enough projects so I'm hesistant to commit to such an undertaking.

[Feldar]

1) Why?


For three reasons Melcar:

1. At the end of the day the adventuring party needs to get along. Unless I can convince every player to run an evil character, there are inevitable hard feelings with a mix of evil (and yes, chaotic neutral is just a trick to play evil for most people).
2. At the end of the day the players need to stay friends.
3. It's a family game.

Your feedback IS appreciated. Please keep it coming!

[Feldar]

It seems to me that you have two goals here:
1) Have the party internally balanced enough that nobody is being generally overshadowed.
2) Keep the total power low enough that you can still use the MM rather than needing to optimize every foe.

Strictness on allowed sources doesn't help at all with #1 (it might hurt, in fact), and while it somewhat helps with #2, I find that the alternate approach of saying "No unbound loops, and please be reasonable" works just as well while being less dictatorial.

Like frankly, a big list of restrictions and allowed sources feels unpleasant. It feels like the GM has no trust in us, and also that there's a higher probability of railroading to come (there's no causal link there, but it's a correlation I've seen a number of times). And it means that if the GM missed something and later wants to change it, I'll be annoyed - "I jumped through all your hoops and you're still not happy?!" Whereas if they were more open at the start I wouldn't have minded.

Re #1, generally true. Some of that is done within the adventure, some of it is done within the campaign, and some of it is done by making specific adjustments.

Re #2, I find that not having to fine tune every encounter and being able to base it on the various Monster Manuals helps me from having to give out treasure with every encounter, letting me keep money roughly balanced between characters and within the campaign world while still giving out treasure the players like and also allows me to plan for future treasures. No one hurts for money in my campaigns, but no one is usually rich either.

[Added via edit] It also makes prep a lot simpler!

As for being dictatorial, I think of it as helping the players know where the lines are and saving them time building complex characters that depend on specific interpretations, feats, classes, etc to work. If they see what I have concerns about, we have a basic framework for having the discussions about how to make it work.

[Feldar]

Cant agreee strongly enough.

Unless all your players play fullc asters, I would suggest simply bringing in the non/Low Casters in their Pathfinder version (its ll online), and even then boosting them with say, flat Ability Boosts every even level isntead of every 4, and similar.

Wont make the game balanced, but at least they wont be feeling underpowered/useless ALL the time.

If you WANT people to play a Paladin, might give my homebrew here a look. Solves some of the problems without maiing the class "Wins because GOOD says so"^^

I'll look at the Pathfinder stuff and other options.

In my campaigns, good only wins about half the time. They sometimes think they've won and haven't though!

[Segev]

Enforcing alignment often doesn’t enforce cooperation nor tone. A better approach is to ask the players to build on reasons why they will work together and overcome any disputes in such a way that they’ll acquiesce to the party’s will when things get sticky. And to talk about the tone of the game to keep it family friendly.

Enforcing alignment will sometimes feel ham-handed and won’t always guarantee that the party will agree on the good course of action.

[Feldar]

That is absolutely fantastic. I loved Living GH back in the day. What origin regions will you be limiting the party to? What overall power level do you want this game to shoot for? How many players would you prefer? Will these be the same players it was 8 years back?


I love Greyhawk too -- nothing else has had the same feel in my opinion.

Some of the players will be the same and continuing the same characters, and some will be new. This is going to be a high level campaign -- starting level for the new players is 17 and continuing players is 18. At that level, the world is open to the characters although there are strong ties to the Duchy of Urnst/Greyhawk/Nyrond/County of Urnst/Nyr Dyv/Bright Desert areas.




The concept of your game given thus far seems pretty cool. Would you consider posting an ongoing campaign journal?

I will consider it, but I'm at least a year out in being ready to run. We're finishing up an Erde campaign right now that will cap out at 10th level or so, and I have a ton of research to do still.

[Gnaeus]

Enforcing alignment often doesn’t enforce cooperation nor tone. A better approach is to ask the players to build on reasons why they will work together and overcome any disputes in such a way that they’ll acquiesce to the party’s will when things get sticky. And to talk about the tone of the game to keep it family friendly.

Enforcing alignment will sometimes feel ham-handed and won’t always guarantee that the party will agree on the good course of action.

Strongly agree.

My last campaign failed because of disagreements about:
How to treat attacking bandits (kill them or make them retreat, potentially allowing them to bandit again)
Same argument regarding wolves who attacked us.
Law/Chaos argument regarding serfdom
Argument about treasure distribution

IC reasons to work together would have been way more helpful than “be good”.

[Godskook]

One rule I have that tones down caster power by a **LOT** is that metamagic reducers apply -after- determining if you can cast a spell with metamagic.

For example, Maximize Spell is a +3 metamagic. It's perfectly reasonable as a +3 metamagic, maybe even underpowered in some scenarios. In a metamagic-reduction build, that +3 goes down to +0 or lower, and the player can no apply it, at no additional cost, to his highest-level spells. This inevitably leads to Mailman and Nightstick-style shenanigans where metamgics are applied to spells far higher than the metamagic was balanced to apply to, initially.

Under my houserule, a caster can only maximize spells of a level 3 lower than his highest. So a level 7 wizard can only maximize 1st level spells, but not 2nd or higher. This has no effect for the casual player. However, for a player who starts opting into metamagic reducers, it greatly limits the benefit. For such a player, Maximize Spell still only applies to level 1 spells at best. The benefit he now receives is that with the reducers, he can apply it for a lesser spell slot cost. If he reduces Maximize down to +0, he can prepare Maximized Magic Missle from a level 1 slot, just as normal, but this level 7 wizard cannot ever prepare a Maximized+Empowered Magic Missle, for he'd need to be able to cast level 6 spells to do that. This still allows these options to be used as tools to increase a player's endurance by being able to cast metamagic'ed low-level spells in situations where they can't justify the use of their actual top-tier slots, but heavily limits a player from abusing reductions to stack more metamagic than is ever reasonable.

And then I nerf Persistent Spell by replacing it with the homebrew in my signature.

Combined, this nerfs almost every metamagic-related abuse that's possible to achieve pre-epic, and that requires reducers.(Which is almost all metamagic abuse), including Divine Metamagic, which must abide by these rules too.

Coincidentally, Nightsticks seem to be not-broken under these houserules, and thus, I'd let them stack so that people have better access to devotion feats.

[D+1]

Plan to stop worst abuses of 3.5 D&D:

1. E6
2. Profit

[Jay R]

I don't require specific alignments, but I expect my players' characters to be heroes. This generally means not Evil, but if somebody can pull off an Evil character who's being a hero, great! [I would recommend starting with Xykon's motive, "I like the world. I've committed some of my best evil there."]

In a 2e game, I once had to explain to the DM, "No, my Thief is not becoming Neutral Good. He is True Neutral. He's acting Good right now because he's traveling with a Paladin, and he's learned that it's much more lucrative than stealing. But that's a purely self-centered motive."

[Feldar]

Plan to stop worst abuses of 3.5 D&D:

1. E6
2. Profit

I would play E6, but many of my players don't want to try it.

[Feldar]

Hey folks, a lot of you have expressed concern that I'm being too strict with the players. To help with that concern, I'm sharing with you what I have included in the draft campaign document regarding sources and materials:

This section details the specifics of character creation for the campaign. In this document you will find lists of classes, prestige classes, and feats that are pre-approved for use in the campaign. With regards to spells and magical items, a few things are banned outright because of balance issues and some items have been given errata. Every other spell and magic item is allowed as written in the approved source book and published errata.

We can discuss specific ways in which the non-approved game features can be approved for play if you wish to use them, but this is subject to negotiation – asking to use these things in a manner that does not cause balance issues is perfectly alright. If there is something that you want to do with your character that doesn’t quite fit these parameters please make a request – if it can be made to fit the general feel of the campaign and is not broken beyond repair (in the judge’s opinion), it will be accommodated.

I'm sure it'll get cleaned up a little as time goes by, but that's the gist of it.

[ExLibrisMortis]

It honestly feels a bit formal for a family game, but it's the right sort of sentiment. I'd write something like: "The list below contains the character options I've decided to allow (or ban) in general. Anything not on the list is probably fine, but I'll judge the specific usage on a case-by-case basis".

I would also provide some benchmarks for numerical optimization. For example, you might tell your players something like: "A damage output of around 400 damage/round (if all attacks hit, all saves fail, all CL checks are made, no DR/resistance gets in the way etcetera) at level 20 is acceptable, but more than that is too much". This also tells your players that 100 DPR is probably too low for a damage-focused character.

Something I forgot to mention before: the old Test of Spite (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?124216-The-Test-of-Spite-3-51) had an extensive ban/fix list. ToS was a high-optimization PvP game (in part), so a lot of more-than-averagely-broken tricks that were discovered in competetive play were added to that list. It's probably more thorough than anything a single person could come up with.

[Biggus]

One rule I have that tones down caster power by a **LOT** is that metamagic reducers apply -after- determining if you can cast a spell with metamagic.

For example, Maximize Spell is a +3 metamagic. It's perfectly reasonable as a +3 metamagic, maybe even underpowered in some scenarios. In a metamagic-reduction build, that +3 goes down to +0 or lower, and the player can no apply it, at no additional cost, to his highest-level spells. This inevitably leads to Mailman and Nightstick-style shenanigans where metamgics are applied to spells far higher than the metamagic was balanced to apply to, initially.

Under my houserule, a caster can only maximize spells of a level 3 lower than his highest. So a level 7 wizard can only maximize 1st level spells, but not 2nd or higher. This has no effect for the casual player. However, for a player who starts opting into metamagic reducers, it greatly limits the benefit. For such a player, Maximize Spell still only applies to level 1 spells at best. The benefit he now receives is that with the reducers, he can apply it for a lesser spell slot cost. If he reduces Maximize down to +0, he can prepare Maximized Magic Missle from a level 1 slot, just as normal, but this level 7 wizard cannot ever prepare a Maximized+Empowered Magic Missle, for he'd need to be able to cast level 6 spells to do that. This still allows these options to be used as tools to increase a player's endurance by being able to cast metamagic'ed low-level spells in situations where they can't justify the use of their actual top-tier slots, but heavily limits a player from abusing reductions to stack more metamagic than is ever reasonable.


I do something similar with DMM, I make it work like Metamagic Song, so that you can only use it to add MM feats if the resulting spell level would be one you can already cast. Combined with limitations on metamagic reducers it stops the worst Cleric cheese (ruling that nonepic metamagic reducers don't stack is one simple way).



Something I forgot to mention before: the old Test of Spite (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?124216-The-Test-of-Spite-3-51) had an extensive ban/fix list. ToS was a high-optimization PvP game (in part), so a lot of more-than-averagely-broken tricks that were discovered in competetive play were added to that list. It's probably more thorough than anything a single person could come up with.

Ooh, I've not seen that list before, nice one!

Any idea why they banned non-dungeoncrasher Fighter?

[King of Nowhere]

Which is why the conversation is ongoing, and performed with everyone.

If you have a session zero where people settle on character concepts, you and your friend will see "One of us needs to change." It won't mean everyone is exactly as useful as everyone else at all times, but it will help everyone be on a similar level.

still, in my experience, eventually it always comes the point where the dm must step up and say "this is allowed, this is not. this is the power level we're aiming for, this is too much, this can be buffed"

mind you, i've always played with my friend, who is not capable of self-regulating without someone outside telling him "no, you can't take this thing". perhaps my perspective is skewed

[Xervous]

still, in my experience, eventually it always comes the point where the dm must step up and say "this is allowed, this is not. this is the power level we're aiming for, this is too much, this can be buffed"

mind you, i've always played with my friend, who is not capable of self-regulating without someone outside telling him "no, you can't take this thing". perhaps my perspective is skewed

If there’s a massive variation in possible inputs you’re better off getting everyone to agree on the goal rather than constraining all the options until you can’t make something outside the targeted realm. That’s how you get stuff like 4e, PF2 and to a certain extent 5e

Tell everyone to build wheeled, man powered forms of transport. Don’t give them build a bike kits.

[noob]

I do something similar with DMM, I make it work like Metamagic Song, so that you can only use it to add MM feats if the resulting spell level would be one you can already cast. Combined with limitations on metamagic reducers it stops the worst Cleric cheese (ruling that nonepic metamagic reducers don't stack is one simple way).



Ooh, I've not seen that list before, nice one!

Any idea why they banned non-dungeoncrasher Fighter?
Because non dungeoncrasher fighter is a trap meant to weaken people.

[NigelWalmsley]

Did they also ban Ranger, Barbarian, Samurai, Swashbuckler, and Monk? There are a lot of classes that suck, and as far as things go, Fighter is at least justifiable for the first two levels in a martial build.

[Xervous]

Did they also ban Ranger, Barbarian, Samurai, Swashbuckler, and Monk? There are a lot of classes that suck, and as far as things go, Fighter is at least justifiable for the first two levels in a martial build.

Iirc a samurai won one of the rounds with intimidate -> cower -> CDG.

Fighter in absence of dungeoncrasher and other similar features isn’t much of a class. Flaws were allowed so if you needed two feats they were right there.

Monk got full BAB and some other tweaks were sprinkled around.

[Quertus]

As others have said (in different words), Balance to the Table. The simultaneously minimalist *and* best way to solve balance issues is to adopt a "balance to the table" mindset, and to build the skills to uplift the weak. That's it.

A list like yours - especially one that does not ban Fighter and Monk, let alone Expert and Commoner, while not allowing Tome of Battle - is only useful for revealing your ignorance. I say that not as an attack, but as a literal statement: you are showing people exactly what you don't know.

As to your other considerations…

"World feel"? As was pointed out, Greyhawk is rife with crossovers; *including* non-Greyhawk-specific material may actually *help* create the proper feel for the world (YMMV). Shrug. I wouldn't be turned off by a well-worded "no realm-specific content unless it is native to Greyhawk".

Amy other factors we need to consider?

[Biggus]

A list like yours - especially one that does not ban Fighter and Monk, let alone Expert and Commoner, while not allowing Tome of Battle - is only useful for revealing your ignorance. I say that not as an attack, but as a literal statement: you are showing people exactly what you don't know.


Why ban Fighter and Monk? They're both useful dips in some builds.

[rrwoods]

Oh yeah I somehow missed that Tome of Battle isn’t on the allowed list. I strongly suggest you allow and encourage it.

[Quertus]

Why ban Fighter and Monk? They're both useful dips in some builds.

"Balance to the Table" is based on the principle of evaluating the final product, not the components. If you're not doing that, straight Fighter 20(+) or Monk 20(+) is (consisted to be) unplayably bad.


this is a common sentiment here, and it certainly has merits - if your players WANT to break the game, they will. unless you keep stopping them. and the game won't be fun.

Strongly agree. "Balance to the Table" is based on the principle of the group optimizing for the fun of the group, rather than for most power. (Yes, it's based on multiple principles).



If you ask me to bring in a character that would not break the game, i may play a monk. this way, i'm reasonably certain i won't overshadow anyone.
if you ask my best buddy to bring in a character that would not break the game, he would pick a wizard/incantatrix casting tons of metamagic for free, and abusing polimorph at high level. but he'd consider it "balanced" because he'd refrain for some of the even worse cheese.
so, you can't just ask your players to not break the game, because it's not an accurate enough statement. you have to define a power level.

Then don't say, "don't break the game". Create some sample characters, and say, "aim for this power level".


"this kind of optimization is ok, that kind of optimization is not". so, a list of restrictions is absolutely a good thing.

Restrictions may make hitting that power level more difficult. So it depends on what you care about here.

[Tvtyrant]

"Balance to the Table" is based on the principle of evaluating the final product, not the components. If you're not doing that, straight Fighter 20(+) or Monk 20(+) is (consisted to be) unplayably bad.



Strongly agree. "Balance to the Table" is based on the principle of the group optimizing for the fun of the group, rather than for most power. (Yes, it's based on multiple principles).



Then don't say, "don't break the game". Create some sample characters, and say, "aim for this power level".



Restrictions may make hitting that power level more difficult. So it depends on what you care about here.
Agreed on all of this.

The weirdest moment I have ever had in gaming was being told that asking to see the other player's sheets so I could balance to them was being a munchkin, because it meant I was going to be taken options based on mechanical utility and not purely for fluff reasons.

[noob]

Monk works just fine if you pick all the cool acfs and also use your wbl efficiently.
Yes even if you do not use your wbl to pretend to be a wizard and instead do more punching you can still beat all the elder evils through punching(with ranged punches while being immune to everything elder evils can do) as seen in tippy terrific trial.
But If you pick up core monk, do not change it, did not get a phd in dnd, do not use like 7 feats and a specific race to cover monk weaknesses and like 5 or 8 more items to cover more monk weaknesses and a whole bunch more to punch things hard enough to result in their death then you are going to be really bad.

[King of Nowhere]

Restrictions may make hitting that power level more difficult. So it depends on what you care about here.
My concept of restriction is not "ban all contents from this book" or "ban this class".
My concept of restriction is "this specific spell won't exhist", or "let's put a nerf on shapechange" or "let's establish clearly from the start what diplomacy can and cannot do". and they are generally discussed on a case-by-case basis, when they come up.
it's just that in my experience, players left to themselves are not very effective at balancing with each other

[icefractal]

My concept of restriction is not "ban all contents from this book" or "ban this class".
My concept of restriction is "this specific spell won't exhist", or "let's put a nerf on shapechange" or "let's establish clearly from the start what diplomacy can and cannot do". and they are generally discussed on a case-by-case basis, when they come up.
it's just that in my experience, players left to themselves are not very effective at balancing with each otherI'm on board with those kind of restrictions - it's a lot better to establish that at the start than have someone make a whole character around something that is later ruled invalid.

TBH, the main reason I don't like source-based restrictions is the friction it introduces to character building. I have an idea of what concepts work well and how to build them, but I don't generally remember (or care about) what physical book something is from. Like, some things are strongly tied to the setting, like Dragonmarks, Spellfire, Red Wizards, etc. And for those I wouldn't necessarily expect to use them in other settings. But something like "Improved Dual Hammer Style"? Why does it matter where that was printed? It's adding a layer of tedious double-checking, and - aside from a few standouts like Serpent Kingdoms - books aren't balanced or unbalanced as a whole (and even SK is probably 90% not broken).

[Segev]

I don't require specific alignments, but I expect my players' characters to be heroes. This generally means not Evil, but if somebody can pull off an Evil character who's being a hero, great! My own signature evil character is...pragmatic. He isn't evil for the heck of it, and he doesn't relish any particular suffering. In fact, he finds it wasteful most of the time. But he's willing to do whatever it takes to reach his goals. He generally prefers to work with good, noble heroes; they're least likely to backstab him and while they restrict what he can do if he wants to keep them as allies, the perks of being allied to heroes in the public eye are many.

He's willing to do horrible things, but he generally tries not to because it causes more trouble than it's worth. The coverup is such a pain. But...he'll do it if it's the most expedient and practical solution.

[QUOTE=Feldar;24788562]Hey folks, a lot of you have expressed concern that I'm being too strict with the players. To help with that concern, I'm sharing with you what I have included in the draft campaign document regarding sources and materials:

[I]This section details the specifics of character creation for the campaign. In this document you will find lists of classes, prestige classes, and feats that are pre-approved for use in the campaign. With regards to spells and magical items, a few things are banned outright because of balance issues and some items have been given errata. Every other spell and magic item is allowed as written in the approved source book and published errata.

We can discuss specific ways in which the non-approved game features can be approved for play if you wish to use them, but this is subject to negotiation – asking to use these things in a manner that does not cause balance issues is perfectly alright. If there is something that you want to do with your character that doesn’t quite fit these parameters please make a request – if it can be made to fit the general feel of the campaign and is not broken beyond repair (in the judge’s opinion), it will be accommodated.

I'm sure it'll get cleaned up a little as time goes by, but that's the gist of it.

It's mostly that my own advice is to be, as others have intimated, less formal about it. Don't make rules to restrict power or control behavior. They won't work. Make rules specifying tone and party cooperation are key, and ask them to build towards those goals, rather than restricting choices that you feel might lead away from it.

Grasp play-doh tightly to try to hem it in, and it will leak out. Mold it into the shape you want, and it will conform nicely.

[Biggus]

"Balance to the Table" is based on the principle of evaluating the final product, not the components. If you're not doing that, straight Fighter 20(+) or Monk 20(+) is (consisted to be) unplayably bad.


That still doesn't make sense to me, can you expand on it a bit? As far as I can see, by banning useful dips what you're actually doing in practice is weakening martial builds even further by restricting their options.

[noob]

That still doesn't make sense to me, can you expand on it a bit? As far as I can see, by banning useful dips what you're actually doing in practice is weakening martial builds even further by restricting their options.

Point them toward flaws if they are lacking feats.
Dungeoncrasher fighter is the only fighter worth playing (Regular fighter gets behind barbarian rather fast) and it still gets a lot of bonus feats.
Monks are really good dips only if you use ACFS or plan to do unarmed strike cheese to deal 128+ D6 damage per hit(in which case you will need heaps of dips, feats, spells and so on) else all you get is some saves boosts and evasion.

[Segev]

That still doesn't make sense to me, can you expand on it a bit? As far as I can see, by banning useful dips what you're actually doing in practice is weakening martial builds even further by restricting their options.
I don’t see Quertus banning dips in what you quote.

But to try to elaborate on it for clarity, he’s saying that you balance to the table by analyzing what each PC can do with his build, and what they can do together, and figure out the power level of the party as a whole and whether the variance from that power level is too high on a given character.

If a given character is significantly more effective in a way that makes it hard for others to shine near him, or to build encounters that challenge him while being something the others can meaningfully participate in, then you work with that player to bring the character in line with the others or you work with the table to elevate them all to be in line with that player, depending on the needs of the players’ fun.

If a given character is significantly weaker than the rest of the table, this problem is easier to solve: either help him rebuild to be better, or discuss with the table that some magic items or special booms will be dropped that are metagame intended for the deficient PC, and use inappropriate wealth for the level to even things out. A level 5-8 fighter with a Rod of Lordly Might has a number of options most fighters won’t, and might have a neat trick that is not on the spellcasters’ lists or may have a lesser trick but have it at will, for example.

[Biggus]

I don’t see Quertus banning dips in what you quote.


This is the original quote I was replying to:



A list like yours - especially one that does not ban Fighter and Monk, let alone Expert and Commoner, while not allowing Tome of Battle - is only useful for revealing your ignorance. I say that not as an attack, but as a literal statement: you are showing people exactly what you don't know.

[Quertus]

My concept of restriction is not "ban all contents from this book" or "ban this class".
My concept of restriction is "this specific spell won't exhist", or "let's put a nerf on shapechange" or "let's establish clearly from the start what diplomacy can and cannot do". and they are generally discussed on a case-by-case basis, when they come up.
it's just that in my experience, players left to themselves are not very effective at balancing with each other

There is… hmmm… a spectrum between the poles of reasonable and unreasonable, I suppose. This sounds decidedly on the "reasonable" side of things.

However, suppose I created a character that was unbalanced - that was too weak. But, if we used the original, UN-nerfed shapechange rules, they would actually be balanced. What would you do then?


That still doesn't make sense to me, can you expand on it a bit? As far as I can see, by banning useful dips what you're actually doing in practice is weakening martial builds even further by restricting their options.

Sigh. I'm really not communicating my position well, am I?

Conventional wisdom is, Fighter 20 or Monk 20 is bad. If you aren't banning those classes, you are allowing those suboptimal, unbalanced builds.

Therefore, if you are banning for balance, but haven't banned those classes, have you not failed?

Obviously, they are useful as components of balanced builds.

As is probably everything else that the OP has banned.

That they are *also* components of seriously unbalanced builds? If that is sufficient grounds to ban things, then Fighter and Monk clearly need to be banned.

(EDIT: also what Segev said)


[QUOTE=Jay R;24788547]I don't require specific alignments, but I expect my players' characters to be heroes. This generally means not Evil, but if somebody can pull off an Evil character who's being a hero, great! [I would recommend starting with Xykon's motive, "I like the world. I've committed some of my best evil there."]My own signature evil character is...pragmatic. He isn't evil for the heck of it, and he doesn't relish any particular suffering. In fact, he finds it wasteful most of the time. But he's willing to do whatever it takes to reach his goals. He generally prefers to work with good, noble heroes; they're least likely to backstab him and while they restrict what he can do if he wants to keep them as allies, the perks of being allied to heroes in the public eye are many.

He's willing to do horrible things, but he generally tries not to because it causes more trouble than it's worth. The coverup is such a pain. But...he'll do it if it's the most expedient and practical solution.

I am decidedly a fan of such forms of party-friendly evil.


It's mostly that my own advice is to be, as others have intimated, less formal about it. Don't make rules to restrict power or control behavior. They won't work. Make rules specifying tone and party cooperation are key, and ask them to build towards those goals, rather than restricting choices that you feel might lead away from it.

Grasp play-doh tightly to try to hem it in, and it will leak out. Mold it into the shape you want, and it will conform nicely.

Strongly agree. "Here's some rules" will encourage min-maxing within those rules; instead, encourage the behavior you actually want. Molding your group is a skill that can be developed.

[King of Nowhere]

There is… hmmm… a spectrum between the poles of reasonable and unreasonable, I suppose. This sounds decidedly on the "reasonable" side of things.

However, suppose I created a character that was unbalanced - that was too weak. But, if we used the original, UN-nerfed shapechange rules, they would actually be balanced. What would you do then?


i have a really hard time imagining anything using the full rules of shapechange and still be balanced. at least according to my table's power level, which is likely much lower than yours.

that said, if i decided shapechange is nerfed in my world (which it is), then if i allowed it for the player, i would also open the floodgates for everyone else learning the same. including other pcs. including significant npcs. in fact, for many spells/powers/builds that were borderline for acceptable power level, i gave the choice to the players: "you can decide that you will take this thing; if you do, your enemies also will have access to it. otherwise, it can be banned for all. your choice".
my first resort for a character lagging behind in power is to give advice to the player to build better, and allowing all the retraining that's needed. if that fails - and if the player is uncomfortable with his power level - giving a special plot-based ability, or dropping a unique item, are my favored solutions.
perhaps the closer thing i've done to what you are asking was allowing a player who wanted to have a dual wield build and have 4 arms.the build was rather weak (unless you go rogue or apply other good rider effects, which the players wasn't going to do), so i decided that his build was acceptable; and that his having four arms was a unique case (an incident of having marilith blood), so i didn't have to worry about "why doesn't everyone else do the same?"

anyway, i generally prefer (and this could be an inspiration for the op) to limit effects rather than powers. Ok, this does not explain it, let me try with some example of actual bans i'm using
- a spell cannot screw you up too badly without allowing some reasonable (and level-appropriate) form of defence. this has to be decided on a case-by-case basis
By this ruling, anything that allows a saving throw: negate is fair game. most things that deal flat damage are ok, i took some measures to limit the amount of metamagic augmenters you can stack on them. stuff that applies a moderate nerf without saving throw are also ok, as long as the nerf does not put you out of the fight. forcecages are also ok, because by the level they come up, you are supposed to have teleportation capacity. but when a player asked for avasculate, which removes half your hit points without saving throw, that was a big no. especially since he could easily cast it twinned; may as well call it "slay elder dragon". but it can also apply to martial: i am resisting giving personal antimagic fields to martials because otherwise they could come in melee with a caster, and the caster would be dead without counterplay (ok, i'm sure there are counterplays for that too, but most of those things that would defend against this - as well as most other stuff that would make even going close to a caster to become impossible for the martial - are already on my ban list. it's an entirely different power level)
- no tampering with action economy
If you have a belt of battle, and your opponent also has a belt of battle, your fight is the same. except each of you takes two consecutive turns. no, thanks. if we want to take more actions in a round, we may as well decide a round is 3 seconds instead of 6, and play the same.
-metamagic reducers cannot lower the cost of a metamagiked spell more than half what it should cost, rounded up. plus one effect from a metamagic rod
if you are casting a quickened, maximized spell, that would be +7 to spell level. by this ruling, you can stack metamagic reducers all you like, but at minimum it's going to cost you (7/2, rounded up) +4 to spell level.
this has some complex interactions with other stuff, especially since a player wanted to build around metamagic reducers. so i decided that the incantatar special power to apply a metamagic effect for free twice per day would be exhempt by this rule - and there's at least one notable villain that will make use of it, though it won't be commonplace. and then i decided that i also would make partial exception for some of the high incantatar special powers, and that would be exclusive to the player.

i also prefer to establish some worldbuilding fluff, and let limitations come from that. i established early on that magic works on some kind of equivalent of energy conservation, and nerfs flow naturally from it. for example, according to this principle you cannot create stuff permanently without paying a price (in xp or diamonds); so wall of iron, with its permanent duration for no cost, falls afoul of this. simple fix: duration becomes 1 day/level. generally the players themselves can realize if something has a problem.
you may say that wall of iron didn't need fixing, but it actually would wreak havoc with the economy and the worldbuilding, and now it doesn't; but it still works in combat.

[DrMartin]

I had a very similar idea in 2014, when starting a new 3.5 game with a group of people I had no previous gaming experience with. I thought a set of rules and limitations it would put the power level of the game into a track I was comfortable with.

I can tell you that in the actual play it did absolutely *nothing* to that effect, except distracting me from preparing more useful stuff for the game and talking more with my players. All the usual quirks (some call them bugs, you call them the worst abuses) of the d20 system are still in place: Players that want to build to be ahead of the curve will still find ways to do it, system mastery on the player side means a more effective character, spells are still sidestepping the game rules that non-spellcasters needs to follow, etc.

I second the advice given many times above, to tune the builds and the allowed sources to your specific table, it's more effective than writing a "patch" to 3.5 as a whole.

[Quertus]

my first resort for a character lagging behind in power is to give advice to the player to build better, and allowing all the retraining that's needed. if that fails - and if the player is uncomfortable with his power level - giving a special plot-based ability, or dropping a unique item, are my favored solutions.
perhaps the closer thing i've done to what you are asking was allowing a player who wanted to have a dual wield build and have 4 arms.the build was rather weak (unless you go rogue or apply other good rider effects, which the players wasn't going to do), so i decided that his build was acceptable; and that his having four arms was a unique case (an incident of having marilith blood), so i didn't have to worry about "why doesn't everyone else do the same?"

There are, of course, always issues of game consistency; however, "this build is allowed 4 arms, because that would be balanced, but those builds are not" is *exactly* what I'm talking about, and coupled with "free infinite rebuild with advice (and backup plans)" is decidedly among the most reasonable possible answers. Kudos!

[Drelua]

I know looking at Pathfinder was already mentioned, but it's worth mentioning specifically that they did a pretty good job with Paladins, I think. The main things are to make charisma their only mental stat, since making a martial need two mental stats is just mean, and buffing smite evil. Instead of a bonus on one attack, it's a bonus against one enemy that lasts until they die, within the same day. With charisma to attack and AC and their level to damage, I've seen paladins go toe to toe with an enemy that would have given the whole rest of the party trouble.

Overall, sounds like your going in the right direction, just maybe putting more effort into this than necessary. But since you mentioned having a year of research before this game starts, I don't think there's any harm in that, since I'm not getting the impression it's distracting you from other things you need to do to run a good game. Only thing I really don't like is the idea of starting the new players a level behind the older players. If you want an internally balanced group, starting some of the party at a lower level really doesn't help with that. If I was new to a campaign I wouldn't really like being told I have to play a weaker character, feels like the GM showing preference to their old friends, and that would likely make me want to put more effort into building my character.

[noob]

I know looking at Pathfinder was already mentioned, but it's worth mentioning specifically that they did a pretty good job with Paladins, I think. The main things are to make charisma their only mental stat, since making a martial need two mental stats is just mean, and buffing smite evil. Instead of a bonus on one attack, it's a bonus against one enemy that lasts until they die, within the same day. With charisma to attack and AC and their level to damage, I've seen paladins go toe to toe with an enemy that would have given the whole rest of the party trouble.

Overall, sounds like your going in the right direction, just maybe putting more effort into this than necessary. But since you mentioned having a year of research before this game starts, I don't think there's any harm in that, since I'm not getting the impression it's distracting you from other things you need to do to run a good game. Only thing I really don't like is the idea of starting the new players a level behind the older players. If you want an internally balanced group, starting some of the party at a lower level really doesn't help with that. If I was new to a campaign I wouldn't really like being told I have to play a weaker character, feels like the GM showing preference to their old friends, and that would likely make me want to put more effort into building my character.
I think making paladin depends only on wisdom for spells and their class features would be more helpful since wisdom double up as a very important characteristic.

[Drelua]

I think making paladin depends only on wisdom for spells and their class features would be more helpful since wisdom double up as a very important characteristic.

True, although some would consider having the same stat apply to your will save twice with divine grace a problem. Charisma goes better with the skills they usually focus on, and wisdom's mainly good for will which paladins are already good at. Although, wisdom would make sense for a holy knight, I'd let a player make a wisdom based paladin if they wanted to.

[noob]

True, although some would consider having the same stat apply to your will save twice with divine grace a problem. Charisma goes better with the skills they usually focus on, and wisdom's mainly good for will which paladins are already good at. Although, wisdom would make sense for a holy knight, I'd let a player make a wisdom based paladin if they wanted to.

Wisdom also helps for spot and listen which are skills they are not very good at but which can be very useful.
Charisma helps paladins to be party faces but sorcerers are usually better at it due to not needing str.

[Darg]

i have a really hard time imagining anything using the full rules of shapechange and still be balanced. at least according to my table's power level, which is likely much lower than yours.

You could use the Polymorph subschool RAW literal interpretation. It says that the spell's text overrides the subschool, but it never mentions that other spell's text does. Meaning the reference chain to polymorph and alter self no longer exists in that fashion. If it doesn't say it in the spell's text directly it doesn't exist. No more passive healing by shape changing every round. No more stacking class features with the new forms. It really tones down the power level to the level of other level 9 spells in the PHB.

[Darg]

Wisdom also helps for spot and listen which are skills they are not very good at but which can be very useful.
Charisma helps paladins to be party faces but sorcerers are usually better at it due to not needing str.

The lack of skill points hurts that more. Sorcerers don't get diplomacy. The biggest mistake WotC did for non spellcasting classes was give them crap for skills. You'd be surprised how much of a difference giving martials a base 6 skill points per level actually does if you haven't tried it. It even logically makes sense considering skills are learned through doing and I bet a fighter has more time learning his skills than a wizard does learning cantrips in a tower for years on end. Giving rangers and paladins full caster level really helps too.

[noob]

You could use the Polymorph subschool RAW literal interpretation. It says that the spell's text overrides the subschool, but it never mentions that other spell's text does. Meaning the reference chain to polymorph and alter self no longer exists in that fashion. If it doesn't say it in the spell's text directly it doesn't exist. No more passive healing by shape changing every round. No more stacking class features with the new forms. It really tones down the power level to the level of other level 9 spells in the PHB.

It does not helps: the broken part of shapechange is within the text of shapechange:



You gain all extraordinary and supernatural abilities (both attacks and qualities) of the assumed form, but you lose your own supernatural abilities.

The rest is negligible.

[Max Caysey]

That still doesn't make sense to me, can you expand on it a bit? As far as I can see, by banning useful dips what you're actually doing in practice is weakening martial builds even further by restricting their options.

That is so true... Good point!

[King of Nowhere]

You could use the Polymorph subschool RAW literal interpretation. It says that the spell's text overrides the subschool, but it never mentions that other spell's text does. Meaning the reference chain to polymorph and alter self no longer exists in that fashion. If it doesn't say it in the spell's text directly it doesn't exist. No more passive healing by shape changing every round. No more stacking class features with the new forms. It really tones down the power level to the level of other level 9 spells in the PHB.

i'm not sure i get what you're talking about, but the main problem with shapechange is that you get all the supernatural abilities (many of which mimic spells) of every creature. Some creatures have equivalents to 9th level spells as supernatural abilities, and with the normal shapechange you can cast all day for free. that's the main problem. heck, our wizard tried it, and he himself asked to be nerfed after a couple sessions doing it.

my nerf for this campaign has invoked the conservation of magic: when you use shapechange, or a summoned creature, or some similar thing to mimic a spell, you have a limited quota of spells you can copy, provided by your original spell's power. once you expend that, you must sacrifice your own spell slots to power the spells you are copying.
we're still far from getting 9th level spells, so i can't say yet how much that would work.


There are, of course, always issues of game consistency; however, "this build is allowed 4 arms, because that would be balanced, but those builds are not" is *exactly* what I'm talking about, and coupled with "free infinite rebuild with advice (and backup plans)" is decidedly among the most reasonable possible answers. Kudos!
the thing here is, when i say "limitations" i really mean to limit power levels, which is what the "gentlement agreement" camp assumes that the players would do by themselves. The only difference is that in my experience the players will make a bad job of it unless given supervision.
Also, I care a lot about consistency, so "guy A can cast this spell with his low-op build, but guy B cannot because he's already too powerful" won't fly with me. I want to keep the crunch consistent with the worldbuilding fluff, and while I try to find excuses to justify a build that is not problematic, sometimes i just have to say no.

[Darg]

i'm not sure i get what you're talking about, but the main problem with shapechange is that you get all the supernatural abilities (many of which mimic spells) of every creature. Some creatures have equivalents to 9th level spells as supernatural abilities, and with the normal shapechange you can cast all day for free. that's the main problem. heck, our wizard tried it, and he himself asked to be nerfed after a couple sessions doing it.

Well, first the shapechanger has to be familiar with the form they are changing into. The PHB has this on familiarity:


The form chosen must be that of an animal the druid is familiar
with. For example, a druid who has never been outside a temperate
forest could not become a polar bear.

Meaning that at the very least it has to be experienced at least once as a druid in a forest can be informed of the creature in absolute detail but they still wouldn't be able to become a polar bear.

Second, the shapechanger becomes a non-unique creature meaning it can only benefit from per day/week/year abilities to the limit allowed by the creature.

Third, Gate/Planar Binding has the possibility of vengeful callees that can be quite the danger for the caller/party. Especially since gate could call you without your willingness.

Fourth, dispel. It's a magical effect that can be dispelled.

There are RAW ways to limit the power of shapechange.

[noob]

Well, first the shapechanger has to be familiar with the form they are changing into. The PHB has this on familiarity:



Meaning that at the very least it has to be experienced at least once as a druid in a forest can be informed of the creature in absolute detail but they still wouldn't be able to become a polar bear.

Second, the shapechanger becomes a non-unique creature meaning it can only benefit from per day/week/year abilities to the limit allowed by the creature.

Third, Gate/Planar Binding has the possibility of vengeful callees that can be quite the danger for the caller/party. Especially since gate could call you without your willingness.

Fourth, dispel. It's a magical effect that can be dispelled.

There are RAW ways to limit the power of shapechange.
At high levels the gm throws you a lot of creatures that usually are very dangerous and shapechange means that you can basically grab every dangerous ability but Spell likes and natural abilities.

[King of Nowhere]

those raw ways are mere formalities at the level we're talking about.
with a knowledge check of 40+ you should be familiar with pretty much everything, and if that's not enough, a few castings of greater teleport and arcane eyes will let you see any creature you want.
second, you do indeed get access to the per day/week/year abilities. if you do not realize how enormous that is, you have never played with someone trying to abuse shapechange. trust me, there's very few effects you cannot replicate for free.
third, i'm not talking about gates, but in any case that's trivial: if you are good, summon angels, they should aid you willingly. if you are evil summon demons, for the same reason. or would you try to argue that there isn't any single powerful entity supporting your cause?
fourth, yes, dispel works. in combat. if someone can dispel you reliably. And often enough to get past your contingencies. and assuming your table is banning caster level tricks, because otherwise you can easily enough get a CL over 30, making your spells basically undispellable except by disjunction. in any case, it's not doing anything for all your out-of-combat utility. most important, if the only answer to your spell is sending in another equally high level caster to dispel it, that pretty much proves that the spell is too powerful.

[Darg]

those raw ways are mere formalities at the level we're talking about.
with a knowledge check of 40+ you should be familiar with pretty much everything, and if that's not enough, a few castings of greater teleport and arcane eyes will let you see any creature you want.
second, you do indeed get access to the per day/week/year abilities. if you do not realize how enormous that is, you have never played with someone trying to abuse shapechange. trust me, there's very few effects you cannot replicate for free.
third, i'm not talking about gates, but in any case that's trivial: if you are good, summon angels, they should aid you willingly. if you are evil summon demons, for the same reason. or would you try to argue that there isn't any single powerful entity supporting your cause?
fourth, yes, dispel works. in combat. if someone can dispel you reliably. And often enough to get past your contingencies. and assuming your table is banning caster level tricks, because otherwise you can easily enough get a CL over 30, making your spells basically undispellable except by disjunction. in any case, it's not doing anything for all your out-of-combat utility. most important, if the only answer to your spell is sending in another equally high level caster to dispel it, that pretty much proves that the spell is too powerful.

Familiarity as presented would not allow a knowledge check as the druid wouldn't have to leave the forest.

I do understand how enormous it is to get those effects for free, but they still have their limits. It's completely fine sending in creatures capable of countering said caster. It's not like they simply become untouchable and being such a threatening target makes that bull's eye that much larger. It's one thing if they stay their relative CR. If they go beyond that, then as a DM you have to meet it. Targeted dispel makes it's check against every magic effect on the creature. If they want to cheese CL then cheesing bonuses to dispel are valuable to balancing. The players should know that their enemies are just as capable as they are and that their lives aren't guaranteed.

Can you explain "contingencies" in detail? I know you can abuse archmage to bypass the one spell limit, Craft Contingent Spell can be prohibitively expensive especially when you increase the caster level to 30+ to protect them, and the spell matrix spells kill you while you have the contingencies.

And it's not like a shapechanged wizard won't die if it's HP is brought to -10. With their d4 HD one good hit is all it would take to take them out and they would have to dismiss the spell to cast their spells.

Out of combat utility isn't much different with shapechange than without and can be quite limiting when they can't cast their spells. Running into random capable individuals that know such creatures shouldn't be around and being a nuisance to society is not something one should do either.

[King of Nowhere]

and they would have to dismiss the spell to cast their spells.
can be quite limiting when they can't cast their spells.

....
what???

nope. a shapechanged wizard can still cast all his regular spells. the spell says they lose their own supernatural abilities, not their spells. furthermore, you can revert to your natural form without losing the spell. shapechange has a duration and you can change as many times as you want during this duration, including using your own form.

[Drelua]

Wisdom also helps for spot and listen which are skills they are not very good at but which can be very useful.
Charisma helps paladins to be party faces but sorcerers are usually better at it due to not needing str.

True, assuming a paladin has the skill points to spend on listen and spot, when intelligence is the last stat they need. Also assuming there's a sorcerer in the party, and that they had the skill points for social skills, which they might not for the same reasons. But yeah, sorcerers can do it better. This is usually true. At most levels, their charisma modifiers a few points ahead. If the paladin has a good reputation though, which they should, that would probably help with a lot of negotiations.

Still, you're probably right that keying all their abilities off wisdom would make the clas marginally more powerful, so if that's your only concern go ahead. But if you look at what charisma represents, not just social skills but also raw force of personality, strength of conviction, then I think that's a better choice for paladins. Plus making it wisdom kinda kills sorcadin builds, so I'd rather give players the choice between the two.

[Darg]

....
what???

nope. a shapechanged wizard can still cast all his regular spells. the spell says they lose their own supernatural abilities, not their spells. furthermore, you can revert to your natural form without losing the spell. shapechange has a duration and you can change as many times as you want during this duration, including using your own form.

That's what a literal reading of the subschool rules would do. As I stated, the rules say that the spell's text overwrites the subschool. It does not say that a different spell being referenced overwrites the subschool.


However, note that the spells' existing rules text takes priority over that of the subschool.

Shapechange is the spell. Anything in the existing text takes priority. Polymorph is a different spell from shapechange. The text from polymorph has a lower priority than the subschool because it is polymorphs rules text. So Shapechange can reference a different source all it wants, but that source doesn't exist within shapechange itself.

I'm not saying it's the only way to read it, but it is a valid reading.

As for using your own form even with your version, I hate to break it to you:


it enables you to assume the form of any single nonunique creature (of any type) from Fine to Colossal size.

This means you can't return to being you. You can definitely be very similar as permitted with alter self, but you could never return to actually being you without dismissing the spell.

[Godskook]

Sigh. I'm really not communicating my position well, am I?

Conventional wisdom is, Fighter 20 or Monk 20 is bad. If you aren't banning those classes, you are allowing those suboptimal, unbalanced builds.

Therefore, if you are banning for balance, but haven't banned those classes, have you not failed?

Obviously, they are useful as components of balanced builds.

As is probably everything else that the OP has banned.

That they are *also* components of seriously unbalanced builds? If that is sufficient grounds to ban things, then Fighter and Monk clearly need to be banned.

Banning OP because it is OP has absolutely zero bearing on if you ban UP(underpowered) for being UP. An UP character can be buffed surreptitiously by the DM based on in-game observation. An UP character can grow and realize that their UP option is UP, and build a better character *next* time. Permission to fail is a good thing, after all, if albeit not something everyone likes in all game formats. Hell, the DM can allow the UP to "grow" his character via Roleplay, transforming a Fighter into a Warblade as he levels, eventually catching up.

Besides, most OP, when we talk D&D, is not actually -just- OP, it's broken OP. It's not only meta-defining, it's game-warping. Playing a Char-OP wizard is to be playing a different game than if someone is playing a Char-OP fighter, and there's just nothing you can do but start banning things to fix this, as far as I've ever seen on this forum.

[goodpeople25]

True, although some would consider having the same stat apply to your will save twice with divine grace a problem. Charisma goes better with the skills they usually focus on, and wisdom's mainly good for will which paladins are already good at. Although, wisdom would make sense for a holy knight, I'd let a player make a wisdom based paladin if they wanted to.
Paladins are already good at will saves in pathfinder, in 3.5 the base paladin has a weak will save. (maybe there are options out there to change that though)

[Drelua]

Paladins are already good at will saves in pathfinder, in 3.5 the base paladin has a weak will save. (maybe there are options out there to change that though)

My bad, I forgot about that. I never played a paladin in 3.5 for a reason. Add a good will save to the list of upgrades from pathfinder.