What would you build? 3.5 with custom rules

[Swampy]

So my DM has decided to add some custom homebrew rules to our 3.5 campaign. He says all of the complete series and most 3.5 books are good except no other campaign than dragonlance and dragon mag is out. Also no PF or 3.0 material. Tomb of Battle is also out.

Banned classes: Clerics (theres more trying to find them)

What would you build knowing the following changes(other than wizard)?

I currently have a level 21 wizard, I just like to have backup characters ready to go in case of bad rolls lol.


DISCONTINUE ALL HIT POINTS BONUES VIA CONSTITUTION SCORE MODIFIER:
All game statistics for all things in the game no longer gain a bonus to HP from a constitution score modifier if
any. What is rolled for HP for an increase in levels for all player characters (& NPCs FYI) is it what it is & all
monster HP values are either rolled for or the average score listed is used minus the constitution score modifier
total bonus for either method. Spells & class abilities (i.e. – barbarian) function as normal to increase HP.
Justification: Combat is not a challenge/concern for many PCs after higher levels (roughly 10 th level & beyond)
perhaps even earlier in level depending on the combination of class selection, ability scores, feats etc. The need
for planning & concern for risk to PCs is severely diminished & causes combat/death to become absurdly
inconsequential nor allows causational realistic & negative outcomes. There is no risk to characters with
challenges that would otherwise cause death to characters due to “soaking” a lot of damage due to high HP
scores. Also, combat pace will be greatly increased to allow for more time for the game to progress to other
combat scenarios or other gaming scenarios in a single gaming session; more time in game for other aspects of
game versus just one combat scenario requiring the majority of the session to resolve. Plus, you know, magic…

NO MORE INTIATIVE ROLLS; GROUP NOR INDIVIDUAL:
Simultaneous action. Players choose their character’s actions by writing it down privately for each
round/encounter, all reveal their choices then resolve outcomes. Feats that improve initiative merely allow
characters to act before other characters without feats, utilizing higher Dexterity scores of those with any of
these given feats taking their turn slightly before others with the higher bonus to initiative acting first, etc. & so
on. Any other feats or spell-like bonuses to initiative take actions in numerical order. Dexterity still modifies AC
& reflex saving throws as usual in combat.
Justification: Requires players to discuss/plan before battle & increase a sense/simulation of the chaos of battle.
Removes the need to “figure out” whose turn it is. Reduces chance for meta-gaming in regard to duration of
class abilities and/or spells by whose turn it is.

INCREASE REALISM OF DAMAGE:
 Sneak attack/sudden strike damage & any damage based class/prestige class ability from which the
target cannot apply its Dexterity score or is considered flat-footed is instead done directly to target’s
constitution score. Con score of 0 = dead character.
Justification: it hurts more in life if you don’t know the strike is coming. Also, increases lethality of
classes with these skills when compared to say the feats for fighters or the spells of wizards.
 Ranged weapon (as per the weapon category type in the PHB) attacks done to targets within or equal to
½ the range increment of the weapon gain an extra damage die for that weapon type added to the total
damage. In addition, any feat that increases the lethality of ranged weapons (i.e. – point blank shot,
weapon specialization) also adds an extra damage die to total damage instead of usual amount of
increased damage described in the feat & these all stack with above stipulation of ½ range increment
damage.
Justification: artillery & ranged weapons were historically made because they were able to kill more
easily, quickly, & effectively than hand held weapons.
 For all melee & ranged attacks: if the number to hit a target’s AC is met or exceeded by a value of 5 or
more this too is considered a threat for a critical hit & allows for a follow up roll to confirm a critical hit
as per rules for 3.5 D&D. Furthermore, if a follow up roll to confirm a critical hit exceeds the target’s AC
by a value of 5 or more again, increase the number of critical hit damage dice by +1 (i.e. – a long bow
would become a x4 from a normal x3). Justifcation: good aim is rewarded also luck is a thing in combat.

 All DCs for traps containing poisons (pgs. 67-75 DMG), all poison DCs (pg. 297 DMG), & all monster’s
poisonous attack DCs are increased by +4 which is 20% more lethal.
Justification: poisons should be lethal as in real life. The DCs in the DMG are low if PC’s ability scores are
generated such that higher values are usually rolled & also if PC is higher level. Plus, ya know, magic is
helpful in overcoming most challenges in the game…

[FauxKnee]

Removing randomization from initiative means that a high modifier allows you to consistently reliably go first.

The "sneak attacks damage con" rule means that beyond level 10 or so almost everything is going to die in a single sneak attack. It's kind of laughable how easy it would be to cherry-tap dudes to death with something like an (eternal) wand of acid splash for 1d3 acid damage and 5d6 sneak attack con damage as a touch attack.

The "beating AC by 5 threatens a crit" rule is likely to make combat really swingy. A single attack with a x3 - x4 crit multiplier weapon can easily kill most critters when considering the lower HP under his ruleset and the additional ease of critting under his ruleset.

Overall I think his rule changes accelerate the game of rocket tag--you need to make sure you go first, since you're likely to die (to a sneak attack, a cheesy true strike auto-crit, or just big monster power attacks) if you don't. Abuse stuff like foresight, celerity, and anticipatory strike depending on the options available to you. Outside of the usual suspects (T1/T2 classes) your typical sneaky types are going to be pretty strong under his ruleset due to their dex focus (initiative) and sneak attack.

[Biggus]

NO MORE INTIATIVE ROLLS; GROUP NOR INDIVIDUAL:
Simultaneous action. Players choose their character’s actions by writing it down privately for each
round/encounter, all reveal their choices then resolve outcomes. Feats that improve initiative merely allow
characters to act before other characters without feats, utilizing higher Dexterity scores of those with any of
these given feats taking their turn slightly before others with the higher bonus to initiative acting first

I'm confused by this part, you initially say simultaneous action, then describe non-simultaneous action...

[Seerow]

To be honest your dm seems like a great example of why homebrew gets a bad name.

[Maat Mons]

I'll offer my usual advice for houserules designed to make high-level play more like low-level play: "If you like how low levels work, but don't like how high levels work, play low-level games, not high-level games."

I'll also offer my usual advice for houserules designed to increase realism: "If you have to pick between realism and fun, pick fun."

This seems like a great campaign to play a Nercopolitan. Not subject to critical hits, sneak attacks, Constitution damage, or poison. Get your hit dice bumped up to d12s. And the drawback of not getting to add Con to HP is something you would have had to deal with anyway.

Maybe play an Unseen Seer? You get nearly-full casting, a good progression of Sneak Attack, and the Hunter's Eye spell. Use Invisibility and ranged touch attacks to wipe out enemy Con scores with Sneak Attacks.

[Jack_Simth]

For level 21?

I'd probably look at a rogue-1/Wizard-5/Unseen Seer-4/Arcane Trickster-11 or something. Practiced Spellcaster to make up the lost caster levels.

[Remuko]

After reading thru your post, I wouldn't play. I'm not even in your DMs game and reading it made me angry. I would never play with someone like that. That's the only advice I can have, is to not play with people who think making changes like that to the game is in any way a good idea.

[Zanos]

These houserules are a mess. High level 3.5 is already rocket tag even before you massively reduce everythings HP. And he described simultaneous turns, but then said people with higher initiative modifiers go first? Increasing the DCs of trap and bought poison is fine, but monster poison usually already has high DCs because it depends on the monsters stats.

Personally with these houserules in mind, and playing a wizard? I would create a 20hd skeleton with corpsecraft and fell energy desecrate in an area with an altar. I'd use magic jar or other shenanigans to steal that body, shrink my normal body with permanent reduce person, and carry it around on my back in a metal case. I would then cast astral projection, and adventure as my projection. So you now are immune to most effects, immune to the constant critical hits, have no con score to damage with sneak attacks, have hp = 20d12+160 = 310, and if your undead body is destroyed, you return to your normal body. If both are destroyed, you wake up in your demiplane or wherever you project from. I would optimize my initiative with nerveskiiter, a humingbird familiar, and improved initiative to start out. I would try to get permanent telepathic bonds with the entire party so the DM can't say we can't communicate during combat.

For offense, blasting is actually very effective with crippled HP pools. Empowered spells with decent dice caps will one or two shot most monsters in the MM and typically kill other characters in one shot if they're near your level. With these rules the average 20th level fighter only has 110hp, so a maximized 20d6 damage spell will just kill him outright. A pit fiend only has 81 hp.

For prestige classes, the standards are still good if they aren't banned. Incantatrix for metamagic abuse, or dweomerkeeper for free wishes/other spells with xp components. Of course it's epic, so you could do both. I think incantatrix is less valuable in epic, since there's other easy ways to metamagic up your buffs.

But before that I'd probably quit the game, because these houserules are pretty unfun.

[Xervous]

Seems rather pants on heads, triply so for how long 3.5 has been out of print.

Death via HP damage remains a serious threat at all levels even with CON bonuses. CON being absent means various power word spells are bonkers, and blast spells that save for half are liable to obliterate anyone. A L20 fighter isn’t likely to clear 120 HP. Most characters are always vulnerable to Power Word Kill.

The AC crit thing means anyone attempting to leverage anything other than no-sell AC will explode randomly at some point. 120HP fighter vs a 4x crit from a giant, dead. 50 HP wizard just dies when he’s looked at.

No clerics means healing will suck, and status cures will be hard to come by.

The main loophole I see is (entering at L20) you just play a dread necromancer. Undead minions can go get butchered for you, and you’ve got healing options available. Also D12 hit dice.

[gijoemike]

After reading thru your post, I wouldn't play. I'm not even in your DMs game and reading it made me angry. I would never play with someone like that. That's the only advice I can have, is to not play with people who think making changes like that to the game is in any way a good idea.

I am 100% with Remuko here. I would laugh, hard at your DM. In person at that, then say no way in hell I would play this disaster. Also, explain to the GM they are clueless and these changes make it obvious. Especially the sneak attack changes. The game is Rocket Tag from lvl 1 to later epic. The most HP one can EVER have without con is around 250 and that is all d12s rolling max/retraining for max. That is 1 round even without the ultra ease of crit fishing these rule changes bring.

Con damage for sneak attack is making me laugh. Sneak attack is instant death. At level 5 that is a 3d6 sneak damage = dead everything since rogues are attacking with 2 weapons. It will happen 2 times. How does damage reduction work with sneak attack now? Bet that DM hasn't a clue.

Attack already out scales AC. That means that first attack will almost always crit. Yeah the 3rd one will not, but who cares.

Improved init is a must for everything in rocket tag without random rolls.

Understand the game, then maybe slightly tweak the rules. What has been written here is just embarrassing.

[Maat Mons]

I missed the fact that the game is 21st level.

Actually, for levels that high, I don't know why you need a backup character. Favored Souls, Archivists, Healers, Shugenjas, Rainbow Servants, Mystics, and some others can cast True Resurrection.

At these levels, there are also many more options for being immune to things. Heavy Fortification armor, a Gemstone of Heavy Fortification, or Bracers of Armor enhanced with the Heavy Fortification armor ability are all good ways of dealing with the critical hit and Sneak Attack houserules.

Poison immunity can be had from various places.

One of the toughest types of characters is a Psion. You can trade power points for hit points on a 1:10 basis, meaning you essentially have several thousand HP.

If you play a Walker in the Waste, do you still get Cha x level to HP? Or is that houseruled too?

[Quertus]

Others have already said it all, pretty much. These house rules look like "LOL Random", made by someone with no concept of... anything. They look like they'll make for a dumpster fire of a game.

In addition to the excellent advice others have given (not just "don't play" (or my "play, but expect a dumpster fire")); ie, Necropolitan, Unseen Seer / Arcane Trickster, and my own "can we get Astral Projection and Sneak Attack?" that dovetails nicely into that build, I'll add Elf (not using our Con anyway) + Fey Mysteries ... oh, no, that's Dragon and... ask why no Clerics / suggest this might be a good campaign to run an Ur-Priest.

So, for example, Elf Necropolitan Wizard 7 / Ur-Priest 3 / Mystic Theurge 10 / Wizard +1.

Or, skip Necropolitan, go Lich. With LA buyoff, you could even slap some templates on early game, too. AFB, so I may be wrong on LA, but IIRC... Dark Feral Elf Lich Wizard 7 / Ur-Priest 3 / Mystic Theurge 10 / Wizard +1 seems a possibility.

Never actually be there, always astral project in. Don't forget to quote Dr. Strange, "This time, it's gonna take more than killing me to kill me." (White text for those who haven't seen Multiverse of Madness and hate spoilers). Use that as your character blurb.

Of course take Improved Initiative, maybe even multiple initiative-improving feats, if being "firstest" stacks that way. Check if Kauper's Skittish Nerves / Nerveskitter count for making you even firstester.

Given how lethal everything is, an Illithid Savant who's chowed down on the communal Tarrasque brain could also be a highly survivable build.

Or (again with LA buyoff), play a Dark Half-Golem Elf Rogue 21. With 11d6 SA on a 2-weapon build, that's, what, 77x4=308 damage on a full attack, 346 with Haste, just from Sneak Attack? With no Con bonus, I doubt many ancient dragons will survive that. Do that instead as a forever-invisible Pixie, and that's all straight to Con. What has a 350+ Con score?

Or just - bear with me - bring a furry ursine Druid, combining green bond summoning, training their animal companion, boosting their healing power, neglecting saddles, contracting lycanthropy, and Vow of Nudity (Vow of Poverty, maybe?), who is a bareback war bear riding, barely-recognizable bear-summoning, bare naked anthropomorphized bear / werebear care bear.

So, in bullet form,
Necropolitan Elf Rogue 1 / Wizard 5 / Unseen Seer 4 / Arcane Trickster 11 (per Jack Smith)
Necropolitan Elf Wizard 7 / Ur-Priest 3 / Mystic Theurge 10 / Wizard +1
Dark Feral Elf Lich Wizard 7 / Ur-Priest 3 / Mystic Theurge 10 / Wizard +1
2-headed (2+3) Illithid (8+5) / Expert 1 / Illithid Savant 5
Dark Half-Golem Elf Rogue 21
Pixie Rogue 19
Anthropomorphic Bear (2+2-2) Were-Bear (3+2-1) Druid... some number 15 (math is hard)

In other words, bring whatever you want, including marshmallows or popcorn, and watch the dumpster burn. (Anyone got a build for marshmallows or popcorn?)

What would *I* bring? Hmmm... Probably Ur-Priest, combined with non-Cleric Turning, DMM Persist Nightstick abuse, and totally opposed to anything that even hints at a resurgence of divine oppression. Or Wizard 21. Or whatever I felt like at the time, honestly. But I'd almost certainly bring a playing piece, not a character. EDIT: On second thought, probably my go-to "Arcane Spellcaster / Tainted Sorcerer" for free True Resurrection spells would be my first choice, actually. With Scribe Scroll, Leadership, and a Rogue Cohort with UMD (also, spell-storing items, but the good ones might all be 3.0) to resurrect me, and to SA the world to death.

[KoDT69]

I was gonna suggest a chicken-infested commoner but you know what? Just don't play. It seems like a big waste of time. The DM wants a different game system but is in denial about it. It just seems like a scenario that will be a source of fighting and tension instead of fun.

[Biggus]

Rather than a flat-out "don't play", maybe suggest to your DM doing a mini-adventure of just a few sessions to see how the rules work in practice before planning a whole campaign based on them? I'm intrigued by the "simultaneous action" thing, even if I'm not clear how it works.

The idea of a more chaotic and deadly battle isn't necessarily a bad thing, a lot people don't like it but some find it fun. I have to agree with the others that a lot of the houserules are silly though (the last few in particular), hopefully that will become clear to everyone quite quickly when you start using them.


I'll offer my usual advice for houserules designed to make high-level play more like low-level play: "If you like how low levels work, but don't like how high levels work, play low-level games, not high-level games."

I'll also offer my usual advice for houserules designed to increase realism: "If you have to pick between realism and fun, pick fun."


I don't entirely agree with the first point, because there are lots of cool toys at high levels you'll never get to use otherwise. In the campaign I'm currently DMing I've done exact opposite of what the OP's DM has, increasing AC and HPs and giving everyone a 1/day save reroll to slow down the rocket tag thing a bit, and after some experimentation to fine-tune the numbers it's working well now.

The second point I very much agree with though. While I personally like to keep at least a semblance of realism in my games, in the vast majority of cases if it's a direct conflict between fun and realism fun should be the winner.

[Jay R]

Any rules change affects tactics. I don't know all the options well enough to design it, but I would look for a way to turn magic attacks into sneak attacks. Otherwise just optimize a sneak attack

Why? A sneak attack is overwhelmingly better than any other weapon or a spell. An epic level sneak attack will kill epic monsters in a single blow.

[Saintheart]

Leaving aside the issues with the changes themselves, reading the justifications for the changes says to me pretty clearly that your DM wants a more gritty, lethal combat environment than he perceives D&D 3.5 allows for. That might in turn be because he doesn't have enough system mastery to make the combats close at high-ish levels, or because he doesn't have the time and inclination to sit down and plan out dealing with players' optionality at high levels. If so he might want to consider a different system altogether.

I notice only Dragonlance setting content is allowed and that clerics are banned. Is he trying to do a campaign in Krynn after the Cataclysm but before the War of the Lance?