Who wants to help me balance my game?

[Jallorn]

So here's the problem I've got: I've gotten rid of sorcerers and wizards, they aren't coming back, no way. I've probably removed paladins and clerics, clerics for ertain for all but one race. Anyway, my human kingdoms have druids as the main proprietors of their religion (it's a celtic society), and I'd like to trade wildshape for spontaneous cure spells and one domain. I want to know if this makes viable sense. I also want to know if I should simply decrease the number of magic weapons, or be rid of them altogether?

Also keep in mind that I don't intend for players to get much past level 10ish or so.

[Jallorn]

Anybody? Anyone at all?

[Faleldir]

EDIT: Oh, you already nerfed Druids. Never mind.
Paladins are not overpowered, so I don't know why you banned them, but I doubt anyone will complain.

I want it on the record that I edited my post before you replied to it.

[Jallorn]

I'm removing wildshape... that makes natural spell pointless anyway... and the changes I'm making are for flavor reasons in my world.

[OverdrivePrime]

It's been all of ten minutes since your first post - give people a chance to read and think about it.

My immediate thought is that as mighty and versatile as druids are, they'll still be one of the most powerful classes in your game if you rip out wild shape in exchange for a domain and spontaneous cure. (Will they have both spontaneous healing *and* summoning, or will spontaneous healing replace spontaneous summoning?) The druids will be a little weaker than they currently are, but will remain far and away more powerful than any of the other casters in your game, if you're just sticking to core rules. Even if you're allowing in non-core, they'll still be one of the most powerful classes in the game.

[Jallorn]

Er... I guess it'll replace sontaneous summoning... ok, my druids shouldn't be too weak, and could even, if I understand correctly, be more balanced. so how about the magic items question? Additionally, the Druids are now my only primary casters.

I can give my reasons for removing the classes I removed if that'll help.

[Blue Warlock]

I think you should expect druid heavy parties- at least 2 members if not more will probably be druids as the standard party match up is wizard, cleric, fighter, rogue. Druids will have to take over both caster rolls, and with the right buffs could be a decent fighter- not nearly as good as if you still had wildshape, but still fairly good and gives the party access to more spells per day.

[Kol Korran]

as to the magic weapons question- i think you should keep them. martial classes realy depend on them to help "somewhat" balance them with the casters. you can make it harder to custome make one if you wish (and that may be true for any magic item) to keep more control of things, but i do belive it is unnecesery.

if you're realy worried about the druid, you could put special bans on them from the religion, perhaps some ban on the type of magic items they can use or what not (fluff wise: they rely only on the maigc of the wild, not on the manufactured magic of civilization or so on).

sorcerers to my epxerience didn't relay affect game balance much, and the players who chose them always were energetic and brought an added quality to the play with their character. i wouldn't ban them, but that's just my suggestion.

also- another idea just sprang to mind- if you're worried about druids, why not use spirit shamans instead? similar flavour, much less powerfull, more spells per day, but much more restricted in the spells they choose.

just my ideas, hope this helps,
Kol.

[Tempest Fennac]

I think the Druids would be fine as they are; the Focussed Animal Druid loses Wildshape and a couple of weak low-level abilities for a companion which is treated as though the Druid had 2 more levels which can talk to the Druid, so the extra Domain and adding Spontanious cures would be roughly equal to that in my view.

[Fixer]

From your description you are running a Celtic, low-magic campaign. Even in Celtic mythos, there were sorcerers, so your omission of them isn't terribly canon.

Allowing players anything from Tome of Battle (or almost any books outside the core 3) pretty much makes your attempts at nerfing the arcane casters pointless.

In such campaigns, I hope you are taking into consideration how the loss of magic will impact encounters.

1) Because of the lack of magical gear, the party will not be able to handle an equivalent CR creature after around level 5. Their effective ECL will be about ¾ their actual levels.
2) Diseases and poisons will become much more nasty, unless you have a party of druids or a character with a high Heal skill.
3) Creatures with damage reduction of nearly any kind will become MUCH more dangerous.

Not sure why you want to set up that particular game, but you should recognize that the game was designed with some idea towards balance, and yanking out half the PHB classes will cause some rather drastic shifts in difficulty.

[Jallorn]

There also aren't very many strong (or magical really) monsters. I'm trying to go back to simpler... less magical (I guess) fantasy worlds. I guess I'm trying to bring it back to............. reality is the only word I can come up with, but it's not quite right.

[Decoy Lockbox]

There also aren't very many strong (or magical really) monsters. I'm trying to go back to simpler... less magical (I guess) fantasy worlds. I guess I'm trying to bring it back to............. reality is the only word I can come up with, but it's not quite right.

If you are trying to play in a nonomagical, "realistic" world, you should probably use a different game sytem than Dungeons and Dragons, especially 3.5 with its plethora of magical doodads and spells.

GURPS immediately springs to mind, or Riddle of Steel.

Are you trying to make a low-magic or no-magic world?

[Jallorn]

Low magic really. Pet of my backstory is that all the arcane magical knowledge of wizards was lost wit the elves. I mostly don't want arcane magic. Plus, I don't want to learn a whole new ruleset for one campaign.

[Goatman_Ted]

Even if you don't remove magic items, many of them can be refluffed.

Weapons with only enhancement bonuses -- or even some of the subtler bonuses like collision, keen or impact -- don't have to be overtly magical in the game. There's nothing flashy, nothing that screams supernatural, just the ability to do a little more damage and actually hurt certain monsters.

I've had good luck with this sort of setting by advancing the powers of an item with the weilder's level. By wrapping the benefits of the default pile o' magic gear into a single item and advancing it in power over time, the characters keep on a more or less even playing field and the magic items actually matter -- there's no such thing as +1 sword syndrome if every magic item can become a powerful tool in a high-level character's hands.


Also, from your description of the setting, I think a Bard would be more appropriate than the Druid class. This is both in terms of power balance and in its abilities. Maybe tweak the skill or spells lists if you think there's something missing. (I think I'd actually leave it as-is, but

[Jallorn]

Even if you don't remove magic items, many of them can be refluffed.

Weapons with only enhancement bonuses -- or even some of the subtler bonuses like collision, keen or impact -- don't have to be overtly magical in the game. There's nothing flashy, nothing that screams supernatural, just the ability to do a little more damage and actually hurt certain monsters.

I've had good luck with this sort of setting by advancing the powers of an item with the weilder's level. By wrapping the benefits of the default pile o' magic gear into a single item and advancing it in power over time, the characters keep on a more or less even playing field and the magic items actually matter -- there's no such thing as +1 sword syndrome if every magic item can become a powerful tool in a high-level character's hands.

I thought about that. A +2 sword would just be an incredibly well made one or something. Do you have any other ideas about that?

[Devils_Advocate]

Give the players an allowance of "virtual gold pieces", based on wealth by level, that they can use to purchase bonuses to saving throws, armor class, attacks and damage, ability scores, etc. as if buying magic items. The treasure and magic items don't exist in-character; the characters' stats just go up by that much more as they level.

Alternately, you could try to re-work d20's whole progression of saves, BAB, and ability scores, and add in level-based AC bonuses, so that characters automatically have level-appropriate stats without magic items as a result of normal leveling. But that would probably be a lot more work.

[Dogmantra]

add in level-based AC bonuses, so that characters automatically have level-appropriate stats without magic items as a result of normal leveling. But that would probably be a lot more work.

Well, this is already done for you