[3.5] Good Houserules?

[Delandel]

I'm going to be starting a Expedition to Castle Ravenloft (6th lvl) campaign here on these forums. I'm not the most experienced DM, have about 14 D&D sessions under my belt total. I haven't played with non-core much but I've read over most of the Complete books and have a decent understanding of them. I was wondering if I could get some advice to help avoid stinky cheese so I don't have to spend alot of time tweaking the module to compensate.

Here's what I was thinking:

1) Core / Complete / ToB are all allowed
Those are the books that I own. Keep in mind I am not very familiar with ToB or Complete Psionic, if you use material from there please know your stuff! If you want things from other books, please cite it for me and we will decide together.

2) No abrupt jaunt wizard variant

3) No alter self or polymorph
If you really want it for RP reasons or something, we'll work together to find suitable restrictions.

4) No divine metamagic
We can discuss this one too. I'm mainly concerned about Persist

5) No nightsticks.

6) Eschew Materials is a free feat for the appropriate classes.

7) Spot, Listen, Search, are universal class skills.

8) Two Weapon Fighting feat grants Two Weapon Defence as well.

9) Druids must take the shapeshift variant in PHB2:

Spoiler

Show

Lose: Animal Companion, Wildshape
Gain: Unlimited Swift Action Shapeshift
More information: PHB2 pg.39
If you don't have the book, PM me and I will cite all the rules regarding this for you.

10) Optimizing is fine, but please use your judgement and try to refrain from munchkin cheese.

11) Be gentle! I'm a new DM inexperienced with the wonders of non-core books, but I'm eager to learn. The previous rules are just to avoid munchkin cheese, make the campaign more enjoyable, or make the campaign easier for me to manage. I want you to play the character you WANT to play and have fun with. I really want to help you accomplish that goal. You want a gnome that throws explosive sheep constructs at his enemies? A dragoon that brings death from high above? Let's make it happen. Reasonable tweaks to classes to put them at the same level as the rest of the party, yes absolutely. My only concern is that the module doesn't become broken or no longer challenging, because that hurts the fun for everyone. As long as that doesn't happen I'm open for anything! As the wise Tom Cruise once said, "Help me help you!"

[Siosilvar]

1) No divine metamagic (or at least no persist)
I've witnessed what this metamagic feat can do, and it's too much. "No nightsticks" should cover this one. Or perhaps a ruling that nightsticks don't stack.

2) No abrupt jaunt wizard variant
There's a thread on WOTC forums on why it's broken that I wanted to quote, but it's down for maintenance. Seems fine.

3) No alter self or polymorph
This could just be limited into something like, "you can only polymorph into something you've personally been in contact with," or something. "Personal contact" could prove a problem at high levels. I'd suggest a list of bonuses you can get, that are in line with other spells of that level.

4) No source that starts with "Dragon Magazine" or "Draconomicon"
No personal experience with these, but I heard a bunch of times that there's alot of broken stuff going on there. Dragon Magic is okay. I don't know about Draconomicon.

Agree/disagree? Should I add anything else to the borked list?

My comments are in blue above.

[Glimbur]

If you can get your players to agree to stay at about the same power level, that should be enough. That means the full casters will have to control themselves and not play Internet Perfect (TM) wizards and such. The fighters and such should get a little more leeway.

Limiting sources to things you are familiar with makes sense, but most books have some broken, some useful, and some useless stuff in them. Core has both the Wizard and the TWF Ranger, for example.

[Woodsman]

A lot of Draconomicon is rather useless without dragons/large creatures in the game (At least the player's side of things) IMO, but feats like "Dragon Cohort" are understandable.

It's an opinion of mine. I own the book, and as a dracophile (I can't help it! They're just so awesome!) use it (or try to) frequently.

[ZeroNumerous]

1) No divine metamagic (or at least no persist)
I've witnessed what this metamagic feat can do, and it's too much.

Depends, really. If you want to overall weaken the PCs, then ya. But if you're looking to keep players on the same level with one another then just make Persist affect non-Personal buffs.

2) No abrupt jaunt wizard variant
There's a thread on WOTC forums on why it's broken that I wanted to quote, but it's down for maintenance.

Meh. No wizards makes more sense.

3) No alter self or polymorph
This could just be limited into something like, "you can only polymorph into something you've personally been in contact with," or something.

I agree with this one.

4) No source that starts with "Dragon" or "Draconomicon"
No personal experience with these, but I heard a bunch of times that there's alot of broken stuff going on there.

So Dragon Magic isn't any good? Or Dragon Compendium? Both are good books without any serious problems.

Honestly though: You're going to have to tweak Expedition to Castle Ravenloft anyway. It sucks as is. Any moderately useful PC is going to have a field day with the zombies without wasting any non-HP resources and those can be replenished very easily and near indefinitely.

[Natael]

For editing the adventure, try changing fighters/monks to warblades and swordsages, give casters good feats/spells, maybe even switch it up and add in a warlock somewhere. Make sure you run through it and give at the very least the important NPCs capability from the books that you allow players to use.

As for your fixes, looks decent enough, I do the same thing for my clerics (though have not had an issue with them).

A few things I do:

Half-Orcs don't have int penalty

Ranger gets full levels for animal companion

Druid has to take PHB2 shapeshift variant

Monk/Fighter/Paladins are now UA Swordsage/Warblade/Crusader, first set of classes are downgraded to NPC classes, you can take them if you want, but mooks may also have them instead of stuff like warrior.

Socerers get either a heritage feat or eschew materials at first level, wizard bonus feats at 5/10/15/20.

You may only have a total of three classes, no more than one PrC.

One thing I don't use, but have considered, is forcing wizards to specialize.

As for feats/spells/alt class features/equipment, I give a blanket OK for PHB stuff and allow others on a case by case basis, usually allowing things that I deem not broken (I have a decent eye for them).


As for rules, rather than character creation restrictions, I allow -Con score, rather than -10 to death. Otherwise, I try not to mess with the basic rules too much.

[Woodsman]

A few things I do:

Half-Orcs don't have int penalty

Ranger gets full levels for animal companion

Druid has to take PHB2 shapeshift variant

Monk/Fighter/Paladins are now UA Swordsage/Warblade/Crusader, first set of classes are downgraded to NPC classes, you can take them if you want, but mooks may also have them instead of stuff like warrior.

Socerers get either a heritage feat or eschew materials at first level, wizard bonus feats at 5/10/15/20.

You may only have a total of three classes, no more than one PrC.

One thing I don't use, but have considered, is forcing wizards to specialize.

As for feats/spells/alt class features/equipment, I give a blanket OK for PHB stuff and allow others on a case by case basis, usually allowing things that I deem not broken (I have a decent eye for them).


As for rules, rather than character creation restrictions, I allow -Con score, rather than -10 to death. Otherwise, I try not to mess with the basic rules too much.

Funnily enough, that's how I run things. Except Eschew Materials is a given and the wizard feats include heritage feats.

[Claudius Maximus]

I'd suggest taking a look at Tidesinger's change list for the Test of Spite. There are a lot of good ideas in there, and he seems to have caught all of the most broken stuff.

[valadil]

1 & 2) agreed.

3) This seems like a good restriction. Alter Self is a pretty decent spell when you aren't using forms only seen in the char ops board. I'm not sure what the current errata is on polymorph. Feel free to go with DM says no, when it comes to ridiculous forms. Another option that I've wanted to see is to base it off knowledge nature ranks. Each rank or two buys a form you can polymorph into. Size limits apply when you buy the form.

4) I prefer to white list certain things from these sources as the players ask. Dragon Magazine in particular has some interesting content, it just hasn't been playtested as thoroughly.

[Woodsman]

I've thought about giving Half-elves a choice between the humans' bonus feat and the elves' sensory abilities (+2 Bonuses to Spot/Listen/Search, along with door sense).

The half-elf is really rather underpowered.

[Eldariel]

Fix the core spells (Polymorph-line, Planar Binding-line [soon relevant], 9th level spells [not relevant]) - a thread exists on this; limit DMM to spell levels you could normally cast (or at most, 1 level higher), ban Abrupt Jaunt. That should do it.

Make the Immediate Action Conjuration Defense some AC buff or grant you partial cover or something; summon an obstacle or such.

[Delandel]

About divine metamagic, ya I put it there to weaken the PCs. From personal experience players complain when they steamroll through everything all the time. There's two ways to go about fixing that: 1) restrict the PCs 2) ramp up the EL of fights. I'd rather just make restrictions before play than have to redo an entire module, it defeats the purpose of me being lazy and using a module anyway!

Yes, nightstick stacking is stupid.

The "Dragon" stuff I just don't know much about. I also don't have them as books. I'm sure there's books under this very vague category that are perfectly acceptable, but I just can't look at them myself to confirm. I have core, complete books, UA, and ToB -- though I've never actually cracked open ToB yet.

@ Natael: I never understood why Rangers have a worse animal companion than druids. I dunno the shapeshift variant but I'll look it up. Dropping out 3 core classes seems quite drastic though. Personally I don't see them being that bad unless you're giving free reigns to crazy optimizers, which I've never experienced. A friend of mine did complain that he felt his monk was too weak when we were running RHoD though (he plays druids alot). Also, it's a level 6-10 campaign, how crazy can some of the other classes be? Wiz/sorc changes, meh, sure. Forcing a wizard to specialize isn't bad at all -- they want to be conjurers anyway if they're optimizing!

[Hunter Noventa]

Those are decent houserules. A couple we used when we played 3.5, though they're more to make the game more fun all around than to limit powergaming:

1) Spot and Listen are class skills for everyone. So I'm a fighter who can't see anything, making me a terrible guard? Got it! Alternately, use the Pathfinder skill system, so much better.

2) You may give up an attack of opportunity to instead parry a melee attack directed at you. To parry you make an attack roll at your highest attack bonus, if you beat their attack roll, the blow is parried. You can parry as many times per round as you may make attacks of opportunity, and can mix and match the attempts.

[brujon]

As a CO'er myself, i think a lot of those things you mentioned are valid, while others don't. Draconomicon, Races of the Dragon and Dragon Magic are all real flavorful books which don't have THAT many cheese going on.

Of the top of my head i remember:

- Venerable Dragonwrought Kobold cheese(Dragonwrought ignores aging penalties, so you get only bonuses. Also you qualify as a True Dragon which may or may not qualify you for epic feats, RAW is silent. But what they DO qualify you for are the dragon feats, and the rites of passage. Loredrake, White Dragonspawn and both Rites add to your CL, while Loredrake also adds to your casting *capabilities* so you effectively gain free spellcasting levels.)

- Dragon Cohort cheese. The feat is just overpowered... That's all. Dragons are really formidable foes, and having one besides you is just, ack. Also you can use them as special mounts AND cohorts at the same time, which just brings more cheddar to the mix.

The rest of the book is pretty ok. The Draconic Words are some weak but cool effects you can give at close to no-cost, but there are also requirements. The most powerful effect is a CL boost. If you make the Rites of Passage sidequests for a Kobold character it's great. Kobolds are REALLY flavorful creatures, and also you have the DRAGONBORN template which is just awesome (And balanced).



The abrupt jaunt wizard... Haven't heard of it til now. Huh. Guess i need to read more.


Polymorph -> Yes, it's cheesy as hell, and the most common and IMHO effective solution is: You BECOME the creature. You DON'T maintain any of your special abilities. All damage carries over regardless of HP totals of you or the creature. If you become a Wartroll, you have the intelligence of a Wartroll and must roleplay accordingly, and no you cannot use any of your OMGWTFPWN spells.. CR of the creature you transform into equals to your CL but cannot exceed 15. Also to transform into any creature you want to, you need to beat the Knowledge Check to know specific details about the creature (Which if i recall correctly, is 25 + Creature's CR). With these restrictions, it tends to roll smoothly. If you slap your restriction of only creatures you've *known* or at least *heard* in game, you could lower the knowledge check.


As for Dragon Magazine material... The access to that material sometimes is difficult, some things are balanced, somethings are not...

Non-Balanced example: Half Minotaur template. +8 Str, large size and other shenanigans for a mere +1 LA? Not balanced, AT ALL.

Balanced example: Hummingbird Familiar. Tiny (Or fine?), familiar, gives you +4 initiative. Doesn't do much more. Fragile but hard to hit, too small to carry wands and stuff, too valuable to be flying around scouting or delivering touch attacks.

I suggest you judge Dragon Magazine in a case by case basis. It sometimes have great ideas... I remember something about stones that contained willpower and essence of sorcerers, so sorcerers could learn extra spells. Albeit at a ridiculously high price. Highly flavorful, high value to Sorcerer-type characters. Makes for a GREAT quest reward. Some ACF's from Dragon are also really cool...

The thing is, it's hard for a DM to be on the loop about every trick and rules lawyering there is, and to keep track of so much different material is tricky. I suggest you judge player's submissions by roleplaying value, if their characters have interesting concepts and roleplaying possibilities you can weave into your story, let them fly, but warn them beforehand that if you catch them trying to badly abuse the rules, they'll get gimped. (Curses work for wonders.)

Don't punish the CO'ers. Punish the munchkins. Trying to minmax in a game is just natural... It's only when it starts to cross into abuse and shunning other players, and otherways ruining the experience that you should take action. Don't get angry because the wizard scryed and knew he would be facing a white dragon and prepared lots of Flame Arrow spells. Make him fight an ALBINO RED DRAGON instead. Make the baddies have Anti-Scrying setups. Make them have teleport re-routing traps.

If you're lucky to have nice players, and savvy to counter any unexpected situations, you could have a ToB min-maxer CO'er alongside a first-time pure fighter and still distill fun from the table. Just divide the rewards accordingly, make retraining available if there's a HUGE gap between party members, and also, talk to them. It works wonders.

I wish you best of luck in your future endeavors and hope this poorly formated wall of text helps you along your game.


EDIT: Alas, i have forgotten about Divine Metamagic. Without nightsticks and CHA-boosting items for turn attempts, and prestige class cheese, there's only so much it can do. I suggest you don't ban it outright. It's a great use for a ability with a very very very narrow use (Undeads). You have to burn lots of turn attempts at a time to be able to really abuse it. If your cleric only has 10 turn attempts, he'll likely save some for when he needs it, and not burn it all. And if he does... Well, there's no place you can't put a living dead, there's it?

[TheCountAlucard]

I made the Healer class (Miniatures Handbook) into a spontaneous caster. It's a little less gimped that way.

Also, retroactive skill points are nice.

[Keld Denar]

Roll TWF and TWD into 1 feat.

Strongly encourage the use of Tome of Battle, but clearly outline the couple broken items in it. (RKV is 1/rd, IHS can NOT turn off the universe, you can't WRT yourself...thats it)

Strongly encourage the use of Psionics. They are not only neat, but WAY more balanced than magic could ever be.

..............
Specifically for RtCR, consider using the Turning Damage variant rule in Complete Divine. It'll still be the same effectiveness against the mooky undeaders, and will actually be useful against the strongest undead without being all or nothing.

[Natael]

@ Natael: I never understood why Rangers have a worse animal companion than druids. I dunno the shapeshift variant but I'll look it up. Dropping out 3 core classes seems quite drastic though. Personally I don't see them being that bad unless you're giving free reigns to crazy optimizers, which I've never experienced. A friend of mine did complain that he felt his monk was too weak when we were running RHoD though (he plays druids alot). Also, it's a level 6-10 campaign, how crazy can some of the other classes be? Wiz/sorc changes, meh, sure. Forcing a wizard to specialize isn't bad at all -- they want to be conjurers anyway if they're optimizing!

Monk/Fighter/Paladin, technically, I'm not actually dropping them, they are still open to players (as are aristocrat, expert and commoner technically speaking). I'm running off modules (Forge of Fury --> Red Hand of Doom for those that care), so I am forewarning them that if an NPC is a warrior, I'll probably make them fighters, and if they are fighters, they'll probably be warblades now, same with monk --> SS and paladin --> Crusader.

Shapeshift variant takes away wildshape and the animal companion, gives shapeshift instead. Give the druid a straight stat bonus based on level, some shapeshifting from level 1, and access to generic offensive, flying, and elemental forms that the player can flavour themselves, while not being rediculously crazy like normal wildshape, plus they don't have to delve through all the MMs looking for things to turn into.

I change the sorc just to make it more appealing and have a reason to actually stay in the class. Casters are pretty crazy even from level 1 (I was playing a level 1 sorc that was making encounters crazy easy via color spray, it scared the other players how good it was).

[Blackfang108]

4) No source that starts with "Dragon" or "Draconomicon"
No personal experience with these, but I heard a bunch of times that there's alot of broken stuff going on there.

Allow Dragon Magic, as it is (FWICT) not unbalanced, and full of nifty.

Especially for Dragon Shamans. (Double Draconic Aura alone is worth it, as are the extra Auras.)

[Sliver]

I donno, I think limiting your players only to sources you are familiar with is pretty valid. But you should allow your players to give you the book or at least point out the stuff they wan't to take so you could allow things on a case-by-case basis.

[Doc Roc]

Have you seen the fix list for ToS? It covers a lot of these bases. As said, dragon magic is okay. More than okay, in fact. It's a great book that adds a lot for a number of different archetypes. It even has ACFs for favored souls!

[oxinabox]

Here what I ran with in a 'soft' campaign for new players:
All swords are usable with weapon finesse (excluding fullblade, which isn't a sword, it a sharpened i don't know what)

Ninja gets proficency with asianafied versions of all swords.
I know this isn't historically accurate.
(forcing them to use the monk list sucks, cos they don't get flury of blows - the whole reason to use weak monk weapons (well that, and it's better than posioning your fists))

Ninja's don't take a penality to there number of Ki for having negitive wis
Normal max ki=3+wis

ninja's don't take a penality to there AC from negitive wis.
(it's just a bad idea to have negitive wis, cos without armour proficency you'll need if)

Yes i made ninja very differnt (easier).

Don't think this is much help to you though.

[Killer Angel]

Balanced example: Hummingbird Familiar. Tiny (Or fine?), familiar, gives you +4 initiative. Doesn't do much more. Fragile but hard to hit, too small to carry wands and stuff, too valuable to be flying around scouting or delivering touch attacks.

Curiously, I've always found this unbalanced. +4 to initiative is VERY good.
With Improved Initiative your wizard will almost always goes first, even at low levels.

[Yora]

Funnily enough, that's how I run things. Except Eschew Materials is a given and the wizard feats include heritage feats.

And it's pretty much what I do, among other things.

[Triaxx]

One of the few rules I use constantly is: If you take skill focus for a skill not of your class, it becomes a class skill.

[Brauron]

I think it might have already been mentioned, but to reiterate: Spot, Listen and Search are class skills for all classes, and Tumble is a class skill for Fighters.

[Curmudgeon]

A couple of weapons got shabby treatment by WotC, and I like to fix that.

Rapid Reload and Manyshot (up to 4 bullets in the pouch) also apply to slings.

For any feats or weapon special abilities where they mention heavy crossbows, add great crossbows there as well. Great crossbows remain exotic weapons.

[brujon]

Curiously, I've always found this unbalanced. +4 to initiative is VERY good.
With Improved Initiative your wizard will almost always goes first, even at low levels.

Yes, +4 to initiative is VERY, VERY good. But, the hummingbird is too fragile to do most of the stuff other familiars do, such as delivering touch spells, scouting ahead, too small to carry wands, cannot activate command word items, etc... So i think it's balanced, all the disadvantages offset the +4 to initiative.


Some things i though i should mention that should go to the ban list: Craft Contingent Spell and Celerity. Craft Contingent spell is just too unbalanced, even if it's pricey, it makes the wizard invincible if used correctly, as is celerity. Wings of Flurry and Maw of Chaos are also spells which i consider too powerful. Enervation, specially when metamagicked, is a win-button. And it's too easy to metamagic it with the right PRC's (Incantatrix, Recaster...). So you might want to have a chat with your players if they start dropping your BBEG's with that every time. I have seen it happen. 10~12 negative levels every time. Not cool. Ray of Exhaustion, Shivering Touch, etc... Are also easily abusable with metamagic and can become win buttons.

I'd also disallow that cleric spell, can't remember the name, that gives the cleric full-bab for the duration of the spell and some plus to strenght. Too powerful. It effectively transforms the cleric in a GISH with no investment whatsoever. But i'd only disallow it if not using ToB for melee classes. If you use ToB it's okay. The cleric will still hit small compared to sublime way, most clerics will prefer to buff the ToB players and stick to support.

Also, if someone is planning to play a monk, tell them to use an unarmed swordsage. So much better, and equally flavorful.

As for house-rules... I'd say that if a class skill is a class skill for one of your classes, it stays a class skill throughout your career. It just makes sense. You train in something to make it easy on you to learn because it relates to your class, that's a class skill. You don't forget your other training just because you broadened your trade.

I also normally require my players to have at least one Craft or Profession skill, to reflect what they did prior to adventuring. They're not required to advance it, just have at least 1 rank in it.

I also modify my players alignments according to their actions, but don't tell them that. Except if they're paladins and just fell, or something like that. They'll only discover it when they think they're immune to some effect that only targets evil, but then they're affected. Makes for some great immersion in game.

=]

[Doc Roc]

Elven wizard substitution levels suggest that perhaps the humming bird is not balanced. +8 to init for..... having a familiar and being a grey elf? Gee Golly! No. No No No, and also no. The hummingbird is extremely powerful, bordering on badly broken. It, by the way, only starts fragile. Familiars are trivially easy to buff. I have a friend who routinely casts Body of War on his familiar.


Body. Of War. Go look it up, I'll wait.

[brujon]

Okay, i retract my previous statement. The hummingbird familiar can be broken. Doesn't mean it is broken all by itself. By itself it's balanced. It's when you go around buffing your familiar and using ACF's that stuff begins to fall apart. Take for example the raven familiar. I had a friend which used to give his raven familiar command-activated wands and used him to rain death from above in his enemies. Use protective buffs in him, or heck even make him invisible. It's powerful all the same. Familiars are really powerful class abilities. If you begin to use improved familiars things start to get silly... There's tons of abuses to go with the familiars. It's hard to create a new feature to an existing game and consider all of the implications of that new addition. I doubt anyone considered the implications when they created the Hulking Hurler. They probably playtested it for a bit, saw it was okay, but then someone threw magic and special materials and stuff got silly quickly. The Half Minotaur template on the other hand, that's broken all by itself.

But, yes, i think maybe +4 to init is too much, it should be +2 or +3 at most to be in-line with what other familiars give you. That way it's not that broken when you slap the Grey Elf substitution levels on top of it...

[Myrmex]

Draconomicon has Rapidstrike, which gives you extra attacks with pairs of natural weapons. You have to be an aberration (elan) or dragon (dragonwrought kobold) to take it, but it can make melee characters very brutal.