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

[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.