Core/SRD +1?

[LecternOfJasper]

Hello fellow forum mites,

I'm planning future games, and I'm thinking of taking a crack at running a 3.5 game again. Unlike my last attempts, where everything (and homebrew) was available and I tried to balance things by making everyone busted in their own way, I'm hoping to keep this game's power level closer to standard play than usual.

Most of my group are the type that won't go out of their way to optimize heavily (except maybe one), but will take any obvious combinations of abilities they see to be effective. I also have been collecting the splat books fairly indiscriminately (though I probably won't get the setting specific ones, because I don't really care about the official settings).

That said, I've been considering a soft limit of only using what's in the SRD and one other book, just to see if we get anything interesting out of that. I'm hoping this way people lean into some of the cooler stuff that's available in this game without getting carried away with optimization (and I'll likely be pointing them towards specific options once we talk about characters/party roles).

Do y'all set limits on the material available to your players, and have you found it to matter?

[Troacctid]

I would personally recommend Core+2 instead of Core+1. Every time I've built characters with +1, it feels like it's on rails—you almost always just pick one of the Compendiums or the appropriate Complete book—whereas +2 feels like it opens up so many more combinations while still being restrictive in an interesting way. It also means that non-core base classes get to play, which is good for balance and variety.

[pabelfly]

Materials I allow: Any 3.0, 3.5, and Dragon Magazine. Might include Pathfinder on a case-by-case basis - for example, I included Gunslinger in my current game because it suited the setting and a player wanted to use firearms.

I'll disallow specific feats I feel are too OP - stuff like Leadership and Item Familiar, for example. There aren't too many feats I'll exclude.

Last thing I'll do is during combat, making sure that weaker characters tend to land the killing blow in combat surprisingly often. If there are stronger characters, I'll just use more enemies or spread enemies out further so everyone gets to kill a few enemies, and hold off on using solo monsters.

[Crake]

I would recommend saying to your players "Hey, don't build overly strong characters for this game, I want to run a more down to earth campaign this time, and if you guys go overboard, it will just make the encounters boring and unsatisfying for everyone involved." Because the thing is, limiting available character building resources doesn't limit power, it just limits variety. There are plenty of powerful builds you can build with one splatbook, and there are plenty of flavourful, but weak builds you can make with a tonne of splatbooks, so limiting your players there doesn't really solve your problem.

[Saintheart]

I've done it both ways: carte blanche "All 3.5 + Dragon", and "PHB, DMG, MM, and one environmental setting book (Frostburn)." The latter in particular is the only (admittedly short) adventure I've actually managed to finish in PbP. It did have some significant-ish changes to available classes (no Paladins, Barbarians, Monks, or Sorcerers; instead, Warblades, Swordsages, and Crusaders were subbed in. No elves or half-elves; Illumians were subbed in. And yes, I'm aware that reduced the category of classes and races down by a net of one.)

Admittedly it's not a big sample size, but I think the latter works very well for DMing if you're homebrewing your own setting (as I did). Mechanical restrictions alone immediately give your setting a unique feel, or a different feel. It gives you better control over the players and (I think) makes them engage a little more with your setting, since they can't go musing through a hundred splats and get entranced by the character build they can draw out, they have to look for interesting stuff to click on in your setting. (But the counter to it is that you had better have interesting stuff for them to do in that setting, or something intriguing. One way to get that, which was recommended to me and which in retrospect I'd do in any future campaign, is to always bar at least one significant option: there's no elves, or there's no dwarves, or there's no monks, or whatever. Subtraction matters, working with restricted options forces creativity. And doing so immediately calls for some creativity from you, adds some interest to your campaign, because you then have to put up a story-based reason why.)

I'll usually give carte blanche when I'm running Red Hand of Doom for parties, because I know the damn campaign so well now that I can usually counter whatever's thrown at me. And also because I do enjoy watching 'alternate realities' play out: there's nothing quite like seeing the Butterfly Effect in action as one party does something at Drellin's Ferry that others don't.

[Paragon]

I would recommend saying to your players "Hey, don't build overly strong characters for this game, I want to run a more down to earth campaign this time, and if you guys go overboard, it will just make the encounters boring and unsatisfying for everyone involved." Because the thing is, limiting available character building resources doesn't limit power, it just limits variety. There are plenty of powerful builds you can build with one splatbook, and there are plenty of flavourful, but weak builds you can make with a tonne of splatbooks, so limiting your players there doesn't really solve your problem.

I agree with this philosophy.
The limit on splatbooks would be useful if you put up a game with total strangers whether online or IRL because you can't know beforehand who's what type of player.
If you know the people you play with personally though, I feel there is no better way than to get down to brass tacks with them.
For instance I'm a player who like heavy optimization and the rest of the group I play are more neophytes so I picked a very low tier class and optimized it to playability and the group is balanced and fun.
Same goes for veteran/noob scale. Extremely well versed players might benefit from certain limitations as it can catalyze creativity and the newest noobie needs limited options to build their first char but in between, opening up options is really what 3.5 is all about imho.

[Rleonardh]

Core plus magic item compodioum

[Condé]

I will probably be a player in a game where these rules are applied. (Core+1 book) So I feel I can add my input because I'm looking into character creation with these guidelines for weeks now.

What I can say is... It's hard. (Mostly because I don't want to make something simple)
The obvious choices would be to take Druid and whatever book you want to add to your Druid supremacy. You have to know that the less book the more you penalize mundane classes... Because a wizard is still a wizard, a cleric, still a cleric and even if you don't have DMM bullsh!t, you still are very powerful.
On the other side you have... The fighter for example. Good luck playing that with only Core and ONE book.


AND remember you make some options totally inaccessible to some classes, like the PRCs for Warlocks in the book Complete Mage. Since you need to take Complete Arcane to get access to the Warlock base class, you cannot be an Eldritch Disciple or Eldritch Theurge.

You then have some questions to ask to yourself. What about web exclusive content? What about the SRD? [EDIT: They are, I just don't know how to read.] Are they core for you? Or if you want something from UA you have to pick the UA and nothing else?
Do you allow giving access to a class if there is a Alternative Class Feature in a book? For example, you have an ACF for the Warlock in PHB2. If you pick the PBH2, do you have access to the warlock or do you need to pick the class from the book it is fully printed? (Complete Arcane in that case)



Sure you limit a lot of builds and possibilites to break the game because it is because the books were designed without taking other content into account that we have so many options that are broken only when comined with something else in a book released years after. BUT, for the most part, I think by doing that you are accentuating the advantage of the caster over the other classes simply because other need a lot (And I mean, A LOT) of good stuff to even compete with full casters and they never are in the same book.
Obviously you can manage to pull some nice tricks here and there but remember that Druids have all there classe feature AND the best feat for them: Natural Spell, right from core. And Wizards and Sorcerers have access to most of the best and abusable spells (Notably Polymorph)...

And if you don't want, for some reason, any "tier 1 class", the best books are going to be the ones you can consider like standalones. Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Magic (The latter being mostly for Binder since most of the book is unusable by most)

You can play a class from ToB and have access to some PrC and never look back at the core. You just need one book and can go from 1 to 20 with no problem. The classes are fun, more or less well-designed and you can have fun at any level.
Magic of Incarnum, a bit more convoluted, but Totemist and Incarnate work fine and everything for them is in ONE book.

From a player perspective, it is a bit restrictive since you cannot really do a lot and if you want not to be overshadowed by some classes you will objectively have to be a spellcaster yourself because they are king and... Easily abusable.

Then, if balance is your concern, restricting access might not be the right answer... Why? You only need one book to have access the dweomerkeeper, incantatrix, spelldancer or planar shepherd.
Once again, by doing so you are primarly hurting mundane classes and not the most powerful ones who still have access to powerful tools to break the game with very low effort.

(Since I'm concerned by this, I would say a lot of classes with "pets" are tempting too. I mean, you just need one class to get a cool pet and do all the job for you. With only one book you still can pick stuff like Beast Heart Adept, Halfling Outrider or even worse, something I considered myself... Zhentarim Skymage if you allow 3.0 stuff which is... I mean... You are a Wizard with a completely broken pet. Yeah of course if it dies you have to wait 2 levels to get it back but I mean what the hell. How are you supposed to compete agaisnt that with other classes and core + 1 book? I can tell you: Hardly.)

BUT... As a player it is a nice exercice tho.

Spoiler: My digression

Show

I have managed to make some cool builds that are probably not playable until a cap. Like a gishy-like Sentinel of Bharrai with Vow of Poverty... Playing a bear and call lightning is super-duper cool by you'd have to wait level 8 to be relevant and if you are not full caster (As I would be if I played this build) you would be a freaking dead weight from basically level 2 to 8 because the first two levels of SoB are really dry.

A melee warlock but with Hideous Blow since Eldritch Claws are in a Dragon Mag and Edlrtich Glaive in DrM (Which mean it is basically inaccessible to any Warlock). But then I remember you have so few invocations at low level and not many good options for PrC'ing in Complete Arcane and I look at the Green Star Adept, think it is cool then read it again and can't believe how few you get. (If only it was AT LEAST 3/4 Bab...)

And as I said, Totemist, Binder, etc... Are mostly fine. But how boring it is to take a class with no combo of any sort and no prc? Basically just playing your class from 1 to X picking what is the "best" and not trying anything stupid like a SoB gish?

But I digress.

[Telonius]

I'd suggest that you get all the players together and talk to them about this. The "tier system" sometimes gets a lot of groans and rolling eyeballs, but there really is a serious power imbalance in the classes. A Soulborn is simply not going to be on the same level as a Cleric (unless the Cleric is deliberately trying to suck). It's a reality that you've got to deal with somehow. Make sure the players are aware that the imbalance exists, and hammer out how you want to deal with it. Whether it's Gentlemen's agreement, bumping up the lower tiers, nerfing the higher tiers, banning high (or low) tiers, targeted bans of problem spells, some combination of the above, or however you want to do it. Make sure everybody's on board; that the caster players know it's not that you want them to be less awesome, it's that you want everybody to have a chance to shine.

[Particle_Man]

If you do go core plus one (or two) or even two minus core, or what have you, is it the players who each choose their own plus one or two or is it the dm who sets the one or two for everyone?

Like if it is core plus one, can billy choose complete arcane and Mary choose book of nine swords, or does the dm choose complete warrior for everyone and that is it?

[LecternOfJasper]

What I can say is... It's hard. (Mostly because I don't want to make something simple)
The obvious choices would be to take Druid and whatever book you want to add to your Druid supremacy. You have to know that the less book the more you penalize mundane classes... Because a wizard is still a wizard, a cleric, still a cleric and even if you don't have DMM bullsh!t, you still are very powerful.
On the other side you have... The fighter for example. Good luck playing that with only Core and ONE book.

Yeah, I recognize casters are really good just in general. And re: fighter, while it looks like you can make a pretty good charger with just Complete Warrior, it's not quite the same thing as the potential world shattering power of primary casters. I'll definitely be asking the casters to try to aim for less that world shattering power, and make sure to point the martials towards the good things (Tome of Battle, Shock Trooper, etc)

AND remember you make some options totally inaccessible to some classes, like the PRCs for Warlocks in the book Complete Mage. Since you need to take Complete Arcane to get access to the Warlock base class, you cannot be an Eldritch Disciple or Eldritch Theurge.

At this point I don't have complete mage, so that's off the table (unless I can find it somewhere), but in those cases, if there a particular prestige class that requires multiple books worth of stuff, I wouldn't have a problem with people building towards that. For instance, I'm hoping to get Complete Scoundrel, and would allow Swift Hunter, even though that require Scout from Complete Adventurer. This limitation is primarily so people don't just slap something off of an optimization guide together.

You then have some questions to ask to yourself. What about web exclusive content? What about the SRD? [EDIT: They are, I just don't know how to read.] Are they core for you? Or if you want something from UA you have to pick the UA and nothing else?
Do you allow giving access to a class if there is a Alternative Class Feature in a book? For example, you have an ACF for the Warlock in PHB2. If you pick the PBH2, do you have access to the warlock or do you need to pick the class from the book it is fully printed? (Complete Arcane in that case)

Web Exclusive likely won't be considered by my players, but I'd probably allow it when it's cool/useful (Kobolds, Pyrolineticist, etc).

SRD and Psionics from that is fine.

UA seems like it's in SRD (or at least on the wiki), unless I'm missing something.

If the ACF is important to the concept and in a different book... I don't know. It sounds like a reason to pick that book. I am leaning closer to SRD +2 after reading comments, but in that particular scenario, there's some neat other stuff in PHB2 as well. Not that I have it.

Sure you limit a lot of builds and possibilites to break the game because it is because the books were designed without taking other content into account that we have so many options that are broken only when comined with something else in a book released years after. BUT, for the most part, I think by doing that you are accentuating the advantage of the caster over the other classes simply because other need a lot (And I mean, A LOT) of good stuff to even compete with full casters and they never are in the same book.
Obviously you can manage to pull some nice tricks here and there but remember that Druids have all there classe feature AND the best feat for them: Natural Spell, right from core. And Wizards and Sorcerers have access to most of the best and abusable spells (Notably Polymorph)...

I'm not as throughout worried about the caster/martial imbalance as I could be. I think my party will likely make interesting and suboptimal choices as casters in 3.5e, and we're probably sticking close to mid levels.

And if you don't want, for some reason, any "tier 1 class", the best books are going to be the ones you can consider like standalones. Tome of Battle, Magic of Incarnum and Tome of Magic (The latter being mostly for Binder since most of the book is unusable by most)

You can play a class from ToB and have access to some PrC and never look back at the core. You just need one book and can go from 1 to 20 with no problem. The classes are fun, more or less well-designed and you can have fun at any level.
Magic of Incarnum, a bit more convoluted, but Totemist and Incarnate work fine and everything for them is in ONE book.

I've got ToB and MoI, they're definitely some of my favorites. I don't know if I can convince anyone to use them, but I'll certainly try.

Then, if balance is your concern, restricting access might not be the right answer... Why? You only need one book to have access the dweomerkeeper, incantatrix, spelldancer or planar shepherd.
Once again, by doing so you are primarly hurting mundane classes and not the most powerful ones who still have access to powerful tools to break the game with very low effort.

I don't think I have those books. I've tried to find a good mix of not-casting splats.

If you do go core plus one (or two) or even two minus core, or what have you, is it the players who each choose their own plus one or two or is it the dm who sets the one or two for everyone?

Like if it is core plus one, can billy choose complete arcane and Mary choose book of nine swords, or does the dm choose complete warrior for everyone and that is it?

The players will choose what they want, with recommendations, and from a curated list. I'm hoping to have most of the Completes, the environmental books, ToB, MoI, Libris Mortis, and maybe a few other things if they fall out of the sky.

I would personally recommend Core+2 instead of Core+1. Every time I've built characters with +1, it feels like it's on rails—you almost always just pick one of the Compendiums or the appropriate Complete book—whereas +2 feels like it opens up so many more combinations while still being restrictive in an interesting way. It also means that non-core base classes get to play, which is good for balance and variety.

Noted. I was going to include the MIC for free, and don't have any of the other compendiums, but Core/SRD+2 sounds reasonable.

[Shockwave]

Just a thought, would it be any better/ worse to go Core+1, with an additional +1 per x/levels?

[Fizban]

Unlike my last attempts, where everything (and homebrew) was available and I tried to balance things by making everyone busted in their own way, I'm hoping to keep this game's power level closer to standard play than usual.

Yeah, everyone being busted isn't actually balanced, it's just really busted. These sorts of games seem to rely on the DM also over-optimizing the enemies and eventually just making stuff up which they literally have no idea if or how the players can beat it and just expect that they'll figure it out.

That said, I've been considering a soft limit of only using what's in the SRD and one other book, just to see if we get anything interesting out of that. I'm hoping this way people lean into some of the cooler stuff that's available in this game without getting carried away with optimization (and I'll likely be pointing them towards specific options once we talk about characters/party roles).

Do y'all set limits on the material available to your players, and have you found it to matter?

Book lists don't work, as far as I'm concerned. A book list is an abdication of responsibility, both allowing people to use things from book X that you aren't actually fully aware of and thus cannot possibly have anticipated, and also preventing others from using stuff from book Y that would be totally fine if you just looked at it. Paying attention to individual elements does. If someone wants to use a thing, read that thing (which they should be able to show you if they want to use it), ask them whatever combos they're trying to do, and evaluate based on that, because they know perfectly well what they're trying to do. No character, party, or even campaign can actually use all of a given book at one time: the reality is that you're looking at a handful of feats, PrCs, and spells, and most importantly the combos that arise from them.

You might be more leery of characters that are combo-ing from a bunch of different books, but that could be because what they want was never printed in one place, or because they're stacking four versions of the same effect printed four times. The only way to do things fairly is the way the DMG already says, by paying attention to what you're allowing and disallowing things if needed, even if you've already allowed something from the same book.

For a more in-depth discussion of how I rate the books, see the Tweaks and Brew link in my sig, or here. The main thing you can tell from books is the overall power level, as power creep happens over time and in particular jumps forward around MM3/second Complete Series. Stuff in older books is usually OP via combos or just free stuff for casters, stuff in later books is usually OP all on its own (unless it's deliberately Under-Powered). And Magic Item Compendium in particular is one of the latest, just completely making up its own ideas about stuff to completely reinvent whole paradigms like the "Anklets of Translocation," water breathing items being cut to like 1/4 their original prices, etc.

It sounds like you're already restricting things based on the actual books that you have, so listing what you do have would be a good idea in general.

[LecternOfJasper]

Book lists don't work, as far as I'm concerned. A book list is an abdication of responsibility, both allowing people to use things from book X that you aren't actually fully aware of and thus cannot possibly have anticipated, and also preventing others from using stuff from book Y that would be totally fine if you just looked at it. Paying attention to individual elements does. If someone wants to use a thing, read that thing (which they should be able to show you if they want to use it), ask them whatever combos they're trying to do, and evaluate based on that, because they know perfectly well what they're trying to do. No character, party, or even campaign can actually use all of a given book at one time: the reality is that you're looking at a handful of feats, PrCs, and spells, and most importantly the combos that arise from them.

You might be more leery of characters that are combo-ing from a bunch of different books, but that could be because what they want was never printed in one place, or because they're stacking four versions of the same effect printed four times. The only way to do things fairly is the way the DMG already says, by paying attention to what you're allowing and disallowing things if needed, even if you've already allowed something from the same book.

What? I thought I was just going to cover my ears and read nothing about their character but the reference page, but I can see now that I have more work to do.

In all seriousness, fair point. People won't be using everything in whatever book they're picking, and the power levels between options in any given book tend to vary drastically for some reason. I may tell my players to only pick one or two to look at anyways, if only to lower the amount of decision paralysis available to them

For a more in-depth discussion of how I rate the books, see the Tweaks and Brew link in my sig, or here. The main thing you can tell from books is the overall power level, as power creep happens over time and in particular jumps forward around MM3/second Complete Series. Stuff in older books is usually OP via combos or just free stuff for casters, stuff in later books is usually OP all on its own (unless it's deliberately Under-Powered). And Magic Item Compendium in particular is one of the latest, just completely making up its own ideas about stuff to completely reinvent whole paradigms like the "Anklets of Translocation," water breathing items being cut to like 1/4 their original prices, etc.

It sounds like you're already restricting things based on the actual books that you have, so listing what you do have would be a good idea in general.

I have Complete Warrior, Adventurer, and Arcane, Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and Cityscape (mostly for inspiration), Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Fiend Folio, and Libris Mortis. I'm hoping to get a few others (Scoundrel, Frostburn, and Divine) to round out what I've got going. Looking over that link, I don't think there's too much of a nightmare brewing.

I figured the magic item compendium would not be too crazy to have around, especially since I don't really have a "magic mart" in most of my games (that may have to change for 3.5). I'm still debating whether I should use the normal "expected to have a silly amount of items" rules or go for some sort of table that gives bonuses through leveling. We're used to 5e, and have mostly gotten off the kick of "+1 or 2 to defenses are really fun to get".

[Vhaidara]

I don't have too strong of a thought on this, but I will chip in that I first started playing the game in a Core+1 environment and, possibly more importantly, in a group that wanted the traditional fighter/cleric/wizard/rogue all covered. Which meant someone had to have trapfinding. Which ended up always being me. And, because I didn't find rogue interesting, I was stuck with Complete Adventurer as my +1 (we didn't have dungeonscape for factotum and I'm allergic to vancian casting so a caster with Find Traps was out). Complete Adventurer was a pretty fun book, but it still kind of sucked never being able to branch out.

And for anyone wondering why I got stuck as the trap monkey, it was a family game run by my uncle, with the other players being his wife, my two cousins, and my dad. My dad always played fighter types (usually actual fighters) and the others always got working on their characters before I knew there was a new game. Also I was an awkward preteen without a lot of willingness to speak up for myself.

[LecternOfJasper]

I don't have too strong of a thought on this, but I will chip in that I first started playing the game in a Core+1 environment and, possibly more importantly, in a group that wanted the traditional fighter/cleric/wizard/rogue all covered. Which meant someone had to have trapfinding. Which ended up always being me. And, because I didn't find rogue interesting, I was stuck with Complete Adventurer as my +1 (we didn't have dungeonscape for factotum and I'm allergic to vancian casting so a caster with Find Traps was out). Complete Adventurer was a pretty fun book, but it still kind of sucked never being able to branch out.

And for anyone wondering why I got stuck as the trap monkey, it was a family game run by my uncle, with the other players being his wife, my two cousins, and my dad. My dad always played fighter types (usually actual fighters) and the others always got working on their characters before I knew there was a new game. Also I was an awkward preteen without a lot of willingness to speak up for myself.

Unfortunate! I was hoping to incorporate more traps in this run (since 3.5 tends to have more of those than 5e). Core +2 with Due Discretion it is, then.

[Maat Mons]

I think Core + MIC + 2 is pretty workable.

You can use one of the +1s for whatever base class you find interesting, and the other +1 for whatever prestige class you find interesting. Most characters don't need more than one PrC, because most campaigns don't run that far into the levels where PrCs are available. Most PrCs can be entered from a single-classed base without major sacrifice.

I guess it could be a slight issue for theurgic PrCs. You'd need to make sure half of the theurge was a core class.

I guess it could also limit the ability to PrC-dip, but I rarely find that a compelling option anyway.

[tyckspoon]

Unfortunate! I was hoping to incorporate more traps in this run (since 3.5 tends to have more of those than 5e). Core +2 with Due Discretion it is, then.

Trapfinding is not the only way to deal with traps! It's possibly one of the more boring ways, in fact - it's the mechanical feature that lets you turn traps into 'I advance slowly down the hallway rolling Search (/taking 10/taking 20, depending on how confident and or paranoid your players are.) Let me know when I find a trap, then I roll Disable Device against it.' You can interact with traps without it, they simply have to be more than 'you didn't pass the arbitrary stat check? Oh well, take xd6 damage and pull Bob the Fighter out of the pit, move on' - you build trap encounters (or build traps into -other- encounters; traps make really nice complicating elements for fights) and plan for players to spend a reasonable amount of time investigating/interacting with/figuring out how to disable or bypass it, same as you would expect them to spend time handling a combat or having a discussion with a social scene.

[Fizban]

What? I thought I was just going to cover my ears and read nothing about their character but the reference page, but I can see now that I have more work to do.

In all seriousness, fair point. People won't be using everything in whatever book they're picking, and the power levels between options in any given book tend to vary drastically for some reason. I may tell my players to only pick one or two to look at anyways, if only to lower the amount of decision paralysis available to them

I figured you'd say something like that since we already seemed around the same page- a refreshing change, since it feels like usually when people bring up book lists they're already dead set on on abdicating.

I have Complete Warrior, Adventurer, and Arcane, Stormwrack, Sandstorm, and Cityscape (mostly for inspiration), Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Battle, Fiend Folio, and Libris Mortis. I'm hoping to get a few others (Scoundrel, Frostburn, and Divine) to round out what I've got going. Looking over that link, I don't think there's too much of a nightmare brewing.

Yeah, the worst I'd expect off the top there are the classic melee char-op, ubercharger/tripper/etc and a couple PrCs, which are are easy to see coming and tone down. Scoundrel has Skill Tricks which I find a bit disruptive as they essentially let people trade non-combat build resources (skill points) for quasi-feats (many of which blatantly ignore the skill trick's own design basics)- so characters with inflated skill points can get extra combat power while others are left out. That said, without a significant homebrew expansion there are only so many.

I figured the magic item compendium would not be too crazy to have around, especially since I don't really have a "magic mart" in most of my games (that may have to change for 3.5). I'm still debating whether I should use the normal "expected to have a silly amount of items" rules or go for some sort of table that gives bonuses through leveling. We're used to 5e, and have mostly gotten off the kick of "+1 or 2 to defenses are really fun to get".

I do normally think of it in essentially "magic mart" terms, since some level of cash conversion is absolutely expected in 3.5 and I aim to allow stuff from anywhere, while the vast majority of the time when MiC is mentioned it's for x/y/z perfect item that you should be "buying" with "starting gold" or getting ASAP. But for a game where most of the gear is being filled by DM-placed items and it's not being treated as a shopping catalog, yeah it shouldn't be any more disruptive than any other book. That is of course the beauty of actually paying attention, since you can "use" any "book", simply not using the broken items and not allowing or fixing them if requested.

Unfortunate! I was hoping to incorporate more traps in this run (since 3.5 tends to have more of those than 5e). Core +2 with Due Discretion it is, then.

Indeed, I'm sure they've been reducing traps over the years (and particularly the "Trapfinders only" system) as it tends to result in unfun binary failure checks. The only required skills in the game are Search/Disable, specifically for the occasionally insta-death-room trap, and that's not really a ringing endorsement- yet it is also a classic of that Indiana Jones trap-filled lair dungeon aesthetic.

My first suggestion is to expand the number of "trapfinders" by adding it to the Ranger (as noted in my doc), so there's actually more than one in the core classes, and don't count Factotum as a "book reference" since Dungeonscape barely has any player content, bringing the base options to 3 (or it would if you/someone has Dungeonscape anyway) (said book also contains the Trapkiller Barbarian ACF).

Or more simply, you might change it from Trap-finding to Trap-disabling. Let anyone with the Search bonus and gumption to risk investigating find traps of any DC, but the rare Trap-disabling class feature represents the mechanical knowledge needed to quickly and easily just poke some tool in and poof bypass the trap. Other characters can find them, but then have to use their heads, gear, or other abilities to deal with it- something which is often suggested but not actually possible if you're not allowed to find the traps in the first place (instead relying on the DM to write a visual puzzle for players to decipher for every trap). You'll want to review exactly how much information you give out on basic success vs extra +5s.

Of course, the Search skill is nearly as rare as the Trapfinding feature, so you'd add that to a couple classes as well: Rangers already have it, add it to Bards*, Wizards have Int to spare so they might cross-class it. And this is another place where one could improve the Fighter's role-building options, as with the oft-suggested addition of Spot/Listen and my own addition of Sense Motive for Fighters that are good at "paying attention," allowing trap-finding for everyone and adding Search to Fighters suddenly gives them a potential advantage in worldly survival knowledge that many don't have.

Naturally if you expand access to Search and loosen trapfinding, you might end up with the whole party able to roll. But since it's still a secret check, unless the whole party wants every character rolling every time (rather than just letting whoever's got the highest bonus do it) it'd probably be fine, and you could boost the DCs if needed.

*Poor Bards being reduced from jack of all trades to "actually just substandard mind mages with a party-buff."

[Jervis]

Hello fellow forum mites,

I'm planning future games, and I'm thinking of taking a crack at running a 3.5 game again. Unlike my last attempts, where everything (and homebrew) was available and I tried to balance things by making everyone busted in their own way, I'm hoping to keep this game's power level closer to standard play than usual.

Most of my group are the type that won't go out of their way to optimize heavily (except maybe one), but will take any obvious combinations of abilities they see to be effective. I also have been collecting the splat books fairly indiscriminately (though I probably won't get the setting specific ones, because I don't really care about the official settings).

That said, I've been considering a soft limit of only using what's in the SRD and one other book, just to see if we get anything interesting out of that. I'm hoping this way people lean into some of the cooler stuff that's available in this game without getting carried away with optimization (and I'll likely be pointing them towards specific options once we talk about characters/party roles).

Do y'all set limits on the material available to your players, and have you found it to matter?

For me personally I allow just about anything, including some third party and all of my questionably balanced homebrew, with a optimization ceiling. That is to say I just straight up tell players they can do whatever they want so long as they keep things reasonable. By reasonable I mean the optimizers in the group have GMed before and I just tell them not to run anything they wouldn’t want their players to use or anything that invalidates the other players. Doesn’t always work but it usually goes well for me.

That said a set of rules I would implement if you wanted to balance things is this.
-PrCs must be finished or at least taken to at least level 5 to stop excessive chaining
-All +1 tier or better PrCs have organization ties
-Feats are restricted to core + any one other source
-Spell outside of core and PHB 2 are considered rare and must be researched, spontaneous casters (both spell know and full list casters like war mages) are exempt from this. Wizards can’t grab them for free on a level and all prepared casters need to go out of their way to spend downtime to get one.
-Magic items of exceptional power may require exotic material components in addition to just gold and xp to make, this may require a fetch quest or additional expense that would place the item out of reach until the players do something to get it. Combining magic items via MiC rules usually do even if their components don’t.
-All character creation related decisions must be justifiable in character, no you can’t start out evil and have a alignment shift to exalted good at level 7 the exact moment you level up. This usually isn’t a balance thing because good optimizers do this anyway but it encourages some creativity so I implement it anyway.

[Thurbane]

Despite the overwhelming onion you'll get on optimization forums, core +1, or even core-only, are perfectly valid play/table styles.

I've played in many such myself.

If it's for balance reasons, though, be aware the much (or even most) of the brokenness for OP characters exists right there in core.

The reason we most often run core, or core +1, games is for ease of materials reference, more than anything.

[Troacctid]

On the topic of the "Magic Mart," my usual way of handling it is to have players commission items from NPC crafters, who are typically artificers, chameleons, warlocks, or the like. Maybe they even have a specific contact that they visit regularly, depending on the nature of your campaign. (Cityscape has some decent rules for contacts if you want to formalize it.) Commissioning items is good for gameplay reasons because it allows not just purchasing new items but also upgrading your existing ones—a very helpful function.

Another option is to make use of the Gather Information skill. A successful check could either find you a seller for the item you're looking for (if it's within the community's gp limit) or, if it's too rare and expensive, tell you where you'd need to go to find one. Set a DC based on the item's level.

In general, it should be possible to find whatever published magic item you want as long as you have enough downtime, and availability issues should only really be a concern when you're in a rush.

[Particle_Man]

I have heard of some people going for “no core, just +whatever” aside from some bare bones core things that are needed.

[LecternOfJasper]

I have heard of some people going for “no core, just +whatever” aside from some bare bones core things that are needed.

Have you heard of why they would do that? Because while that seems possible in this game, it's really weird.

[Particle_Man]

1) boredom with core.
2) balance issues with core.

[Crake]

Unfortunate! I was hoping to incorporate more traps in this run (since 3.5 tends to have more of those than 5e). Core +2 with Due Discretion it is, then.

Well, keep in mind, ANYONE can find a trap of up to DC20, and ANYONE can disable mechanical traps with sufficient ranks in disable device. The only edge trapfinding grants you is the ability to find/disable magical traps (or the rare mechanical trap with a DC over 20, but i think those are nonstandard)

[Fizban]

Well, keep in mind, ANYONE can find a trap of up to DC20, and ANYONE can disable mechanical traps with sufficient ranks in disable device. The only edge trapfinding grants you is the ability to find/disable magical traps (or the rare mechanical trap with a DC over 20, but i think those are nonstandard)

The DMG has traps above DC 20 Search as low as CR 2 and while a surprising number are under that threshold, it looks like nearly half or more are above it, and magic traps are if anything more common. Disable Device is a trained-only skill which is only found on the Rogue in core and basically only on classes that already have "Trapfinding." Modules will usually make up their own traps, which I'd bet will usually have DCs based on an appropriately leveled Trapfinder (and gods help you if you think that would work in say, World's Largest Dungeon), and if they have a spellcasting BBEG will often specifically have magic traps meant to have been cast by them.

Sure, the DM can specifically place only traps that a no-Trapfinding party can deal with, the same way they can refuse to use status-effect monsters for a party with no Cleric or fire-resistant monsters if the arcanist is a pyromancer. You can say that your world runs only on easy to find mechanical and (easy to find via Detect Magic because also no one uses Magic Aura) magical traps, but if you want to be able to actually use the variety of traps normally presented, then you need either an Official Trapfinder in the party or to make some changes to the mechanics.

[Jervis]

The DMG has traps above DC 20 Search as low as CR 2 and while a surprising number are under that threshold, it looks like nearly half or more are above it, and magic traps are if anything more common. Disable Device is a trained-only skill which is only found on the Rogue in core and basically only on classes that already have "Trapfinding." Modules will usually make up their own traps, which I'd bet will usually have DCs based on an appropriately leveled Trapfinder (and gods help you if you think that would work in say, World's Largest Dungeon), and if they have a spellcasting BBEG will often specifically have magic traps meant to have been cast by them.

Sure, the DM can specifically place only traps that a no-Trapfinding party can deal with, the same way they can refuse to use status-effect monsters for a party with no Cleric or fire-resistant monsters if the arcanist is a pyromancer. You can say that your world runs only on easy to find mechanical and (easy to find via Detect Magic because also no one uses Magic Aura) magical traps, but if you want to be able to actually use the variety of traps normally presented, then you need either an Official Trapfinder in the party or to make some changes to the mechanics.

This discussion is bringing back ptsd of a player who decided to make a Ranger trap finder under the assumption that DC 20 was rare for traps. Cross class disable device and all. Said player also sent his horse into trap and monster filled hallways and got upset when it died because of the gold it cost him.