Author Topic: [3.5] Extensive House-Rules for PbP-campaign; Balancing grunts to caster level  (Read 2652 times)

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Brainpiercing

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I wanted to open up my rules ideas to a wider public. They are, I admit, still a work in progress, and in spite of this rather lengthy, too. Some are pending a reworking, like Polymorph, yet again.

You can find them by directly following this link, I didn't want to copy and paste with all the formatting:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=809.0

These rules do not produce a low-powered environment, but I find they do offer important improvements over the basic rules, like taking away spellcaster supremacy.

I'll be happy to get comments and suggestions.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2008, 11:29:03 AM by Brainpiercing »

Brainpiercing

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I am just a leetle miffed that noone is even LOOKING at the thread.  :(

fil kearney

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phew!  lotta reading there, Brain.

As far as house rules go, those are pretty good. 

I like the knowledge check needed for poymorphing
I like the 1k xp / year of adult life.  Just makes sense.... does this stay consistent regardless of species?  virtually all elves and dwarves are a minimum level 10?

Brainpiercing

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Well, species that age slower also usually get less XP, or everybody would be of too high level. Basically I don't want too many NPCs of over Lvl 10 running around.

fil kearney

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So would elves get 100 xp per year, and dwarves 200 xp per year?



Omen of Peace

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One thing I don't think I told you : I personally think you don't get enough feats in 3.5E. A common fix is to use flaws but you don't like them. You could still:
- do like Frank & K who give 4 feats at level 1 IIRC.
- do like 4E and give feats at level 1 and then at all even levels.
(or approximate those differently)

It cheapens Fighters a bit but they can be given other perks to compensate. It allows for more interesting and more diverse people at lower levels ; it makes feat chains more accessible (I dislike Dodge and Combat Expertise but they're prereqs for tons of more interesting feats).
An example among others: the Dex Swordsage needs Weapon Finesse, Shadow Blade and (often) Adaptive Style. That's level 6 already if he's not human...
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Brainpiercing

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So would elves get 100 xp per year, and dwarves 200 xp per year?
It all depends. There is no fixed system for long-living races as of yet. After all, there are even enough immortals running around. How do they get XP? Every Immortal of a few hundred years would be WAY into epic levels without doing anything.

So basically I mainly use it for human NPCs. But perhaps someone has a suggestion how to do it better? To incorporate longer-living races or even immortals? Giving a few hundred instead of 1000 is a start.But I want to reserve the possibility of giving every player his 1000XP should there be a year of downtime.

@OoP:
Yes, most classes are feat-starved. Somehow we still get strong builds, though, or don't we? Also, if I changed the feats mechanism, I would have to rework most  monsters, too. And NPCs would be even more of a bitch to build. You have any suggestions to avoid that?

Omen of Peace

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I don't have a blanket solution, no. My impression is that with optimized characters - which are your "target market" it seems - the CR system has to be thrown out anyway. If one wants to stick with CR, +3 feats to everyone in party may be worth +1 CR.

Many monsters can actually be made more deadly by just changing a few feats - they probably don't need more. I'm not sure what to do about NPCs... I do strongly believe their builds don't necessarily need to follow the same rules as the PCs'. Also, you can always take save boosters and Improved Toughness. ;)
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Brainpiercing

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As a matter of philosophy I don't like having NPCs follow different rules. At least not important NPCs. I do agree that players should be special, or else their survival and success would just be a matter of luck. The difference here is optimisation. A PC should be optimised, an NPC only in an exceptional case.

I already have a comparatively cheap way of gaining basic feats in the item rules: Want Power Attack for your wizard gish? Put it on an item.

If I were to change the feat rules, they would have to count for everybody, even monsters. I also think the age-XP system alleviates a lot of problems with not gaining feats early on: Simply because most people don't stay lvl 1 or even lvl 4 for very long. A thirty-year old human is already lvl 6.
And if everyone were to get a feat every even level, a Fighter would have to get a feat EVERY level.

There are feats that annoy me: Weapon Proficiencies for instance. Why do you need EWP for a Bastard Sword? Or a Katana?  But these are already adressed in regional proficiencies (which I'd probably allow upon request). Alternatively I could rework the weapon. Bastard Swords and Katanas, as well as a number of other far eastern martial weapons should be simply martial weapons. Others not so clearly, but for those a racial proficiency bonus feat is in order. EWP should be limited to stuff like Kusari-gamas or spiked chains, which are really non-standard weapons, even in their place of origin.

Midnight_v

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Quote
There are feats that annoy me: Weapon Proficiencies for instance. Why do you need EWP for a Bastard Sword? Or a Katana?  But these are already adressed in regional proficiencies (which I'd probably allow upon request). Alternatively I could rework the weapon. Bastard Swords and Katanas, as well as a number of other far eastern martial weapons should be simply martial weapons. Others not so clearly, but for those a racial proficiency bonus feat is in order. EWP should be limited to stuff like Kusari-gamas or spiked chains, which are really non-standard weapons, even in their place of origin.
Agreed. I think though that was just added as an incentive to keep people using the "Iconic Longsword" or whatever, cause who'll use one if they get the BS for free, so, something needs different stats I guess..
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Omen of Peace

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As a matter of philosophy I don't like having NPCs follow different rules. At least not important NPCs. I do agree that players should be special, or else their survival and success would just be a matter of luck. The difference here is optimisation. A PC should be optimised, an NPC only in an exceptional case.
Then give them unoptimized feats for the extra ones - that shouldn't take long. :)

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I already have a comparatively cheap way of gaining basic feats in the item rules: Want Power Attack for your wizard gish? Put it on an item.
I actually don't like this rule too much, because these items are unaccessible for low- to mid-level characters (when 10k is a lot) which need extra feats the most, whereas a level 20 character will buy himself tons of feats that way.
That cheapens the Fighter even more at high levels...

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If I were to change the feat rules, they would have to count for everybody, even monsters.
Sure, see above. If monsters don't need to be optimized, extra feats are no biggie.

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I also think the age-XP system alleviates a lot of problems with not gaining feats early on: Simply because most people don't stay lvl 1 or even lvl 4 for very long. A thirty-year old human is already lvl 6.
Approach this from the PCs' perspective : it means campaigns have to start at level 6 or above. It's fine if you don't especially care about lower levels but then you should perhaps mention it somewhere.

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And if everyone were to get a feat every even level, a Fighter would have to get a feat EVERY level.
Some homebrew variants do that. Another option is to give them extra bonuses when they take a feat - I remember Khan suggesting something along those lines (tactical feats can be mined for ideas) - or make the feats scale for them.

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There are feats that annoy me: Weapon Proficiencies for instance. Why do you need EWP for a Bastard Sword? Or a Katana?  But these are already adressed in regional proficiencies (which I'd probably allow upon request). Alternatively I could rework the weapon. Bastard Swords and Katanas, as well as a number of other far eastern martial weapons should be simply martial weapons. Others not so clearly, but for those a racial proficiency bonus feat is in order. EWP should be limited to stuff like Kusari-gamas or spiked chains, which are really non-standard weapons, even in their place of origin.
I've seen it done with skill points, just like languages. I don't remember the details though.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2008, 08:16:18 PM by Omen of Peace »
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Brainpiercing

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Re: [3.5] Extensive House-Rules for PbP-campaign; Balancing grunts to caster le
« Reply #11 on: September 02, 2008, 07:05:58 AM »
Ok, I seriously wouldn't give a character any bonus feat at creation. There are some, though, that set some kinds of characters back by a mile, while others don't need them. So maybe I could get used to giving a single bonus feat off a restricted list:

I could agree to the following bonus feats (non-exclusively, this is a first thought):

Combat feats
Weapon Finesse
Martial or Exotic Weapon Prof. for a single weapon; although I would prefer some exotic weapons just become martial as stated above
Shield Proficiency
Armour Prof.

Minor skill enhancers or other minor boost feats:
Endurance
Alertness
Diligent
Acrobatic
Agile
Athletic
Die-hard
Deceitful
Deft Hands
Investigator
Negotiator
Nimble Fingers
Persuasive
Run
Self-sufficient
Stealthy
Improved Toughness (because Toughness doesn't exist in my campaign)


Less likely, even though they use a similar mechanism to Weapon Finesse, but because they make CoDzilla even worse:
Zen Archery
Intuitive attack (Alignment independant)

How does that sound to you?

Omen of Peace

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Sure, why not ? I mean, we don't quite agree here so other people's answers will matter more than mine. Withholding Zen Archery is probably a good idea.

Feats-as-items are still a bit scary to me at high levels : a wizard will get worse if he has access to all metamagic and metamagic reducers like Arcane Thesis and Practical Metamagic.

To reiterate, I like the majority of your houserules. I hope the minor criticisms don't eclipse that fact.
I like the new Sunder rules - sundering items is stupidly easy at high levels. Disjunction can be houseruled to disable items temporarily. If it's banned, Greater Dispel & co need to be allowed to scale beyond CL 20.
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