« Reply #31 on: March 09, 2011, 01:32:16 PM »
I disagree with any house rules assumed as a "standard" set. Because that would dilute the topic.
I think everyone assumes that monks are proficient with their unarmed attacks, and that multiclass xp penalties aren't used.
Technically speaking, unarmed strikes are natural weapons and all creatures are proficient with their natural weapons.
True on the multiclass XP penalty in my experience, due to lazyness.
I think that for these boards, what we pull from is any WotC 3.5/unupdated 3.0 unless an actual booklist is given.
Hmm. The pattern I've seen is the following:
All WotC-published 3.5 material (excluding Dragon).
General silliness is presumed out of the question (i.e. all tricks in the dirty tricks handbook somehow will be nonfunctional).
If the character in question wants to be a blaster, War Mage (AoM) is suggested.
If the character in question wants to be a shaper, ignoring CPsi is suggested.
If the character in question wants to do psionics (but doesn't want to go Thrallherd/Slayer), Hyperconscious is suggested.
If the character is otherwise under-supported with the above material, Dragon or 3.0 material is suggested.
For some niche builds, 3rd party material may be suggested (I can think of: additional 3rd-party vestiges and some Tome material).
In general, I think the 'exoticness' of the sources depends on how much support a build needs to be effective (i.e. on par with the power level in a campaign). And I think that's very much optimal.
Well without an official book list all official are considered on the table. After all, you are playing D&D are they are D&D books.
3rd party content gets mentioned a bit as a suggestion, or because someone wants to break the campaign to piss off the DM. The latter is dumb and to be ignored but the former tends to be for simplistic reasons. Sure you could build an effective monk using official rule books (tip: multiclass) but there is a 3rd party monk that already does that without requiring you to dip around and reference 40 books to do so. Mayhap your DM would rather ok that one class rather than telling you to compile all your rules your using together so it's possible to read them all inside ten minutes.
What's the title of that thing? Can I get an ISBN number? I can't find that thing anywhere!
Google "D&D 4th edition"
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Tiers explained in 8 sentences. With examples!
[spoiler]Tiers break down into who has spellcasting more than anything else due to spells being better than anything else in the game.
6: Skill based. Commoner, Expert, Samurai.
5: Mundane warrior. Barbarian, Fighter, Monk.
4: Partial casters. Adapt, Hexblade, Paladin, Ranger, Spelltheif.
3: Focused casters. Bard, Beguiler, Dread Necromancer, Martial Adapts, Warmage.
2: Full casters. Favored Soul, Psion, Sorcerer, Wu Jen.
1: Elitists. Artificer, Cleric, Druid, Wizard.
0: Gods. StP Erudite, Illthid Savant, Pun-Pun, Rocks fall & you die.
[/spoiler]