I'm not the kind of guy who cares very much for house rules.

I'm of the opinion that, even if the Core Rules have some problem or omission, there's usually a sourcebook out there somewhere that handles it, and we can just use that in our game. It's far easier - and, I think, more fair to everyone - to have an objective source to consult rather than hand-wave a new rule that some guy just made up and everyone else is constantly forgetting about. So yeah, no house rules in my game.

The one exception I make, however, is for the divine intervention roll.

This idea comes from the old 2E supplement Monster Mythology, which idly talks about divine intervention, and mentions (on page 7), "Perhaps as few as 1% of all such beseechings will be heard, and virtually no mortals will ever receive significant help from a god twice in a lifetime." That offhand notation sounded pretty cool to me - a slight, but still possible, chance for divine aid when all else is lost. That's perfect for a beleaguered group of heroes who need a hand. So, I tweaked it a bit, and added that to my campaign as a house rule. The way it works in my game now is like so:

Over the years, we've tinkered with modifying this rule some, such as divine characters (e.g. clerics, paladins, etc.) having an increased chance for aid, or relative planar proximity to your god making it more or less likely they hear you, but ultimately it's remained what it was always meant to be - a last-ditch effort for characters who have no other chance at salvation.

Alzrius

A little while ago, I picked up Free20: The Troublemaker Template, a short but FREE d20 product by Chris Field. The template is one that basically codifies a character archetype - that of the plucky young female sidekick, insecure but out to prove herself, even if it's not always a good idea.

As I was reading through it, I couldn't help but grin as I read the writing, particularly regarding what sort of character has this template. I own quite a few products by Chris Field, and I have to say, this is a guy who has his own style and doesn't hesitate to put it into his writing. That's something I admire, and I think deserves respect, because it's not something you see everywhere else.

I think the crux of what makes Chris's work different from the vast arena of what's out there for d20/OGL games is that he doesn't duck themes of sexuality in his products. This is more important than it might sound at first, simply because most RPG writers self-censor in regards to sex as a matter of course; I doubt they even realize that they do it anymore. Sure, there'll be a mild description that a female NPC is attractive, and they might order some cheesecake artwork, but that'll be it. Chris, in contrast, treats sexuality as just another topic, no more or less deserving of attention than anything else.

Take the Troublemaker, for example. He's clearly identified the character type that this template is meant to exemplify - that of the young, insecure teenage sidekick who isn't sure of herself, and often overcompensates for her insecurities. Most people would just focus on the personality and combat style of such a character, and leave it at that. Not Chris, though. He's not afraid to point out that "...a youthful, jailbait sexiness is part and parcel..." of this kind of character, which is true; most people, however, would be afraid of pointing that out. The sheer level of honesty Chris brings to his products in this aspect is, I think, very refreshing.

Now, I'm not saying Chris is the next Monte Cook, in regards to his writing. In fact, his style is rather unpolished in a lot of regards. It's not unusual to find typos or grammar errors in his work, his stat blocks usually need a bit of errata, and whenever he makes a new class or prestige class he has a damning tendency to list the class powers alphabetically, rather than in the order they're gained. In fact, the commonality for all of these is the biggest problem of all - at no point does a skillful editor seem to look over Chris's work after he's written it. It seems to go straight from his hands to the publisher, which is always a recipe for letting errors in. Though, to be fair, that's as much the fault of his publishers as it is his.

Despite that, I continue to enjoy the work that Chris puts out. Not only is he still making new material for the d20 market (which is a minor miracle in and of itself, these days), but I appreciate that he isn't ducking the less-accepted issues in what he writes. Sexuality is intrinsic to people, and that's just as true for characters in a game setting as it is in real life; it's not the largest part of a character, nor does it dominate who they are - it's just there, along with everything else. It's nice to see someone recognize that, rather then feel embarrassed by it.

Write on, Chris!

Alzrius

There's been a lot of talk recently (mostly since Paizo started working on Pathfinder) about how to "fix" multiclassing in 3.5 games. It's a worthwhile topic for discussion, since there's a fairly strong understanding that multiclassing is suboptimal as it exists now. Let's examine what these problems are, and look at ways to fix them in your game.

XP Penalties

Unless you keep all of your classes within a level of each other, and/or make sure to play to your favored class, you're going to be hit with some pretty stiff XP penalties; they start out at -20% and go up from there. In fact, if you play this badly, you could actually end up with a -100% XP penalty!

So what's the best solution for this particular problem? Easy: dump this restriction.

Seriously, there's absolutely no reason to have this particular restriction in the game. It exists solely to limit multiclassing possibilities (I suppose you could consider racial favored classes to show a particular predisposition in a given race, but that's a very thin bit of in-game flavor - and one that you can have anyway without this particular rule). After all, prestige classes aren't held to this. d20 Modern does away with it altogether. Just ditch the rule about taking XP penalties if you have disparate levels in multiple classes and be done with it.

BAB Progression

Another problem is with BAB progression. A character that focuses on melee (or even ranged) combat tends to be hurt if he multiclasses into a class with anything less than a full BAB progression. His bonuses to attack, which the party counts on, start to fall behind. If they fall behind too much, then he may even lose an iterative attack, which is a devastating setback when you think of all the attacks over the course a campaign that he'll be missing out on.

So what do we do about this?

The answer here turns up in Unearthed Arcana. I'm not sure why this particular sidebar was excluded from The Hypertext d20 SRD (v3.5 d20 System Reference Document) :: d20srd.org but you'll find it over on page 73 of UA: fractional BAB (and base save) increases. Basically, this notes that most classes have a BAB (and saves) that advance by fractions of a whole bonus over each level. Usually, these are rounded away, but if you keep the fractions (and no fraction is worth anything until it's increased to a whole, the same way a half a skill rank is worthless until another half is added to it), then the progression is much faster.

To quickly summarize the sidebar, classes with a full BAB progression (+20 at level 20) gain a full +1 at each and every level. Classes with a good BAB progression (+15 at level 20) gain +0.75 at each level. And classes with a poor BAB progression (+10 at level 20) gain +0.5 at each level. (And, if you want to keep this for base save progression also, good saves begin with a bonus of +2.5 at 1st level and gain +0.5 at each additional level, while poor saves begin with +0.34 at first level, and gain +0.34 at each additional level). Remember, these values go for monsters also.

Having said all that, there are some weaknesses to this particular fix. The big one is that this only going to add minor increases; only rarely will it be more than a +1 adjustment to your BAB, though that can happen. For example, a rogue 9/bard 9 normally has a BAB of +12 - a +6 for each class at 9th level. Under this system, that character has a +13.5 BAB, since each class has +6.75 at 9th level. If the character adds a level of wizard, then under the normal progressions that'd add +0 to the character's +12 BAB. Under this system, it adds +0.5 to the character's +13.5 BAB, bringing it up to +14. That's a not-insignificant increase for the character, particularly at such a high level. Admittedly, it's nowhere near as good as a single-classed fighter, but it gives this rogue 9/bard 9/wizard 1 a +14 BAB, letting him fight on par with a 19th-level rogue, which would also have +14 BAB.

Spellcasting

Perhaps the largest issue is that multiclassing tends to seriously impact spellcasting ability. A wizard 10/cleric 10 is still going to be slinging around 5th-level arcane and divine spells, all with with a caster level of 10, at CR 20 monsters. That's a pretty serious setback.

Much like the last problem, this has a solution given in Unearthed Arcana, this being the Magic Rating system. Essentially the magic equivalent of the fractional BAB system presented above, this works for caster level instead. In fact, we're just going to dispense with referring to this as a "magic rating" and instead call it what it is, gaining fractional caster levels per level.

Under this sytem, all creatures gain a caster level of some amount at each level. The linked page discusses which specific classes gain what "rating" - just treat the rating as a caster level. Thus, bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards gain a +1 to their caster level at each level. Monks, paladins, and rangers gain +0.5 caster levels at each level. And barbarians, fighters, and rogues gain +0.25 caster levels at each level. (Don't forget to consult that page to check out how monsters configure their caster levels also.)

The idea here is that you total up a character's caster levels from all of their classes, and this is their effective caster level for all of their spellcasting classes. It only applies to effects based specifically on caster level; it doesn't grant new spells per day, spells known, or new spell levels. E.g., our wizard 10/cleric 10 can still only caster 5th-level arcane and divine spells from each spell list. However, since each class gives him +10 caster levels, for a total of +20, he casts all his spells as a 20th-level caster. This assures that his spells are a match for CR 20 monsters, though he still can't cast higher-level spells. If the character was a wizard 5/cleric 5/mystic theurge 10, he'd be casting 8th-level arcane and divine spells, all at 20th caster level, which seems more balanced in terms of trading the most powerful spells of each class for being able to cast spells as both a wizard and a cleric.

Note that, while the linked article above uses whole numbers, there's no reason you can't use fractional increases with this particular bonus as well. Doing so gives your multiclass spellcasters a little more kick, which can be very useful when they're multiclassing with a non-spellcasting class (since those tend to have the worst caster level increases).

Another variant here is that you can have this caster level increase apply to all effective spellcasting, similar to how a prestige class's "+1 spellcaster level" increases spells per day/spells known. In this case, our wizard 10/cleric 10 is now a 20th-level spellcaster for both classes, and can whip out 9th-level arcane and divine spells at caster level 20 no problem. The problem with this particular variant is that it actually rewards multiclassing too much. Under this system, it's always far better to play a wizard/cleric than a single-classed wizard or cleric, as you'll end up with full spellcasting progression for both - in fact, the only downside is that you won't have the total BAB and Hit Dice progression of a single-class cleric (though you'll be close). It's basically too attractive of an option.

These changes, unto themselves, probably don't entirely fix multiclassing. But they at least make it a little more viable, and hopefully a little more attractive, in your game.

Alzrius

Recently, I was looking over some old threads, and came across a brief debate I participated in. I'd postulated that there'd be a number of "off-color" and even largely useless (from a combat perspective) spells in a campaign world, simply due to human nature, and how ubiquitous magic is. Another person disagreed, saying that just because something could exist doesn't mean it must. While I agree with that principle, it seems silly to suggest that certain spells won't exist in a campaign world when magic itself operates like a science, and spells are a commodity. To that end, I'm going to crunch some numbers here to try and estimate the number of different spells that exist in a campaign world that holds to the standard 3.5 d20 rules. In several places some things are assumed, but I think the conclusions that can be drawn here are fairly logical, and offer a good guideline for such a campaign.

Before I begin, I want to mention that this is largely my own take on a similar essay found in Distant Horizon Games's superb book, The Practical Enchanter. I got some different numbers than they did (largely because it doesn't seem as though they took the community modifiers into account), and wanted to show my results. I HIGHLY encourage people to go download the book via the link above, as it's not only one of (in my opinion) the best d20 books out there, it's also free to download!

So how does one determine the number of unique spells in a campaign world? Well, the most obvious place to start is with the people casting them. The section on NPCs in communities in the DMG (pg. 138-139), lets us determine the highest levels of NPCs, and in turn calculate their numbers. To establish a baseline, let’s say that the majority of the world's population lives in hamlets (population ranging from 81-400). Just so there’s a fixed number to work from, let's say that the average hamlet has a base population of 200 people.

Now, the next step is to determine the classes and number of people living in the hamlet. Though the DMG already has a sample breakdown of NPC in a hamlet of two hundred people, let’s run the numbers anyway to see what our results are. Using the demographics rules and tables in the DMG (pg. 138-139), lets us start determining everyone who has PC class levels. For the sake of expediency, assume that every die roll on the Highest Level Local Table is average (what happens with the .5 aspect to the average numbers is discussed below), and take the community modifier (-2 in this case) to generate the results. For the PC classes, these are the results:

Barbarian: None.
Bard: One 1st-level bard.
Cleric: One 2nd-level cleric, and two 1st-level clerics.
Druid: One 1st-level druid.
Fighter: One 3rd-level, and two 1st-level fighters.
Monk: One 1st-level monk.
Paladin: None.
Ranger: None.
Rogue: One 2nd-level rogue, and two 1st-level rogues.
Sorcerer: None.
Wizard: One 1st-level wizard.

While the method of determining these levels is explained in the DMG, the results generated here require some explanation. All of the average dice results result in a number that ends with a .5 aspect to it. This slightly skews the data, because it means half the time the number will be 1 greater than it will be the other half of the time, and this does affect the numbers generated for this community. As such, what I’ve done here is take two classes that roll similar dice, and assign the higher part of the average to one class, while the other gets the lower average. For example, to find the highest levels of both barbarians and monks, roll 1d4 (average 2.5) and subtract 2 (the community modifier). The result is 0.5 for each. Hence, I assign one class (monks in this case) to have a result of 1 (thus resulting in the hamlet having a single level 1 monk), and the other class (barbarians) to have a result of 0, meaning that there are no barbarians in this community. The classes that I “paired off” this way to equalize the average dice rolls were: barbarians and monks, clerics and druids, fighters and rogues, paladins and rangers, and sorcerers and wizards. In the case of the bard, the remaining .5 for its average was ported over to the adept.

NPCs with NPC class levels in a community are generated the same way that NPCs with PC class levels are, save for determining 1st-level characters. Thus, determine the higher-level characters first:

Adepts: One 2nd-level adept.
Aristocrat: N/A (generated using rules for level 1 NPCs with NPC class levels).
Commoner: One 8th-level commoner, two 4th-level commoners, and four 2nd-level commoners.
Expert: One 6th-level expert, two 3rd-level experts.
Warrior: One 3rd-level warrior.

Again, in several places the averages were moved between different classes. The adept, as mentioned previously, received the remaining .5 average from the bard, raising its 1.5 result to a 2. The aristocrat, which had a result of 0.5, gave its average to the expert, lowering its result for this stage of NPC generation to 0. Finally, the commoner and warrior had no 0.5 averages to move, since both had average results that resulted in whole numbers.

Finally, take the remaining number of individuals in the community, and populate them with the percentages given in the DMG. Since our results have generated a grand total of twenty-five individuals thus far, that leaves one hundred seventy-five left to generate. Based on the percentage figures given in the DMG (91% commoners, 5% warriors, 3% experts, 0.5% aristocrats, and 0.5% adepts, all 1st-level), we get (with some rounding) the following figures:

Adept: One 1st-level adept.
Aristocrat: One 1st-level aristocrat.
Commoner: One hundred fifty-nine 1st-level commoners.
Expert: Five 1st-level experts.
Warrior: Nine 1st-level warriors.

Thus, we now have the entire population of an average-size hamlet. This is significant because, as mentioned above, we’re assuming that – since the average campaign world is roughly similar to medieval Europe – this represents the population breakdown of the majority of the world. More specifically, (again using medieval Europe as a rough guideline) we’ll assume a world population of about 70,000,000 people, of which 80 to 90% (we’ll use a baseline of 85%) live in hamlets, and thus are defined by the numbers we generated above. This makes it significant that only 4% of the hamlet can cast spells – eight people out of two hundred – and 75% of those are divine spellcasters. (To be clear, the “world population” is, in this context, limited to creatures of the Humanoid type. If you want, however, you can limit it to the races, including their sub-races, from the PHB. E.g. dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, and humans of all types.)

(Just for fun, let’s see what other assumptions we can make about this hamlet based on the data we’ve generated. For example, the 2nd-level cleric is probably the local spiritual counselor, who together with the two 1st-level clerics who most likely serve as his aides, maintains a small church. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that this religion has a monastic order as well, which would make the 1st-level monk part of the church order as well. This forms the pillar of the religious part of the community. The 2nd-level adept might be an old wise woman, perhaps thought of as a witch, at the edge of town, together with her 1st-level apprentice. Even further afield, the 1st-level druid might keep watch over the surrounding wilderness, while the 1st-level wizard is conducting his self-taught magical research in relative isolation. The ten warriors in town would probably be the local militia, keeping bandits and goblins away from the community, while the contingent of fighters – having a different fighting style from their fighter bonus feats – would probably be a small group of archers, or perhaps cavalry. And administrating over the town is the mayor, the 1st-level aristocrat.)

What about the other 15% of the world population, then? Well, we can chart their statistics also. However, even using an abbreviated listing for the remaining types of communities is very long and very dry. As such, we’ll just use the results gathered from generating averages for those community levels.

Refining the world population numbers even further than the above becomes very pedantic, but does help us generate a more accurate look at the population breakdown of the average fantasy world. I said before that 85% of the world’s population lives in hamlets, and ran my figures based on the demographic breakdown of the population of the average hamlet. In order to get more accurate totals regarding the remaining 15%, just repeat the initial community demographic figures with each of the other types of communities available. Since it’s best to be conservative, let’s stagger the population towards smaller communities, and assume that the remaining global percentages breakdown like so: 3% live in thorps (population 20-80, average 50 people), 3% live in villages (pop. 401-900, avg. 600 people), 3% live in small towns (pop. 901-2,000, avg. 1,500 people), 2% live in large towns (pop. 2,001-5,000, avg. 3,000 people), 2% live in small cities (pop. 5,001-12,000, avg. 8,000 people), 1% live in large cities (pop. 12,001-25,000, avg. 18,000 people), and 1% live in metropolises (pop. 25,001 or more, avg. 40,000 people).

Since it’d be a bit too tedious to list all the numbers and processes here, I’ll just post the results, using the same calculations that were done to find the demographic breakdown of the population of an average hamlet:

Alzrius