D&D 3E/3.5 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Sepulchrave II]

Huh, I found single classed wizards, clerics, and druids out of the core the strongest classes at higher levels and multiclassing and prestige classes one of the options that could slow down the power of casters as they most often give up at least a caster level to do so. Abilities from different classes are often neat and attractive, but push you back on the power scale compared to higher level spells with more slots and higher caster level.

Very few caster prestige classes gave full casting, and few of those gave significant powers.

I was curious, so I dug around. There is a post in this thread (#6 by daremetoidareyo) which lists all PrCs with caster level progression.

I counted 107 PrCs with full progression. Not that 3.5 was bloated, or anything.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I was curious, so I dug around. There is a post in this thread (#6 by daremetoidareyo) which lists all PrCs with caster level progression.

I counted 107 PrCs with full progression. Not that 3.5 was bloated, or anything.

Probably because by the time 3.5 came around, 3.0 had taught them that spellcasting PrCs that lost significantly in progression were going to be too unattractive unless the benefits they gave were simply overwhelming. This tended to create problems if they were accessible to sorcerers (because sorcerers didn't have a lot of side abilities to trade off), but what else is new.

 

[Voadam]

I was curious, so I dug around. There is a post in this thread (#6 by daremetoidareyo) which lists all PrCs with caster level progression.

I counted 107 PrCs with full progression. Not that 3.5 was bloated, or anything.

Good find!

Post 6? 86 10/10 entries, 29 5/5 ones, and one 7/7? That double counts a few though as things like the arcane hierophant is listed as 10/10 for both arcane and divine (also Fochlucan lyricist, mystic theurge, and true necromancer).

Also a bunch of these require giving up caster levels to meet the prerequisites for meeting the class like Arcane Trickster.

Still that leaves a lot of full caster ones and this list looks like it is from a lot more WotC sources than I had.

I remember being less than impressed with the power potential of the 10/10 candle caster from 3.0 Tome & Blood, a bit more so with the 10/10 alienist and their pseudonatural theme replacing fiendish/celestial on summoned stuff but not a big power bump overall. Mage of the Arcane Order was fairly meh, some minor bumps with only the hassle of the prereqs. Arcane Trickster and True Necromancer were 10/10 but gave up caster levels before entering the class. The eight others were not full caster prestige classes. Stuff like the Blood Magus and Acolyte of the Skin and Spellsword had a bunch of non-casting levels at 5/10 each.

I remember Incantatrix from an FR sourcebook being discussed as a big straight power up if you took it.

Given the varied design of prestige classes it was also possible to game them to take just the levels of a class that gave full caster levels and benefit from the bonuses they gave in addition. So the Elemental savant gave full casting for levels 1-9 but not for its capstone level 10, so it was possible to get nine full caster levels out of it and go back to normal wizard or a different prestige class after that.

I think the only full caster prestige classes I took were the 3.0 5/5 harper mage and the 3.5 10/10 loremaster which were basically wizards with bardic knowledge, four skill points a level, and few minor knick knacks.

 

[Geminisaga777]

list of suggestions for revision of edition 3.5


limit of attribute points per level: each level would have a maximum range of attributes achievable by both monsters and players
a range (for example level 10 maximum attribute up to 30 so even if the player optimized or created combos it would remain in this maximum range)

skill point limits per level following the same idea as above

damage limit per level (for example maximum damage at level 10 = 100 damage regardless of source, combo or etc.)

feats: based on level without ridiculous requirements but that had a tree (such as tree of opportunity, movement attack tree, etc.)

caster level limit and maximum CD per level (following the same idea as above)


with these changes it doesn't matter the level of optimization, number of classes etc... as long as they respect the maximum limit of each level or cr everything will be fine

 

[Maxperson]

Generally the Fighter (and to a lesser extent the Wizard) killed Feat design. Any time a designer made a new Combat Feat, they had to balance it with the knowledge that Human Fighters got 19 of the damn things, so they would add all these prerequisites so they couldn't have all the cool Feats on one character, or get very powerful Feats early.

This made it really difficult for any other class to invest in the better Feats, let alone in a timely fashion.

A lot of the splatbook feats took that into account by putting in base attack prerequisites.

 

[Maxperson]

Toughness I already know about, Monte Cook pointed that one out in his "Ivory Tower Game Design" essay. It was largely intended for low level characters, particularly wizards in one-shot games where you're not thinking long-term. I'd probably change Toughness to +1 hp/level though because I'm not running one-shots and thus the feat ends up being a waste.

That feat already exists in 3.5e. Improved Toughness has a prerequisite of +2 fort save and gives 1 hp per hit die.

 

[Orius]

Yeah, I'd drop that feat and just change Toughness to something with more utility.

 

[Yora]

While flipping through the DMG again yesterday, I saw that Toughness is one of the feat prerequisites for Dwarven Defender.
A class aimed at fighters. For a race with Constitution bonus. That has d12 hit dice. And whose main ability gives it a +4 bonus to Constitution.

Also Endurance, for a class whose main ability is to keep standing in place. And that definitely won't be able to swim.

Any time I look at a prestige class, I hate the concept even more.

 

[Maxperson]

I think you can use dispel magic to counter but at a penalty or something? I always liked the concept, but like many things in 3E, the juice wasnt worth the squeeze.

You could use dispel magic or there was a feat that allowed you to use any spell of the same level and school. However, none the lipstick they came up with could make the pig not a pig.

I played 3e/3.5 from the day it came out all the way through late 2019. In all that time I saw counterspell used exactly 0 times. It just wasn't worth it to give up an entire round of spells to maybe counterspell something. Even if you knew the enemy had this spell you wanted to counter, he wasn't guaranteed to use it in the round you were waiting. If he didn't, you lost a round and the next round you had to decide if you were going to lose another round of spells for a maybe, or actually start participating and affecting the battle with your spells.

 

[Celebrim]

That feat already exists in 3.5e. Improved Toughness has a prerequisite of +2 fort save and gives 1 hp per hit die.

Toughness was revised in this way in my own house rules:

TOUGHNESS [GENERAL, EXPLORER]
Benefit: You increase your maximum hit points by an amount equal to 3 + your base fortitude save. (As your base fortitude save improves, so does the hit points you gain.)

A fighter at 20th level would get 5 hit points from toughness at 1st level and 15 hit points at 20th level.

Great Fortitude explicitly increased your base fortitude save by 2 rather than giving a bonus to your fortitude save and so (like a few other feats) comboed with Toughness to increase your hit points. I prefer this to scaling on HD since I want fighter types to retain the "I'm much less squishy than you." thing they had going in 1e that they've sort of lost in later editions as non-fighter classes HD increased and constitution bonuses equalized the playing field.