Please provide feedback on changing magic item and feat bonuses

[MacMathan]

I have written up some ideas I am thinking about implementing in my next game and below them included what I am hoping to achieve.

Please provide feedback and ideas for the following house rules:

1.) Innate bonuses to-hit not from magic items.

I like magic items being able to be more interesting and not as tied to a static bonus.

2.) No extra damage from magic item pluses?

I am a little less sure about this one but I think it would free up some room around the whole +x needed for efficiency at a certain level.

3.) Eliminate all feats that primarily only serve to boost to-hit and or damage, including exotic weapons etc.

I think this could free up a lot of freedom for heroic level feat choices for the mechanically minded player

4.) Drop hit points on monsters a little further to balance the lesser damage out put.

To balance out the above.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I have written up some ideas I am thinking about implementing in my next game and below them included what I am hoping to achieve.

Please provide feedback and ideas for the following house rules:

1.) Innate bonuses to-hit not from magic items.

I like magic items being able to be more interesting and not as tied to a static bonus.

This sounds like Inherent Bonuses to me. The rules that cover it are in Dark Sun and, I think, DMG2.

I use a variant based on this and it works wonderfully.

2.) No extra damage from magic item pluses?

I am a little less sure about this one but I think it would free up some room around the whole +x needed for efficiency at a certain level.

By default, Inherent Bonuses add to damage as well. Not sure there is much reason to remove these bonuses from the game.

3.) Eliminate all feats that primarily only serve to boost to-hit and or damage, including exotic weapons etc.

I think this could free up a lot of freedom for heroic level feat choices for the mechanically minded player

This is fine in the heroic tier, however, eventually the math starts to become pretty lopsided in favour of the monsters, particularly in terms of hit bonus. If that doesn't bother you, then no problem. If it does, then you may want to consider either dropping all monster defences by 1 per tier, or giving the players a non-stacking feat bonus to attacks and defences per tier.

4.) Drop hit points on monsters a little further to balance the lesser damage out put.

To balance out the above.

You could do it this way, but if you're having less damage because of lack of assumed damage-boosting feats and whatnot, you could easily compensate by having the "half-level" bonus to all rolls also apply to damage. It's easy and requires no fiddling about with which feats to allow and which ones to ban or tweaking of hit points to maintain balance.