3.5e -- What REALLY needed fixing?

[greyscale1]

Mialee

 

[Aus_Snow]

And Regdar, apparently.

 

[greyscale1]

Yeah, no place for a snowflake like him.

But seriously, Mialee.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

I believe they should have allowed 3 feats per level, not including fighter feats (1st, 2nd, 4th, etc.) and metamagic feats (which should have been speeded up to 3rd, 6th, 9th, etc.)
The 1 (or 2) starting feats should have been retained, but considered gained at 0 level. 1st level should have brought those 3 feats mentioned above.

Since many feats require higher levels to take, and many feats don't work well until higher levels, a glut of feats at low level merely allows for flexibility, not great power.

An example of this is a fighter at 1st level somehow taking Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave, Brutal Throw, and Power Throw.
Yes, said fighter has all these abilities. But he still has only a BAB of +1 to back them up with (if he has high Strength bonuses, he still won't have over a +3 to BAB.)
He will have the potential, but won't realize it immediately.

Now, when he gains BAB +5, plus gauntlets of strength +6, plus an axe +3 and sword +3, that's another matter. : )

 

[Andre]

Ok, taking on some of the issues one at a time, here's a suggestion for hit points, save or die, and character toughness.

All characters and creatures have two damage pools, hit points and vitality points.

Hit Points = by class level, +20 points at 1st level

Class Hit Points
Ftr/Brb/Rgr: 6 + 1d4 (Barbarians gain Improved Toughness at first level)
Cle/Rog/Dru/Mnk: 4 + 1-4
Sor/Wiz: 2 + 1-4

Creature Hit Points:
per normal rules

Vitality Points = 1 per level or HD, + one-time bonus based on class

Character Vitality Points:
Ftr/Brb/Rgr: +4
Cle/Rog/Dru/Mnk/Sor/Wiz: +2
Multiclass: use whichever bonus is better

Creature Vitality Points:
1 per HD (no bonus)

Damage

Hit point damage occurs per the normal rules. If a creature's hit points reach zero or below, the creature is unconscious. Hit points recover completely with five minutes of rest.

Vitality point damage only occurs in special situations:
- a critical hit does 1 VP
- coup de grace does 1 VP per 2 levels or HD of attacker
- a sneak attack does 1 VP per 1d6 sneak attack damage sacrificed (in other words, each sneak attack die can do 1) +1d6 hit point damage, OR 2) 1 VP.
- any save or die effect instead does VP damage based on the spell and whether or not a save is made (need to determine on individual spell basis)

If a creature's vitality points reach zero or below, the creature is dead. VP wounds heal at a rate of 1 VP per day of rest.

Healing spells, fast healing, regeneration, etc. heal hit point damage per the normal rules. In addition, healing spells heal 1 VP per level of the spell. Regeneration heals one VP per minute.

This system would make it more difficult to kill characters in most situations (an attack by multiple rogues could be nasty, but that's true with RAW too). More often, characters will fall unconscious, perhaps with a wound or two. This would be true of creatures too, so for games where you don't want most creatures knocked unconscious before they are killed, you can simply rule that monsters die when either hit points or vitality points equal zero.

It also has the effect of encouraging characters to continue adventuring, as hit points recharge fairly quickly. But once the characters have taken some VP wounds, they'll then have to consider carefully whether or not to press on. This would reduce the need for a cleric, or other forms of healing, but not eliminate that need entirely.

Thoughts?

 

[CleverNickName]

It seems like one of the most popular complaints about the 3.5 Edition is how multiclassing breaks the game. I agree.

I don't know if this fix will work for everyone, but it seems to work just great for us.

[SBLOCK=Assign Prerequisites to Core Classes]Note that these prerequisites only apply to multiclassing...a character does not need to meet these requirements in order to start as one of these classes...just to multiclass into one.

I tried to keep the requirements as "even" as possible from one class to another. Each core class has the same three elements, in addition to any alignment restrictions the class might have:

- an ability score of 12 or higher,
- 5 ranks in one skill, and
- a skill-enhancing feat

In other words, I treat them like prestige classes.

Barbarian
Con 12
Nonlawful alignment
Survival 5 ranks
Toughness feat

Bard
Cha 12
Nonlawful alignment
Perform 5 ranks
Investigator feat

Cleric
Wis 12
Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks
Negotiator feat

Druid
Wis 12
Neutral alignment
Knowledge (nature) 5 ranks
Animal Affinity feat

Fighter
Str 12
Intimidate 5 ranks
Athletic feat

Monk
Wis 12
Lawful alignment
Tumble 5 ranks
Acrobatic feat

Paladin
Cha 12
Lawful good alignment
Knowledge (religion) 5 ranks
Negotiator feat

Ranger
Dex 12
Survival 5 ranks
Self-Sufficient feat

Rogue
Dex 12
Open Locks 5 ranks
Deft Hands feat

Sorcerer
Cha 12
Knowledge (arcana) 5 ranks
Magical Aptitude feat

Wizard
Int 12
Knowledge (arcana) 5 ranks
Diligent feat[/SBLOCK]

Perhaps this should be forked to the 3.5E House Rules forum...

 

[Taraka]

Infinite summoning does not exist in 3.5

Easy one to fix, just assume summoned creatures can't summon anything themselves. My group has been doing it that way for years.

According to the Summon Monster I spell description in the 3.5 PH, "A summoned monster cannot summon or otherwise conjure another creature, nor can it use any teleportation or planar travel abilities."

Putting this rule only in the Summon Monster I spell description makes the rule fairly hard to locate when this question arises since it usually pertains to fiends summoning other fiends, so no one is generally going to look at this spell description to resolve the issue. I started out looking at all 2nd edition Planescape materials, and I was unable to locate anything regarding the topic. After a time-consuming Google search that didn't help, I had then searched in 3.5 edition places like the "Outsider" entry with no luck before finally stumbling upon it in the Summon Monster I spell description. If anyone can point out a second edition Planescape book that addresses the summoning abilities of summoned fiends in detail, I would very much appreciate knowing about it.

 

[Primal]

For me, the biggest issue (as a mostly DM kind of guy) was the need for quick NPC generation rules. Taking half an hour or more to roll up a PC every once in a blue moon isn't an issue. Taking half an hour or more to roll up every NPC in the setting, OTOH, is a huge (and rediculous) time sink.

[Edit: I realize that you can handwave low-level, window-dressing, NPCs -- but if they ever become engaged in combat, that elevates them to the status of at least extras. Since there aren't any rules for extras or mooks in D&D, you're stuck using the full-blown PC creation rules (alebit with a different class list) if you want to play by the RAW. This is rediculous and frustrating.]

DMG includes exemplary stats and equipment for all the classes (levels 1-20), including the "non-Heroic" classes such as the commoner; unless you wish every NPC to have individual stats, those tables were easy to refer to.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

whoa. Thread resurrection. Oh well.

Save or Dies. These were a sacred cow that needed to be killed. I'm trying to make a version where it instead leaves the person at -9 and bleeding, so if he has allies, they have a chance to save him, but keep finding technical problems in making it actually work as intended.

Yeah, it pretty much doesn't work. There are a lot of spells that qualify as "Save or Die" though they do not actually affect your hit points. Obvious ones like Flesh to Stone, or Hold Person. In some cases even Dominate, Confusion, or Hideous Laughter. These can be game enders for a PC or a BBEG. Otiluke's Resilient Sphere is a Boss Killer in every way, and I don't see it popping up on many "Save or Die" hit lists.

Save-or-die is a problem that designers, in their continued ignorance, have always left for DM's to solve. To a VERY limited extent save-or-die is okay. There ARE some things in a game world which should be able kill characters definitively, and without hesitation while still allowing PC's SOME chance of survival. The problem is that DM's need to be KEENLY aware of when and why they want to introduce such things into the game because it is then up to the DM to ensure that sufficient warnings and chances for avoidance or alternate solutions are given to the PC's.

Save-or-die is acceptable - but only when players CAN anticipate the danger level actually being faced, AND have opportunity to avoid it or alleviate the danger. Save-or-die is most eggregious when it occurs suddenly, without a sign of the actual danger and then the ONLY possible means of success is a SINGLE lucky die roll which players are then specifically in no position to even adjust circumstantially. PC's SHOULD die if they blunder unprepared into situations of certain death, ignoring danger signs and warnings.

And PC's and NPC's do NOT play by the same rules here. It's not generally a problem if PC's can whip out a few save-or-die effects on the bad guys. Kill all you want - I'll just make more. But players should have a reasonable expectation (especially as their characters gain levels) of being able to ensure their characters survival beyond a single, arbitrary die roll.

Making alterations to how "deaths door" is handled can be one solution, but the only proper solution is a studious process of finding those save-or-die effects and fixing them one by one. The fixes for each also need not be, indeed should not be universal. Some should be fixed by changing death effects to hit point damage, some to ability damage, some single/instant effects changed to ones that need to be sustained for a time or repeated to achieve full effect, some just dropped summarily, some provided with warning signs, others with onset time for their effects, and so on and so forth. In summary, they must be carefully written out of the game. There is no magic-bullet solution for them.

 

[Set]

Number one thing that needed fixing, IMO, was the problems inherent in trying to design a fantasy game, while holding one side of the system (PCs) to a different standard than the other side of the system (NPC / monsters).

The problem with Summoning/Calling spells, Shapeshifting, Mind Control spells, etc. isn't that any of those absolutely vital fantasy staples are unbalanced in a vacuum, since all of them are dependent on allowing the PCs to access abilities normally only available to NPCs. If there wasn't a CR 8 creature able to grant 3 Wishes / day, few people would give a rat's rearend about the Candle of Invocation. If the Fleshraker / War Troll / Solar / etc. weren't so darn unreasonable for their CR / HD, nobody would care if the Druid / Wizard / whatever turned into one.

You can go one route and just nerf shapeshifting, control spells, summoning spells, etc. into the ground (or just utterly remove them from the game), or go *even further* into desperate attempts to justify giving someone a 'Summon' power that creates ectoplasmic imaginary creatures that don't have the unbalanced and ridiculously arbitrary abilities that some creatures have (such as Spawn, Feed, Split, etc.).

Or you can do it right from the start, accept that this is a game where wizards and druids are supposed to be able to shapeshift, various casters are supposed to be able to summon up (or control) various creatures, and even Bob the Fighter and Jen the Rogue can take Leadership or insane ranks in Diplomacy and gain access to monsters as followers or allies.

If various creatures weren't inherently unbalanced, then no amount of polymorphing, summoning, candle of invocating, wild shaping, etc. would be unbalanced.

Too many 'fixes' focus on the PHB, and try to balance things from the Druid, Wizard, etc. lists, which does *nothing* to prevent someone with Diplomacy from convincing that Efreeti that for every Wish he grants you, you'll let him write two Wishes for his own benefit, and have them 'grant' them to you. (Assuming that the Efreeti isn't a total moron and doesn't already have a dozen mortals lined up for that very duty, pestering him to allow them to to be his wish-proxies for the day...) Like one of those assassins targetting Inspector Clouseau, the designers trying to 'fix' Wild Shape, Polymorph, Gate, etc. are missing the darn target, killing all sorts of class features indiscriminately, while the culprits in the Monster Manual laugh their heads off.