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Message: <blockquote data-quote="an_idol_mind" data-source="post: 4833839" data-attributes="member: 43749">I find it odd that a game with as much 3rd party support as 3e, let alone the big book o' house rules that is Unearthed Arcana, gets lambasted as being impossible to modify. I especially think it's odd that there's suddenly a perception that your new house rule has to be completely unbreakable, when in reality it only has to make gameplay more enjoyable for the handful of people you play with. In my 3rd edition game, some of my house rules include:-AC increasing as level increases (also, magic weapons and armor being extremely rare),-Encumbrance being tossed out completely,-Favored classes being ignored,-All skills being considered class skills for all classes,-Critical hits only occurring on a natural 20 and always dealing double damage (yeah...the scimitar is useless. Instead, we call it a curved longsword or shortsword)-Massive damage rules being totally ignored,-Strength modifiers to damage not being increased or reduced for two-handed or light weapons,-Spellcasters getting 0-level spells at will, and-Permanent level drain being stripped out of the game. My game has run for years quite happily. Similarly, when I ran earlier editions, I included such house rules as:-Point-based ability score purchase (oh no! Anyone can have an 18 if they want!),-No class or level restrictions on any race (who will play the poor human now?),-Alignment not even existing (blasphemy!),-Any class capable of being proficient in any weapon,-No encumbrance rules (again - I just plain don't like them),-No experience gained for gold pieces earned,-Spells not requiring material components,-Ignoring the punching and wrestling rules entirely,-Replacing the AD&D initiative system with the BECMI version,-Ignoring weapon speeds, casting times, and rate of fire (what's to balance a heavy crossbow now?),-Tossing energy drain and instant death effects into the garbage (and yes, I still used wights, wraiths, and banshees), and-Removing raise dead, resurrection, and anything else that brought the dead back. All of these changes and more didn't impede the games I ran. All of them were custom tailored to the tastes of myself and my groups. And for almost all of them, the AD&D changes included, there are dozens of people who would claim that I was tossing the balance of the system completely out of whack - especially with such things as no level limits or class restrictions. I think the perception of 3rd edition being unchangable comes more from the facts that: 1) the designers made their design decisions much more explicit than ever before, lending to the notion that everything was somehow carefully balanced, and 2) the Internet makes it a lot easier for people to shoot things down as unbalanced or as ruining the game than before, when such decisions were rarely discussed beyond the gaming group they were used for.</blockquote>

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