Do you allow feats/PrCs from Dragon or non WotC products

[Crothian]

That's just my take on it. When it comes to DMing, I love 3rd party stuff. But for the players, they get Core and the 5 WotC Splats, and that's it. Give everyone the same resources to work with and nobody feels like someone else got a better deal 'cuz he owns more books.

Why doesn't player A help player B by lending out the books or suggesting things from the books for player B? That's what we do. I know there are books I have that the others do not, so I go out of my way to try to suggest things for their characters.

 

[johnsemlak]

Why doesn't player A help player B by lending out the books or suggesting things from the books for player B? That's what we do. I know there are books I have that the others do not, so I go out of my way to try to suggest things for their characters.

That should work, but it sometimes gets complicated depending on the group. Some group members may not be the most punctual about returning books. Some may just not be interested themselves in combing through third party material. I've loaned stuff out to members of my group but still I'm the only one using a lot of options from non-WotC material.

 

[HellHound]

Since I'm the only collector of d20 products in my gaming group, it's a non-issue.

I say what goes and what doesn't.

 

[Emiricol]

Met a couple of DMs who said they don't allow feats and PrCs from Dragon magazine and other WotC sources. To them, they find some of the stuff unbalancing. They also say it's just too hard to reference some of the stuff.
Most of the time, they'll allow stuff from just the WotC books. What about your campaign?

I permit most anything from most any source as long as 1) I can review it first, 2) I approve it, and 3) I either have the book or they give me a copy of the relevant section.

 

[Ranger REG]

Most of the time, they'll allow stuff from just the WotC books. What about your campaign?

I've used feats from non-WotC sources, as well as magazines and on the internet.

Of course, I must review the feat first and see if it may unbalance the dynamics of my campaign. Any smart DM would do that before putting it in play, or they'll have to deal with the repercussion.

So, yeah, I try not to limit my option to just Wizards only. There are other designers that have great ideas ... not always, but they are there. Heck, sometimes I don't use everything that Wizards published, but I use most of them.

 

[Olive]

Since I'm the only collector of d20 products in my gaming group, it's a non-issue.

I say what goes and what doesn't.

This is pretty much my situation as well.

 

[Gizzard]

Tangent: Since Krug asked about Dragon, how do people feel about the stuff that's published there? I really like to keep a tight lid on my game (it's not like my players have halfway explored all the Core classes and feats anyway) but I do consider using non-Core stuff as one-shot flavor for bad guys.

Still, a lot of the monsters, equipment and feats I see in Dragon make me a bit nervous balance-wise. "Hey, look, it's a CR 1 creature with DR5/+1, SR 12 and Fly 80'. Hmmm. (#306, p 39)" Do people generally find Dragon's stuff well balanced or is it on an author-by-author basis?

 

[Darkness]

This is pretty much my situation as well.

Me three.

 

[mearls]

Still, a lot of the monsters, equipment and feats I see in Dragon make me a bit nervous balance-wise. "Hey, look, it's a CR 1 creature with DR5/+1, SR 12 and Fly 80'. Hmmm. (#306, p 39)" Do people generally find Dragon's stuff well balanced or is it on an author-by-author basis?

Most of the battleloths have lower than normal CRs because their attacks are so pathetic. The arrow battleloth has a +2 bab and does 1-3 damage with its claws. With an AC 16 (17 if it dodges) and 4 hit points it's pretty easy to hit. If you compare it to a stirge, I think it fits in with the MM creatures, especially if you consider that a stirge gets a +6 touch attack.

The funny thing is, as soon as you give it Flyby Attack it bumps up to 2 or 3. In a way, Dodge is a bad feat choice for it in the strictest sense of "make it as powerful as possible with the limited resources at hand."

Monster balance is always tricky, because so much of it depends on the party's abilities and the designer's style.

Let's say a 1st-level party with a barbarian and a wizard encounter an arrow battleloth.

The barbarian has an 18 Str, Power Attack, and a great axe. His BAB is +5 and he deals 1d12+6 damage. He deals on average about 12.5 damage per hit to the poor daemon and has a 45% chance to hit if it dodges him, 50% if it doesn't. Even if the daemon attacks the party wizard, who probably has an AC in the 12 to 14 range and 5 or 6 hit points (Toughness or good Con) it only hits about 55% of the time and deals 1.5 damage. If the daemon uses the full-attack action, it gets two strikes, but that means it can't move. More than likely, the party surrounds and kills it. In any event, the daemon drops the wizard to 0 or lower in about 4 rounds if it never moves away and fights suicidally.

(If you replace the barbarian with a 16 Str fighter, things stay about the same. His damage goes down, but feats like Weapon Focus, equipment like reach weapons, and so on, roughly balances things out. The fighter with a longsword does about 7.5 points of damage per hit, but hits at the same rate. It takes him about 4 rounds to kill the daemon, longer than the barbarian but still faster than the average fight IME. It's worth noting, too, that if the wizard blasts away at the daemon with his spells he affects it half the time. If he casts shield, the poor 'loth doesn't have much chance to hit him: 15%, dropping to 5% pretty quickly if the wizard has mage armor or a good Dex.

The cleric and the rogue don't matter much since the rogue more than likely has to sneak attack to kill the creature and the cleric is in a weird binary situation: he either casts magic weapon and swats the thing dead in one hit, or he has to hit it several times. In either case, both of those character's average damage (1d8) is good enough to beat the DR about 38% of the time, with that value going up pretty fast if either has a Strength bonus. Both characters can hit about 25% of the time, meaning it takes them about 6 rounds working together to kill it, possibly fewer if the rogue sneak attacks. Against both those characters, the daemon has about a 30% chance to hit the cleric, and it takes it about 6 hits to drop him. Even with both attacks, it takes the 'loth almost 10 rounds to defeat the cleric. He can take down the rogue in about 8 rounds.

So this is the basic crux of it: it's a CR 1 monster that takes 2 or 3 rounds to overcome the weakest member of the party. It has a very limited window of opportunity against the characters. It needs to attack the low AC character. That's why giving it Flyby Attack bumps the CR up by 1, maybe 2, since it strengthens its core ability.

At this point, you might be wondering: what does all this mean? In essence, creatures with DR at low level give the fighters, barbarians, and paladins a chance to shine. With their good Strength scores, they can wallop right through DR 5 and take down this creature. A fair number of the creatures I design are built that way: one of the four core character types are meant to clobber it.

But this brings us back to the original point: is this creature balanced? My answer is yes, if you have a fighter with good damage potential in the party. If not, the party is going to have some trouble with it. It's fly speed allows it to zero in on the wizard or sorcerer, though it has to sit still to attack. More than likely, you'll have the wizard flanked by two characters with held actions to hit the monster when it moves in to attack, and the thing will do about 4 or 5 damage to the arcane caster before it drops.

So, in summary Gizzard's DM sense is working pretty well. This creature is balanced, IMO, against most parties, but some groups are going to have problems with it. It also has what I call a swing factor (swing factor means "how easily does this creature swing from "Man, was that thing a wuss?" to "Man, is that thing broken?") The offical rating for this one is "freakin' crazy." This is the kind of monster that either the wizard hits with a magic missile, beats its SR, and does 5 points of damage to drop it one the first round of combat, or the party never comes close to beating its SR and can't manage to hit for more than 5 points regardless of how many modiifers they throw on to it.

That's one of the tough things about designing monsters: you can't predict what every party has with them. What you can do is make assumptions based on what you've seen people do in play, which is one of the many reasons my first words of advice to any would-be d20 designer are "Play the game as often as possible with as wide a range of people as possible."

This also illustrates one of my design conceits: I like creatures that give basic types of characters a chance to shine. When I build a creature, I tend to think in terms of the four core classes and tailor it to have weaknesses against one type and strengths against another, with the other two roughly balanced against it. IMO, the unbalance this causes against some parties is compensated by the majority of groups that can handle it.

(BTW, my math is off in the examples. I'll be shocked if there aren't any mistakes. I just woke up, and I don't have my notes or calculator with me. If anyone wants to argue the specifics of the example, I'm probably going to be too busy the rest of the week to get back to you.)

(BTW part 2, the 'loths were also designed for use by higher CR creatures to use as weapons against higher level parties. Most of the time, they'll be going against parties about 3 levels higher than their CRs.)

 

[Endur]

For the drow campaign I'm GMing, I'm allowing 3.0/3.5 PHB and FRCS materials. And Drow materials from other resources on a case by case basis.

I'm not a big fan of having a zillion rules, so I'm not allowing PRCs. Nor am I allowing feats beyond the PHB and FRCS.

PRCs and new feats are interesting, but I'm one of those who feels that you can do everything you need to do for a role-playing game with the basic PHB.