For those with some time on their hands...

[Balder]

Greetings,

I have a rather huge collection of house rules, and in one week they are going to be tested. To save myself the humiliation of having all the players rip them apart, I would like those of you who have the time, to comment on their strengths and weaknesses. Many of the rules have been brutally copied, edited and pasted from this forum, others were found in obscure corners of the internet (that were not this forum) and some I have made in moments of inspiration and/or insanity while reading Unearthed Arcana.

My group is making the switch to 3.5e the very session we are going to test these rules... In other words, these rules have been written for 3.5e without us ever having played that edition. This means that I might have missed a few of the changes from 3e to 3.5e and added a completely irrelevant house rule or two. I do not think so, but I would rather that you were warned so you won't start throwing rocks or similar blunt and heavy objects at me.

I should add, that most of the rules won't make sense unless you read chapter 8 (combat rules) first. Also, some of the feat rules are in addition to the normal use of the feat, and some overwrite the normal use. After reading chapter 8, it should hopefully be obvious which are completely overwritten.

I've uploaded the rules to my server, since there are a few tables and a few images, and I've no idea how to post stuff like that. Mostly, though, it's because the rules would simply take up too much space to post all of them here. Well, enough talk. For those who made it this far... The rules: http://www.balderweb.dk/rules.html

I look forward to reading your comments/threats/manic laughter.

Regards,
Balder

 

[Clay_More]

Hey mate, just wanted to throw in my share of opinions.

"Damage reduction is 3.0 version."

I always considered the 3.5 DR to be one of the best aspects of the new edition, it makes alot more sense than the old. It seems silly that you are fighting a monster with 50/+12, and because you have a +11 weapon you might as well have had a scary wooden stick. The reduced DR and the ability of all magical weapons to overcome DR removes flavour.

"ETIQUETTE"

The rules about not saying HP makes alot of sense, same with alignment. The part about HP is something I wouldn't mind including in my own game, just never get around to it.

"RESURRECTION"

You might want to mention if this removes any penalties for using current spells. Does Raise Dead still reduce level by 1?

"ABILITY INCREASE"

Even though it is slightly more complicated than the normal rules for Ability Increases, I can see what you are trying to do with it, avoiding the über scores some characters have. I just think that the system will make it easy for all character to remove their really low scores quickly in the game. Since it so cheap to raise scores with negative modifiers, I think you might risk ending up with bland character very quickly, with no negative scores and no really high scores (unless items are worn, which are a far more normal thing used for gaining the really high Ability Scores).

"HIT POINTS"

This one is okay, its what I use myself and it works.

"CLASSES"

I think the change to the Cleric and Druid are both fair. That way, they can choose if they want to be the slightly combat heavy types they normally are (by choosing the Armor Feats with their bonus feat), or they can become more support characters (like the Cleric is in many computer games, for example).

The whole thing about the Fighter seems okay, didn't read through all feats really closely, but generally I have always thought that the Fighter, being the most versatile melee combatant, should be able to duplicate some of the abilities of the other classes (but not to the full extent).

The Paladin is okay, that ressurecting the mount causes the XP loss to be negated.

The Wizard's forced skill choice is okay, most people already keeps Knowledge (Arcana) maxed anyways. Most Wizards worth their salt will still have enough skill points to keep Spellcraft and Concentration maxed.

"SYNERGY BONUSES"

There was a discussion about this elsewhere in the forums. I think it seems only fair to increase synergy bonuses, but keep it a little bit lower to keep things even at really high levels. Perhaps simply +1 for every 10 ranks seems plausible. +2 at 5 ranks, +3 at 15. Otherwise skills with synergy bonus will be more unbalanced at Epic levels.

"DIPLOMACY"

I think its fair enough to remove Diplomacy and require roleplayers to roleplay the meetings they make. I use Diplomacy, but I simply add hefty bonuses/penalties according to how the players interact.

"KNOWLEDGE"

I think its a little bit too complicated to make Knowledge this heavy in use. Trying to identify an opponent monster or something wielded by an opponent will really slow things down. What was wrong with simply determining the success based on the roll?

"TOUGHNESS"

Is slightly vague in its wording, simply state "one bonus HP per level"

"TUMBLE"

Erm, should be in skills.

"WEAPON FINESSE"

When you state it is a rule, not a feat, do you mean all weapon use DEX to determine their "to hit" bonus?

"EQUIPMENT"

The nerf-down on Vorpal is fair enough. Nothing else to really say.

"COMBAT"

The rules for dying seems okay. I use a rule in my own game that every round you roll 1d20 and 20 or above stop you from bleeding. You add your Con Mod to the roll, so high Con characters have a far bigger chance of stopping bleeding. (a characterwith 20 Con stops bleeding on a roll of 14 to 20). Also, all Dwarves and Half-Orcs have a +1 bonus to their roll.

I am a little bit unable to figure out the exact rules you use about initiative. The fact that the system might require combat to be handled second by second seems to overcomplicate combat a tad.

"ATTACKS"

The rule with making a silent attack roll should still suffer some adjudication by the DM. Making an attack with a mace against someone in heavy armor is near to impossible to do without making a sound. You might want to decrease the penalty (which I assume it is, even though it states it actually adds to the attack) for especially useful weapons, like daggers, blackjacks etc.

"FUMBLES"

Its an interesting table. I have seen tables being used before for determining fumbles, one rule I saw was that a character in light or no armor can use their DEX bonus to either add or subtract from the roll (enabling agile characters to avoid really annoying results of a fumble).

 

[Balder]

Thanks for the reply. I much appreciate the feedback, and I've altered some of the rules to make them (hopefully) more practical.

Damage reduction: I agree that DR in 3e is somewhat silly, but my alignment rule makes the 3.5e DR seem wrong, somehow. Another tread suggested that each +1 of a weapon negates 3 DR. I've changed the rule so DR is be the 3e system, but at 3.5e "strength" - instead of DR being in the range of 10 to 30, it is 5 to 15, and every +1 negates 3 DR, except for creatures with DR x/-.

Resurrection: Good idea. Any other penalties associated with raising spells are still in place, but the rule didn't mention this. It does now. (This rule should make players a bit more careful... Death is something to be feared, even if one has the gold for a true resurrection.)

Ability increase: I see your point, but I hope it won't be a problem. I'll wait and see on this one.

Synergy bonuses: I'll change it to +1 for the first five, and another +1 for every 10 beyond 5. That should keep the balance.

Knowledge: You're absolutely right. This means I'll have to change the way bardic knowledge works, though. It'll probably just become a bonus of half the bards level to knowledge checks.

Toughness: Vague, I agree. Now it says "grants an extra level of hp. That is, whatever class taking this feat may apply his hit points for that level twice, not including CON modifiers". So a fighter taking this feat would roll 2d10 hp for that level-up, instead of just 1d10.

Tumble: Doh!

Weapon finesse: It means that any light weapon may be used with DEX instead of STR on the attack roll, whether the character has the feat or not. Also, half the DEX modifier may be applied to the damage roll. I forgot to write this before.

Combat: The rules about initiative I like, the part about combat being split into seconds I do not. It may very well prove completely undoable or greatly complicated. It is a difficult thing to make rules on... The intent is, basically, to let combat be less restrictive, and more realistic. I dislike the way combat is a "let's take turns hitting one another" comedy. This rule requires some like-minded people to work, I think, and it will probably be defenestrated after half an hour of play. I'd like to get it to work, but I'm not holding my breath. Without this rule, I'd still say that attacks made as a standard action is half the characters number of attacks per round, rounded down. That only one attack is possible, no matter how many attacks you could make as a full-round action, seems very odd.

Attacks: Agreed. It depends very much on the situation.

Fumbles: I like that idea a lot. I think I'll write in something like it.


Hopefully some of the really bad and unbalancing rules will have been removed before next thursday. We're going to play for 3 or 4 days in a row then. I'll try to look a lot into balance issues before we start playing, but with this many house rules some problems are probably unavoidable.

Cheers,
Balder (who is trying hard to hate squirrels)

 

[Terwox]

yikes.
If this works for your group, cool, but I suspect it will be way too much stuff, unless you had a similar huge set of rules in 3.0.
G'luck w/ it, though!

 

[haiiro]

My group is making the switch to 3.5e the very session we are going to test these rules... In other words, these rules have been written for 3.5e without us ever having played that edition. This means that I might have missed a few of the changes from 3e to 3.5e and added a completely irrelevant house rule or two. I do not think so, but I would rather that you were warned so you won't start throwing rocks or similar blunt and heavy objects at me.

This is certainly a lot of house rules. As a player, if I was presented with this list before the game, I most likely wouldn't play -- to me, some of the rules seem like change for change's sake.

How much of your list carries over from your 3.0 games? How many of the rules have actually come up in play, as opposed to just being neat ideas? If most of them are new to your upcoming game, and most of them haven't come up in play, I would try and cut the list down quite a bit.

I understand that you're testing them, but I think it would probably be weeks or months before some of them arise in play (which makes testing them difficult). No disrespect intended, I'm just giving you another perspective.

 

[Balder]

Point taken. Many of the rules will see very infrequent use, I admit. I'll go over the list and cut out the ones unlikely to see actual use anytime soon. And no disrespect taken - receiving criticism is never fun, but often a big help. I appreciate the input, even if it isn't what I wanted to hear.

Edit: There, I've moved all the rules that could be called "common sense," those which will rarely see use and those which, with the current party, will take some time to become relevant. The combat rules have been given their own chapter.

I'll still hang on to the ones I've removed, though... If/when they become relevant I can pull them out of my magic hat and save the day... Or make it worse. Time will tell.

And by the way, you may suspect that the alignment rule is irrelevant or just plain weird. It's very relevant for one of the party members, a half-fiend struggling to break free from the darkness in his soul. With an alignment of LE, a NG personality, and evil slowly consuming him, it's a necessary rule. It may require tweaking, but it has to be there.

Anyway, the number of rules should be more reasonable now, and sufficiently simple that I don't foresee any problems with the ones remaining.