D&D 3E/3.5 House Rules for Spells in 3.5

[Thanee]

We currently think about doing the following changes:

Invisibility - Duration: 10 min./level
Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, etc. - Duration: 10 min./level
Fly - Duration: 10 min./level
Polymorph - Duration: 10 min./level; Range: Personal; Target: You

I also thought about changing Hold Person, so that every save to break free (that is, every after the initial save) is done at a -4 penalty, but that will not be done.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Nifft]

IMC, I grant bigger dice to higher-level Evocations:

- Cone of Cold: 1d8/level (max 15d8)
- Polar Ray: 1d10/level (max 25d10)
- Meteor Swarm: 24d10 (+impact damage)

For all my spell house rules, check here:
http://klimt.cns.nyu.edu/~fishman/DnD/spells.shtml

-- N

 

[Thanee]

[Off-Topic] Hey Nifft. No change to Psychofeedback (psionic power)!? Or did you already ban it?

Bye
Thanee

 

[Belbarrus]

My house rule changes are as follows:

-Ability increasing stats (e.g. Bull Strength, etc) have a duration of 10 min/level
-Bless grants its effect to all allies within an area. Aid is a higher level spell and grants an extra effect, but lowers the area to one character. So my house rule is that Aid has the same statistics as Bless, but also adds 8+caster level (max 10) temp hit points to allies.
-Use the 3.0 version of Haste and Mass Haste instead of the 3.5 version.
-Protection spells (like Protection from Evil) do not prevent bodily contact from summoned monsters

B

 

[Li Shenron]

We currently think about doing the following changes:
Invisibility - Duration: 10 min./level
Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, etc. - Duration: 10 min./level
Fly - Duration: 10 min./level
Polymorph - Duration: 10 min./level; Range: Personal; Target: You

I am not using any House Rules on spells (in fact I currently only use 3 HR at all), but yours here seems very fine for me, if ever you were asking for a comment.

Their normal short duration makes these spells useful in combat only, or for single feats: slip past the guards ONCE, fly over the wall ONCE, break ONE door and so forth.

Your change will allow these spells to be useful in more/longer situations: slip past all the guards to escape the prison, fly over a lake, engage in a door-bashing sporting contest

It is possible that at higher levels (and perhaps with the aid of Extend Spell) you can cover many combats with a single casting, but I don't think it will be overpowerful, and in general your change improve the chance of using the spell in a more creative way, which is a very good thing.

 

[Nifft]

[Off-Topic] Hey Nifft. No change to Psychofeedback (psionic power)!? Or did you already ban it?

It hasn't come up, but if it did, I'd ban it.

I've also changed Bodyfeeder / Mindfeeder weapons to be more generally useful and less prone to abuse.

Bodyfeeder: When expending a power point via the Psionic Weapon Feat, you deal +1d4 damage as usual. However, you also heal an equal amount of damage. Price: +1 equiv.

Mindfeeder: Whenever you inflict damage, you also deal 1 point of Wisdom damage. When the weapon deals wisdom damage, you gain 1 temporary power point. Price: +3 equiv.

-- N

 

[el-remmen]

Mine can be found here: http://www.matantisi.com/aquerra/rules/spells.htm

 

[Dancer]

One of the ways to curb the cry of "wizards are too powerful, especially at high levels" is too wait till they get to be high level to be powerful.

It's your game, you can do as you will, just know that you are drastically changing the tenor of your game by increasing the duration of Stat boosting spells. Fly and Polymorph are also huge changes. If you want to run a game where travel is interesting, you've killed that once your players reach 12th level or so.

Since there is no real penalty for keeping the buff spells as you've rewritten them up all the time, you've turned your medium to high level characters into supermen. Once again, that's okay if you are willing to forego some of the other parts of adventuring (dangerous travel, unprepared ambushes, etc).

With every Prestige class out there giving every character superhuman abilities, one might as well play Marvel. (that last one was a personal gripe and only vaguely connected to the conversation....Overpowering issues.

 

[VirtualWizard]

I haven't implemented any house rules for spells yet. However, I was thinking about making all the cure/inflict spells ranged touch spells with no level change.

 

[Abraxas]

I've already implemented:
Invisibility - Duration: 10 min./level

Bull's Strength, Cat's Grace, etc. - Duration: 10 min./level
plus only one mental and one physical booster can be in effect at one time on one character

These work fine. Since they can only be extended once to 20 minutes/level they still don't last that long and the characters have to decide when to start the clock.

Fly - Duration: 1 min./level/level, so, for example, at 5 th level it lasts (1+2+3+4+5 = 15 minutes)

Polymorph - haven't worked to much with this one yet, am thinking about implementing the changes found here http://www.giantitp.com/Func0012.html