D&D 3.x "Just the Good Stuff" 3.x Ruleset Deckbuilding

[Celebrim]

I have a 600 page house rules document that is a fork of 3.0e that I call 3.25e or 3e AD&D that reworks a ton of the base game to fix balance issues, deal with problems that the designers tried to kludge into the PrC concept without using PrCs, and generally be a crunchier game that is harder to break out of the box and plays well for a longer time and in more situations.

And that's just the "Player's Handbook". I have a road map to a complete new edition of a professional scale that I'd probably never finish in my lifetime.

I can point to somethings that people could port in more or less wholesale:

a) The chase subsystem from "Hot Pursuit" https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/pro...initive-d20-guide-to-chases?products_id=18966
b) The fear, madness, and horror subsystem from S&'s Ravenloft source book https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/2478/ravenloft-3-0
c) The bits and pieces I have posted on EnWorld if you search for "playing like Celebrim". I've also mentioned major revisions as well like spells not adding their spell level to the DC of the save as well that just plays so well.
d) The Shaman class from Green Ronin's 'Shaman's Handbook' https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515890/shaman-s-handbook.

My own rules rework the class substantially in order to completely deprecate the Druid, essentially porting any spell from the druid list that isn't part of some other class over to the Shaman and turning things like Wildshape into a spell. But the class is fairly solid as is, needing only a tweak on having an ethereal familiar if your game world uses the stock ethereal plane because that would be OP if your ethereal plane just allowed you to pass through walls.

I personally use the Ethereal Plane from the Classic Play Book of the Planes: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/1673/the-book-of-the-planes because in that conception of the plane things that are solid in the real world tend to be solid in the ethereal as well and you can't generally use the ethereal to easily bypass walls and the like (though you often can use it to move through a door). See the description of the plane in that book for why.

e) Deprecate the Paladin in favor of either my Champion (from 'c') or the Green Ronin Holy Warrior from their Book of the Righteous. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/20694/book-of-the-righteous

The GR Champion is not flexible and not balanced, but I stole the ideas from it to make my flexible version that isn't tied to a particular mythology. It is IMO the best class I've ever made, and it makes the WotC Paladin look immature from a design perspective. No cap, as they say these days.

 

[Celebrim]

Were I ever to run 3.x again, I'd also put a much tighter limit on multiclassing: each character can have a maximum of three classes: their races' favoured class, one other base class of their choice, and one prestige class.

So my rules implement this by getting rid of prestige classes and typically turning prestige class abilities that have no other source into feats if that ability seems reasonable.

Additionally, there are very low minimum requirements to get into a class - for example you have to have at least 9 strength to be a fighter - inspired by 1e AD&D. Also inspired somewhat by 1e AD&D, the more classes you have the higher the requirements are. Each prerequisite ability score increases by 2 for each class beyond the first. If you want to be a Fighter/Rogue, well you need at least 11's in both STR and DEX. That's trivial, but very quickly isn't trivial if you tried to stack more than three classes each with their own requirements. Essentially I'm forcing MAD as a balancing mechanism, while putting a soft cap on how many classes you can take. Between that and enforcing/keeping the 3e rule that you take an XP penalty for certain types of dips, typically this means less multiclassing. It's really the PRC that is the problem, because most of the PrCs are front loaded, typically more than one feat equivalent ability per level, and as the number of PrCs increased typically you had a situation where multiple front loaded classes existed to cover the same concept leading to the ability to stack (unnecessarily) multiple abilities that covered the same concept ("I'm better at X than normal"). That's just braindead levels of design IMO, and as I started to trim down the PrCs to those that I felt needed I soon realized the only PrCs that were needed were those that covered gaps in the multiclassing rules where by the RAW multiclassing as a spellcaster would otherwise always be bad. That became a feat tree that taxes those sorts of multiclassing, while still enabling and encouraging it (because it is a powerful and interesting thing to do). Thus, no PrCs ended up making the cut.

I end up in a situation where I can cover more concepts than all of 3.5e put together with like one 20th of the rules and without the stacking problem of multiple mechanics improving the same area that breaks 3.5e balance all to pieces. Granted, if your idea of a character concept is a meta concept, that is, "My character can use this mechanic to interact with this other mechanic" then I can't cover that and don't want to, because frankly if that is what you think a character concept is, then you don't know how to RP and I don't want you at my table. But if your character concept is "I was raised by wolves" or "I am really good at fire magic" or "I'm a paladin of the god of thieves" or something like that, you get supported in a way that doesn't steal spotlight but let's you shine and feel unique(ish).

 

[DeadlyUematsu]

I've tinkered with the idea of treating prestige classes as 5e subclasses in that you start acquiring the class features (so no spell progression unless it's native) of one starting at 6th level. I imagine it wouldn't be that popular since I excluded PrCs that were obviously powergrabs from the selection.