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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6188988" data-attributes="member: 4937">It varies considerably with DM.  I only allow a very exclusive list of things, about 40% of which is homebrew and the rest of which is in the original 3.0 player's handbook.  The only book that I've almost completely adopted other than the 3.0 player's handbook is Green Ronin's 'Shaman's Handbook', which replaces the core Druid class in my campaign.  The Holy Warrior class from Green Ronin's 'Book of the Righteous' was also hugely influential, though the current homebrew class resembles it only in the most broad outline.The earliest hard and fast ban was "No PrC's."  That was the first house rule I implemented in 3.X.In general my philosophy is, "Unrestrained spellcasters are broken past a certain level even in core 3.0.  Therefore, spellcasters need little additional support and actually minor nerfs.  Conversely, even compared to restrained spellcasters matial classes require additional support for high level play and need minor buffs and much support.  PrCs are inherently broken, but all classes need greater support for becoming a 'prestige class' through built in options and more powerful character defining feats."I consider my current homebrew the most balanced fantasy RPG I've ever played.  I'm very happy with the results.   No class nor combination of classes has managed to out shine the others in play.  All attempts to break my game, some of them quite creative* have merely resulted in interesting balanced characters.*(One player tried a fighter/feyborn spending both starting least fey magics on Enlarge Self, with the goal of out performing a basic Fanatic build.   It was fun and powerful, but didn't actually outperform the Fanatic.  I've also have a Sidhe with Misanthope (Human) which is the most creative abuse of the Empathy skill you could probably manage, but ultimately he's just managed to gain some circumstantial social skill points.   Fun, but not broken.   None of these builds occurred to me when I wrote the rules, and both surprised the heck out of me, but my inherent conservative nature when evaluating rules is again and again proved.  I can basically support just about any character you can imagine, without the problem 3.X has of trying to support every mechanical concept you can imagine.)Some players coming from 3.X hearing about my rules invariably go into revolt because they embraced 3.X power creep as the solution to the core rules problem of only 'spellcasters got good stuff' and think therefore by banning 3.X's extensive mechanical diversity I'm creating a game which you break by playing a full spellcaster and which has limited support for player creativity.   I feel little could be further from the truth.  3.X power creep created run away constraints on player creativity because of the need to hit some minimum bar of effectiveness that was always rising because of the ever rising expectations of power at a given level.  I know where those critics are coming from, but I think they game they try to create may have some balance to it but is inherently unstable and easily knocked over when unspoken table agreements are broken. On the other hand, while I'm very protective of my rules, I'm also very willing to smith out any option that a player makes a good case for that I don't currently support and am continually searching for good mechanics for things I know I don't yet support well.   What I am very unlikely to consider though is a demand for a particular mechanical implementation - "I need/want this specific mechanic.", as opposed to, "I need support for this currently suboptimal or uncreatable concept."</blockquote>

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