Quite a class-book vision, Ryan D!

[Voadam]

I understand the new uses for old skills and AEG has been the one I'm most impressed with by doing this. However, how would you do new uses for old feats? Feats seem pretty well defined and limited so I'm not sure how this would be done.

In my campaign wizards can learn spells from any item they can create, all start with scribe scroll (barring special character creation options) so as a default it is just like core D&D where they can learn from scrolls but provides non xp consuming uses for creation feats.

 

[Voadam]

I was reading Ryan Dancey's excellent contribution to a thread over at RPG.net which Eric directed us towards http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?threadid=1910&perpage=20&pagenumber=3

And I was particularly taken by the following gem





Gosh, I'd love to have had classbooks which looked like this! Options 1 and 3 were things that I had particularly hoped for in the classbooks and sadly never saw realised... but they would have been worth *much* more to me than lots of extra prestige classes.

Sadly I don't suppose there is any real chance of seeing something like this appear now - but I wonder if anyone in the world of Netbooks would be up for considering some of these sorts of thing?

Cheers

#3 customizing classes is done in Unearthed Arcana for every class with a few options, I've used a bunch from there such as spontaneous divine casters, wolf barbarian, and wilderness rogue. Complete Warrior has spell-less ranger and paladin options I've considered. Ronin arts has a pdf of variants for the core classes, though I don't own it so can't say how good it is. Ditto for The Le which has done a series of pdfs on variant options for specific core classes.

 

[philreed]

Ronin arts has a pdf of variants for the core classes, though I don't own it so can't say how good it is.

Well, if you're willing to write a review of it for EnWorld drop me an e-mail at roninartspresident@yahoo.com and I'll send you a comp.

 

[Crothian]

We got some of it. However, a lot of Ryan's ideas are in other 3.5e books.

Cheers!

I'm not seeing it

 

[jrients]

I didn't know anyone still paid any attention to Ryan Dancey nowadays.

#1 was also done in goodman games "power gamers 3.5 warrior strategy guide", (although they got a few things wrong in execution, it is still useful to look at).

I like the 3.5 warrior guide from Goodman, but I'm not enough of a rules maven to know where it's flawed. Can you clue me in?

 

[diaglo]

I'm not seeing it

#2. is the 3.11ed for WOrkgroups Monster books.

adding monsters as possible PCs.

instead of going the savage species route like the 2000ed did.

 

[F5]

The funny thing is, there was already a book that did #1, but it was possibly the worst-received book in 3.0: The Hero Builder's Guidebook. The last chapter (before the name appendix) has recipes for building The Ultimate Archer (either elf for the Dex bonus or Human for the bonus feat, class is fighter all the way), The Witch-Hunter (fighter/wizard specialized in counterspelling), The Spy, The Friar (Tuck-like cleric or druid), etc...

I thought that, too. And in hindsight, I think the reason the Hero Builder's Handbook was so poorly-recieved is that the material didn't belong in its' own book. It' was content that a lot of people would have liked to see in the supplemental class books, but it wasn't enough to justify buying an entire book for it.

 

[jmucchiello]

3. Ideas for customizing the basic classes of [Book Focus] without creating whole new class concepts - a topic touched on in the DMG and almost completely ignored by all the d20 publishers (and WotC itself).

I haven't ignored this. But then, he posted this over a year before I released Character Customization so I guess that's why he might have missed it. (And yes, I'm still working on a 3.5 update....)

 

[Ranger REG]

Gosh, I'd love to have had classbooks which looked like this! Options 1 and 3 were things that I had particularly hoped for in the classbooks and sadly never saw realised... but they would have been worth *much* more to me than lots of extra prestige classes.

RE: Option #3

Actually, three issues of Dragon covered this, which they called it a "class variant." I myself once did a a fighter variant of the samurai, now posted in Wizards' messageboards. It is a great [variant] rule but I kept scratching my head as to why WotC didn't use it when they did the Complete series.

At least they did racial variant of classes, like the elf ranger variant in Races of the Wild.

One can hope they will do so in the upcoming Dungeon Master's Guide II (in addition to creating prestige classes).

 

[Particle_Man]

I didn't know anyone still paid any attention to Ryan Dancey nowadays.



I like the 3.5 warrior guide from Goodman, but I'm not enough of a rules maven to know where it's flawed. Can you clue me in?

Some of this is cut and pasted from earlier comments of mine, some looted from others' comments:

1) The humble Javelin is ignored as a decent ranged weapon, even though it has the best range increment of any thrown weapon in the phb. A simple weapon, but useful. And monks can use it!

2) The Power Attack charts are flawed, according to some math geeks. I don't pretend to understand the complicated bits. I do konw it doesn't take DR into account. Also, it doesn't distinguish between the 5th level barbarian with 16 str and the 6th level fighter with 14 str, even though the latter gets a secondary attack.

3) On page 11 of the PHB, under racial ability adjustments, it says "If these changes put your score above 18 or below 3, that's ok, except in the case of Intelligence, which does not go below 3". Yet in your book on p. 10, in the sidebar "How much Orc is too much?" you state falsely that a character's ability scores cannot fall below 3 during character generation. Contrary to what you state, an orc could begin the game with a score of 1 in Wisdom or Charisma or both.

4) Multi-Classed rules on p. 60 of the phb state that a multiclass character takes a -20% penalty to XP for each class that is not within one level of his or her highest-level class (favored classes excepted). Yet your book on p. 26, has allegedly perfect characters suffer this penalty with multi-classed heavy infantry, who would gain a penalty for levels 10-11 if human or half-elf, or 10-12 if a dwarf. The penalty is also suffered for multi-classed light infantry on p. 27 for levels 13-14, and for multi-classed skirmisher on p. 28 for levels 10, 13, 15-20 (you seem to be under the false belief that if levels are kept "in a line" (i.e. 1st/2nd/3rd/4th/5th) there is no penalty, but the rules clearly state that there is a penalty in such cases, since only comparison with the highest level class that is not a favored class is considered, thus mandating a penalty).

5) Looks like they use the 3.0 version of keen, since they don't think it applies to piercing weapons.