Don't play 3e? I pointed you to something straight from the PHB, but whatever.
Sorry, but, "Make up your own rules" isn't really a rule to me. If I could just "make up my own rules" then 4e is every single bit as wide open as 3e.
If you're looking at making a Henry V character, why would alignment restrictions matter if the alignments you're restricted to fit Henry V? In other words, if the restriction isn't an actual restriction or is a voluntarily used tactic, why complain about it?
Actually, I thought of this later and you're right. Every example I gave would fit a lawful alignment. Yeah, alignment restriction is probably out. Could I change that to "must be allowed to be lawful"?
So play a fighter/cleric with a 9 Wisdom. Pick whatever alignment you want. Yeah, you'll have the ability to turn (or rebuke) undead, but if you don't want the ability, don't use it. Opting not to use an ability you have is functionally identical to not having the ability at all.
Heh. Now THAT'S a unique solution. I like it.
Not quite what I want, since I do actually have the whole god botherer thing going on, but, y'know what, that's gotta score some serious points for originality. Although, I still get domain abilities there too. That I'd have to be careful of. And it does tie me pretty tightly with a particular diety. But, I do like it.
Good idea.
So you've got 3 options to do what you wanted. Whats the problem? They're not a very good fit? I think they all work quite well. The fighter option is the slightly worse, but core option. The Cosmopolitan feat seems to give you just what you're looking for.
Yup, I've got three options. I had to wait years to get those, but, yup, I got three options. Look, if the claim on the table is that 3e, after 8 years of publication, plus the OGL has more options than 4e after a year and a half, then sure, no problem. I'll agree to that. It bloody well should. Several hundred books vs a couple of dozen, I would hope you have more options.
But, my point was, my options are largely illusionary. I had to have access to those books in order to have those options. A year and a half after 3e release, I had one option. At best I have three (maybe 4). That's hardly a massive number of choices here. I mean, apparently having the same number of choices out of the box in 4e isn't good enough, so why is it good enough in 3e?
You can nitpick at anything. If you want to mix up my core pure fighter build a build without violating your points, take a few levels in ranger, barbarian, monk, paladin, or some of the non-core fighting type classes. Just stop before you get magic or whatever abilities you don't want. You may be restricted from some of these by your alignment, but certainly not all of them. Prestige classes are also available, the only core one that might fight your concept is the dwarven defender, but there are way too many outside of core.
Really? Too many? So far, we've got 3. 4 if you count the gibbled cleric route.
E6 is one option for low magic 3.5 d&d. But, I think this point is really not what we're talking about when we say 3.5 isn't homogeneous.
Again, I brought up a simple archetype that is pretty common in the genre. Henry V, Carrot, Maximus, the guy from 300. I can point to genre characters that everyone who is a fan of the genre will know. It's not like I'm saying "Shortbow wielding rogue". Point me out that archetype in genre. Let's see examples of that.
Noble/Officer type is hardly a unique snowflake. This is a bog standard character. And you guys can't make it in core. End of story. The closest you can get is a halfway build cross classing with burning skill bonus feats. If I want to add any other out of combat ability to this character, that certainly isn't going to happen.
That's why I say the variety of build isn't actually all that varied in 3e. Not as much as you guys are trying to make it out to be. If the variety of build was so broad, I should be able to make this pretty simple concept with no problem at all, right in core. And, with all the additional options, I should be able to fufill my list with any number of ways.
Instead, after hundreds of books, thousands of pages of rules, I got 3. Three options, only one of which ACTUALLY fufills my list.
To me, 3e's heterogeny is largely an illusion when the pen hits the paper. For any given concept that mixes combat with non-combat, your choices are very, very limited because 3e uses non-combat to balance combat abilities.
If your concept is pure combat or pure out of combat, you have a plethora of choices. Totally agree. I want to make an archer? The list is as long as my arm. I want to make an archer that knows stuff? Wow, did my list just shrink.
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