D&D 3E/3.5 Retro-cloning D&D 3.0

[DeadlyUematsu]

Side based combat turns are such a great way to speed up play in a number of ways. But I am somewhat hesitant because of how prominent Initiative modifiers are in the game. Lots of creatures and NPCs have the Improved Initiative feat. Replacing the feat with something else that fits the creature would be a lot of work, and just ignoring initiative with no replacement feels very inelegant.

You could have the character with the highest initiative bonus in each group make an initiative roll for all the members of the group. This would make the Improved Initiative feat still relevant for monsters and NPCs.
It would mean that it would be pointless for the players to have more than one party member who has Improved Initiative. But it's not that awesome of a feat anyway, and if that's something known to the players from the start, then they can make their characters accordingly. Unlike monsters and generic NPCs that already exist outside of the campaign, the PCs are all always tailor made for the specific campaign that is played.

With 3.5e, some of my players ended up stacking initiative bonuses so high (some guy had a +29 initiative roll, others were not so far behind) that leaving Improved Initiative on the stat block was effectively worthless. Depending on monster, I usually substituted in Brutal Throw, Combat Reflexes, or another bread-and-butter feat since it wouldn't be as worthless (assuming the monster survived largely going last).

 

[payn]

It depends on where one considers the sweet spot to be. E6 is too low-level for my tastes.

I'm considering running a "2E6" or "E6 x 2" game, with character levels up to 12, most classes limited to 6th, and spells thus limited to 3rd. Multiclassing is expected, and rules that hamper multiclassing get modified with a chain saw.

Why dont you just call it E12? Many do consider the sweet spot to be level 5-8 in 3E, but I did run often in the PF1 era up to 12. Though, by that time my table and I were very very ready to start over again.

 

[Celebrim]

In general, 3.0e was superior to 3.5e.

But this doesn't mean that 3.0e was without problems. There are a lot of things to take care of and what you take care of is a personal preference.

At the minimum I would recommend people who stick with 3.0e:

a) Ban PrCs. There is a long discussion why but PrC's break 3.0e's design in multiple ways and were kludged into being the solution for multiple problems and oversights with 3e D&D's design (multi-classing casters and non-casters for example) in ways that ultimately were unhappy solutions.
b) Evaluate the version of the spell in 3.0e and 3.5e and always take the weaker version of the spell. 3.5 broke the game with a bunch of unneeded spell rebalancing - the fixes to haste and harm were offset by breaking so many other spells. Avoid adding a lot of new spells to the game that solve some big problem that casters have, as casters really don't need more solutions.
c) Drop the rule that the level of a spell adds to the DC to save from the spell. This requires a few other rewrites, but it is worth it as this change alone goes a long way to producing parity between casters and non-casters. Additionally, go ahead and drop the rule that half the HD of the monster adds to the DC of saving versus its non-spell abilities. One problem with the 3.X design is that unlike 1e/2e, as the consequences of failing a save increase the chance that the PC succeeds in the save doesn't go up, producing a situation where in order for high level PC's to survive they need magical aid in the form of immunities. And that blows the balance between casters and non-casters completely away. With these changes, save or suck stops being the obvious winning strategy. After banning PrC's you'll probably also have gotten away of a lot of the easy ways to up DC to the point that spells reliably succeed.
d) Ban divine wands. This is a bit more controversial, but divine wands weren't really present in 1e/2e and they create lots of weirdness - most notably with the massive efficiency of Wand of Cure Light Wounds, but really in general.
e) Ban the "Natural Spell" feat. Avoid power ups to the Druid class introduced by 3.5. I banned it entirely, but it's a lengthy discussion of how to ban the class but retain the class concept of an animist spellcaster.
f) Nerf the Cleric slightly by reducing its available spells in each spell level by one. In other words, at some levels it will be 0+1D spell, having access to only it's domain spell. Secondly, require the Cleric to have a spell list similar to the sorcerer so that it does not have access to every divine spell. This avoids the problem of every divine spell you introduce automatically becoming a cleric class feature and along with the above prevents CoDZilla.
g) Redo the fighter by giving it more skill points and more feats. Four skill points and one feat at every level not divisible by 3 up to 15th level and then an extra feat at every level above 15th level works pretty well (so like 2 bonus feats at 16th). It still won't get it up to tier 3 without some more help but it does make fighters relevant.

After that it very much gets to be preference and figuring out what to bring in to add to the core rules that does actually benefit the game.

 

[Alzrius]

In general, 3.0e was superior to 3.5e.

But this doesn't mean that 3.0e was without problems. There are a lot of things to take care of and what you take care of is a personal preference.

At the minimum I would recommend people who stick with 3.0e:

a) Ban PrCs. There is a long discussion why but PrC's break 3.0e's design in multiple ways and were kludged into being the solution for multiple problems and oversights with 3e D&D's design (multi-classing casters and non-casters for example) in ways that ultimately were unhappy solutions.
b) Evaluate the version of the spell in 3.0e and 3.5e and always take the weaker version of the spell. 3.5 broke the game with a bunch of unneeded spell rebalancing - the fixes to haste and harm were offset by breaking so many other spells. Avoid adding a lot of new spells to the game that solve some big problem that casters have, as casters really don't need more solutions.
c) Drop the rule that the level of a spell adds to the DC to save from the spell. This requires a few other rewrites, but it is worth it as this change alone goes a long way to producing parity between casters and non-casters. Additionally, go ahead and drop the rule that half the HD of the monster adds to the DC of saving versus its non-spell abilities. One problem with the 3.X design is that unlike 1e/2e, as the consequences of failing a save increase the chance that the PC succeeds in the save doesn't go up, producing a situation where in order for high level PC's to survive they need magical aid in the form of immunities. And that blows the balance between casters and non-casters completely away. With these changes, save or suck stops being the obvious winning strategy. After banning PrC's you'll probably also have gotten away of a lot of the easy ways to up DC to the point that spells reliably succeed.
d) Ban divine wands. This is a bit more controversial, but divine wands weren't really present in 1e/2e and they create lots of weirdness - most notably with the massive efficiency of Wand of Cure Light Wounds, but really in general.
e) Ban the "Natural Spell" feat. Avoid power ups to the Druid class introduced by 3.5. I banned it entirely, but it's a lengthy discussion of how to ban the class but retain the class concept of an animist spellcaster.
f) Nerf the Cleric slightly by reducing its available spells in each spell level by one. In other words, at some levels it will be 0+1D spell, having access to only it's domain spell. Secondly, require the Cleric to have a spell list similar to the sorcerer so that it does not have access to every divine spell. This avoids the problem of every divine spell you introduce automatically becoming a cleric class feature and along with the above prevents CoDZilla.
g) Redo the fighter by giving it more skill points and more feats. Four skill points and one feat at every level not divisible by 3 up to 15th level and then an extra feat at every level above 15th level works pretty well (so like 2 bonus feats at 16th). It still won't get it up to tier 3 without some more help but it does make fighters relevant.

After that it very much gets to be preference and figuring out what to bring in to add to the core rules that does actually benefit the game.

I don't have the specifics handy, but I'd also recommend disallowing anything that mitigates/removes the spell level adjustment when applying metamagic feats. Maybe that's part of the PrC ban idea, since I think a lot of it came from there.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Why dont you just call it E12? Many do consider the sweet spot to be level 5-8 in 3E, but I did run often in the PF1 era up to 12. Though, by that time my table and I were very very ready to start over again.

I don't call it E12 because classes are limited to 6th level (with the exception of fighters). So the 12th level characters would be things like 6/6 paladin/ranger, 6/6 barbarian/fighter, 6/6 rogue/wizard, 6/6 sorcerer/cleric, etc.

E8 was already an E6 variant out there when I went looking, with E10 and E12 being obvious extensions. I decided against a straight E12 extension of E6 and E8 in favor of this thing I call 2E6.

 

[payn]

I don't call it E12 because classes are limited to 6th level (with the exception of fighters). So the 12th level characters would be things like 6/6 paladin/ranger, 6/6 barbarian/fighter, 6/6 rogue/wizard, 6/6 sorcerer/cleric, etc.

E8 was already an E6 variant out there when I went looking, with E10 and E12 being obvious extensions. I decided against a straight E12 extension of E6 and E8 in favor of this thing I call 2E6.

Oh, you mean gestalt on top of E6. That makes more sense.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

Oh, you mean gestalt on top of E6. That makes more sense.

No, not gestalt. Multiclass. Six class levels of rogue plus six class levels of wizard for a multiclass character of 12th level. Not a 6th level rogue/wizard gestalt. And no 12th level rogues or 12th level wizards because class levels are limited to 6th.

 

[payn]

No, not gestalt. Multiclass. Six class levels of rogue plus six class levels of wizard for a multiclass character of 12th level. Not a 6th level rogue/wizard gestalt. And no 12th level rogues or 12th level wizards because class levels are limited to 6th.

I was thinking if I ever made my own heartbreaker, Id go to level 12 and either do 6 levels of two classes, or 3 classes at 4 levels a piece. I dig the idea, and finally get what you are saying.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

In general, 3.0e was superior to 3.5e.

But this doesn't mean that 3.0e was without problems. There are a lot of things to take care of and what you take care of is a personal preference.

At the minimum I would recommend people who stick with 3.0e:

a) Ban PrCs. There is a long discussion why but PrC's break 3.0e's design in multiple ways and were kludged into being the solution for multiple problems and oversights with 3e D&D's design (multi-classing casters and non-casters for example) in ways that ultimately were unhappy solutions.

Practically the first thing I did.

d) Ban divine wands. This is a bit more controversial, but divine wands weren't really present in 1e/2e and they create lots of weirdness - most notably with the massive efficiency of Wand of Cure Light Wounds, but really in general.

Hmm. In my "Brotherhood of Rangers" game, where I wanted to keep house rules to a minimum (other than using the gestalt rules), I decided to go with the flow of cure light wound wands, making them a well-known thing that was done in-universe.

For other campaigns, I'd want to boost the price of wands in general, but wouldn't want to particularly go after divine wands. I would suggest that if divine wands are banned, then bard wands should be too.

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

One thing about 3.0 & 3.5 that was elegant in theory but I find a pain in the heat of play is the frequent use of temporary ability score increases and decreases. Elegant because a broad cascade of effects can be produced by a simple +4 to DEX or -2 to CON. And a pain in the heat of play for the same reason - tracking those effects inspires bad language.