Rules in 3.5 that need fixing and what you'd do to fix it.

[Renfield]

Renfields changes (AKA: My house rules)

More or less do what I do now. Incorporate my house rules a little more.

A crit is a crit is a crit. None of this silly 'critical confirmation roll' stuff, it's bad enough a lot of weapons require a natural 20 to hit without having to roll again to confirm that wonderful damage. At the very least they should have done a damage bonus rather than the chance of getting ones hopes up and dashing them against the rocks. PC's or NPC's roll in the crit range they crit. Pure plain and simple.

Spot and Listen would change to a new skill: awareness.

Move Silently and Hide: Stealth.

Feats could be sacrificed for stat bonuses (i.e. only the feats gained every third level, not fighter feats or other bonus feats) considering feats are fairly important to improving a characters I don't see this happen alot. Ever actually, none of my players have taken advantage of this.

The STR stat is way overrated and the CHR stat is way underrated. This has been proven to me time and time again. So races getting that +2 bonus to STR while sacrificing a -2 to two other stats would lose one of those penalties. Perhaps while being in a warrior barbarian society makes a half orc crude and kinda ugly their brain capacity is actually equal to that of their human kin. Not much of a stretch there.

Spells would be adjusted from the 3.5 nerfing many of them went through. Seems to me the people at Wizards went "Wow, this spell is actually kind of useful in combat, let's weaken it drastically and shorten its duration." Seems they got to thinking of magic in terms of combat only which really irked me, and I'm the primary DM of my group! Utilitarian spells got cut down (i.e. fly) and there seemed to be a sweep across the board of reducing durations to 1 minute per level. (I.E. good for one or two combats). Some changes were necessary as there were some spells that were indeed rediculously powerful and needed to be changed, but many of them didn't.

Spell Focus would go back to 3.0 rules. Honestly, the adjustment was for one school of spells and the DC wouldn't really get that big of a boost. Once PC's get to higher levels it would hardly even matter, especially if they hit epic, either way that would definitely change.

I imagine there are other things I'd change but those are the first things that come to mind.

 

[delericho]

A crit is a crit is a crit. None of this silly 'critical confirmation roll' stuff, it's bad enough a lot of weapons require a natural 20 to hit without having to roll again to confirm that wonderful damage.

Funny you should give that as your example of why the confirmation roll sucks - the fact that you sometimes only hit on a natural 20 is one of the reasons why the confirmation roll exists in the first place. Without it, you can get to the situation that every time a weak creature hits it is always a critical.

Additionally, removing the confirmation roll really increases the power of weapons with big critical multipliers, especially when combined with Power Attack, and ideally with a two-handed weapon. Suddenly, there's much less reason to not dump the whole of your BAB into Power Attack, to get to that 'only hit on a 20' thing. Without it, if you need an 18 or so to hit, you may well be better off without the PA to hit the target number.