D&D 3.x Still playing 3e? Share your 3.0 and/or 3.5 house rules

[Alzrius]

Or maybe I should buy a PDF of 3.x Psionics Handbook … which I assume exists.

It does, but the psionics rules (both 3.0 and 3.5) were released under their respective SRDs, so you don't need to buy either the 3.0 Psionics Handbook or the 3.5 Expanded Psionics Handbook if you'd rather not.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Re: psionics:

I thought Hyperconscious was a very good 3PP for psionics, especially for what it did for the soulknife. There’s also a PrCl that combines elements of the SK & PsyWar.

Also, Dragon#348 has a bunch of mindblade feats, most of which are cool and/or good.

D&D 3.x Thread 'I like psionics…'

Mar 25, 2023

…but I know my 2 favorite classes- the Psychic Warrior and the Soulknife- are flawed. I still play them & build future potential PCs using them. I like the others, too, but I almost always choose one of these two.

I have 2 questions:

1) Besides Hyperconscious and assorted Dragon Magazine articles, are there any other good resources for those 2 classes?

2) What homebrew rules have you used or seen that shore them up?

• Dannyalcatraz
• Replies: 18
• Forum: D&D Older Editions, OSR, & D&D Variants

• 

 

[VHawkwinter]

I briefly scrolled through 3.Y. A major change is Soul Knife as a main character class (and no Prestige Classes). In 25 years of 3.x DMing, I have only seen Prestige Classes for PCs a few times, so I am not too concerned. (I generally prefer not, but tolerate it.) But how to do Psionics in 3.x is intriguing to me.

Or maybe I should buy a PDF of 3.x Psionics Handbook … which I assume exists. I want a little Psionics - for this adventure and perhaps Psionic monsters, but not a full blown “alternative magic” system.

There are 3.X psionics books, yes, Expanded Psionics Handbook is the main one. Much of those contents are in the SRD though so you could see them on d20srd for free. There's also the update / conversion to PF1 by Dreamscarred Press, "Ultimate Psionics", if you want much much more of it.

It's definitely a full-blown alternate magic system though.

I found a 2e adventure in Dungeon, where PCs gain temporary, minor psionic powers from a damaged gate to the Astral Plane, and then travel there. It seems interesting to me, so I might run it. I may just wing the semi-psionics bit, using what the adventure has.

If you don't want the psionics books, you might consider using Upper Krust's Challenging Ratings v5 to ballpark the value of getting individual spell-like abilities X/day, and compare it against darkvision 60 in Challenging Challenge Ratings and build some basic spell-like ability packages "as feats" that you hand out, either making them available through normal level up, or just giving them to players through plot, but having your little powers be relatively balanced against eachother.
Alternately, you can build them using the custom magic item rules in the DMG as a slotless wondrous items that do spells; divide the price by 4000 gp, and then square root it, and the number remaining is a reasonable starting estimate as to how many feats it's worth (I did some indepth analysis and conversion math between them in spreadsheets last year).

 

[haakon1]

I'm a PF1 holdout, but a lot of my house rules for that are the same as they would be for 3.X due to how similar the games are (these are just a modest selection):

• I try to keep the 3.0 versions of weapon size scaling (e.g. that Medium-sized shortsword is effectively a Small-sized longsword; none of that "-2 inappropriate size penalty" malarky) and creature spacing whenever possible (no, the giant snake has not coiled up!).

Ah, I should have done that!

I had a halfling rogue who found a great dagger. I was doing the -2 and so they decided to sell it for other magic items. That worked OK, but your rule would have made it a more challenging decision.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

Weapons crafted by and for the appropriate race, given that they can and should all have crafters in their ranks and large enough communities in most settings to warrant their own weapons, is one of the 3e to 3.5e changes that made the most sense to me.

None of that "the only weapons that exist in the world are crafted by humans, for humans" malarky

 

[Edgar Ironpelt]

In my Brotherhood of Rangers game:

Use my house-rule hybrid roll and point-buy system for ability scores, posted elsewhere

Characters are limited to one creature as an animal companion/paladin's mount/wizard's familiar, and can choose to take an extra feat instead of having one.

A bunch of travel/transport/teleportation spells are disallowed as not existing in the setting:

Air Walk, Astral Projection, Blink, Dimension Door, Ethereal Jaunt, Etherealness, Fly, Greater, Mount, Overland Flight, Passwall, Phantom Steed, Phase Door, Plane Shift, Refuge, Shadow Walk, Teleport Object, Teleport, Teleport, Teleportation Circle, Transport via Plants, Tree Stride, Water Walk, Wind Walk, Word of Recall

The 0-level wizard/sorcerer spells can all be cast at will, even by non-wizards who might have them as 1st level spells. Some of those spells have been modified/nerfed. In particular, they can't be recast until the previous casting ends.

Creatures larger than Medium have 5 ft reach; they do not get increased reach due to their increased size.

The Spot modifier for distance beyond 100 ft is 1 point per 100 feet (-11 at 200 ft, -12 at 300 ft, etc.) It's an outdoors campaign, and sight distances are longer than the RAW standard.

Creatures who speak Dwarven, Elven, Giant, Goblin, Gnoll, Halfling, or Orc will also be able to speak and understand at least a broken or pigin form of Common even if they don’t have Common as a “known” language under the standard rules.

Arrows have a 50% chance of breaking, being lost, or otherwise being unrecoverable whether they hit or miss, rather than following the RAW where arrows that hit are gone and those that miss have a 50% chance of being lost.

Monsters with poison damage will often have this altered to acid damage or will have the nature of the poison changed (e.g. to inflicting extra non-lethal damage). I find temporary ability score losses and boosts to be a PITA in the heat of play, and want to reduce them in the game. Although I haven't gone so far as to ban the ability score boost spells.

I'm still fiddling with Damage Reduction, because I don't like DR/golf bag, and it's hard to scale DR so that it's a handicap rather than a coin flip as to whether it's meaningless or overpowering.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

Monsters with poison damage will often have this altered to acid damage or will have the nature of the poison changed (e.g. to inflicting extra non-lethal damage). I find temporary ability score losses and boosts to be a PITA in the heat of play, and want to reduce them in the game. Although I haven't gone so far as to ban the ability score boost spells.

I never liked poison doing ability damage either and I am pretty sure I just had "Poison" do HP damage over time back in the day.

 

[earthsea_wizard]

Arrows have a 50% chance of breaking, being lost, or otherwise being unrecoverable whether they hit or miss, rather than following the RAW where arrows that hit are gone and those that miss have a 50% chance of being lost.

Monsters with poison damage will often have this altered to acid damage or will have the nature of the poison changed (e.g. to inflicting extra non-lethal damage). I find temporary ability score losses and boosts to be a PITA in the heat of play, and want to reduce them in the game. Although I haven't gone so far as to ban the ability score boost spells.

For the arrow rule, if I were to implement that I think I would only allow 50% recoverable chance happen if the target wasn't wearing armor. Hitting armor, especially heavier armor, the arrowhead is likely to shatter or at least break off of the shaft. If it were straight to flesh I could see it. But counting them as gone is just simpler for me, and arhcery already has a lot of perks.

The second rule kills some flavor, but I think most people can agree that ability damage can be a PitA mid game. I think having it do acid damage or hp damage over time (how many video game RPGs do it) makes sense. I might consider this.

Is your game set in Greyhawk? I haven't looked back at earlier posts but I feel like you said that.

 

[haakon1]

For the arrow rule … But counting them as gone is just simpler for me, and arhcery already has a lot of perks.

I agree. I like tracking logistics, and an arrow used is an arrow gone makes sense to me.

 

[BryonD]

Multiclassing: Class abilities advance faster.
Your class specific abilities equal your class level + 1/2 your non class levels, with a maximum of 2X class level.

A 4th level character Wiz 2 / Clr 2 would cast spells as a L3 Wiz and a L3 Clr.
At level 5 Wiz 3 / Clr 2 casts as Wiz 4 / Clr 3
At level 6 Wiz 4 / Clr2 casts as Wiz 5 / Clr 4
At level 7 Wiz 5 Clr 2 casts as Wiz 6 / Clr 4
At level 8 Wiz 6 Clr 2 casts as Wiz 7 / Clr 4 Cleric 2 capped at 4, and consistent +1 to wizard.
Alternatively A Wiz 4/Clr 4 would cast as 6/6

It produces a high volume of spells, and that might be a problem in some games. But I find most players still prefer to not hold back their top level spells.

Everything else (HP saves skill feats etc) are the same as normal multiclassing