Still playing 3e? Share your 3.0 and/or 3.5 house rules

[haakon1]

It's a free action to activate/deactivate certain magic weapon qualities, such as flaming, frost, etc. A standard action is simply far too much of an investment for those.

I never noticed these rules. For the PC with a Frost Mace in my main campaign, it just automatically does Cold damage on a hit.

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!).

This has never come up as an issue for us. No captured giant weapons and the small characters use their own small weapons.

I dump the Heighten Spell feat. I'm sorry, but if you're already casting a spell in a higher-level spell slot, that's punishment enough. You shouldn't need to take a feat to get the save DC scaled up (and spontaneous casters shouldn't have to spend a full-round action to do it).

Also hasn’t come up. The only Metamagic feats I’ve seen used are the no-rolling, max damage one (Maximize Spell?), which a Sorcerer used with Magic Missile - automatic 25 hp damage. And the double Duration one (Lengthen Spell?), which was popular with Rope Trick for all night camping.

In general, of the magic feats, Spell Penetration and the Magic Item Creation feats - Brew Potion, Scribe Scroll, Create Magic Arms & Armor, and Create Wondrous Item have all been popular.

Part of this might be the level of play. We’ve never gone above 13th.

 

[Alzrius]

I never noticed these rules. For the PC with a Frost Mace in my main campaign, it just automatically does Cold damage on a hit.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Going forward with the written rules for these feels like it'll either punish the PCs or damage (albeit minimally) verisimilitude by having everyone just leave them "on" all the time, which encourages players to say "no, the flaming longsword +2 won't set anything on fire, the rules say it only harms enemies." It's practically begging to be house-ruled.

This has never come up as an issue for us. No captured giant weapons and the small characters use their own small weapons.

Also hasn’t come up. The only Metamagic feats I’ve seen used are the no-rolling, max damage one (Maximize Spell?), which a Sorcerer used with Magic Missile - automatic 25 hp damage. And the double Duration one (Lengthen Spell?), which was popular with Rope Trick for all night camping.

In these cases, I have to wonder if they're not coming up because players have been taught to self-select out of stuff they know will cause them grief. I mean, these are admittedly corner-cases (because how often do you come across unusually-sized weapons or cast a spell from a higher-level slot?), but adding insult to injury certainly doesn't help to make them more popular.

Which reminds me of some other house rules I'm partial to:

• Using that rule from the back of the Magic Item Compendium about how adding certain functions to body-slotted magic items (e.g. energy resistances, armor bonuses, natural armor bonuses, deflection bonuses, enhancement bonuses to ability scores, and resistance bonuses to saves) does not apply a x1.5 multiplier to the cost of the less-expensive function. (This isn't a house rule, but everyone forgets about it so it might as well be.)
• Add in the "dead level" bonuses from those old articles on WotC's website (though in fairness, the classes in that second article virtually never come up in Pathfinder).
• I give a lot of monsters maximum hit points per die. This doesn't increase their Challenge Rating, since it's virtually always less an a +50% increase to their usual hit point total. I don't do this for every monster, but if (when I eyeball it) I think that the PCs will walk all over it without breaking a sweat, then it gets max hp.

 

[haakon1]

In these cases, I have to wonder if they're not coming up because players have been taught to self-select out of stuff they know will cause them grief.

More like Weapon Speed Factor in AD&D: nobody cares about it.

 

[smetzger]

32 point buy. But... a full spellcaster’s primary stat cannot start higher than 15
(before racial adjustments)

Fighter
● 2 additional skill points for a total of 4/level
● At 1st level choose any 2 additional skills to be class skills
● Any Feat you qualify for can be taken as a Fighter bonus Feat
● Weapon Mastery - Any Feat which applies to a specific weapon (e.g. Weapon Focus) can be
retrained to a different weapon (that you are proficient in) after 1 hour of practice.
● Feat Mastery - Upon gaining a Fighter level you can retrain any Feat you have for a different Feat
that you qualify for. The Feat that you lose will not affect prerequisites for other Feats or Prestige
Classes. For example: If you have Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack, and Whirlwind Attack... you
could trade out Mobility for Power Attack and you would not lose access to Spring Attack and
Whirlwind Attack.

Clerics
● PC Clerics must be good and therefore cannot cast spells with the [evil] descriptor
● Evil NPC Clerics cannot cast Raise Dead, Resurrection, or True Resurrection. But they
can use magic items with these spells (i.e. scrolls)

Druids
● can speak with their animal companions via Druidic language
● The Reincarnation spell is not available, good Druids get Raise Dead as a 5th level
spell.
● May spontaneously cast speak with animals and speak with plants
● Natural Spell is a Metamagic Feat +1 level. You do not need to prepare the spell in a
higher level slot. But when casting you need to have the higher level slot available to
sacrifice.
For example: suppose you had Flaming Sphere (2nd lvl spell) prepared and Call
Lightning (3rd lvl) and wanted to cast Flaming Sphere when wild shaped. You would
cross Call Lightning off as if you had cast it, but Flaming Sphere would still remain
available to be cast.
● May use metal armor, but incur the arcane spell failure when casting spells while
wearing it.

Monk
● Use the Pathfinder 1e Unchained Monk. Skills are as per D&D 3.5 Monk.
● No multi-class restrictions
● Have proficiency in pole arms

House Rules 2

Paladin
● Smite Evil can be used on all attacks for a Full Attack
● No Multi-class restrictions
● Detect Evil, need to use holy symbol for this ability.

Wizard/Sorcerer
● Familiars
o 1st & 2nd lvl - You can speak with it but no empathic link
o 5th - 6th lvl - Telepathy with familiar
● Sorcerers know all 0 lvl spells
● Sorcerer - 2 different kinds
o Can be standard Sorcerer from PHB or
o Themed Sorcerer. Work with me and we can come up with a custom list of
spells to choose from (which can come from Wizard, Cleric, or Druid list). For
example: Lightning which would include Call Lightning from Druid list.

 

[Tinker Gnome]

3.0 Weapon Sizing is superior. I would also let players use the "Monkey Grip" Feat from Sword and Fist to let them wield a weapon one size up in one hand or two sizes up in two hands with no penalty. Normally Monkey Grip lets a creature use a weapon one size category larger in one hand at a -2 penalty.

 

[Deset Gled]

I never noticed these rules. For the PC with a Frost Mace in my main campaign, it just automatically does Cold damage on a hit.

The more common (IMNSHO) play regarding the rule that it's a standard action to activate a magic weapon is that the action only needs to be taken once (ever), and the weapon is then "on" unless someone intentionally takes another standard action to turn if "off". Most play just assumes weapons are always in the activated state.

What @Alzrius describes is an alternate ruling, and then houseruling it back to something very similar to this more common method. There are some minor details that will result from this, but they are relatively unlikely to come up in play.

 

[bloodtide]

Divine Approval: All Divine Magic is approved by your deity. If it follows your deities ethos they will add a boon, if it goes against they will add a bane. Or the deity might be neutral.

---

Mundane Magic Item Crafting

At 3rd level all non spellcasting classes gain the Create Magic Item Ability. This ability allows them to take magic item creation feats. They may pick one at 3rd level and one more every three levels. Magic item creation is essentially unchanged from the way a spell caster does it. Except that the spell need not be cast by them, or they can drain the spell from a scroll or magic item(destroying the item in the posses).

All magic items need three components: Mundane, Rare and Exotic.

*The mundane component is simply the physical form of the object. It must be made out of special materials to hold the magic.

*The rare component is something that locks the magic effect into the item. This is most often a creature part, but can be any physical thing.

*The exotic component is not physical thing, it is a process. It is what needs to be done to finish the item. It is a process of what to do at a set time and maybe place.

----

Skill Expertise- Non-spellcasting characters gain a bonus every three levels. This can either take the form of adding a single skill to their list of class skills or adding a +4 untyped bonus to any skill they have.
-------
Action Boost-A non-spellcasting character gains a pool of points equal to their level, plus their constitution modifier that can be used every round. Cost 5=1 round action,4=full round action, 3=standard action, 3=move action and 2=swift action. These actions don’t count against the normal actions the character can take in a round.
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Shields Shall Be Splintered:Whenever you take damage, you can opt to have the damage absorbed by your shield. Fighters can splinter the shield after the damage has been rolled, everyone else must do so before the roll. The shield is splintered and destroyed, but you don’t take any damage from the blow. (from OSR)

 

[cbwjm]

Weapon Mastery - Any Feat which applies to a specific weapon (e.g. Weapon Focus) can be
retrained to a different weapon (that you are proficient in) after 1 hour of practice.

This has given me an idea for a fighter only feat, like a fighter version of spell mastery. Pick a number of weapons, any feat which applies to a single weapon additionally applies to all your chosen weapons. So weapon focus (shortbow) and weapon mastery (longsword, shortsword, mace) would apply weapon focus to all 4. I might base the actual number on fighter level. Something like choose 2 weapons +1 for every 4 fighter levels.

 

[delericho]

It has been a long time since I ran 3.5e. Here's roughly where we were at the end:

• Characters could be created using the PHB only. When using Eberron (which was most of the time), add the Expanded Psionics Handbook and the main Eberron Campaign Setting book. (If I were doing it again, I would instead use the "core three plus one" rule that others have mentioned.)
• Characters could multiclass freely, ignoring favoured classes. However Prestige Classes were not allowed. (Again, if doing it again, I'd allow characters to have three classes: any one base class of their choice, their Favoured Class, and one Prestige Class.)
• When generating ability scores each player could freely choose from three methods: 28 point buy, or a standard array of 16, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8, or roll 4d6 drop lowest (reroll as per the PHB - I forget exactly what that was). The major caveat was that if you chose to roll you were then expected to play the resulting character in good faith - no suiciding a bad character.
• Characters gained 7, 5, or 3 hit points per level, depending on their class (classes with d12 or d10 gave 7, classes with d8 or d6 gave 5, classes with d4 gave 3). This included first level, except that all characters gained a one-time bonus of 5 hit points.
• Likewise, characters gained 8. 6. 4. or 2 skill points per level, including at 1st level. Cross-class skills cost 1 point per rank, just like class skills, but any character with 1 rank in a class skill gained a +3 bonus to that skill. (Essentially, the Pathfinder rule.)
• Encumbrance was by armour only.
• Captured treasure could be sold, but only gave 20% of value. I also gave considerably more treasure than was standard, skewed fairly heavily towards 'cool' rather than 'utility' magic items - the reduction in sale cost was to encourage players to keep what they had rather than just trade it for the useful-but-dull "big six".
• Shields shall be splintered: as mentioned, a character using a shield could choose to sacrifice that shield to negate the damage from one attack. I allowed any character to see the damage roll before applying that option, though.
• The Gods Shall Not Be Mocked: A character who chose to carry a dozen shields for use with the above rule (or otherwise tried to abuse the rules) suffered maximum damage from all incoming attacks.

 

[haakon1]

Druids
● can speak with their animal companions via Druidic language
● May spontaneously cast speak with animals and speak with plants

Good stuff. I might yoink these Druid rules.