Oni
First Post
Things I would like to see.
*Fighting techniques. Perhaps could be implemented a special feat trees. But basically flashing and interesting powers for fighters and to a lesser degree for other classes to reduce dependency on magic items. Lets make our heroes self-reliant.
*Change sorcerers, there are a number of things that could be done, but they are a little nonsensical now flavor-wise. Personally I would drop their need for material components. Impose a penalty on the spellcraft check of anyone trying to figure out what they're casting because of their unique individual casting styles (which they are now lacking). I wouldn't add any skill points, they are more or less superpowered commoners (at least that is how I see them). But I would change their skill list to include more things that involve intuition, such as sense motive and other social skills that involve gauging others, and animal empathy, direction sense, that sort of thing. Another suggestion would be giving them domains (to make the stronger thematically), maybe they could be called heritages. I would also be very happy to see them either have a way to access all the spell list, or better yet their own spell list (which would include many druidy type spells and some healing because those things seem closer to raw natural magic as opposed to something like Leomund's Secure Shelter). If not willing to make a new spelllist, at least a divine equivalent of the sorcerer would do.
*Give the monk alternatives as they level up. Personally I would like to see something like the loremasters secrets, where the monk has a list of things to choose from and more of the become available as they level. That way they could built their own style. Not every fighter is the same, why should every monk be.
*Balance the schools of magic for wizard specialization. I'd like to see the schools shuffled around and bolstered or trimmed whatever have you to make specialization choose a specialty drop two schools. Another thing that would help this is allowing spells to be in more than one school, this is something they dropped from second ed. and I think it was a mistake.
*The inclusion of psionics i the core rules so that it can be supported in other products.
*more alternate or optional rules, like a good spell point system, suggestions for combat without mini's.
*a feat like leadership, but that allows any class to create their own personal magic item through investment of self, say a portion of their xp goes to creating an item that grows with them. Lessens reliance on spellcasters or finding items.
*reduce the number of spells per day the cleric can cast, but give them a suped up version of lay on hands and turning against a wider variety of creatures, such as outsiders. (I'm not sure about this one, but I'm not happy with the cleric class as it is. Their powers aren't particularly awe inspiring or godly to me. If you see a miracle all the time it isn't a miracle.)
*definately some revisions to the druids spell list. Maybe have them develope salient powers (sort of like the sorcerers spellcasting, but fewer a day) and then set down some of the other spells into ritual format (like animal friendship, reincarnate). Mostly spontaneous casting, but with like 1 slot per level for preping and ritual casting spells. This would give them a more unique flavor.
*Show equal support for all the elemental damage types.
*allow the ranger to choose from a small selection of feats rather than choosing ambi and two weapon for him.
*Fix half-orcs.
*give paladins an option to mounts, such as the magical item/leadership feat suggested above.
*I'll second the kobold idea, I like the little fellows.
[ edit : forgot some things.
*Soup up spellcaster defense against other spellcasters, give them more ways to muck with eacher other than ready action blaster magic. As it stands first caster to get off a big spell wins, if there were more ways of stopping or twisting that then spell duels would be more strategic than seeing who can bring the biggest guns to bare the fastest.
*Reduce scribing cost (and get rid of or fix that silly Boccob's blessed book, specific magic items shouldn't be must haves).
*Alternate familiars (like a spellbook, or a crystal ball).
*secondary magical traditions that break the schools down differently to give more variety to specialist (like elemental schools, or shadow based stuff or any other wide variety of entertaining ideas). ]
[ edit II:
*Allow all the characters to pick one or two non-exclusive skills at character creation to be considered class skills in addition to whatever may be on their class skill list.]
[ edit III:
*The ability to create undead creatures (and possibly other creature types, like some aberrations) with item creation feats as per the construction of golems.
*something to make bards more distinct from sorcerer/wizards, not sure what at this point, but their spellcasting strikes me as too similar. They should either be jacks of all trades, and cast as wizards having learned how to do so through their travels, or be something completely different, right now they are just different enough to irritate me.]
[ edit IV:
*In regards to spell descriptors create a catagory of them called energy descriptors, have it include positive, negative, sonic, acid, cold, fire, and electricity. Create a sub-catagory called elemental descriptors, it would include only acid, cold, fire, and electricity.
. -Change Resist Elements, Endure Elements, Protection from elements to Resist energy et c., have them be able to block also negative and positive energy (if your feeling real uppity have energy drain, or undead ability drain equal to a certain amount of damage, like say 10 or 15 (those would be my recommendations, then resist could stop ability drain, and protection energy drain for a while). If you were to include something like like Energy Immunity from T&B make it Elemental immunity and only able to stop the elemental subgroup.
. -Replace spells that do a specific type elemental damage with a spell type. For instance replace Fireball or Lightning bolt, with Elemental Ball, or Elemental Bolt. Upon gaining the spell the caster chooses one element type from the elemental subgroup and forever after that is the energy type the spell produces. ex. a sorcere gains sixth level and chooses Elemental Ball, he picks the cold descriptor and now the spell does cold damage. He could later pick Elemental ball again and choose a different descriptor as a different spell. Sonic is not available as it is not an Elemental descriptor.
. -If Energy Substitution is included, change it to Elemental Substitution. Make a seperate feat called Energy Substitution, it does the same thing as Elemental Substitution but also includes the negative, positive, and sonic descriptors in addition to the elemental descriptors however it takes up a slot one level higher than the spell to use.]
Well there we go, since this is a wish list I went all out. I figure the only way I'll see most of this stuff though would be to do it myself.
I'm curious if there is anyone out there that actually has a hand in these revisions that is bothering to read threads like this?
*Fighting techniques. Perhaps could be implemented a special feat trees. But basically flashing and interesting powers for fighters and to a lesser degree for other classes to reduce dependency on magic items. Lets make our heroes self-reliant.
*Change sorcerers, there are a number of things that could be done, but they are a little nonsensical now flavor-wise. Personally I would drop their need for material components. Impose a penalty on the spellcraft check of anyone trying to figure out what they're casting because of their unique individual casting styles (which they are now lacking). I wouldn't add any skill points, they are more or less superpowered commoners (at least that is how I see them). But I would change their skill list to include more things that involve intuition, such as sense motive and other social skills that involve gauging others, and animal empathy, direction sense, that sort of thing. Another suggestion would be giving them domains (to make the stronger thematically), maybe they could be called heritages. I would also be very happy to see them either have a way to access all the spell list, or better yet their own spell list (which would include many druidy type spells and some healing because those things seem closer to raw natural magic as opposed to something like Leomund's Secure Shelter). If not willing to make a new spelllist, at least a divine equivalent of the sorcerer would do.
*Give the monk alternatives as they level up. Personally I would like to see something like the loremasters secrets, where the monk has a list of things to choose from and more of the become available as they level. That way they could built their own style. Not every fighter is the same, why should every monk be.
*Balance the schools of magic for wizard specialization. I'd like to see the schools shuffled around and bolstered or trimmed whatever have you to make specialization choose a specialty drop two schools. Another thing that would help this is allowing spells to be in more than one school, this is something they dropped from second ed. and I think it was a mistake.
*The inclusion of psionics i the core rules so that it can be supported in other products.
*more alternate or optional rules, like a good spell point system, suggestions for combat without mini's.
*a feat like leadership, but that allows any class to create their own personal magic item through investment of self, say a portion of their xp goes to creating an item that grows with them. Lessens reliance on spellcasters or finding items.
*reduce the number of spells per day the cleric can cast, but give them a suped up version of lay on hands and turning against a wider variety of creatures, such as outsiders. (I'm not sure about this one, but I'm not happy with the cleric class as it is. Their powers aren't particularly awe inspiring or godly to me. If you see a miracle all the time it isn't a miracle.)
*definately some revisions to the druids spell list. Maybe have them develope salient powers (sort of like the sorcerers spellcasting, but fewer a day) and then set down some of the other spells into ritual format (like animal friendship, reincarnate). Mostly spontaneous casting, but with like 1 slot per level for preping and ritual casting spells. This would give them a more unique flavor.
*Show equal support for all the elemental damage types.
*allow the ranger to choose from a small selection of feats rather than choosing ambi and two weapon for him.
*Fix half-orcs.
*give paladins an option to mounts, such as the magical item/leadership feat suggested above.
*I'll second the kobold idea, I like the little fellows.
[ edit : forgot some things.
*Soup up spellcaster defense against other spellcasters, give them more ways to muck with eacher other than ready action blaster magic. As it stands first caster to get off a big spell wins, if there were more ways of stopping or twisting that then spell duels would be more strategic than seeing who can bring the biggest guns to bare the fastest.
*Reduce scribing cost (and get rid of or fix that silly Boccob's blessed book, specific magic items shouldn't be must haves).
*Alternate familiars (like a spellbook, or a crystal ball).
*secondary magical traditions that break the schools down differently to give more variety to specialist (like elemental schools, or shadow based stuff or any other wide variety of entertaining ideas). ]
[ edit II:
*Allow all the characters to pick one or two non-exclusive skills at character creation to be considered class skills in addition to whatever may be on their class skill list.]
[ edit III:
*The ability to create undead creatures (and possibly other creature types, like some aberrations) with item creation feats as per the construction of golems.
*something to make bards more distinct from sorcerer/wizards, not sure what at this point, but their spellcasting strikes me as too similar. They should either be jacks of all trades, and cast as wizards having learned how to do so through their travels, or be something completely different, right now they are just different enough to irritate me.]
[ edit IV:
*In regards to spell descriptors create a catagory of them called energy descriptors, have it include positive, negative, sonic, acid, cold, fire, and electricity. Create a sub-catagory called elemental descriptors, it would include only acid, cold, fire, and electricity.
. -Change Resist Elements, Endure Elements, Protection from elements to Resist energy et c., have them be able to block also negative and positive energy (if your feeling real uppity have energy drain, or undead ability drain equal to a certain amount of damage, like say 10 or 15 (those would be my recommendations, then resist could stop ability drain, and protection energy drain for a while). If you were to include something like like Energy Immunity from T&B make it Elemental immunity and only able to stop the elemental subgroup.
. -Replace spells that do a specific type elemental damage with a spell type. For instance replace Fireball or Lightning bolt, with Elemental Ball, or Elemental Bolt. Upon gaining the spell the caster chooses one element type from the elemental subgroup and forever after that is the energy type the spell produces. ex. a sorcere gains sixth level and chooses Elemental Ball, he picks the cold descriptor and now the spell does cold damage. He could later pick Elemental ball again and choose a different descriptor as a different spell. Sonic is not available as it is not an Elemental descriptor.
. -If Energy Substitution is included, change it to Elemental Substitution. Make a seperate feat called Energy Substitution, it does the same thing as Elemental Substitution but also includes the negative, positive, and sonic descriptors in addition to the elemental descriptors however it takes up a slot one level higher than the spell to use.]
Well there we go, since this is a wish list I went all out. I figure the only way I'll see most of this stuff though would be to do it myself.
I'm curious if there is anyone out there that actually has a hand in these revisions that is bothering to read threads like this?
Last edited:
