[3.5/PF] Rebuild II: Rebuild Harder (a replacement for the entire PHB)

[Rogue Shadows]

“I believe that there is nothing wrong with 3.5 that cannot be cured by what is right with 3.5.” – Bill Clinton (probably).

This has been a long time coming.

The Rebuild is a project I started a few years ago. It seemed to me that everyone knew that there were massive problems with 3rd Edition D&D, and a huge number of us all knew what those problems were exactly, and even how to fix them…yet no one ever really seemed to hit upon the idea of compiling together all the various fixes into a single document, meshing them with each other, seeing what worked and what didn’t, etc.

The Rebuild is, in other words, a community effort, even if not everyone – indeed, even if nearly no one – in the 3.5 community knew that they were actively working on this effort. And I don’t just mean Giant in the Playground forums. No, I have scoured the Internet back and forth. From ENWorld to RPG.net, from the D&D wiki to the other D&D wiki to I think there’s a third one, too. From alternate and additional class features from Wizards of the Coast itself and from the open documents of Paizo, and beyond – the countless third-party variants published by Green Ronin, Malhavoc Press, Alderac Entertainment, and so on.

Special mention here goes to Paizo; I found myself turning to Pathfinder for inspiration so often that really this can almost be called Pathfinder 2nd Edition. In fact just about the only uniquely 3.5 thing that I’ve kept is the experience table, as I prefer the easy-to-follow formula of 3.5 rather than ones presented by Paizo. Still, Pathfinder is simply a variation on 3.5 itself, fully forwards-and-backwards compatible, so I still fundamentally consider this to be a 3.5 fix.

Of course, I’ve posted this before; the original Rebuild thread. That, it turns out, was merely the alpha. There were still plenty of holes and problems that needed to be fixed. Hopefully, I fixed them, though I don’t doubt that I missed some, and left behind quite a few others. I don’t claim to have done a perfect job here, but hopefully the effort I’ve made wasn’t in vain, either.

So, without further ado, I present to you:

The Rebuilt Player’s Handbook! (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B86CqQWWW_t7SkYwX1pGUjBVQWc/edit?usp=sharing)

...now I have to do the DMG, ugh...

[Rogue Shadows]

Oh, some broad design goals:

1. Make all classes hover somewhere between Tier-3 and high Tier-4.
2. Make all classes depend on at least 3 ability scores (except the druid, who can wildshape into a new form but polymorphing and the druid class both have been extremely nerfed, so it balances).
3. Eliminate dead levels. All of them. In every class. Including full casters.
4. Make the Sorcerer and the Wizard distinct by giving them different spell lists.
5. Have each full casting class (Bard to an extent, Cleric, Sorcerer, and Wizard) have VERY different methods of learning spells so as to make them feel different.
6. Make formerly useless skills (Appraise, Linguistics) have more in-game utility by both increasing what they can do and cutting down on (though not eliminating entirely) spells that can functionally replace them, or let them do things that spells can't.
7. Make any feat that provides numerical bonuses scale, and make sure there's a good selection of feats for everyone.
8. Make 3 "levels" of masterwork items that add appreciable benefits as you improve them so as to encourage using mundane items instead of magical ones for longer (Note: this will be expanded upon if/when I ever get to the Rebuild of the DMG, suffice to say that the plan is that there will no longer be +1 thru +5 weapon/armor enhancements)
9. Create a balanced and cohesive-feeling pantheon of deities that interact with each other and feel "tight" without actually being a tight pantheon. Part of this involves the elimination of racial deities and pantheons. Also the pantheon explicitly allows for mortal ascension given that a fair number of the gods are ascended mortals. Also I might have ripped off Discworld a wee bit.
10. Fix some recurring problems with combat (small creatures fighting much larger creatures, falling speed, etc). However mostly I just adapted wholesale from Pathfinder.
11. MASSIVE SPELL FIXES EVERYWHERE.

[Chronologist]

So , here's my feedback in no particular list.

- The racial modifiers on page 7 and the ones listed thereafter in the races' descriptions are different. You should fix that.

- Backgrounds are nice, and I can see the influence from D&D Next in your design here.

- Removing spellcasting entirely from the Bard class is strange, but I like it!

- Restricting the Cleric to 7th level spells goes a long way to making them less powerful

- Druids getting 4th level spells is both strange and an interesting concept overall. I'd have to see how that works in practice of course

- Monks getting 7 attacks with a Flurry is just... too many. Make their attacks more meaningful, not more frequent.

- I don't like that Rangers get Sneak Attack. It's the iconic class feature of the Rogue. Why not replace it with the Skirmish ability of the Scout?

- 7th level spellcasting being the cap is a GREAT move in my opinion. It's what I've homebrewed in my own games for years.

- Do you really need all of those skills? It just seems like a LOT to track.

- Forcing Wizards to ONLY be able to cast spells from a single school of magic is pretty good. Personally, I'd expand it to two schools of magic. That gives the class comparable versatility to the Cleric IMO.

Overall I think it's generally a better PHB for the most part, though I think it needs some reworking in a few areas. Since you're already tackling such a huge project, why not take the opportunity to improve on the D&D formula in more complex ways? I see a good start with the Bard, and I'd honestly love to see more of the casting classes handled that way.

[Rogue Shadows]

- The racial modifiers on page 7 and the ones listed thereafter in the races' descriptions are different. You should fix that.

Whoops! Deciding to go with a Pathfinder model was a last-minute thing, guess I missed that.


- Backgrounds are nice, and I can see the influence from D&D Next in your design here.

Actually, I know absolutely nothing about D&D Next. The Backgrounds were actually inspired by d20 Modern, but I just wanted to make them more meaningful than simply permanent class skills and a feat. So I added in the background abilities, the greater majority of which are simply taken from Pathfinder traits.


- Removing spellcasting entirely from the Bard class is strange, but I like it!

Courtesy of Malhavoc Press and Monte Cook, The Complete Book of Eldritch Might. Monty's bard was a little sparse, though, so I added in a ton of stuff. Still, Monty's design goal was to create a spellcasting class that felt more like it was legitimately playing music, rather than just casting spells. I liked it and so stole it wholesale.


- Restricting the Cleric to 7th level spells goes a long way to making them less powerful

It's more than that; they actually only ever know 5 spells, max, for each spell level, since they are strictly limited to Domain-only spells.


- Druids getting 4th level spells is both strange and an interesting concept overall. I'd have to see how that works in practice of course

To me, druids as spellcasters never really made too much sense. When I think "druid," I think of a character with some spellcasting ability, but much more emphasis on the shapeshifting.


- Monks getting 7 attacks with a Flurry is just... too many. Make their attacks more meaningful, not more frequent.

Fair enough. I think I'll limit it to 5 (1 more than a full-BAB class' full attack).


- I don't like that Rangers get Sneak Attack. It's the iconic class feature of the Rogue. Why not replace it with the Skirmish ability of the Scout?

Because the two are so similar that I'd rather just have one or the other, and since the Sneak Attack is so iconic to to the Rogue, I decided to keep that one and give the ranger a downgraded version. Besides, the rogue still gets a better sneak attack, in that its dice are larger and it gets rogue talents to improve it, so I don't see it as too big a deal.


- 7th level spellcasting being the cap is a GREAT move in my opinion. It's what I've homebrewed in my own games for years.

Agreed.


- Do you really need all of those skills? It just seems like a LOT to track.

Eh, I don't think so.


- Forcing Wizards to ONLY be able to cast spells from a single school of magic is pretty good. Personally, I'd expand it to two schools of magic. That gives the class comparable versatility to the Cleric IMO.

I'd like to keep it to one school by default, and playtesting proved this to be viable. Starting at 4th level, anyway, Wizards can take the Expanded Knowledge feat to add additional schools (though they can't apply metamagic to those them).


Overall I think it's generally a better PHB for the most part, though I think it needs some reworking in a few areas. Since you're already tackling such a huge project, why not take the opportunity to improve on the D&D formula in more complex ways? I see a good start with the Bard, and I'd honestly love to see more of the casting classes handled that way.

I'm not actually that good at design, per se - I'm better at taking other people's works and meshing them together. Besides which, as much as I added in a bunch of new things here and there, I still wanted this to feel like 3.5 D&D.

[Ashtagon]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[Rogue Shadows]

Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

I...don't have a news letter.

[Vadskye]

I...don't have a news letter.

It's a saying. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMwc1c0HRQ) It means your ideas are intriguing to her.

Incidentally, I agree. There are a number of ideas I really like here; putting the core uses for the ability scores right at the front is fantastic for many reasons, and I can't believe I didn't think of it. But as long as you use the (ability score - 10)/2 formula, the ability modifiers are simply too small relative to a d20's variance for many of the interesting uses to come up. Also, catching items needs to be an action of some kind, or else people can make Dexterity checks against every single ranged attack that comes at them, which is obnoxious and unintuitive.

I love the idea of backgrounds, though I wish they had a larger effect on skills and a smaller effect on feats and core competency. Players should be encouraged to choose a background for their character, but you should avoid providing strong mechanical incentives to have specific backgrounds, and having imbalanced backgrounds (Sailor is weak compared to, say, Peasant or Religious) is jut annoying.

I am disappointed that you used some of the stranger parts of Pathfinder; I hate the No Escape barbarian power. Infuriation is weird; does it cost a use of Rage? It seems like that would be actively detrimental in many cases, and it isn't optional.

I swear I've seen that bard before. Where is it from?

Why are all clerics preachers? That's but one of many possible character concepts for a cleric. Also, clerics of different domains are still too similar mechanically. Different domains should provide different abilities, I think.

Am I missing something, or is Wild Shape just as powerful as it was in 3.5? If not more so, thanks to Shifter's Speech letting you cast spells without dumping a feat on Natural Spell?

The fighter Physical Prowess abilities are crazy, and definitely not in balance with each other. Intimidating Presence and Bash are not even close to being equal to +1 Strength or +1 Dexterity.

Resplendent power's duration is too complicated; it comes out to about 4 + 2/3 levels, but that's far from clear. Why not just say "rounds equal to 3 + paladin level"? The effects and concept are interesting, though. I'm not sure why it's fluffed as "resolve", though; to me, it feels like a quick prayer to the paladin's deity. There's some imbalance, though; Only Blood is far better than Inspiring Words. It's also weird that most of the powers are duration-based, but Only Blood is instantaneous. Righteous Cause is completely useless, and it doesn't even have much of an effect on fluff.

Removing spells from the ranger is good. Wild Trait seems to be weird fluff-wise for rangers; actually taking on aspects of animals is much more of a druid thing generally. Your perception may be different, though. Why do rangers get sneak attack? Quarry is too weak; why would you use a standard action to improve your ability to track the target when you could just keep fighting him? It changes to a free action later, but that just makes it practically useless until 16th level; grant it earlier, and as a swift action, but with limited uses/day. Perceptive Tracker is poorly worded; does that mean that they can never fail? Seasoned Explorer is not a 16th level ability.

Measure the Mark is confusing. Power Slide has a weird name. Redirect Attack should be an immediate action. Skirmisher is interesting, though the specific restriction of it not working against uncanny dodge is odd, and it likely won't be used much because full attacks are so critical at high levels. Makeshift Tools is not a 14th level ability.

Adept Sorcery is very clever, though it should be reworded; "targeted spell" includes spells which affect multiple targets, which would allow you to gain the spell's effects on all the targets that didn't resist without using the spell slot. In general, I'm very happy with the sorcerer abilities; they definitely feel like a conduit of inherent arcane magic, which is cool.

Intuitive Knowledge's 7th level ability is pointless. Learned Sage is also pointless; by RAW, you can actually take 10 on Knowledge checks, unless you changed that. (Blew my mind when I realized that too. You can't reroll it, but there's nothing stopping you from taking 10.) Erudition is weird; none of those are class skills, and I don't buy the fluff. Logical Mind and Academic are weak abilities that belong at lower levels, if at all. That seems to be the theme with wizard abilities. Are you worried about the wizard being overpowered?

Skills don't seem to have changed much. That's a shame - there is a lot of room for improvement in the core skill system. Improved Feint is annoying; it means that character will roll an extra die every round for a minor benefit for the rest of the game. You don't want to encourage time-wasting for a trivial benefit, and feinting - like other maneuvers - should be done for a specific reason as a reaction to circumstances, not just because you can. Many feats scale when they shouldn't. Weapon Specialization is ridiculous, and makes being a generalist fighter stupid.

Called Shot seems like a complicated subsystem, but non-critical, non-debilitating called shots all have negligible effects, so I'm not certain it's worth the effort to learn (as a player) and penalty imposed to hit the target (for the character). However, there are weird corner cases; use two of your attacks to Called Shot (leg) a dwarf at a mere -2 penalty to hit and he becomes completely immobile. That's significantly better than most called shots, which is weird.

It looks like you haven't done much of anything to address the core combat imbalances in the system (two-handing is the best style, dual-wielding is generally weak, etc.)

Splitting up the spells so much by school makes it much harder to play sorcerers, and to choose between your options for different spells at a given level. I think I prefer the original formatting unless there is a good reason to only look at one school at a time that I'm missing. I definitely don't like the forced selection of prohibited schools. I'm assuming you did that to keep people from always banning the weak schools, but there's a much better solution: balance the schools.

I really like that ranges are shorter. Spell scaling is really weird in some cases, though. For example, Fireball deals 1d6/level, to a maximum of 10d6, but wizards don't get it until 9th level, so they get a grand total of one level of scaling out of it. Also, why are some levels delayed for wizards? What's the logic on which spells are delayed and which aren't? Why are some spells sorcerer only and some wizard only?

Many of the most powerful spells are unfixed, and power level is very inconsistent. Color Spray (Sor/Wiz 1) is vastly better than Command (Wiz 2), Grease and Entangle are still amazing, and Fly and Improved Invisibility are just as game-changing as ever. Also, Just Reversal is too weak, Mage's Denial is crazy powerful (though the feat dependency is really weird).

Okay, so I ended up focusing on the negative because that's the way I think, but there really is a fair amount of good material here. I wouldn't spend this much time trying to find problems if I didn't think it was worth improving. Do you mind if I take some of your ideas - particularly the ability score formatting and some sorcerer class features - for my own total rewrite?

[Rogue Shadows]

But as long as you use the (ability score - 10)/2 formula, the ability modifiers are simply too small relative to a d20's variance for many of the interesting uses to come up.

Hmm...any suggestions?


Also, catching items needs to be an action of some kind, or else people can make Dexterity checks against every single ranged attack that comes at them, which is obnoxious and unintuitive.

Whoops! Hmm...does an immediate action 1/round sound about right?


I love the idea of backgrounds, though I wish they had a larger effect on skills and a smaller effect on feats and core competency. Players should be encouraged to choose a background for their character, but you should avoid providing strong mechanical incentives to have specific backgrounds, and having imbalanced backgrounds (Sailor is weak compared to, say, Peasant or Religious) is jut annoying.

Conflicting interests here...I want the backgrounds to be more meaningful than just a few skill ranks, but at the same time trying to balance relatively minor abilities across 21 distinct backgrounds, each of which can by design be taken by any class, is difficult.


I am disappointed that you used some of the stranger parts of Pathfinder; I hate the No Escape barbarian power. Infuriation is weird; does it cost a use of Rage? It seems like that would be actively detrimental in many cases, and it isn't optional.

Well, the fact that it isn't optional isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world to me; this is a barbarian we're talking about. Though, I can see how that could be annoying to some players, so I'll make it optional. And no, it doesn't cost a rage, and actually explicitly states that it can be activated even if you've run out of rages.

What's the problem with No Escape?


I swear I've seen that bard before. Where is it from?

Monte Cooke's Complete Book of Eldritch Might.


Why are all clerics preachers? That's but one of many possible character concepts for a cleric. Also, clerics of different domains are still too similar mechanically. Different domains should provide different abilities, I think.

What do you mean by preachers? Do you mean the Preach Unto the Masses ability? It's there mostly to fill up dead levels, since that was a design goal of mine. Nothing mandates a cleric to preach, anyway, but I do think that a cleric who feels like doing so should be able to get up to an altar and convey his beliefs to the masses effectively.


Am I missing something, or is Wild Shape just as powerful as it was in 3.5? If not more so, thanks to Shifter's Speech letting you cast spells without dumping a feat on Natural Spell?

Wild Shape is worded basically the same, but three things impede it. First, it directly works like polymorph, and polymorph has been significantly nerfed: you're limited to forms equal or lesser HD, to a max of 10 HD, and any limited-use abilities are unavailable, "limited use" being defined as anything the creature can't use every round, every day. For example, if you polymorph into a dragon, you can fly and have darkvision, but you don't get the breath weapon, since the breath weapon is usable only once every 1d4 rounds.

Second, the Druid's spell list is now much, much more limited (it is in fact the old Ranger spell list), so the druid's options are curtailed. I'm sure the game can be broken by a 2nd-level Ranger spell at 10th level, but I'm equally certain that there are far, far, far more efficient ways to do so.

Thirdly, Shifter's Speech only lets a druid speak in animal form, not cast spells. Natural Spell (gained at 10th level) lets the druid cast spells, but only Druid spells.


The fighter Physical Prowess abilities are crazy, and definitely not in balance with each other. Intimidating Presence and Bash are not even close to being equal to +1 Strength or +1 Dexterity.

Fair enough. I'm open to suggestions for changing them.


Resplendent power's duration is too complicated; it comes out to about 4 + 2/3 levels, but that's far from clear. Why not just say "rounds equal to 3 + paladin level"? The effects and concept are interesting, though. I'm not sure why it's fluffed as "resolve", though; to me, it feels like a quick prayer to the paladin's deity. There's some imbalance, though; Only Blood is far better than Inspiring Words. It's also weird that most of the powers are duration-based, but Only Blood is instantaneous. Righteous Cause is completely useless, and it doesn't even have much of an effect on fluff.

They're lifted from a 3rd-party Pathfinder class; I forget which one. I'll change it to 3 + Paladin level rounds.

Righteous Cause was lifted from WotC's Dead Levels article. I like it, personally. Yeah, it's useless, but I like it, and since it's useless it isn't hurting anyone by being there.


Wild Trait seems to be weird fluff-wise for rangers; actually taking on aspects of animals is much more of a druid thing generally.

Well, the ranger isn't literally growing flippers or gaining catlike ears. They're just names for the abilities. It could be a little clearer, though, I guess; I'll add in some lines to that effect.


Why do rangers get sneak attack?

Honestly, my only answer to this is, why shouldn't they have sneak attack? They're trained hunters. A hunter usually strikes from ambush and tries to bring the foe down as quickly as possible with a debilitating blow. Them getting sneak attack just seems natural to me.

(And as I explained to a poster above, I gave them Sneak Attack and not Skirmish because the two are so mechanically similar that I'd rather just have one or the other, and Sneak Attack is more vital to my image of the rogue than Skirmish is to my image of the ranger).


Quarry is too weak; why would you use a standard action to improve your ability to track the target when you could just keep fighting him? It changes to a free action later, but that just makes it practically useless until 16th level; grant it earlier, and as a swift action, but with limited uses/day. Perceptive Tracker is poorly worded; does that mean that they can never fail?

Will do.


Seasoned Explorer is not a 16th level ability.

Down it goes, though...damn. One of my minor goals was that noncasting classes should get at least two things at every level. Preferably new things, but simple mechanical increases were fine. The Ranger was the hardest to fill out in this regard. Gonna have to find a new 16th level ability...


Measure the Mark is confusing.

You can thank Pathfinder for that wording, I'll rework it. Basically:
- I want to make a Sleight of Hand Check (Me: "ooh, that necklace looks shiny")
- You want to oppose with your Spot Check (You: "I really don't want to have my necklace stolen")
- But you roll your Spot check first. (You: "There are thieves everywhere in this market, they say")
- Having done so, I can now decide to either make my Sleight of Hand check, or not, based on whether I think I can beat your Spot check (Me: "...better not risk it, he looks like he's paying attention to his surroundings.")
- If I decide to not make a Sleight of Hand check, I can make a Bluff check to make you not realize that I was just sizing you up for a pilfering. (Me: *whistles nonchalantly*)


Power Slide has a weird name.

Pulled from the Thief-Acrobat class over on the D&D Wiki. I couldn't think of a better name, given that "defensive roll" was already taken.


Skirmisher is interesting, though the specific restriction of it not working against uncanny dodge is odd, and it likely won't be used much because full attacks are so critical at high levels.

One thing I hoped to do with Skirmisher, and with other movement-based attacks elsewhere, was to make combat more mobile and...well, longer. It has occurred to me over the past few years of playing D&D that most battles in-game last only a few rounds. The longest last maybe a dozen. And the vast majority of them, when it's just melee, involve standing in place and swinging.

Contrast this to some of the great swordfights of cinematic history: Obi-Wan verses Anakin, Inigo Montoya verses the Dread Pirate Roberts, etc. They last for some time an have a lot of variation and stuff going on during them.

Basically, one of the things I want to happen is to reduce the tendency to full attack, and instead to bring movement into a D&D fight.


Adept Sorcery is very clever, though it should be reworded; "targeted spell" includes spells which affect multiple targets, which would allow you to gain the spell's effects on all the targets that didn't resist without using the spell slot. In general, I'm very happy with the sorcerer abilities; they definitely feel like a conduit of inherent arcane magic, which is cool.

Will reword. And yes, the goal is to to make the Sorcerer a living conduit of magic. Fun fact; the Sorcerer also is the only full casting class (0-7th-level-spells) that has access to its entire spell list, though with the caveat that it takes literally weeks to change its higher-level spells out for other higher-level spells.


Intuitive Knowledge's 7th level ability is pointless. Learned Sage is also pointless; by RAW, you can actually take 10 on Knowledge checks, unless you changed that. (Blew my mind when I realized that too. You can't reroll it, but there's nothing stopping you from taking 10.) Erudition is weird; none of those are class skills, and I don't buy the fluff. Logical Mind and Academic are weak abilities that belong at lower levels, if at all. That seems to be the theme with wizard abilities. Are you worried about the wizard being overpowered?

Sort of. Prepared casting is notably better than spontaneous casting, and I generally hold the Wizard as being sort of iconic of all that is unbalanced in D&D. Also, I just wasn't sure how to fill most of its dead levels (which was, again, a design goal). Most of what's there was lifted from the Archivist.


Skills don't seem to have changed much. That's a shame - there is a lot of room for improvement in the core skill system.

There are some minor tweaks here and there, but yeah, it's basically unchanged, because...well, during my playtest of the original Rebuild, skills simply weren't that much of a problem, save that the Monk was too damn good at certain of them, but even then, that was a problem with the Monk class, not the skill system.

To be honest, my biggest complaint with the skill system is the fact that it encourages specialization over generalization, but without drastically reducing the number of skills to, like, 10, I don't know how to fix that.


Improved Feint is annoying; it means that character will roll an extra die every round for a minor benefit for the rest of the game. You don't want to encourage time-wasting for a trivial benefit, and feinting - like other maneuvers - should be done for a specific reason as a reaction to circumstances, not just because you can.

Any suggestions for fixing?


Weapon Specialization is ridiculous, and makes being a generalist fighter stupid.

The problem here is, cut the bonus in half - to +1, so a maximum of +5 at 20th - and it's instead ridiculously too small and not worth the feat investment. I suppose I could change the scaling so it cuts out at +7 or something...


Called Shot seems like a complicated subsystem, but non-critical, non-debilitating called shots all have negligible effects, so I'm not certain it's worth the effort to learn (as a player) and penalty imposed to hit the target (for the character). However, there are weird corner cases; use two of your attacks to Called Shot (leg) a dwarf at a mere -2 penalty to hit and he becomes completely immobile. That's significantly better than most called shots, which is weird.

The system was actually lifted directly from Pathfinder's [url=http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/variants/calledShots.html]Ultimate Combat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlMwc1c0HRQ), with no changes.


It looks like you haven't done much of anything to address the core combat imbalances in the system (two-handing is the best style, dual-wielding is generally weak, etc.)

Right, I knew I forgot to eliminate a clause from Power Attack...


Splitting up the spells so much by school makes it much harder to play sorcerers, and to choose between your options for different spells at a given level. I think I prefer the original formatting unless there is a good reason to only look at one school at a time that I'm missing.

Um...did you miss that Sorcerers have their own spell list distinct from wizards? Pages 178-181, with nary a mention of spell school in sight (because sorcerers don't care too much about school). Sorcerers also get a number of spells that wizards don't (and vice-versa) and get some spells sooner and some later (for example, fireball is a 3rd-level Sorcerer spell but a 4th-level Wizard spell)


I definitely don't like the forced selection of prohibited schools. I'm assuming you did that to keep people from always banning the weak schools, but there's a much better solution: balance the schools.

Better, maybe, but over 9000 times more complex, and a lot of attempts to balance the schools would result in a lot of arbitrary decisions. Like, for example, how the Hell do you balance anything in evocation against something like planar binding?

If you want free access to all the schools within your spell list, play a sorcerer. Otherwise, part of the cost of playing a wizard is the fact that you're not going to be able to use every sort of magic, but the magic you do have access to will be very powerful.


Also, why are some levels delayed for wizards? What's the logic on which spells are delayed and which aren't? Why are some spells sorcerer only and some wizard only?

Sorcerers and wizards get distinct spells to further differentiate between the two. Basically, it's for the same reason that in 3.5 the cleric and the druid didn't just have the same spell lists, or the beguiler and warmage. They're not the same class, they're not trying to do the same things with magic, so why should their spell lists be identical?

In general, sorcerers tend towards flashy and immediate spells. They don't get quite as many utility spells or spells with long casting times. Sorcerers also get early access to some "blasty" spells. They're not cerebral the way wizards are; a sorcerer is built for adventure (their spells are partially based off of Constitution, after all!)

Wizards, by contrast, get far more utility spells. Their delayed entry into "blasty" spells is offset by their class features allowing them to easier pump the spells they do know (via the Augment School ability), as well as having a far larger breadth of knowledge at their fingertips via their spellbooks.


Many of the most powerful spells are unfixed, and power level is very inconsistent. Color Spray (Sor/Wiz 1) is vastly better than Command (Wiz 2), Grease and Entangle are still amazing, and Fly and Improved Invisibility are just as game-changing as ever. Also, Just Reversal is too weak, Mage's Denial is crazy powerful (though the feat dependency is really weird).

Mage's denial is actually meant to be the great equalizer, at least between mages. To be perfectly frank, counterspelling is too difficult in D&D, to the point where I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever try to do it in over 10 years of playing. Spells have powerful effects on the game state; they should be easier to interrupt. I'll admit that a large part of this is probably born from being a primarily Blue player in Magic: the Gathering, but it's neverthless a view I'll hold to.

Most of the rest of your spell complaints are right, though, I should get to those. The exception is Fly. If an opponent is flying, I have one response.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110909153326/mk_/images/2/27/Bow_and_Arrow.jpg

I believe I mentioned this earlier with skills, but if I have one complaint with D&D above any other, it's the fact that it rewards specialization over generalization. The problem is that this is at least partially a result of players and DMs enabling the players.

If my players encounter a flying creature, and then begin whining because they're all melee trip charging spiked chain specialists and none of them ever thought to buy a bow and arrow and invest in some training in them, that is neither my fault, nor my problem.


Do you mind if I take some of your ideas - particularly the ability score formatting and some sorcerer class features - for my own total rewrite?

To be honest, I'd rather a mutual collaboration on a rewrite, though I don't have anything remotely resembling the time.

So, in lieu of that - yeah, plunder away. This entire thing was itself plundered, after all.

[Vadskye]

Hmm...any suggestions?
Simple but slightly inconsistent approach: For the purposes of ability checks, you use (ability score - 10), without dividing by 2. More robust but a dramatic change: For almost all purposes, use (ability score - 10), without dividing by 2. At that point, you might as well drop that extra +10 that doesn't mean anything and start counting ability scores from 0. But that's a whole new ball game...


Whoops! Hmm...does an immediate action 1/round sound about right?
If it's an immediate action, it's already 1/round. :smalltongue: But that sounds good, yes.


Conflicting interests here...I want the backgrounds to be more meaningful than just a few skill ranks, but at the same time trying to balance relatively minor abilities across 21 distinct backgrounds, each of which can by design be taken by any class, is difficult.
How about granting class skills or granting actual bonuses to skills? Both of those are more meaningful than a skill rank or few without entering the difficult territory of writing unique yet simultaneously balanced abilities for each background. That, combined with the bonus feats, should be more than enough to give them each a unique flavor.

Well, the fact that it isn't optional isn't necessarily the worst thing in the world to me; this is a barbarian we're talking about. Though, I can see how that could be annoying to some players, so I'll make it optional. And no, it doesn't cost a rage, and actually explicitly states that it can be activated even if you've run out of rages.


What's the problem with No Escape?
I have a rant on that somewhere around here... there are two main problems. First, you can move double your speed as an immediate action, which wreaks all kinds of havoc with the normal relationship between actions and time. It lets you exceed your maximum (running) movement speed and all sorts of weird stuff. Second, it means that it can be mechanically advantageous to treat an ally as an "enemy"; have your ally withdraw from you so that you can get free movement. It's just a poorly designed ability.


Monte Cooke's Complete Book of Eldritch Might.
Huh. I've never heard of that or read it. Maybe someone else pilfered from there for something they posted on these boards.


What do you mean by preachers? Do you mean the Preach Unto the Masses ability? It's there mostly to fill up dead levels, since that was a design goal of mine. Nothing mandates a cleric to preach, anyway, but I do think that a cleric who feels like doing so should be able to get up to an altar and convey his beliefs to the masses effectively.
Yeah, that ability. I agree with that idea, but that just means that it should be an option, not a class feature; nothing about being a devout believer makes you necessarily good at convincing others. But clerics should definitely have Perform (oratory) and/or Diplomacy as class skills.


Wild Shape is worded basically the same, but three things impede it. First, it directly works like polymorph, and polymorph has been significantly nerfed: you're limited to forms equal or lesser HD, to a max of 10 HD, and any limited-use abilities are unavailable, "limited use" being defined as anything the creature can't use every round, every day. For example, if you polymorph into a dragon, you can fly and have darkvision, but you don't get the breath weapon, since the breath weapon is usable only once every 1d4 rounds.
None of those three restrictions matter to the druid until 10th level. Animals don't have limited use abilities anyway; that wasn't what made them overpowered. Animals are generally powerful for their size, pounce, improved grab, and so on - none of which are restricted here. Then at 10th level, the progression suddenly hits a brick wall (in a way that isn't described in the actual Wild Shape ability). It's a strange system.


Second, the Druid's spell list is now much, much more limited (it is in fact the old Ranger spell list), so the druid's options are curtailed. I'm sure the game can be broken by a 2nd-level Ranger spell at 10th level, but I'm equally certain that there are far, far, far more efficient ways to do so.
True. I forgot the reduced spell list when I said that.


Thirdly, Shifter's Speech only lets a druid speak in animal form, not cast spells. Natural Spell (gained at 10th level) lets the druid cast spells, but only Druid spells.
Ah, I see that your Polymorph change removes spellcasting. That isn't an issue, then.


Fair enough. I'm open to suggestions for changing them.
If you remove the stackable ability score increases, everything gets better. You never want to incentivize a player to be "boring" and choose the same ability over and over again. Plus, without the stackable abilities, the imbalances matter less. If an ability is overpowered, that means every fighter takes it, but there are still worse things that could happen.


Righteous Cause was lifted from WotC's Dead Levels article. I like it, personally. Yeah, it's useless, but I like it, and since it's useless it isn't hurting anyone by being there.
It actually does hurt, but not in an obvious way. There's a mental cost associated with everything that a player has to keep in their head. The problem with this ability is that it's a conditional bonus for a very specific situation; you can't just write it down on your character sheet. That means it has a relatively high mental cost - and it provides essentially zero benefit. That means it's negative overall.


Well, the ranger isn't literally growing flippers or gaining catlike ears. They're just names for the abilities. It could be a little clearer, though, I guess; I'll add in some lines to that effect.
Fluff-wise, how do you explain abilities like scent without druid-style magic? That's not just living in the woods; that's having a sense of smell as good as a dog's. A swim speed equal to your base land speed makes you faster than the world swimming speed record. At level 1. It's not a "balance" issue, in the same sense that being able to bench-press a thousand pounds isn't a "balance" issue by itself, but it rubs me the wrong way.


Honestly, my only answer to this is, why shouldn't they have sneak attack? They're trained hunters. A hunter usually strikes from ambush and tries to bring the foe down as quickly as possible with a debilitating blow. Them getting sneak attack just seems natural to me.
See, that description makes sense to me. But that doesn't match up with the group fighting and flanking-based mechanics of sneak attack in my mind.


(And as I explained to a poster above, I gave them Sneak Attack and not Skirmish because the two are so mechanically similar that I'd rather just have one or the other, and Sneak Attack is more vital to my image of the rogue than Skirmish is to my image of the ranger).
I agree - and I don't like the mechanics of Skirmish. I tried a skirmish-based ranger for a while, and it didn't fit. But I'm not sure sneak attack fulfills your goals either. It interacts poorly with ranged combat and the whole "hunter" mentality.


Down it goes, though...damn. One of my minor goals was that noncasting classes should get at least two things at every level. Preferably new things, but simple mechanical increases were fine. The Ranger was the hardest to fill out in this regard. Gonna have to find a new 16th level ability...
Two new things at every level? You're ambitious! I recommend using a "cycles" of abilities: low-light vision -> darkvision -> blindsense -> blindsight -> true sight, for example. Steady improvements on a single thematically appropriate concept, placed at consistent intervals (4th, 8th, 12th...).


You can thank Pathfinder for that wording, I'll rework it. Basically:
- I want to make a Sleight of Hand Check (Me: "ooh, that necklace looks shiny")
- You want to oppose with your Spot Check (You: "I really don't want to have my necklace stolen")
- But you roll your Spot check first. (You: "There are thieves everywhere in this market, they say")
- Having done so, I can now decide to either make my Sleight of Hand check, or not, based on whether I think I can beat your Spot check (Me: "...better not risk it, he looks like he's paying attention to his surroundings.")
- If I decide to not make a Sleight of Hand check, I can make a Bluff check to
make you not realize that I was just sizing you up for a pilfering. (Me: *whistles nonchalantly*)
"When a rogue fails a Sleight of Hand check to take something from a creature without being noticed, she may make a Bluff check. If the Bluff check succeeds, the target does not notice the failed attempt."
Slightly more powerful, but involves less yo-yoing back and forth on who is the "active" party. Also, it's two sentences, which is nice. I also think this needs to be an optional ability, such as a rogue talent. The rogue class encompasses many, many different kinds of characters, and only a few of them are pickpockets.


Pulled from the Thief-Acrobat class over on the D&D Wiki. I couldn't think of a better name, given that "defensive roll" was already taken.
I was trying to come up with a better name, but I really don't like the ability enough anyway. It's extremely powerful: you take half damage from the first part of a full attack, and the rest of the attacks can't hit you because you're out of range.


One thing I hoped to do with Skirmisher, and with other movement-based attacks elsewhere, was to make combat more mobile and...well, longer. It has occurred to me over the past few years of playing D&D that most battles in-game last only a few rounds. The longest last maybe a dozen. And the vast majority of them, when it's just melee, involve standing in place and swinging.

Contrast this to some of the great swordfights of cinematic history: Obi-Wan verses Anakin, Inigo Montoya verses the Dread Pirate Roberts, etc. They last for some time an have a lot of variation and stuff going on during them.

Basically, one of the things I want to happen is to reduce the tendency to full attack, and instead to bring movement into a D&D fight.
I know the problem you're talking about, but providing minor incentives to move is not nearly going to cut it. There are two separate problems you've identified, and they are both tricky to unravel. The first is that combat is very static. This is happens for two reasons: attack of opportunity mechanics overly penalize movement, and the full-round action nature of full attacks ensures that everyone has a strong incentive to stand totally still. This can be solved by rewriting attacks of opportunity and allowing a full attack as a standard action. Standard action full attacks are huge by themselves; when players can move your speed without crippling your ability to deal damage, combat magically becomes much more mobile. It makes the game vastly better.

The second problem is more difficult. Yes, D&D and Pathfinder combat is generally extremely fast with respect to in-game time, usually lasting two or three rounds before victory is inevitable for one side. This causes and is related to a host of problems. However, fixing this requires rewriting the fundamental math of the game, which is very, very complicated. spreadsheets... so many spreadsheets


Will reword. And yes, the goal is to to make the Sorcerer a living conduit of magic. Fun fact; the Sorcerer also is the only full casting class (0-7th-level-spells) that has access to its entire spell list, though with the caveat that it takes literally weeks to change its higher-level spells out for other higher-level spells.
Very different from before! Does he actually have to spend days or weeks doing literally nothing except meditating, though? That seems... really inconvenient, to the point that it would never be used in some faster-paced campaigns.


Sort of. Prepared casting is notably better than spontaneous casting, and I generally hold the Wizard as being sort of iconic of all that is unbalanced in D&D. Also, I just wasn't sure how to fill most of its dead levels (which was, again, a design goal). Most of what's there was lifted from the Archivist.
Prepared casting is only better than spontaneous casting when spell lists are large. Spontaneous casting is better in a vacuum, because you never have "dead" spell slots. That's why D&D delayed sorcerers by a level. It's hard to say this for sure without testing, but I think you've effectively flipped the power gap between sorcerers and wizards, making sorceres significantly more powerful.


There are some minor tweaks here and there, but yeah, it's basically unchanged, because...well, during my playtest of the original Rebuild, skills simply weren't that much of a problem, save that the Monk was too damn good at certain of them, but even then, that was a problem with the Monk class, not the skill system.

To be honest, my biggest complaint with the skill system is the fact that it encourages specialization over generalization, but without drastically reducing the number of skills to, like, 10, I don't know how to fix that.
You're testing with D&D/PF players, I assume? The skill system has plenty of problems, but we've all gotten so used to it that we don't really think about them anymore. If it isn't an issue with your group, though, you're right not to worry about it - there are other things to fix.


Any suggestions for fixing?
I allowed feinting as a move action, which makes more sense in a standard action full attack system, but still isn't perfect. Feinting should be an attack action by default, though. Improved Feint could make them flat-footed against all attacks you make for 1 round, instead of just your next attack.


The problem here is, cut the bonus in half - to +1, so a maximum of +5 at 20th - and it's instead ridiculously too small and not worth the feat investment. I suppose I could change the scaling so it cuts out at +7 or something...
Feats like Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization shouldn't scale at all (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332544-How-to-Design-Feats).


The system was actually lifted directly from Pathfinder's Ultimate Combat (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/variants/calledShots.html), with no changes.
I'm not too surprised, I guess. Pathfinder is great at creating interesting and flavorful game mechanics but then botching the execution.


Right, I knew I forgot to eliminate a clause from Power Attack...
Power Attack is far from the only reason that problem exists. Two-handed weapons are cheaper than two-weapon fighting, require no feats or ability scores, interact better with single attacks, and give you a free hand to do other things like perform combat maneuvers. Power Attack was just icing on the cake.


Um...did you miss that Sorcerers have their own spell list distinct from wizards? Pages 178-181, with nary a mention of spell school in sight (because sorcerers don't care too much about school). Sorcerers also get a number of spells that wizards don't (and vice-versa) and get some spells sooner and some later (for example, fireball is a 3rd-level Sorcerer spell but a 4th-level Wizard spell)
Um... yes. Yes, I did miss the sorcerer-specific spell list. That objection is withdrawn. I am still unclear on why those differences exist, though; what internal logic supports sorcerers and wizards getting scorching ray at the same time, but wizards getting fireball a level later? Are wizards bad at AOE effects?


Better, maybe, but over 9000 times more complex, and a lot of attempts to balance the schools would result in a lot of arbitrary decisions. Like, for example, how the Hell do you balance anything in evocation against something like planar binding?
If a spell is so powerful that it makes balancing the schools impossible, it's too powerful.


If you want free access to all the schools within your spell list, play a sorcerer. Otherwise, part of the cost of playing a wizard is the fact that you're not going to be able to use every sort of magic, but the magic you do have access to will be very powerful.
But you're building your whole wizard casting system around casting spells from specific schools. That means school balance is critical! Otherwise, everyone will just be conjurers and transmuters. In the original system, even if you were a necromancer, you weren't gimped because you could still cast spells from good schools. If your schools are imbalanced, the whole system is broken, regardless of how your force banned schools to be assigned. (And if your goal is to balance things, why does Conjuration ban Divination and Transmutation ban Enchantment? Those are weak schools that most people would already love to ban.)


Sorcerers and wizards get distinct spells to further differentiate between the two. Basically, it's for the same reason that in 3.5 the cleric and the druid didn't just have the same spell lists, or the beguiler and warmage. They're not the same class, they're not trying to do the same things with magic, so why should their spell lists be identical?
Clerics and druids had different spell lists because they were thematically distinct, not in order to make them thematically distinct. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. If the differences don't come as a result of some underlying logic, they will feel arbitrary and inconsistent. (For example, why do both sorcerer and wizard get suggestion, but only wizard gets command?)


In general, sorcerers tend towards flashy and immediate spells. They don't get quite as many utility spells or spells with long casting times. Sorcerers also get early access to some "blasty" spells. They're not cerebral the way wizards are; a sorcerer is built for adventure (their spells are partially based off of Constitution, after all!)

Wizards, by contrast, get far more utility spells. Their delayed entry into "blasty" spells is offset by their class features allowing them to easier pump the spells they do know (via the Augment School ability), as well as having a far larger breadth of knowledge at their fingertips via their spellbooks.
This is a reasonable distinction - it makes wizards closer to clerics if they get more of the subtler utility magic - but it's not backed up by the actual spell lists yet. Based on this description, sorcerers shouldn't get phantom steed or scrying, but they should get command. Blasting spell levels are very inconsistent. There are other oddities.


Mage's denial is actually meant to be the great equalizer, at least between mages. To be perfectly frank, counterspelling is too difficult in D&D, to the point where I don't think I've ever seen anyone ever try to do it in over 10 years of playing. Spells have powerful effects on the game state; they should be easier to interrupt. I'll admit that a large part of this is probably born from being a primarily Blue player in Magic: the Gathering, but it's neverthless a view I'll hold to.
Counterspelling is weird because readied actions are really weird. If you ready action to counterspell a boss, it's trivial to counterspell every spell he casts, because your turn always comes right before his. This just doesn't happen because people don't like waiting, and you have to tell the DM "I ready to counterspell" and you know he's going to mess with you. Immediate action free counterspells are not the answer; it will turn mage duels into a battle of "who has more relevant spell slots today, because all of our spells are fizzling". This is something I haven't fully solved yet, though. If it functioned more like Celerity, where it took up your next action or your magic on your next turn, it could be more balanced.


Most of the rest of your spell complaints are right, though, I should get to those. The exception is Fly. If an opponent is flying, I have one response.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110909153326/mk_/images/2/27/Bow_and_Arrow.jpg
You give your typical Strength-based PC a bow and the mage will laugh as he rains down death from the skies, possibly supplemented by a nigh-impenetrable stoneskin. Because D&D rewards specialization so strongly, and your system is no exception, the power gulf between normal fighting and pulling out a bow is massive. And that doesn't even address the 80% or so of monsters that just have no way to deal with flying foes. Yes, there are a small percentage of encounters where everyone has potent ranged attacks. But thanks to the short range of spells, even casters have no reasonable way to deal with a flying archer unless they can also fly. It's an extremely potent combination.


I believe I mentioned this earlier with skills, but if I have one complaint with D&D above any other, it's the fact that it rewards specialization over generalization. The problem is that this is at least partially a result of players and DMs enabling the players.

If my players encounter a flying creature, and then begin whining because they're all melee trip charging spiked chain specialists and none of them ever thought to buy a bow and arrow and invest in some training in them, that is neither my fault, nor my problem.
It's not just a question of having a bow or not having a bow. Just having a bow lying around - even a magic bow - isn't that helpful when your Dex is 13. (Also, range increments are doubled going up and halved going down, so if the flying creature stays a decent distance away even a skilld archer will have a bad time.) If you want players to stop specializing, you have to do a comprehensive rewrite of the math and stacking of the system that results in not giving people an incentive to specialize so darn much: remove or drastically shorten feat chains, limit bonus stacking, encourage multiple ability scores to be high, and more. (Also, don't have massive Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization feats...)


To be honest, I'd rather a mutual collaboration on a rewrite, though I don't have anything remotely resembling the time.

So, in lieu of that - yeah, plunder away. This entire thing was itself plundered, after all.
Well, the reason I take such an interest in your rewrite is that I've been working on a complete rewrite for a very long time - going on two years now. It's called Rise, and it's online here (http://kcjohnson.me/rise-resources/). If you want ideas for potential fighter abilities, you could look at the fighter class features and extensive supply of combat feats. Or you could pilfer the attack of opportunity and overwhelm mechanics if you want to make combat more mobile. There are also more subtle changes that are harder to quickly steal, but are really useful. For example, combat lasts for 5 rounds on average. I'm too far along to turn my attention to a direct mutual collaboration, per se, but I'm always looking for ideas and things that I could improve on, and I love seeing fragments of my system spread through other people's systems. So more of a mutual pilfering and improvement?

[Rogue Shadows]

Simple but slightly inconsistent approach: For the purposes of ability checks, you use (ability score - 10), without dividing by 2.

That's...that's what you do, in the Rebuild, justified by the fact that ability checks represent the very basis of what you can do.

So if you have a 15 Dexterity, you have a +5 to Dexterity checks.

Did you miss that?


How about granting class skills or granting actual bonuses to skills? Both of those are more meaningful than a skill rank or few without entering the difficult territory of writing unique yet simultaneously balanced abilities for each background. That, combined with the bonus feats, should be more than enough to give them each a unique flavor.

Eh, I guess. I dunno, it just seems like that's something that's disappeared into your available bonuses by even 5th level, let alone 10th, 15th, or 20th. Also, skill bonuses are a dime a dozen. I want your background to let you do something that you can only do because of that background.


I have a rant on that somewhere around here... there are two main problems. First, you can move double your speed as an immediate action, which wreaks all kinds of havoc with the normal relationship between actions and time. It lets you exceed your maximum (running) movement speed and all sorts of weird stuff. Second, it means that it can be mechanically advantageous to treat an ally as an "enemy"; have your ally withdraw from you so that you can get free movement. It's just a poorly designed ability.

Any DM that lets you treat an ally as an enemy...shouldn't.

As for the other complaint, it's entirely dependent on an enemy taking a withdraw action, and the barbarian has to end adjacent to that enemy, and it's only usable 1/rage. So I'm really not seeing any major problem here.


Yeah, that ability. I agree with that idea, but that just means that it should be an option, not a class feature; nothing about being a devout believer makes you necessarily good at convincing others. But clerics should definitely have Perform (oratory) and/or Diplomacy as class skills.

*Shrug* this is the same objection people raise whenever you try to make a fighter class that's more focused and less generic. "But that's only one fighter archetype, and the fighter has to conform to all archetypes." No, it really doesn't. That's why we're playing a class-based tabletop RPG instead of something more generic, like GURPS or the Storyteller system.

If your cleric doesn't want to preach, then just don't preach. And if the fact that you can but won't really bugs you, well, that's what alternate class features were invented for. Any good DM should be able to come up with something to replace it.


None of those three restrictions matter to the druid until 10th level. Animals don't have limited use abilities anyway; that wasn't what made them overpowered. Animals are generally powerful for their size, pounce, improved grab, and so on - none of which are restricted here. Then at 10th level, the progression suddenly hits a brick wall (in a way that isn't described in the actual Wild Shape ability). It's a strange system.

Hmm, good point, I should actually make the druid able to shapeshift into an animal based on total HD.


Ah, I see that your Polymorph change removes spellcasting. That isn't an issue, then.

Frankly, in general, the options available to a druid via shapeshifting are going to be worse than simply fighting in her normal form. For example, a Tyrannosaurus is an 18-HD creature, but it is not appropriately balanced for 18th-level fighting. A rhino is an 8-HD creature, but it is not as powerful as an 8th-level character.

This druid can shapeshift for combat, but really shapeshifting is more useful in a utility role. When I was reexamining the class, I actually found it fit into the "rogue" archetype more than the "priest" or "warrior" archetype.


If you remove the stackable ability score increases, everything gets better. You never want to incentivize a player to be "boring" and choose the same ability over and over again. Plus, without the stackable abilities, the imbalances matter less. If an ability is overpowered, that means every fighter takes it, but there are still worse things that could happen.

I'll eliminate the STR, DEX, and CON boosts, then.


It actually does hurt, but not in an obvious way. There's a mental cost associated with everything that a player has to keep in their head. The problem with this ability is that it's a conditional bonus for a very specific situation; you can't just write it down on your character sheet. That means it has a relatively high mental cost - and it provides essentially zero benefit. That means it's negative overall.

I guess.


Fluff-wise, how do you explain abilities like scent without druid-style magic? That's not just living in the woods; that's having a sense of smell as good as a dog's. A swim speed equal to your base land speed makes you faster than the world swimming speed record. At level 1. It's not a "balance" issue, in the same sense that being able to bench-press a thousand pounds isn't a "balance" issue by itself, but it rubs me the wrong way.

I know you didn't really mean it like this, but I read this as "mundanes can't have nice things."

To be honest, my explanation is "this is a ridiculous world of magic." Even if the ranger isn't itself magic, its still a class that exists in a world of magic, a world where 1st-level sorcerers are already beginning to tear holes in reality to summon creatures from across the planes; or bards are playing music so well that reality itself rewards them.

Basically, I took the line in the PHB that extraordinary abilities aren't magic but can still defy the laws of physics and ran with it.


See, that description makes sense to me. But that doesn't match up with the group fighting and flanking-based mechanics of sneak attack in my mind.

Sneak Attack is based around flanking or whenever the opponent is denied DEX to AC - such as when striking from ambush. Like a hunter. Remember?


Two new things at every level? You're ambitious! I recommend using a "cycles" of abilities: low-light vision -> darkvision -> blindsense -> blindsight -> true sight, for example. Steady improvements on a single thematically appropriate concept, placed at consistent intervals (4th, 8th, 12th...).

I have those, but it's hard to do that in a balanced way over 20 levels with every ability.


Slightly more powerful, but involves less yo-yoing back and forth on who is the "active" party. Also, it's two sentences, which is nice. I also think this needs to be an optional ability, such as a rogue talent. The rogue class encompasses many, many different kinds of characters, and only a few of them are pickpockets.

Again, I'm actually building towards specific archetypes, which is the entire point of a class-based system like D&D. Abilities that you don't like can be swapped out for ACFs.


I was trying to come up with a better name, but I really don't like the ability enough anyway. It's extremely powerful: you take half damage from the first part of a full attack, and the rest of the attacks can't hit you because you're out of range.

To be honest, by this point you're 15 levels deep into the Rogue class and should be rewarded for having not moved out of it for a prestige class. I will, however, make it limited use per day.


This can be solved by rewriting attacks of opportunity and allowing a full attack as a standard action.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. At least, not with iterative attacks. Playtesting the original Rebuild found this to be far too powerful an option to be regularly available to characters. Simply put, damage output per round becomes absurd; I had a monk that dropped an equal-CR black dragon in two rounds.

To be entirely honest I've been considering going the other way and simply eliminating iterative attacks entirely. If you want multiple attacks, wield two weapons or be a monk.


The second problem is more difficult. Yes, D&D and Pathfinder combat is generally extremely fast with respect to in-game time, usually lasting two or three rounds before victory is inevitable for one side. This causes and is related to a host of problems. However, fixing this requires rewriting the fundamental math of the game, which is very, very complicated.

Actually it mostly just involves dropping damage output while still giving characters something interesting to do with their attacks (hence all the new class features that replace normal attacks, and called shots, though I understand that I'm going to have to pump up the basic called shots a bit to make them wothwhile).

This goes the other way, of course: monsters need to deal less damage per attack. Though then again, even the Tarrasque only deals 4d8+17 (average 35) damage with its single best attack (funnily enough, exactly the same as a maxed-out fireball's average)


Very different from before! Does he actually have to spend days or weeks doing literally nothing except meditating, though? That seems... really inconvenient, to the point that it would never be used in some faster-paced campaigns.

Which doesn't really make the sorcerer worse off than it was before. Yes, the sorcerer does have to spend days or weeks: This process takes a number of days for each spell equal to twice the spell’s level for each spell the sorcerer wishes to “unlearn” in this way, or one day for cantrips.

Though in hindsight I should have added the usual clause that the sorcerer only needs to spend 8 hours a day meditating, the rest can be doing anything else that's non-strenuous.


Prepared casting is only better than spontaneous casting when spell lists are large. Spontaneous casting is better in a vacuum, because you never have "dead" spell slots. That's why D&D delayed sorcerers by a level. It's hard to say this for sure without testing, but I think you've effectively flipped the power gap between sorcerers and wizards, making sorceres significantly more powerful.

Possibly, though then again spell lists are still pretty big, especially if the wizard invests in Expanded Knowledge. Also, I was given to understand the difference (in normal D&D) is in the fact that the wizard can replace his spells on a daily basis, whereas the sorcerer, in effect, prepares his spells just once, when he levels up, and is then basically stuck with them.

In the current system, both can now replace their current spells known by preparing new spells. The wizard does it notably faster, though.


Feats like Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization shouldn't scale at all (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?332544-How-to-Design-Feats).

I disagree, for precisely the reason Grod_The_Giant did in the thread you linked: perception. Like he said, a +1 bonus just isn't perceived as relevant to a 20th level character.

It's also not just about whether a 20th level character should be deciding whether or not he should take Weapon Focus. Its about whether or not the 20th level character feels like the Weapon Focus he did take back at 1st level has now become a wasted feat slot that he really wishes he could trade out for something else but for the fact that it's letting him qualify for some prestige class or something. Having taken a feat, there should never be a point where you find yourself saying "I wish I hadn't taken this feat/didn't need to take this feat."


Power Attack is far from the only reason that problem exists. Two-handed weapons are cheaper than two-weapon fighting, require no feats or ability scores, interact better with single attacks, and give you a free hand to do other things like perform combat maneuvers. Power Attack was just icing on the cake.

Excepting grapple or steal, combat maneuvers don't require free hand. Also, with most classes getting bonus feats and me adopting the Pathfinder feat progression, the impact of the "feat tax" has been significantly lessened.

The ability score requirement I actually find to be irrelevant. if you plan on two-weapon fighting (or einhander), then you're going to be pumping Dexterity anyway since you're using light weapons and so will be taking Weapon Finesse (granting DEX to attack and damage). If you plan on fighting zweihander, then you're going to be pumping Strength anyway.


If a spell is so powerful that it makes balancing the schools impossible, it's too powerful.

Unfortunately, were I to eliminate every unbalanced spell, I'd be left with nothing but spells that just deal straight damage...which then makes evocation overpowered, since it gets the best damage-dealing spells.

I WILL say, though, that I actually considered adopting something from 4E: taking most of the "problem" spells and turning them into rituals that, among other things, anyone with a high enough skill modifier and the proper ingredients can cast (even fighters!). Unfortunately, the mechanics proved...daunting.


But you're building your whole wizard casting system around casting spells from specific schools. That means school balance is critical! Otherwise, everyone will just be conjurers and transmuters. In the original system, even if you were a necromancer, you weren't gimped because you could still cast spells from good schools. If your schools are imbalanced, the whole system is broken, regardless of how your force banned schools to be assigned. (And if your goal is to balance things, why does Conjuration ban Divination and Transmutation ban Enchantment? Those are weak schools that most people would already love to ban.)

To be honest, I actually fixed most of the problem spells in those schools. Conjuration no longer gets healing, it's moved over the Necromancy. Planar binding is now harder much harder to pull off, and the bound creature explicitly will never grant wishes under any circumstance.

Transmutation, meanwhile, was unbalanced basically because of polymorph, but, as highlighted, polymorph has been significantly nerfed.

Wish - or rather, limited wish, and its cousin divine intervention - are also significantly less powerful than before, and going outside the specific bounds of the spell now carries a significant, mechanically-imposed penalty.


Clerics and druids had different spell lists because they were thematically distinct, not in order to make them thematically distinct. It's a subtle difference, but an important one. If the differences don't come as a result of some underlying logic, they will feel arbitrary and inconsistent. (For example, why do both sorcerer and wizard get suggestion, but only wizard gets command?)

Basically, to incentive playing an enchanter instead of a sorcerer who happens to select only enchantment spells. yes, there's some arbitariness involved. I personally fluff it as being a wizard and studying magic allows for much more precise control over spell effects.

(Also in 2nd Edition the druid actually got basically the same spell list as the cleric; 3rd Edition is the one that made divided spell lists for the two in a significant way, in order to make them distinct. Same basic thing is in progress here)


This is a reasonable distinction - it makes wizards closer to clerics if they get more of the subtler utility magic - but it's not backed up by the actual spell lists yet. Based on this description, sorcerers shouldn't get phantom steed or scrying, but they should get command. Blasting spell levels are very inconsistent. There are other oddities.

I did say generally. Basically, for each Sor/Wiz spell, I asked myself, "can I see this as being something that someone with an INT of 8 would think up?"

And also some spells that make them feel like a living conduit of magic.

I dunno; it's an uphill struggle. The Sorcerer as a class only exists at all because after WotC made the original 3rd Edition PHB, they realized that half the book was devoted to spells castable only by a single class. Trying to make the two different without invalidating certain concepts, like the Evoker wizard, is not easy.


Counterspelling is weird because readied actions are really weird. If you ready action to counterspell a boss, it's trivial to counterspell every spell he casts, because your turn always comes right before his. This just doesn't happen because people don't like waiting, and you have to tell the DM "I ready to counterspell" and you know he's going to mess with you. Immediate action free counterspells are not the answer; it will turn mage duels into a battle of "who has more relevant spell slots today, because all of our spells are fizzling". This is something I haven't fully solved yet, though. If it functioned more like Celerity, where it took up your next action or your magic on your next turn, it could be more balanced.

Honestly, my problem with counterspelling is that, except for dispel magic or in specific cases like darkness/daylight, you need to have the same spell prepared as the opponent in order to counter it. But with over 400 spells in the original PHB, how likely is that? Not to mention that dispel magic doesn't even always work in that regard.

Again, this spell was included based on my experience in Magic: the Gathering. Totally different game, but in broad strokes it's still a turn-based game centered on casting spells.

Also, don't forget that Mage's denial can, itself, be countered...