3.5/Pathfinder Overhaul PEACH

[arixe]

I've been working on a sort of home brew system based on one of my favorite shows log horizon. I'm new at this home brew thing and would like some input that might steer me away form conventional 3.5 pitfalls. its not any where close to being done. and my biggest hurdle right now is a spell-less bard class. ultimately I just want to know if I'm even making something playable at this point or should I stop and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RLuEX17s3lwDuXiqmw7vokEzck-3ngwTC3i_t3QSmAQ/edit?usp=sharing

[~Corvus~]

The monk is cool. Lots of flavourful ki powers, but also many dead levels, and one crippling weakness: Wis as Insight to AC. Just change it to uncategorized, like standard. Otherwise, it's a really cool class.

Most of these classes have a lot of dead levels: levels that gain no listed improvements or abilities. The Assassin doesn't suffer this so far, which makes it more attractive than others. But for a re-tool system, you want to do something with those dead levels. I recommend you find a way to add Profession talent and Sub-class ability slots to those dead levels on a consistent basis so that your lists can have progressive growths that can be counted on, like with Vancian spellcasting.

You have a lot of space to fill. Looks promising.

[arixe]

The monk is cool. Lots of flavourful ki powers, but also many dead levels, and one crippling weakness: Wis as Insight to AC. Just change it to uncategorized, like standard. Otherwise, it's a really cool class.

Most of these classes have a lot of dead levels: levels that gain no listed improvements or abilities. The Assassin doesn't suffer this so far, which makes it more attractive than others. But for a re-tool system, you want to do something with those dead levels. I recommend you find a way to add Profession talent and Sub-class ability slots to those dead levels on a consistent basis so that your lists can have progressive growths that can be counted on, like with Vancian spellcasting.

You have a lot of space to fill. Looks promising.

Thanks for the input. I'll try to fix the dead level thing with subclasses or even retool my classes

[~Corvus~]

One of the largest failings 3.5 (and PF TBH) have is they provide no incentive to take many real-world skills like Craft, Profession, Perform (beyond a bard), Balance (beyond 5 ranks), etc whereas in real life, an artist, a great writer, a powerful singer has an incredible effect on others. This is only represented by the Bard, and loosely in 3.5: the Dragonfire Inspiration bard trumps a standard Bard's power. YOur subsystems offer hope to add meaningful depth to an adventurer and flesh them out as real people that can do OTHER things than just whack monsters. Adventurers can become productive members of society, which is an incredible draw to people that dont just want D&D as a combat system.

In this regard, I think the gaps in characters' special abilities become more of an opportunity. You have the chance to add mechanics of your (frankly, brilliant) ideas for subsystems into every class, which could be very cool and a great draw. Something that may be construed as a mistake should be seen as a blessing. In this regard, the monk could do with retooling to gain the same 6 gaps as most of the other classes, and then it would be prime for filling.

I eagerly await what comes.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm new at this home brew thing and would like some input that might steer me away form conventional 3.5 pitfalls.
Well, the most common 3.5 pitfall is assuming that every system has to be 3.5. (For example: 1-20 scaling is quite unnecessary, and often leads to trying to stretch a few levels' worth of content out into twenty, as well as inconsistent scaling between classes). There's nothing wrong with using it as a base, but there are literally hundreds of RPG systems out there, many with very different mechanics.

In any case, I have a spell-less bard (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?392463-The-Bard-v2-%28Spell-less-and-Fixed-List-Caster-Project-Versions%29)you might find interesting.

[arixe]

One of the largest failings 3.5 (and PF TBH) have is they provide no incentive to take many real-world skills like Craft, Profession, Perform (beyond a bard), Balance (beyond 5 ranks), etc whereas in real life, an artist, a great writer, a powerful singer has an incredible effect on others. This is only represented by the Bard, and loosely in 3.5: the Dragonfire Inspiration bard trumps a standard Bard's power. YOur subsystems offer hope to add meaningful depth to an adventurer and flesh them out as real people that can do OTHER things than just whack monsters. Adventurers can become productive members of society, which is an incredible draw to people that dont just want D&D as a combat system.

In this regard, I think the gaps in characters' special abilities become more of an opportunity. You have the chance to add mechanics of your (frankly, brilliant) ideas for subsystems into every class, which could be very cool and a great draw. Something that may be construed as a mistake should be seen as a blessing. In this regard, the monk could do with retooling to gain the same 6 gaps as most of the other classes, and then it would be prime for filling.

I eagerly await what comes.

Thanks yes this was a mistake as far as gaps and i mostly did profession to help with crafting and other skills becoming pointless like i have never had the opportunity in all 12 years of being a player to use profession for anything. there just seems to be a number of skills that purely exist as that exists but we couldn't make it useful kind of feel. sub classes are primarily to assist with adding additional flavor im still fleshing most of this out but i have great hope for it.

[Grod_The_Giant]

I recommend checking out Exalted-- they do a good job of baking interesting abilities into what you'd think are utterly useless skills like Bureaucracy. The books are kind of expensive, but you can find summaries of the charms (think somewhere between a feat and a spell; it's a class-less system) here (https://www.reddit.com/r/exalted/comments/3pwiez/exalted_3e_charm_cascades/).

[Nifft]

Now I want to play a COMBAT ACCOUNTANT.

Dang.

[arixe]

Now I want to play a COMBAT ACCOUNTANT.

Dang.

well i am taking a lot of inspiration from log horizon so a combat accountant will eventually be possible lol but i doubt it will give you any inside combat bonuses but who knows it could be a subclass that will enhance your professions instead.

I will be taking a break from the classes and begin work on races. my next target is probably subclasses after this