Is there a fully balanced 3.5 variant?

[zlefin]

By fully balanced i mean all classes are within one tier of each other.

Pathfinder is nice and all, but the tiers are still there from what i've seen and read; somewhat closer, and some classes in different places, but still quite there.

Numerous people have started their own attempts to balance 3.5; even i just started on one :P
But I haven't seen one that's accepted as a standard of balance.

With all the expertise on this forum, so many people who truly know the system very well inside and out; how come there isn't a fully balanced, standardized one in use by now? With the expertise on this forum, building a fully balanced system shouldn't take more than a month, and then it's just a question of being popular enough to be accepted as a standard.
So are there systems that just aren't accepted as standard, but are around, or what? Or people working on it just couldnt' agree enough to cohere on a single balanced setup?

[deuxhero]

Yes: Remove every class but one and all options from it.

It is impossible to have anything be perfectly balanced if all sides aren't symmetrical.

[RaggedAngel]

Nothing is perfect, but Legend is very close. What's more, right now it's "pay whatever you can", so you and your friends can pick up the system for a reasonable sum. (You pick your own definition of 'reasonable'.) It is very easy to learn, and as far as I can tell every single possible character is about as tough as another character of the same level while retaining variety and versatility. It's incredibly impressive, actually.

[Dsurion]

I'm sure someone's going to chime in with "Play 4e"

But really, there are so many wildly varying ideas of what D&D "should be", that there will never be a single, accepted re-balance of 3.5. And that's all I have to contribute.

[BobVosh]

Yes: Remove every class but one and all options from it.
It is impossible to have anything be perfectly balanced if all sides aren't symmetrical.

I'm sure someone's going to chime in with "Play 4e"
But really, there are so many wildly varying ideas of what D&D "should be", that there will never be a single, accepted re-balance of 3.5. And that's all I have to contribute.

Basically he did :P

[tcrudisi]

Basically he did :P

Basically, you've not really played 4e then. :P

As for a 3.5 variant, there are no balanced versions that I'm aware of. My one time playing PF did nothing to assure me that it was even remotely balanced.

Honestly though, if you are looking for balance, 3.5 is not the system for you. You could try 4e. :P (That's mostly a joke at Dsurion.)

I'm really not even sure how you would go about balancing 3.5. It would be tricky to boost casters at the lowest levels and nerf them at the mid-to-highest to make them on par with melees. I'm not sure it can be done as long as they get access to high level spells. I'm not even sure it can be done as long as they get access to mid level spells. Polymorph as an example.

[erikun]

Your question just gets odder the more I read it.

I mean, even if you narrow down the variance between classes, there are still going to be tiers. 4e still has their tiers, even though nearly every class would fit into Tier 3 by 3.5e standards (maybe). And as for why there isn't a "standardized" homebrew system... are there any standard homebrews? E6 possibly comes close, although the rules played for that are hardly standard.

Banning Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 5, Tier 6, and prestige classes that would put characters into those tiers is probably the most common houserule for allowing all classes within one tier, and is probably what you are looking for.

An actual homebrew system would probably involve re-writing 90% or more of the game system, which is why you haven't seen many people do it. Legend did, but it looks more like 4e than anything else.

[olthar]

If your DM wants balance, then balance can be created.

[Ravens_cry]

It is impossible without removing almost all options from the game.
When you have options, unless you lose almost all of them and play test what remain rigorously, some are going to be better than others.
And I really mean "almost all." Adding options increases the number of possibilities exponentially and some of those possibilities are going to suck and some of them are going to break the game.
Even fourth edition, where an incredible amount of effort went into balancing it, still has broken options.
For another example, Valve spent years balancing Team Fortress 2 and still have had to issue patch after patch once it hit players.

For a game that is meant to be fun rather than competitive, I think "fully balanced" is a bit of a mugs game. Overly balancing things, in my opinion, can either make what options remain bland and uninteresting or rigid and uncustomisable.
In my opinion, it is only part of what makes a game fun and, to a certain point, not even a particularly important part.

[zlefin]

Your question just gets odder the more I read it.

I mean, even if you narrow down the variance between classes, there are still going to be tiers. 4e still has their tiers, even though nearly every class would fit into Tier 3 by 3.5e standards (maybe). And as for why there isn't a "standardized" homebrew system... are there any standard homebrews? E6 possibly comes close, although the rules played for that are hardly standard.

Banning Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 5, Tier 6, and prestige classes that would put characters into those tiers is probably the most common houserule for allowing all classes within one tier, and is probably what you are looking for.

An actual homebrew system would probably involve re-writing 90% or more of the game system, which is why you haven't seen many people do it. Legend did, but it looks more like 4e than anything else.

Right, there will always be tiers; i had forgotten about that.
I was looking for a balance point where all classes are within one tier of each other.
While there may not be standard homebrews, there are standards that have been developed by people, pathfinder and legend are such. I'm just surprised there hasn't been one that balances the 3.5 base closer, without feeling too much like 4.
I wonder if perhaps as you approach balance it just ceases to look/feel like 3.5?

Rewriting the system would only take a month or two, if you stick to core. The hard part is doing extensive balance testing to verify the changes work as expected. But I agree the more I look at it the more it looks like a lot of things have to be rewritten; I wonder how much can be preserved while still keeping things balanced?

[MeeposFire]

Normally when people want "balanced" what they really mean are that most every option is a good one and everything is in the same realtive operational sphere. In 3.5 if you took all of tier 3,4, and 5 classes you would get most of the way there. While tier 3 is better than tier 5 tier 5 is still somewhat in the same operation sphere (which in my example is they work and they don't generally break the game). Tier 6 is too weak and tier 1 is too strong. Tier 2 characters can be tweaked down but do notice that is some work. One thing you could do is make more warmage/beguiler/dread necrmoancer type casters of all types. Tier 5 works but if you want to put a little more work in you might be persuaded to give them some love so that they are more friendly to newer players (so they won't fall too far behind). You can just not use tier 5 but it does limit you a bit not using any of them so just choose on whether you keep tier 5 or not (though you could probably dump classes that you have a class filling the same niche such as dumping paladins for crusaders or the like).

This won't make it perfect but it is a start. The levels of power will have been brought closer to the middle and you should have enough classes to fill the basic archetypes assuming you make the warmage type spellcasters for some of the basic magic types not already represented.

[Hunter Killer]

The biggest problems don't really reside in the classes themselves. Most of the class abilities are well thought out and fine. Even Wildshape, as much as people claim it is borked, isn't that bad.

The problem with 3.5 is that magic is just sooooo damn powerful. It's so good that the most powerful characters can absolutely suck at everything else and still own face in almost any situation.

To balance 3.5, you have to gut the entire spell list and rewrite that. Every single spell. You would need to figure out borked interactions and eliminate those as well. Plenty of spells are bad by themselves, but powerhouses in a combo.

[Infernalbargain]

In short, no.

The problems with 3.5 are very deep, almost systemic. The system is... salvageable. Legend is a big step in the right direction, however I have a few minor beefs with it; namely they weren't bold enough to pitch the standard/move/swift paradigm.

[MeeposFire]

Right, there will always be tiers; i had forgotten about that.
I was looking for a balance point where all classes are within one tier of each other.
While there may not be standard homebrews, there are standards that have been developed by people, pathfinder and legend are such. I'm just surprised there hasn't been one that balances the 3.5 base closer, without feeling too much like 4.
I wonder if perhaps as you approach balance it just ceases to look/feel like 3.5?

Rewriting the system would only take a month or two, if you stick to core. The hard part is doing extensive balance testing to verify the changes work as expected. But I agree the more I look at it the more it looks like a lot of things have to be rewritten; I wonder how much can be preserved while still keeping things balanced?

The biggest problem you will have is that there is no way to balance 3.5 unless you give up one major aspect-that magic can do anything easily for little to no cost. That is the single biggest difference between 3.5 and 4e not the things people mostly talk about which are mostly organizational.

For instance many people know 4e gave fighters powers and some feel that makes them "mages" but the thing is that all of those powers could easily have been written as not being powers and they also made fighters that have no daily powers that are as good as the ones that have daily powers. The power system is mostly for ease of use, design, and to learn. If you want a good example the slayer and knight type fighters do not have daily powers and use basic attacks (the 4e version of the attack and full attack action) as their standard mode of attack. Those classes could be rewritten into a 3e style game so long as you remember some basic differences in encounter design (4e encounter are designed to normally be between 3-7 rounds long with most attacks being standard actions which means that your 4 encounter powers do not need to be recharged typically in a combat since the encounter should not last much longer than that. Also damage and the like would need to be modified to deal with 3 style HP) and those classes would look very similar to ToB classes.

The big change was that magic was limited. In 3.5 if you wanted to scry an enemy and teleport miles away and hit them with abilities that were nearly impossible to resist you could do that as several standard actions and a few spell slots. The 4e wizard needs to spend a long time and lots of money to create a teleportation circle, etc and magic now uses attack rolls so nothing is a sure thing (the wizard is in the same realm of "hitting" their target as a warrior of the same level).

So unless you are willing to make magic much more limited in some fashion. You don't have to do it in the same way as 4e but the magic system itself needs more limiting limits.

[Draz74]

The problems with 3.5 are very deep, almost systemic. The system is... salvageable. Legend is a big step in the right direction, however I have a few minor beefs with it; namely they weren't bold enough to pitch the standard/move/swift paradigm.

What's your fundamental beef with the standard/move/swift paradigm? I was under the impression (e.g. in my own homebrew) that people generally like that part of the system. I didn't think it was a question of boldness.

On a similar vein, though, I do wish Legend had dropped the "iterative attacks" paradigm.

[MeeposFire]

What's your fundamental beef with the standard/move/swift paradigm? I was under the impression (e.g. in my own homebrew) that people generally like that part of the system. I didn't think it was a question of boldness.

On a similar vein, though, I do wish Legend had dropped the "iterative attacks" paradigm.

Yea the action system is one of the best things that 3e implemented (it could be tweaked sure as 4e has but 4e is still basically the 3e system tweaked a bit).

I agree though I hate iteratives. For one it makes balancing defenses more difficult. That is also one of the tweaks that I like in the 4e action economy (eliminating full actions and making standard actions better much like ToB upgraded standard actions for warriors making full attacks less needed).

[Infernalbargain]

What's your fundamental beef with the standard/move/swift paradigm? I was under the impression (e.g. in my own homebrew) that people generally like that part of the system. I didn't think it was a question of boldness.

On a similar vein, though, I do wish Legend had dropped the "iterative attacks" paradigm.

It is the root of action economy abuse and some very weird things from a realism perspective. It is also the cause for a lot of unnecessary things like charging, full round attacks, spring attack, the list goes on. Movement is only marginally different from short range teleportation. Consider a chase between to humans. They are neck-in-neck with each other. However, if you time it right you can land a fireball between them and hit neither. A smooth movement system will fix everything I've listed in addition to opening up a lot of more avenues to create variance like having a whole continuum of casting times.

[sonofzeal]

I actually like the idea of full-attacks. The only problem is that they scale poorly - you've got big cutoffs every 5+ levels, and that's a huge portion of a person's adventuring career. And the penalties on later iteratives get a little ridiculous. I like the idea of getting an advantage if you devote your turn to it, but the implementation is lacking.

Instead, what if you could "spend" your move action to gain bonuses for the round similar to ToB's boosts? Something like "add BAB to damage for the round", or "gain bonus +4 to hit" or "bypass DR" or "extra attack; all attacks at -2". I dunno, just a thought.

[Infernalbargain]

That reminds me, is there ever a reason to not use flurry? I'm pretty sure the math comes to it being worth it to use it unless you only hit on an 18; in a few levels, you are probably not attacking or always have enough to-hit to always use flurry.

[MeeposFire]

I dislike having tons of attack rolls as it gets tiresome (especially if they very different on the attack roll like an iterative attack). I would rather have fewer bigger attacks than a ton of attacks and have them use standard actions. That is what makes ToB so much fun. You can land a big attack and then move or move and then land a big attack. Much more interesting than "I stand and launch 8 attacks" (even if 8 attacks is big damage it is still a lot of rolling and you can't move which limits tactical maneuvers).

[MeeposFire]

That reminds me, is there ever a reason to not use flurry? I'm pretty sure the math comes to it being worth it to use it unless you only hit on an 18; in a few levels, you are probably not attacking or always have enough to-hit to always use flurry.

Eventually you always use flurry (no penalty). If there is a penalty it really depends on the AC of the subject and how accurate you really are in the first place.

[sonofzeal]

That reminds me, is there ever a reason to not use flurry? I'm pretty sure the math comes to it being worth it to use it unless you only hit on an 18; in a few levels, you are probably not attacking or always have enough to-hit to always use flurry.

True. Same with Rapid Shot and TWF. The only reason not to is if you've got a use for that move action.

[Infernalbargain]

Even at level 1, you are typically looking needing to hit around a 15 on your rolls for most appropriate encounters. For when you only have one attack, using flurry is statistically better, even ignoring triggers, as long as you hit on a natural 17 without flurrying. The math gets more complicated when you get iteratives, but not flurrying is really a trap option.

[Infernalbargain]

True. Same with Rapid Shot and TWF. The only reason not to is if you've got a use for that move action.

Curse you ninja! Flurry in Legend is simply an attack option. Rapid shot and TWF at least had opportunity costs to use the better option.

[Psyren]

Numerous people have started their own attempts to balance 3.5; even i just started on one :P
But I haven't seen one that's accepted as a standard of balance.

Obligatory:

[Darrin]

Well... there's Call of Cthulhu d20:

"Everybody is Tier 5. If you can cast any spells, you're Tier 6. If you can't read and have a severe enough Listen or Spot penalty, then maybe you're Tier 4. Oh, and for no apparent reason, make a Will Save or Die right now. If you succeed, you might have a very slim chance to live out the rest of your days drooling on yourself in a sanitarium."

[Tyndmyr]

By fully balanced i mean all classes are within one tier of each other.

Legend is probably as close as you're going to get. There are a lot of 3.5 variants, but to get anywhere close to fully balanced, you have to get pretty far from 3.5.

Pathfinder is nice and all, but the tiers are still there from what i've seen and read; somewhat closer, and some classes in different places, but still quite there.

It's not really closer at all, tbh.

Numerous people have started their own attempts to balance 3.5; even i just started on one :P
But I haven't seen one that's accepted as a standard of balance.

With all the expertise on this forum, so many people who truly know the system very well inside and out; how come there isn't a fully balanced, standardized one in use by now? With the expertise on this forum, building a fully balanced system shouldn't take more than a month, and then it's just a question of being popular enough to be accepted as a standard.
So are there systems that just aren't accepted as standard, but are around, or what? Or people working on it just couldnt' agree enough to cohere on a single balanced setup?

Eh, pass. More people = more coordination work. And there's a LOT of books. And there's copyright issues with published balanced versions of much of that material. And frankly, it's easier to handle balance by just not making a big deal out of it. I have players that have large amounts of system mastery and could break games in half...but they'd prefer to play through the game normally. Done deal, vastly easier.

Even at level 1, you are typically looking needing to hit around a 15 on your rolls for most appropriate encounters. For when you only have one attack, using flurry is statistically better, even ignoring triggers, as long as you hit on a natural 17 without flurrying. The math gets more complicated when you get iteratives, but not flurrying is really a trap option.

Unless you're naturally only hitting on 20s...then, back to flurrying being superior! Hitting on nat 19s is equally good. So, the only case where flurrying is actually inferior to a single attack is when you're hitting on natural 18s.

TLDR: Mash the flurry button whenever possible.

[Talionis]

The best way to do it with 3.5 is only allow tier 3 classes and tier 4 or only tier 4 and tier 5. This would be the best to just limit which classes by the judges discretion. I think that is what most games end up doing anyway.

[DoctorGlock]

The best way to do it with 3.5 is only allow tier 3 classes and tier 4 or only tier 4 and tier 5. This would be the best to just limit which classes by the judges discretion. I think that is what most games end up doing anyway.

Not really, otherwise there would not be a slew of "help, wizard is breaking my game!" threads. Also it's a crude way of dealing with problems. T4-5 leaves a horribly boring game where you are shoehorned into playing the classic archetypes rather than your own character. The best way to do it is to say "please dont break the game or make the others feel useless" or suggest classes within tiers 2-4 which covers most to all builds. Yes, the ideal balance is 3, but some people want to play a master of arcane lore and the warlock's pew pew pew style is not what they want.

As others have said, Legend is really the closest you are going to get, and even there you can have some choices that work better than others, but even then the less effective ones can contribute significantly

[Orzel]

Everyone knows 3.5 is unbalanced but few can agree on the fixes. There are probably a lot of balanced variants and rewrites out there. But would you like it. Orzel d20 is very balanced but it goes the 4e route and goes farther by taking two axes to versatility and enforces classes to be masters at their conceptual occupation.