A Mechanicaly fixed 3e (Or house-rules for a mechanically fixed 3e)

[Seharvepernfan]

I'm fairly confident that I have fixed 3.5 with my houserules, assuming you play the classes in that PDF.

[The Rose Dragon]

No point buy? Good luck.

There are lots of systems that do dungeon crawling much better than D&D 3rd Edition, but nearly all of them are point buy. GURPS and Unisystem come to mind. True20 and M&M do not handle dungeon crawling that well, but they can do the world development part, at least.

Then again, I'm not sure what you want from D&D 3rd Edition. Maybe if you told us what you wanted from a game, rather than attempting to fix a notoriously unbalanced system, I could give you better suggestions.

[Eldan]

Yeah, Legend really isn't a fix. It doesn't try to improve the broken things. It just cuts them out entirely. I read 1.0. There's no magic in the system, it's just gone.
It's a sterile fantasy martial arts simulator with some bare-bones non-combat stuff added which seems to mainly serve to getting you back to hitting things with weapons. All the world simulation elements are just cut out. Including all those ways in which players could influence the world beyond their immediate environment.


If I may suggest someting, your best bet is probably staying with 3.5 and then replacing all the classes with homebrew classes and expansion classes. Throw out core, is what I'm saying, that's what I do. 90% of the feats are gone, all but maybe two or three classes (bard, certainly. Not many others.) Find a homebrew magic system you like, homebrew fighting classes you like, and then just go on. Build your own system from the homebrew.

[Scowling Dragon]

To be honest I don't have an issue with 3e. Every once in a while I read some thread about nutso 3e rules, get upset, go looking for other games.

But in the end I always return to 3e/ Pathfinder. I don't know. Call it magic but I just can't get upset for long.

[Elderand]

I recomend taking a look at Arcan Evolved, it's hardly perfect but it does have a clever magic system that is less extreme than what you can end up with in standard 3.5.

[Powerdork]

I read 1.0. There's no magic in the system, it's just gone.

I am fairly certain you missed Chapter 12, Magic & Spellcasting.



EDIT: Reading this thread in full, I just want to say a break between Legend's [Scenes] is like 4th Edition D&D's extended rest, while a break between [Encounter] durations is like the shorter rests. Not a perfect parallel, but close enough.

[Gavinfoxx]

I am fairly certain you missed Chapter 12, Magic & Spellcasting.

This! That IS what you were talking about, right Eldan?

[eepop]

What is "right" about 3.5 that you would hope the game would be fixed or balanced to?

There are fixes people can propose, but without knowing what your group is looking to fix it to, its hard to give a satisfactory answer.

To one person, non-casters need to be buffed up to be as powerful as casters.
To another, casters need a nerf down to the level of non-casters.
And there are people that think the perfect balancing is on every class in between. One person thinks that if every class were balanced against Bards that the game would be perfect.


Does backward compatibility matter to your group?

Even after answering those questions, you're unlikely to ever get a perfect fix.

But if you're mostly happy now, you could probably get a lot of mileage out of the right house rules. But we'd need to know what you're aiming for before we could take a shot that even hopes to hit the target.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Well, if you want a semi-generic fantasy class-based system... HackMaster 5e.

[Morty]

No amount of houserules is going to fix 3e. It's broken on a fundamental level. If you want to play the kind of games that 3e is meant to simulate but with a system that actually works... well, people have offered a lot of suggestions already. I don't think I know of any system that hasn't been named yet.

[MirddinEmris]

Scowling Dragon, can you elaborate about rules in Fantasy Craft that pushes it towards "one kind of a game". From what i can tell, playing FC a couple of years, it quite the opposite, being the modular game in which you can easy switch on and off parts of it that you want.

[Scowling Dragon]

The mind numbing rules for magic items and social interaction.

The idea that I have to give away magic items (WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY) if I loose social points and the stupid system that points out itself that social points would change in every different area. This means that I am pretty much chained to a "Town" or "Home base", otherwise the rules make no sense.

Also the plug in stats for monsters seems like a good idea at first, but then you realize that it makes advancement mostly pointless.

Whats the point of advancement if the creatures I fight have the exact same abilities, just higher numbers?

Thats what mainly killed the system for me.

[MirddinEmris]

The mind numbing rules for magic items and social interaction.

The idea that I have to give away magic items (WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY) if I loose social points and the stupid system that points out itself that social points would change in every different area. This means that I am pretty much chained to a "Town" or "Home base", otherwise the rules make no sense.

Also the plug in stats for monsters seems like a good idea at first, but then you realize that it makes advancement mostly pointless.

Whats the point of advancement if the creatures I fight have the exact same abilities, just higher numbers?

Thats what mainly killed the system for me.

I see what you a talking about, but it's just the case about misunderstanding the rules. First of all, Renown is not "social points" (though they could be) they are abstraction for your progression as a hero and bought on a Reputation which is given to all players as one of the reward at the end of adventure (and sometimes on the DM whim). Second, for the amount of Prizes you count your total Renown + 1, so if you have Heroic Renown of 3 and Military Renown ( Elven Kingdoms ) of 4, you can keep amount of Prizes equal of 8 by the end of Adventure (keep in mind, that you can have more than that, it's just that you need lose some by the and of adventure).

About NPC...well, the way Fantasy Craft handling NPC/monster creation is by far one of the best feature of the game. I don't understand what you mean by "have the exact same abilities, just higher numbers?". If you mean that their advancement negates PC advancement, than you are wrong - first, every "plug" have a grade and each of them have it's own progression rate, so if the monster have an Attack of III, it will mean that the more levels your PC melee combatant have the more bigger numbers he will have compared to this monster (assuming, that he has a decent attack progression). Of courser, when moster has an Attack X grade, story will be different, but that is why every game needs DM - to oversee this kind of thing. Also, progression in level doesn't mean only numbers in Fantasy Craft - every character will have plenty of class features and feats (which are good thing here, unlike in certain system, we all know), so even with scaling numbers monster that beat the crap from most of the party ten levels ago, now will be just a pushover, if you don't add any NPC qualities. Besides, there is a campaign quality which you can apply to your games and it says, that monsters doesn't have scaling Threat Level and remain the same like when you meet them.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yeah I know I called them social points because I couldn't be bothered to find the real name.

I mean, by giving away magic items don't I LOOSE renown? Its so clunky and chunky.

I mean what If my magic blade is iconic and its the thing that people recognize me for. Wouldn't giving it away just have a chain effect for every Renown lost I loose more renown?

And what If I did something that was secret? I could have killed the god beasts of the 12 moons and yet since nobody saw me do It I have to give away my magic items to a doofus.

Its just so poorly implemented and a forced, crowbarred way to give more value to Charisma.

Yes there is the campaign quality for no scaling but it doesn't account for how much XP they cost in comparison. The whole system becomes more confusing then it would be if enemies didn't scale.

[MirddinEmris]

Yeah I know I called them social points because I couldn't be bothered to find the real name.

I mean, by giving away magic items don't I LOOSE renown? Its so clunky and chunky.

I mean what If my magic blade is iconic and its the thing that people recognize me for. Wouldn't giving it away just have a chain effect for every Renown lost I loose more renown?

And what If I did something that was secret? I could have killed the god beasts of the 12 moons and yet since nobody saw me do It I have to give away my magic items to a doofus.

Its just so poorly implemented and a forced, crowbarred way to give more value to Charisma.

Yes there is the campaign quality for no scaling but it doesn't account for how much XP they cost in comparison. The whole system becomes more confusing then it would be if enemies didn't scale.

Like i said, Renown is not "social points", while it does have a function about recognizing your character, it's main function is an abstract scale to measure how much of a big damn hero your character is, so it doesn't matter if anyone saw how you beat the crap out of a couple angry gods, you still gain your Reputation, which can be used to buy Renown. And you don't lose Renown (you can lose Reputation, but it doesn't follow with losing anything else), at least there are no rules for it, i just don't know where are you taking this from.

Also, Renown in no way have any ties with Charisma, i think that you are talking about Lifestyle (which happens to be responsible for how much money you spend between adventures and size of money income you have).

Scaling monsters doesn't invalidate character growth. 10 npcs with 30-40 XP cost can be dangerous for a couple 1st level pcs, but when they hit level 5-6, it will just be a no-so-dangerous band of mooks, but not because "i have much bigger numbers than you". Scaling here is just so high level PCs wouldn't react to a band of goblins like "Oh, we fought with them 10 levels ago, now they will not be able to hit me with my high defense". Like, you know, in DnD where high level fighter could slaughter a town of a respectable size because most of it's inhabitants have only 1-2 level in npc classes.

The most wonderful thing is that you can play without most of rules and the game still be playable and balanced, nothing is compulsory like characters doesn't expect to have a certain amount of magic items or access to certain spells in level progression, but granting access to this things, doesn't throw game balance out of window.

P.S. No offense, but it seems that you didn't actually read the rules very carefully, so you made assumptions that was based only on your image of them, which wasn't very accurate. I suggest, that you give it another try (as any other system, if you read them with same level of patience) otherwise i doubt that you will find what you are seeking.

[Scowling Dragon]

I read the rules, I just read them a while ago, and I don't have the book at hand to refresh my memory.

I don't buy anything unless I have a good read through. Either way I just don't remember liking the system very much, and the way you mention it I still don't.

But I definatly remember there being something about being forced to give away magic items if some score drops too low.

Maybe Il try to find the book again and give it another read and then give a more thorough trashing.