Got a house rule document? Share it!

[Ozreth]

Having just gotten back into DMing for the long haul again after a lot of years away I’ve been having fun looking at people’s house rule docs around the internet.

If you’ve got one and are willing to share a link or copy/paste it here please do so!

[Saintheart]

Fizban had/has a tweak document linked in his sig that makes roughly 200 changes to the default system. Worth checking out.

[vasilidor]

Campaign Information

Character Creation

Changes to existing classes: All classes must be either a class from the spheres of might, spheres of power or spheres of champions or the class must be using a archetype from the aforementioned books.
Other archetypes: other Archetypes may be used if they are compatible with the sphere archetypes.
Player may create their own Archetypes for their characters, subject to DM approval.
Banned Classes: Kineticist, Vigilante
Why?: The Kineticist is simply better done as the elementalist or any other class in spheres of power, combined with the fact it is so hard to make a competent kineticist... just no.
The Vigilante plays havoc with alignments and those are screwy enough as it is.

Changes to races:
Races that get magic spells as a racial feature must trade them out. They can either trade it out of for any of the alternate available racial features that do not grant spheres or they can get the basic magic training or extra magic talent feat. However the magic talent taken must make sense with the races spell ability
IE: a gnome may trade out his spell casting abilities for the illusion sphere or an aasimar may trade their ability to cast light for the light sphere. No more than two sphere talents may be gained in this fashion.

Attributes: you have a choice of either:

A: 24d6 spread throughout your 6 scores so that none before race modifiers are above 18 or below 6. you may use all 24d6.

Or

B: you may spread 85 points throughout your 6 scores as you see fit as long as none are below 6 or above 18 before racial modifiers.
You may choose after rolling as to which you want.

Note that this does not include the appearance stat. To determine character appearance (if you want to use it) write in any number that you damn well feel like as long as it is 20 or less. Alternatively, if you so desire, you can derive appearance from first averaging your physical stats, and then taking that average and adding it to charisma and then dividing that by 2. player preference.

Banned Races:
Any race that:
Has a greater than +4 to any one attribute or greater than a net of +6 to all attributes.
Has a greater than +2 natural armor.
Has a spell resistance greater than 5 + class level.
Is larger than large size or smaller than tiny.
Is unable to use or learn spoken or written language.
Unable to use tools or weapons.
Has more than 2 racial hit dice.
I am not using level adjustments, ignore any and all level adjustment rules.
Magic changes:
Regular spell casting is being replaced with spheres of magic.

Magic Shops and magic items:
magic items are not automatically available. To determine the availability of any magic item, consult the following chart:
Magic Items
If total is positive, that item is available.
Wondrous
4d6-(4+caster level)
Scroll
2d12- caster level
Weapon
6d4 – caster level
Armor
6d4 – caster level
Rod
8d6 – (8+caster level)
Ring
5d8 – (10+caster level)
Wand
10d4 – (1.5*caster level)
Staff
8d4-(1.5*caster level)
Potions
5d4-(caster level)
Example: trying to get a sword with a caster level requirement of 12, roll 6d4 and subtract 12. if the total is positive, that sword is available in a quantity equal to the positive number.

Note: I plan on having magic items and crafting materials be in found treasures. I may include side quest to hunt for treasure.

New Materials:
Magicite: magic solidified into crystalline form. Comes in varying grades and is used in all magic item creation. Worth 1gp per intensity point per pound (IE 15 intensity points is worth 15gp per pound). This is the stuff you buy when you buy materials to enchant items. To determine the intensity of any given chunk of magicite, roll 1d10d100 (not a typo, 1d10d100)
magicite can be supplemented by various materials from magical plants and animals or other such beings. Yes I am ripping off final fantasy here.

On followers for characters: there are several ways to gain followers, from feats to class abilities to paying for th-+em from treasure. All options are open on a case by case basis. No follower is allowed to higher leveled, or have a higher CR than the character that it is following.
Approved methods of gaining followers: the leadership feat, sphere abilities, hired mercenaries, animal companion ability and familiar ability.

On alignment issues:
For purposes of this campaign slavery is considered evil. Mind control is situational evil (mind controlling someone for laughs, yes – evil, mind controlling someone to stop them from murdering someone, no – not evil).
The objective standard for good and evil will otherwise be this: actions that cause suffering, death and loss of freedom will be considered evil, unless done to prevent or stop an even greater evil. Actions taken to lessen suffering, death and loss of freedom will be considered good. I am ignoring the law, chaos spectrum.

[earthseawizard]

Fizban had/has a tweak document linked in his sig that makes roughly 200 changes to the default system. Worth checking out.

I found this and its insane.

[Biggus]

I thought you'd never ask...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.yis3hhe9t1wi

It takes quite a lot of stuff from PF but also some from 5E, 4E, various people on the internet, and stuff I've come up with myself. It's very long but still isn't all my house rules; at this point the game I'm playing is more like a new partial edition (like 3.5 or PF) than a list of house rules.

Quite a lot of it is intended to make the game work better at epic levels; changes which don't seem to make a lot of sense will often be for that purpose. One of the major changes in this respect is the almost complete removal of absolute effects (inspired by Sean K. Reynold's article); most immunities are now virtual immunities which give a huge defensive bonus instead of complete immunity for example. This is because at epic (and even high-nonepic) levels many PCs and NPCs have spells and items which render entire classes obsolete, and can leave all classes with only quite a narrow list of attack options which still work.


In case you don't feel like reading an entire 38-page document, here are some of the more interesting/original parts:

Monks gain Rapid Flurry: at level 4 can use Flurry of Blows as a standard action 1/day, then an additional time/day every 4 levels thereafter. They also gain Mobility as a bonus feat to make that increased speed a bit more useful.

Magic weapon cost is reduced 25% from 2,000GP x bonus squared to 1,500GP x bonus squared. This especially helps two-weapon fighters. Natural armor bonuses are likewise reduced 25% as they're objectively worse than other bonuses like Deflection and Insight as they don't apply to touch attacks.

You can now get Eternal Ironward Diamonds and Eternal Crystals of Life Drinking (both MIC) which do not stop working after 10 hits and cost 3x the normal amount. You could just buy three of the normal ones; this is mostly just to save the hassle of keeping track of how many times you've hit/been hit.

Craft and Profession skills now both use either Dex, Int or Wis as their key ability, as appropriate. In the standard rules quite a lot of them make no sense at all.

Disjunction is rewritten as Superior Dispel Magic, which works more like a souped-up Greater Dispel Magic but retains some of the features of Disjunction.

Mithral and adamantine pricing has been completely rewritten, as it makes no sense whatever in the standard rules.

The most fundamental change is inspired by 4E which has three tiers of feats, heroic, paragon and epic, available at levels 1, 11 and 21 respectively. A lot of 3E epic feats (and several of the epic prestige classes) are very weak at that level; these have now been made available at level 11 instead, and in some cases the epic versions are now significantly stronger. Some of the stronger nonepic feats have also been moved to "tier 2" (level 11+), so no more DMM:Persist at low levels for instance.

[pabelfly]

I have a houserules document. It used to be longer and more complex, but I've found that simpler is generally better and less prone to unintended consequences, ie, stuff that needs to be fixed because of the house rules.

---

Note: You may choose to use the default rules for DnD 3.5 and ignore all changes here.

Levelling Changes
Starting characters get one stat at 18 for free. All other stats are 4d6 drop lowest.

Players get three ability score boosts every fourth level. These stat boosts must be spent on three different ability scores. If an ability score is below 16, the ability score is boosted by 2. If the ability score is 16 or more, it is boosted by 1.

General Feat Changes and Additions
Changes to existing feats are in addition to the rules the feats originally have.

Adept Learner (New Feat): You gain 1 extra skill point per level. You spend these skill points as normal. You cannot exceed the normal maximum point for your level in any skill. You cannot have both this feat and “Nymph’s Kiss”.

Alertness, etc (Changed Feat): If you have 13 or more ranks in one of the skills that are part of the feat, the bonus increases to +4 for that skill.

Great Fortitude, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes (Changed Feat): The bonus to saves is 2 and +1 for every five character levels (maximum of +6 at level 20).

Pounce (New Feat): When a character charges a foe, it can follow with a full attack. A fighter may select Pounce as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Skill Focus (Changed Feat): The bonus from Skill Focus increases to +6 when 13 ranks are invested in said skill.

Spellcaster Changes
There are no limits to the use of level 0 spells.

Lost Traditions (New feat) (modified from 3rd Party)
Choose one spellcasting class. You may change which ability score governs spellcasting (both the casting stat and the stat used for save DCs). You may only choose from INT, WIS, or CHA for your casting stat. You may take this feat multiple times, but each time it applies to a different spellcasting class.


Martial Changes
Unarmed Combat
Unarmed strikes get extra attacks due to a character’s base attack bonus

A Monk’s Flurry of Blows can be combined with Two-Weapon Fighting. The negative attack roll penalties for both are combined.

Martial Feat Changes

Ignored Feats
These feats are ignored should they be required for other feats, prestige classes, etc. These feats can still be taken should the player want the benefits of these feats.

Dodge, Point-Blank Shot, Toughness, Combat Expertise

Example – Rapid Shot normally requires the player to take Point-Blank shot as a feat beforehand. With this rule, the player can take Rapid Shot without taking Point-Blank Shot first.

Feat Changes
Two-Weapon Fighting:
A player with the Two-Weapon Fighting feat automatically receives the feats Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting and Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting. They need to meet BAB and ability score requirements for said feats before receiving them.

Two-Weapon Defense
A player with the Two-Weapon Defense feat automatically receives the feats Improved Two-Weapon Defense and Greater Two-Weapon Defense. They need to meet BAB and ability score requirements for said feats before receiving them.

Weapon Finesse
Weapon Finesse is a free option and doesn’t cost a feat. When Weapon Finesse is applied to a weapon, players calculate bonus damage using the dexterity stat instead of the strength stat (you cannot add both STR and DEX without the use of class features and/or feats). The bonus damage is halved for offhand weapons. Weapon Finesse only applies to light weapons, the rapier, whip, or spiked chain.

[Biggus]

Feat Changes
Two-Weapon Fighting:
A player with the Two-Weapon Fighting feat automatically receives the feats Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, Greater Two-Weapon Fighting and Perfect Two-Weapon Fighting. They need to meet BAB and ability score requirements for said feats before receiving them.

Two-Weapon Defense
A player with the Two-Weapon Defense feat automatically receives the feats Improved Two-Weapon Defense and Greater Two-Weapon Defense. They need to meet BAB and ability score requirements for said feats before receiving them.

Your 2WF rules are extremely similar to what I'd decided on. I hadn't thought of doing the same for 2WD though. That makes a lot of sense, I'll be borrowing that.

[vasilidor]

I forgot that is not the updated version, due to using an unreliable magic mart and the spheres system, I am also using Feats Reforged so that other feats are still worth taking and to make up the potential loss of power in magic items.

[pabelfly]

Your 2WF rules are extremely similar to what I'd decided on. I hadn't thought of doing the same for 2WD though. That makes a lot of sense, I'll be borrowing that.

Glad you liked the modification to 2WD.

So what does your houserule for 2WF look like?

[Ozreth]

I thought you'd never ask...

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...h.yis3hhe9t1wi

Mind making it public for a bit? Would like to read it.

[Fizban]

Fizban had/has a tweak document linked in his sig that makes roughly 200 changes to the default system. Worth checking out.

I'm flattered that you would plug my stuff, thanks! Though 200 changes. . . no idea what the precise count would be. I've labeled it as over 200 pages, 'cause out of the 300-some the document says it has, there's probably around a hundred which are more collected of 'indexes' and cutting floor ramblings, and the first 16 are discussing the published books themselves. But the bulk of it is plenty of feats and spells and class tweaks and general variants etc that can be used all on their own even if the reader isn't interested in the bigger picture I'm trying to paint.

I found this and its insane.

I will take that as a positive insane!

I've had DnD stuff on the backburner for a while so there haven't been any major updates to upload a new version for, just little editing bits. If/when I do I'll mention it in the sig and can send out PMs if anyone's interested.

(And here's the google drive link for posterity, in case the sig is lost in the future for some reason).

[Biggus]

Mind making it public for a bit? Would like to read it.

Sorry, I'm not very tech-savvy, I wasn't sure if you could read it or not. I think I've made it public now, please let me know if you can read it.

Glad you liked the modification to 2WD.

So what does your houserule for 2WF look like?

Basically the same as yours, except that also when you meet the prerequisites for Improved 2WF the attack penalty drops from -2 to -1 (assuming you're using a light offhand weapon or have the Oversized 2WF feat) and when you meet the prerequisites for Greater 2WF it drops from -1 to 0.

Also, the Dual Strike feat (CAdv) has been made simpler and more useful:

Prerequisite: Two-Weapon Fighting

Benefit: when you make an attack as a standard action, you can attack with two weapons. You take the standard penalties for two-weapon fighting.

On a slight tangent, this has reminded me of another change I've made which I don't think is mentioned in house rules document; when your BAB reaches +16, instead of your attacks becoming +16/11/6/1 they become +16/11/11. The idea is to speed up high-level combat (I'm currently DMing a game where the PCs are 24th level and none of them are especially good at math, so a round can take a long time) and also that it's more fun to make three attacks which all often hit than four of which two often miss. I ran the numbers and in most circumstances it doesn't change damage output very much; depending on the AC of your opponent relative to your attack bonus it may be somewhat better or worse, but not hugely so either way.

[Ozreth]

I've had DnD stuff on the backburner for a while so there haven't been any major updates to upload a new version for, just little editing bits. If/when I do I'll mention it in the sig and can send out PMs if anyone's interested.

(And here's the google drive link for posterity, in case the sig is lost in the future for some reason).

I'm loving this and have read a big chunk of it already (thought jumping all over the place). So much love, time and thought was put into the whole thing. Your view of the game and how you think it is best experienced is pretty in line with mine as well, and we appreciated 3.x for many of the same reasons. I've already plucked your fighter, ranger and sorcerer changes.

I have some surface level questions off the bat:

1. Your monk fix. I know monk sucks as is, and there have been a ton of attempts to fix it. I like that yours addresses AC more than anything else, but this feels like a lot. I'm curious what your thinking was going into all of these changes and what your experience has been with the class since implementing these changes. Also curious what others reading may think? I like all of the changes individually, as a whole it feels overboard when combined with this really big AC bonus. Also, full hit points for Wholeness of body?

Here is the full list of changes:

Monk:

• AC bonus is 2+1/2 level
• Monk's Flurry of Blows (or PHB2 Decisve Strike) can be used on standard action attacks
• Slow Fall includes Wall Walker and Water Step (from Dungeonscape and Stormwrack) for free
• Wholeness of Body is equal to your full normal hit point total.
• Add bonus feats at 10th, 14th, and 18th
• Abundant Step can be divided into 40' increments.
• Quivering Palm is usable 1/day.
• All Monk bonus feats can be chosen from any feat associated with the class or otherwise deemed reasonable.
• Monks can use gauntlets or handwraps enhanced as weapons, and either Bracers of Armor or robes/martial arts uniforms enhanced as armor.
• Feats which allow Monk AC progression via other classes may be nerfed.

Second, this has clearly been a labor of love from 22+ years of playing this edition. I'm curious, is 3.5 still your favorite edition and the one you play? What were your experiences with 4e and 5e if you gave them a shot?

Lastly, there are a lot of nods to 3.0 in here, but nothing from Pathfinder. Why did you not make the move to Pathfinder (I didn't, and have several reasons that mostly revolve around tone and aesthetic of the game, art and setting)? While I didn't make the move, there are a handful of small Pathfinder changes that did make it into my 3.5 game. Nothing there influenced you?

Thanks again for this awesome work, looking forward to reading and pillaging more of it.

[Darg]

I don't have a document per se, but I do have two common rules I use from game to game as they've become a staple. The first of which is from a RAW perspective without the perspective of D&D literacy. Basically, touch spells allow you to hold the charge and the combat rules allow you to touch up to six friends as part of a full-round action. As nothing says only the first touched gets the benefit of the spell, upto all six are capable of benefiting from the spell. The second is that if you use standard or full-round action to make attacks with a weapon then they are attack or full attack actions.

A previous rule we had was that you could overrun on a charge (we use a pre-errata PHB), but recently we've moved to using the 3.0 charge rules which inherently allow an overrun with the chimera rules. On that note we've also adopted the 3.0 version of power attack (just remove the special text from the 3.5 version of the feat).

A rule that I thought would be common, but actually turns out isn't from my interactions on this board, would be that rules that can conflict only in part do so only in so far as they have to conflict. An example would be that you can't cast spells of a certain level unless you reach a level in the class that would allow you to cast the spell. The versatile spellcaster feat allows you to cast spells of a higher level. The way this rule would work is versatile spellcaster can fully function without violating the first rule and does not specifically mention it does. Therefore it does not violate the rule. Versatile spellcaster cannot let you cast spells of a higher level than your class level allows.

[Biggus]

1. Your monk fix. I know monk sucks as is, and there have been a ton of attempts to fix it. I like that yours addresses AC more than anything else, but this feels like a lot. I'm curious what your thinking was going into all of these changes and what your experience has been with the class since implementing these changes. Also curious what others reading may think? I like all of the changes individually, as a whole it feels overboard when combined with this really big AC bonus. Also, full hit points for Wholeness of body? Quivering palm every day?

I've made completely different changes to Fizban (other than changing Quivering Palm to 1/day) but the Monk is one of the most heavily upgraded classes in my house rules also. The AC bonus seems a little high (I'd probably go with 2 + 1/3 levels if I was going to improve it) but apart from that his version looks reasonable.

A rule that I thought would be common, but actually turns out isn't from my interactions on this board, would be that rules that can conflict only in part do so only in so far as they have to conflict. An example would be that you can't cast spells of a certain level unless you reach a level in the class that would allow you to cast the spell. The versatile spellcaster feat allows you to cast spells of a higher level. The way this rule would work is versatile spellcaster can fully function without violating the first rule and does not specifically mention it does. Therefore it does not violate the rule. Versatile spellcaster cannot let you cast spells of a higher level than your class level allows.

I'm bit confused by this. Versatile Spellcaster says it allows you to "cast a spell you know that is one level higher". You don't know any spells of higher level than your class level allows, so how could it allow you to cast them?

[vasilidor]

I have to agree, Fizban's monk edits are awesome.

[Fizban]

I'm loving this and have read a big chunk of it already (thought jumping all over the place). So much love, time and thought was put into the whole thing. Your view of the game and how you think it is best experienced is pretty in line with mine as well, and we appreciated 3.x for many of the same reasons. I've already plucked your fighter, ranger and sorcerer changes.

And that makes it all worth it.

1. Your monk fix. I know monk sucks as is, and there have been a ton of attempts to fix it. I like that yours addresses AC more than anything else, but this feels like a lot. I'm curious what your thinking was going into all of these changes and what your experience has been with the class since implementing these changes. Also curious what others reading may think? I like all of the changes individually, as a whole it feels overboard when combined with this really big AC bonus. Also, full hit points for Wholeness of body?

And then comes the dirty little secret, which is of course that I haven't really got to playtest. . . anything? Haven't had a game in ages, everyone worth playing with around here is too busy to actually game (I could probably scrape some people together if I really tried hard, but they'd all be strangers, probably coming from different editions, and certainly end up with some that are incompatible with my desired game leading to cuts and further searching or the whole thing falling apart in a waste of time). Though this is hardly uncommon, basically any huge homebrew project (and likely huge chunks of actual books) is guaranteed to have little or no actual playtesting. And many of the changes were made with specific respect to things I did learn from the games I had back when I had a group. So you can generally assume the answer to any "seems like a bit much" question is that if it turns out I went too far, I'll just fix it when it happens. Particularly when you add the caveat that there's stuff for multiple power levels written across years. There are definitely some class tweaks where I go back and think that might be too much, or not enough (I'm getting pretty close to just going full 5e on the animal companion, and if you think Monk has a lot of text check out the Soulknife), it basically depends on what I've been thinking about at the time and how it compares to whatever I wander towards next. That said, upon review, yeah I'm still good with where I left the Monk:

The AC bonus fixes the main problem that martial arts masters are always shows as dodging attacks constantly, which in DnD means AC, so they need AC equivalent to heavy armor *and* shield, plus enhancement. Wis bonus can roughly be the shield while the base goes up to +12, which is only +4 full plate. How cheesy their AC ends up being thus depends on how much extra Dex and how over the top their Wis gets, which is limited by stats, which I limit to Standard or Elite arrays and normal races. So the AC rather than being huge, is basically just where it should be.

The Flurry as standard action is fairly common, fixing their speed vs full attack conflict without running into all the problems of easy "pounce" abilities. These first two are the most important.

The extra movement abilities aren't all really extra: Slow Fall is rarely useful but if you can Wall Walk then it makes no sense to not slow fall, so the only real extra is the Water Step, which is extremely situational. You could easily fit them all into one ability text and they just let you do the thing you should already be able to do just from the speed bonus, run circles around people.

Wholeness of Body as full hit points: yup, it's big. It's also based on the Guardinal version of Lay on Hands, and is repeated in the Paladin changes*. But hit point pools based on tertiary stats or a flat 2 x Level are terrible and simply do not evoke the proper response of "oh no they just healed up/bah I can just heal up" because they can barely handle chip damage. I will admit, if the other changes have sufficiently refocused the game to AC and the enemies in play are not doing big chunks of damage and the Cleric is ending up with tons of spells laying around because they never have to heal, this could become a problem, but I'd rather try it this way first (and in a game where the Clerics aren't "supposed" to heal, it becomes a more necessary fix). At high levels enemy damage output can reach insta-kill on occasion, so any healing ability which can't do your full bar doesn't matter anymore.

*(The Paladin gets full hit points at 2nd level, within dipping range, and that doesn't go away if they multiclass as long as they keep up the code. Now *that* feels pretty extreme even to me, but I'm considering it a reward for actually being the good guy. I want Paladins to be a little OP, and it also helps keep some Paladin oomph distinction going into mounted PrCs compared to non-Paladin entries.)

Abundant Step division: this is another very small set of words to cram into the original text, and the 40' increments keeps it pretty limited. It's a 12th level ability so you're not going into some crazy PrC and I want it to be better than the very lackluster Shadow Jump abilities, with some potential distance to it, meanwhile there are short range teleportation spells that I've not banned (even if the Anklets of Borked are mega-banned), so it has to compete with those. At 12th you have a maximum of 16 uses, which sounds huge on paper, but you have to know exactly where you're going and be able to get there in 40' to actually use it that many times, while during combat it still costs a standard action and there are foes with massive speeds or much better at-will teleportation of their own. If you need to move even 50' each of those times, it drops to 8/day. In the end I think it should be fine next to the two full casters of the party, and since the melee role is tank with a side of damage, teleporting is actually a trap.

That leaves Quivering Palm 1/day, and bonus feat and equipment guidelines, which should all be common and self-explanatory.

Second, this has clearly been a labor of love from 22+ years of playing this edition. I'm curious, is 3.5 still your favorite edition and the one you play? What were your experiences with 4e and 5e if you gave them a shot?

I was willing to try 4e on the "any game is better than no game" principle, but that game only got one session, it was clearly a lark rather than a commitment for the rest of them. But I did not like the system, everything's all the same as far as I'm concerned. Probably very good at what it does and some people loved it, but I did not want.

I'd be willing to play 5e more on its own terms, with some caveats. I hate how they've removed the tactics from their tactical combat game by making everything move+full attack, the skill system isn't a skill system- it's a vague list of competencies that cause the DM to make you roll for things and then fail at what you're supposed to be competent at because a system without standard DCs is not a system, and the "feats" take the complaint about 3.x where you supposedly need a feat to do anything and actually make it real. That said, it's a very hit-point based almost video-game like RPG, makes me think Final Fantasy quite a bit, where both sides just attack every turn, and they completely excised some major problems like "animal companions." It could be a very comfortable resource management game where everybody has some resources, assuming the DM has planned things appropriately (except the very first module they put out immediately broke their own encounter pacing and redlines the party into the ground and most groups I've seen seem to run it even more casually as 1-2 encounter days when the DMG actually increased it to a "6 encounter day"). So sure I'm willing to give it a try, but not run it, 'cause that's not what I'm here for.

Because I am of course 3.x for life, writing stuff down was just a response to having too much stuff and no game to narrow the focus or stop me from writing them down. I've played a little . . . was it World of Darkness, not the New one? Anyway, other games are good at other things if someone's running one, but DnD is 3.x.

Lastly, there are a lot of nods to 3.0 in here, but nothing from Pathfinder. Why did you not make the move to Pathfinder (I didn't, and have several reasons that mostly revolve around tone and aesthetic of the game, art and setting)? While I didn't make the move, there are a handful of small Pathfinder changes that did make it into my 3.5 game. Nothing there influenced you?

There are a very few, very tiny nods to Pathfinder: if you pop all the way down to alchemical items table you'll find a couple items from there, and there might be a feat, or a feat that took some inspiration (there are also some references to/inspiration from Dragon Mag content, which is still Paizo). But mostly no, I never considered a switch to Pathfinder because I didn't like any of its most vaunted changes: simplifying skills so that seeing and hearing are the same thing, simplifying combat maneuvers so they're nearly all the same thing, and feats that make two-handing even more favored. Add on top of that, every class has extra menu feature lists even when they didn't need them and there are endless ACF "archetypes" swapping and/or upgrading everything with everything and then base classes doing the same while also having yet more "archetypes", meanwhile they did things like turn smite into not-smite and even rage is potentially more fiddly than a barbarian should be fiddling and yup there's the usual bloodline nonsense sorcerers of course just to grate on me personally. They made some decent nerfs to a few problem spells, but left others alone, and printed plenty more. I've noticed some changes to monsters, but nothing crazy enough to shift my entire pre-existing knowledge base.

Basically, Pathfinder actually has the bloat that 3.x was accused of, all right there online even. It starts out as a giant house-rules document (so, no better or worse than anything I or others could produce) edited into the PHB for publish as a new edition, and then just keeps getting heavier and heavier, more and more char-op that has to be arranged starting at 1st level to do anything, ugh. Mutliclassing worked, PrCs worked, even 1/2 ranks for out-of-class skills worked, and too much too interconnected stuff turns the game into a soup. The game needs some crisp lines, a skeleton for definition, but Pathfinder just looks like mush to me, and when I do zoom in far enough to pick something out there's almost always something in the fundamental design I don't like. Addition is not the solution to everything, and aside from a couple simulation destroying simplifications, addition is how Pathfinder wants to fix everything.

It's a very surface level understanding with surface level fixes, in my opinion, which ends up just as broken and difficult to use. Perfectly understandable given the time-frame and fact that they were actually publishing a product for money. But yes, with an extra decade or more with no external pressures and a different "target audience" as it were, well clearly I prefer my own work. There are sometimes very small things like an alchemical item, or stuff like the witch's familiars and spells, or the concept of the Aegis class, which I find interesting, but only the rarest I would use as written.

That said, I do have one of the Pathfinder video games, and may eventually play it some day since there won't be any more 3.x based games. . . though I'll probably try Baldur's Gate 3 first.

Thanks again for this awesome work, looking forward to reading and pillaging more of it.

And thank you for appreciating it! I've had some people like bits that have gone into it here and there, but you're the first to take a larger interest

[pabelfly]

And then comes the dirty little secret, which is of course that I haven't really got to playtest. . . anything? Haven't had a game in ages, everyone worth playing with around here is too busy to actually game. Though this is hardly uncommon, basically any huge homebrew project (and likely huge chunks of actual books) is guaranteed to have little or no actual playtesting.

I had a quick scan of the document. While I think there's some good changes in there, and it is better than vanilla 3e, you would have a problem with people buying into your house rules. There's nearly three hundred pages of rules that you want people to understand and agree with to play the version of the game you want.

I think the saying, "don't let perfect be the enemy of great", is applicable here.

[Troacctid]

Here's mine. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Ozreth]

I had a quick scan of the document. While I think there's some good changes in there, and it is better than vanilla 3e, you would have a problem with people buying into your house rules. There's nearly three hundred pages of rules that you want people to understand and agree with to play the version of the game you want.

I think the saying, "don't let perfect be the enemy of great", is applicable here.

The document reads more as a thought experiment, a long-term project, theorizing, advice on picking and choosing what you will from the document, philosophy on the history of the game and where 3.x sits in that context, as well as how it was shaped over the course of its lifespan and what those implications are. From reading the document, I don't get the idea that the author would hand this to a new group and ask them to read it over and adhere to it all. It is so well thought out and written that I imagine that Fizban would be able to bring most of these changes up on the fly during play, making it easy for the group. Many of the changes are individual changes to how classes work, so a player would only need to know what the document says about their class. I also imagine this document would be approached differently between a long term group that Fizban was playing with for years vs some newer people who may be strangers.

[King of Nowhere]

i did not try to fix the classes. the build is a lot more important than the class anyway, so i try to work with builds. my monk has AC 53 and saving throws close to 30 without any houserule.

i have a bunch of houserules, but the main ones are 2: one for build balance and one for world balance.

1) you can't reliably one-shot a foe of your level without giving them adequate counterplay. you can kill on a crit, you can kill on a failed saving throw. you can definitely kill if you team up two versus one. but i don't want the kind of rocket tag where the first to act ends the combat.

2) you can't permanently create something from nothing without paying a cost of some sort. no workarounds. all spells that imply otherwise are revised accordingly.
this is something akin to energy conservation, and it avoids all "infinite X" exploits and everyting that breaks the economuy and worldbuilding too badly

i have a list detaling some specific interactions, and a few other houserules made mostly for streamlining and simplicity (like dodge giving a flat +1 dodge to AC, or needing only 1 feat for two weapon fivhting) but those two principle are the fundation of most of it

[Fizban]

I had a quick scan of the document. While I think there's some good changes in there, and it is better than vanilla 3e, you would have a problem with people buying into your house rules. There's nearly three hundred pages of rules that you want people to understand and agree with to play the version of the game you want.

I think the saying, "don't let perfect be the enemy of great", is applicable here.

And yet, if you read it, the very first thing is says is that you don't have to read the whole thing. Pre-Edit: okay it's the second thing, after the introduction, but very clearly labeled as "How to Use This Book." No one expects anyone to read every single 1st party book to play the game, why would you need to read my entire "update" book? That's what I'm for, I know what in there. Or you can just search for whatever you're doing and ignore the rest. The only reason to even provide it to players is because well yeah, being blindsided is no fun, but more importantly if you want people to try your homebrew stuff you have to actually give it to them, and I've got quite a bit of homebrew stuff. But even then, I can just hand feats to the feat people, spells to the casters, etc.

The initial bits were even intentionally truncated so that this or that section could be printed on a single page*, though eventually I decided I'd rather have clarity and let them start creeping larger: The entire core base class tweaks list minus the Paladin fit on a single page, and most of the remaining base classes fit on a single page -and those that don't fit are themselves only a single page, aside from spell lists because those take up a ton of space. Every change individually can be described in only a few sentences.

*Of course I'm cheating and have it set to A4 paper rather than American Letter for better formatting/bit more space.

But eventually, if you bring everything together, yeah instead of having two dozen shorter documents I've just combined most of it into one. Though if you want to be combative, I could also say it is in some way a direct refutation of char-op claims that "you can't just nerf everything, the only way to fix the broken is to make everyone broken!" Sure I can- this doesn't even include my list of tweaks to every single spell from all the rest of the books- sure I got burned out a couple books before finishing, but yes, obviously, it is 100% possible to go through every broken thing in the game and judge it as fine, removed, or make a change. It's exhausting and not even necessarily worth it if you have a bunch of time to kill, but you can, if you want. Except that's not really what this is either, because huge swathes of problems are instead covered by "I'm a DM and I will in fact do my job," with discussion of what that job is and why I'm doing it the way I do- the "every spell change" list is emphatically not part of this document, just the important ones (which were written one at a time, long before I got bored and decided to try going through every spell at once), nor is the "every magic item change" list here either (which was also unfinished and out of date). Some 20 pages are tweaked and new feats, mostly new because those take more space, and about 50 are new spells and invocations, around another 10 for items, etc. Pretty sure that's a comparable ratio to most splatbooks actually.

The document reads more as a thought experiment, a long-term project, theorizing, advice on picking and choosing what you will from the document, philosophy on the history of the game and where 3.x sits in that context, as well as how it was shaped over the course of its lifespan and what those implications are.

What use is it presenting a pile of rules without context? Even the published books had little "Behind the Curtain" sidebars on occasion, I just think one of the major problems was not enough of them. If I'm sending a tweaks and brew doc out into the void, do I want people to read and then immediately disregard it because they don't already understand and agree? Of course not. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem with discussion on these boards is a failure to adequately communicate such context, leading to whole threads of shouting back and forth before someone finally provides the one missing sentence that makes it clear why they shouldn't have been arguing in the first place.

So naturally, I've gone and summarized a bunch of my thoughts and have tons of notes all over everything (to the point where the older minimalist stuff looks weirdly out of place at times).

I don't get the idea that the author would hand this to a new group and ask them to read it over and adhere to it all. It is so well thought out and written that I imagine that Fizban would be able to bring most of these changes up on the fly during play, making it easy for the group. Many of the changes are individual changes to how classes work, so a player would only need to know what the document says about their class. I also imagine this document would be approached differently between a long term group that Fizban was playing with for years vs some newer people who may be strangers.

Exactly. And while my old group trusted me enough to take the (very limited) changes I'd been working on at the time without question even as a player, or let me use homebrew (to some somewhat negative learning experiences), running a group again I could just slip most of it in as it came up without them even knowing I had anything other than some homebrew I printed off to hand them. The most onerous stuff comes up in character creation and some particular spell nerfs that can be got out of the way quickly.


And since we're a couple posts past I'll add this here instead of editing: regarding looking at stuff as too much or too little, it can be further noted that when I started I was still aiming for a boosted power level (I'm traditionally inclined to Sorcery), and the stuff I was working on was buffs. Buff the Monk, Hexblade, Sohei, Paladin, and even give the Warmage a few more options, tons of new invocations including overall buffs for high level Warlocks, cram a bunch of stuff into "LA +1" for Manaketes, etc. Meanwhile the biggest nerfs for Sor/Wiz are in the spells themselves, with some stuff applied to base Cleric and Druid. But as time has gone on and I've built up the document and moved even further away from char-op mentality, I've trended to aiming lower than that- moving from just nerfing the Beguiler to "soft-banning" it entirely, for example, or how I'm thinking the best fix for "animal companions" now is to just 5e them and export the non-mount HD-based companions to a Bonded-Summoner style PrC entirely. I've not abandoned the old slightly more powerful stuff, but I'm also ever increasingly just over the idea of dealing with char-op problems, while also acknowledging that, especially with the DnD of today, random and new players are just not going to be a "GitP" levels of optimization. Even getting people to read the PHB is a challenge much of the time, just getting them to read the homebrew is likely to be daunting enough.

At the end of the day, I'll only know what power level the game is going to be when I have a group of players submitting characters, and even if I've been making "blander" stuff more recently on the assumption of tamer players, that doesn't mean I don't want to see the cool stuff in action if that's what they want.

[liquidformat]

I have quite a few, I enjoy playing around with the classes and feats as a fun thing to do, feel free to use what you want and give suggestions.

Adjusted and new Feats

Barbarian

dusk blade additional spells

Fighter

Hexblade

Inquisitor

Marshal Knight

Martial Monk


Ninja

Nobleman

Orlesian Bard


Paladin

PRCs Revamped (still working on and adding many)

Psionic Monk


Ranger

Ranger ToB Variant

Rogue

Samurai (work in progress)

Soulborn

Soulknife

Spellthief (work in progress)

Swashbuckler

Witch Expanded Spell List


Thoughts on making weres/lycans more playable

House Rules (don't use all of these all the time and some are random things I am playing around with)

[Darg]

I've made completely different changes to Fizban (other than changing Quivering Palm to 1/day) but the Monk is one of the most heavily upgraded classes in my house rules also. The AC bonus seems a little high (I'd probably go with 2 + 1/3 levels if I was going to improve it) but apart from that his version looks reasonable.

I'm bit confused by this. Versatile Spellcaster says it allows you to "cast a spell you know that is one level higher". You don't know any spells of higher level than your class level allows, so how could it allow you to cast them?

A wizard knows the spells they have in their spellbook. They can copy spells whose level higher than they can actually cast into their spellbook. They can also gain access to spontaneous spellcasting to qualify for versatile spellcaster. Thus the theory goes that you can use versatile spellcaster to cast those spells you know.

Personally, I'm not sold on monks needing more armor. Access to mage armor puts them at or above the average heavy armor user using just the elite array and eventually they get access to shield AC with animated shield. They also have an advantage in that they get to keep their AC bonus while polymorphed so on occasion they can easily outpace normal armor wearers when the situation demands it. If I gave my players Fizban's level of AC bonus, it would just get ridiculous incredibly quickly. Even your 2 + 1/3 feels like too much and is easily exploited by druid dips/monk belts. I'm also of the opinion that gauntlet attacks are UAS attacks and you can use UAS for TWF. 3.5 has several places where the legacy off-hand mechanic from 3.0 was assumed to exist, but was actually removed by the update (monk UAS and shield bashing for example).

[Ozreth]

Personally, I'm not sold on monks needing more armor. Access to mage armor puts them at or above the average heavy armor user using just the elite array and eventually they get access to shield AC with animated shield. They also have an advantage in that they get to keep their AC bonus while polymorphed so on occasion they can easily outpace normal armor wearers when the situation demands it. If I gave my players Fizban's level of AC bonus, it would just get ridiculous incredibly quickly. Even your 2 + 1/3 feels like too much and is easily exploited by druid dips/monk belts. I'm also of the opinion that gauntlet attacks are UAS attacks and you can use UAS for TWF. 3.5 has several places where the legacy off-hand mechanic from 3.0 was assumed to exist, but was actually removed by the update (monk UAS and shield bashing for example).

I am still stuck on this as well. My group has a monk for the first time in more years than I can remember. We are early in the campaign so I can't make any serious calls on issues yet, but I'm well aware enough of the issues that do crop up around monk. My group have been playing for many years but never got into any level of optimization, rarely multi-class and still find enjoyment out of all the options in the PHB, so I am trying to keep this in mind when making any changes that scale power up. The only complaint the monk has had so far is that their play feels a little plain (this is someone who usually plays casters), and many of Fizbans fixes would remedy this. It is the AC that I am stuck on. I'm of the opinion that they probably need more, but not sold on how much. But I love much of the rest of his document and opinions so much that I am convinced he must be right about this too

[Lorddenorstrus]

At one point I tried fixing 3.5 to.. I recently decided to just switch and make PF1E the base and 3.5 the allowable content to go on top. My only real modification is I just hard ban Artificers. I just don't want to deal with people trying to spend 24/7 crafting. Pass, loot is my job as DM. I throw challenges and giant treasure piles. If ya want something just buy it and I can make sure everyone is roughly around the proper WBL standards.

[liquidformat]

I am still stuck on this as well. My group has a monk for the first time in more years than I can remember. We are early in the campaign so I can't make any serious calls on issues yet, but I'm well aware enough of the issues that do crop up around monk. My group have been playing for many years but never got into any level of optimization, rarely multi-class and still find enjoyment out of all the options in the PHB, so I am trying to keep this in mind when making any changes that scale power up. The only complaint the monk has had so far is that their play feels a little plain (this is someone who usually plays casters), and many of Fizbans fixes would remedy this. It is the AC that I am stuck on. I'm of the opinion that they probably need more, but not sold on how much. But I love much of the rest of his document and opinions so much that I am convinced he must be right about this too

Monks are kind of in a strange place base monk out of the gate is pretty bad and yet some super unoptimized groups will swear its the most broken class and not allow it in their games. Yet in a group with decent optimization standard monk tends to fall behind pretty quick. With that said even in the standard game, gishing with kung fu genius wizard enlightened fist and abjurant champion is pretty powerful, so is tashalatora into psychic warrior or other psionic classes, going cleric/monk/sacred fist or fist of the forest are other good choices, the real issue is base monk is a bit derpy and dysfunctional.

If you are wanting to play around with more AC I would suggest using the defense bonus and armor to DR alternate rules. across the board I think that is a better system than standard armor.

[Fizban]

Personally, I'm not sold on monks needing more armor. Access to mage armor puts them at or above the average heavy armor user using just the elite array and eventually they get access to shield AC with animated shield. They also have an advantage in that they get to keep their AC bonus while polymorphed so on occasion they can easily outpace normal armor wearers when the situation demands it. If I gave my players Fizban's level of AC bonus, it would just get ridiculous incredibly quickly. Even your 2 + 1/3 feels like too much and is easily exploited by druid dips/monk belts. I'm also of the opinion that gauntlet attacks are UAS attacks and you can use UAS for TWF. 3.5 has several places where the legacy off-hand mechanic from 3.0 was assumed to exist, but was actually removed by the update (monk UAS and shield bashing for example).

I suppose I could try to add a note regarding that to the Monk section, since I have nerfed both Mage Armor and Shield (by a mere -1 or 2 each but oh boy did people rage in the thread where I brought it up), and Animated Shields are mega-banned for violating the entire concept of shields. Wording the Monk's AC bonus to explicitly never stack with any sort of armor or AC bonus is easy enough, I don't recall if I avoided doing so to keep it short, or because I thought that was a bit extreme and wanted to allow some cross-play.

As for Monk+Polymorph, I'd put that under Polymorph problems to deal with as needed. I'm entirely cool with ruling that your humanoid kung-fu does not in fact work in bodies outside of your own, the fact that it doesn't is really a massive oversight (for that matter, another option would be shutting down feats!). I can add that to the Polymorph section.

[Crake]

I don't really have a document per-se, but more like just a collection of verbally communicated rules that we all just keep track of mentally.

For feats, i remove 90% of the "expected" feats and just make them standard options. Things like power attack, combat expertise, two weapon fighting, are all unlocked for free as long as you meet the prerequisites. So anyone with 13 strength can power attack, anyone with 15 dex has reduced twf penalties, anyone with 6 bab and 17 dex gets a second offhand attack, anyone with 13 int can get 1:1 AC to attack penalty up to their bab or 5.

Things like improved sunder/trip etc are still feats, as they improve the thing you can already do.

Prerequisites for prestige classes are largely removed, but instead are entered into entirely by RP and in character decision making. The more you work with the DM on this, the better it will work out. I have and will design entire prestige classes for a campaign, just for one player, that may never see use again, but is tailored directly to your character's story. I'm usually quite generous on this front too, so you can probably expect said prestige class to be stronger than most others, but I need you to work with me narratively for this to succeed.

Players can still take prestige classes normally if they wish, unless it's inappropriate for the campaign in question. You probably won't be going incanter if the campaign is set in the dark ages, where magic is a crime punishable by death, and mages rarely ever get past level 3 for example.

I use an optiona gestalt system that players can engage in. For e6 it allows players to begin gestalting at 6 instead of taking feats, but once they begin gestalting they must continue to gestalt until 6//6, and once they reach 6//6 they become permanently considered ECL7, meaning they will forevermore gain less xp than their level 6 counterparts.

Generally speaking, I will allow users to use either the pathfinder or the 3.5 version of something, but they cannot mix and match. For example, you cannot use the pathfinder unchained rogue in combination with a 3.5 ACF, nor can you use a pathfinder archetype with a 3.5 base class, even if the class has all the class features replaced by said ACF/archetype.

Campaigns may have limitations or subsystems included or enforced on a per campaign basis, I may for example, do a words of power campaign, or a spheres of power campaign, where all casters, player or npc, must utilize that system, but outside of those circumstances, generally speaking anything goes.

Druids are almost universally not an acceptable choice as a player class, as they are bound by duty to protect their territory in my setting. They only really work if a campaign is largely stationary. Deal with it.

There's probably a tonne more, I didn't bother with the specifics of character creation, as that's not really house rules, just cherry picked optional rules usually.

[loky1109]

Martial Changes
Unarmed Combat
Unarmed strikes get extra attacks due to a character’s base attack bonus

A Monk’s Flurry of Blows can be combined with Two-Weapon Fighting. The negative attack roll penalties for both are combined.

Are you sure this is house rules? I think it's standard rules.