Homebrew DesignRoll up your sleeves and get working: there's lots of homebrewin' to be done! Post your custom creation for critiques or review those of your peers.
As the last spellcaster part of my general Core fix, I'll be fixing druids.
While druids definitely need fixing, they're surprisingly easy to fix. Their class features aren't exactly broken, just too powerful for the level at which the druid gets them. Some spells need work, but nowhere near as many as wizards. So I propose the following fix.
Wild Shape:
Spoiler
The new form's hit dice may not exceed half the character's druid level for animal and plant forms (elemental forms are still only restricted to HD equal to the druid's level), and a druid does not gain the ability to take Huge forms until level 20.
Animal Companion:
Spoiler
All medium and large animals on the level 1 list are moved to level 4. The level 4 list is moved to level 8, the level 7 list to level 12, the level 10 list to level 16, and the level 13 list to level 20. The level 16 list is not available. As before, the adjustment to the druid's level for determining companion abilities is a penalty of one less than the minimum level for the list.
Spells:
Spoiler
-Spike Growth, Spike Stones, and Wall of Thorns each have their casting time increased to 1 minute. (The first two are long-duration traps, and the last one is by far the hardest Wall spell to get rid of; none of them need to be castable in combat.)
-Winds created by Control Winds have a Fortitude DC either equal to 10+spell level+caster’s key ability score (like a spell) or the DC to resist such a wind if it occurs naturally (as by the table on page 95 of the DMG), whichever is less. When Control Winds creates a tornado, its size is limited to a size of 50’ radius for every 3 levels.
-When Fire Seeds is used to create bombs, each casting of the spell has a different command word (which is not under your control). It is therefore impossible to set off more than 8 bombs at once.
Ever want to try your hand at optimizing, but dislike heavy emphasis on splatbooks and/or the rocket tag phenomenon?
Come visit the Core Coliseum today, for a totally different style of optimization.
I've always done: 'The druid can only Wild Shape into animals native to their area', so a druid in a desert can just look up any animal with a cool ability and change into it. I use Knowledge nature to keep track of this, 'you must have at least twice the ranks in knowledge nature of each terrain as the HD of an animal you wish to change into.'
I've always done: 'The druid can only Wild Shape into animals native to their area', so a druid in a desert can just look up any animal with a cool ability and change into it. I use Knowledge nature to keep track of this, 'you must have at least twice the ranks in knowledge nature of each terrain as the HD of an animal you wish to change into.'
That really is just a formalization of the Core rules, and is definitely necessary for a game with a lot of splatbooks (for Core-only, it's likely to be little enough of a problem to not need formalization). The problem is that even with that, the druid can still become a Dire Bear and become a substantially better warrior and a far far better grappler than he should be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eldest
How would the change to the animal companion affect the ranger?
Surprisingly little. Because his effective level for the ability is only half his class level, his animal companion will be pretty much useless in combat anyway. For the things where the ranger's animal companion might be useful, a dog or bird should do fine anyway.
Effectively, for the ranger this simply takes an ability that's nearly useless for certain purposes, and makes it even more useless for those purposes.
Ever want to try your hand at optimizing, but dislike heavy emphasis on splatbooks and/or the rocket tag phenomenon?
Come visit the Core Coliseum today, for a totally different style of optimization.
Personally, I think SOMEONE should have a useful animal companion. In my game, I use an expanded version of Shapeshift Druids, and give the Ranger the animal companion. (Though now that I think about it, maybe this would be a better fit for the Shaman... Leave the Ranger with the 1/2 level progression. I also justify the animal switching by putting all three as 'primal' casters, and saying the animal itself is actually being possessed/guided by a Companion spirit.)
To that regard, though, I also nuke Handle Animal as a skill and have been converting the 4e beastmaster ranger's Beast powers as a Beastmaster set of skill tricks, with heavy 3e context-appropriate adaptation and a few new tricks based on Handle Animal's tricks.
Personally, I think SOMEONE should have a useful animal companion.
Oh, they do...an imaginative ranger or druid can find plenty of uses for their animal companion. It's just not a particularly powerful combatant. (This puts them in line with other class feature allies, who can be extremely useful but don't add to direct power.) This is intentional; nobody should have a large amount of control over more than one combat-worthy individual (other than by using Dominate, which has its own drawbacks.)
Ever want to try your hand at optimizing, but dislike heavy emphasis on splatbooks and/or the rocket tag phenomenon?
Come visit the Core Coliseum today, for a totally different style of optimization.
Ever want to try your hand at optimizing, but dislike heavy emphasis on splatbooks and/or the rocket tag phenomenon?
Come visit the Core Coliseum today, for a totally different style of optimization.
RSS Feeds: 
Druid fix (3.5 Core, PEACH)
