What are some good easy low-effort houserules to "fix" 3.5?
Not that you can fix 3.5, but I suppose what I mean is, stem the absolute shitstorm of imbalance.
My personal ones are:
>full attack is a standard action
>you can move within a creature's threatened zone as you please, but leaving it provokes an opportunity attack (unless you have spring attack)
>you can move between attacks as you please (kinda like 5e). This doesn't nullify those extra spring attack feats in PHB2 because you can still use those to spring amongst enemies you don't one-shot.
>wizards cannot learn new spells without purchasing the requisite scroll and learning it.
>similar for sorcerers
>not sure what to do for clerics and druids
None of these require any changes to stats or homebrew classes or anything like that. They are just plain old rules. I'm considering them for Pathfinder too but my group will get too asshurt over half of them so I'd have to pick a few to go with. I can't get them to play 5e and honestly while 5e has a lot of better rules I hate how chargen is set up. And I run 5e but it's a much less committed gaming group, whereas the PF players are hardcore autists who will stick with a campaign for a long time.
What are some good easy low-effort houserules to "fix" 3.5?
Just play FantasyCraft dummy
clerics and druids should probably need to go on some minor side quest, maybe?
A druid needs to help grow some trees in an abandoned villages, a cleric needs to help an acolyte renew their faith, etc.
Also:
>damage scales with character level.
While it doesn't make up for everything martials lose out on, adding your character level to your weapon damage plus mods goes a long way.
Don't try to fix 3.5. Don't play 3.5.
Your house rules are shit. People who like 3.5 or Pathfinder will rightly consider you an idiot, people who dislike 3.5 and Pathfinder will not play your game with these house rules either.
Low-effort house rules? Here's one: play within the same tier (or 1 higher or lower), and you're fine.
FantasyCraft has a tiny playerbase. And I happen to like playing 3.5. I don't care if martials are good at nothing but combat, that's why I want to play one. Honestly the worst part of playing a high-level martial in 3.5, is shit Will save, and having to move to attack. If I wanted to bend reality and craft golems and demiplanes, I would play a wizard. I hate that 5e removed so much of that in the name of "balance." I say this after being a martialcuck for a full 10 years, almost my entire D&D career.
I'm not saying 5e is bad. In all honesty, the rules are better than 3.5's for the most part. And same with FantasyCraft, it doesn't fix enough of 3.5's issues to be worth picking up and investing in.
What is shit about them? The first and fourth one I see no reason against. It never made sense to me that a wizard could be locked in a dungeon for 3 weeks and emerge having learned fireball. Where did he learn it from? Oh, he had it in his spellbook all along. So why can't he cast it, even though he could have cast a fireball scroll? Oh, the spell wasn't complete. And all the goblins he killed helped him focus on his studies better. Sure.
Making casters 'find' spells helps turn down the power level of clerics & wizards, and gives more incentive to play a warlock or sorcerer who can learn a handful spontaneously.
>implying warlocks won't need to go on special quests to gain new spells from their patrons
>implying Sorcs don't need to sink a lot of time into trying to figure out how to do certain spells because while magic is natural to them, spells are not.
Martials aren't even good at what they do though.
I was going to say ‘Just play 5e’ before I noticed that you’ve said you can’t. Honestly it’s your best option still. Get your autists to play 5e.
...
>And I run 5e but it's a much less committed gaming group, whereas the PF players are hardcore autists who will stick with a campaign for a long time.
The game designed to reel in casuals, Skyrim players, and Critical Role fans attracts people who don't take it seriously? You don't fucking say.
>SpergCraft
No.
>What are some good easy low-effort houserules to "fix" 3.5?
Level cap of 6.
T3 classes only, use PF skill rules.
Never allow players to buy magic items. They can only find them in dungeons or kill powerful Npcs for them.
Balances the game and creates a way better rationale for dungeon delving murderhobos as a bonus action.
That doesn't balance the game, that does the opposite of balancing the game.
>good
>easy
>low-effort
>3.5
Learn a new system. Quicker, easier, and way less effort than fixing that mess.
Here's a pile of tripe my group liked to use:
As long as they are above 0 hit points, characters recover their average hit die + CON modifier in hit points every half hour, after they confirm a critical, and after they down an enemy.
All attacks on full BAB.
Movement per round can be split up between attacks.
Touch AC scales with BAB.
Natural and Armor AC bonus is untyped DR instead.
No DEX cap on armor.
No armor penalty to skills.
Classes with warrior BAB have all good saves.
All attacks against surprised/unaware/flat-footed threaten criticals.
All skills available to all classes.
Spot, Listen, Sense Motive condensed into Awareness.
Search, Pick Lock, Disable Trap condensed into Burglary.
Forgery, Decipher Script, Gather Information condensed into Spycraft.
Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate condensed into Manipulation.
Hide, Move Silently condensed into Stealth.
Swim, Climb condensed into Athletics.
Jump, Balance, Tumble condensed into Acrobatics.
Ride merged into Handle Animal.
Use Rope merged into Survival.
Heal can replicate effects of cleric healing and restoration spells of character's Heal rank /5 caster level.
UMD is not a skill but a CL+INT check.
Appraise is not a skill but a CL+INT check.
We also heavily reworked all the core feats to make each of them significant and useful enough so that there's not one obvious valid build.
So, even at the most superficial level there's no such thing as good easy low-effort houserules to fix 3.5. You either learn to love eating shit, or you keep fixing it until you're not playing 3.5 anymore and you wonder why you even bothered.
Force your martial players to use the Book of Weeaboo and Wuxia
ToB doesn't really do anything.
1) Only allow Tier 3 classes
2) No PrC's
There I've cut out like 70% of the shit.
OK.
What spells should you allow and which spells shouldn't?
Which spells are problematic and need to be restricted?
What if a player undergoes a huge journey, gets a spell and finds out he can abuse it in a particular way? Are you suddenly going to invalidate everything he did because now every adventure going forward has to account for that spell?
And here's the big thing. If a spell needs to have an adventure undergone what's stopping the autist caster from claiming the fighter needs to undergo an adventure to learn a feat?
Feats are cosmetic and largely worthless, spells are powerful reusable treasures.
Isn't that still basically admitting that casters are OP?
I mean from my perspective all you've done is turn spells into magic items. Except they're magic items your class is expected to have and they cost a resource to use.
Replace core martials with Tome of Battle and full casters with Psionics.
Ban everything, especially core, except for Tome of Battle, Expanded Psionics Handbook and Magic of Incarnum.
Or follow 's much better advice.
Hence the houserules I am considering.
But that's the problem. 5e has some really good stuff:
>resistances/immunities/vulnerabilities are handled well
>movement is good
>action economy is good
>grappling is less of a fucking disaster
>attack/save bonuses/DCs are better balanced (even though bounded accuracy goes way too far IMO)
>size modifiers to AC are gone but I can live with that.
>size based hit dice
>attack roll bonus based on CR for monsters is kinda gay bu I can live with it
>lack of NPCs classes is kinda dumb but I don't mind making them up in some ways
Honestly, 3.5 had some really cool material. Hexblade, duskblade, scout... I loved those classes, even if they were shit. I could run 3.5 to the end of time just having characters roving through hobgoblin or orc lands, clearing out strongholds led by a unique NPC I make for every week. Hell, I'm considering my next campaign to be 3.5 west marches, which sounds like total shit but I've done similar stuff before to great success. The trick is to have a storyline tying it all together.
This is good shit for the most part. Thanks user. I can get good ideas from this. Especially the "hitting a flat-footed guy is an automatic crit threat", I like that one.
What is wrong with PrCs? Can't I just ban the broken ones?
Just nerf as you go and tell your players not to min/max or break the game. If they have a problem then thats not the type of player you want anyway.
Low effort:
Martial gets scaling level damage to their attacks, and their special abilities is less shit(improve, somehow)
High effort:
Retool the entire skill system to cap at 80 for all skills.
Meaning a jump to the moon is 80, as it should be. Just like 80 Hide is completely fucking untraceable.
Unfuck Grappling and all skills that scale of the same check, so its possible to hang on to dragons flying around
Unfuck the HP abstraction, so its meat points. Or make it heroic points, but make sure everything respects that.
Accept that a Level 4 anything is already superhuman as fuck, and it gets more and more superhuman past that.