LibriumArcana.Games

My proposal is as follows: 3rd Edition is essentially a good system at its core, but there are aspects of it, particularly classes and the magic system, that can be and in many cases clearly are unbalanced. The solution Wizards of the Coast has come up with is to scrap the whole thing and make 4e. Now, this is something that I'm unwilling to do simply because of the sheer amount of money I've already invested into the current edition. That they're making sweeping flavor changes, and ones that suck at that, is not serving to convince me. I know there are others who share my views on the matter.

So the question is this. Is there enough support in the gaming community to create, sustain, and ultimately finish our own "3.75e" of sorts? Keep in mind when responding that designers aren't all that this project would need: It would also require playtesters, proofreaders, editors, and even just people with good ideas to contribute. It's a huge project, and not one to be undertaken lightly, but there would be a place for just about anyone who wants to help, and with a large community behind it I believe it could succeed. Feel free to post and ask if you have questions.

So: Who's in?

Edit: Another board I posted this poll on had a slight misunderstanding, so let me clarify.

I'm not suggesting the attempt to herd cats that actually trying to get a unified, single edition out of a bunch of guys on the Internet would be. Essentially what I want is a clearinghouse for posting and playtesting house rules. I think that such an effort could eventually create a cohesive ruleset (or more likely several different ones), but for now the objective is to make 3.x easier to houserule and balance, and maybe continue to get a few pre-made adventures on the side. (After all, what do you do with your old adventure ideas after they've been run? Might as well make them available somewhere if that's your thing, I think.)

Well, for those probablys, now's your chance. This thing has moved along a lot faster than I anticipated; I've been given webspace and a wiki to work with by the Akashic Record site.

http://3eupgrade.akashicrecord.org/

Nothing there yet; I'm still writing out the front page.

Is there a general design philosophy associated with this project (such as "balance the classes" or whatever) to go by?

Or is it more of a clearinghouse for different ideas based on house-rules at this stage?

The second one. As of now, we'll take what we can get; there's not a whole lot there, and limiting ideas will limit our scope.

And it's going to remain a clearinghouse for house rules even if it does get to the stage where we try to forge some of them into a cohesive system; after all, even if such an end does occur, not everyone will like it, and more will houserule it.

In that case, I vote "probably": I can't make any promises... my time's not what I wish it would be, if you understand.

In my mind there's a few problems that need to be addressed in 3e. The big ones are as follows:

Saves and DCs: How hard a save is to make varies far too wildly in a party of the same level. The rogue can make a reflex save easy that the fighter will fail, but both the rogue and the wizard have no chance of making the fortitude save. This can make situations radically more dangerous for some party members than for others and that's bad game design. A rogue should be better at reflex saves than others, but the gap shouldn't be large.

Secondly, spell DCs a related subject. The ability to stack DC modifiers in 3.0 lead to a mass nerf and removal in 3.5 leading to a switch to no save, ranged touch attack spells really coming into the fore for arcane casters. A good middle ground between the two for offensive casting is the ideal place.

Badly designed spells: forcecage having no save. Unforseen stacking effects between certain spells and powers. The problem children need to be written and reworked.

Feat stackage: There's a few of them that are just ugly in combination with certain class abilities or other feats. Nitram is the man to see about a list, because he seems to know most of them.

Skill rationalization: Too many skills, not enough skillpoints. See Star Wars Saga Edition.

Crazy ass DR: A fighter should not be carrying an entire arsenal just so he has one weapon that can beat whatever kind of DR the monster he's fighting has. For that matter, demons should be great at breaking devils' DR and visa versa.

Way too many resistances and immunities: Too many critters, especially high level ones, have too many resistances and immunities. Immunity to magic is the worst, but the rest suck too. They practically make Mastery of Elements mandatory for mages so they'll have spells that will work in any given encounter. Monsters need to be paired down to just a few resistances/immunities, if any, and potentially beatable SR.

Sneak Attack: needs to be able to effect more critters, even at the cost of a few dice.

The monk: This is a personal bias, but I hate it. It has, obviously magical abilities like uber unarmed fighting which isn't considered magical. It also sticks out like a sore thumb in most pseudo-European settings. I much prefer the Black Company D20 Weaponsmaster.

Now admittedly not every single problem needs to be handled this way. People who magic themselves into Sarrukh to abuse the transform scalykind powers are going to get themselves on the receiving end of the stick used by GMs on greedy bastards who try to abuse wish and the same solution can be applied to other abuses. Others require being rewritten or excised from the game.

One of my earliest houserules was the institution of a medium save progression. I'm told by some people that it makes the gap between saves so small as to be meaningless, but I really don't think so.

Rogue 9 wrote:One of my earliest houserules was the institution of a medium save progression. I'm told by some people that it makes the gap between saves so small as to be meaningless, but I really don't think so.

Same here. It went 1 + (level / 2.5), to place it halfway between good saves at 2 + (level / 2) and bad ones at 0 + (level / 3).

Crazy ass DR: A fighter should not be carrying an entire arsenal just so he has one weapon that can beat whatever kind of DR the monster he's fighting has. For that matter, demons should be great at breaking devils' DR and visa versa.

One could include Material Hardness to deal with some of those: for instance, Adamantine is harder than Mithril, hence creatures vulnerable to Adamantine are vulnerable to Mithril (sort of diamond cuts steel cuts glass).

That might be a problem with classical stuff like lycanthropes and silver, though here perhaps one could introduce spells that allow mimicry of the qualities of certain materials.

Another possibility: to include more "OR" in the DR of creatures with DR rather than "AND"; such as "silver and magical" becoming "silver or magical".

Alternatively, having certain DR go something like: 10 / silver ½ OR magical, meaning that magical negates the DR while silver halves it, rounding down. That way you can at least reduce the DR some with a less potent weapon, you don't need to nerf them all the way to make the fighter more competitive.

Badly designed spells: forcecage having no save. Unforseen stacking effects between certain spells and powers. The problem children need to be written and reworked.

Such as Timestop and anything else.

I use 5/12(level)+1. It's more math, but it's mathematically exactly between the high and low saves. I make a slight adjustment to it, though; at 19th level that formula works out to +8.91, and I make an exception to the otherwise universal d20 rounding rule and round it up to +9.