Campaign House Rules

[MisterDee]

First - as it's my first post here I figure I'd say hello to you all (and thank you for having a gaming community that isn't full of hypocrite snipers like the paizo boards or *shudder* the wussy nicer-than-thou GitP forums.

So - I'll soon be GMing a Pathfinder campaign. I don't have all that much experience with Pathfinder, but so far it's definitely shown that the common complaint that it's D&D, Caster Edition is completely true.

So, obviously, I want to house-rule a few things. I don't want to switch out the ruleset for something else (neither my players nor I have the time to relearn yet another version of the game, and honestly current Pathfinder Core+Option is just right for me as far as number of choices go - 3.x Core has too few, 3.x + options has way, way too many.) I just want to fix the truly egregious issues in order to have a game that's somewhat better balanced between classes, and ideally I want to do it without massively overcharging everybody.

Ideally, if the house rules could fit on one page or two, that'd be great.


...Yeah, I'm screwed. Seriously, fuck Pathfinder.

Luckily, there's a few things that should help with that goal.

First, and foremost, my players are mature enough that I can trust them not to break the game just for shit and giggles. So I don't have to house-rule common-sense items like "you can't use Wish to break the game economy" or anything like that.

Second - we're going for that Epic-Campaign-That-Will-Be-The-Most-Epic-Story-Ever. Which means that the players will use pre-gen characters I'll create (at level-1 - after that, it's theirs.) So I can avoid the most stupid Pathfinder crud like those ridiculous "I summon a squorvillion mooks to adventure in my place" summoner or that retarded Gunslinger class.

Third - we'll be playing in Ptolus. So there's a couple of tricks that fall under setting rules (no Gate-ing or similar spells - Summon monsters work, but the more game-breaking summons are out.) Also, evil and necromantic spells are illegal (as in Ptolus law illegal, not gamerules illegal).

More noteworthy: non-consumable magic item acquisition is quirky in Ptolus. Either you get the items through adventuring (GM fiat), you buy them market price at a specific shop which deals in findings (i.e. any item is in stock solely by GM fiat), you get it crafted by a specific organization (which charges you a significant margin above market price) or your party craft the items themselves. So, the party wizard / sorcerer can be subtly pointed toward being the item crafter to at least put in a small feat tax on him. And getting the melee classes what they need isn't all that hard.

And that's about where I'm at.

The party will consist of a dwarven paladin, an half-elf bard, a human cleric, a human fighter type, and a human wizard or sorcerer.

I'm perfectly OK with using different point-buy values for each character if that'll help in making the less-than-full casters viable. I was planning on having a fairly low point-buy baseline (15, probably) for the full casters. But my best guess is that it won't be enough, so I'd really like suggestions on where to go from that.

Thanks in advance!

[RobG]

The biggest potential problem I see in PF are the Trap Options. There are so many bad feat choices and archetype choices that if one player doesnt do his homework he could end up too far behind the rest of the party.

I think there is errata on the Paladin smite that makes it a bit more sensible.

Be aware that the Bards inspire courage stacks with things like Heroism and Good Hope now.

Be sure to adjudicate the Healing Burst correctly. It heals your enemies too if you don't take the feat.

Human Sorcerers can gain a spell known per level with a favored class option.

Combat Manuver Bonus and Defense is kind of wonky, make sure you understand it. Make sure the Fighter understands the new rules there. He may not be as keen on things like tripping.

Casting Defensively is much harder (15+ twice the spell level)

Is this the kind of stuff you're asking about?

[Bihlbo]

I'm doing something similar soon. The first house rules I wrote (besides the ones based entirely on the setting) were actually to solve some issues with 3e in general, like hit points.

Skills in PF, since ranks can only get up to level, but you get a +3 training bonus for class skills, are stupid. This means players are hunting ways to get a training bonus, which could be as simple as a one-level rogue dip. Just moronic. My solution was to say 1 rank costs 1 point, x4 points at level 1 just like in 3e. Class skills only affect two things: you can only choose class skills to advance when you take the first level of a class, and you might (I haven't worked out any criteria yet) need training from NPCs in non-class skills. I couldn't care less if someone wants to play a fighter with Knowledge and UMD ranks, with this crap it's awesome if the player thinks it's awesome.

Be wary which classes you allow. The ninja is brokesauce as-is. The monk is still terrible.

[MisterDee]

Thanks a lot!

I'm already set on one house-rule: I'll allow feat retraining, probably as it was in 3.5. That should help with fixing the less obvious trap options (and is just a good idea in general).

I'll probably also include a simple house rule that says "some spells have been changed - see appendix for details. Polymorph will be changed to something sane, and I think I'll have the Teleport line be limited to places physically visited prior and/or line of sight, for instance. Any suggestions on that?

The two characters that worry me the most are the cleric and wizard, to be frank.

I really like the concept of the wizard as arcane-researcher over the sorcerer's magic-is-in-my-blood. But effectively unlimited spell lists is probably the single one biggest balance issue in 3.x. I'm really trying to figure out a way around that. Maybe a fairly large price to scribe a spell into a spellbook would help? Maybe SpellLevel^2 x 100GP (excluding spells learned from level-ups, of course)?

For the cleric, the issue of large spell lists also looms large, but I'm also annoyed by the lack of focus - I was thinking that instead of X spells / level +1 domain spell, clerics could cast 1 spell per level + X domain spells. So the cleric could do many domain-relevant spells per day, but only a few of the more generic spells each day. Thoughts?

[MisterDee]

So, for the hell of it, I've decided to start working on characters (15-pts buy, but I'm willing to take a look at increasing that for noncasters)

In retrospect, a dwarven Paladin is... not a good idea. That -2 to charisma means that most abilities get neutered badly unless all points. So I decided to go with a dwarven Cavalier instead (Order of the Dragon.)

I'm thinking of going with the Beast Rider archetype, too. Although Musketeer would be on theme too (and would remove the need for figuring out a mount.)

At level-1, the only other choices I have to make with that built are feats - the regular feat and the bonus teamwork feat.

For the teamwork feat, Precise Strike seems to be the most relevant one (with a five-person party, including another fighter-type and a cleric, I think flanking should come up fairly often.)

For the other feat... I'm not sure. Part of me thinks that two-weapon fighting would work well: the challenge works on a per-attack basis, so extra attacks should be nice. Plus a dwarf gets to use a dwarven war-axe one-handed, might as well make use of that.

However, it also seems to me that a Cavalier should probably be charging at people. But at this point, should the various charge abilities be nice extras? Or just plunk in the Honor Guard archetype and stop worrying about charges altogether?

[echoVanguard]

I was thinking that instead of X spells / level +1 domain spell, clerics could cast 1 spell per level + X domain spells. So the cleric could do many domain-relevant spells per day, but only a few of the more generic spells each day. Thoughts?

I'd like to see the results of this, honestly. It sounds really interesting.

echo

[koz]

One suggestion I would make is that races no longer have stats. I would use one of the race stat replacement rules (one such is http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Simplified ... iant_Rule) ), but realistically, you could just say 'racial bonuses and racial penalties are gone, happy birthday'.

Your idea with the cleric is interesting, but since clerics only have two domains, it'll lead to a lot of ability spam. My advice would instead be this: eliminate the domain slot, but let any cleric cast spontaneously any spell they would get from their domain. This solves the problem much better. Another option is to give clerics a lot of domains (like, five), but have their spell list consist of nothing but their domains. If you're worried about an overabundance of domain powers as a result of this, simply say 'you get powers from two of them, the rest just add spells to your list, deal with it'.

Wizards honestly don't need nerfing. What you do need to do is address problematic spells - otherwise, they are basically fine.

One huge elephant in the room is the high dependency on treasure, which is also asymmetric across classes. If you're seriously gonna have fighters and wizards in the same group, may I humbly suggest http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/New_Level- ... iant_Rule) ? It'll help a lot.

Lastly, on the question of feats. Although PF gives you one feat every odd level, this is seriously not close to enough to be good, especially since Paizo really fellates feat chains. For a caster class, one feat every odd level is probably OK, but for a non-caster, that's cripplingly low. I would suggest giving every non-caster class one bonus feat on every odd-numbered level, and TWO on every even one. If this sounds like it's a lot, this is the only way any sort of reasonable competitiveness with the casters can be established and anything resembling level-appropriate tricks exist.

Another suggestion, more to do with sanity than anything, is don't roll for hit points - it'll lead to hilarious instances of sorcerers having more HP than barbarians. Instead, have people take the average. I would also recommend doubling first-level HP to avoid 'lolgreataxecrit' situations, but that's up to you.

Edit: Seems like this has trouble parsing links with brackets. Be sure that you include the bracketed bit at the end when you check those links, because otherwise, they won't work.

[echoVanguard]

Your idea with the cleric is interesting, but since clerics only have two domains, it'll lead to a lot of ability spam.

I really don't think it would. Your typical cleric is going to have between 1 and 6 spells at a given level, and the average is typically going to be around 3-4. With only two spells to fill those slots, the most you might realistically see is 6 copies of the same spell (and remember, the cleric is a prepared caster, so players are very likely to memorize at least one or two of the other spell unless it really, really sucks). You're most likely to see 2-3 copies of each spell, which isn't any spammier than a typical sorcerer - and as a bonus, players would be *really* invested in their actual domain choices, instead of "eh, I like the rerolls from the Luck domain, I guess I'll worship the Luck God again".

I do concur that having only domain spells to pick from would be interesting, but that's not really a cleric as people expect clerics to be.

Edit - a suitable compromise might be allowing clerics to prepare spells from subdomains that share the same parent domain as any of their domains.

echo

[MisterDee]

Yeah - rolling for hit point is out. Seriously, that was dumb back in BECMI.

As to treasure dependency and number increases... I'm mostly worried about balance between the classes.

It's not really a problem for me if the party ends up only able to face EL14 encounters at level 16 only. I'll adjust my encounters, and if everyone's having fun, who cares about the rest? I'm not going to use per-kill XP anyways.

That said, my group isn't obsessed about sharing treasure equally. In fact, I tend to have to deal with the Communist Party (of adventurers) instead. So I get quite a bit of control that way - if a character needs a gear increase, I can fairly easily ensure that he'll get it.

For the feats - I knew I'd need to increase the number of feats a bit, but... Wow. That many? Here I was thinking that one extra feat on even levels for non-casters would be unbelievably generous...

[MisterDee]

So - after thinking about it, I'm probably going to make the fighter-type an urban ranger, and make him a two-weapon wielder primarily.

Damn, do fighter archetypes suck ass.

The Cavalier will be specced toward waraxe-and-board (and/or two-handed waraxe wielding) Plus the occasional lancing of course, although I'll make him a standard-bearer since urban campaigns aren't that good for mounts and charging opportunities.

That leaves me with a regular joe cleric, an half-elven bard archer, and a wizard to figure out.

[TarkisFlux]

TWF is a trap option without substantial bonus damage, and PF favored enemy bonuses are not big enough or commonly enough applied to count. You should probably make the ranger an archery guy instead. It will work better with the bard and wizard anyway, and lets you make a beatstick melee cleric if you want an extra melee body.

Alternately, go with two-handed if you really want a melee ranger and are willing to use advanced player's guide content. TWF really is that bad an option for a ranger.

[koz]

As to treasure dependency and number increases... I'm mostly worried about balance between the classes.

It's not really a problem for me if the party ends up only able to face EL14 encounters at level 16 only. I'll adjust my encounters, and if everyone's having fun, who cares about the rest? I'm not going to use per-kill XP anyways.

That said, my group isn't obsessed about sharing treasure equally. In fact, I tend to have to deal with the Communist Party (of adventurers) instead. So I get quite a bit of control that way - if a character needs a gear increase, I can fairly easily ensure that he'll get it.

You... clearly didn't read what I linked. Treasure as PF presents it is a class balance problem, because while the Wizard only wants a headband of intellect and maybe a cloak of resistance, the poor fighter wants that, and a belt of giant strength, and magic armour, and a magic shield, and a magic mount, and some items to make up for, you know, not having fucking class features.

I would also add that quite simply, the majority of required items are boring. Swords, armour or whatever with nothing but pluses on them are boring, but because efficiency is required by the system, people ignore other fun things in favour of MOAR NUMBERS WARGARBL.

So by implementing what I suggested, you eliminate both problems, without having to change a thing about anything in the system. Where exactly is the problem with this, and how exactly does it not fit with your goals again?

For the feats - I knew I'd need to increase the number of feats a bit, but... Wow. That many? Here I was thinking that one extra feat on even levels for non-casters would be unbelievably generous...

Sigh. Look at this, then compare it with this. These are both considered a 5th level-appropriate ability as far as PF is concerned - and may I add that you get fewer of the former than the latter.

It's just truth beyond truth that PF feats are worse than 1st level spells. Hell, most of them are worse than cantrips. And yet, not only do you get fewer feats than spells, you're also expected to jump through a million hoops of bullshit with prerequisites on feats, which miraculously don't apply to spells? For real?

So no, in no way is my suggestion anything even resembling generous. In reality, you should let people take feats which don't suck as well, but if you insist on playing PF, at least make sure that this joke applies:

Brezhnev was making a speech to a crowd:

"Comrades, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that for the next five years, all you'll get to eat is shit.

The good news - there will be lots of it."

[...You Lost Me]

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Simplified_Races_%283.5e_Variant_Rule%29

Dude this is... holy crap. It's a lot more than one page, but that's awesome.

[koz]

http://www.dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Simplified_Races_%283.5e_Variant_Rule%29

Dude this is... holy crap. It's a lot more than one page, but that's awesome.

As long as you define 'per encounter' to be something not-daft, like 'every 10 minutes', and don't mind its somewhat blinding focus on 'moar MMO damaeg' and 'combat IS THE ONLY WAY', then yes, it is pretty awesome.

[MisterDee]

You... clearly didn't read what I linked. [...]

Oh - I read it (and I don't necessarily disagree with it, either. It's certainly an elegant fix to the MOAR NUMBERS problem.) I'm just working through the implications and taking the time to think about it. In fact, I'm very interested in the treasure issue, and I'd like to go into more details on it.

As to the feat issue - by "Wow." I didn't mean "Wow, this guy is completely fucking nuts", I meant "Wow, I was really completely off." Sorry if that came out as dismissive.

Now - one thing I do want to clarify: I'm not looking to fix Pathfinder permanently. I just want it to work well enough for a single campaign, with a specific set of characters (and more importantly, a very specific set of players.)

Going back to the treasure issue - I get the house rule you proposed - basically, forget about getting those +X to something item, because they don't stack with the boni you already have.

And frankly, it really works, thematically, with the campaign I want to run. I would use that rule solely for PCs, and I want them to be inherently powerful.

But I do have a couple of questions:

1-I'm having trouble visualizing the basic save DCs vs saves boni.

By and large, saves will climb up a lot quicker vs. save DCs. As far as I know, there isn't any other enhancement bonus to saves, so that will stack with everything else. (Including the enhancement boni to the relevant stats, right? And the Cloak of Resistance?)

It's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. But it's going to mean that other (non-PC, since fuck redoing every single Ptolus NPC ) save DCs will end up a bit on the low side. Not a huge issue but wouldn't it be best to just make the bonus to save a resistance bonus? Or maybe just ban the Cloak of Resistance and other permanent resistance bonus items?

2-Should I adjust the general wealth level of the campaign?

[koz]

As to the feat issue - by "Wow." I didn't mean "Wow, this guy is completely fucking nuts", I meant "Wow, I was really completely off." Sorry if that came out as dismissive.

Don't worry - I never assumed it as such. This is the Den, and I'm pretty thick-skinned by now. I hope though that I've adequately illustrated precisely why my suggestion is both necessary and, sadly, still inadequate.

Now - one thing I do want to clarify: I'm not looking to fix Pathfinder permanently. I just want it to work well enough for a single campaign, with a specific set of characters (and more importantly, a very specific set of players.)

Which is fine - I never assumed you were gonna fix the whole thing ever. If you're preconstructing characters, I'm happy to offer my help - I'm fairly competent insofar as mechanics work.

...boni....

It's bonuses. Sorry for the grammar fascism, but it's a pet peeve.

But I do have a couple of questions:

1-I'm having trouble visualizing the basic save DCs vs saves boni.

By and large, saves will climb up a lot quicker vs. save DCs. As far as I know, there isn't any other enhancement bonus to saves, so that will stack with everything else. (Including the enhancement boni to the relevant stats, right? And the Cloak of Resistance?)

Are you sure you read what I linked? First of all, resistance bonuses no longer exist, so it makes no difference. Secondly, cloaks of resistance don't exist, so it still makes no difference. Thirdly, even if they did exist, the benefits you get just from levels obviate them anyway.

In case it is unclear, no, cloaks don't stack with the enhancement bonus you get from levels in my system, just like belts of giant strength won't stack with the bonuses to Strength you get from my system. Even if they existed, which they don't, so it's a non-issue.

2-Should I adjust the general wealth level of the campaign?

It depends. If you want to still charge people gold pieces for items, then yes. If you don't wanna do that (and fair enough), give out much more. Since then people can build castles and have giant orgies and stuff, and that is very cool.

[RobG]

For the cleric, the issue of large spell lists also looms large, but I'm also annoyed by the lack of focus - I was thinking that instead of X spells / level +1 domain spell, clerics could cast 1 spell per level + X domain spells. So the cleric could do many domain-relevant spells per day, but only a few of the more generic spells each day. Thoughts?

Woah there.

There's a reason your Cleric picks from the whole spell list every day and that's because it's his job to fix all the crap that may of happened the previous day. If somebpdy was turned to stone, permanently blinded, deafened, cursed, diseased you have to fix it. A fight with a bunch of shadow and allips might leave you needing a half-dozen Restoration spells.

You only have so many spell slots during the day. You can't prepare everything you might need and even if you do you'll end up swapping out Delay Poison for a cure spell right before someone gets poisoned.

He needs to be able to keep the party going. He doesnt know exactly what he needs to do that so he needs the whole list.

[Krusk]

There's a reason your Cleric picks from the whole spell list every day and that's because it's his job to fix all the crap that may of happened the previous day. If somebpdy was turned to stone, permanently blinded, deafened, cursed, diseased you have to fix it. A fight with a bunch of shadow and allips might leave you needing a half-dozen Restoration spells.

You only have so many spell slots during the day. You can't prepare everything you might need and even if you do you'll end up swapping out Delay Poison for a cure spell right before someone gets poisoned.

He needs to be able to keep the party going. He doesnt know exactly what he needs to do that so he needs the whole list.

Necro --

Let him cast from items from the full cleric list. Then say its something like "Clerics don't like opposing schools and can't prepare them. That said, it all works the same and with an items they can do it fine". Written out as rules instead of conversation.