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.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/smileyellow.gif)
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!