What to ban to make 3.0E and/or 3.5E playable and fair?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Aren't Wizards generally considered better for the game because their ability schedule favors variety over sameyness?

[erik]

Gestalt doesn't put em all on the equal footing as well as having a single customizable class.

I didn't opt for sorcerer or wizard because we don't need arcane spell failure, other than that, it's an acceptable alternative. Knowing all spells vs. having a set repertoire... meh. Certainly you have less frequent option paralysis with sorcerer instead. I could get behind using sorc without spell failure as the base.

Given how awful feats are, I can't be bothered to factor feat builds in as something to care about. Sure you could redo feats to make them mention-worthy but that's a lot harder than just giving out all da spellz.

[Foxwarrior]

Aren't Wizards generally considered better for the game because their ability schedule favors variety over sameyness?

If a superhero game can be interesting with characters that have one or two powers, the Sorcerer can probably squeak by with twenty.

I could see making each Cleric pick a couple of banned Schools (or equivalent similar choice) as a diversification-friendly alternative.

Erik: I was thinking of Divine Metamagic and Mother Cyst, and nothing else. Although with the right prerequisite tweaks, Natural Spell and the Locate City Bomb feat group could work too.

[fectin]

You might (might!) be able to force balance back by giving non-casters access to Spellfire.

[ishy]

You could also just give all non-casters spell casting ability, tome of battle like.

[sabs]

You can also require all Full spellcasters to multi class at least 1 in 3 levels
Course, that still makes the Fighter sad, but.. screw him.

[OgreBattle]

What if you just let the martial classes freely gestalt?

Choose any two from:
-Fighter
-Rogue
-Monk (any proficient weapon=monk weapon)
-Barbarian
-Ranger
-Paladin


Fighter|Rogue for your gritty sellsword that can stab you forwards and backwards
Barbarian|Ranger for a crazy berserker with two axes spinning around
Monk|Rogue to flip around stabbing things in their secret spots
Paladin/Ranger to pew pew with a bow on your magic horse with your loyal dog smiting evil and pollution.

[erik]

What if you just let the martial classes freely gestalt?

Choose any two from:
-Fighter
-Rogue
-Monk (any proficient weapon=monk weapon)
-Barbarian
-Ranger
-Paladin


Fighter|Rogue for your gritty sellsword that can stab you forwards and backwards
Barbarian|Ranger for a crazy berserker with two axes spinning around
Monk|Rogue to flip around stabbing things in their secret spots
Paladin/Ranger to pew pew with a bow on your magic horse with your loyal dog smiting evil and pollution.

Other than rogue, gestalting martials gives almost no benefit. I'm surprised you held onto the idea when you had to describe how useful a Barbarian-Ranger would be.

You run the certainty of every combination that doesn't include Rogue being garbage at level 10+... and if they don't use UMD shenanigans then they're still not playing the same game and even the rogue ones will fall short.

If martial classes could actually work with the CR system and had interesting non-combat abilities and such then dumping casters would be fine to keep things fair, but that's not how things worked out in 3.x.

To stay on the CR track rails and also to do level appropriate non-combat schticks, you need to be a caster.

There's many ways to make everyone a caster with varying amounts of work required in the conversion process.

• Limit to only full casting classes [all your work is already done]
• Require Gestalt of casting and non/casting [all your work is mostly done... but this raises the balance bar above vanilla caster for no good reason]
• Create a single customizable casting class [easy]
• Create full casting lists for every class [not hard, just tiresome, especially with the previous options already available]

For any fix, what I'd expect of a good 3e fix would be make all skills class skills, and get rid of polymorph spells (you can keep Baleful Polymorph if 3.5, I don't think that was problematic).

Then you have a relatively playable and fair 3.x.

[RobbyPants]

You can also require all Full spellcasters to multi class at least 1 in 3 levels
Course, that still makes the Fighter sad, but.. screw him.

The problem with that approach is you get all of your Protection from XXX and Remove XXX spells half again later than you normally would.

[Dr_Noface]

The gestalt solution was found long ago.

[Aryxbez]

Why only using official material or "strict 3rd edition" method ye described? Instead, just use [Tome] Classes/feats, they exist to boost the non-casters after all. Simiarly, official Tome of Battle could help if nothing else, just be more lenient on caring about requirements for the powers (and perhaps even opening up some schools for the Crusader).

Seeing I'm the only one to suggest this, I assume I'm asking a stupid question, but all the same, I will risk proceeding.

[RobG]

To keep it simple, ban..

1) Spells affecting other spells
2)Anything that reduces the level of a metamagic effect

and then go through all the higher level spells in the PHB. Ban whatever you don't want your players to be doing (planeshifting, polymorphing, chain-binding vrocks, etc). Ban nothing if you want, but be prepared to DM anything.

Make sure the fighter types have the right tools. They need to be able to:

1) Get to the enemy
2) Deal with DR and
3) Not fail every will save

but, don't let them get away with any ubercharger, wraithstrike/ power attack type crap either.

Medium BAB classes can have huge problems hitting anything at high levels. Esp if you start putting armor on fiends and the like.

The little class imbalances are kind of trivial. Just make sure everyone has the numbers they need at the level they're at. If one guy starts creeping past everyone else deal with it in a mature fashion.

Thats it

[Drolyt]

All right. So, if I was running a strict 3.0E game in which any first-party WotC material that was published before 3.5E came out, what would I have to impose a blanket ban on to make the game playable until, oh, character level 20? If this is impossible, what's the highest level I can expect the game to go before I start having to ban more than a third of published material?

Similarly, what if I was running a 3.5E game?

Alright, I thought I'd chime in since none of the other answers seem particularly helpful, hopefully the OP is still interested. First off, what you are asking for is basically impossible without gutting the game. Sure, if you have nothing but similarly optimized Wizards and Clerics and Druids the game will be balanced and possibly also fun, but you are removing a large part of the game (martial characters and skillmonkeys) and not everyone wants to play spellcasters. Why is it impossible for banning to make the three character archetypes (spellcasters, skillmonkeys, and martial characters) balanced? Because the fundamental issue isn't just that certain options are overpowered (though that is totally an issue, banning, say, monks and wish will help somewhat), it is also that some classes get a tremendous number of those options (wizard) while some get almost none (monk) and some are in-between (rogue).

So let me answer a question slightly different from yours: how do you run a reasonably balanced and fun Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 (I'm ignoring 3.0) game where players can play whatever archetype they want and still contribute while using only WotC material (preferably with as few books as possible)? What do I mean by archetype? Consider the barbarian. Basically, the archetype is that of the Norse berserker, or similar legends from other cultures. As long as the mechanics on your character sheet support your concept, it doesn't much matter whether it says barbarian under the class line. This is the key insight we'll need to accomplish our goals. To do this, the absolutely fundamental supplements are Unearthed Arcana and Tome of Battle; note that Unearthed Arcana is in the SRD and that the warblade, the feat list, and all maneuvers from Tome of Battle are available for free online (dndtools.eu is quite helpful too). Some other books that might be useful include the Player's Handbook 2, Complete Adventurer, and Complete Scoundrel.

First, spellcasters. You need to do two things, limit their options, and limit the power of those options. The latter is not something you can provide an easy fix for, you need to monitor what spells your players are picking and ensure that they are appropriate to the party and the campaign. The former is pretty easy though, just ban the wizard in favor of the sorcerer and use the spontaneous divine casters variant from Unearthed Arcana; you will also need to control access to scrolls/wands/etc. (magic marts should die in a fire anyways). In addition to making the game more balanced, I like how this individualizes spellcasters, it really isn't that fun for every spellcaster to be the same. Note that you not only have to watch out for win spells, but also trap spells. You and your players should probably read some of the various handbooks out there to get an idea of what spells are useful. Additionally the beguiler (Player's Handbook 2), dread necromancer (Heroes of Horror), and to a lesser extent warmage (Complete Arcane) classes are great if they fit your concept; warmage needs some optimization though, eclectic learning (Player's Handbook 2) at the very least.

Druids face an additional problem: wildshape. There are a couple options here. The first one, which is more work, is to preapprove any forms your player wants to use and have them write up the stats for that form ahead of time (this is also a good idea if anyone wants to use polymorph or similar spells). The other option is to use an alternate class feature, either shapeshift from Players Handbook 2 (for some reason this gets rid of your animal companion, so your player might want to take the wild cohort feat from the WotC website) or aspect of nature from Unearthed Arcana. Either is a decrease in power level, but you are still a full spellcaster so what the hell.

Limited spells known does create a problem with spells you might not want to cast every day, like raise dead or remove disease. To some extent this is fine by me, spells like teleport and planeshift are (often anyways) bad for the game. You do need to provide other ways to do these things though, maybe look at the incantations rules from Unearthed Arcana.

Alright, martial characters. This is a bit more complicated, because there are a lot of martial archetypes. Let's explore them one by one. First, the fighter. The fighter is actually a set of related archetypes, but almost all of them can be done with the warblade from Tome of Battle. For some archetypes (archery* especially) a two level dip in fighter may be necessary. Two-weapon fighting might benefit from a dip in swordsage (or just going full swordsage, but warblade is usually better and most of the benefits of being a swordsage can be had with just a one level dip and if that isn't enough master of nine is essentially super swordsage). As an aside, and this applies to all martial characters, there are almost as many traps for martial adepts as there are for spellcasters; Google Tome of Battle for Dummies for help building these characters.

The paladin is best represented either by straight crusader (Tome of Battle) or crusader/cleric/ruby knight vindicator (refluffed, there really isn't anything Wee Jas specific in there). Alternatively cleric/prestige paladin (Unearthed Arcana) works pretty well.

Monks have a couple options, the unarmed swordsage variant (Tome of Battle) is the most popular choice, but a warblade with improved unarmed strike, superior unarmed strike, and snap kick might be better just because warblades are generally better than swordsages (remember you can multiclass to get the best of both worlds).

Barbarians are trickier. In general take one level in barbarian then switch to warblade. Use feats (such as extra rage and extend rage from Complete Warrior and reckless rage from Races of Stone) and prestige classes (such as bear warrior and frenzied berserker from Complete Warrior and bloodclaw master from Tome of Battle) to improve your rage, otherwise just play like any tome of battle character (tiger claw is fairly thematic). You might also want to look at alternative class features for the barbarian (look for a handbook).

Rangers are probably the hardest class to get to not suck. One option is to look at the scout from Complete Adventurer and swift hunter from Complete Scoundrel. The result is similar to a rogue, with a lot of useful skills and good damage output, but the fighting style is weird (move at least ten feet every round and then use manyshot). Another good option is the prestige ranger from Unearthed Arcana which gets a power boost from druid spells. You need at least one level in a full BAB class to qualify by 6th level so go ahead and dip warblade. Bloodclaw master is nice for a two-weapon fighting ranger.

Okay, skillmonkeys. Rogues are mostly fine as is, but again they require some optimization (find a handbook) and they benefit quite a bit from having access to Complete Adventurer and Complete Scoundrel. Same for bards.

Gishes are hard. Any gish that requires a prestige class is out because you should be able to fulfill your concept at first level without sucking. The duskblade (Player's Handbook 2), hexblade (Complete Warrior) (with some optimization), and the battle sorcerer (Unearthed Arcana) with the stalwart sorcerer alternative class feature (Complete Mage) all work okay but my preference is the arcane swordsage variant. People love to talk about how broken this is, but really they aren't unless you allow them to take whatever spells they want.

Okay, that pretty much covers everything. What else... I heartily endorse the retraining rules from Players Handbook 2. Without them you basically have to plan your build from first level, this allows some freedom. So yeah. Someone should probably come and tear this advice apart, but I think it is at least a good starting point.

* To create a Tome of Battle Archer you play a warblade with a two level dip in fighter and build it mostly like you would if you were building a straight fighter archer (you get almost as many feats) and use maneuvers and stances to add versatility (very few can be used directly with ranged combat, but the end result is still better than playing a fighter).

[Dogbert]

Ban non-casters. Always err on the side of awesome

Seriously, just make Have Nots more badass to play.

If you ask me, DnD will never be balanced on grounds of being built on a Linear Fighters-Quadratic Wizards paradigm. As long as the game divides classes in Haves and Have Nots, it will never be balanced.

[Username17]

I think at the point you've decided to carefully limit options to a sampler platter taken from a half dozen books, that you've failed the OP's design goals of being able to sit down at a table and tell players that you're playing 3rd edition D&D and present a short list of house rules/errata so that the players can go to town making characters without having to read a whole other book.

The long and the short of it, is that if you want to play 3rd edition D&D in a reasonably balanced fashion you don't really need a ban list at all (except for lesser planar binding, because fuck that spell). Your game plan is simple:

• Retire the game at level 10.
• Hand out artifacts that happen to be martial weapons at level 5.
• If you have a Monk, hand out the first artifact shoes or gloves at first level.

That's it. At first level, some players are going to be Fighters or Barbarians or some shit, and at first level that is OK. Swinging a long sword and adding strength modifier to damage is totally plenty to cut down a goblin warrior. It's only when enemy hit points start going quadratic and missions become more complicated than "Go to X, Stab Y" that those characters stop being able to contribute. And that's when you give out the artifact sword that lets them cast clairvoyance at will.

-Username17

[Drolyt]

I think at the point you've decided to carefully limit options to a sampler platter taken from a half dozen books, that you've failed the OP's design goals of being able to sit down at a table and tell players that you're playing 3rd edition D&D and present a short list of house rules/errata so that the players can go to town making characters without having to read a whole other book.

Oh, I completely agree with you. But the OPs design goal is impossible (edit: while preserving both casters and non-casters). The vast majority of what I recommend can be done with just Unearthed Arcana (which is in the SRD) and Tome of Battle, so it isn't nearly as complicated as I make it look. Unless you want to play a barbarian or a ranger.

The long and the short of it, is that if you want to play 3rd edition D&D in a reasonably balanced fashion you don't really need a ban list at all (except for lesser planar binding, because fuck that spell). Your game plan is simple:

• Retire the game at level 10.
• Hand out artifacts that happen to be martial weapons at level 5.
• If you have a Monk, hand out the first artifact shoes or gloves at first level.

build

That's it. At first level, some players are going to be Fighters or Barbarians or some shit, and at first level that is OK. Swinging a long sword and adding strength modifier to damage is totally plenty to cut down a goblin warrior. It's only when enemy hit points start going quadratic and missions become more complicated than "Go to X, Stab Y" that those characters stop being able to contribute. And that's when you give out the artifact sword that lets them cast clairvoyance at will.

-Username17

This is not completely inelegant, but it basically folds to magic item dependence and can't be played at high levels. Unlike fighters and their ilk martial adepts and rogues/bards can contribute at high levels, as long as your spellcasters aren't too optimized. So let me present a simplified version of my above advice:
1. All spellcasters are spontaneous.
2. Use martial adepts.
3. Monitor spell and maneuver selection so that everyone contributes meaningfully and no one is overshadowed.
The rest of my post was really only there to show how you can replicate various classes/concepts. I probably made it look more complicated than it has to be.

[Username17]

The thing is that while I will admit that Sorcerers are a lot less good than Wizards and Druids, they are still plenty good enough to make Fighters cry. If they decide to learn polymorph and wings of flurry or charm monster and solid fog as their two 4th level spells at level 9, they are going to be able to dictate the pace of the game, no matter what any Ranger or Warblade wants to do about it.

If casters go apeshit with scrolls and wands, no amount of fiddling with martial adepts is going to keep up with that. The reality is that decent spell selection on casters will make them bigger than any noncasters unless those noncasters get some seriously beefy magic items. It's just objective fact that non-casters of all stripes are magic item dependent, and that the wealth by level system does not hand out enough magic items to get non-casters up to par.

You have to juice magic items if you're going to have Sorcerers and Rogues playing next to each other if those Sorcerers pick up any of the juicy spells that fucking kill people. And once you're juicing the magic items, why not juice them a little bit more and let the Ranger play side by side with the Druid? You're not really gaining anything by fiddling with the player options, because you still have to give non-standard treasure regardless.

The basic Wealth by Level chart has a fifth level character use up their entire allotment with a single flaming sword. That is bullshit. But it's not fixed with a ban list. It's fixed with the DM handing out better equipment than the guidelines suggest. But since the guidelines suggest handing out equipment that is woefully inadequate for the needs of 5th level Fighters, how is that a problem?

-Username17

[Drolyt]

The basic Wealth by Level chart has a fifth level character use up their entire allotment with a single flaming sword. That is bullshit. But it's not fixed with a ban list. It's fixed with the DM handing out better equipment than the guidelines suggest. But since the guidelines suggest handing out equipment that is woefully inadequate for the needs of 5th level Fighters, how is that a problem?

-Username17

The problem is that at that point you might as well admit you aren't playing King Arthur, you are playing Excalibur. Again, it isn't that I really disagree with you, but I think most people would find it more satisfying to buff non-casters, or at least make that part of the solution, and the only way to do that without homebrew is Tome of Battle.

[Whipstitch]

Given Lago's parameters--he was pretty flexible about swag--I'm willing to call that a smaller problem than curating builds to the degree you're recommending. Tome of Battle is a decent book and all, but there's still trap options in there and even if you avoid those characters would still benefit from a grip of utility magic items as well as some basic math fixes in the form of an extra plus or two on those amulets of natty armor.

[Drolyt]

Given Lago's parameters--he was pretty flexible about swag--I'm willing to call that a smaller problem than curating builds to the degree you're recommending.

You are right, and perhaps I was overreaching, but curating builds like that is the most powerful tool available for balancing a party. Most other games with versatility similar to D&D, such as HERO/Champions or GURPS, basically require you to monitor builds. I think the main problem is that low level D&D just works. It is nice that it does, but if you look at the huge range in character options and the huge range of power levels it shouldn't be surprising that D&D eventually stops working out of the box. At that point you either have to step in and bring the system in line on your own (for example, by banning spells that are problematic for your campaign) or else just give it up past 10th level (or whenever it happens to break) like FrankTrollman says.

To be clear, most of the games I've ran did not require that kind of micromanagement. Usually it was more organic, one player was having trouble so we rebuilt his character to be the same but better or something like that. But as a hypothetical balanced system I think my proposal is as close as you'll get without homebrew, albeit it may be too much work. Beyond that, I think spontaneous casters + Tome of Battle is just more fun to play.

I have to admit though, as a practical matter I don't have much experience dealing with really optimized spellcasters unless I happened to be playing them (I like sorcerers) and I always held back. Usually the most powerful characters would be clerics and druids, because most people don't know how to play wizards and sorcerers.

[ishy]

[ . . . ](martial characters and skillmonkeys) and not everyone wants to play spellcasters.

Then recommending that all martials play ToB spellcasters is not really going to do much is it?

[Lokathor]

The basic Wealth by Level chart has a fifth level character use up their entire allotment with a single flaming sword. That is bullshit. But it's not fixed with a ban list. It's fixed with the DM handing out better equipment than the guidelines suggest. But since the guidelines suggest handing out equipment that is woefully inadequate for the needs of 5th level Fighters, how is that a problem?

-Username17

The problem is that at that point you might as admit you aren't playing King Arthur, you are playing Excalibur. Again, it isn't that I really disagree with you, but I think most people would find it more satisfying to buff non-casters, or at least make that part of the solution, and the only way to do that without homebrew is Tome of Battle.

Most people are so blind as to the exact source of their ability to interact with the game that they think that a fighter can beat a wizard at any level and that a Vow of Poverty Monk (the best combo ever!) can solo a Balrog.

[Drolyt]

[ . . . ](martial characters and skillmonkeys) and not everyone wants to play spellcasters.

Then recommending that all martials play ToB spellcasters is not really going to do much is it?

Bah. The vast majority of martial maneuvers are not supernatural, they are just feats with a weird cooldown mechanic. Anyone who cannot understand this probably isn't very fun to play with.

The basic Wealth by Level chart has a fifth level character use up their entire allotment with a single flaming sword. That is bullshit. But it's not fixed with a ban list. It's fixed with the DM handing out better equipment than the guidelines suggest. But since the guidelines suggest handing out equipment that is woefully inadequate for the needs of 5th level Fighters, how is that a problem?

-Username17

The problem is that at that point you might as admit you aren't playing King Arthur, you are playing Excalibur. Again, it isn't that I really disagree with you, but I think most people would find it more satisfying to buff non-casters, or at least make that part of the solution, and the only way to do that without homebrew is Tome of Battle.

Most people are so blind as to the exact source of their ability to interact with the game that they think that a fighter can beat a wizard at any level and that a Vow of Poverty Monk (the best combo ever!) can solo a Balrog.

...
That's a fair point . Though at a certain point it becomes pretty blatant, especially since at high levels pluses alone are just not going to cut it and people are going to start noticing that basically everything they can do comes from their magic items.

[Username17]

...
That's a fair point . Though at a certain point it becomes pretty blatant, especially since at high levels pluses alone are just not going to cut it and people are going to start noticing that basically everything they can do comes from their magic items.

My experience arguing with Fighter supporters is that for many people this never happens. I mean, a few months ago we had a cross board flamewar with the idiots at The RPGSite, and they were seriously arguing that Fighters in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition had the skills to pay the bills. You know, the edition where the Fighter literally had no special ability to do anything save for what was granted by magic items. If Fighter supporters can argue with a straight face that Fighters are good enough when there is an actual blank space where all their character abilities should go, I don't think they will ever really notice that a 3rd edition Fighter is being stealth errataed into having useful abilities through found magic items.

Secret Class Feature: Artifact Sword is a terrible solution for the game, but it has always been sufficient for a game. If your goal is to minimize the errata, ban lists, and new material that your players have to read, that's totally the way to go.

-Username17

[Drolyt]

Secret Class Feature: Artifact Sword is a terrible solution for the game, but it has always been sufficient for a game. If your goal is to minimize the errata, ban lists, and new material that your players have to read, that's totally the way to go.

-Username17

You are right of course, but it still bugs me.