Psychic Robot wrote:look you can't convert people to the tomes.
if ordinary people who aren't rules spergs like we are here play the tomes, they're going to shit themselves with OMG OVERPOWERED, especially when the base tome material is on par with heavily optimized casters. codzilla accidentally breaking the game will not compare to what tome classes will deliberately do.
if you honestly want the players to try a powered-up version of the base classes then use tome of battle.
I've done it with my own group, everyone who DMs for that group only uses Tome stuff now, dubbed "Frank and Beans" D&D, since one of the players is intentionally too dumb to remember that it's "Frank and K(ieth)".
Pro Tome stuff:
Necromancy:
Clean up and pre-agree on whether Necromancy is [for this campaign/game/group/etc.]:
-Playing with Dark Fire
or
-Spreading a Crawling Darkness
-Allow players to
play undead that doesn't break the game (Vampires, Revenants, Ghouls, Swordwraiths);
at level 1
-Allow Necromancer Wizards to
actuallu have undead minions; without making everyone cry
-Rules for creating undead that don't make everyone cry
-Rules on how to make
all currently published Undead; that are balanced, rigourously fair and vetted by people who can out-sage the D&D "sage". [the fact that Frank knows the rules of D&D
better than that assclown who called themselves the sage is
highly important, since it means if he says something is balanced, it means he probably knows what he's talking about]
Dungeonomicon
-Explain and allow for the existence of
plausible reasons to build underground
-Fix "inifinte" range spells such as Scry, Teleport, etc. [also fixes Scry & Die issues]
-Convert the Monk into a classic Wuxia style character that doesn't need to multiclass in order to remain "at par" to the DMG and MM outlined CR calculation system. A monk that doesn't suck.
-Explain Gold, Magic and Soul economies
Tome of Fiends
-Fix 3.5 Wish nonsense back to 2e/3e Wish reasonablity
-Remove "unreasonable magic item prolifieration"; also "heroic/legendary/epic magic shops"
-Remove "
real magic items purchasable for gold" (ex. 15,001+ gp items); trading in 10 +1 swords for a +3 sword is no longer allowed. This seems bad, but is ultimately good for the game.
-Allow "wooden nickel" magic items (0-15,000 gp); since they can't ever break the game
-Allow "reasonable magic item proliferation" (0-15k gp items)
-Re-evaluate and clean up
Calling and
Summoning
-Explaining why Outsiders would
desire to be summoned (the Prime, it's better than Cancun)
-Allow for an Aasimar and a Tiefling that doesn't make anyone cry (+0 LA)
-Outline low, mid and high level adventures on the Lower Planes (level 1 adventures in Gehenna; Acheron, Hades, etc. is a
good thing for the game, and increases game referee and player creativity)
-Allow players to play as fiendish characters, that doesn't make the game system cry (Tru Fiend, Fiendish Brute)
-Allow players to play a "spell caster" that is on par with martial characters for tactical/strategic use (the Conduit of the Planes)
Races of War
-Replace the various martial classes with things that
actually can "go to 20"; with no one ever crying. Yes, a Fighter that can go to 20, also a Barbarian that never has to multi-class or PrC.
-Replace the hundreds of generally unbalanced and useless feats with 30 feats that actuall matter. Simplicity can be a good thing.
-Explain the facts of War in a D&D world
-Outline a War scale game that is simpler to use and better than the Mini HB game
-Explain various species, at war or not
-Introduce suits of armour, sheilds and non-armours
aside from the standard of "chain shirt; breastplate; fullplate"
Book of Gears
-Mandate that "numeric bonuses" are the
pre-requisite of what a magic item should do. The
basic Magic item does things that need
verbal description, beyond "+X to Y rolls".
-Establish and define how magic items are used; lowering the "total" number worn by a creature; but also vastly widening options on how magic items can be used (want to wear 8 rings on your fingers (such as Mandarin of Marvel comic); or two crowns together (such as the Pharoh of Egypt) or three crowns (such as some kings of Spain), like actual characters in history and fiction
actually do? Teah, that's totally reasonable).
-Explain Monsterous Vermin
-Discuss contructs
Basically, the point of Tomes is to
reduce head scratching and allow
more options for players; while at the same time
increasing amount of balance within the game system.
The people that benefit the
most from this content are the
non-optimizing roleplayers. The optimizers won't ever suffer; since they'll always try to do "the best the can". Therefore, as the game approaches balance, the non-optimizers approach parity with optimizers.
This is something that really needs to be emphasized; The Tomes is for groups who want to
roleplay; not merely hack-n-slash.
... and that's just off of the top of my head; going through the actual chapter headings helps