Opinions on my house rules

[codeGlaze]

Just do your level compression (1-10, 2HD/lvl, 2xskill points(?) ), cap your spells at 5th (new spell level every odd level : 1/3/5/7/9).
Introduce 6th level spells as tack-ons. (Artifacts / Magic items)

Don't fiddle with the spells per day or spells known.
Use Tome BAB, don't bother giving wizards and shit +1 BAB/lvl. It's unnecessary.

If you're using the Tomes just use your level compression to give out martial abilities in the correct level space.

So obviously 1 = 1:2, 2 = 3:4, 3 = 5:6 ... etc.

Make characters and run with those rules for a few games. See if you like it as is. If not, THEN you look into adding some extra shit. Keep it simple.

[Mask_De_H]

Okay yeah, this whole song and dance was pointless.  Somewhere in this shitshow uber completely missed these were house rules for PATHFINDER, 3.X'S UNLOVED BASTARD CHILD.  THAT'S P-A-T-H-F-I-N-D-E-R But this is the Den; pointless vitriol is our bread and butter.

Remember folks, poor communication kills.

Problem 1: Playing to twenty levels isn't normally done due to time constraints.

U: In the context of what level 20 actually means in 3E D&D, that's not actually a problem. That's a Feature. You have a whole bunch of distinct power levels to tell different kinds of stories with, and your story doesn't explode because Robin turned into Superman over three sessions. This is literally not a problem. If you want a system that does not have this feature, go play a different game like 4E. This is the system working as intended.

Level 20 doesn't mean jack shit in D&D unless you're fapping to one of those useless CharOp builds.  The system doesn't work as intended past level 11-15 due to the exploits, big and small (Wish loops, Astral Projection savescumming, Gate in general, the Word spells) inherent in the untested piece of shit double digit 3.X is. The sweet spot you talk about is the edge of a fucking cliff.

Solution 1: Compress the game space or advance advancement speed.
U: You already control the advancement speed. I'm not even joking. This is not a problem.

Wow, no shit?  You just blew my mind, maaaaan.

I'm using that power to control the advancement speed and presenting it up front. The only one making this a problem is you.

Problem 2: Many class abilities never get their time in the spotlight because they are placed too far out and are overshadowed by high level spells.

U: AGAIN. CITATION NEEDED. Show me a single ability where this is true

The Pathfinder Ranger's save or die strike at 20th.  The Soldier gets that shit ten levels earlier.  The Pathfinder Monk becoming an outsider.  Quivering Palm.  Spell Apotheosis.  Mask of 1000 Faces.  I could go on. But here: this is the class list for the Pathfinder SRD.  Pick a non-caster, the Paladin or the Ranger.  Pick anything they get past level 10.  Shit, pick any class's non-spell abilities.    There's your fucking citation. 

Solution 2: Compress advancement for characters or move the abilities to a different level. For casters, whose only notable class features are their spells, some other abilities will have to be granted. Working in Pathfinder helps cut down on the mental work of coming up with meaningless bullshit.

Pathfinder is stupid in the first place. And nobody is stopping you from writing classes that don't suck. You can go write classes on the In My Own Invention board and we will be glad to help you balance them.

Yes it is.  I am trying to make it less stupid.  Did you even fucking read my first post?  Is PF not a standard abbreviation for Pathfinder?

Again, I would be making Tome classes if I were playing a Tome game.  That's not what these house rules are for.  They are there to try and unfuck Pathfinder some.  It may be a futile effort but at least it's something other than hatejerking.

Problem 3: The E6 game, in my personal opinion, misses the real fun parts of the High Fantasy game. The life of a level 1 character is cheap.

U: The life of a level 2 character is cheap. The life of a level 3 character is cheap. This is because level 3 and less characters are basically normal people you could represent from the real world. Yes, you and I would get eaten by demons. This is a good feature for telling stories. It means that when you want to kill off the entire town, the rules let you do that (Dance of Ruin, Blasphemy, circle of death, shit even fireballs will kill off hordes of mooks).

First off, party foul for bringing realism into an argument about fantasy.  Second, starting at 2 allows for the kind of games you bring up in this post but without the chance of a lucky Orc one-shotting you and some abilities under your belt.  I want to keep the plucky adventurer shit around but advance past that into high fantasy, like so:

U: If you want to run a High Fantasy game, just start at level 7. You can just do that.

Solution 3: Allow the game to progress past level 6. Start the game after level 1.

Reading is fun-damental!

U: The only one who controls what level the game starts and ends at is the DM (for starting) and the players (for how long everyone keeps playing together). The rules are not stopping you from starting your game at level 4 and saying "you level when I say you level"

They aren't and I'm not being stopped by them.  The only caps are at level 12 and at level 2.  I'm just collating the advancement track beyond that in case somebody has to cover for me or wants to do this silly bullshit without me.

U: No one is stopping you. I promise.

Nobody but you, ponyboy.

Problem 4: The game falls apart by level 15 at the latest and level 12 at the earliest. This can be laid at the feet of martial classes becoming wholly unable to interact meaningfully with the game space and sixth level and higher spells fundamentally altering the game space beyond the comprehension of players.

U: No, the game falls apart at level 1 at the earliest. If a player really wants to explode the game, he can do Pun Pun at level 1. The game continues because the players and DM work together to craft a story that they want to tell. This means that if they want to keep playing into high levels, the players either agree not to Polymorph Any Object crazyness or the DM says go for it and just throws hordes of Balors at them to challenge their cheese.

The game gets harder to run at high levels, but high levels are where you can tell stories beyond "go into that dungeon and fight that guy."

Party foul number two: you should know Pun-Pun doesn't actually work.  Gating in a Noble Efreet with a Candle of Invocation or playing a Changeling with Assume Supernatural Ability that turns themselves into a Zodar would have been acceptable.

On to the next one: the major game changers that take the game from "go in that dungeon and kill fools" come online at fifth and sixth spell level.  Those just happen to fall into the back end of your proposed system and mine.  You can craft an engaging story in fucking F.A.T.A.L.; that doesn't mean the game is workable and/or sane.  If I wanted to purely craft a story, I would play Fiasco or FATE Core or Wushu or Munchhausen.   I want to craft a story in 3.X's bastard child with some people and to do that, I need to lay down some ground rules.

U: If you suck at telling stories/communicating/having nonshitty relationships with your players and need to play a simpler game... you can play the game at level 7.

And now that you've dropped that pipe bomb, perhaps you could help me with my sexual inhibitions?  Or stop insinuating that because I asked for help with some wacky houserules (in the houserule thread!  What gall!) this one time that I am functionally incapable of telling stories or basic human interaction.  Either one works.

U: There is nothing stopping you from saying "I like playing the game at these levels, and we are just not going to play at these other levels"

If you want to tell stories at that power level, you can. Because the system lets you do that. We are not stopping you. I promise.

Yet you totally are, because when I said I would do exactly that you popped off on some stupid bullshit.  So at this point you're either tilting at windmills, are functionally illiterate, or this is some weird self-loathing projection thing.
 

Solution 4: Put the end-point of the game at the level it starts to break down. For purposes of this discussion, ECL 12. Throttle access to game space altering spells and allow rationed distribution of said spells to any and all players at the level it would be relevant.

U: D&D is not World of Warcraft. There is no Final Boss. It is an engine to tell cooperative stories. You start and end those stories at whatever you cooperatively agree would be fun for everyone.

Yeah, and?  Are you arguing with H_eD_ksaM or some shit?  Do I have an evil twin posting for me?  Ensuring that everybody gets the cool toys isn't turning the game into WoW.  I'm adding things to the part of the game I want to play.  Plus.  Not minus.  

U: The only reason Tome classes have capstone abilities is as a joke. It's one big joke because the only time level 20 characters get played is during internet fighter vs wizard masturbation contests.

In the context of what level 20 actually means in 3E D&D, that's not actually a problem. That's a Feature. You have a whole bunch of distinct power levels to tell different kinds of stories with, and your story doesn't explode because Robin turned into Superman over three sessions. This is literally not a problem. If you want a system that does not have this feature, go play a different game like 4E. This is the system working as intended.

Which one is it?  Does it mean something, does it not mean something?  You can't eat your Cheerios and piss in them too.

Problem 5: Even with checks on the high end, by level 6 non-casters become increasingly more irrelevant. The abilities that render them irrelevant have been documented and are relatively flavor-agnostic for a fantasy world.

U: You are dumb. A level six DPS fighter is basically a walking save or die. All the time. The only things that invalidate fightan mans are when all the opposition has teleport spam/super flight speeds/etc to keep him out of stabbin range forever. That really does not happen for a long time. A stabbin man can keep stabbin for a long time. Now, there are spotlight hogging abilities that mages have that fightan mans don't. The easy solution to that is to just give the fightan man some spotlight hogging abilities.

Not in PF they ain't.  Hell, only Tome classes, superchargers and smart Rogues/Clerics/Druids pump that in 3.X proper.  And the Phase Spider is CR 5. That shits on everybody who doesn't have force effects.  Simply flying up with level appropriate flight speeds shits on damage builds.  A chair shits on martial damage builds.  So yeah, they should get some spotlight hogging abilities too.

Solution 5: Provide non-casters with abilities that allow them to use the abilities that relevant characters use or have the ability to counteract the abilities that relevant characters use.

U: Most of the Tome classes do this by default. You should look into them.

These aren't Tome house rules.  These are PF house rules.  For when running Tome isn't an option.  You should look into a thing called reading comprehension.  Or fucking thought.

For example: the ability to affect incorporeal monsters would come online at ECL 3. The ability to become invisible and catch the invisible would come online at ECL 3 as well. The ability to fly in combat or negate flight in combat would come online at or around ECL 5. The ability to scry and detect scrying would come online at or around ECL 7. Teleportation and unmolested fast overworld travel on the Prime would come online at or around ECL 9. Planar travel and True Seeing effects would come online at ECL 9 or 10.

U: You are dumb. There is no reason to ever play a caster person ever under your system because you took away all their toys and gave them to fightan mans. Why not just make one class and give everyone every ability on it.

What are Polymorph, Color Spray, Fabricate/Creation + Shrink Item, Summon Monster, Web, Charm, Sleep, D-Door, the Image spells, lesser Simu-fucking-lacrum and all the other spells that fvcking kill people/useful utility spells?  And that's just for arcane casters.  Giving the basics to non-casters isn't going to take from casters the other amazing tricks they have. 

Problem 6: BAB is an unnecessary complication to attack math and multiclassing for something that nominally increases by level.

U: It is not that fucking hard. +1, +3/4. +1/2. And anyone that actually gives a fuck about BAB has full BAB anyways (maybe rogues being the exception, but I think the flasked avenger has enough attacks).

Flasked Avenger doesn't work in PF.  THAC0 "wasn't fucking hard" either, but it got nixed.  Outside of extra attacks, there's no good reason why BAB is staggered without Tome Combat Feats or The Edge.  Without those things, it's unnecessary.  I am not using those things.

Are you going for the 3rd edition version of shadzar with this argument or something?

Solution 6: Make BAB a constant among all characters.

U: OK, so why don't you just write one class called HERO and have everyone play that. You get full BAB, all the utility spells, and all the story abilities from both Fightan Mans and Caster mans. Because that's what your fucking "solution" is right now. Take away everything you don't like from Caster Mans and give anything that remains to Fightan Mans, but without the spellcasting accounting/ASF/being a spellcaster.

Why don't you calm the fuck down and turn off the histrionics?  I'm not raping your precious caster, I'm giving them full BAB and extra class abilities in exchange for maybe letting the fighting mans not be their gofer bitch past level 7.

Also, I offered to just turn fighty men into shittier casters but you didn't like that.  I even offered to make the game straight up "Everyone gets spells, whee", which would kill the stupid fighty man as a concept for good but nope.  Although making that Hero class is a good idea.  See?  You can do it if you try!   

Problem 7, which comes from Solution 6: Standardizing BAB robs certain martial characters of their only meaningful shtick.
U: You have never played a gish before. Having half BAB on your character sheet means nothing when you throw down divine power and draconic polymorph. No one cares about BAB. Seriously.

When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of u and mption.

If nobody cares about BAB, then why are you so mad about me changing it?  You are somebody, yeah?  

If it honestly didn't matter, as long as it fit the bounds of game math I could change it to whatever I fucking wanted and you would suck it down with a smile.  Also, D-Power got nerfed in PF and Draconic Poymorph sucks in PF.

Solution 7: Reintroduce multiple attacks as a function of character class instead of BAB.

No one cares about BAB.

I'll take that as a word of confidence, then.  Thanks.

Problem 8: The multiple forms of casting advancement tables are unnecessary and unsatisfying.

U: Maybe to you, but to me having your big nuke spell DCs keep pace with monster saves is important. DCs for spells are 10 (this is the variance on the dice basically) + 1/2 level (the same scaling for a good save) + stat (they defend with a stat)

So you're just not listening?  Cool.  I said that the DC for spells across the board was going to be 10+1/2 character level+relevant stat.  You know, like the Tome Sphere errata.  Or spell like abilities.  Or something fucking reasonable.  Try to keep up.

Solution 8: Standardize the advancement tables for casting.
U:Not a real problem.

So the Sorcerer hitch and Bard casting blowing chunks isn't a problem.  K.

Problem 9, which comes from Solution 8: Pure casters now have their main defining point cheapened.

U: Obviously.

Solution 9 *tentative*: Either allow pure spellcasters more spells per day, give them a superior form of casting as opposed to other casters (ex: pure casters prepare like Clerics, mixed characters have limited choices like Sorcerers) or give them class abilities to make up for the lost in mechanical niche.

U: HERO.

RETARD.

That doesn't even mesh with your original reason for why I should make the hero class.  These are spellcasters.  Not fighty mans, spellcasters.  You know, robes and hats and being better than everyone forever?  I'm trying to keep them strong after all the other changes, dipshit.

Problem 10, which stems from Solution 4: High-level creatures have abilities that would completely shut down players if the ECL is capped at a certain point (Word spells).

Solution 10-A: Merely disallow those creatures from being used.

U: Or just stop being retarded and don't play a high level game if you don't like the way high level games work. Blasphemy still gets beaten by silence.

First off, Blasphemy was your original counter example you gigantic fuckstick.  Second, the entire goddamned point of this excercise is to play at mid-level bounds with the high-level things that should be mid-level.  Blasphemy is a seventh level spell.  In the off chance something with CR 13 or 14 happens to have fucking Blasphemy (or Plane Shift or Flesh to Stone or Maze or whatever) I need to have an answer for it.  That answer should be "provide countermeasures" or "bar the option" not "don't play the fucking game".  Jesus wept, I thought we were supposed to be better than "If you don't like it, don't play it".  That's Paizil bullshit right there.

Solution 10-B: Allow level-related metrics (HD, saves, BAB, CL) to advance at double speed for player characters.

U:My original complaint about fucking with the scaling for no reason.

It isn't for no reason you chucklefuck, it's to ensure that numerically characters are level appropriate for the challenges in the fucking book.  Your original idea to divide everything is fucking with the numbers too, by your metric.

TLDR: You are dumb. Your complaints are dumb. There is no"problem" that cannot be solved by just deciding to play the game as is at the levels you actually like it. There is no problem being fixed here.

Fine.  Fuck it.  I'm dumb and there's nothing wrong with D&D if you just play it at the right high levels.  We'll just ignore the parts where the board we are slapfighting on was founded on the concept that just running D&D 3.X or its bastard children at the levels I like (or at all, really) does not goddamned work. 

Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, as well as Pathfinder, is a hot mess once you get into double digits.  Spells are not balanced against each other, anyone who doesn't have spells (or is a Flasked Avenger Rogue with maxed UMD and a cheeky feat) might as well not show up and proper play using the fool's provided creates a game that is uncomfortable and alien to a depressing amount of people that I would like to game with. People like you think the game still works there and want to play in that design space.  People who aren't like you will not accept the fundamental changes in play without it being baked into the system for them.  There are two simple ways to solve this dilemma, neither of which were accepted by the group.  This was an attempt at a third.  It is an attempt you consistently denigrate with frankly appallingly bad reasoning and bad faith while telling me to do pretty much exactly what I'm already doing instead.

So fuck it.  I will try to convince my group, again, to play from 7-12.  For you.  If they don't want to, we will play FATE or something and this whole thing can be laid to rest.

I am forever in debt to your priceless advice.

[Mask_De_H]

Just do your level compression (1-10, 2HD/lvl, 2xskill points(?) ), cap your spells at 5th (new spell level every odd level : 1/3/5/7/9).
Introduce 6th level spells as tack-ons. (Artifacts / Magic items)

Don't fiddle with the spells per day or spells known.
Use Tome BAB, don't bother giving wizards and shit +1 BAB/lvl. It's unnecessary.

If you're using the Tomes just use your level compression to give out martial abilities in the correct level space.

So obviously 1 = 1:2, 2 = 3:4, 3 = 5:6 ... etc.

Make characters and run with those rules for a few games. See if you like it as is. If not, THEN you look into adding some extra shit. Keep it simple.

Thank you codeGlaze, that is a reasonable statement to make. I will try this out. I can add in the other stuff once this framework has been hashed out.

You see how easy that was? Almost like we were game designers or something.

[ubernoob]

OK, so the problem is that you're using pathfinder. That is 100% your problem. Let me link you to some rules that don't have capstone abilities so you don't run into this problem:
http://www.d20srd.org/
I hope that helps. No one is missing out on any capstone abilities with those rules.

[ubernoob]

So fuck it.  I will try to convince my group, again, to play from 7-12.  For you.  If they don't want to, we will play FATE or something and this whole thing can be laid to rest.

I am forever in debt to your priceless advice.

You're welcome. I'm glad you finally figured it out.

[Mask_De_H]

See what happens when we work together? It's all magical and shit. Like carrots. Or friendship.

[fectin]

No. It isn't a good solution, because none of those steps solve anything you mentioned as a problem. Nor is "unemployment" a valid problem, any more than "gravity", "trees", or "negative numbers" are.

So, good example.

I really can't tell whether you are attempting to take a political dig at an argument that was deliberately presented to be as bad as possible or not, but the statement "people who are actively looking for a job but can't find one, also known as unemployment, is above some arbitrary threshhold which is therefore bad" isn't even politically questionable because even fucking libertarians and republicans think that is a bad thing.

Yeah, it's a great sound bite. It's also completely meaningless. Unemployment refers to people looking for a job and not getting one. So you can reduce it it by e.g. making everyone drop out of the workforce (school or apathy works there), or by creating more jobs tailored to the unemployed, or by driving more efficient employment matching, or by bundling every unemployed person off to the next state, or by killing all humans. If your problem statement is a vague, unfocused, abstract concept, your "solution" will also be unfocused, and ineffective. See: every solution to unemployment in there recent past, the war on drugs, Vietnam, etc.

Which, I think, complements the point you were making in your post. I was serious when I said it was a good example.

[Kaelik]

If your problem statement is a vague, unfocused, abstract concept, your "solution" will also be unfocused, and ineffective. See: every solution to unemployment in there recent past, the war on drugs, Vietnam, etc.

The problem statement "I want to reduce unemployment to X" is not vague or abstract. It may be true that there are many ways of doing so that are not ideal, but that doesn't change that the problem statement itself is not vague or abstract. If your problem is that unemployment is too damn high, then reducing unemployment is a solution. The fact that you can propose a solution that nominally fixes the problem but no one would like isn't proof that the problem is unfocused, watch:

Problem: My foot hurts.
Solution: Kill yourself.

Problem: I can't find a job.
Solution: Kill yourself.

Problem: My Wife is pregnant, and we really can't afford a child.
Solution: Kill yourself.

But still no one would say that "my foot hurts" is a vague, unfocused, abstract problem.

[fectin]

Are you seriously complaining because one of five examples was flippant? Are you seriously making that complaint on the Den?

Fine. You got me. "Kill all humans" is not a realistic solution. Well spotted, I guess.

[Kaelik]

Are you seriously complaining because one of five examples was flippant? Are you seriously making that complaint on the Den?

No I am complaining because you claimed a focused problem was unfocused simply because you wanted to whine about politics. All your examples are flippant, because they all fit the situation I proposed, which is that they are immediately dismissable as not that kind of solution we want even if we don't specify "but not because they all get apathetic and stop looking."

[fectin]

You think that sending people to school, or matching people with jobs more efficiently, or creating jobs tailored to people's skills are flippant examples?

[Kaelik]

You think that sending people to school, or matching people with jobs more efficiently, or creating jobs tailored to people's skills are flippant examples?

I think none of those are what you actually said.

[fectin]

you can reduce it it by e.g. making everyone drop out of the workforce (school or apathy works there), or by creating more jobs tailored to the unemployed, or by driving more efficient employment matching, or by bundling every unemployed person off to the next state, or by killing all humans.

[Kaelik]

you can reduce it it by e.g. making everyone drop out of the workforce (school or apathy works there), or by creating more jobs tailored to the unemployed, or by driving more efficient employment matching, or by bundling every unemployed person off to the next state, or by killing all humans.

And you can't see how those things are different than what you are now saying?

[fectin]

Do tell. I await with breathless anticipation how school is not school, how tailored job creation is not tailored job creation, and how efficient employment matching is not efficient job matching (or was it the other way around?)

[Kaelik]

you can reduce it it by e.g. making everyone drop out of the workforce (school or apathy works there),

sending people to school,

Sending people to school is not making them drop out of the workforce, even if they do go to school after you make them.

creating more jobs tailored to the unemployed,

creating jobs tailored to people's skills

Jobs tailored to the "unemployed" is not Jobs tailored to people's skills. Do you think unemployed people have specific skills that jobs don't exist for?

by driving more efficient employment matching,

matching people with jobs more efficiently

Matching people with jobs is a focus on getting a job for a person making it easier to find people for jobs by employment helps businesses find specific kinds of employees, but does nothing for people without jobs.

Now can you stop whining about how unemployment is a vague abstract problem that we just can't understand, man, in a fucking D&D thread.

[deaddmwalking]

If 'unemployed' is defined in part as 'people actively seeking work' (which it is for statistics on unemployment) sending people to school (so they are a student and no longer looking for work) reduces unemployment.

If you are unemployed and you stop looking for a job and take up the hobo lifestyle, while you are 'not working', you're not considered 'unemployed' by those conducting the survey. It's only if you're trying to get hired that you count.

The number of stay-at-home-parents is not included in unemployment figures for this reason. They may not be working in the conventional sense, but since they're not actively seeking employment, they're not considered unemployed.

[codeGlaze]

This has abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with houserules anymore. Split it the fuck out into a new thread.