Quick and dirty fixes

[Murtak]

We all know the games we like to play have issues. Rules holes, basic design problems and what not. And we still like to play them, even if we have to houserule some parts of the game. Sometimes we rewrite entire rules sections. At other times we simply slap on a small fix and call it done.

I was wondering what kind of quick and dirty rules / design fixes you have used or consider using? Here are some of mine:


DnD: starting hitpoints
We all know the problem - when you mix classes it is better to start out with the hig hHD class first, since the first hit die gets maximized.

Solution: Do not maximize the first hit die. Instead everyone gets +4 hitpoints at first level.


DnD: starting skill points
Similar to the last issue you also want to take your high skill point class first. I have had parties with three rogues at first level before.

Solution: Do not give out extra skill points at first level. Reduce maximum skill ranks to character level. Instead, whenever you take the first rank in a skill you gain a +3 bonus to it.


Shadowrun: dice roll system
Prior to Shadowrun 4th edition the dice pool vs threshold system utterly and completely sucks. The supposedly same hindrance sometimes does absolutely nothing and sometimes halves your chances of succeeding.

Solution: Instead of rerolling only 6s, also reroll 5s, but substract 2 from the result.

Example:
Old System: Your difficulty is 9, your dice pool is 6. You roll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. You reroll the 6 and get a 3, for a total of (3+6=)9. 1 success total.
New System: Your difficulty is 9, your dice pool is 6. You roll 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. You reroll the 6 and get a 3, for a total of (3+6=)9. You reroll the 5 and get a 6, for a total of (6+6-2=)10. 2 successes total.

[RandomCasualty]

Polymorph Effects

Alter Self: No longer grants natural armor bonuses.

Polymorph/Polymoprh any object/Shapechange: Gone.

Wild Shape: When wildshaped you may not benefit at all from magical items, whether they are constantly active or must be actively activated by you. Wild armor enchantment is gone, as is natural spell.

Planar Binding/Gating stuff

Creatures with innate wishes: Creatures like efreeti that can make free wishes cannot be coerced into giving wishes by spells like dominate, charm and similar magic. If under one of these spells, while making the wish, they are free to twist it as though they were not magically influenced.

Planar Binding: There is no charisma check for this spell, it is simply a roleplaying encounter like any other. This spell lets you call a powerful being to you, after that you must negotiate. Your deal must be a fair one as opposed to a lucky roll of a charisma check.

Gate: This spell is for transportation only.

Contingent Effects: Any one creature can trigger only one personal contingent effect at any one time. This includes contingent items that he carries. If multiple contingencies are present which would be triggered by the same event, the most powerful one activates. A contingent effect triggering cannot also trigger another contingent effect to create a chain reaction. Further, If the contingency is triggered by a creature's action (including an action by the caster), it must be a standard action or a full action.

[Fwib]

1131534984[/unixtime]]DnD: starting skill points
Similar to the last issue you also want to take your high skill point class first. I have had parties with three rogues at first level before.

Solution: Do not give out extra skill points at first level. Reduce maximum skill ranks to character level. Instead, whenever you take the first rank in a skill you gain a +3 bonus to it.

Wouldn't that seriously nerf access to PrCs? Is that intended?

[erik]

And I never really had a problem with starting skill points or HP. If characters want to be skilly, then by all means start out with a level of rogue, though if they ever want to be good at all those skills they had best keep taking levels of rogue.

And random HP have always been a bad idea. Adding +4 to everyone just exacerbates the problem. Rolling a 1 still sucks, and rolling maximum still throws things off.

Ah well, quick and dirty fixes... hrm.

Average HP+1 per level after level 1.

Using Summon Monster spells for non-random amount of lower level critters, i.e. Summon V to get IV critters gives 2, to get III critters gives 4. Does away with crappy randomization.

[Username17]

Wouldn't that seriously nerf access to PrCs? Is that intended?

I would imagine that you'd reduce the prereqs accordingly.

8 ranks becomes 5 ranks and 4 ranks becomes 2 ranks.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

DnD Metamagic feats

Grant uses per day (hardly an orginal or unusual fix) rather than a spell level cost.

The result (in an all wizard campaign) was a heck of a lot more metamagic, as intended.

So is it perhaps a tad powerful? Maybe, whatever.

Does it mean that the metamagic rules are no longer dead space left dusty and unused till the end of time itself? Thankfully yes.

[Essence]

Alignment Sucks

All spells that detect, target by, or affect alignment now detect, target by, or affect which god/element/philosophy you worship/follow/like best.


Fighting is too complicated

All free/swift/immediate actions automatically avoid AoOs.

All "special" attacks are resolved exactly like normal and/or melee touch attacks (no adding various stats or getting various checks against trip/disarm/bull rush/feint etc.)


Several skills suck balls

Combine them with other skills. Balance/Escape Artist/Tumble --> Acrobatics. Climb/Jump/Swim --> Athletics. Hide/Move Silently --> Stealth. Spot/Listen --> Perception. Forgery/Appraise --> Craft. etc.


I want my X to be able to do Y

Remove Class Skill lists. Let members of any class take any skill they please.


The LA/ECL system is fuxx0red.

Reduce LA by the creature's HD. (Really, a character with that many class levels would probably have abilities better than the creature by that HD anyway, so this is just levelling the playing field.)

Then, if you still have LA left over, make the player play an Advanced X that has an extra HD per point of leftover LA. That makes sure the creature roughly mimics a character class in terms of ECL.

Alternately, if you still have HD left over, count every 2 HD as one point of ECL. The creature will be shy on abilities, but big on numbers, which is basically called "being a Fighter".

[Murtak]

Wouldn't that seriously nerf access to PrCs? Is that intended?

I would imagine that you'd reduce the prereqs accordingly.

8 ranks becomes 5 ranks and 4 ranks becomes 2 ranks.

Not intended, no. As Frank said, just reduce the number of skill ranks required by 3 (or by 1 to 2, for cross-class skill requirements if you feeö it's important to have people sink points into cross-class skills).

[User3]

1131641123[/unixtime]]The LA/ECL system is fuxx0red.

Reduce LA by the creature's HD. (Really, a character with that many class levels would probably have abilities better than the creature by that HD anyway, so this is just levelling the playing field.)

I beg to differ. A Solar is probably better in most situations than 99% of 23-level builds.

Really, I doubt that there can be any quick-and-dirty fix. Monsters were never designed to be put alongside player characters.

The biggest problems arise when a monster is craptacular but has an ace up its sleeve–like, say, a Pixie with Otto's Irresistible Dance. Where do you put it? Irresistible Dance is really powerful, but gauging the Pixie's LA based on that power will make it woefully weak, relative to the other characters, in every other aspect.

Frankly, I think that the only way to fit monster characters into a campaign is to have the DM hand-balance them based on the players' needs.

[User3]

That was my post.

In case anyone, you know, cares, or something.

[Essence]

All I can say is that you must have seen some woefully assy 23rd level builds. A Solar is basically a crappy Cleric Archer who makes up for his crappiness with infinite Arrows of Slaying and a nice Fly speed.

Seriously, a 23rd level Cleric Archer with an attack bonus of +28/23/+18/+13? The Solar needs those Arrows of Slaying because he wouldn't hit a real 23rd level PC often enough to endanger her with his mighty 2d6+7 damage.

Eairrdsidh, the 20th level Cleric Archer in my current game, attacks at +42/+42/+42/+37/+32/+27 for 1d6+25+ 5d8 in the form of a Spell Stored Searing Light -- and that's with a Blazing Energy bow. He doesn't ever miss. His extra attacks from from constant Haste and Rapid Shot.
(For the record, that's 20 BAB (Divine Power), +5 from the bow, +3 from a Skin of the Hero, +11 Wisdom (Zen Archery), +1 Weapon Focus, +1 Bracers of Greater Archery, +3 Divine Favor, -2 Rapid Shot.)

If he cared, he could acquire a +5 Dancing sword that would attack exactly like the Solar's (since Dancing weapons don't rely on anything but BAB), but he doesn't bother because it's not worth the investment.


As to situations like the Irresistable Dance, that's why my quick-and-dirty fix above suggests playing an advanced version of the monster. A pixie should probably gain 1-3 points of LA depending on how often the ability is usable, so you force the player to play an advanced pixie with 1-3 more HD. If the campaign isn't starting at that high of a level, allow the player to take levels of Pixie and earn the Irresistable Dance ability after a couple of levels.

[User3]

1131944854[/unixtime]]All I can say is that you must have seen some woefully assy 23rd level builds. A Solar is basically a crappy Cleric Archer who makes up for his crappiness with infinite Arrows of Slaying and a nice Fly speed.

Seriously, a 23rd level Cleric Archer with an attack bonus of +28/23/+18/+13? The Solar needs those Arrows of Slaying because he wouldn't hit a real 23rd level PC often enough to endanger her with his mighty 2d6+7 damage.

Eairrdsidh, the 20th level Cleric Archer in my current game, attacks at +42/+42/+42/+37/+32/+27 for 1d6+25+ 5d8 in the form of a Spell Stored Searing Light -- and that's with a Blazing Energy bow...

Maybe the thing you didn't know about characters with ECL is that they get full equipment and the normal stat array for characters of their ECL, and they aren't restricted to feat and spell preparations given in their MM entries.

With spellcasting as a 20th level cleric, the Solar doesn't have much to complain about when compared to a standard 20th-level cleric.

A human cleric 20 with a starting Wisdom of 18 will have a wisdom of about 29. A Solar with a base Wisdom of 18 will have a score of about 43. This is a big difference.

The Cleric will have access to Divine Metamagic, but the Solar already has a BAB of 20. The Solar has many more skills, thanks to the Int of around 20 and 8 points per level.
The free Spell-like abilities are just icing on the cake.

Of course, at ECL 43 (IIRC) the Solar is a little outclassed. But who tries playing D&D at that level anyway?

[Crissa]

...Or you could realize that anything that's not a PHB critter has some class or racial abilities built-in to represent having a class.

The pixie right out of pixie school might not have Otto's irrisitible dance, or a weaker version, depending upon classes. Frank gave me a nive write up of classing creatures down - and he did a nice write up long ago of creating patch PRCs to bring creatures into the class and ability step of other players.

The weird patch of using class levels to represent less abilities than a warrior gets and then as many levels as the 'highest' ability - or making abilities cost more levels for a critter-player to get than a regular player just hurt my head and made no logical sense.

Hence why the whole level equivalent thing hasta go out the window right away.

-Crissa

[erik]

1131944854[/unixtime]]A Solar is basically a crappy Cleric Archer who makes up for his crappiness with infinite Arrows of Slaying and a nice Fly speed.

Seriously, a 23rd level Cleric Archer with an attack bonus of +28/23/+18/+13? The Solar needs those Arrows of Slaying because he wouldn't hit a real 23rd level PC often enough to endanger her with his mighty 2d6+7 damage.

Eairrdsidh, the 20th level Cleric Archer in my current game, attacks at +42/+42/+42/+37/+32/+27 for 1d6+25+ 5d8

It looks like you are comparing a base race to a tricked out race + class. Not a terribly fair comparison. Some might even call it disengenous. Comparing to the base solar is like comparing to a naked human with 10 stats who only carries a couple o-kay weapons.

A tricked out Solar will make that cleric crap his pants.

It seriously wouldn't take much work to get the Solar's AC up to where those +42s are missing most all of the time, and nevermind the messed up crap it can do with Permanency and Wish at will as SLAs.

I'd pick a PC solar over most anything else, especially a cleric archer, to adventure by my side any day of the week and twice on sundays.

[edit: okay, touch AC up to 62 is harder, but a couple buffs can still make it so the hit chance goes way down, displacement, greater blink, mirror image, etc. and shapechanging into a construct would be mean.

You may as well include point blank shot in the stats for the archer's attack and damage stats if you are going to include Zen archery, since it's range is only 30' as well.]

[Zherog]

+1 Bracers of Greater Archery

Not that it's going to matter to your player, but greater bracers of archery provide a +2 to attack rolls.

[Kirin_Corrigan]

You may as well include point blank shot in the stats for the archer's attack and damage stats if you are going to include Zen archery, since it's range is only 30' as well.

Zen Archery doesn't have a range limit.

[Maj]

f course, at ECL 43 (IIRC) the Solar is a little outclassed. But who tries playing D&D at that level anyway?

Ess and I do. We played one game from 1st level to 96th.

[User3]

1131996490[/unixtime]]

f course, at ECL 43 (IIRC) the Solar is a little outclassed. But who tries playing D&D at that level anyway?

Ess and I do. We played one game from 1st level to 96th.

So what did you do about the lack of balance? Houserules, or trust?

I once played a game from 4th to ~26, and the game ended when we realized that my character (a tiefling sorcerer/loremaster) could singlehandedly take threats which would destroy the rest of the party (a chitine Monk/Ninja of the Crescent Moon and an Enlarged dire weasel-riding paladin) without breaking sweat.

[erik]

1131995125[/unixtime]]

You may as well include point blank shot in the stats for the archer's attack and damage stats if you are going to include Zen archery, since it's range is only 30' as well.

Zen Archery doesn't have a range limit.

Devious.

Stinkin 3.5.

[Crissa]

1131997982[/unixtime]]So what did you do about the lack of balance? Houserules, or trust?

It's a little of both; though if memory serves they only had one Player and one DM in the party.

-Crissa

[Essence]

t looks like you are comparing a base race to a tricked out race + class. Not a terribly fair comparison. Some might even call it disengenous. Comparing to the base solar is like comparing to a naked human with 10 stats who only carries a couple o-kay weapons.

A tricked out Solar will make that cleric crap his pants.

The only thing I'm comparing for is to answer this question: how does the Solar with no class levels stack up with a Cleric with enough class levels to match the Solar's ECL under my quick-n-durrty fix (above)?

I don't have the time or resources to find a reference for the given ECL of a Solar or how they calculated it, but if someone can post it for me, I'll be happy to do a comparison.

nevermind the messed up crap it can do with Permanency and Wish at will as SLAs.

Umm...Permanency is 3/day and Wish is 1/day.

I'd pick a PC solar over most anything else, especially a cleric archer, to adventure by my side any day of the week and twice on sundays.

Again, that depends entirely on what the actual ECL of the Solar is. If it's 22 or 23, absolutely. If it's 29 or 30, I'd definitely go for the Cleric.

[Essence]

So what did you do about the lack of balance? Houserules, or trust?

Crissa is correct: both. The gist of all of the houserules is this: we never nerf anything. We pump up the classes that are behind the curve so that everything can stand up to a Cleric Archer or an Octopus Druid, and we change any rule that leads to infinite combos, and that's about it.

we realized that my character (a tiefling sorcerer/loremaster) could singlehandedly take threats which would destroy the rest of the party (a chitine Monk/Ninja of the Crescent Moon and an Enlarged dire weasel-riding paladin) without breaking sweat

That's exactly as it should be. However, there should also be threats that would destroy the paladin and you that the mnok can take with no sweat, and threats that would destroy you and the monk that the paladin can handle with no sweat. And, of course, there should be threats that you can all handle and hopefully threats that you have to cooperate to overcome.

[RandomCasualty]

1132012505[/unixtime]]

we realized that my character (a tiefling sorcerer/loremaster) could singlehandedly take threats which would destroy the rest of the party (a chitine Monk/Ninja of the Crescent Moon and an Enlarged dire weasel-riding paladin) without breaking sweat

That's exactly as it should be. However, there should also be threats that would destroy the paladin and you that the mnok can take with no sweat, and threats that would destroy you and the monk that the paladin can handle with no sweat. And, of course, there should be threats that you can all handle and hopefully threats that you have to cooperate to overcome.

The problem is that D&D rarely works that way. Ideally, that'd be the way it'd work, but unfortunately, characters in D&D tend to be universally powerful. So one character is just straight up better in all ways than the other characters.

[Josh_Kablack]

Back to the original subject of Quick and Dirty Fixes

>Balancing the unmanagable volume of D&D material out there against players pre-game character ideas:

>At the start of each campaign, each player may bring in one non-core book to use. Materials from books all players bring in is included in the campaign. This lets any player use and individual feat or PrC they had their heart set on. It gives a 3 to 9 book set to min/max and rules lawyer from, which is large enough to be interesting (especially if some of the books are new to the players) and small enough to be manageable and comprehensible.

....

>ECL/LA

>ECL = Max [CR+1, HD + listed_LA/2]. And lycanthropes are banned from use. A long way away from perfect, but very easy to implement

....

>Multishot damage is incomprehensible

>Extra damage dice (Sneak Attack, Flaming weapons, etc) are not multiplied, just like the critical hit rules.

[PhoneLobster]

How about this,

Cross class skills and multiclass class skills A complicated and terrible mess that short changes players if they carefully read and adhere to its zany accounting rules.

Solution. A class skill remains a class skill even for levels of classes where it is not a class skill and new class skills retroactively render the skill a class skill since level 1 doubling any cross class ranks already spent on that skill to the full class rank scale.

Alternate solution. All skills are class skills for everyone.