Truenamer. Excellent concept, dogshit mechanics.

>>93128570
I love incarnum a lot.

>>93128781
That's a good one too. Even some of the spells involving truenaming are pretty cool.

>>93128570
Spellthief. One of the coolest classes in the game, conceptually. Always finds a way to underwhelm in practive.

>>93128809
>>93128852
>>93128781
They don't *have to be* badly implemented. Just coolness in concept, whether well implemented or not.

>>93128570
There's 3 different, unrelated 3rd party sources thst some make a cohesive blood magic system by complete accident.
(The books are Encyclopedia arcana: blood magic, the quinessential kobold, and ravenloft secrets of the blood)
It's feat heavy and uses hp to cast spells, so it'd be stupid to use in combat, but it cool as hell.

>>93128881
I don't actually think Incarnum is all that bad, just a little underwhelming, but perfectly playable.
I just love it a lot, the concept behind it and the idea behind the mechanics.

>>93128570
Spellpools. The idea is really interesting, but the class is not. I mentioned this a couple threads back, but I really think it should be magic items attached to guild membership instead of anything class related.

Also, Incantations. Cool idea but not very fleshed out in the core books. Maybe if you pile on Kobold Press / Paizo incantation stuff it's good? Never had a chance to try it at the table. But I like having slow group ritual magic.

the shadowcaster was such a cool idea but a very underwhelming execution

>>93128913
Interesting. Weird coincidence, but interesting.

What would you change to make it more competitive? Just make it less feat-heavy?

>>93128923
Totally fair. I've not had a chance to try Incarnum at the table, I have just heard people describe it as being underwhelming.

File: Dark Sun 3 Rules.pdf (5.17 MB, PDF)

5.17 MB PDF

i remembered after seeing the dark sun discussion that i had a pdf downloaded that tried to convert Dark sun stuff to 3e, so there you go anons

File: DnD - Truenamer Book of W(...).pdf (429 KB, PDF)

429 KB PDF

>>93128781
you might find this interesting

>>93128980
Incarnum is good in the early levels and if you know what you're doing you can push them pretty hard but the issue is they conflict with magic items in Magic Items: The Edition.

>>93128937
Not sure you can make it less feat-taxed without it being overpowered.
As is, the system allows a person to cast any spell they know without spending a slot using [spell level x 2] hp, spend more hp to increase things like caster level at cost of 1 hp per +1, gives a way to store hp in items to use later(so you can prepare a store of spells in downtime, but if you lose the item you're fucked), and use those virtual slots to gamble possible on a buff/debuff chart.
It can very easily swing between powerful and anally fucked, any means of mitigating the downsides with prestige classes or feats could cause things to get out of hand.

>>93129005
That's fan content, not the WotC official stuff(which in in Dragon Magazine for some reason).

>>93129145
Incarnum also suffers from the same problem warlock does though much less of course, since its a whole book. But it's basically a small subsystem that was never intended to be expanded much. Warlock of course has its much worse.

Ideally you'd want multiple branches of exclusive soulmelds with group based fluff.
And warlocks to have options based off the kind of creatures they are making a pact with, not just all having the same small amount of features and options.

>>93129508
Incarnum also has the issue of having an incoherent explanation for how it works.
Why does the well of souls exclusively manifest as a selection of hyper-specific, pseudo-magic-items?
If incarnum was re-fluffed as the spirits of items passed down through legends it'd make more sense.

>>93129663
I think that's too Earthdawn.

>>93129690
>Earthdawn
Wouldn't be the first time D&D ripped something off wholesale.

>>93129663
You can give similar critique to the Cleric's full-list access being oddly rigid for what's supposed to be god-power granted upon request, when the things it's sourced from have no such rigidity any time they get fluff text and in the non-deific cases with the misfortune of a statblock often end up with narrower and little-related powers to "their" Domain. At a certain point, the abilities need to be discrete, and for MoI the mechanic was chucked at the item slots so that's what we got.

Though Totemist has a pretty blunt answer of "that's what you can get from the soul of an X". It's not an exact imitation of the Magical Beasts in question, but much closer than mere theme.

>>93129392
Athas.org got an official sanction years before anything in dragon. I would argue that gives Athas.org an official status the same way the White Wolf Ravenloft books are official, or the Dragonlance books.

>>93129891
Only one dragonlance book got the official sanction, the campaign setting book.
The rest are in a weird limbo similar to the kingdoms of kalamar books.

>>93129891
Wouldn't that mean the dragon magazine is the 3.5 update to the athas.org content?
That's kind of cool and kind of a bummer, the dragon mag defiling system and races are leagues better(the Athas.org team completely dropped the ball there), but the mag version of the athasian dragon prestige is complete shit and the other epic prestiges don't exist in the mag at all.

For me, it's Shadowcaster. I actually really like Warlocks, but Shadowcaster is the one class I've always wanted to play and never really got to.

>>93130344
The blurb on Athas.org says that nothing on it could be used by WotC without their permission, so I assume they weren't legally allowed to take the Athas.org stuff and then turn it into an actual book later in the 3e lifespan when they might have otherwise considered it, and had to do their own work, and they just did a Dragon Mag copout.

If you care about what's newer, and if you think dragon magazine content is included in that errata update replacement cycle, I suppose so. I'm not personally inclined to have a dragon magazine article by anyone but Ed Greenwood take precedence over actual sourcebooks. YMMV.

But the Athas.org "Fan Site" is THE official Dark Sun site according to the agreement they made with WotC around when 3e came out and they weren't supporting Dark Sun. I believe it's the same for Planeswalker and Spelljammer. Anyways. IMNSHO, use the one you like, or find a way to combine them together. But clearly one of these projects had a lot more effort put into it than the other.

>>93130318
Official sanction as in they were allowed to publish without WotC suing them, not Official Sanction as in "we get to put the logo on our books". I don't think any of the Ravenloft books have that logo, doesn't mean they're unofficial or fan-books. They had the license when published. As for Kalamar and Rokugan, the publishers own the setting outright, everything they publish for it is official Kalamar / Rokugan.

>>93130477
>Planeswalker and Spelljammer
There are official sites for these in 3.x?
I only knew about dark sun and birthright.

>>93128570
Warlock, without hesitation. In the 3.5 days and long after Complete Arcane released, so many DMs were such pussies about letting players run warlocks. Despite their weak endgame and limited options, I prefer them to regular casters in classic campaigns.

>>93130562
>>93130477
I would also like to know.

>>93129891
I believe the Kargatane website might have been a better comparison, before Sword & Sorcery got the rights to Ravenloft.

>>93130477
>I'm not personally inclined to have a dragon magazine article by anyone but Ed Greenwood take precedence over actual sourcebooks.
The Dragonlance books were also written by the original creators, if I recall.

>>93130562
I think there might have been one for Mystara, too? And not sure if Zakhara.com was "official" for Al-Qadim.

>>93130562
I believe they got the same official approval back in the day. The sites are still around.

https://www.spelljammer.org
https://www.planewalker.com

>>93130818
Huh. I'm one of those DMs. I've always hated warlock. Its not an "over powered" thing at all, I just think they're redundant and reductive.
Demon cultist: Cleric, or a Cleric/PrC.
Wizard who makes a deal with no real loyalty to the fiend: a contact, a spell book, a magic item, some off-list fiendish spells, someone to buy and sell souls from, or maybe a cool magic item.
Some weak bitch who makes a nebulous deal for power: Sorcerer, or a demon feat or graft.

I just straight up don't want to include a pact /class/, a and think its a bad idea.

>>93131025
I believe they were. Or at least supervised by the original creators. Afaic the dragonlance books are official with or without a d&d 3.5 sticker on the cover.

They're totally irrelevant if we're playing Eberron, but if I'm running Planescape or Spelljammer, sure - you can be from Krynnspace. Nobody is going to tolerate your Kender shenanigans, but you can be from Krynnspace.

Do you guys know of a good way to put your soul in a construct? Does Soul Jar work?

>>93131844
Make it intelligent, cast greater human essence, and then use an item of true mind switch.

>>93131882
There's no RAW way to possess an unintelligent creature?

>>93130818
i love the archetype but fucking hated their infinite spammable ability in a game about resource management in the magic department.
they feel like an npc class for the dm's hands only with this issue not influencing the balance of the campaign

>>93128570
Soulknife. Such a cool aesthetic, really fun niche of throwing weapons or sneaking into places "unarmed", but just not good.

>>93129145
>but the issue is they conflict with magic items in Magic Items: The Edition.

I still don't know what entirely the point of Incarnum is supposed to be, from that standpoint. A character's powers and stats come from their class abilities and magic items. What kind of a core mechanic is "already has magic items"? Are you supposed to use all your WBL on slotless items replicating real class powers?

>>93129508
>And warlocks to have options based off the kind of creatures they are making a pact with

This is the 3.X thread Anon. It's only barely part of the fluff that you make a pact at all, it's also handwavily suggested that you may be born into it for one reason or another, and it says you are not ultimately bound to the source of your power in any meaningful sense.

>>93132937
NTA, but:
"Warlocks. Basically just Sorcerers again."
"Warlocks. Basically just Clerics again."
Regardless of which it is in any edition I've seen them in, they're thematically redundant.

>>93132901
I think the idea was that you'd spend more on the slots that weren't taken up or take the Split Chakra feat.

>>93132306
Between the dearth of accretion cases and incredibly limited number of Invocations per Warlock it's not really a problem. Also consider how many monsters with LAs have At-Will effects. Having 1/3/5/At-Will bracketing would have worked perfectly for your issue and better modeled the monster's SLA paradigm, but it's a rather minor issue because Warlocks just don't have much logistical magic that'll take the party anywhere.

>>93132901
The lockout is specific to Chakra Binds, which top at 5 at Incarnate or Totemist 18th. The frequent gold-sinks of weapon, shield, rings, armor, necklace, and belt see the first three never conflicted with, the fourth only by Incarnate 19th, and the last two at Incarnate/Totemist 14th or Soulborn 18th. So it really only becomes a problem at high levels when you're usually in a position to start being picky about your items, its substitution makes up for the surcharges, and one feat to clear one critical slot isn't a monstrous ask.

>>93132946
Clerics don't work on low-level Fiends and the core cause for Sorcerers is DIRECT descent. It's a bit of a corner-case for fluff, but it's properly there. And as mentioned above the LA mechanic ends up shoveling a lot of at-will SLAs into the players' hands, so there's a functional niche for a class that focuses on that.

>>93128570
>If you had to pick one class, or subsystem, or race, from anywhere outside of the core three books, that you find really cool (even if they're not mechanically optimal and could use a boost from the DM to make them competitive), what would it be?
feels like this question is missing something
"If you had to pick one thing you find really cool, what would it be?"
Scout? That's my favorite class. Is that the whole question? Swiftblade is my favorite class period, but it's prestige.

If the question was "pick something to make core", I would say artificer. Feels like the 12th base class imo.

File: castle diorama.jpg (3.06 MB, 6214x3996)

3.06 MB JPG

I have a passion for dungeons, but 99% of all D&D discourse online is about player options or irl table experiences. You see 10 times as much discussion about maps and overland travel than you do about actual dungeons. They are the meat and potatoes of the game and yet it seems most people hardly care; drives me nuts.

>>93134239
3.5 doesn't have dungeon procedures like the previous editions of Adnd.
There is no careful slower dungeon movement, no random encounter tables, no gold=xp that was the whole incentive to delve into dungeons while avoiding potentially deadly asymmetrical encounters and traps is mostly negated both from the way you want to beat encounters to get xp and more importantly from the way 3e is the first edition to really tryhard to balance everything (and fail miserably) around the CR is completely antithetical to how dungeons used to work.
Also the overabundance of magic compared to previous editions trivializes the dungeon even more.
I mean you can still dungeoncrawl but it takes a lot of caveats to make it work and the players will have to really buy into this way to play.

On the other hand overland traveling both has most of the rules necessary to make work, like overland movement rates according to terrain, weather, etc, hexcrawling or pointcrawling procedures are more system agnostic and the way skills work don't bypass challenges the way they do in the dungeoncrawling.
It still isnt perfect but it is more doable for sure.
We for sure got a shitload of dragons though, unlike previous editions that was all dungeon and no dragon.
I guess it's a trade-off

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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/IkDhJuN8uNY

I just found a YouTube short wherein someone explicitly states that they are explaining Pun-Pun in 5e terms to make it more understandable. This is so strange to me, like the tabletop equivalent of "in Fortnite terms."

>>93128570
Master from the Dragonlance campaign setting. Such a baller NPC class. I'm using it to run a mono-class campaign with a couple of tweaks to make it a real "build your own role" experience.

Beyond that, the Dragonfire Adept is probably my favorite class overall.

>>93129145
>>93132901
You can stack incarnum items and magic items by using specific incarnum focus items.
Unfortunately, this mean magic items cost 50% more for incarnum users because the need to enhance a body-slot item, but they still get magic items.

>>93134785
Mster class craftsman is fucking badass.
Combined with some of the mundane weapon customization features hidden thoughout 3e, it's possible to make mundane items that surpass +5 magic items.

>>93134697
Granted, it also shows a small but growing interest in previous editions now that the hype for 5e is on the decline.
That's both a good and bad thing. 5e is basically baby's first 3.x, so a our edition is going to get both an influx of new blood and an influx of mouth-breathing children at some point.

>>93135367
Between MIC's "common item effects" and only needing them where an item and Chakra Bind overlap, it's not quite as bad as it seems at first glance. Especially if your usual loadout has the Essentia float for the Resistance or Deflection items, given their nearly 50% cost reduction.

Could make a Greater Cloak of Soulbound Resistance with Incarnum Focus and +5 Deflection AC for 87,500 GP if I'm parsing it right. Two common item functions, one now Essentia powered, in a Chakra that has decent chances of putting two Soulmelds in it with the feat you've freed from Resistance to get that +1 capacity applied twice.

>>93134239
>Dungeons are the meat and potatoes.
That stopped being what sold books when the dragonlance adventures came out in the 80's. There's a reason the OSR people on this board choose DL as their cutoff.

>>93134022
>low-level fiends
Grafts and magic items and fiendish feats and a fiendish familiar cover that well already IMO. Or wizard, with your low level fiendish patron providing tutelage and spell formulae. If they're low level fiends I'm not sure how they are providing you a whole class, unless they're like, infecting you with
a seed of sorcerer-disease to develop yourself.

>sorcerer
It was a comment on it being a class with magic inside, and not being able to lose that magic. I'm fine with allowing an artificially created sorcerer spark.

>At-Will SLAs
Sure. I could see granting you an SLA they have, as a graft or through a bonus feat, or a minor transformation ritual like the ones at the back of Savage Species, even gradually turning you into fiend yourself through multiple transactions or one big one. At-Will SLAs should be creature type traits, but I'm not opposed to players having them if it makes sense. I just don't think a dedicated class makes sense for the purpose.

I prefer my one-and-done low level demon deals to be more transactional rather than ongoing, and if the only narrative niche of warlock is "artificial sorcerer spark because to lazy to read a demon spellbook", I would be inclined to just use sorcerer, while if the mechanical niche is to be at-will SLAs, I lean towards having those specific to the fiend you're getting power from, and not a single generic universal SLA track.

Obviously you (and Hasbro) disagree, and prefer the generic homogenised class approach to having a variety of different options for different niches. But I don't care for homogenised Tieflings either, and prefer either the random trait grab-bag or the Pathfinder 1e style Tieflings of specific fiendish ancestries.

>>93134229
That was most of the question yes. What's something outside of core that you find cool /and why/. I thought people would say why they find the thing cool on their own, but a lot of people didn't.

>artificer feels like the 12th core class.
Fascinating. I have never seen one played at a table. Why do you say that?

>>93136108
It sucks huge dicks to be attached to flavor but the mechanics aren't what you want. That's why having different sets of mechanics is important.

>>93134472
And also, the frequent 1min/lv buff durations + exp from combat pushes players to try to rush the next room and kill all the enemies before their spells wear off.

I've certainly played 3e dungeon crawls, but lots of things in the system push you to tackle them very differently than AD&D1e or even 2e.

>>93134785
What makes them cool?

>>93136125
I'm inclined to agree. A lot of my objection to warlock is that it ends up being used as the default to replace all of the more varied, specific, and interesting options, with something generic. Both by DMs who use it for 3.5 and by Hasbro proper from 4e onward.

>>93136181
If it was specifically "this is a second kind of sorcerer, that you can have unlocked by being infused with a small amount of magic, and a fey or low level demon could do it for you, have-at", BTW there are still many other options if you find this uninteresting: .....

Then that would be great. But I object to it being presented as the standard / only / default option disregarding the rest.

>>93136181
>A lot of my objection to warlock is that it ends up being used as the default to replace all of the more varied, specific, and interesting options, with something generic.
From where I'm seeing, that complaint applies a hundredfold more to the base spellcasters except for the Druid because they're intentionally generic and wide-reaching.

>>93136181
>>93136213
Ideally you should have something like way expanded 5e warlock fluff and system support.

So you have warlocks that pact with demons, warlocks bestowed with power from celestials, those that bind a magical that is too strong for them, pack bond with some magical animals and so on. Depending on how strong the pact warlock would get different abilities and responsibilities - getting a contract with a powerful devil comes with a lot of strings attached but it also gives benefits that you just can't get from having a pact with your wizard granduncle bath robe.

>>93136228
True. They all need to be split into parts.
Wizard should have something like School+Element creating ONE subclass. And thus splitting in a fucking couple dozens of ways.

Clerics should have at least 3 subclasses - caster (all the spells) /rogue (skills) /warrior priest (full bab) - and also should only cast their domain spells but with more slots or something.

And druid either needs to be a variant of cleric or have its own split between wildshaping murder beast and caster. And certainly no shit like "you know all your spells and can exchange them whenever".

>>93136228
Part of it is liking those classic baselines (though I would prefer 2e priests to the 3e version). I like wizards and priests, conceptually, and would prefer to customise them as needed rather than having a trillion fiddly base classes.

What warlock does mostly I don't want as a class at all, but as ways to customise other classes.

Paladin Bob makes a pact or does a job for a fey? Get one fey SLA as payment.

Wizard Timmy does a favor for a mid level devil without selling his soul? Have a fiendish spell or three.

Jim Sword&Board has a transhumanist devil obsession? Let him gradually transform himself into a pit fiend (or a hamatula or whatever) via rituals, one CR at a time.

Fiend Cultist? Clerics, or Wizards / Adepts with a fiendish patron teaching them specifically fiendish spells.

"Daddy make me a sorcerer I want to be special" - a Fiendish variant Sorcerer (or I guess) Warlock.

The caster classes need a rework IMO, but a trillion little specific niche variant classes is not the way I would pick to do it.

>>93136108
>Grafts
I fucking wish there was a consolidated library for content on grafts, symbionts, and lifeshaping.
Shit is awesome, but like alchemy it's spread too thinly over way too many books and supplements, and some of the best stuff is third party.
Actually, there also needs to be a consolidated alchemy content list.
Why did the assholes at wizards fuck up so much of their content?

>>93136267
Cleric would be so much better if they brought back deity specific spheres like 2e, and I agree, you really want a way to have them trade off some spellcasting for BAB or skills.

Druid, IMO make them pick between being good at wild shape or having an awesome companion, and then separately make them pick between great martial combat from one of those two, and great combat spellcasting. If they don't pick the spellcasting, pull out the more potent combat spells from their list.

Wizard, I think the problem is spells/day and invincible spell books thanks to DMs not targetting player items (I think they assumed DMs would target your gear). Maybe spell books (and other magic items) a fair target, or make learning spells cost a lot more, and go back to "it'll take you like a week's downtime to re prep all of those slots, chief"

>>93136108
>Grafts and magic items and fiendish feats and a fiendish familiar cover that well already IMO.
As individual things scattered throughout the system, I agree that there's a lot to work with. But consolidating on a base class in a single book makes it so there won't be arguments between players and DMs about how much can be used by a 1st-level character.

>If they're low level fiends I'm not sure how they are providing you a whole class, unless they're like, infecting you with a seed of sorcerer-disease to develop yourself.
In this case, "low level" technically goes up to the Pit Fiends and Balors. Only Archfiends get the clear Cleric-powering permission, anything else is special shenanigans or has to run through ideology.

>It was a comment on it being a class with magic inside, and not being able to lose that magic.
But that magic runs out at the same pace as Cleric, causing a lot of horrible suck when you actually act like it's "just a thing you can do" instead of carefully hoarding it like the cerebral prepared casters. Horrible friction with

>I just don't think a dedicated class makes sense for the purpose.
...No. It's comprehensively fucked discussion of balancing the SLAs on the monsters for player use because there's no overt mechanics to upgrade them ANYWHERE in the system. If it's to be a player option on the regular, it NEEDS a scaling framework, and that means either a bespoke 1-20 race-as-class or a base class a variety of races can take.

>Obviously you (and Hasbro) disagree, and prefer the generic homogenised class approach to having a variety of different options for different niches.
You can hardly call it a "generic homogenised class" when the thing's Alignment-locked and the Invocation list is quite pointedly Evil oriented. And there's only so much room per book for ACFs, base classes, and class-independent character customization to overtly support the numerous permutations.

>>93136267
That's no longer a class system in the ways that matter, as there's no functional unity under the heading so you HAVE to closely look at what the exact permutation chosen offers to identify what the fuck the character actually DOES to determine how the campaign's going to work.

>>93136459
That's not customizing other classes, that's slathering on class-independent power and redefining class-internal power by backstory, seemingly without strings attached.

>>93136555
>"it'll take you like a week's downtime to re prep all of those slots, chief"
This is a shit decision since it basically punishes the group for having a wizard. Like I can see it work but that game won't be D&D, or at least not the third edition. It's too high power level. Needs something more down to earth where you are not expected to murder her way through dozens of enemies.

It's also doesn't addresses the core problem - which is the fact that wizard and cleric can have all the spells at the same time. And later they have fucking 40+ options to choose from during fight/exploration.

As for spell books - you'll also need to remove all the ways that could be circumvented. And there are a lot of them. It's also pretty boring since it doesn't help your opponents during the fight itself. No one is going to target the spell book when the wizard is trying to murder them. You can do it with fanatics and say undead but intelligent creatures are rarely going to go for it. Cause it doesn't help them survive right now.

>>93128570
Psychic Warrior

My favorite 3.5 class by a mile

>>93135385
How the fuck do you surpass +5 on a mundane item?

>>93136546
>there are good third party grafts
Wait what? Where?

>Consolidated lists of grafts and alchemy.
100%. That would be a handy resource.

>>93136267
I'd love to play a full BAB Cleric that only gets the spells from their domains.

>>93137074
And I pressed post by accident.
Kind ofike that Crusader PRC, but that can get more spells from more domains acquired from other classes.

>>93136628
Archfiends use their planes to power clerics, IIRC, and their higher level cohorts can dole out the same on their behalf (they probably do the actual work of doling out spells already, realistically).

>>>93136267
>Comprehensively fucked discussion of balancing the SLAs on the monsters for player use.
My suggestion of giving them as loot means you can price them in gold via the DMG item pricing rules as a slotless item, much like how contingent spells are essentially slotless consumables. That's what I had in mind. You could then upgrade it, *as equipment*. But going more off-label you can use the SLA-to-Monster-LA formula in CCRv5, divide that by 1.16, and get a % of a level the spell is supposedly worth as an LA and combine it with the SS transformation rituals for an xp cost to learn it instead of gold.

>because there's no overt mechanics to upgrade them ANYWHERE in the system. If it's to be a player option on the regular, it NEEDS a scaling framework, and that means either a bespoke 1-20 race-as-class or a base class a variety of races can take.
If a player wants a SLA build-a-freak rather than using bespoke monster classes, I am in favour of letting them build an unfettered eidolon (pf1 bestiary 3) and coming up with some options to choose a creature type other than outsider. I could even see it as a monster cultist class anyone could take with a few tweaks. Point buy monster building for summoner was one of the best ideas Paizo came up with, even though the implementation is imperfect.

>its not generic it's pointedly fiend flavoured.
I meant its presentation as a catchall pact option, which 4e and 5e of course ran with. The premise is almost always very specific and could reasonably be many things, while the implementation as a class leaves it as a one-size-fits-few flavour. You want specifically pit fiend flavoured stuff? Nope. You want mezzoloth stuff? Nope. Etc.

Whereas picking up SLAs as loot, I can hand out whatever fits.

>>93136901
>punishes the group for having a wizard.
Frankly I would extend that to all casters, as an across the board magic nerf. The exact prep times could be adjusted, but more than the 3e default, such that a high level character can't re-prep everything every day and needs to pace themselves.

>Needs something more down to earth where you are not expected to murder your way through dozens of enemies.
It does get mages less versatile in combat. But I think the answer there is magic items. Something like those X/Day wands in MIC. Make them commit if there's something they want to be able to do every day, every fight, or every round. like how a fighter commits to one kind of weapon.

>all the spells at the same time.
There are many more spells than you have slots. I'm not sure what you mean.

>40+ options to choose from on their turn.
Most of those options will be irrelevant to the situation at hand, and only 3-5 of them at most will be relevant right now. Perfect solutions would be less commonly available if it's much slower to swap out spells.

>threatening a spell book is not an interesting tactic in the moment.
No, it's not. But I think spell copying prices are too cheap for WBL if the spell book isn't a target. If its a target you will have to keep up like 2 books somewhere safe and a small travelling spell book. If its not a target, you just slashed spell prices by 57%.

>>93136991
>Wait what? Where?
Sword & Sorcery's "Chaositech 3.5", Dreamscarred Press's "High Psionics: Fleshcrafting", and The quintessential series: "The Quintessential Drow".

>>93136546
>>93136991
I know for grafts there's this guide for first party sources: https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?190350-Fleshwarping-A-List-of-Grafts-Symbionts-and-Related-Goodies
Shit outa luck on alchemy though, it's so scattered that even 3.x doesn't have an autist dedicated enough to build one.

>>93137205
Have there really been no autists powerful enough to compile a singular source on 3.x alchemy?

>>93137874
Wasn't there a complation book with for a bunch of 3.5 shit called viniculum draconis or whatever?
You might have luck with that.

>>93136160
>Master
It's a heavily skill focused 3.0 class that essentially has subclasses built in. You pick one of the write-in skills (Craft, Profession, Perform, Knowledge) as a focus, and as you level up you can pick from a list of Knacks you can perform.

* Crafter can make mundane weapons and armor with to to +5 masterwork bonuses, giving you a unique possibility of magic-less item progression (or you could homebrew magic properties as gem slots or something)

* Profession lets you debuff enemies like a Feint, and grants you the Leadership feat in two parts

* Perform can use various knacks for scaling party buffs

* Knowledge lets you learn enemy type weaknesses, debuffs enemies, and use Bardic Knowledge.

And after all this, at level 7 you get to choose a second focus, so you can craft and debuff, or buff and use Bardic Knowledge, etc. It's like a mini gestalt character. I feel like any character would benefit from a Master gestalt just to increase the fun factor. It's especially useful when your campaign is built around making some of these actions useful like I'll be doing. It does mean a lot of homebrew work for me, but it'll be a completely unique experience for 3e. My players will all play Master with Strength scaling your BAB progression (at about 16 Str you'll have Fighter progression) and Wisdom scaling your spellcasting (I'm bolting on the Shugenja list).

>Dragonfire Adept
Con-based breath weapon user that gets invocations like a Warlock. Highly versatile class that can take on many non-combat roles within a party. You can augment your breath weapon as you level, and many of the effects are diabolical. In-combat its best use case is debuffing enemies with things like Slow breath, Sickening breath, Chilling Fog (a damaging Obscuring Fog invocation), creating shaped breaths to hinder movement, etc. You can be a stealthy scout, skill monkey, party face, intimidator, etc. It's an area denial force multiplier, which fits well into any party.

>>93138324
Interesting. The Master reminds me a bit of the various Specialist Expert classes in Experts 3.5.

>>93137874
Here's what a search turned up.

https://orbitalflower.github.io/rpg/dnd3-extended-alchemy-items-list.html
https://www.realmshelps.net/magic/items/alchemy.shtml
https://adamsouza.tripod.com/alchemy.html
https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=17967.0
https://web.archive.org/web/20110909113430/http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19871634/Alchemical_Devices:_Optimized_Selections_and_Crafting_Strategies
https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=2714.0
https://bg-archive.minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=11066.0

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?148101-3-x-Shax-s-Indispensible-Haversack-(Equipment-Handbook)


We really should compile a PDF Index of all of the guides. I'll start a word doc of links and make that the thread topic next time, to get you guys to give me a list of which guides are worthwhile.
https://minmaxforum.com/index.php?topic=1000.0

>>93136942
Unless they're talking about oerthblood, I'm pretty sure the only way to do it requires third party material.
You can technically do it first part using the Dragonlance class "master", which allows making "items of legend" that multiply masterwork bonuses up to x5(so weapons of legend have +5 to hit, armor of legend reduce ACP by 5, and tools of legend give a +10 bonus to a skill check).
Add Oerthblood to a weapon gives a +1 luck bonus to attack and damage, allowing a total of +6 to attack.

The third party way requires access to the "Quitessential X" series(there's a feat "The quintessential Aristacrat" that allows you to increase a masterwork bonus by +1, "The Quintessential Elf" allows elven mega-autist to spend a decade on one craft check to also increase a masterwork bonus by +1).
In total, an elven Ultra-autist with the above feat and the master class could make a weapon with +7 to hit, armor with ACP reduced by 7, or a tool with +12 to skill.
All of that is before getting into the True-Omega-Autism that is Artisan qualities, item templates, item mods, or special materials.

>>93138900
Anons where would one find the most autistic elves in 3.x? I wish to make a purchase...

>>93136123
Item crafter specialist just makes sense as the next thing to add. Also they can handle traps like the rogue, just worse; only one class out of 11 being able to do that has always seemed wrong to me.

>>93138972
Mongoosia, land of the Elves Quintessentia.

>>93138972
You will most likely die of old age long before the sperg elves are done crafting your legendary sword anon.
There's a reason most protagonists Find the super-sword, crafting that shit takes a while.

>>93139053
Not to mention, what would you have to pay if the autistic elves price it by charging by the week, profession-style.

>>93139030
Don't those guys make Really fucking overpower caster content?
They basically gave drow Epic Magic a bonus feat with no level requirement in one book.

>>93139080
I cherrypick from them. They make some really good stuff, but they also put out some junk books in the early days. I can't say I've ever actually tried any of the 'Quintessential' books though. They also made d20 Conan, and I've played in four or five campaigns of that. It's a pretty fun game and they put the effort into it. My only gripes with it are gripes they inherited from d20 combat in general, and martials being kindof boring.

But the main Mongoose ones I grab from them are Games Designer's Companion (which is like a UA, with more variant rules and subsystems), Seas of Blood (Nautical stuff, and generally better done than Stormwrack), and Strongholds & Dynasties (Generally Base-Building mechanics than Stronghold Builder's Guidebook).

>>93139170
The quintessential series is actually pretty high quality and I don't believe it has anything that could actually break a campaign.
99% of the shit people complain about from mongoose is the encyclopedia arcana series. I personally have a love-hate relationship with that series because it have many of the books are wonderful expansions that explain how to make chimeric creatures like the owlbear or create custom construsts, but others give drow access to "totally not epic magic" at level 1.

>>93139063
To a high level player, it might be worth it anyway. It'd still cost less than the average +5 sword.
It's also a great base for making a magic weapon, the attack bonus will still be high even as you load it up with +9 worth of special abilities.

>>93131334
>I just think they're redundant and reductive
I don't think there's any other way to roleplay a wielder of queer and foul magic that refuses to sully his hands with mundane weaponry thanks to Eldritch Blast.

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I love the 3E aesthetics

>>93138900
Elfanon are there any other alloy components beyond oerthblood and pure ore? Even third party sources are fine.

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>>93139757

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>>93139762

>>93139280
>I personally have a love-hate relationship with that series because it have many of the books are wonderful expansions that explain how to make chimeric creatures like the owlbear or create custom construsts
Which ones are the good ones, worth considering for inclusion as a GM?

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>>93139715
There are. Just seems I'm the only person in this thread who wants them. And, probably not at level 1, but I haven't started a campaign at level 1 in over a decade.

>Caster Class + PrC of Choice.
>At-Will Slotless Command Word Lesser Acid Orb (or other scaling 1st level spell) for 1x1x3600gp, upgrade the CL multiplier by two and pay the price difference periodically to upgrade your SLA for additional d8s. Enchant yourself. Half that price if you'll accept it as a staff or rod you have to hold while shooting at people.

>>93139757
>>93139762
>>93139769
Agreed.

>>93140002
Off the top of my head: The 8 books named after each magic school(Abjuration, enchantment etc.). Two of them are weird, the evocation book is named "Elementalism: The Primordial Force" and the Transmutation book is only found in the compendium the also has the Demonology, Necromancy, and battle magic books all packages with it.
I also recommend "Demonology: the Dark Road", "Battle Magic: The Eldritch Storm", "star Magic: Wisdom of the Magi", "Constructs: It's alive" and "Crossbreeding: Flesh and Blood" for worldbuilding how various kinds of magic affect the setting(the last one is literally the "this is how they made owlbears" book)
Finally, "Components and Foci", "Tomes and Libraries", "Familiars", and "Magic Item Creation" fill in the gaps to explain why the various aspects of wizarding work the way they do and expand other ways they can be applied.
"Shamans: Call of the Wild" is one of two expansion released for Divine casters(specifically nature casters like druids, and this is the good one).

The ones to auto-ban with no exceptions are "Dragon Magic: Power Incarnte, "Drow Magic", and "Fey Magic: Dreaming the Reveries"(the bad divine caster book). They have, in order, A skill that allows infinite free metamagic(including matemagic feats you didn't take) on every spell by passing a skill check, The aforementioned drow epic magic, and Skill-check based mana system that allows any class to cast Every Druid Spell. That's only scratching the surface of broken bullshit these three books allow.

There's a weird other book called "Soveriegn Magic" that turn the game into army battle game where player get a second leveling system based on conquered territory, effective allowing players to be the final boss of their own empire/dungeon. It's cool, but probably not usable in most party-adventure/dungeon-crawler games.

>>93140164
>Holy shit anon wrote a novel
>allowing players to be the final boss of their own empire/dungeon.
That sounds awesome.
It'd even be a useful tool for building bbegs even outside of d20 nobledark warhammer games.

>>93139757
When we get to the equipment it's top tier but I hate the character art.

>>93140164
Some of these sound pretty interesting. I haven't looked at them before. Sounds like I will have to. Thanks anon.

>>93128570
Alrighty guys. I thought this used to be a web article, but I can't find it. Is anyone familiar with a Wight template where you keep all your class levels? I thought that was a thing.

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>>93140252
not him but its hit and miss; some of it is superb, most of it is meh or shit
depends on the artist
sam wood and todd lockwood
the woods are the goat

>>93140164
I actually remember liking the dragon magic book, but it's for sure an NPC villain resource only.

>>93134472
I know for a fact there are dungeon random encounter tables; one for each level 1-20
I dont remember any specific text about dungeon movement, but there doesnt need to be; we know that searching a 5x5ft surface is 1 round, and you can take a 5ft step for free, and you can search from 10ft away
we also know that you get a free spot and listen check each round, or can take one as a move action

I dunno, I think you're wrong about the rules making it hard; in my experience most players just dont like it
they want to walk from battle to battle in a movie-like sequence; they dont seem to care about exploration or non-combat challenges (outside of videogame-style puzzles) or navigation

>>93140276
It's great for expanding on a lot of detail about dragons, but said stuff is best kept with said dragons.

>>93128570
I have about 30 hardcover books I bought in the 90s. Whats the best place to pawn them?

>>93140362
EBay is probably your best bet. Make a spreadsheet, and look them up, and set your prices according to what they last sold for.

>>93140335
Don't mongoose-verse dragons get that overpowered metamagic skill and(in other of their books) the true names of Everything by default?
Mongoose style dragons are only slightly less powerful than the gods themselves. That might be a bit much for an adventuring party.

>>93131334
Personally I'm in it for the mechanics. A wizard that gets spells from the gods or by pulling them out of his ass or whatever is still a wizard, and a warlock who's born with his powers like a sorcerer is still a warlock (and I'd still play one if I was in the mood to play a warlock at the time).

>>93140290
i forgot about them honestly. Still 5 feet per round is way too fast of a movement rate for dungeon crawling.
The way it worked previously is that the party was supposed to be doing all these things like searching while moving silently, etc in an automatic fashion and not rolling a skill check to accomplish this.
The way this would be represented in dnd 3.5 is taking 10 for every skill check with the extra time that it would take to resolve, but for issues explained above i dont think that it works well.

It probably can be done but no one has ever really tried outside of an E6 game perhaps that lends itself to this better with the low level cap and all.

What your players will want will vary. Most of the people i played with didn't like the movie sequence combatfest dnd but i recognise that it is not the norm probably.

>>93139762
i never cared for Wayne England's art. Some of it wasn't terrible but it never looked good to me.
Though >>93139769 is decent.

>>93140519
>the true names of Everything
So they get a +4 to overcoming spell resistance? Doesn't seem that overpowered when next to infinite free metamagic.

>>93128570
>TQ
I really liked the unarmed/unarmed mystic one punch man from the playtests

Hey anon, is there any way to make readying an action not take your standard action or a source of free readied swift actions?
Only thin I've seen is Eye's of the Oracle, and that's a 1 action per cast basis that still takes a standard action to cast.

>>93141507
Most people I've played with want combat to be like 1/4 of a session. 1/2 session max, going back to the early 2000s. From what I understand, 5ebabbies primarily play with even less combat, running lots of sessions with no combat.

I don't think your situation is that unusual. I do think 3e and 5e are designed for much more combat though.

>>93144840
not him, but the issue isn't the amount of combat, its that its just a railroad between cinematic fight scenes with a little drama club in between along the way

>>93144884
3e works fine as as a player driven sandbox game. Its just a bit weak if you want OSR dungeon crawling.

>>93144915
kek
I think its the other way around
3e works best if you contain it to dungeons
its everything outside the dungeon that makes DMing difficult

>>93142222
His monsters are pretty good, his items (Especially anything with a gem which he always makes very predictable) and humans/elves etc are pretty bad.

>>93145044
The dungeon gameplay loop pushes people towards hyper focusing on combat / rushing rooms to try to make your buffs last through multiple encounters / assuming you need to fight everything because that's where the exp is and that's generally how you get paid.

Which is very different than a survival looter where you try to sneak past the monsters, steal their shit, and run away

>>93146468
A lot of minute/level spells in 3.5 started as 10 minutes/level in 3e, synching up with AD&D "dungeon turns" and giving plenty of time to comb over a few rooms.

>>93146486
I recall. My criticism was in no small part linked to those nerfed spell durations for 3.5. But I think they get in the way of an OSR crawl and push the game towards a Diablo playstyle of mindless hack and slash.

You could make it run more OSR hack and slash with a few targeted houserules but they would need to be deliberate.

> Bring back the longer spell durations.
> Dungeon Turn Procedure (I think the Alexandrian has one for 3e and 5e based on AD&D 1e).
> Maybe reduce HP gained each level or reduce the death by massive damage threshold like Conan does.
> XP mostly for loot brought back to town rather than enemies defeated.
> Up the encounter difficulty.


You could do it. But the default disincentivizes survival dungeoncrawling gameplay.

And - that's before getting into specific spells that increase survivability that got buffed for 3e, and before considering the impact of increased spell slots and having them all easily recovered every day.

I'm just saying. A lot of 3e design disincentivizes or short circuits that Oldschool Essentials survival loop

>>93146646
*Oldschool
Apparently I have Oldschool Essentials saved as a word, but not oldschool, and my phone autocorrected.

Does Ocular Spell really help War Weaver? People are saying on char op forums that it helps you bypass not being able to put "personal" range spells in your eldritch weave.... but at the same time the Ocular Spell feat says it can't be applied to personal range spells? So what gives?

>>93136715
>That's not customizing other classes, that's slathering on class-independent power and redefining class-internal power by backstory, seemingly without strings attached.
True but I sorta have similar ideas for quest reward stuff that's not items or normal XP.

Get a feat or an SLA type thing.

>>93148704
Those posters misread the feat or have some very strange ideas about familiars, shared spells, and the focus caster option.

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Zombies are resistant to non-slashing
Skeletons are resistant to non-bludgeoning
What enemies are resistant to non-piercing?

>>93136715
>without strings attached.
The string is you need to unlock it according to what you find in gameplay like foubd loot, and you're not planning it into some hyper-optimized build.

But, I prefer emergent character progression to preplanned anyways, and I'm inclined towards the test-based-prerequisites UA variant.

>>93149088
I don't know of any. But clockwork golems or giant bugs would be a good pick. Thick carapace with weaknesses in the joints and vitals if you can get under the shell.

What's the good 3.5 database site again?

>>93149466
None are complete.

>>93149495
It was one with a lo t of dropdown menus, the only one that actually let you sort spells by class and level without bugging out and only giving you the first page of them.

>>93149512
From the description, I think you want dndtools.org.

>>93149540
No that one doesn't work when I use the search function. It had a TON of dropdown menus for sources and stuff.

>>93149558
Oh! Srd.dndtools.org maybe?

>>93149569
With the big accordion menu on the left?

>>93149466

dndtools.one?

>>93149569
Not that one but it's still quite good It was almost all white

>>93149614
There we are!

Both of these are pretty good.

Anybody ever seen rules for cauldrons of burning oil/hot sand/quick lime like they'd use when defending a castle?

>>93150113
Just off the top of my head, Heroes of Battle spell, Boiling Oil, does 4d6+2d6 (fire damage) each round on failed reflex save, but that might be a bit much.

>>93149088
>>93149361
I think oozes would make the most sense. It's easy to imagine how bludgeoning wouldnt do much, and you can kinda see how a focused pierce might get through their exterior better than a broad cut, kinda like fat on an uncooked steak.

>>93151603
If they had vitals to target I would agree. But they're amorphous. The javelin goes in well, but doesn't do a lot of destruction, and can't target any weak points.

>>93149088
Always liked using flesh-bags types or ghost-filled mindless undead to fill that gap. Slower base speed, but without the single action zombie limitations. Immune to acid, reduced slam damage, and grab attack. They look like slightly deformed versions of themselves without any decay and their flesh bulges with ectoplasm or some other foul necromantic energy. Their faces are always warped or missing such as a bald smooth head with only a wide grin that takes up far too much room.

>>93152283
its more about damaging them at all
bludgeon bounces, slashing bonunces, pierces can get into the jelly through the "skin"

>>93149024
Any way I can refute them? Loads of people on giantitp seem to think this works.

>>93153712
Just give them the quote from Ocular Spell's Lords of Madness entry:
>"Only ray spells and spells with a target other than personal can be cast as ocular spells." (page 181)
It speaks for itself.

...I thought the point of Ocular Spell in the TO space was getting Touch and variable-range buffs valid to Persist. Its value to War Weaver would appear to be easing actions on sub-60 ft. spell application, nothing about bypassing Personal restrictions.

>>93152545
>pierces can get into the jelly through the "skin"
For all the good it does.
You may as well be trying to *pop* the ocean like a balloon. The jelly will just re-form.
Oozes with a realistic take on the mechanics should be to martials what 3e golems were to casters pre-3.5 update, a hard shut-down used when a player gets too full of themselves.

>>93153956
I'm pretty sure any optimizer worth their salt is using another trick to change the target.
Granted, there are a lot of optimizers not worth their salt that no-game on forums.

>>93157153
Were golems getting a couple weaknesses a 3.5 thing or was the spell immunity changing to only work on spells that allowed SR the big change?

>>93157389
Spell immunity.
You can see what it used to be like with the never-updated stats of the demilich, shit was Poison to casters.
The only cure was hiding behind a wall of martials and buffing them until they were prepared to fight god or die trying.

>>93157563
Ah, it used to work on even SRless spells? Oh wow, spells, Spell-likes, AND Supernaturals.

>>93157389
>>93157563
DR/Magic is the same way. It's so easy to overcome that it becomes pointless.The easiest fix is to mage any DR/Magic require an enhancement bonus equal to [monster CR/4, round up], CR over 20 get DR/Epic. That way CR 17-20 require a +5 to overcome DR, which justifies getting a +5 enhancement rather than +9 worth of WSA.

>>93157601
Is there a spell immunity/spell resist fix like this?
Seems like spell resist does jack or shit to a well prepared party.

>>93157613
It would just be going back and individually deciding which SR No spells to remove it from.

Magic Circle/protection from can be good for those who want to bypass SR with summons.

>>93157621
There might be an alternative. You could give spell resist monsters a spell-level based immunity like 3e, but use the 3.5 resist mechanic for SR/no spells. That way, lower level SR/no still has a chance to work, but doesn't outright render the anti-caster mechanic useless. Might be complicated for the average table though.

The biggest problem with this approach is that it takes a fat steaming shit on gishes like the Duskblade that aren't harming the game. Same reason why targeting the Frenzied Berserker with massive AC enemies shits all over a Monk.

>>93157903
The Duskblade is awkward content bloat rather than something that works naturally anyways, too much of the system keeps the core and previous-edition assumption that Fighter and Wizard are firmly separate.

If you want it, you're going to have to completely overhaul it around the pointy thing not carrying actual spells.

>>93158084
Channeled spells bypass leveled spell immunity, or for various half and quartercasters scale it based on the spell's level relative to the max level the class can cast.

The point isn't the Duskblade specifically, it's that the game is trying to support things other than 20/20 spellcaster progression and when you target 20/20 spellcasters to rein them in...

>>93158133
That'll cause way too much mechanical bloat.
Though, I am kind of tempted to say "fush gishes and half-casters". The core examples already have niches that aren't harmed much by this. Paladins are still able to mow down demons and undead, bards are still useful as buff dispensors and social casters(also has prestiges that give full caster progress anyway).

>>93158197
Non-standard casters like warlock, binder, and shadowcraft mage would be largely unaffected. So players would that, or the could just bite the bullet and play an initiater

>>93163345
If I wanted to play a warlock, I'd play a warlock. If I wanted to play a binder, I'd play a binder. If I wanted to play a swordsage, I'd play a swordsage.
If I want to play a paladin, I'm not going play a warlock, a binder, or a a swordsage, I'M GOING TO PLAY A GOD-DAMNED PALADIN!

>>93163486
>A GOD-DAMNED PALADIN!
That's called a blackguard anon.

>>93163486
Firstly, Paladin spells tend away from the countermeasure stack in question, whereas the Duskblade and Hexblade are EXPLICITLY built on forcing exactly those spells to work for a limited-casting "canned gish".

Secondly, you can move the desired features to a non-Vancian resource framework, which in the Paladin's case is pretty much just adding to the Crusader.

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>>93128570
Ideally, what's the best build for a single-PC game? Assume that Gestalt is on the table.

>>93167707
Any of the INT primary spellcasters/Factotum is stupidly good.

I dunno who might be interested, but I just stumbled across an adventure conversion to 3.5 by the dedicated people at Candlekeep.

It's a free 3.5 conversion and expansion of Under Illefarn, by Eric L. Boyd (Waterdeep; Champions of Ruin; Cloak & Dagger; Demihuman Deities; Dragons of Faerun; Faiths & Avatars; .... etc), with continuity fact-checking by Thomas M. Costa, Ed Greenwood, George Krashos, and Steven E. Schend.

It's a 324 page campaign setup with 4 adventures and a ton of supplemental stuff for the GM to improvise with.

http://www.candlekeep.com/downloads/UnderIllefarnAnew.pdf

Found it entirely by accident while trying to look up the meaning of 'Shantel Othreier'

>>93167726
Factotum is so meme supreme in almost any gestalt, it's borderline unfair.

>>93167728
Holy fuck, thank you for sharing.

>>93167743
Apparently (reading the introduction) it's a polishing up of a conversion of Under Illefarn he did to run it for his kids.

What's the consensus on Dragonfire Adept, and why do I never hear about it?

>>93167832
All the enthusiasm and rage clash over the warlock before the adept has a chance.

>>93167832
Entangling Exhalation takes it from decent to completely broken in the very very low levels where it outright wins fights by giving you guaranteed damage and a serious debuff, but other than that it's a solid class.

>>93167728
that's an awesome find anon

>>93167832
change entangling exhalation cause it is broken and then its fine.
I would like it for a draconian race only class.
I generally really like the concept of racial classes that are unique to each race

Trying to make a blade of orien build. Keep material to eberron, no tome of battle.
One idea I found as entry was psionics because they get hustle(move action as a swift action) which allows them to abuse the capstone(full attack when you teleport as a move action). Any other options?

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>>93168129
I thought so. I also found this very extensive elven dictionary. I had already started on a spreadsheet tool so I could quickly look up terms to coin new ones for my campaign, but this is not too bad. Looks like lots of canon Tel'Quessan words I didn't have from other sources.

>>93168497
It does have a few inconsistencies with the Candlekeep lexicon I saved first. Still customising it for my own campaign in a spreadsheet. Kinda slow. You want to automate as much of it as you can. Inputting everything manually would take far too long. Looks like he fixes some errors I noticed in the candle keep one, too. Looking forward to having a big set of modular elf word pieces for my elf games. Super agglutinative conlang, even if its nowhere near as complete as Tolkien's conlangs. All those apostrophes? They're like English hyphens in compound words.

>>93168237
If your move action ios a swift action how are you qualifying for the teleport as a move action? Or is this to stack a teleport, attack, and normal move all into one turn?

>>93168597
The idea is to use a move action as a swift action, teleport, full attack, move action as a move action, full attack, standard action downgraded to move action, full attack.

>>93168237
Bard with Lyric Spell or Battle Sorcerer can hard-cast Dimensional Leap a few times, as I suspect three uses per round is going to be difficult to support long-term.

>>93168597
It appears to be from Blade of Orien's features improving Dimensional Leap to a Move Action.

>>93146646
>> Maybe reduce HP gained each level or reduce the death by massive damage threshold like Conan does.
This betrays a cursory knowledge of 3e.

>>93134472
So much wrong in one fucking post it feels like something written by a bile-ridden OSRfag.
>no random encounter tables
Wrong
>gold=xp that was the whole incentive to delve into dungeons
No gold=xp but saying that it was THE incentive is retarded
>you want to beat encounters to get xp
Encounter beaten doesn't equal to monster killed in 3e
>tryhard to balance everything (and fail miserably) around the CR
Along side people misquoting the Ivory Tower and completely misunderstanding the "magic item per settlement" and how should be used, this is another massive lack of judgement.
Before 3e, you just had the HD and asterisks (at least in BECMI) to assess how bad of a threat a monster was. At least BECMI was layered, but say AD&D you had a 1-20 levels book with no indication on when a monster was supposed to not be an insurmountable challenge that requires you to flee.
And guess what - you can still do it, because the CR lets you eyeball when an encounter is supposed to be lethal. Also you still have SoD in 3e.
>Also the overabundance of magic compared to previous editions trivializes the dungeon even more.
Concerning items, this is wrong. People often played with less items, but RAW the drop tables were quite rich. Additionally, monsters in previous edition didn't have DR - they could not be outright harmed by lesser weapons.

>>93136555
>Cleric would be so much better if they brought back deity specific spheres like 2e,
Tying to do this in my homebrew but there is an important question.
Which spells are Cleric "essentials" which they all should share?

>>93138324
>>93138418
This all sounds interesting, thanks

>>93171335
I'm not sure what you mean, unless you're talking about how damage can get quite high at later levels, particularly with non-core shenaniganry?

>>93153712
>Loads of people on giantitp
Gitp has cool guides and several good posters but there is a good share of posters that have an intellectually dishonest approach to rules and, worse, make it the RAW assumption and the baseline on how rules are discussed there.
And mind it, this probably improved in the last years.

>>93171575
Correct.
Every time I hear that 3e is padded in a way or another, I know I can discard that person's opinion.

>>93171432
Resurrections, low level heal / harm, stuff for communing with the dead or the gods, planar travel stuff at higher levels to see said gods, summon monster (customise the list by the god).

Everything else can go back in spheres, and get doled out accordingly.

>>93171581
>mind it, this probably improved in the last years.
No, it has gotten worse. Most of the old gaurd from giantitp have moved on and the place is flooded with newfags who don't actually know the system very well.
Plenty of them also cleave to the extremes of "narrative play" wear the rules don't matter and "gm is god" where gm's retardedly houserule everything to chace their warped understanding of "balance"(think the early days of DMs banning 3.5 warlock because it's "overpowered", the same gms who encouraged batman wizards that easily break core like a kitkat bar).
The RAW discussions between people with high-level system mastery and a long history of play experience is a rarity in the modern playground. The giants are gone.

>>93171718
>No, it has gotten worse.
Ok, this sounds like a different type of stupid than before. Not saying you are wrong.

>>93170489
I think you'd need to downgrade your standard action first. Otherwise the full attack would use it up by default.

>>93171758
It's giving you a full attack for free, like shadow pounce.

>>93171744
The giantitp has definitely developed a new flavor of stupid since 2023 at least. I think the lockdowns gave the site a temporary renaisance of RAW-lawyers that knew what they were talking about, but the grognards have since had to get back to their jobs and left a bunch of screaming 5e kids in their place.

>>93171624
That's player side nonsense though. Are you suggesting I should find minmaxed builds on optimizer boards and use those instead of a monster manual?

Lowering player HP and lowering death by massive damage thresholds means my bog-standard MM1 monsters will trigger more death saves vs massive damage.

Set it to 25 + 10 per size category over medium, and set it to drop you to -1 instead of insta death, and suddenly my mid-CR monsters are more of a threat. This is about increasing the threat from monsters. Players already chew through monsters after a few levels.

As for the specifics of how you guys cone up with meme damage? I don't even try to remember them all. I get to play a character like once every 5 years, and when I do I usually go for something like a wizard with only indirect spells that don't do much damage but are still useful, or a character who does party-buffs. When I play a martial, it means "this is a level 1 1shot".

>>93171768
I see, but aren't you stuck with only being able to dragonmark's dimension-leap ability 2/day? Even if you get 1-2 more uses, you're only going to be able to pull a triple full attack once a day.

>>93171826
Extra number of uses equal to 1+1/2 your level in Blade of Orien.

>>93171818
>That's player side nonsense though. Are you suggesting I should find minmaxed builds on optimizer boards and use those instead of a monster manual?
I don't play that optimized and consider most of CharOpt bullshit theoretical stuff that only an autist would use.
Nonetheless, even with no optimizations, playing core, HPs in 3e are in no way bloated, especially due to how crits work in the edition.

>>93171818
I've played games where massive damage saves were set at damage>con. It really wasn't particularly punishing at low level, as that level of damage would be having squishy classes making bleed saves anyway until level 5, and the barbarian, fighter, etc, just invested slightly mor in Con and was fine. The real change was High levels, where an archer being able to 1-shot an unprepared anything(except undead, constructs, and oozes) made everyone paranoid as fuck.

>>93171870
>Nonetheless, even with no optimizations, playing core, HPs in 3e are in no way bloated,
This is complete bullshit. If you aren't an optimized 2H martial or a Rogue getting your sneak attack off your time to kill goes up even if you manage to hit every attack you land later on. HP goes up faster than your baseline damage does - that's why 2H power attack is the standard.

>>93171844
Oh, so the triple punish is 3-4 times per day?

>>93171898
Get unlocked dragonmark and have the party buffer persist an unfettered heroism on you. You now have unlimited dimensional leaps and can zip around the battlefeild like a hanna-barbera skit.

>>93171890
We have probably different assumptions on how many hits you need, especially counting items, buffs, crits and the like.

>>93171913
You only get 1 temp action point a round and it's lost if it isn't spent at the end of your turn. You'd only be able to full-attack once a round after the first few rounds, not much different than normal.

>>93171898
If you can find a way to shove in twin metamagic in there somewhere, then you can even get a 4x attack, but that's unlikely

>>93171877
>At high levels, archers can snipe you and this makes you paranoid as fuck
Making players paranoid as fuck about traps and midlevel enemies even at higher levels is kind of what you want in an oldschool dungeon crawl though. That's the vibe you're going for.

>>93171967
Its an SLA, so its a no. Theres obscure 3rd party shit for putting metamagic on SLAs, but that would require rediculous epic-level-only scenarios like breaking into the midnight campaign setting.
At that point, the extra full attack isn't as impressive as the other shit you can already do at epic.

>>93171890
1st level Fighter, 16 STR, +5 1d8+3 19-20/x2 vs Gnoll (AC 15, HP 11). 3 round kill.

4th level Fighter, 17 STR, +9, 1d8+6 19-20/x2 vs Flamebrother Salamander (AC 19, HP 26). 5 round kill.

6th level Fighter, now he's using a bastard sword and freely retrained thanks to a nice GM. +11/+6, 1d10+6, 19-20/x2. Average Salamander (HP 58, AC 18). 4 round kill, and only barely so.

12th level Fighter. He's now got a +4 STR belt, a +3 bastard sword, and all of the expected Fighter specialization feats. So that's +23/+18/+13, 1d10+13, 17-20/x2. Leonal (AC 27, HP 114). We're back down to 3, but CR 12 is full of huge outliers in both directions and doesn't have a comfortable middle point.

And the problem past level 6 is that you have to full attack to keep pace, so if that's ever interrupted your damage goes to shit.

>>93172001
The absolute easiest way to get old school paranoia is to ban clerical divine casters. No healbots, easy rez, and sudden vulnerability to energy drain turns your average undead dungeon into call of cthulhu for your average party.

would you allow the constitution drain from this spell
https://dndtools.net/spells/champions-of-valor--28/create-lantern-archon--307/
to be healed with Restoration?
Mechanically 1 hour casting time to get 1 hour service from a single CR 2 creature doesn't seem a problem.
Thematically though - level 11+ clerics can become Lantern Archon factories for their deity?

>>93172033
*no easy rez.

>>93172029
>no buffs
>no crits
>no spirited charge
But more importantly - what is the rest of the group doing? Because if they contribute in the least, the round numbers is starkly reduced and you never-happy fags starts complaining about rocket tag.

>>93172064
Crits were taken into account and Spirited Charge is on a mount, which isn't even close to a given. Buffs and conditional bonuses and party actions also swing things further the earlier you go because enemies have less HP and AC is a more powerful defense. Enlarge Person turns the gnoll fight into a 2 round affair, and more importantly, a 2 round affair solely because of AC because they're killed in a single hit on average. You can layer on more and more buffs as you go up in levels, but you still have to be able to full attack later and buffs don't make that much easier because it's not 3.0.

You're working from a baseline, not replacing your entire character with buffs. A weaker baseline means those buffs don't go as far.

>>93172057
The choice of Drain rather than Burn indicates it's supposed to be done by (Lesser) Restoration. But there's likely back-end inefficiencies to the two spells in question being granted.

>>93172029
Yeah. This is what I meant. The basic core dpr scaling isn't so high (especially if you miss your iteratives), and that's what scaling the MM is designed around.

Sure, the player damage can get a good bit higher if you include various splat books but most enemies are not designed to drop a same Level PC in 1-2 rounds, and unlike in old D&D when player HP basically stops going up after level 10, in 3.5, it doesn't. So you keep getting more and more defense against those mid level monsters.

>>93172033
Also very true. Healing is so very easily available in 3e. Whether we're talking about "more spell slots", or "they're not just your max spells now, they're your spells for today, and refilling them is easy" or how cheap a wand of CLW is.

You nerf healing, and reduce HP, and lower the massive damage threshold - and players will get appropriately paranoid again.

I'm not saying you *need* to play that way. Enjoy a more diablo-esque meat grinder if you prefer it. But if you want to run an oldschool dungeon crawl, I stand by my statement that RAW 3e has design choices that disincentivise that style of play.

>>93172064
We're talking about a non-optimized character, not someone running around with a full buff stack at all times with feats for a second combat style.

>>93172220
3.5's monsters are also designed around a different paradigm at that because they were set in place in a game where crit buffs stacked and full attacking on the go was doable from level 5 on and with 8k gold. Even the outsider buffs were made with that in mind when 3.5 removed all of that.

That's literally why Power Attack is so dominant. It's the only thing that keeps up with the expectations set back then.

>>93172223
Non-optimized as not using the best splat feat combos. And even that, frankly, you can just use the SRD to good effect.
PHB buffs are intuitive and strong. You must assume a few are not, not talking about remove buffs from some splat.

>>93172220
>Yeah. This is what I meant.
What you meant is that the fighter solo is 3-rounding them, therefore the whole party will be even too quick in dispatching them?
3e was called by a different type of retard "rocket tag" for a reason.

>>93172261
That's not what non-optimized means

>>93172270
You can be non-optimized and still not being braindead and use PHB buffs.

>>93171696
>customise the list by the god
Truth to be told, is already partly customized by alignment compared to the arcane casters.

>>93172005
Nothing in the blade of orien that says you need to use the dragon mark. That's why the other Anon said to go bard/sorcerer. But you're right that it would be difficult to get the requisite spell levels.
I found another source that uses psi crystals to get a twin linked hustle so that you can get 3 hustles on turn 2 for a 5x full attack by level 16, but he got the lesser dragon mark prereq wrong. There would need to be a level of dragon mark heir in there somewhere there delaying it to level 17/18, and that would mess with BAB

>>93172111
>because its not 3.0
You mean 3.0's more generous buff stacking and longer durations, or haste or both?

>>93172267
>the whole party will be too quick.
Learn to read. I don't give a fuck about player DPR. I've been talking about how much of a threat monsters are, and how cautiously players need to play, weighig whether or not risking death in combat is worth it, if you want an oldschool paranoid survival crawl, this entire time. IDGAF how hard the party hits, its irrelevant to the discussion.

>>93172420
Haste and partial charges. Move and full attack or partial charge + full attack if they're in a line from you. 3.0 was nowhere near as sticky as 3.5.

>>93172319
The biggest problem is the sustainability. Sure, you can nova for insane damage for a few turns, but you end up running out of steam and going back to 1 FA a round pretty quickly.
In any game that isn't handling the players with kids gloves, this build is a mildly interesting gimmick rather than any kind of powerhouse.

>>93172875
Well it's going to be unlikely that I will need to nova every round. But it would be nice to have the option during a desperate situation.

>>93172651
NTA, but how was charge different in 3.0?

>>93173159
3.0 charge
>The character must move before attacking, not after. The character must move at least 10 feet and may move up to double base speed. All movement must be in a straight line, with no backing up allowed. The charge stops as soon as the character threatens the target. A character can't run past the target and attack from another direction.
vs 3.5 charge
>You must move before your attack, not after. >You must move at least 10 feet (2 squares) and may move up to double your speed directly toward the designated opponent.
You must have a clear path toward the opponent, and nothing can hinder your movement (such as difficult terrain or obstacles). Here’s what it means to have a clear path. First, you must move to the closest space from which you can attack the opponent. (If this space is occupied or otherwise blocked, you can’t charge.) Second, if any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can’t charge. (Helpless creatures don’t stop a charge.)
>If you don’t have line of sight to the opponent at the start of your turn, you can’t charge that opponent.
>You can’t take a 5-foot step in the same round as a charge.
>If you are able to take only a standard action or a move action on your turn, you can still charge, but you are only allowed to move up to your speed (instead of up to double your speed). You can’t use this option unless you are restricted to taking only a standard action or move action on your turn.
Plus 3.0 Haste:
>On its turn, the subject may take an extra partial action, either before or after its regular action.
Partial charge is listed as a partial action, which is a charge that moves you your normal movement speed before attacking instead of a full charge.

This is also why Ride-By Attack works in 3.0 and not 3.5 RAW.

>>93172444
>Learn to read.
no, you - the conversation started here >>93171335

>>93173328
>"This conversation started here"
>its a reply post.
>a reply to my post, which was part of a conversation going in this thread before today.
That is not the beginning of the conversation.

This was the beginning of the conversation. >>93134239

This is why you shouldn't jump into conversations at the end if you don't know what people are talking about.

>>93173328
Do you also "read" a novel by starting with the final chapter?

New Topic:
>Railroad vs Player Agency
Do any of you guys actually prefer a TTRPG campaign where you're just an audience member doing what's expected of you?

>>93174396
I don't mind either so long as it's fun at the end of the day and I'm not railroaded into doing something I don't want to. Now that's bullshit.

>>93174396
>Do any of you guys actually prefer a TTRPG campaign where you're just an audience member doing what's expected of you?
I generally don't, I don't mind being kinda shunted into certain situations so long as they're interesting enough, but I've played in too many games in which my character was essentially made to do really stupid things or reasonable things I wanted to do were not allowed. I mean, the party gets in a situation in which we're obviously going to be ambushed in the middle of the night, even obvious from the perspective of the characters, so we arrange to sleep in shifts and have a watch of two people but nope they fall asleep in the middle of the night, not even via magic because the enemies we were fighting were a bunch of shitty thieves who had no magic users among them, just nope you fall asleep anyway. Shit like that is garbage.
When I've DM'd I have done things like, oh sorry, you all can't go this way, there are like 100 armored enemy soldiers patrolling and encamped between here and there, but if the party can figure out ways to get the enemies out of the way, then I'll let them go that way.

>>93174396
>Railroad vs Player Agency
I prefer neither. I like d&d best when the gm takes the time to build a setting and have events/story threads that can involve the player or resolve without them.
I hate it lazy dm go to either extreme of "This is MY STORY(and therefore I don't need to have branches for player choices)" or "players are the center of the universe(and therefore I don't need to think of any ideas because the players should do that for me)"

>>93174396
I can enjoy almost anything as long as it's well executed, much like >>93174517
I do agree with >>93174859 that the ideal is a well crafted setting with a world that existis and the PCs exist inside that world.

>>93174859
A setting where the players still decide what to do is still a game about player agency. Not prep vs no prep, but "prep a novel and force my players through it" vs "prep a setting and players choose what to do".

"I can't be bothered to prep and my fame is an ephemeral mush without object permanence" is a different axis entirely.

>>93175035
*game.

A lot of monsters will easily 1-turn kill a pc via sheer damage, at least in a full attack. Hydras and behirs off the top of my head are especially bad, and of course dragons. Theres a lot of claw+claw+bite+other stuff (rend, improved grab + grapple damage, extra claws, etc). A chimera (CR 7) for instance:
>Bite +12 melee (2d6+4) and bite +12 melee (1d8+4) and gore +12 melee (1d8+4) and 2 claws +10 melee (1d6+2)

>>93172245
>3.5's monsters are also designed around a different paradigm at that because they were set in place in a game where crit buffs stacked and full attacking on the go was doable from level 5 on and with 8k gold. Even the outsider buffs were made with that in mind when 3.5 removed all of that.
Interesting point They were expecting double spells and hasted full attacks with wide crit ranges. And then didn't really keep that going.

>>93175657
Why exactly were hasted spells so terrible again?

>>93175887
Stacking SoS/SoLs even faster. Getting to evne sometimes land big ones on more than one target in a round.

>>93175887
There are so, so many you lose get fucked combos you can pull off with two spells per round.

Really getting into the weeds with my homebrew here. Rewriting spells to function off of a different paradigm is a bitch.

>>93128570
I need exotic weapon suggestions for a Large size humanoid dragon. I'm leaning away from a double weapon, it feels like trying to use one of those with wings would be hazardous.

>>93176061
Talenta Sharrash. Super-scythe.

>>93174396
If the PCs have no agency, there's no reason to play. Oh, the GM's working on a novel and this is his latest draft? Email it and let someone else run a game.

>>93174396
Some campaigns like Curse of Strahd only really work if you play to the genre and respond pretty reactively to whatever hooks the DM gives. It can be nice to have that additional structure when it's rewarded with depth or with flexibility within the niche, but when it's just railroading because the DM really wants a particular set piece or can't respond to improv then it's stifling.

>>93176239
At the same time, the world exists, the plot and it's stakes exist, it's not going to stop because you want to switch gears and do other things. Pat yourselves on the back for your political revolution, but that liche is still summoning an army of skeletons.

>>93175035
>is a different axis entirely
I wonder if a DM alignment chart is kicking around somewhere using these two Axes instead of good/evil/law/achaos.

Anyone here an expert on the D20 midnight setting? Are there any fan sources that Stat out Izrador using Deities and Demigods/Faiths and Pantheons rules?

>>93176261
>At the same time, the world exists, the plot and it's stakes exist, it's not going to stop because you want to switch gears and do other things.
Good. That's the way a proper campaign works. Some players just get tired of saving things and would rather loot ruins, create monsters, or build empires. "Read the room" goes both ways.

>>93176050
Interesting. Didn't know anyone else was doing anything like that in this thread. I'm the guy bringing back longer 2e style prep times and switching some spells back to their 3.0 durations and the like, and considering making most of the resurrection options have a drawback beyond a raw gold cost, for my frontier hexcrawl sandbox project.

What are you doing for yours?

>>93176317
I haven't seen one, but I could make a template for it tonight if you think that would be fun.

>>93176239
I tend to agree but apparently some people aren't looking to make plans and execute them and decide what to do, they just want some vague justification for another minis combat; and others just want to some creativity to pick their lines in a predefined script. Was wondering if there were some anons here who just wanted some strung together excuses for the combat.

Sometimes people tell me its impossible to sell an adventure that's not a railroad and people just run published adventures. Thus far I haven't gotten a good answer when I start citing sandbox campaign books like the ones for Waterdeep or Ptolus as counter examples.

>>93176887
Something very very very different from that. Way back in the day, there used to be a homebrew called G6 that took E6 and reworked the classes to fit a 6th level format, complete with capstones, and PrCs that took off at 4th level. It was never finished because 4E came out, and I wasn't satisfied with how standardized the classes were and how underwhelming most of the encounter powers were, but the idea stuck with me because I thought it was great. I got pissed off at PF2E's shit ass hit rate about a week ago that never ever goes away, class design I'm not fond of, and misuse of a good concept in 3 actions while I was thinking about G6 at the same time and I was like 'fuck it, I'll try my hand at it' while thinking of concepts from 3.5 that would work naturally with the 3 action system while changing everything that was per-day except for spells and psionic powers exactly.

>>93176362
There's a guy who has been talking about Midnight the past few threads. If that wasn't you there's at least one dude familiar with it here.

File: 33557.jpg (52 KB, 400x358)

52 KB JPG

>>93177037
Interesting. Yeah. That's very different than my point-buy-exploration-sandbox-kitbashed-thing.

Though both E6 and what I'll be doing both have slowed progression, they're different in most other regards, in that I'll be having players start out somewhere between level 6 and 9 (undecided), and then they'll "level up" through downtime training, with a cap at 15.

That said, I am still interested in seeing what the people in this thread cook up. Share it when its done, talk about it while you're working on it, some 3.5 homebrew discussion would be great.

>>93177473
I have quite a bit done, about half of the feats, all of the equipment, and 80% of classes, it's just spellcasting that's going to be a complete bitch and a half to do a once over even with the limited scope of 1st to 3rd. Here's one of the PrCs, for instance.
https://pastebin.com/KR30kw1H

>>93178162
Not bad. Interesting looking chassis. I have done a fair bit, but I've barely touched classes (I'm just about done Ranger), and for spells, I'm... at C. Besides the +4 stat spells, haste, and the polymorphs, I don't recall what changed from 3.0 to 3.5, so I can't just look at the ones that changed, and I'm going through all of them side by side.

But a good chunk of my project was compiling from many disparate sources with only key sections needing a real rewrite.

I've jumped around a lot as my brain has jumped around, so I have many sections started but not that many finished yet, aside from the ones where 'done' meant at 'extract the section pages from the relevant pdf and put in folder'. I have a lot of those selected and finished, or extracted and all I new to do is choose one version out of a couple options.

Recently put all the parts in a spreadsheet so I can track them better and start checking them off.

But I definitely underestimated the size of the project.

I may put off doing most of the classes for now (other than Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, which I need to do because they're getting more of an overhaul), and instead help my players build something based on the Eclipse builds of relevant classes, just because that looks like it will be a time consuming job an I'm getting anxious to get the campaign I want to run with this homebrew started. But, since I'll be building the classes based off of Eclipse point buy rules, and starting by combining the items in his 3.0 / 3.5 / PF1 builds of the classes into a point buy class feature buffet (with some features having a minimum character level to take), I think I can probably make some general purpose guidelines that reference Eclipse and his builds to fudge that part in the meanwhile.

>>93178162
That's a fun looking mini-PrC. And I can see how 3-level PrCs would be easier to design.

What exactly is your goal for this 1-3 magic overhaul? Is there some other version of magic that would be a closer fit to your goal that you could start from?

>>93177037
>I got pissed off at PF2E's shit ass hit rate about a week ago that never ever goes away
It's funny that M&M, theoretically, has the same problem. Since all of its attacks and defenses are by default PL based. But due to sheer breadth of powers and ways of working around defenses it's not a problem. While PF2 painstakingly removed most of the options to circumvent or sunder enemy defenses.

>>93178407
>M&M
Last time I played M&M3 everyone started taking an accurate wimpy attack, medium medium attack, and a whiffy heavy attack, to choose from depending on what we were fighting. I really did not care for its gameplay, and found it a slog.

A couple of us made DoT effects and one guy built a rigger to get better action economy. I forget what his build was.
M&M, I had more fun building characters than playing it. Gave my M&M book to the guy in the group who actually liked it, to run it with his other friends.

>>93178405
>What exactly is your goal for this 1-3 magic overhaul?
Spell points + new systems that hook into 3 actions + new augmenting mechanics. Spellcasters have to pay for their power like psions rather than getting it for free for leveling up. Took inspiration from the kineticists' Gather Power mechanic from PF and applied it to the 3 action system. Magic casters get their own variant of psionic focus that they can pump 1 to 5 actions into, but like psi focus you have to roll Concentration for it and the DC gets harder the higher the action cost goes, but at the same time you can't hold magical focus indefinitely.. Magical focus can be burned to cover for spell points and metamagic cost increases, with each point above 1 counting for a spell point, or spell-specific augments. Spells generally take 2 actions, so unless you specialize in it with a PrC spamming focus will eat away at your

For instance, I did work on basic spells and cantrips today. Ray of Frost costs 1 spell point and has 3 different augmentation options because it's a cantrip and all of them get similar options. Augment X, increases the damage of the spell by 2 for each point spent and increases the DC of the special effect from the focus augment by 1 for every 2 points. Action Augment 1, which refunds the first spell point spent and half of any spell points spent in exchange for jumping the action cost of the spell to 3(ie: a full turn). And Focus Augment 1, which requires you burning magical focus with at least 1 rank of focus on activating this specifically, which increases the range to Medium and adds a Fort save or be entangled for 1 round effect to whatever it hits.

>>93178483
Have you looked at the "vancian to psionic" fan conversion document? It may get you half way there.

>>93176078
A superior suggestion, thank you.

>>93177021
>I tend to agree but apparently some people aren't looking to make plans and execute them and decide what to do, they just want some vague justification for another minis combat; and others just want to some creativity to pick their lines in a predefined script. Was wondering if there were some anons here who just wanted some strung together excuses for the combat.
It just takes one player to get the ball rolling. I think these types have to see how it works before they're willing to even consider the possibilities, much less act. Giving the group a starting task with multiple means of solution is one way, but I like to give a variety of starting tasks and let the players argue over it to better see what motivates them for future sessions.
Also, I don't run heroic save-the-world bullshit unless the whole group specifically asks for it, so it might come down to DMs unwilling to do that.

>>93138972
>>93139030
Don't mongoose's book default to core D&D(AKA greyhawk)?
The "Master" pc class is dragonlance specific, so there'd be no overlap unless you create an interdimensional kidnapping and elf-trafficing ring(starting with finding which of Oerth's infinite parallel realitied is the mongoose modified one[not being facetious, this is canonically how oerth's relationship with 3rd party material works])
You'd need an entire campaign just to get one of those swords.

>>93174059
>>93174230
The point about monsters HP (and your complete ineptitude in understanding how they work) started there, retard-kun.
Now please go and learn to play so you don't think high level HP are bloated in a game often maligned as being rocket tag.
You utter, drooling cretin.

>>93176078
>>93178880
It has been errata'ed, did you know that?

>>93180378
nta but you are really obnoxious, anon. You also don't know what you re talking about which makes it even worse. High level HP is bloated, and builds in their basic form developed to deal with the fact that the game is a huge slugfest unless you use one of the optimal ways to build a character. An unoptimised fighter/paladin/ranger will hit like a wet noodle. I know because i have played them focusing on a more thematic approach and it was miserable. Power attack is so necessary to deal damage that you need a 2 handed weapon almost and a million other bullshit.
The game can solve the HP bloat, but it does in the single worst way possible and is the source of frustration of almost everyone who dislikes 3.5.
The main bloat point of 3.5 are the accursed modifiers that got changed from Adnd and suddenly you got the fighter with 120 hp and the wizard with 90 by level 12 or something because the second can afford the larger con score.
Never made any sense and it's the trashiest part of game design 3e has, and not because the stat increments of 2 cant work, but because they kept everything else the same from Adnd and changed this and it completely unbalanced the hell out of things to the point where 5e had to cap your stats because they couldnt be bothered to fix this problem.
Of course this had even greater effects on larger monsters with tons of con, making them more bloated than ever

>>93180358
>Oerth's infinite parallel realities
So I need to destroy 2 artifacts and have a Gate spell ready to start, and I'll need to do this multiple times in a row?

>>93180524
>An unoptimised fighter/paladin/ranger will hit like a wet noodle.
No they will not. This is OSRfag delusion.
The fact that above instand death was suggested at 25 HP or greater than Con suggests that you literally fucking insane or you play with a level of incompetence that is unparalleled.
And we discussed all of this while ignoring all the SoD effects.
You are crazy. You are literally crazy.

>>93180551
I aint the anon advocating for the death saves at 25 hp
And it really isn't osr delusion though. If you have any melee character without power attack he will deal what? 15 damage on average or something at levels 12. Not including DR and other stuff that will start popping up at that level. How is this ever acceptable?
And no, the get this build every time is the most tiresome trash ever.
Every fighter or barbarian or paladin i have seen does the same feats every game, all rangers just go the same vanilla archer build because 2 weapon fighting and generally dex fighters suck.
It might as well be hardcoded into your class.

>>93180538
A well of many worlds isn't an artifact anon. You could pull this shit off at level 1 with a source of wishes(candle of invocation, bound noble genie, ring of 3, lucky blade , etc) and knowledge of the world serpent inn.
There is however, no way to do this without metagaming. There's no real explination for why your character knows a theoretical +7 masterwork was possible or that they needed to kidnap a specific elf, before they turn 110(aka. Gain their first class level), and bring him to get trained by a specific smith in another universe for this never-before seen sword to be made.

>>93180629
or you could simply allow for masters as an npc class in your setting/world even if you use a published setting like forgotten realms and be done with it.
It's not like a cheap +5 to hit weapon is gonna break the game if you play high power with all the monstrosities of 3.5

>>93178877
Yep, I've had that saved for years. Definitely a lot of overlap because we're coming from similar fundamental places, but since it's 1-6 and not 1-20 and a different action economy I've got to work most of it out myself.

>>93180627
But that simply not happen. There will always be buffs, weapons, temporary conditions that all add up and with the whole party nuking the monsters will disappear.
And this before any splat.

>>93180725
It absolutely does happen. I've seen it. Whether it's weapons rolling the wrong type, or the spellcaster being single-minded on spells other than buffs, or someone building something that just doesn't work, or a tactical failure. Not every party turns into a well-oiled machine because not every player works on the same wavelength and it's very easy to have a fuckup PC if you don't know how to build them.

>>93180725
This has happened in pretty much every 3.5 long form game i have ever played. It is the nature of the system to punish new players or ones who hate optimisations or even huge class power disparities.
Irl isn't the internet. Most people don't know and dont care about the optimal way to play dnd.
They just wanna play something they think is cool and in 3.5 this ends up in a disaster always.
Expecting to have system mastery and years spent to learn the ins and outs to build the same optimised characters every time from that point onwards is the most sad gaming experience i can ever conceive and the reason most dm's around here have either their small homebrew fixes or extensive fixes, because the game has potential but it takes finessing to wrangle it out.
Or you can all simply like builds and powergaming and striving for optimisations and have the time of your life.

>>93180750
>Not every party turns into a well-oiled machine
That's my experience as well.
I think most parties fluctuate between 60 to 80 percent of their ultimate potential nowdays where the optmization game is mostly a solved quantity.
My Cleric doesn't go around destroying every encounter even though I could were I to simply follow the traditional wisdom, mostly because that wouldn't be fun, because the rest of the party doesn't play at that level, and because that opens the opportunity to sacrifice some power potential to simply do other things that I think are cool even if not optimal.
I spent 7 fucking turn attempts to persist Dragon Breath.
Was it better than persisting Elation that day?
No, but it was a cool scene when my character doubled up with the dragonborn, and it ended up actually working out okay when a zombie spit out a bunch of swarms that were weak to fire.
Of course, some options are powerful, obvious, and common, like Power Attack, but even then, without buffing the character's AB, but still.

>>93180824
>dragonborn
Half-dragon actually.

>>93180815
>>93180824
I maintain games should not be designed to cater retards but more importantly, 3e is a game in which you can do something OP even by accident, like a x4 critical or a SoD.
>My Cleric doesn't go around destroying every encounter
Nor my players Clerics do. I would argue that YOU sound like the power gamer in a way, because on my side is perfectly acceptable to kill the monster in 3-4 rounds with outliers of 1-2 or 10.
To do that, the current HP paradigm is just fine.

I again smell OSRfag.

>>93180900
>elements of game design sucks
>game design that doesn't suck caters to retards
you sound like the most stupid motherfucker possible

you know it's ok to admit you have fun playing something that isn't always great and because something works for you and your group doesn't mean that it works period.

>>93180900
>I would argue that YOU sound like the power gamer in a way
In the sense that I know the system enough to break it I guess.

>ecause on my side is perfectly acceptable to kill the monster in 3-4 rounds with outliers of 1-2 or 10.
That's how I like it. Having a battle against anything that's supposed to be an actual threat last 1 or two rounds is anticlimatic as fuck. I can only imagine what the DM feels when that kind of thing happens.

>OSRfag
The funny part is that I ever only played 3.5e and 5e.

>>93180949
>you sound like the most stupid motherfucker possible
But for me the HP works, I make the system work with no struggle.
You are sperging about le bloat while considering simple buff and normal equip something esoteric.
Maybe, just maybe you are the fucking retard anon.

Because again - 3e is often accused of being rocket tag. There are 100 things I can list as wrong about the edition but HP bloat cannot be one of them. It's literal insanity to think so.

>>93180996
>In the sense that I know the system enough to break it I guess.
lmao
>That's how I like it. Having a battle against anything that's supposed to be an actual threat last 1 or two rounds is anticlimatic as fuck
... therefore that's no bloat. Right?

>>93181009
Oh, I wasn't actually chiming into the bloat conversation, I suppose I should have made that clear.
I was just commenting on anon's claim with my own anecdotal experience.

>>93181009
there is both hp bloat and situational damage bloat. in certain cases this does even out, in others it doesn't.
Buffs are not something you ll always play with. You can very easily not have a buffer in your party and after the first 5 levels potion and the like buffs are atrocious. How is that +2 sword gonna solve the aforementioned problem?

>>93180716
Yeah, I think changing the action economy is going to be the most time-consuming part. Best of luck, anon.

>>93181392
Honestly, that's the easiest part of it and works fine with a hard rule. Standards are 2. Full round action spells are 3. 1 rounds are 4, so you still need to spend a round winding up unless you've got something to reduce casting time or an extra action like from Haste.

>>93128928
Agreed, though it's abilities give it about the same measure of power and utility as a 5e 'caster. Switching them to their skill set and save DC's is all you'd need to change to make it playable in the contemporary system, and you could keep the CL scaling rather than spell-slot scaling.

>>93181022
I also wasn't talking about bloat. (The anon he's been screeching at you about this morning), and whose post he claims his reply to is the "beginning" of the discussion. I was talking about "if you want an OSR feeling paranoid dungeon crawl, these parts of 3e are not going to give you that". And then he keeps moving the goalposts to talk about PC DPR, when if he wants to refute me, he should be showing statistics about how what % of MM1 monsters can down a well built PC in 1 hit, 1 round, or 2 rounds, by level, what their odds of doing so are, (without relying on dragons which we all know are under-CR-ed deliberately), not making irrelevant tangents about player DPR to argue with other people about.

Because while there are *some* examples, they're not as ubiquitous as he claims. If they were, 3e players would be more paranoid and less gung-ho to jump into combat. Combat would be a thing to avoid unless you're confident in winning without any party deaths.

>>93181619
And any other reasons he could back up of why "OSR dungeon crawls have no more player deaths for players to be paranoid about than 3e dungeon crawls".
But his central tenet seems to hinge on an unsupportable central claim, which I think is why he keeps trying to get me to argue about player DPR and how long it takes to down monsters instead.

>>93180629
>no way to do this without metagaming
Sure there is, I can think of 2 right now that don't require DM fiat.
Be a cleric of a crafting god and get a vision quest from said god to ensure the greatest smith to ever live is born.
Have a BBEG with DR/epic and a prophecized sword needed to slay them(I believe DR/epic only specifies an enhancement over +5 is required, not that said enhancement is magical).

In both cases, a deity with a crafting portfolio would be smacking the knowledge into someone's head, but that's RAW for portfolio sense.

>>93157601
>The easiest fix is to mage any DR/Magic require an enhancement bonus equal to [monster CR/4, round up]
DR is, alongside rare (RARE) "immune to spell this level and below", one of the things 3.0 did better than 3.5.

>>93180698
A +7 mundane bonus to attack rolls permits normally target-limited levels of accuracy with a full stock of efficient damage, possibly far earlier than intended. It's not severe enough to outright break the game, but it IS a significant DPR boost over officially-combinable material.

You can get similar out of highly specialized buffers amplifying Greater Magic Weapon, but that generally translates to a lot of other horrible things and has to be continually reapplied instead of innate to the item.

>>93140264
I could be wrong, but I'm seeing only where getting Spawned as one cuts your levels. Maybe if you get Animated as one?

Alternatively, Libris Mortis Savage progression? The template I was looking at was in Savage Species.

>>93181924
Funnily enough, many monsters never got converted and the conversion docs are explicitely optional rules while backwards compatibility is core.
That means there are several monsters with 3.0 stats, and most of them are stupidly high level(classic examples:the demilich still has Magic Immunity: "FUCK YOU" rather than spell immunity and stats for the archdevils give them +7 and up DR in the 40's-60's range)

>>93140264
Dragon Magazine #300, page 76:
https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/DragonMagazine300/page/n57/mode/2up

>>93181619
>>93181691
Are you talking with yourself?
3e players can be paranoid if you don't play monsters like retards and don't pull your punches.

>>93182036
>3e players can be paranoid if you don't play monsters like retards and don't pull your punches.
That assumes the players are exclusively playing like retards or exclusively play classes near the bottom of the class-tier totem poll.
You can have monsters making Xanatos gambits and throw every punch you have as a DM, but still struggle to properly challenge experienced players using casters properly. A party with a wizard, a cleric, and a druid can stomp waaaay above their weightclass even restricted to core only.

>>93182005
haha, the 3.0 demilich.
What a peculiar fellow.

It has an old-style list of "fuck you" immunities almost as a puzzle monster.
But is NOT a puzzle monster. Oh, no.

>>93182111
No, but I am not going to engage in an old diatribe.
If this is your Dunning-Kruger position, just go and play other editions with this assumption.
I will enjoy 3e, thank you very much.

>>93182149
>Dunning-Kruger position
I always love how it's always the people who bring this up that never see the irony.

>>93182414
Irony is bragging to know a game better than others while admitting of being unable to make it work.

>>93182471
>The game is perfect and has no flaws
>especially not massive glaring balance issues inherent to core
You heard it here folk. We've found the perfectly balanced game! Perfect game balance isn't an impossible and inherently destuctive concept after all!

>>93182137
The demilich really feels like it was designed to remind parties that get a little too arrogant that they aren't the top of the food chain.
I keep tomb of horrors in reserve for whenever I get That kind of munchkin player.

>>93182663
Eh. They're not immune to some of the most annoying combinations you can throw at it even through 3.0 magic immunity, so I'd be more worried about its helping hands and its ability to kill everyone before they can take a turn.

>>93182631
Idiotic strawman but you can also make a thread about the version of the game you prefer.
Because you clearly don't know about this one if you think HPs are bloated.

>>93182036
I meant to put a <cont'd> after the tag and forgot to do so.

So not talking to myself, expanding on that post.

>>93182149
I'm not looking to run a survival dungeon crawl at all, actually. I'm not that into dungeons. I'm pretty happy with using 3e for a less lethal fantasy RPG. But if and when that's what I want, I'll either grab AD&D or GURPS, or houserule 3e accordingly.

>>93182767
Case in point, AMF or anti-magic cone + grapple into a pin into stopping their verbal components. You COULD build a demilich to counter it, but the sample one is utterly fucked the moment it happens.

>>93182794
>reeeeeeee players in 3e are just as threatened as in OSR editions and 3e is perfect for people who want an OSR dungeon crawl how dare you suggest otherwise!!!
No it isn't, and we will correct you every time you try to claim here that gives a similar experience. If you want that level of threat and resource depletion, you need a different system or houserules. Screeching otherwise has convinced nobody. Eat a dick.

>>93182897
>>93182957
You are the only one screeching here, incompetent retard-kun.
Now please give up, adults are talking about monsters.

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>>93182967
Still going to correct you every time you spout your disingenuous bullshit in this thread, no matter how mad you get when people don't pretend you're not lying or retarded. Deal with it.

>>93183090
The only person spouting bullshit making retarded assumptions about the system is you anon.
Learn to play and stop spreading misinformation, for one.

>>93183167
Says the guy arguing with half a dozen people over three days.
>inb4 schizophrenic samefag accusations.

>>93183167
Unoptimized players don't run around with buff stacks. They just don't. They might have 1 hour/lvl duration spells on.

>>93183226
>Unoptimized players don't run around with buff stacks
You don't need buff "stacks", just a few decent ones. Basic gameplay unless you play with utter retards, which is, I start to think, must be the case.

>>93183260
>just a few decent ones
You're already above an unoptimized group. You literally don't know what they look like.

>>93183226
>Unoptimized players don't run around with buff stacks
Today I learned only optimization focused players know how persistant spell works.
Also, doesn't this prove this anon's point:>>93182111
The fact the tune changed from "A DM that doesn't pullhis punches can handle anything" to "optimized players don't count" shows back-tracking.

>>93183226
That's arguing too far to the other side.
A player chooses to play a Cleric or a Bard, it's logical that they'll use a couple of buffs, even if not optimizing their load out of spells to be the most efficient and effective for any given situation.
I think it's pretty safe to say that we can assume that an average party will use at least a couple of buffs.
Granted, there are groups where the only caster will be, say, a sorcerer only with blasting spells, but I don't feel (yes, subjective) that that's the average party.
I might be biased because I'm usually the one providing some of the buffs, but still.

>>93183452
The trouble is that you need to be optimized to actually USE Persistant Spell for anything important given that +6 adjustment. Even if it's entirely incidental.

>>93183489
>I don't feel (yes, subjective) that that's the average party.
Not that subjective. The people still playing 3e in this day and age are likely to have high system mastery.