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Today I am running Pathfinder for the 1st time in a few months. Anyway I have a 13 page book of errata and some feats converted from 3.5 and ideas borrowed from other d20 systems most Star Wars Saga, a few from 4th ed and some from D&DN play test.
It is a work in progress at the moment but it is turning into a rewrite of various things. overall I am looking at toning down PCs in terms of offensive options due to the way the game tends to collapse at around level 10 or so due to various problems. I am kind of aiming for a 2nd ed style game in some ways using d20 mechanics and the fun parts of 3.5/PF.
Some of the ideas I am currently experimenting with.
1. Magic items requiring exotic materials to build a'la 2nd ed. Eliminating wands of CLW. Wealth by level is also going out the window.
2. Power attack and Rapid shot being changed. These feats have been being abused by power gamers since at least 2001. I was on the WoTC boards when the early builds were being put together. Charge builds, archer builds, cleric build etc. Not much has really changed.
3. Limiting ability score. We are using a hard cap of 25, considering going down to 20.
4. Saving throws increasing or a fixed cap of DC 20. Currently going with the 1st option, in effect everyone has monk saving throws almost. A level 20 fighter for example has 12/10/10 base saves while a wizard has 10/10/12. Saves no longer stack from multi classing.
5. Critical hits being toned down. Crits now deal maximum damage, X3/X4. weapons do an extra dice of damage on a crit in addition to max damage.
6. Most classes get 4-8 skills per level. Background and not class determines skills.
7. Races are home brewed but have a choice of floating stats. Elves for example get +2 dex, and +2 int or wis and -2 con.
8. Weapon finesse is now a property of light weapons. Weapon finesse is now precision based dex to damage.
More or less it atm. Working on how to dial the spell casters down. Spell DCs and the spell lists are prime targets atm.
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It depends on who I am playing with. As a DM I always give my players equal input. After all we are all playing this game together and their fun is equally important as mine. But once we decide on a rule I enforce it and any rules changes are made outside of actual playtime.
One of the rules that almost everyone I have played with likes once they try it is the removal of alignment.
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overall I am looking at toning down PCs in terms of offensive options due to the way the game tends to collapse at around level 10 or so due to various problems. I am kind of aiming for a 2nd ed style game in some ways using d20 mechanics and the fun parts of 3.5/PF.
Have you checked with your players yet?
Before investing yourself into a lot of changes, you should find out if your players want them. If they're not on board, you'll spend your entire campaign saying "no" to all of their ideas, and generally making everyone unhappy. This is especially true for the kinds of changes you're proposing, since all but #8 just weaken PCs.
Dot.
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Yup. Writing a simple (as in quick-as-possible-to-play) rules for my next 'sacred 4' game (only the 4 basic classes, easier access to prestige classes [also expanded selection]).
As for OP's rules, here is how I think...
1. Magic items requiring exotic materials to build a'la 2nd ed. Eliminating wands of CLW. Wealth by level is also going out the window.
Try 'power components' from dragon magazine. They provide rules for exotic materials for specific items. They only cover the most common ones, but it gives guidelines for others.
If you throw out WBL, what are you replacing it with? Ad-hoc?
2. Power attack and Rapid shot being changed. These feats have been being abused by power gamers since at least 2001. I was on the WoTC boards when the early builds were being put together. Charge builds, archer builds, cleric build etc. Not much has really changed.
Changed how? I'm adding an improved version of piranha strike to my house rules (usable with any finesse weapon rather than just light weapons) to bring finesse builds up to par. I'm not sure how amazing power attack and rapid shot are in relation to full casters?
3. Limiting ability score. We are using a hard cap of 25, considering going down to 20.
I'm considering a hard cap of 18 + racial modifier. This causes issue with balance. Are you changing how you factor APL? Or are you throwing out CR as you do WBL (those go hand in hand for some people)?
4. Saving throws increasing or a fixed cap of DC 20. Currently going with the 1st option, in effect everyone has monk saving throws almost. A level 20 fighter for example has 12/10/10 base saves while a wizard has 10/10/12. Saves no longer stack from multi classing.
I can't agree with saves not stacking from multiclassing. Not allowing that +2 bonus for good saves that is part of good save stacking makes sense (and is something I do in my game as well as the other DM in my circle does as well; we also do fractional accounting for BAB and saves, though), but not stacking at all is too punitive IMHO.
5. Critical hits being toned down. Crits now deal maximum damage, X3/X4. weapons do an extra dice of damage on a crit in addition to max damage.
This depends on how you change power attack... High crit builds don't necessarily come out ahead of high damage builds.
6. Most classes get 4-8 skills per level. Background and not class determines skills.
Skill ranks per level is a part of the games inherent balance. You are weakening rogues and bards and stepping on their toes. Wizards get more power. If you want background to come into skills, why not just use traits which already do so?
7. Races are home brewed but have a choice of floating stats. Elves for example get +2 dex, and +2 int or wis and -2 con.
Floating stats are nice. I like that they did that in 4E and have considered the same for my games. Floating stats get rid of the 'duh' options for certain classes.
8. Weapon finesse is now a property of light weapons. Weapon finesse is now precision based dex to damage.
Not sure how I feel about this, it is hard to judge adjusting feat taxes without going into lots of theoretical builds or years of testing... finesses damage as precision damage makes sense from a stimulationist perspective, not sure about from a balance perspective.
This should really be in Houserule/homebrew.
The hard cap on ability scores will suck for barbarians. An 11th level barbarian will have a +6 to strength. If he uses enlarge person and a +4 strength belt, thats +10 overall. Once he gets a +6 strength belt, that goes to +12. And thats without putting either of his level based ability score improvements into strength. Depending on how high level the game goes, he may want to start with a strength of 14 or he will hit the hard cap.
I would suggest morale bonuses should be able to get around the cap.
As for items, remember OP is throwing out WBL. I doubt there will be +6 STR belts laying around.
overall I am looking at toning down PCs in terms of offensive options due to the way the game tends to collapse at around level 10 or so due to various problems. I am kind of aiming for a 2nd ed style game in some ways using d20 mechanics and the fun parts of 3.5/PF.Have you checked with your players yet?
Before investing yourself into a lot of changes, you should find out if your players want them. If they're not on board, you'll spend your entire campaign saying "no" to all of their ideas, and generally making everyone unhappy. This is especially true for the kinds of changes you're proposing, since all but #8 just weaken PCs.
They are fine with it as they want to play higher level games and not have me the DM "say OK guys back to level 1" because the game is more work than fun around level 7-12.
WBL is being replaced with Ad hoc. Defensive items will be more common.
+6 stat buff items will most likely go out the window except maybe the strength ones so back to pre 3rd ed for these.
Zardnaar, you sound grim tonight. Check with your players. Perhaps at a first session where characters are finalized. I don't strictly oppose any of your ideas, but please make sure these are good for the table and not just you. Talk it out.
We have been talking it out. The playrs know they can roll anything that is similar tier and they are getting sick of rocket tag encounters or easy boring encounters.
Yeah I re-wrote 3.5 with some pathfinder influences, coupled on to house rules, which I cycle through (so this time, no crit chart of doom).
Re-wrote a rather unknown game called lace and steel (Australian, very good 1 on 1 combat, far better than pf). Turned it from a card based duelling game to an opposed die game. Quite good in testing so far.
Yup. Writing a simple (as in quick-as-possible-to-play) rules for my next 'sacred 4' game (only the 4 basic classes, easier access to prestige classes [also expanded selection]).
Colour me interested!
They are fine with it as they want to play higher level games and not have me the DM "say OK guys back to level 1" because the game is more work than fun around level 7-12.
I'm thinking that doing a rewrite of an entire game system + adding 4 or more gamesystems worth of homebrew rules is more work than running encounters for a 7-12th level party... (which isn't hard IHMO, pregen NPCs are widely available, and monsters for the most part aren't that complex, BBEG still require effort, but its worth it).
You are going to have to do a full rewrite of monster entries, due to the adjustments in PC saving throws, as most of the abilities will become quicky worthless if they can save more often than not. You will also have to lower the HP of the monsters, or lower their damage potential to deal with the diminished ability of PCs to deal damage. You will also have to lower the monsters saving throws, to deal with the lower DCs the party will be dishing out. Or you will have to throw out he CR vs APL rules, as the party will have diminished ability deal with some monsters.
I'm not telling you how to run things, but it might be a good idea to run a game with 15 point builds or standard array, wbl enforced, core assumption only (core+APG+ultimates). The reason why I'm saying this is you admitted that you hadn't run PF before, and the system really isn't broken as long as you have reasonable limits. Also auditing characters is a good idea, as most "broken" builds made with the core assumption tend to be built with flawed reading of the rules, and the ones that are legit (imho aren't broken, but to each their own) can be vetoed.
Alternatively you could just run 2nd ed and modify the numbers to get rid of thac0 (not hard). Its pretty obviously you like the power balance of 2nd ed AD&D better, just run that?
The thing I've found about D&D groups is they aren't always stable, and running a big pile of homerules can make it impossible to get players. For instance in my LGS there are 3.x 4ed, old school (1st or 2nd) and pathfinder groups organized using the cork-board. The pure system games have no problems finding players, but the guy who is running a hybrid game had 1 session with 3 players, and promptly lost 2 of them, and hasn't found a replacement yet. His flyer has been up for 6 months or longer with no takers.
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My houserules are enough to do Pathfinder v2.0.
I find that if you make it to where players are getting more options and getting buffed then you tend to get more players.
Most of mine buff Martial Characters by a lot while it only slightly buffing casters.
I am buffing martial types in various ways but not so much in offensive options. Fighters get 4 skills per level, there is a Rogue talent where once per round the attacker can roll twice and take the worst result.
I'm not to worried about DCs if PCs saves increase for example. 2nd ed at higher levels you really only flunked saves 5-15% of the time and it was not a big deal IMHO. At level 20 saves are only going to be four higher than normal- 10 vs 6 in a bad save the big kicker will be PCs who have multi-classed a lot will not have their saves stacking. In testing yesterday crits for example still hurt a lot and a few were rolled as you no longer need to confirm them. 19/20 threat range if it hits is an auto crit now. Max damage is less swingy than X2 and X3 damage. Power atack resembles 3.0 PA although it is a litttle better, Rapid shot gve you an extra dice of damage rather than an extra attack.
iI want to get encounter design back towards a larger number of lower level threats being a decent encounter instead of fodder. If the PCs are level 8 a CR 8 encounter hopefully will last more than a round or two. With no wands of CLW I'll add in some extra potions of healing and items that can cast CLW once per day. I'm not opposed to magical healing at all just the cheapness and efficiency of a CLW wand. Also the PCs may be over equipped according to WBL rules but hopefully they wil have a wider variety of items to chose from and things like Rings of Freedom of Movement can be handed out as treasure at lower levels since RAW it is a 40k magic item. If I want to give them a +5 sword or a holy avenger at level 8 then I can do so. I would rather have the PCs have something like that than a Keen Falchion critical hit Paladin build or some other cheesy + uber damage build.
Vigor & Wounds can actually reduce the amount of Healing the PCs need if they are smart.
Damage builds and cheesey is what I'm having a hard time with. That and keen weapons being more cheesey than a holy avenger.
Freedom of movement rings makes a very large amount of effects and monsters worthless and a non challenge. They should be reserved for late game for a reason.
CLW wands are not the big problem that people make them out to be, they are post combat healing to extend the adventuring day. The alternative is to have a dedicated heal slave cleric, retreat and rest (15 minute adventuring day), or to risk TPK due to trying encounters with severe HP loss and resource depletion. Potions are for emergency in combat healing, not for dedicated post combat healing. 1CLW per day items are also known as vendor trash loot. CLW is supremely underwhelming post lvl 3. Are you just trying to replicate BG2 where you use the stacks of CLW potions to keep going?
As for balancing solos, good luck. The problem with those fights aren't HP pool or any such individual fixable thing. It has to do with action economy. Solos can do the normal 1 standard, move, and swift per round, while a 4 man party does x4 that. You need the added mooks/minions to occupy the party/block movement lanes to limit PCs ability to action the brute/leader down. The best way to make solos workable is to use the 4ed rules on solos(IIRC they get double actions per round, correct me if I'm wrong), and give them max HP for HD. Even then they better have good saves (or they get save or suck/die to death).
Like I said earlier, it sounds like you should just be playing 2ed rather than retrofit PF with 2nd ed style play.
I'm glad your players are on board! To me, any rewrites are OK if everyone at the table enjoys them.
Also, I'm glad you clarified that when you said "WBL is out the window" you mean that you're giving more rather than less treasure. Since most of your other changes were in the downward direction, I thought assumed you meant to lower treasure as well.
Best of luck!
They will probably be over equipped if anything but they will not have specialized equipment. A ring of freedom of movement for example was a reasonably common item in pre 3rd ed.
The changes to magic items rules form 2nd to 3rd ed contributed towards CoDzilla in 3rd ed. Basic defensive items like the ring were overpriced and made fighters very vulnerable to things like hold person and CLW wands freed up cleric spells to be used offensively and CLW wands also wreck the assumption about a CR challenge of equivalent level using up 25% of the parties resources so 3-5 fights a day would be average.
Even a change from a fixed DC in effect of 20 in 2nd ed with +4 or so at level 1 to unlimited DC, crap saves, unlimited spell DCs, contributed to it. They removed most of the restrictions spell casters had in 2nd ed, let them advance at the same rate as everyone else, adding level 8 and 9 divine spells, and then finally buffed the spell casters as well.
Things like keen, power attack, rapid shot, spell DCs, individual spells, WBL, magic item creation rules, none of them are really broken by themselves (except maybe some spells) but put together they add up to the game not really working at higher levels. Offensive abilities scale to fast in relation to the CR system which has always been wonky at best.
Not sure where someone got the idea I have not played PF earlier, I have been doing it since the alpha play test and played 3rd ed since 2000. My account on the WoTC site has been there since 2001 and I was on the min/max boards when the basic power build was a charging Paladin dealing around 200 damage.
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I convert the adventure paths back to 1st edition each month...I drop what will not work and since I don't have the beastiaries, I either ask my players what this critter best resembles or drop in something challenging.
I have not had complaints from my players so I must be doing something right! Plus, we have fun!
Today I am running Pathfinder for the 1st time...
Also the min max board were often thought experiments. Or for high power campaigns. I'm kind of surprised that the paladin build even back then was considered to be a power build. I'm sure it hardly if ever got used due to how crappy palis are without their horse in 3.0.
As for 8 and 9 level cleric spells...
Did it really change what they could do in terms of spells? or did it just give them more separation than a 7 level progression could provide? Oh no, they actually got some non restoration/protection spells in there. Well blasting still sucks, and buffs usually help the party or claw back some of the BAB bleed that occurs over time with a 3/4 BAB char.
CLW wands free up the cleric to be something other than a heal slave or gm controlled heal bot. Nothing quite as fun as joining a campaign and being stuck as a heal dispenser because other players already picked their characters.
In PF I've not had the problems you are talking about in terms of damage vs CR, or perhaps I'm having them, but I see it more of a works as intended than you do. My 8th level characters in AP play are occasionally breaking 100 damage, with a pali breaking 200 the other day. Is this a problem? No, the things they were facing had well over 100hp, tremendous ability to kill the PCs (one encounter could have 2 round TPK if more people failed their will saves). At the end of another AP (party was level 14, bbeg was stated as a lvl 17) the boss got a nearly 200 point crit off an AoO nearly dropping the PC, at least one other PC (the party tank) had been dropped to single digits with 2 attacks... If the party hadn't been able to deal 300 damage in one round it would have been a 3 round TPK.
Where I see more imbalance is certain classes being able to front load their builds, like a power attack barbarian at first level doing 2d6+12 damage out of the gate, or how strong low-mid level summoners or archers can be. People who don't play these kind of characters can be overshadowed quite easily. Like the guy in our PFS group who keeps playing a 16 strength sword and board pali who only manages 1d8+3+x (where x depends on what he is fighting of course). Sure palis are damage machines, but he is built for defense, and moves slower than the barbarians or pets, so rarely got to tank or damage things at low levels. But by the time he got to 9th level, he was downright scary and the barbarians/pet classes were forced to play more tactical because of their ability to deal damage wasn't enough to 1 round things anymore, and they were getting hit too hard back.
One thing I don't get though is you keep bringing up CoDzilla. It is not present in pathfinder. Sure you can make a decent battle cleric or druid, but the nerfs to spells makes stat dumping not work for druids, and clerics don't have divine metamagic anymore, nor do they have the other splat powered options they used to have. They are both tier 1 characters (full casters and all), but they are not the unstoppable campaign wrecking machines they were in 3.x.
Spells are still always better as a general rule though.
The adventure paths IMHO kind of disguise some of the problems in the game. Someone else has done all the work for you. For the most part it is still fun. Druid animal companions last I looked were still nasty;). Clerics are not as bad but they still make good healers due to channel energy. Wand of CLW make encounters very hard to design though as even the tough ones if the PCs survive a few rounds later out comes old faithful and back up to full hps.
CLW wands usually aren't usually used in combat. As for wanting the PCs to be badly hurt after combat, why? If the party is beyond their heal limit they will retreat and rest. Or they will have a cleric heal slave, which is about as fun for many people to play as getting audited by the IRS in the middle of a dentist appointment. Or if there is time pressure they will be forced to press on and that just begs for a TPK (back when I played battle-tech you could have a full lance get through a firefight or two with no losses, but go one more and you were risking a wipe due to previously lost armor/heat-sinks/ammo, often the entire lance could go down in 1 play turn since they had no buffer, same thing can happen in D&D/PF). The CLW still uses resources (and HP is only one resource among many), CLW wands while cheap per HP healed, still cost a fair amount of gold and when you get to higher levels its actually barely functional (for instance I ran a fight the other day at level 8 where the party took over 150 damage spread out among 3 players, CLW wands on average heal 5.5 per charge, that is over half a wand for one encounter). 750 gold is a fair amount to be burning every 2 encounters... But if that was potions it would be even worse, CLW wand cost 2.72 gold per HP,CLW potions cost 9.09. For 150 damage that would cost the party 1363.5 gold to heal up. That is gold that will have to be added to troves or will start to drain the treasury of the players at an alarming rate (and thus be way behind in wealth vs what they are facing).
Also channel energy isn't bad by any means, but it scales very slowly (3.5 per 2 levels after 1st), clerics don't get very many of them normally, neg energy clerics don't get healing at all, some variant channels or alt archetypes get diminished channels, and is best used when the entire party has taken a moderate/light damage (like against an AoE user), as opposed to when 1 character gets creamed (which is more likely against dangerous brutes).
Druid pets are nastier at low levels than at high . They scale reasonably well (they get a significant boost at 4 or 7 depending on pet, but this buff is just to keep them relevant), and are great things to buff, but they aren't the end all be all once you get to the teens.
As for the whole AP does all the work for you, not hardly, I actually find running my own game easier, since I can ad hoc encounters, don't care if the PCs run off the rails, and I don't have to look things up or rebalanced the encounters due party size. Heck my homebrew/non AP adventure prep is pretty much limited to crafting NPCs (quick with hero lab and using stock characters), having a quick doodle of a map (or none at all and run out of my head) and an adventure outline based off what I expect the players to do. Maybe a half an hour of prep each week, 3 hours before campaign starts. Been running a weekly game with 6 total misses for almost 5 years now (beginning was 3.5 obv). Heck a bunch of those sessions were no prep at all, with a few actually using random dungeon generators, and random plot generators. Players had fun regardless (honestly they liked the loot better in the random dungeons lol).