Guppy's page

I thought about the Armoured Mage idea as well from the Beguiler, etc. However, those classes have restricted spell lists and I wanted a universal feat for wizards and sorcerers. So, I found a variant of sorts (PHBII? Complete Mage?) for fighters where you can ditch heavy and medium armour proficiencies so that you can cast spells in light armour with zero arcane spell failure - and here's the important part - of a spell level no higher than half your fighter level, rounded down. I adapted this into...

Armoured Mage (Light)
You can freely cast some spells while wearing light armour.
Prerequisites: Armour Proficiency (Light), able to cast 1st level arcane spells.
Benefits: You can cast spells while wearing light armour with zero arcane spell failure so long as the spell being cast is of a level no higher than one-half your base attack bonus round down.

There would be similar feats for medium and heavy armour. Maybe for shields, but I don't think it matters that much - you only need one free hand to cast a spell.

Thoughts?

The other night I was playing in a friend’s game and I noticed that the combat was taking a pretty long time. I could understand a long battle for a main encounter ,“boss battle”, but the encounter seemed not too important and took the entire night. Makes me want to suggest more damage, I also ask what is the time of the average encounter and is this too long? That night we found our selves taking too long to hit them and not doing a lot of damage when we did. This makes me think that either damage is too low or ACs are too high.

If ACs are too high then I’d suggest the base number to add for AC is 8 rather than 10. But AC may not be an issue for too many people.

But if damage is too low I’d like to suggest adding damage to everyone’s attacks. Adding more damage like every character adds ½ their level to their damage round down. Example is a 7th level elf archer can have a base damage with a longbow of 1d8+3, this is before the str, feats and magic adjustments to damage. This is to show how a character is not just more accurate with his/her tools but they are also better with the tools at hand. Currently melee fighters get power attack and end up doing massive damage but are loosing hits to do so and this doesn’t show character growth too well. Power attack is still and option along with any other feats and magic items it’s just cooler when a skilled archer can not pick up ANY bow and see himself being better with the weapon than he was six levels ago.

I use a base damage bonus of 1/2 base atack for everyone for just the reasons you describe. I also use a base defense of 1/2 base attack to armour class, but that's because I don't give out a lot of rings of protection and amulets of natural armour.

How about divine feats instead of domain powers? Clerics of different deities are essentially different classes unto themselves. I realize this would be straying from the core 3.5 rules probably too far, but it would make for a more diverse set of characters. For that matter, why should all clerics turn/rebuke undead? At first level, you could just pick a divine feat. The overall class ability could be called "channel positive/negative energy", or something like that.

As for the domain powers, they're pretty good. My biggest complaint as a cleric was having to spend three rounds ramping up in a fight just so
I could make a decent attack. But you can't do that because everyone else is getting pounded on and needs to be healed. What's the point of align weapon if you never get to cast it? So for a domain power, how about certain abilities always being active? The good domain second level power align weapon could be "pick a weapon, it's always aligned". You could perform a ceremony to align it taking 24 hours or something. There might be a balance issue, but I can't see it. Just a thought.

I use base defense and damage bonuses equal to 1/2 BAB. Both are insight bonuses. The defense bonus applies to AC, touch and flatfoot. It stacks with armour but only up to the same amount as your dexterity modifier would. This way high level fighters get to choose whether they want armour or not. Both bonuses are designed to reduce the high-level dependency on magic items. Note that this applies to all classes. My group consists of 6th level players, so time will tell how this works out.