I wonder if Natural Spell been changed at all. In 3.5 it was a must have feat for any sane druid, and it was rather overpowered.
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I missed out on getting it at the store on Free RPG day, but I have happily, greedily downloaded the bonus best-i-ary. Thanks.
I've had three I can think of, and I handled them all differently. Once I admitted messing up, and changed the results of the conflict. Basically, I had brought in reinforcements to finish off the half-dead party, and later realized that was a bad idea. The second time, everyone died, and a new set of characters started years later to bring the originals back and continue the quest, albeit years later. And the third time, there was a TPK in like the fourth game session, so I had them survive under suspicious circumstances which became the thrust of the campaign. How exactly did they survive, and at what price? But every time there is a TPK, some characters are retired. And then there are the near TPKs where I start giving out strategic advice to help avoid an actual TPK.
If there was one thing I would change it would be that metamagic given from sources that don't require actual level adjustment (i.e. sudden feats, universalist school, metamagic rods etc.) were not allowed to exceed what the caster himself could cast. Absolutely. This would be my pick too.
I'm not sure about fear effects giving out such huge penalties on saves. Penalizing your defenses doesn't make you run away, it makes your enemies kill you faster.
In 3.0 and 3.5, I never saw a character keep a +2 or better weapon because of one factor: the Greater Magic Weapon spell lasts 1 hour/level. So you can take your +1 holy keen flaming longsword and bulk it up to +3 or +4 no problem. In 3.0 this would go through all DR you'd expect to meet. In 3.5, it wasn't necessary for DR but the bonus to hit and damage was nice. I think the problem with 3.5 DR is it seems that every monster gets it. While I want to be able to run an adventure where a werewolf is effectively immune to everything but silver, I don't want every adventure to devolve into a game of find the correct weapon. My suggestion: Go through the monsters and remove DR from those creatures that don't need it.
I like Mosaic's list for various reason, including 3.5 compatibility. But I would combine Spellcraft and Knowledge(arcana). Also, Pathfinder's Perception with its separate bonuses for Spot, Listen, Smell basically becomes separate skills. Actually, I would rather have separate skills than write down Perception +10 (Spot+12). One other change I would like is to have a Track skill instead of lumping it into Survival. Then I can finally make an urban tracker who isn't good at living in the wilds, and I can finally say "Make a Track check" when tracking instead of "Make a Survival check". I like having Balance, Jump, Climb, etc. skills. I want to be able to say "Make a balance check and have it in front of me, instead of looking for the skill to roll." My games use a lot of climb, balance, etc.
I'd vote for Domains as bonus spells like in 3.5 as well.
I agree with +2 Cha for elves. I'd move the +2 Int bonus to gnomes (but I've always seen them as wizards and not 3.5's bards) and give the halflings the Cha bonus as well. As for dwarves, I think a Dex penalty makes the most sense. But now we get into backwards compatibility problems.
We must play different games because every wizard in every game I've ever played has specialized. An extra spell each level was too much of a draw. I agree that this in balance should be fixed, but I wonder why fix it by removing the bonus spell. As for clerics, I never found anyone complain about the bonus domain spell, so why change it? It just creates incompatibility.
My problems with sneak attack: 1. All that dice rolling at high levels. Rolling 5-6 attacks with +9d6 damage each is painful to watch. 2. Each +1d6 of sneak attack is less important. When you get +3d6 it is a great boost over +2d6, but when you get +10d6 who cares so much. 3. Sneak attack is only truly powerful with two weapon fighting, and then it is so powerful that it can skew the game. My fixes: 1. Make sneak attack +2 damage per rogue level. This has the side effect of working with critical hits, and it never made any sense to me that it didn't. 2. Give out some additional bonuses to sneak attack as you go up in levels: I like the to hit bonuses discussed in this thread. 3. Limit the rogue to one sneak attack per round, and then have a feat that allows additional sneaks per round.
Perhaps I missed it, but I'm wondering why Pathfinder chose to change how domains and specialist wizards are handled. I liked the bonus spell system, and the change seems fly against the stated compatibility goal. These two changes are definitely my least favorite.
I think the Toad Familiar should be boosted up to +1 hit point per level (or +3+1/level). In 3.0 the Toad (with +2 CON) was everywhere, now in 3.5 (with +3 hp) it is never seen. +1hp/level seems like a nice compromise.
DR 10/- is a huge change from a level before. I'd like something that isn't so jumpy. DR 10/- is so much better than the barbarian's DR. I'd like something different. All the other fighter armor bonuses are to AC, so this could be another increase in AC, or some way for fighters to avoid attacks instead of withstand them like a barbarian.
I would like to see Heavy Armor proficiency moved to 2nd level to avoid some of the one level of fighter dips I've seen. For single-classed fighters, this would make no difference because they can't afford plate at first level anyway. If you want to support lightly armored fighters, give out something in exchange for heavy armor. One idea could be an extra skill, but this could cause problems with multiclassing with other classes that provide heavy armor. A bonus that doesn't work in heavy armor would avoid that issue (for example, at 2nd level choose heavy armor or uncanny dodge in light/medium armor). |