Tessarael's page

Another example is Great Cleave. The 3E and 3.5E D&D version of Great Cleave is weaker than Cleave, because it is less often that you will have additional opportunities to use it over Cleave. For that reason, I would be inclined to just combine the two feats into a single Cleave feat along these lines:

"If you deal a creature enough damage to make it drop (typically by dropping it to below 0 hit points or killing it), you get an immediate, extra melee attack against another creature within reach. You cannot take a 5-foot step before making this extra attack. The extra attack is with the same weapon and at the same bonus as the attack that dropped the previous creature. You can use this ability once per round per 5 BAB rounding up (1/round at BAB 0-5, 2/round at BAB 6-10, 3/round at BAB 11-15, and 4/round at BAB 16-20)."

In general, I'm in favor of making the rules as versatile as possible, and alignment restrictions just seem to rule out some character concepts, without being a good balance to game mechanics.

Any real reason why the Paladin class needs to be restricting to Lawful? i.e. Could the restriction be reduced to any Good alignment?

Reading through the Paladin class, the only thing that is actually Lawful-related is in the Code of Conduct and Associates limitations. Could we just drop the Lawful restriction, or make it an optional rule for backwards compatibility?

Barbarians are restricted to not being Lawful. What about say law abiding elite Dwarven Berserkers? Why not remove this restriction?

Similar question, why should a Druid be neutrally aligned? What about Elven Druids in a lawful society - couldn't they be lawful good and still be druidy?

Why should Monks have to be lawful? There's plenty of non-lawful martial arts characters in fiction. One can be a disciplined martial arts fighter without being law abiding. If this was relaxed, the 10th level ability to make unarmed attacks treated as lawful weapons would have to be modified - maybe they could choose between lawful and chaotic?

Thoughts?

Bard should get Weapon Finesse too.

A number of feats are on the weak side in 3.5E D&D. Here are some suggestions:

1. Combine Medium Armor Proficiency and Heavy Armor Proficiency. Medium Armor Proficiency only provides +1 AC benefit over Light Armor, at the cost of a movement speed penalty. Alternatively, consider making Chain Shirt a medium armor instead of a light armor.

2. The damage with Improved Unarmed Strike is very weak. It should be increased to make it a worthwhile feat to take. Something like: "The damage for your unarmed strike increases depending on your size, from d2 to d4 for Small, d3 to d6 for Medium, and d4 to d8 for Large."

3. Spell Focus rightly was reduced from +2 in 3E D&D to +1 in 3.5E D&D. +1 may be a little on the weak side, but is roughly comparable to Weapon Focus. It's not clear when spellcasters should take this versus say Spell Penetration. My suggestion is to wrap these feats together - I don't think the result is too powerful, but others may disagree: "+1 to save DC, +2 to dispel DC, and +2 to checks to overcome SR for a chosen school of magic". Similarly for Greater Spell Focus.

4. Make the Dodge feat give a flat +1 dodge AC bonus. No need to recalculate when it is being used (as a Combat Feat in Pathfinder) or who it is being used against (3E and 3.5E D&D).

5. Simplify the magic item creation feats. There are too many of them, and some of them provide redundant ability. e.g. Brew Potion/Scribe Scroll (single use items), Craft Rod/Staff/Wand, Craft Wondrous Item/Forge Ring, Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

6. Improve the weaker metamagic feats, giving them some limited use per day. e.g. Metamagic feats increasing spell level by 1 could be done for free on the fly say 3 times per day; those increasing spell level by 2 could be done for free on the fly say 2/day; anything higher 1 free use/day. The spell level of the adjusted spell not to exceed the maximum spell level you have access to - so a 5th level Wizard would not be able to Maximize or Empower a Fireball. The metamagic feats that do increase the spell level more might require other weaker metamagic feats as prerequisities (ala the prerequisites for the Sudden Metamagic feats).

7. Consider combining Quickdraw and Rapid Reload.

8. Maybe make Arcane Armor Training and Arcane Armor Mastery regular feats rather than combat feats, so that you don't need to decide when they are in effect and remember to roll arcane spell failure when they are not. (These feats help fix the need for a prestige class like Spellsword with reduced arcane spell failure, so I rather like them.

I like the change in Pathfinder to Mobility - makes it a much simpler mechanic.

One other suggestion here, give Bard the Arcane Armor Training feat instead of their ability to cast spells in light armor with shield. This way they can choose to work up to heavier armor if they want (say a Fighter/Bard) by taking Arcane Armor Mastery. Likewise, a Bard/Wizard would then make a little more sense as you can cast those other arcane spells with reduced arcane spell failure too.

I'd like to suggest that the requirement to pick Dispelling Attack be changed from "must have the Major Magic rogue talent" to "must be able to cast a 1st level arcane spell or use one as a spell-like ability".

With this change, a Rogue/Wizard for example would not have to take Minor Magic and Major Magic to qualify for Dispelling Attack.

Thanks.