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Here's a quick little idea I had... make lay on hands 1d4*level*Cha bonus. If the paladin wants to heal someone, he states a number of dice and rolls them. All other uses of lay on hands (cure disease, heal ability damage, etc.) use dice of healing instead of uses/day - cure disease would use 2 dice, remove curse 3, etc.

So I had this idea about immunity to crits and sneaks. Immunity sucks - it's a gamebreaker, and it makes certain classes (rogues) pretty well useless.

The idea: creatures that normally have immunity gain minor, lesser, or greater resistance. Minor would be 1/2 damage on sneaks and 1 less multiplier on crits (so a greataxe would do x2 damage on a crit instead of x3); lesser is 1/3 damage and 2 less; greater is 1/4 damage and 3 less.

Elementals and oozes* would get greater resistance; constructs and undead have lesser; and plants would have minor. Incorporeal creatures are still immune.

*Oozes have greater resistance to crits and immunity to sneaks because of their lack of a discernable anatomy.

On a semi-related note, I was thinking about crits on the way home from work, and I came up with another idea for dealing with them. Let's face it - randomly-rolled crits kinda suck. You roll a nat 20, confirm the crit... and roll minimum damage. WTF? So I thought of this:

Either the first die of damage is automatically maxed (so a longsword deals 8+1d8 damage),

or all but the last die of damage are maxed. For example, a greataxe (x3) would deal 20+1d10; a scythe (x4) would deal 24+2d4.

I'm not sure about the second option, since it would make high-crit weapons exceptionally powerful, but I think at least the first die should be maxed, to properly reward rolling a critical hit.

As I was looking over enervation and energy drain a little while ago, I had an idea. Energy drain is kind of cool, but negative levels are stupid - even with them being simplified in 3.5, it's still more stuff to keep track of, AND you lose XP if they become "permanent".

So, I thought, why not just make it hit point drain? The number of hit points drained depends on your HD type: 1 (1d4), 2 (1d6), 3 (1d8), 4 (1d10), or 5 (1d12). In the case of multiclass PCs, negative levels are always taken from the highest class first; if that class is drained to 0 levels, then it starts on the next highest, etc. If two or more classes are equal, then it goes with the highest HD. 24 hours after losing the HD/hit points, you make a second Fort save as normal or lose them permanently. If the creature's effective HD total is reduced to 0, or its hp total to 0 (or negative Con score for PCs), it dies.

Lost hit points can be recovered at the rate of 1 HD's worth per day of rest; a lesser restoration will restore 1d4 HD, restoration 1d6+1, and greater 1d8+2 (the latter two will restore permanently lost hp).

In any case, there are NO other penalties applied. Since the spell is not actually draining HD/levels, there is no need for it.

I've been looking over the death spells, seeing how I can change them to not be so "save or suck".

Now, one thing I've done is to change the death/dying rules so that a) you die when you hit negative Con score, not -10; and b) each round, you make a Con check to stabilize; if the check succeeds by 0-5, there's no change; if it's 6+, you go to 0 hp, and if it fails, you lose 1 hp. 3 failures and you die.

So, with death spells, what I did is instead of "save or die", it's "save or be reduced to dying, but you automatically fail the stabilize rolls". Which means there's still a good chance of dying if your friends don't get to you in time.

One other idea I'm toying with (and the reason I'm posting this) is putting a HD cap on what can be affected by a given spell level (like the damage caps). For instance, circle of death is L6; it affects 1d4 HD/level (20d4 max), with a 9 HD cap. So what I suggest is:

L6 single-target: 12 HD; multi-target: 9 HD

L7 single-target: 15 HD; multi-target: 12 HD

L8 single target: 18 HD; multi-target: 15 HD

L9 single target: 21 HD; multi-target: 18 HD.

These caps are for arcane and divine - there's no difference.

Thus, a spell like wail of the banshee could kill up to 1 creature/level that has no more than 18 HD.