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The purpose of my current Pathfinder House Rules Document (PHRD) is to encourage my less rule-savy/number-crunching gamers to adventure 10+ level and beyond! Additionally, it encourages greater mobility allowing for fights to be more dynamic and a greater use of combat maneuvers.
Feel free to ask any questions on my experience with these rules and the nature of their origins. This set is currently being applied and play-tested at 11th level in the Kingmaker AP with 4 players.
Attacks of Opportunity
Attacks of opportunity work as normal except the attack is replaced with a free combat maneuver that does not provoke and failure by 10 or more has no effect.
Combat Maneuvers
All combat maneuvers may be performed in place of an attack roll.
Iterative Attacks
This variant replaces the normal progression of iterative attacks:
- At BAB +6, gain a 2nd attack but both suffer a -2/-2 penalty. Gain the Vital Strike feat.
- At BAB +11, this penalty is reduced to -1/-1. Gain the Improved Vital Strike feat.
- At BAB +16, the penalty is reduced to -0/-0. Gain the Greater Vital Strike feat.
Flurry of Blows, Rapid Shot, and Two Weapon Fighting provide one additional attack as normal. Flurry progression, improved, and greater two weapon fighting do not provide additional attacks but instead each reduce the penalty for all attacks by one.
Skills
- Bluff (Feint) = Move Action
- Intimidate (Demoralize) = Move Action
Feats
- Improved Feint: Feint = Swift Action
- Improved maneuver feats = +2 bonus and may be performed as a move action
- Greater maneuver feats = +4 bonus and may be performed as a swift action
Spontaneous Metamagic
When a metamagic feat is selected you may modify a spell 3/day, at the time of casting, with no increase in the spell's level. The maximum spell level the metamagic feat may be applied to is equal to the caster's highest spell level minus the level increase of the metamagic feat. Any number of metamagic feats may be used but may not exceed maximum spell level. Additional selections of the same metamagic feat allows the uses per day to stack.
Spontaneous casters may apply metamagic to their spells as a free action. Preparation casters may apply metamagic to their spells as a move action or may prepare their spells ahead of time using up a use per day as normal and cast their modified spell normally.
Magic Item Variant
In this variant all magical weapons, shields, armor, cloaks of protection, attribute enhancement belts/headbands, and attribute buffing spells that provide a numerical modifier are removed from the game. This variant also replaces attribute bonuses normally received at 4th level and every 4 levels after.
Magical arms and armor with special qualities still exist but without their numerical bonuses. Instead these become inherent bonuses for each character and these bonuses apply to all arms and armor of masterwork quality that the character has proficiency with. Starting characters receive 75% of their wealth by level (WBL) if they are non-martial/non-armor-based characters and 50% WBL for martial characters. The price of magical arms and armor begin at the +1 level and increase based on the special abilities added. So a flaming (+1) bane (+1) magical (+1 base) sword would cost 18,000 gp (at the +3 level).
- At 2nd and every 2 levels after: +1 to any two attributes
- At 2nd, 5th, and every 4 levels after: +1 to all saves
- At 2nd and every 4 levels after: +1 Armor
- At 3rd and every 4 levels after: +1 Shield
- At 4th and every 4 levels: +1 Atk/Dmg
NPCs and Monsters
Minion Template: NPCs and creatures modified by the minion template are reduced to 1 HP, become immune to magical and special ability secondary affects due to failed saving throws, AC -4 and CR -3. For effects dependent on hit dice, a minion's effective hit dice are equal to the base creature divided by 2.
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16th+ level fighters won't like this. Quasi-free bonuses and cheap special abilities on weapons/armor don't make up for loosing two attacks while getting +5 on the second attack. Other martial classes could benefit a little, since generally only fighters will be able to hit with their 4th attack without buffs, while the half-martial classes certainly benefit a little. +16 BAB should get -4/-4/-4 OR +0/+0. Full BAB classes will hit just slightly less than compared to normal, while multi-class characters and dual-wield types won't suffer the attack penalty they don't need.
With these rules, using +0/+0, with a 95% chance to hit, there is a 90.2% chance for 2 hits, 09.5% chance for 1 hit, and 00.2% chance for 0 hits. Add on to that, a single hit using Vital Strike does x3 weapon damage, and can intimidate, and full attack is looking lackluster.
Give -4/-4/-4, and the chances to hit become 85% each. 3 hits @ 61.4%, 2 hits @ 32.5% of the time, 1 hit @ 05.7% of the time, and 0 hits @ 00.3% of the time. An average of 2.5 hits per round of full attacks.
There is but one problem with -4/-4/-4. The magic weapons have more special effects and the +hit is a little better with masterwork. Solution: apply the special effects to the first hit a round only.
How will this work with natural attacks? Say, an old dragon, who gets a bite, two claws, two wings, and tail slap? Eidolons could become the PC's melee champions.
Add on that only combat maneuvers may be taken with an AoO, and melee will suffer. Though some would make a combat maneuver with an AoO anyway, two-handed types would not, which would be more likely choices given the free Vital Strike chain. This should probably be removed.
Grapple doesn't belong in an attack chain, let alone the others that normally can't be taken in place of an attack. Kill the thought with fire. They are balanced as they are- remove this houserule?
The spontaneous metamagic is powerful. Too powerful, especially for spontaneous casters. It needs nerfing, even eliminating. A maximized fireball is worth a 6th level spell. You're giving martial classes the Vital Strike chain for free, how about giving free metamagic feats to casters instead?
Now after all that, the Magic Item Variant is brilliant, and could be used in a no-magic campaign with a little tweaking without having to adjust monsters. +1 for that. Be careful about what special abilities you let the PCs have on armor and weapons, especially Brilliant Energy in a Kingmaker game.
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The above poster has some good points.
What do you do about treasure? PCs need less, so they should probably earn less. But how much less?
You've mentioned the approximate totals, but that raises new questions...
Do you audit the players wealth, or estimate?
How do you modify the printed treasure? Half gold? 75%?
What do haste and slow do in your house rules?