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Since when Pathfinder Unchained was published, I intended to publish my own series of homerules, variant rules, and optional rules, but events in my life had me delayed a couple years. Now I have the means to start this long work, so here I am.
All my homerules are intended to work with each other as a whole, but many can also work with normal rules, if a GM doesn't want to allow some changes. Basically I revised the Pathfinder ruleset to achieve some very specific objectives:
- Remove inconsistencies (things that contrast with the basic assumptions in the game, that contradict other rules, or that simply make no sense).
- Make useless things useful (for example, combat maneuvers, many feats, some forms of combat, some kinds of equipment, etc.)
- Balance disequilibrium whenever I found it (starting with spellcasting, but not just that).
I paid a special attention to feats and how to balance them. My premise is that feats should be about as powerful as class features that require the same number of levels in a class to be taken, since they are limited in number during a character career and often require to satisfy harsh prerequisites.
Based on prerequisites, I devised a tier sequence to assess the power of a feat. Tier 1 are feats that require no requisites at all or whose requirements can be met easily at 1st level by a generic character (not just a specific class).
Each successive tier either has one more feat as a prerequisite or has a prerequisite that a character can satisfy only 1-2 levels after the lower tier. So tier 2 feats can be taken at 3rd level, tier 4 at 5th level, and so on up to tier 10 for normal play. Obviously, it's assumed that a higher tier feat must give a greater benefit than a lower level one, not just some upgrade or diminishing returns (such as the Weapon Specialization or Two-Weapon Fighting chains).
The first variant rule I want to present concerns some balancing among ability scores, since is evident that some of them are really a lot more useful in general than others. Removing something from the list of things an ability influences to add to some other "poorer" ability was the obvious solution. Here is the result.
STRENGTH - Standard melee combat, (Strength-based maneuvers), (Protection), load limit.
DEXTERITY - Precision melee combat, ranged combat, (Dexterity-based maneuvers), Reflexes ST.
CONSTITUTION - Hit Points, Fortitude ST, (heal checks, affliction resist checks).
INTELLIGENCE - Skill Points, spellcasting.
WISDOM - Initiative, spellcasting, (weapon max range increments).
CHARISMA - Will ST, spellcasting, (magical resonance checks, resurrection checks).
I moved Initiative to Wis just as they did in the playtest for PF2 much for the same reasons: Wis governs senses and intuition, so it's simply perfect for that.
I moved Will ST to Cha basically for the same reasons: Cha better represents the willpower of the character, since it's already a measure of its self-confidence, force of personality, and self-esteem.
The things in parenthesis are things that will be modified or added in future threads.
There's not much to comment yet, but if someone already had similar ideas, please feel free to add a link to his or her post(s). My time for today is over, but next time in this thread I will post some modified feats for Initiative.
As I wrote yesterday, I'm going to publish some modified material about initiative feats (since I moved it to Wis, I went on revising them), in particular the main and most seeked out one: Improved Initiative.
That feat has a weird characteristic: it's one of the worst feats in the game, yet it's also the one feat that most builds recommend, especially for casters or resolutive-attacks-based builds, such as sneak attackers or chargers.
Why is it so bad? Because it only works one fifth of the times for a single roll per encounter (basically, it's ininfluent if you fail initiative by more than 4 points or if you win it in any case, that's 16 values out of 20 you can roll), and its effect can be negated the first time a foe can ready an action against you. Also, since it has no requirements, it can be taken by virtually anyone without any particular investment to do.
So, how do we make this feat really worth of wasting a feat slot on it?
Well, it needs a benefit that works almost everytime you roll for initiative and it needs some requirements to limit its presence in every build in the game (a feat that everyone wants to have is too good, or percieved as too good, to stay as it is). This is what I devised:
Improved Initiative (Combat)
Your quick reflexes allow you to react rapidly to danger
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Wis 13, Alertness.
Benefit: When rolling for initiative, roll your d20 twice and keep the best roll.
This will definetely make the feat better (it works 19 times out of 20), but also harder to come by (it requires some specific character building). The prerequisites are all tied to how an initiative roll based on Wisdom and Perception of your foes would work, with the addition of some quicker that average reflexes.
The changes would make it a tier 2 feat, 3rd level or higher, but a human or a fighter could get it at 1st level, as could any class or race with Alertness as a 1st level bonus feat.
The only feat of the Improved Initiative tree that would really require some adjustment would be its Mythic version, but since I never used that particular set of rules, I can't really work out an appropriate change for it. If someone has a good idea, please feel free to post it in this thread.