How I Tried to Fix 3.5 D&D

I made a post last month about what I see as the core problem of Dungeons and Dragons. I would consider it a fairly in-depth criticism, and I stand by it.

I also have such an extensive set of homebrew and house rules for D&D 3.5 that I created an entire webpage to contain it all.

It should go without saying that one of my major goals was to alleviate what I see as the primary issues with the system. Read on, and I'll explain what I aimed to fix and how I went about doing it.

Character Creation

Character creation is my favorite part about 3.5 D&D. There are countless interesting resources that can be combined together to build a character from the ground up that can truly embody any archetype imaginable. Big guy warrior who throws his enemies? Goliath fighter with Fling Enemy and the Dungeoncrasher variant. Tiny invisible mutated ninja scholar? Psychic warrior multiclassed with the educated rogue variant. The system has decades of supplemental materials, and it shows with how many options are possible.

Character creation is also my least favorite part about 3.5 D&D. The system is unbelievably bloated, with literally hundreds of options at every step. There are classes that should do the same things as other classes but don't, classes that shouldn't do the same things as other classes but do, classes that promise certain gameplay styles but fail to deliver on them, feats that sound cool but are actually useless, and options that feel great at lower levels but bog a character down later on. At first glace, it's impossible to tell these things apart and find the diamonds in the rough. A new player can't intuit why taking more than 2 levels in fighter is useless, or why Dodge is only ever taken as a "feat tax".

So how do we fix it?

First, the bad options need to go away. It's not enough to give a fighter a slew of new feats if Whirlwind Attack still exists as a trap for new players to fall into. Rather than remove these feats, they are instead buffed to be more useful. Dodge provides a flat AC bonus instead of a bonus against one target; Mobility provides defense against all attacks of opportunity rather than just the ones caused by moving. However, they also have to be more interesting - it's not enough to have them be viable. Mobility now grants extra defense against readied attacks, providing utility for chargers who don't want to get swatted out of their charges. Whirlwind Attack now lets the user move during the attack, granting a nice battlefield mobility trick to a class that desperately needs them.

Second, the good options need to be obvious. The main way this has been done is by creating subclasses for each class, utelizing commonly-taken Substitution Levels and Alternate CLass Features and tying them directly to the class features page in a way that's easy to understand. You no longer need to dive into suppliment books to find out about totem barbarians, nor do you need to cross-reference the two books to find out what your level progression looks like. Instead, you can toggle over to the Totem Barbarian subclass and see the brand new class features table.

This has also been done by tagging and grouping classes and feats based on their actual gameplay purpose. This can clue new players in to the fact that, for example, clerics are extremely well suited to melee combat. By placing them next to the likes of duskblades and psychic warriors in the Spellblades class category, it makes players think about how to make use of the formidable armor proficiencies and hit dice of the cleric. Similarly, Toughness is tagged as a feat for wizards (who need the extra hit points) rather than a feat for rogues (who have better things to spend the feats on) or a feat for barbarians (who are tough enough already).

Martials and Feats

It's a pretty well-known fact to anyone familiar with the system that spellcasters are overpowered. Anything a fighter can do, a wizard can summon ten minions to do better. Spells are the difference between having a spell list full of solutions and being forced to hit the problem with a stick again and pray that it works.

Well, I guess the praying part is limited to paladins.

Of course, there is a book that fixes this problem. The Tome of Battle introduces martial classes who, for the first time, can properly threaten things the way a spellcaster can. Their abilities allow them to defend and attack in interesting ways by using a wide slew of abilities. I'm certainly not alone in considering it one of the best balanced books ever written for the edition.

The problem is that Tome of Battle is not the solution for everyone. The book fixes the problem of spellcasters by, essentially, turning warriors into spellcasters. This doesn't work for everyone, and it especially doesn't work for every character. Whether that's because of a flavor mismatch or a playstyle mismatch, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution. It's a great option, and a great benchmark, but it's only a starting point.

Part of the problem with martial classes is that they lack good ways to progress to high levels. Theoretically, this should be accompished by feats. Warrior-types should get stronger and do more interesting things as they get more feats. Anyone who has played a fighter, however, knows this falls apart around level 10.

A lot of the changes needed to fix these issues were addressed above when talking about feat tax. These poorly-written, uninteresting feats are required to do better things, but do almost nothing themselves. Point blank shot is a required feat for any serious archer, but the benefit it provides is almost useless and frequently forgotten. For fighters, it's a waste of a slot. For classes with fewer feats than a fighter, it puts the actually good archery feats well out of reach. By powering up these kinds of feats, it enables characters to stack their synergies better and sooner, resulting in more compotent warriors with more meaningful build choices.

More importantly, but often overlooked, are the core rules of the game. Specifically, the actions that one can take in combat. In a word, they're underwhelming. In a lot of words, they are unusable without specialization and too limited with it. A character who takes Improved Sunder has completely wasted his time if he fights one of the many weaponless beasts in most campaign settings. So, some of these options have been given more realistic use cases, and clear mistakes in wording have been rectified. Sundering allows the disabling of natural weapons, Improved Overrun no longer shuts off a viable means of using the attack, and grappling has been given a slew of more interesting interactions to make it more viable for player characters.

Extensive Rebalancing

There's no quick way around it, though - many of the design problems with the system are simple issues of classes and spells being too weak or too strong. There are sweeping balance changes, and every class feature has been reviewed to ensure balance. This isn't just balance to keep a specific power level, but balance to maintain proper flavor as well.

Most notably:

• Lion Totem Barbarian no longer grants Pounce at level 1. Instead, it is granted at level 6. The first reason for this is simple: it isn't needed before then. Most barbarians will not have an extra attack to benefit from pounce before 6th level. The second reason is that it made the barbarian too much of a target for dipping. Characters with no reason flavor-wise to be barbarians would take one level of lion totem for punce and rage and then abandon the class completely. Even lawful-aligned characters often do it, as pounce is not lost by being an ex-barbarian. For a class that is already as front-loaded as the barbarian, this was required to balance out those players who want to be rewarded for playing single-class barbs.
• Fighters gain ability score boosts at every level that they don't get a bonus feat. This helps motivate fighters to keep pushing for that next fighter level, of course, but it also makes fighters more versatile. By letting high-level fighters have incredibly high stats, it gives them a significant edge in combat even when they are fighting in a way that does not best leverage their feats. The trip-based lockdown fighter will still be better at plan attacks than other classes due to having higher strength. This lets fighters continue to specialize in anything they want while also providing much-needed versatility.
• Freedom of Movement no longer allows for automatic grapple escpaes. Instead, it grants a +20 bonus. While this is the same thing in most cases, it still allows hyper-focused grapplers a chance to overcome the odds and rewards them for closing the distance on enemy spellcasters.
• Monks have been re-focused into masters of combat tricks. They gain a list of martial arts that generally focus around allowing them to attach unique effects to trips, grapples, feints, and similar attacks. This allows monks to actually have a meaningfully different playstyle from other warriors, rather than just being unarmored punching machines. They have, of course, been given extensive numeric buffs as well, including a high base attack bonus to make grappling easier and more skill points to offset a low intelligence score.
• Classes with MAD (multiple attribute dependancy - classes that have a hard time specializing because they depend on too many different ability scores) have been tremendously buffed. Rather than consolidating ability scores, classes like the monk, paladin, favored soul, and knight are instead made stronger across the board to allow the ability scores that they do invest in to define their playstyles. For example, monks have higher armor class bonuses and better defensive options so that they can afford to focus less on Dexterity without feeling like giant targets. Alternatively, they can focus more on dexterity to have truly outstanding defenses.

There are plenty more, of course, but this post isn't meant to be (and realistically can't be) exhaustive.

Give the full site a look for yourself and see what you think!