Still playing 3e? Share your 3.0 and/or 3.5 house rules

Alzrius said:

I mean, even 3.5 saw fit to introduce the Improved Toughness feat, which gave you +1 hp/level (and since it only had a prerequisite of base Fort save of +2 or higher, was clearly meant to replace Toughness altogether). It's just a shame it did so in a later sourcebook instead of right there in the PHB.

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The same with Lion Totem barbarians getting pounce, and all the other (mostly late-game) hoops many-to-most* martials jump through to get full attacks with more than 5' movement. *minus Bo9S classes, uber-charger, and all the other exceptions who get decent attacks with more than 5' move some other way.

That's first on my house rule list -- full attack with normal move. After that is Natural Spell is a +1 SL metamagic feat. Cleric Metamagic cannot be powered by nightsticks. Save or die spells generally instead drop opponents to 0 hp. Save of suck spells like Hold Person generally get at least one follow-up save the next round. And so on to address individual problems.

Also a general rule: no cheeze. That's very much know-it-when-you-see-it, yet also something upon which reasonable people can disagree*. The general idea is to find interesting combos, but not hyper-parse exact verbiage to end up with something clearly never intended, not exploit editing glitches, subsystems from wildly differing splatbooks, sacrificing the same trade-off multiple times, etc. PrC early-entrance 'exploits' tend to fall in the cheeze category, as does chart-text disagreement** being another.
*because the game was in fact designed towards system mastery, and finding exploits was not universally treated as a bad thing.
**if the chart suggests the PrC gets +1 caster level every-other level, but the copy-pasted text doesn't agree, it likely was intended to be every-other level, despite the stated rules-for-the-rules saying text takes explicity precidence

Willie the Duck said:

Also a general rule: no cheeze. That's very much know-it-when-you-see-it, yet also something upon which reasonable people can disagree*. The general idea is to find interesting combos, but not hyper-parse exact verbiage to end up with something clearly never intended, not exploit editing glitches, subsystems from wildly differing splatbooks, sacrificing the same trade-off multiple times, etc. PrC early-entrance 'exploits' tend to fall in the cheeze category, as does chart-text disagreement** being another.
*because the game was in fact designed towards system mastery, and finding exploits was not universally treated as a bad thing.
**if the chart suggests the PrC gets +1 caster level every-other level, but the copy-pasted text doesn't agree, it likely was intended to be every-other level, despite the stated rules-for-the-rules saying text takes explicity precidence

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This.

If you want to pull off some cinematic combat, fine. There's a limit, though. Want to jump from the yard arm to the main sail with a dagger in hand and slide down like Errol Flynn? Fine. Want to then burst into the HMS Pinafore in Draconic at the same time? Cheese.

Alzrius said:

I try to keep the 3.0 versions of weapon size scaling (e.g. that Medium-sized shortsword is effectively a Small-sized longsword; none of that "-2 inappropriate size penalty" malarky) and creature spacing whenever possible (no, the giant snake has not coiled up!).

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I used to hate the 3.5Ed revision to the sizing rules until something on my desk gave me a reality check.

I had bought a letter opener that was a scale replica of a basket hilted sword in a museum’s store in Toledo, Spain. I also had a tiger-eye handled boot dagger made by a local artisan in Texas. They were exactly the same length. But beyond being pointy steel objects of the same length, they had nothing in common.

1) The boot dagger’s blade was half of its entire length; the scale replica’s blade was perhaps 5/6th of its length.
2) the boot dagger’s blade was about an inch wide at its base; the SR’s blade was 1/4” at its widest.
3) the boot dagger’s hilt was as wide as its blade; the SR’s hilt was maybe 1/8”, possibly smaller.
4) the dagger’s mass was many times the weight of the opener.

For a character who might conceivably use the opener as a real weapon proportional to their size, the dagger would have been more analogous to a caber than a blade. After that, I was wholly onboard with the 3.5Ed sizing rules.

JustinCase said:

• Critical hits need not be confirmed. (Yes, I recently checked, and RAW a critical hit must be confirmed, which often leads to disappointment when the second roll goes poorly. So I got rid of that rule.)

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Confirming critical hits is something I consider... critical, as otherwise at the extreme every hit becomes a critical hit. But then I'm anti-critical-hit in general, and would either implement a "confirm" rule if the RAW didn't have one, or more likely just say No. Critical. Hits.

As it is, I'm tempted to apply an optional or house rule to nerf criticals. Maybe reduce all multipliers by 1, so that only weapons with a x3 or better multiplier get criticals at all, or maybe just a rule that only the base weapon bonus is multiplied, and not the damage bonuses from STR, magic, etc.

(And I hate "fumble" rules even more. I may allow "weapon breaks" "fumbles" when using improvised or cheap & shoddy weapons - but on a good hit, not a bad miss. Otherwise my attitude toward fumbles is "When Hell freezes over, thaws out, and freezes over again a second time - then I'll consider it.")

From the top of my head.

In general: pare down all situational modifiers to +/-2, 5, 10, and 20. Every modifier that would be a +/-1 is either removed or turned into a 2.

Remove scaling by caster level. (To remove moving parts) Heighten does increase numeric effects.

Keep things to mostly core only. Everything from outside has to be checked.

Spells are more likely to be allowed as is.

Skill tricks and hidden blades are allowed.



Allow the focused casters from later supplements. Allow the Healer as an spontaneous caster from a fixed list.

Remove convert into cures/summon ally from druids and clerics.

No natural spell.

Ger rid of Combat expertise. Add a new combat expertise that has prerreqs fighter 3 or bab +5 and says "You can do all combat maneuvers as a standard action. Special: Fighters get this feat as a bonus feat during character creation"

Have features that were moved to later levels from 3e be acquired at first level if you start as that class. You still get them as normal if you multiclass. For example lay on hands if you start as paladin.

Spell focus requires specialization in the school selected.

Spell school specialization requires to forgo an extra school (two for conjuration)

Monks have full bab

Unarmed attacks (punches) inflict 1d4 damage.

Innovation. Kicks are a thing. They do 3d4 damage, but you are open to an AOO if you miss.

Spontaneous casters can use metamagic without increasing casting time.

Sorcerers (and favored souls) get two known spells whenever they gaim access to a new spell level. They can retrain one spell every level.

Cantrips aren't unlimited, but they reset every scene. (Justified as in you are moving to a new area/have managed to rest a bit)

No creature type has blanket immunity to sneak attack. Selected special monsters do still have it.

Magic Weapons don't have boring plusses. They all have a +2 from being masterwork. We still keep the +1 system for weapon creation. This means weapons are cheaper to craft since we no longer have the mandatory boring +1.

Remove xp penalties for multiclassing.