This is a setting in which much powerful knowledge is secret; exotic spells and feats may serve as a quest reward.
Homebrew base classes are encouraged (this wouldn’t be Legacy of the Makers without a party of very strange characters indeed), but as a rule of thumb, the more exotic an ability, the more you’ll have to do to get your hands on it. Want Orb of Sound? You can probably find a scroll of it. Want to be an Ur-Priest? You’ll have to do something extraordinary.
In-game, that may mean seeking out a grimoire or a teacher, whereas during character creation, that means it needs represent some part of your character concept or backstory.
Spells and feats from core can be assumed to be fairly common, with a few exceptions: polymorph spells are very rare, and planar travel spells, spells that can bring back the dead, and the feat Leadership are quite uncommon
I ignore XP penalties for multiclassing.
SirPercival's houserules that we're using:General
• Whenever there is an effect based on one-half of an ability modifier (when the modifier is odd), round down if you have an even ability score, and up if you have an odd ability score. This grants a very minor benefit to having odd ability scores, and makes things scale more smoothly. For example, a character with a 20 or 21 Strength wielding a greatsword would do either 2d6+7 or 2d6+8 damage, respectively.
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Skills
• Use Rich Burlew's Diplomacy.
Feats
• Toughness now grants the effect of Improved Toughness. There is no Improved Toughness.
• Weapon Focus grants the benefit of WS at 4HD, GWF at 8HD, and GWS at 12HD. All three of those feats no longer exist.
• Two Weapon Defense provides a Competence bonus to AC equal to the number of mainhand attacks you can make derived from BAB (i.e., +2 at BAB +6, etc.).
• All three of the feats that give +2 to a save still do, except that if your base save bonus of that type is at least +6 you also no longer auto fail saves of that type on a natural 1. You must still actually roll high enough to save normally.
• Devotion feats grant an additional use for every 5HD.
• Weapon Finesse now requires Dex 15+ instead of BAB +1, and grants Dex-to-damage as well (stacks with Shadow Blade where applicable).
• IUS and its chain are updated to dman11235 here.
Equipment
• Spending gold for enhancement bonuses sucks. So, let's not. Instead, you can enchant a masterwork weapon, armor, or shield directly with properties, instead of needing a +1 enhancement bonus first. Each property grants an enhancement bonus to the item equal to the plus of the property. For example, a keen flaming longsword functions as +3 (+2 from keen and +1 from flaming), and a ghost ward shield has a +1 enhancement bonus. The maximum total bonus on equipment is still +10, meaning you can get up to a +10 enhancement bonus.
Rich Burlew's diplomacy fix can be found
here. Intimidate uses the same rules, except that relationship with the target generally does not grant a bonus or penalty, instead of proposing a trade, you are making a threat, and where successful diplomacy will tend to please both sides, intimidate, of course, tends to make you enemies.
Healing spells are, with a very few exceptions,
Necromancy (Healing), not Conjuration(Healing). This includes Raise Dead, Resurrection, etc. Some Transmutation spells that deal solely with biology or life force may also be converted to Necromancy.