3.5e is unbalanced, and flavourful. 5e is more balanced, and boring. (Idea thrd)

[I Cast Fireball!]

Without touching on protected IP, what homebrew would you suggest that would result in something with the approximate:

1) Flavour of 3.5e.
2) Power levels of 3.5e.
3) All the core classes at about Tier 3.
3a) With the same flavour, ideally. Example: The Fighter is the king of combat feats. A good Fighter, for me, would be a Fighter that's the king of combat feats, and is Tier 3. Warblade doesn't count; yes, its Tier 3. However, it uses manuevers, not combat feats.
3b) With less fixed progression. That is, two 20th-level Barbarians (no other classes) have nearly exactly the same abilities. Clarification: I'd like more core class variety.
4) And that provides for different styles of the core classes. See 3b. I like the different styles of 5e, but I think they'd be better as feats and talent trees.
5) Useful feats.
6) Talent trees. This was a great idea from D20 Modern, IMO. Not sure why they ignored it.

Apologies if this is the wrong way/place to post it. This looks like the right forum, but I could be wrong.

[I Cast Fireball!]

Hmm...Tried to find a Monk class to use. Could not find any that were on this forum (if they're on the old forum, it seems they may just disappear) that weren't broken somehow, and usually could have done with a lot more feedback. Most of them were also years old, generally with at most three response posts.

Unfortunate.

[bhu]

What kind of monk homebrew are you looking for?

[Maelphaxerazz]

I suppose if you really wanted a "good" feat-based fighter, you could give him more HP, more skill points, more class skills, and a feat every level. Plus the ability to "switch out" feats when you level, like retraining but without costing time or money. People regularly use two-level Fighter dips even in Warblade builds for the bonus feats, so if there are no featless levels, theoretically the rest of the Fighter will be as good as the two-level dip.

In practice, however, you don't actually need that many Fighter feats, and most Fighter feats kinda suck.

But really, most Warblade manoeuvers are generic enough in effect that, if you re-write the fluff, they aren't any different in flavour from combat feats. "King of combat feats" is not the fighter's flavour because "combat feats" is not a flavour description, it is a mechanical one. There is no such thing as a "combat feat" in-universe.

3b contradicts 3a. If you want more class variety, then by definition you will be diverging from the core flavour of the classes.

As for 5, there are already loads of good feats. For extra mileage, you can trim down feat chains: remove Dodge and Point Blank Shot and Toughness and similar boring baseline feats from prerequisites. However, that would lead to you needing even less Fighter feats.

Talent trees are just a second set of feats. Nothing really worth adapting to D&D.

[Jackinthegreen]

Dragon 310 has a section devoted to variant fighters.  Most of them have exclusive abilities that can be taken instead of a feat.

I don't think 3a and 3b are mutually exclusive.  Wanting to keep the flavor but also wanting to give some more versatility to certain classes would be desirable.  Pathfinder Archetypes might be a solution to that if written well.


Something with similar flavor to D&D 3.5 but more balanced is the Legend system which can be found here.  Alas, they haven't updated the front page so it's a bit unknown how far along they are with new stuff unless one dives into their forums.

[RobbyPants]

2) Power levels of 3.5e.

It depends on what you mean by that. Are you talking low-level 3E, high level 3E, 3E with casters pulling out all the stops, or what?

I have a mostly finished set of house rules I've been using for my last few campaigns with reasonable success. I always start the PCs at 3rd level and geared the feat changes to make low level characters more fun to play.

If you want crazy rocket-launcher-tag games where everyone is like a full-tilt wizard, there are the Tome rules. They aren't complete, and are notable for creating other problems where they solve some. While this technically falls in line with everyone playing a caster and knowing all the tricks, it isn't what most people would assume as "3.5 power level", even if it could be achieved in the core rules.

3a) With the same flavour, ideally. Example: The Fighter is the king of combat feats. A good Fighter, for me, would be a Fighter that's the king of combat feats, and is Tier 3. Warblade doesn't count; yes, its Tier 3. However, it uses manuevers, not combat feats.

You're probably best off dropping the fighter or cutting it down to a 5 or 10 level class. If you want him to be a feats-only guy, he's not going to be pulling his weight in a high-level game. The only way around that is to write in some crafting rules so the fighter can make himself the items he needs so he can start flying, teleporting, surviving in hostile environments, and using divinations.

3b) With less fixed progression. That is, two 20th-level Barbarians (no other classes) have nearly exactly the same abilities. Clarification: I'd like more core class variety.

This is where stuff like pick lists of maneuvers and and spells come in handy. You'll otherwise just need a crap-ton of feats to pull this off.

The game already has ACFs, although most of them are pretty crappy and some are good the the point of being mandatory. This means that in practice, everyone still looks pretty similar.

5) Useful feats.

You can take a peek at my current working set of house rules. It's a somewhat higher power-level than low-level 3E uses, but it's not out of line for what casters typically are doing.

Revised combat rules and feats

Skill feats

Hmm...Tried to find a Monk class to use.
Unfortunate.

There's always the Tome Monk. It was written for the tomes before they got all power creepy from Races of War. It fits well in 3E games without the other Tome rules.

[I Cast Fireball!]

Just dropping in the morming to post some quick answers.

I view Tier 3 as a pretty ideal power level; everyone is either a workable Jack of All Trades, or Master of One who can generally contribute in other situations. I guess I wasn't clear enough when I said "All the core classes at about Tier 3." I meant that as a benchmark for where I think the entire system would work best.

Yes, most Feats that aren't caster feats suck, but IMO, that's a design flaw. As a non-caster, I level up, take a feat...And am overall even worse off, as the caster got a better feat, and more spells. That, IMO, fits the definition of a design flaw. Sorry, that's a bit ranty. Not ranting at you, just 3e feats as designed.

For the type of Monk I'm looking for, the 3.e Monk is pretty clearly based on 80s Asian martial arts flicks in my mind, from the slow-falling down cliffs to the exotic hand strikes (stunning fist, quivering palm) or the blocking weapons with hands. Or AC bonus. Making the Monk synergistic raises it to Tier 4, I think. With some actual ability to counter DR, and things like its capstone ability being a distance-unlimited, use-limited version of a 1st-level Wizard spell...Well, yeah. That needs fixing. Badly. The Monk should be a Wushu fighting master, and right now, it's not. Unfortunately, the Monks I found had things like "Immunity to any spell that allows Spell Resistance", or other things like that.

Anyway, hope that's enough for more discussion.

[bhu]

Well...for homebrew i did do a revision of the Chaos Monk class from Dragon Magazine, but I gotta warn ya, it has a pretty R rated sense of humor

[I Cast Fireball!]

Well...for homebrew i did do a revision of the Chaos Monk class from Dragon Magazine, but I gotta warn ya, it has a pretty R rated sense of humor

Sorry about the late reply; haven't had energy for deep thought for a while.

Not really interested in R-rated humour.