You did download my metacompendium, right? The thing where I released how to fix 3e with the fewest changes.. Let's see here dnd's character building\homebrew\1 campaign-based\C8
Oh... I linked the shortcut over to the builds area. I suppose I'll update that, but one could examine where it lead and then pull up the builds area: selected builds\homebrew\c8\c8 rules.txt
But first some maths before I quote myself. 20/2.5 = 8 . So you could scrunch a 20 level base class into 8 levels if you understand how to shove some abilities on either side of the odd levels. This would be obvious by examining the edited SRD pages I made, but that's the main idea. Basically you get to play a mundane 20 build in e8 without knee-capping all of your great class features. Spells are unaffected, since we all know that's where the power is. After all, any non-caster's capstone could fit in as an ECL 8 ability. The only reason they were "stretched" out to level 20 was because that's how long base classes were declared to be. See RAW spell-less Paladin for a nice example.
Other minor adjustments were made to each classes chassis to help "noob-proof" then and certain numbers are also squeezed (when it's really clear that having 6 level's of useless +1's should just be lumped in all at once). Again, the designers did this for "filler" (see the dead levels article if you just looooove lots of filler abilities). We just want the crunchy part. I'm not going to harp on these two little points. They are obvious when they occur, and aren't absolutely necessary, but you would find if you tried to make the charts that you'd end up doing something similar.
Ahem:
PrC levels that do not advance casting follow the 2.5 rule
Those that do progress casting follow a x1 progression.
If this makes certain class features unaccessible, you have to use legacy champion (which is itself now not squished) to get up to those levels
Example 1: Carn the mundane decides to take Exotic Weapon Master. He takes the first level which gives all class features of the non-squished progression at once.
Example 2: Brie the wizard takes Initiate of the 7 fold veil. Its full casting progression does not squeeze down any and therefore the class feature progression is unchanged.
Example 3: Candy the sorcerer takes Acolyte of the Skin its 50% casting progression squeezes down until it bumps into other caster-progressing levels. This makes the PrC 5 levels deep.
Example 4: Bob the bard goes into sublime chord. But since it grants a casting progression, it is full length.
Example 5: Cully the cleric vampire takes the Lifedrinker PrC. Since it doesn't advance his casting, it is only a 4 level PrC.
Metagame: This encourages casters to lose out on caster levels for the more flavorful PrCs. Now those wizards don't just shrug and say, take Master Specialist because its there and full casting.
Non-progressioned base class abilities for casters do get squished, though. This again encourages casters to single class more.
Mundane's progressions can be gained all at once at its initial level if it isn't correctly divisible and it isn't the class's main progression. See Rogue as an example.
I've already made it look pretty (look in the builds\homebrew\c8\srd folder!) but here's what the class abilities look like for Barbarian:
1) Fast movement, illiteracy, rage 1/day
2) Uncanny dodge
3) Trap sense +6
4) Improved uncanny dodge
5) Greater rage 3/day
6) Indomitable will
7) Damage reduction 5/—
8) Tireless rage, Mighty rage, rage 6/day
The capstone feels appetizing, the abilities are all there, and if becomes harder to find break points (which is a symptom of players turning their nose up at a class after a certain point). A class with a break point that no one ever goes past proves the class poorly made.
Indeed front-loaded classes don't need to be adjusted (who takes more than 2 levels of fighter without being a dungeon crasher??) as much: fighter 1,2,3 has 2 bonus feats before slowing down to 1 feat per level. ACFs can be inputted over the ability in place at whatever level. It's all very straight forward to me, but I'm happy to answer questions on it.
