House rules discussion

[TheFred]

4 hours ago, dalamb said:

@TheFred all points worth considering, which I will try to do today.

1. I did kill the cost for adding a class.

2. I’m not currently considering adding Binders. Where do I find more about MeldShapers?

3. I hadn’t yet thought through invocations, but basing on per-bracket feels right.

4. I may have to rethink what I did with “fighter-only” feats being more broadly accessible. Fighters do get BAB faster (+1.25 per level), so a former “Fighter 4” requirement is now phrased as “BAB +5” which fighters still get at 4 but others would get too, just a little later.

Meldshapers are the Incarnum classes from Magic of Incarnum (Incarnate, Totemist, Soulborn). Like the Binder they're fun oddball classes that sit largely in the middle of the power range (Soulborn are like Paladins without spells or splatbook support so they generally do the worst).

I hadn't looked at the class-specific changes; this already seems like a healthy boost for Fighters.

The skills thing... honestly I'd be tempted to streamline it just for simplicity. Needing to take Skill Focus for this means I'm unlikely to have many of these anyway. The feat now provides a big boost to one skill and maybe an SLA too, which is way more attractive, but generally anything that's only 1/day I'm pretty eh about, I don't really want to burn a feat on that (unless I'm getting 21 bonus feats from these points, maybe).

I was also thinking about LA. Since this is gestalt, is any outstanding LA reducing level as normal or only dropping one of your classes each level? In the latter case, that's already generous but generally fine as LA is usually bad - but it because really awkward to buy off retroactively.

With regard to the spells and powers... does spending those points unlock spells generally? What if I'm a Wizard|Cleric or something, do I pay once, or once for each class? If it's once only, goes paying for spells automatically unlock powers and invocations?

Edited February 14 by TheFred (see edit history)

[rorytheromulan]

Level Adjustment isn't per class it's a racial modifier to XP gained in any class. After all, you're advancing two classes simultaneously. If you could negate level adjustment in only one of the two selections for gestalt, then gestalt isn't working like it should, plus headache.

Perhaps the cost could be increased based on that understanding. Or applied once for the gestalt pair and then for once each new class taken besides the gestalt pair.

[TheFred]

Level adjustment isn't a racial modifier to XP, it's an adjustment to level. However, I ask because it's quite common in gestalt games to allow the LA only to count as one of your class options each level - this weakens the impact of LA dramatically, but the alternative is to increase it (and most LA-adjusted races are way overcosted anyway). For this game, though, I'd suggest leaving it as an overall level adjustment given the alternative option available to pay it off.

[Lord Foul]

I see that we get 2 points for going up a level, but gaining a new spell level costs 3 points.

If we anticipate gaining a new spell level at 10th, would we therefore be obliged to save one point from our initial build in order to go up to 10th?

 

[TheFred]

You only gain a new spell level every two levels, for most levels that grant spell levels (see: relevant).

Edited February 14 by TheFred (see edit history)

[Lord Foul]

Yes, but Sorcerors get a new spell level at 10th, so only one level from starting position.

 

[namo]

4 hours ago, Lord Foul said:

I see that we get 2 points for going up a level, but gaining a new spell level costs 3 points.

If we anticipate gaining a new spell level at 10th, would we therefore be obliged to save one point from our initial build in order to go up to 10th?

From the Houserules:

Quote

If we level up, you’ll get another point at least as often as you need to gain access to higher-level spells (at least 1.5 per character level on average).

So no need to set aside a point.

edit: clarified to be the opposite by the DM, below.

 

@dalamb almost all of the spells gained from skills are 4th level or lower... except Freedom which is a 9th level spell. Do you lower it to to 4th level to make it accessible to this pseudo-Ranger progression?

6 hours ago, dalamb said:

What do y’all think? Especially about whether the current system is too hard to manage with multiple focused skills?

It's mostly fine; I doubt people will take more than a couple Skill Focus. A little streamlining and you can be done with it: I would recommend not basing bonus spell slots on varied attributes. You could just have a fixed table with slots based on skill ranks, or a formula (e.g. "you gain 1 1st level slot at skill rank 7; 1 2nd level slot at skill rank 11; etc... plus 1 bonus slot of level 1/2/3/4 per 3 additional ranks beyond 7/11/15/19), which is similar to one of the options you outlined.

Also, I guess it was inevitable, but the strong skills are associated with strong spells (cf. Hide especially, Spot). Skill Focus can become a real contender for classes with limited spells known. I'm thinking of having a generic spellcaster as one of the gestalt classes, in which case I would likely consider SF as a feat.

I do like the idea overall, and like TheFred said, it doesn't really cause balance issues.

 

8 hours ago, dalamb said:

Regarding getting some feat chains for free:

I am seriously considering this, but would have to modify the "feats for free when you have the prerquisites" summary statement to say not all such feats get added. The actual lists speak for themselves; I just would need some wordage to cut off "but this feat has its prerequisites satisfied; why isn't it on the list."

To clarify what I meant: I would just split some lines, e.g.

• Weapon Focus: Weapon Specialization
• Greater Weapon Focus: Greater Weapon Specialization
• Deflect Arrows: Snatch Arrows

rather than change how the proposed system itself works.

Edited February 14 by namo (see edit history)

[Fallout_Monkey]

I'm thinking about applying with a Spell Thief/Swashbuckler. Under your rules, if I steal a cantrip do I get to use that cantrip for an hour or is it still single use only? Would I have to spend build points for the highest spell I can steal(4th) or just the ones known(2nd). Also I don't see the initial Attribute point buy limit, have you decided on that yet?

[dalamb]

I'll be answering all of these as the evening progresses, but not necessarily chronologically.

I've been involved in "Level Adjustment with Gestalt" discussions more times than I can count, and I'm pretty sure @TheFred remembers many of them, too. The main three approaches I have seen people passionately defend (and argue about) are:

1. Level adjustment and racial hit dice go on one side of the gestalt, and are mitigated by whatever "real" classes you have on the other side at those levels.
2. Level adjustment occupies both sides of the gestalt, and has to be bought off to make a viable character.
3. Level adjustment is broken, both in gestalt and non-gestalt, and you should use an alternative (lower) LA cost scheme, or switch to something completely different like Oslecamo monster classes.

My approach is #2, with the fairly generous LA buyout (with character points). Feel free to advocate for some other approach, but like I said I've seen a lot of these discussions before. I've added the gestalt rules to the character creation rules thread.

[TheFred]

Yeah, neither 1 nor 2 work very well and whilst 3 is kind-of true it's also way more open - it's not clear what to do instead (and also, ugh, Oslecamo... 😉).

Looking at your generation rules, you don't seem to have stated a point buy? You also say that there are houserules to go along with the Generic classes, but I can't find them anywhere. Finally, your sources list - is that a list of sources full stop, or just for classes?

You've banned dual-progression spellcasting classes, but does this mean that things like the Eldritch Knight, Abjurant Champion, Sacred Fist, Jade Phoenix Mage, etc, are still in?

[dalamb]

@TheFred I should mention somewhere that you can save up a point. At level 9 sorcerers would have 2*9+1 = 19 points, and use 3*4 = 12 to get access to 4^th level spells. They have to save one of the remaining seven points to add to the +2 from leveling up. I’ll find a good spot in the rules to point that out.

I am nearly done waffling over starting point buy. Probably 25. At level 1 a wizard can't afford to increase that to 30 as most people are likely to do, but they can retroactively do it at level 2 and save a point for the level 3 increase in spell level.

Banning dual progression is a standard UA rule, but UA doesn't mention anything in the list you posted. Are any of them problematic in the same way the UA authors thought Mystic Theurge was?

[dalamb]

@namo: Freedom was a mistake in copying from an old version of the rules, where at around 17^th character level there was a big jump in spell levels but also fewer spell slots (there was an ill-thought out spell points system). I’ll be deleting that.

[dalamb]

44 minutes ago, Fallout_Monkey said:

I'm thinking about applying with a Spell Thief/Swashbuckler. Under your rules, if I steal a cantrip do I get to use that cantrip for an hour or is it still single use only? Would I have to spend build points for the highest spell I can steal(4th) or just the ones known(2nd). Also I don't see the initial Attribute point buy limit, have you decided on that yet?

I'll try to stop waffling on initial point buy soon.

Good question about Spell Thief. The most consistent thing to do would be to allow at-will use for a stolen cantrip for the hour, but I've never been in a game with Spell Thieves. Could it cause a problem?

[namo]

9 minutes ago, dalamb said:

Banning dual progression is a standard UA rule, but UA doesn't mention anything in the list you posted. Are any of them problematic in the same way the UA authors thought Mystic Theurge was?

IMO you can allow them, in case someone really want their class features, but they must choose only 1 progression (e.g. either maneuvers OR spellcasting with Jade Phoenix Mage). That avoids stacking too many progressions, while losing very little since you can "catch up" the couple of lost spellcasting levels by leveraging the other "side" of the gestalt.

[dalamb]

While converting my daughter Shiv’s character from the old campaign to use as an example, I remembered a problem from when we first tried to use the UA Defence Bonus rules: they weren’t well thought out with respect to multiclassing, because a single level of fighter gives you the maximum bonus even if all other levels are, say, sorcerer. I am trying to remember what we did about this. I think it was basing defensive bonus on BAB instead of character level. Stay tuned.