Den Fixes, for fledgling casters

Orion · Post by **Orion** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 9:08 am

I think we all know that some of Frank and K's material was tuned for parity with casters who used the most optimal spells, and in most cases took full advantage of alternate class features from splatbook and even dumpster dived for spells. Races of War is the big offender, of course, but also some aspects of other books. The community added a lot of material, much of which was pitched to that upper balance point. That implies a question: what do you do when your friends like to play clerics who pick domains that are relevant to a god they find interesting, rather than taking Undeath for the free feat, and have never heard of nightsticks? What do you do if your friends like sorcerers better than wizards, and take fireball first because, though they know it's not amazing, it is really cool? To some degree I've found that I can just ignore it. Caster players tend to have fun even if they're weak, because spells are cool and choosing them and looking for the opportunity to use them is fun. I've had RoW samurai and Kantian paladins running around kicking way more ass than the casters can, and nobody has complained. Still, I think there may be an upper limit. How far can you push the envelope with custom classes, if your players don't push the envelope on the core classes? There are some fixes I'd never do away with -- the reformed crafting and equipment rules are a must -- but I'm not sure where to draw the line.

For a concrete example: I'm starting a 3.5 game in about 4 weeks, and I'm currently throwing together the rules I want to use. I've only talked to one player about character concept, and they want to play a halfling cleric with animal and healing domains. They have not played D&D before. How would you handle this situation? What's an appropriate environment for that character to play in, or what's a good fix for that character?

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 9:37 am

I'd encourage them to not use Wizards, Clerics and Druids. Spontaneous fixed list casters (e.g. Beguiler, Koumei's Warmage, Koumei's Witch, Frank's Bard, Quantumboost's White Mage, Robbypants' Elemental Mages, Oracle, Illuminator, etc.), sphere users (though I'd make it so that basic access grants 3 uses and expert access grants 6 uses per day) and SLA users (Fire Mage, Green Mage, Cold Dude, etc) are much more newbie friendly and kick ass even without optimization.

If they insist, boost the stuff they want to use and/or make up thematically appropriate powerful stuff.

If your players like evocation, use Frank's earlier access suggestions.

You could try making up substitution levels. e.g. Halfing cleric of animal deity gets the animal domain for free, can talk to animals at will and gets an extra domain slot for each level that can only be used for animal domain spells in addition to two other domains for use with regular slots. They also get a familiar.

They'll probably understand if you explain how the healing domain is redundant for good clerics.

deaddmwalking · Post by **deaddmwalking** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 1:40 pm

The caster is going to contribute no matter what, so there is no problem. If you want the player to have fun, offer alternative class features that support the concept. For example, Animal Companion instead of Turn Undead. As long as everyone has fun, it's goof. Rules need to support lots of play styles but 'gentleman's agreements' are sufficient for an individual table.

K · Post by K » Sun Mar 22, 2015 2:47 pm

For people like that, off class features like a standard action elemental attack that does 1d8 + stat damage as a touch attack. You want them to always have something to do that feels somewhat useful.