Tomes (DnD 3.75 Alternative to Pathfinder)

http://code.google.com/p/awesometome/downloads/list

Pros:

• [Combat] Feat scale with BAB, meaning feats you got your melee class in earlier levels stay useful as you level up. This effectively replaces feat chains. Other feats scale as well.
• Melee classes in general are upgraded. One thing that stood out to me is that every melee class acknowledges the gamebreaking power of magic and comes up with a way to counter it.
• Magic items also scale. No longer do you get a +1 sword, you a get a sword that gives a +1 every 3 levels rounded up.

Cons:

• Power creep, power creep, power creep. And it's a little bit on purpose. Fighter is especially broken. The feats are now more powerful and the fighter gets twice as many as everyone else. To paraphrase, he is purposely meant to be as game breaking as the wizard.
• Classes can sometimes be silly. Although, this is the 'non-core' classes. Their all in the same booklet but the creator takes the effort to separate them.
• In the core classes, the magic casters are all copy-paste from 3.5 PHB. Just their to acknowledge they still exist. Their are magic casters in the non-core and they are worth looking at but for the 'crown jewels' its mostly melee town.

edited 27th Jul '11 12:03:43 PM by God_of_Awesome

So it's basically D&D 3.5 with a melee patching up?

edit: Eh, can't say I care for the melee balances but I'll take the non-level adjusted races for a spin.

edited 27th Jul '11 5:44:22 PM by Ramus

You should play melee classes or at least use the combat feat if you have complaints about melee classes not scaling with spell-casters.

i made the use of tomes feats mandatory in my campaign. I think everyone will be happier with it. I wanted to include scaling magic items, but it screws with the treasure system for me a little too much. instead, I'll just micromanage the characters equipment by giving out treasure (like normal)

How about the classes? Even if you give the fat middle finger to the Fighter.

The Fighter now seems to have a rather huge mixed bag of tricks. Honestly, I'd have to play them with their various changes to really say what I would think.

I kinda wanna try out a tomes exlusive DND game, but not sure if it would be good or not... CR would probably be way off.

For that I can only recommend an unmapped dungeon with rooms of successively harder baddies until you hit a good stride.

Downloaded it a few months back; wasn't impressed. The authors spent as much time complaining about 3.5 as published as they did explaining their new take on the rules.

edited 4th Aug '11 2:04:59 AM by FarseerLolotea

Yeah, their is that, I'll say. It's worst on their forums.

Paladin variant of the Samurai, mostly refluffing.

• Pledge of Loyalty becomes Pledge of Faith whereas you pledge yourself to a religion. You cannot be made to act against the tennets of your religion by mind-affects.
  • At DM's discretion, according to your god, your other abilities may be changed or replaced. Especially the Samurai's bonus feats, which can be replaced with other feats or casting Spheres if you want to go for a Warrior Cleric feel.
• Ancestral Weapon becomes Holy Weapon
• Kiai! becomes Smite
• Ancestral Guidance become Divine Guidance You Commune directly with your deity but lose the ability to speak with the dead at all.
  • Instead it is replaced with Divine Envoy. You can Commune with any deity as long as one of their faithful is present, thereby including them on it. Since you count as a faithful of your deity, you can speak with them by yourself. At DM's discretion, this can be used for something other then asking questions, such as passing messages or brokering deals, mostly between the gods.
• Iajutsu becomes Divine Wrath
• Iajutsu Focus becomes Divine and Focused Wrath
• Iajutsu Master becomes Mastered Wrath of Divinity
• Iajutsu Grandmaster becomes Most Divine Wrath
• Terrible Blows becomes ((Deity))'s Blows
• Blade of Devestation becomes ((Weapon)) of ((Deity))
• Final Cut becomes Final Judgement
• At the DM's discretion, Blade of Souls becomes Divine Judgement Instead of being sucked into your Holy Weapon, the soul of the killed is banished into the waiting arms of your deity who may do with the soul as he wishes at DM's discretion. This often ends with the soul being unable to return and barring any form of ressurection and anyone who wishes to do so must seek out the soul themselves. The DM may simplify this and say that the soul is place under a geas by your deity, unable to return unless your Holy Weapon is destroyed, making it exactly as Blade of Souls.
• Scrolls of Wisdom becomes Book of Faith. You must spend a year writing this work for fit distribution. Any NPC who reads it becomes converted to your faith. Anyone who reads it is invigorated with divine purpose and gains +2 morale bonus to anything they do so long as it furthers the cause of your deity. Even the doubtful who have read it suffer a -8 penalty to attacking you.