3.X/PF fucking blows pig cock.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, I was thinking of instituting a houserule to make the Profession skills more useful.
Putting ranks into a profession gives you membership with a guild associated with that profession.
Each guild has its own list of guild skills.
You may put skill points into your guild skills as though they were class skills if that skill isn't already on your class skills list. However, the maximum number of skill points you can put into a guild skill is equal to your skill rank in that guild's associated Profession skill.
So you put points into a useless skill to open up three or four more useful ones, and hopefully spend fewer points overall than you would buying skills cross-class style.
And you get a contact and roleplaying opportunities out of it.
I should add that guilds in my setting are all fronts for criminal syndicates.
Example: local laws forbid open carrying of weapons within the cities, but everyone is allowed to carry tools associated with their profession. Guess which profession is associated with big, nasty looking blades:Butchers
Post and critique houserules, I guess.
>>43958586
Or you can just play something else.
RuneQuest has rules for guilds/cults/etc. built in without a broken skill system, casters sidestepping skills entirely (despite having some of the best access to them), and a desperate reliance on minmaxing.
>>43958586
All skills that give synergy to other synergy skills can be used with the synergistic skill as a separate check, adding a bonus to the original check for how much the other check beat the DC. DM fiat applies for stupid shit as always.
y/n?
>>43958699
It's kind of like the challenge of fixing up an old Model-T and modifying it into a Hot Rod.
Like using oldschool D&D to play Alice in Wonderland + Dracula, or using 4E D&D to play mecha vs. kaiju.
>>43958729
Sort of turns it into a dice pool system.
More so than it is already (I swear, every failed skill check is followed up with "Let me try!" The number of players attempting a given action matters more so than the character's skills.)
>>43958743
>or using 4E D&D to play mecha vs. kaiju
If you use Gamma World 7e most of the work's done for you already.
>>43959605
I keep meaning to pick that one up. I still have a bunch of these little Gundam gashapon toys I bought in Taiwan.
>>43959605
>>43959640
More Gundams. I want to use them as miniatures.
>>43959640
>>43959652
>>43959605
Gundam Baratheon.
>>43959660
>>43959652
>>43959652
>>43959640
>>43959605
These guys are common.
Hey question
I think my play group sucks, but they're the onlyplay group I've had.
>GM is great, puts time into making campaign and everything.
>everyone generally drinks and smokes pot, which is great imo
>GM wont let people who have actual skills in persuasion and charisma points to actually use their skill at all. Will just let people talk without rolling and he tells them when he wants to.
>people complain if you use charisma
>people dislike if you try and interact with environment to fight, escape etc
>if someone is brought into a different battle (we had a boss who would replicate himself, take us into his dimension where we would face our selves, then each of the party members, then have a huge boost of power to fight him) the entire group will go and do something else (MTG) and then only pay attention when their turn is up
Only those things annoy me
>>43958586
>guilds in my setting are all fronts for criminal syndicates.
Nice. Can't wait to see the guild wars.
I think it's a cool idea. No idea if it's balanced, but with the very limited list some classes have, any way to expand them will be nice. Also now everyone should have a nice down-time skill. I'd increase the minimum number of skills to the higher of 4 and 4+INT MOD, since you will be needing to spread your points around more to get at dem skills.
I'd also be careful about what skills guilds have access too. UMD is powerful if bought up, so I would make whatever guild granted access to that ONLY grant access to that.
7/10 not bad, interesting bandaid on the gaping wound that is 3.5's skill system.
>>43959685
Then offer to run the game you want to run, and make it clear what sort of game you are running.
>>43959685
>>43959712
This. Or just tell your GM, these are all easily solved problems. Except the environment one, which is the one problem for which there is no cure:shit taste.
>>43959706
If I make UMD a skill for any of the guilds, I'll probably just make it a skill for all of the guilds to represent the sort of every-day magic that permeates all mundane activities.
Generally though, it's...
>Sailor's Guild (Smugglers)
Skills: Balance, Tumble, Swim, Use Rope
>Actor's Guild (Whores)
Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, Perform
>Smith's Guild (Arms Dealers)
Skills: Craft, Knowledge, Appraise, Intimidate
>Butcher's Guild (Violent Motherfuckers)
Skills: Intimidate, Sleight of Hand, Handle Animal, Survival
>>43959743
what about the fact that the group just does their own thing half the time
>>43959852
How old are they?
>>43959847
No Locksmith's Guild (Burglars)?
Stealth, Pick Lock, Disable Device, Climb
Or would that negate the rogue's utility too much (not that wizards don't do that already)?
>>43960004
Actually, that would be a good one (still filling out my list.)
This is actually for a campaign I've run before, but plan on running again with a new group (or online with the old group; I've moved.)
PHB classes are banned; this campaign uses Tome of Battle, Expanded Psionics Handbook and Magic of Incarnum (and maybe Tome of Magic for Binders). Epic 6 rules.
So rogues are out in favor of swordsages and incarnates. A locksmith's guild would be just fine.
I want to include a rat-catcher's guild as well.
>>43960052
I'd say Stealth again, plus Swimming, Escape Artist (squeezing into small passages), and Search.
>Incarnum
Seriously did not get enough love, I thought that was a hella baller splat. And yeah Binder's are just really cool, I'd let them in just on that.
>>43958586
We houseruled crafting in PF by just going with gold coin costs instead of silver for craft time. The party alchemist took Master Alchemy, which already had that effect, and is now calculating his times based on platinum cost.
PF is far from perfect, obviously. But if everyone is having fun then it doesn't really matter.
>>43960115
I wish Incarnum had gotten included in 4E.
I mean, I like some of the crazy PC shit you can pull off in 3.5 to a certain extent. The tier 2/tier 3 classes hit the sweet spot for me. But I hate how 3.5 runs on the DM end. I loved DM'ing 4E for the encounter building (XP budgets), the reward management (treasure parcels), and how cleanly everything worked overall.
4E Incarnum would have been great.
A fairly straight conversion of 3.5's binders to 4E (instead of the shit-binders we got instead) probably could have worked alright too.
>>43958586
>Skills
Do them like the last iteration of the Star Wars d20: instead of skill points, you just train skills, and a trained skill grants a +5 bonus to the skill, plus there's a lot of stuff you can't do untrained.
>>43958586
Just play 5e.
>>43963536
How can I convert incarnum and power point psionics into 5th edition?
>>43961018
So just like 4E.
More ideas:
The corpses of beasts, magical beasts and constructs are treasures. Their skins, bones, meat, and organs may be harvested for monetary value and crafting materials equivalent to NPC gear values of equivalent ECL.
You can meet the spell requirements for crafting magic items by using as raw material the body parts of appropriate creatures (usually creatures that can use the required spell as a spell-like ability.)
Some GM's run it by the rules and level up the PC's when they gain enough XP. Many simply level up the PC's after n number of game sessions as long as the players show up (and sometimes regardless of whether the players show up.) I'm thinking of leveling up the PC's when they attain the required wealth-by-level.
