3.5 House Rules

In prepping to run my 3.5 campaign I am assembling some house rules. I figured I'd log a few of them here along with the reasons why.

Bull Strength, Cat's Grace, Bear's Endurance, Fox's Cunning, Owl's Wisdom, and Eagle's Splendor - the duration of these is 10 minutes/level, not 1 minute/level. I did this because I do not like 1 minute/level spells. They encourage rushing through encounters rather than balancing the buff/duration. I'm not a great fan of 1 min/level spells. Monte Cook talks about the issue here.

I'm a big fan of Monte Cook. I think he has a knack for balancing and figuring how what is "cool".

I'm using the 3.0 version of Polymorph. Read the 3.5 version of Polymorph self, then look at Alter Self. Its a rather pathetic spell. Also, 3.5's baleful polymorph - GONE.

Weapon sizing works like it does in 3.0. A dagger for a "medium-sized" creature is a "short-sword" for a small creature. 3.5 differentiates the two. That always rubbed me the wrong way, especially since J.R.R. Tolkein set the precidence that the interchange was OK. Remember Bilbo/Frodo's short sword, Sting? It was actually WAS a dagger that got passed along.

Action Points: Eberron uses Action Points. If you look at the d20 SRD, you will see how that works. Well, I'm expanding that a little bit. You can be awarded Action Points for doing something Cool, Heroic, and especially Herioc at a Dramatically Appropriate time (if you remember WEG Star Wars, you will understand this concept comes from Force Points).

Damage Reduction: Monte Cook puts it best.

Now, many readers I'm sure are saying "Wow! 10 people!" Well, I again turn to Monte Cook for information: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

I'll post more on this later.