Now that I've released
my D&D archives, I feel like taking a step back.
Let's imagine you are playing Game 1: Baldur's Gate. In this case you chose the Dark alliance game in the series. You've picked your elf chick and been kill the baddies for a while. You wondered about something in the beginning and rolled up a human to go check it out.
In most games, each save file is monolithic and separate. Without hacking the data you can't put your elf into your human's early game state nor your weaker human into your elf's advanced game state. Some gamer's accept this fate due to "balance" concerns, but it's not really an issue anymore for modern gaming with auto-balancing systems like that found in the Game 2: Dragon Age Origins.
In some games, you have to wait for a New Game + to restart with your tough character back into the beginning of the game. The idea was still revolutionary decades ago for hallmarks (think Chrono Trigger). Nowadays, its a fairly standard mechanic for games that actually think themselves a decent game. Balder's Gate of course has this as "extreme mode".
But remember that a New Game + still falls short of a true in-game import. Even fewer games allow a true export process to a sequel. This is a much-appreciated feature that uses tried-and-true numbers inflation to maintain balance. It helps players think they've gotten somewhere without the "start all over again" disappointment. The Dragon Age Origins Expansion allows this, for instance, and the story line is coded to adjust for this fact.
Even the above is still short of a true in-game import. Why did I mention Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance? Because it allows a true, overwriting import, even in multiplayer. This allows for all the muling item transfer goodness we've come to expect (think Diablo I & II).
But you notice as you take a look at your Elf wizard and Human archer, newly geared due to importing and in Extreme Mode, that you just don't like the options available to you. You like some of them. Going Emporer Palpatine on enemies is fun. The dancing sword is useful to help make enemies flinch even while you kite or attack. But that's it. Even your archer friend's character feels a little lack-luster. Multishot is good, and ice arrows were good. but mainly all you use is repulsion and your passives to hack threw enemies.
You look at a fighter's ability options and notice that the awful Drizzt incarnation is a mix of the main three character's ability sets. "I could do better than that," you think. And suddenly it downs on you. If you could just take a blank character, like the fighter, and swap out four or five abilities, you've have a very fun combination. But alas, your hopes are dashed because you can't do that.
Even with the two features, it does have, there is no built-in level editor so you can add that kind of system. But you don't want to make new levels or even change how the lightning looks or how much it costs, etc, like a full game editor would allow (Think Warcraft III). All you want is a system to build characters.
Da Rules (for those to lazy to click the download link in my sig)
Custom Characters
In this high-powered campaign variant, characters essentially take any class at every level, choosing the aspects at the indicated level. The process is similar to multiclassing, except that characters gain the full benefits of each class at the chosen level without starting over. If the abilities overlap, they stack normally. The custom character retains all aspects that don’t overlap.
The custom character variant is particularly effective if you have three or fewer players in your group, or if your players enjoy multiclassing and want characters with truly prodigious powers. This variant works only if every PC in the campaign uses it, and it results in complicated characters who may overwhelm newer players with an abundance of options.
Building A Custom Character
To make a custom character, choose at least two standard classes. (You can also choose any class, though you can’t combine two versions of the same class.) Build your character according to the following guidelines.
Hit Dice, Base Attack Bonus, Base Saving Throw Bonuses, & Class Skills
Choose the incremental values of the class that is currently present. A paladin1,2+ranger3,4 would use first d10 as her Hit Die and then d8, for example. For example, a 1st-level custom fighter2+wizard3 would have base saving throw bonuses of Fortitude +3, Reflex +0, Will +2—taking the Fortitude save from the fighter classes and the good Will save from the wizard class, as normal.
Class Features
A custom character gains the class features of the chosen class at the chosen level, rather than the first level of a new class or the next level of a noncontiguous previous class. A 2nd-level custom cleric1+rogue2, for example, gets 1st-level cleric spells & domains and the ability to turn or rebuke undead, along with a rogue’s evasion ability. A cleric1+rogue2 would not gain sneak attack until progressing to rogue3, in which case it would only be 1d6 sneak attack. Class- and ability-based restrictions (such as a paladin’s code of conduct or a druid’s prohibition on wearing metal armor) apply normally to a custom character, no matter what the other classes are.
A custom character follows a similar procedure when he attains subsequent levels. Each time he gains a new level, he chooses another class, takes the aspects of that level, and applies them to his characteristics. A few caveats apply, however.
• Previous classes that are broken up come back at a higher level than normal multiclassing. The exception to this is chart-based progressions, which are often for spellcasters. For example a Wizard 1,2,3+Fighter 4 can’t gain wizard 4 class abilities, while a Wizard 1,2,3+Fighter 4+Wizard 5 casts as a standard wizard 4 rather than a 3rd level wizard with a 5th level wizards added incremental spell slots and spells known.
• Class features that two classes share (such as uncanny dodge) accrue as if they were a normal multiclass character. A Warblade 1,2,3,4,5+Fighter 6, gains 1 fighter level for the purpose of feats, as added to his warblade levels.
• Custom characters with more than one spellcasting/psionics/shadowcasting/martial/etc class keep track of their spells per day table as if they were multiclassing normally. This does not apply to non-table abilities.
• A custom character can take a prestige class level of any level lower than his current class level, assuming he would have qualified a number of levels ago equal to the one he is currently taking. For instance a Wizard 1,2,3,4,5+Fighter6+Loremaster4 is probably illegal because 4 levels ago he probably only had access to 1st level spells. A Wizard 1,2,3,4,5+Fighter6,7,8+Loremaster2 is allowed since he would have qualified two level ago.
• Prestige classes that are essentially class combinations-such as the arcane trickster, mystic theurge, and eldritch knight-should be prohibited if you’re using custom classes, because they unduly complicate the game balance of what’s already a high-powered variant. Because it’s possible for custom characters to qualify for prestige classes earlier than normal, the game master is entirely justified in toughening the prerequisites of a prestige class so it’s available only after 5th level, even for custom characters.
Custom Combinations
Because the player of a custom character chooses two classes at every level, the possibilities for custom characters are almost limitless. The following combinations are particularly potent.
(Repeating) Odd Fighter+Even Ranger
If you like feats, this is the class for you. Most fighters must choose whether to split their feats between melee and ranged combat or emphasize one kind of attack at the expense of the other. The fighter1+ranger2 can have it both ways, relying on the fighter bonus feats to improve melee attacks and the ranger’s combat style, improved combat style, and combat style mastery to pick up three good archery feats.
Odd Rogue+Even Paladin
Every rogue likes to get behind the enemy and dish out sneak attack damage. With this custom combination, that trick gets even better because you have the hit points and Armor Class to survive toe-to-toe with the enemy, you’ll hit more often, and you get more attacks, which just means more chances to pick up a fistful of d6s. You can wear heavy armor, but you’ll degrade some of your better skills and you’ll lose access to evasion.
Balancing Custom Characters
Obviously, this variant results in characters who are significantly more powerful than is standard. But how much more powerful? The simple answer-that custom characters are twice as powerful as standard characters—isn’t accurate. Custom characters don’t have an advantage in the most important game currency: available actions. Even a character who can fight like a barbarian and cast spells like a sorcerer can’t do both in the same round. A custom character can’t be in two places at once as two separate characters can be. Custom characters who try to fulfill two party roles (melee fighter and spellcaster, for example) find they must split their feat choices, ability score improvements, and gear selection between their two functions.
While a custom character isn’t as powerful as two characters of equal level, a custom character is more powerful than a standard character. Hit points will always equal to those of a standard character, although saving throws might be worse. Furthermore, a party of custom characters has greater durability and options, so they can often take on six or more consecutive encounters without stopping to rest.
Your players may be excited by the chance to play fighters with powerful sneak attack. But as the game master, you know that the only measure of PC power that matters is the comparison with NPC power. By throwing monsters of higher Challenge Ratings at them, you’ll still be giving them significant challenges. Custom characters look superior compared to standard characters, but that’s a false comparison. With this variant, such “standard” characters don’t exist.
Here’s how to build a campaign that can handle custom characters.
Challenge Ratings
Custom characters can obviously handle more opposition than standard characters. The simplest way to compensate for this is to use adventures with tougher monsters. In general, a party of four custom characters can handle multiple encounters with a single monster of a Challenge Rating equal to their average level + 1. If the monster poses a challenge because it forces the characters to succeed on life-threatening saving throws (such as with a medusa or a wyvern), it’s stronger against custom characters, who have weak saves. Characters can only handle multiple encounters with such monsters at a Challenge Rating equal to their average level + 2. A shambling mound (CR 6) or a medusa (CR 7) would be appropriate encounters for four 5th-level custom characters. If you take this approach, realize that characters gain levels faster than in a typical campaign, because they’re gaining experience points as if those encounters were harder than they actually are. You’re obviously comfortable with a high-powered game, so faster advancement may be an additional benefit, not a problem. if you rely on published adventures, this is the easiest option.
If you want to keep level advancement at the standard average of thirteen encounters per level, reduce the Challenge Ratings of all the monsters and NPCs in your campaign by 1 (or by 2). The shambling mound and the medusa would both become CR 5 monsters, and the custom characters gain levels at the usual rate. Monsters with a Challenge Rating of 1 become CR 1/2, and other monsters with fractional Challenge Ratings have their CRs cut in half (kobolds become CR 1/6, in other words). Many staple low-CR monsters don’t work well against a party of custom characters, even 2nd-level customs.
Adventure Design
Once you adjust the Challenge Ratings, you have one more subtle factor to consider when you design adventures for custom characters. You must take into account the greater “adventure options” of custom characters both when you’re preparing an adventure and when you’re at the gaming table running the adventure. Because custom characters have abilities than standard characters, they can safely tackle more encounters in a row before they run.
Custom characters can, for example, delve deeply into a dungeon on their first foray, when the dungeon denizens may not be expecting them. The defenders of any site in a site-based adventure can’t rely on greater flexibility than a party of custom characters. They have to pose enough of a threat that the custom characters retreat because they’re worried about their hides.
In event-based adventures, custom characters can wreak havoc with timetables because they have more resources at their disposal. Although, a 10th-level custom wizard1,2,3,4,5+sorcerer6,7,8,9,10 can’t teleport the entire party without resorting to scrolls, he probably has lots of low level spells. That means one round trip in a lower level dungeon rather than two.
At the gaming table, you may want to plan longer gaming sessions because rest periods for the characters are natural stopping points for the players, and custom characters have fewer rest periods. If you do stop in the middle of the action, encourage your players to take careful notes of which class abilities they expend, which spells they have active, and other relevant information. Custom characters are complex enough that relying solely on memory is a recipe for trouble.
NPCs
An important aspect of most campaigns is verisimilitude—which is centered on the notion that everything in the campaign world is obeying the same set of rules. Accordingly, any important NPCs in your game should also be custom characters. It’s probably not necessary to have low-level noncombatant NPCs pick two classes, but any NPCs above 1st level should be constructed as custom characters. (NPCs with levels only in NPC classes-adept, aristocrat, commoner, expert, and warrior-can remain standard characters.)
Prestige Classes
The high-powered nature of the custom character variant gives you more room to create unique prestige classes. First, you can create narrowly specialized prestige classes, and they’ll still be compelling choices for PCs because the characters can advance in a regular class while taking levels in the prestige class. Players won’t feel shoehorned into a very specific prestige class if they have another class they can also alternate into later. Second, you can create truly outrageous prestige classes-but add the additional cost that such classes remove contiguous room for custom characters. For example, a prestige class that offered a d6 Hit Die, +.5/level base attack bonus, two good saves, full spellcasting, and a host of class features would be completely unbalanced in a standard game, but is nonetheless the norm for casters. But if it disallows customization for a custom character, it’s not too powerful.
Campaign Pacing
Once it is adjusted as outlined above, a campaign that employs custom characters isn’t that different from a standard campaign. Custom characters don’t gain access to key campaign-changing abilities faster than their standard counterparts. No custom character can use teleport or raise the dead under her own power before 9th level without fast casters, and no nonmonk custom character gets a second melee attack in a round before 6th level without whirling frenzy. Custom characters get to tackle monsters a level or two ahead of time, but they’re still fighting gnolls at low levels, rakshasas at middle levels, and balors at high levels. Perhaps the only noticeable difference in terms of campaign pacing is that custom mundane PCs are “something special” from the beginning. They are far more powerful than typical 2nd-level commoners even at the beginning of the campaign. Again, this difference only matters for a level or two, because standard 2nd level characters are also far more powerful than 1st-level commoners.
Speaking of Warcraft III, you realize that a third game, LoD DotA, does allow that sort of thing. It's is still alive and kicking even though DotA II has been available for years, and is in competitive play. It's pretty much the only spin-off to achieve that. Usually a new version and the migration of the e-sports scene spells the death of any game.
You are aware that Baldur's Gate is just a DnD intellectual property port to video gaming. In 3.5e you can multiclass, but then you only get the earliest abilities from the chasis. So by DnD's method, if Balder's Gate had a more linear abilities progression, maybe you'd never get Repulsion on your fighter without losing out on Fighter abilities (which you'd otherwise want). It's just not true customization.
Now you think over to DotA LoD again. You can get any ult from any hero at level 6. They are all available for level 6. They are all assumed to be balanced. No spell is assumed to be better than any other similar-level ability. Of course some combinations will be banned and there are going to be others that work together far better, but it's your job to find those.
What if you could do that for DnD? What if there was one mode that allowed a fighter to take a high level ranger's ability at a given point and only lose one equivalent high level fighter ability? Unfortunately DnD has "dead levels" which are universally agreed to be a terrible idea, much less a balancing point.
So assuming an adaption that had no dead levels (an up-shifted one, like my C8), or even just powering up generic 3e's dead levels, imagine the flexibility of being able to achieve this "LoD" mode. I'm curious if 3e would have lasted even longer the way LoD DotA has. Maybe that's something to hope for in 5e. I suspect that 5e's creators simply haven't played enough other games to learn this lesson, but we managed it in only three and a half ;)
Q: How did you come up with this?
A: I originally thought this was how multiclassing worked. Just the idea of it blew my mind. Then I realized 3e was still holding a "middle ground" between full customization and old school multiclassing: "you gain all the rogue levels if you take the xp hit for the rogue progression." It probably helped me see DotA LoD mode even before Formless in the DotA AI maps. Seriously, I had backstab + morph + omnistrike mapped out and everything.
Q: Does 3e even need this?
A: To be taken to its limits, yes it does. I think full customization haunted the creator's nightmares along with wizards in full armor. You'll notice that mundanes are significantly boosted while casters don't gain anything. If 3e started out this way, I don't think it would have been labeled 'caster edition' quite so quickly.
Q: My DM won't allow this! He can't handle my fighter being so uber!
A: It's weaker than gestalting. And I've determined that to be equivalent to at most worth 4 free LA. If your DM can't spare you 3LA, then he's basically can't DM for 3 levels higher. He might not be the most capable DM, in this case.
Q: Is this really the limit of gaming? What about homebrew for 3e?
A: For games that have build paths? Yes. Homebrew is like an entire world editor, rather than a high-powered mode for the same game. In a level editor, your mods basically become different games unless they are done very, very tastefully. Remember, that I've already released my homebrew and it is basically just an enumerated 3e game that uses the dirty trick handbook fixes along with about a hundred and fifty little, specific tweaks (most of which are just caster nerfs).
Q: How game I take a game even further?
A: You just apply the same principal: add customization features to the mechanics. The main decisions in a game is the build, but some have races or items, etc. See my racial Calculating & Comparing Racial ECL for how to say "Fine you can build any custom race using these given entries." You can do the same thing for spells, or whatever. Usually these things are more add-hoc and therefore harder to find swappable equivalency. Even something simple and cut and dry like melee weapon stats (which I've done) requires lots of analysis, but knock yourself out.
