For a long time, I've been impressed with the tattoos on Platter's Planescape site.  After years of wondering if I really want that tattoo, I've decided that waiting almost a decade to decide is probably long enough.  I do want it.  I've found a beautiful version of the artwork, here:

The nature of a man by ~isilien on deviantART

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This is my third homebrew rule revision to Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, which I'm calling the 3.t edition. Today's rule revision has little to do with speeding up gameplay, but has a lot to do with lengthening the game day.  In particular, we're addressing Vancian magic.  That's the form of magic that 3.x and earlier versions use -- basically, spellcasters can use a limited array of spells per day, and then they're wiped out and need to rest.  That's a very different model from Diablo, for example, where your character can shoot fireballs all day, so long as he has mana.

The problem with the Vancian system is that it engenders the "15 minute work day" -- that is to say that clerics, wizards, and the like seem to blow through their spells after just a few combats, causing the group to go rest after less than a hour in the game world.  Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition has a solution for this, which is pretty close to just abandoning the Vancian magic system.  I personally wanted to do something much simpler with the 3.5 rules.  I was thinking, could I address the issue by changing just one single table in the Player's Handbook?

Let me show you the revised table, and then I'll explain why it's awesome.

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Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch recently gave a presentation titled, "Achieving Your Childhood Dreams."  What makes the presentation amazing (aside from how entertaining it is) is that this is a man who was staring down cancer.  He knew it when he gave the presentation.  Yet it is amazingly hopeful.

He was a geek, like me.  He loved video games and learning through fun.  He loved his family.  He has a thousand stories about the people he's met.  And he passed away today, July 25th, 2008.  You should watch the video.

"I mean, the metaphor I've used is... somebody's going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon, and I won't be there to catch them.  And that breaks my heart.  But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall.  So, I can curl up in a ball and cry, or I can get to work on the nets."

Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008)

As in my previous entry about the 3.t system, I'm trying to make D&D 3.5 play faster.  Today's rule revision has to do with critical hits.  Right now in 3.5, each weapon has a "threat range" such as 19-20, which means that if you roll a 19 or 20 on a 20-sided die, you are maybe going to do critical damage.  To determine if you actually do get critical damage, you roll again.  That's a bit convoluted.

The problem?  To fix this, we cannot just drop the confirmation roll and say "all critical threats are automatically confirmed."  If we do that, then crits will happen much more often and low-level characters will die more often.  But if we reduce the damage of the weapons, then we can keep all those crits.  That should speed up gameplay without changing the numbers (much), because there is no more rolling to confirm crits.  They just happen.  It should be more enjoyable for the players, too -- their weapons might do a tiny bit less damage each hit, but they will do critical hits often.  So what we're about to do will keep damage roughly the same, but remove an extra dice roll.  Ready?

Critical hits

1. Drop every weapon's damage to the next smaller die.  1d12 becomes 1d10, 1d10 becomes 1d8, 1d8 becomes 1d6, 1d6 becomes 1d4, 1d4 becomes 1d3, and 1d3 becomes 1d2.  Now, there is a tricky part here, for weapons that do two dice worth of damage per hit: 2d6 becomes 1d10, and 2d4 becomes 1d6.
2. All critical threats are automatically confirmed.  Done.

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For a while now, I've been mulling over what I would do to make D&D 3.5 play faster, like 4th edition promised.  Of course, the joke is that 4th edition can be even slower than 3.5, due to all the new movement rules.  But I don't have to worry about that.  I just want to take the best elements, and graft them onto the 3.5 rules with a minimum of fuss.

I'm calling my revisions 3.t, as in 3.tony, because I'm the one to blame if the revisions suck or work well.  The criteria for "sucks" would be if a rule change requires large rewrites, or breaks lots of other rules.  The criteria for "works well" would be if a rule change speeds up gameplay but has little effect otherwise.  So if a typical combat takes 90 minutes to resolve normally, with my rules I hope that you can resolve combat in an hour or less.

Turning

First up for revision is the cleric system for turning undead.  We merely drop the turn check roll, and replace it with cleric level + charisma bonus + knowledge religion synergy (if the character has it).  The turn damage roll would remain.  So the steps are as follows:

1. Roll the turn damage as usual (2d6 + cleric level + charisma).
2. Cap the highest hit die undead that can be turned at: cleric level + charisma modifier + knowledge religion synergy (if any).

Let's consider the example of a 2nd level cleric with 14 charisma and no points in the knowledge religion skill.  If the cleric rolled a 4, he'd have an 8 for step 1 (4 + 2 for level, +2 for charisma).  Then for step 2 the cap would be set at 2 + 2 + 0 (no synergy bonus), or 4 total.  Therefore, the cleric could turn two 4 HD undead (8 total, capped at 4 HD).  But he/she could not turn one 8 HD undead, due to the per-monster cap.

This is almost exactly the same as turn undead following RAW, but removes one roll and replaces it with a reasonably fair, typically unchanging number.  Should be easier for players to follow and execute quickly.

I'll group all my articles about rules revision under the 3.t tag, should you wish to see what else I have for it.