I'm gestating a bunch of ideas for DnD rules revisions. I'm still playing by the book 3ed on the grounds that I ought to know it before I try to change it, so none of them have had a minute of playtesting. Many of the ideas here are not even playtestable rules, they are just suggestions for rules that could be developed, or attempts to analyse the official rules and see how they work. But I'd love to get feedback on any of them from you clever people out there. Email me on dndrules at the domain name of this site and let me know what you think.
Linked from this page are a set of stand-alone ideas and thoughts that either just comment on the official rules or that are suggestions for variant rules that could be dropped into an otherwise normal game. I'm also taking most of my variant rules ideas, and putting them together with some other ideas, to form a coherent system, to see how they all fit together. At the moment I'm calling it the dx system version 0.
So here are the stand-alone ideas and analyses of the official rules. Click through on each one to find out more. In some cases, there's one link for the text of the suggested rule variant, and then another link for a discussion of why I'm suggesting it and what alternatives I think could also be considered.
Click on these links to find rules ideas in various categories.
Classes
World Generation
Miscellaneous
How do the classes compare to each other, power-wise? If you wanted to create a new class, how would you make it balance with the others? Click here for my effort to give each aspect of the official classes a points value.
Here's how I think the game could be played with just 4 basic adventuring and 2 civilian classes replacing the 11 classes from the PHB (well most of them) and 5 NPC classes from the DMG.
Here are some prestige classes that bring back some of the bells and whistles that my basic models leave out.
Here are some career structures that demonstrate how you might combine these basic and prestige classes to fill the roles vacated by some official classes that I have abolished or heavily revised.
And here are the "exotic classes" that your campaign may not be able to do without.
I'm not keen on the settlement generation system in the DMG, and I've seen on message boards that some other people aren't either. Here is my alternative system for the same process.
Bows and crossbows - this is an article I wrote suggesting a fuller set of basic bows and crossbows than just long, short, light, heavy. Included here are some links to historical sources.