I am working on a concept of all-inclusive democracy whereby all intelligent races are considered citizens of the realm, are protected under law and encouraged to participate in the government of the nation.
Players will be encouraged to play non-standard races.
As part of this I am considering doing away with the alignment system, so that rather than being constrained to a particular code of conduct, players will have to roleplay according to their character description. I think this gives a lot more scope for characterisation, and there's something just slightly off about being able to detect evil in an ordinary person. It's rarely that cut and dried.
However, I was still going to use alignment for Clerics and Paladins, but not in a "you are LG and I can detect it" way, but in a "if you don't act according to your particular code of conduct, your patron god will be extremely put out" kind of way.
Also, I have always been bothered by the way the "favoured class" system worked with multi-classing penalties. The way it stands in the book a Dwarf with 15 levels of Wizard has a favoured class of Fighter! This guy wouldn't know the right end of a sword to hold, he's a Wizard! By this stage his favoured class is, and always will be, Wizard.
So, I toyed with making multi-classing work for all races the way it works for humans, first class = favoured class. But then, take a character that is Rogue 2/Wizard 14. If he took Rogue first his favoured class is Rogue, despite the fact that at a glance you'd call him a Wizard. That far along the Wizard track, his favoured class is definitely Wizard.
Therefore, the rule I have come up with is that your favoured class is always the class that you have the most levels in, meaning it can change as you multiclass.
If your highest levels are equal, you can choose which is your favoured class, but it still changes if you progress along the other class.
So, any race, Fighter 6/Rogue 7 has a favoured class of Rogue. Druid 8/Fighter 5/Ranger 6 has a favoured class of Druid. Rogue 5/Wizard 5 has a favoured class of either Rogue or Wizard (it makes little difference which, but it can't be both).
I also think that, in order to encourage players to choose non-standard races, monster HD shouldn't count for multi-classing.
Does anyone see any problem with any of these house rules?
