Family Campaign

Tonight is the family campaign. For a variety of reasons ranging from illness, to scheduling, to other things lost in the midst of time we haven't met for several months. That does make it kind of tough to keep the campaign continuity going, but they seem to be enjoying themselves so I guess it's not all bad.

I came across a post by one of the D&D developers with some suggestions for making the monk and the bard class more playable. I'm strongly tempted to implement these changes, because the bard and the monk do seem kind of underpowered, but then so does the half-dragon favored soul, and the rogue. So basically everyone other than the arcane archer and the barbarian (half-orc str 20) seems under-powered. I guess it would be easier just to nerf the two of them than buff the other four, but no one really likes being nerfed, and its not as if I'm having a hard time challenging them.

So here are the changes he suggested along with the changes I'm thinking.

Bard
1/1 BAB progression.

Swift action to start bardic music, swift action to keep it going as needed, no restrictions on spell casting.

Increase hit die to d8.

Spontaneous casting - swap a spell to give a target an attack and AC bonus for one round equal to the spell's level, and heal 1d6 per spell level.

Monk
1/1 BAB progression.

Increase hit die to d10.

Those were his suggestions, now here's what I'm thinking for the other two:

Half-Dragon Favored Soul
Make the Half-Dragon only ECL +2

Give him +2 on effective caster level (making his caster level equal to the levels of the rest of the party)

Rogue
Allow sneak attacks to work against creatures normally immune to crits (undead, oozes, etc.)

I know the latter modification is pretty ham-fisted, but I don't have the time to be more elegant.

Let me know what you think, particularly if you're in the family campaign and you're one of the people being affected.

You'll do what I say and you'll like it