Sounds fun. I'm using the tier-based free LA houserule, as well.
Hello shenanigans, my old friend; Ive come to talk with you again.
as a person who's never actually played DnD, despite owning the rulebooks, I have a question
what is this house rule? What does it do?
There's a lot of power disparity in the game. Fighters and monks, to put it mildly, suck. Wizards can singlehandedly do everything before they're half max level. Lots of houserules have been come up with to get around this, from blanket bans on the strong stuff to stuff like giving lower-tier characters "gestalt" abilities where they get to advance in two classes at once. I'm partial to the "Level Adjustment by Tier" rule, where lower-powered characters get to add extra stuff to their characters, like templates and more powerful races like drow and stuff.
Personally, I prefer having a gentleman's agreement with anybody who wants to play stuff like Druids or Wizards, since they're the only one who has fun turning into a bear that shoots bears that spit fire and fart lightning or use the Locate City bomb to eliminate everything in a seventy-mile radius. Some people run high-powered games where the free LA starts coming from everywhere below Tier 1, but I'm more of a Tier 3-baseline kind of guy and intend to start supplying it to Tier 4 (default rangers/rogues/paladins) and under.
Make that two and a half, depending on whether or not I can be arsed to break out Ye Olde Rulebooks once more.
3/2!
How heavily can we optimize?
I'd prefer you not go into full-on munchkin mode, but I don't mind the sort of splatbook-laden min-maxing that internet class guides generally advocate. To an extent, that is.