Favorite Variant/House Rules

Kryndal Levik · Aug 3, 2005

What are everyone's "favorite" house or variant rules? What do you use in your games? Perhaps most importantly, which fix what you see to be inherently broken aspects of the game?

domino · Aug 3, 2005

Kryndal Levik said:
What are everyone's "favorite" house or variant rules? What do you use in your games? Perhaps most importantly, which fix what you see to be inherently broken aspects of the game?

Favorite. The Legend or Destiny Stat. Basically, instead of 6, you get 7 stats to roll for. You get some help on a roll for your bonus (per game, or arc, or whatever). It can be a bonus to your roll equal to your modifier, (or split between several rolls) or X numbers of rerolls, or X number of automatic sucesses.

Sorta like Action points, but a different mechanic. Mostly because I like the idea of getting a shot to make SURE that you can try the really important/dramatic stuff.

magic_gathering2001 · Aug 3, 2005

My favorite was the weapons as special abilities thread. It, for me, fixed the problem with hp. But i do nonmagic alot so that makes it different.

Kryndal Levik · Aug 3, 2005

domino said:
The Legend or Destiny Stat....

I really like that! Is that a house rule only, or is there a source that elaborates on the concept?

Personally, I have always used more relaxed rules for negative hit points and stabilization to give characters a bit more of a fighting chance at higher levels. I just recently read similar rules on Sean K. Reynolds' site, and plan on adopting those (as they're more fleshed out than mine have been).

Viktyr Gehrig · Aug 3, 2005

My point-buy based attribute improvement system.

Sets the number of build points based on character level, so that 1st level characters are actually baseline 25 points, and 15+ level characters actually have the kind of stats that 15th level named NPCs do.

Terraism · Aug 3, 2005

Korimyr the Rat said:
My point-buy based attribute improvement system.

Sets the number of build points based on character level, so that 1st level characters are actually baseline 25 points, and 15+ level characters actually have the kind of stats that 15th level named NPCs do.

Could you elaborate on that a bit, or point me to a source? It sounds shiny.

Viktyr Gehrig · Aug 3, 2005

Terraism said:
Could you elaborate on that a bit, or point me to a source? It sounds shiny.

Sure. Characters start at 1st level with a baseline number of build points-- I favor 25, since it's the default, plus one point for having acheived first level. Characters have a maximum ability score (before racial or other adjustments) of 18.

Replacing the whole attribute point gained every fourth level, characters receive a number of build points at each level equal to 1/4th their ECL, rounded up-- 1 each for 1st through 4th level, 2 each for 5th through 8th, and so on. These points may be either spent immediately or reserved. This gives characters 85 build points at 20th level.

Racial adjustments, class ability bonuses, inherent bonuses, and any other ability score adjustments are applied after point buy, as normal, and are removed before spending new build points-- while the relative difference between a 20 and a 22 is smaller than the difference between a 12 and a 14, it's a considerably greater savings in build points.

The maximum pre-adjustment ability score increases by 1 every 4th level-- 18 at 1st, 19 at 4th, 20 at 8th, and so on. While characters can't pour all of their build points into a single attribute, they can focus on solely on two attributes, keeping them almost maximized, if they so desire. One maximized attribute is slightly over half of your total build points at 1st level, and slightly under by 20th.

For scores above 18, the same scaling pattern is used as for starting characters-- at every odd ability score, the cost per point increases by one, so that 19 and 20 cost four points each (20 and 24, total), 21 and 22 cost five points each, and so on. A 23, first available at 20th level, costs 40 build points.

Ferret · Aug 3, 2005

That is shiny.

domino · Aug 3, 2005

Kryndal Levik said:
I really like that! Is that a house rule only, or is there a source that elaborates on the concept?

There might be somewhere that covers it more in depth. But I've not found it. I only saw it in a game I played in, run by one of my friends (who got it from someone else) a few years ago.

genshou · Aug 4, 2005

I'm split between vitality/wounds in place of hit points, parrying rules, and called shots. Yes, you read right. Called shots.

My bastard child rules for Pledge of Tyranny, which include all of these crazy changes and enough more to choke a gnoll pimp, will eventually be posted in this forum (with a cross-post in my story hour), once I actually write it in a way that makes sense to anyone but me who attempts to read it. (English? What's that? We speak Mushakelingerishnabooderism here.)