my House Rules and GM board/sheets

Since I've posted my multiclassing house rules, I thought I might as well share my full selection of house rules, as well as show you the GM board (rather than GM screen...) that i use, and show you my encounter and xp sheets.

House Rules
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At-wills:
Additional at-will from ONE of your classes at level 4

XP:
each player that hits a target is awarded some xp, and the char that kills the target gets extra

so... orc, 160 xp. player 1 hits, player 3 hits, player 1 hits, player 2 hits and kills
xp is split 4 ways, 3 player hits + killing blow, so 160/4 = 40xp
player 1 gets 40 xp, player 2 gets 40 xp + 40 xp, player 3 gets 40 xp

Characters that don't play in a game i.e player couldn't make it, still get xp equal to the average of xp awarded (remember ing to remove highest and lowest totals rewarded)

Determining magical powers:
Mages can daily, auto determine the powers and effects of a number of items equal to their int modifier.
After that, they can make an arcana check, DC 15
Warlocks can make an arcana check DC 20
Anyone else can make an arcana check DC 25

Skills:
Only class/race related skills have the 1/2 level bonus in skill checks. All the other have 1/4 level

Traps:
Rogues can detect traps using either perception or thievery stat, whichever is higher (automatically gain Trained Eye [homebrew] feat as a class feature)

Heroic Burst:
Instead of using their healing surge in combat as a Second Wind, the player can use the healing surge to gain an immediate interrupt action with a -1 to hit. They gain back Cons modifier HP rather than the full amount of the healing surge.

Action Points:
Action points can be used to either:
make another action,
gain a +1 attack and damage bonus to next attack,
a free healing surge,
recharge a used encounter power

Minions:
if a minion gets a critical hit, it does double damage
if a minion is 'special' (i.e. carrying a necessary item), it can survive one hit, then get a +1 to attacks, damage and speed, die'ing on the next hit

Re-Training:
Each level you can retrain/swap one at-will/encounter/daily/utility for one of an equivalent or lower level.
Or you can swap a feat (cannot swap a multiclass feat)
Or you can reduce an ability score by one and increase a score by one (cannot reduce lowest score or increase highest score)


Potions
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These potions replace what is shown in the PHB. All of them can only be used once in an encounter

Potions of Healing
are easy to identify, gives a free healing surge
Potion of Vitality

gives 2 healing surge worth of temporary hp, temporary hp last for the encounter

Potion of Recovery
the potion costs 1 healing surge buts heals twice the amount, also gives a +5 bonus to the next saving throw

Potion of Restoration
costs 1 healing surge but heals the character up to full hp, also gives a +10 saving throw bonus to the next saving throw

Potion of Life
if given to a live character, acts as a potion of restoration
if given to dead char within 1 hour of death - it heals them to bloodied hp
if given to dead char within 24 hours of death - it heals to 1 hp


Multi-Classing
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Multiclass feats remain named as they are

Once multiclassed, you are considered to be that class for feat pre-reqs
New powers at each level MUST be from original class
You can multi class once during heroic tier (at level 1 or 2 or 4), and once during paragon tier
Your paragon path has to be from your original class
You gain 1 class skill, 1 at-will from new class as a encounter power and 1 class feature

New feats to replace PHB power swap feats: Multi-Class Power Swap, Multi-Class Additional Power, Multi-Class Additional Feature, Multi-Class Additional Skill
Power swap feat means you can, when re-training encounter/utility/daily, choose it from any ONE of your classes
Additional power feat gives you an additional at-will from the new class as an encounter power
Additional feature feat gives you an additional class feature benefit from the new class
additional skill gives you an additional class skill from the new class

I like your ideas about the "healing" potions, I'm going to have to implement something like this in my game.

An idea I use and you may like for minions is have them take one successful hit per tier to kill, so paragon minions need to be hit twice to be killed, epic three.

So your leaders gain XP more slowly and your strikers more quickly, and now that I think about it the wizards, quickly as well. Poor leaders, healing and gaining less xp than even players that didn't come to the game...

I, too, wonder why change XP rewards to tie it to killing monsters.

DS

Sabathius42 said:

I, too, wonder why change XP rewards to tie it to killing monsters.

DS

Click to expand...

Why? because thats the way half of my group has played it for the last 16 years.

Why reward the killing blow? because its that moment of glory, that blagging right. we've found that its always helped focus the players in one of two ways, they either try and keep an enemy to themselves, or try and take out something thats already been hit in order to get the extra xp. weeks after a game the guys will still be talking about how they stole the kill with only 1 hp remaining.

As for slow progression for leaders, its actually slow xp progression for everyone. they are onto the 7th session and most are only just past the third level xp. after the temple game we played at the weekend, we discussed the slower xp for leaders and suggested that maybe if you buff another character you get half their xp

Well, I guess that's why RPGs are so great, because everyone can find their own way to do things and have fun.

My group is totally the opposite of how you describe yours. We like to split everything totally evenly and have mostly ditched tracking XP and instead just level up when the GM wants us to in order to advance the story.

DS