Immediate need for house rules?

[delericho]

If I run 4e at all, then I'll run my first campaign by the book. Then I'll start making changes. I did the same with 3e.

That said, before 3e was released, I had a list of definate house rules (things like "get rid of favoured classes" and "no monk/paladin multiclass restrictions"). For 4e, I have a similar list, and it's getting awfully long.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Where do you think you are? I'm already house-ruling for 5e.

I hear they're removing house-ruling from 5e. It creates too many inconsistencies.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

The first 3E game I played in, in college, the DM started houseruling right off the bat, fixing things that were obviously problematic, since they never would have worked in 2nd Edition, while adding in all the cool stuff that had accumulated from previous campaigns.

It was a catastrophe. "Multi-classing" that worked like gestalt-classing, fewer skills (since Non-Weapon Proficiencies were "just fine" and all those skills were "for munchkins"), facing rules, and a million other things to correct for "balance" because the DM had no idea how to look at the system as a whole, and instead starting tearing out whatever did not make sense to his intuitions.

And then there was the assassin. *Shudder.*

I'm going to wait a good long time before I start dreaming up houserules. If Rule 0 is "change what you don't like," Rule -1 is "the game designers might actually know what they're doing."

I agree with this for the most part, but the game designers don't run or play in my game so their usefulness and opinions on how I run things at my table extend only as far as I allow them to.

But yeah, for the most part when I run a new game I do start with the rules as written unless something jumps out me that I feel / know won't work that well at the table with myself or my players. Worst comes to worst, we can always go back to default.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I don't think it's irrational to house-rule from day one. Indeed, I think it's irrational to suggest that it is irrational!

In particular, I think adding to the rules, rather than altering the rules, which is typically regarded as "house-ruling" is far from unreasonable, especially for many of us who have been running games for decades now, and thinking about the issues involved.

It's one thing to drastically change the mechanics from the get-go. It's another to make a number of minor changes based on having read and understood the rules. It's also a bit misleading to say you always have to have read all of the rules to know whether making changes is a good idea. It depends entirely on what the rule is and how it works, and whether it even interacts with any other rules.

Plus, realistically, no-one is going to actually use house rules without having read the full rules, because we're not even going to be able to play properly until they're out, duh.

Edit - Delericho reminds me of "to hell with favoured classes" which I had houseruled by the time 3E came out, too. I mean, did I have to see "all of 3E" to understand that that little dinosaur needed shooting? Nope.

 

[MerricB]

The funny things is that a lot of these changes are getting houseruled into my 3e games... diagonals, death & dying? Yeah, they'll be better for my players.

Cheers!

 

[Nikosandros]

I've always houseruled the games that I played... probably 4e will be no exception. But I'd first like to try it the way it is for a while...

 

[arwenarrowny]

If Rule 0 is "change what you don't like," Rule -1 is "the game designers might actually know what they're doing."

.Sigged!

 

[Generico]

I'm seeing threads about no cone shaped effects and square fireballs, and I'm immediately thinking to myself 'not in my game'.

Remember, this is the internet, "thread" means "pile of mind-poop" here. Honestly, the extent to which people can stupidly interpret WoTC 4e information is both mind boggling and depressing. There's a large trend towards immediately assuming that the WoTC designers have done the absolute dumbest thing possible. People also tend to make gigantic assumptions based on a 3.5 context, seemingly without realizing that this information is related only to a 4e context, of which we know very little.

The only thing I might house rule very quickly would be diagonal movement. My players can actually count 5, 10, 5, 10 and so on. Other than that, I'll have to play it for a while before I start making significant changes.

 

[BlueBlackRed]

Unless you or one of your players has an eidetic memory, you're going to miss or forget a rule.
Your options are to quickly houserule it or spend an unspecified amount of time looking it up.
If you're wrong on the ruling, it probably won't be that big of a deal to fix.

 

[D_E]

I'll be putting diagonal movement back the way it was.

Also, unless there is already a mechanism to ensure that the fighter isn't always hit by an Area of Effect attack if the Rouge is, I'll be reversing the math on Saving Deffences to turn them back into Saving Throws.