Introducing New House Rules

[Garthanos]

I don't see nothing wrong with Monster Knowledge Checks, after all, the PC should know many things that the player don't.

Loads of things... now its possible the dm can change the nature of his game world such that monsters are more rare and more unique than in D&D standard assumed world. In which case .. might want to just remove the skill from the list...you could make all the difficulty checks so high that people will not choose it either way, let the players know.

 

[Mallus]

... allowing players to tweak their characters with unlimited power/feat retraining options.

However, I think that might be a bit too powerful, since most of my house rules will only modify the game in small ways.

I don't think that's too powerful. Giving PC's unlimited retraining when they level won't break 4e.

3) Monster Knowledge Checks do not grant a huge amount of monster knowledge, but instead more "flavour" information (I *HATE* monster knowledge checks, and want my GM freedom)

Better to remove Knowledge: Monsters completely (PC's 'know' rumors whatever firsthand knowledge they've gained from actually facing a particular beastie). It's a bad idea to allow players to spend in-game resources for something you've already decided will have little-to-no in-game benefit.

4) Rules that make no sense thematically will be ignored (ie, if you're prone, you don't grant cover to allies behind you vs. ranged attacks)

5) Flavour of powers will be considered for "stunting" purposes

Sounds good. The only caveat I have is that you should try to keep to the spirit of rules, if not the letter. 4e, in general, cares not a lot for corner cases. For instance, 'tripping' an ooze might be plausible, because 'tripping' really means 'imposing a hampering condition', and not neccessarily the literal act (which is why you can trip a sack of carnivorous protoplasm in the first place). Be aware of the places where 4e terms are really more of a convenient shorthand.

6) No takebacks on moves (ie, you count as you move, and you can't try out multiple pathways).

I'd be wary of this one. Players focused on tactical challenges might eat this up, but I can easily see this bugging players who's primary interests lie elsewhere.

Otherwise, the house rules sound find. They are a D&D tradition, after all.

 

[Imban]

By that logic the bite of a cobra that deals poison damage and a swing from a gargantuan titan's 2-ton greatclub should be identical because they both deal hp damage. Never mind that the first must have inflicted at least a minor puncture in order to inflict the poison and that being directly struck by a 2-ton club would probably liquefy Hercules himself. D&D mechanics are simplifications of fantasy world effects. In the first case the hero probably got bit by the cobra but was tough enough to shrug off the worst effects of the venom. In the second he probably dodged the club and took damage from the nearby impact as it struck the earth like a meteor.

Yeah, this just reminds me that a lot of us have entirely different game worlds. By the narration that I tend to use, most of my players' characters can shrug off repeated greatsword blows to the neck - not because they're lucky or skilled, they're just that bad and thus they only got beaten up a bit by it.

If something seems like it shouldn't work I first try to think of a way that it could work, and I ask the player to do the same. It never takes longer than a few moments for someone to come up with something plausible.

To be fair, these sort of arguments don't come up very often at my table, because generally we don't disagree that much about what's possible. The one person who's really given to it is a big 4e fan, and he tends to skip justification and go straight to "Is it immune? No? Then I knocked it prone." Which... well, that's really annoying, because I'm the GM and he can get stuffed.

However, I've had the misfortune of playing under a DM who would arbitrarily deny certain effects that he deemed "unrealistic", even if the player had a justification for why it should work and despite that it upset the player (this DM wouldn't let the player take back his action either).

Geez, if you're going to declare an action patently impossible, you should at least let the player pick a different one. Assumedly his character would know that what he's doing was never, ever going to succeed and not have done it, is my reasoning... but beyond that, it's just not polite to make people lose turns over rules arguments.

I learned a lot from that guy actually (in the sense of how not to run a game). The DM is there to act as a fun-inspiring arbiter rather than a my-way-or-the-highway tyrant, and it's a "subtle" difference that many but not all DMs seem to grasp (and no, I'm not suggesting that you are a tyrant DM). Your advice of "striking down nonsense" did strike me as having dangerously tyrannical interpretations though (again, I'm not suggesting that such was your intent).

I approach DMing as more a referee than a facilitator. For instance, I think it's totally legitimate to have the consequences for attempting to climb a wall be either that you can (and do) or can't (and don't) and far prefer just saying "yes" or "no" to "yes, but...", but at the end of the day I only sit down to play or run a game because it's fun, and assume the same is true for everyone in my group.

So yeah, I subscribe to a lot of theories that tend to lead to tyrannical DMing but also to "no gaming is better than bad gaming", which in my experience acts as a pretty strong counter to terrible game masters. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying that any number of races can't be played in your campaign world, but if I really want to play one that isn't allowed, I'm just going to tell you this and then not play in your campaign. Which has an obvious effect - if you make a campaign pitch nobody likes, it doesn't get run.

 

[Wik]

WHoa. A lot of replies! Awesome! I feel I should clarify my original points, rather than go through people's replies point by point - I'd love to, but I'd be here all day!

1. Average Healing Rolls between Encounters

This would be done purely to speed up short rests. I find 4e can get a bit "draggy" at times, and this is one of those things to speed up play.

2. Average Damage Rolls for Secondary Attacks

Again, done to speed up play. I don't think there are too many cases in my group that need to worry about this, but I find it sort of silly that a controller has to use the same damage for all of his area attacks, but a character that makes iterative attacks rolls new damage for each attack. Since my brother made a hypothetical ranger that can get eight attacks in one round, I figured this is a house rule I should declare right now... rather than seeing any single player take up a huge amount of time rolling damage for attacks.

3. Monster Knowledge Checks

Here's the big one. Every fight, I have a character that does a monster knowledge check. When I started my 4e campaign, I said "everything will be core by the rules", and I've been sticking to that, so when he makes his monster check, I have to give the player info on the monster's attacks, role, name, resistances... it REALLY bugs me, because I feel it takes some of the mystery out of the game.

I'm perfectly happy giving clues with monster knowledge checks. And I don't mind giving away full information for relatively common monsters. I really just want to have more power in my hands for deciding what information PCs get in a certain situation.

4. Ignoring Dumb Rules

Okay. I have no problem with the tripping of oozes, or with Come and Get It possibly moving a monster into bad terrain. But I'll give you two examples of why this is coming into play.

First off, remember that I said the game will always follow the rules when I started the campaign. This means that players can read the rules, as written, and do actions that defy "reality". I realize reality is highly subjective in a fantasy RPG... but there are things that really jerk players out of the game.

Situation one was in my game last month, and it bugged the hell out of me. The rules say that if a character moves two squares, he has a running start on an athletics check. In this situation, the player essentially moved his character back one square and then forward one square to get the two square running advantage - even though "realistically", everyone at the table agreed it made no sense (I can't remember the exact situation, but it was something that would not work in real life... it wasn't just getting room for a "running start").

Situation Two was in a game I was playing a few weeks back. Again, it made no sense thematically, but it followed the letter of the rules. Essentially, we knocked a gnoll prone, and one of us tried to shoot past the gnoll to the archers behind him. Unfortunately, the prone gnoll still granted cover. This was a "wtf?" moment for the group. To be fair, the GM follows the same rules, so it wasn't like it was intentionally unfair or anything, but it was one of those things.

My essential purpose for this house rule is essentially to say "I know I said we'd follow the rules exactly as written, but there are times that doesn't make sense, and I want the freedom to make those rulings without players getting mad at me for changing my approach halfway through the campaign".

5. Flavour for "Stunting"

There's a tendency in 4e (at least among my group - this isn't an edition war!) for players to simply read off the power name, and roll some dice. "I use come and get it" and then tell me the mechanical results. I want players thinking more about their powers, and get them a bit more involved in the thematic side of the game, and I think this house rule will encourage that. One player has already been doing this, and I really like it. Essentially, I'd be willing to let a character with Come and Get it possibly knock a few people prone with a modification to the power on the fly, or the bard using his shout power to break a window over the head of some minions and thus make the area beneath them dangerous terrain.

6. Takebacks on Moves

We have a few players who, when it's their turn, consider every possible movement choice. They will move their character, count ranges, move their character back, and so on. In the game I'm playing in now (which is all the same players, just a different GM), this rule was implemented, and I like it.

Essentially, there's a slight time limit on your turn, and once you move into a square, you're there. Takebacks are only allowed if you moved in a certain way assuming information that your character didn't have (That guy you wanted to target was actually invisible, for example, so your character wouldn't have moved to attack him).

The goal is to speed up play in combat, and it's worked well so far. I can see why a lot of players would hate this one, but I actually think it's one my current group would barely notice.... all it would do would encourage one or two players to take quicker turns, without anyone in the group actually having to say something to those specific players and possibly embarrass or hurt feelings.

7. Backgrounds

It'd be kind of lame to allow players to choose backgrounds for characters they've been playing - in some cases - for over a year. But I like the mechanic of backgrounds, and want to see it in play. So, since I'm moving the campaign to Sigil, I think a bunch of "Faction" backgrounds would work nicely. I'm going to explicitly state this to the players with the other house rules. But I'm toying with how to do it exactly... my current plan is to have each faction have multiple powers to choose from, but to not tell the players what those powers are until they join the faction (so they're not joining for a purely mechanical benefit, but instead for RP reasons).

8. Leader Abilities to Include Self

Someone on the class survivor threads pointed out that powers that do not include self are self-defeating. Essentially, a group buff makes the party stronger. A character that does this as his "schtick" improves the group's overall effectiveness... meaning that if the GM wants to throw balanced encounters at the group, he'll up the XP budget or throw better-constructed encounters at the party.

However, if the leader's powers do not include self, what he's done is upped the danger level to the group. Sure, he's improved the group's ability to respond to that danger, but he has not improved his own ability to respond to that danger. He's essentially nerfed himself, and paid character resources for the privilege.

Right now, my group has one leader - the other leader was retired when I politely asked one of the players to retire one of his two characters (he volunteered for it). With one leader and six PCs, I really don't want the player to just feel like he's the group healbot. This is one I'm going to put into a trial period, for sure, but I want to do something to make leader characters more enjoyable to play, and less like a chore.

(For the record, my group's leader seems to enjoy his character. And I play the leader in our other game, and love it. But we've both seen the ally rule get in our way, and it sucks to blow a daily on making everyone but yourself better).

One final thing - I think some of you might read this and start arguing about whether or not a player should have done something. Or suggest that my players are all bad hacks, or something. My players are all great - I have a great group, and I think their actions have been perfectly acceptable in play. The fault lies with my initial declaration of following rules as written - I should not be angry when a player does so. So I'm not really looking for a "well, that's wrong of your players to do", or anything like that.

 

[Fanaelialae]

8. Leader Abilities to Include Self

Someone on the class survivor threads pointed out that powers that do not include self are self-defeating. Essentially, a group buff makes the party stronger. A character that does this as his "schtick" improves the group's overall effectiveness... meaning that if the GM wants to throw balanced encounters at the group, he'll up the XP budget or throw better-constructed encounters at the party.

However, if the leader's powers do not include self, what he's done is upped the danger level to the group. Sure, he's improved the group's ability to respond to that danger, but he has not improved his own ability to respond to that danger. He's essentially nerfed himself, and paid character resources for the privilege.

Obviously you should do what works best for the group but I will say this regarding the idea of ally powers being self-defeating. 4e is a game designed for team-oriented play.

Having played multiple leaders myself, I know the suck that comes from not being able to use Sacred Flame to save myself when I'm dazed.

Nonetheless, I've found that it strongly encourages the rest of the team to fight harder to keep the leader safe, so that he in turn can continue supporting the rest of the team. I don't just mean defenders either. I've had both strikers and controllers acting as linemen, holding back the enemy so that I could keep dispelling their conditions and buffing them.

In the last game I played, the feylock interposed himself between me and a giant snake so that I'd be able to heal the rogue and druid fighting on the other side of the room (our fighter was absent that session) instead of having to worry about myself (I was in the single digit hps I think). He felt like a hero and I was able to (barely) keep everyone conscious thanks to him doing what no sane feylock should ever do. It was awesome!

So, essentially, I don't think that a buffing leader is paying to nerf himself. That buffed party is there to keep the (increased-xp) enemies off of you. If they don't do their job you'll have trouble doing yours, and the DM will quickly realize that he's made the encounters too difficult and (presumably) scale back all future encounters until he finds the "sweet spot". It seems to me to be a self-balancing equation.

I'd keep an eye on the consequences of this house rule.

 

[Garthanos]

3. Monster Knowledge Checks

Here's the big one. Every fight, I have a character that does a monster knowledge check. When I started my 4e campaign, I said "everything will be core by the rules", and I've been sticking to that, so when he makes his monster check, I have to give the player info on the monster's attacks, role, name, resistances... it REALLY bugs me, because I feel it takes some of the mystery out of the game.

REALLY
I have no issues with adjusting how much information you give out on a knowledge check none whatsoever.... that said...Pardon if I am suprised at how antagonistic your premise is. You start your premise I will take all the power out of my hands then you hate that the power is out of your hands?

This nothing more than a setting issue .You see ummm every version of D&D has required I adjust for my setting so I both approve of you doing so and find your complaint that you need to .... umm questionable. Lets look at implied setting features of D&D

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The game presumes a given universe these are my takes on it.

• monsters are common
• the people who battle and hunt them are not inclined to keep the knowldge of them a secret from the other people who do so, this knowledge is propogated for the betterment of all (heroic universe assumption points of light and that.).
• At even level one they arent children (with only fairy tail level knowledge skills).

If the default world didnt include monster knowledge with real knowledge not just vagary I would be complaining that if they are as bloody common as the game presents them to be.. then why isnt my wizard / witch hunter or whatever able to be knowledgeable about them? The games presumptions of commonality now match the mechanics of knowledge I seem to recall these did not match in AD&D?

Some DM's dont like having to decide how much information or what will be gained from a given check and wow the game has tools for them.... You even with yout setting diverging now have a tool for saying I dont like quite as much information to go out.. .and I can tune it back for my setting and adjust the difficulty setting of the checks if nothing else. It could even give a clue that you might also want to tune back the commonness of monsters. Its easier for you to remove your own use than force those who want the tool to build there own.

I make knowledge checks like perception checks where the players cant see them to help with immersion ... and sometimes give falsehoods as complete certainties and truths as vague hints.

 

[Wik]

See, Garthanos, I have no problem with monster checks existing in D&D. It's probably a good design, for the most part. HOWEVER, I think I made a mistake running the game "by the book", and I want to get rid of monster checks - they don't fit my style. And I firmly believe they take out some of the "sense of wonder" when a fairly easy check can give all sorts of information.

So, that's why I'm changing it. Because it does bug me to throw a fight at the PCs, and then have the players drop some monster knowledge checks to know that it's vulnerable to fire. It doesn't fit my playstyle.

I'm sorry if I came across as antagonistic. My point goes like this - when I made my campaign, it was with the stated intent that everything in the game was "core" and "by the book". However, doing so, I've found some parts of core D&D that really bug me. Monster Checks are one of the big ones. And it's something I want to change - but I want to give my players advance warning.

As for your perception on monster checks in the world... I don't mind giving away some well known facts about monsters. But I dislike giving away mechanical information, resistances, or stuff like that unless it'd be obvious. And I really dislike the idea that if a monster is a heroic level monster, regardless of relative rarity, the PCs should get a buttload of information. But then, I model my game off Clark Ashton Smith and old-school sword and sorcery more than high fantasy, and try to capture that feel at times.