One DMs House Rules for Review

[Dremmen]

There is a standard set of house rules I use in my games presently or are planning on using, and although they seem to work ok, which is enough validation for me, I wanted to present them here to see what the populace thought of them.

The first is Armor Piercing. This comes about because of simple physics saying that if you get shot with a crossbow from across the room, versus a hundred yards down the road, the impact will be different on armor. At close range a crossbow bolt will shred chainmail easy. NOTE: I use the Game of Thrones rules, which are like Grim and Gritty in that Armor provides Damage Reduction, not an AC bonus;

that being said - the rule is based on the range of the weapon, and the assumption that if the weapon can hurl an object to Extreme range, then it will have considerable punch at closer ranges. With the range increments being Short, Medium, Long and Extreme, a heavy crossbow, which can fire at extreme range, can ignore 8 points of DR at Short, 5 at Medium and 3 at long. A weapon that had only long range could ignore 5 pnts at Short, 3 at Medium, while a weapon that could only go to Medium range would ignore 3 points of DR at Short. Short range weapons would have no AP.

This second rule just came about out of another thread. It is a Skill Based Damage Bonus. The way it works is that for every point that you beat an opponent's AC with your roll to hit, you add to damage. The only other change is that Str is no longer added to damage as well - that is taken into account when rolling to hit.

My third rule is an Initiative Penalty for Heavy Weapons. This one was a bit trickier to work out but seems to hold up well in games. The first change is that drawing a weapon is no longer a movement equivalent action, it is an attack equivalent action. That means if you draw a weapon on your turn, you cannot attack with it. This leads to the second change - anyone can attempt to draw as a free action - however, you incur penalties to initiative based on the size of the weapon. For Small weapons the penalty is -2, -4 for Medium and -8 for Large, all this being relative for your size so for a hafling drawing a small weapon would be the equivalent of drawing a Medium weapon for a Human. If you take Quick Draw the penalties fall to 0, -2, -4. The situation that I envisioned was two fighters squaring off, one with a Greatsword strapped to his back, the other a short sword. Both try to draw to strike the opponent down - the short sword fighter should be faster. Even faster still if he forgoes the weapon and tries to dive in for the grapple.

So, what do you all think? Too much?

 

[Bagpuss]

Do only crossbows get armour piercing? As longbows can pierce armour too, historically speaking. What about picks and other melee weapons specifically designed to penetrate armour?

 

[Dremmen]

Do only crossbows get armour piercing? As longbows can pierce armour too, historically speaking. What about picks and other melee weapons specifically designed to penetrate armour?

My bad, I see the wording was less than good. The AP rule is intended for *any* ranged weapon. It hasn't come up yet, but things like Ballistae would have special considerations.

As far as melee armor piercing weapons..I'm content leaving that to the wielder's skill, unless you can think of a quick n dirty way to incorporate it into melee weapons.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I think a limited ability for specific weapon to ignore armor DR is an cool idea, but hard to fairly put into play. I think your skill based damage increase account for this nicely.. the better you target the guy, the less his armor will affect him.

Besides, have an item that ignores armor...guess what everyone will use? Trust me, I once handed out armor piercing ammo in a CP2020 game...no-one ever wanted to go back. Made armor slightly pointless. If you are going to do it, the item should deal less damage to the target, which ends up being essentially the same as armor anyway....

RE: Initiative. Sticky issue. How do you intend on this working?
- Roll every round variant: your action penalizes your next initiative roll.. doesn't gain the effect you are looking for
- RAW initiative: The chosen action 'delays' your turn by a number of points.... okay. What happens when said greatsword gets disintegrated mid draw? {or user gets grappled...a more likely scneario} Has the character just lost an action? The new tactic of the day turns into readying to tackle your opponent when they draw the big nasty sword..thereby denying them an action that turn!

 

[the Jester]

I don't know enough about the changes from dnd in AGoT to judge this.

On the whole, though, it seems like you're making the game deadlier. Keep in mind that this generally plays out against the pcs in the long run. If you want a high-lethality game, I would say that you're in fine territory. Otherwise, pay attention to how you're dealing with raise dead and other magic that brings back dead pcs- if you tend to make it hard to find revivifying magic, and you're turning the deadliness dial up a notch, I would recommend making sure that your players understand that they're playing a much deadlier game than standard.

Personally, I like games that are highly lethal, but I usually dm, too.

(Then again, I really enjoy omrob's games, and they're generally all high-lethality... though, amazingly, none of us have died in his Warhammer game yet, and we've been playing it long enough for my character to have filled out all his advances for his first career! )

 

[Dremmen]

Thank you both for comments

If you want a high-lethality game, I would say that you're in fine territory. Otherwise, pay attention to how you're dealing with raise dead and other magic that brings back dead pcs- if you tend to make it hard to find revivifying magic, and you're turning the deadliness dial up a notch, I would recommend making sure that your players understand that they're playing a much deadlier game than standard.

Personally, I like games that are highly lethal, but I usually dm, too.

(Then again, I really enjoy omrob's games, and they're generally all high-lethality... though, amazingly, none of us have died in his Warhammer game yet, and we've been playing it long enough for my character to have filled out all his advances for his first career! )

The game is indeed made more lethal by these rules, both for the PCs and their quarry. With this system high level PCs can wade through waves of orcs thanks to the extra damage. In my game world there are no Cure or Inflict spells, so *most* of the time you have to go to natural healing, enhanced by alchemy/herbalism, which is the reason why said PCs might choose not to wade though said orcs. Yes, they would kill them quite effectively (a la Drizzt in Thousand Orcs) BUT the damage they do suffer starts to accumulate, and all of the sudden they are left with only a few HP and the orcs are chasing. Things get hairy. This translates into being able to have high level PCs in relatively low level adventures and it still become dangerous.

A way I make things *less* dangerous is the alternate way of doing Crits. They are no longer simple damage multipliers (that usually leads to untimely death), but effects per Bastion Press' Crit book. So a crit usually means a crippling, or punctured long ,or other bad, bad thing that usually translates into Ability modifiers, not always extra hp damage.

As to initiative - it is RAW - one roll at the beginning of combat that determines initiative for the rest of hte combat UNLESS something happens to change it. So indeed drawing that big two hander might put you near the bottom of the list in initative for the rest of combat.

 

[green slime]

Armour piercing: Too complex.

Skill Based Damage: Interesting. Does it apply to ranged weapons as well? Dex mod to damage?

Initiative Penalty for Heavy Weapons (or All weapons): So most surprise rounds are spent drawing weapons? Or do most combatants draw weapons anyway, and suffer Initiative penalties? I'm guessing the later.

 

[Dremmen]

Armour piercing: Too complex.

Skill Based Damage: Interesting. Does it apply to ranged weapons as well? Dex mod to damage?

Initiative Penalty for Heavy Weapons (or All weapons): So most surprise rounds are spent drawing weapons? Or do most combatants draw weapons anyway, and suffer Initiative penalties? I'm guessing the later.

On AP: Well, I was going to do a table and reference it, maybe keep it simple to keep a track of.

Skill Based Damage: For ranged weapon, since Dex adds to the To Hit roll, then it would translate to damage as every point beyond what you need to hit translates into extra damage. If you are high level you should be able to put that arrow where it counts.

Initiative Penalty: Surprise rounds, if you are in the party being surprised, you have an option - draw your weapon as a free action, giving you something to fight with when your turn comes up, and take a penalty depending on how large a weapon you choose to draw ( if you're smart, go for your belt knife instead of your battle axe ). Or resign yourself to being surprised, take no initiative penalties and don't draw a weapon as a free action and wait until your turn comes up to draw it using an attack-equivalent action. Or simply choose to defend yourself with your hands and don't worry about drwaing a weapon. Option, options..

 

[airwalkrr]

The first is Armor Piercing. This comes about because of simple physics saying that if you get shot with a crossbow from across the room, versus a hundred yards down the road, the impact will be different on armor. At close range a crossbow bolt will shred chainmail easy. NOTE: I use the Game of Thrones rules, which are like Grim and Gritty in that Armor provides Damage Reduction, not an AC bonus;

While I empathize with a desire for realism in your games, the PCs will rarely be using crossbows at such long ranges unless you run a wilderness campaign, so it probably will not come up often enough to be worthwhile. The range increment penalties already increase your average damage by reducing your attack modifier so I would say that is enough of a simulation of the effect. You might want to consider reducing the range increment on crossbows and bows though. They always struck me as a little high.

This second rule just came about out of another thread. It is a Skill Based Damage Bonus. The way it works is that for every point that you beat an opponent's AC with your roll to hit, you add to damage. The only other change is that Str is no longer added to damage as well - that is taken into account when rolling to hit.

That seems fine, but just be aware that it adds a lot more calculation to the DM's work since you would have to give away the monster's AC for the players to calculate it themselves. Assuming you are fine with almost doubling the amount of math you have to do on the fly as a DM, go with it.

My third rule is an Initiative Penalty for Heavy Weapons. This one was a bit trickier to work out but seems to hold up well in games.

Like the first, I think this is an unnecessary complication. I appreciate the desire to bring back weapon speeds into the game, but most people agree it is really not necessary. A minor initiative penalty like you are suggesting will probably not have a significant impact on gameplay or make anyone change their weapon style (which I imagine is your reason for wanting the rule, unless realism is your only goal).

In all, I doubt your fixes would drastically alter the game in any way. So you would be fine using them without any other adjustment. They are not anywhere near as drastic as my house rules (see sig). I just think some of them are hard on the DM, and these days I'm finding that I prefer to KISS.

 

[Warbringer]

Ap is incredibly easy to implement, event in an AC based system; for example

All weapons have an AV (Armor Value) and an AB (Armor Bonus); the first is a condition based on the protetction that the armor offers, the latter is a bonus recieved when the condition is met.

So

Heavy Crossbow bolt (>4,3)... When armor/natural armor has protection 4 or more, the weapon does an additional +3 damage, representing that the armor offers less (or no) protection against that type of weapon

Stiletto Dagger (>5,6) ...

Also

Longsword (<3,2) indicating that against armor that provides less than 3 points of protection the wepaon does more damage