D&D 4E My 4e House Rules - Yours?

[Kynn]

The only house rule I'm using currently is "one action point per encounter."

 

[EmbraCraig]

The only house rule I'm using currently is "one action point per encounter."

Isn't this a standard rule? Or do you mean you change it to allow more than one?

(unless I made rule that up and need to apologise to my players next week for enforcing it..)

 

[Ryujin]

Isn't this a standard rule? Or do you mean you change it to allow more than one?

(unless I made rule that up and need to apologise to my players next week for enforcing it..)

I'm pretty sure that you're right on that count, as I forgot my multi action point per encounter (but only one per turn) house rule.

 

[the Jester]

Isn't this a standard rule? Or do you mean you change it to allow more than one?

(unless I made rule that up and need to apologise to my players next week for enforcing it..)

I suspect Kynn means that s/he awards pcs 1 action point per encounter rather than 1 per milestone- a pretty common house rule, from what I've read and heard.

 

[EmbraCraig]

I suspect Kynn means that s/he awards pcs 1 action point per encounter rather than 1 per milestone- a pretty common house rule, from what I've read and heard.

Ah, now that makes sense, and is something I've thought about doing myself... giving people more chances to put together epic turns is always a winner (except for the bad guys, of course...)

 

[The Human Target]

One free expertise feat at 1st level.

One free melee training feat at first level if ya need it (the one that lets you use Int or Dex or what have you for basic attacks, I forget what its called off the top of my head.) Basically to help non-STR defenders be a little more sticky and charge-y. But it lets every non-STR based make better melee attacks really, and hasn't seemed to unbalance anything.

Every PC gets six skills at first level, and can choose any skills in the game. You don't get any skills as part of you class however (so Rogues don't automatically get Sneak and Wizards don't automatically get Arcana.) Any bonus skills you get from Race (Human or Eladrin) count as normal.

PCs can't take extended rests without the say so of the DM (usually after 3 or 4 encounters.) It lets me use more "random" encounters and a slightly less day and encounter based adventure design.

Thats all I can think of.

 

[Hyatt]

My main house rules involve the pace of the game in 4E:

1. Encounters don't end until I decide they do.
2. The day doesn't end until I decide it does.

My games are very story-based, and I frequently have a bunch of roleplaying with maybe one fight in the day. I got tired very early on of watching players just blow through my one fight using 34435 dailies. Similarly, I got annoyed that I couldn't just throw two guards at a party in a dungeon to whittle down some of their resources, so instead I started saying things like "Until you finish this wing of the dungeon, it's all one encounter."

I find 4E's main problem is the cookie-cutter mold of X monsters = an encounter, and X fights = a day, so changing encounter to "scene" and daily to "chapter" has worked very well for me.

 

[corwyn77]

Probably too many minor ones to mention but I'll try to cover the major ones:

Almost no magic items - consumables, the odd artifact-like item, and some minor but iconic items. All PCs add level to defenses and to attack instead of half-level and half-level to damage. As an add-on to that, no feats that add universal bonuses to attack (expertise), damage (weapon focus, etc.) or defenses (paragon defenses, etc.)

Ability bonus does not add to attack; instead attack bonus = 3 + level + proficiency bonus (if any).

Any class with an at-will melee weapon attack gets Melee Training for free, anyone else can take the original MT as a feat. Without MT, either as a feat or for free, attack bonus for Melee Basic is level + 0 + weapon.

Extended rests happen when dramatically appropriate. Like some others here I sometimes have only one fight in a day and this allows me to keep them challenged.

If attacking from complete surprise (such as sneaking up on a sentry) the victim is considered helpless, allowing for a coup de grace.

Coup de grace does an extra hp per level. This is because monster hit points increase out of proportion with PC damage. With this extra damage a striker still has a reasonable chance of killing with a cdg at higher levels. With the above rule, this allows for some intense commando raid type scenarios.

 

[Destil]

All characters a +1 feat bonus to all attack rolls at 1st level, increasing to +2 and 11th and +3 and 21st (this can be done by adding weapon/implement expertise feats if you're using character builder).

The Melee Training feat gives you your full ability score bonus to damage, not half damage. The following classes get Melee Training for free at 1st level: Paladin (Charisma), Swordmage (Intelligence), Battlemind (Constitution), Avenger (Wisdom), Monk (Dexterity), Rogue (Dexterity).

Warlocks get a third at-will power for free at 1st level.

Sorcerers get the Acid Orb or Energy Strobe power for free at 1st level.

Standard free expertise. All defenders and melee strikers have a good melee basic for free, all ranged strikers have a good ranged basic for free.

Magic Items
Any magic item crafting must be approved by the DM, magic items will be somewhat rare and the ritual to craft magic items will require special unique components and knowledge.

Rituals
Like magic items, the DM has the final say on all rituals. Some rituals will require specific components instead of or as part of their component cost and some rituals may be off limits to classes that learn free rituals like the wizard.

Magic items are boring in 4E, in most cases. This generally lets me replace them wholesale with more interesting ones of my own design.

Untrained ritual use
A character without the ritual caster feat can attempt to cast rituals from a ritual book or scroll, as long as the ritual does not exceed their level.

They must first familiarize themselves with the ritual by succeeding in an intelligence check: DC 10 + the ritual's level. Doing so takes an hour per level of the ritual, there is no penalty to failure on this check and a character may take 10 or take 20. A character can only ever be familiar with a single ritual at a time, attempting to familiarize themselves with a new costs any existing familiarity with an existing ritual.

An untrained ritual caster familiar with a ritual may cast it any number of times provided they have the ritual book or a scroll at hand for the entire length of the casting as well as all the correct components. They take a -5 penalty to any skill check required by the ritual.

Ritual Caster
The ritual caster feat grants the following:

You gain a reservoir of power that can be used to reduce the cost when casting rituals. Certain components, at the DM's discretion, can not be replaced.
Level: Reservoir
1-5: 25xlevel GP/week
6-10: 50×level GP/week
11-15: 100×level GP/week
16-20: 150×level GP/week
21-25: 250×level GP/week
26-30: 300×level GP/week

With an hour of study you can memorize a ritual of your level or less from a ritual book (you can not memorize rituals from scrolls). You can use memorized ritual in all ways as if you had the ritual book on hand. You can only have a single ritual memorized at any given time.

You can copy rituals of your level or less from one ritual book (or memory) to another. Scribing a ritual into a ritual book costs 1gp per level of the ritual.

You can create scrolls of rituals in a ritual book you have on hand (or memory) of your level or less for for a cost equal to twice the component cost of the ritual, only half of this may be paid from your reservoir. Any special components the ritual requires must be used but these requirements are not doubled.

When you cast a ritual of your level or less you can choose to double the component cost and take a -5 to all skill checks in order to reduce the casting time by a factor of 10 (days become 2.5 hours, hours become 6 minutes, minutes become rounds).

You can attempt to cast a rituals of a level higher level. An hour of study beforehand should give you some ideas to the costs and risks involved.

Decoupling ritual use from wealth, letting non-ritual-casters use rituals with some effort and allowing me to drop things in like requiring special components for something like Raise Dead to lessen their impact on the campaign world.

 

[Tallifer]

My 4e clone has a few house rules built-in. Most of them are little fixes for 4e's few wrinkles; a feat tax fix, a fix for the 1-square bubble, fixes for AC-gimped builds, etc.

My only really radical house rule is my replacement for hybrids and RAW MC feats; I wrote my own MC feats that allow power swapping without the repeated feat 'surcharge.'

What is the one square bubble and its problem?