How Much Houseruling Are You Willing To Do?

[Mercutio01]

I voted some. <snip>

So I don't mind doing some house ruling but if I feel I have to basically house rule to many things I am not interest in running that edition.

Yeah, that's pretty much the way I feel as well. If I outright ban things, it's usually from books I don't own or have reasonable access to, or sometimes because it doesn't fit the world as I see it (no warforged in FR, no kender in Eberron, etc).

 

[Sunseeker]

A Little; which grows into Some as more content is released.

Early on, my houserules usually exist mostly to flavor things towards the way my table likes to play. Few to no things are banned, a couple things are added, and some stuff is just made up on the fly.

As more splat comes out, I end up with lists of races I don't want to see, a lot of stuff I've added and some general ideas about what works in play and what doesn't.

If it pushes into "a lot" I start to question why I'm playing the edition. If it looks like I'll have to completely redo core aspects of the game, I will probably just not play.

 

[Gold Roger]

Voted "some", but I hope with modules it will be only "a little" or "none".

I have elements I don't want in my games for setting reasons, but don't ban, like dragonborn, warlocks and half-elves. If a player really wants to take those options, I'll just point out that such characters would be way out of place, might need to be refluffed and the characters "out of placeness" would be a major plotpoint.

If I ban things or make changes, it's because they put a major dent in my or the other groupmember suspense of disbelieve (I'll note this includes "gamebreakers" as they tend to take you out of "imaginespace" and into "rulespace"). This not only depends on the people involved, but also the genre you aim for, I guess.

 

[Pickles JG]

I want the modules to do the work & to play in OP events so I put none. I play 4e un modded & 3.5, when I played it, with fixed HP/level as the only house rule so I expect this to be at least as robust.

edit: oops this is a fib as I don't use XP by the books I hand wave it.

I would ban stuff for setting specific games - Dark Sun races only in Dark Sun etc if the rules did not already do that.

 

[slobo777]

I'm an inveterate rules-tinkerer, I /like/ to modify rules and come up with new ones.

Even so, I don't like /needing/ to do so because the rules are F'd up.

This, for me.

I'll play "by the book" if I can, and save the creativity for home-brew monsters and encounters.

I have never outright banned anything (unless you count refusing to play/run D&D 2e at all for a few years

 

[Viking Bastard]

I voted Complete, but it depends on a number of factors, including how malleable a system is. I won't hesitate to do sweeping changes to get exactly the experience I want out of a system, but whether I bother to do so depends on how receptive the mechanics are to such changes and how much of a domino effect the changes will have throughout the system (I found 3e much harder than 4e to house rule into shape, for instance).

5e's promise of being a D&D toolkit, so to speak, is the biggest selling point for me.

 

[KesselZero]

I voted for A Little. I'm one of the few DMs who doesn't think he knows better than the designers. (I mean that in the nicest way possible, fellow DMs! ) So I'm always hesitant to start house-ruling, especially when it comes to taking away character options, as I hate limiting my players in any way. I also can't afford to buy every rulebook and read through it, so I don't always know a certain power/class/race/expansion rule/whatever better than the player who wants to choose it.

I trust my players to make their characters how they want to, and I enjoy coming up with in-world explanations for seemingly strange things (warforged outside of Eberron, for example) and throwing killer encounters at optimized characters much more than I enjoy telling my players "no." Accordingly, then, I'd much rather have a system that I can trust to be reasonably balanced no matter what official content I allow.

That being said, houserules always come into play in one way or another (my current campaign has an "everyone gets one for free" character rebuild rule, and uses homebrew nautical combat rules) so I'm not against them. Just would rather they add something to the game, rather than fixing or removing bad bits.

 

[jadrax]

I voted for A Little. I'm one of the few DMs who doesn't think he knows better than the designers.

Honestly, unless the designers have been to you table and met your players and studied your style, you will always know your game better than them. Believe in yourself, not the rulebook.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I voted for A Little. I'm one of the few DMs who doesn't think he knows better than the designers. (I mean that in the nicest way possible, fellow DMs! )

It's not necessarily a question of thinking you know better than the designers (not for me, anyway; I trust the designers to create a good, playable game), as much as it is getting exactly the play experience you want out of a system. All in all, I'm much less likely to houserule the micro than I am the macro.

I've never banned a class or a feat in my game as I don't like bossing my players around in character creation, but rather like to see what they come up with. The gist of my instructions to new players is: "Go forth! Go wild! Have fun! Don't break the game. Try not to create anything annoying."

 

[CM]

Toward the end of 3.5 I was running a few heavily-houseruled games. I liked tinkering but discovered some things are more trouble than they're worth.

So far in 4e I have only a few houserules, mostly to maintain compatibility with the character builder, and don't have any regrets. There are a couple of feats and items that we don't use, and we boosted assassin shroud damage, made a few daily items into encounter items, and that's about it. We are looking at adding a few new combat maneuvers (lunge, a 1-square charge, and tackle, a multi-square bull rush) to patch what appear to be holes in the system.


So i'm probably going to continue my more recent attitude and only houserule things that are clearly overpowered (or underpowered) as evidenced in play. I'm highly unlikely to houserule anything based simply on personal taste.