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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 2566023" data-attributes="member: 22779">Like I said earlier, I have no real beef with houserules.  As was mentioned, all campaigns have them.  If you play in a particular world, that particular world will have certain rule changes.  I have no problem with that because those rule changes ARE KNOWN BEFOREHAND.  My beef comes when the DM changes the rules midgame.Here's an example from Scarred Lands, because it's a campaign world I know well.  In SL, arcane casters heat up when they cast spells.  As a bonus, this heat makes them less susceptable to cold for a period of time as per an endure elements spell.  As a side effect, all spell failure chances due to armor are doubled.  Now, I have no problems with that.  It's a  cool idea and goes a long way to explaining scantily clad northern barbarian sorceresses.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  Anyone playing in a SL game knows that this exists and can plan accordingly.If, on the other hand, I didn't use this SL rule until one of my players decided to take a level of fighter with their mage and I sprang it on them in the middle of a combat, then I would be a bad DM.  Despite the fact that this is the same rule, the timing of the presentation of that rule changes me from a creator of an interesting campaign quirk to a butt head.  My main beef with homebrew rules is that IME, many, many are the result of poor understanding of the mechanics.  Take another SL example.  In Relics and Rituals, magic items were not given a gp or xp value for creation.  The reason given in RR was that magic in SL is rarer and more difficult to create.  That's fine as far as it goes, but, that homebrew rule interferes with a number of other mechanics.  As a DM, if I don't know how much an item is worth, I have to guess as to whether the item is a realistic reward for an encounter.  Also, considering they didn't change any of the item creation rules, the homerule made pretty much zero sense.  If creating items has the exact same difficulty as other campaigns, then there is no real reason for items to be more rare.In the end, SL errata'd the list and added xp and gp values to magic items in RR.  To me, this is a pretty good example of a homebrew rule that simply wasn't carried far enough.  If you start changing rules, you can't just look at the rule itself.  You also have to look at how that rule fits into the mechanics.  IME, most DM's neglect that part and just change rules to suit their own sense of right or wrong.  And frequently, again IME, these changes make less sense later than at first blush.Sure, slavish attention to the RAW is not necessarily a good thing.  But, half arsed rule changes are, IMO, far worse.</blockquote>

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