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Message: <blockquote data-quote="BiggusGeekus" data-source="post: 2572646" data-attributes="member: 1014">Warning: this may not be true contribution to the thread.  I may be blathering.  I'm increasingly becoming a bigger fan of approaching pen and paper RPGs as if they were computer RPGs.  When I tell this to folks, I usually get a lot of derision and snide remarks about fed-ex quests and no roleplay.  But that's not what I mean.  I mean that adjustments and conditions in RPGs should apply to the character or NPC alone.The dodge feat is an example.  The RAW, as Quasqueton noted, says that you have to pick one opponent as often as once a turn to apply a penalty to hit the character.  In a computer game, this would mean that every six seconds you could click on a new opponent and apply a debuf to that opponent that would affect only your character.  That's a lot for a computer to keep track of to say nothing of a human.  The global +1 dodge bonus means that the character applies a buff to himself.  That's much easier and it doesn't even have to be applied in combat, it only has to be figured in whenever there's an armor class change.Attacks of Opporunity are another example.  IF an opponent passes through your range AND that travel meets a list of conditions THEN you may make your attack.  An alternate way to handle it would be to apply a condition on a character to say if the character is actively defending himself or not.  If he is, then take a movement penalty, if he is not then take an armor class penalty.  The changes are noted on the character sheet and AoO are dropped.  Less bookkeeping.  Now there is a loss of "realism" but I personally think that ship sailed long ago when we started playing a game that assumed a 20' lizard could open up a flamethrower on me and I would casually react to that by deducting an appropriate number of hit points instead of ... you know ... acting like I was on fire.Anyway, in an attempt to bring this back on topic, how would I weigh house rules?  With a scale.  I've seen house rules that could easily be their own 32 page books.  If the house rules go "thump" when you drop them on a table, you have a lot of house rules.</blockquote>

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