Amusing House Rules

[Oversquid]

In my experience, no game is complete without the institution of a house rule or two. Some of those house rules are good, others aren't, and others are, well, just plain silly.

This thread is devoted to hearing silly house rules that you've had to experience during a game.

I'll get the ball rolling by saying that I was in a game where if you get petrified, you can make a heroic pose before being turned to stone. The more heroic, the more money your petrified body will fetch for on the market.

What about you guys?

 

[RangerWickett]

A poster registered on EN World with the screen name God a few years ago. People asked Him what His dice policies were. He said, "If it falls off the table, reroll it, unless it lands on a 20. Then you keep it."

 

[ValhallaGH]

Don't like your (dice rolled) stats? Drop all your equipment and have your 1st level character fight a house cat. If you lose then you can use a point buy. This one was all kinds of silly, but fun and popular - every single PC chose to fight the cat (even the guy with three 18's and nothing below 14).

 

[Mark CMG]

When rolling fireball damage (or for similar spells) and you roll the absolute minimum (all ones), it becomes the maximum.

A bard can sustain their bardsong beyond the normal duration if on their initiative they can come up with an original couplet that fits the situation.

Saying "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" as a way to try and win favor when parlaying with an actual Beholder allows the Beholder to gain a surprise round and use all of their attacks on the speaker simultaneously.

 

[MarkB]

In a Dresden Files (FATE system) game:

"Puns cost you a Fate Point."

This was directed at two players in particular, of whom I was one. At one point, the other player just mutely handed over a Fate chip in response to a remark by the GM, explaining when queried that the pun he'd thought of was so terrible he felt obliged to pay up even though he hadn't vocalised it.

About half a minute later, I was fined a point for uttering what turned out to be the same pun my fellow player had suppressed.

 

[wingsandsword]

Any time you have to roll percentile dice, if the answer is 69%, something "special" happens during the action, if you get my drift.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I am the DM, and my word is law. All who dare to dissent have XP revoked at my cruel and capricious whim.

However, XP are like the points in Whose Line Is It Anyway?; they just don't matter.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Had a DM, that ruled that Light spells were a sphere and pentrated objects as it moved...doors, floors, cealing and walls, if the sphere extented beyond the boarders so did the light!

 

[radja]

Dice are governed by the god of numbers, El Palo. His favourite number is 1, and he hates the number 2. Any player who rolls a one must worship El Palo by uttering his name. Any non-minion that is reduced to exactly 1 HP gets a halo (the Halo of El Palo), which appears with an audible *pling*.

 

[Random Axe]

Had a DM, that ruled that Light spells were a sphere and pentrated objects as it moved...doors, floors, cealing and walls, if the sphere extented beyond the boarders so did the light!

Yup, my group did this too when we played in that edition. It was dumb (IMO) but everyone had agreed to the poor logic of the RAW.

Our current house rule is that, if you don't have your dice ready to go by the time a roll is called for, you either automatically fail the check or have to put in an extra two bucks to the house kitty.
As a side note, we each always bring two bucks to the house for every game session, for the game host to buy the cokes and snacks and so on.