[Ari Marmell's blog] To House Rule or Not to House Rule

[Greg K]

The new paradigm in 3e quickly became different than that in the older days. In 1e/2e, anything outside the core book was understood to be purely at the DM's discretion, and the ruleset in general as well. In 3e, though initially things like prestige classes gave lip service to that.

I don't disagree that things changed (although I think it happened much later than you claim). I do disagree about paying lip service in 3.0. Between the PHB and DMG, there are several passages stating that the DM is in control of how the game is run, can make changes and even the presentation of many variant options for tailoring the game.

PHB:
P. 4 Rule 0
p. 18 Customizing Characters
p. 60 Sidebar: Access to Skills

DMG
P.6
"Let's start with the biggest secret of all: the key to Dungeon Mastering (Don't tell anyone, okay?). The secret is that you are in charge. That is not telling-everyone what to do sort of in charge. Rather, you decide how the group is going to play the game and "you decide how the rules work, which rules to use and how strictily to adhere to them."(DMG p.6).

"the whole tenor of the game is in your hands".

P.9 "Good players will alway recognize that you have ultimate authority over the game mechanics, even superceding somethng in a rule book"

p.11.
"Every rule in the Player's Handbook was written for a reason. That doesn't mean you can't change them for your own game"

"As DM, you get to make up your own spells, magic items, races, and monsters!".


P.25-26 Modifying Classes
- Modifing Character Classes
- Spell Lists for Variant Spellcasters

P.27 Prestige Classes
"Allowing PCs acces to prestige classes is purely optional and always under the purview of the DM"

" Prestige classes are idiosyncratic to each campaign, and DMs may choose to not allow them or use them only for NPCs"


P40-42 Variant 1st Level Multiclass Characters

P41 Advancing Levels
- Access and Training
- Variant Learning Skills and Feats
- Variant Learning New Spells
- Researcing Original Spells
- Variant Gaining Class Abilities
- Variant General Downtime
- Variant Gaining Fixed Hit Points

p.66 Combat: Damage
- variant Clobbered
- variant Death from Massive Damage Based on Size
- variant Damage to Specific Areas

 

[Lanefan]

But the idea that it froze XP until you did the training made the sudden rush to high level no longer a major gameplay issue.

One of the very old houserules we still use is that your ExP gain is not completely frozen when you bump, but if you don't get training reasonably soon it slows to a slug-like crawl. This was to account for people who bumped in mid-adventure - they could finish that adventure out without losing too much, rather than want to drop everything right then and there and go back to town for a few weeks.

Lan-"To House Rule, for the win"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

I don't disagree that things changed (although I think it happened much later than you claim). I do disagree about paying lip service in 3.0. Between the PHB and DMG, there are several passages stating that the DM is in control of how the game is run, can make changes and even the presentation of many variant options for tailoring the game.

This shows me that despite having played 3.0 for seven years or so I really need to read its material more clearly, as while I knew about the rules options I didn't know about most of the others.

The most important passage is this one:

DMG
P.6
"Let's start with the biggest secret of all: the key to Dungeon Mastering (Don't tell anyone, okay?). The secret is that you are in charge. That is not telling-everyone what to do sort of in charge. Rather, you decide how the group is going to play the game and "you decide how the rules work, which rules to use and how strictily to adhere to them."(DMG p.6).

Was there a similar passage in the 3e PH, that said in effect "The DM is in charge"? If not, there should have been; highlighted in neon on page one and repeated often thereafter. Many many arguments could have been prevented...

"the whole tenor of the game is in your hands".

I think this one is referring to flavour and game style, which the DM is by default going to set whether she is told she can or not.

Lan-"'The DM is god. Abide or die.' (sign on my first DM's DM screen)"-efan

 

[pemerton]

Between the PHB and DMG, there are several passages stating that the DM is in control of how the game is run, can make changes and even the presentation of many variant options for tailoring the game.

The 4e DMG has a page discussing house rules (p 189), giving a couple of examples. Unlike 3E it doesn't have the same emphasis on GM power over the game - page 189 cautions that "You have the authority to do whatever you want with the game, but your efforts won’t help if you
have no group" - but 4e does stress the role of the GM as a referee and arbiter of the rules (PHB p 8, DMG pp 12, 42).

 

[Rechan]

I have created a few new monsters;

That's a houserule? IF that's the case, I'm a super houseruler.

 

[Votan]

One of the very old houserules we still use is that your ExP gain is not completely frozen when you bump, but if you don't get training reasonably soon it slows to a slug-like crawl. This was to account for people who bumped in mid-adventure - they could finish that adventure out without losing too much, rather than want to drop everything right then and there and go back to town for a few weeks.

Lan-"To House Rule, for the win"-efan

I used to only assess XP at the end of an adventure and freeze the XP at that total (so players would be really encouraged to train before taking on a new quest). That way nobody would end up multiple levels behind.

I also used it to make it impossible for daul class humans to gain several levels in an adventure so that they could reactivate the original class very quickly. Otherwise dual classing all mages as fighters seemed too be too obvious a route to go (even if it was fun in Baldur's Gate).

 

[Votan]

P.27 Prestige Classes
"Allowing PCs acces to prestige classes is purely optional and always under the purview of the DM"

" Prestige classes are idiosyncratic to each campaign, and DMs may choose to not allow them or use them only for NPCs"

I found it very hard to eliminate prestige classes in 3.0/3.5 even if I wanted to. Player's focused on them and it seemed to annoy people all out of proportion when you removed a beloved prestige class. It was actually easiser to set the rules as "core only" in my own experience.

But I agree the text was there . . .

 

[ExploderWizard]

But at it's most basic, this is true for any dice-based RPG, including indie games like HeroQuest, or D&D combat, etc.

Really? Some situations are handled regularly without rolling dice at all in my(4E) campaign. The fact that the rules call for a dice fest when anything of substance happens doesn't stop us from ignoring that and just playing it out.

I think a lot of the criticisms of skill challenges simply disregard the rules text that I quoted upthread: the die cannot be rolled until after the GM has framed the situation and the player has explained what s/he is doing to respond to that situation. It is implicit, although perhaps not fully explicit, that the situation may change in respond to any given skill check, thus opening up new opportunities for subsequent skill chekcs. (One way in which this is implicit: that certain skill checks may open up new skills.)

My major issue with skill challenges isn't that the PC's cannot approach the challenge in different ways or that the nature of the challenge doesn't change in response to actions taken. The rules actually cover this
quite well. My issue stems from the fact that setting up such a challenge pre-supposes what the PC's need to do in the first place.

For example, lets say I construct a skill challenge. The PC's have found out that one of the Baron's most trusted allies is in fact, a villan. The challenge involves convincing the Baron of this fact with circumstancial evidence and persuasion.
So I start outlining the useful skills, set complexity and DC's, and make notes about how successes and failures influence later parts of the challenge. That's a lot of work. What if the PC's don't care what the Baron believes? What if they are not sure if the Baron is a villan so they decide not to tip their hand with the info they have?

Here I have wasted valuable prep time for a scripted encounter that will never happen.
Unlike combat stats which are generally useful and can be recycled with ease, the effort spent on the skill challenge is wasted.

I could only see the value in skill challenges if I were running a game wherein I dictated to the players what encounters they were going to have and the nature of those encounters.

 

[Scribble]

Unlike combat stats which are generally useful and can be recycled with ease, the effort spent on the skill challenge is wasted.

I see them pretty much as the same as a combat encounter... You don't have to make them super tailored to a specific outcome or story or whatever, so if the PCs don't go that route just store it for later use.

I don't find any difficulty in re-using SCs at a later point. (The fact that they're not as detailed as combat encounters also means they can be retrofitted on the fly much more easily.)

 

[Mallus]

With 4e, my group does very little house ruling (free weapon/implement expertise feats, re-equip each PC w/magic items when they level in lieu of magic treasure, start with/use 1 action point per encounter).

With 3e I did more, mainly to add flavor (and with 1e/2e, well, you can probably guess...). Nowadays we just add flavor and handwave, leaving the basic game engine alone.