Austin, TX, Star Wars d20 - House rules

[Zhaa]

On the subject of "House rules", "rule bending" vs. "power gaming".
The crew that I used to play with abided by the rules & erratas very carefully in general.
However, some other players have said that we were "power gamers" because with our character creation we allowed for more feats & skill points to be awarded. I didn't feel that it was that excessive & we adjusted the challanges accordingly.
The types of adjustments to character creation were:

1 - Hero's ability scores couldn't exceed 90 when added together & to create balance, scores couldn't be lower than 85. Any initial ability score couldn't exceed 18 or be lower than 10. (I supplied some templates they could choose from)

Example: Loci "Jazz" Jasmar - 6'2" male Mon Calamari (Tech Specialist 10)
Str 12, Dex 16, Con 14, Int 20, Wis 16, Cha 12
Jazz started with his abilities adding up to 88. His Con was 14 & Int 18. Mon Cals have -2 Con +2 Int, which made his Con 12 & Int 20. Over the course of this character's creation he got a Abiblity point at levels 4 & 8 which he put in Con bringing it up to 14.

2 - All recieved 3 additional feats per level & 6 additional skill points per level.

3 - When creating followers their follower recieved only half of the hero's rewards (1 1/2 additional feat & 3 additional skill points per level).

Power gaming ? ... I don't know? What do you think?

 

[Donovan Morningfire]

"Power-gaming" is many times in the eye of the beholder.

The ability scores would strike me as being a very lucky series of rolls, but then again I have characters with totals around the 80 to 90 range, but I can see how a group used to lower ability scores on average would see such a method as being "power-gaming." I prefer to use point-buy most of the time, allowing 35pts as standard; allows the characters to have traits far above the norm, but not excessively so, unless they choose to over-focus on one ability score at the expense of others.

The skill points and feats do strike me as being "power-gaming," as they are far above what a 1st level character starts with, especially if one is used to the regular allotment of skills and feats.

 

[Zhaa]

Yeah, the feats & SP are a little high. When we first started gaming back with D6 we were used to getting more rewards than usual. Now with about 12 players & 3 rotating GMs everyone didn't like the D20's reward & level up system. One of our GM's started giving out feats & more feats & SP galore after every adventure. We actually had to bring back our feat & SP count when he had quit. So we had to arrive at a happy medium for players & GM alike. Now that I'm in AUSTIN, TX I hope to find a group that is a little more orthadox, but still as fun as my usual group of players ...

ANY AUSTIN PLAYERS OUT THERE !!!