Bad House Rules

[mseds99]

I've made a lousy house rule every now and then, mostly because I like to tinker with the rules. Most work very well, but i've thrown out a clunker. My worst, by far, was...

you could trade 12 skill points for a feat or vice versa. You could also save up skill points to buy feats later on. Add in the factor that I increaed everybody's skill points by 2 and gave the players exceptional ability stats, and it became munchka-mania.

Take it from experience, this is NOT a good idea.

 

[LrdApoc]

Okay, I think I understand the point of this thread but in essence aren't you just pointing fingers at those you don't agree with and calling them unknowledgable or inexperienced?

I guess I can understand why some folks would enact some of the above listed modifications, but I think it's arrogant to assume they are adopted because of a lack of understanding of the core rules. I wonder if this is truely just a thread to make some people feel superior to others or if it serves any sort of purpose.

Look I'm not wanting to start a fight with this comment, but shouldn't the discussion be turned to more useful avenues such as why some of these house rules are off, and maybe a way to implement the changes using the stated guidelines.. since that's all the d20 system is.

Also wouldn't this be better served in the House Rules forum?

 

[Chauzu]

Oh boy...

OK, we had to declare what part of the body we were aiming for when we attacked. Head attacks and heart attacks were instint deaths if the roll succeeded, and the rolls were treated no different than others. So anyways, we told the DM that we were aiming for the head on every attack all night. That was a QUICK adventure.

 

[Ace]

1. , removed *all* costs for scribing spells into spellbooks.

5. "Hero" Cards. Nothing quite like a stack of "get out of consequences free" cards to bleed all excitement from the game.

6. 42 point buy.

we must have very different gaming styles

I use all of these IMC without trouble. Heck if I charged scribing costs no none would play a wizard

As for the cards, well I use fate points and am carefull about handing them out

Ah well, YMMV and all that

 

[Berk]

1. , removed *all* costs for scribing spells into spellbooks.

This one is actually not all that bad. The price to scribe a spell into a spellbook is pretty hefty.

 

[SamuraiY]

I once played under a DM who made you roll will saves to be waken up. If you succeded, then you were still asleep. It got to the point where a wizard or cleric could be hit over the head with a sledge and still be snoring.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for this DM, but this particular rule was just something I didn't agree with.

 

[ph34r]

I gave Harm a save once, what the heck was I thinking!

 

[mmu1]

1. Everyone in the game had max HP. Except the PCs.

2. The DM made up a new type of sword that did d10 damage but could be wielded one-handed as a martial weapon because he was making up a ridiculously twinked-out NPC and didn't have enough feats for Exotic Weapon Prof: Bastard Sword.

3. Played with a DM who ran a "low magic game" - which turned out to mean that magic was doled out in painfully small amounts to the party while many of the NPCs strutted around with multiple magical items. Come to think of it, that game was all about the strict rationing of everything the party got, most notably healing - we weren't allowed to play clerics or druids... (although NPC races with access to magical healing did supposedly exist...)

 

[Hypersmurf]

1. Everyone in the game had max HP. Except the PCs.

I actually used that for a while, and found it worked quite well - with 7 PCs, I found that CR-appropriate creatures with average hit points tended to fold far too quickly, but creatures with higher CRs frequently had abilities that low-level PCs couldn't cope with.

Giving all the monsters max HP actually struck a reasonable balance, until they got up to around 5th level... now I'm finding that I can either throw something a CR or 2 higher at them without killing them, or add another couple of beasties.

But max hit points served me well at low levels.

-Hyp.

 

[presumed_druid]

Way back in my munchkin years of AD&D, I adopted a rule from my eleven year old school mate.

In an effort to create a critical hit system, we decided that a roll of 19 or twenty was a threat for a crit. So far, so good, right? Well to decide if the attack was double damage or not, we'd roll a d20, and any result of ten or higher was a crit, multiplying regular damage by 2. Still not that terribly far off... but it gets worse! If indeed the hit was double damage, roll the bone again. Over 10? triple damage! Keep going like this until either you roll under ten, or you've outdone your multiplication tables!

Funny thing is, that the monsters (We rarely used NPC's... we didn't need to role-play!) rarely had the luck of getting a crit. Must've been that DM dice-fudge rule....

But that was a long time ago!