Do you let your players know your House Rules?

[Pinotage]

Wow! Great and very helpful responses! Thank you! It's a very interesting read to see so many different opinions.

Pinotage

 

[JoeGKushner]

I always tell the players.

It reduces confusion and insures that the players know you trust them and that they trust you.

If any changes are made to the house rules, I announce them beforehand so that there are no surprises. Few things are worse than, "No, I changed criticals and now we use product X for them."

 

[drothgery]

Changing how one monster works isn't something the players need to know (unless their characters research the monster in question or learn by trial and error). But if, generally speaking, DR works like 3.0 and not like 3.5, then that is something the PCs need to know. There are a lot of spells, class abilities, feats, and items in 3.5 that are designed for the sole purpose of getting around 3.5-style DR; if the standard spells and weapons for beating DR don't work, the PCs need to know not to waste their money on cold iron weapons, the DM needs an alternative mechanic for the monk's ki strike, etc.

 

[The Grackle]

You're going to need to support your argument that telling players up front you've changed certain rules, which seems to be the widely-advocated approach, amounts to "rule changes that will seem sudden and arbitrary." Otherwise this is another straw man.

No, I meant discovering that the DM has house rules when they come into play. I've had it happen to me, and it blows. As for a DM telling players that he has house rules for certain things on his side of the screen; that's fine and totally within his rights. I Just don't see much of a reason for it.

You're also going to need to support your assertion that templates are better, across the board, as a way of injecting uncertainty into encounters, because you haven't made the prima facie case just by saying so. Please elaborate.

What the...? Prime Face? I don't speak French, buddy.
Templates- They're for making boring and well-known monsters less boring and less known. At least, that's what I use them for.

*****
For some people it seems this "hidden" house-rule-thing is a good way to stop the meta-gaming tendencies of players. If they don't know how DR works exactly, they might react with more awe and wonder to tough encounters. They might be more cautious when encountering the unknown.

That's a legitimate DM tool, I just think that there are better ways to make players fear and question the unknown. Like good storylines, home-brewed monsters, and real threats that can't be stabbed away.

The way I look at it, a little meta-gaming is bound to happen, and is actually part of the fun for the players. They know which weapons, feats, and spells to pick out, even if their Characters should have no idea about such things. They fight monsters thinking in terms of rounds, hit points, and saves even though their characters couldn't possibly consider these. It's fine. The mechanical side is part of the fun, so I let them know what parts they're working with. The surprises come from elsewhere.

 

[S'mon]

As far as the whole monster-DR thing goes - well, IMC the 'magic flux' that determines how magic works varies over time - so one year it might be 3.0 rules, the next 3.5... unless the party Wizard has a high rank in Flux Sense and does his research he's unlikely to know what's harming a Vrock this semester! Personally I'm not that keen on excessive DRs (or ERs, for that matter) and if I houseruled it would likely be to reduce invulnerabilities, eg maybe Vrocks' DR can be bypassed by _both_ Cold Iron _and_ +2 weapons... or maybe Cold Iron only works on the Prime, not the Abyss... in any case I would not normally set up an encounter on the basis that success relied on the players having read their Monster Manual - strictly speaking, players ought to actively avoid using recalled MM info at the table unless they get clearance from the GM. I use a lot of converted & homebrew monsters anyway, straight-from-book critters are a minority. If the PCs knew they were fighting a Vrock and did some research in-game, maybe (with eg Gather Info or Kno (Arcana) rolls) they'd find out useful stuff. If everyone was eagerly buying Adamatine weapons to go fight iron golems and I wasn't using the 3.5-materials-bypass-DR rule I'd let them know this - of course some players will actively _hide_ their motivations from the GM, with the logic that if the GM doesn't know the plan then he can't counter it! These players make me sigh sadly. They tend to get the party killed - not because I arbitrarily alter reality to hurt them, but because I wasn't able to discuss it with them in advance and explain the flaws in their approach.

 

[Desdichado]

The way I look at it, a little meta-gaming is bound to happen, and is actually part of the fun for the players. They know which weapons, feats, and spells to pick out, even if their Characters should have no idea about such things. They fight monsters thinking in terms of rounds, hit points, and saves even though their characters couldn't possibly consider these. It's fine. The mechanical side is part of the fun, so I let them know what parts they're working with. The surprises come from elsewhere.

Unless you tell your players, in metagame conversation, after the fact that, "hey, that troll had a template on it, that's why it didn't work the way you thought it would," then I can't see that there's an appreciable difference between using templates and just arbitrarily changing the way some monsters work.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Make up stuff all you want, but there's a point where you're just screwing with players to irritate and disadvantage them, not trying to produce a more entertaining game.

*blink*

That really depends on the DM, doesn't it? There are, indeed, some DMs who make changes purely to disadvantage players. OTOH, there are DMs who make dramatic changes to their campaigns, but are still doing so truly to make the world/story more interesting.

The line is drawn in different places for different people, of course, but I don't think it's ever fair to say "If you change up to point X, it's acceptable. If you go beyond X, it's not."

I agree that adding house rules on the fly, changing things in mid-campaign, is bad (unless you talk it over with the players first), and that's certainly not what I was advocating. And it's entirely possible that what I consider changing "details," others consider changing "rules," and vice-versa. But my point remains that I agree with the poster--I apologize, I forget who it was--who said "adventure is partly about discovery" and "the game's not about math assignments." (Or at least, not they waI prefer to play it, it isn't.) Sure, the best way to obtain those feeling is through creative challenges and interesting stories. But tweaking monster abilities and rules (I particularly like the example given that states "don't judge a dragon by its color," since that's something I've done frequently in my own campaigns) is also a wonderful tool for that sort of thing.

If I were to change DR to combine 3.0 and 3.5, I would tell the players "I'm tweaking some monster abilities and rules." I might even tell them "Damage reduction may not work entirely as it does in the rules, but right now your characters don't know anything about the specifics." It's not as though I advocate sending them in blind; I just don't think the characters should, for all practical purposes, have access to the Monster Manual.

 

[Pinotage]

Don't the core rules already advocate changes to monsters? I admit that while these aren't house rules, changing monsters is part of the game and I certainly wouldn't tell them that this particular 'dire rat' can breathe acid, for example.

From the Advancing Monsters section of the SRD:

ADDING SPECIAL ABILITIES
You can add any sort of spell-like, supernatural, or extraordinary ability to a creature. As with a class level, you should determine how much, or how little, this ability adds to the creature’s existing repertoire. A suite of abilities that work together should be treated as a single modifier for this purpose.

Pinotage

 

[Staffan]

I'm in the camp that believes players should be aware of the rules themselves, but not all the data that goes along with them. In other words, they should be made aware if you're using 3.0 or 3.5 (or some hybrid) DR, but should not necessarily be aware that demons are vulnerable to good and/or cold iron weaponry.